The Voice Over Student: Are You Teachable? Part 1

I am a Voice Over Student. 

And if you are reading this right now you are at least interested in the subject. It does not matter whether you have been learning about Voice Over for 2 days, 2 months, 2 years or 2 decades, there is something you must do - Never Stop Being A Student! Even if you are a seasoned and successful Voice Actor you must never stop learning.

Perhaps you have heard the saying "If you are not growing, you are dying". That is true no matter what you are pursuing in life. You must continue learning. If a doctor quit learning about medical advancements as soon as he earned his degree, he would quickly fail as a physician and probably lose his license. If a computer programmer never upgraded his equipment his usefulness would evaporate quickly. 

This is true in Voice Over too. We must be willing to learn in order to advance. 

To this end, I want to introduce you to something called the Teachability Index. This is just a simple tool designed to measure your teachability - your ability to learn and apply new information. However, although the concept may be simple, the application of it in pursuit of your goals can be complex.

There are 2 aspects to the Teachability Index:

1. Willingness to Learn
2. Willingness to Accept Change

This blog post today will discuss part 1 - Willingness to Learn - as it relates to Voice Over. The next post will discuss part 2 and how to quantify your Teachabilty Index.

So, are you willing to learn? The simple answer to this question for any Voice Over Student is "YES"! Many people want to learn how to do this. But wanting to learn and being willing to learn are 2 different things. It is like WISHING something would happen vs MAKING something happen.

How do you know if you have a high willingness to learn about Voice Over? Here is the litmus test: What are you willing to give up in order to learn? Be honest - What are you REALLY willing to give up?

Here are a few things that you may need to sacrifice to learn:

• Money - Are you willing to pay a real teacher, a real mentor to instruct and coach you? Because if you are not willing to invest in yourself, how can you ever expect anyone to invest in you? Maybe you can even consider cutting back on the money you spend eating out or going to the movies and use it on building your studio or having professional demos created..
• Time - Are you willing to give your VO lessons the time needed to sink into your brain? Elaboration on this below, but this includes TV, playing video games, golfing,etc.
• Pride - If you think you have a voice made for VO, you better be willing to knock that down a few notches and really listen to your coach. 
• Your Lunch Hour - If you have a Full-Time Job, how do you spend your lunch hour and breaks? Playing on your tablet? Taking a power nap? Use those times to listen to VO Podcasts or YouTube videos, read and practice scripts from your coach, read VO blogs, etc. Sacrifice that time to learn.
• Evenings - Maybe your bedtime is 9:00pm...you better be ready to make that later. This may be the only time you can actually record scripts for your coach...or for a paying client in the future.

You get the picture, you need to buy time from other things and use it to learn the VO business. 

Now, honestly, rate yourself on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being totally willing to sacrifice and learn. The higher the number, the better. Keep that score for the sequel to this blog.

This just scratches the surface. Next time I will discuss the other part of the Teachability Index - Willingness to Accept Change. If you can score high you will be on your way to VO Success.

See you next time.....Jeff B

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Part 2 is available by CLICKING HERE.