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Your Voice Over Success Requires This Key Soft Skill

July 12, 2018 by Debbie Grattan 3 Comments

Voice Over Success requires the ability to delay gratificationThe journey toward your voice over success and a fulfilling voice talent career requires many skills, talents and qualities. And one of those qualities is becoming more elusive than ever in this digital age of instant everything. It’s the quality of delayed gratification and it is truly a life-changing skill if mastered and utilized in your everyday existence. So, let’s dive into this topic and if you make it all the way to the end of this post, you’ll get a special reward.

Delayed Gratification Explained

Delayed gratification is the capacity to wait for a reward that promises to be bigger and better than the instant gratification you’d get from a lesser yet immediate pleasure. The concept of delayed gratification was explored years ago in The Marshmallow Experiment, as James Clear brings up in his discussion on the topic.

The Marshmallow Experiment involved bringing a child into room where a marshmallow beckoned from the table. The researcher told the child he was going to be left alone with the marshmallow for a set period, during which time the children were given a challenge.

If the children could refrain from eating the marshmallow until the researcher returned, they would get a second marshmallow to enjoy. Kids had to pick between:

  • Immediate pleasure from a single marshmallow
  • Delayed gratification with double the rewards

Results were mixed, and the children’s lives were subsequently tracked over a 40-year period. The kids that were able to choose delayed gratification ended up more successful in many things across the board, from SAT scores to social skills and reactions to stress.

Where Delayed Gratification Fits in with Your Voice Over Success

Delayed gratification plays a huge role in your voice over success, as long-lasting positive results do not come instantly. The promise of the big reward of a full-time voice actor career is down the line, but only for those who have the capacity to wait it out while paying their dues.

Those dues can be pretty hefty. Starting any business as a solopreneur involves a lot of moving pieces that need to be put together to complete the puzzle. These include setting up a website, creating your branding and marketing plan, strengthening your talent and skills with training, putting together a voice over talent demo, finding agents to represent you, constantly seeking out audition opportunities, and otherwise doing all those things to get a new business up and running.

Sometimes it may feel like the only reward at the end of the day may be the ability to finally move away from the computer and get some sleep. But the bigger reward of living a dream job is only possible for those willing to wait for the delayed gratification.

Voice Over Success demands you be able to fight off the many distractions and stay focused on most important tasks

Things Fighting You Along the Way

For the younger generations now in or near the workforce who grew up in the digital world, delayed gratification may seem like a totally foreign concept. That concept gets even harder to grasp, for people of any age, with the number of distractions in society today.

Even when you’re at work at your computer, emails urge you to check out the latest sales at your favorite shops, the instructional YouTube video you’re viewing ends with links to dozens of other intriguing videos, one article you’re reading links to a handful of others, and social media alerts exclaim that three more people commented on your latest post.

Add personal responsibilities that may include daily chores to complete, errands to run, children and pets to tend to, and that thing called eating dinner, and sticking on the patient road toward delayed gratification can feel like an impossible feat.

With so many things calling for your attention, and so many tasks that need to be tackled when you’re first launching a business, the whole process can feel overwhelming. Overwhelming can turn daunting and even frustrating when there’s not a lot of early success at the beginning of a career.

The choice between delayed gratification down the road and the instant gratification of throwing up your hands in despair as you go to watch TV can be a tough one indeed.

Why Stick it Out

Don’t give up. Even if you’re used to instant results, instant gratification, and pretty much instant everything, challenge yourself to stay the course for the delayed gratification that hard work, passion, and dedication always brings.

Even if your own delayed gratification doesn’t bring the voice over success as you envisioned, putting all that positive energy out into the universe is going to bring on rewards. Perhaps all your hard work will lead to new relationships, new ideas, or a new path that results in a career even more exciting than the one you imagined.

Whatever the case, I’ve found the success that comes from the pain of sticking with it over the ease of distraction is worth the wait. You can even train yourself into a pattern of delayed gratification by setting up smaller, daily rewards – like the delayed gratification of finishing everything on your to-do list if you stay focused on your work throughout the day.

Remind yourself that you do have the capacity to wait, and the rewards will definitely be worth it. There’s no reason to sell yourself short with one marshmallow now when you can double your rewards down the road.

Now, on a little tangent (and I’m putting this at the end so that I don’t distract you from finishing my post), last weekend I got to finally see Hamilton in Chicago. And, as I was doing my final edit on this blog, the song “Wait For It” kept going around in my head! So, for a little entertainment and reward for making it all the way to the end of my post, please check out this awesome 360-degree video of the original Broadway cast. Be sure to grab the screen and rotate to see everyone around you.

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Filed Under: For Voice Over Clients, For Voice Over Talent Tagged With: Featured, VO success

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Andrea Annika Ilgner says

    July 21, 2020 at 1:02 pm

    Debbie, thank you for this valuable article! So true!

    Andrea

    Reply
  2. Debbie Grattan says

    August 25, 2018 at 3:33 pm

    Hi Karen,

    Thanks for your comment. I am strictly a voice talent, not a voice coach, so if you want your voice evaluated by someone you should look for someone who does that as a primary part of their profession and the services they offer. I don’t currently offer that service.

    If you’ve read some of my posts about marketing and the “business” of being a voice over talent, you’ve probably concluded there is a lot more to being successful than just having a great voice. You can find tons of articles and posts written by other successful talent and coaches that talk about this idea as well. So, I recommend doing a lot of research on this and understanding as fully as possible what you are getting into before you move in this direction. The business has changed immensely from the time when I got my start back in the early 90’s. It is probably 1000 times more competitive now than it was back then, since it’s so easy now for anyone with a mic and a computer to try to break into the business.

    As is true for most performance professions, your success all depends on you and what you can bring to the table. And then, your ability to market yourself and get the work. In most cases, having a great voice is just one part of the equation. Now, if you have one of those voices that makes everyone stop and listen (very rare), then the path may be much easier for you to get started. However, those types of voices usually are hot for awhile then they fade as trends change. So, it can actually be harder to create a longterm career with a very distinctive voice.

    That’s just a bit of insight and advise, only scratching the surface really… Please seek out a good voice over coach if you reach the point where you feel ready to go for it. I don’t make recommendations for coaches either, but there is plenty of info available online to figure out who might be a good fit for you to start with. Thanks again for reading the post and commenting!

    Reply
  3. Karen Wilson says

    August 25, 2018 at 2:52 pm

    Almost every time I speak to someone they ask me if I sing because of the husky sound of my voice. I decided after a family outing recently where I got so many compliments and questions about my voice that it is time for a real professional opinion. I have read many animated stories to children and have taken many acting classes. I would love your opinion on the next step to a voice over career?
    Thanks so much for your time,
    Karen Wilson

    Reply

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Debbie Grattan is a top-rated professional female voice over talent with more than 25 years of experience delivering voice over services worldwide. She regularly records commercial voice overs for radio and tv as well as infomercial voice overs and direct response marketing for children's toys, health, fitness and beauty products. Other specialties include female narration voice overs for corporate narration, web videos, tutorials, explainer videos and technical medical narration. Debbie also provides phone-related voice over services including phone prompts, messages-on-hold and outbound phone marketing for companies in the United States and Canada.

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