#82: Some Rides Are Rough
Tuesday 10/22/24
As this posts, I’ve signed my lease! My new studio will be located at 470 Ridgedale Ave, East Hanover, NJ!
This sudden change has made me think about my trajectory in the arts over the years. I share this to say that you can be many things. Every experience you have in life can be applied to other endeavors and will help you develop skills that can help in so many aspects. I said YES to many kinds of jobs and opportunities and if I hadn’t, my life may be very different and void of so many of my skills I have today.
Let’s reflect, shall we?
Age 4: start acting in the local youth performing arts school (i stayed here til I was 16, and even was an “intern” in high school assisting the program director - leadership skills started young!)
Age 10/11: first professional audition - and it was for Broadway haha. Around this time, my mom started enrolling me in more serious training in voice and acting. I didn’t do “kids” shows, I only focused on training, school shows, and 1-2 community theatre shows a year (with adults - a distinction to make haha)
High School: Weekly voice, acting class with adults - 10 weeks at a time, summer intensives, 2-3 big shows a year, summer shows with a great team, trying to get an agent, auditioning all the time (marie taking me out of school every week), and just going full force. ***Important*** started a part time job so I had my own money at Joyce Leslie - the clothing store. I started in retail and unfortunately, i was great at it lol.
College: Off to NYC, focused on class but got a job at Express, again retail. Over my college career I worked A LOT and right after I graduated I was promoted to a Keyholder. I was auditioning only once in a while during school. They told us we “weren’t allowed to audition” so a lot of us did not. I met amazing people and contacts at Marymount. For 1 year I was a real estate agent. I did like 3 deals… i was NOT good at it. I became an agent because the realtor we used to get an apartment off campus told me he was scared of my negotiating skills and he wanted me to work for him. So, at 20, I got my license and started. I was bad.
Post Grad: Stayed in NYC itl 2011 doing the following… auditioning like a crazy person, did a few shows in NYC, concerts, singing in the basement of bars, continued working at Express til 2008. By 2008, I was running the location on 58th and Lex. I kept getting promoted and was so young. It was so nice to be told you are great at something, and better than others. MUCH different than auditions.
The Fossil Years 2009-2015: Left Express to go to Fossil with my old district manager. I was hired as an Assistant Store Manager for a brand new store that was opening in Times Square. I opened that store without a Store Manager - i hired everyone, coordinated the opening, was the contact with the President, and after an amazing Nov (we opened Wed before Black Friday), I was given the store. They never hired anyone and realized that I was giving HBIC regardless. In 2011, the offered me the Area Manager job in DC. I never thought I’d leave NYC but i wasn’t really acting much so figured it was a good time to try something new. So, in August of 2011, off to DC I went. I lasted 9 months. I loved Fossil and my job, but I couldn’t make friends and couldn’t hang with people who worked for me. I did a show to try to make some friends, but it wasn’t enough to justify not just living back in NJ. In April of 2012 I told them, I’m going back to NYC/NJ with or without Fossil. The next week, Fossil called me to say, we figured it out. You wil be the Area Manager of all Northeast Brand Stores except NYC. We are moving your boss to only run those. OK! I was back by July. I was back in NJ, running 13 stores all over the Northeast. I was responsible for about 50 million dollars and over 500 employees. I loved it. AND i was able to get back into theatre. I started getting very involved in the local scene. I hadn’t done a show in NJ in over 12 years! I got promoted to have NYC in my district in 2013 and was officially a District Manager. I was probably the youngest one in the company - as people loved to remind me. I kept this up - DM and shows - until Feb of 2015 when I was laid off along with 30% of the fleet. Apparently, they were closing clothing stores which made up half my district. They also shared they were comfortable absorbing the northeast stores into the mid-atlantic market…. To a new-ish DM. She was gonna get eaten alive in the northeast, but they were ok with it. I took my severance package, and went to an audition on Monday.
Since then I’ve worked for myself. I had a job at a company for a bit creating tours of their weird shows but that really felt like a part time gig. Other than that, it’s been acting jobs & coaching. Of course in 2020, things very much changed and I pretty much exclusively coached til about early 2022.
Building a business is not something I could’ve done if I didn’t choose to apply to Joyce Leslie, or taken leadership opportunities, or took a leap with Fossil, or lead HR workshops for people older than me, etc. Each stop along the way, each twist and turn gave me skills - hard skills of course, but also soft. Sometimes I miss working with a lot of people. I really do. But, I treat myself like my first team I ever had - the team that opened that Times Square Fossil Store without a store manager. I hold myself accountable, I learn from my students/clients, and I understand the most important thing about business: People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. They buy what you believe. And the result simply serves as the proof of what you believe.
If you don’t understand business, you don’t understand people.
Dreams Don’t Die
Julie