The 5 Lies That Keep Actors Invisible

Hello, hello. Just going to go live on Facebook and Instagram. Okay. And we are good. Hello. We are back with another episode of Powerhouse Conversations. And last week I talked to you about 10 actors who made 560 outreach moves in 21 days and everything that changed for them. So, if you didn't um if you didn't catch that, check it out, but there were referrals to managers from casting directors. There was a starring role in development. There was four invitations from one email including a couple of bookings. And I know what happened for some of you who watched that. You saw that and you were like, "Sounds great, actually. Like, I could see how that could happen to me." And you thought, "I want that." And then somewhere between that thought and actually doing anything about it, a voice showed up. And the voice is what today is all about. We're going to talk about that because the things that keep actors small and kind of invisible, it's never like laziness. It's never lack of talent. It's beliefs. It's our mindset. And these things are very specific. They sound very reasonable from the inside. I call them the lies that we tell ourselves, but I want to be clear about what I mean by that. I don't mean that you're lying. I mean that these beliefs are lying to us. And they present themselves as facts about our situation. And they're not facts. They are fear disguising themselves as being reasonable. Clip that. So, today I'm going to walk through the five lies that I hear most often. And for each one, I'm going to show you why it feels true, um why it is not true, and what the actors who did the challenge in the last round proved about that, and how they kind of show us the way on that. And some of these might be like, "Ooh, that that hurts a little bit. That stings." And that's okay. Like, I get it, too. That little sting is recognition, and recognition is where change starts. All right, so this is episode 27 of Powerhouse Conversations, the five lies that keep actors invisible. All right, so let's get into them. All right, so the first one is, "I don't have anyone to reach out to." That's the first lie. And this is the one I hear a lot, and the one that is the most factually wrong. So, let me just walk through it with you, right? Have you ever taken acting class? Probably. Everyone in that class, the teacher. Have you ever been on a set? Any set, a student film, a web series, um a commercial shoot that you were there for one day, right? Everyone on that set, the director, the other actors, the DP, the sound mixer, the PA who was great at their job that you connected with, right? Have you ever done a play? All of the rest of the cast of that play, the director, the stage manager. I actually hosted an industry event last night and invited my acting newsletter list, and an actress that I was in class with like 18 years ago was there. I haven't seen her in like 14 years. No no exaggeration. And it was so great to see her and reconnect, right? So, think about those things. Think about industry workshops, think about panels, think about mixers, all that stuff, even if it was years ago. These people are people to go on that list. Because when we actually sit down and we do this exercise, we realize, and this is what we do during prep for the challenge, we don't just come up with five people, we come up with like 50 people. And they might be people that we feel bad that we've lost touch with. But, the list was not empty, it was just unwritten. We just didn't think about it. And here's the deeper thing that this belief is getting wrong. It assumes that outreach means cold contacting famous strangers. And it actually doesn't. It mostly doesn't. We might do a little bit of that, but not a lot. The most productive outreach in the entire last round of my challenge was reconnection. Reconnection. Corey spent her 21 days reconnecting with directors that she'd already worked with. People who already knew her work, already liked her. And they were so happy to hear from her. And one of those reconnections, who was a sound mixer, happened to be in town the exact day she needed him for her 21, or excuse me, a 48-hour film festival type thing. So, these people are one just like warm reconnection message away from being active relationships again. And so often, this is how we can rekindle our network. This is how we can wake it up, how we can rejuvenate it. So, you don't need to feel like you have a network now. You just need a good 20 minutes of honesty about who you already know. And if you are genuinely brand new, like you might be like, "Well, AJ, I actually just became an actor. I don't have any of those things." If you say you just moved to a new market, you know nobody in that city, whatever. So, your list is teachers you want to study with, actors whose careers you admire in the community, filmmakers making things, you know, the people you'll meet at the events you're going to start attending. You don't need an existing network to start this. In fact, you are uniquely positioned to develop this chat this kind of skill as you are starting out. I'm jealous of you. Real talk. All right. So, line number two is I don't have the time. I don't have time for this. And I want to handle this one really carefully because your busyness is real. I get it. I'm a very busy person. You're working a job. Maybe you have two jobs, right, in addition to this. You've got family you're taking care of. You've got auditions. You've got class. You've got a full life, and I'm not going to pretend that oh, well, you must have you know, all this free time that you're wasting. No. Instead, I want to tell you what this thing actually requires because you might think it's going to take a lot more time than you than it is. Doing the challenge at the most basic level, which is where most people do it, is one power move a day. That's one email, one text, one DM, one phone call, and most of these well, all of