BTS: How One Shoot Can Boost Your Acting Career

Want to Book More Work This Year?
If you’ve ever wondered what it really takes to land a commercial gig and keep the momentum going, this episode is for you. You’ll hear how to prep like a pro, the simple ways to stand out on set, and how showing gratitude can leave a lasting impression. Walk away with tips you can use on your very next audition or job.

✨ Meet the Incredible “Maine Tourism” Team ✨
Couldn’t have done this shoot without these insanely talented humans—go check out their work and give them some love:

• Taylor Heath – Stylist + Model
• Krane Media – Taylor’s Production Company
• Anton Fresco – Director of Photography
• Michael Wilson – Photographer
• Bobby Marinelli – Director
• Lindsey McGraw – Fellow Model
• Emi D – Fellow Model

2025 could be the year everything shifts for you—and I want to be right there with you on the journey.

Follow along for the real behind-the-scenes of acting, modeling, and mindset growth—you’ll see the wins, the lessons, and what it really takes to build a creative career.
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Chapters

• 0:22 Welcome to The Glow Up Year
• 2:41 Preparing for the Shoot
• 6:01 First Day on Set
• 11:53 Meeting Amazing Cast and Crew
• 17:21 Day Two Adventures
• 22:08 The Power of Gratitude

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

The feeling of when you're just living one day in your dream is it's just nothing else touches it. Nothing else beats it.

SPEAKER_00: 0:22

Welcome back to the glow of year.

SPEAKER_01: 0:26

I'm Meg, actress model, and your behind the scenes bestie when it comes to chasing dreams and building something big. After years of navigating the ups, the downs, and the wild in-betweens of the entertainment world, I'm fully stepping into this next level chapter. This podcast is your backstage pass to all the real stuff auditions, photo shoots, mindset shifts, script prepped, career curveballs, you name it, I'm sharing it all.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00

The highs and the hard lessons. In real time. If you're ready to go all in on your glow-up, take some brave steps, and to see what it really looks like to grow in this industry, grab your favorite drink, get cozy, and let's dive in together. Howdy, howdy, howdy there, friend.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19

How are you doing today? It is so good to be back talking with you today. So I had mentioned on a previous episode that I was on hold for a main tourism commercial, and I booked it!

SPEAKER_00: 1:34

I booked it, I booked it, I really, really booked it, I booked it so hard, I booked it, I booked it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41

