I’ve honestly never thought about what it would be like to actually be repped and still having to do this. That was until I talked to a friend of mine over this past weekend.

My lovely actor friend is currently repped by Innovative Artists… about two tiers above (at least) from where she is, according to her. To every other un-repped actor, this sounds amazing. She’s a fairly recent graduate (a bit over a year out of school) and got signed by an amazing agent. Well when talking to her, I found out that everything isn’t always what it seems.

As explained to me, her problem is that she always gets sent out for things way above than what she can handle (in her opinion). (From my understanding, I thought that was a good thing because agencies can aid in bringing you to a tier above.) So she is constantly going out for things that she feels she’s not ready for and is against her type.

“How could this possibly be a problem?” I started asking myself as she was talking. Well turns out, when you go in for things (or pretty much do anything) in which you feel unready, not properly prepped for, your confidence will not be there and you won’t do as well as you really could have.

She also has a manager, so the things that she has booked have come through him (co-star level). When she asked me for advice, I honestly didn’t know what to tell her other than having a sit-down with her agents but I told her to really map out what she wanted to say because I know it’s drop season and telling your agent in not so many words that “I’m not ready for you guys” doesn’t really get you far with said agent.

I also told her to continue taking more classes which should help, but really, I just didn’t know what to tell her. (Earlier I had told her about your methods of targeting and maybe she should start that process but I wasn’t sure how that helps once you’re in the situation since it helps mostly before you get in a situation like this.)

So imagine my surprise when I woke up to your lovely email GOLD about rep ranking (which I quickly forwarded to her). I think the sentence that hit home the most for me was:

Remember, sometimes we get so caught up in the whole, “I’ve gotta have an agent” way of thinking that we forget that there are some teams we’d be better off without.

That so used to be me (and if I’m being really honest with myself, that was probably me even a few months ago — I just wanted it too bad which is NEVER good). So thank you, Bonnie! I’m going to go through my list of target agencies and do some rep ranking myself so I don’t find myself in a similar situation!

This advice was truly ” The Sauce that is Awesome.”