The Sokanu Blog

JoJo Jensen

What do you do?

I’m a voice over talent. I read and record scripts for every type of project from documentary narrations to on-hold messages, commercials to training videos and almost everything in between.  Video games and cartoon voices are on my project wish list and with deep respect, I don’t narrate audiobooks.

Armed with a quiet, professional studio and an Internet connection, I voice twenty or more projects everyday and send them to clients all over the globe. I’m excited to go to work everyday!

How did you get there?

The biggest misunderstanding about becoming a voice over talent is that simply having a good voice is enough to have a successful career. It’s not.  More important than having natural talent is taking the time to learn and practice the skills required to become a professional.

The first time I stepped behind a microphone to record a radio commercial for my employers, it felt like home. I was terrified and my voice cracked, but I knew right then, that becoming a voice talent was what I wanted to do.  I quit my job, found a voice over coach and never looked back.

I worked with my coach for two years taking private lessons and weekend workshops. She taught me the fundamentals of voice over including how interpret a script, how to avoid popping my Ps and how to deal with a sore throat.  My teacher set the bar high for skill and professionalism making sure I would be ready for any project no matter how complicated or challenging.  She taught me the importance of practice both in and out of the studio and pushed me to take more classes in acting and improvisation, along with singing lessons to strengthen my voice.  

Becoming a voice talent isn’t about being good at only one thing – it’s about having a variety of skills that have been honed through practice and the ability to put them all together when you need to, like in front of a room of eight casting directors just waiting to be wowed.

After cutting my first demo, I created a marketing strategy to land projects. When I started, it was cassette tapes, outside recording studios and the only available projects I could get were where I lived. Now it’s Mp3s, home studios and a global market.  I record from a home studio and email finished audio to my clients around the world. It’s really cool and never ceases to amaze.

Why do you like it?

It’s fun.  Don’t get me wrong – it’s hard work every single day, but I have such a great time every day I step into the studio and hit record that it’s worth it any struggle to keep going.  I can’t imagine doing anything else.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a French speaking marine biologist, a la Jacques Cousteau, a family court judge, a dancer, a gymnast and an international business mogul.  However, when no one was looking, I read the back of toothpaste tubes out loud and watched British comedies so I could practice my British accent. 

A professional voice over talent with more than eighteen years experience, JoJo Jensen has recorded every type of project from short, snappy television commercials to YouTube marketing videos, long form documentary narrations to on hold messages thanking you for your call. With a background in sales and marketing years before ever standing in front of a microphone, JoJo runs her voice over career with a sincere dedication to customer service and satisfaction! Listen to JoJo Voice Over demo samples at www.jojojensen.com! 

Photo credit to  AJ Halliday Photography

By Spencer Thompson  (original post from Sokanu Posterous blog)

Life is an eternal education. We are almost always students of life, learning more every day. Every person we meet, show we watch and book we read - we are learning. Part of the problem with our society is that we seem to define education as the standardized years in which we go to “school”, when of course this is not the case. 

What most people don’t realize is that we are also teachers. For every person we are influenced by, we in turn influence others. Our actions cause other people to stop and question why we did what we did. Our actions show kindness and compassion towards others. We are always leaving an impact, day by day. Our circle of influence grows along with ourselves.

The way that I try to see life is as a giant classroom. In that classroom there are teachers (your mentors, parents, and influencers) and there are students (the people you influence). Your job is to learn and to represent both sides. If you are constantly growing, your platform for teaching will grow. Your words will become more powerful, and your influence will spread further. 

One of the things we must realize is that the world is completely open. You are influencing others whether you believe so or not. We are all teachers now, more than ever. We all tell stories every day. Remember:

Every life has a story. Stories are made up of experiences. Your experiences make up the lesson plan for your life. Use your life as a class.

Vince Rotello

What do you do?

I am a Professor in the Chemistry Department at the University of Massachusetts. I have a group of 30 researchers working on biomedical applications of nanoparticles, including new anti-cancer strategies and diagnostic tests for cancer and other diseases. 

How did you get there?

Undergraduate and graduate school, a postdoc, and a lot of hard work!

Why do you like it?

