The concept of the Actor’s Business Cycle, or ABC™, has been adapted from the corporate world and, taken step by step, these easy to understand concepts will provide you with a powerful tool to realize your career goals. Picking up from Step 1 – “Examination of the Market and Marketplace”, you have now investigated the market/marketplace you’re interested in, as well as made the decision to invest your time and money. If you’ve discovered that you’ll need some additional training, education, etc., in order to make your “widget” competitive, you should find out the following.
Building a Better Mousetrap
Remember, these questions need to be asked for each new market you want to enter.
- If it’s necessary, where can I receive training to be competitive in this new market/marketplace? Let’s say you want to start working in video industrials or in the live promotional events market. You can take an on-camera host class for some experience for the one, and an improv comedy class to get you used to thinking on your feet for the other.
- Is the training for a set period of time or is it ongoing? If you want to get certified as an actor/combatant, then you know it will take “X” number of classes, along with passing the final exam, to complete it. But for singing or dancing you’re looking at an ongoing commitment.
- Are there other issues, besides training and education, which I need to consider? The majority of summer stock theatre is cast out of New York, so if that’s a market you want to break into, then you need to plan ahead and be in town, or close by, during the casting period. This is going to require some serious time, effort and money. The same would hold true about going to LA for pilot season.
- What do other “widgets” who work in this marketplace and/or market look, feel and act like? Different markets prefer different acting techniques and actors. The soaps, radio commercials, regional theatres, cable TV, audio books -- they all have actors that have a certain look and feel. Find out, define and emulate that in your own way and you’ll be halfway to being the right actor for the job.
- What other “widgets” in this category are considered successful and why? Who are the other actors in your area who regularly get called in to read for the same parts as you? Who are the ones that land the most parts? What do they have that makes them so wanted by producers and directors? If you can put your ego on hold for a while and really observe them, you’ll be surprised at what you can learn.
- What other information can I use from this research that will be useful in developing my own “widget”? How helpful is it, in the market of audio book narration, that you can speak another language, or that you have access to a studio? Are there only a handful of Asian-American women, like you, in their 40’s in your local commercial video market or none at all? And if so, how can you turn that to your advantage? There may be scores of other young guys auditioning for classical theatre roles, so would growing your hair long be seen as a plus and help get you noticed?
After you’ve answered these questions, you’ll be ready to go to the next step and “create” your widget and begin to market it. To close with, here’s a great quote from business guru Peter Drucker, “Entrepreneurs see change as the norm and healthy. Usually they do not bring about the change themselves. But – and this defines entrepreneurship – the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as opportunity.”
To Read the next article in this series go to: The Actor's Business Cycle - Marketing
Since it’s always best to start at the beginning, read “The Actor’s Business Cycle - Getting Started to get caught up on this important series.
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