Ep. 183: What If I Don't Have Experience

What If I Don't Have Experience

Over the last few days, I have received this question many times from new voice actors coming into the industry.

And I thought I would do a podcast on it. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, and welcome to a Vos journey podcast. My name is Anthony Pico. This show is all about helping the new and upcoming voiceover artists grow their business and sidestep all of the crazy things that I seem to step on it is time for episode number 184. I believe it is the 30th of October on a Friday. Tomorrow is Halloween so happy early Halloween today. We're going to be talking about a question that actually has been popping up a lot for me. A lot of people have been asking me recently and I thought that it would be a great topic to talk about in the podcast. And that question is how do I show that I have experience when I don't have any, how do I start my voiceover business? And everybody wants me even with websites like Upwork and stuff, you know, demanding that I have experienced before I joined the platform now. And, uh, you know, how do I do that? So I want to talk to you about my thoughts and how you can utilize your life's experience. All right, let's do it. This

Speaker 2: 1:09

Is the O's journey with your host, the incomparable Anthony Pika. All right. So

Speaker 1: 1:32

It's great to be back. I know it has been another long stretch between these podcasts, but thank you guys so much for listening and we are inching ever so much closer to 200. I think we're going to definitely have some sort of giveaway on episode 200, just like we did on episode 100. So I'm very excited about that. Usually we give away a microphone. And when I say we, I mean, I, I always like to say we, you know, it's like, Hey, there's some massive team over here at a Vios journey, doing nothing all day, but you know, looking at how to get you stuck. I don't have any of that, but it's, I guess it's that we thing, you know, there's a mult, I do have multiple personalities, so maybe that's something anyway, let's get back on the topic. And that is, you know, when I'm just starting out or I'm trying to get going, how do I show, you know, well, what do I put down for experience? How do I bridge that gap? And, you know, it's the chicken and the egg, how do I get experience without, you know, I need jobs to get experience, but I can't get the jobs without experience. You know? So I want to give you an alternate way of thinking about this. And from this point on, you know, use this method and quite frankly, I would use this method even when you have loads of acting experience or voiceover experience. And that is, we are the sum of all of our experiences in our life. Okay? And the person that you are, the voice actor that you are and the voice actor that you will become, the business that you will create the basis for all of that is going to be dictated by the experiences that you've had in your life. The jobs that you have worked, your education, your family, where you were born, where you grew up, okay, what, you know, what direction you have taken in your life, your morals, all of those things go into who we are and who we are is what comes across in our voiceovers. Now we play characters and so forth. I understand, but you can understand what I'm trying to say, right? I mean, that is the basis for everything that we do, our experiences in our life. So let's say that you are a construction worker, uh, or, you know, you're working, you know, you're, you're trying to transition over into becoming a voiceover artist and you work during the day and you come home at night and you try to do voiceover when you can. What do you say as a construction worker? You know, when you're, you don't have any experience, how do you bridge that gap? Well, to me, it's our job to make the client know what working with us is going to do to help them relate. This is an important word, guys relate to their customer. So when we are talking and this goes into your voice acting as well, our job is to help businesses relate. Okay, we are putting a voice. We are putting a, um, a face, if you will, through our voice on a business or product, or even a book, okay, we're bringing it to life, but we have to be able to relate. And one of the ways that we relate is by shared experiences, when people hire us, they want to feel like there is something that they can relate to or something that they look up to, or they respect. Okay. And there's nothing better than to talk about the life and the work and the things that y ou h ave done in the past and how that has prepared you for what you're doing now as a voiceover artist. So using our construction workers, you know, scenario here, it's all about how you word it and how you bring it to the client. So, first and foremost, remember your Yoda. They're Luke Skywalker. Your job is to help them be as successful as possible. Okay. Whether you've done, you know, a thousand voiceovers or you haven't done any, it doesn't matter. You still have the same job. And as a construction worker, right? Depending on what type of construction that you've done. Okay. Think about it. You are constantly put in new situations, you have a variety of different types of jobs that require different skill sets. You have to be able to communicate, right? You have to be able to work as a team. These are wonderful assets that any business or any voice actor must have in order to give the best voiceover and service to a client. So see you have these skills in Spain's. Our job though, is to then take those skills that I, and like I just mentioned, and now turn that into, Hey, listen, you know, I've worked construction for, you know, the better part of the last 10 or 15 years. You know, all of the work that I've done has led me to, you know, really appreciate the importance of teamwork, the importance of listening to the client or the person directing me. And then for me, being able to communicate effectively with different people from all