Acting Business Boot Camp

The Number Nobody Tells You About Voiceover Marketing

I need to have a real conversation with you. Not a comfortable one. Not a motivational poster kind of conversation.

A lot of you are working really hard and wondering why it is not translating into bookings. You are auditioning, posting, emailing, doing the things, and it feels like nothing is moving. And instead of looking at the actual math and data of this business, you are starting to wonder if maybe you are just not good enough.

You are good enough. That is not the problem. The problem is the number.

Here Is the Number

Industry veterans who have been in this business for decades are now saying that the old standard of 20 marketing touches a day is dead. That number used to be considered ambitious. A serious effort. The bar is now 100.

100 touches a day between auditions and direct marketing outreach if you want to compete at a serious level in today's market.

I know how that sounds. But I would rather you hear it from me now than spend another year wondering why 20 is not cutting it.

What a Touch Actually Is

A touch is not a finished, polished, custom audition every single time. A touch is any meaningful point of contact within the industry. An audition submitted, a LinkedIn connection request sent, a follow-up email, a comment on a piece of content, a pitch email, a check-in with a producer you worked with six months ago. All of it counts.

The Three Reasons Most Voice Actors Never Get Close to 100

The first is perfection paralysis. You spend so much time crafting the perfect audition, agonizing over every take, re-recording 17 times, and then you submit three auditions instead of 10 because you spent 30 minutes on each one. A solid, confident, well-directed audition submitted today beats a perfect audition submitted next week every single time. Done is better than perfect in a volume business. Full stop.

The second is confusing being busy with doing the work. Being in voiceover Facebook groups is not a touch. Watching tutorials is not a touch. Reorganizing your recording space is not a touch. All of those things have value but none of them move the needle the way actual outreach does. You can feel very busy and be making very little contact with the people who actually hire you.

The third is not tracking anything. If you are not writing down what you sent, who you sent it to, when you sent it, what subject lines you used, whether they responded, you have no idea what is working. Tracking is not optional. It is the infrastructure of the business.

What a 100 Touch Day Actually Looks Like

I am a big fan of time blocking. Here is one version of what this could look like.

Morning block: 90 minutes on auditions. If you are working on a casting platform and you are focused and not overthinking, you can realistically submit eight to twelve auditions in that time. That is 10 touches right there. Then 30 minutes on direct marketing. Five personalized pitch emails to potential clients. Five more touches.

Middle of the day: 20 minutes on LinkedIn. Ten connection requests to people in your target industries, five meaningful comments on posts from people you want to be on the radar of, one piece of content that demonstrates your expertise. Fifteen more touches.

Next block: follow-ups. Anyone you reached out to in the last week who has not responded gets a brief non-desperate follow-up. Ten more touches. Then check-ins with your existing network. A quick note to a producer you worked with, a congratulations to someone whose project just launched. Another 10 touches.

And then the auditions you submit through agents and other rosters throughout the day. Another 20, 30, maybe 40 depending on what is available and how efficiently you work.

None of that requires you to be superhuman. It requires you to be organized, consistent, and willing to prioritize this work.

The Thing I Want You to Sit With

Most actors approach this business like they are waiting to be discovered. Passive. If they just get good enough, if they just have the right demo, if they just book that one thing, the floodgates will open.

The alternative is you have to go get it every single day. It is relentless. It is consistent without waiting for permission.

The voiceover actors who are thriving right now are not the most talented or the most popular. They are the most persistent. The most organized. The most willing to show up and do the unsexy things.

A hundred touches a day sounds exhausting until you reframe it. What it actually means is that you are making yourself impossible to ignore. The math is on your side if you do the work. But you have to do the work.

Your Homework

Count your touches from yesterday. Actually count them. Auditions, emails, social media activity, follow-ups, all of it. Write down that number. And then be honest with yourself about the gap between that number and 100.

Not to beat yourself up. This is a clarity moment. Because most of us have a significant gap between what we are doing and what we think we are doing, and pretending it does not exist is not going to close it.

This is the long game. It is a hard game. But it is absolutely a winnable game for the people who show up every day and put the numbers on the board.

Want to Keep the Conversation Going?

Share this with another voice actor who needs to hear it. And reach out to Mandy at [email protected]. See you next time.

