The Best Way To Set Goals for Your Acting Career

You’ve been setting goals all wrong, and it’s totally not your fault. (Side note: We’re all guilty of this.)

And setting goals can be extremely exciting – but really frustrating when it comes to achieving them. Especially when it comes to setting goals for your acting career, where there’s no roadmap to follow.

I recently learned an entirely new way to set goals and let me tell you… it’s 🔥

We’ve been taught to set outcome-based goals. Meaning, that we’re focused on the end result. 

“I want to get a new manager.” 

“I want to book the job.” 

“I want that casting director to call me in from the workshop I attended.”

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The problem with outcome-based goals is:

1.) They’re largely out of our control (In all of the examples above the outcome depends on someone else saying YES to you).

2.) Research shows that if you focus solely on the thing that you want at the end and what your end goal is – you can actually start to feel really unmotivated and discouraged because you’re nowhere near it.

Instead of outcome-based goals….

We need to be setting PROCESS-based goals. 

Meaning, if you want to get a new manager, what’s the process you need to engage in to make that happen?

Just to spitball here, a process can look like this:

• Every day this week for 20 minutes I’m going to research a targeted shortlist of managers that I could be a good fit for
• Once I have that, I’ll spend 10 minutes a day perfecting my cover letter to get it ready to submit.
• I’m going to follow all of their companies on social media
• Once I have that, I’ll dedicate 20 minutes a day to update my resume and casting profiles so they represent me well
• I’ll start submitting my materials to representation (I have an excel tracker to keep this information organized so you know who you’ve reached out to, what their responses were, etc;)
• I’ll send follow-up emails in 7-10 days
• So on and so on…

Process-based goals are about breaking down your goal into the smallest, bite-sized chunks that are easy for you to achieve consistently. What’s something you can do every single day, even if it’s only for 10 minutes to work towards your goal?

And I know 10 minutes doesn’t sound like a lot, but the reason I say 10 minutes is because everyone has 10 minutes they can give. Not everyone has an hour.

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Why Process-Based Goals Work… ⚡️

Process-based goals allow you to create a bridge from where you are now and where you want to go. Consistency is what breeds results and gets you closer to the outcome you desire, and you’ll probably gain some pretty nifty benefits along the way.

The question to ask is, “What’s something that I can take action towards regularly and will help me reach my outcome-based goal, but is in my control?”

You are in control of the plan you put in place, the process you engage in, and the strategy you create.The outcome is WHAT you want, the process is HOW you make that happen.

You can’t control an agent signing you. But you can control your marketing materials being prepared, having an outreach strategy, a great cover letter, and questions to ask if you do get the meeting.You can’t control booking a job, but you can control how prepared you were for the audition. You can control the process you engage in when that audition email hits your inbox.Even if your goal is that you want to build more confidence – what’s a process you can consistently engage in that no one can take away from you? How can you build internal confidence that isn’t dependent on someone choosing you?

^^^This s exactly how I work with my clients. We know where they want to go and what the outcome they’re desiring is. We break the goal down into a series of small steps and create a process that we engage in consistently and build upon, pivoting when necessary. We strategize and focus on what we can control and throw all of our effort into the steps we KNOW we can take. Steps that are actively moving us towards the outcome we want, but do not depend on someone saying yes to us.

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If you’ve been working towards your goals and are banging your head against a wall because you’re exhausted, confused, and don’t know what actions to take next…. or maybe you’re not off the deep end yet but you want some professional support and guidance to build a process that’s geared towards your goals but you’re excited about, book a free consultation with me. Even if we’ve worked together before, or you’re not in a position to financially work together just yet – I always love to help performers or their parents in any way I can 🧡