I was sharing one of my favorite stories about timing with the current students of the SMFA Seminar and was asked whether I had ever written this story into a column. I hadn’t (outright)… until today. Chalk it up to timing. Heh heh.
There’s this actor I know who came to Los Angeles with a really fantastic connection. It was a friend of the family or an alumni referral or something pretty tight, and it was one of the top agents at one of The Big Ten agencies.
This was no Hero of the Moment situation. This was truly an opportunity for this young actor, because the call had been made to this top agent at this top agency, and all that was left was the scheduling of the meeting.
But wait. What did this actor stand to gain from this meeting? He had just moved to Los Angeles. He had no network costars on his resumé. He wasn’t yet a member of the actors’ unions. Certainly, he was well on his way to a fulfilling and profitable acting career, but he was at the beginning of his journey (a journey we all hope will span decades).
Was this a check he needed to cash, ASAP? Or was this more of a savings bond he should keep in the bank until the highest-yield payout was possible, in cashing it?
Of course, we all know the answer is that this relationship would be better nurtured now and exploited (not in the negative sense, of course) in the future, but as you can imagine, an actor with an opportunity to meet someone at the top tier of this industry may be too wooed by the “what ifs” of it all and cash that check TODAY, wasting the true opportunity.
Well, this actor is one of those smart, business-savvy, ninja actors I love so much, and here’s what he did: He replied to the email in which the scheduling was happening (with one of the agent’s assistants CC’d, of course) and commented that — while he would love the opportunity to sit across from the power agent, pick his brain, benefit from decades of his industry experiences, and garner advice — there would likely be a time down the line, when the actor had been in town for more than a few months, when a meeting would be not just “one way” in nature.
The agent’s assistant encouraged the actor to go ahead and take the meeting now, which the actor did, but he felt very good having laid the groundwork for the long haul. And sure enough, as he sat across from the agent and was asked the question of many actors’ dreams: “What can I do to help you, at this point?” the savvy actor said he’d like to see this as the start to a relationship during which he would be welcomed to check in with the agent, “because I’ll want to be on your roster when I’m past the guest-star stage of my career.”
Ninja.
The agent, of course, was impressed with not only this actor’s honesty, but his awareness of what this industry is truly like and what the value of favors may be, based on where you are, tier-wise. And years later, he signed the actor and helped him with the tier-jump he was then poised to make.
When an opportunity presents itself, don’t leap to take that big meeting too soon. First, do your research, understand where you currently are and where the power players you may encounter are, and map out where those trajectories may logically meet, on a grid. If that’s looking like something that will happen within a year, easily, go right ahead. The timing is pretty dang good. But if that intersection may be more like a few years away, consider discussing the timing with the person who is at that higher tier, because doing so may reveal you to be the kind of professional with whom a meeting should take place sooner than was organically gonna happen.
Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!
Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/001440.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.