Anyone ever tell you that? I've gotten it my whole life. If you've met me, you know I have a voice that tends to make people think I could make a living in voice-over work. But, for years, I resisted this venture.

When I decided to get into casting, I decided to put my acting aside. It seemed to me that it was a conflict, a potential distraction and a little bit tacky. But in the past couple of years, with over a hundred films under my belt as a casting director, I have decided to have some fun and pursue voice-over on the side as time allows.

Do I regret putting aside? Maybe a little. But I don't want others to put such things aside in the pursuit of anything else. If you are one of the people who hear it all the time perhaps you should look into it, too. What have you got to lose? And you might just gain a whole new career.

Voice-over work is lucrative and once you get a few jobs under your belt, more are sure to follow. Once I could tell producers that I had experience doing voice-over work they were much faster to hire me for their own projects. You just need to get started. So where you do you look for those first few jobs.

There are a ton of opportunities out there that you can apply for. This might be the perfect time to consider a student film or a short. Once I made the commitment to doing it, no job was too small. I did not prioritize the money. I only focused on booking jobs so I would have a resume and eventually some voice-over tape.

You can start with a web series or even books on tape. Anything that gets your voice on tape. Amazon is just one source of potential jobs for wannabe V.O. artists. The pay won't be great at first, but as you gain experience and tape, you can raise your rate and demand for your voice will grow. Then it's important to be that actor they want to hire again.

I have heard producers complain so many times about actors harassing them over and over for tape from their projects and usually way too soon to even be able to deliver it to them. So, the first thing I did? Nothing. I did not hassle them a week after the shoot.

It takes months to finish post-production on a feature film. And it only shows how little you know about the process when you ask about your clips a month after production wraps. I have had actors ask me on the set! Not a good practice.

If you want to apply for voice-over jobs before you have developed a voice reel, you will need to buy some equipment, but it doesn't have to break the bank. Until you are making some money you can get by with the basics. I bought my package on Amazon and you can get it all in one purchase. There are enough people out there doing this that it is an item you can search. Just type in "beginner voice-over package." The other option is to find a friend that can help you out with their own package. They better be a very good friend because you will need to use it more than once.

My friends Tara Platt and Yuri Lowenthal are professional voice-over artists and they wrote a book I read and highly recommend, "Voice-Over Voice Acting." You can grab it on Amazon. It is perfect for anyone that wants to begin doing voice-over. When I needed some advice on how to get started, I bought their book and it answered all my questions.

It will probably not shock anyone that the world of professional voice-over work is not easy to break into, but it can be done, it is done and you can do it if you take it seriously and hang in there. Just don't allow yourself to be discouraged if you aren't raking in the big bucks overnight. Like anything else in this business, you can work three jobs in a month and then not work for six months. Don't rely on it to pay your bills until you have established great representation and a solid resume. Best to keep that survival job until things are stable.

I highly recommend you give this a try if it interests you even a little. I have booked four jobs already and found it to be a blast. It is hard work, but what isn't in this industry?