The Best Kept Secret in Entertainment

No…it’s not how to attract the attention of top agents…

Or that short actors are put in platform shoes or on apple boxes to make them look taller…

Nor is it how celebrities can manage to adopt eight children, travel the world, stay in shape, head their own charity, run a multi-million dollar company that sells luxury goods, film multiple projects a year while doing press for all of them…and still manage to look well-rested.

For the past two weeks, I was volunteering for an organization more secretive than the Masons.**

**Okay, I might be exaggerating a little bit there…

An organization that is over 100 years old…

An organization devoted to helping actors and anyone else in the entertainment industry—lawyers, burlesque performers, ushers, photographers, opera singers, costumers, grips, producers, stage managers, circus clowns...

Yes, even you, skeptical clown man!

Everyone that I have told about it has never heard of it, and I only heard about it after becoming active on LinkedIn during the early days of the pandemic.

It’s not a union.

It’s not exclusive.

And it’s not limited to New York or Los Angeles.

Do you know what it is?

Are you stumped yet?

The organization is The Actors Fund.

Originally founded in 1882 in response to the anti-actor sentiment after Lincoln’s assassination, The Actors Fund was created to help actors and other performers, who were often discriminated against, get a proper burial after death.

Since then, The Actors Fund has become a national non-profit organization that offers all kinds of services to anyone in the entertainment industry.

Some of the many initiatives the fund has supported throughout the years have included:

• Senior care

• Affordable housing

• Retirement planning

• Access to healthcare

• Emergency financial assistance

• Education and career counseling

• Support for those with HIV/AIDS through Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS

• And much more…

While some services are still restricted to the cities where the fund has offices (NYC, LA and CHI), the internet has made other services accessible to all.

You, too, can attend a class in New York from your rooftop in Seattle! Or Minneapolis! Or Phoenix! Or…Keokuk, Iowa.

Just some of the interesting workshops coming up on the Career Center’s calendar this month:

• Managing Cash Flow

• Mindfulness Meditation

• Budgeting Nuts & Bolts

• Good Grief: Grief Support Group

• How to Job Search During a Pandemic

• Asian American & Pacific Islander Entertainment Professionals Gathering

• Mind, Body, Spirit: A Group for Black Women Working in the Entertainment Industry

Did I mention these services are all FREE?

Your money is no good here!

Back in May, I took the LinkedIn Suite for Entertainment, which is a trio of workshops on how to use LinkedIn effectively, and I participated in the 15-day LinkedIn Challenge that followed.

About a month after the challenge, I learned about LinkedIn’s Social Sales Index, and discovered that I was in the top 1% in my industry and in my network (translation: I’m working LinkedIn’s algorithm better than 99% of people in the industry), and I have The Actors Fund to thank for that!

After the challenge, I have been telling everyone about the fund, and promoting their services to all of my performer friends.

When the September challenge happened, I signed up to volunteer as an ambassador, helping to support others doing the challenge.

If you want to sign up for any of these upcoming workshops through the career center, you must first take the Career Center Orientation, which is offered every Monday except on legal holidays.

The LinkedIn Suite for Entertainment and LinkedIn Challenge will ONLY be offered one more time this year, in November.

Next year, they plan to offer it, but fewer times overall, so if you want to up your LinkedIn game, sign up for November’s workshops!

Click here to sign up for the orientation and see all of the other resources and workshops at The Actors Fund’s website.

And please—don’t keep this a secret!

How to Get What You Want

No one gets everything they want 100% of the time.

That’s just ridiculous.

But if you can do just two things, you’ll get what you want a lot more often.

Be careful what you wish for…

First: Know what YOU want

Then: Get specific. Really specific. 

Without a target, you have nothing to aim for. 

What’s your bullseye?

So many of us (but actors especially) come from such a scarcity mentality, that we are afraid to say what we really want for fear of losing out on ANY opportunity. 

• We take the low paid jobs, for fear that the better paid ones will never come along. 

• We check yes to “Willing to take any role,” when we really only want to play the lead. 

• We audition for everything, and then have a panic attack about declining a role, worried that the director will never cast us again. 

There are times when being open minded is a good thing.

When you’re in your teens or twenties, you’re still discovering who you are, what you like, and what you’re good at. At that point, gaining experience of any kind is good until you start to narrow down your goals. 

However, just thinking about your options does not give you any actionable feedback.

Don’t overthink it. Pick a target. Try it out. Take action. 

Doing the thing gives you direct input—What do I like about this? What do I NOT like about this? 

