In the same way that it’s scientifically impossible not to punch the air and bellow out the chorus when Bon Jovi’s ”Living on a Prayer” turns up on the radio (even if you only do it in your imagination), there are very few actors, even the gritty dramatic types who don’t feel a tiny tingling of the tinsel muscle when Ethel Merman, Bing Crosby or a thousand other variety legends of yesteryear belt out ”There’s No Business Like Showbusiness”.

Or maybe that’s just me. Which is particularly embarassing given that my job as career advisor for The Stage newspaper means I spend a lot of my working week trying to get performers to accept that Showbusiness works exactly like any other business, and it’s not marrying basic business and money management wisdom to whatever their individual party piece might be that is usually at the root of performing careers which never take off, or worse, which end up at the mercy of dodgy agents and even dodgier ‘pay us a huge amount of money for a showreel and we’ll make you a telly star’ outfits.

However having once been the odd one out in my own circle of friends the rest of whom all had full time jobs and sensible careers, over the last couple of years I’ve found that many of my contemporaries are joining me either by choice or by necessity in the freelance employment jungle, and some of the basic survival techniques I and many other performers have learned over the years, usually by accident, can be useful for people whose money making may be derived from something entirely different to performing but who now find themselves centre stage in the unfamilar world of going it alone.

One thing well worth remembering is that performer or non performer, all of us only see what’s going on in front of the curtain of other people’s lives, whereas we get to see backstage in our own. In business terms we tend to only hear about other people’s schemes either when there is something successful to report or when something goes wrong.

The reality for most business people is that at any given time, there are usually several things going right and several things going wrong all at once, and the secret of success if there is one is to be able to cope with the tension of life’s messiness, prioritise what needs to be done right now, pay a little attention at a regular time to what needs to be set up for the future, and get as much help as you can with the bits you are struggling with.

I’ve found that even though performers (and I include myself in this) have a better understanding than most people that all those rags to riches stories we read or see on screen have been edited, reorganised and over dramatised to make them more entertaining and inspiring, we still buy into the myth that taking an idea from start to completion happens in a logical sequence-the initial struggle, the big break, the years of success…..in fact for most of us it is struggle, perhaps a break, then more struggle, then periods of nothing happening at all, then another struggle, or as one distinguished actress had printed over her dressing room mirror ‘getting there isn’t half the fun, it is all the fun” on the basis that it’s only in the movies that there is one definitive ‘happy ever after’ ending.

Actor, singer or maker of organic pastry, it’s therefore important to create milestones for ourselves that are much more personal so we can mark our progress in the non neatly scripted real world. Sometimes it might be ‘this week I started my web marketing campaign’, sometimes it might be ‘signed two new contracts’ but usually it is more like ‘typical demotivating week with no movement in my plans whatsoever…but I still worked the three hours I’ve committed to my money management plan’.

If that’s you today, have a round of applause on me, and keep going at what you’re doing. Perseverance doesn’t necessarily make the most interesting theatrical or cinematic entertainment, but it will tend to lead you to success in showbusiness or any other business more surely than simply having stars in your eyes.