I spotted in my inbox that I’m a finalist in the 10th Annual SOVAS (Society of Voice Arts and Sciences) Awards for Best VO Website! With over 100 categories and a mostly US-based entries, competition is fierce for a coveted place on the nominees list of what it widely regarded as ‘The Oscars for Voiceover’.

Next week marks my 3 year work-a-versary as a full-time Voiceover Artist, and I couldn’t be happier with where I’ve got to in that time. As any Voiceover will tell you, it’s a tough industry to break into, sustain, and build on, but, like any creative industry endeavour, if you really want it, you just have to make it work for you.

I LOVE client-directed sessions. Not only is it great to collaborate with others when recording, but also it gives you the chance to focus more on the performance, knowing that an engineer will be handling the technical aspects.

Having said that, I always mention at the start of a directed session that I’ll be recording a back-up of the session, which I can send to the Director/ Engineer at the end of the session. Usually, to my surprise, they find it really helpful and thank me for being forward-thinking.

“The room removes all other outside noise and allows you to hear the endless sounds of your own body” - consider my morbid curiosity, peaked!

I scrolled through the list of names, in my bleary-eyed haze, completely unprepared to see my name there at all (at that point, I could barely remember what my own name was, let alone what categories I’d entered) - but there it was - ‘Television/ Web Commercials, Best Performance (Female)’ and my name nestled in among some incredibly talented and prolific VOs that I follow and strive to emulate.

How do you take care of your body and mind? Is it something you think about more due to the work you do?

Of course, we can’t deny that any prize awarded to a creative endeavour is, of course, subjective, but this is where we need to change our viewpoint on the goal of ‘winning’.

For the last 2 weeks I’ve been in aforementioned ‘refresh hell’, where I’ve thought of almost nothing else - I’ve even been dreaming about image alignment and meta descriptions!

A lot of people (us VOs included) sometimes forget that as much as we would probably get out of bed and do this job for free, it is first and foremost a business. A big part of that is client retention. Therefore we need to remember that one of the most important jobs we can do is keep our clients happy.

As VO Artists, we mostly work alone, and thanks to brilliant home studio setups and the ability to work almost entirely remotely, the seldom contact we get with producers and other collaborators is on the end of a video call or phone line. In what is largely considered to be one of most isolating creative professions, its really important to establish a community with other VOs and people in related professions, as this is sometimes a sanity saviour. Not only has making friends with my VO peers given me a great professional boost, but also a personal one. 

I don’t know about you, but SEO has always daunted me slightly, as it comes across as a ‘dark art’ to most and is constantly changing (like most things containing algorithms). So to have an expert on hand not only giving some great advice but also offering a Q&A session at the end was brilliant!

Firstly, before you part with any money for equipment, demo reels or even coaching, there are loads of great free resources for aspiring VOs out there to give you a better idea of whether this career is right for you or not (I’ll come onto those aspects in a later blog post, in more detail).

It was February 2020, I’d set my heart and mind on taking the leap to being a full-time Voice Over Artist, I’d ordered my new business cards, and had decided that this was the year I was going to grab the bull by the horns and actually go to some in-person Expos and Networking events.

Long time no blog! I’m very excited to share that I’m a finalist at the VOX Awards 2021, for the ‘Best Character Performance’ category, for my work on the HSBC project Bank of the Future from last year.

As it’s been a while since I last wrote a blog post, I thought I’d share a bit of background info on my Gaming Reel - which has been nominated for Best Female Demo at the One Voice Awards 2021.

I actually cannot believe I’m writing this, but after just a year of being a full-time VO, and still very much a newbie to the industry, I found out this week that I’ve made the shortlist for 3 One Voice Awards!

The past year and a bit has been hard on everyone, especially those that have lost their jobs and income, so it’s really disappointing to see so many people online still preaching that you have to work yourself into the ground to get anywhere in a career. This simply isn’t true and, frankly, is incredibly dangerous - particularly considering the mental health impact of this outlook on working life.

When you change careers, you very rarely start from scratch. I spent over a decade working in Marketing, Advertising and Social Media before making the leap to VO, and I’ve seen a lot of fellow VO Artists with a wide-ranging career history. 

As someone who is relatively new to Voice Over (within the last 2 years), I thought it would be helpful to anyone who wants to learn more about it, through the lens of my own journey.