Doing Less to Do More with Sam Valentine
“I think once you realize it is not about the next gig, but it's about the next 10 years, that's when I think you're starting to play professional ball.”
In this week’s episode, I’m so excited to introduce you to Sam Valentine, an actress, podcaster, and entrepreneur, Sam Valentine. Sam is best known as One Broke Actress. She has the One Broke Actress blog, podcast, YouTube, Patreon and all the social medias. She moved to LA right after college with a Theatre Degree and in her words “with more conviction than she had dollars”. She is also the CEO of a new women-focused podcast production company called Fast Forward Productions.
In this episode we talk about her high and sort of outlandish expectations of moving out to LA to pursue acting, how she continues to refocus on her acting when she gets off track here and there, why she believes having a side hustle as an actor or artist is a MUST, how she has, throughout the years, figured out that she is deserving of rest and how slowing down has helped her realize what she really wants out of life.
I hope you enjoy our conversation and if anything that Sam says resonates with you, please share this episode on Instagram and tag me @levelupwithshay and Sam @onebrokeactress.
Thank you so much for being here. It’s time to level up.
Subscribe to Level Up! With Shay wherever you get your podcasts.
Sam Valentine’s Links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onebrokeactress/
Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/1R0Vcnx2XdBgbi73EWLtsK
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@onebrokeactress
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLLnIi2v_7sxQIEzaHra4Ug/videos
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/onebrokeactress
Fast Forward Productions: https://fastforwardproduction.com/
Level Up! With Shay Links
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Timestamps
2:08 - Why Sam is passionate about showing the reality of an acting career
3:50 - Sam’s journey to becoming an actress in LA
6:36 - You are capable of more than what you’ve seen people do
13:53 - Why time disappears
14:51 - Do not wait for permission to start making money
18:15 - You can learn anything through the College of YouTube
29:30 - It’s not about the next gig, it’s about the next 10 years
34:51 - Doing less = better work
40:21 - You deserve rest
42:37 - Why Sam got into YouTube
49:43 - How Sam is leveling up
54:34 - Stop comparing yourself to other people
Transcription
Shay 0:00
(intro) Hello and welcome to Level Up! With Shay. I'm so excited to introduce you to today's guest, Sam Valentine. Sam is best known as One Broke Actress. She has the One Broke Actress, blog, podcast, YouTube, Patreon, and all the social medias. She moved to LA right after college with a theater degree and in her words, "with more conviction than she had dollars". I know what that feels like. She created One Broke Actress because she saw a need for stories and advice from real, working actors. On social media she has always seen actors when they booked a job, or got an audition, or got repped by an agent, but never what they did 100+ hours the rest of the time. She says the career path is crazy AF but that doesn't mean you have to be. So, if you're an aspiring actor, go listen to her podcast and follow her on social media. She is also the CEO of a new women-focused podcast production company called Fast Forward Productions. In this episode, we talk about her high and sort of outlandish expectations of moving out to LA to pursue acting; how she continues to refocus on her acting when she gets off track here and there; why she believes having a side hustle as an actor or any artist is a must; how she has throughout the years figured out that she is deserving of rest; and how slowing down has helped her realize what she really wants out of life. I had so much fun talking with Sam and this episode is jam packed with such great nuggets and I hope you enjoy it. Please welcome to Level Up! With Shay, Sam Valentine. Hello everyone and welcome to Level Up! With Shay. I'm so excited for today's guest. I watch her Instagram videos and all of her content, her podcast, new YouTube video. She's an actor, podcaster, business owner/entrepreneur. Not sure what that label is. But welcome Sam Valentine.
Sam Valentine 2:06
Thank you so much for having me.
Shay 2:08
Yeah, absolutely. I kind of see me in you in that you are the broke actress and I'm a comedian, and I'm an actor as well, and podcaster, entrepreneur/business owner, all of that. So, I really get a lot of inspiration from your podcast and your content, because you're showing the real side. You're going as an actor, and you're showing the real side. So, I'm so excited to talk to you.
Sam Valentine 2:42
Thank you. I mean, listen, the actor world, it's similar for comedy, it's all really hard to understand what people are doing when you don't see them working. And when you realize how little time you actually spend on a paid job. It's like, "Well, what is everyone else doing with the rest of their time?" And then once I realized that everyone else was doing what I was doing I was like, "Oh, why aren't they talking about it?" So, I'm very glad that it provides some help to you and whoever else can find it.
Shay 3:18
Yeah, I just interviewed somebody else the other day, and the guy was like, "Everybody wants to get to this full-time artist thing. People say that." And he's like, "Okay, I have a gig tonight. It's gonna be an hour. What am I going to do with the other 23 hours a day?" I'm like, "Oh, that's so true." So, I usually start at the beginning of one's journey in their art. So, you got a BFA, right?
Sam Valentine 3:49
Yes. I grew up in like a lot of small towns, I grew up in small towns outside of big towns.
Shay 3:58
In Missouri, right?
