This Actor Got Ignored for 5 Years… Then She Flipped the Script

One of my amazing students, Meg Messmer, is an actor and Emmy-nominated showrunner living in Sweden, and for five years she was doing everything the industry tells you to do. Pitching her show. Sending emails. Following up. Getting babkas back. She knew it was good (duh, Emmy nom), so she believed in it enough to pitch it for half a decade, and all she got for her trouble was crickets. Frustrating? You betchya.

She knew she had to do something different, but what? That's when she found the Side Door Challenge, and five days later she had a plan that's since gotten her a YES on the show she'd been pitching for five years, connections to major industry players she's already collaborated with, and over $5K. (Not from the show, but we'll get there.)

I sat down with Meg for the Act Bold channel to talk through all of it, and I've been thinking about what she said ever since.

What changed? I thought you'd never ask.

What Meg figured out inside the Side Door Challenge was how to identify exactly what she needed to get out of stuck and build a step-by-step plan specific to her career, her market, her situation. Not generic advice. Hers.

What came out of that process: the vertical dramas format was taking the industry by storm, and she wanted to repackage her script as a micro drama to get in on it. Only problem? She first needed to figure out what the heck was actually involved with writing and pitching one, because she had absolutely no idea.

And that thing she needed to learn? That became the room she built.

If an Emmy nom couldn't get her a meeting, God help the rest of us

That's basically what I said to Meg during our conversation, because it's genuinely ridiculous. She wasn't coming from a weak position. She had the credits, the project, five years of persistence, and still nothing was moving.

So instead of quietly signing up for a course somewhere, she organized a masterclass. She brought four major players in the Vertical Dramasphere into one virtual room and invited others who were also curious about this new format to come learn right alongside her. People paid to be there.

Thirty-three people showed up. She walked away with over $5K, real relationships with every speaker she'd brought in, and a professional treatment ready to send. She sent that treatment to the production company she'd been trying to pitch for HALF A DECADE. They want to produce the show.

When she described what it felt like to be in that room, she said something I couldn't improve on: "I felt like I was in the power seat. The energy I was coming to the table with was different because I wasn't asking for something. I was... organizing... Offering."

Yep. That's it. Offer don't ask, and (spoiler) it's not nearly as hard as you think.

Follow your curiosity not your passion

The thing Meg built wasn't the thing she'd planned when she sat down at the Side Door Challenge to figure out her next move. She followed her curiosity into a space she knew almost nothing about, and it led her straight to what she needed. (It usually does.)

Everybody's always talking about following their passion, and I'm like, yeah, but follow your curiosity, because your curiosity is your passion. Passion is the thing you already know you love. Curiosity is messier than that. It's just interested in something, it follows the thread, and the whole thing builds itself from the conversations along the way.

Meg's curiosity about vertical drama led her to four people who knew the space inside out, which led to a virtual room she ran, which led to a production company saying yes to her show. She didn't plan that chain. She followed the curiosity and kept going.

Whether two people show up or 33

Near the end of our conversation I asked Meg what she'd say to the actor still sitting where she was two years ago. She didn't hesitate. "What do you have to lose? You have to lose two more years of figuring it out yourself."

And then, right at the very end, she said something I've been thinking about ever since. Whether two people had shown up to that masterclass or 33, it wouldn't have mattered. Because once you've done it once, you can do it again.

When she said that, I didn't have anything to add. I still don't.

One more thing from this conversation. Right in the middle of all of this happening, Meg got her 90-day TCA check-in, one of those "hey, you've gone quiet, where are you" nudges. Her first reaction to that email kinda stung. But then she looked at the steps she was already taking and realized she wasn't standing still, she was moving towards exactly what she wants. She looks back at that letter as a nudge, not a verdict. Yep. That's exactly how it works.

The full episode is on the Act Bold YouTube channel. We got into all the nitty-gritty of exactly how she went from babkas to a big fat YES, what following your curiosity actually looks like when you have no idea where it's going, and what she'd say to the actor who's been doing everything right for years and still waiting.

The Side Door Challenge is live every day from May 4 through May 8. It's where Meg figured out what was actually blocking her and built a plan specific enough to act on. There's more about it at act-bold.com/sdc .