Hey, welcome back week three, we are really chugging along. So this is the week about finding the work. This is one of my favorite lessons in the whole course because I feel like the other information is I mean, if you really really scoured and took a bunch of people out for coffee and went down many Google rabbit holes, you could maybe find the information but exactly where to find all the jobs is in like listed anywhere. So I love sharing this information. I feel like it's really valuable. We're going to start with the hardest way to find work but the best way to find work and that is through an agent, right?

So I don't Want to be like an old man being like I couldn't buy today, we used to have to crawl to school in the snow. But at the same time, I am going to tell you about how it used to be when I was first starting out and how it is a lot easier to submit work these days. And that is that we used to have to make a demo CD, burn it onto a CD, package it like this little, you know, packaged pretty thing, and then mail it through snail mail out to everybody along with a printed out letter. And now, pretty much every single agency, every single agency that I would want to work with anyways, has a talent submission link on their website that will either be an email link or a submission form on their website where you can attach your demo and a form letter, which I can show you some examples of the problem though is is that if you don't know anybody at that agency, and if you don't have any credits, and if nobody the agency knows you, it's pretty much a sure bet that you will never hear back from them.

If you submit onto that talent link. I mean, a lot of people are submitting onto that talent link every day, a lot of which do have credits and things. So you need to have something to get you noticed to break through that clutter. But if you do know someone at that agency, or if you know someone who knows someone at that agency, a great way to get on board is through a referral. And all that means is someone personally walks your information into an agent's office and says, this person's really good. You might want them on your roster.

Now, the referral. This is hard to explain, but the referral if you're going to approach somebody that's maybe repped at that agency or knows one of those agents, my recommendation is to find someone that doesn't overlap with your brand at all. Because for example, when I was repped, or when I got my agent I you know, am a young adult Female Voice and I approached a like 40, something male sounding voice and said, If you listen to my demo and you think it's competitive enough and you feel comfortable, would you be willing to walk it into your agency and recommend it to your agent, and he went for it. But he also stated that if I was a guy in my 40s, and I asked him, he would have turned me down. So if that makes sense, I mean, if someone like if I'm repped at an agency, and I'm a young adult female, I'm not going to walk another young adult females demo into my agency to compete with me for my job's it's just not smart for business.

So the best way to get a referral if there's someone who you feel like you could ask is someone who doesn't entirely overlap with your brand, so you're not walking in to try to take their jobs. So the way I started out, I had made my demo after a voiceover class that I took. He was like, you're really talented. You should pursue this further. So I made a demo through him. And I sent it out all over the country, because by the way, you can have as many agents as you want as long as they are not within 150 miles geographically of each other.

So I sent it out to all these agencies all over town and beyond. And nobody cared. I never heard from anybody. And then I found a great coach, which I talked about in my last lesson and cannot stress the importance of enough. And I studied under Nancy Wolfson for a while, and then once she felt like I was ready to create a demo that was competitive, and that she was willing to slap her name on. We made a demo, and then I sent that out all over town.

Imagine how annoying The production was of all of this stuff, making all of these little CDs and booklets and the printouts and the inserts and the stickers that go on the CDs. Just be glad you don't have to do his stuff anymore. But anyways, so then I sent that out all over town, and still nobody cared. Nobody responded. Nobody wanted to hear about it nothing. And then when I found three different people that were repped, at agencies that I was interested in, and I took them out to dinner, or lunch or coffee or whatever, and I let them refer me, I got three meetings, and I was able to create like a bidding war and choose my agency of choice for my big la agent.

And then once I started to have some credits, and have that big la agent, it can kind of snowball from there and you get better at submitting to all of the other agencies and you start to acquire more agents, which gets you more avenues for more work. This was once I had some credits. This was once I had really been beating the pavement for a while. And maybe if there's a small local regional agent in your small local hometown, you can just get on board with a referral. But otherwise, this is not the low hanging fruit, which is what we're going to move on to talk about. But the first thing I'm telling you is kind of like, Oh, this is where we where we all want to be.

Another thing that I will tell you about the difference between getting that work through an agent and getting the work through all those other people is that an agent gets you better rates, they fight for you, they only get 10% of the money that you get when you book jobs. So you never have to pay them unless you're getting a job where you're going to get paid, and they take a cut. So it behooves them to negotiate more money because that means more money for them. This is not the case with any of the other work that I'm going to be talking about where you need to get your own negotiation in order. You need to book your own rates and a lot more of the paperwork and the negotiating has to be handled by you. So this is another reason why agents really are great.

Keep in mind you are picking them to work for you. So often the power balance is way askew, because actors Want to be actors so badly and they're just desperate for this agent to get them on their roster. But really, you're trying to hire them to be the person to help find you work because you're good. And you should get this work and you need the connections to it. Oh, wait one last little detail I want to tell you, it's really important to be on the cutting edge of stuff so that you can see what's next. And I want to choose an agent that is on the cutting edge of technology and new ideas so that we together can help see what's next.

If you are looking to submit to an agent, and all of the work that they give to you is going to be over email and then you submit the audition back to them and they want you to mail in a demo CD, like the olden days, along with the letter to me, I'd be like you're fired. I would not want to work with them. So it's okay to be choosy when you're picking an agent and if any agent ever asks you for any money I would fire them to or just not consider them they would not make the cut