We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chris Bylsma. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chris below.
Chris, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.
I think anyone with a healthy amount of self-awareness will always have to keep an eye on imposter syndrome a bit! So I wouldn’t say I’ve fully “overcome” it, but I prefer to think of it as a perfectly natural check-&-balance. And it can even be a healthy thing for me I feel, just to make sure I’m not getting to enamored with accomplishments or any part of my journey, & to ensure that I’m re-examining things from other perspectives from time-to-time.
But of course when we use that phrase, we’re nearly always talking about that crippling battle with “That Voice”, a war that definitely took a lot of time for me to tune down & then to the background. I think what that takes can be a little bit different for everyone, just based on how our brains work, but for me the heart of it came down to being able to trust & rest in everything that had prepared me for this stage in my career(s).
It’s not self-indulgent or pretentious for me or anyone else to KNOW that we are excellent at what we do! Because each of us knows the amount of hours that it took to pour into our passions to get us to that point. No matter what walk of life you’re in, it takes careful preparation, trial & error, & hard work to get things off the ground a bit, so those beginning stages can be fraught with the imposter syndrome grappling. It’s hard to really KNOW that you belong when the truth is you haven’t put in the time just yet…but that all changes fast!
When I say “I know what I’m talking about” but I’ve only done it once, inevitably everyone around me [& hopefully even I myself] might doubt that. When I say “I know what I’m talking about” after having done it literally thousands of times, it would truly be completely illogical for me to doubt my core knowledge or ability. So whenever I have my moments, I try to observe the lie for exactly what it is, & then run through a few of the things I’m most proud of in my journey.
The years that I have put into study, the times when I felt at my most uncertain but was able to conquer those moments anyway, the goals that I’ve been able to set & meet. There are many other factors that can be really helpful for me, but I believe this to be one of my primary tools. And ironically it’s among the simplest ones, too.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I got my start in acting after stumbling across the indie film scene, & I’m still doing it a decade & a half later! I think one of the things that makes my time in the industry unique is that I also had an editing background before all this, so while not on set I founded & built my own actor reel editing company – Breakthrough Reels.
That balancing act between keeping my creativity & schedule freed up for my passion for acting, while still being wholly responsible for an entire company & for doing the absolute best work for the actors who trust us has been a really challenging but fulfilling one. In acting I’ve taken a bit of “the road less travelled” I think, getting hooked on the collaboration & comradery of indie film sets before eventually deciding I’d like to do some episodic work, & then finally considering it time to branch out to LA also.
That turned out to be perfect for me, as I got to really develop & hone my own method through indie films & bring a wide variety of roles to life in that way before I ever stepped onto my first network set! Circling back to imposter syndrome, I definitely feel like all of that experience allowed me to be far more grounded & confident “in the big leagues” than I would’ve been if I had stepped on a Netflix set first thing.
With Breakthrough Reels, I personally felt that the big companies on the coasts didn’t know how Casting really used clips & reels to book us, didn’t care to tailor their edits to each actor’s unique path, & over all they just didn’t “get” actors & what we need.
That wasn’t necessarily their fault, many of them are exceptional editors for film or television, & some of them even are able to make solid reels. But I decided then & there that I would take my technical proficiency with editing, BUT prioritize combining that with my insight as an actor, what I’d learned from directing, casting, & producing in the indie film world, & everything that I was constantly learning by talking to Casting Directors & Agents.
Our #1 Goal became not just delivering a solid video edit to an actor, but creating a showcase that uniquely empowered each individual actor. Not only to reach their next goal partly because of the marketing their reps could now use, but to show who they are as artists & as human beings. That’s not an easy task…but if it was everyone would be doing it!
And fast-forwarding to now we’ve clearly been successful in delivering on that goal, as we’ve grown from a little start-up company to working with over 500 actors in every major market in the country. We’ve developed thousands of unique strategies & edits, with many of our actors being with us for 2-10 years, & quite a few over a decade!
