The concept of the Actor’s Business Cycle, or ABC™, has been adapted from the corporate world; these well known ideas have a great deal of relevance in the realm of show business. Taken step by step, these easy to understand concepts will provide you with a powerful tool to realize your career goals. The impetus for starting this whole process is the idea that the possibility exists for you to grow your business; to take your career into a new marketplace, a new market or by increasing your market share in a particular area. You can draw this conclusion from one of two observations.
Definitions
First, it’s time for a couple of important definitions. These will help clarify some of the ideas in the ABC™.
- Marketplace (n) - A geographic location where products/services are bought and sold: The Chicago marketplace, the New York marketplace, etc.
- Market (n) - A body of existing or potential buyers for specific goods or services: The theatre market, the voice-over market, the commercial modeling market.
- Widget (n) - An item that is considered typical of a manufacturer's products/servicesIn a broad sense, it can be said that an actor provides both a product and a service. For the remainder of these articles, you and your product/service will be referred to as a “widget”.
Getting the Lay of the Land
So to begin with, one of two ideas has occurred to you:
- You recognize the opportunity of breaking into a new marketplace or market; presenting your “widget” as something unique. “If I’m willing to travel, I might be able to get more work in the Philadelphia marketplace” or “Hey, there’s nobody here in the Chicago commercial modeling market that looks, sounds or acts like me!”
- You perceive the opportunities of expanding the sales of your widget in a market you’re already working in. “I want to do more audio narration projects here in Los Angeles” or, “This kind of theatre work is great but I want to try and do more projects of a higher quality.”
Time To Dig Deeper
Next, you must ask yourself these questions:
- What is required of me to compete in this marketplace or market? Is travel a factor? How about being union or non-union? If you want to work in commercial modeling, will you have to lose 20 pounds?
- What kind of training might be necessary to meet these requirements and how much will that cost? If you want to do summer stock musicals then maybe it’s time to find a voice coach. What will the ongoing cost be?
- How long will it take before I can advertise my “widget” in this new market? One class in stage combat does not make you a stuntman. Likewise you don’t want to put down on your resume that you can swing dance until you’ve had enough training to really show it off.
- What kind of advertising materials will I need and how much will they cost? Want to break into commercial modeling? Then you’re going to need a comp-card. You’ll have to investigate how you create one, the cost of shooting the pictures and what the price of reproductions will be.
- How much work and money do I think I can earn? You need to investigate and then decide if the return on the investment of your time and money is worth the effort of working in that marketplace or market.
- Are there any other issues associated with pursuing this goal? You may want to go on that 9-months tour, but how will that affect your partner or family? If you want to go back to school for your MFA, will you be taking yourself out of the theatre market at just the moment when you could really make some headway in your career?
Answering all these questions will help you decide if it’s worth proceeding to the next step in the cycle – Research and Development. To close, a quote from Winston Churchill – The Pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The Optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.
To read the next article in this series go to: The Actor's Business Cycle - R & D
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