Thar She Blows!
Ah, Voiceover. The proverbial White Whale of careers. The profession that allows you to work in your PJs from home never having to subject yourself to traffic, long lines at Starbucks, or office politics. What a dream!
Ok, so it’s not just voiceover. It’s most freelancing jobs. But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re finally getting paid to do what we love.
But are we? Getting paid, I mean. All too often, voiceover — and freelancing in general — can get scary.
You just spent a week putting the pedal to the metal for that one client.
You’ve worked on literally nothing but their project. After all, they’re the ones paying you at the moment, so why shouldn’t they get 100% of your focus?
And therein lies the problem.
Mind The Gap
Don’t get me wrong. A client should get 100% of your focus – when you’re working for them. Like, in the actual moment that you’re working on their job.
But what happens when that job is all wrapped up?
If you were working for a company full time, you’d move on to the next task. Easy peasy. “What’s next, Boss?”
That’s just it, though. YOU’RE the boss here. There’s nobody else to send that next job down the pipeline.
Now you’re in a bit of a hole. You’re going to have a gap in your schedule.
And gaps in schedules mean gaps in pay. Gaps in pay mean panic. Panic means terrible decisions. Now you’re stressing out.
You absolutely NEED to get that next gig. And when you NEED it, it comes across in your voice – in your demeanor.
Now you can see that next job floating just out of reach.
These feelings can be real obstacles to succeeding in voiceover.
Crunch Time
When I first started my voiceover journey, I worked primarily in audiobooks. Let me tell you: there is no other area of voiceover where this phenomenon hits you harder.
That’s because audiobooks are so time-consuming. I would be chugging along on a particular project, happy to have the work.
Sure, I’d be putting in a few auditions for other work here and there and everything would be going very well.
Then maybe I’d get a headache, or I would just generally feel under the weather. I’d take a couple of hours or maybe even a day off.
All of a sudden, I would realize that I was starting to push up on that deadline! Time to buckle down!
Everything that wasn’t directly related to my project would get put aside. Then I would finish the project and turn it in. My clients would rave about how great it sounds.
Why wouldn’t it sound great? I worked so hard on it to the detriment of everything else.
But what then? In my mad dash to the finish line, I stopped auditioning. There was nothing else on my plate.
If I didn’t get a new gig soon, there would literally be nothing on my plate in a few weeks! What was I going to do?
Get Hungry
Okay. Breathe. You’re going to get through this.
It’s something that, as freelancers, we’ve all experienced before. We sometimes forget that our JOB is auditioning.
The gigs are the payoff (Okay, the payoff is the payoff too, but you understand what I’m getting at).
Succeeding in voiceover means remembering to keep that schedule booked.
Work hard to make sure you don’t have any gaps for the next few days. Then work on the next few weeks.
You should be making time in your daily routine to audition for new projects, even if you already have a big juicy one on your plate.
You need to be hungry for more.
And if you are working on a campaign that has the potential for future work, be sure to communicate openly with your client. Don’t just sit back and hope they send you the next part.
Their production schedules might not line up with yours, and you need to be ready for that.
Get Organized
As freelancers, we need to be productivity ninjas.
Succeeding in voiceover requires you to learn to manage our time properly. And that means a lot more than just staying off social media and keeping the TV off.
It means finding time for all the different facets of your job.
You can’t ignore things like auditioning, recording, editing, marketing, and even the housekeeping stuff like running the business side of things.
It’s like a house of cards. If any of these pillars become unstable, the whole thing comes crashing down.
So get organized. Make a schedule for yourself. Find a flow that works best for you – because you’re flying high now.
And there’s no net.
