My car’s registration is four months out of date.
It’s not that I didn’t renew the registration; I did. I just haven’t gotten around to putting the sticker on the inside of my car window yet. The registration itself has been sitting in a pile of mail in my house for four months now, and every time I pass a police officer on the roads, I hope he doesn’t notice that I’m driving with an expired registration. So why don’t I just spend the 37 seconds it will take to put the new registration in? Because I simply haven’t gotten around to it yet.
What does all this have to do with voice overs? Well, just like I haven’t gotten around to putting my registration in my car yet, I can’t tell you how many aspiring voice actors I’ve encountered who “just haven’t gotten around” to marketing themselves yet.
A prime example occurred a couple of years ago. I had a student from Syracuse, NY, who I thought had the whole package. He had an amazing voice, an incredible personality, and what seemed like the will and drive to really make things happen. About a year after he completed his demo, I ran into him completely randomly, and I asked how things were going. “Well, I’ve been really busy with work, and I sent out a couple of demos early on, but I really just haven’t had the time to pursue it yet.”
That got me thinking. I understand that people are busy (and I can relate since I haven’t even found time to put a sticker in my car) but is it too hard to find the time to try and launch a new career for yourself? At what point does the amount of time and effort required to market yourself outweigh the desire to enter into a new and exciting career?
One student who isn’t waiting to find out is Don Madison. Don is a retired military man who now works for a private contractor in Iraq. Rather than wait for his return to U.S. soil to begin training with Voice Coaches, Don is currently utilizing our phone link system to undergo training from halfway across the globe.
Don got interested in voice overs initially while doing video production for the professional training company he works for, and he decided that voice over acting was something he wanted to pursue when he returned to the U.S. When he found out that we could train him while living in Iraq, Don jumped at the chance. Don says, “I’m a big believer in not putting things off until later. I tell my kids ‘there’s no time like the present.’”
I agree with Don, and he sets an example for all the other aspiring voice actors across the country. If he can find the time to train and study and practice while living and working in a war-torn corner of the globe, I think we can all find just a few minutes a day to spend on a little self-marketing. Because what would you rather do? Get a demo out into the marketplace and start an exciting new venture, or have to admit a year later that you simply “hadn’t gotten around to it”?
Me? I’m going out to my car right now to put that sticker up.
Next… that long awaited trip to San Francisco
By the way,
I’m Mike Spring
Director of Communication
Voice Coaches
