One of the easiest, yet most often dismissed ways to cultivate a vibrant artistic community is simply to acknowledge and celebrate the creative work of our peers. And yet so many creatives I know practically refuse to tell someone they enjoyed their work if it didn't meet their lofty standards of excellence.

It's no secret that the entertainment industry is a wild ride, and the past couple of years have taken things to a whole new level. With the pandemic wreaking havoc on our industry and our mental health, it can feel like we're constantly walking a tightrope without a safety net.

But fear not, my friends—there are strategies you can use to stay grounded and sane in the face of all this uncertainty.

We've all been there—feeling the frustration of seeing our most rivaled nepo babies in the entertainment industry succeed and getting all the juicy roles. But here's the thing: all this bitching and moaning isn't getting us anywhere. The reality is, we need to come to terms with a very simple truth about the world: people like to work with those they trust. And that's why nepotism exists, and why 'nepo babies' have had some level of success. If we want to succeed in this industry, we need to focus on building our own trusted name and establishing our own credibility—famous parents or not.

If we don’t start saving now, we may find ourselves in a difficult position in our later years, when we feel like we "have to work" rather than choosing to work…That’s why it’s important to start saving as early as possible so that we can have the retirement we want and deserve.

Learning to market yourself is a key step in becoming a career actor. Getting your personal brand out into the world will take your acting career to the next level.

Want to self-produce your creative vision, but don't know where to get the funds? We've outlined step by step how to find financial resources for actors.

Like actual entrepreneurs, artists face the challenge of selling their product to a valued consumer. (If you’re already cringing at the word “consumer,” this blog post is for you.) Unlike actual entrepreneurs, however, artist entrepreneurs have to sell their product (ditto cringing on “product”) without appearing overly salesy, pushy, or corporate.

We’re under constant pressure to create new work while promoting and maintaining current projects—all while juggling multiple auditions, callbacks and rehearsals / shooting at the same time. And let's not forget the social media maintenance that’s essentially required of anyone trying to make a name for themselves in this industry. What about your survival jobs or side hustle to sustain yourself in between gigs? With so many demands on our time, it's no wonder so many of us are feeling too overwhelmed and burnt out to hit peak creativity. Use this technique to up your productivity game and get more done.

iI you still really need an excuse to reach out to your network, just look at your calendar—the holidays are around the corner! And there truly is no better time of year than this one to catch up on all the community cultivating you’ve anxiously postponed.

No matter where you end up in the acting and entertainment industry, it's always important to remember the value of building long-lasting relationships. Whether you're walking into an audition room, rehearsal environment, live set, fancy premiere, or dinner party, you never know who you might meet and how that potential relationship could change the course of your entire life and career.

Less established creative professionals without the benefit of name recognition risk throwing thousands of dollars into content creation, press releases, and branded websites only to have it buried several pages deep in Google’s search results. If you’re generating all of this content but not giving it the SEO treatment, you’re squandering an opportunity before it can even materialize.

There is no doubt that some artists move from obscure to celebrated in a matter of weeks, but it’s not a future most of us will take up. And for those who do, it usually comes with more pain and disappointment than the glamor of overnight success initially promises.

One reason so many creative entrepreneurs fail to break through is not a lack of passion, but a lack of well-defined consequences and accountability measures. Instead of sheer will, which is bound to prove unsatisfactory as a consistent resource, artists need to develop a steady work habit built on routine, incentives, goals, and consequences.

There’s no shortage of acting coaches who claim to provide their clients with cutting-edge industry knowledge—and a lot of it—as part of their value proposition. But knowledge today, with the proliferation of social channels and cheap digital publishing, is easier to come by than ever before.

Now that’s not to say industry tips aren’t useful at all. They certainly can be if distilled to their essence and made as actionable as possible. If you feel like you’re drowning in a deluge of hot tips, best practices, and insider intel, let me make your life easier and give you the spark notes: The only thing you need is other people.

Our hustle culture teaches us that success is measured by how many tasks we check off our to-do list or how many goals we can reach in a given week or month. But what happens when we don’t hit one of those goals? It’s easy to fall off the work wagon, even after a solid streak of success. After all, life happens: Weddings, sickness, moments of inspiration followed by moments of anything but. Auditions, rehearsals, and new career opportunities all have the power to veer us away from our immediate plans and—often rightfully—shift our attention to new and often unexpected priorities. We need a different and more reliable framework for consistent and sustainable motivation. This is where the power of simple directionality comes in.

