Fair warning...this one might hurt a little bit.
Most actors try to build their acting career in the most inefficient and ineffective way possible.
They spend their time going from one thing to the next, never really stopping to think about whether what they are doing will have an effect on their acting career.
What most of them end up doing is taking acting classes haphazardly, redoing their headshots without being strategic about it, and basically securing their place on the audition hamster wheel.
That’s usually a best case scenario...
You might think that this is something you would never do, but I challenge you to be honest about how strategic you have been with the way you build your career.
Look, most actors don’t succeed. They usually don’t come anywhere close to accomplishing the goals they set when they first got into the industry.
So, at some point you have to decide whether you will follow the crowd or whether you will figure out how successful actors are able to make it.
The actors that do succeed do things differently and I have broken down what they do into a step by step path you can follow, regardless of where you are in your career. Here’s where to start...
Step 1 is to get your first few credits out of the way.
When you are just starting out, you want to first get your first credits, any credits will do. You just want to get some on set experience.
However, you have to move beyond that and start to think strategically about the types of project you want to be involved in.
Even if you already have several credits, stop and think about whether those credits have been acquired strategically.
That brings us to step 2. In this step, you will be at a place in your career where you will be choosing the category you want to focus on for the long term.
Most actors get stuck in step 1 and they never really move on from just going after anything and everything they might remotely be a fit for.
When you choose the category you want to focus on, you start to work with others that are also focusing on that category.
That gives you the opportunity to make more meaningful industry connections, since you would be working with the same people over and over again, instead of working with them once.
Once you settle on your category, you can then move to step 3 and find an agent that specializes in that category also, or work with your current agent to pursue that chosen category.
If you have an agent that is already getting you a lot of quality auditions then you may want to stick with them.
You would just work together to make sure that your industry persona matches the category you want to specialize in. More on that in a sec...
If you decide that it's time for you to find a new agent, then you want to be sure that you sign with someone whose client roster has a lot of clients that are also successfully booking in the category you have chosen.
That means that the agent likely has good working relationships with CDs and decision makers that specialize in the same category you are hoping to focus on.
Step 4 applies whether you choose to sign with a new agent or stay with your current one.
You have to work with your agent to ensure that your headshots and your reel match your chosen category.
When those things are not in alignment actors struggle to book.
They either get passed over because their headshots don’t match the category, so CDs don’t often ask them to read, or they get passed over after the audition because they didn’t match what CDs had in mind, based on their headshot.
That’s why this is such a crucial step.
Step 5 is all about making industry connections with others that also specialize in your chosen category.
Spend a few minutes and reach out to make connections with people you haven’t worked with yet. Do this frequently and see how quickly you can expand your network.
Don’t neglect the people you have already worked with. Follow up with them afterwards to stay top of mind. Those can end up being some of the most meaningful industry connections.
Things get easier when you walk into a room and CDs already know you. Here’s how you can increase your visibility in a place where Casting Directors and industry decision makers are already looking for talent.
Whether they know you because you have worked with them before or they know you because you have made yourself visible to the industry, the dynamics change.
It pulls you out of the crowd and gives you an immediate differentiator.
That can be a huge advantage, when it comes time to decide who they will move forward with during the audition and booking process.
We went over a lot today. If you feel conflicted when thinking of your next step, that’s completely understandable.
We have only begun to scratch the surface and we’ll go further into each step over the coming weeks.
In the meantime, if you need to bounce ideas, I’m always only a comment or an email away and I’m happy to help however I can because I truly want to...
See you at the top,
Scott