Hi, I am Jason Leadingham. I was an SAV student not that long ago and I have had some fairly decent early success. In fact, enough to repay my SAV investment a couple of times over already.
My training and demo program gave me more than skills: it gave me confidence – a key ingredient to anyone’s VO success. If you are struggling with confidence (and we all do from time to time), let me suggest four things that will kill your VO confidence. There are many more than four, but for the sake of time let’s deal with these to turbo-charge your confidence.
I love acronyms. So, the word we are going to use to help us remember these four things is JUNK.
J stands for JACK-WAGON (or Jerks) in the VO Biz.
These are the people in our industry who are only here to take your money. Phony coaches, shady demo producers, and internet scammers. You have to avoid these folks like you would avoid a sick toddler in front of you in line, coughing in your face in the middle of a crowded Walmart somewhere in the middle of the pandemic. Stay away.
The great news is that these people are actually few and far between. Hear me out, MOST people in the industry are amazing, delightful, and helpful. And they are here to actually help you and pay it forward.
How do you know who to avoid? Ask. Ask your SAV coach, ask the VO community, ask the SAV Facebook group hivemind. Your gut can be helpful here too: if it feels off, it probably is.
U stands for Unknown.
Specifically, we must get rid of the fear of the unknown. Now, this is a tough one because the more you learn about voice-over the more you realize you don’t know much at all. You have to keep learning. The fear of the unknown can paralyze us from moving the proverbial VO ball forward down the field toward our goals. Don’t be afraid of the unknown, embrace the challenge of learning.
N stands for the Not Booking Blues.
You may be suffering from that right now. We all battle these blues. In fact, if you are not battling them right now, that just means you have battled it in the recent past or you will be battling it again in the near future.
I have spoken to several VO veterans who say there are still seasons of “not booking” in their successful careers. The question is…can you persevere?
I think this is where most people give up. It’s okay not to book for a while, but it’s not okay to get so down about it that you don’t continue to work on your craft. I know this feels easier said than done, but all you can do in this situation is to keep going, keep auditioning, keep learning. Eventually, your persistence will pay off. Remember it’s okay not to book, just toss the part out about staying sad about it all the time.
K stands for Killer Pressure.
I call it killer pressure because the pressure we put on ourselves kills our confidence. If you want your reads to come across sounding confident, you have to perform them feeling confident. The pressure to succeed can be great, but in order to do so, it can be useful to let go of that pressure somehow.
Again, much easier said than done.You must discover your own way to toss this kind of junk. If you are a person of faith like I am, you can pray and rely on your dependence on a higher power. If spirituality isn’t your thing, then try mediation or a gratitude practice. These things can help remove the pressure in your mind when you dwell on the things you have yet to attain.
I hope this has been helpful. I believe in you, we have an awesome SAV community that is here for you. Remember to practice dumping that JUNK every day, and all of this will get easier over time.
Check out our free PDF with pro-tips from real working voice-over actors here!
Want to learn more about voiceover? Signup for our introductory VO webinar.
