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Sam Valentine
What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of the One Broke Actress podcast. An honest account of actor life, plus a few lessons I learned in the process. I am your host Sam Valentine and this is a specialty. It hits different episode and if you already know what that is, go ahead and skip forward 60 seconds and skip this intro. If not, this is the throwback episode, meaning it was previously recorded. So not all the content that is in it might be relevant to this exact moment. But let me tell you something I have noticed about all of these interviews and these conversations. Depending on the time of where you are at in your life and your career, man, it hits different. Also, please keep in mind I've grown and changed as a person and as a host, so I might not agree currently with all of the things I said in this episode. Please be forgiving of my growth as a person and be understanding of its still really vulnerable to put yourself out there, especially a former version of yourself. Our guests themselves also might have changed a lot in the process, so let's be equally loving to them. And my audio setup has gotten a hell of a lot better since I started this. So please take the content, please enjoy it to the best of your abilities and forgive anything that doesn't resonate in your ears as well as it could. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy this. It hits different episode. What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of the One Broke Actress podcast. An honest account of actor life, plus a few lessons I learn in the process. I am your host, Sam Valentine and today we are kicking it with a solo episode. I am recording this on Wednesday, October 4th. Right now our badass negotiating committee is back in in the negotiating room with the amptp. Maybe by the time this podcast airs at the end of this month, this is all in the past. Who knows what is to come of this? I know the negotiating committee has had their nose to the motherfucking grindstone and they are doing so much work on our behalf and I am so excited to see what happens next. So at least we're out of the writer strike. They're working, planting their stories, doing their thing, getting paid to be in real rooms and we are en route to get there. So hopefully by the time this podcast airs, that is all wrapped up and done with and this segment is useless. So regardless of where we are right now, I know you're listening to an actor podcast in your free time, which means you are an actor who is always concerned about what the next move is. If you are Someone who listens to this podcast regularly, and you are, because you click on that subscriber follow button A that's called a full circle moment. It means that you're someone who spends a lot of time thinking about this career. People don't just randomly listen to actor podcasts because they have five seconds in their car. They do it because they want to know everything they can possibly know. But oftentimes this is stressful. And when you are in a place that feels like you never know what the next move is and what the right thing is, it puts you in a very likely position to be preyed upon. Also, Audrey helps actors, has a great episode about scams, and she talks about how people prey upon actors. And I think it is so important to decide what is right for you and what isn't. But there are so many things to decide from. There's so many things to choose from. If we are still in strike right now, dear God, I hope we're out. Whether we're in it or not. You have to decide where to put your energy. And there are 10,000 billion things you can do to put your energy. Do you want to watch all of the latest programming? Do you want to do casting directions, director workshops? Is this the year you really focus on voiceover? And by year, I mean quarter of the last year and then into next year, whatever. Do you need more on camera training? Should you go back and read the classics to get inspired? Oh, maybe you've always wanted to do stunts and you saw a stunt class. And someone mentioned recently that there's a bunch of new shows that are on procedurals and things like that on the streaming networks and as well as on cable and that they're doing a lot of stunt work. And oh my God, I just saw that people are practicing their British accents like crazy. But also, we know due to the war in Ukraine and Russia, there's going to be a lot of content about this in the future. Does that mean that you should be doing some accent work on your Ukrainian accent or your Russian accent? Oh, my God, that feels like it's coming down the pipeline very fast, especially now that the writers are things. But what if you don't have an agent or a manager yet? Like, should you have a manager and an agent, or should you just right now be focusing on getting an agent of some kind so you can get to the next agency? Or do you need a manager to help you out with this? So this is where we are. There are so many things we can give our energy and time To. And today we are going to talk about the bird's eye view of your acting career and how to simplify the next step you take in this sea of Overwhelm. Because it is overwhelming. Everything I just said is probably an idea at least half of you have had. And if you didn't already, you have it now. There is so much to be offered to us and so many outlets for our creativity as well as places in the business that we could put ourselves. And I've said it before, and I'll say it again, but if you try to do everything, you're gonna do nothing. You cannot do all of these things well. You cannot do incredible stunt training while also getting really good at your Russian accent while also going back and reading the classics and watching all of the latest content. So not only are you up to date on pop culture, but you're up to date on the latest streaming shows. Oh, and also you