Make Your Own Opportunities

You’ve made it to the final chapter! At the time of this book’s writing, studies have shown that Americans read an average of only twelve books per year. Congrats on making this book one of your reads for this year, and seeing it through to the very end.

The last chapter was all about mentors and how to acquire them. You must keep in mind that building relationships is not the process of a microwave: it doesn’t happen in minutes. It’s a long process that is slow-cooked to perfection. Avoid rushing heavily to build relationships with your trusted board of advisors.

For this chapter, I’ll be sharing a couple stories of mine to help give inspiration on your networking journey.

After winning my first acting award and getting so many callbacks, I found myself in a room full of producers, directors, talent agencies, managers, and so many other professionals in the entertainment industry who wanted to speak with me. Many of them were based in different parts of America and had a long flight to catch, so they had to leave the event early.

Not knowing who would be leaving first, I did my best to speak to as many professionals who gave me a callback as possible. As I went from one industry professional to the other, some professionals saw me, recognized me from my performance, and pulled me aside to chat after realizing they had meant to give me a callback but didn’t get the chance. A good problem to have—but the additional professionals who wanted to discuss possibilities slowed me down to the point that I was unable to get to everyone that had originally given me a callback.

The next morning, I emailed every industry professional who was at the event, regardless of if they gave me a callback or not. I figured that if they didn’t like my performance, it didn’t matter—we could still build a professional relationship and create win-win situations for each other.

A couple months went by. Things died down and I didn’t know what to do. I could wait around for another opportunity, but after working so hard for months and then getting so many big wins at once, it almost felt irresponsible to sit on my hands that way. I was offered a movie deal by a casting director for a project shooting in Philadelphia and had a folder full of business cards, contracts, and letters of invitation to meet with agents and managers. To go from taking my well-developed work ethic to fight for a win like that to sitting around waiting for my wins definitely felt lazy. So, I went to Google and typed in something along the lines of, “How to network as an actor.”

After about fifteen minutes of scrolling, reading, and more scrolling, I discovered LinkedIn. It was foreign to me. The first time I used it, I typed in “director” in the search box and a load of directors popped up in front of me. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, but I saw a button that looked like an “add as a friend” button (come to find out the button was actually called “Connect,” for connecting with professionals).

As soon as I realized this button was actually a way to add professionals as connections, I figured I would connect with as many professionals as possible. Since the button said “connect” I assumed that as soon as you clicked the button you were automatically connected, as the word implied. I didn’t know the “connect” button was actually more like a “send a connect request button” and the receiver had to accept said request.

Needless to say, I spent a good three hours excitedly jamming my thumb on the “connect” button on every director, producer, and casting director, scrolling furiously until around eleven o’clock at night.

The next morning, I woke up to fifty-six LinkedIn notifications from different professionals who had accepted my request. My phone buzzed periodically throughout the day to let me know someone else had accepted my request. The buzzing continued for over a week. I now had over 200 connections on LinkedIn. Out of that 200, only about fifteen to twenty of the professionals I connected with actually sent me a message. Realizing I would have to reach out first (I was very new to networking at this time), I constructed a generic “thanks for joining my network” email that went something like this:

“Thank you for joining my network! I am a young actor in the MD area. I see that you have experience working in the entertainment industry. I look forward to a fruitful working relationship with everyone I connect with on LinkedIn. I see every new association as a possibility to make a friend while elevating my work to the next level!

Thank you for your time!

Ali Scarlett”

From a power dynamics and networking point of view, there is a lot wrong with this. We could take the time to pick this apart, but then you’d miss the rest of the story.

For a quick note on what I mean, one problem with this cold introduction is the fact that I said “thank you for joining my network.” Leading with “thank you” that way frames the interaction as if I’m the only one that will be benefiting in our professional relationship[1]. It almost completely takes away what could have been a great chance to underline the value that I bring to the table. Had I said something along the lines of “Welcome to my network,” I could have avoided the slightly negative reaction that comes with signaling to others that your primary concern is finding what you can get from them. I wouldn’t be surprised if the recipients of my “thank you” message were shifted into assuming that I’m a taker because of my poor word choice. The funny part is, hundreds of industry professionals received that message. Not my brightest moment, but I’m a learner.