Sam Valentine 3:59
I grew up in Missouri, in Oklahoma, in Illinois, all over all these little places, and Kansas. And we were always big town adjacent, but 45 minutes-ish away. My dad changed jobs a lot, so we moved all the time. In small towns, it's hard to understand theater or any art to be truly honest in most of them. So, I did what I could in high school. We did plays in the caf, gym, auditorium, and stuff like, but when I said I wanted to do it and study it in college, thank God, my parents were so supportive, because that was a really big leap. Because we didn't know anyone who did art as a job. We didn't know anyone who did any of this professionally. So, to say, "I want to do something you've never seen in real life except for the 1% you see on TV." And for my parents to go, "Alright." I don't know how it would have changed if they would have been like, "No." So, I auditioned actually at University of Illinois. I was like, "This is the school." And I floundered. I blacked out. I barely remember it. I definitely did a scene, I did a monologue. And it was from a play that I definitely didn't read it because I didn't know any better. Because no one taught me that, I'd never really auditioned before, except with people who knew me, which is totally different. So, to go and do that, it was a big bomb. So, I got really shy about it. I was like, "Well, maybe I'm not ready. Maybe I should just be a teacher. Maybe I should teach theater." So, then I applied to Missouri State, I wanted to teach theater, so it was a BA. And then I took all the theater classes and all that was left was the teaching ones. And I was like, "Oh, no. I don't want to do this." So, I switched my major again. So, it was like my second or third major switch at that school, and joined the acting program late. And I did four years of studies. I had a bonus year of college. And then within graduating, I was like, "K Bye." And made it out to LA immediately. And then I learned that my BFA program, although it had prepared me to understand character and plays and movement and all this fun stuff. The one class I had that was one credit that was for acting on camera was no match for the business that I wanted to enter.
Shay 6:30
Yeah. Wow, that's so interesting that you almost went to be a teacher.
Sam Valentine 6:36
Yeah. Because I'd seen people teach acting. I was like, "Well, maybe I'll just do plays at middle schools and high schools. And I'll just help them." But when it got right down to it, I realized that I only wanted to do that because that was the only correlation I had to that business was people doing it in community theaters and people doing it in high school and middle school at a very low production level. And I assumed that that was all I was capable of doing because that's all I'd ever witnessed.
Shay 7:04
Yeah, I'm from a very small town in Illinois. W
Sam Valentine 7:07
Which town?
Shay 7:08
Shipman.
Sam Valentine 7:09
Where is Shipman?
Shay 7:10
It's by Alton.
Sam Valentine 7:12
Oh, I worked at a summer camp in Southern Illinois outside of Carbondale called Camp Ondessonk.
Shay 7:23
Yeah, so, I know what area you're talking about and it's so true. It's like we gravitate towards things that we surround ourselves with and when we're kids, we can't help our environment. We're just there.
Sam Valentine 7:36
Yeah. Which really makes you think twice about the content we consumed and anybody who was not straight, white, cisgender, middle class, right? I don't know how old you are but I'm my approaching my mid 30s and I only saw little blonde Disney Kids. And there was not a lot of anything else. And, so, I can't imagine how much harder this world is for people who are in any oppressed group.
Shay 8:04
Yeah, totally. So, you went to LA around 22-23?
Sam Valentine 8:09
Yes, I was 22 when I moved.
Shay 8:11
Yeah, I'm in Atlanta now have been great years and I lived in LA for five years before that. So, I love LA. So, during that time, did you work restaurant jobs to pay the bills?
Sam Valentine 8:30
Yeah, I had a very unrealistic expectation that I think a lot of us have that. It was when everyone said how hard it was, how complicated it was. And I was like, "That's cool for you. But I'm special." And people are going to be like, "Where have you been?" And I'm going to show up and it'll be like, "I have a BFA, I'm classically trained, I'm cute, I'm this and that." And I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. You can curse, right?
Shay 8:55
Yeah. (laughs)
Sam Valentine 8:57
I always say a curse and then asks. (laughs) So, once I started, once I got to LA I was like, "Great, and action. Let's go Hollywood." I've always studied the system and then I figure out what my in is and then I figured it out. Because I moved so much. So, like when I went to a new school, I would like observe for a while and figure out what kids did what and who was who. And then I would insert myself into situations where it's like, "I feel like I fit here and this is my thing." So, I was like, "I can take that to LA." LA's a lot bigger town than Columbia High School. So, the work of observing the world and figuring out my place, it seemed very insurmountable. So, I got here, found a roommate while I was still in college. I did a senior showcase out here, which is an amazing thing that my program did. Thank God. So, I had a reason to come to LA. From that showcase I had an agent who didn't attend but saw my headshots and called me in and decided to rep me commercially and I was like, "I'm still in Springfield, Missouri. Can I call you when I get to LA?" So, I signed with them and I had a meeting with a manager as well from that showcase. And I took all of them, I signed with everyone, everyone who wanted me, I took them. But I didn't understand what to do from there. So, I spent a week eating oatmeal and peanut butter because it was cheap and I could afford it. And I was always afraid of my car running out of gas on the highway. So, I was very cognizant of my surroundings. But, like I said, before I moved, I found a roommate on roommates.com, moved into their house, signed with these people, and then found jobs. And that was when you found jobs on Craigslist, almost exclusively.
Yeah.
So, I found restaurant jobs. I was a server and a hostess at a pool and a hotel in LA called the Sunset Marquis, very nice hotel. And I flailed about, and thank God that I had people. There's an actress named Ashley Platts, who is phenomenal, and she was a hostess at the restaurant as well. And she basically took me under her wing and was like, "Hey, the place you're living is really shitty. Let's figure this out." She made me a list on a hostess notepad of like, "Here's places you can live." And then the next shift, she was like, "Here's the websites you go to to find auditions." So, she was the first person to be like, "Here's how you do this, just so you know." Because no one else was talking. Everyone I meet was like, "Oh, you figure it out." And I was like, "Wait, but like, where do you get an audition? I don't understand." Because my agents and reps, they had like a little bit of something for me, but I was like, "What about film? What about TV?" So, yeah, I flailed about significantly for a very long period of time, I had like five or six jobs of different types. I worked every single job you can imagine in this business. I was a tube shot girl at one point, I worked at a toy store, I worked restaurant jobs, bartending jobs. If I could find someone who would pay me for it, I did it. I did so much work like that.
Shay 12:03
So, why do you feel like you moved around so much? Was there a reason?
Sam Valentine 12:09
From job to job?
Shay 12:10
Yeah.
