Cris D’Annunzio is an actor/writer/producer originally hailing from Western Pennsylvania by way of New York.  He is a graduate of Princeton University where he claims the only practical things he learned were how to bartend and play billiards.  Aside from those two occupations, he has also made a living as a stockbroker and a professional football player.

After gaining widespread recognition with his role as the corrupt cop, Frank McNamara in Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, Cris has gone on to appear in numerous film, TV and theater projects.  Among them are Chasing 3000 (now available on DVD) a film he wrote and co-stars in with Ray Liotta and the award-winning short Clemency.  This past year he also wrote and performed the solo play, Digging Up Dad, about his relationship with his deceased Mafioso father.  Please watch for Cris playing Joe the Hot Dog Vendor opposite Steve Carell in an upcoming episode of The Office.

Back in the day, as they say, one of my “day” jobs was as a stockbroker. (I console myself that Brian Dennehy once did this too).  Though I barely knew the difference between a stock and a bond, I was very determined to succeed in the way in which success was measured in that business: making a lot of money.  I would become successful, relatively speaking, as a broker, but more importantly, I would learn something that would help me build a career as an actor; something that is applicable, really, to any endeavor.  But back to the market.

So there I was, a rookie stockbroker in the “bullpen”, along with 50 or so other men and women of all different ages who professed to be as determined as I was.  There were varying degrees of “talent” in the group, that is to say, those who had knowledge or experience analyzing stocks and the market.  Our job, however, and our livelihood, depended not so much on how good we were at picking the right stocks, but on how much commission we could generate.  In order to generate commission, one needed clients.  Clients who trusted you with their money.

Now there are any number of ways to go about obtaining clients, but not having come from money myself – or not really knowing anyone with money – I would have to resort to the rudimentary.  The very first thing I did was to attach myself to one of the more successful brokers in the office.  His named happened to be Blaine Lourd.  (Unbeknownst to me at the time, his brother, Bryan Lourd, runs the power agency CAA).  This is what Blaine told me: “The only thing that can absolutely guarantee your success in this business is to talk to fifty people every day.”  That’s it?  No problem!  Right?  Well, here’s the rub:  Talking to fifty people every day means making two hundred and fifty cold calls.  And for anyone who doesn’t know what cold calling is like – or can’t imagine – it sucks!  But I was determined, so that’s what I did.  Day in, day out, rejection after rejection, I made two hundred and fifty cold calls.  As an aside, one of the most humiliating moments of verbal abuse I endured came at the hands of comedian George Carlin – may he rest in peace – whom I had cold called at home.  But I digress.

The training period for rookie stockbrokers in the bullpen lasted two years.  I made two hundred and fifty cold calls every single day, without fail, for the entire twenty four months.  Never missed a day.  At the end of the training period, I was the only one that still had a job. There were many more who knew the market, could pick stocks that always went up, were better connected, etc.  But they were gone.  I was not.  I say this not to impress you, but to impress upon you the “magic” of DELIBERATE PRACTICE.  What am I talking about?  Just this:  success in anything is almost never the consequence of possessing some innate talent, but rather the result of years and years of hard, painful work.  If you don’t believe me, study – really study – the most successful people in history.  Michael Jordan had great talent, yes, but look at the endless hours of practice he put in to hone his skills.  Nobody on the Lakers outworks Kobe Bryant.  And he’s been doing that since high school.  What about Mozart, you say?  Child prodigy who composed a masterpiece at the age of 21.  Do you know that Mozart’s dad drilled him – every single day – from the age of 3 yrs old?  That’s 18 years of DELIBERATE PRACTICE.  There are no prodigies; there are no “special” people.  There are only those who succeed because of pure hustle.  Science backs me up on this, by the way.  I cite a very interesting study by a group of English professors published in the Cambridge University Press @1997 (Howe, Michael J. A., & Davidson J. W., & Sloboda, J. A. (1998 in press) Innate Talents: Reality Or Myth. Behavioural and Brain Sciences 21 399-442.).

So what does this have to do with acting?  Well, simply this:  You may be the greatest actor in the world, but in order to be successful, you have to book work.  In order to book work, you have to get auditions.  People have to know who you are.  Now if you are waiting for the phone to ring or think that because you have an MFA or you’ve always been told that you’re good looking, talented, etc… forget it!  It’s not going to happen.  Yes, occasionally someone gets “discovered” because of their looks.  People also win the lottery.  Neither hold on to either very long.  And then what do you have?

You must go out and make it happen for yourself.  What does that mean?  What is the take-away in my little rant?  Do something!  Okay, it’s more than that.  You must do something, do it consistently, track whether what you are doing works and if not, change it and do something else.