Almost everyone who received this message didn’t bother with the usual formalities you’d experience in face-to-face conversation. The main response was, “What do you want?”, making me feel like most of the entertainment industry professionals were mean. Here I was, being nice, using my good manners by saying “thank you,” and the few connections who actually responded were acting like I was a waste of their time (at least that’s how it felt at the time, without knowing what I do now).

One of the industry professionals who was kind in response to my message was a former producer who was moving into directing. Originally, he seemed to think that I wanted something from him too, and responded by telling me he’s not casting for his film at the moment. I had no idea he was casting for a film.

After some conversation, he offered to let me read the synopsis of the story for his movie. I loved the story and communicated how much I enjoyed the concept, but in the same message told him I’m not looking for any favors at the moment. I emphasized that I’m only looking to make another friend in the entertainment industry. I established common ground, telling him what I had in common with him (from what I could tell, reading the synopsis) and his response was:

“You’re close by. Would you like to meet up after the holidays in January to discuss the film and some possibilities?”

We set the date and I met up with him at the agreed-upon date and time. At this meeting, he told me that his film was an epic major motion picture with a budget of roughly $120 million. With a compassionate directness, he expressed to me that with a project this size, chances are I wouldn’t make the cut as anything bigger than an extra.

We were meeting for the first time so, at that moment, I couldn’t understand why he was underestimating me or my acting ability—but that was really my ego talking. I knew he was just trying to be nice, and I understood the situation. We continued to talk about the film until we shifted more into his passions and drives, where we connected more. We wound up talking for about four hours, then he said, “Would you like to audition?”

I said yes and got an exclusive audition, just me and the director. At that audition he told me I was a great actor and embodied the character better than anyone else he had seen audition (he had seen hundreds; he had been casting for over half a year). He gave me the part. Not as an extra, but as a principal role. We went to his office (which was in another location within the same building) where he handed me a huge script and I was given an non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to sign right then and there.

I tell that story to say this: read the title of this chapter. I gave it that title for a reason. There is more opportunity to be created than you could imagine if only you would create the relationships you need with the decision-makers in positions of power. If only you would put in the work needed to get to where you want to go.

There was no time in any day where I couldn’t be doing something more to advance my career. Even if the work I put into my career started with working on myself and becoming a high-quality man, that was fine. The point is that I could always be doing something.

You may have read the chapter title and assumed that by making your own opportunities I meant networking your way to opportunities that benefit your career. That was definitely a big part of it, but you’re only seeing half the picture.

There’s a reason networking has the word “work” in it. What most people don’t understand is that networking is more of an opportunity to work on yourself than on anything else. If you can’t communicate, can’t show empathy, or have a general lack of soft skills, you’ll have a very, very hard time succeeding in a way that lasts.

Growing up, I didn’t just have negative experiences with my family, friends, school classmates, school teachers, and soccer teammates. I was disrespected often by some of my neighbors. This is not entirely their fault. They were fed misinformation about me and my goals.

They assumed I had no plans for the future and believed the lies they were told that I was not going to amount to anything. I furthered that idea by choosing to lie that I had no idea what I wanted to do in life. Despite being an accomplished actor at this time with numerous connections in the entertainment industry (and an eye for real estate), I would tell them, “I’m still figuring it out.”

Why did I do this? I wanted to see for myself how far the stereotype content model went. I had friends that I knew I could never abandon, simply because they had gone broke or dropped out of college. They would be low-power at that point, but I would still be there for them. I had no real family, so I considered my real friends to be family. Regardless of any fluctuations in their value and power, I would be there. My friends were the only family I really had, so our friendships were always built on more than just money.

My relationships with my neighbors dissolved when they realized I was a grown adult with seemingly no direction, ambition, or goals of any kind and was not in college. There were days when they pretended not to have noticed my presence.

