At eleven years old, I told a childhood friend that my mom had put me on a program called “25 Days to Better Health”. My mother had no such plan. It was all me. I have no idea what I thought I was going to do, or where I came up with the idea, but I clearly had a penchant for self-improvement early on.

In that vein, I have recently improved and refreshed my demos to better represent my voice. I’ve had the same commercial demo for about 4 years and it was time.

However, in addition to my belief in self-development, I also believe,

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” Arthur Ashe

As I’ve developed my business from the ground up, I’ve always used what I have in order to do what I can to start where I am each day. If I bought the story that I needed to spend a lot of money to produce a good result, I would never move forward. I don’t believe one needs to spend a lot of money to reach a goal and that we have the tools we need to proceed with those first few steps…

Instead of a trip to a voiceover convention or a critique from a New York voiceover guru, I’ve collected some recent work and had it edited together. I may be naïve to think that my demo is “good enough“, but as a big believer in the aforementioned quote, I’m not going to wait until I’m more ready.

Linda Daley of DaleyProgress.com, a trusted associate of mine and someone who helped me get my own weekly newsletter off the ground, wrote about this very topic in List Size Matters… how using the contacts and information we have now is a very good place to start.

So if you also have a goal you want to move forward, don’t wait. You are ready now. Start where you are. Use what you have!