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[0:00] Jennifer Apple: Welcome to the Empowered Artist Collective Podcast. I am your host, Jennifer Apple. Actor, writer, coach, monologue whisperer, dog mom, and creator of the Empowered Artist Framework. But who I really am is someone who believes that there is another way to build a creative, sustainable life in the arts that doesn't involve losing yourself. This podcast unmasks the reality of life as an artist through conversations with women and non-binary changemakers in the industry. We get crystal clear on how you want to show up and not how you think you need to show up in this wild industry. Whether you're headed to your first ever audition, auditioning for BFA or MFA programs, sitting in a Broadway dressing room feeling like you haven't made it, or been at this for a long time and something isn't working, I see you. This episode is powered by WelcomeToTimeSquare.com, the billboard where you can be a star for the day. Let's get to it.

[0:58] Jennifer Apple: One of the things that has fascinated me over the years, both as somebody who has been an actor for a long time and as somebody who has coached hundreds of artists, is how often people come into a session convinced that the answer to whatever they're struggling with is knowing more people. I just need to network more. If only this specific casting director knew me. If I just had the right agent. If I can meet that one producer. It almost is always framed as if there is somebody somewhere who holds the missing piece. If we just meet them and know them and they love us, then everything we want will fall into place. I understand why we think that. We've all heard stories about a career happening because of one big introduction or callback or a chance meeting or the one person who says yes.

I too fall privy to this narrative because sometimes when you're slamming your head against the wall and wanting something to change or stick or shift, it's easier to look outside of ourselves for the solution. It's really seductive because it gives us something tangible to chase. If I could just get into the room. If I could just meet that one person. If I could just have that one coffee. This is essentially what I talked about in my previous solo episode around the shift from focusing on the external to the internal, which if you haven't already listened to that episode, I think will be a helpful base for what's about to come.

[2:15] Jennifer Apple: But what I've noticed, and this is something that comes up over and over again inside my Empowered Artist Intensive specifically and with other folks I coach, is that artists are often looking so far ahead of the people they don't know that they've stopped seeing the people they already do know. Truly, we often know a ton of incredible people. One of the exercises I have clients do is simple, so I want to share it here too. I ask them to make a list, not of dream collaborators or casting directors they hope to meet. I ask them to write down every relationship they already have. Every friend, family member, teacher, classmate, director, stage manager, producer, playwright, boss, co-worker, everybody.

In more of a corporate space, they would just call this a CRM, a customer relationship management system, which is like saying an ATM machine in terms of its redundancy for understanding purposes. Anyway, I do think this is a useful thing for artists. I have one myself that I've created for the purpose I'm about to discuss, but I digress. Every single time, and I really mean every single time, I have clients do this exercise of listing everyone they know, and there comes a moment when they stop writing, look up from the page, and say something like, oh, which is almost always followed by some version of, I actually know way more people than I thought I did. Yeah, exactly, because the exercise isn't about counting contacts. It's about changing your perspective.

[3:31] Jennifer Apple: We have this tendency to think our career begins when somebody important notices us, but what if your career has actually been growing quietly for years? What if every rehearsal room you've ever been in has mattered? What if every person you've worked alongside remembers something about what it felt like to work with you? What if your ecosystem is already far richer than you've allowed yourself to believe? I use that word very intentionally too, ecosystem, because an ecosystem is alive. It's interconnected. It's constantly changing. People move. People change jobs. Assistants become casting directors. Actors become producers. Directors become artistic directors. Friends start companies. Former classmates start writing plays.

People leave the industry. People come back to the industry. You have absolutely no idea where someone will be in five or ten years or even tomorrow or the next day, which means every relationship already is thriving in its current form, and every relationship has the potential to evolve into something you never could have predicted.

[4:31] Jennifer Apple: This is not to say we should be thinking about the use of every relationship or person we meet. To think about relationships as transactional defeats the point of what it means to be in relationship with someone. If you think about the people on the list you admire, love, and respect, it's because there is a mutual sharing, vulnerability, and openness. In fact, I think approaching relationships transactionally is completely antithetical to the point I'm trying to make because it takes away from the human connection in the first place. We need to focus on the human part. What do these people remember about interacting with you? Do they remember how you listened? How you collaborated? Do they remember somebody who treated the stage manager with the same respect as a lead producer?

Do they remember laughing with you and feeling your grace when they had a bad day? If there is one thing this industry has taught me over and over again, it's that talent is rarely the thing people talk about after they've worked or spent time with you. They talk about what it felt like to be around you, how you made them feel.

