Harlan Hogan and I produce an annual, month-long teleseminar class entitled STARTING YOUR VOICEOVER BUSINESS: Everything You Need To Know To Turn Your Dream Or Your Sideline Into A Business.
We’ve been teaching every year since…well, since 2009. Ah, tradition.
At the moment, class registration is open. Soon it will close.
A bunch of people already have signed up. Maybe you’re thinking about it. Undecided. On the fence.
Perhaps a brief look at last year’s students will help you decide. The information below is from a pre-class survey.
43% of last year’s students already were earning money from voiceovers, either full- or part-time. 57% were not yet earning any money from voiceovers.
66% did not have their own voiceover websites.
Almost everyone had taken at least one other voiceover class. There seemed to be a lack of overall satisfaction with the results, although a few people were happy with some of the classes they took.
We asked, “What are the biggest obstacles to launching your career?”
Here are the most common obstacles the students listed.
Far and away, Number One: “Not knowing where to start.” (Fortunately, that’s what this class is all about.)
Number Two: “Not having a mentor.” (Hmm. Harlan Hogan as your mentor. Not bad.)
Number Three: “Lack of confidence.” We admired the people who were willing admit they weren’t confident they could do it, that they could do the work necessary to get a job.
If you’re considering taking this class — or doing anything else that might help you achieve your dream — here’s a Big Secret:
You can think, “I’m afraid, so I won’t do it.” Or you can think, “I’m afraid and I’m going to do it.”
I mean, if you take the class and “fail,” what’s the worst that can happen? I guarantee your voiceover career won’t be any worse as a result of taking this class.
The Fourth Most Common Obstacle: “Knowing how to market myself” or “I don’t feel comfortable marketing myself.”
Even before our first class assignments, Harlan and I sincerely applauded everyone who registered, because everyone had a good excuse not to register. All of us had other things going on in our lives and other things we could spend our money on.
One student was in the process of moving. She had sold her house the week before our first class. But she showed up.
Another already was enrolled in another class (not related to voiceovers) that he had to attend in person, every Tuesday evening. But he signed up, and he emailed his questions for our Tuesday Q&A sessions.
One student was in great pain from a disc problem in his back. He showed up anyway.
Several were on other continents and attended each class “live” even though for them it was the middle of the night. Others were on other continents and waited to receive the mp3 recordings afterward.
This level of commitment really was very encouraging to us, because you cannot succeed in voiceovers unless you’re willing to commit to it.
And commitment doesn’t mean, “I really want to do this.” Commitment means doing what you have to do to make it happen.
Commitment is not a measure of how much you want it; it’s a measure of how much you’re willing to do to make it happen.
Harlan and I knew we could not guarantee anyone’s success. In fact, we knew that a certain percentage of students simply would not take action.
Our commitment to the class was to do everything we could to make it easy for people to take action. But we couldn’t force anyone. And we couldn’t do it for anyone.
If you register this year, we hope you’ll be among the students who don’t treat it as just another class but who instead take what we teach you and use it.
And still we won’t be able to guarantee your success. We can’t guarantee your degree of talent, your degree of ability.
But we guarantee this: If you do all the assignments and then after our four weeks together are over you act on what you’ve learned, your voiceover career definitely will not be any worse off.
Some of you will succeed more than others, but there is no way for you to fail, unless you simply fail to act. And we’re going to do our best to make easier for you to act than not to act.