It’s like running a start-up company focused on making peoples lives better. I work with a great group of students, postdocs and visiting scientists, and have the ability to move in new direction—as long as I can get someone to fund it.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a chemist—I’ve always liked making things, and that’s what we do now.

Check out the Rotello Group and follow their discoveries on their Facebook or Twitter page

By Sara Halickman

Anyone who knows me knows I love to eat and cook (also a reason why anyone who knows me also knows that I am a very regular gym-goer). I’ve always been an adventurous eater thanks to a pact my parents made with me at the age of three when I swore I would try everything once and only once I had could I decide what I did and didn’t like. I have to say it worked; there are very few foods I turn my nose at.

Lately I’ve become more and more aware of how important what I eat is during a workday; it dictates how tired I am, how productive I am, and how well I feel. There’s nothing worse than feeling sluggish after a big lunch and too tired to get anything done all afternoon, or being distracted by hunger and on a hunt for food (which generally doesn’t end well). I’ve found that it is incredibly important to eat properly for a workday to make sure I have enough energy.

I have always been a huge proponent of breakfast being the most important meal of the day. I can’t understand how people go through an entire morning without eating anything and somehow muster up the energy to get a morning’s worth of work in. I love breakfast. I have been one to admit that upon finishing dinner I start looking forward to the next morning’s breakfast. I’ve gone through a lot of breakfast phases, and the meals that stick tend to be ones that actually keep me full from breakfast until lunch .

A vegetarian friend of mine introduced me to a website devoted to vegan recipes over the summer and recommended something called Vegan Overnight Oats. I was intrigued. I’ve always been a fan of oatmeal in the morning and once I tried VOO (as the website’s creator affectionately calls them) I was immediately hooked. The recipe extremely filling and is one of the few breakfasts that can get me all the way through until lunch. It’s made with rolled oats, almond milk, chia seeds, and a variety of other ingredients that can be used to customize it to your tastes. The secret is in the chia seeds; they act as a binding agent and by some miracle of chemistry absorb the milk into the raw oats and make everything moist but not soggy.

You can find my personal favorite VOO recipe here; along with a number of others that are based along the same premise.

It is my current favorite breakfast to start a workday with, along with a nice cup of coffee. I usually prepare mine when I make my lunch the night before, which is not surprisingly when I start looking forward to eating it.  

Written by Leo Babauta from the blog Zenhabits 

“You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers … If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” - Steve Jobs in a Stanford commencement speech

One of the keys to happiness — as well as productivity and effectiveness at work — is finding work you love, that you’re passionate about. Work youwant to do, instead of just have to do.

If you really want to do it, it barely seems like work at all.

I’ve finally found that work, in blogging here at Zen Habits and with writing in general. I don’t drag my feet to go to work anymore — now I can’t wait to get up early and start working.

And I’m just one of many who’ve done that — there are people all over the world pursuing their dreams, working with passion, losing themselves in their work. Are you one of them? Do you want to be?

The difficult thing for many people is finding what that work is in the first place. They don’t know where to start, and it seems a hopeless cause.

It’s not. You can find that work, but it’ll take some effort. Here’s what you need to know about finding the work you love:

1. It won’t find you — you have to seek it. Doing the same ol’ thing everyday isn’t the way to find the work you love. Sometimes, you get extremely lucky and it just lands in your lap. Most people, however, aren’t that lucky — you’ve got to take action, and you’ve got to seek it.
2. You can’t stop looking until you find it. As Steve Jobs said, never settle. If you find something that’s just a bit better than your current job, that’s better … but don’t stop there. Keep looking. Don’t give up the search.
   
3. You’ll have to look in lots of funny places. Really explore. Try new hobbies. Talk to new people. Read articles on different blogs, in different magazines and books. Inspiration might come from someplace you never imagined.
   
4. You might not love it completely until you get good at it. Most likely you’ll know that you love something once you find it … but at that point, you’ve got to work at getting better at it, with all your might. Once you get good, it’ll be something you can’t stop doing, because you’ll get a thrill at doing something great.
   
5. Once you find it, you have to pour yourself into it. If you find the work you love, you’ve been given a gift. Don’t spoil it — truly pour yourself into that work. That doesn’t mean you should ignore the other loves in your life, including family and friends, but when you’re working, you should devote yourself completely to that work.

