Why Most People Quit Voice Acting in the First Year

These three are personal to me, and I'm sure other people would say other things. But they're the reason I built everything I've done after I went full time as a voice actor and started helping other voice actors. I talked through all of them on Episode 302 of the podcast. This is the written version.

Why do most voice actors quit in the first year?

Mostly because they don't get work.

There are subcategories in there, and we'll get into them, but that's the biggest reason. I've always been an educator at heart, so it makes me backtrack. Why don't voice actors get work in that first year, and what can we do to help them get it?

When you get into voice over, there's a lot to do. You've got to get your setup done (your microphone, your studio, your equipment) and make sure it sounds good. Then you learn your DAW and do all the engineering. Depending on your time, it can take a year just to get your bearings on recording and editing. If you're at that stage, my Step-by-Step Guide to Start Voice Acting with No Experience walks through it.

Then there's where you train. Some places will tell you, without saying it outright, that your job is to train for the next couple of years until a few voice over people have ordained you as ready. At VO Journey Academy I'm a firm believer in training your skills, absolutely. But I'm also a big advocate for quick wins. Getting work, and getting work quickly.

Does a small first job really matter?

It did for me.

I got a job in my first month as a voice actor. It was an audiobook of about an hour and a half on sports training, and it paid $50. If I hadn't gotten that audiobook, I don't know how much I would have kept moving forward.

After that it became an obsession of mine to always have a job in the queue. Early on I wasn't so concerned with what a job paid. I did some work for royalty share (I explained how that works in How Do Audiobook Narrators Get Paid), and the pricing went up as I got more in demand. I'm not starting something new and expecting a job three, four, five years down the road. That's not why I became a voice actor.

How many auditions should a beginner send?

If you never want to worry about work, 40 to 50 a day.

I've talked about this for years, and it's rare that I meet people actually doing 40 to 50 auditions a day. It's a challenge of time, especially with a full-time job and a family. You might not hit that number. But can you get 20 to 30 a day? You can audition on Academy Voices and ACX, and there's Voices.com and Voice123. Some of them cost money, and for some people that's a barrier. I went deeper on the numbers in How Many Auditions Does It Take to Book a Voice Over Job.

What does treating voice over like a business mean?

Doing the daily work whether you feel like it or not.

I got into voice over because I missed being creative. At the time I was a performance teacher and technical director for a theater. I was directing others, and I missed performing. So voice over was a creative endeavor for me, but it was also a financial one. We are slaves to our feelings. If something's a hobby, we don't push past what's comfortable. In a business, we do uncomfortable things because we have to. You get the auditions in. You do the job and record. And you get the auditions in. (You notice I keep saying auditions.)

What does "burn the boats" mean for a voice actor?

It means you don't give yourself a way out.

The second biggest thing I see people fail at is that they still give themselves an exit, and that gives them an excuse.

“I've never been successful in anything I've done until I burned those boats.”

Anthony Pica, A VO's Journey podcast, Ep. 302

Look down at your business from a 20,000-foot view and decide which actions must happen daily. It has nothing to do with emotion. Whenever I don't follow that rule myself, my whole business goes down. Fewer clients come in and my posting slows. You can feel it. It's hard, because this is an emotional business. Bad days at work, the kids, dinner plans. There are a million things that get in the way. But this should come first, and sometimes that takes being a little selfish.

Why does support matter so much?

Because this is the most isolated business there is.

We're in a booth or a closet. Unless someone close to you does this too, you won't make them understand why you lock yourself in a closet for hours making weird noises into the ether. So community is vital. I'd go a step further. The wrong group can hurt you too. There are a lot of negative Nellies out there. That's bad, those people are bad, that website's bad. It's constant fretting over things we can't control.

When nothing's working and I've been auditioning with nothing happening, my support group is always there. I'm never alone. A support group could be one other person, or three people who meet on Discord every week, or a mastermind. Wherever you get it, get it. Otherwise you've got no one to share your wins with, and even more, your losses.

Frequently asked questions

What to do next

Pick one fix for this week. Set a daily audition number or find one person to check in with. Then go after a quick win.

Go out there and audition.
Anthony