Doing Voiceover on Your Own Terms with Erikka J. (ColorVO Collective series)

In This Episode…

How Erikka's journey into voiceover began 2:21
Collecting VO gear 4:27
Advantages of being a singer when voice acting 8:00
Being a Black woman in the tech space and creative endeavors at the same time 10:40
Challenges in doing VO 22:39
Balancing career and family life 24:08
Setting boundaries as a freelancer/entrepreneur 28:12
Advice for those who want to pursue VO 36:18

Key Points

Remember that you're running a business

When it comes to voiceover, it's easy to just get stuck in the voice part, and yes it's acting. And then there's the technical aspect, but you have to understand business—making sure that you're reaching your ROI with all the investments you're making, and you have to understand that this is advertising, this is marketing. That's the industry that you're working in, and advertising and marketing change at the drop of a hat. If you're not training and don't understand the current trends, you're going to fall behind.

Validate your own lifestyle

There's this underlying narrative for anyone that's in the creative arts that's like, or even entrepreneurship in general, that if you're not only doing that and you're not serious or you're not committed or you know like there's this sort of like this unspoken law that if you do one, Just that one thing that that means that you are all in and that's when you're serious about it and I just I call poopy crack. Because like like it said it informs your art better because you have a world experience to pull from, and it being, having that sort of freedom in your mind, allows you to ideate better at work as well. So the company will benefit. So, in, like you said, I've said before, and you don't have to have just one dream, you know we have a whole life to live here. Why do you have to just pick one thing to do? And, you know, with the pandemic now that I work full time from home. I do so much voiceover that I actually say that I am full time voiceover, you know, in addition to having a full time job and I'm blessed that I've been able to do both things I work a lot, but it is not impossible. And, yeah, I just don't like anybody kind of telling somebody that they're not serious about or they don't care about something or maybe you just want to be part time, that's okay. That doesn't mean you're not serious. You know, just do what you want to do with your life, man. Don't let anybody tell you that.

Boundaries when freelancing

Regardless of your profession, you don't have to respond to every text, and every email, the minute that you get it. You can schedule it to go out whenever you want. There's are free services, email services where you can decide when to respond. Teach people how to treat you. Maybe you can't drop everything to take care of something a client deems as urgent. Give your availability and be firm. It doesn't matter whether it takes five minutes or 55 minutes.

For VO, it's not about the time in the booth that it takes you to produce a recording. It is about so much more. It is the investment in the equipment. It is the investment in the training to learn how to use that equipment. It's the training to be able to step in here and convey an emotion and a message for you in those five minutes, or in 30 seconds. It is about the draw on your energy. I have to be at my best. And all of that factors into the pay. I'm giving you not just my time and my knowledge, I'm giving you my time knowledge and energy, so now there's an opportunity cost that I'm not giving that to someone else. So that has to be compensated for that. And I do have session minimums that I communicate to my clients, I have pickup rates.

Tips for breaking into voiceover

How do you define full time? If you're making enough to make the money that you want to make? I don't think it really matters if you're part or full time. I think that's a vanity metric. As long as you're doing voiceover, you're enjoying it, and getting the level of success that you want, then if you want to level up and get into higher paying or more high profile type stuff, it almost always boils down to the training.

I recommend to people that if you're just starting out, check on the free information out there. Seek out the groups where the pros are, like Clubhouse and Facebook. There's so many different genres and topics and you know people to learn from for free. Check out the conferences you just got to keep learning. Some VO workouts can be as cheap $25 and some are free. Also, decide which VO genre you would like to start in. Explore and understand the industry and the genres and advertising.

Connect

Erikka J is a singer/songwriter and voice actor currently living in Atlanta. She is also a product manager for automotive data analytics software and has two teenage sons. As a professional voice talent, her clients includes notable names such as Google, Apple News+ and Facebook.