Here’s how to go about seeking your passion:

1. Break out of your routine, and dare to ask. You’ve got to stop what you’re doing (maybe not at this moment, but today, or tomorrow, not next week) and be bold enough to ask yourself if you love what you’re doing. And if you don’t, then what is it you really love? And if you don’t know, then are you going to look for it?
   
2. Spend time thinking about it. It’s good to take an hour or two to really think about the question. It’s worth the investment. Really think about what you love, about your life, about what you want to be doing.
   
3. Think of what you already love. Do you have hobbies you’re passionate about? What do you like reading about? What do you talk about with others? Is there something you always wanted to do but forgot about, or were too afraid to pursue?
4. What are your dreams? Is there something you’ve always wanted to accomplish in life? Almost everybody has some dream like that, sometime in their lives, but often they don’t think it’s realistic. Give it more thought now.
5. What are you good at? What are your strengths? Do you have any talents? Is there something you’ve always excelled at? Pursue these things.
6. Take action. If you don’t actually do anything, you’ll never find it. Start doing research, start making calls, make appointments, take career assessment tests. Take action, now.
7. Explore new things. Try out new hobbies that sound interesting. Read about new things. Find new ways to explore — break out of your patterns.
8. Once you find something interesting, pursue it. Read about it. Learn, and try it, and do it, and get better at it. Don’t be afraid to pursue it — fear is what stops most people from finding this happiness.
9. Then take action – again. Now that you’ve learned about it, give it a try! You might be able to pursue it within your current job, or do it as a side job or just as a hobby at first. Write to people who are doing it to find out how they got started. Check out a few books on the library and do some research online to find out about the first steps you need to take — and then take them! Pursue your dreams!

“Getting up in the morning and having work you love is what makes life different for people. And if you get into a position where you really don’t love what you’re doing, get off it. It’s easy to be on someone else’s track or something that sounds like a safety play.” -Bob Woodward    

Original post from the amazing blog, Zenhabits

        By Spencer Thompson    (original post from Sokanu Posterous blog)

Perspective

The world around us moves at the speed of light. With planes, trains and automobiles we can travel to far corners of the earth. With the Internet we can access any piece of information we want. With the advent of social networking, we can connect with virtually anyone we want.  But through all of this innovation and the new ways that we can connect with one another, is there really any difference in the way we interact? Humans have always had very poor judgement systems when it comes to meeting other people. Our interactions with one another are interesting simply because of the multitude of ways that we judge instantly.

The world would be a lot simpler if humans were built to be the same, or at least very similar.  We would understand how one another are thinking, our paths to get to a certain point in life would be the same and our opinions would be non-existent. But of course, uniqueness is what makes the world go round. I am not going to get into the philosophy behind perspective, as that could easily become a book-length blog post. Instead, due to the nature of Sokanu, I am going to focus on how perspective affects us when it comes to careers and career choices.

Growing up in the Western world, most of us are used to the luxuries that we receive on a daily basis. And no matter how hard we try, we still take these things for granted. If we truly appreciated what we had, each and every one of us would wake up and start jumping up and down because we are living with shelter, have instant access to electricity and can eat anything we choose. A lot of the world does not have the basic necessities of life, and therefore their perspective is based on the first level of Maslow’s pyramid. I will not be talking about that today, as it is extremely difficult to understand the perspective from that world.

Instead, let’s focus on the traditional path that a westerner takes through life. Grows up in a middle class neighborhood, goes to public school, has friends, plays video games, graduates from high school, goes to university, graduates from university, gets a job, gets married, has kids, advances in his career, retires, and eventually dies. This is the typical path of a person from birth to death in North America. Now, where does perspective come in? Well, between each step in life, it’s the blank space that determines what kind of person we are. It’s the non-traditional things that we learn that defines what we believe, how we think, who we talk to and how we live our lives. And the first rule we must remember is, everyone’s blank spaces are different.

