Stop Waiting! - You have to play to win!

You're never going to be 100% ready to start. It's impossible. Get going!

Stop Waiting! - You have to play to win! - 4:31

Mark Twain wrote, "The secret to getting ahead is getting started." Let's discuss.

Hey guys, welcome to another edition of The Gift of Gab. Today I want to talk about the delayed voice actor, and what I mean by this is, the voice acting student that has put in the time, put in the effort, um really is taking their craft incredibly seriously, but yet is suffering from a lack of confidence and therefore keeps sort of delaying the actual start or the official start of their entry into the field.

First I want to say there is no such thing as 100% ready, okay? That's a myth. A hundred percent in anything does not exist. So if you're holding yourself to that standard and you're thinking that you have to be a hundred percent... NO, that's not accurate. You have to know that it's okay to get going at 80%, 85%... Believe it or not, that's the best most of us can ever hope to expect to have when we're starting something. That's a pretty high percentage, and the remainder is not for lack of your trying, for lack of skill, for lack of knowledge, it's for lack of experience, because you learn that remaining 20% on the job while you're doing it, and the only way to learn it is to get started.

At some point you just have to pull the trigger and begin. Look I have a wonderfully talented, fantastically incredible student. Hi Christiana... yeah, I'm calling your ass out in this one. She just kept delaying and delaying and delaying and delaying and coming up with excuse after reason after excuse as to why she wasn't ready, and I really had to kind of force her hand and force her to begin the process, because I fear if I didn't she was never going to start. There was always some silly excuse and it always came down to uh you know my mic doesn't sound 100%, my acoustic treatment doesn't sound 100%, my marketing isn't 100%, my editing skills aren't 100%... I have been doing this for 25 years and my equivalent of those things are not a hundred percent, because again, it doesn't exist. It's a myth!

There's something to be said for the evolution, right? The process that takes place when you're on the job when you're doing it. 10 years ago I tattooed my TLM 103 on my leg. Why? Because I was just so damn excited! Because to me it was this pinnacle, it was this - this moment of crowning achievement with my microphone and my sound and what I was achieving as a voice actor. Now I have a U87! The TLM? It's collecting dust! This is what happens. Five years from now? Who knows! It might be a Manley in my booth! I don't know.

But that's just it - we're always progressing, we're always moving forward. A hundred percent simply isn't attainable, because every time you get there or you think you've gotten there, guess what? You find that there's more.

Don't be afraid to just get started. If you know in your heart that you have put in the work and you have done all the things that you can do to prepare yourself for this... what are you waiting for? Get going! No... I mean like, now. Like - like right now. Go! Send me an email when you're open for business, okay?

Thanks for watching guys, I really appreciate you. As always, if you like what I'm doing, like, subscribe, uh... hit the little bell thingy, you know... do the things on YouTube that give you more of me in your life. Yeah... go ahead! Bye! Go! Okay?

704-674-8294 / GabrielleNistico.com / gabby@voiceovervixen.com

Gabrielle Nistico, Gabby Nistico, The Voiceover Vixen, The Business First VO Coach, #VoiceoverVixen #VoiceOnFire #BusinessFirstVOCoach Voiceover, Charlotte, North Carolina, Voiceover Demo, Voiceover Coaching Advice, Working Actors, Los Angeles, New York, How to Be a Better Voice Actor, voiceover coaching, YouTube Channel, Voice Acting Coach, Mark Twain, students, get ready stay ready, motivation, Mark Twain, motivational quotes, student stories, get started, you are ready, you can do this