VOICEOVER PUPPY MILLS

Harlan Hogan has decided to teach a month-long series of teleseminars devoted to just one topic: Starting Your Own Voiceover Business: Everything You Need To Know To Turn Your
Dream Or Your Sideline Into A Business.

Why?

If you think he needs the money, you’re mistaken. He’s been pulling down a steady six figures each year for 32 years — as he says, as a talker, not as a teacher.

He’s doing it for two reasons:

1. He’s seen too many promising careers flame briefly and then disappear because the voice actors concentrated on voiceover jobs or even voiceover careers…but not on building voiceover businesses. If you spend all your time trying to land an audition or win a gig, you’re missing the big picture. Harlan is a Big Picture kind of guy.

2. Over the past couple of years he’s become really upset over what I have dubbed “Voiceover Puppy Mills”: companies that sucker people in to free or inexpensive “workshops” and then follow up with each person who attended: “You have what it takes to make it in voiceovers! You must sign up for our multi-thousand dollar ‘master’s class’ immediately!

I knew there were some fake voiceover gurus out there, posing as successful VO performers, suckering people into “continuity programs” where the naive student pays $X per month — forever — to be part of an inner circle of other would-be voice actors. I’m quite familiar with that business model. Heck, I can tell you who invented it.

But I didn’t know about the hucksters who pitch their tents, separate the local yokels from their precious cash, and then move on to the next sucker town.

For a couple of years now, Harlan has forwarded me the various snake oil pitches that have come his way.

Result:

Now I’m angry, too. So when he asked me to assist in putting together a series of teleseminar classes that tell the truth, offer real-world information and tools, and can steer serious voiceover professionals away from “hope careers” and toward voice acting businesses…It was easy to say yes.

Harlan talks about those rip-off artists in much greater detail here.