Feel the Fear and Audition Anyway

Working actors are not fearless actors.

They have just learned how to move when they are afraid.

This morning I woke up with what I can only describe as generalized anxiety. And I knew I could take a shower and stew in my own anxiety juices for a while, or I could just do something. So I attacked the email inbox. About 20 minutes later I was like, woo, I am ready, I am going. The anxiety was gone and I was zip-zopping through my day.

That is the whole thing. It is not about feeling confident first. Confidence usually comes after the action.

Fear Is Not Always a Stop Sign

Fear can mean growth. Visibility. Vulnerability. Possibility. I have come to look at fear as an indication of what still needs to be worked on in me.

For actors this shows up in a few ways. Avoiding self-tapes because perfectionism feels safer. And what do I always say about perfectionism? Perfectionism leads to procrastination leads to paralysis. Waiting to be fully ready before taking action. You are going to be waiting a long time. Shrinking after one bad class or one audition you feel you messed up. I cannot tell you how many auditions I walked out of thinking that is never going to happen, and then I booked the job.

Fear does not mean stop. Sometimes it means you are finally moving. You are out of your comfort zone. And life and adventure begin outside your comfort zone.

Perfectionism Is Just Fear in a Different Outfit

Perfectionism often hides fear of judgment, fear of rejection, fear of being visible. It keeps you stuck in preparation instead of participating. And what we want to be doing is participating. In life, in our scenes, in the business.

The 10 Seconds of Courage Exercise

Sometimes you only need 10 seconds to send the email or upload the tape. Here is the exercise. Say to yourself, for the next 10 seconds I am going to do what I would do if I were brave. And then do it. Push the click. Send the email. Do the thing. You have 10 seconds.

Journal Prompts

What opportunities have you talked yourself out of lately?

And what if discomfort was not proof that you were failing? What if it was proof that you were moving forward or that you had something to learn?

The Bottom Line

The entertainment industry rewards resilience. Rejection, waiting, and uncertainty are all built into this business. Emotional resilience matters just as much as talent does, because your talent is not going to get to shine unless you are emotionally resilient.

Your dream career may live on the other side of that uncomfortable visibility. Feel the fear and move anyway.

Want to Keep the Conversation Going?

I am introducing something called buddy coaching. You and a friend apply to coach with me together at 50% off. It can be someone from your acting class, someone you want to learn and grow with. EMAIL ME and make sure to CC your potential buddy.

If you want private coaching or just a free consultation, click that link too. We will take it from there.

As I always say, stay safe and treat yourself real well.

Nobody in this industry ever says this out loud, so I am going to.

Greed is making you a terrible actor.

Not greed in the cartoon villain sense. I am not talking about people twirling their mustaches trying to steal jobs. I am talking about the low-grade background hum of financial anxiety and ambition that most of us are walking around with every single day. The constant calculation. The booking pressure. The way you think about auditions as transactions.

That energy is getting into your work.

Greed Makes Your Audition Sound Desperate

When you need to book, you perform differently. Not better. Differently. In a way that casting directors, clients, and agents can feel even if they cannot name it.

There is a quality that shows up in an audition when the actor is trying to win instead of trying to serve the copy, tell the story. You can hear when someone is pushing for the job instead of just doing the job. And that reaching makes complete sense. Bills are real. The pressure to justify this career choice is real. The comparison to other people who seem to be booking constantly is real.

But the microphone hears it. It hears the wanting. And wanting the booking is not the same energy as serving the story. They feel different. They sound different.

The actors who book consistently have found a way to separate those two things. The audition itself is not a transaction for them. It is just the work.

Chasing Money Kills Your Instincts

This is what happens when income becomes the primary lens through which you make career decisions. You start chasing verticals that pay well instead of developing the ones where your voice actually lives.

I have so many conversations with actors who tell me they really want to do animation, and all they have to show me is a commercial demo they just spent thousands of dollars on. Telling someone who wants to be an animation actor to go make their commercial demo is like telling someone who wants to be a chef to go train as a race car driver.

