You know the saying “Results may vary?”
It’s used in marketing to cover the client’s ass from people who buy a product, and then come back pissed off that the hair growth formula they bought didn’t work like it did for the actor in the TV commercial (who was obviously wearing a toupee).
Well, voiceover should really come with that caveat too.
Demos, marketing programs, P2P sites, microphones…
One group SWEARS by something, and another group says that thing is useless.
Who’s right? You are.
Whatever gets you the results you want is the right path for you.
But in case you’re NOT getting the results you want, or just to make sure you’re not getting in your own way, I’m here to offer a few tips to get better results from what you’re doing.
First, I want to tell you a little about my path and why it worked…for me.
“You should REALLY get coaching from a reputable coach, first.”
This advice was tossed at me in response to a question I was asking on a voiceover Facebook group back in 2016, right around the time I got started. I’m pretty sure the question was about how to find work, or P2P sites, or marketing, or something like that.
They weren’t totally wrong.
But they weren’t necessarily “right” either.
The person who gave me that advice didn’t know about the rest of my background leading up to that start:
My deep love of commercials and advertising
My theatre degree and lots of post-college acting classes
And my 20 years of experience doing theatre, improv, and on-camera work
Not to mention, at the point I made my demo, I had also spent TEN YEARS recording commercials off the radio and transcribing them by hand. You can’t tell me that wasn’t an education of its own.
For most people, getting coaching probably IS the first logical step to starting a voiceover career.
But, you see, at the time, I had already set my cart firmly in front of my horse, and there was no putting them back.
Oh, I got to the coaching eventually…but it’ s just not where I started.
My voiceover path went:
Got my demo
Got my first audition
Booked that (very lucrative) job
Used that job to get a voiceover agent
(All of this happening within less than two months )
Yadda yadda yadda…and a year or so later, I took my first weekend intensive VO workshop.
And two years later, after attending VO Atlanta, I finally did some private coaching.
Would I recommend my path to most people? Definitely not. Especially if you don’t know for sure if you really want to do voiceover for the right reasons, and not just because you think it’s easy money. Standing in a padded room talking to yourself all day isn’t for everyone.
My cart pulled that horse along just fine, until it got stuck in a rut and I needed a coach to straighten it all out, but…
RESULTS MAY VARY
I am not you, and you are not me.
(sorry, this is probably a big shock—I hope you were sitting down for that)
We each:
Bring our own unique set of skills and life experiences.
Encounter our own set of unique opportunities based on our personality and the relationships we’ve formed with different communities.
Experience lucky chances that we either take or do not, based on our personal bias toward action or inaction, as well as our ability to recognize them in the first place.
So, let’s break down the elements that could have made my personal experience of voiceover different for someone else.
Srsly.
Know thyself. And act on that knowledge.
I got my demo made without doing any formal coaching.
Now, I wouldn’t recommend this for everyone, but because of my background, it worked for me.
For someone without any formal acting training, I’d say that coaching is a necessity for a few reasons:
To understand how to act copy instead of just reading it
To learn how to take direction, and
To understand your place in the advertising ecosystem
One could say this is the step where I screwed up, and I should have done coaching first. Who knows. Maybe I really would have been better off if I had.
However, it’s hard to say if doing one-on-one coaching right then would have given me better results.
Honestly, I think what probably would have happened is that I would have continued to overthink the whole voiceover idea forever, get intimidated and not take action.
A reputable coach might have told me to wait and save up for a $2000 demo, and that might have been enough to deter me from ever taking action at all because at the time, that amount would have seemed impossible. Add expensive coaching on top of it, and I probably would have surrendered before I began.
Instead, I had an experienced audio engineer who had me read some copy for him tell me, “You’re ready. Stop stalling. Just do it.” And so I did.
I tell you this not to give you a blueprint, but to say that it’s okay if your path doesn’t look like what everyone else says it should look like. It shouldn’t look like my path either.
Know thyself. And act on that knowledge.
You can be humble and still share your gifts with the world.
Cultivate Relationships and Promote Yourself
I got my first audition because of two simple facts.
