One day while I was in the middle of making a decidedly unconventional career change from international banking to the holy calling of advice-giving, I came across a free alternative paper that had this eye-catching headline: “How to be OUTRAGEOUSLY Successful in Acting.”
As it happened, I had just done a commercial for the New York market that had been seen by a total of three people. (Backstory: The director wanted someone who was wearing a suit in his commercial. The casting agent only knew one person who owned a suit. Me.) Wow, I thought. That first commercial was easy. Maybe this free paper could help me finance my consulting career with quick, easy, and lucrative acting work.
Big disappointment. The article provided exactly what it promised: a guide to being outrageously successful. However, it provided nothing in the way of quick or easy.
I was about to throw it away when I realized that it could be a more-than-passable guide to being a successful consultant. Just change a few key phrases to business-oriented language and it becomes a very handy guide for the self-employed consultant or coach.
I cut the article out and hung it on my refrigerator, where it proudly reigned until it was displaced by the handprint of our first-born. The actual paper has now been lost. However, its lessons are timeless. Here they are:
- Get known. Have you personally met every casting director in your market? If not, you are not sufficiently well known. Get out there.
- Audition. Are you auditioning at least three times per week? If not, you are missing the main avenue for success in the business. No one says “bravo” to an actor still in in his pajamas.
- Head shots. Are your head shots up to date? Do they have your updated biographical information, including recent roles and skills, on the back? If you have done Shakespeare but it is not in your CV, the Shakespearean director will put your name to the side.
- Study. Are you studying acting with the best coaches you can find? Not for job-hunting, but because you are so very determined to build your craft. No one hires rusty actors.
- Networking. Are you networking for jobs? Do you know about all the road tours, experimental productions, summer stock, church-basement, and floating-barge productions in town? It is your job to know about jobs. Until you have an agent, you are your agent.
- Do you have an agent? It is your agent’s job to help you find work. If you can’t convince an agent you have the stuff, how do you expect to convince producers?
- Skills. Are you building your skills? Actors need to know how to sing, dance, fence, fight, speak languages, perform stunts, and do myriad other skills that help the portrayal of real life. Adding these skills gives the actor confidence and the casting director confidence in the actor.
- Health. Are you taking care of yourself? You must eat right, exercise, and get plenty of sleep to be ready for the big role. Not only to look great — that is a given in this field — but to be ready to take on the physical and emotional challenges of life onstage, not to mention the disappointments and challenges off.
- Not yet. Are you taking disappointment in stride? No does not mean “no” to the determined actor. It means “not yet.”
- All the above. Are you taking the above points and practicing them for as long as it takes? If you do, you will be OUTRAGEOUSLY successful.
(Continued)
I have not changed the emphasis from acting to consulting. You get it, right? You will also notice, by the way, that the ethos here is pre-Internet. The emphasis is on getting out there and seeing people. I have no reason not to believe that, for actors, the fundamentals are still true even if head shots are now kept in electronic form. I know the fundamentals are true for freelancers.
Freelancers are growing in number. However, I find many of the newer entrants are overly reliant on LinkedIn and other directories for exposure and on receptions and networking events for the chance to get in front of decision makers. In this I am thinking of a friendly competitor who never fails to answer his landline on the first ring. He always complains that business is slow. You know, as he says, just like it is for everyone in this crazy business.
I never disagree with him for fear of being impolite. But my business is not the way he describes it. As a matter of fact, given the disciplines I have put in place over these last several years, I am close to — on the very edge of —being outrageously successful.
And now you know how to achieve that same inevitable success yourself.
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