need to be ready to pick up a script at a moment's notice. And also you probably need a job that pays for your lifestyle in the process. That is insane, you guys. This is clinically insane. There is no way we can do all of these things. And if we know that, if we know that there's no way we can do all of them, we have to decide what we are going to do. So we're swimming in the sea of Overwhelm today. We're going to take it slowly, step by step and see if we can take some of this away. Step one. One. Come with me on this journey. We just dropped you into the middle of the ocean of Overwhelm. You're floating in a life raft. We've been on strike. We've been through a pandemic. Some of you joined this actor world in between one of these things, and it just feels like it's so far away. What do you do? It is time. Do not hate me for this. You need to put all of these ideas that are in your head onto paper or a Word Doc or a Google Doc or a scribble pad on your iPad or your notion template or whatever this is. Step one, you need to see all of your thoughts in front of you so you can even decide what to do next. I'm reading this great book that so many of you in the productivity world are probably already familiar with. And it's David Allen Green's. I think that's his name. It's called Getting Things Done. And he has a very famous quote in that book that says your mind is for creating ideas, not holding onto them. I think I just butchered that. I think it's. Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. That's what it is. That's what it is. Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. If that is true, then every time you hit on one of these new ideas of what you should be doing, it means that it's added to the floaty list of things that occasionally pop up in your head. And I don't know about you, but they always pop up when I'm like jumping on the treadmill for my workout or in the car on the way home from returning something at Zara. Or it's inconvenient times when my brain goes, hey, you know what you could be doing right now? You could absolutely be taking a class. You know how to handle a handgun better. What? I'm at the Grove. Leave me alone. So we have to put these things all in a place. I'm not saying you have to do this all the time, although I would recommend having a place to brain dump constantly because it has saved me a lot of time and energy. But you need to put these ideas and thoughts and worries and concerns on one big sheet of paper in front of you. You can go buck wild and you can go to CVS or Rite Aid or your local Duane read and you get a goddamn poster board for all I care. But you have to put them out of your brain onto somewhere or else it's going to feel like you cannot prioritize. So that is our first ever step. We need to get all of that stuff out of the top of your head and into a paper in front of you. And as you're making the list, I need to caution you, do not edit, just brain dump the smallest thing. Like, I think I need to cut 3 inches of my hair. I don't care what it is. I think I need to whiten my teeth. Oh God. If only I had air conditioning in my self tape room, I wouldn't look so sweaty. That's so personal to me. We don't have air conditioning. The summer has been brutal. Even with the few tapes I've had, my commercial tapes, I look quite glowy. Anyway, all of that little stuff, I want you to put it down if it feels like the stupidest thing. You don't have to show this list to anyone. This is for you. You can like flush it down the toilet if you have a very good, not 1960s plumbing like I do. You can do whatever you want with this list when it's done. I Do not care. But you have to get it all out on paper. The smallest idea to the biggest idea. All of the things you think you should be doing. So it could say, I need to get a new agent. I need new headshots. I want to get a new light for my self tape room. I need some consistent readers for self tapes. I want to cut 2 inches off my hair. I want to listen to more actor podcasts. Write every small to big thought down in no order. Just like jam it out. For some of you, this is going to be a long list. Every thought that you've had when some teacher was like, you know what you should really do? You should do a scene from the Exorcist. Like what? There's so much stuff living in our brain that someone somewhere told us to do at one point. Our brain will circle back to it at the weirdest times. You know what? You. You don't have anything from a sitcom on your reel. There's no real sitcoms that film in wherever I live. Yeah, but it's just like a thing you should have. Okay, so that thought is now floating around in your brain. So all of the thoughts that are from you and from someone else are going on page. Here is an example of that thought. Let's say one of the things you wrote out is I need to find consistent readers for my self tapes and up level and ease my self taping strategies. Okay, great. We will stick with this example. We're going to come back to this in a moment. So that is one of the bajillion things on your list. Okay, Step one, check deep breath. Step one is done. Step two, now that you have this list of things, ideas, passions, stuff, here is the big step that is the basis of this podcast episode. Take out the trash. There are things on this list that are not for you or not for you right now. Maybe they were recommended by someone else. Maybe you observed them by some influencer on the Internet or podcast. Hi. Maybe they were told to you by your random aunt 14 years ago. Oh my God, you such a good voice. You should totally do cartoons, honey. You know what I mean? Like there's a lot of things on this list that aren't for you. The point is they are not yours to do or not yours to do right now. So this means if you feel as though you've barely started your acting career and one of the things on your list is get an agent, get a manager for you right now. I'd take out that