You’ve got a dream for your voice over business. Maybe more than one. And that’s great. It’s important to have dreams! My entire voice over career started with a dream.
Eventually, though, you need to morph those dreams into action. If you want a dream to become a reality, you’ve got to activate the dream.
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This week has been insane. Just insane.
One of those weeks where all the planning, scheduling and organizing in the world couldn’t help me keep up. For the record, I’m pretty anal about planning, scheduling and organizing.
Between recording and editing voice over jobs, dreaming up and writing my 12 Voice Over Tips of Christmas, planning, shooting and editing a new Voice Over Video Tip, marketing to new clients and following up with existing ones, and doing everything else I have to get done outside of voice over on a given week… wow… what a week.
Wednesday night I was working late on a project. Tags for a national radio spot. It’s a job I was super excited about.
One of my goals I wrote down in December of 2013, was that I wanted to book a national radio gig in 2014. I do a lot of local and regional radio stuff, but not much at a national level. It took me until December 17, 2014 to finally achieve my goal… but who cares?! I did it!!
As I was in the middle of editing the tags, I actually had to stop what I was doing because I was smiling so hard I thought I was going to swallow my head.
Have you ever taken a minute to stop and appreciate how amazing it is to do what we do for a living? I mean, really just soak it in and appreciate it?
We talk.
God gave us a voice, and people pay us for the opportunity to use it. To tell their stories. To bring their ideas to life. To spread the good news of their brand. To explain the benefits of their product. To say what needs to be said. To share what needs to be heard.
We are the masters of our own destiny.
Entrepreneurs.
We have the power, ability, skill, opportunity and flexibility to build the career and lifestyle of our dreams.
How amazing is that?
Even now… smiling like a fool!
Thank you, Jesus, that I had a dream, You gave me a gift, and with Your help and leading, I’ve turned it into this amazing life.
Sometimes, I just have to stop for a minute and pinch myself.
You know, just to make sure it’s real.
It is!
* This is a follow up to What’s REALLY Stopping You From Achieving Your Dreams? *
Since I was a kid there’s been an entrepreneur in me just waiting to get out. From childhood “businesses” selling baseball cards and fixing bicycles to starting a woodworking business when there wasn’t enough money coming in from radio. If there’s one thing I’ve always known about myself, it’s that I wanted to be my own boss.
But there were too many barriers in the way.
What if I don’t make enough money?
What if I can’t support myself?
There’s no way I can quit my radio job.
Barriers? Or fear?
I had done voice over on the side since 1995. I’d always dreamed of doing it full-time, but never actually believed I could. For the reasons listed above… among others.
For around 17 years I had come up with every reason imaginable why it couldn’t and wouldn’t work.
So I stayed with what I knew. Radio. It’s not that I didn’t like radio. I really did. It was a fun job. But deep down inside, there was still that entrepreneur that wanted to get out. And there was the dream. No matter how hard one tries, a legit dream can never be fully suppressed.
For me… it took getting downsized. When I couldn’t force myself to quit radio and pursue voice over full-time, God forced my hand.
Suddenly I found myself unemployed with no prospects and no desire to return to radio. It didn’t feel like it at the time, but looking back I can clearly see that it was God breaking down a barrier for me. My refusal to quit radio and even try for full-time VO.
When I did voice over on the side I didn’t worry about how much money I made. Radio paid the bills. Voice over was extra. I auditioned when I had the time. I didn’t really do any marketing at all. Just a few Pay 2 Play memberships. That was good enough.
But now I had no money. No income stream. No prospects.
All the questions I asked that kept me from doing voice over suddenly needed new answers. It was no longer 101 reasons why I can’t do this full-time. I needed 101 reasons why I could. And I needed those answers fast!
Here’s the thing I learned by having my hand forced… all of my fears about doing voice over full-time were based on unfounded answers to questions that I never actually bothered taking the time to thoroughly research.
When I broke the big fears down to smaller problems, all of the sudden I discovered that every answer I needed was out there. And most of them were well within my grasp. Attainable with a little time, a little sweat, a little hard work, a little perseverance.
That’s the key. Don’t just say, “I can’t.” Break it down. Why can’t you? Or better yet, why do you think you can’t? What are the problems standing in your way.
Write those down.
Then, one by one, start finding solutions.
I was downsized at the end of January in 2012. I spent a couple months in a daze, trying to figure out what happened. Why it happened. How it happened. What I was going to do next.
By the Spring, I was starting to find the answers to the questions that had been holding me back for years.
In 2012, I made roughly $13,000 doing voice over. I’d say I ate a lot of Kraft Dinner, but the truth is, I didn’t each much at all. I couldn’t afford it. 🙂
In 2013, I more than tripled my income. No longer was I referring to myself as unemployed and still trying to figure out my next move. Now, I was a full-time voice over talent.
In 2014, so far, I’ve almost quadrupled my 2012 income.
