Are You Sacrificing For Success?

While coming back from Raleigh Studios where I had a callback for a film on a Sunday, it occurred to me how much I love to work on a set and how much through the years I have sacrificed for the love of my art. On this one, I sacrificed my entire weekend to study for the original audition on Saturday during the second half of Friday and got the callback on Saturday night - which led to studying all day on Sunday until the call.

Most of you know that my weekdays are very long and I that cherish my weekends. So why use up a precious weekend? Well, when all is said and done, I really am like you... an actor. And, I love to work. I believe that that is both a blessing and a curse. I have been "going at" this beast for 40+ Films and 30+ Television shows since I was a kid. I can also say that I would have been so much further along if I had said "no" to my gut feelings, made stronger choices about my life and sacrificed more when I started.

I must ask you, how many of you truly sacrifice your lives when an opportunity presents itself in order to work? We all know that this is perhaps the most inconvenient career known to man. Auditions and callbacks oftentimes come at the most inopportune time. How many of you rearrange your schedule to allow the time necessary to study and book a job? How much do you really want it? How many opportunities have passed you by when you didn't do the work? Do you really think that there are endless amounts of opportunities out there? What about the auditions that you thought were a waste of your time and then it turned out that that the Producer was extremely established and could possibly determine your fate or think of you in another role on their next project? Every industry professional that you meet is like opening another account. What about practicing on people out there so that when the big audition does come your way, you're ready?

I will tell you this, if you're anxious for your rep to call for feedback, you didn't do enough homework. Let me tell you, the callback is your feedback. Additionally, if you're still studying the script in the waiting room, you didn't do enough homework. If you're still going over your audition in the car on the way home, you didn't do enough homework. If you're still thinking about the audition and running it for weeks after you auditioned, you didn't do enough homework. So many times I'll see actors put down their scripts and say, "I've got it." Ask yourself, "Did you really prepare enough?" Do you guys know how many panic phone calls I get on a weekly basis from actors that are rusty and suddenly get a huge opportunity from out of the blue and need coaching? What about the times that I get a call last minute, when the actor had the script for 2 days prior? If you're saying, "That's not me," then you make me proud. If you're saying, "That is me," then you need to ask yourself, "How competitive are you going to be with so little preparation?" Why even go? You should just cancel. Do you really want anyone in this industry to remember you as just being okay? Don't you want to be on everyone's short list? How serious are you? Are you looking at your career as a hobby, or a true profession?

Trust me, the audition that you didn't work on could very well be the one that can change your life. Do you really want it to go to some other actor? Sometimes all you need is one great role that can change the course of your career. It is said that, "Success always comes when preparation meets opportunity." I do believe that to be true.



Always here for you,
Amy Lyndon
CEO - The Lyndon Technique
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Amy Lyndon is the Founder and CEO of the Lyndon Technique, a 15 Guideline Map to Booking for actors at all levels. With over 20 years experience and clients at all levels of the industry, Amy provides insights found nowhere else. Check out her totally free 4-Week Booking Kit at www.TLTaccess.com

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HOW YOU WIN: It's very easy, really - whoever refers the most people to the new 4-Week Booking Kit earns a copy of Amy's gigantic business lecture entitled How To Put Together Your Acting Package. Simply direct your friends to www.TLTaccess.com, have them click on the 4WBK link, then put your name in the referral box. Each month, the guy or gal with the most referrals wins!
*Bonus: If you are a member of TLTaccess.com and you refer the most people, you get a FREE private coaching session valued at $100!

WHAT'S THE 4-WEEK BOOKING KIT?  The 4WBK is Amy Lyndon's brand new actor resource that's totally free. Over the course of 4 weeks, actors receive premium content normally reserved for paying Members of TLTaccess.com. We cover the challenges of booking gigs, motivation, the Formula For Success, and even show you a full-length coaching session to see the information in practice! No sales, just information. You can click here to read all about it and sign up yourself!

WHAT YOU WIN:
"How To Put Together Your Acting Package!"
The INSIDE Scoop! ($20 on Amy's home site)
Amy Lyndon's MOST EXTENSIVE LECTURE TO DATE!!! With over 13 Points of reference this lecture stands at 1 HOUR 46 MINUTES in length! Full of important information this is not a lecture to miss.

1. Interview Skills	8. Negotiating
2. What Is My Essence/My Type	9. Casting Director Workshops
3. Writing Your Resume	10. Postcards – Marketing
4. Pictures	11. Submission Sites
5. Demo Reels	12. Inside Scoop On Auditions
6. Agents And Managers	13. Q & A's
7. Internet Movie Database

Hi Amy,
I enjoyed listening to the lecture "How To Put Together Your Acting Package" and hearing you break down each topic. It gave me a lot of good ideas to think about, especially the Interview, Resume, and Negotiating topics. I absolutely love your brutally honest approach, and I jotted down many 'pearls of wisdom' from this lecture.
Many thanks!
Robert Glen Decker

BRAND NEW: The Free 4-WEEK BOOKING KIT!