trash. Sure, you can get one. Right? But Is that what we want to focus on right now when we're trying to build your skills and make you eligible for a good agent and manager? Have you been self submitting online? Right. There's so many other things that go into this that have nothing to do with that goal. That goal is maybe six months, a year down the line, but you have it on the piece of paper and that's what's important. So we are taking out the trash. I'm not saying these are bad ideas or bad investments of your time and money, but they may not be the best idea right now. Okay. And we will get to getting your perspective on this in a moment. But I know something just came up for a lot of you when I told you to take things off this list and it's motherfucking fomo. Career fomo. Oh my God, I'm missing out. What if I miss out? What if the big next job is because I would have had weapons training and I would have gotten it if I would have just prioritized weapons training. I promise you, if you start focusing things that are important to you and matter to you, there is no missing out. Mind blown. If we got rid of this idea completely. I strongly believe that everyone, everywhere would be much better off if we thought. There is no missed opportunities. There are only lessons learned. That only exists though, if you give yourself time and space to learn the motherfucking lessons. There are no missed opportunities. You are not missing out. If we can take that fear out of your zeitgeist, you then get to choose to live the life you want to live. The second I took this pressure off myself to speak really candidly, I started to really enjoy my day to day. Instead of thinking, oh no, like every people are auditioning and I'm not, or they have these special skills and I don't. Or my agent sent an email a couple days ago and it was like, can you do a headstand? I mean, I could do one for like a second if it was a print shoot. Sure, we can edit out the person holding my legs, but can I hold it up there for like five minutes? Now I could see that as I missed out on this opportunity or I could see that as, oh, interesting. It's good to know they're casting these type of roles. Do I want to utilize that as a priority for the future? No, not right now. And we move on that role, is it meant for me? Whatever that thing is? And you know what? I got an audition and then a callback for a different role in a Different project within two days. Not saying that that's going to happen, but I'm just saying that like one thing does not need to be done. There is no missing out. We just need to prioritize what is important right now out of your list, which is likely long and exhausting just to look at right now. We're going to narrow it down and we are going to take out the trash. So let's say on back to our idea of the self tape that you said you need to uplevel your self tapes, find consistent readers and get rid of any obstacles in the way. Okay, great. Can we take out some of that trash? Can we say do you really need new self tape lights right now or is the problem that you don't know how to put them up? Can we take out that trash of needing to buy more stuff? Because you have everything you need. You just need to figure out how to set it up. Which by the way, Put me on safe has a put me on self tape. Has a great class about learning to light yourself. Really big fan of them. I'll see if I can put it in the show notes. I think you can prioritize this smaller. So maybe instead of worrying about all of these things, let's take out that trash of needing to buy stuff. And instead of needing to buy consistent readers, maybe we make that smaller. I need two relatively consistent available people I can count on who can also count on me to be their audition readers. So what we just did is we took the trash out of that sentence, we took the trash out of those ideas and we narrowed it down a little more. Now we're going to take that into a much more minute level. As we move on to step three, I want you guys to know you can save this podcast and come back to it at any point in time. It's going to be here. You can come back to this. We can talk about more of this specifically. But listen to this whole thing first. If you were like, oh, I need to get a piece of paper. I need to like stop listening. Listen to the whole thing first and then go get your piece of paper later. Come back to this episode so we can prioritize things more. Because now comes the hard part. You take the remaining things that are left on this list and I would love if the remaining things was less than 10. I would love if it was three to five. Okay? If we're thinking use of your time, energy and money in between working your jobs, taking care of your family or your dependence, sweeping the floor occasionally, I Don't know. Los Angeles is so dirty. Every time I leave open a window, I have to dust. You have a life outside of this. We need to pretend like we actually are fully formed humans when we make these kinds of lists. Because I think the tendency is to want to be a different person in terms of our priorities. But you're still you. And if you're someone who really enjoys watching an episode of a new show at the end of the night and having dinner, you're not going to be a different person. When you have your acting priorities sorted out, you're still going to want to watch a show and eat dinner at the end of the day. So you cannot give up those things. So if we narrow this down with what you have available in terms of time, energy and money, let's say three to five things. Three to five things that you want to do and or need to do for your acting career that are not trash for you right now. And now we're going to prioritize them. Here are some examples of how I would prioritize these. These are in no particular order, but I do think they will help you get a grip. And one of them is going to kind of like reach out to you and say, this is more important