When you start taking every job that comes in, including the ones that are wrong for you, because you need the money, slowly over time you stop developing as an artist because you are too busy managing the business of being an actor. I have watched genuinely talented people calcify into serviceable performers because they optimized for income instead of craft. And the cruel irony is that the income usually follows when the craft is the priority.

Your instincts as an actor are built through curiosity and practice and risk. They erode when everything becomes a calculation. When you stop taking the class because it does not have a clear payoff. When you stop experimenting in auditions because you need this one to land. When you stop listening to the copy because you are already thinking about the rate.

Those instincts are the product. Protect them.

The Industry Rewards Generosity

The people who last, the ones who build real careers that sustain them, are almost universally generous. Not in a work for free and be grateful way. Generous with their attention, their craft, their presence. They make the director's job easy. They bring more than what was asked for. They stay curious about the client's actual need.

And that generosity gets remembered. It gets you booked again without an audition. It builds the kind of reputation that no marketing strategy can replicate.

Extraction gets noticed too. The actor who treats every client relationship like a one-time transaction, who is visibly thinking about what they can get instead of what they can give. People remember that. And this industry is a lot smaller than it looks.

What to Actually Do About It

I am not telling you to stop caring about money. That is an absurd thought. This is your livelihood and the business side of this career matters enormously. But there is a difference between running a smart business and letting financial anxiety run your artistic choices. Most of us, if we are honest, have let that line blur at some point.

So here is one thing. The next time you sit down to record an audition, before you hit record, ask yourself one question. What does this script actually need? Not what do I need to do to book this job. What does this script need from me right now. That is it. It sounds small. It is not small.

And on the business side, build your finances in a way that gives you enough runway that you are not auditioning from desperation. That might mean keeping a part-time income stream longer than it feels good to. It might mean building a marketing strategy that brings inbound work so you are not always chasing.

Whatever it takes to remove the financial panic from your creative process is worth doing. Because the actor who is free from desperation is a better actor. Full stop.

The Bottom Line

Greed is a strong word and I used it deliberately. Because sometimes we need a strong word to name the thing that is quietly running in the background and affecting everything.

Keep developing. Keep showing up fully. Keep being generous with your work. Keep trusting your instincts. The business will follow that. It really will.

Want to Keep the Conversation Going?

If this resonated, share it with another actor who needs to hear it. And if I can help you marry the business and the performance side of this career in a way that actually feels harmonious, schedule time with me. A 15-minute consult, a 30-minute coaching session, a website colonoscopy. Let's get you out of this cyclical state and into something better.

Reach out at [email protected]. See you next time.

I want to start this episode with someone I lost recently.

A dear colleague of mine, Riff Hutton, passed away a couple of weeks ago from a brain tumor. I am opening with him because I just used something he taught me. I came into my booth and my preamp was not working. And there was a part of me that just wanted to say forget it, record on the laptop mic, move on.

And then Riff's voice came to me. Be curious.

So instead of pushing through I got calm. I started looking at why. Turned out the power cord into my preamp has a lock position and it had gotten unlocked. A simple thing. But the old me would have forced it and missed the lesson entirely.

Riff Hutton, if you are out there listening on some plane, thank you for teaching me to be curious.

Forcing vs Allowing

Today's episode is about attracting rather than forcing. And you are talking to a reformed forcer here.

The times I have pushed hardest are the times I have created the least flow. There is an energy to forcing that is very close to frustration and anger. I am going to make this happen. And when I operate from that energy, things go wrong. Last night I was exhausted and forcing myself to make dinner and the glass lid to my frying pan shattered in the salmon. Everything was fine. But I said to myself, you are forcing. What I really needed to say was I am too tired to cook. Either we make a salad or we go out.

When I gave myself permission to be curious instead, when my tech broke down before this recording, it created an opportunity to learn something and to teach you something. That is not magical thinking. That is nervous system reality.

What Scarcity Actually Looks Like

Scarcity is not just financial. Scarcity sounds like it is too late for me. I am too old. I missed my chance. Everyone is ahead of me.

It shows up in actions too. Checking casting sites obsessively. Spiraling when someone from your acting class books a job. Treating every audition like something you have to survive instead of something you get to be curious in. Believing that rejection defines your self-worth.

Scarcity is a clenched fist. Abundance, and that means abundance of love, opportunity, curiosity, is an open hand.

