Getting Over a Slump with Gina Scarpa

Participant #1:
Hi there, and welcome to Voiceover Experts, your monthly educational podcast helping you bring your voice acting career to the next level with insightful lessons presented by Voices voiceover coaches, this is Gina Scarpa, your Voice's August featured coach.

About Me I'm a fulltime voice actor from Connecticut. I started in radio way back in 1998. I was on the air in Connecticut and New York for almost a decade. I went on to be an entertainment reporter, editor in chief, and podcast host for several reality television sites and interviewed people from just about every reality show you could think of survivor, The Amazing Race, Real World, Project Runway, American Idol, so You Think You Can Dance, The Bachelor the list goes on. I started my voiceover journey in 2014. I went full time in 2020. I am currently the voice of Xfinity Rewards, and some of my happy clients also include Burger King, the Portland Trailblazers, Nike, and L'Oreal. And actually, I booked L'Oreal through Voices.

So today we're going to talk a little bit about getting through a voiceover slump, which is my hot topic this month for Voices. A slump can mean a lot of different things, right? So you might experience a slump when you're first getting started. You get super excited. You've done your coaching, you've got your demos, you've got your clips, you're on the site, you're ready to go. Everybody told you that you're doing great. And then you get out there and you start auditioning, and you realize, this is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Or maybe you booked your first and second job, and then suddenly it gets super quiet. Or maybe you've been chugging along and you're booking like crazy, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, it seems like nobody wants to book you for anything. This can be super demotivating and frustrating to get through. And I'm here to talk about actionable steps you can take to get through those slow times, take control of it, and come back stronger.

And so the first thing we want to do is identify why we're in a slump, and sometimes that answer is easier than others. But here are the four DS of why you might be in a slump. So, first, demand. Is your voice type in demand right now? Delivery. Are your reads in line with what the client wants? Does it fit the specs that they wrote? Directions are you following all directions in terms of slate takes, labeling, etc. And distractions? Are there things going on in your life that are preventing you from doing your best, most creative work? Once we've thought through those and maybe come up with some reasons why it might be happening, the next thing we need are the three as of being in a slump. So we have the four DS of why you're in it and the three A's of actually being in it. Acknowledge it, accept it and attack it.

First of all. It's okay to be in a slump. It happens to everyone. It happens to me. It happens to all voice actors everywhere. Don't let people fool you on social media and have them act like they're just booking left and right all the time. Everybody goes through slow periods, even celebrities. Instead of ignoring it or faking it, acknowledge that you're going through a slow period. It's okay to accept it. Try not to waste time being angry or sad about it. Accept what's happening and use this time as an opportunity. And three, attack it. Create a plan with actionable. Steps you can take to lessen the duration of the slump, especially in the future. So first things first, it starts with you. You need to be in the right mindset in order to conquer the slump and start taking action. We want to start from within. Go easy on yourself.

Like I said, slumps happen to everyone. Try not to talk to yourself negatively about it. Get organized. Use to do lists. Clean up your workspace or find ways to work more efficiently. Start small. You don't need to do everything at once. You can just start with a few auditions per day or items on your to do list. And don't forget some self care. I know it sounds cheesy, but take some time for yourself. Rest. Go outside. Do something fun. Spend time with loved ones instead of obsessing over the slump that you're in. Okay, so we're starting from within. And that means we're going to look inside things that we can control within our career and our business model.

First, we can update our website and our casting profiles. Rewrite your bio, add a new clip. Just freshen up your content online. Track down your project. Did you voice something lately? Find it. Get a clip of it, get the video link to it and be able to share it with others. Check back in with your clients. Reach out to everyone you've worked with in the last six months and see if they're up to something new. And share your own updates as well. Don't just email them and ask them for work. Have a reason to talk to them and refill your sales pipeline. Finding new leads to reach out to. Creating or updating your spreadsheet so that you have a plan going forward.

And as a bonus tip, create social content. If you've kind of been slacking on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, whatever, maybe this is the time to increase your social content and connect and network more with others. Now that we've looked inside, it's time to replenish your leads. You might get a marketing list. You can pay for a list. You can search for things online, or you can just create your own. You might use LinkedIn or other social media platforms to find people or companies that you want to work with. You can just use Google, Google Best, ad agencies and things like that. And think local, too? Are there people right in your own backyard that you could be working with? And how about your own website? Have you done your SEO homework? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it's how well sites rank in. Google is your site optimized?

