Tina and Martha are friends on Facebook. Tina is friends with four cartoon producers. Martha does 100 cartoon voices and wants to get more gigs as a voice actor in cartoons.
Failure 1 … The reel
Martha makes a voice reel showing off a bunch of voices to try to impress the powers that be. She works super hard getting the perfect recordings, trying to make it flow and hiring the perfect editor that pores over every detail.
One piece of content goes out. Tina might watch it, might not. Likes it on facebook.
Failure 2 … the brags
Martha feels she needs more visibility and more impressive stuff. She does projects for free and brags about them before, during, and after.
Tina sees some of them
Failure 3 … blood hound
Martha starts painstakingly digging thru all her facebook friends’ friends. She finds some of Tina’s friends who are cartoon producers. Sends Tina a message asking to be introduced to them. Tina makes a couple introductions. Martha says something like “If you ever need a voice actor, I’m available! Here’s my reel.”
The producers say “good to meet you” and possibly watch the reel. They don’t ever need a voice actor. They have voice actors falling at their feet and they have voice actors they know and love and they have a casting process for new roles. They are not impressed by Martha’s reel.
OOPs Success
Martha says, “forget this hustle, I am not gonna be able to make things happen, but I love cartoons. I love making voices.” Martha makes a youtube channel reviewing her favorite cartoons as other cartoon characters. Eg: Bart Simpson reviews Bojack Horseman.
She gets to make things. Good things that she likes.
When Tina sees that Minnie Mouse reviewed season 3 episode 12 of Rick and Morty and it’s hilarious. She sends that video to the producer of Rick and Morty. That producer sends it around to his team. The team starts talking about this series and watching more of it. Many of them subscribe to the channel.
When they need a new role cast, they are excited to bring in someone they are all a fan of… Martha.
Serve
Because Martha created a service for her potential clients, they wanted to…
- see what she’s creating
- hear from her again
- meet her in person
- get work out of her
- recommend her
- share her
- trust her
It’s great to make a reel. It’s great to make our work visible. It’s great to ask for introductions to people.
Unfortunately, we can’t look at these things as magic top hats that are going to bring our frozen careers to life. We gotta start serving our people before they buy.