Sam Valentine 12:11
I think it's the same reason that I like acting is I'm interested in learning a new side of the world. So, whether it's an acting project, or whether it's a new job, I'm like, "Oh, a meal prep chef, I could be the girl who's a meal prep chef, I can figure this out, I want to know what that lifestyle is." So, I'm very interested in dipping my toe into all the different ponds. And everywhere I went there, you can do something in LA, and they'll pay you to do it. It gets crazy, you know? So, I was like, "I think I could be a professional dog walker." I was like, "Okay, cool. So, I'm gonna go try out that lifestyle. Okay, great." Then from there, I was like, "I really love moving as a job, I want to let me test out being a fitness instructor." So, I got Pilates certified. And all these different things, I was just trying, but at the same time, I will say I think I spent a lot of time jumping from job to job and learning new skills, because it was an immediate validation. Whereas with acting, I wasn't getting any of that immediate validation. So, I think I let the financial aspects of my life take over a lot of my time, as opposed to the work that I could have been putting in my acting and just putting in the day-to-day.
Shay 13:22
Yeah, that's so good. I just relate to that. I worked at Starbucks, I cleaned out a guy's garage every couple of weeks, just very random jobs going from job to job. Again, another guy that I interviewed, he's like, "Focus on your day job to fund your art, your career." And I never focused on that. I was always like, "Oh, I have to go to this day job." And then I go do my thing at night or whatever.
Sam Valentine 13:53
Absolutely. When people say in LA "time disappears", how is that? There is weather in LA, I hate when people are like, "There's no weather." I'm like, "Yes, there is. There's chillier seasons and colder seasons, hotter seasons, but just not as extreme as other places." But because of that there are days where I walk outside and I'm like, "Is it school season?" Because I live down the street from a school and I'm like, "Is school in session right now? Oh, it's June. No, no, they're not in session right now." I have to kind of mentally check myself. So, I think if you're running around just trying to find the next moneymaker, the thing that will help you like find stability, without giving any credence to your career pursuit, then you do completely lose track of time.
Shay 14:41
I love that. Moving to making money, you said on a podcast recently, you said you'll, "die on the hill of having a side hustle".
Sam Valentine 14:51
Yes. Oh my god. I love that you hear that. Yes, because everyone has multiple streams of income and as actors we call them side hustles. But a side hustle doesn't have to be babysitting or an MLM, right? People own real estate as a second stream of income, celebrities do Instagram collaborations and posts and all this stuff as streams of income. And I don't know a single person who is successfully working as an actor who doesn't do also something else. Even if they're highest paying, they do a heavy load of volunteer work then, or something, right? Or they're writing a screenplay with someone else, or they're consulting, or they're coaching, and they might not display it, right? They might not talk about it. I'm just captain of the ship of talking about every aspect of my life. But everyone is doing it. What is it? The average millionaire has like seven streams of income, what's that overused phrase? And I don't know how you could make sustainable money in acting without different streams of income, because there are things that we don't talk about. I don't know if you listen to Audrey Helps Actors, but she has a great podcast. And she was talking about on an episode today, that there is a cap on the amount of money you make in a project that goes towards your SAG health insurance. So, if you are collecting residuals from the same show for 10 years, and you hit that cap of amount of money that can pay to your health insurance, it'll cut off. So, you have to have other either acting jobs to stream that, or you have to have outside funds. Also, what a boring life if you're always just waiting for someone else to give you the permission to make money. I don't know how you could live like that. The reason I am so prominent about talking about this is because when I moved here, everyone's answer to the question, "What do you define as success?" was making their income solely off of acting. Everyone said it, I heard it all the time, I said it, I remember, I had a five-year plan with my college, it was part of our thesis to graduate. And I was like, "Within five years, I will make my money solely off of acting." First of all, what? Second of all, that's not true and no one does it. So, I want to rid us of the idea of being a working actor means only making money off of acting, because that's just not a true, sustainable plan.
Shay 17:34
Yeah, and that's so interesting, because we want to get out of this nine to five, actors don't want to be in a nine to five, one income stream. And then we're like, "Oh, we want to make all of our income from acting." We're doing the same thing. It's just with another career.
Sam Valentine 17:50
100%, we're putting all the eggs in a basket being like, "This is the thing."
Shay 17:55
So, when did you discover to actually start building a side hustle, not just as a dog walker, a babysitter, actually building your side hustle? I don't know what that was, if that was your podcast, your blog? When did you start thinking about that and building that?
