I was invited to talk about "marketing and branding for actors" tonight by my film acting coach, Van Brooks.

It was beyond generous of Van to invite me to chat to his students tonight, and I also got to sit in on their mock auditions and monologue reads.

I didn't "teach" anything (personal bias: "God teaches, man parrots"), but I basically ran through what I do for my personal branding/marketing campaign, from Email templates to thank you cards to postcards, to whatever.

Kind of an abbreviated version of the stuff I talked about in the Biz Directory.

Caveats in a nutshell:

1. Don't use marketing or the business as a replacement for honing your craft, or for getting to know people.
   
2. It's about building relationships, not just networking.
   
3. Do what works for you. I do what I do for marketing myself because I don't know how to do anything else; other actors will probably do something else. Yeah, it's business, but hopefully it's a little organic for you.
   
4. Freakin' treat it like a business! Know what your goals are for each week, month, year, 3-year, 5-year, whatever. I know if I'm doing OK on the biz front any given week or month, because I have specific goals. I know if I'm doing well, or if I'm sucking it up, and I know why (and if it's OK).
   

Anyway, Fun shtuff ...