for me. So you can prioritize by bandwidth. What do you actually have the time to do? You can prioritize by money. What can you afford? We are not going into debt in order to take fucking stunts class. Do not do this to yourself. Do not put that pressure on your career. And we can prioritize by excitement. Which of these things actually sounds exciting for you to work on? Note that I said exciting to work on, not achieve. It's exciting to get an agent. It's probably not exciting to email agents. Okay? So that's a different priority schedule. So if we are thinking about what you have time for, what you have the money for, and what you feel passionate about right now, you can kind of enter a ranking system with these things. If you're a pro con list person, if you're someone who needs a weighted list, you can give these things a category, one to five for each of them. And then the thing that is the heaviest in those categories, that's your priorities. Because everything we have left is important to you. We took out the trash. We don't need to get a brand new manager and also take this class and also buy a new wardrobe and also cut your hair. Because only one, maybe two of those things has been important. After you take out the trash, only the top should survive. So we are organizing them and prioritizing them by bandwidth, money and excitement. And yes, a lot of people will tell you to prioritize by bandwidth and money. Like, how much time and money do you have? Great. But also, I want you to enjoy being a motherfucking actor. I am over this like, I just have to do and push through mentality of like, no, you know what? I'm gonna give you a real tablespoon of advice right here. You're gonna be pushing through indefinitely. I know people on big sets, big Hollywood things, and you know what they do through their days, they enjoy it, but they also are at work and they're also pushing through. So in the process, in the journey, you should be able to enjoy parts of it. If you don't, I do not think you will survive. So equaling and getting all of these things that you think you need is not going to equal you instantly enjoying this process, instantly being happy, instantly having fun. So you got to make the fun along the way. So that is why it is important to me that you are excited about the things you're doing. Because there's a good chance a lot of these things, whatever's left on your actor priority list, on your next step list, is not something you're gonna do in a day. These are things that you're gonna work on for the next few months, maybe even years. So you should be excited about them. You should wanna get up in the morning and not every day. You know what? Podcasting is one of my favorite things to do in the world. I still had to convince myself to sit down in this chair, plug in this microphone, turn on this camera, close my windows, and sweat in this little box of a room today. And it's one of my favorite things in the world, but I still had to convince myself to do it. So, yes, not every day is going to be rainbows and butterflies and glitter, but it's still exciting and I'm still having a good time. Do you see what I'm saying? So if we can get you to look at things in an excited way and for the process, not just for the result, that is going to change what you do next. So bandwidth, money and excitement once you have this list. So we took out all the trash, we left that page behind. You flush it down your toilet. If you have great plumbing, you burned it, you threw it in the trash. Or maybe you wanted to keep the master list of ideas and add to it as you go and do little incremental taking out the trash where you Make a different list of what is left for you right now. That's also a great way to do this. So then you have your master list just like floating around. I don't know, I don't like loose paper. Not my thing. Once you have this list narrowed down to these three to five potential next steps and you've prioritized them by the bandwidth, money and excitement, I want you to take the top one to two things that floated to your list and you're going to break them down into real tangible steps that you can do on your own, not wait for or wish for. So if we are going back to our example of wanting to uplevel and ease your self tape experience, if you want to have consistent readers and make the process seamless, let's break that down. Having consistent readers means you need reliable people who are available with probably a 6 to 12 hour notice consistently, roughly. And you're probably going to need to be available for them. So my question is, where is your community? Yes, I run one. I run the membership, which is an online community and we have tons of people who find their readers in there on a daily basis because there's always somebody active. There's also other websites, there's also other communities. You have your acting class, maybe you have a significant other who can read with you. Whatever it is, let's break that down into steps. What does that need to look like to be consistent for you? Do you need to actually have a conversation with this person? Hey, I'm narrowing down my favorite readers and you are absolutely one of them. I would love if you were heavily in my rotation of readers and I would like to be in yours. There's a give and a take here. What can you make this good for them with? My husband just started getting commercial auditions, guys. He's been doing a time so I've been doing a lot of his tapes with him, all of his tapes with him, and half the time I end up editing them because it's so much faster for me to do them. I am happy to do that for him because he is always available to me. That is a consistent workthrough of this list. So now we have two to three people who you have brought into your circle who you're going to use consistently. Cool. Now you laid that out for them. Maybe you have a process, maybe you lay out a process of what it looks like