First job of the year. Yeah. So exciting. So so so exciting. So today, in honor of having booked the first job of the year, and also because this is the glow up year and it's a come with me journey, I figured today you would come to set with me and I would talk to you throughout the day and let you know what was happening and do another come with me episode because I think you really, really enjoyed our Coco Rosha Come With Me. And if you haven't listened to that one, go back a couple episodes and listen to it. It's great. You're gonna come with me today on my first shoot of the year, main tourism. This shoot honestly was a great match for me. It was hiking, it was outdoorsy, it was going to bars, it was chilling. At very local, awesome, cool places. And I discovered a few new places that I hadn't ever seen before, which was great because now I can go back and really enjoy it. Without further ado, come with me on my main tourism shoot. Howdy there, Chicky Pooh. So it is the day before I go on my main tourism shoot. And here's what I need to complete and prep today before I go on my shoot tomorrow. So I've been in talks with the stylist, and based on our conversations going back and forth, I have a long list of clothing options that I need to bring. So today I'm making sure everything is washed, everything is cleaned, everything is lint rolled because as much as I love my big giant goober of a dog, his white fur shows up on everything. And this is actually probably the thing that's gonna take me the most time today. But making sure everything is lint rolled, ready to go and clean and hung up in garment bags and such, and ironed if it needs to be ironed, that type of stuff. And I actually have a jacket and a coat that I am going to bring that has a stain on it. So I am not gonna show up with a stain on my jacket, and so I'm gonna spend some time trying to figure out how to get this stain out today. I also need to pack my other essentials in my model bag. I'm gonna have different color undergarments, my laptop, some accessories like sunglasses and such, my air pods, like just my normal essentials, my wallet. And then I also need to prep my meals for the next two days, as I'm anticipating they're going to be longer days, but with a lot of downtime. And then I have a ton of shoe options that I'm gonna pack into a rolling suitcase and bring with me for the morning. And so I'll get everything all packed and loaded into the car tonight so tomorrow can be smooth and easy because I just received my call sheet and my call time is 6:30 a.m. Ah so early, but we are ready and prepared for it, and I'm gonna get a good night's sleep tonight so that I can be well rested for tomorrow. I'm very excited, and I will touch base with you guys tomorrow. So it's the morning of my shoot. Guys, I was able to get my stain out. I'm so excited. You probably do not care about this at all, but the magic ingredient was mixing dish soap and baking soda, and that was the like magic sauce. So huge win on the stain front if you were concerned about that, which you absolutely were not. I am about to hop in the car and head over to set. Um, I'm leaving a little early because I want to make sure I'm there on time and um I have all my stuff I need to carry inside. It might take me a couple trips. So I am all packed and ready to go, and I'm about to hop in the car. It's only a 20-minute drive. But can I tell you guys? For where I live, that is like I think this is the closest shoot I've ever been up to. Like, normally I'm driving three up to four hours before my call, not twenty minutes. I am so stoked I'm only 20 minutes away. This is amazing. This is a dream come true. But I better get over there, so I'll catch you guys on the flip side. So we just finished filming day one, and oh my gosh, guys, this I very incorrectly anticipated how this was gonna go. And by that I mean I thought, you know, we're we're doing several locations, so I thought there would be a little bit of downtime while the camera crew set up, and I thought there would be downtime throughout the day, and there was uh very little, if any, which was great. It that means we used our time wisely. When we weren't filming with cameras, we were doing stills and we're flip-flopping back and forth, so it was a very busy day. Today we went hiking at the beginning of the day up to the top of a mountain, which was very cool. They shot us hiking along the way, and then us at the glorious top with the scenic view, which was so fun. The hike was relatively easy, so it wasn't too bad. And then we went to a bargain location to shoot us having dinner and hanging out, having some local craft beers. And that ended up being awesome. We got to use a ton of locals as backgrounds, which was amazing. So far, today was great. I am tired though. We we did almost a full 12-hour day. I think it ended up being 11, which was fantastic. Before I go, let me tell you a little bit about some of the amazing people that I met on set today. First and foremost was Taylor Heath. I'll talk about her first because she was kind of handling us throughout the day and helping style us. And the craziest thing about this, guys, is that Taylor lives like five minutes away from me, and she's also a model, and she's also represented by one of the same agencies as me, which is frigging awesome because now I have a cool connection that's close by who does the same thing as me, which is so awesome. It's great to always meet your local community and network of people so you can build each other up. And Taylor was amazing, she's so nice, she's always there hyping you up, she's making you look the best you possibly can. She was just amazing. Amazing. And Taylor is also a producer, and she owns Crane Media, which is awesome. I'll link them below as well so you can check out what they do. They do really cool, like vintage car shoots and such. Her producing page just really stands out just because of the way they've organized things. It it just looks so awesome. So check them out. Some other amazing people were our DP and our photographer. Our DP was Anton Fresco, and he was so great, so communicative, and just the way he was moving around his shots was so fun and interesting. And you know, I love people who are super passionate about what they do because it really does reflect in the work and the effort they're willing to put in. The final product always comes out so amazing because because they love it. It really does show in the work. And so Anton was so great to work with. I know he got amazing things, amazing things for us, which I'm just so, so, so thankful for. And then I also mentioned our photographer, Still's photographer, was amazing. His name is Michael Wilson. He was just so much fun to work with, and my favorite thing about Michael was that he gave us so much direction, which is so nice because he could get exactly what he wanted from us when somebody's posing you and helping you style that the photos are gonna are gonna come out great because they just have the eye for it, which is so awesome. He is also a jokester, and so he had us laughing so many times just off of what he was saying in his jokes. His Instagram page is just full of so many cool editorial fun things. I'm I'm so very excited to see the end product because he just blew me away with all of the things, his personality, his style of directing us, and I know his photography is going to blow me away as well. So I'm I'm so excited to see the final product of that as well. And then I can't leave out our amazing, amazing director, Bobby Marnelli, and I hope I'm saying Marnelli right. I hope so. If not, I apologize, Bobby. I really do. Our director was so awesome, he was so clear and specific with what he wanted, which I love. Was funny and fun and kind of new little ways to get us laughing or get us in the energy that he wanted. He was very clear and specific with his directions, which is so nice. He was also just such a positive and great personality on set as well. Sometimes you can see people get frustrated or get angry and upset, and he was just in such great spirits the entire time. And it's always fun to work with people who are positive and surrounded with light, and he was just that, and he he was just fantastic. Today was such a fun, great day, and I'm really excited. Although I'm really tired, I'm really excited to get back at it tomorrow and have another full day of shooting. This is awesome. The feeling of when you're just living one day in your dream is it's just