Latest / Lydia Nicole's Acting Smarter Now Podcast / Why Every Actor Needs SOPs to Land More Roles

Transcript

Why Every Actor Needs SOPs to Land More Roles · Lydia Nicole's Acting Smarter Now Podcast

• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I think is so important for actors when it comes to being an entrepreneur is one, you can't just see yourself as an actor or an actress.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: You have to see yourself as a business.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: You have to see your person, you have to see your social media presence, you have to see how you carry yourself, what you do on a daily basis.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: You have to operate as a business.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: But then also you have to participate in your own rescue.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: You can't wait around for, like you said, somebody to hand you things.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't work that way, right?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: We have to, we have to sit here and we have to.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: I know there's been many a night where my husband's not coming home from set until two o'clock in the morning just for an extra role.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: But guess what?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Those extra roles, they pile up, they they compound.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: But there are people out there, there are actors and actresses out there that I know they feel like I don't want an extra role.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: I want the role.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be mainstage, front and center with all the lines.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you got to start somewhere.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that starts with participating in your own rescue.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I love how you put it in your own rescue.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because I would say, as long as I've been in the business almost 50 years, no one has put it as good as that.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: That because we're waiting for somebody to rescue us.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: We don't take our career into our own hands.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: We don't do what we need to do and go, okay, well, if that door is an opening, let me make my own door.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I love what you said.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things you taught me a while ago, and it might have sounded simple, but it really has changed how I do business.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you taught me about SOP.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell the audience what SOP is?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so SOPs are standard operating procedures.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it is the recipe for how you do things.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, baking, nine times out of ten, most people they don't, when you just cook regular meals, you don't really always use a recipe unless it's something very specific that you want to make.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to baking, you know that by the end of this recipe, this is the product that I'm gonna have.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is the outcome I'm gonna have.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: The SOP or the standard operating procedure is the directions of how to get that result.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: How can actors use SOPs with social media to help boost them in their career?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like a script.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: A script has a structure, right?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you guys know exactly where you should be standing, at what point, who you should be talking to, which angle, which part of the stage you need to be exiting from, right?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Your career has the same exact thing.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Your career is a script.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: So SOP standard operating procedures help you to avoid burnout and guesswork when it comes to creating content, when it comes to auditioning, when it comes to filling out and putting in your comp cards, right?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: I know a little bit.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to putting in your comp cards, when it comes to doing all of the different things that you have to do on a regular basis to land the role, to land the gig, no matter how big, no matter how small.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, what would an SOP look like?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, for an actor, an SOP might look like having an audition prep checklist, right?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: So you have a specific checklist so you know exactly what you have to have in hand every single time you go to an audition.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: You better have that comp card in hand.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: You better be wearing a plain shirt, no graphics or anything of that nature, and some nice bottoms, whether it's dress or jeans or something, something form-fitting, whatever the case may be.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: You better make sure your hair is pulled up so they can see your face, right?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: So these are things that are normal when it comes to going to an audition.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe networking and a networking workflow.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: So every single month, maybe you should know exactly how many networking events that you're going to.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you should be saying to yourself, okay, when I go to these networking events, these are my goals for each networking event.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: These are things that you can put into place.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to your social media, don't just post what's, don't just post random stuff that you think your audience is going to want to see, right?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead and use Chat GPT, create a couple scripts, create a couple monologues, and go ahead and start posting those on a regular basis.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Have those those monologues, have those scripts.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a few actor friends, actresses, actress friends, get together and create a small skit together.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is how a lot of actors and actresses are getting their gigs down, right?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're being discovered because they're taking it into their own hands, they're creating this workflow and they don't miss a beat.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And they're using social media to elevate them.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of actors are missing out because they're not using social media as their publicist, as their marketer, as their network.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like um when when I think of Issa Ray doing Awkward Black Girl, she was not waiting.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: She created her own project, she put it up on YouTube, which doesn't cost anything.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And through that, she was able to get a deal for Insecure.