Perspectives: Removing the psychological barriers to a creative career
A voiceover coach shares her journey.
This week’s Perspectives is an interview with Carrie Olsen, a voice actress, voiceover business coach, and online course creator. Carrie left a corporate career in instructional design to pursue voiceover full-time, and now helps others explore creative careers through her coaching practice and courses. You can check out Carrie’s 3-step guide to building something that’s yours here. You can also connect with Carrie on LinkedIn and Instagram.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Anna Burgess Yang: Tell me about the work that you do.
Carrie Olsen: My primary work is voiceover. Anywhere that you hear a voice but don’t see a face, that’s voiceover. That could be anything from animation to TV and radio commercials, the self-checkout line telling you “Are you ready to pay?”, the voice on the bus saying “Next stop, Broadway Street.” Audiobooks, podcasts, promos. I do a lot of promos for TV shows and live announcing. When you’re listening to the Oscars or the MTV Movie and TV Awards — which I’ve live announced — that’s voiceover work.
Through coaching other people on how to get into voiceover, I found that some people are truly passionate about voiceover. But others are like, “I just want something that’s creative, that’s out of the ordinary. Tell me about this. Is this something that might fit that mold?”
Over the years, I’ve started tailoring my coaching more toward a creative outlet. If you don’t know what your thing is, we’ll figure out what that is. And if you do know what it is, it’s usually psychological barriers that are keeping people from pushing forward. We’ll work through those things.
ABY: You were at a corporate job and discovered voiceover through a podcast you were listening to. What was it that made you think, “Yes, I could do that”?
CO: I was listening to a podcast, and a voiceover coach was on it. Basically describing a day in the life. I had just had my first daughter, so I was looking for something where I could be at home with her more. And it was checking all the boxes. She would say, “I get up in the morning, do my workout, check my emails, go record a little bit, then go back to the booth.” And I was like, she’s doing that from home, and she’s making a living, and she’s supporting her kids. That sounds like something I could do.
It’s kind of the impetus we all have. When you see someone doing a fun job, you’re like, “Oh, that looks fun and easy. I’m sure I could do that.” That was me being naive going into it. But then, after I had my first coaching session with her and started learning what it takes to build a voiceover business, I got more excited. It was combining my creative side with my entrepreneurial side and building a business from scratch.
ABY: You went from a corporate job with clear structure and a clear title, and now you’re in a field that a lot of people don’t even know exists. How did that change how you thought about yourself professionally?
CO: I’ve always thought about my corporate job as feeling like I was wearing a mask. There are some people who are really good at corporate, and they’re bringing their full selves. But for me, it was being in a stuffy office and having to wear clothes I didn’t choose and sitting in inefficient meetings.
The job I had right before I got into voiceover, as far as corporate jobs go, was fantastic. I liked the work, I liked my coworkers, but it wasn’t ideal. I was still away from my daughter, and it wasn’t what I would have chosen.
When I started my own business, how I thought about myself became less defined. I was creating what I was doing. Everything was my call. When people ask what I do, I always have to explain it. It’s not like saying “teacher.” People are like, “What is that? What do you do?”
I’m a quiet person. I’m introverted. But voiceover became this space where I had to be bigger and louder. I was still getting to explore those other sides of me that you would never get to at a corporate job or in a boardroom. It was really neat to get to explore that creative side.
ABY: Did that exploration change your sense of identity, or did it reveal who you already were?
CO: I think it was the latter. It was always there. But there were parts that I didn’t even know were there, or you’d have to probe really hard for me to admit it. It seems silly for an adult to be like, “I want to be an actor someday.” Responsible people don’t say that. Realistic people don’t say that. So it was this thing that was buried really far underneath, and voiceover opened that up.
ABY: You’ve built a business with multiple income streams: voiceover work, coaching, and an online course. Was that intentional, or did it evolve over time?
CO: That definitely evolved. Getting started in voiceover, I didn’t know what to expect. When I started booking work, it was this leap of faith that my husband and I took. I was booking work on weekends, working after work with a newborn at home. We had this moment where we said, “What would happen if you put full-time hours to this work?” We did that, and it worked out. I matched what I made at my corporate job in my first year of voiceover work.
My corporate job was instructional design. I was a content design specialist for the e-learning department of a construction company. I really love adult learning theory. When people started asking me, “How did you build a voiceover business in a year?”, my natural answer was, “Let me build a course about it.”
It started off as a blog post, and people were reading it. I started building my email list, I thought, “Now I have this asset. What do I do with an email list?” So I started doing webinars to send people to my course. It all just stacked on. I didn’t have a master plan from the very beginning. I just kept seeing what was offered next and saying yes.
ABY: What’s the hardest part about running a creative business?
CO: There’s no steady paycheck. You have to learn how to budget on an irregular income. I’m okay with that. My husband is happier when things are expected and normal. Balancing our two different preferences for how money comes in has been a challenge the whole time I’ve been a solopreneur.
But I think in general, it’s getting over the hump of saying, “I can do this. It’s okay for me to do this. It’s actually good for me to explore something that is fulfilling.” I think that’s a part that responsible people have a hard time with, because we feel like we need to take care of everyone else. And a lot of times that means putting our own desires on the back burner, indefinitely. That barrier is hard to overcome.
ABY: What would you tell somebody in a corporate job who has a creative passion and wants to turn it into a real career? How do they get past that barrier?
CO: You don’t have to quit your job right away. There’s a way to do it responsibly. That’s a barrier for some people, but it’s also kind of the easy barrier that’s hiding other barriers. It’s the easy one to say: “I want to be responsible. I can’t risk losing my job.”
I have a three-step guide that talks about this. The first step is to see the lie: the stories you’ve been telling yourself about the reasons why you can’t write a book or start painting or whatever. Those stories aren’t true. Things like, “I’d be abandoning my family,” or “I’d be doing something irresponsible,” or maybe it’s something your parents instilled in you.
It’s important to recognize that your inner critic is trying to keep you safe. But you’re actually going to be okay. You don’t have to quit your job right away, and you don’t have to jump in with both feet. You can practice putting yourself out there in small ways. That helps you build the muscle so you get more used to what it feels like.
Thinking about a career change? Download my guide: 5 Types of Career Pivots.
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