[5:27] Jennifer Apple: There was one experience early in my career that completely shifted how I understood all of this even though I don't think I realized it at the time. One of my first thrival jobs after undergrad was selling merchandise for Broadway shows. It was a grind, sure, but I got to see theater, be around other creatives, and I met a ton of people. My boss at the time was producing a show at the New York Fringe Festival. He was looking to hire a stage manager for the production. One day at work, he approached me during my shift and asked me about this one person who had applied for the job. He said he recognized that we went to the same undergrad and asked what my thoughts were about her. The question stopped me in my tracks.

My entire experience with her in college just flashed before my eyes because this girl was really mean. People didn't enjoy working with her. She wasn't collaborative. Frankly, she created an environment where people didn't feel particularly good or safe. I remember the feeling I had in my body whenever she was around me or even simply began approaching me. Standing there in this moment, I had this massive realization. I remember thinking, oh my god, whatever I say can either give this girl an opportunity or not. I never thought I would be in the position as a person being asked that my opinion actually mattered. Whether or not she got the job was in some small way going to be influenced by what I said next.

This shocked me because certainly at the time, I didn't think my opinion carried any weight. Who was I to be in this kind of position? I thought influence belonged to somebody else, the casting director, artistic director, producer, etc.

[6:57] Jennifer Apple: There I was with a decision to make. I answered him honestly. I emphasized that obviously he should do what he feels is best for his project, but that I couldn't recommend hiring her for all the reasons I previously mentioned. Instead, I recommended another friend of mine who was a wonderful stage manager, somebody who I knew would create a really positive room, who I trusted, who was collaborative and generous and thoughtful. That conversation has stayed with me for a very long time. Not because I feel particularly proud of saying no about someone, I don't. If anything, I wonder if she's changed and I hope she has. But because it was the first time I really understood that people are paying attention in ways we don't always realize.

We are paying attention to how we feel around others, how others make us feel around them. And those experiences and feelings last. And sometimes they are expressed years later, sometimes quietly, sometimes in conversations we'll never even know happened. That's why they say, surround yourself with people who would mention your name in a room full of opportunity. The truth in that statement is vast and runs deep, and I have experienced it firsthand on both sides of the coin.

[8:04] Jennifer Apple: Which is why I have such a complicated relationship with the word networking, because I actually don't think that's what we're doing. Networking, at least the way it's often presented to artists, feels incredibly transactional. Feels like we're supposed to collect business cards or LinkedIn connections or go to industry events and somehow convince people that we're worth remembering. Those are all...

[8:25] Jennifer Apple: And it sounds exhausting to me and it doesn't sound particularly human. I am interested in being seen fully as a person and to experience someone in front of me in their truth and fullness just the same. So I don't really use the word networking because what I'm trying to do is cultivate and build relationships and strengthen my ecosystem so it can support itself and all of those inside of it. Relationships ask, who is this person? Networking asks, what can this person do for me? Those are fundamentally different questions and perspectives on how we're connecting. And one of the things I say to clients all the time is that your career is not separate from your community. Your community is your career.

I think we spend so much time trying to get into rooms that we actually forget to be in the rooms we're already in, surrounded by the people we already know and admire and love, uplifting the people around us as they do the same. And we forget that today's reader of a new play could be tomorrow's literary manager. The assistant who checked you in for an audition may become a casting director. The actor you did a tiny regional production with might start producing independent films. The teaching artist you worked alongside could become the education director at a theater where you eventually want to work. We genuinely don't know. And honestly, I don't think we're supposed to know. And frankly, also, it doesn't actually matter who or what someone becomes because it's about being in the now with these folks.

Because if we knew exactly who was going to become, quote unquote, influential, we might only invest in those relationships, thinking they would somehow become of assistance. Instead, we're invited to invest in people, not because of what they might become because they're people. And maybe that's the real reframe I'd offer around networking. Instead of asking yourself, who do I need to meet? What if you asked, how am I showing up for the people I already know? That question has changed so much for me over the years because it's shifted my focus from trying to manufacture opportunities to actually participating in a community that I genuinely wanted to be a part of. And I think those are two very different ways of building a career.

[10:21] Jennifer Apple: Once I started thinking of my career in this way, something else became really obvious to me. I actually love connecting people. I genuinely think it's one of my favorite things to do. I don't know if you ever had this happen where somebody is telling you about a project they're working on or a problem they're having, and immediately another person's face pops into your head. Before they're even finished talking, you're already thinking, oh my god, you need to meet so and so. That's my brain all the time. I've learned over the years that this is just how I move through the world. I'll be talking to one client who's trying to produce a reading, and suddenly I'm thinking about somebody I interviewed on the podcast three seasons ago, or I'll meet somebody at a birthday party who's looking for a director, and my brain immediately starts flipping through all the incredible people I've worked with over the years.

