I spent the weekend doing the comedy intensive at the Actor’s Foundry here in Vancouver. It was a great learning experience and reminded me just how skilled one needs to be to do comedy scripts well.
We study many video clips of different performers, but ended the weekend with this clip and I wanted to share it with you.
Being an actor is a hard profession. It’s hard to get an agent, it’s hard to get in the union, it’s hard to get an audition and it’s hard to book a gig.
All this struggle can leave a person with the stink of desperation on them. Many actors constantly give their power away by talking non-stop about how their career is going nowhere, how their agent never get’s them auditions, and how this great TV show has put them on hold 3 times now, but never booked them!!!
It’s uncomfortable to be around these people. They suck the energy out of the room. They do extra work and constantly ask the A.D. for an upgrade. They ask the actors on set who their agents are. They ask the union members how they got their credits. They’re like a shark, constantly moving, looking for the trick, the secret, the loophole that will get them their “big break”.
The trick to getting your career going in the right direction is to stop looking inward and asking what people can do for you. Instead look outward and ask…
What can I do for you? Continue reading
After I posted It’s working! I got an email question and thought maybe I would re-post my answer here, incase anyone else had the same question.
Hi Troy,
I talked to a few people and not everyone knew about DRIPs. So I have a question, This stock that paid you a dividend rather than being automatically re-invested, is that a DRIP stock or something else, as I gathered from your article with the DRIPs the money is always automatically re-invested?
Also am I right in thinking that you can just purchase a few shares and fill out the application form to get the dividends, or do you have a minimum amount, say 500?
In my last post I talked about receiving dividend income. I am kind of fascinated by dividend yield and feel it is one of the most powerful wealth building formulas next to compound interest.
“Yield” simple means the % return you can expect from an investment. So if you bought a $100 savings bond for example with a 3% annual yield, you would expect that bond to be worth $103 a year from now. Your $100 investment yielded a 3% return.
Some people argue that an investment that doesn’t have a clearly defined yield is not really an investment at all, it’s a gamble. I tend to agree.
Let’s look at a real world example of how a stock’s dividend yield can grow over time. Continue reading
The hardest part about being an actor is hanging in there and believing that all your hard work will pay off one day and you will be earning a good living doing what you love.
The same is true for investing. You set up an investment account of some kind, you deposit money into it, but you still feel broke all the time. It feels like all that discipline isn’t getting you ahead in life.
For me this month, it finally started to work.
I received three types of income this month, but only one of them required me to do any work!
Having other sources of income is great because it puts more cash in your pocket, but the real benefit is the freedom it buys you.
Last week I had an audition for the TV show Supernatural. Yesterday I audited a class at the Actor’s Foundry. This weekend I am doing a 2 day comedy intensive workshop.
I consider all of these activities part of my job although I don’t get paid to do them.
The only way I can afford to work and not get paid, is if I also get paid not to work.
I started this website because I was shocked by the amount of actors I met (many of them 40 years old) who had no financial plan in place. I fully understand that learning about personal finance can seem like a daunting task, but a little knowledge goes a long way.
I have identified 5 basic levels of investing. By moving up just one level from where you are now, you could generate tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars more over time.
The 5 levels of investing
I got some nice feedback from people who are already using the internet to promote their acting careers.
People like Alison Wandzura who is promoting herself with the following websites:
Check out her sites. Give her support. Get some ideas for your own promotion!
I just finished a 3 part series on how actors can use the internet and social media to their advantage. Below are a few examples of people I know and how they are marketing themselves on the internet.
Chris Boyd and Pierre Wolff are a couple of actors producing their own work. They started a YouTube channel called The First Game Plan where they post short demo videos of projects they are working on. When they submit a pitch package to a network or production company, they can then include a link showcasing their ideas.
Michael Rowe is a gifted dramatic actor who I have the pleasure of working with at The Actor’s Foundry. He is also part of Wild Driver a comedy sketch channel on YouTube that his brother Andrew started three years ago.
Mac Faoro is a 17-year-old high school kid from North Vancouver. He wrote and produced this song which he plays guitar, keyboard and sings on. He has his promotion totally synched up with YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter, and MySpace.
What are you working on? Do you have a website? A YouTube channel?
Send me a link and I will post it on here, so we can all continue to network and support each other!
I once studied with acting coach to the stars Cameron Thor and one of his favorite sayings was:
Treat your career like a cat
He said, “if you go running up to a cat and try to catch it, it runs away, but if you start working on something interesting, the cat always comes sniffing around to see what you’re doing”.
The point of using the internet and social media isn’t to hound casting directors for jobs. Instead you should be using the internet to showcase the excitement you have for your art and to support others in their work.
Do that and there will be a lot more cats sniffing around that ball of yarn you are playing with! Hey, I just realized “cats” is an anagram for “cast”!!
One other important point:
Anything you say can and will be used against you
This is a hard one for me. I spent years working in bars where off-color jokes and foul language were par for the course. Today it seems people make a sport of being offended by everything. Sometimes I wonder if they are really offended or if they just feel they get some power by acting indignant.
Justin Bieber got his start on YouTube and has worked hard to keep his image as politically correct as possible. Alec Baldwin on the other hand is routinely having heated battles with everyone and anyone on Twitter. And who can forget Gilbert Gottfried who lost a lucrative corporate voice gig by sending out a single Tweet!
Gilbert Gottfried–SHOCKING JAPAN TSUNAMI JOKES–TMZ
If you want a crash course in what not to do on FaceBook check out LameBook. Or maybe not is you are easily offended…
I remember one casting director “friended” me on Facebook. I was shocked when I went to her page and found that she had posted tons of pictured of her getting fall-down drunk with a bunch of cowboys at the Calgary Stampede.
It didn’t offend me, but I noticed she isn’t in that line of work anymore…
Since we work in a visual media and a picture is worth a thousand words as they say, I am going to stop talking and just post some examples of artist using social media.
Up Next: Some Examples
The topic of promoting your business on the internet is too vast to cover in a blog post. I would recommend going to the library and taking out Facebook for Dummies, Twitter for Dummies, and YouTube for Dummies just to get a running start.
I also recently read a great book by Gary Vaynerchuk called Crush It! In it he explains how to promote yourself and your business online and “cash in on your passion”.
Back in the good old days of Hollywood, a young pretty girl would be sipping a soda at the local diner and be discovered by an agent who made them into a movie star. Word got around that this was happening and soon wanna be movie stars were arriving by the busload in Hollywood. They would get up in the morning, do their hair and makeup, put on their best dress and then head down to the diner and wait for their “big break”.
Problem was, you never knew exactly which diner the big shot Hollywood agent was going to have his lunch in. Also, if you spent all day hanging out in a diner, it didn’t leave a lot of time to hold down a job or work on your craft.
Luckily today’s actor can hang out in a virtual diner 24 hours a day without even leaving the house. In fact they can wait for their “big break” in several different locations all at the same time! Continue reading