Sam Valentine 18:15
I never saw myself as an entrepreneur. I never in a million years. I was like, always, "I want to work for someone else. So I can know when to check in and when to check out and be done with my work." I was not interested in running my own business. Cut to getting into my 30s and realizing all the side jobs, I had felt like they had a cap on them in terms of how long I could continue to do them to sustain my acting career. So, even though this is just 100% in my brain, and no one told me this, I thought, "I cannot babysit much longer and still take myself seriously." Is that true? Absolutely not. People make really good living off of childcare. So, it's complete bullshit that I told myself, but it felt like there was a cap on how long I could continue to do it. So, I was trying to find an exit strategy, I was really miserable, I was working. And it also was not enough to sustain my life without working multiple other jobs. So, I had four or five jobs at one point, and I was drowning, and I didn't know it. I was that frog in the pot that you turn up the temperature by one degree and I didn't know that I was boiling. I didn't know that I was going under. And to be honest, there was not a point where I was like, "This has to stop and I'm stopping it." What stopped me was the pandemic. What stopped me was 2020 because for the first time ever, everyone was on the same trajectory and everyone was doing the same thing. And that had not happened my entire career. Also, the government assistance of that extra money for unemployment made it possible that I didn't have to, for the first time, spend a lot of free time working or searching for work. So, I hate saying this because there's so much to it. That is so tragic and sad and traumatic, but the pandemic, all in all, for my effects and purposes changed my life for the better. Because for the first time, I stopped and looked around, and I was like, "What do I actually want my life to be? Where do I actually want to go? What do I want to do? Where do I want to put my time, energy, and money?" And obviously, acting stuck out the most. And then the second thing that stuck out the most was I have this side project that I run for free for actors as well as One Broke Actress. And it was a podcast and the platform, but it was pretty small at that point and it had never occurred to me that that could make money. Because to me to earn money in the acting world meant I needed to be booking a lot of acting work, I needed to earn the right to give advice to actors. I didn't know anything until I was a series regular or whatever the fake bar is set in my head. I didn't feel like I was there. And I didn't feel like it was attainable. And I realized, in the pandemic, when no one was working for a couple of months, I was like, well, "We're all doing the same thing. So, why don't I talk about that?" So, I started my next podcast season all about like, "What do we do now? How do we pivot? Where do we go from here?" And having extra time to work on One Broke Actress expanded its reach so much that it expanded my acting career, because then I was meeting and talking to other new people and learning things myself. And I realized that there was a place where I could turn this into somewhat of a profitable business for those who wanted it, which would then free up more time for me. And that means I could spend more time giving more free stuff back, right, because it's an equilibrium. In the pandemic, also, my friend had a podcast as well. And I had had One Broke Actress for four years, I think, in 2020. And she's like, "I have too much going on. Will you just like run my podcast for me?" I think she paid me 20 bucks an hour. She was like, "Is it insulting to ask you to run my podcast?" I was like, "No, I'm so bored. Please give me this work." And while I was doing it, I was like, "This is really fun." I was like, "Hey, I have an idea. If you started doing podcasts like this, we could pivot and add this and we could do that." And I had a bunch of ideas of how it would work. And then someone else came to me and was like, "Hey, will you give me advice on my podcast?" And I was like, "Oh, wait a second. People are coming to me for this. Is this a job? Can you make this a job? But I'm not an audio engineer, don't you have to be an audio engineer to make money for editing and running people's podcasts?" You don't. Once again, if you are good at something, and you know it, people will pay you to do that job. And you can self-teach yourself in the College of YouTube and you can figure it fucking out. So, I started to take on podcast clients. And over the past two years, my friend Ashley, who asked me to do her podcast, we've worked together for so long, and we were college roommates and all this stuff. And she runs businesses. And she asked if I wanted to start a podcast production company. And I was like, "There's no way. I don't know, the first thing about a business." She was like, "What if we just took what you were doing now and we put a website and a structure in place for it?" So, the more we built it up, the more we realized this is really legitimate. And now we have different offers. So, now my side work beyond acting is podcast production and One Broke Actress. So, because of that, because of the pandemic, because I had time to work on other things and figure it out, and time to stop and think about what I really wanted my day-to-day life to look like I realized, I really like working at home. We have three dogs. So, I was like, "I want to do stuff that I can do on my own time so that I can put acting first." And that took a lot more runway of time than I thought to put the structure in place to figure out what it was to make enough money in order to siphon off some of the workload so I could move acting up. I'm just now figuring out my day-to-day schedule. But having the time to sit and think about like, "I would like to not work until 10pm at night, I would like to finish around five or six and walk my dogs. I really like having dinner with my husband at home. I really like doing stuff in pockets of time that I like, I like moving at this kind of pace. I like working with clients I like and I don't like X, Y and Z." And taking the time to put that all together has resulted in where I am now which is running the podcast production company, I'm the CEO. Where I just do a lot of work with clients and I now have an assistant who does the editing work. It frees up a lot of my time. I make less money because I pay her but it's rad and I love it.
Shay 24:51
Yeah.
Sam Valentine 24:52
And One Broke Actress now has workshops we do for new actors to teach them how to survive as an actor. It's not acting. It's like, "This is how much it costs to be an actor. This is how much time it might take you to start working. This is what working actually looks like." And we go through all of the basics in the Working Actor workshop. I have a Patreon that has monthly work and study halls and all of these things were built out of the first thing I did was create an actor dictionary. I was like, "This is important. This is all facts. This has nothing to do with my opinion so I feel safe sending it out into the world." So, in creating the actor dictionary, I had other people proofread it and stuff. That was the first thing I did. And it sold like gangbusters. I was like, "Oh, people who want to buy so for me? Oh." So, I have a lot of impostor syndrome for getting money from actors. So, everything I do is very centered around knowing how much money and time and energy we have to spend and give. That's kind of where it exists now. That was a very long answer to that question. Did I answer it all?
Shay 25:55
Yeah, I love that. I also relate to that because the pandemic, before that I was working retail.
Sam Valentine 26:04
It's a brutal job.
Shay 26:05
Yeah, it was. I mean, nine to eight at night, you know, 9am to eight at night. It's awful.
Sam Valentine 26:14
Yeah. But you have to do that to make ends meet, right?
Shay 26:18
Yep. And then the pandemic happened. And then eventually, a couple of months later, I decided to move out to Atlanta. And then I worked with a life coach, I was his right-hand person, learning so much. But then also getting into podcasting because I do have my own podcast. I'm like, "I know how to do this. People need their podcasts edited." So, I just relate to that a lot and it was because of the pandemic. And it caused us to, again, slow down, and it's like, "Oh, wait, what do I like?" You said you like to stop your day at 5pm. I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that sounds great." Whereas before you work your day job, then you go and spend the rest of your time on your art, what you want to do in your career.
Sam Valentine 27:05
Where you can fit it in, right? What little energy you might have left?
Shay 27:10
Yeah, just packing everything in. So, you talk about being career focused. Because sometimes as entertainers or actors, we want the magic pill, we want to get from where we are right now to where we want to be like that. So, I want to know your perspective of why, what is that? Is it part of us, we just want to be loved, we want attention, we want to be famous? What is that and how can we be more career focused, rather than just this gig focused? Or the next audition, the next job. How can we really build our career? Because, like you said, it's a long runway an so we have to start small.
