The newsletter & podcast for actors who want to work — free on Substack.
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The business of acting
Talent gets you in the room. Business builds the career.
Drama school taught you to act. We teach you everything that happens outside the audition room — negotiating deals, landing an agent, building your brand, and turning connections into work.
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What we cover
The four things no one taught you about the business.
Every essay and episode comes back to the same four things — the business of a career, not the craft of a performance. The stuff drama school and scene study never cover.
01
Contract negotiation
Read and understand deals, know your worth, and negotiate rates and terms with confidence instead of taking whatever you're offered.
02
Finding & keeping an agent
How to get representation, what agents actually want, and how to be the kind of client worth signing — and worth keeping.
03
Branding & social media
Build a recognizable personal brand and show up online so the right people — casting, reps, collaborators — actually see you.
04
Leveraging connections
Turn relationships into opportunities. Networking that doesn't feel gross, and making the industry work for you.
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Who it's for
You can act. You were just never taught how to run the career.
01
Breaking in
Early-career actors trying to get their first real footing in the industry.
02
Leveling up
Working actors who want better representation, better rates, and bigger rooms.
03
Going it alone
Self-represented and self-taping actors running the whole business themselves.
Brock
Becca
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Who we are
"We won't teach you how to act. We'll teach you how to work."
Practical Actors is Brock and Becca — a husband-and-wife team who've lived both sides of this industry, the creative one and the business one. We've sat in the audition rooms, signed the contracts, chased the agents, and worked out the parts nobody hands you a syllabus for.
We started this because the people we watched book work weren't always the most talented ones in the room — they were the most business-minded. So every week we write the newsletter and record the podcast we wish we'd had starting out: honest, specific, and free of the fear-based hustle culture the industry runs on. No gatekeeping. Just the practical stuff that turns talent into a career you can actually live on.