them, especially if you do the prep work, takes under 15 minutes. Most of them take under 5 minutes, let's be real. Elisa's email, the one that she had been avoiding for years that turned into four separate invitations, that one took her about 3 minutes to write once she finally just decided I'm going to do it. So, the honest version of this objection is not I don't have time, it's I don't have 5 minutes. And almost nobody actually believes that about themselves once they once they say it out loud. Like, you probably spent more than 15 minutes on your phone today. I know I did. Like scrolling on Instagram for 15 minutes, we can swap that out for 3 weeks. Right? Clip that. Now, I want to say um something about one of our last round challengers uh named Tashi. Tashi did her 21 days during one of the busiest seasons of her life. She was dealing with a lot of things all at once. She had just started a new job that was more demanding than it would be ultimately. And she did one move a day. She was like, "All right, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do one move a day." But she was very committed to it. And what I love about her is what she understood going in that there was never going to be a month where her schedule was like wide open and she could just do this challenge without feeling kind of pressed about it. There's no when things calm down. Like that just never happens. Things don't calm down. There's just a decision that you make to do one little thing a day inside the life you already have. And that's it. And what came back for her? She had a reconnection with an audiobook producer. She had virtual tea with a director. She has a meet up in the works with a writer. She's still getting replies from casting directors months later being like, "I'm going to keep you in mind for this." 15 minutes a day. That is the actual cost of doing this the right way. So, just know that. Lie number three is This one's fun. I tried outreach before and it didn't work. I did this. And this one I will say is based on actual evidence that you think you have, right? You did send the emails. You did reach out and nothing happened. So, you're like, "No, this is not the fear talking. This is actual data. Like, that that happened to me." Except, let me just gently ask you some questions about that experience that you had before. So, the first question is, how long did you actually do it? For most of us, the honest answer is like, "I did it for a week." Or, "I did it for a couple of weeks. I had a burst of emails. I did it I sent out 400 emails in one weekend." Or, whatever. And how were you reaching out? This is the other question. Were you sending out a bunch of headshots? Were you sending like a blast an email blast to a bunch of people at once? And also, how long did you wait before you decided it didn't work? Because here's what the last round of the challenge taught us about timing. Like I said, Tasha's results are still coming in. We did that challenge in April. It is September. She's still hearing back months after the 21 days ended. Right? So, the results tend to lag the work. And if you evaluate your outreach on a one-week or like a day-long burst of outreach, it will never look like it's working. Ever. You'll always conclude that it fails. And that's because you just stopped before it was working. That's it. And there's a stage of this process where you're kind of in the middle. You're kind of like doubting like, "Does this even work?" And this challenge is built so that you don't quit during that. So, that you keep going through that until the moments start arriving that you want. Until the you get the bookings. Until you get those warm emails back. Until you start having meetings. Right? So, when you say I tried it before and it didn't work, most of the time we're saying I did it briefly. I did it by myself. And I stopped when it started to feel slow. And that's not evidence that outreach doesn't work. That's evidence that doing it alone and doing it blind doesn't work. And I'm also going to teach you how to write warm, authentic, personal messages so that your outreach has a better chance of getting responded to. Line number four. I already have reps or I'm too established for this or this is not my job or whatever. And this is what comes from those of us who are more experienced, who have credits, we're out there working, we have a team, and we're like a daily outreach challenge is for beginners. Like, this is my reps' job. I'm not doing any of that. So, the reason why that is so backwards is that the more career you have behind you, the more valuable outreach becomes. Because outreach for you isn't going to be cold contacting strangers, it's going to be following up. And that is such a neglected asset in an established actor's career. Think about it, right? If you've been working out here for 10 years, for 15 years, for 17 years like me, you have hundreds of past collaborators. You have directors, you have casting directors, you have producers, writers, other actors, and every one of them is a warm contact who you are probably neglecting. Or probably going cold. And that is how you end up with a career that mysteriously stalls out, and you wonder like, what is happening? We covered this back in the episode about what where offers come from, right? Offers come overwhelmingly from people who know your work. A director you worked with three years ago is probably making something now that you would be great in. They just need to be reminded that you exist. That's all. And nobody can maintain your relationships for you. Your reps submit you, they pitch you, they might get you meetings. That's those are the good ones. But nobody can maintain your relationships for you. Only you can. If you were staying in touch personally, you have a better career, hands down. I did this challenge and I'm doing it again. Right alongside everyone else. And one of my reach outs last time, it was just a check in with a manager