Sam Valentine 28:02
Yeah, I mean, I want to preface this by saying I'm still figuring this out, right? It's still a constant battle for me as well. But I strongly believe that we are taught to seek out validation in every aspect of our lives as humans. So, when you're a lawyer, right, your validation often comes in the promotion, and the payment, and the raise, and the next big client, and all that stuff. So, you get outward validation. When you're an actor, none of those things come linearly. Sometimes people come out here, and they book their first big job, and shit blows up. That's the 2% of people. I would say, the rest of us, though, see that and we're like, "Oh, that's what we want to do." But that doesn't happen and when it doesn't happen, we panic. And then in the panic, we're searching for more validation. And the onset of social media being like, "I booked a job, look at me on set, look at my post." And then you get a credit. And then it's like, boom, boom, boom. And then when that happens, when people book a co-star, and they're like, "Yes, I finally got one. I am validated, I have done good work. I deserve this. I am a good working, I'm officially a working actor." And then a lot of times, nothing happens. I would say most of the time nothing happens because a co-star, it doesn't really matter. It feels good, because it's official, and you're on a real big set and it's exciting. But casting directors are not out there like, "I want to find the next big co-star."
Shay 29:29
Right. (laughs)
Sam Valentine 29:30
And listen, there's tons of fun stories where someone was on a co-star and then they were like, "This is so fun, let's bring them back." And then it became a thing and it built, but that's the exception, not the rule. And as artists we keep striving to be the exception and not the rule. And I think it puts us at a bad playing field because it makes us not realize this is a business and not a magical fairy dust of a dream. And as you get older, like I said, I'm in my thirty's and I've been doing this for 11 years. And I realized it's no longer like, "Am I going to do it? Am I going to do this thing?" It's like, "No, I'm doing it. I just might have years that are down and years that are up. And some of those up years might look really good from the outside. And then the down years, I cannot share because it's so dark." Because I'm like, "Well, I haven't had an audition in four months." And what do I do? So, One Broke Actress is cool, because I'm like, "Hey, guys, I haven't had an audition in four months, you want to talk about it? Anybody else feel this way? What do you do to get out of it?" It's less of a shadowy place. But being on a set feels like you've been gifted a thing. And most actors that I know who haven't really done a ton of work would do it for free, just because they love the work so much. But we can't do that for free if we want it to be a business. And that's a hard thing I learned with doing a business. It's like, "I have to raise my prices, I have to do this, I have to do that." Because, sustainability wise, you have to if you want to, because gotta feed my dogs, fill the kitchen with food, gotta pay for my gym, whatever it is. So, you have to look at it as a business. When you start to look at it as a business, it sucks. Because nobody was like, "I want to be an actor because I love a spreadsheet. Because I love corporate America." None of us want that job. But there are aspects of it, where, if you don't treat it like a business, everyone else behind the scenes is. Casting, production, yes, they are art minded, but they still have to pay their bills. So, they're treating it like a business. And if you're treating it like a sparkly dream, then it's not going to translate. And, like I said, there's exceptions to this, but I think you really have to try to not be the exception. You have to learn. Yeah, the craft. Yes, we love that part. We love learning the craft. Most actors I know now relatively do well, self-tapes, we have coaches, we have all this. But, also, do you have the structure in place for your day-to-day life to continue doing this for five or six years without getting a paycheck? And then when you do get that paycheck, what do you plan to do with it? Where's it gonna go? Because when we get really real, I have a post coming out about this soon, a co-star pays $1,056. After taxes and fees, it's like 720 something bucks. That's like two months of acting class and you put in five years to book that. So, what structure do you have in place to continue to play this game? And I think once you realize it is not about the next gig, but it's about the next 10 years, that's when I think you're starting to play professional ball.
Shay 32:43
Yeah, I love it.
Sam Valentine 32:45
And I'm still figuring this out. (laughs)
Shay 32:48
Yeah, I think that's interesting. For me, Level Up! With Shay, I want to share with people the lessons I'm learning and like, "Hey, this is what I've done. It may not work for you. I'm still figuring this out." But it's super important to put that out there so people aren't like, "She's a know it all."
Sam Valentine 33:08
Right. And here's the thing, whenever we judge someone else's success, or trials and tribulations, the calls coming from inside the house, right? That's more about us than it is about them. But at the same time, I think it's just the most beautiful thing to look at that as a resource and be like, "Oh, interesting." Take what fits for you and leave the rest. I'm not going to have the same career as you, but that doesn't mean that you haven't done something I can't learn from.
Shay 33:34
Yes. Well, I want to ask about slowing down. So, I listened to a podcast you were on, you were talking about your Enneagram. You're an Achiever.
Sam Valentine 33:45
I'm a three. Yes.
Shay 33:48
I haven't taken the quiz.
Sam Valentine 33:49
You have to take it.
Shay 33:51
I'm pretty sure I'm an achiever. I'm like, "That sounds like me." So, a couple of things, when do you know you need to slow down? Because you want to do all of these things. I read on one of your posts, it may have been an older one, but it was like, "I have the weekends off. So, I kind of take that off." But now you're recording your vlogs on YouTube on the weekends. So, taking that off time and filling it in with stuff. How do you know when you need to slow down and when do you know when you want to work on something? Because sometimes it's eight o'clock at night. And I'm like, "Yes, I want to do this thing until 10 and then go to bed." But sometimes I'm like in this mindset of, "Okay, I need to do this thing." So, I'm pressuring myself to do it. So, how do you know when to slow down and also decipher when you're really pushing yourself and when you want to do something?