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and she's no different or better than any actor out there.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: She just decided to rescue herself.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: To participate her or rescue.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: My acting smarter planner, which, as you're talking, I'm going, wait a minute, I have SOPs in my planner.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I give the actors an audition cheat sheet.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: What you need for I give them a place to write down all their information for each audition.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: So they know if they have to go to a callback, say two months later, and they forgot what they wore, how their makeup was, how their hair was.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: They can go refer back to the planner and go, oh yeah, I did that.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things with actors is they don't have SOPs, they're not consistent with um organizational stuff.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and you know, you're what you want to be creative.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be tied down and you don't realize that by being organized, it just makes you flow better.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Really quick, because something that um one of my mentors actually told me very recently, um, because I'm I'm sure you you can attest to this, Lydia.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: I changed my hair with the with the wind, right?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: She has seen me in so many hairstyles, so many hair colors.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so funny because when I was younger, when I was in my teens, I actually was a model actor, actress, and all the things.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it got away from me that you have to be aware of your brand, right?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so recently my mentor told me pick a hairstyle and pick a hair color and leave it there.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times, just I'm gonna speak for myself, a lot of times we get so caught up in being the creative and being the person that wants to be able to be free, free-spirited, free-minded, and everything else that we forget that the moment you change your hair, you're changing your look, you're changing your brand, you're changing who they see you as.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're changing every single 2.5 seconds, you don't even give potential directors or anybody cast casting directors, you don't give anybody a chance to really get to know you because by the time they they come back to your Instagram or your TikTok, you already done changed your hair like five times.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're really big on how to show up on social media, and I don't think a lot of actors really know how to do that in the proper way.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, showing up on social media, it really honestly starts with your daily habits and your systems.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: So your consistency off camera is what makes on camera work.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: People think that you just show up and it's just no right when actors become the people that they're supposed to be for their parts, it's work off camera that has to get done.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: It is work off camera that they have to practice, that they have to embody.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so the work that you do on your social media is the same exact thing, it's showing who you are and who you can be, who you can transform into, right?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so things like I said before, doing those skits, had taking the time to do a monologue.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: I love me a good Claire Huxtable monologue.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I will I will sit there and watch somebody do that, and I'll be like, oh, they did it just like Claire.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, they they embodied all of her.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care if it's a skit that's if it's a monologue that's already existent.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care if it's one that you go pull up off of Chat GPT and have and have an idea of what you want in your head to come to fruition.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people will get stuck in the I don't have time because a lot of actors, a lot of actresses, nine times out of ten, they're doing things like serving or bartending or something so that they have that flexibility to be able to be on set when need be, right?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so, or they're even in school a lot of times.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so you have to understand what your daily schedule looks like, right?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: You have to really sit down and say, these are the non-negotiables that I have to show up for every single day.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then through those non-negotiables, you'll start to see the holes of where you can utilize social media, where you can take time.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Don't feel like you have to record, record your videos today, edit them today, and post them today.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: No, record on Monday from one to three o'clock, and then on Tuesday, go ahead and edit when you're laying in bed scrolling anyway, right?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then on Wednesday, that's when you sit there and you schedule it out.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: If you try to do everything all at once, that's how you get bogged down, that's how you get burned out, and that's how you become undiscoverable.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: But if you take the time and you really set a schedule using things like Lydia's planner, right?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: You set a schedule, look, shameless plug.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Use things like the planner to set your schedule, set your times, make them non-negotiables because the things that are important for us, we're going to make time for them.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: If you say I don't have time, it's not that important then.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: You really don't want to be a big Hollywood star.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: You really don't want to be on the main screen.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: You're okay with being a Z-list actor, like you are okay with being at the bottom of the barrel.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: But if you really want to be an A-list star, an A-list actor, or even a B-list, it requires some work.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: It requires discipline.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna get motivated in the beginning, you're gonna be hyped, you're gonna be excited.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I got my schedule down, I'm doing this.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: The discipline kicks in when the motivation disappears.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: You're not always gonna be motivated.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Even as a full time entrepreneur, I'm not always motivated to sit here and talk to my clients.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: I could there are times when I'm just like, I really don't feel like picking up this phone.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: But the discipline keeps me in line with what my goals are.