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So many voice actors (VO) struggle crossing the “Aspiring-to-Career VO Chasm”
There is a gap – a chasm – that stands in front of an “aspiring voice actor” who’s trying to make VO a career. On the other side of that chasm is a sustainable business model: a growing client base, YoY revenue growth, and whatever else one envisions a successful VO career to be. The challenge is to safely cross over that chasm without falling in.
Most voice actors that I’ve had a chance to speak with didn’t start their life in voice acting. Most of us started in something else — whether that was the corporate world, military, nonprofit, whatever you did before. And by some strange chance, you just kind of “fell into” voiceover.
Voice actors like this (including myself) have been molded by an ‘employer-employee’ relationship. Everything is taken care of for you. But now you’re in charge of everything related to your business.
This is why you have to think differently than you did when you were an employee.
What separates the VO who make it across the chasm and those who don’t is the ability to think like an entrepreneur.
When you’re a voice actor, yes, you have to know how to act. But that’s just your basic day-to-day operations.
Now you’re in charge of budgeting & accounting; you’re the accounts payable/accounts receivable person in the company. All the invoicing, chasing people for payment, quoting people, sending out your receipts, all of those things are you.
You’re also in charge of marketing. Direct marketing, social media outreach, content creation, networking with people, shopping your demos and reaching out to agents, optimizing your website SEO and your various platform profiles.
You must hit the proverbial pavement and GO FIND CLIENTS. Passively waiting for someone to book you off your P2P auditions is not a sustainable revenue model. Depending on your representation to provide you with 100% of your opportunities is not a good business decision.
You’re not an employee. You’re a small business owner, and small businesses live or die by the owner’s ability to bring in new accounts and nurture current ones.
That’s all you. That’s what an entrepreneurial VO has to do.
A colleague of mine put it very succinctly: As the CEO, after all your jobs are delivered, and all the auditions are submitted — that downtime you have? That is “self-promotion time.”
It’s ‘building your business’ time.
These are skills. If you’re struggling to cross that chasm toward making this a career….in many cases, it’s simply because your business acumen isn’t quite there yet.
The great news is that that’s something you can learn. There’s a plethora of information out there, and most of it is free. Webinars, podcasts, audiobooks…the sky’s the limit. Take your pick.
My challenge to you is to really make a deliberate effort to focus on improving the “business” aspect of your voiceover business, and successfully cross the “Aspiring-to-Career VO Chasm”.
