Episode 266: Avoid This Mistake in Your Voiceover Career

What's Standing in the Way of Your Voiceover Career? Masterclass About Mandy Fisher: Mandy Fisher is a NYC-based full-time voiceover actor with over 15 years of experience in the industry. She has worked with brands like Crayola, Disney, Peloton, Coke, Walmart, and Kohls to name a few. Her passion for voiceover and genuine love of helping people inspire her to work with actors of all stages of their career.  With a theater background, she brings her training to guide copy analysis and character creation. As an industry vet of 15 years, she has witnessed the changes and understands the ebbs and flows of the business.  Mandy created her own voiceover business from the ground up and has a successful and replicable model to help actors build their own successful businesses. All of this adds up to a coach who can provide audition and career advice while helping actors become the best they can be! I am a professional voiceover actor, and I've been in the industry for a little over 15 years doing lots of different things across the industry.  And I wanted to share with you some things that have happened to me in my voiceover career that maybe you can learn from so that you don't make the same mistakes that I did.   The number one thing I think that I wish if I could go back tomorrow, right, if, if I could start my career all over again, the number one thing I would tell myself is to not rush the learning phase.  You only have one opportunity in your career to be a beginner, to be a newbie, to be fresh into the industry.   You have this one golden sweet spot of time where you don't know the answers. You don't have the training. You don't have the experience. You are a fresh baby bird, and it is a little intimidating sometimes to not know, to not understand, to not have the answers and to not know how to move forward.  But that sweet spot of being able to learn and grow and ask questions and figure it out is so important.   And I rushed that.   I was always rushing from one thing to the next. I graduated high school early, I graduated college early. I was always just trying to move on to the next thing, and I wish I would've taken more time to just breathe in these moments of learning, breathe in these moments of not knowing and, and getting the opportunity to have different perspectives.   Because also when I was first starting in voiceover, there was nothing, there was literally no resource, no people teaching voiceover, definitely no people on the internet teaching, no forums, no nothing.  And nothing for anybody, but especially nothing for a child. So we were scraping, trying to figure out how to make this a business.   And it was very, very difficult.   And now you are exposed to more information than ever. There is so much information out there, a lot of free information out there, right?   I always point people to www.Iwanttobeavoiceactor.com by D Bradley Baker.   It is a fabulous resource. There's so much information there, but it can also be very overwhelming because there's so much information there.   And while you can definitely read it over and over and immerse yourself in from the starting from zero point to checking out all of the myths, tips, and tricks and ways that you're going to be able to set up your business, it's not comprehensive enough because it's just from one person, you need to expose yourself to multiple people, to people who say things that maybe you don't agree with, to people who have only been in the business for X amount of time, for people who have been in the business for 10 times that amount of time, the new people, the older people, the vets, the people who are just breaking in.  There's so many perspectives. There's so many people writing blogs, showing off TikTOK, showing their experiences in different ways because technology has evolved and the landscape of the industry has evolved.   And it is so important for you to take this time to absorb all of that information.   I've been doing voiceover for a really long time, for over 15 years. And guess what? I still, to this day, I will still take beginner voiceover classes. And you may be thinking, why would you waste your time?   Why would you waste your money? Don't you know all of the things? Don't you have more important things to do? Hell, you're teaching voiceover. Don't you know what you're talking about, Mandy?  Yes, I do. But the point is, the reason why I do that is because I need to keep my ear to the ground to understand what these teachers are teaching new actors.   I want to know what the new trends are. I want to hear what an agent is going to say to new voiceover actors. I want to hear what a casting director is going to say to new voiceover actors.  I want to hear what other actors are saying to new voiceover actors.   I want to understand how the industry has changed from their perspective and, and adapt that, as it makes sense, to my business, to my craft, to how I am not only teaching, but how I am performing.   So taking beginner voiceover classes, even if you are an established voiceover actor is a very good idea.  It's going to keep you in the know. It's going to keep you relevant. It's going to keep you understanding, but it's also going to keep you in that growing phase.   Like I said, doing this a long time, 15 years. You never have too much knowledge, you're never gonna say, "Oh, well, I've learned enough and I'm all done.  I don't need to grow anymore. I don't need to change my business model. I don't need to do this. I don't need to do that."   That's [00:07:00] that's just not how this works. That's not how you're going to grow and scale. You need to constantly be absorbing information.   And if you establish that as your foundation right out of the gate, you're never going to lose that zest and yearn for more information.  If you only do a couple of classes, maybe coach with one person, it's not going to be ingrained in your creative DNA to seek out those new knowledges and seek out those new teachers and, and try new things.   You might get stuck in a pattern. You might get stuck in quote unquote, traditional ways of running your business, and that is not going to help you scale.  It's not going to help you adapt and evolve and change and grow.   And that's what the entertainment industry is all about. learning, adapting, changing, growing, scaling, and being sustainable.   So one thing that I just want to encourage you to do, even if you feel like you have reached the epitome of your knowledge is maybe take a step back.  Maybe, you know, you've taken advanced commercial classes and advanced interactive. And you've taken workshops, four week workshops with casting directors, and you're about to take an amazing business voiceover program with this woman named Mandy Fisher. Maybe you're doing all of these things, right?  But take a step back.   Let's examine how you feel about your confidence.   Let's examine how you feel about your approach to your craft, to your business, because there's two sides, right?   There's your performance side and there's your business side. And the marriage between those is how you're going to keep your business sustainable and financially sensible.  So I want you to take a breath in. Relax into this time where you are allowed to be in the unknown and to gather the information to ask the questions.   Look, you can always ask questions, right?   But at a certain point in your trajectory, it's always okay to be inexperienced, right? You're always going to have all of the bookings and all of the experience in at certain points in your career.  It's okay to be inexperienced. What's not okay is to be uneducated.   You have more opportunity than ever to get the education for free for paying classes. There's so many opportunities to learn.   So it's okay to be inexperienced. It's not okay to be uneducated.   And take it from me, from somebody who has lived those moments of rushing the eagerness to work and to book and to make the connections without having the education behind me, I got experience, but it wasn't formed in education.  And that made my booking ratios plummet.   I got lucky in some instances. Yes, I was in the right place at the right time. I met the right people at the right time. I sounded a certain way that someone needed at the right time. But because I didn't have all of the other tools in my arsenal to sustain that, to keep that going, to build a business behind, I ended up walking away.  I knew that I couldn't keep myself afloat that way, so I ended up stepping away from voiceover for a while.   And in that time I trained, I met with coaches, I took classes. I wish I would have taken more business classes because there's so much about owning your own business that I never knew.   And I wish I would have had that foundation because once you decide to be a voiceover actor, you are a business owner and there's so many hats that come along with that.  You're the CEO, you're the CFO, you're the head of sales, you're the head of marketing, you're also the janitor, you're all of these different things. And I just wish I would have understood that in a different way to keep my business growing instead of having to stop and start all over again. So take that with you.  I sincerely hope that I will see you in my free masterclass coming up. And if you feel inclined to join a voiceover gym, I would love to work with you. If you feel inclined to join the voiceover actor road map, I would love to work with you, but my door is always open. So if I can help in any way. Please shoot me an email at [email protected].