Now when people ask me what I do, I tell them I’m living my dream!
As has become my custom at least a few times throughout the year, this past weekend, on a whim, I packed a bag and spontaneously hit the open road. I wound up in Erie, PA – home of the cheapest gas I’ve purchased in a decade. $57 to fill my truck? Are you kidding me??? At home $57 would almost get me half a tank!
I digress.
I love my apartment. I love my office. It has too many distractions. That’s why I like to leave sometimes. I find a nice hotel, book a suite for the weekend, and lock myself inside to see what happens.
In most cases, my creativity runs wild.
I took the above pic on Friday evening. The papers spread out all over… goals, ideas, dreams, plans. I was writing down everything that came into my head. Nothing was edited. Nothing was filtered. I didn’t stop myself to consider logic or practicality.
I also spent some time reading a book on the subject of achieving our dreams and breaking down the barriers that so often seem to be standing in the way.
What I came to realize is that, more often than not, the only true barrier standing in our way is ourselves!
Ask yourself this question, “What do I REALLY want?”
Now, as you ask yourself this question what comes into your mind? Whatever it is that you want most? Or 101 reasons for why you can’t have it, don’t have it, won’t have it?
Do you think about what you need to do to achieve it? Or do you think about everything standing in your way?
If you’re like me, and most of the rest of the world, your natural inclination is to see the barriers. All the barriers. Every. Last. Barrier.
Then comes fear.
Which breeds procrastination.
Nothing has ever been accomplished on the heels of procrastination.
I have a dozen pages of goals that I wrote during the weekend. From small, simple personal goes to big, elaborate career goals. Goals I can accomplish in a week, some in a month, some in a year. Some in five. Some in ten. One thing is certain, I intend to accomplish every last one of them.
If your answer to the question, “What do I REALLY want?” is in fact, what you really want, you’ll find a way to get there.
Remember the 101 reasons why you can’t? Write those things down. Every last one of them. Get them on paper. Speak them out loud. Confront them head on.
Then get creative.
If you’re committed to your goals and dreams, all you’ve got to do is reframe the circumstances and ask new questions. Take each one of those barriers standing in your way and find a way through them, over them, under them or around them.
Believe it or not, it can be done!
On Wednesday, I’m going to share a new blog post. The story of how I took my dream of being a full-time voice talent and turned it into my reality.
I hope you’ll come back and check it out.
* For Part 2 of this post visit How I Made My Voice Over Dream A Reality *
All through elementary school I was a runner. Not a track superstar runner, but a runner nevertheless.
Mostly, I give the credit to my mouth. You see, I needed my legs to carry me to safety when my mouth frequently got me into trouble. Whether I was outrunning mom and her wooden spoon or some punk kid in my school, seldom did I get caught. I even won a few races here and there.
In Grade 9 I was running a race and my right knee gave out. I face-planted on the track, picked myself up, carried on with the race, and still managed to win. I decided then to go out on top. Retired. In Grade 9.
In the two plus decades that have followed since my Grade 9 retirement, the only time I have run is when my fire department pager goes off. Thankfully, I live about 500ft from the fire hall, so I don’t have to run far.
Beyond that, I’ve have no desire to run. In fact, it’s something I’ve never given as much as a thought to.
Until two weeks ago.
June 24, 2014 I went out for my evening walk. Or, I suppose it would be my late night walk, on account of it was after midnight. For some reason, I got the bright idea that I’d run. I downloaded the Nike+ app and thought to myself, “what the heck?!”
I suspected I’d make it to the end of my street, collapse in a pool of sweat, tears and puke, and there, in all my un-glory, I’d die. All that would be left for me is the humiliation of calling 911 and having to be discovered by my fellow firefighters. When a firefighter has to call 911 for the fire department, he has to put up a case of beer. At least I’d be dead, so I wouldn’t have to buy beer.
Instead, much to my shock and amazement, I ended up running 3.21km in 21:02. Now, granted, this is not exactly world record time. But for me, to me, it might as well have been!
The next night, I tried again. 3.43km in 23:16. The night after that, 3:37km in 21:33.
I kept going. Kept running. On Monday July 7, 2014, I ran 5:03km in 27:40.
Two weeks ago, I was retired from running. I had been since Grade 9… over two decades ago! Two weeks ago I was pretty sure if I ran any further than the end of my street, I’d die. Two weeks ago if you had told me I’d run 5km in under 28 minutes within two weeks, I’d have referred you to my shrink!
I’ve got some stuff I’m working on in my life right now. Stuff that, to me, under current circumstances, seems impossible. At times I’ve wanted to quit. Throw in the towel. Walk away. Find new goals. Hopes. Dreams.
When I finished my 5km run on July 7, 2014 the very first words out of my mouth were, “thank you, Jesus. For showing me that maybe the impossible is possible after all.”
Now, I don’t want to give up on those things anymore!
Don’t let your dream(s) die. Maybe the impossible is possible after all!
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