to stalp tape with each other. Maybe you always email them your sides. Maybe you always check their calendar first. Maybe figure whatever that is for you to take any sort of work out of this for you. So this might be a bit of a brainstorm. Okay, so that's that process for that specific priority. Another piece of that was not buying new self tape equipment, but figuring out how to utilize what you already have. Love this for you. Does this mean you need to do some research? Does it mean you need to take a class? Does it mean you need to practice lighting yourself once a week for eight weeks? What does this mean to you? How is this the next step? We're going to break it down into small, tangible steps that you're in charge of. And then when the audition comes, there's less friction between you and it. A harder example for this is going to be those of you who decided you need reps. Got it? If that is your next step, that is your next step. I will not argue with it. But you have to now break that down into steps of things that you can do. So get agent is not a next step. You need to figure out what agents you want to target. You need to figure out where they are and how they accept submissions. Then we need to sort out your package. Do you see how this kind of snowballs into, like a gentle sequence of events of things for you to focus on? What we're doing here is taking this big list of things that seemed so esoteric and so random and so utterly uncommittable, and we're picking a few and we're breaking them down into smaller pieces. This is very similar to how I run my goal setting calls. You have to be in charge of these steps. The next tangible thing cannot be get an agent. In my opinion, the next tangible thing can be prep my package and get ready to submit to agents and submit to agents. Those are three separate projects you get to break down into tangible steps. This is putting your acting career in your hands. And our goal here is to remove the overwhelm, take you out of that sea of overwhelm, take you and plop you back on the motherfucking cruise ship. You know what I'm saying? I don't want you guys living on a life raft. I've seen a lot of movies and it looks horrible and you know, I love sunscreen. So if you guys want to come back to this podcast, bookmark it, save it, make sure you're following it and you're subscribed, please. And you can come back to this episode anytime you feel overwhelmed to review. Our steps are first, get all, all, all, all of the thoughts shoulds, coulds, wants have to's onto a paper, a document, a written thing, whatever it is. Step two is to take out the trash and step three is to prioritize, wait and break them down into tangible steps. This does not mean that after you listen to this podcast episode, your hopes and dreams are going to come true. This does not mean that because you broke these systems down into steps that your world's going to change and next year is going to be your year. You know, I hate that saying. I hate it. There's never your Every year is your year you're alive. Congratulations, it's your year. This is not the thing we're doing to achieve an exact result. This is the things we are consistently doing to calm ourselves in that sea of overwhelm, to bring us back to a point where we have control over our career and we can choose the next steps based on the life we're currently living, not on what someone else told us to do or what worked for someone else. Mostly this is something I wish someone would have told me 12 years ago. Ah, that was really, really fun for me to put together. I also want to thank the podcast before breakfast. It's a very short daily podcast I listen to sometimes, and they had an organizational episode about taking out the trash. And it really inspired me. If you think about it, when you have a room and it's dirty and you're overwhelmed and there's so much shit in it, the first thing you do is you take out the trash. The first thing you do is you pull out the trash and you get that out of there and then you can see what's left and what you need to do. And they did a. It's a great episode. I love that podcast. Anywho, that, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the end of today's podcast. If you have a specific question that you want help with in terms of this, in terms of your organization, in terms of your priority, there's a few things you can do. The easiest and simplest thing is to join the Patreon or the bonus podcasts on Apple or Spotify. Because they get bonus episodes with a Q and A segment I give directly to them based on their exact questions. So you can check that out wherever you're listening to this podcast. It is Patreon, like I said, or Apple Bonus podcasts. They get a podcast every other week. It is filled with goodies. A lot are kind of like this. I answer their specific questions as well. So check that out. If you don't want to spend any money right now, you can support this podcast, just like I said, by clicking that Follow or subscribe button right now for free. And if I made your commute, dog walk, house cleaning, walking around the neighborhood better today, would you be so kind as to drop a review of the podcast if you have a moment? And if you're feeling extra spicy, would you share this podcast to your social media and tag me one broke actress. It helps a lot of people find the podcast and it helps the audience grow, which, like I said, helps me have the ability to make more content for this podcast and helps me contribute to SAG aftra, which is thrilling. And we all love. We're all big union fans right now, right, guys? It's cool. It's cool to love your union. Should love it anyway, but it's great. Okay, I need to cut myself off. Thank you so much for tuning in today and enjoy taking out the trash. And I will talk to you next week. I will, I will put my heart on the line Give it all this time I will, I will put my heart on the line Nothing will stop me this time SA.