Filling In The Blanks

When you take the bus or train to work, do you ever stop to listen to some of the conversations going on around you? If you are someone that just puts in earbuds and shuts out the world, try this on Monday. Check your Blackberry, read the paper, or just sit in silence. Observe the people around you. Realize that every single person sitting around you has had a unique life path to get to this point. No two people are the same. That person sitting across from you can be a banker, lawyer, doctor or he can be a pastry chef or farmer. And his path to get to that point has been totally different than yours. Isn’t that amazing? As obvious as that may sound, every single person sitting around you, at that exact moment, has had a unique life. Their blank spaces have been totally different than yours. Sure they have gone to school, gotten married and had kids, just like you. But that person is so completely different you have no idea.

I’ll explain with a story of my own. On the way back home Thursday evening, I was sitting at the front of the bus. A couple came in and sat down. The lady was older and couldn’t hear very well. Her partner was making sure to talk directly into her ear so that she could hear. As a result, the entire bus could hear exactly what she was saying. He was talking about loan sharks, politics and conspiracy theories. Normally I would internally roll my eyes and stop listening. But I was also reading The Happiness Hypothesis on my Blackberry, and had just read a passage on perspective. I realized that these people may not have gone to Harvard, may not live in a $10 million dollar house, may not have invented a revolutionary technology, but they were still entitled to their perspective on life. And my opinion on what they should or should not believe is irrelevant. 

Their blanks in their lives were completely different than mine. I spend my time worrying about financial forecasts, UX mockups, hiring, marketing, designing, reading, writing and thinking about Sokanu. My perspective is generally focused on the tech world. If I had asked these people who Mark Suster or Fred Wilson was, they would look at me with confusion. But on the flip side, if they asked me any question about any other industry, would I be any better off? In each industry, I am beginning to realize certain sets of people have a very narrow view of the world through their eyes. The science world thinks that the art world is flaky, while the art world thinks that scientists just aren’t creative enough. Finance guys think that technology people don’t understand capitalism, while tech people think that finance guys don’t understand entrepreneurship. It goes on and on. We generally exist in one world in our entire lives. Our “tribe” and information is all related to that world. And because of this, all of our gaps are filled with the same thoughts, opinions and beliefs as others in that world. Thus, our view of the world begins to narrow. We begin to realize what “the real world” is.

The Real World

When you were growing up, did your parents ever talk to you about “the real world”? You know, the one where money doesn’t grow on trees, you have to work extra hard to pay the bills, promotions aren’t real, a $20,000 car is all you can afford, owning a house is the greatest achievement you will have, a university degree is a key to life, etc… And the problem is, we are a product of our environment. So whatever our parents deem as the real world, we usually accept as our own. The only issue with that is there is no one real world. There are millions of real worlds co-existing on this planet at the same time.

You create your real world. Every single action that you take determines your world. And that is why perspective is so important to consider. We co-exist with billions of other people that live in their own worlds. And when two people or more share overlapping features from their world, they form a tribe. And collections of those tribes form the industries that we know today. So when it comes to careers, we generally find ourselves funneled into a category that we live our lives in. And this is wonderful, because it allows the plethora of different personalities and talents available on the planet to shine through.

Next time you are talking to someone new to your world, or from a totally different world, don’t just dismiss them. Remember, we live in a world with multiple intelligences, and so what we may be intelligent at, others may be lacking in. But remember this works both ways. There is something to learn from everyone. Sometimes the worlds are so far apart that your perspective can’t understand theirs, but that doesn’t mean they are wrong and you are right. 

—

Choosing a career path is tough, and the education system doesn’t make it much easier. They try to guide you towards one of these worlds that exists on our planet. The problem is that most of the time, schools don’t understand the unique perspective of their students, and they don’t adapt their needs to the situation. This is why finding your passion is so important. Passion is not the be-all-end-all, but rather the guiding force that allows us to make the right decisions as we travel through life. Finding your passion, connecting with your tribe and achieving your goals are the steps that you must take in order to find a career that you will find rewarding. But having a sense of perspective for the world around you allows you to understand that your opportunities are endless.

Never let someone with little perspective guide you away from your passion. Next time you have a conversation with someone who doesn’t understand why you are doing what you are doing, try to understand their perspective. How were they raised? What was their path in life? This will often let you understand why they are making the statements they are. By getting this, you can understand where they are coming from. People that are not in your world will very often not have the same perspective to you. Remember, that’s what makes the world so unique and wonderful.