For actors, sending postcards is roughly the equivalent of the stockbroker cold calling, but don’t rule out actual cold calling.  Hey, more than one producer and casting director has told me that a charming, non-threatening, unobtrusive cold call would definitely get their attention.  Or maybe your thing is to walk in to a casting office personally to drop off a headshot or demo tape.

I know, I know.  If you’re a casting director reading this you’re cringing and wanting to choke me right now.  And many actors are saying, “…but I’ve been to CD workshops (or I know a CD or I heard from someone who knows a CD, etc) and they all say to NOT send postcards, they don’t work, don’t call because they’re too busy and definitely don’t just come to the office!  If you’re good and you’re out there, we’ll find you.”  With all due respect, this is exactly what I (and most all of us) say to anyone trying to sell something.  That is, until I NEED what they are selling.  Then I’m all ears.  Then I’m open to the flyer in my mailbox, the phone call, the knock on the door.

But if those businesses stopped marketing to me and everyone else that gave them the ‘ol “we’ll call you when we need you” shpiel, they wouldn’t have a business.  The truth is 99% of businesses fail for one reason: lack of sales.  Lack of sales is a direct result of lack of marketing.  That’s why you have to keep doing it – whatever you decide to do – and keep track of whether it’s working or not.  How do you know whether it’s working?  If you are getting more auditions.  This is a very basic premise of marketing and ALL businesses use it.  Why do you think they still put commercials on TV?  You think it’s just so those of us in the acting profession that rely on them for a large part of our income can stay alive?  Businesses know that most people hate commercials, don’t watch them, TiVo and fast forward through them.  And truth be told, most businesses probably don’t like to have to pay actors to do their commercials either.  But by putting their message out there – consistently – they are subliminally inputting their brand into the minds of the public.  And every so often, catching the attention of someone who actually NEEDS their product now.  Geiko gained enormous market share in the auto insurance industry by using the Gecko in their ads.  As such, they’ve milked it for all they can.  As their market share has leveled off some, they are testing new methods, like the guy from “Brother’s McMullen” asking ridiculous rhetorical questions.  They will track their market share and if it increases again, we’ll see more of his Rod Serling impressions.

Look, I’m preaching to the choir here too.  It’s easy for actors to overlook the importance of a consistent marketing campaign – even when you believe in the benefits.  Several years ago, I myself had begun to let my marketing efforts drag.  They had become tedious, costly and I could just not make a direct correlation between anything I was doing and subsequent results.  But my results (number of auditions/jobs) had decreased enough for me to re-examine my approach.  I tried a new marketing method and made an effort to do it consistently for a month.  Most of us can do ANYTHING for 30 days.  I decided to make 5 business phone calls every day.  Not cold calls, but to people I knew or had met.  Just a call to say, “hello” and have a conversation.  And always with a closing question: I’m trying to build my business as an actor – who do you know that I should be working with?  What happened?  The following month my auditions increased by 50% and I booked a role in a major motion picture.

So to summarize my contention, you must come up with a marketing plan for yourself – mailings, phone calls, CD workshops – whatever it is, you must do it consistently.  Not once in a while, not once a month, not once a week, but every day.  The first step though is to DECIDE.  The next step is to TAKE THE ACTION of doing it and notice what you are getting from your actions.  So you’ve sent out postcards every day for a month.  How many auditions did you have that month compared to last?  If it’s more, keep it up.  If it’s not, consider changing something.  Different postcards or different approach.  Then go back to the first step and do it again.

I want to conclude by saying two things.  First, if you are not currently engaged in some kind of consistent – and I mean every day – marketing campaign, this is not going to be easy.  But ask yourself this: are you happy with your current situation?  If not, this is how you change it.  Just realize that nothing changes until we change.  And nothing changes without some pain.

Believe me, I DID NOT want to call 5 people every day and essentially ask them for a favor – especially people that I barely knew.  I have HUGE issues with asking for help, let alone the fact that I would struggle to find 5 different people to call every day.  So it was very painful for me.  But I dealt with the pain of doing it by attaching MORE pain to NOT doing it.

The last thing is this: I can’t honestly say that any marketing campaign you chose to embark on will have any DIRECT effect on whether you get more auditions or not.  In fact, I may go so far as to say that it most likely will not.  Yeah, all those CD’s are probably right.  So why do it then?  What’s my point?  I’ll let Goethe explain:

“Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it.  For action has magic and grace in it”.

Almost every person that I spoke with said to the effect, “I’ll think about it and let you know.”  None of them ever called back.  I got a few names, but largely there was no direct correlation between my actions and the results.  But I did get results, nonetheless, where I was not getting them before.  THAT is the magic of action!