Have you watched Jerry Maguire? It’s a great movie, about a sports agent, and there’s a lot that you can learn from it to advance your acting career.
During the movie’s opening monologue Jerry describes what he does and what it means for the clients he represents.
Here’s what it has to do with your acting career...
If you listen to the monologue, the job of a sports agent is very similar to the job of a talent agent. I’m a firm believer that the most impactful person you can have on your side is a talent manager.
Before you start googling them, understand that having a manager also comes with a lot of risk.
See, they will only be effective if you can find your own Jerry Maguire. A good manager is a game changer but a bad one can be a career killer.
Almost everyone starts out being their own manager, not because they want to but it happens simply out of necessity.
That’s the safest route and if you are self managing at the moment, you have a unique advantage but it’s somewhat of a double edged sword.
The problem is that no one teaches you how to manage your acting career. It’s a very specific skill set that even professional talent managers often struggle with.
If you want to be a professional actor, you're going to need a manager at some point. For several reasons, the best thing to do is to do it yourself.
Here's how you can do it effectively and move your acting career forward quickly...
Speaking with actors over the years, I’ve found that many of them know how impactful a good manager can be, but most of them don’t really know exactly what a manager does.
A manager will take care of running your career, day to day. That means they will take care of the administrative, monotonous stuff that no actor really wants to do but that is necessary to build your acting career.
They will also advise you on long term career strategy and branding.
For example, if you have multiple talents and you want to pursue an acting career and a music career, your manager will help with figuring out which one to focus on first.
They also help with the transition and integration of the two career paths.
That’s the basic rundown of what a talent manager will do for you. Here’s how it benefits your acting career...
On the practical side, it takes the little things off your plate and having a manager allows you to focus on the creative, fun side of the industry.
It also provides you with someone who can give you a second opinion before making moves in your acting career.
Your agent can do this for you too, but this isn’t their area of expertise. It’s kind of like asking your doctor to be your personal trainer.
As an actor, however, you have the personality type to easily see the bigger picture, when you know what you are “looking for.”
It’s one of the many reasons you should self manage your career, at least temporarily.
Actors are always eager to hand off this part of their career to someone else. After speaking to so many of them over the years, I’ve found that they do it out of insecurity.
This may sound harsh, but if you are self managing your career and you fail...who else is there to blame but yourself?
If you bring in a manager, it’s easy to blame them for giving you “bad advice.”
In other words, it’s an easy out in case things don’t go as planned with your acting career. If you’ve been around Boost My Star for any length of time, you know that having an easy out should never be an option.
So, instead of signing with just any manager who will take you, educate yourself on what a manager does and how they do it. The best way is to manage your own career, so you will know whether or not anyone you sign with is even doing a good job for you.
Starting now, commit to career planning so you can get in the practice of looking at the big picture.
Look at where you are now in your acting career and think of where you want to be in the next 3 months.
Plan out what it will take for you to reach your goal, in that timeframe, and break it down into weekly chunks.
Then, break those weekly chunks and determine what you need to do over the course of 7 days to hit that goal.
Do the same for the next 6 months, then 12 months, 3 years, and 5 years.
That simple exercise is one of the best things you will ever do for your career. It will train you to look at the big picture, and then break that big picture down into manageable chunks and plan the steps you need to take to actually accomplish your goals, no matter how big they are.
When your day to day workload gets to be too much to handle, it's time to hand it off. Only then is it time to bring in a manager.
Just be sure they are the right person...
They should be big picture thinkers and still be able to drill down to the day to day, step by step things that need to get done.
You will have already been doing it for yourself for some time, so when you interview potential managers, you will be able to spot the ones that can actually do the job effectively.
They should also have a vested interest in seeing you be successful.
Usually that's in the form of only getting paid when you book something but it should go beyond that.
They should believe in your talent and truly believe that you not getting to share it with the world would be a tragedy.
When you find that person, it can be an absolute gamechanger and your career will never be the same again.
This is how you start to build your “entourage.”
Once you have a good manager and a seasoned agent on board, things can snowball pretty quickly.
We’ll go over the other people you could soon find in your entourage and discuss their roles in further detail over the coming weeks...
For now, focus on either becoming the best manager you can (for your own career) or focus on training and getting on the same page with your current manager if you already have one.
Most actors hear about the big picture and immediately start trying to piece everything together, thinking it will help to speed up the process, but it’s best to take things one step at a time.
Everything in your acting career tends to build on the things you did previously, so doing every at once will just scatter your focus and diminish your efforts.
If you don’t build your career on a solid foundation, you might still be able to make some progress but the cracks will eventually show themselves. It’s why I created this to help you secure the foundation and boost what is really the bedrock of your acting career.
On top of that, it has also created a way that you can offload one of the most tedious and most important tasks you have right now, without having to bring anyone on board.
I’m talking about building and managing your industry reputation. It’s no secret that the industry is built on this, so if your industry reputation is not always at its best, it could severely limit your opportunities. Here’s how I can help with that.
Keeping your reputation in line with your industry goals can open doors for you, both on screen and with future potential managers.
It’s rare that a day goes by without me receiving at least one email from an actor who wouldn’t even be considered for a certain role, because of their industry reputation.
While it’s not a perfect system, by any means, this is how the industry measures an actor’s credibility, castability and it’s a big determining factor in whether or not industry decision makers think you will bring value to the project.
So, what step are you going to take next? Are you going to go the solo route and self manage, using what we talked about today, or are you at the point where it makes more sense to bring someone on board to help with this?
Leave a comment below or shoot me an email and tell me your plans, even if you are not quite sure which way is best for you right now.
I’m happy to help you get clarity on this or anything else about the industry because I truly want to...
See you at the top,
Scott