Your nervous system affects your ability to see opportunity, stay grounded, and recover after rejection. If it is dysregulated you overthink, you chase approval, you lose your authenticity. And your authenticity is your superpower.

Can You Receive

Here is the exercise I want you to try right now. Imagine booking the dream role. Imagine finally being seen as an actor the way you have always wanted. Really sit with it. And then notice what emotion appeared immediately afterward. Was it fear? Pressure? Guilt? Fear of visibility?

Because if it was, those emotions matter. They are showing you where you are stuck.

So many actors become addicted to the struggle. If that is you, it is because struggle feels more familiar than ease. I want ease to feel familiar. I want flow to feel familiar. Because peace can feel threatening. Calm can feel unproductive. Stability can feel suspicious.

But your nervous system dictates your success more than your effort. That is the truest thing I have discovered in 30 years.

The Bottom Line

Allowing is not passive. Allowing is staying open long enough for life to meet you. Your job is not to force every outcome. Your job is to become available for what you say you want.

Your emotions are your inner GPS. They are showing you where you are going. If you feel good, you are going somewhere good.

Want to Keep the Conversation Going?

If any of this resonated, please click the link in the show notes and set up a free consultation over Zoom: email me at [email protected].

This work is amazing and you get so many surprises along the way.

As I always say, stay safe and treat yourself real well.

A student of mine forwarded me an email she got from a voiceover guru. One of those here is the truth nobody tells you posts. And after reading it, she asked me, very sincerely, if she was a terrible voice actor.

I cannot tell you the range of emotions I felt. From heartbreak to anger. Because she is not. She has been working at this for five years. She is talented. She has done a lot of things right. And one post made her question all of it.

That is the damage incomplete information does. And today I want to talk about why.

What the Post Said

The post was about booking ratios. It said working voiceover actors book roughly one out of every 50 auditions. Beginners are closer to one in 400. The framing was motivational. Stay the course. You are on schedule. If you quit at audition 40 you quit ten auditions before the math even gets interesting.

And look, the numbers are not made up. Booking ratios are real. Tracking your auditions matters. Those things are true.

But the post also mentioned a student who booked on her third audition and cleared six figures in her first year. Told as inspiration. Told as proof that the teachings work.

That is not inspiration. That is the lottery winner telling you how easy it is to win the lottery.

What the Post Left Out

Booking ratio stats without context are not a roadmap. They are a feeling. Here is everything they left out.

What verticals was this person auditioning for? A commercial audition pool is very different from an audiobook pool, which is very different from a AAA video game pool. The ratios are not the same across verticals.

What does your demo sound like? Is it competitive in the market you are submitting to? If it is not, your ratio is going to look very different from someone whose demo is dialed in.

Who is actually hearing your auditions? Are you submitting to pay-to-plays, to cold outreach, to casting directly, through agents? These are not the same situation.

What does your marketing look like? Are the right people even finding you? Audition volume is one variable. It is not the whole picture.

Telling someone who has been at this for five years to just keep submitting without asking any of those questions is not coaching. That is a content strategy to scoop students.

The Questions You Should Actually Be Asking

If you are feeling stuck, the question is not have I auditioned enough. The question is where is my pipeline actually breaking down. Because that is a solvable problem.

Maybe your demo is not representing the work you can actually do right now. Maybe your website is invisible to search engines. Maybe you are submitting to the right platforms but with no direct marketing strategy on top of it. Maybe you are in the wrong niche entirely. Those are all fixable. But you cannot fix them by counting auditions.

The Bottom Line

If you have been at this for years and you feel stuck, do not let booking ratio stats be the thing that makes you quit or the thing that makes you stay. You need real data. You need to look at your actual pipeline and find where it is breaking down.

And please know you are not behind. You might just be missing a few pieces that nobody has pointed out yet.

Incomplete information dressed up as insider knowledge does real damage to people who are already working really hard and wondering if they are doing it right. You deserve better than that. You deserve the complete picture, not just a number with a roadmap label on it.

Want to Keep the Conversation Going?

If this hit home, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you have questions about voiceover, marketing, your audio, your website, your business model, please schedule a free consult. Let's get you unstuck and on the path to doing what you love.

