VACATION! Everybody needs one now and then. And thankfully, I just got back from one.
I don't care what type of job you have, the regular 9-5 corporate gig or a work-from-home job, while you're away at the beach or hiking a mountain, you have to think about work at least a little bit.
The voice over business is no different than any other business, in that you always want to be thinking about the best interests of your clients. And if that means working your tail off before leaving on vaca to help get ahead, or taking a microphone with you on the road in the event of a VO emergency, you're going to need to embrace that.
What's a VO emergency and how can you be prepared? Well, I'll give you an example.
We were traveling from San Diego to LA when I got an email with the word,"Urgent" in the heading. I had notified my clients ahead of time that I would be out of the office, so I knew if they used the "U" word, they meant it.
Turns out, someone at the company had deleted a file that I had recorded for them that they were still actively using...and it was from 2015! They asked if I could re-record it for them.
Now, I was prepared with a microphone and computer, but we weren't checked into a hotel at the time so I couldn't just set up shop and record. If this truly was urgent, I needed to find another way to help.
In preparation for the trip, I had anticipated something like this happening and I had loaded a USB drive with all the work I had done for them in the last year, thinking that I could quickly pull that up with and send it over with a wifi connection somewhere.
But the file they needed was from 2015. Think...what options did I have? What would you have done?
Well, here's what I did. You know how all your emails are filtered into a bunch of folders. Well, one of them is labeled, "Sent." As long as you don't delete them, every email you've sent will be there. So...I was able to go back through my "sent" folder, find the one where I had originally sent the files off to them, and resend it. I'm surprised you didn't hear the cheers of joy erupting from my client's office when they received it.
Being prepared with the right equipment, a little for-thought in planning and just plain understanding the systems you use, can help you be a hero in your client's eyes when they need you the most.
When you're a one-person office and each client is critically important to you, find ways to delight them even when you're out of the office.