Modeling & Acting 101 - A Model/Actor's Diary

Okay, if you know anything about me, you know that I'm professional to a fault. What I love about having my blog, mentoring, coaching and consulting is that it gives me the chance to educate the next wave of models on how to practice the good habits (not develop bad ones) and understand the importance that their polished and professional approach will be to the success of their modeling goals. Technology has taken over our lives and social media, love it or hate it, is a part of our daily routine. This includes doing business. However, there is a right way and a wrong way to network and do business using today's innovations. Just because social media is everywhere and just because it's easy doesn't mean you can be lazy or rely too heavily on it. Failing to exercise proper communication methods, not caring about excessive typos and treating potential clients or professional contacts as some random person in your social media world is a quick way to derail any app...

The wonderful thing about our technology driven world is it has completely changed the face of the modeling industry. From modeling agencies to how clients find new faces, the industry has learned to grow and adapt to the times. This includes magazines. Getting published in a magazine as a model is one of the most coveted goals, as it should be. In the past it was much more challenging to figure out how to get into a magazine, especially for female and male models not represented by an agency and/or didn't meet the physical requirements (aka "the height factor") to be considered for modeling jobs in the fashion category. But that has now all changed thanks to technology and the Internet. There are more magazines out there than you can shake a stick at and that means even more opportunities to get published, both in hard copy and digitally. That being said, where do you begin your journey towards appearing in a magazine? START SEARCHING Facebook - If you do a s...

I believe in not beating around the bush and while you could consider me Paula Abdul on American Idol when it comes to giving reality checks with a smile, the fact of the matter is that the modeling industry as a whole can be harsh. Of course, you probably already knew that but it is important to really understand that getting into modeling eventually puts you in the belly of the beast. And it doesn't matter if you're young or old. In the case of child models and their parents, grasping the reality of the competitive nature that comes with this territory is essential to building the thick skin needed to get through and keep your eyes on the prize. So I wanted to do this post to address the parents of child models--namely, newbies. I have to do these reality checks from time to time as a form of tough love. Oftentimes, it isn't just models who have stars in their eyes. Parents want their kids to succeed in life, and if modeling is one of those goals, what I'm goi...

I had originally put the title of this blog post as, "Branding & Modeling Pt VI: Common Sense + Tips" but decided to change the second half to "Dos & Don'ts" simply because I felt it would be easier to organize the tips I want to share and make it easier for my readers to reference...so here we go! This is the last entry in this latest mini blog post series related to the concept of "Branding" when it comes to the modeling industry. Chances are I'll continue to do new posts in the future related to the subject but hopefully this collection has helped some of you get a better understanding of why Branding continues to be so important, even for models. If you've read the previous 5 posts, the dos and don'ts listed below will make much more sense to you so I encourage that you go back and read those in order first before diving right into this post if you haven't done so already. ***FYI: I'll be adding updated Dos ...