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Welcome to the first step in finally making a difference in your career! Take a second, and ask yourself these questions:

• Am I frustrated by the progress of my career?
• Do I feel like no matter how hard I work, I'm just spinning my wheels?
• Am I looking for someone to give me guidance that actually works?
• Am I ready to make a change?

If you answered "yes" to any of those questions, you're in the right place. Amy Lyndon and her team at TLTaccess have over 75 years of combined experience working within this industry. We are YOU - working actors out on auditions every day.

Amy also works as one of Los Angeles' top booking coaches, starting the careers of thousands of actors. Every month, we post dozens and dozens of success stories on our website, so you can see why you might want to get on board! This package we're about to share with you is like nothing else in the industry.

This 4-Week Booking Kit is PACKED full of market-tested information proven to bump you into the top 1% of the industry. And it's FREE!

 

Your 4-Week Booking Kit contains:

WEEK 1 - Myths About Booking & The Business - There's so much misinformation out there that it's no wonder that actors often start to flounder. We share with you three audios that cover everything from why actors fail to the biggest myths about the business!
WEEK 2 - Addressing The Biggest Challenges - In this short video, Amy Lyndon sits down and lays out the 5 biggest challenges actors face and what you can do to overcome those challenges. 
WEEK 3 - The Basics of Marketing - Did you know that there is a formula for success? Yep, there is a very simple formula to becoming a successful working actor. That's just one of the articles we share with you during week 3.
WEEK 4 - Coaching Session Voyeur - For the first time ever at The Lyndon Technique, we are making a video of one of Amy's legendary coaching sessions public! Watch as she takes a good actor and makes him great. Then you can apply her techniques to your own audition!

 TOTAL VALUE = $100+

This is a FREE gift to you, chock full of useful information. We believe in under-promising and over-delivering, so rather than offer you some measly tips with a thinly veiled sales letter, we offer you some of our most popular videos, articles and audios normally reserved for paying customers.

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TESTIMONIALS

Amy and Justin!

The 4-Week Booking Kit is not only setting me up with the tools I need to go into the room and book the job, but it has also provided me with great tips that will help me build my career in the long run. I am so blessed to have the two of you at my side! I am so grateful to you both, thanks!

Braden Paes

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Amy--

I wanted to take a moment and thank you... for all that you do and are.  My ambition has ignited like never before to be who I am supposed to be in this industry.  Reading and responding to the few questions from the 4 Week Booking Kit has already began to center me and fuels my drive for this.  It is vital we remember WHY we do this, WHY I wake up at five AM to serve coffee so I have my days free for auditions and ready for BOOKINGS, WHY I wake up more motivated each day knowing I'm another step closer to working more as an actress.  I know you understand the passion that jolts our reasons for turning around what can be known as "the monotony" of this industry, to "the motivation" to press through and win.  I am so blessed to have found you all at TLT and I look forward to learning and growing every week.  Cannot wait for tomorrow's email. A most sincere thank you,

Christie Brooke

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Amy and Justin,

Thank you for this great information!!!!!!!!!

DH Lewis

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Niiiiiice! Super stuff! Thanks!

Heidi Carmichael

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"You're frakken fantastic. I feel so grateful to have your passionate honesty. Rock on!"

Super Joey @ Vimeo

SEMINAR: How To Book A Co-Star

Hey guys! The Lyndon Technique and TLTaccess' FREE 4-Week Booking Kit proudly present Amy's first interactive seminar...

How To Book A Co-Star

When: Saturday, June 4th | 11:00am - 3:00pm

Where: Studio City, CA

Rate: $100

CALL with questions/RSVP: 818.760.8501

*SPACE IS LIMITED: As of this posting, there are only 4 spots left!!

ABOUT THIS CLASS: As an internationally-renowned booking coach and the author of The Lyndon Technique: The 15 Guideline Map To Booking, Amy Lyndon is the authority on booking. With dozens of success stories every month, it's no wonder Backstage readers named her one of L.A.'s Best! 

Ms. Lyndon has decided to offer her first public interactive seminar on the topic that tends to plague actors the most: booking those first few Co-Stars. With as little as one or two lines, how can you deliver the necessary performance to earn the booking? Amy answers that and all your Co-Star questions.

Stop spinning your wheels, and find out EXACTLY what you need to do to book those credits! Call the office now as space is limited (4 spots left as of this posting). 818.760.8501

Honing Your Edge: The Power & Purpose of Consistent Marketing

Tom Cruise keeps it real.

I’ve been talking to a lot of actors lately that feel like the actions they take never get them direct results. Consequently, they give up on those actions. It can be frustrating when you’ve put time and effort into your business and yet there seems to be no direct results. However, I’d like to challenge some of your ideas when it comes to getting “results.”