nothing else touches it, nothing else beats it, and so I'm just I'm so happy. Today has been such a great day. But I need to get to bed, even though I have all of this energy right now. I need to get to bed so that I can wake up bright and early tomorrow and be ready to go for shoot day number two. Night, guys. So it is the morning of day two, and our call time was a little later today. It was uh 10 a.m. was great. It gave me some time to do some personal things this morning and get some stuff done before I had to head over to set. I think I forgot to mention over the past couple days that I have been doing my own hair and makeup. Honestly, if you're an actor or a model out there and you don't know how to do your own hair and makeup and you want to do this full time and you're just starting out, that's definitely a really good skill to have. So, pro tip learn how to be able to do your hair and makeup in many different ways so that you can show up to set and look professional and look your best, even on days when you don't have hair and makeup artists. But it's almost time for me to head over to set, so I will talk to you at the end of the day. Okay, so it's really, really late. I mean, it's not really that late, but I am it's late because I have to get up early tomorrow. We wrapped today around 8:30-ish, I think. Today was so much fun. I guess I should start at the beginning, not at the end. So today we started off with a hike where there were all these cool wooden statues. This place is so local and so close to me that it's so cool to go to all these cool local places because I'll be able to go back and actually really explore them because I've never been to any of them. I also realized I never talked about my castmates yesterday either. My castmates are amazing. I have two other models that I'm working with who are fantastic, and I'll link their social below so that you can follow them if you're interested or follow their journeys as well. But Lindsay and Emmy were so easy to work with that Lindsay has just this infectious smile and this infectious laugh. She's also got this amazing personality and this like adventure for life, which I just loved so much. She just makes you so excited about the little things, the small little things that not everybody notices. And so it was really great to work with Lindsay and and Emmy was amazing too. I always love getting to know new people, and she's also local, which is awesome too. So that means that we can potentially work together on other things, which is so, so great. So I'm excited to have another local contact for Maine. You know, I thought we were far and few in between up here, but it sounds like there's a lot more people up here than I thought there were doing similar work to me. So that's amazing too. And Emmy was just first of all, she's gorgeous, like drop-dead gorgeous. She has just this funny, funny personality. She asks so many good questions, she's so smart, and just also has one of those infectious personalities that you just want to hang out with and you just want to get to know them better. And and she's a dancer, and she just she seems so adventurous and so fun to be around. And so I was I was honestly just blessed with the nicest, most inspiring, incredible castmates. It was great. But let me tell you about the day now, now that I've bragged about how amazing all these people around me are. So we started out today going on the hike with the statues, and today's hike was way less intense, which was good because honestly, I woke up this morning and I was so just energy tired. My body wasn't necessarily tired, but the amount of energy it takes to smile and laugh and giggle and be present for 12 hours doesn't actually seem like it would be a lot. But once you do it, it does take so much energy to be present, to be listening, to be all there and fully invested for 12 hours straight. And my body was definitely feeling that on the second day, and I was trying very hard to not make it look like I was feeling low in energy because I wanted to be able to bring the same amount that I had the day before. And so today we went on our hike and then we went shopping, quote unquote. We went to this local shop and did all our little scenes in the shop of us looking at all the amazing different products they had, all the local products, which was very cool. And then we ended our day going to a local tree house, which was so so so so so so so cool. It was beautiful. It looked honestly straight out of a movie, and I'm sure they Airbnb it, but it was just such a beautiful location and so fun. And that was near the end of our day, and we were starting to get some weather and some rain, and the uh Airbnb owner and our guide was like, if it starts to have thunderstorms, you know, the the house does shake and move. It is in a tree, like in the trees. And if you hear large banging sounds, that is normal. And I was like, oh my god, are we is this gonna turn into a horror movie? But the rain ended up not being very bad. And we shot some scenes where we were drinking tea together, coffee, and we shot some scenes of us playing Scrabble as well. The crew was so amazing and so awesome. Our gaffer was working a mile a minute that day. Just everybody just came together as a team. We actually didn't end our day at the treehouse. We went on a walk down to the water by the treehouse. On the way back up, we stopped at a fire pit and ended our day having fake wine, which was actually real wine, um, around the fire pit. And it was so beautiful, the sky got pink at the end of the day. It was like exactly what you would want for like a picturesque main tourism shoot. At the end of the day, it was time to say goodbyes to everyone and you know, grab everybody's social media so we can stay in contact and stay in touch and just say thank you for all of their hard work. You know, I don't get to do what I love to do unless these other people around me are doing what they love. It's such a team sport. I was just so thankful to everybody. I have a little pro tip here for you that I almost don't even want to share, but I gotta share it because I don't gatekeep around here. That's not how we are. But one way that you can help yourself stand out amongst the crowd of amazing actors and make an impression on people is through gratitude. At lunch today, I took some time to write personalized notes and cards to some of the key players that I was working with. I found stickers of the cabin that we were going to, and so I put little stickers, like a little extra thing in there. I just wrote cards to everybody who I came in really close contact with throughout the day and passed them out right before I was gonna leave at the end of the day. And people were so grateful for just that one small little thing, that like moment of appreciation from someone else, and like this moment of noticing and appreciating what you do so that I can do what I do. And so my pro tip is to find a way to show your appreciation for somebody else, to show your appreciation for the people around you who help you do the thing that you love, whether that is a card or it's a note or whatever other creative way you want to do it, a gift card, whatever your thing is, find a way to show the people on set that you appreciate them. Because they're gonna remember you not only for your great performance, but also for your gratitude. And with that being said, I also sent a thank you card. I printed out a picture of the three of us who all modeled together and the director, and I sent that to my agent as well with a note saying, Thank you for the booking and thank you for being an awesome agent and negotiating and finding me something local to work on. As well as I didn't send a card, but the casting director had texted me to confirm the booking, and so I did text her back, not that night because it was late, but the next day, and said, Hey, the shoot went incredibly. Thank you so much for the booking, short and sweet, very simple. And she messaged me back and said, Yay, I'm so glad it went so well. So just showing appreciation for all of those people who help you do what you do is very, very, very important. This was an incredible shoot, an incredible two days. I felt so blessed. I'm so thankful for all of the people out there who helped. And if any of you are listening, thank you so much for supporting my podcast as well. You're the best. But I gotta let you go now because I gotta get to bed because I gotta go to work tomorrow and do my day job. Bye.

