Next up in our series, Casting in the age of the cloud, is about being proactive.
When I was young, I liked to fish. I liked to bring a rod and bait to a lake or to the ocean and spend time trying to catch “a big one.”
One day, when I was young, my family went camping with some friends who fished professionally. I watched them in the evening as they lowered a really long line with hundreds of baited hooks into the water to leave overnight.
And the next day, it was like magic: they pulled the line back up, and I saw them pull in fish after fish after fish. A much larger, phenomenally larger return than the few fish I could catch with my rod and one baited line in an hour or two at the edge of a lake.
They had many hooks, and I had only one, so it was no surprise. But even if I were to fish with multiple fishing rods on my own, how much would I be able to catch in an hour? It still wouldn’t come close to the number of fish that they had brought in.
The key was that they put out their baited hooks expecting to leave them there for a long time, with no expectation of immediate return. They were well aware that they would see no fish until, at the very earliest, the next morning. Maybe even the afternoon. And when they harvested the next day — lots of fish. Much better than what I could expect with my simple short-term strategy, even with multiple fishing rods.
Now, despite the good harvest, many of those hooks came up empty. Not every hook brought in a winner. Not every opportunity bears fruit. But the key, the absolute key, was putting the hooks out there for a future return. Setting up today for tomorrow’s harvest.
This is a true story, and I like to think that the logic of it is simple enough for everyone to understand. Planting the seed for tomorrow’s benefits tends to bring larger results than only working toward immediate gratification.
The performing arts industry is largely a gig economy, so I tend to advise performing artists to run their careers like a startup business, instead of like an employee looking for a job. Gigging means that most performers do not land permanent jobs and stay on for 50 years, like our parents and our grandparents did with what used to be called “normal jobs.” That’s just not our world, generally.
What I mean by running your career like a startup business, is to get comfortable with the idea of investing. Whereas an employee will not work until they have a contract that guarantees a certain salary and conditions, an entrepreneur invests everything they’ve got — their time, their money, their effort — into something that may happen in the future. Might. And they do it many, many times, with no guarantees. Entrepreneurs understand that investment means risk. And risk means that they may lose. But it also means that in the future they may pull up the fishing line and see hundreds of fish.
And when they do pull up that entrepreneurial fishing line, many of those hooks will still come up empty. But the potential for pulling up opportunities is much, much greater than simply dropping your line in the water hoping to get that fish now: the short-term strategy, which is, unfortunately, where most performers put their effort, and have been for decades.
“I’ll wait for the audition notice to be posted and then submit myself for the job.”
Yes, you might catch that fish. Or, you might have lost before you even submitted, lost to others who had submitted their profiles to the producers, or the casting directors, or the production companies long before the audition notice in question had even been posted. Lost to others who, due to a proactive strategy, are already known to said producers, casting directors and companies.
And on the casting side, as a casting professional, which candidate would I choose for the job? The devil I know, or the devil I don’t know? What would you do in my shoes?
What I’m saying is this:
Don’t wait for stuff to happen. Don’t wait around for the next gig. Take advantage of opportunities that present themselves, but also consistently create an environment where opportunity is most likely to happen. I’ve written this before, and I’m writing it again.
Thomas Alva Edison said, “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.”
And David Allen, in his famous book, Getting Things Done, wrote, “If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it’s defined.” In other words, do it now.
Inactivity is the hard way to get a career going. A gateway to a sad spiral into Netflix binge-watching with a bag of chips and beer (even though I do like chips and beer), while waiting for the phone to ring.
This being said, there are two exceptions that can yield good results even when one is being inactive:
- Pure luck
- Politics
And these can happen, too. In most cases, neither one means that someone’s necessarily out to get you, and at the same time, neither one means that you’re necessarily great at what you do. Success and failure can sometimes be linked to either luck or politics and nothing else. Or both. And it can be unfair. Get used to it and move on.
Life is short, and careers are shorter; you won’t know just how short they are until you realize all the things you haven’t done, the projects you didn’t partake in, the places you didn’t see. The networks you weren’t a part of. All because it’s too much trouble to put in the effort right now; “I’ll just wait until a job is posted, and then I’ll put in the effort…”
But you could wait a lifetime.
I get it. Managing a career can be complex. So start with the basic, which is simple: go fishing like a professional, before the opportunity appears. Move like an entrepreneur, as opposed to an employee. Be proactive, be strategic, take control of your path instead of waiting for someone else to create a path for you.
Many of the opportunities you meet in the future are going to be the result of the baited lines you put out today. And don’t forget, opportunity often doesn’t look like how you imagined it. The smart ones are able to recognize opportunity when it appears, even when disguised — which is not uncommon.
To repeat myself, investment means that there are no guarantees, so be prepared to pull up some empty hooks. If you have invested intelligently though, a lot of those hooks may yield nice fish.
And don’t worry about those empty hooks. Yes, they represent lost time, lost energy and consequently lost money. Entrepreneurs have a term for empty hooks, a term that I’m sure you’ve probably heard of already.
What do they call them? They call them the cost of doing business.
By Rick Tjia of Dance Informa.
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