Well now here's a hot take for you. The overwhelming majority of voice actors will never go full time. I don't say that to be mean. I don't say that because they lack talent. I say it because they refuse to treat VO like a business. Look, if you're still measuring success in this business by the sheer number of auditions you send or the number of compliments you get on your demo, you're doing it wrong. The real winners in voiceover know their numbers. They know exactly what's working and what's not and when and how to pivot for profit. Question is, are you ready to join them? Now here's when everything changed for me. I was a few years into my VO journey and I was still juggling day job and getting VO gigs on the side. But the old inbox was nothing but a pile of, you know, thanks but no thanks emails. And I was working like a nutcase but My bank account didn't show it. So one night after another sort of sad week, it dawned on me that I had no clue what was actually moving the needle and what wasn't. Was it my marketing? Was it my auditioning? Was it my rates? I was flying blind and deaf, but that's when I made a choice. made a decision. I was going to start tracking everything and not just auditioning and bookings, but everything that would tell me how I was spending my time and my money and what I was getting back for that. And yeah, it was a little tedious at first, but within a couple of few weeks, I started seeing patterns I had never noticed before. And I was able to stop wasting time on stuff that was low yield and start doubling down on the stuff that worked. Here's the odd thing, thing I didn't see coming. Not only did my income begin to grow, but it began to become predictable. And that's a big damn deal if you're a freelancer. And that's when I knew I was running a business and not just jacking around anymore. So let's bust a myth right now. Being a good voice actor ain't enough. The industry is flooded with talent guys. And what separates folks that work constantly from people that don't is an ability to make decisions based on data. If you don't know your numbers, you are leaving your career to chance. And that's not the way to succeed. My good friend Tom Deere says this and he's absolutely right. You need to begin to think of yourself as the CEO of your own voiceover company. CEOs don't guess. They measure, they analyze, and then they act. They know their KPIs, their key performance indicators inside and out. And if you want to go full time and earn consistently, then you've got to adapt that CEO mindset. but Polly, I'm going to lose my creativity. No, you're not. It's not about losing your creativity. It's about giving your talent and your creativity the business engine it needs to thrive. All right. So what are the core metrics that you should be tracking and following and analyzing to help grow your voiceover business? Number one, and you may have heard of this one, you may not, your audition to booking ratio. That's the percentage of auditions that result in bookings. You want to do the math? It's book jobs divided by auditions. And this out of all your KPIs is probably the most indicative of your level of training, your effectiveness as a voice actor and as an auditioner. If you're auditioning a hundred times and you're only booking maybe not at all or once, something's probably off. Probably reads and therefore probably your amount of training, your level of training. But it could also be your demo or your targeting. Now, how do you track this audition to booking ratio? Well, you start yourself a spreadsheet or better yet, I've already made one for you. It tracks this and all the other KPIs we'll talk about. You can get that in the link in the description and show notes below. For every audition, you log the date, the client, the platform, and the outcome. Did you book it or not? Every month, we calculate your ratio. So what's the sweet spot? Depends on who you talk to. Top talent are booking 7 to 10 % of their auditions. Regular, lunch-pale, non-elite talent, maybe 3 to 5%, maybe a little bit higher. If you're below that, start analyzing your auditions. Are you submitting for the right jobs even? Is your audio quality fecacca? Are you trained well enough to be competitive? That's usually the crux of the problem. Number two. Revenue by source. Shout out to Troy Holden. I know he tracks this one like a hawk. This is essentially where your income is coming from. Is it pay to plays? Is it direct clients? Is it referrals? Is it from your agents? Why track it? Because not all sources are created equal. Some are high yield, low effort. Some are low yield, high effort. How do you track it? Well, you just set up your categories, four, five, six, whatever sources of income that you have. and you ascribe every job that you get to one of those categories. What do you do with that information? Well, every so often, every month, two, maybe even three, take a look at it, analyze what your best sources of income, if 80 % of your income is coming from 20 % of your best clients, then you better be nurturing the shit out of those relationships. Number three, your marketing ROI, your return on investment. This is what you're getting back for all the time and money you're spending on social media. any paid ads you may be doing, your cold marketing, your email, whatever it might be. Marketing is not about being everywhere because it's impossible to be everywhere. So you have to look at where your effort and time and money is going and what you're getting back in a particular channel. You track it by logging your time and money for each channel and the revenue that that time and money generates. If you want the math formula, it's revenue minus cost divided by cost. How do you use it? You cut what doesn't work. If you're spending hours on whatever platform, Instagram, TikTok, whatever. and you're not getting any leads from that, then it's time to put that time and money and effort into something else. Number four, your client retention rate. This is simply the percentage of all your clients that hire you more than once. Repeat, clients are worth their