You get feedback, and you adjust your course. But first, you must be in motion. 

Get moving

Listen to yourself. No one else. 

I used to work for Ann Kim, who runs four restaurants in Minneapolis. She won the James Beard Award a few years ago, and her advice when she won, her ongoing mantra: #fuckfear

Allow me to relate a short version of her story: She was an actress. She gave it up. She thought about opening a Jimmy Johns franchise. Instead, she opened her own restaurant, Pizzeria Lola. She had no experience running a restaurant and no formal chef training.

I’m sure many people out there probably tried to talk her out of it. 

That’s what our well-meaning family and friends often do—they put their own fears on us in the guise of trying to be helpful. Because they want to keep us safe. Protect us from disappointment.

So…

• We go to school for business instead of graphic design. 

• We opt for a “safe” career, rather than the one our heart yearns for. 

• We never take the steps toward our dream, because if we never try, we cannot fail. 

True story

My Story

I have known, in my soul, since I was three, that I wanted to be an actor. And by the time I was six, I added singer, artist, and writer to that list. 

My senior year of high school, I told the counselors I would not take AP Calculus because there was no reason—I was going to major in theatre, so why keep taking math? Instead, I spent my senior year taking AP Lit & Comp and another English class, and my after school time doing theatre at school and in local community theatres.

The summer after my senior year of college, I had trouble finding a job right away, and my mom encouraged me to apply at the grocery store. Now, there’s nothing wrong with working in a grocery store, but I have no regrets about never having applied. I had already worked retail for about six months in high school, and it was one of the most depressing jobs I’ve ever had. 

There is value in knowing what will help you grow, learn new skills, and make your soul expand vs contract. 

When I graduated from college, I knew I never wanted a full time desk job. I never wanted to be comfortable but unhappy. I wound up working at a desk job full time for almost four years, and while it was admittedly a pretty cushy position, there was no room for advancement or skill building, and it started wearing on me working 40 + hours a week, plus having rehearsals 20-30 hours a week, as well as auditions and trying to have a life. When I was finally laid off, I swore I would never let another full time position get in the way of pursuing my real goal of acting. 

When I became clear on wanting to do voiceover, I quit four of my five part time jobs. I kept the one job that would allow me to invest the most time and money in my voiceover career. And I quit doing theater. Because even though I love it, it didn’t fit into my plan anymore. At least not right now.

One path leads to the center of the labyrinth, and the other one leads to…certain death

Back to the discussion of specificity—

So, while I have known my whole life that I wanted to be an actor, and I have single-mindedly focused on that, the one thing I could have done better along the way is to be specific. To really dig in and figure out “What do I REALLY want?” 

Shakespeare? Film and TV? Musical theatre? Legit theatre? Creating my own work?

I’ve dabbled in a little bit of everything, but never committed to one path, always spouting the same wishy-washy bullshit line: “I just want to make a living acting!” 

So I did make my living “acting”…at kids’ birthday parties, as a mall princess, doing singing telegrams, reading palms at grad parties, being in corporate industrial videos, doing patient simulations for medical students, plus the occasional play that paid a stipend that didn’t even cover parking for the rehearsal period. 

Was that what I REALLY wanted? No! But what I really wanted was too big and scary to really say out loud.

If I had gotten specific and been honest about that, then I could have faced the scary things that it would have taken to get to my goal.

You know the saying…aim for the moon, and even if you miss, you’ll end up among the stars

How specific can you get?

One time, in my old accountability group, one of the members had said that he wanted to get cast in a feature film. 

That’s at least more specific than “I want to act.” 

But I challenged him to get more specific—

• What genre of film? 

• What kind of character? (The dad roles, he said)

• What kind of dad? 

There’s a huge difference between Liam Neeson’s role in Taken, Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire, and Jack Nicholson’s role in The Shining, but they’re all dads. 

Hell, Darth Vader is a dad. 

One day, son, you’ll be a great dad like me!

Time, money, and energy are all limited resources.

Know what you want, and you’ll not only waste a lot less of all three…

But in not scattering these resources, you’ll get what you want a lot more frequently as well.

Are you chasing the wrong goal?

Years of running weekly accountability groups have taught me many things. 

One of them is that a lot of people THINK they want something. They think they want to get an agent, or think they want to go to grad school, or they think they want to be a voice actor. 

Oftentimes, they only see these goals through the benefits they’ve brought others. 

• An agent means audition opportunities. 

