3 Deadly Business BLUNDERS New Voice Actors Make

Can your voice over career survive these rookie mistakes? Most miss #2—don’t let that be you!

Are you pouring your heart into voice acting but not booking clients or growing your business?

Discover the top 3 business mistakes voice actors make, how to avoid them, and the exact strategies used by successful pros. Get actionable advice, industry stories, and proven marketing tips you won’t find anywhere else.

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About (Paul) Schmidt:
Paul Schmidt is a successful voice actor, community builder, and voiceover business coach. 

He's also the creator of the VO Freedom Master Plan, a voiceover marketing program designed to generate consistent opportunities for voice actors to book work, and the VO Pro Community, a private, professional, global community created to meet the needs of voice actors and audiobook narrators who want to take their careers to the next level. 

Paul has been a voice actor for over 25 years and full-time for the last several. He lives in beautiful Richmond, VA.

Transcript

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Well, here's a big old sack of truth no one's willing to tell ya. Your biggest threat as a voice actor isn't due to your so-so consumer-grade microphone. It has nothing to do with a saturated market or even your lack of agents. It's you. Yeah, even the most promising new voice actors kill their career like a slow-motion train wreck by falling into classic business traps that could have been avoided with the proper guidance. Now, if that hurts a little... Good, because sometimes you need to shine a little light on what's really keeping you from going full time or leveling up and finally living that VO life that you deserve and crave. This video is a wake up call packed with what to do next steps. So if you've ever wondered, why am I not booking? What am I missing? Buckle up buttercup, because what comes next could just change the trajectory of your VO career. Mistake number one, and yeah, it's this simple. Treating it like a hobby and not a business. So let's start with a story. We'll call this person Jamie. Now Jamie was a fitness instructor who was doing VO at night. She'd come home from her fitness classes. She'd duck into her little makeshift VO tent and she'd knock out some auditions for some of the P2P websites. P2P by the way, if you're new, pay to play. And she kept thinking, man, this could really go somewhere. and she sat around and waited for validation, that discovery by a major casting director or that big booking. But six months later, Jamie's bookings were going nowhere. She was spending tons of time on lowball jobs, taking whatever she could to get some money in the door and all the time trying to figure out why her vision was stuck in neutral. Now, Jamie's fatal mistake was she never made the mindset shift from hobbyist to business owner. She had a lot of fun, sure, but fun don't pay the bills or build a client list, now does it? She didn't track her earnings or her expenses. She didn't set up a business bank account. She was completely reliant on the casting sites rather than doing proactive outreach. In short, she winged it and she called it creative freedom. In reality, it was business laziness disguised as passion. When you treat voice acting like something you do on the side, that's what it stays. Real clients. clients like ad agencies and production companies and authors. They want to work with professionals, not hobbyists or dabblers. Having no system for tracking leads or follow ups or outreach equals lost revenue. Not having a clear pricing policy means inconsistent and low ball offers. And no brand or marketing plan means you look like every other rank amateur out there. Now get a pen because I'm going to tell you how to flip the switch. First, open a separate business bank account. Second, track every dollar you spend. Seriously. Now apps like QuickBooks, which is what I use, or FreshBooks, or Wave apps, they're gonna be your best friend. Third, register your business. In most cases, an LLC makes sense for most people. And your domain name. So you look real to clients and for god's sake, will you get rid of that god damn Gmail address? Four, set your business hours. Even if you have a day job. It's not gonna transform overnight, but when you start treating your VO career like a business, guess what? Clients will too. Mistake number two, failing to market or relying on the casting sites for your marketing. Here's one of the most dangerous myths I see in voiceover. Poster demos, sit back and wait for people to line up and put bags of money on your front porch. It's never worked for anybody, but it's still common advice. I think you got the P2P's to blame for that, but I digress. Let's meet Ray. Ray spent months perfecting his commercial demo and he paid top dollar for a website and branding and he thought, you know what? Now I'm ready to go get him. And then, and then, nothing. Nothing. I mean, nothing. Sure, he got a few invites from the P2Ps, but direct inquiries were MIA. And that just leads to a big bucket of shit sequences. The algorithms change, and your exposure drops to nothing. You become just another faceless profile. And most sadly, because you haven't made one you have no pipeline and then of course you start as an artist doubting your skills oh I suck at my art it's not your talent it's your marketing process most voice actor business mistakes have to do with visibility to the people who are the decision makers and actually hire us real voice actors ones who make a good living doing this they don't rely on pay to plays and platforms they build They find decision makers on LinkedIn and they introduce themselves. They build and nurture an email list of prospects. They send email directly to those prospects and they remarket to their existing