I’m hoping to find more freelance voiceover work in Nashville so I thought I’d take a chance and start posting demo “videos” on YouTube. This is a small sample of my work from 1989 to 2007. Too bad my career mostly predated the age of MP3s! I had to track these down from reels and VHS tapes. Not. Kidding.
I know, right. I haven’t been doing voiceover at my previous level and yet here I am dishing out advice.
I got an inquiry in my inbox through my About.me profile on how to get started in voiceover. The person wanted any tips I could give. As I was answering the email, I figured I’d turn it into a blog post!
I’ve had to eat a lot of humble pie when it comes to voiceover. It’s just an entirely different ballgame here in the US. Competition is stiff. And for someone who works a full-time job, it’s not a priority for me at the moment to start at the bottom of the rung. That being said, the following tips I came up with are all part of my experience and personal journey, which I love sharing.
Mr Blue in my ottoman; click image for how to set up a portable booth
Since I started reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It! and Seth Godin’s Linchpin, I’ve been inspired to take serious steps at resurrecting my old voiceover career. It’s been relatively quiet since I moved back to the US in 2007.
Imagine the blow to my once highly-sought after voice’s ego when my CD demos went ignored by the recording studios I mailed them off to and followed up on painstakingly. The shock! It was sobering. My voice don’t mean jack in the US. Ouch.
I was unemployed for a good four months after landing in September 2007 (my two weeks as a housekeeper at the mall barely counts) and the one thing that I knew how to do from the time I was eighteen and starting off on a simultaneous career in radio, was being a voiceover. My first radio ad was a toothpaste commercial, which was followed by laundry soap, and ultimately led to a steady stream of products and formats: live announcing at fashion shows or corporate presentations, corporate videos, signature voice for network TV, for close to two decades while juggling full-time jobs in radio and the corporate ladder.
