Consistency Matters
As a full-time professional voiceover actor and coach, I think one of the reasons my career has continued to thrive and grow through the years is the consistency of my practice. When I work with my VO coaching students on techniques, whether the are voice over acting methods or the practical steps to running a day to day business, I pass on exactly what I practice in my own business. I encourage what I have found to work and hope to foster good habits in students. Conversely, I also share what has not worked in hope of sparing them what I already know not to be helpful. As solopreneurs, we wear so many hats and juggle so many balls. Setting ourselves up for success and holding ourselves accountable makes life much easier. So yes, this many years in, I practice what I preach as a coach and I do as I say in my lessons. Here awesome aspects I focus on regularly as both a professional talent and a coach:
Goals
Goal setting is pivotal to success in voice over. If you don’t know where you want to go, how can you possibly get there? As part of my business plan, I update my goals at least twice a year, if not quarterly. Anyone who has worked with me can tell you I love to help them flesh out there goals and we typically do this early on. When I do my own personal goals, I always post them in my booth and where I like to work upstairs in my house. This helps a lot with mindset. I think everyone has good days and bad, and just knowing your intentions is useful.
Accountability
I have been saying for years that I would not be where I am today without my accountability buddies! We have even presented together at national conferences. At present I am in several accountability groups. My primary one for all of VO is affectionately called “the VO Powerhouse.” We meet weekly and talk about specific touch points and present in order every week. We also chat about our lives. We tend to talk daily on Facebook as well about everything from rates to pronunciation to our families.
I have a mentor for my audiobook work. We meet monthly. This has been extremely helpful in launching that genre of my business. Again, I don’t think you can quite imagine what the possibilities are without being pushed by those who have already gone there.
I am also in an eLearning ensemble. We meet twice a week. We touch base about our marketing goals specifically. This group is great because we push each other and keep our eyes on the horizon.
I always encourage students to find accountability buddies. I personally think that meeting at least once a week is crucial. I think it helps to keep you going and to keep your eye on the ball. I think everyone in VoiceOver should be in one! If you are not and would like to be, you can look at conferences (which is where I met my buddies), Facebook groups, and at local VO meetups.
Craft
As in other professions, voice actors, regardless of how established we are, are never finished working on our craft or technique. And in truth, as industry trends shift, it is extremely important to stay on top of them. Having one on one coaching is still extremely joyful for me, and the last one I worked with at length was Sean Pratt. I love doing online webinars, like Tina Morasco’s library and Dervla Trainor’s Speaker Series. I also love learning at conferences, and conferences are essential both to being part of the community and to staying on trend in VO. While I am often in attendance as a presenter, I try to soak in as much as I can as there are experts across genres from all over the country and often other countries, so if you can afford to go, you should!
Marketing
Just as I encourage my students, having a consistent in-bound and out-bound marketing strategy, staying on top of marketing is crucial to my business plan. From blogs, to social media, to newsletters, all of it matters, both separately and as a whole, to establish my brand. Everyone who knows me knows I can talk endlessly about branding, but in truth, it all matters, a lot, and being consistent not just about posting content, but the quality and quantity of the content matters. It can be daunting to have to post and keep track of all of these moving parts regularly, while staying on top of auditions and recording booked work, but if you want clients to know you exist, it is crucial.
Daily Routine
Having a consistent daily routine and painting a schedule helps to ensure that important “to do” items don’t fall through the cracks. Whether starts with a warm-up, goes to booked work, then auditions, and cleverly weaving social media in, or whether certain days are time blocked for certain tasks, your routine is important. I tend to leave certain days for certain tasks. I also am passionate about healthy living and fitness, so I weave meal prep and pilates into my routine as well. My voice over career would not be where it is today of those items were not part of my schedule. When I work with coaching students, I try to be realistic with them about their schedule. Working moms with young kids have very different demands on them than empty nesters. Still, regardless of the phase of life, routine helps everyone stay on task.
Takeaways
When I coach, I draw from my experience. If I change what I do, I share it so others can benefit. If I find something no longer works, I share that too. I find the best way to coach is to draw from my years of booking and try to help my students build a solid foundation.
look up to most in the industry, including Anne Ganguzza, Clif Zellman, and J. Michael Collins. In addition with being in such good company, I try to pick up public speaking tips as well. At MAVO, I attended sessions of other industry greats like Michael Scott, and I took note of his presentation style. I also spent a lot of time talking to Joe Cipriano, who I have looked up to for many years, and learned a tremendous amount from him.
nomination for one of the demos we did, an eLearning demo for the super talented Dallas based John Guccion. I also earned a nomination in the bloopers category which was good fun. While we didn’t take home any statues this year, I will say it really meant a lot to be in such good company and it was for sure a highlight of the year.
