The Importance Of Listening to Advice You Might Not Want To Hear (Part Two)
In Part One, I shared the importance of having a willingness to listen to advice you don’t want to hear. That article can be found here:
In Part Two, I’ll share some of the qualifications necessary to give that advice. Quality advice comes from quality advisors. It’s imperative to use critical thinking when deciding who to take advice from. Here are a few things to keep in consideration:
Qualifications for Educating and Advising Others
Anyone can become a coach, teacher or mentor just by declaring they are one or by adding the right words to their social media bio. There is nothing stopping them from doing this. But are they qualified to do any of these things? Look at their background and experience. How long have they been advising others? Do they have accreditations or ties to institutions?
Agencies are licensed by the state (and have legal and ethical obligations on what advice they can and cannot give to actors). Acting coaches and teachers do not have similar requirements, so what are their incentives? And how should you evaluate their credibility?.
The Cost
There are many great acting coaches and teachers out there. There are also people who claim to be one of those things because they need a side hustle. When seeking advice from someone who is paid, it should come as no surprise that you get what you pay for. Oftentimes, people will seek out photographers or coaches that are the cheaper option. And while they may be qualified to assist and guide you to a certain extent, those that are most qualified usually come at a higher price. If you spend 25 dollars coaching with a friend, that friend is going to give you 25 dollar advice. Same with headshots. If you want quality headshots, you’re going to have to pay a quality rate. I’m not unaware of how expensive launching an acting career can be; these are all investments that you hope to recoup.
The Level At Which They’re Advising
Would you pick a driving instructor who has never sat behind the wheel of a car? What about learning to paint from a graphic designer who has never touched a paintbrush?
Why would you hire an acting coach for a guest star role audition from a fellow actor who has never booked a guest star before? Or a coach who has never coached someone to or at the level that you aspire to be at? Is it possible that they can overcome the odds and get you to be the first actor they ever coached to book a guest star? Sure! But what happens when you achieve that? Everything beyond that booking in your career is uncharted advising territory for them.
Finding advisors who have experience doing what you want to be doing is only going to enhance the likelihood that you can achieve that. If your agency has never booked a series regular before, and you want to be a series regular, do you think they are going to have the advice and skillset to get you where you want to go?
Motives
When you are paying someone for their expertise, there are a few things to consider when it comes to their advice.
If you are putting money in someone’s pocket, are they incentivized to make you better OR keep finding ways to get paid by you? When working with a coach for a specific audition, they want you to do well so that you keep using them to coach you on every audition. There is a mutually beneficial aspect to this relationship.
This is exactly why I would not recommend hiring a career coach or life coach to help you in your acting career. Their incentives are not to improve your career. Oftentimes, career coaches do the exact same jobs as agents for a fee. Their incentives are purely financial. They want you to keep coming back for more and more advice. Your agent’s incentives are that they want you to succeed because they don’t make money unless you make money. And since their areas of advice overlap, sometimes their advice may contradict one another causing an uncomfortable situation for the actor. To my knowledge, I’ve never had a client become successful by hiring a life coach or guru, but I have seen many cases where the advice given has actively worked against an actor’s career. If someone tells you their guidance in life can “aspirationally” change your career trajectory or that they are a “business strategist” that can “guarantee results,” I would implore you to light your money on fire instead to save yourself some time.
The Pros/Cons of Reaching out to Peers
Fellow actors are one of the most accessible sources of advice. These peers might also be your friends. While these are people that can often provide encouragement in your career, peers are, unfortunately, some of the most unreliable people to receive advice from for a number of reasons.
First, every career path is different. There is no yellow brick road that takes everyone directly to Oz. You must find your own path and that path is going to be different from any peer. That doesn’t mean they don’t have nuggets of advice to help you along the way, but at a certain point, their advice will not be applicable to your path. It’s important to remember that career paths take on incredibly different timelines. The people who became famous right out of college might not sustain that fame. And someone who will be nominated for an Emmy in five years time is probably not a household name at the moment. When you seek peer advice, it often leads to competition and that’s just not healthy (I’ll come back to this shortly).
Second, most actors giving advice do not have insight into multiple career paths. They just have the information/advice that has worked for them which is self serving. This advice may be helpful for them, but it might not be the best advice for you. Teachers (see * below), coaches and agents have seen hundreds of actors’ careers blossom and fail. They can identify certain trends or common beliefs, but then must tailor that advice to each individual client. Having advised thousands of actors over my career, I have learned how to individualize my advice in two ways: what I’m presenting to the client and how I’m presenting it to the client. Every client will have a slightly different piece of advice, but I have also learned how to present the advice in a way that will be best received based on different personality types/work ethics. You want advice that is individualized for you and not others. So if an actor says “well my agent told me this,” it’s because that advice was intended for that particular actor. I don’t give advice to a client thinking, “how will this sound to someone else that they will pass this info on to?”
*One caveat on teachers: teachers can be incredibly helpful in guiding actors, but a lot do not have real world experience outside of the classroom. Some do, but many teachers will give advice that works best in an educational and not in a business setting.
Third, sometimes peer advice leads to competition, especially if the actor you are seeking advice from is of a similar type/status in the industry. While sometimes unintentional, I’ve seen peers give misleading or inaccurate advice to peers as a way to get into their head or cause a problem. Where I see this happen the most is in contract negotiations and audition opportunities. I’ve heard of peers telling clients that they were auditioning for things they weren’t or making a salary that was not accurate. While intel is important and sharing information can be helpful at times, it’s also important to remember that the information is not always accurate. There are a few actors that I’m personally aware of who always inflate how much money they are making on a project as a way to stir up drama or make others feel inferior to them to boost their own ego. When I inquire as to if the information is true, it is almost always false. So just remember that peers can have ulterior motives.
The Bottom Line
Seeking advice is imperative in your career. Seeking quality advice is often hard to do. It is important to do the necessary vetting and find advisors who have the experience you are looking to acquire and are the appropriate people to give it. Anyone who is giving you advice that directly lines up with your own thoughts/perceptions is not worth the money because they add nothing that you don’t already know. It’s ok to be challenged. It’s ok to receive advice that pushes you. This is how you grow. Trying something new can be dangerous, but you won’t actually know if it’s truly dangerous until you’ve tried it. As the saying goes in the book, The Anxious Generation, by Jonathan Haidt, “A worm can look scary, but you don’t know worms aren’t dangerous until you touch one.” So when an agent or qualified mentor tells you to touch a worm, expand your safe spaces and grow by taking advice that might seem scary. The outcome–or even just the growth throughout the process–will probably be tremendous.
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