The Five-Year Career Contract
Treat your craft like a business you just opened: seven days a week for five years, then reassess.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- 93%
Jackman graduated drama school at 26, and the framework came from his pre-acting jobs — gas station attendant, restaurants, and dressing as a koala for the National Parks and Wildlife Foundation, where he got punched in the kidneys by 14-year-olds. What he took from all of them was that if you start a business — a pizzeria, a bar, a restaurant, anything — you have to give it seven days a week for five years, and only after five years might you pull back a little, hire a manager, hire staff, having built the brand to a certain point. And nobody goes into owning a business thinking it will be the easy life; they do it because there is something they want to create and they do not want to be told what to do. In the last semester of drama school it dawned on him that this described acting exactly: no one is employing him in their company as an actor and sending him out, he has to re-hire every time, and his brand is his name. So he made a contract with himself. He vowed never to wait for the phone to ring — he would write letters, and he and his friend Simon Lyndon were going to start a theatre company, which Simon actually did, the Rock Surfers in Bondi, still going 25 years later. He set the term at five years because he was 26, which put the decision at 31, explicitly to avoid becoming one of the people who stay a good 10 years too long at the acting party, sustained by the feeling that it is going to happen next week. At 31, having done X-Men, he sat himself down and signed up for another five.
Origin
Jackman worked in restaurants, a gas station and as a costumed koala before and during drama school, and drew the seven-days-a-week-for-five-years rule from watching small business owners. In his final semester he realised acting was structurally identical, and made an explicit contract with himself at 26.
Core principles
- 01If you start a business — a pizzeria, a bar, a restaurant — you have to give it seven days a week for five years before you can pull back at all.
- 02Nobody opens a business expecting the easy life; they do it because there is something they want to create and they do not want to be told what to do.
- 03In a freelance craft, no one employs you and sends you out — you have to re-hire yourself every time you go for a job.
- 04Your brand is your name, which means brand-building is not marketing but the core operating activity.
- 05You cannot be a victim and you cannot wait for the phone to ring; you have to go out and generate.
- 06Set an explicit end date so the decision to continue is a decision rather than a drift.
- 07Everyone knows stories of people who stayed too long at the party, sustained by the feeling that it is going to happen next week.
- 08Be stoic and be hopeful, but work your ass off — hope without the work is the thing that keeps people at the party.
How to run it
- 1
Reframe the craft as a business you just opened
Recognise that no one is employing you in their company and sending you out — you have to go and re-hire every time you go for a job, and your brand is your name so you have to build that up.
Pro tip Jackman drew the analogy from actual small businesses he had worked in, not from a book.
Watch out Carrying employee expectations into a commission-based craft is why people wait rather than generate.
- 2
Commit seven days a week
Adopt the small business standard directly: seven days a week, and only after five years might you be able to pull back a little, hire a manager, hire staff, having built the brand to a certain point.
Pro tip Nobody goes into owning their own business thinking it is going to be the easy life — the expectation is set correctly from day one.
- 3
Ban waiting and start generating
Jackman vowed never to wait for the phone to ring. He wrote letters and planned a theatre company with a fellow graduate. His formulation: you have to drive, you have to work, you cannot be a victim, you cannot wait for the phone to ring, you have to go out and generate and get your brand out there.
Pro tip Simon Lyndon actually started the company — the Rock Surfers in Bondi, still running 25 years later.
Watch out Waiting feels like patience and is actually the single behaviour the contract exists to prohibit.
- 4
Say yes to everything at the start
Jackman's stated graduate attitude was that you have to say yes to everything when you graduate — just say yes, go for everything. His agent pushed him toward the Beauty and the Beast audition when he considered himself a theatre actor and not a singer; saying yes was a huge turning point.
Pro tip The role you feel unqualified for is often the one that adds the skill you will build a career on.
Watch out Yes has a shelf life — later in the episode Jackman shows how the same openness has to be replaced by judgment.
- 5
Set the explicit end date
Jackman set five years because he was 26, making the decision point 31. The date exists so that continuing is an active decision rather than a drift.