In TLTaccess, we talk a LOT about different marketing techniques, but you probably at least know the basics: mailings, postcards, websites, social media, etc. These can all be tedious to keep updated and maintain consistently – especially when “nothing ever happens.” Here’s the thing though: these actions aren’t meant to get you direct results.

“Wait, what? Then why the hell am I doing them?”

Good question. While consistent marketing will help get you results, there will almost never be a direct correlation. What consistent marketing will do is prepare you for when opportunity and preparation meet in the form of an audition, agent meeting, or general.

Let me give you an image: by the advent of the Edo period of Japan, a class of former-mercenaries – Samurai – had been elevated to the highest caste system in the society. These warriors were renowned for their fierce military prowess and ethical code of honor. Their symbol was their weapon, the samurai sword. Samurai kept their swords razor-sharp; so sharp, that many on the receiving end claimed that a cut from a samurai sword didn’t even hurt at first because it was so freakin’ sharp. Samurai would spend hours and hours sharpening and honing the edge of their swords knowing that when it came time to do battle, their weapons would carve through any barrier of armor like it was warm butter. This elevated them from being careless or lazy mercenaries to being legendary warriors.

Consistent marketing isn’t your prowess on the battlefield. Consistent marketing is the long hours you put into honing the edge of your career. If you have clearly typed yourself, then doing mailings and casting workshops and creating one-sheets keeps that sharp. So when you walk into an audition room, you are the sharpest version of that type in the room, so clearly defined that it’s impossible to ignore. Guess what? You’re hired. When you walk into an agent’s office and you have exercised the muscle of razor-sharp self-promotion, the agent will start trying to convince you why you should sign with them, not the other way around. (No joke: a TLTaccess.com member just had 4 agent meetings and every single one made offers and follow-up calls essentially fighting over him!)

Guys, hone your edge. Stay consistent, but just remember that your marketing is not the battlefield – it is what prepares you to be a legendary warrior. Er, actor. :-P 

Vote for Amy Lyndon

Hey guys! This is Justin Turner, Amy's Marketing Director, and I am commissioning you for support!

Guys, let's pump Amy up!! Last year's runner-up, this year's winner! Vote for Amy Lyndon under Cold-Reading for Backstage's Readers Choice Awards Los Angeles.

http://www.backstage.com/bso/news-and-features-bulletins/vote-for-back-stage-s-2011-readers-choice-1005109632.story

Booking Is A Separate Beast!

Acting vs. Booking. Totally different, both formidable.

In all the years that I have been working as an actor, I cannot recall ever completely duplicating my audition during a shoot. Inevitably something gets changed. So much so sometimes I think to myself, "This is so different from my audition, why did they even pick me?" The answer is simple. Booking is a separate beast! When you understand that booking a job is not necessarily how you're going to shoot the job, then you will start separating out the two and see booking as it's own art form. Trust me on this guys, I have booked over 40 films and 30 television shows in addition to helping actors book when I was a personal manager for 9 years and personally coaching 1000's of actors over the years and witness them booking big jobs!

So what constitutes a booking? Well, it would take an entire "War and Peace" gigantic book to describe that one to you, but what I will tell you is that you have to be dynamic. Actors are so afraid of "going over the top" that they actually put a cap on their own performance. Did you know that 'going over the top' is simply not being in truth? If you are in EXACT TRUTH according to the writer's intent and you are in the tone and style of the show or film, then why are you hitting it at a comfortable 7 when you should be hitting it at a 10+ to take the job? Why get all dressed up and inconvenience yourself to get to an audition and not go there to book it?

Instead of running your scene with anyone that will help you and flattening the hell out of it, why not section out your script and work your transitions and see if you actually know where this is for you and if you understand exactly what you are saying and feeling? Look for the transitions and keep switching them effortlessly like a precision driver. If you run the lines, then they will sound like lines run.

Another thing that constitutes a booking is knowing what you are doing. Why would anyone hire you if you don't know what you doing? Trust me, the last thing a casting director wants to hear from their boss is that they messed up by bringing you into their producer session and onto a set when you didn't know what you are doing.

Also, are you prepared to shoot the scene right there in the office? If not, then don't go to that audition. This is an add water and stir business people. I'm sorry, but no one cares about your process. Are you there to deliver the goods or not? Stop thinking that you're going to get a second take or an adjustment to help you hit it exactly where they want you to be. If 6 actors are brought in for one job and 5 actors get it on the first take, why would they bring back the 6th actor who needed an adjustment? Be logical. Look at this business as a business. If the tables were turned, would you do business with you? Are you conducting yourself as a business? Are you really ready to work? This isn't a joke. This is the real deal. Information is power!

Here's to booking big!
xoxo
Amy Lyndon
CEO - The Lyndon Technique
http://thelyndontechnique.com
818.760.8501