If I were to ask you to do a SWOT analysis on your voice-over business, you’d likely ask, “What’s a SWOT analysis?”

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A standard SWOT matrix looks like this:

Strengths (internal) and opportunities (external) can grow your business.

Here though, we’re going to focus on the scary stuff: weaknesses (internal) and threats (external) that can harm or even kill your business.

Most of us mistakenly tend to focus on external threats to our well-being. We endlessly worry about the things that could do harm to us, that threaten our physical, psychological, social, or financial well-being. Psychologists call this rumination.

In voice-over, we hear this worry and fear of the external expressed out loud all the time.

“AI is taking over VO!”

“The pay-to-play algorithms are stacked against me!”

“The market is over-saturated.”

“I never hear back on my auditions. How can I get better?”

The problem with focusing on the external is that we waste an inordinate amount of time and useless energy on things we can’t control.

What we can control is our own weaknesses and our reactions to external threats.

The number one threat to your voice-over business is not artificial intelligence. It’s not the pay-to-play algorithms. It’s not market over-saturation or a lack of demand in the market. There’s more voice-over work out there than ever in the history of planet Earth.

It’s not a lack of feedback on auditions, and it’s certainly not a lack of free information about the voice-over business. There are endless YouTube videos, blogs (including this one), and resources out there for anyone who looks.

The number one threat to your voice-over business is you.

It’s your weakness. It’s your limiting beliefs. It’s your lack of ownership of what you can control. These are the things with the biggest potential to harm or kill your voice-over business.

But there’s good news.

Weaknesses are, by definition, internal which means you have control over them.

I’m not a religious person, but I’ve always loved The Serenity Prayer:

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

You cannot change the external. You can change the internal.

• You can’t change the fact that AI is here and evolving. You can train to sound more natural and human.

• You can’t change the pay-to-plays. You can market your business and grow your own relationships and your business.

• You can’t control how many voice actors there are. You can focus on being better every day.

• You can’t expect buyers to give you feedback on auditions that don’t book. You can train with a reputable coach to get continuous, better feedback.

• You can’t bemoan “competition” when you’re fishing where all the other fishers are.

• You can’t expect to open the doors of a voice-over business and have people to hand you work. You can target, identify, reach out to and cultivate relationships with people who hire voice actors.

I talked to someone recently who said, “I need one-on-one interaction to keep me motivated.” That’s looking for external motivation. You can’t expect to be motivated every day. Motivation comes and goes. You can do what’s necessary (feel like it or not) every damn day to grow your VO business.

If you haven’t taken ownership of what you can control, that will ultimately be what harms or kills your voice-over business. Focus on what you can do and you’ll then be able to address all those scary external threats you spent so much precious time worrying about.