Reach out at [email protected]. See you next time.

Energy Vampires in the Acting Industry

Not everyone around you wants you to be emotionally healthy.

That is not paranoia. That is a pattern worth recognizing. Because some people feed off insecurity, confusion, desperation, and approval seeking. And as artists, as actors especially, we are emotionally open. We are sensitive. That sensitivity is gorgeous for art. But it is dangerous without discernment.

What to Start Noticing

How do you feel around the people in your life? Around the people in this industry? Is your confidence being destabilized? Are you ignoring red flags because an opportunity feels important?

I experienced teachers in my own training who made me feel emotionally dependent on them. If I did a good scene, they liked me. If I did not, they did not. That is not teaching. That is manipulation. And then there is the breadcrumb thing, leading you along, creating confusion, keeping you uncertain so you keep coming back.

Also worth watching out for: actors who constantly compete or undermine. Friends who are always dumping emotionally. We all need someone to unload to sometimes. But if that is the entire relationship, that is a true energy vampire.

Chaos Is Not the Same as Alignment

Here is something I want you to understand about this industry. Chaos gets very normalized at drama schools, on sets, in groups of actors. And what happens is our nervous system can mistake that intensity for alignment. It is really intense so it must be good.

Maybe not.

When things are calm, clear, curious, confident, that is when real art gets made. Creativity depends on your emotional safety. Protecting your energy is not selfishness. It is career maintenance.

Outsourcing Your Self-Worth

I have watched actors hand their emotional authority to agents, coaches, teachers, social media. And as a coach, when an actor asks me what I think, unless it is about a specific business question, I want to know what they think. A good mentor does not hunt for their student. They teach their student how to hunt so that when they separate, the student can thrive.

Healthy coaches empower and clarify. They build your confidence and teach you how to build it yourself. Manipulative people create dependency and chronic inadequacy. Spot those people in your life. Say less around them. Listen more. Pay attention to how your body feels after every interaction.

Do you feel calmer and clearer? Or more anxious and contracted?

The Bottom Line

People pleasers and validation seekers are easy to manipulate. I was both. The work is learning to check in with yourself first, to notice how you feel, and to reach for a better feeling when something is off.

If somebody consistently leaves your nervous system dysregulated, pay attention. That is information.

Sensitive actors with boundaries are the ones who become powerful.

Want to Keep the Conversation Going?

I have a weekly accountability and time management class on Fridays from 12 to 1 Eastern, plus a weekly adjustment class focused on core energy work. Right now you get both for the price of one. Click the link in the show notes to sign up. And if you want a consultation first, we can do that too.

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Here is the scenario I want you to picture.

A casting director, an agent, a direct marketing client lands on your page. They have 17 seconds and zero obligation to stay. In those 17 seconds your website either answers the question, can this person do what I need, or it does not.

Most voiceover websites do not answer that question. Not because the actor is not talented. Because the website is not doing its job.

And I say this as someone who has had a big reality check handed to me that I feebly and graciously accepted. So today I am going to walk you through five questions so you can audit your own website right now. Pull it up on your phone. Mobile is actually better because most people are hiring voice actors on mobile. Got it? Good. Let's go.

Question One: Is Your Demo Above the Fold

Above the fold means visible without scrolling. You land on the site and boom, there is your hero audio.

This was an issue for me for about ten years. I had an image of myself, a little blurb, logos, and then my audio came. If someone lands on your homepage and has to scroll past a hero image, a headline, a bio paragraph, three sections of copy, and more logos before they hear a single second of your audio, you have already lost most of them.

Your demo should be the first thing. The audio is the product. Everything else is context.

Friction does not have to be enormous to be fatal. Even one extra click, one moment of confusion, one second of wondering whether the page is broken is enough to lose someone who has 80 other submissions waiting.

Question Two: Is There Any Text Around Your Audio Player

This one surprises people. Google cannot listen to your demo. If there is no text on your page describing what your demo covers, what vertical it is, what kind of clients you work with, Google has nothing to index. Your demo could be perfect and completely invisible to search engines.

Here is exactly what I write and what you can adapt. Two to three sentences above the player. Mine says female commercial voiceover for national and regional brands. Warm, conversational, bright, retail, luxury, and everything in between.

