What To Do When It’s SLOW in Voice Over (YES, IT WORKS!)
It’s June and the legendary Summer Slowdown in the voice over industry is here. Yeah, it’s a thing. It’s real. You’re not imagining it.
Just about everything in the voice over business slows down in June, July, and August.
But I also hear a lot of talk about a more macro slowdown in the voice over industry overall. Is that real? Is that just a chicken little reaction to AI? Are there other forces at play? Is this a perfect storm that means existential crisis for our business?
Do you want the real answer? Who cares.
In my humble opinion, which is all I have because there is no data on this that anyone is aware of, yes there appears to be a general slowdown in the industry for many voice actors. The fact is you, I, nor the ghost of Don LaFontaine himself can’t control the global macro and micro forces that may or may not contribute to a slowdown that may or may not be having but think so because, ya know, AI and P2Ps and el Niño and sunspots and windmills.
So, who cares?
It doesn’t even matter if there’s a slowdown in the industry or not. If it’s slow for you, it’s slow. And if there is a slowdown in the industry, macro or micro, you can’t do shit about it.
But you can do something with it. You have the choice to not just survive, but thrive.
Today, we’re going to talk about doubling down, leaning into the slowness, and using it to your competitive advantage so that you emerge from the Summer Slowdown, and any slowdown or crisis, even stronger, better, and more successful.
The best example of a slowdown in VO was not a slowdown at all. It was the complete, screeching halt called COVID-19. For several weeks to a couple of months, there was ZERO voice over work being done while we all tried to figure out how to live at home boiling our mail and using sanitizer like Lubriderm.
I myself was just couple of years into my full-time VO career. While I was doing quite well up to that point, but I, like everyone else, was petrified. But I did my research and I learned that there’s a long history of companies that, when faced with crisis, didn’t run and hide, they didn’t fold up and go home. They doubled down. They bet on themselves. They didn’t cut their marketing budgets, they increased them.
During the Great Depression, Coke increased, not decreased, its advertising budget. They focused on brand visibility and consumer engagement, creating a strong emotional connection with their customers. Their tagline, "The Pause That Refreshes" became iconic, and they increased market share and cemented their position as a leader in the beverage industry.
When the shit hit the fan in 2008, Amazon increased its marketing and introduced new product lines, like the Kindle. They stepped-up promotion of Amazon Prime and they not only survived the crisis, but saw huge growth in sales and membership. Their stock went from $95/share and a market cap of $38 billion at the end of ’07 before the crisis, to $130/share and $58 billion at the end of ’09.
“Well, I’m not Amazon!” You know what? Go watch people getting hit in the dick with a golf ball while you mouth breathe your way to mediocrity.
Doubling down, especially in your marketing, when things are slow or in crisis, works. Why?
The crisis or the slowdown applies pressure, or chaos, to the market.
The chaos naturally takes out the weak and those who stick to the status quo.
As competition drops out, their customers have to look for new vendors.
Doubling down on your marketing leverages the chaos.
Companies that double down emerge stronger and with less competition.
So, let’s take this concept of marketing in chaos and apply it to the voice over industry today.
Is there some chaos in the industry? I think most people would agree, yes. There are dozens of reasons and they really don’t matter because we can’t control them.
When there’s chaos, it will take out the weak and the status quo folks. In other words, if you don’t adapt, you likely will not make it to better times.
That’s your choice. Stay the same and die or adapt and survive. Literally go big or go home.
The question, then, is how do you double down?
The first and biggest gift of a slowdown is time. With less paid work, there’re more time in the day to do the things that will help you survive and position you better as you come out the other side.
In our VO Pro course called Time Mastery for Voice Actors, we call these long-term, important goals Quadrant 1 activities. They’re not urgent, but they are crucial to your long-term success as a voice actor and those who execute them with urgency in a slowdown or crisis win.
First and foremost, double down on your marketing.
When COVID-19 hit, I literally doubled my marketing efforts. I went from reaching out to 50 new prospects a day to 100.
In those days, my system was not what it is now, and it took hours every day. But I had the time and I used it to my advantage.
As a result, in 2020 alone, I was up almost 10% from 2019, and I emerged stronger, doubling my 2020 numbers in 2021.
Second, build your skills.
The fact is 90% of voice actors come into the business with no previous marketing skills. If you don’t know how to market or need to improve, use the time to learn and sharpen your marketing skills.
I recommend with obvious bias the VO Freedom Master Plan, which teaches everything you need to know about how to market directly to clients. If you think there might be a fit, schedule a free strategy call with me and we’ll dig in deeper.
Double down on your performance skills.
Use the slowdown to level up in genres that you know you’re strong in. Why?
Double down on your strengths, manage your weaknesses.
If you are strong in one genre, and suck in another, why waste the time becoming average in the one you suck in? Get great at the one you’re already good in.
Attend workout groups in those genres. Take a workshop. Sign up for that improv class you always wanted to take. Enroll in that acting class.
Now with that new skill level, level up your demos, tighten up your website, and most importantly, start reaching out to more new prospects now.
Double down on your networking.
Slow times are great times to concentrate on building relationships within the industry. Use the time to connect with other voice actors and industry pros.
Building relationships leads to opportunities you can’t even imagine right now.
Research and reach out to coaches who you might like to work with. Have a Zoom coffee with that demo producer you’ve been meaning to connect with.
Double down on your strategic planning.
Take the time to step back and assess where you are and where you want your VO career to go, and reverse engineer those goals into daily, weekly, and monthly behaviors that will get you there.
Assess and evaluate your team of coaches and talk to possible new ones about your strategic growth plan and how they might fit in.
Yes, it’s a slow time in VO and it won’t be the last one, but what you do with that slowdown, crisis, and chaos makes all the difference.
As Andy Dufresne famously said in The Shawshank Redemption, “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’.”
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Thanks for the conversations we have here on the blog, in the VO Pro Community and the VO community at large. The more we talk, the more we listen, the more we exchange ideas and information, the better, stronger voiceover industry we can have.
We’ll see ya again here soon. Thanks for reading.