weight in platinum. They're the backbone of every successful VO business. And they cost up to seven times less to get more work out of than it does to get them on board the first time. Track every client and make a note when they come back for that second or third or fourth job and recalculate that retention rate every six months or so. How do you move the needle with that number? Follow up after every single job, a warm, sincere thank you. However you prefer to do that, whether it's an email, whether it's a small gift card, whether it's through the mail, whatever, make sure you say thank you and make sure that client knows you're grateful to work with them. Number five, your average job value. This is simply your revenue at the end of the year divided by how many jobs you did. The lower your average job value, the harder you're going to have to work to hit your revenue goals no matter what they are. Are there benchmarks here? Yeah, but the problem is they differ for every genre. The point is you take a look at your average job value every six months or so and decide, do I need to raise my rates to still be competitive yet still maximize my revenue? Number six, time spent per booking. Simply how much time do you spend on every job? And that means from the time you get the audition notice till the time that you send the invoice. How to track it? Again, you can use the spreadsheet I'm going to provide you in the link and show notes, but you log every hour and minute you spend on a particular job. And then you figure out where you can save yourself some time and therefore make more money. Maybe it's working with an audio engineer like Jordan Reynolds or Tim Tippett or George the Tech to build you a nice post stack so that you're not doing the same repetitive stuff for every job and losing time. And what they say is true, time is money. And last but certainly not least, your website and social media analytics. Essentially, this is your traffic, engagement and conversion metrics across your platforms. And that matters because your website and your online presence, whatever platforms you want, That's your digital storefront. So if you're not attracting and converting clients, then something is gone horribly awry. How to track it? There are plenty of softwares out there to do it for you. The best, most commonly used is Google Analytics. Maybe your website provider has a built-in analytics package and almost all of them can track your engagement. Most of the social media platforms have analytics built in. Track your followers, your engagement, your conversions. and your inquiries from social media platforms. Now, what do do with this data? Well, for instance, you can start using your conversion data to test different calls to action to see what works best for you. All right. So what's the infrastructure look like? How do you set all this up? First, you don't need super fancy tools. I made a basic spreadsheet template for you, which again, you can get in the show notes in description. Or you can make your own or you can use something like Airtable or Notion if you're into that. Step two, you got to decide what to track. I think I've given you the standouts here, the ones, the KPIs that you're going to want to use. Step three, yes, James Clear, make it a habit. Make sure you're consistent and regular with it because if not, what's the point? Treat it like a client job. Make it non-negotiable. And step four, this tracking is only going to do you any damn good if you occasionally review it and adjust your actions. At the end of the month, at the end of the quarter, review your numbers. What's working? What's not? Throw out the stuff that's not, double down on the stuff that is. Now look, I understand. Tracking numbers. Anytime you're dealing with math, it can feel intimidating as hell. Maybe you're afraid of what the numbers will show you, but you got to shift that mindset because my friends, clarity is power. When you know your numbers, you can make decisions with confidence. You stop chasing every shiny object that comes along and you start building a voiceover business that works for you. What to stay away from. First of all, don't track every freaking number. I think I've given you a pretty good roadmap here for the important KPIs to follow. Number two, do not ignore the data. Numbers and data are only useful if you analyze them and act on them. If something's not working, that's your red flag to change it. And number three, my God, we talk about this a lot in the VOFMP. Do not compare yourself to anyone else other than you. Your metrics are unique to your voiceover business. Use them to compete with you yesterday, last month, last year, not strangers on the internet. Now, if you're serious about leveling up, whether that's going full time or going from full time here to full time there, consider voiceover business training. A good VO training program will help you not only identify the right metrics and set achievable and smart and actionable goals, but they will hold you accountable and that is a very big deal. And they will show you how to turn that data into action and that action into revenue. So if you want to level up, you got to stop flying blind and not looking at your data is doing just that. Start tracking your data today so you can start making better decisions today. Start focusing your efforts today and building the damn voiceover business of your dreams. Know your numbers. The data doesn't lie and neither do results. Now if you want to go deeper you can check out all of our coaching programs at vopro.pro slash work with me that's vopro.pro uh and if you learned anything from this video, if you got value from it and you think it might bring value to other voice actors, then by all means, please share it with them through social media, through email, however you prefer. The more we put good information out there, share strategies that work, exchange information and ideas, the better, stronger industry we're going to have for everybody and the better VO practices we'll have as individuals. Thanks so much and we'll see you again very, very soon.