It's become such an instinct that I honestly don't even think about it anymore. And the thing is, I don't do it because I expect anything in return. I don't keep score. I don't think, well, now they owe me one. It genuinely brings me joy. I love watching people find one another. I love watching collaborations happen that never would have happened otherwise. I love it when someone texts me six months later and says, hey, remember the person you introduced me to? We're working together now. There is something deeply satisfying about realizing that community has a ripple effect.

[11:29] Jennifer Apple: My birthday parties are probably the best example of this. I hate my birthday, or I'm getting better at embracing my birthday. I have lots of feelings around it that I don't need to get into here, but in an effort to lean in, I have started planting myself in a bar on my birthday these past few years and simply inviting my ecosystem from all parts of my life, not knowing who will show up. My acting friends come, coaching clients and colleagues, people from podcasting, friends from college or my grad school, friends from my Jewish community, people I previously dated, neighbors, family. It never really occurred to me that these people should stay separate because, well, they're all part of my life.

Almost every year, without fail, somebody ends up meeting somebody they otherwise never would have crossed paths with. Months later, I'll hear that they grabbed coffee, or one person invited the other to a reading, or they wound up collaborating on a project, or somebody recommended somebody else for a job. Every single time, it makes me ridiculously happy, not because I need credit for introducing them. It makes me happy because that's what community does. Community expands. It creates possibilities. It introduces people to ideas and opportunities they couldn't have created alone.

[12:37] Jennifer Apple: One of the things I tell clients all the time is that networking isn't something you do. It's a way you show up that's a really different mindset. When networking becomes something you have to do, it immediately starts to feel performative. You go to an event wondering who you should meet. You rehearse your elevator pitch. You wonder if you're talking to the quote-unquote right person. You leave wondering if it was worth it. But when you're participating in a community where you show up fully and with presence just to be and engage with curiosity, the questions you ask of others and of yourself become completely different. Who have I not seen in a while? Who could use encouragement? What conversations am I genuinely curious to have?

What's exciting people right now? Do I know someone who would love to meet this person? Suddenly, the pressure comes off because you're no longer trying to extract something from the room. You're contributing to it. I think that's actually where artists get stuck because we tend to think of networking as this thing we only do when we need something, when we're looking for representation, or unemployed, or when we're promoting a show, when we're trying to make the next thing happen. But relationships don't work that way. Relationships are built in the ordinary moments, in the text message, just checking in, congratulating somebody when they book something, sharing an article that reminded you of them, introducing two people who should know each other, showing up to somebody's reading because you genuinely wanted to support them, remembering somebody's birthday, sending the email you've been meaning to send for six months because you finally thought of them while walking your dog.

None of those things sound particularly strategic, and yet, in my experience, they're actually how careers are built. Not because every interaction leads to a job. It doesn't. Most of them actually won't. But they create something much more valuable. They create trust and familiarity and a community of people who know one another as human beings first, and they let others have a lasting impression of how you made them feel.

[14:17] Jennifer Apple: So this is the shift. It's about becoming more intentional and taking stock of the ecosystem you've already built instead of constantly believing you need to start over somewhere else. It's recognizing that every hat you've worn, whether you've been performing, teaching, bartending, producing, writing, stage managing, directing, working in an office, selling merchandise like I was, talking to your friends at brunch, going out with your family for dinner, or doing something that feels completely unrelated to your artistic career, has introduced you to people, real people. And those relationships matter probably far more than you've given them credit for. So I invite you to try this. Try listing out your support system, the people you love, who are actively in your life, who you spend time with.

Then expand from there to folks you've worked with in the past, shared space with, had more casual interactions with, and so on and so on. You can make it official in a CRM or categorize it in lists or simply stream of consciousness dump without organization and do that later on if you want. Then start small. Pick one person from any of those lists and reach out with a congrats on something they're working on, a funny reel that reminded you of them, a simple just thinking of you and hope you're well. If it feels feasible for the next week, I invite you to reach out to one of those people every day. That's just seven people with a simple gesture. No ask, just connection. Send and let it be. Hopefully, it begins a conversation or even a catch-up or a hangout.

At minimum, you've nurtured your ecosystem and that's what matters most. I hope this episode empowered you to take one small step forward. Make sure you're subscribed to never miss out and while you're at it, kindly leave us a review. It's one of the best ways to help other artists find the podcast and join in on the conversations. Be sure to tag at Empowered Artist Collective and at JenniferApple underscore so we can see what's landing for you and keep the conversation going. As always, thank you for being here. Thank you for listening and thank you for being a part of this incredible community. Remember, whether it's a small shift or a big breakthrough, every step forward counts. Keep creating and keep thriving. I'm Jennifer Apple. Until next time.