friend, turned into a whole new team that is working for me better than any team I've had in years. I've been doing this for a long time, but I still needed this container to make me send that text. Nobody graduates from this work. You are never too experienced for this work. I built this challenge on the activities of a producer who's 30 years in the business and very successful, who does this every single day. So, the fifth lie is, like, who do I think I am doing this? Like, this is This is the deepest lie. This is the one that's underneath all the others. Who am I to email this person? Who am I to email this casting director? Who am I to call that production company? Who am I to do this? They're going to look at my credits, they're going to laugh, they're going to I'm going to be annoying to them, I'm going to get blacklisted even. So, I'm going to say two things about this voice. Number one, everyone has it at some level. At some level, we all think that we're not good enough for a certain thing, right? All of us get nervous at some level before we start reaching out. That producer that I was telling you about cold called an A-list actor's company to try to attach him to one of her films. And she's like, I still get nervous before making certain calls or sending certain emails. The fear doesn't go away when you get successful. The successful people just stopped waiting for it to go away and they did it anyway. So she was like, don't be scared to reach out. That's the job. Clip that. And then the other thing I want to say is that this voice doesn't get quieter because you identified the beliefs and you've done the mindset work and blah blah. You can't journal it away, affirm it away. It only goes away after you do it and you realize, oh my god, I didn't die. Like Corey said, you know, you do it, you survive it and then it does get easier. But it gets easier through doing it. You know? Um Katie who did our last round shared this. She got a lunch on the calendar with someone who'd she'd been like nervous to contact for a long time and at the end of the challenge she was like, ah that that feeling of like, who do I think I am? That is fading away. Not because she fixed her mindset first and then reached out, but because she reached out first and then that mindset shift followed. So I hope that is helpful to hear. So let's look at all five of these together for a second. I don't have anyone to reach out to. I don't have time. I tried it and it didn't work. I'm past this stage in my career. I don't do this anymore. And the who do I think I am? So what do they all have in common? Every one of them stops the conversation before we have to take any risk, right? It sounds super respectable. And that is what makes them so effective, right? So, if any of these have been living in your head, tell me in the comments which which one. Let me know which one resonates for you the most. Um Okay. So, let me talk about the challenge. So, the Fearless 21 is designed to defeat every one of these five lies. I don't have anyone. We've got our prep period, right? You are going to build your target list of 20 to 50 people using our training so that you've got your list before the challenge starts. You don't have to worry about not having people. I don't have time. You do the Spark Tier, one move a day, like I said, 5 to 15 minutes, boom, you're done. I tried it and it didn't work. We've got our 21-day challenge. We're doing it together. You have a map of the four stages, so when that doubt starts to creep in, you know to expect it. You know what's going on. I'm too established. We talked about that. The basis of this challenge is follow up and reconnection, and if you're more established, you actually have more opportunity for that. So, you are you have an advantage. And the who do I think I am? You are about to accumulate 21 days of evidence of this. That you are worthy to be here, that you are part of this conversation, you are part of this industry. And we're doing it together. So, the next cohort starts October 1st. It's super cheap. You'll get my outreach playbook built on the principles that the producer taught us. You'll get real message templates. We have our target list builder. You will never not know who to reach out to and and not know what to say. So, we're doing it together. The earlier you enroll, the more time you have for prep. The link is in the description. It's fearless21.com. Super easy. 21 like in numbers. So, come on in. Collect your evidence. So, I'm going to open it up to questions. Um and while you're getting those together, here's what I want to leave you with. You are not, I guess, lagging in the career that you want because you're not talented. You are not invisible because of your credits or because of your age or because of where you live or because of your headshots. For most of the actors that I meet, the only cause of that is that the industry can't remember someone that never heard hears from. How are people supposed to know how talented you are? And the reason that no one knows is not because you're lazy or not willing to do the work. It's because all these little mindset things have taken hold and are telling us lies. Lies. So, now you know all five of those. Which means the next time one of them shows up and it probably will again, just for you like it just does just like it does for me, you can identify it, you can recognize it and you get to ask, "Is this real or is this just the fear talking?" Right? And it is if it is, you can move anyway. You can make the move anyway. You can make today's one move. And if you want to do 21 days of that with a map, with a coach, with a cohort of actors doing it alongside with you, alongside you, we start on October 1st. All right? So, the link is fearless21.com. You can grab it in my link in bio if you're watching this on Instagram and if you are on YouTube, it's in the description there. And I'm excited to do this with you. All right, I'll see you soon.