How To Go Full Time in Voice Over – 7 Steps
Welcome back and welcome to How to Go Full Time in Voice Over. When starting a career in voiceover, figuring out how to become a voice over artist and how to make voice over a full-time career can be daunting. Going full-time in voice over ain't easy. Today, we're going to talk about what it takes to go full-time in the voice over business, including voice over training, voice over marketing tips, voice over coaching, and more.
I'm Paul Schmidt, a voice actor, VO marketing pro, and voice over business coach. And I'm glad you're here.
And stick around, especially if you're new to voice over, because at the end, I'm going to tell you how to get my free Seven Steps for Starting and Developing a Career in Voiceover.
First, let's assume you've already started your VO journey, right?
You've gotten a solid base of professional coaching and training. You've gotten some basic pro gear. You have a recording space that's treated and sounds good, and you've gotten professionally produced demos ready to go, and you've been seeking work for a while now.
You may have a full-time job and you may be doing voiceover as a side hustle. You might be retired and doing voiceover for supplementary income and as a part-time job.
If you're looking to go full-time in voice over, it takes a number of things to make that happen. And we're going to spell them out for you here today.
What it takes to go full-time in voice over
Number One: It takes money in the bank
Now, whether you've been socking away your revenue and income from your part-time voiceover work or whether you have another source of savings, you have to have enough money in the bank to give yourself a ramp. Trying to go full time without money in the bank, and ample money in the bank, is downright foolish. You only want to do this once, meaning you only want to go full time once, especially if you have a day job.
Most likely the last thing you want is to go back with your tail between your legs and find another day gig.
I recommend having at least 9 to 12 months of living and business expenses in the bank before you make the jump to full-time.
Number two: An acquired history of booked work
If you haven't built up a solid client base yet, you have no business going full-time.
You need to learn what your revenue and expense numbers look like from month to month and season to season so that you can effectively and adequately plan 30, 60, 90, 180, 365 days in advance. If you don't have the data, you're just guessing. And guessing will put you back in a day job really fast. I think it takes a bare minimum of 1 to 3 years working voice over part-time to understand that ebb and flow.
Number three: "100" good clients
Now this one is in black and white because everybody is circumstances and needs are different. But as a rule of thumb, you're going to need 100 good clients to generate a full time income. Let's look at it this way and do some quick math.
If your average job is, let's say, 350 bucks and you have 100 clients a year that hire you for an average of 1.3 jobs per year, then you'll generate $45,500. If your average job is 400 bucks and you have 100 clients a year that hire you for an average of 1.5 jobs, you'll generate $60,000. Now, since 75% of U.S. voice actors report making less than $40,000 a year, they're either not charging enough, as in GVAA rates, or they're not booking enough gigs per year.
If you can book 200 jobs a year at 350 bucks each, you're making $70,000.
If we define good clients as clients that hire you for at least two jobs a year, one hundred clients generally provides a solid, full-time income for most people. Your circumstances may be different.
Number four: Have a backup plan
The author of The Infinite Game, Simon Sinek, says that in infinite games, like business or life, the players come and go. The rules are changeable and there's no defined end point. There are no winners or losers in an infinite game. You're either only ahead or behind. And the object in an infinite game is to perpetuate. In other words, to stay in the game as long as possible.
And voiceover, my friends, is an infinite game. If you go full-time, your job is to stay in the game as long as possible, ideally forever.
But as Confucius once wisely said, "Shit happens," and you may hit a rough patch or a very rough patch. You need a backup plan. I was seven months into my full-time VO career and I lost my biggest client. Bam! 50% of my income gone overnight. I had to find a way to stay in the game.
Now it's impossible to flip a switch and just double your voiceover income willfully overnight.
So I started driving for a rideshare company. It was something I could do at night and on the weekends outside of normal voiceover business hours. And I scraped by until I was able to restabilize my business. Have that backup plan and a backup to the backup ready to go when, not if, adversity hits. And that brings me to…
Number five: Grit, resilience, and resourcefulness
Being a successful voice actor today means being an entrepreneur, starting and growing a business for most people will most likely be the hardest thing you ever do professionally. Adversity will hit. That's a guarantee. You will make mistakes. That's also a guarantee. You will get blindsided. You will want to quit multiple times. And your mindset, more than anything else, will determine whether you give up or whether you find a way to stay in the game.
You'll need to learn how to take a big punch and get up off the mat. You'll need to learn how to work harder than you've ever likely had to. And yet you'll also need to learn how to pace yourself. You'll need to learn to be thick-skinned. And you'll need to learn to handle rejection and rudeness, and occasionally even haters, with grace and confidence.
You may need to have difficult conversations and set healthy boundaries with close friends and maybe even family members who don't respect your chosen profession as a real job. If you don't treat it like a business, how will they ever treat it like a business?
You have two jobs: to plan to minimize adversity as much as you possibly can - minimize threats to your business, and then deal with them as they arise so that you can stay in the game as long as possible.
Number six: It takes wearing all the hats
At least initially, you'll be the chief lead generator, marketer, sales person, accounts receivable, accounts payable, engineer, quality control lead, and oh yeah, voice talent. And no one, no one, comes into this business with all of those skills developed and ready to go. You have a great voice over performance coach. I recommend you get a great voice over business coach.
Number seven: It takes marketing
One of the biggest mistakes new businesses make is not having a marketing plan. Everybody thinks they can just hang a shingle and print up a few business cards and people will just come walking in the door with business. "Well, surely word of mouth will spread. People will come from miles around to sample my wares."
No, they won't.
If you build it...They won't come. If you market it, they will come.
And if you do a great job and exceed their expectations, they will come back when they have more work.
Now, the overwhelming majority of voice actors don't have a marketing plan. They don't know what to do, who to approach, how to approach them, what to say, how to follow up. And they don't have the tools and processes and workflows in place to do that all at scale and efficiently.
And that's what the VO Freedom Master Plan is. For voice actors who don't have a marketing plan, it teaches them a proven and tested system to start and grow targeted relationships consistently over time that lead to more consistent booking business revenue and income.
For more information on the VO Freedom Master Plan, click that link. And if you're newer to voiceover and you want to get my free Seven Steps to Starting and Developing a Career in Voiceover, click that link as well. And finally, there's my Move, Touch, Inspire Newsletter created especially for voice actors and sent out every Thursday.
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As always, I'm deeply grateful for your support. Thank you so much for watching. Have a great week and we'll see you back here again soon.