That’s just another unique thing about Breakthrough Reels, & it’s been truly incredibly to get to see these actors go from stuck at an indie film every two years all the way up to their first network co-star, Guest Star, or recurring roles.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
For me three of the most important to look at for actors would be that you either have or work hard to develop your empathetic senses, a great work ethic or the quality of perseverance, & that you consider building a strong base of film industry knowledge. You can mold each of those principles to apply to almost any industry or career pursuit, not to mention it’s just a good way to navigate life, but I’ll mostly keep the commentary to acting.
The absolutely most vital thing for me throughout my journey has unquestionably been empathy. I’ve always been painfully empathetic, since way back when I was just a young kid, & I never really understood why that was or why things that other people were going through had to have such an affect on ME. But when I discovered acting I immediately found this to be an enormous gift that I’d been given, as I could quickly tap into the heart of what these characters that currently existed only on a sheet of paper were feeling or experiencing.
Additionally, I just think when you approach your fellow humans with empathy you are genuinely interested in their perspectives & you’re living a life that is more in-tune with trying to understand others. And I just strongly believe that to be the only way to live! But as it applies to the passion of acting, I think it’s pretty easy to see how useful that is when you’re creating characters & unlocking motivations & “the reasons why”, rather than just looking at someone completely different than you thinking “…but I don’t know what they’re thinking or why they would do that.”
As far as the hard work & perseverance goes, I’m really thankful that hustle culture has finally gotten reigned in a bit & we all are able to critically examine the clear cons of a complete tunnel-vision approach like that. I know I had it in my head early on that if I just went ALL IN at all times I would be able to reach all my goals. Honestly, I wish that I had not had such rose-colored glasses on where that was concerned.
First, it’s just not true. Second, what good are those goals when you reach them & then immediate collapse from complete, exhaustive burnout yet again? Third, just pointing yourself in a direction & working SUPER HARD has to be the least intelligent way ever to approach anything.
That being said, whether you’re pursuing acting or a similarly-highly-competitive industry, you are going to have to be willing to put more time than most, turn down trips or parties you might rather be at, & above all you’ll have to be willing to be persistent through far more roadblocks than you thought you could. There are healthy boundaries & balances that we all must establish for ourselves, but the reality of this business is that the ones who are able to break through to the next level of their goals are often those who were “able to hang on the longest.”
That’s a sad visual, & it doesn’t make it fair – sometimes they just hung on long enough to get an incredibly luck break. But I’ve still found it to be the truth. And at least when we’re armed with the truth of a situation we’re able to make an honest, well-informed CHOICE about whether we are willing to do what it may take or not. Not just continue wandering through with glazed-over eyes because we’re under a lot of impressions that were never accurate to begin with.
And if we decide that we aren’t willing to do the persistent thing, I think that’s great! Million of people have given it a shot & decided that the industry just wasn’t the best thing for them, that it required way more than they were willing or able to give, or just that they’d rather have some regularity to their work schedule & paychecks.
Nobody can decide whether you should continue the race or take a different path in the road except YOU…but as long as you’re pursuing it, hard work & persistence are valuable assets.
Lastly, I’ve found it to be incredibly helpful that I studied all aspects of filmmaking, not just acting. I’ve cast films, produced, directed, run sound, been a production assistant, been a unit production manager – nearly all of it. And because I have at least a small degree of understanding about each role now, & the job that person is trying to accomplish, I’m able to do my job as an actor in such a way that we can ALL be as effective & efficient as possible.
We study the creative side of acting & hone our craft all the time, but the technical side can be equally important to a long career in this business. And very little really cements that side of the craft like being on the other side of the camera & really putting in some dedicated hours to building that area of our knowledge. You can be told over & over & over again the importance of hitting your marks, being a little more still for a tough focus pull, & about the importance of the continuity of the prop in your hand – just to name some basics. But sometimes all it takes is to be behind the camera ONCE so you can see it for yourself.