Sam Valentine 34:52
It's a constant change in flow for me and that's something every time I make a post, I'm like, "This is what I'm currently doing for my routine." And I get it a lot of different feedback. I'm also like, "Just so you know, this might change tomorrow." Which it already has from other times I posted about it. So, first of all, it's a privilege to be able to stop and slow down, it's a privilege that I can make consistent money right now, and still have a lot of time leftover to figure some shit out and to build rest into my schedule. What I realized is, when I work nonstop and jump from one thing to the next, I am never giving anything my full attention. So, when I had four or five jobs, for example, there was a point in time where I would get up at like, 4:30 in the morning, and I would try and eat food because I would then go teach a fitness class where I had to work out with the people. It was heated, brutal, I would teach like hot Pilates. And then I would teach like a HIIT training. And then I would run to the hills and I had two private clients in the hills. By the time that was all wrapped, it was like 10:30, 11am. I'd run home, eat food, then I would go to my cooking clients' house, I would meal prep for them for a couple hours, run home, run my dogs outside where I was dragging them on the sidewalk to get them out fast enough, really bad dog mom vibes, run them back inside, grab a Cliff Bar and then run to school to pick up the kids I'd nanny. And by the time I got home at nine o'clock, my husband was like, "Should we watch a show?" And I was like, "I want to die. I'm miserable." And then if I got an audition notice in there, I'd be like, "When the fuck am I going to fit this in?" So, everything that made me happy, was getting pushed, and was bringing me bad vibes. And I realized that when I jumped from one thing to the next, like when I would have all morning to try and do my fitness stuff, my brain was already 17 steps ahead. And when I was cooking, I would burn myself because I was thinking about how fast I could get it done to get to baby setting. And when I was with babysitting kids, I would get an email, I would read to check it in, then the kids playing are like, "Get off your phone." I'm like, "No, I don't have any time to be on my phone, you don't understand." So, I was never fully present at anything I was doing and it detracted from my relationships, it detracted from myself. And having the time to test schedules, and to test out different things over the last couple of years, has given me a lot of data to work with. So, for a time period, I got up at 5am every day just to test out being a 5am girl. I didn't love it, I did it for three months, I was like, "I'm just gonna give it a good college try." And I didn't it didn't work. For me, it was not enough sleep, it just didn't work for my schedule. So, I test and develop different types of schedules for myself. And I realized that if I do a ton of stuff in one day, the day before, I'm super anxious, because I know that tomorrow is gonna suck because I have six meetings. And then I have a workout class and then I have an appointment, but I got to shower at some point and put on makeup and that it gives me such anxiety and then I suck. I don't show up for anyone, right? So, I blocked off an hour before you in an hour after you because from this, I'm gonna get a workout in and then go to a voiceover job. I could fit in two more meetings today and I could maybe make some content or whatever. But telling myself that's not the time to do that and giving myself space, I'm able to stand here and connect with you and to show up as me and turn off my phone because I'm not doing 500 things. And then we get better work done. You and me. we have a better conversation. So, I realized I do so much better work when I do less, when I have less on my plate in a day. And, like I said, it's privileged to say it but it's true. I only do meetings Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday now. Mondays and Fridays are mine. I can do content work. I can do acting work. I'm working on creating my own schedule right now to fill that in. And then I have a cap I can take three meetings a day. After that, I'm jello. It makes it tough because people are like, "Man, your schedule is really full." And I'm like, "It's not that full. I just don't have the bandwidth."
Shay 39:07
Yeah.
Sam Valentine 39:11
Some people want to fault me that I'm not busy, but I used to be busy and I was not as good of a person. There's just no longevity in that for me, the long game is something I talk about so much. I've spent 11 years trying to survive in this business and now I want to thrive. And I got to figure out what that looks like because I can't run from 16 different appointments to an audition when I'm 65 and I want to be doing this job when I'm 65. So, I need to figure out now what brings me joy and happiness and gives me mental relief in my schedule. And that has really meant lately doing less. It bothers me because I do want to do everything and I want to have a TikTok and a YouTube and an Instagram and an email list and a workshop and whatever, but I can't do them all at once and still be good. So, I have to do less.
Shay 40:05
Yeah, that's so interesting with the surviving versus thriving, just because thriving being an actor doesn't mean you're booked all of the time. Thriving means thriving in your life and actor is one part of that.
Sam Valentine 40:21
Yes. Oh my god. This is why everyone, when people wrap seasons of shows, they go on vacation for four weeks. Because they can. Because they need a breather and they need a moment. That to me is the thrive, right? That's built-in rest. Especially actors who are listening to this right now and are like, "But I haven't really booked anything yet." You still deserve rest, you still deserve comfort, you still deserve joy. Your acting career doesn't have to feed it. It can. And at some point it will. But if you're waiting for permission to rest and recover or take care of yourself, nobody's gonna give that to you.
Shay 41:02
And during the pandemic, I started a laughter workshop.
Sam Valentine 41:05
Fun.
Shay 41:06
Yeah, it was great. And I have affirmation, "I am worthy of love, joy, peace and laughter." Because that's when I really did recognize, "Oh, I'm worthy of rest, of going out and taking a hike, and not working all the time."
Sam Valentine 41:25
Yeah, because when you do start to get that work that happens all the time, there's less time for rest. I have some very close friends who are series regulars, and who are number one, number two on the call sheet, and they have less permission to rest now. So, if they weren't doing it before, it's even harder for them to justify it now. And they need it now more than ever. So, we have to figure out how we can bake this into our lives to where we deserve it now and not wait for permission.
Shay 41:58
Totally. All in presence. It's like, "Oh, I don't have time now." It's like, "Well, when will you?" Because you will continue to perpetuate you won't have time for whatever you want to have time for.
Sam Valentine 42:11
Yep. 100%. And then if you're like, "If I constantly don't have time, what is important to me?"
Shay 42:17
Yeah, I love that. Well, I want to talk about your YouTube really quickly. So, you went from blog, to podcast, Instagram, Patreon, YouTube, all of this. What made you pull the trigger on YouTube? Because it's fun? Because it will help people?
