We are officially in the last quarter of the year and it's time to be a little bit introspective.
Have you achieved what you set out to achieve so far this year? Take a moment to think about that and reflect on your career progress honestly.
That’s something we have been doing over the last few weeks.
If you're an actor, especially given the things that have thrown the industry into chaos over the last few months, you have likely found that you are falling short of your initial goals.
Even with many things left unresolved, it's not too late, but you do have to make a detailed plan for getting your career to the next level.
That involves two things that most actors don’t think about very often.
However, professional actors rely on those two things, especially when they are in the early stages of building their career.
Those two things are problem solving and goal setting. I know that sounds simple and many actors think they do some form of this somewhat often, but over the years I have seen that most actors don’t do it properly.
That leads to many of them getting stuck in their careers, so if you want to build your career as a professional actor, this is something you should want to get right. Here’s where to start...
When an actor’s career stalls, their response is typically to do something that isn’t very well thought out.
They realize that something in their career is wrong so they instinctively try to do something quickly.
What sets professional actors apart is how they dissect the problem and their systematic approach to overcoming it.
They don't merely wish for things to change; they take deliberate steps to make the change happen.
Setting goals is something most of us are familiar with, especially at the beginning of each year.
The real challenge lies in the process of achieving those goals. It's not enough to simply want things to change, while continuing to follow the same routine.
The first thing professional actors do, when faced with a career that has stalled, is goal setting.
Questioning what you want to accomplish in your career is important, because it helps you clarify the steps to do it.
Building a professional acting career is essentially a matter of setting goals, accomplishing them, and then setting new goals.
So, if you are in a place where your career isn’t progressing, think about what you want to accomplish in your career.
Think about both long term goals and more immediate goals. For example, it’s great to set a goal to win an Academy Award.
If you are still working on getting your first few credits, then put that goal into the long term category and think of more immediate goals like booking a certain number of roles or getting a certain amount of screen time.
It's crucial that your goals are realistic and achievable within the given time frame. Your short term goals should be one to two years maximum.
So, while it's exciting to dream about giving an acceptance speech at a prestigious award show, think about the timeline.
Even if you were cast in a movie on the first day of preproduction, it would take at least 18 months before you see it on screen.
That means, in the best-case scenario, you might be looking at two award show cycles, and realistically, it is probably more like three cycles.
That makes the goal unrealistic as a short term goal, which is what you want to focus on as you build your career.
It's also important to understand where you currently are in your career. Winning major awards may be an absolute possibility for you and it’s great to have that as something you are working towards over the long term.
However, it's essential to set goals that are suitable for your current stage and work towards accomplishing those first.
The problem that many actors run into when doing this is setting lofty goals without a clear plan.
Instead of setting goals and continuing to do the same things as before, come up with concrete steps you can take to accomplish those goals.
That will help you move your career forward, step by step.
Once you have established your long term goals, consider what has been hindering your progress thus far.
That will help with adequately setting your short term goals. If you are working on getting to the next level in your career, from background work to speaking roles, set goals around that.
The problem solving aspect comes in, when working through the reasons an acting career has stalled.
It’s crucial to identify the right problem and solve the right problem, to make career progress.
Everyone’s acting career is different, but the process of building a career is universal. Overall, setting a clear goal, identifying obstacles, and working diligently to overcome them is how professional actors build their careers.
There are also other factors that are universal, because they are the fundamental building blocks of your career.
One of those building blocks is your industry visibility.
That’s important because if the industry doesn’t know you, they can’t hire you. I created Boost My Star to help increase your visibility where Casting Directors and industry decision makers look for talent.
While being highly visible to the industry is important, it’s also crucial to cultivate a stellar industry reputation.
When Casting Directors make decisions, they put a lot of trust in the actors they move forward with.
Because how those actors ultimately work out reflects on the Casting Director, they tend to do some research on the actors they are considering. Be sure that what they find about you is up to their standards. Here’s how I can help with that.
Especially when working with actors they are unfamiliar with, Casting Directors rely on that information to help with the process.
They try to learn as much as possible about the actors when making casting decisions to ensure that there will not be any big surprises after the fact so make sure your industry reputation is always in top shape.
Over the years, I have seen actors take their career to the next level by simply focusing on the fundamentals and then working on building their career with the goal setting framework we just talked about.
It seems overly simplistic, but that’s part of what makes it so effective.
Don’t overthink things, just take some time to work through what we talked about today. As you are doing so, you are likely to want an opinion on how to take the next step or how to workout the correct problem.
Remember I am always only a comment or an email away. Feel free to get in touch anytime! I will always help however I can because I truly want to...
See you at the top,
Scott