Why a voiceover business is in decline. It has been nearly 3 years since writing a blog post. Shame on me. But, life gets in the way of man

We made it! The final episode of 10 things you need to know when starting out in voiceover. Number 10: You can’t force things to happen. You’ve done everything right. You got great training from a respected coach. You researched the niche markets that you will be targeting and have come up with a business plan on how to market to your strengths. Website is complete. Check. Professionally produced demo complete. Check. Home studio set up and ready to take on the world. Check,

Continuing with the 10 things you need to know when starting out in voiceover. Number 9: What do you think is the most important skill in voiceover? Having a voice that melts people’s hearts? Having a voice that is right on trend? Being able to mimic any accent on demand? Here’s another question. What do you need to be a success in voiceover? A high-quality studio? A major coastal agent? A U87 microphone? These questions are asked all the time and the answers used as examples

Continuing with the 10 things you need to know when starting out in voiceover. Number 8: You have got to put in the work. Sorry to be a downer so soon into this blog. But as the title says, it is something you NEED to know. There a very few overnight successes in this business. Peel back the layers of any rags to riches story and you will nearly always find evidence of hard work and passion. Hey, you can always try and buck the trend if you want, but I much prefer the path sh

Continuing with the 10 things you need to know when starting out in voiceover. Number 7: Invest in performance coaching. Now, I know that depends on whether you are just doing voiceover as a hobby or if you are serious about your career. If it’s a hobby, then coaching will be fun and help you, but the cost may be prohibitive. If this is your chosen career, there is just no excuse to not get further coaching. The expense is tax deductible and the return on investment can be si

Continuing with the 10 things you need to know when starting out in voiceover. Number 6: Get used to rejection. I know that sounds a little negative, and please believe me, that is not the intent. It’s just a simple truth when working in a creative industry where you are required to audition. It takes a strong character, especially when starting out, to navigate the natural human emotions of rejection when you are submitting for jobs over and over again and not getting select

Continuing with the 10 things you need to know when starting out in voiceover. Number 5: Prepare for the journey. That sounds like something from the Lord of the Rings. “Prepare for the journey Frodo. Many challenges are ahead of you”. Ok, it sounds a bit overly dramatic, yet it is something that many new voiceovers do not prepare for. This is not a scare tactic. I am not trying to dissuade you from a career in voiceover. Far from it. I am just trying to help you understand w

Continuing with the 10 things you need to know when starting out in voiceover. Number 4: Get out of your head. Before we go any further, I want to let you know that this blog is mostly for those who want to work in commercial, narration and eLearning. It still applies in some respects to animation and gaming but that is not the target audience. Your brain is a complicated thing. And when it comes to voiceover, it really can get in the way. For so many years, we have been expo

Continuing with the 10 things you need to know when starting out in voiceover. Number 3: Fix your recording space. In the first of these series of blogs, I mentioned that you must train your ear. Once you have started to really hear what good quality audio sounds like, it is time to take a good hard look at your recording space. If you’ve been doing your research, you should already know what every sound engineer says about a VO’s home set-up: The quality of your recording sp

Continuing with the 10 things you need to know when starting out in voiceover. Well, looky here. I managed to come up with number 2 in my series of blogs. Forgive me if I am slightly smug and impressed with myself. That’s one more than I thought I would get to. So, let’s get to it. Number 2: This is a business. There’s no business like show business. It’s a well known saying but so many people forget the word that repeats in that sentence. Voice over is a business. More accur

10 things you need to know when starting out in voiceover. I really should have thought this through as I don’t have 10 things that come to mind at the moment. But it sounded like a good round number so let’s go with it! Over the next 10 weeks I am going to focus on 10 skills or things you need to know when you first start out on your voiceover journey. The kind of things that make the phrase “you don’t know what you don’t know” ring true. Some of these things will be easy an

Learning and training is really important. Not just in voiceover, but in every profession that requires a skill to be learned and then applied creatively. I like to use football (soccer) as a great example of this. All the best players practice, practice and practice. They are constantly trying to improve their game. There is one important thing to remember though. Once game day comes, they don’t think about what they practiced or try to force things when in the game. They na

I LOVE the voiceover community. I think it is the most generous and helpful community I have ever been part of. I look forward to my various Zoom meetings every week like a kid on Christmas Eve. Immersing myself in this world has made me a better person. I have seen a genuine evolution in my personal outlook due to the wonderful people I have met. It has made me a better person and I am thankful for that. But it may have one dilemma. How do you know who is telling the truth a

Today I thought I would dish out some facts about the voiceover industry! Things that are based on public data that can be fact checked and confirmed. There can be too much noise out there sometimes and an opinion becomes fact all too quickly with no basis in reality just because it gained traction in a Facebook group. And we all know that everything on the internet must be true…… The best of the best. According to Voices dot com, the highest earning talent on the site have a

Stretch yourself. It’s an easy thing to say or ask people to do. Doing it on the other hand is a completely different thing. If you’ve...

Don’t be afraid to say YES! Taking on new things that are out of our wheelhouse and challenging is scary. I get it. But they are also the things that can invigorate us and give you a new impetus in whatever you are doing. The fear of failure, embarrassment, ridicule, and a host of many other things is very powerful and can cloud our judgement sometimes. Causing us to make decisions that may not be beneficial. This is not the same as agreeing to do something that you know you

As if most of you hadn’t noticed……I am British. To confuse things even more, I am actually Scottish, but I am not going to go into a Geography lesson at the moment! Why is this important? Well, the culture of a country has a weird way of molding who you are as a person. And if you ask most people what the stereotypical traits of someone who grows up in the UK is, the list would be full of words such as reserved, stiff upper lip, unemotional, self-reproving and…well the list g

Each of us has weaknesses. Things that we know deep down don’t quite feel right and can hold us back from becoming better people. It...

OK, it’s the New Year so you are probably working on some new goals. If not, what the bloody hell do you think you are doing, LOL! And if one of those is your financial goals for 2022 then I have some advice. The actual number itself is nonsense. An imaginary number. A series of digits that have absolutely no basis in reality. Don’t jump down my throat all of a sudden and say what is that stupid Scottish voice over guy trying to tell me. That you must set a financial goal, or

Christmas in our house always reminds me of one thing - How important family are to have around. For me, it’s not about the gifts or the food (which thanks to my wife is amazing!). Usually, we have at least 8 people around for Christmas dinner, and unfortunately, due to various issues we only had 4 in total this year, including my wife and me. Although it was still a good day, it just wasn’t the same without the hustle and bustle of a house full of people. And the same is tru