Are you getting the amount of attention as a talent that you should? A dose of advice from Colleen Wainwright of The Communicatrix might do you good.
A brief lesson in the new golden rule and how it applies to the smart actor living in today's attention economy.
One question I get with reasonable regularity is "How do I get people to pay attention to my (BLANK)?" The (BLANK) in question used to be "stage play" (and plays are notoriously hard to get people to pay attention to), but a (BLANK) can now just as easily be "YouTube channel," "Facebook page" or even "anything I send them."
There's no easy answer for this. Everyone--civilians, included--is inundated with choices of things to consume. The networks compete with the Internet, the Internet competes with video games, they all compete with everything else we all have to do in our lives. Money and power are nice, fame gets you access, but attention is the most valuable resource of all. So how do you get a slice of that very valuable attention? By adhering to one simple principle:
Always be AWESOME.
First and foremost, you must excel at your core competency--i.e., you must be the most awesome actor/model you can be. Yes, you will get better and better with more and more experience. But at any given moment, you must be the most awesome actor you can be right now. This is cost-of-entry, or as I've called it, the all-things-being-equal rule.
You may get away with being a little less of a great actor than some other actor if you are exceptionally gifted in some other sought-after area, such as being extraordinary on the looks scale (either end of it, ugly or pretty) or playing crazy young/old for your age if you're a minor/senior, but don't make the mistake of relying on something that is evanescent and/or out of your control. Being off-the-charts good at calf-roping might get you work when Westerns are hot, but what about when they're not? Exactly.
Being an AWESOME evangelist
Even if you're the most stupendous actor working at the very, very top of their game, ultimately you can get tripped up if you aren't also the most awesome representative of yourself that you can be. That's right: it's not just up to your agent and manager and other minions to keep the word of your awesomeness out there; you've got to do it yourself by being awesome in every aspect of how you interact with your peers, your gatekeepers, your associates and your fans. (Especially your fans.)
We will talk about how to be AWESOME according to Colleen's guidelines in future blog posts. The first step in righting your "attention deficit," however, is how YOU act, how YOU are perceived, and how YOU treat others around you. Each time a talent gets lazy, doesn't turn on 100% of their potential, doesn't do their homework ahead of time, doesn't show up with the materials requested in good order, or drops the ball in any other fashion, the "awesome-ness" quotient drops. Maintaining "awesome-ness" is challenging enough, but rebuilding what has been damaged is hard labor and can leave the talent toiling to prove themselves for years to come. Be in control of making good choices . . . be awesome at every opportunity . . . and be the cream of the crop in the talent world!
Comments