• Grad school means a degree which means greater work opportunities and connections. 

• Being a voice actor means making a lot of money working from home in your pajamas. 

Most of the time, they’re not seeing the full picture. 

Don’t base your decisions on an incomplete picture

Having an agent means: 

• Knowing your type (Young mom, hipster, grandma, blue collar, upscale, etc)

• Making yourself as marketable as possible (meaning you can’t just dye your hair green on a whim)

• Investing in the right tools—headshots, demo reels, etc. so that your agent can market you (No whining about having to spend money on new headshots because you decided you felt like getting a pixie cut)

• Communicating well with others so that you remind them you exist without being needy

• Still working all of the time to be competitive (taking classes), book your own work, and show your agents that you are proactive

• Doing work you may not want to do…this ain’t the thea-tuh! You’re here to bring your amazing skills to even the most silly of commercial scripts or inane of TV shows

• Being a professional even in the face of work that you feel is beneath you. Have you seen the supercut of Bryan Cranston’s decades of commercials? The man didn’t start with Breaking Bad…

Going to grad school means: 

• Knowing WHY you are going to grad school (is it for the connections? for the degree? do you want to teach? increase your skills?)

• Potentially moving across the country

• Spending a LOT of money

• Giving up 2-4 years of your life (or more if you’re getting a PhD)

Being a voice actor means: 

• Spending a lot of time learning the craft (it’s NOT just talking, no matter what those internet ads say).

• Investing a lot of money on equipment and coaching (don’t quit your day job…you’re going to need it for a while).

• Learning to run your own business and do the uncomfortable work of marketing yourself.

• Motivating yourself to keep going when you haven’t booked anything in a long time 

• Being a self-starter…when you don’t have a boss, it’s your responsibility to make yourself do the grunt work that leads to the fun voice work

• Doing the NOT FUN voice work. Personally, I think it’s all pretty fun, but some people only want to do animation, or video games, or high-paid commercials, when there is a great need for people who can inject life into explainer videos, corporate training, e-learning, and medical narration. 

No, no, no, no, NO! Definitely ask WHY!

Maybe your dream is none of these things, but whatever your dream or goal is, ask yourself WHY? 

Why do I want this thing? 

In fact, I would say that none of the above examples are really the ultimate goal or dream of that person. 

The underlying “why” of any of these three things could be:

• “I want to make a living from my acting” 

• “I want to be rich” (misguided, but some people think this way)

• “I want to be a super talented TV/Stage/Voice actor” or

• “I want to be a famous TV/Stage/Voice actor”

There are so many ways to have the bard in your life

A friend of mine wanted to go to grad school for theatre, and I asked why.

“So I can do Shakespeare.” 

I asked “Aren’t you doing Shakespeare right now?”

“Yes, but I want to get paid to do it.” 

“Okay, so if you were to go to grad school in another state, would you want to stay out there? Or use the connections you make at school to go do Shakespeare elsewhere?”

My friend replied, “No, I’d like to come back here.”  (Here meaning Minneapolis, where there are two companies who could pay a reasonable wage to do Shakespeare)

“So, you want to take four years, and spend a lot of money to go to school so you can come right back here for the same opportunities you already have access to, and maybe STILL not have any greater access to them than before?” 

There were other FASTER, MORE DIRECT, and CHEAPER paths to my friend’s goal. 

The direct path isn’t always better, but if you know where you want to go, why waste time?

Whatever your goal or dream is, make sure you’re REALLY clear on it. 

I read somewhere (don’t recall where) about a guy who figured out what he wanted his life to look like down to the smallest detail and THEN figured out what job would get him that. Where he wanted to live, what he wanted his days to look like, family, pets, material belongings, etc. 

The job he ultimately chose wasn’t glamorous, but it got him the life he wanted. 

I think more of us would do well to consider what we want our life to look like, and then do some informational interviewing of people already doing that thing. Ask them questions about their life…their schedule…what they love and hate about their job, and see if that’s what we really want. 

Here are the six questions you should ask yourself to figure out if you’re chasing the wrong dream:

1. What is my dream/goal?

2. WHY do I want that thing? (this is how you find out if there is a bigger underlying goal)

3. Is my dream/goal just one path to a bigger underlying dream?

4. Is that the ONLY path to that dream? Or are there other routes that I’m missing?

5. What does the life of a person who has that thing really look like? Is there someone I can ask or some way I can dip my toes in the water before committing to something time-consuming or expensive?

6. Do I want that life?

Now…where do you want to go?