Ahhh 2020. I was working part time at the Trader Joe’s on 3rd street – global pandemic, couldn’t smell or taste anything, riots, fun times. I had moved to Los Angeles in 2013 in pursuit of my dream to be an actor and a writer and I was finally having some success- I did a guest star spot on Lucifer, a Scifi-Pilot called SOLUS that I produced was screening, and a few of my scripts were placing in contests… BOOM. And now the entire industry had been put on hold. Stopped. All of my progress seeming to evaporate in mere days – it’s a lot easier to convince yourself it’s ok to live paycheck to paycheck, handing out toilet paper rolls on the front lines of a literal plague when you’re actively moving towards your goals. So I melted. I started to question what I was doing, my craft, everything was unraveling. Oddly enough, at the same time, I had started expressing myself more frequently online doing short form videos with my dogs. I was no stranger to this format, I was on VINE (when the dinosaurs existed), but we really started to hit our stride on TIKTOK, and then Instagram REELS, and eventually Youtube SHORTS started to pick up viewership. By 2021, we had a large enough following that it made sense for me to quit. It seemed I had finally found a place to express myself fully – something that is oddly difficult for an actor / writer since it takes teams of people to help get projects made. The jump-off was rocky. It’s really hard to make a transition from a steady paycheck to a gig job where you get paid in sporadic lumps (if you are experiencing any other kind of sporadic lumps, you should see your doctor). I had to learn how to manage my own finances, taxes, media kits, press- Hardest of all was determining how much I was “worth” – which, in itself, is a really messed up question. Fast forward to now and I’ve finally made my creativity my career. HOLY CRAP that’s cheesy. I mean, I have finally married my vocation with my passion – is that a little too high-brow? Oh well.

I am an actor, online creator and award-winning screenwriter. You might know me from the 2 minutes and 30 seconds I was in the show Lucifer as Detective Doofus (this is, unfortunately, not a joke) or most likely you’ll recognize me and my dog from such memes as “Let me do it for you” and “It’s my Little Russian Lady.” We currently have an online following of over 2.5 million across Tiktok, Instagram and Youtube all under the handle @esperborzoi.

Building an audience on social media is simple (I did not say easy). I can give you a blueprint. It has worked for a number of my friends – those who can stick to it. 1. BE CONSISTENT – this is the number one advice, you have to post consistently. Find out what “consistent” is for you. I do once a day. Some people, 3 times a week.
2. BE SIMPLE – execute a concept you are not going to burn out on. What do you LOVE!??! Also, If you are doing crazy complex videos, you’re probably not going to be consistent. If you’re doing boring things all the time, no one is going to care. It’s a balance.
3. QUALITY IS ALL THAT MATTERS – don’t get bogged down in hashtags, captions, time of day, audience, even platform. The only thing that matters is the quality of the content – QUALITY does not mean complex, it means genuine which leads me to-
4. BE YOUR DAMN SELF – if you’re faking it online, the audience will know, humans have innate bulls*&t meters and they are in OVERDRIVE on social content.
5. PREPARE FOR BACKLASH – once you start expressing who you really are online, you’re going to get backlash. People will call you CRINGE- if they do, but your content is funny or educational, or overall what YOU want to be – your’re doing it right, you’re on your way.

Right now we are seeing an epic battle. The WGA and SAG went on strike. Hundreds of thousands of people were put out of work (myself included). The media portrays all actors as millionaires, the truth is, out of the 160,000 SAG actors, only 15% of them make enough money to qualify for health insurance. That is $26,000 a year.- 85% of Actors work poverty level wages because they love it. We are seeing a real-time visceral industry clash that determines who will dictate our entertainment for decades to come – will it be the actual ARTISTS or will a handful of rich men have computers write 7000 superhero movies to ram down our throats until we die. The studios were willing to take hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, just to control what you get to see… AS ENTERTAINMENT.

Therein lies the problem… Creative endeavors are not valued the same in society as other more tangible industries. It’s true, if you went without TV or books, or social media you would live- You would be bored and sad, but you would live. I believe that the majority of the public wants to see brilliant artists do brilliant things. They don’t want to see banal overplayed remakes. They want genuine art on the screen.

All of this to say, the best way to support artists (who work in film and TV) is to support the organizations on strike. You need to let the studios know what YOU want to see. The power, as always, is with the people.