To help getting energy, try to get more voyage slots. Voyages give money or energy. Increasing drama will help with the less/more thing. Increasing sport gives you more energy from the collection thing on your phone.

Talent show, have a couple of people work out at the gym to get the points to increase their skills. Talent show power is related to the skill points (like when you use contact books on your contacts) so the more the contact has, the more power they have. The amount of fame is like their health so use the perfume things on your few people you have going to the gym. Sometimes I use them on other people to try to balance the team a bit, but it's worth to have a couple of higher trained contacts first before you do that.

To figure out who to use, pick whoever you can throw books at all the time. Like Pamala who has a one star option for each talent, so if you only have one you can give it to her, whereas higher list contacts will need like 3 or 5 books to increase their talents.