sorts of different places. Okay. So that I can then relate what I'm trying to do so that we can get the job done. I can do this for you and your clients by hiring me. You're going to get somebody that has a mountain of experience and relating to G to, to your, to, to different people, uh, and, and, and bringing them together for a common goal. Do you see, like, it's all about the way that you paint the picture? It's not about me saying, well, you know, I've done a, you know, I've done like 4,000 voiceovers and you know, I've worked for Disney and I've worked for BMW. And I, and I, you know, and I've, I've worked. I mean, the that's nice and all, but just because you w orked for those people d oesn't mean that I'm w ant t o work with you. I care more about working with someone in the end, who is going to be able to relate to my clients and bring me, s ee, don't forget it i s about them. It's not about you. So it w as going to bring me the client the best possible outcome. And I want to work with people who are going to, y ou k now, do everything in their power to help me succeed. And because of that, I'm willing to pay them good money. Okay. That that's, that is your mission. So when you're first starting out, whatever you do, don't come into this thinking that you are lacking experience, you have a whole life, a life's worth of experience, right? That's the power of what you have. You have tons of experience. So it's so important for you to make sure that you, um, uh, verbalize that or write it so that the people can understand it. If you don't do that, then they're not going to know it's not good enough for, and, and let's tie in kind of talk about that for a second. It's really not good enough for you to just give a list of what your experiences are like, you know, Hey, I worked construction for this many years, you know, before that, um, I did, you know, I was a bouncer or whatever for a little bit. And, you know, I thought about going back to school, you know, maybe doing X, Y you know, you know, no one, no one is going to relate to that. What they're going to relate to is those themes, those common goals that we all have that are about communication. Remember guys in the end, this is all communication. We are communicating an idea, a feeling, a state of mind, a particular moment in time, we're communicating thoughts, uh, emotions we're communicating, the more effective of a communicator. You are the better you're going to be at this business and make money and make no mistake. Being able to communicate by writing is just as important as being able to communicate in this sense, by doing your voiceover, because acting is only half of the battle. The other half has to be the way you relate to other people and sh and, and be able to communicate with them what you can offer them and the people who can communicate the best. When, let me say that, let me say that again. If you communicate the best you win, you win in this game. In any game. They often say that you are your, the, um, the power of your communication or how good you are to communicate her. Okay? Uh, is, do you know, you're directly reflected and where you are in life right now, think about it, your relationships, your job, how good are you at communicating your thoughts, your feelings, your desires, you know, what you want, how good are you at communicating that really think about it. How good are you at it? And you might be good. You might be not so good. You might be middle of the road. You might not even have ever thought of that. But your ability to communicate those things, what you need, your ability to communicate, what you need to be successful, your ability to communicate is directly reflected upon where you are, what your station is in life right now, the positive thing is, is we are in the business of communicating. So it's our job to get better at it. And something that I just talked to you about, right. Was as a construction worker. I mean, listen, what it's, what's at the base of that. Yeah. We're building something. Yeah. We're doing something. We're making something. We're tearing something apart, but there are certain core values. There there's teamwork. There is communication. There is a common goal. There is relating to, you know, what the, the client's desires and wishes are. And being able to turn that into reality. Now you could say, well, yeah, it's digging a ditch or it's building a house, right. Or it's, you know, I'm tearing up a road or whatever. It's putting up a lot. What of sign, whatever. You can say that, but you see how, again, it's the way you communicate. That makes all the difference. I could say that, you know, I build roads as a construction worker, right. Or I can say, you know, you know, I'm, I'm, uh, you know, I work, I work as a team member. I take direction very well. And the goal of what I do is to make sure that I complete the task that allows people to do what they need to do to get where they are going. I've learned so much by, you know, being in construction, building roads, working with so many different foreman, working with so many different engineers, communicating effectively, being put in situations where I had to relate to different people I worked with in order to get the job done. And then in order to be able to communicate effectively so that we could all work together and finish in a timely manner as well. And on budget, this is not stuff you guys, that's not important to everyone, right? I just told you how a person who's building roads, or as a construct, a road construction worker can relate to anyone because it's true. No matter what we do, we are all doing the same thing. We were all communicating. And the effectiveness in the way we communicate will determine how far we go in this life. So I want, so we started this whole thing out by saying, you know, Hey, you know, what can I do if I don't have any voiceover experience? And the reality is is you have an entire life worth of voiceover experience. Your entire life has been proposed prepared you