The proverbial wisdom tells us that debt in all its forms is an evil that must be avoided. And if for some reason we can’t avoid it, it should be eliminated as quickly as possible. We certainly agree that carrying burdensome debt is not a good thing for your business or mental health, but sometimes borrowing capital is a necessary and even helpful tool to jumpstart our business in the very beginning.

We all know making our own work is essential as actors, but limiting ourselves to one self-produced project at a time deprives us of so many of the amazing benefits that come from being one’s own boss in the first place. Now you are probably asking, “How, Joshua? How can we possibly add even more to our plates? We can’t all be the next Shonda Rhimes like you are.”

OK, so maybe I took some liberties with the Shonda comparison, but the part about you asking me “how?” is almost certainly accurate. And, so, I will tell you how.

Let’s first dispel the myth that as an up-and-coming artist you have no business selling branded merchandise of your own. Just about every business—and don't forget, you are a business—proudly cultivates its brand through memorable, physical keepsakes. Whether you’re Elizabeth Warren selling “Nevertheless, She Persisted!” mugs or the real estate broker whose face has been frozen as a magnet on your refrigerator for years, merchandise is yet another way for a brand to make a personal connection with audiences and to ensure the experience is memorable and top-of-mind.

Like a series of giant waves, our industry can pull us in directions we don't always see coming. Sometimes we think we can brace for it, telling ourselves we've got everything under control, but the tide proves too strong to resist.⁠ So what's the solution to these ever-shifting objectives? To not resist, to accept the undulating waves of priorities that will threaten—and often succeed—to throw us off our game. ⁠

In my 10 years in this industry, I have learned (the very hard way) to treat what I do as a profession, not as some nebulous or mystical calling that I must abandon the moment inspiration runs dry. And rather than discouraging me, this realization that I am running a money-making creative enterprise, with good days and bad, has only made me work harder.

When driven by this scarcity mindset, it’s easy to forget an important thing: Your reps are representing you. But once again, as actors, we're held to a different standard than our peers in other industries. Job interviews in the corporate world, for instance, have long been described as two-way streets: The employer seeks to determine if you're a good fit for the company, and you're sizing up the employer to suss out if they're someone you want to spend years working for. The proceedings are understood to be mutual, and working with talent reps should be no different.

if you’re an actor I know you’ve heard (or perhaps partaken in) the bemoaning of the truest observation about the entertainment industry: it’s about who you know. Oftentimes when this is said it carries the injustice and despair of a NATO human-rights violation.

Forget about all those expensive courses, activating frameworks, inspirational bootcamps, and acting seminars. As somebody who offers many of these resources, I’m here to say there’s no such thing as a silver bullet to make your acting life easy. There’s really only one thing you need to do in order to become a working actor.

One paradox that still stumps many artists I know, one that’s especially relevant to their regular working lives, is structure versus creativity. These artists—the same ones who are otherwise perfectly capable of performing with nuance and subtlety—live on either extreme when it comes to balancing rules, timetables, and structure with freedom, expression, and creativity. It’s one or the other, many of them tell themselves.

What RuPaul knows so well—and what we can learn from him—is artists must show us the real you first, and then introduce us to your range, your span, your wide spectrum of characterization.

Gig work allegedly provides an artist with the ultimate flexibility required to do what they really love. But we’re much more interested in the flip side of that conversation, an angle we don’t hear that much about: the very real downsides and dangers of gig work.

You’re already taking a big risk by producing an artistic venture, and maybe playing with more unknowns in the form of new collaborators, you’ll seek comfort and safety by surrounding yourself with familiar collaborators.

We’re always dumbfounded when scrolling through social media and I see a post like this from a former colleague: “Hire me! Lord - I’ve been without a gig for 8 months. #desperate'“

The truth is, very few of us have the time, resources, or ingenuity to post something new about ourselves every week—much less every single day. And yet, we know that a thriving creative career demands a well-oiled content machine—one that keeps our narratives fresh and visible to potential colleagues, partners, and bosses. So how do we iron out this paradox?