Every time I would get a win in my career that I chose to advertise on my social media, some of them would reach out to me. You would think that, now that my value had gone up, they’d stick around, but as soon as my win became old news they’d shut me out again. I would get another win, post about it, and the cycle would continue.

The only thing that was truly consistent in my life was self-development. I came back from wanting suicide to working on myself to make sure my choice to live was worth it. There was a time when I nearly died of kidney failure and realized how fragile life truly is. Growing up every day seeing my parents living their lives in their forties and then one day, suddenly coming close to my end at sixteen definitely didn’t seem right to me. I thought I would live to at least thirty.

It made me realize that tomorrow really is a made-up idea. We never truly see it, because we’re living in today, yet we plan our calendars with the expectation that we’re going to wake up tomorrow. Having that experience where my tomorrow almost vanished shocked me into hustling every day to build my legacy and fulfill my purpose.

So, I worked on myself. As I improved, people drew nearer to me. My social life slowly began to improve. I was able to identify who was wasting my time and who would be a great fit for my social circle. I weeded out the people who only saw my value, not the human being in me. I kept people around who could help my mental health. I made my own opportunities by first making myself into a man who could create opportunities. It all started with choosing to work on myself, not just my career.

You may be asking: how does this process work? How does working on yourself translate to real, and noticeable improvements in your life and career? Different areas of your life are complementary. As I said before, the pillars to the good life are health, wealth, love, and happiness. My mental health suffered because I let my negative experiences get to me. As a result, I didn’t have the desire to work hard and ended up becoming a very cold person. This resulted in people distancing themselves from me, which caused a lack of love in my life. I fell into depression and my happiness suffered. (The funny thing is, back then, my wealth couldn’t have declined because I didn’t have any money. It broke the bank for me to go to a private high school with rich kids that had rich parents. I was barely getting by.)

To get back on my feet, I had to push people away who were bad for me and my future. I had to say no to things I would’ve liked to have said yes to. I would come home, and no one would see the good in me, the hard choices I made day in and day out to remain a good person, or my constant struggle to develop. Instead, they saw disappointment. My father told me, “You’re a damn waste of my money,” and would routinely threaten to pull me out of the private high school. My mother eventually wanted nothing to do with me, putting me out onto the street.

I was making what could be considered “socially impressive,” career-worthy wins at that time, but I didn’t trust my mother enough to tell her about them after she cancelled my scholarship. Since I kept all of my success a secret, she assumed I was nothing.

Here’s the key to this whole story, the primary lesson I want you to take away from this chapter: I blamed myself.

Everything my parents ever said to me, every time I had ever been abandoned, disrespected, or treated unfairly, I took full ownership. To escape the personal pain that came from never getting answers to why my negative experiences happened, I adopted what you might call an “extreme locus of control.” I chose to believe that everything is my fault, because that means I can learn and grow from it. I can use those experiences as opportunities to make sure it doesn’t happen again or, if it does reoccur, that I handle it much better than I did back when I fell into depression.

Taking my pain and blaming myself for it led to me making my pain an opportunity to grow. Since it was my fault, I could change it. This was no different from me leaving my textbook at home on accident being my fault. I am able to learn from that and change by preparing my backpack the night before, moving forward.

That life-changing choice and growth in maturity led to me becoming the kind of man that could create career changing opportunities. The change in my mental health and my mindsets—my frames—led to me improving my overall health, which improved my happiness, which improved my relationships, which improved my success.

Now, that doesn’t make those experiences any less painful—-and you shouldn’t use this extreme locus of control to beat up on yourself. The idea is to know that you’re in control of yourself and how you react to situations in the future.

I accept that as bad as my experiences were, they could’ve much been worse. My mother could’ve been a drug addict. Most of the abuse that she put me through was her taking her emotional pain over her collapsing marriage out on me. I don’t blame her, and I thank God she never became an alcoholic.