You can also add text below the player including your actual clients. Clients include blank. Source connect ready. Most projects delivered within 24 hours. That is not even 60 words. Do this for every audio section on your site. It is the single fastest SEO fix available and almost nobody does it.

Question Three: What Does Your Page Title Say

Go to your browser tab right now and hover over the tab your website is in. If it says Home or Professional Voice Actor or just your name, you have a problem. The page title is one of the most important SEO signals on your entire site and most voice actors leave it as the default.

It should say something like female voice actor, commercial, e-learning, characters, your name. You can change this in your backend. In Squarespace it is the gear icon next to your homepage. While you are there also update your favicon, the little image that shows up in the browser tab. Casting people and agents have a lot of tabs open. Make it easy for them to find you. Use your headshot, not a generic microphone icon.

Question Four: How Many H1 Tags Does Your Homepage Have

The answer is one. One. An H1 tag is the main heading that tells Google what your page is about. Most voice actor websites built on drag and drop platforms accidentally tag every section headline as H1 because the builder defaults to it. I am raising my hand because that was me.

Your main headline should be heading one. Everything else should be heading two, three, or normal. Go through and fix every one that is wrong.

Question Five: Does Your Homepage Tell People What to Do Next

This is the one almost everybody skips. Is there a clear call to action? Not a generic contact me buried in your footer. A specific visual next step. Hire me, listen to my demo, send me a project, ask me about a quote, contact me for a custom sample.

If someone wanted to reach you after listening to your audio, how many clicks does it take? If the answer is more than one, that is too many. And if your contact form has too many required fields, fix it. You need their name, their email, and their message. That is it. Anything else and people will pass.

The Bottom Line

Your website has one job. Answer the question, can this person do what I need, before the visitor leaves. If it is not doing that right now, you now know where to start.

Fix at least one thing today. Then fix another one tomorrow. This stuff compounds, and it will help you show up in search.

Want to Keep the Conversation Going?

I have a full 32-point checklist covering technical SEO, audio placement, content, conversion, design, and platform. It is in my Substack and will be in the show notes. Grab it and go through it.

I also do something called a website colonoscopy. You can schedule that the same way you would schedule time with me. Reach out at [email protected]. Share this with another actor who needs to hear it. See you next time.

Let me ask you something.

When an audition lands in your inbox, what is your first reaction? Is it excitement? Or is it, oh no. Not another self-tape.

If it is the second one, we need to talk about that. Because that reaction means your nervous system has started associating auditions with danger instead of play. With burden instead of opportunity. And any time we get the chance to act, it should feel like a yes moment. If it does not, it might be time to pause and look at what is actually happening.

It Is Not Just Tiredness

So many actors feel ashamed admitting how exhausting self-tapes are. And I get it. But here is what I want you to hear. It is okay that you find them exhausting. What it means is that we need to take really good emotional care of ourselves so they do not feel so depleting every single time.

My mom used to say, you cannot give from a dry well. I have no idea if that is a Dutch expression or just a her thing, but she was right. And I have watched actors cry after their self-tapes because they did 27 takes, or obsessed over tiny moments, or felt physically sick when the audition notification came in. That is not a performance problem. That is a nervous system problem.

Self-tapes are not just acting challenges. They are nervous system events.

What Perfectionism Actually Does

Watching yourself on repeat trains your brain to search for flaws instead of truth. Instead of those moments of magic that actually make people stop and pay attention.

Here is what I notice. The earlier takes usually have the life in them. The later ones get more controlled, more manipulated, more fearful, because you are trying to get it right. And trying to get it right kills the thing that made you interesting to begin with. Perfectionism disconnects you from spontaneity. And spontaneity is what is so brilliant about acting.

I never allow myself to do more than four takes. Absolute maximum. I really try to cut it off at three. Because endless takes teach your nervous system that you cannot trust yourself. And the one thing I need to know, the one thing I keep coming back to, is that I can trust me.

Before You Hit Record

Avoid doom scrolling before auditions. Regulate your nervous system first. Meditation, breathwork, movement, music, prayer, laughter, more interaction with people you love. Whatever grounds you. Because you cannot create freely from a dysregulated body. The most creative I can ever be is when my nervous system feels settled.

