6 skills you need to become a professional singer

This is what I found through experience, in both singing and teaching. These six skills are what it takes to make it:

• Musical skills
• Presentation skills
• Business skills
• Financial skills
• Confidence
• Resilience

Skills 1 and 2 are the “talent” part. Talent is in quotation marks because you can learn these things.

Skills 3 and 4 are entrepreneurial: you're going to be your own brand and business, unless you're waiting for the messiah, I mean to win the lottery, I mean to get discovered. 

Skills 5 and 6 are character traits, which I believe can be acquired. Let's break them all down.

And let me help you unlock your voice and voice your truth

Skill 1: Singing (vocal) skills

Musical and stage skills are the “talent” part, and those quotation marks are intentional. I don't believe you're either born with talent or born without it. Some things come naturally to some people, but the rest can be learned, and learned well. As a voice teacher, it's my job to teach you how to sing: to make the voice richer and more under your control. That's vocal technique. But it also means presentation, your stage skills, even if you don't want to perform. Here's why.

Stage skills and vocal skills feed off each other. Work on one and you boost the other. So even if the stage isn't your goal, stage work makes you a better singer.

Combine the two on two timescales. Every day, take the last few minutes of practice to just sing through, no technique in mind, maybe with a performance exercise. And periodically, once you've made real progress, give a couple of weeks to stage skills: performance exercises, musicality, expression, the weirder the better. The result is tons of fun, and better technique.

Why does stage work improve technique? Because confidence puts you in a position of power, so you're far more likely to actually carry out your technique instead of wasting energy judging yourself. You give your mind a rest from the technical battle, and the work starts to sink in.

Skill 2. How to get those skills

You can learn voice in many forms: lessons, courses, YouTube tutorials. Whatever you choose, you need a real method of learning.

My how to learn singing guide is the key one, and I also have advice on learning to sing on a budget. For stage skills, take a look at my SingWell on Stage course.

Skill 3: Business skills

“What do business skills have to do with me as an artist?” I grew up thinking art and money sat at opposite ends of a spectrum: money is for lawyers and traders, artists struggle and aren't good at business anyway. I have bad news and good news.

The bad news: business and financial skills are essential if you want the arts to be your profession, and singing is no different, because as an artist, you are a business. I learned this the hard way, when I thought it was too late and had no emotional or financial resources left. I truly hope it won't happen to you.

Skill 4: Financial skills

Finance is hard for everyone, and harder for artists. A few things are a must:

1. How to have enough to live on while you build yourself as an artist.
2. How to make money from your profession (singing).
3. How to save money. Depending on where you live, you may be solely responsible for your own pension.

The “artist mentality” (I don't need much money, I do it for the art) is a trap. Your art won't happen if you starve. And as a singer you need money not just for lessons, but for website management, travel for auditions and shows, recordings, bodywork, good nutrition, makeup, outfits, photoshoots, and on it goes.

A few hard-learned money lessons

First, when you start out, get a job you're good at, ideally related to music, full-time if you need to, then drop to part-time as singing work comes in.

Second, audition and apply early, start small, and never say no to an opportunity to apply (they can say no to you, you don't say no to you).

Third, to save, make more than you spend and put the difference away, because when you retire you'll need decades of self-sustainment. It is possible you'll be swept up by a label or an agent, but there's a 99.9% chance your career will be your own doing.

So if marketing isn't your thing, take a course; if self-promotion makes you cringe, build the confidence and learn it.

Be open, do anything you can in this field, make friends and connections, and keep going. My friend Nani happens to be one of the few people I know with both musical and entrepreneurial skills. She has a course on how to DIY your musical career. She isn't paying me to say this; I just know her advice is gold

Skill 5. Confidence

Confidence is the name of the game, and everyone knows it. If you look and sound unconfident, people see through it. But confidence forgives almost anything: a wrong lyric, a mistake, even the outrageous, forbidden act of stopping mid-song and starting over.

A confident performer convinces the audience that whatever happened was the plan all along.

So how do you get confident? Ever heard of faking it? Confidence can be faked, and eventually it earns you real confidence. Alan Rickman, the great actor, was a master at it. Watch him talk about how insecure he felt, all the time. Had he not learned to convince everyone otherwise, he'd have had no career.

