When it comes to start-ups and small businesses, there are countless statistics out there that offer a mostly gloomy picture of the potential.
Though the facts vary greatly from a numerical standpoint, say percentages, for example, one truth seems to be consistent. Most startups and small businesses fail… and usually within a couple years.
Why? Well, that’s a whole other volume of books (not blogs) for another day. For now, let’s just talk about voice over.
I went full-time in 2012 and earned about $15,000. In 2016, I finally broke six-figures by a very comfortable margin. That means, for me, it took four years to hit my goal. That goal, of course, being a six-figure income.
That was four years of ball-busting grind. It didn’t happen by accident or fluke or luck. If someone credits luck, I kind of want to reach out and slap them (but I don’t). It happened because everyday I woke up, got my butt in the studio, and proceeded to do all the things I needed to do, strategically and methodically, to turn my goals into realities.
5 Reasons Your Voice Over Business Will Fail
So why do so many people “break-in” and strike out almost as quickly?
- Fast Money: My own story is proof. It took me four years of insane effort to go from nothing to six-figures. If you’re looking for fast money, you’re in the wrong business. Since so many people are, they usually fizzle out after a few months when they realize it doesn’t work that way.
- No Training: It’s great that your neighbours, mothers, best-friends, grandma thinks you have a nice voice. The sad and harsh reality is, that accounts for about 3% of the overall success equation in voice over. If you’re struggling to book work, it’s most likely because you’re not trained up. Get trained up!
- Poor Planning: Signing up for one or two or five casting sites, or building your profile on Fiverr is not the way to build a voice over business… despite what some “coaches” might try and tell you. If you’re going to succeed you’ve got to have a plan. That plan involves clearly defined goals, and a strategic map for how you’re going to get there. You MUST be a lifelong student of marketing.
- Lack of Commitment: When the going gets tough, the tough get going… right on to their next brilliant idea for earning an easy living. Can you build a voice over business part-time? Yes you can. But it still requires a serious commitment. If you only have two hours a day to give to your business, you better be willing to commit 100% to giving those two hours and maximizing that time to take you where you want to be.
- The Easy Road: Examples of this… I tell someone to reach out to 20 leads a day and they reach out to three. I suggest to someone to take a workshop from a specific coach relevant to their needs, and they go watch a free five minute YouTube video from some guy who’s probably never booked a VO gig in his life. I give you specific strategies for how to use Twitter and you ignore all my advice and try to automate the whole system with no results. What I’m getting at here is, there is NO EASY ROAD to success. Not in voice over. Not in any business. If you know what you have to do, but don’t do it because you’d rather find an easy way… while you’re wasting all that time, your business is failing! DO THE WORK.
This business is AMAZING. I truly love it. I love my clients. I love my colleagues. I love our community. I love the lifestyle it’s given me. The freedom it’s afforded me. Master of my own destiny. Controller of my own calendar!
You can have it to. But only if you’re going to do the work!
DO THE WORK!
