So you've decided you want to get into voice acting and you want to learn to do voiceovers and maybe even, who knows, become a professional voice actor one day. That's great.

And as the song says, yes, there are two paths you can go by. First, maybe you just want to make a few extra bucks and have some fun and make voiceover a hobby.

Or you can jump on Fiverr or Upwork or any of the freelancer sites and find a ton of voiceover jobs to audition for. And that's great.

But if you think you might want to go pro one day or you don't even know, avoid the Fiverr route. Working on Fiverr and Upwork and the freelancer sites can eventually damage your professional career.

Now, if you want to get started on the journey to professional voice acting, it all starts with good coaching.

"Coaching?!?" you say, "But why do I need coaching? I can talk. I do it every day." Here's the hard truth. If everybody could do it, everybody would. If you're going to compete with highly trained professionals, you're going to have to become a highly trained professional.

Yeah. Sounds intimidating, but remember this: every highly trained professional was once brand new, just like you. You can get there, but you have to do the right steps in the right order.

And one of the first steps on the road to professional VO Land is reputable coaching. I said one of the first steps because I also said reputable.

Sadly, our business, just like any other, has our fair share of snake oil salesmen - people that will sell you a dream and in return give you nothing of value.

And here's another hard truth about voiceover. It takes months and years, not weeks, not days to reach a baseline of competency in voice acting to become good, very good, great and elite takes years and decades. To go into voice acting without a baseline amount of proper training is foolish, and you'll waste a ton of time and money along the way.

Anyone who promises to sell you professional demos after a weekend or a couple of days or a webinar is selling you a bag of air.

And to be clear, at this stage, you want to start with performance coaching until you have a baseline of competency. You don't need a tech coach and you don't need a business coach yet, at least not at this stage.

So even before coaching, you need to do your research. You need to find out who the reputable coaches are and who they are not. Just because they have a huge YouTube channel or just because they've been a voice actor for decades doesn't necessarily make them a great coach.

Conversely, generally, good coaches are also voice actors. They've spent time in the trenches, but not always. Nancy Wolfson is a phenomenal coach. Not a voice actor. Trends change in this business, and if you're training with someone who hasn't kept up, they might not be a good performance coach.

So how do you find out who the good coaches are?

Join the Facebook groups, start listening to the podcasts. I highly recommend the VO School Podcast with Jamie Muffett. Jamie's not a coach per se, but he's a highly accomplished British voice actor here in the States, and he does a really great job at targeting and producing content for the newer voice actor to help get you educated and oriented in the business.

Jamie's also one of the creators, along with Carin Gilfry, of the Vocation Conference.

Another podcast I recommend is Voice Over Sermons with Terry Daniel. Terry is a voice actor. He's a reputable coach. He works with newer talent. And I promise you, you will get a no bullsh*t approach from Terry in everything he does. If we could only get him to form an opinion.

This Week in VO with J. Michael Collins is also a very good podcast. Now, J. Michael is one of the 800-pound gorillas in our business, not just as a voice talent, but also as a very reputable coach, demo producer. And his podcast is in an interview format. So he's talking to talent coaches, demo producers and other service providers in the business.

I have a short list of podcasts and coaches that you can get free from my website. I put the link here. It's called 7 Steps to Starting and Developing a Career in Voiceover. Again, that's free.

Now, once you've joined the Facebook groups, do this for a few months. Listen, lurk, and linger.

Over time, you will learn who the reputable coaches are and are not. If they're teaching Fiverr and Upwork, they're simply teaching you a way to make extra money, not how to develop a professional voiceover career.

Now, as you start to learn the reputable names, now you have to start researching those people. Go to their website, research their approach, research their service offerings, reach out to them, introduce yourself, get them on a Zoom call and interview them. Respect their time, but talk with them in depth. See who resonates with you.

So much of the effectiveness of good coaching comes down to fit between you and the coach. Ideally, you and the coach will have a vibe together, right? They'll speak your language so vet for fit, coaching experience, service offerings, approach, and budget.

A reputable coach at this stage will generally run about $100 to $150 an hour. After you're working pro, you may pay up to $200 an hour to work with the best coaches in the business.

And yes, good coaching costs money. Every business has startup costs. And let me say this - before you invest in cheap gear, invest in good coaching. It may turn out you're just not cut out for this. Probably not, but it could. A bad coach won't tell you that. And cheap gear is always a waste of money. Start with good coaching.

The faster you get good, the more time and money you will save in the long run.

So how long should it take before you're demo-ready?

What does demo-ready even mean? Being demo-ready simply means that you can reliably and predictably perform at a level at which you can reasonably compete with other professional voice actors at professional rates.

It doesn't mean you're beating out Gramps and his USB mic on Fiverr. It means you can compete with other professionals and reliably win 1 to 2 out of every 100 auditions.

It also means that you can reliably do by yourself in your own booth the same level of work that is on your demo. And to do that, if you don't already know, you're going to have to learn how to produce clean, professional broadcast-quality audio.

Now, most coaches who work with newer talent can help with that, but there's also a ton of tutorials on YouTube for digital audio workstations - editing software - like Adobe Audition or Audacity or Twisted Wave, Reaper, and so on. Watch them record practice editing.

You'll also have to identify space in your home that you can treat and in which you can consistently and reliably record. Ideally, you have a walk-in closet you can start with. Maybe it's a non-walk-in closet. Maybe it's a small bedroom or a part of one. In the long term, you're going to need a consistent, reliable space that's treated and sounds professional in which you can record consistently.

Now, assuming you're demo-ready at that point…

What kind of demos should you do?

There are a ton of different genres in voiceover: IVR work, commercials, animation, medical narration, corporate narration, technical stuff, promo, trailers, message on hold, mobile apps, and the list goes on and on and on and on. Generally, the two genres you're going to concentrate in get your initial training in, and do your first couple of demos in are commercial and corporate narration.

Those are typically the first two demos you should have. Corporate narration because there's a ton of it out there, and generally it's less competitive and work that's typically easier to get. And commercial because commercial will teach you to be a good actor, not just a good voice actor. The oldest cliche in the business is this, and it's absolutely true:

They call it voice acting. It's about 5% voice and 95% acting.

Man, if I had a nickel for everybody that has told me, "You know, I've been told I have a nice voice," I'd be sitting on a yacht with Giselle right now. Having a nice voice means almost nothing. Almost everybody has a nice voice.

Being able to perform and act and sound natural and believable and compelling is everything. You need to be an actor in order to be a voice actor.

For information on the VO Freedom Master Plan, which takes voice actors from having no system or no plan to market their businesses, making part-time income or relying on the pay-to-plays, to having a proven system to start and grow relationships at scale that lead to more consistent booking business revenue and income, click the link here.

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As always, I am so grateful for your support. Thanks so much and we'll see you back here soon.