Create.  Maintain.  Re-invent.

 

If you love the voiceover jobs you’re doing right now and want to increase your work, build your profile, and secure a spot for yourself.

Or you’re ready to kick off your journey and need to know more, then this blog is for you.

To create and maintain a career in Voiceover you’ll need to have done a few things that are essential to making your way in.

And to make it a long-term reality, there are some things you need to understand about how to sustain it.

 

Baby Steps to Healthy Growth

We all begin at the beginning.  We’re babies, knowing nothing.

And as babies we don’t just get up and walk.  Our first steps are always tenuous.  We’re unsure of how we’re going to take those steps.  What muscles do we need?   Where are we headed?  What will happen we get there?

Some days we’ll fall.  We’ll fail.  Have a bad day.

But every day, we try it again.  Because we want to be able to walk.  Every day we practice it.  We get better and better at it.

Then people start noticing how good we are at it.  They tell other people how good we are.  People begin telling us they’ve heard how good we are.

Well, getting into voiceover is a bit like that.  And it takes time.  It takes practice.  It takes focus.

Even though you know you have a feel for this work, and you’ve been told you’d be good at voiceover, in the beginning it’s truly a wise strategy to say, “I know nothing, or I know very little”.

Followed by, “But I’m going to learn.  And nothing will stop me”.

Approaching it in this way, will free you from your ego, which may have told you many things about your abilities for voiceover, including ‘how easy this is going to be’.

Take into this journey a desire to grow knowledge, as well as self-esteem, self-confidence and self-respect.  You need to listen, to learn and to grow.

So, now you need to make space in your life to focus on voiceover, because…

 

The Baby’s Walking

And it feels good.

So, first up, you need to understand that voiceover work happens randomly.  Even for experienced voice artists who work a lot, the work is seldom regular and can’t be relied on to give you a reliable income, and is rarely a full-time job.

Sure, you may be able to earn enough money to equal a full-time job…sometimes…but sustaining it can never be relied upon.

I was working full time when I began my career over 35 years ago and for 5 years I just dabbled in voiceover.  It was a bit of fun.  Then I got serious about it and it took another few years before I felt I could take a chance on my freelance VO income to survive.   Then I could give it my full attention.

Sure, there were some tight months and some anxieties, but I managed to survive and after a couple more years, I was confident that I was established enough to believe I could make a career of it.

I’d done the work, made great demos, built credibility and contacts. I’d created relationship that were to last many years, some even decades.  Some, I’m still working with.

Word of advice, please don’t let your regular job go to soon.  I understand that part of your goal may well be to change careers, but always have something in place that you can rely on as well as keeping your eye on the goal.

 

Let’s talk about building a strong foundation.

It’s essential that you get some training.  Make sure the coach is a professional working in the area, either a voice artist or a sound engineer or a producer.

You need to find out:

• what skills you have

You must know what it is about your voice and abilities that those casting are looking for

• how to create an affordable home studio

When Covid hit, having a home studio was a must, post Covid it’s become the norm and is still a must

• how to make space in your life to focus on voiceover

This is where research is crucial, listening to others work and their voice demos, reading blogs and practising

• How coaching will benefit you

Coaching is how you build, not just your techniques, skills, and the knowledge of how it all works, but your self-confidence.

• How to create a great demo full of samples of the things you do best.

That’s a must.  Your demo is your entrée into the world of VO.  It must be brilliant!

• Create your own list of contacts.

When you begin booking work, it’s crucial to keep an eye on who likes you, who gives you good feedback on your demo, who regularly books you for work.

 

Now the Baby’s Talking

So, okay.  It’s happened.  You’ve successfully trained, made a brilliant demo, set yourself up and are getting traction out there.  Brilliant!

But no matter what stage you’re at, what experiences you’ve had and what you’ve discovered about yourself, you’ll still need to make sure that you keep your eye on several aspects of doing this work.

You need to sustain it.  That’ll be down to some things already in place such as contacts and relationships.

You may have even become a lot better at your marketing.

And you must take care of this aspect when you’re new to the game.  Update demos regularly.  Once a year is okay.   Every six months is great, especially when you have new work to share.  And it gives you a reason to make contact with those who may want to cast you.

So, make sure you get copies of your work that’s been to air.  Then you can update material on your website or online profiles.  You can email studios and contacts with a sample of something really good, to let them know you’re still out there.

They’re always happy to hear good work.  You’re helping them.

Be diligent with these things.

Sustaining also means:  Stay healthy.  Be available.  Never stop learning.

Why?  Simple.  The only way to sustain your voiceover work is to be in great shape, ready to work whenever you’re requested.   And being better than the last job you did 😃

 

Now You’re All Grown Up

Okay, so now you’re one of the big kids.  You’ve been doing this for a while.  It’s all going really well.  You’ve created some great relationships and are getting regular work.

Until work begins to slow a bit.  Oh, oh!  But you don’t worry.  VO is like that right?  Random.

But that might not be the reason for the slow.

What you need to do now, may actually be analysis.  You’ll need to ask some questions of yourself and your work.

Because to sustain and build a career, you may need to actually re-invent yourself. 

At the very least, you need to work out what you could now add to your repertoire.

So, now you need to listen to your demo and copies of work you’ve done.  Put yourself into a little thought bubble.  Have a planning session with yourself.

Ask:

• What work am I always or often cast for?

The answer you get, tells the story that this is possibly your most bankable style.

Hopefully there’s more than one style.  I’ll get to that soon.

• Are there tracks on your demo in a style that you never get cast for?

There can be several reasons for this.  The read might be in a niche where there’s a lot of high-profile experienced people who are holding that territory.  That’s when listening to those who do those kinds of jobs is a good litmus test.

It may be that this is just not your strength.  Yet.  A coach will tell you.

It may be that your sample of that style just isn’t exciting enough.  If it’s not amazing or you’ve never been booked for that style, flick it off the demo.

But if that style is something you really want to perfect, get coaching around just that.

Get sound advice around creating a new track or tracks to add to the re-invented demo or simply email your contacts saying, something simple like, ‘Here are a couple of tracks I recorded recently, and thought you’d like to hear them’.

• Is every track on your demo a winner?

That is, are you believable?  Do you understand the meaning in the language fully…so that we can?  We have to believe you.  And we will, if you make the words your own, as though you’re making it all as you go along.

 

And the last point is about getting stuck in patterns.

I want to share with you something that happened to me about 25 years ago.  At a VO job, the  producer said to me, “it’s just sounding a bit voiceovery Abb.”

I’m thinking, ‘What?  🤷🏻‍♀️ It’s a voiceover.’

But what he wanted was something that was becoming more of a trend…a really natural ‘non-voiceovery’ read.

And for some of my work, I’d become stuck in a pattern that was no longer the trend.

So, I began to take notice of what others were doing…and I could hear what he was talking about.

They were more ‘authentic, more real, more ‘in the moment’; more like they were making it up.

It was more like the way I worked was when I first started out in voiceover.  Very natural.

It was a truly insightful lightbulb moment, and it turned my career around.

Because then I went about ‘reinventing’ Abbe.  And I’ve continued to do that over the years.

The truth is, trends come and go, voices come and go.  Script styles change as well.  And we all need to change with the times.

So, no matter where you are in your voiceover journey, never stop listening to what’s being made and who’s doing it, and what the trends are.

To build and sustain your voiceover career you need to;

Create.  Maintain.  Reinvent

 

I hope this helps you know more about the way this all works.

And if you need any help or advice, I’ll be here 

Happy voiceovering!!!

Abbe Holmes

Contact me anytime