A nursing student named Eliana asked how to fix her sleep schedule and stick to a habit. Half an hour later we’d found the real problem: her dream wasn’t specific enough to get her out of bed, and a sentence from years ago was still running. The plane that leaves without you, good fear, why nobody pays a student nurse either, and the morning that builds a dream.
Three words on the wall of the studio and what they mean in practice: act with passion, keep love at the center, and commit to a never-ending pursuit of mastery. Why the 10,000 hours number was never the point, and what is.
Keegan, a high-school senior from the Shadow Mountain drama program, came in looking for part-time work and passed our secret tests. Nine minutes on what an internship here is actually like: wax on, wax off, why we are selective about who is in the building, the terrible interview that became his first lesson, and the difference between have to and get to.
Brianna asks how you know you are getting better when nobody hands you a grade, how to push through the days you want to sleep in, and which paid classes are worth it. Compare you to you, book it the night before, quadrant two and the audition that doesn’t exist, ten times the value, and the 6 a.m. call time you give yourself.
Jenna Del Pozo is graduating from ASU with a film degree, a new marketing job with a family of Phoenix restaurants, a food blog, and a fear about the future. Letting go of the timeline, the math I did when I left pre-med, combining the things you love into one profession, the pitch she prepared and never had to give, becoming a servant of all, and why she has to audition now, because she is afraid to.
Jada Warner asks whether she is doing enough and whether to study acting in college. Counterbalance instead of balance, the lie that you don’t have time, why nobody goes pro on two hours a day, college as a babysitter and as a business, the editor I paid to hold me accountable, and where God is pulling the studio.
Brad Sweeney, Brian and Joey’s father, joins the boys and me. The studio that started in a doctor’s office and then eight parking spots on McDowell Road in 2007, sign spinning with my new bride, the habits that go with you anywhere, why the television belongs out of the bedroom, Joey’s growth, and a thousand dollars in gift cards from two strangers.
Shea was making slides for her first real speaking engagement and got stuck on one word: speaker. Yoga instructor, yes. Actress, yes. Speaker? She’d done it twice. This is about the two different I ams, the one you say to other people once you’ve earned it and the one you say to yourself before it’s true, plus Matt the friend versus Matt the coach, and Leeann coming back to teach the kids.
Joey fought through a day of roadblocks to get us live, and it turned into the best day he’d had in a while. That’s the episode: why finishing strong feels good whether or not you finish, Napoleon Hill on going the extra mile, a week of Valleywood, what Mercury in retrograde has to do with gratitude, why you choose what you spread, and two students who told strangers where they trained.
Two of our teen students behind a microphone for the first time, with Joey and me. Cardinals football and why Brian never knew where Kyler Murray was, the coach who told a nine-year-old she had to mature, the night the teen class sat in a circle and got real, a happy birthday sung to someone whose birthday it wasn’t, a freshman class of 600, deleting social media, and what makes this place special to them.
The studio ran a week without me and two castings landed in the middle of it, one of them a national SAG job. Shea, Brian, Joey and me on what a casting week is really like from our side of the table, the local agents who pull over in the grocery aisle to get talent submitted, hurry up and wait, why an actor should audition for themselves on the day nothing is scheduled, and a Valentine’s Day at the studio.
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