The 5 Biggest LIES in Voice Over & the REAL TRUTHS BEHIND THEM

One of the biggest problems that folks new to the business coming into voiceover run into as new voice actors is how to separate, how to sort out the good information from the bad.

In fact, it's one reason I started this channel because there is a substantial amount of factually incorrect garbage going on in our business that's floating around out there and the only way to fight that is with real facts and honest truth.

Now, is truth in the eye of the beholder. Largely, yes. But again, there's stuff out there that is just factually garbage and has to be called out as such.

So, today we're going to do just that. We're going to talk about the five biggest lies in the voiceover industry, what the source of those lies are and the corresponding truths that you need to know to be a successful voice actor.

Big Lie Number Five

“You have a nice voice, so you should get into voiceover.”

I’m starting with this one for two reasons. Number one, it's probably the most common big lie that you'll hear. And number two, it's probably the least malicious.

This big lie is often told to us by our wonderful family and friends and coworkers, and sometimes even the most well-meaning strangers. They hear the tonal quality of our voice and they take notice of it, and they decide that out of the kindness of their own hearts, they're going to pay us a compliment. And God knows we can use a lot more of that in this world.

And if they would just stop at, “My, you have a lovely voice,” then that would be perfect. But they can't help themselves and they almost always stumble into, “So you should get into voiceover.”

The problem is that having a nice voice has absolutely nothing to do with being a great voice actor.

That's like me telling you, “My, you have beautiful hands. You should become a neurosurgeon.”

“You have such lovely feet. You would make a wonderful dancer.”

“You have a lovely smile. You should be an orthodontist.”

Big Lie Number Four

“You can train to be a professional voice actor in 8 to 10 weeks.”

This one is not as harmless, but it's just as much complete bullshit. The source of this lie are coaches and coaching companies, sometimes very well-meaning, but unfortunately, horribly mistaken.

And the truth is that it takes months, sometimes well over a year to get baseline competent in this skill and the art of voice acting.

Some of these 8 to 10 week programs are four and five andsix thousand dollars and 8 to 10 weeks just isn't enough time. And then of course, they've got the professional demos thrown in at the end.

And there's a reason they do that, because when you get to the end of your “training” and you go into the booth and you produce that demo and they treat you like a wonderful, talented, professional voice actor, and then they wrap that sadly underprepared performance in all this gorgeous audio production, and then they put this slick audio lipstick on it.

And when you get the demos back, you hear your voice probably for the first time in that beautiful audio environment on that wonderful professional microphone. And you think to yourself, “My God, I sound amazing!” And you come away from the program thinking, “Man, I really got my money's worth.”

But the problem and the truth is that those under-prepared performances wrapped up in all that gorgeous audio production are still not competitive with professionals that have been training for months, for years, and often for decades.

And the casting directors and professional talent buyers that work with voice talent on a daily basis can tell in the first 3 to 5 seconds,

Look, it's not that spending that kind of money on your training is bad. In fact, it's good. It's the problem is these packages that rush you into a demo or two before you're ready.

A good coach, a reputable coach, will never rush you into your demo before you're ready to produce it. That, in fact, is one of the biggest signs of what makes a coach repeat a bowl, take that same five grand and put it into months of training with a good reputable coach and then at the end of those months, when you're ready to go, at least you'll know you're well trained, you're prepared, and you can go into that booth and produce your demo with a high amount of confidence that you'll be competitive and actually get hired after you produce that demo.

Big Lie Number Three

“You can find all the work you need on the online casting sites.”

Now, this didn't always used to be a lie [Awful grammar, Paul.] 20, 15, 10, even as recently as 5 years ago, you could pretty much camp out on the online casting sites and if you were well trained, could make a hell of a good living.

But today, in 2023 and beyond, unless you've already put that time in, unless you've already trained the algorithms, learned the system, built the relationships with clients from those sites, your chances of success today of exclusively working on the online casting sites and being able to make a good living are slim to nil.

Now, why is that?

The biggest reason is COVID 19, which flooded the market with entirely untrained, unprepared voice talent who needed to find a way to try and make money from home.

Do I fault those people? Absolutely not. And a lot of them stuck around, got the proper training, got really good demos made and are now working professional voice actors. But they're the minority.

Second, the rise of sites like Fiverr and Upwork in the last decade or so that have further and faster commoditized rates in the voiceover business. And third, in 2023, the voiceover market, the available work globally to voice actors has anecdotally shrunk for the first time this century.

Higher supply, lower demand, lower rates equals a lot of people fighting over scraps.

The truth is, today, to be a successful working voice actor, you must learn to market your services. And this, by the way, is the most stable way to grow your business long term because when you develop and grow your own relationships directly with clients, you get to manage those relationships directly.

You have more control over those relationships and more importantly, you can negotiate fair, appropriate, proper professional rates with those clients directly. You're not beholden to the budgets and the fees and everything else that comes with working on the pay-to-plays.

And when you're on, let's say, a corporate roster of 10 or 20 or maybe even 50 other voice actors, when you do audition, you're doing so in a less competitive environment. You're auditioning against maybe 10, 20, 40, 50 others rather than three, four or five hundred, a thousand others.

And so your booking ratio goes up when you do audition. And oftentimes when you've taken the time to build those relationships, you will be handed work outright that you don't even have to audition for because you've taken the time and the effort to build those relationships directly with those clients.

Big Lie Number Two

“Once you get an agent, it's a game changer.”

Now, technically, I'm not sure that this is a lie, because if I think about it, I've never heard anyone actually say it out loud. But it is a common misperception about this business, a huge one, and it's incorrect for this reason.

A good agent, by definition, will get you access to better auditions. That's what makes them a good agent

Better auditions, by definition, are more competitive. You still have to have the chops to be able to book. So, if you weren't working consistently without an agent, you're not going to be working consistently with one.

Secondly, good agents want to work with good voice actors. What does that mean? They want to work with voice actors who work, who have established a proven track record of being able to book work and to work consistently.

And the best way for you to do this again is by learning to find your own clients and your own work directly

When you're ready for it, a good agent is a hugely valuable addition to your team, and a great agent will be invested in you and your success.

But just having an agent - that's not a game changer.

And Big Lie Numero Uno

“You can be a highly profitable voice actor in 90 days with no experience necessary.”

This, by far is the biggest pile of crap in the voice over pasture for all the reasons we've just spoken about. And the source of this lie is the snake oil salesman whose sole purpose and their own mind is to detach you from your money.

It's a predatory, get-rich-quick, bullshit narrative that preys on the naive and the ignorant. It's the selling of a promise to the desperate and the deliverance of nothing of real value in return.

Any real gains in life take consistent effort over time. Real transformations do not happen in 90 days. When are we going to get this through our heads?

That's true in voiceover. It's true in fitness, it's true in finance, it's true in emotional intelligence. It's true in everything of value, in life.

But what can happen in 90 days is you can establish core behaviors, habits that, when executed consistently, daily over the course of months and years, can build the foundation for a real transformation.

There is one core common trait to all successful people. They put in the work consistently. They are not overnight successes. They are highly consistent in their actions, in their behaviors, and they are focused on their long term and not short term goals.

The VO Freedom Master Plan teaches a proven system to teach voice actors how to market their services directly to clients. For more information on that, click this link and for my Move Touch Inspire newsletter for voice actors that comes out every Thursday, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, depending on where you are in the world, click that link as well.

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Thank you so much. We appreciate your support and we'll see you back here again next week