Tech support = YOU!
Phew! We made it to 2021. The world is still spinning, even if it does feel a tad off-axis.
Running your own business can feel fraught over holiday periods - especially over the Christmas and New Year break. Whatever your traditions, most people set time aside for celebrations and family, and keeping up with business can be really hard.
Family time
Personally I decided that my family needed some dedicated attention so I didn't take on any work that would have taken up my time during the holidays. My kids are growing up but they are still at home and very much need, and deserve, some focussed attention. Christmas is still exciting for them and I love indulging that excitement and letting it infect me, too.
But still, when you run your own business there is always something. This holidays I realised it was the ideal time to wipe my laptop clean and set it up from scratch. A bit of tech tlc to make sure I can keep working efficiently in my voice over business.
What a lot of fun that wasn't!
The wiping bit went along jolly-holly-oh. But when it came to restarting my laptop so I could reinstall everything, I hit some kind of a wall. Tried again. Another wall. And another. Then the first one again. And so I went round, and round, and round. And each time I tried to restart I had to input our wifi code. Only 30 digits long!
My Mac presented selection of icons of hope, and of despair!
Being a voice-over artist is often more about admin and tech than about voicing. It's about marketing, networking, customer relations, keeping up with new trends, audio software changes etc. You're your own technical helpdesk and if you're not techy when you start - you have no option but to upskill. Fast!
The solution to my frustrating reboot loop was just a matter of doing a lot of searching on YouTube for help videos and trying different things until WOO HOO everything started to work as it ought to.
Wasting time?
It's easy to feel 'what a waste of my time', 'this is so annoying, I ought to be speaking to potential voice over clients or auditioning, not faffing around with my computer.' But it's all part of the job.
I’m very pleased I chose to use a little bit of my 'down time' to factory reset and rebuild my laptop. I could still engage with my family between inputting those 30 flipping digits (which I pretty soon knew by heart), and setting the next process running - with my fingers crossed. I may have missed out on a few auditions, but no one was let down.
Now I have a laptop that's running super smoothly and can relax knowing I've done the hard tech yards for this year, learnt a bit more about Apple MacBook Factory Reset, and I can focus on building my business and being the best voice artist I can be.
Get in touch with me today to discuss your voice over needs and get a quote.