for this moment. Now. Yes, there are there skills that you need to learn, of course, but that doesn't mean that you don't, you have not been practicing since the first day. You w that when you were a baby, that you uttered your first noises or your first word, think of it that way. Think of that. You have been training and communication since you were a baby. And I, and, and I know you giggle a dis or think I'm being a goofball, you know, and, and, and maybe some of this is, but if you look at it that way, man, that's how I look at this. I've been training my whole life for this moment right now, as I'm communicating this message to you. And the sum of everything that I've done up to this point has brought me here. And this point I'm making to you now, everything that I've done, not just the last three or four years, I've been doing voiceover. Right. But the last 20 years I've been teaching, all right. And the last, the 10 years I was acting okay. In the years, I, you know, the couple of years I owned a restaurant and they, they, the years I, you know, was in college. And I learned in college the years that it took me to get my master's degree, the time it, you know, the, the relationships I've been in, the children that I'm raising, the, being a son, being a brother, okay. Being a friend, all of these experiences have led me to this moment in time to talk to you, the power in which you relate to me is really reflected upon how I can relate to you by communicating that message. And if I communicated effectively, you and I will be able to, you know, create a, shared, a shared emotion, a shared understanding. And that means that we can relate. And if we relate, we can trust each other. And if we trust each other we'll, then anything is possible. We'll work together. You'll work with me, I'll work with you. That's how communication works. And that's what you have to get really good at. It's not your experience and how many voiceovers you done that you've done. It's your experience and the power of your communication. All right. So I definitely think I've nailed the, uh, the, that, that, uh, coffin there. I think I've put a nail in that golf, but I think you get it. You get the idea. I know that I used, um, the, the, the construction worker analogy, and this can be used for anything, because no matter what you do, even if you have a job that solitary, no matter what you are doing, it is in some way or some form in service to somebody somewhere or some thing. Okay. And in this, how you communicate that experience to others, that will determine whether you get work. That's why I'm a big advocate. Um, when, when there's descriptions, right, that you talk specifically in those descriptions about some of your experiences in life and how those experiences are going to help the person that you're working for and what that's going to help them and their clients, right. It's all about them. And it's about them purchasing the sum of your experiences for a point in time, remember that they are purchasing the sum of your experiences for a point in time. It'll really blow your mind about the story. I love that story, u h, by red Horrocks, if you haven't listened to that podcast, u h, she told t his story about, u m, I think it was Picasso and you know, him charging an insane amount of money for a few minutes of work. And then when asked why, you know, it only took you a few minutes, w hy'd you charge me that much money. And he said, you know, it took me a few minutes, but those few minutes were from the sum of my whole entire life's experience of years and years and years of work and training, right? You didn't b uy just a few minutes. You bought the, s ome of my experiences. Now we're not going into that in this session, but there is a difference between Picasso doing a painting i n this particular situation and that story, and you running a brand new business from scratch. So that's, there's a difference there, but in the end, okay. The point I'm trying to make is, is that, you know, Picasso right. Had all of that communication, he had a name, all right. And that's what you're trying to build. But before you have that name built, you have to be able to communicate the sum of your experiences up to that point and how those experiences can help your client. All right. You guys, thank you so much for listening. Hey, I have this really cool thing. I'm so I'm so excited about it. I just finished this course. It's taken me a while because I wanted to make sure it was the very best course that I've done up to this point. It's marketing, it's a voiceover marketing one Oh one. How to get clients, I've poured my heart and soul into this new course. It just went live yesterday. We're already starting to let her go. We I'm already starting to sell some. And, you know, it's, it's, um, it's amazing. It's full of, uh, I I've, I've laid out an entire plan, visual representations, templates, tracking, sheets, maps, all sorts of things. Um, tutorial videos. It's really one of the best courses I've ever created. You know, I often think that f ive o r, you know, the, my Fiverr course of how to make$20,000 on fiber is, has been the, it's been the best course I've ever made, but this one is, you know, just as good or better. Uh, I'm so excited about this and it, and it expands out of fi ber. You know what I mean? Be cause, you know, I get a lot of business from fiber, but fiber is actually not the majority of my business. Fiber is not the majority. It's just a part. The majority of my business comes off of fiber. And if you remember, if you've listened to this podcast, that has been something that, you know, I worked very hard on was to build a business that was not completely relying upon on fiber. So anyways, thank you guys so much. If you get a chance, please feel free to leave, you know, some feedback, uh, a review on iTunes. If you're on Spotify or wherever you is, I would appreciate it. And thank you, have a great weekend. And I will talk to you all very soon. Thank you.

Speaker 3: 20:25

Goodbye.