I wasn’t afraid to share my demo proudly on Facebook right when I got it
I happened to know someone who could cast me and lucked out that he just happened to be casting something when I posted my demo
You have to be prepared to promote yourself in this biz. If you’re not willing to advertise what you’re doing and do that frequently, how will opportunities find you? Sharing what you’re doing is like putting up a beacon to draw them to you.
You also have to be prepared to form relationships. Knowing people in related industries and keeping up with them is HUGELY helpful for advancing your career.
I could very easily see someone in this situation who did not add the producer as a Facebook friend when the request came in. Who didn’t keep in touch. Who didn’t share their demo because they were worried it wasn’t good enough. And that person’s results would differ greatly from mine.
RSVP ASAP
Be Responsive, Professionally and Artistically
I booked the job. Now, this is the thing I had the least control over.
The producer texted me the script. I read it and sent it back. He wrote back and said “Can you do it again…more like this?” And I did.
If I had been unresponsive or slow to respond to his text, undirectable, or resistant to his direction, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the job.
Life is one big chess game. If you want to win, you’ve got to think more than one or two moves ahead.
Think Strategically
I leveraged my first voiceover job to get a voiceover agent.
When I booked the job, the producer asked me if I wanted to book directly or have him “toss it” to one of my agents, and I very distinctly remember a few other actors questioning my sanity about booking it through my agent.
“But you’ll be giving up $750 in agent commissions!” they said. “And they didn’t even get you the gig!”
Even then, I knew that getting an “in” with agents for VO wasn’t easy (I had already been with that agent for on-camera work for nine years at that point, and one of my previous on-camera agents had flat out refused to let me submit any VO auditions without getting a demo made first).
Agents are access to opportunity. Agents are social proof.
Sure, there are plenty of people out there making a living at this without a single agent, but I’ll take every open door to opportunity I can get thankyouverymuch.
Plenty of actors would have kept the $750, and as a result, they might have had to wait for months or years for another opportunity to get picked up by an agent.
The following year when I booked TV spots for General Mills and Pillsbury, I had proof that it was a worthy investment.
A wadded up ball might fly as far as a carefully folded paper plane.
As you can see, the same set of opportunities can lead to very different outcomes, depending on how they’re handled.
So, let’s review!
Six tips for getting better results in your voiceover business:
Know yourself and what you want.
Your goals and your path should be in line with what YOU want, not what you think you should want, or what someone else wants for you, or anyone else’s idea of success is. You do you.
Develop a bias toward action.
Don’t wait to take the PERFECT step forward. Just keep taking any step forward in the direction of your goals. And another. And another. Any action in that direction is better than waiting to take the perfect step in that direction. Plus, little steps are a lot less scary than big steps.
Cultivate relationships.
In the industry, outside of the industry. The more people you know and keep in contact with on a regular basis, the greater your chance of finding opportunity. Seek to help others. Going out with the intention of getting is a sure way to fail. Don’t be that smarmy person who only reaches out when they want something.
Promote yourself.
Share what you’re doing in a way that gives something back. People can’t care if they don’t know. That being said, don’t expect everyone to care. Share openly and without expectation. Share because you care, and the right opportunities and people will find you.
Be responsive.
Be grateful and responsive to the opportunities you get, even the ones that you don’t want. Respond to texts and emails quickly, and send your auditions back early. Learn to say “no, thank you” graciously (and perhaps pass along the opportunity for extra good karma). And on the artistic side, work on taking direction. Be the easiest person to work with.
Think strategically.
See every opportunity as a way to access greater opportunity. A voiceover booking isn’t just a paycheck. It’s an opportunity to show your agents that you’re in demand and booking—especially the agents who didn’t book you the job! A job is a potential social media post or email marketing campaign (with permission to share of course). Working with a coach isn’t just training, but potential access to resources and opportunities. Remember, when you get opportunities, to think about how you can leverage them in greater ways.
Your results will always vary from someone else’s, so just let your path be your own. There is no one right way to do this.
As my acting teacher would say “There’s no right choice. But there are better choices.”
Maybe try these tips, and let me know if your results improve. I’d love to hear if they do.
Until next time, friends! May your opportunities be many.