How to make a ton of money in voice over. Or anything.

I just finished three books by famed multi millionaire Real Estate agent Gary Keller. Yes, I'm a voice over guy, but I love real estate too. In fact my degree is in Business/Real Estate.  One piece of wisdom I've gained in my half century on earth as that if you want above average results in your chosen industry, its extremely helpful to look outside your industry.  Two of the books I read are specifically about real estate - The Millionaire Real Estate Agent and The Millionaire Real Estate Investor and the third was less specific - The One Thing.

As I listened to all of them, I thought a lot more about Voice Over than real estate!  "How can I apply this to my voice over business?"

Here are a few things I learned or was reminded of:

Many of us have heard of the 80/20 rule.  It was originally discovered in 1906 by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who determined that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.  It is also true in business that  about 80% of your results come from about 20% of your efforts.  Want bigger results?  Figure out what that 20% is and do more of that!  Bill Dewees, successful voice actor, marketing genius and voice over coach talks about this in his training.

In real estate, you are virtually guaranteed to be successful if you spend 4 hours a day, 5 days a week marketing and prospecting.  In voice over, assuming you have the training, a decent recording studio and a place on the web for people to find you, I have no doubt that the same thing is true.

The trick is to ACTIVELY and CONSISTENTLY let the world know you exist!  And you can't give up after a week or a month or even a year.  If you have the luxury of being able to dedicate full time to your voice over career, MOST of your time should be spent marketing and prospecting when you start out!  You could be rocking the greatest pipes on earth into your Neumann U87 being fed into your Avalon 737 in your custom VO booth after having been trained by the greatest coaches on earth (Nancy,  Marice and David) - but if no one knows you exist, you ain't gonna book a thing!

In fact, you should never stop marketing yourself.  Gary Keller says you can NEVER have too many leads.  You may think, "sure, for real estate thats's true, but there are only so many hours in a day I can sit in a dark room and talk to myself".  Well, that's true, but there's a great way to deal with "too much work".  First of all, LEVERAGE yourself.  Once you get to that point where you've got SO much money and SO much work, figure out what the best use of your time is.  I'm guessing its not invoicing, maintaining your website, updating your social networks, and editing your VO work.  If you're THAT busy, the best use of your time is talking into that mic!  Pay someone $15/an hour to do THAT stuff so you can spend your time making your $500/hour.

Secondly, raise your rates!  There's a number that will give you that perfect balance.

But I digress.  More on how to get to "too much work".  In The One Thing, Keller convinces the reader to focus on One Thing.  Find that driving force in your life that makes you want to get up and take on the world.  It may be voice over.  And it this point in your career it may be marketing and prospecting.

Once you find your passion and your purpose,  focus on it. Literally block out 4 hours per day 5 days per week in your calendar to do that one thing.  Make that time sacred.  Don't skip.  Don't allow interruptions.  Learn to say "no" when someone needs you for something during that time.  Remember, when you say "yes" to something, you're saying "no" to everything else!

But how do you market your voice to the world?

Ahhhh.  That's a topic for another day.

In the meantime, check out Keller's books.  You won't regret it.

Purple Cow

My wife has been pushing Seth Godin on me for awhile.  I finally caved and started watching his YouTube videos.  Really good stuff.  I wanted more.  So I purchased his audio book, Purple Cow. Audio book you say?  Heck yes!  I LOVE audio books.  I read while I run.  I read while I drive.  I read myself to sleep.  But that's off topic.


In the dark ages before the interwebs, marketing went like this:  Huge companies spent millions of dollars on national TV campaigns, sold a ton of product, and reinvested the money in, yep, more TV time.  They forced ads down our throats, we watched, and bought.  This worked fabulously.  Then.  But this was before TiVo, Hulu, Netfix and an epidemic of ADD.  


Now, if we don't want to watch an ad, we don't, so more effective marketing has evolved.  Certainly, some companies have not evolved and they're still using the 1970 model.  It doesn't work anymore.


Now, you've got to do things differently.  You've got to target your marketing - get your product or service in front of people who WANT to see it.  That's the genius of a Google search - you type "widget", and you see ads for just what you're looking for.


The main point of the book however, is that marketing should start with the creation of the product.  You need to create a product that will market itself.  You can no longer create something, and then think, "hmm, how will I market this?"  The product or service has to be the marketing.  And how will it do that?  It must be a purple cow.  It's gotta stand out.  Be different.  Make people take notice.


If your product IS the purple cow, you'll have the early adapters (sneezers) gobble it up.  It will be so cool, that they'll "sneeze" it out into the world, and then the rest of the world will start to adopt it.


So here's the question:  How are you going to make YOUR voice over business, your widget or other product stand out?


Check out Seth's book and get the full scoop.