Sam Valentine 42:39
I feel like it's taken me the longest time to consistently show up in One Broke Actress as myself not as repeating other people's information. It's hard to do and I think I thought I had to do it all. So, I wanted to do YouTube for a long time because I don't feel like there's a lot of information of working actor life on YouTube. I search it all the time and you get like, "Here's this really famous actor going to set for Netflix, here's like this child star going to whatever." Or you get people who are spewing nonsense. There's a few standouts, I love Kurt Yue who does Acting Career Center. He's based in Atlanta. There's a couple of people. But I'm a basic bitch, Shay, you need to know this. And I love a vlog, I love to watch people's lives. My candy is watching what I eat in a day videos, which I know some people are like, "That's very triggering." I love it. I'm a nosy Nellie, I want to see what's in your iced coffee. I want to know what do you do for work? I'm fascinated by people's lives. There's a girl I watch on there. She's from Florida. She's like an Orange Theory trainer. No idea who the fuck this girl is, love watching her life. (laughs)
Shay 43:59
Yeah.
Sam Valentine 43:59
So, I was like, "Oh, there's nobody that I've really found, who does a lot of day in the life of an actor." And if they do, it's the day they go to set, they're only highlighting the highlights. I'm like, "Well, what do you do on like a Tuesday when you don't have an audition, when you don't have work?" So, I wanted to do that. There's also a lot of things that I have ideas for that I want to do and that would exist best in long form video. So, this wall behind me, I painted it as a self-tape wall and I was like, "I can make a super short video about it or I could talk to the girl who helped me pick out the color who put me on self tape. I could talk about that process. I could go over painting it." More intricate details. So, I realized it could exist in a longer form video. So, I held back from it for a long time because it felt like another thing that wasn't acting.
Shay 44:50
Mmhhmm. Yeah.
Sam Valentine 44:51
So, I waited until I had the bandwidth to bring it on. And then I have like 10 videos just in the wings. So, I decided instead of being like, "Okay, well, this is a thing and most YouTubers released once a week. So, that's what I'll do." So, I was like, "I'm not, I'm not trying to be a famous YouTuber, I'm just trying to put my content out in different spaces." And then that can also feed the other platforms, because there's ways to proliferate one piece of content into a bunch. I was like, "Well, what if I did a video every other week, and I gave myself permission to do less once again." I also edited my first few and I was like, "This is a lot of work." So, I reached out to my assistant who does podcast editing with me. And I was like, "Do you want to edit video too?" She was like, "I'd love to." I was like, "Great. Here's more work for you." And I waited to do this until One Broke Actress makes enough money that I can pay her. She's also a new actor. So, it's cool because I get to pay and employ an actor, which is rad, which is the dream. So, I love that aspect of it and now that it's not my cash going into that, it's One Broke Actress's because it's a totally separate LLC. Because I can do that now, I feel like it's worth it now. I waited a long time in order for it to be worth it. But now that the business can pay for it, it's now going that direction. So, I was really excited to start it. I am trepidatious about keeping it going. But every time I get excited about something, my biggest fear is like, "What if I run out of stuff to talk about?" When I started the Instagram, I was like, "What if I run out of ideas?" And it's been five years, and that hasn't happened. So, I think I need to take that fear off the shelf. And also, if I stopped doing it for a while I stopped doing it for a while. Acting's number one and if it takes over cool, we can always come back. There's not this pretend rulebook in all of our heads about all of these things, and there's nobody enforcing them. That's why it's like an open platform. So, that's the YouTube right now. It's small, it's gonna grow, it'll be a thing. But I'm just interested in seeing how much more people I can touch and reach. I had an actor reach out to me who was so kind and she's 18. She's in high school. And she was like, "What do I do?" I was like, "Well, start taking acting classes if you haven't done that, start exploring that area. You don't have to necessarily major it in college, if that's the area you're moving to next, but do you like the work? And then from there, you can start to integrate into the business." She was like, "Well, I want to be super famous, like, Tom Hanks." I was like, "Okay, cool, cool. So, Tom Hanks had a black and white headshot. So, we're not learning from Tom Hanks anymore." Yeah, he's a rad actor. Of course, we want to be Tom Hanks. Of course, we want to be Brad Pitt. Of course, we want to be Julia Roberts. But they're the 1%. That's like starting a business and being like, I am Elon Musk. And it's like, "kay, right. But like, what do you want to do while you reach that point? Or what if you don't reach that point? The idolizing of that big number one top slot is really hard. So, I was like, "Let's start with acting. Let's start with your day-to-day life." Because some people would consider me a successful actor. But I don't think I've done that much yet. And I have a day-to-day life that looks like this. What is this person's life like? Let's talk about the simple things you can have under your control for now.
Shay 48:14
Yeah, I love that you're able to reach these 18-year-olds who are like, "I want to be super famous," and can give them that.
Sam Valentine 48:21
That's another reason I wanted to do the TikTok as well. There's a lot of people who are super young on there who are giving acting advice that's not true. And I'm like, "Oh, no, we need to reach them. We need to talk to them." And I also want to go teach at colleges. I want to do my Working Actor workshop, and take it to people who were me graduating with a BFA thinking I was 100% ready, and see the financial aspects of this career and see what a day-to-day life really maintains, and see what kind of mental health care I need in order to survive and do this job for the next 50 years. So, that's the next goal I have is to go teach the workshop at colleges, and then colleges can pay for me instead of the individual actors.
Shay 49:06
Yes, I love that. Well, I have a couple more questions for you. The first one, what's one thing you've been doing lately to level up?
Sam Valentine 49:17
Great question. I mean, is doing less, is that too much of a repeat answer.
Shay 49:24
No, because this whole podcast, this has been how you're working now on yourself. So, no, continue.