This summer I got to go on a trip to Canada with the gals in my VO accountability group! We had been talking about going away together since before Covid. We had so many ideas, but really, the most important detail was that we were all included and beyond that everything else was secondary. To have this time together to bond and to reflect was so meaningful. We are all exceptionally close, and this trip was as wonderful as can be.
Of course this chat with Gwen about our health made me draw a parallel to voice over and think about how easily it can all be undone. Imagine years of hard work and suddenly the ups and downs of voice over just continue to spiral down. I of course thought back to hearing Dave Fennoy, world famous voice actor best known for his video game roles, who I had the privilege of hearing speak for an entire day back in 2016 at a conference called VO Revolution. Perhaps it was his lack of pretension that got me, but Dave talked about how after a few big bookings he thought that he had made it. He shared how his business peaked and then plummeted. He advised working as if every day is your first day in voice over and warned that if you don’t you can lose it all. I carry this with me. This has always had my wheels turnings. So, if all that we have worked hard to build can slip aways so easily, here are some of my best tips to lay a strong foundation for your voice over business:
Ah September. If you can actually remember what life was like pre-pandemic, September used to feel like a huge shift for us working moms, with an audible sigh of relief heard from coast to coast. While having our kids home to spend time by the pool and doing crafts is a time of joy, for solopreneurs who have always run our small businesses from home, summer has always involved juggling lots of balls. This year, 2020, has presented a whole new set of challenges, and if your family is like mine, your kids are “back in school” without leaving your house. While I confess that I am enjoying the extra time I have with my teens, it does present a lot of challenges for those of us whose career depends on quiet in the recording booth. Doors slamming, thumping and thudding on the steps, random proclamations- these barely scrape the barrel of what the new normal is like. The quietude is gone and with it I have, you guessed it, more balls to juggle as both my children and my husband are now in the house. All day. Every day. So no, this September, being a working mom and small business owner it is not easier, but I do have some strategies for coping in order to ensure that my goals stay in clear focus.
In order to maintain the balance between my role as a mom and my life as a professional voice over actor, accountability in my professional career is extremely important. I have blogged before about my group, but one of our touch points is health and wellness. When we started reporting on this years ago, I did not realize that the relevance of this area would increase in importance. Who could have predicted a pandemic? Every day wellness is a priority, including: steaming, supplements, eating well, etc.
Pilates is another focus of mine. After a difficult twin pregnancy, I have spent years rebuilding my core. I love that through the pilates I work on my breathing and that the workouts are total body workouts. I am learning to make connections and to listen to myself. Work as a voice over actor so much depends on connecting with people and connecting with scripts, so if I am connected with myself as a foundation of it all, I work better. At the start of every session, my instructor asks how I am feeling and for me to be aware of where my body is starting. I wish that I had people teach be to be aware of my physical state in this way when I was 12 years old. I think I would have treated myself very differently. In any event, I am thankful for this journey that I am on and pilates helps me very much.
“Don’t give up what you want most for what you want now.” Ultimately all of this matters because working moms have goals. As a voice actor, I have spent years building my business. It isn’t about getting through September, it is about making life work so that I reach these goals for myself and for my family. If we can’t see the forest through the trees, we just won’t get where we have worked so hard to go. In the shadow of the passing of the great Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we have a great torch to carry. She did it with such ease, and we must carry on for our children so that we can finish the work she set out to do.
Some days I wake up with a burst of energy and ready to get to work. Other days I am less energetic, but regardless, the outcome is the same: I do my thang in the booth. I’ll explain. I am pretty regimented when it comes to sticking to my voice over routine, and that routine enables me to balance both my mom tasks and my business tasks in a way that I am comfortable with. Most days follow the same pattern, with slight variation by day of the week. But some days, I am less “into it” than others. I was thinking it through the other morning and I thought this was a matter of inspiration. I was walking my dogs one day this week with my friend Melanie and she was telling me she felt the same way, that feeling when you just can’t get started. Melanie is a successful New York attorney who works extremely long days. While her career path is decidedly different than mine is as a working creative, this got my wheels turning. Both of us are working moms. Both of us work long days every day. And both of us build our household responsibilities into our professional goals. What, then, is the secret sauce? It came to me that while I often think of things only in terms of the presence and lack of inspiration, it is actually the ability to sustain the magic of the intersection of motivation and inspiration that makes success happen.
I will still also take care of myself too. I want to teach my children that is well. I will blow out my hair, put on some make up, do my nails, and do pilates. If I fall apart, how can I take care of the needs of so many others? Worse, what kind of example am I setting as a mother. So here I am, hanging out at this intersection I realized I love being at but only just named. And now that I’ve found it, I’m not going anywhere!!