Pro tip Pick the number before you start, when you are least emotionally invested in the answer.
Watch out Without a date, the feeling that it is going to happen next week has no counterweight.
- 6
Work each job as if it is the last
Jackman's advice to young actors is to be wary of the word career: 98 percent are unemployed, it is a privilege when you get a job, and you should not expect there will always be one around the corner. Work your ass off as though this is the last one, because you have to be at your best.
Pro tip Treating each job as terminal is what makes the next one likely.
- 7
Renew or stop at the deadline
At 31, having done X-Men and with things starting to happen, Jackman mentally sat himself down and said all right, another five years and we will see how it goes. He notes that these days he does not redo the contract anymore.
Pro tip Renewal is a legitimate outcome — the point is that the decision gets made consciously.
Watch out Skipping the renewal decision is how a five-year contract quietly becomes the ten-years-too-long story.
In the wild
Before and during drama school Jackman worked at a gas station, in restaurants, and dressed up in a koala suit for the National Parks and Wildlife Foundation — where he got punched in the kidneys by 14-year-olds and told them where to go. What he actually took from all of it was a business lesson: if you start a business, a pizzeria or a bar or a restaurant or anything, you have to give it seven days a week for five years, and only then might you be able to pull back, hire a manager, hire staff, having built the brand to a point. And nobody does it expecting an easy life — they do it because there is something they want to create and they do not want to be told what to do.
→ A ready-made operating standard which, in his final semester of drama school, he realised applied exactly to a freelance acting career.
Jackman set the term at five years because he was 26, which put the decision at 31. His explicit reason was the cautionary population around him: if you go to LA there are people who have stayed a good 10 years too long at the acting party, sustained by a chain of maybes — a guy at the gym who knows the guy who parks the cars who knows a friend of a casting agent, and the feeling that it is going to happen next week. He credits Ryan Holiday and stoicism for the posture: be stoic, be hopeful, but work your ass off.
→ At 31 he had done X-Men, and rather than coasting he mentally sat himself down and signed on for another five years.
Jackman's graduate rule was to say yes to everything. When his agent called about playing Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, his reaction was that he was a theatre actor, not a singer — but she thought he should go for it. He said yes, got singing lessons, and got the part, and his contract stipulated a company-paid singing lesson every week, which he believes makes him possibly the only actor in history with that clause. Singing eight times a week in a show with a weekly lesson is, he says, really where he learned how to sing.
→ An entire second craft acquired inside one job — though it also produced the labelling problem that nearly derailed his film career.
Common mistakes
Waiting for the phone to ring
Jackman's core prohibition. Waiting feels like professional patience but produces no opportunities, and it is the behaviour that keeps people at the party for a decade.
Running without a deadline
Without an explicit reassessment date, the feeling that it is going to happen next week never gets tested. Jackman set 31 before he started specifically so the decision could not be deferred indefinitely.
Assuming a job implies a career
He tells directors to be wary of the word career: 98 percent of actors are unemployed, it is a privilege when you get a job, and you should not expect one to always be around the corner. Assuming continuity is how people stop working each job as though it is the last.
Keeping the say-yes-to-everything rule too long
Yes to Beauty and the Beast built his singing career and simultaneously got him labelled a singer, after which he could not get a film audition in Australia. The rule that launches the first five years is not the rule for the second five.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone entering a field where nobody employs you continuously — acting, writing, consulting, founding — who needs both a work standard and an honest exit date.
Not ideal for
Salaried roles with a clear internal ladder, where the constraint is not generating opportunity but navigating an existing structure.
From the transcript
“if you start a business it could be a pizzeria it can be a bar a restaurant anything you have to give it seven days…”
“so i vowed to never wait for the phone to ring”
“you have to drive you have to work you cannot be a victim you cannot wait for the phone to ring”
“we all hear stories of people staying too long at the party”
From the episode
#444: Hugh Jackman on Best Decisions, Daily Routines, The 85% Rule, Favorite Exercises, Mind Training, and Much More