Is it a Feature or a Bug?
Every Industry has secrets, the kind you have hidden way back of the closet that way you can't even see it unless you look for them...
and we are no exception. It seems the acting and production industry is riddled with conflicts specific to us, that many other industries do not face. In the process of learning the business we are often left to figure things out as we go, to see where the "features" and "bugs" are, and in doing so solve what we can and deal with the rest as best as possible.
What is a Feature vs Bug?
A couple simple examples I've seen are a Home Cleaning service and Gym studio. Getting clients to want a home cleaning service to save time and efforts to keep a cleaner home is pretty easy, but getting and keeping new clients that want to show up for workouts, while putting in the time and effort to eat healthy is a much bigger ask. But being able to hire reliable and trustworthy talent to provide the home cleaning services on a maid's salary can be very difficult. These are examples of "Features" in these particular industries.
However a "Bug" would be the flaws that can be resolved to improve the business model. A possible example of this might be money constraints on a business due to a net90 model, where the invoice isn't due in full for up to 90 days upon delivery. This constraint could become an issue for marketing to generate more clients/projects, or making payroll for employees/partners, or even having the cash flow to spend on the cost of a project. (i.e. Travel, equipment, permitting, wardrobe, krafty, catering, etc.)
There are overlapping features, however, between many facets of our community.
Here is a infographic with many, but not all, features for talent listing things that may not necessarily apply to the production side, and others that we both face giving each other some common ground to build on.
Venn Diagram for industry specific features with overlap between production and talent.
What features are currently a bottleneck for your business?
What features might you be facing that may not be listed here?
What we can do about it.
If we as a community were able to work more intrinsically together, what might this look like? A few obvious suggestions that come to mind, over-communication. Not just within your team but to potential talent as well as contracted crew, letting everyone involved know hierarchy for dissemination of information and questions. When someone on the team is afraid to ask a question or make a mistake, they will inherently work slower causing more problems in the project. They need to know who to contact, and how to contact them for efficiency. TLDR:
Once we understand the features of each other’s businesses, we can design better systems and expectations that align with our core values.
Transparency comes up a lot. There's a reason why. When businesses provide transparency to clients, talent, and their team, it establishes expectations, simplification for anyone who new to your business/industry, and better understanding of how all these pieces fit together to create these masterful productions of creativity.
So, I want to know, what can YOU do? How can these points and information help shape your business for growth in 2026?