And here is the thing I had to learn the hard way. One audition or callback or screen test does not decide your destiny. It is one audition in a lifetime of auditions. Careers are built through consistency, resilience, relationship, and repetition. Not through the perfect take.

The Bottom Line

Self-tapes do not have to become emotional punishment. But there is a real tendency for them to go that way if you have a habit of emotionally punishing yourself.

You are allowed to protect your nervous system. You are allowed to enjoy acting again. You are allowed to be you in the most organic form you can be. That is where the connection lives. That is what casting directors are actually looking for. Not the controlled version of you. The present one.

Want to Keep the Conversation Going?

If you are not on the mailing list, please get on it. There are so many things coming up over the summer, acting classes, voiceover classes, weekly classes, some as low as five dollars.

And as I always say, stay safe, treat yourself real well, and give your nervous system a hug.

I'm going to say something a little unpopular.

Most SMART goals don't work. Not because the framework is bad. Not because I don't believe in it. I make SMART goals every quarter for myself. But what I actually see with the voice actors I coach is that they use them to create the appearance of a plan, not an actual plan. They check all the boxes, put it in a document, and never look at it again. And then at the end of the year they feel like they failed.

And that is awful.

What Goes Wrong

Here is a real example, completely anonymized. A student submitted this goal to me. By the end of September I will post once a week on LinkedIn, send five follow-up emails daily, and reach out to one voiceover buyer weekly. My goal is to book at least two new clients and generate $5,000 in new revenue within 12 months.

On paper that looks great. There is a date, there are numbers, there is a revenue target. But here is what is actually happening.

The timeline is a mess. The activity goal says by the end of September. The revenue goal says within 12 months. Those are two totally different timelines bolted onto the same goal. So which one runs the show? What happens in October?

Five follow-up emails a day is 150 emails a month. To who? If you do not have a large existing prospect list you will run out of people to follow up with within three weeks. The goal becomes impossible on its own terms before you hit month two.

And the goal contradicts itself. One section says one LinkedIn post per month. The main goal says once a week. If your goal contradicts itself it is not written yet. It is just a draft.

These are fixable problems. But they are the kind of thing that quietly kills your momentum before you have even started.

How to Know If Your Goal Is Actually Written

Read it out loud to someone who will ask questions. Not someone who will be supportive. Someone who will push back. See if they can tell you from that goal alone what exactly you are going to do on a Tuesday in month seven.

If they cannot, you do not have a goal. You have an intention. Intentions are fine starting points. They are terrible execution plans.

How to Do This Correctly

Start with the real outcome. What do you actually want? Be honest. Five thousand dollars in new revenue from direct marketing is a real outcome. Get more clients is not. Name the number.

Then work backwards. If your average booking is $500 and you need 10 bookings and your close rate from outreach is roughly one in 20, you need to contact 200 people over the course of the year. That is about four contacts a week. That is a real activity target.

Then check it against your actual capacity. Four targeted contacts a week is doable for most people. 150 follow-up emails a month is probably not. I know because I used to send three to four hundred emails a month and I was burnt out and hated my life. If your targets require more time than you actually have, you either need to scale down the activity or scale down the revenue goal. Both are honest choices. The worst choice is setting an activity level you cannot sustain and then feeling like a failure at month three.

Build quarterly checkpoints. At the end of Q1 ask yourself, am I hitting my activity pace? Is that activity generating early indicators? What do I need to shift? You are allowed to adjust. A goal is not a contract you signed with the universe. It is a plan, and plans get refined.

Where Is the Goal Coming From

This does not come up enough in the goal-setting conversation. A lot of voice actors set goals from a place of I should be doing this instead of I have decided I am doing this.

I should be sending outreach emails is a guilt goal. It lives in the same category as I should be going to the gym. You know you should. You don't. You feel bad. You repeat it forever.

I am a voice actor who runs a direct marketing operation and three days a week I do outreach for an hour. That is an identity-based commitment. You are not motivating yourself every morning. You have decided who you are. And people who have decided who they are do not negotiate with themselves about whether to show up.

