It’s rewarding to mark milestones along my acting feelancer path, from my first audition at a major casting agency to my first VO and on-camera bookings to my first national TV commercial.
This week: my first time auditioning at all three of Chicago’s major casting agencies…one Tuesday, one Wednesday and one Thursday.
Another milestone is that for the first time I’ve been cast in five on-camera projects at once, from a sitcom pilot to a TV reporter in an indie feature, two web series and a short film. And I’m waiting for two corporate VO scripts.
As an entrepreneur, business metrics are important. So I’m surprised when I hear that other actors don’t keep track of things, such as how many auditions they average per week, where the auditions are and for what client and product. Some don’t even keep a list of all of their bookings. Some audio book actors know how much they earned for the entire book, but they don’t calculate their hourly rate. Five thousand may sound like a lot, but perhaps isn’t so great if your target hourly rate is say, $50, and the finished hours took 200 hours to produce, which is only $25/hour.
Increased revenue is of course one way to tell if your business is growing, but I also want to know if I’m auditioning more often and for what I consider to be better clients and better projects, and also for different production companies and/or ad agencies.
Consider keeping a chart of your stats and referring to it at least monthly. Then you’ll be able to see where you’ve been and could have even more milestones to note.
