One of the most critical elements of success in any field, and especially, Hollywood, is to take consistent, directed action in moving your career forward.
As an actor, you probably have already faced the many ups and downs that are an ongoing part of pursuing an acting career in Hollywood. Whether you are trying to get a new agent or a personal manager, or simply to get in to see the casting directors, when you don’t get the results you want, it can be disheartening and then you stop taking action right at the point that your next step may have been the tipping point!
Too many times, actors stop taking action when they don’t get results as fast as they think they should. In fact, many people in all areas of life do the same thing.
Countless times I’ve worked with actors who are really doing “all the right things,” but they figure there must be some BIG thing that they have missed and that’s why things are not happening the way they want them to. That is not necessarily the case.
At some point, when you are doing all the right things, then it is a matter of continuing to do those things and constantly refining those steps with small improvements.
Over time,THE BIG step comes from consistently taking the small steps.
There are also the ideas of a “tipping point,” critical mass, the domino effect, paradigm shift, quantum leap, and the straw that broke the camel’s back. The idea being that lots of smaller things add up, one by one, and then at some point, there is a huge shft and something big happens. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this in depth in his bestselling book : The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.”
To create a tipping point, keep taking the smaller actions in your career, improving on them, and dreaming up new small actions and simple improvements. It could be your goal that each month or each quarter to add one casting director to your list of Who Knows You and Calls You In. At the end of the year, you have 4 or 6 or 12 casting directors who now know you.
Put a few of these small things in place and you will find at some point, a huge shift will happen in your career.
A final and very important concept to keep in mind is that you will not be able to tell which action will push your career to the tipping point — at any point it could be the very next action you take — so you will need to trust the process and keep taking actions until it happens.
Congratulations on all the actions actions you’ve take in your acting career up until now.
You might add to your list of practices that every time you receive another Hollywood Hot Tip, that you think about and create an EXTRA step that you could take TODAY to move your career forward.
The Hot Tip will give you some ideas. You can also always look to see what action YOU KNOW you should take but just haven’t done it yet.
Action Idea: Do you have an agent and manager? If not, you might want to do a mailing with Smart Girls to help you get one. Our specialty is writing a letter that makes you look good. Plus, it is always nice to have someone help you with the hard stuff, isn’t it?
Give us a call if you want to set up an appointment to do an agent or manager mailing.