- We have a lot of projects
in production right now with Garblic,
so that means we're hiring a lot of actors.
We're hiring a lot of crew members for our shorts.
In general, because we're early on,
my approach is hiring people for as cheap as possible,
the same approach I use in entrepreurship,
but in today's video I wanna show you the process we used
to hire a voice actor for our last comedy short,
but also I wanna tackle the question:
are you charging too early?
In services, and in acting,
I didn't realize they were so similar,
but they are very similar,
your portfolio means everything.
If you can get that one solid role,
or that one solid portfolio item,
it opens you up to be able to charge.
It opens the door to a lot of new things,
but here's the problem we ran into.
We were trying to cast a role.
It was for a two-minute cartoon short
that we're gonna enter at film festivals,
we're gonna pitch as a pilot,
and it's a lot of opportunity,
and I had one actress in mind for the role.
Respected her work.
Reached out to her
'cause I figured she'd have the right voice for it.
She asked for info.
Here's the exact email script, anonymized, of course.
I'm not out to embarrass anybody here.
I want this to be a case study, though, for you,
if you're looking for work as a freelancer.
So she asked for the character designs.
She looks at the script
and comes back with $450 for a session day,
meaning about an hour of work,
then $117 for each half hour after.
Now, I'm not against paying actors.
I'm not against charging for your work.
We charge almost that much for consulting right now.
If you wanna consult with us, by the way,
check out experiment27.com/consult.
A lot of good info if you wanna help improve your agency.
So I wasn't immediately taken aback.
It's higher
than the budget we wanted to put into this project,
which is zero.
Everyone else is giving their labor,
but because she asked for so much,
I assumed she has a portfolio.
If she has a name attached,
if there's some other value she can bring to the project
in terms of past experience,
I would love to have her on.
I would pay $450, $500, $1,000
to get an actor that's gonna help sell this thing, for sure.
So I asked her
if you could send your acting reel and your resume over,
and this is when I started to get a little peeved.
Here's the resume she sent over,
and she says 20 years of comedy experience,
but if you look at the actual jobs,
she's worked as a Coors Light promo model for five years,
and an independent model since 2008.
The resume's not targeted at all.
There's no portfolio here to back up the rates,
and then when you look at training,
the number one thing is a Steve Martin Master Class.
I love Master Class,
in fact I'll put an affiliate link
down below in the description,
if you wanna check it out.
The Steve Martin class is amazing.
Don't get me wrong.
Should it be the number one thing on an actor's resume
when they're trying to charge $450 for an hour?
I would say no.
If I was this actor,
I would do as many roles as possible for free
until something got sold,
or if I really needed to get paid,
I would look up what's the average hourly rate for an actor,
and I would ask for the bare minimum: $15, $20 an hour.
'Cause I, as a producer, am not against paying talent.
I would pay 40, 50 bucks to a voice actor
to get them into this short cartoon,
but the bigger lesson here is know when to charge.
So I reached out to another actor
that I've had a little bit of contact with,
saw her around the scene,
and her response, as a professional,
is completely different, night and day.
So I said, "Hey, we're working on a script
"that your voice would be awesome for.
"She's a Persian teacher.
"Wanna look at it?"
Same day, she responds, "Definitely.
"Send it over."
I give her a little bit more info on the role.
Immediately, "Count me in.
"Let me know the next step."
I get back,
"Are you around for an hour or two next week to record?"
She says, "Yes, let me know a day or two in advance
"and I'm all yours."
For context,
this is an actor with four or five times more experience
than the one that wanted to charge $500 an hour.
If this actor wanted to charge us
100 bucks, 200 bucks to come in,
I might have pushed back.
I might have tried to talk her down to like 50 or 60,
but I still would have paid,
and the bigger lesson here is,
if you're an actor in Hollywood,
or you're a business owner
trying to get your company off the ground,
work for free
until you have a case study worth charging for.
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Also, if you need marketing support for your digital agency,
check out experiment27.com, thanks.