“Voice-over is a multi-billion dollar industry.”
That little factoid gets tossed around quite a bit, but have you ever unpacked that statement? Sure, voice-over pops up all over, in sectors everyone knows like radio, television, audiobooks, and animation, and in even more that everyone forgets about—like public transportation announcers, toys that talk, and automated phone lines. There are probably hundreds of thousands of voice-over jobs cast every year. But the industry is made up of more than actors behind microphones.
To start, casting directors get paid, as do coaches, teachers, demo producers, agents, managers, assistants, casting workshop coordinators, and voice-over websites that require a monthly or yearly subscription.
There’s a lot of money to be made in this business, but if you’re a voice-over artist reading that list, it’s important to notice how many parts of this industry don’t see you as an artist. They see you as a customer.
Between the money you spend on a decent microphone, computer, and home studio, the classes you take, the demo you need, the subscriptions you use and the commissions you pay for the work you do, voice-over as a business starts to look like a boat with a lot of holes in it. What’s seeping through the holes in the boat and causing it to sink? Doubt—and opportunistic people can recognize doubt in a heartbeat to sell you the one thing that will get rid of your doubt. And then sell it to you again.
How many classes do you have to take before you’re good enough to go pro? Think you’re ready for level two? Do you really think you’re ready to cut your demo? Who produced it? How old is it?
An agent asked me if I wanted to wait a few years sticking to commercials before I was ready to try out for animation, I told him no, that’s not what I’m built for. It wasn’t long before I found new agents who could see I was right. I only started booking cartons when I rejected the warnings and advice I was getting about auditions and started doing what I wanted to do with them, not what someone else told me to do.
Being an actor comes with plenty of doubt, but it doesn’t have to cost you your career. The longer you stay on the sidelines hemming and hawing over whether or not you’re really, really ready to go pro, the more opportunities you lose. The more you doubt your ability the worse you do, and the more money you spend on the empty promise that someone else can turn you into a top-earner if you pay them enough.
That’s not how it works. A good teacher will allow you to recognize your brilliance and offer a perspective that you can use to be more confident and more successful. A good demo producer will highlight what makes you unique as a voice. A good agent knows your strengths and your passions, and gets you opportunities to shine. You’ll get help from good people; the kind of help that makes you stronger because it empowers you to do more—not because it encourages you to come back for more help. But for any help to work you’ve got to believe you’re capable of being professional, getting the work you want, and reject doubt in all its forms. Working hard with intention will build your career.
Yes, a great microphone and a solid studio are expensive. But nothing will cost you as much as doubt.
