Aaron Marcus, an actor with 30+ years and 1,200+ jobs, missed an audition after an agent said his submission was incomplete. He sent what he thought was right, got a terse rejection, and decided not to fight it. His takeaway: ask for exact clarification next time instead of guessing what went wrong.
Hi, my name is Aaron Marcus. I've been a full-time actor for over 30 years and I've been booked on over 1,200 jobs so far. If you are watching this on YouTube, you definitely want to subscribe and then click the notification button so you can always get all the new videos that I place here. If you're not watching this on YouTube, yeah, just go to youtube.com/howtomodel. So what I'm going to be sharing with you today is something that I normally really don't talk about. that often with people. It was a bad experience that I had in the industry. I think it's important for me to be completely transparent and let you know, yeah, I've had some real successes, and, and this one was a tough one. And I'm hoping that by me going through it, it will prevent you from having some of the same kinds of issues. So this was a while ago. There was an agent who sent me information about an audition. It was complicated. They wanted all kinds of different things that were very specific. And I thought I took care of everything, sent it back, and I get an email back from the agent and he said, you missed some of the things that I asked for. So, you know, unfortunately I didn't know what was missing. And so I went back through the email, read it more carefully, and I clarified some things. Sent it back in and then I got— it was another— it was kind of a nasty— and look, sometimes with emails it's hard to tell. It felt a little nasty. It certainly was very short. But essentially the agent said, you still didn't answer all my questions properly, so I didn't submit you. And it's like, really? I mean, why didn't you just send me an email and say, look, This is what you missed. Clarify it. Make this clear. I need this information. Instead of making it so vague and having me go back in and try to figure out what was missing. It was just— it felt really bad. And I lost out on a good audition because of that. So my initial reaction was I wanted to get in touch with the agent and, you know, just say to them, Why didn't you just contact me? This doesn't make any sense. I really don't like being talked to like this. And then I thought, you know what? I really pick and choose my battles with agents very carefully, and I decided to let that one go. I certainly didn't like it. And when I thought about it, it hit me later that I should have done that. Not to say the agent shouldn't have done it as well. But in the future, the next time, if that ever does happen, I'm going to contact the agent right away and just say, hey, really sorry. I'm not sure what I missed here. Just let me know and I'll take care of it. So anyhow, if you ever run into those situations, look, it's easy to start fighting. It's easy to feel defensive and feel like your intelligence is being challenged as well as your work ethic. You know, you didn't follow my direct— And that's so unnecessary to be talked to like that. So what I would suggest doing, contact the agent, ask them specifically what they need, what you didn't fill out properly, what information they didn't get. Hopefully you can get that stuff back to them in time and then you can be submitted. So anyhow, I just wanted to share that experience with you. Love to hear some of your ideas of things that happened to you, and please share them with others so that we can all learn from our experiences. I mean, that's what this is all about. If you do have any follow-up questions or comments, you can either leave it below. You can also go to my facebook.com/howtomodel page. And anyhow, I look forward to talking with you again soon. See you. Thanks, Aaron.
