An Actor’s Guide to Marketing Your Career, Part 3 of 5

Hey everyone,
Here we are again with the the marketing and promoting of your dream, getting your work out there. When I started a thousand years ago, you couldn’t self-submit. You just couldn’t. It wasn’t possible. There was no internet. There was none of that. I know how old I am. I get it.
But these days, my goodness, what a gift for actors. I know you have to pay a service fee (and again, the theme over the last several episodes is that there are rip offs and then there’s legit), but there are plenty of legit online resources for actors to submit and be able to be part of a community where they are actively promoting their career.
So you need the tools of the trade to do this. You need just a kickass headshot, something that pops and that is extraordinary. We’ve done we’ve done a series about taking a quality headshot, so make sure you check that out, but that’s your calling card.
The difference between your buddy shooting your headshot and a pro is night and day. And early on your headshot is all you’ve got. You don’t have a lot of relationships, a lot of connections, a lot of tape, a lot of credits. That headshot on that self-submit is a big deal, so make sure you’ve got a home run. You have to have a home run.
You need your resume, in quality format. Don’t bullshit. Don’t cheat it. Be honest about it. Everyone knows you’ve got to start somewhere, but make sure that it’s professional and clean and it looks good and it follows the industry format that goes along with that.
Of course if you have any kind of tape – let me take that back – quality tape, good stuff, and if you don’t, begin to build it. And you don’t have to sit there and wait for some break to do it. Somebody you know has a nice camera, I’m sure of it.
And you guys should get together this weekend, next weekend, and begin to create stuff so that you can self submit, so that you can blow people away, so that you can separate yourself from the pack, and you need to dog this daily. You need to be all over these self-submissions.
If you have ever been on this side of the desk, where you’re casting something, and you put something out there, I’m telling you – you know who gets the best look? You know who gets the best view from us?
It’s the people that come in first. We’re excited. We’re hoping someone responds. We don’t know what we’re going to get, and as soon as they start coming in, we’re all over it. But hours later, if not days later, when now we’ve got dozens and into the hundreds, I’m telling you – it’s like, “click, click, click,” so as corny as this sounds, the old “early bird gets the worm,” man, is that true when you put out a casting notice for something that’s solid.
You want to hop on it. This needs to be your job – this marketing and promoting. It is a gift to self-submit. Dog it. Be all over it. Be part of every social media opportunity that you can. You must.
You know there’s a great quote, “Why do we pay our agents 10% and expect them to do 90%?” This is the 90%. This is the stuff that you must be doing to market and promote your career. So get on it. Cool. Hope it helps.
 
I HAVE A GIFT FOR YOU
I’d like to invite you to check out my Artistic Family Newsletter. These newsletters are for any actor in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, Europe, and beyond because my goal every week is to empower, inspire, and educate any actor living anywhere who has the burning desire to really do this.
I believe these newsletters are the best of what I do as an acting teacher and it’s free to you, so join our family today by going here and signing up.
Alright, we’ll see you next week. We’ll see what we can advance for you. Thanks for joining us.