My father was raised by physically abusive parents and that was all he knew about parenting. As I got older and after my parents’ divorce, he realized he had done all he could to provide for the family financially, but now had no family. He wasn’t really around and didn’t take the time to get to know me, so there was no bond.

Eventually, I reached out to him. We got closer through my kidney failure because my mother was unwilling to take me to dialysis. Three days a week, it was me and my father. A two-hour drive to the hospital, three hours of me hooked up to a machine that cycled blood as I did homework, and a two-hour drive back.

Eventually, I let him know what I liked about his parenting and what I felt like he could’ve done better. I told him how, all things considered I’m very proud of him. I could’ve been antagonistic and held resentment in my heart throughout every car ride, but I instead took responsibility and accepted all that happened.

This is the power of improving your mental health and taking responsibility. I was able to forgive him for his mistakes and forgive myself for not handling my experiences better. Now my dad is my best friend to this very day.

After forgiving him (and myself), we were able to talk about a hell of a lot more of our struggles and actually laugh about it. Looking back, we could remember the long, two-hour drives to my private school in my dad’s broken BMW, where the window slid into the door and we had to tape a garbage bag onto the frame in its place. The interior of the door was missing (all the metal and wires were showing) and the door couldn’t shut. Throughout the cold winter, I would hold the door shut for the daily two-hour drive to and from my private school. We laughed as we recalled when my father sent the car to a shop to get it fixed. The car repairman “fixed” the door that refused to close by welding the door onto the car. Now the car door wouldn’t open.

As we laughed about the days behind us and talked more with each other, I realized I couldn’t have asked for a better dad. I only didn’t know how amazing my dad was because he wasn’t in my life. Before, I didn’t know much about him and held resentment in my heart for that. It was only by blaming myself for our distance that I could tell myself, “My dad not being in my life is my fault and I can change that.” It was then that I empowered myself with the ability to step up and warmly open up the opportunity for us to reconnect, every car ride of every day.

My final story for you here is an example of my choice to say no to something I would have liked to have said yes to. At my private high school, there were a lot of rich kids, one of whom I was friends with. Our high school campus didn’t have a field for sports practice at the time, so the soccer team went to the private high school nearby for training.

This old friend of mine asked if I would do a drop for him, since I was on the soccer team. He would give me a deodorant, I would get it to a girl over at the nearby high school since I had to go there for practice anyway. I would get a cut of the money. If you haven’t already figured it out, there were drugs inside the casing of the deodorant stick instead of actual deodorant. I wanted the money, but I said no.

The next week, I went to a restaurant with a mutual friend of ours who is also on my soccer team. When paying for his meal, he opened his wallet and pulled out a wad of hundreds. My financial situation being what it was, I had to ask how he was making so much money. He told me he picked up the same deal I had turned down and was now making good money off of it. One of my mottos was and still is “whatever it takes,” but I stick to my values and follow the law regardless of how big the opportunity is. The money wasn’t enough to make me break my moral code, and I am determined to never allow it to be.

Get clear on what success is to you. If you ask me, success isn’t a million dollars, and it’s not even ten million. It’s the achievement of “the good life”—health, wealth, love, and happiness. I invested much time, energy, and money into learning the art of networking because having resources—having connections—is a form of power. You just learned how to network, and you can network your way to opportunities to create this life for yourself. You also just learned how to become a high-quality man, and can work on yourself to create this life. Do both, and be willing to endure. Learn to suffer without complaining. Do it for yourself, because you owe it to yourself. No mission too difficult, no sacrifice too great.

Action Steps:

1. Write down ten things you would do with a romantic partner to show that you love them

- Soak in a hot tub with candles lit? Dinner and a movie? Maybe you have a hobby you enjoy that you would love to do with them such as singing, boxing, or learning a new language.

2. Schedule a day in the week where you can do as many of those things as possible on that day with yourself.

- Learn to love yourself more. Learn to enjoy your own company. We appreciate the big things in life, like landing that promotion, but it’s not often we spend time learning to appreciate the little things in life, like good music on a nice night. Use this action step to do just that.