Anthony Smith:
The Actor Behind
ActingCareerStartUp.com

Watch this 3 minute video to see why actor, author and motivational speaker Anthony Smith decided to create ActingCareerStartUp.com.

Anthony Smith left a very successful business career in 2003 after thirteen years in Nike and Levi’s as a senior manager to pursue his dream of becoming an entrepreneur, writer, motivational speaker, actor and television host. Today, while enjoying success in his new life, he shares his insight in business, helping young actors achieve their career goals.

Read on for the whole story.

Native Carlisle Pennsylvania, 'Tony' knew at 18 years of age, that he wanted to lead a “different” life than that which was prospected for him by his parents. He joined the US Air Force just after finishing high school to “see the world” and his travels took him to Europe for the first time in his life, to Germany, where he obtained proficiency in the German language under his own initiative and integrated himself into the culture. After his tour of duty there and upon his return back to the US, he knew he would be back to Europe one day…to stay. In fact, after leaving the military life after six years, he decided that his next course would be that of a college degree in business, with German and Russian as supporting disciplines. As a result of his greatly improved German language skills, Anthony Smith returned to achieve a Master’s Degree at a German university and during and also for some months after that course of study, taught German to American soldiers for a year until meeting his next challenge.

A GREAT SCHOOL. A GREAT EXPERIENCE

At the age of 30, he married a company that would have a profound effect on his life…NIKE. A brilliant career, beginning as a technical consultant in Germany, which consisted in conducting clinics for groups of NIKE’s customers’ store personnel both in stores as well as for groups as large as one hundred and fifty. The company decided to utilize to the fullest extent Anthony's language capabilities by sending him to Moscow to train store sales personnel in the Russian language. In addition, he conducted interviews and talk shows with some of NIKE’s world famous athletes, who were sponsored by the sports giant. He was also afforded the privilege of spending a week with basketball legend Michael Jordan as his personal escort and interpreter for interviews and press conferences; an experience he later repeated with other, world-famous NIKE-sponsored athletes. In addition Anthony conducted numerous interviews and talk shows himself with other athletes, such as Michael Johnson, Sergei Bubka, Charles Barkley to name a few.

Germany 1991: With Michael Jordan
at party with Nike employees in Germany
during a promotional tour of Europe.



Interviewing a Finnish runner
and her manager at the Nike stand
at the Berlin marathon 1991.

After two years and as technical consultant and national manager of that department, Anthony would go on to tackle his first challenge in a commercial role in an 18 month stint as sales manager for the NATO bases in Europe. Then, out of a growing necessity for a structured training program for the sales people in the company and seeing the results Anthony Smith was able to achieve through the training and motivation of his own team, the company asked him to effect the start up of the Sales Training and Development department for NIKE’s European headquarters in The Netherlands; an experience that would put him in constant contact with fourteen European countries and thus, contribute considerably to his knowledge of international business.

Putting first the things that matter most, encouraged him to put his career on hold…for a moment…and believing in himself that he would soon resume his climb to success, he made the decision, for the love of his future Italian wife, to make the move to Italy, which would mean taking a temporary step backwards. Anthony would accept a position in NIKE’s Italian organization as Sales Training and Development manager. This meant that he would pass the reigns of the European organization to his successor and then report to that person from Italy! But as he predicted, it would only be six months later that he was promoted to divisional sales manager for Italy; a responsibility of the largest part of NIKE’s Italian business. Obtaining positive results and the successful management of his team, achieved Anthony Smith a promotion after just two years to Italian national sales manager, responsible for all three divisions, footwear, apparel and accessories.

After nearly three years in that position and 13 years of working in a great company, that taught him a tremendous amount about leadership, the importance of sound planning, marketing and the importance of developing human resources, he felt the need to step out of of the NIKE family and accept a new challenge on his way to creating his future; that of Country Managing Director at Levi Strauss Italy, an experience, which allowed him to further develop the skills he learned in Nike.

THE LATEST CHALLENGE

On a day in the last phase of his corporate business career, Anthony had completed one of his many strategic plans for the company for which he worked. It was necessary to think three to five years out, to create the vision for the Italian market, develop a mission statement, define what the key factors for success would be to achieve company objectives and to put together a detailed action plan, that would identify, what was to be done, when and by whom together with the budget and a solid monitoring system that would ensure the successful execution of the plan.

After completing this task, Anthony would ask himself a question, that would be decisive in changing his professional direction in life. Thinking about the endless hours, days, weeks spent throughout his career putting together plans such as that one, he asked himself the question, “If I were to invest this much time and effort planning MY life and the things that I would like to accomplish…big things…what could I achieve for ME?” And that’s what he did. The result? Being the excellent planner that he is, Anthony made another courageous decision; to leave a career in corporate business to dedicate himself full-time to following his own dream: To use his experience and his extraordinary communicative skills to help others bring out maximize the potential they have within themselves. How? Through acting, hosting, motivational speaking, writing.

Today Anthony has formed his own company in Italy, called JOLTEN Educational Events and Entertainment, that offers corporate consulting, motivational speeches as well as training for sales and marketing professionals.

In addition, he personally offers a special seminar entitled, "La Vita Che Vorrei" which translated means, "The Life That I Want". This is the seminar that gives Anthony the greatest satisfaction, has the mission of helping people to improve the quality of their lives. If you want to have a chuckle, have a look at the site and listen to Anthony's Italian voice on its home page!

Acting Career Start-Up, both the book and this website, is an extention of that mission.

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What you're doing is great Anthony. Whenever I read the things on your site, the interviews and even your book, I feel like if only everybody got to read this before they got started, they would be so much better off and everybody else (casting directors, agents, directors, etc.) would be so much better off too.
Personal Manager, Ingrid French

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Tony,
I want to say you changed my life. I want to be an actress so bad, but i began losing motivation when I couldn't figure out what to do. And then I found you! Thanks to you, I'm taking my first acting classes next month! Yippee!
Sara, Pasadena, CA

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Dear Anthony,
Just wanted to thank you for bringing me in to [audition for the video], meet you and chat this Saturday. I was really excited to hear about your working on actingcareerstartup.com and even took a look at it today - it's awesome! You are very well-spoken, knowledgeable and enthusiastic, and it shows through the work that you do! I hope our paths in the industry will cross again and really enjoyed meeting you. Thanks, again and best wishes with your very important work!
Warmly,
Gretchen, NY, NY

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