Our voice over mantra so far…
I love my work
I am focused
I am discerning
I listen
I am open
I make genuine relationships
In the last two installments of our series we talked about how to increase your voice over work opportunities and “sell” yourself better in the voice over industry:
- Loving your work
- Knowing who your ideal clients are
- Managing where you “advertise” your business
- Keeping yourself up to date and relevant
- Learning to accept feedback, criticism and changes
- Building genuine relationships
The last three mantra will focus on the three most important “person” in building your career – your CLIENTS, your PEERS, and YOU.
Be Reverent
Once you have earned the trust of your client and the people you work with, you should continue to honour that trust. When people decide to engage with you, to further work with you, treat that moment with reverence.
Show, on every opportunity, to your client that they have hired the right voice over for the job. Communicate your reverence to this partnership by being consistent with your work and providing great customer service. When you show them respect, they would reciprocate that respect.
People don’t just continue to work with you because you are talented, or they like you, they keep on bringing work to you because they trust and respect you.
Extend a Hand
The voice over, more than being an industry and business, is a community. We have stressed earlier that making genuine relationships as your plod along your career is vital to becoming successful in the industry… vital to sustaining a career.
Though there are classes, workshops, trainings about voice over, the meat of what you learn as a voice over talent is in your experience; it is in what you learn from other talent’s experience, it in what you hear, what you see, and often what is passed on to you by mentors, friends and peers.
More than what you can learn, the voice over community can also help open doors for you that would have remained shut if you go through your career without reaching out.
So be an active collaborator, an active participant to the community, and eventually help usher new talents to opportunities that was once opened to you.
Have Fun and Be YOU
We said early on that to be able to sell yourself better, you should need to love yourself, your work; be so passionate with voice over that it transcends to every aspect of what you do, what you say and share.
We start and end our list of mantra that way.
Sometimes you become so focused in getting that national campaign, that best-selling novel turned audiobook, that primetime television gig, that you tend to feel anxious and burdened by the need to succeed – that you seemed to have forgotten the reason why you wanted to get behind that microphone in the first place.
Don’t get lost in the mountain of work. Don’t lose yourself in the many character voices you portray. Focus on who you are and that feeling you had the first time you stepped into that recording booth.
As Maya Angelou once said, “You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.”
When you enjoy and love your work, others will enjoy and love your work too.
To complete our nine mantra:
I am reverent
I am a collaborator
I am me
Also, you may read the following:
9 Mantra to Sell Yourself Better as Voice Over Actor
9 Mantra to Sell Yourself Better as Voice Over Actor – Fostering Relationships
Did the 9 voice over mantra help you? What tips can you share with other voice talents on sustaining a career in the industry? Share with us your thoughts…