And by the 100th time you’ve seen this or that technical pro or con in the frame as a director, you certainly won’t be forgetting to assimilate it on the other side of the camera as an actor.
How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
I’ll use something that applies not only to acting or running a business in the industry, but also is pretty broadly applicable outside of it I think.
I’ve fortunately gotten past this now thanks to more creative planning, better forecasting, & some really talented new additions to the Breakthrough Reels team, but the #1 biggest challenge I faced was working through “becoming the bottleneck” in the business.
Thousands of business owners may have no problem with this, but I think for anyone else like me who can be extremely detail-oriented, cares deeply about their business & the quality standard they’ve set, & believes in their work ethic & ability to persevere (going full-circle again)…this can be a huge issue. And it truly does hit out of “nowhere”.
I do a little bit of advising for start-ups now & I think the best & simplest way to avoid this is to do a better job of clearly & carefully “planning for success” from an early stage. As your business grows & surpasses the next goal you set for it, that should automatically trigger an incremental move towards accommodating this expansion,. That way nothing is left up to your personal opinions about it.
In my case I could see my business growing rapidly, but because I valued every detail of the final product so much, I believed that I had to continue overseeing every single step of the process. If you tell yourself that story, it’s easy to look at your business’ overhead & fall into confirmation bias that your beliefs are true, because of course there’s not an exorbitant amount to go around yet.
Additionally, in my case with Breakthrough Reels I had always been able to manage everything myself, whether that was through adding hours or making tough sacrifices, & I fully believed in my ability to do that. So, again, that just further confirmed my bias that if I kept leaning into that I could continue to run it all. But if you extrapolate that line of thinking you can see how that leaves you tunnel-focused on just staying on top of the growing pile of work *in the moment*, which invariably leaves you with absolutely ZERO time to revisit the growing issue & adjust your processes to accommodate for your success.
As a result, in my cautionary tale “BTR” realized incredible growth but converted me into the bottleneck for ALL OF IT. So rather than the fulfillment & pride that I should have been feeling, I was experiencing profound misery that was rapidly growing at an inversely proportional rate to our business.
That’s a pretty rough place to find yourself, so even though this is a fairly simple concept I always stress just how vital it is. Even if it seems like it could be far off in the future, be sure to set processes in place so you can scale them alongside your growth with ease.
Additionally, one thing that’s reinforced often in the acting & entertainment industry is the so-called <u>need</u> to “be a multi-hyphenate.” I do believe in the value of experience in a wide-variety of areas, & I think it’s a great exercise to learn & do various thing yourself if you can. However, I also believe this sets us up for a trap, & it was one that I fell into.
Having heard over & over that I needed to be a multi-hyphenate, rather than addressing expansion sooner & engaging a team with their own unique talents & perspectives, I continued to double, triple, & quadruple-down on running the entire business myself. Because I technically COULD do all of these things myself, there was a time where I was: doing all the outreach & engagement with new actors, designing the entirety of every strategy & quote, executing every single cut of the video edits, preparing the invoices & doing the entire billing process, building all the graphic design elements, undertaking all of the marketing, overseeing our social media strategy…& the list goes on & on.
I *COULD* do it. I did it for years, especially when “BTR” was smaller. But it wasn’t until I forced myself to break out of that mindset that I was really able to start scaling wisely, bringing on individuals who added even more expertise than I had ever hoped to the business, & above all…got my Life back!
Seriously, it all sounds so simple & it’s easy to think “That won’t happen to me” or “That’s a long way off;” but suddenly in the briefest of flashes you’re realizing how hopelessly buried you are. Don’t underestimate your business or its potential! And DON’T let a little positive multi-hyphenate ability develop into a bottomless pit.
A bottleneck is an excellent opportunity to further streamline your processes, increase your efficiency, or take a closer look at future contingencies. But it is no place to live.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.breakthroughreels.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bylsmadness/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@breakthroughreels4867
- Other: Breakthrough Reels Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breakthroughreels/