clients because 80 % of your bookings come from people you already know and work with. Here's your action steps. Step one, devote at least an hour a day, ideally two, to direct outreach. Researching, cold emailing, networking. LinkedIn DMs. Number two, start by researching 10 local ad agencies, just 10. Then reach out by email to each decision maker there with a tailored message and a link to your demo or a relevant landing page. Number three, start a simple email list, paid clients, prospects, and past contacts, and use it. Reach out, follow up, and four, build a marketing strategy, not just a pay to play profile. Remember, if you build it, they will come is a lie. This ain't field of dreams, Costner. If you kind of market it, they might come. But if you consistently and strategically start conversations, follow up and serve, they will come. And mistake number three, not investing in business coaching or training. Let's talk about Jean Paul. He's got pipes you wish you had. He taught himself audio editing. He learned from free YouTube videos. He even booked a few spots, but then year after year, he stayed stuck at 23 grand a year, which was not enough to quit his cushy IT job. Why? Jean Paul, like so many, so many I see, thought that free resources and a lot of hustle were enough. But reading blogs isn't the same as learning actual business strategy from someone who's been there and done that and done it successfully. So what happens when you go the lone wolf way? Well, the industry shifts and you spend a lot of time on outdated techniques. You get no feedback from actual pros, so your so-called unique approach may actually be repelling clients. And you don't know how to negotiate, upsell, or systematize so your income flatlines. And above all, you end up spinning your wheels and get stuck in that almost-there spot for years. It's lonely. It's frustrating and it's a fast track to burnout. Coaching is an investment, not a cost. Actual truth. Most of the successful voice actors I know invested in a paid business course within their first couple of years of the career. Why? Because business courses teach you what's not on YouTube or in the Facebook groups. Things like how to build a voice actor business plan tailored to your goals, proven voiceover marketing strategies that work in 2025 and beyond, not 2015. A step-by-step process for reaching out to agents and production companies and all kinds of direct clients and accountabilities so you don't quit when, not if, shit gets hard. So how do you choose the right VO business coach? First, you research business coaches who specialize in teaching the business of voiceover and not performance. Second, look for concrete deliverables, communities, courses, tools, real world advice. And third, budget for your coaching investment. Even a hundred bucks a month is going to go a very long way to fast tracking your success. I say it all the time, there are no shortcuts in life. If you want faster, better results, then you've got to invest in yourself. That's the only way to shortcut years of trial and error and disappointment and starting over. A sustainable VO business is not built on luck, gimmicks, or going viral. It's built on systems for tracking income, expenses, leads, and follow-up. A system for consistent, proactive marketing every damn day and investing in expert business coaching and ongoing training. Now picture Jamie, Ray, and Jean-Paul a year later. Jamie now runs her own video business with predictable hours. She tracks every client and her revenue has doubled. Ray shifted from waiting around being passive to proactive pitching. now monthly bookings are steady. JP invested in coaching, learned how to build and launch new marketing funnels. And then gave his boss the old two week notice. That's not fantasy guys, it's not rocket science, it's what happens when you swap old mindsets for new solid business strategy. Alright, enough hoping, enough blaming the market or AI or tariffs or El Nino. If you're serious about making VO your living and not just your love, it's time to get off your duff. Audit your current business practices. Are you really running a business or are you just side hustling for beer money? Commit today to spending real time on proactive marketing, not just relying passively on the pay to plays. And third, schedule a consultation with a business coach who understands VO. Growth starts guys when you do the shit that scares you. The three business mistakes we talked about today keeps thousands of voice actors from really stepping into their real potential. Don't be another sad tale. Be the one with the great gear and the six-figure spreadsheet and the consistent bookings. Now, if you're ready to go from side hustler to full-time VO pro, I got a couple of resources for you. First, our voice actor business plan starter kit. That's a free download and the link is in the description. That'll give you the clarity you need to get off the ground. And secondly, join our private group of driven. business-minded voice actors called VO Pro and surround yourself with accountability, feedback and support. The link is also in the description and show notes. The full-time voice acting life is real and the fastest way to get there is to stop making these three mistakes, start running things like a real business and surround yourself with the right guidance. Now if you found this video helpful, please share it with another voice actor, whether it's through social media or otherwise. Better yet... Leave us a comment. Have you made one of these mistakes in the past? Or are you still working on maybe another couple of them? The more we exchange information and ideas, the better stronger industry we will have for everybody. Give us a like, a subscribe. If you're following us on the audio podcast, give us a follow. Thanks so much and we'll see you back here again real soon.