First Directed Session!

So I had my first directed session last week!

The character voice that I THOUGHT I nailed…turns out the customer was not entirely happy about it. After a bit of back and forth, I offered to jump on a call to complete a directed session, so that he could tell me more about the character and what he envisioned. I learned about 2 barriers with this session: time zone and language.

Time Zone Issues

With my client living and working on a completely different continent than I do, it was a little tricky getting the timing right for our Zoom session. I needed to be fresh as I could be to get the take that my client approved of, and my client needed to be awake! It was a tough balance, and when we linked up for the directed session it was 10:30 at night for him! I felt really bad about the inconvenience of it, but it took 3 iterations in that scheduled Zoom to land on the character voice! If you are working with clients that are in vastly different time zones, you have to consider convenience for them AND optimizing your performance. Because I am a part time professional, I knew that meeting with my client after I already completed a long day of accounting and mom-ing would reduce the likelihood of amazing customer service from me. Not to mention, a tougher read.

The Language Barrier

Although we both spoke English during the call, I already knew that English was not my client’s first language. He didn’t say it outright, but I could tell from our text-based communications that there were some blockages. Once we were on the phone, we were able to pound out that what he was looking for was the word “sarcastic” to describe the character. Once we both said the word, there was a big “oooh” with big smiles on both sides. Then I did the 3rd read and he was very happy. “1000% perfect” was his exact phrasing.

I think it is really easy to get comfortable with communicating with a keyboard and forget that as humans, we can often connect very well when we can see another person. Although we were not standing in the same room, we were able to hammer out our thoughts fairly easily. Pitch is too high, speaking too slowly, she shouldn’t be angry she should be… Not exact phrasing, but the ebb and flow of the conversation helped leagues above what I could have ever imagined. Now, I have a repeat customer (at least a few episodes of this YouTube show, still in progress) and less anxiety about performing “in front of” my clients.