Sam Valentine 49:34
Yeah, I really realized that, once, again, I had started to put One Broke Actress and, fast forward, which is the podcast production company, they were taking up a lot of my time because I was getting instant validation. Because I was getting subscribers. I was getting Patreon people. I was getting money or a heart or some sort of pat on the back like, "This is good. You're doing good work." And I had let the pursuit of the acting career fall behind, which is fine, because I almost needed to put my energy into these things so that now they can run themselves. I needed to teach my assistant how I work so that now she can do some of the work for me, I needed to front load that job, so that it can run sort of in the background. And, so, now I'm trying to do a little bit less, I know, it sounds like counterintuitive, but I'm actually doing less content, I'm just utilizing a lot of content pieces in different areas. And I want it to be better. So, I'm doing less but better and I am doing less teaching, the workshop I'm only doing in the end of June, and then one more in October. And then I think I'm going to completely redo the way it's done and do it like once or twice next year and have it be longer. So, it's like a multi week workshop, I am doing a lot less in terms of taking on new work, I'm giving more work to my assistant. And then therefore that frees me up. I mean, when I'm not editing, five or six podcasts a week that gets me what, 15-20 hours back, maybe 30. And in doing that, yes, I do lose money, which is why it took some time to get to this place where I can afford, where the train is running enough that I can afford to pay for that work to be done outside of myself. But then I can relocate my time to, I'm just joining this group where they read scripts once a week as a group, and then they go see the movie together. And that's a group of writers and producers and people I want to be in a room with and working with. I'm starting to do workshops, again, with casting directors, I'm starting to film scenes every single week, even though it's not an audition, which I didn't have time for when One Broke Actress was at the top of the list. So, as I figure this out, I'm doing less in my other work so that I can front run acting now. Does that mean I'm acting every single day? No, no, but it means that I know what my acting tasks are for that week and I fit them in where I can.
Shay 52:03
Yeah., I love it. I get the same thing with this podcast. When I started this podcast, I'm like, "Oh God, now I'm a podcaster." But it's like, "No, I love comedy. And I'm a comedian and acting and writing." We tend to put these things that give us that instant validation. "Oh, one episode a week. Yes!"
Sam Valentine 52:29
Yes, and it goes out into the public and people see it and you get that validation of that.
Shay 52:37
So, where can we find you and support you?
Sam Valentine 52:41
Well, everything's One Broke Actress. It's @onebrokeactress on Instagram, the One Broke Actress podcast, @onebrokeactress on TikTok, @onebrokeactress on YouTube. I know some people have a Patreon and it just kind of like exists in the background. But my Patreon is poppin' and if you're looking for accountability, and people, and quality, ongoing content, my Patreon patreon.com/onebrokeactress. We get monthly bonus podcast episodes, they get different posts from me, this month we're doing a pop-up class where we're doing a workshop with the Put Me On Self Tape Girls. So, they're getting a costar workshop. It's all about self-taping and leveling up your self-tape. And then I have study hall tear of the Patreon where we do a study hall twice a month where we sit down and all together for two hours and get actor work done. And you can read with someone or whatever it is. And that includes like Slack channels, you can be like, "I got this weird email from my agent, what do I say?" And then like the group sources the answer, there's a lot to that. And then I do one on ones where I do work one on one on ones with actors. So, those are called Coffee Calls. If you just need like, "I need someone to look at my career and tell me what's missing or just an outside source." I think that's everything. And then my podcast production company is called Fast Forward Productions and we do women-centered podcasts.
Shay 54:05
Yeah, everything's poppin. Okay, well, one last question. What advice would you give to someone who wants to see the light in themselves that they see in others? They put others in on a pedestal right, like the Tom Hanks or Julia Roberts? Because you have to see yourself as that person before you can get to that. So, what's some advice you could give them?
Sam Valentine 54:34
Well, it's stop comparing yourself to other people, because it's never gonna be enough. I do it all the time still. And then I'm like, "Oh, wait, I'm subtracting 100% from myself, and then I'm setting off jealous vibes which no one likes." That comparison, it can rob you have everything. If you do a great audition, you can feel really good and then you'll see somebody else booked a job and then you feel like shit because all you got was an audition, but yourself two years ago would have killed to get that audition. So, where's the line? When is it enough? I watch actors all the time who book roles and they're like, "Yeah, it's just a commercial, it's just a guest star." And then they're like, "Well, it's just a recurring guest star. It's a series regular, but it's for like this lesser channel." So, I keep saying this to my clients recently, I'm like, "Every time that you have a victory, you have to use it as a charge to your battery. Because no matter how good you are, no matter how good and heavy your momentum is, there will be a point in time in which nothing is coming down the pipe, and you will feel depleted. And if you do not use these victories to charge your battery now, you will have nothing left at that point." So, it's really, really hard to see that in this acting career. But you have to define your own victories. Because if you wait for someone else, it's not going to happen. No one's ever going to be like, "That's really good. You're done here." Never. So, if you can define your own victories and define your own like, "For this week, this is what I wanted to do when I did it." That's going to help you survive much longer in this career than only giving yourself validation for a booking.
Shay 56:14
Yes, I love it. This episode has so much packed information. I can't wait to go back and edit it myself. But thank you so much for being on here. I appreciate your time.
Sam Valentine 56:24
Thank you so much, Shay. It was an honor to meet you and this was super fun.
Shay 56:27
(outro) Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you to everybody else who's listening. This is Level Up! With Shay and we'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Please share it on Instagram and tag me @levelupwithshay and tag Sam @onebrokeactress. Go follow Sam on social media, listen to her podcast, you can work with her through her Patreon, and so much more. All of her links are in the show notes. Subscribe to Level Up! With Shay wherever you get your podcasts. Again, thank you so much for being here. It's time to level up.