And another thing we can do is create connection. Get social on social media, comment and respond on other people's posts more than you talk about yourself. Take a workshop, especially with decision makers like agents and casting directors. Find an accountability or a cheer group, because a little support can go a long way. And this might sound counterintuitive, but stop talking about voiceover when you're connecting with people online. Talk about family, pets, hobbies, travel, anything else. Find a way to make personal connections with people. Relationship building is like gardening. It takes time. And you want to plant those seeds and water them and cultivate those relationships so that they grow into something more. And the truth is, maybe it's not you. Maybe this has nothing to do with you at all. It might just be a slow time that's going to pass.

But on the other hand and I hate to say it, but maybe it is you and here are some questions to ask yourself and really try to answer them honestly. Is your sound quality up to par? Have you had your studio vetted by a pro? Have you done any coaching lately? How about marketing? What are you doing to advance yourself? Do you really know yourself? And do you know what you're most likely to book? And are you reading for those things? Are you really giving your best, most creative effort to your reads? Do you follow all directions to a T? Do you struggle with self direction? Do you know how to competitively quote for jobs? Can you look at your business with an objective perspective?

And a final tip on this topic is to conduct what we call an SWOT analysis, which is something that is taught in marketing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Really look at yourself as a voice actor in your career and list those things off. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What are your opportunities? And what are your threats? And what can you do about it? When you put it down on paper and you really look at it, you might be surprised about how many ideas and answers you come up with.

And so now that we've talked about things that you can do for your voiceover business in general, let's talk about how we can get through a slump and what steps we can take specifically on voices. Just like I said earlier, update your profile, update your bio, add some new clips, get some new clips made. Maybe you want to do a new demo. Now that can be easier said than done, because sometimes professional demos can be pretty pricey. So you might just want to think about adding a new clip, and that might be a more cost effective way to help branch yourself out on the site more.

What about projects? Have you thought about or have you created your project yet on the Voices platform? Projects are a great way to get clients to come to you without you even having to audition. You basically put your project out there, tell people what you would charge for it, and then they can just book you directly. It's a nice way to get some new visibility, new clients looking at your profile and listening to your clips. So if you haven't tried projects yet, or you only have one or two, or you haven't really beefed them up when you're going through a slump, this is the perfect time to do that.

And then what about your profile in general? Have you optimized it so that it's doing well for you when it comes to job match? So for every clip you've uploaded, have you chosen all ten styles and have you chosen all five roles? If not, then you should. What if you only have one demo? Well, that demo probably has five or six different clips in it, right? So let's split that up, let's take that demo and let's keep it on the site, but let's also break it into each individual clip. And now instead of having one clip on the site, we have six or seven clips on the site, all of them optimized with styles and roles that help you improve your job match. And that's super important because when a client is listening back to auditions on Voices, they automatically by default sort by job match. So if you're looking in your job matches only 50 or 60%, well, this is a time during a slump when it seems quiet and there's not a whole lot going on to try to get that job match score up so that you're listened to sooner by clients. I could go on and on and on, but honestly, hopefully this gives you a great starting point for what to do when you feel like things are slow.

And I promise you that if you do the things that we're talking about, each time a slump comes up, that time will lessen and lessen. So if the first time you went through a slump, it was about a month long or something like that, two months, maybe even longer, eventually it should only be a couple of weeks and hopefully down to maybe just have a bad week here and there, a quiet week, you have more control over your career than you probably even realize. And I promise you that if you take these steps, you'll start to notice a positive difference.

Thanks so much for listening to me today. If you want to find out more about me, you can visit my website, which is Ginascarpa.com and Voiceovers by Gina.com. You can also check out my studio, which is Positive Voices ct.com. I also have a coaching group called Positively Voiceover, which has an exclusive discord community. Monthly workshops, weekly workouts, monthly giveaways and coaching on demand. I'm there when you need me. You can check it out on ginascarpa.com. Subscribe to voiceover experts for free. Wherever you listen to podcasts and grow your career today. Thanks for listening.