Here's a story. In one of my group lessons, a man in his 60s, let's call him Peter, sang his turn. You could tell there were issues to work on, but above all he looked like he didn't want to be there. Instead of fixing his vocal problems, I asked him to sing again and pretend every sound coming out of him was deliciously amazing, as good as his favorite singer. He laughed: “That feels undoable, I believe the opposite.” I said, I know. Do it anyway. He sang again, and it was like a different person. The technique was better, but most of all, we all enjoyed the song. Confidence works from the outside in.

That's how ‘fake it till you make it’ becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it extends to everything around your singing, not just the singing itself: interviews, auditions, networking. The more you do it, the more you start to believe it. And even if you never quite believe it, people may still buy tickets to your show.

Three tools that actually calm the nerves

Faking it is a mindset. These are the physical tools that back it up when the nerves hit.

The long exhale. When you're scared, your breathing goes shallow and fast. Override it: breathe out for twice as long as you breathe in, say two counts in and four counts out, for a couple of minutes. It tells your body it's safe. (Fair warning, breathing deeper makes you feel the fear more at first. Keep going, it settles.)

Shift your attention. Panic loves a single fixed thought, so flood your brain with detail instead. Look at something or someone and catalogue it: the colors, the textures, the tiny details. Your brain can't catalogue and panic at the same time. Keep moving your attention so you don't lock up again.

The singing turnaround. At home, with one trusted person, sing a song three times. First with your back to them, singing to the wall. Second, start with your back turned and turn around partway through. Third, face them from the start. The trick: when your back is turned, perform fully as if you're facing them; when you're facing them, pretend in your head that your back is still turned. It shouldn't work, but it does.

Skill 6. Resilience

Here I want to talk again about my friend Nani. She wanted to play a certain festival, so she contacted the founder offering her show. Fully booked. Next year she asked earlier; too early, ask again later; later, suddenly fully booked again. I'd have taken the hint. Nani didn't. She kept asking once a year, never taking it personally, because he never said he disliked her music. Six years later she got an offer to play the main stage, plus a solo with an orchestra. That's resilience in a nutshell.

Notice she was never rude or pushy. Once a year, calmly: any slot this time? Here's what I've got. Don't assume people aren't interested, don't spam, but keep coming back.

Resilience also means not waiting for yourself

Nani's story is about not giving up on other people's doors. There's a quieter kind of resilience too: not giving up on yourself by endlessly “getting ready.”

I once decided I wasn't good enough to perform yet, so I locked myself in the practice room for two years to fix everything first. When I finally came back out, I was worse on stage than before, because all that vocal ability refused to show up the moment I stepped out. No amount of practice replaces the growth that only comes from performing. It was the biggest mistake I made.

So here's the rule: the moment you catch yourself thinking “maybe in a few months,” that's your signal to put yourself in front of people now. Offstage, stay a humble student who's always learning. But the second you step on stage, switch: you are already the artist the audience came to see. Confidence isn't perfection, it's presence.

How long does it take to become a professional singer?

It depends on where you start, how dedicated you are, and how structured your process is. Five years is a realistic target. If you already sing quite well and only need technique here and there, two to three years. In my case I started at 21 and it took 12 years to reach professional soloist level. With more focus and structure I'd have saved at least half that time. Most time is lost to lack of structure, I had no method in place. And business and financial skills changed my bottom line, because even at a pro level I wasn't as successful as I could have been without them.

How to become an opera singer?

If you want to specialize in opera, the training is extra intensive, and you'll need all six skills above. Most professional opera singers went to a music academy at some point.

In my view the main benefit of college is the things around the singing, diction, music theory, acting, plus masterclasses with visiting experts and, crucially, a regular platform to perform (in my academy, every week). The singing itself you can learn from an excellent private teacher who specializes in opera.

Graduating from a music college is the norm, and I followed that route, but a friend of mine never did: she went to an opera studio, a kind of internship, and after a few years got a contract at an opera house.

How to become a vocal coach

This is the path I chose, wholeheartedly. Becoming a great vocal coach is about more than knowing technique: it's about helping singers grow in confidence, expression and independence. The best coaches teach what they wish they'd learned themselves, blending clear vocal science with creative imagery, mental support and body awareness.

How to become a voice actor

Voice acting blends creativity, performance and vocal skill. Build your acting chops through classes and practice scripts (remember, voice acting is acting), create a high-quality demo reel, set up a basic home studio, then find work through casting platforms and start auditioning. With persistence, your voice could be the next one we all recognize.

And let me help you unlock your voice and voice your truth