Your 6-Point Plan to ROCK VOICE OVER and LIFE in 2024

You have a choice. You can decide right now that you're going to keep doing what you've been doing and keep getting what you've been getting.

Or, you can decide right now that you're done with excuses, done with kidding yourself, and done with half-assing your career and your life.

I said in last week's episode, there are two kinds of people in the world: those that make excuses and those that make it happen. And the fact of the matter is, you can't make it happen without a plan.

Decide. Right now. You're either going to rock the coming year or it's going to rock you.

You already know without me even having to ask you if you executed in the past year or not. If you kept the promises you made to yourself or not. If you were consistent or not.

Now, doing the same things next year as you did this year only makes sense if you made significant progress this year. If you didn't make significant progress this year and you've decided you're done making excuses and you're ready to make it happen, then listen up.

Today, I'm going to give you a six-point plan for killing in the coming year.

Point #1: Improve your vision

It's impossible to get anywhere unless you know where you're going. If your goal is to be a significantly better version of yourself in 365 days, then you have to have an absolutely crystal clear vision of who that new person is.

Real change, real transformation starts with a shift in identity. You have to already see yourself clearly as the version of you you intend to be.

If you intend to lose weight, then you have to clearly see your stronger, lighter self. If you intend to be more consistent, then you have to clearly see yourself executing your daily habits with consistency.

When you think about your VO career and your life being wildly successful, what does that look like? What does your day look like? What kind of work are you doing? What are your clients like? Who are they? What kind of revenue are you making? How flexible is your time and who are you spending it with?

Author and psychologist Dr. Benjamin Hardy tells the story of a friend of his who struggled with his weight. One day this friend went out and spent money. He didn't really have to buy two suits.

The suits were not made to fit him at his current size. He had the suits made to fit him at his ideal goal weight. He didn't wait (pun intended) to lose the weight to buy the suits.

He shifted his identity first. Upfront. He bought the suits as though he were already at his goal weight and that shift in identity - the clarity of vision of his future self - was the fuel that drove his transformation.

To date, he's kept the weight off. He founded a successful business and he is an entirely different person. He's the person he originally saw in his mind's eye.

If you want to be it, you've got to see it in as much clarity and detail as possible.

Write it out. Put together a vision board. Spend time visualizing what your new self will be like. Everything all day.

Point #2: Improve your mindset

Decide right now, once and for all that whatever challenge gets in your way, you will figure it the fuck out.

Decide right now that whatever excuse you choose to use to choose what you want right now over what you want later is what's killing your progress. Decide right now that done is way better than perfect and that your expectations of yourself are the only ones that matter. And decide right now that you truly deserve the best possible version of yourself. The people you love, and the people who love you. They also deserve the best possible version of you.

And therein lies your purpose.

As I said last week, it can't always be about you. That's not enough. If you have a soul and you're not a raging narcissist, then it has to be about the people that you love. Your family, your friends, your community. They all want you to succeed, too.

Point #3: Improve your time management

I've said it a billion times as an entrepreneur and as a voice actor, time is your most valuable asset and how you manage that time makes all the difference in the world. if you don't have a plan for how you manage the precious little time you have every day, then you don't stand a chance of being consistent in the habits and behaviors that will truly change your career and your life.

Once you've clearly defined your new identity, your vision of who you are going to be, the next step is to reverse engineer the habits and the behaviors that, executed consistently over time, will get you to be that new person.

Once you've defined the habits and behaviors that will advance your goals, you have to prioritize them. They have to be at the top of the list because those are the things within your control that are going to have the most impact on your career and your life.

How do you prioritize them? You schedule them into your day, into your week, into your month. You literally make time for them.

It's one thing to say, “You know, I'm going to spend time marketing my business.”

It's another thing entirely to say “I am going to spend an hour a day from 6 to 7 a.m. every weekday marketing my business, and I'm going to do it then, because that way, if the day gets sideways, at least I've already got that done coming out of the chute.”

Now, the first thing you should do every day is to take 15 to 20 minutes to review your schedule for the day, to make sure that you've made time for your priority habits and behaviors. Make sure that the important priorities are scheduled first and then leave some cushion to fight the urgent fires that crop up during the day.

The more you stay focused on the important stuff, the long-term goals, and not the urgency of your short-term fires, the more you will be living your new identity.

Point #4: Improve your performance

If your goal is to be a better voice actor, then you have to have a plan to improve your voice acting performance. Now, regardless of genre, this means two things: first, working with a reputable coach in whatever genre you choose to work in.

And second, purposeful practice on the techniques and behaviors and actions that that coach gives you consistently over time. This means prioritizing and scheduling time to research the coaches that you think might be a good fit and to find and settle on a good coach.

It means scheduling the actual coaching sessions and it means scheduling the practice time in between the coaching sessions.

If you're auditioning, use those auditions to practice the techniques your coach is giving you. If you're not auditioning yet, schedule time to practice on practice scripts.

If you don't make the time to get better at your craft, guess what? You won't get better at your craft. And if you don't get better at your craft, you're going to get worse because everyone else around you is getting better.

Point #5: Improve your marketing!

90% of the people that come into the voiceover business have no exposure to or expertise in sales and marketing. The pandemic flooded us, flooded the entire industry with people that came into the business, thought they could open a few accounts on the pay-to-plays, notably Voices and Voice123 dot com and they'd be off to the races making a great living and it'd be Skittles and unicorns for everybody.

I talked to voice actors every single day and the vast majority aren't marketing at all. Those that are marketing, the vast majority of those typically aren't reaching out to enough people. They aren't reaching out consistently enough and they're not following up properly

In the New year and beyond, guess what, kids? Voiceover is like any other business: you will either learn to market your business properly or it will die.

If you don't have marketing and sales experience. That's okay. You likely didn't have any acting experience when you got into voiceover either. But understand if you don't take the time to get the training, to learn, to develop the relationships over time, consistently by marketing your business, you don't stand a chance.

And point #6: Improve your relationships

You are not in the voiceover business. You, my friend, are in the business of relationships. Your job is to help people solve a real tangible problem that they cannot solve for themselves.

Now, to earn the right to help them, you have to prove that you can solve their problem, that you can provide value to them, and that you can make their jobs or their lives easier and more enjoyable

In life, your job is to serve the people that you love, to make their lives easier and more joyful. Now, I'm not one to ever have believed in unconditional love except between a parent and a child. I believe that we earned the right to be loved by spreading kindness and love through service to others.

When we stop spreading love and kindness, when we stop doing things for the ultimate good of others, we are ourselves less lovable.

One of the best things we can possibly do for our lives and for our careers is to improve our relationships. How can we be better parents, siblings, children, coworkers, family members? Community members?

How can we better align our time spent with the important people in our lives? How can we be more present in our relationships, both personally and professionally?

How do you do that? You go back to #1: You shift your identity.

You see yourself as someone who already aligns their time with the important people in their lives, in their careers.

You see yourself as someone who helps people through service. You see yourself as someone who grows and brings value to relationships by spreading love and kindness through service to others.

If you're done making excuses, if you're going to rock the coming year, if you've decided you're going to figure it the fuck out, learn to market your business and crush it, click the link here for the VO Freedom Master Plan, and to get my Move Touch Inspire newsletter for voice actors every Thursday, click that link as well.

If you found value from this post, if you were inspired by it, if you think it will help or inspire other voice actors, then please share it with them, either by email or social media or whatever you prefer.

As we inch towards the end of the year, from my family and myself and my son Robbie to you and your family, I don't care what you celebrate, have a lovely Holiday Season and we will see you back here real soon.