Posts tagged Getting started in Voiceover

Seth Godin, a very bright man, has started a new venture called The Domino Project. The newest release is called Anything You Want by Derek Sivers, the brains behind CD Baby. Derek is creating animated videos to illustrate some of the key points of his new book. This one is called If It’s Not a Hit, Switch.

If it’s not a hit, switch from Derek Sivers on Vimeo.

I don’t know if Derek realizes he was aiming this one at voiceover people or not, but wow does that hit the mark.

I’ve mentioned voiceover coaches here a number of times, but today I’d like to point you to a blog post by my friend Dan Friedman that makes a very good point about “The best voiceover coach.”

Several times in the past I’ve written about one of the key truths of voiceover: “It’s not about you.” And it’s not. It’s about your client and his or her or their story.

I’ve been reading a fabulous new book from Steven Pressfield called “Do the Work” (link is an affiliate link to the Amazon Kindle edition) which is published by the new publishing project from Seth Godin called Domino. In the middle of the book I ran across this quote:

A professional does not take success or failure personally.

That really hit me between the eyes. It’s so easy to imagine that all the hard work we put in (to find new clients, to delight our existing clients to encourage them to keep coming back, to meet or exceed deadlines, etc.) somehow means that we are personally responsible for whatever success we experience. On the other hand, when things are quiet and the phone isn’t ringing at the same time the inbox is strangely empty of anything but notes from your family and the occasional bit of spam that slips past your filters, we are again personally responsible.

Now, there’s some value to taking responsibility for our own behaviors that are either productive or destructive. But it seems to me, ultimately, that Steven Pressfield is right. It’s not about you. Success. Failure. You can’t really control this stuff. All you can control is what you are doing.

Are you keeping your promises? Are you doing everything possible to delight your clients? Are you moving forward and making progress toward your goals every day? Then keep it up. If you’re not, then start.

Meanwhile I highly recommend Steven Pressfield’s book “Do the Work. You can get it from Amazon in Kindle format or as a hardback book.

Dan O’Day and Harlan Hogan present a four-week series of tele-classes on the business of voiceover again this year. Classes start May 10, but registration closes the week before.

My friend Dan Friedman has written an excellent post about voiceover demos on his Sound Advice blog. Well worth a few minutes of your time.