The Bottom Line

Name the real outcome. Work backwards to the activity that produces it. Check that activity against your actual capacity. Build quarterly checkpoints. And decide before you start that you are the kind of person who will follow through because this means something to you.

The SMART goal framework is a tool. If you use it well it builds a real plan you can follow. If you use it as a checkbox exercise it builds something that looks like a plan and functions like a wish list.

You deserve a real plan. Build it that way.

Want to Keep the Conversation Going?

Pull up whatever goal doc you have right now. Run it through the test. Can someone else read this and tell you what you are doing on a Tuesday in month seven? If the answer is no, tighten the timeline, reconcile the contradictions, replace aspirational math with real math. It might take you 20 minutes. Those 20 minutes are the difference between a goal that gets executed and a goal that just makes you feel bad every time you remember it exists.

Reach out at [email protected]. I am here to look at your goals and tell you whether you have an actual goal or whether you need to go back to the drawing board a little.

The Career Stages Every Actor Goes Through

There is a coaching phrase I keep coming back to.

It gets better, it gets worse, it gets different, it gets real. And then it starts again. Better, worse, different, real. Over and over, sometimes all at once, sometimes so fast you can barely tell which one you are in.

That is an acting career. And honestly, that is most creative careers.

So today I want to talk about the stages, because here is what I find is true for so many actors I work with. They are not failing. They are just in a different stage than they think they are in, and that changes everything.

Everyone Else Is Moving Forward and I Am Stuck

This is the quiet belief that a lot of actors carry around. And whenever we compare ourselves to other people what we are really doing is telling the universe we are in the wrong place. But you are not in the wrong place. John over there is just in a different phase. That is it.

Compare and despair. It is one of my favorite little sayings because it is so true. Comparison creates panic, and panic is absolutely useless unless it is your character who is panicking. Leave the drama on the stage.

When you understand the stage you are actually in, the path forward gets a lot clearer.

The Training Stage

This is where you are focused on skill and craft. Studying technique, learning how to audition, learning how to work on camera, building those very first relationships in the industry.

And so many actors want to skip this stage, which I genuinely do not understand. Improv classes and acting classes are fun. That is why we want to do this in the first place. It is joyful. So why would we rush past it?

The desire to get representation immediately, to land big auditions right away, I get it. But I so strongly believe that opportunities come into our lives when we are ready for them. Without that training foundation, the opportunities that do arrive are very hard to sustain.

The Positioning Stage

This is where a lot of actors get confused. You can already be a strong actor, but casting still does not know where to place you. And sometimes that is because you do not know where to place yourself.

The practical questions here are simple but important. What roles can you actually walk in and play right now? Do your headshots reflect that? Does your resume? Can agents and casting directors easily understand where you fit?

Casting directors are solving a puzzle. The actor who clearly fits a piece of that puzzle gets called in first. Clarity in your own mind about what you want and what you offer, that clarity matters more than most actors realize.

And I will throw this in because I talk about it a lot. If you are a voiceover actor, doing on-camera work supports your voiceover. If you are an on-camera actor, doing voiceover supports that. They feed each other. Work begets work.

The Relationship Stage

Your craft is strong, your positioning is clear, and now something else becomes really important. Your relationships with people in the industry. Casting directors, agents, producers, directors. You want them to recognize your name. You want them to trust your work. You want them to think, Josh is a great actor and Josh knows he is a great actor, and I know he is going to deliver.

Because that is what makes us bring you back again and again.

Acting careers do not explode overnight. They are built from little decisions over time, little actions and thoughts, working on relationships and craft and positioning a little bit every single day. Consistently. That is the whole thing.

The Bottom Line

If you are vague about where you are, you get vague results. You choose the wrong goals, you compare yourself unfairly, and eventually you burn out.

But if you know exactly where you are at, you can focus strategically. Whether that is training, positioning, or relationships, every working actor you admire has moved through these stages. No one skips them entirely. Each stage prepares you for the next.

Careers in acting are rarely built in giant leaps. They are built in stages.

Want to Keep the Conversation Going?

I have a class called Co-Creating Your Future. It is a three-hour taped class, so you can watch it whenever you want. Right now it's 33% off.

And if you need some extra guidance, there are still some free consults available. Email me at [email protected]

As I always say, stay safe and treat yourself real well.