Goals and Planning

Hi all..

Well yesterday we talked about opportunities and taking advantage of them. Today let’s talk about goals.

What goals do you have for your voiceover business? Do you have any, or are you happy with where you are now?

Important question isn’t it? Sometimes, we get so wrapped up in the routine, and how busy we can become, and forget all about our longer term goals. Your long term goal might already be what you’re doing now.. being solid, busy and constructive. Nothing wrong with that at all! :) However, let’s take that a step further. Are these the kinds of projects that you saw yourself doing or are you just satisfied with simply being busy? Again, no wrong answer here! :)

However, it’s a good idea to take a breath for air once in a while and look at your career, and what kinds of things you’re extremely happy about and what things you’d like to refocus on.

So, let’s just say for the sake of discussion, that you’ve looked at where you’re going and want to make some changes? How do you do that?

Well, let’s start with looking at those goals and starting to map out how we’re going to get there. Sit down, old school style with a pad and a pen. Draw a line down the center of the page. Then draw a line in the center of the page from the left side to the right. Now you have 4 boxes. In the top left side, list  the types of things you’re doing now, and in the top right, the things you’d like to do. In the bottom left, write the things that are keeping you from doing those things now, and in the bottom right, the things that you would need to take those steps to make it happen.

Just a basic exercise. So many people say they’ve been “racking their brains” to try and figure out how to solve some of their problems. Well, the first step to overcoming those obstacles is to know what you’re dealing with. This last Winter, I sat down with a pad and pen and listed each room in my home and what needed to be done in that room. We’re talking any menial stuff, all the way up to repainting, changing window treatments, any remodeling I wanted to do. By the time I knew it, I had a huge list of things that I could now see, and could start knocking off one by one.

The best place to start is.. well the beginning.

Same thing with your exercise. Now we have our items on the page. Look at those things you’re doing and feel good! Feel good because you’re already working in the field you love, and this is just a “fine Tuning” of where you’d like to be. Now look at those things you want to be doing, and think about how cool it will be when you reach those goals and have taken a positive step in their development.

Now let’s look at those things that are keeping you from reaching those goals. Okay.. here’s where we’re deep in it. We’re now looking at the obstacles that might be keeping us from those warm fuzzy feelings we just felt by how good it’s going to be when we reach our objectives. Now, these are obviously going to be personal to you, and everyone’s issues are vastly different, so these examples are just that.. examples.

Say that you’re submitting dry voiceover most of the time, but you’d like to get your hands on some full production jobs and add that to your arsenal. Ok, now this brings us to the last section, those things that we will need in order to make this whole thing happen. For instance if you would like to do more production jobs, but don’t have the experience, just as you could if you were just trying to break into voiceover, do some free work to get your feet wet. Try taking the time to put some music pads together and make them fit a 30 second time frame without sounding rushed, or having a piece of pad that’s too short, or long and putting a sample script to it. Try asking some friends or colleagues that you might know to let you sit in on a session or two where they’re doing just that so you can get  a feel for how to do it, do it well and be productive at it.

Point is, whatever your goals may be, if you get them in front of you, look at where you are, where you’d like to be, what’s standing in your way and what things you might need to overcome that, it dumps all that out of RAM in your brain and allows you to fall back on the problem solving skills we all learned in elementary school.

Taking a visual inventory like that can be a great first step to realizing that maybe you’re not so far away from where you’d like to be, you just got busy and put it on the back burner.

Lastly, Have Confidence that you WILL achieve those goals and that new skill set, technical knowledge or upgrade to your routine and it will make you a more well rounded individual for the journey.

I’d love to hear your processes for problem solving and planning for your goals!

Till next time,

Bye For Now,

Adam