127 | I Pretended to be a Stuck Actor and Asked AI for Help

0:00Okay, I pretended to be a stuck actor and I asked Chachi T.P. for career advice. 20 minutes later, it used the exact word I built my entire business around. By the end of this video, you are going to know why most career advice for actors never really works. What actually happens when you get brutally specific about what's not working. And you're going to have a prompt that you can steal and use tonight to help you figure it all out. I have coached hundreds of actors all around the world on how to get out of the waiting game and begin creating ways to build their own access and visibility so that they can get better auditions and get better roles. I had to figure this out the hard way when I relaunched my acting career from Munich, Germany when I was 47 years old. I've gone on to work with studios like Netflix, A24 and a hallmark just to name a few. And I only say that to say that if I can do it, you can do it.

1:00Because now I also run a program for actors called The Curator Academy, which is going to become very relevant to this story in about five minutes. But before we get into it, you might find it really useful to try the actor career DNA decoder to help you figure out why you're not yet getting invited to audition for the roles that you know you're right for. It's 100% free and the link is in the description. All right, let's get into it. So I was testing a new prompt for the Side Door Challenge and I thought, hmm, let me see what happens if I log into chat GTP in an anonymous browser and pretend to be a stuck actor. So that's what I did. Here's the prompt I used. But let me also say it for those of you who may be listening. I'm an actor targeting your future. I need to be known for your reputation. Right now, my biggest gap is whatever your gap is. Generate 10 workshop or event concepts that would help me fill this gap, attract other serious actors with similar goals and be something that will help me close that gap.

2:08Yeah, go try it. Pause right now, seriously. Copy that prompt, fill in your blanks and come back. Leave a comment below about what happened because I'll be very interested to hear. Do we? Minutes later. Okay, you're back. All right, I filled in my version of these blanks and hit enter. Here's what happened. It actually came back with some pretty great concepts. In fact, seven of the ten would definitely help to fix the challenges the prompt laid out. And they would have made a real difference in the gap that I had described. There wasn't one boring or generic suggestion like, you know, take a scene study class or another Meisner workshop. And if I saw these advertised, I would definitely check them out. They were specific to the kind of work I said I wanted would have helped me build the reputation that I named, but then it went even further.

3:11It said that there's a psychological shift that happens when you do this. You go from, I hope to be chosen to, I create spaces worth being invited into. Oh, man, that is everything that I teach in a nutshell. And then it laid out two paths, the one that we all know, audition, hope to get cast, rinse and repeat. But then there's another one, curate spaces, attract collaborators, and projects and referrals just emerge. It said the actors who do this become known as the person who brings great actors together, the person who has good taste, the person who builds interesting creative rooms. And that is half of what's fantastic about it, but it's not even the whole thing. But at this point, I'm like, okay, wait a minute, hold up, hold up here, Nelly. And I type, I find it interesting that you use the word curate.

4:15And it comes back with, good catch. I chose that word very intentionally. So I told it. I said, well, my name is Ann, and I run something called the Curator Academy, which teaches actors how to do exactly this. And it goes, that makes your reaction make a lot more sense. Yeah. Yeah, does. Now, before you think that this video is all about how smart AI is, it's not. Stay with me. Here's what actually happened in that conversation. The reason chat GPT got there wasn't because it's some kind of oracle. It got there because I asked it a very specific question. I didn't type, how do I get more auditions? I didn't say I need help with my acting career. I told it exactly what kind of work I wanted, exactly what reputation I was trying to build, and exactly which gap was in my way. When you lay the problem out that specifically, the answer starts to feel kind of obvious, even to a chatbot.

5:21And that's the part I kept coming back to, because I've been coaching actors on their careers for years now. And the conversation almost always starts in the same place. I'm not getting enough auditions. I can't get an agent. I'm not getting seen for the right auditions. And those things are all real, and they all suck. But they are not the problem. They are the symptom. It's like telling somebody, my car won't go. When the actual issue is you're out of gas, completely different fix depending on what's actually going on under the hood or in the gas tank as it were. And most actors are in that same spot. And it's not because they're not paying attention, but because my career isn't working doesn't actually tell you anything useful about how to fix it. Getting specific isn't just helpful. It's a whole dang thing. And as actors, we know that better than anyone.

6:25Think about a generic choice versus a specific choice when you're acting, which one gives you a better connection to the other actors in the audience. Obviously, the more specific it is, the more effective it is. And the same goes for figuring out what isn't working in your acting career. And I coach actors, the first thing we do is figure out what's actually keeping them from the level that they want to be at. And then we fix it. Step by step. Because if your real gap is connections, but you spend a year working on your skills, you will be a better actor for sure. But who's going to know? No one. And that's the problem. And if your real gap is industry proof, in other words, your materials, but you keep trying to network harder, you're just going to be spinning in circles, hoping that someone is going to magically spot your potential or infer your talent from your less than stellar materials.

7:25That front door, where 1.3 million actors are already waiting, that's a fact. 1.3 million actors and actors access. Let's skip that line. It's time to build your side door. And if you went and tried that prompt and you weren't sure what to write in those blanks, that's exactly what the actor career DNA to Coder is for. It's going to make all of that crystal clear. It's a free conversation that helps you get specific about what's actually going on in your career. The link is in the description. And if you want to go deeper on what it actually looks like to build your own door into the rooms that matter, then watch this video next. Until next time, you all stay your bold and beautiful self. Bye bye.