SPEAKER_00: 21:01

Overall, such an amazing furshoot. Great vibes from everyone. What a wonderful day. A couple good pro tips in there for you. If you're wondering, this commercial doesn't air until next year, which is 2026 in the summer. And of course, I will keep you updated. I'll let you know when it comes out. I'll drop links, you know, all the things. I will also link everybody that I talked about in here who is so wonderful and so amazing.

SPEAKER_01: 21:28

All their social media will be in the show notes. If you're curious, if you want to follow someone, if you're trying to network, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 21:35

I'm just I'm giving you a little help here. I'm giving you a little nudge. So check it out. Follow the people, see what they do, notice what they're good at, put it in your brain for later.

SPEAKER_01: 21:46

You never know who you might meet or where you might meet them. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of The Glow Up Year. You're the best, and you know it. I hope you enjoyed this come with me episode, and we have some exciting news coming up on the horizon, and we're gonna talk updating your reel because my short film is coming, and it's coming fast.

SPEAKER_00: 22:07

So, with that being said, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and we'll talk soon. And that's a wrap on today's episode of The Glow Up Year. Thanks for hanging out with me. I'm seriously so excited to have you along for the ride, and we're only just getting started because the best is yet to come. If you felt fired up or inspired today, hit that subscribe button, leave a quick review, and pass this episode along to another fellow dreamer in your circle. You want more BTS, pep talks, or updates? Come find me over on social at MegSallsburyOfficial. I'll be sharing more of my journey there. Links are in the show notes. And remember, your glow up is unfolding one bold move at a time. Keep showing up, keep dreaming bigger, and I'll catch you on the next one.