Author: scot

People use you for your assets, but they love you for your flaws.

Most of the time showbiz people hyperfocus on the wrong details. If you call yourself a perfectionist, then you are hyperfocusing on the wrong details. Prolific people don’t have time to call themselves perfectionists, and perfection is not even what your audience wants – they want more of the good, real stuff!

So, then we’re in a balancing act of trying to serve quality entertainment with some messiness. The science, the craft, and the magic of developing great stuff is knowing which parts are important, and unfortunately there’s no formula.

There is a concept that can help though, it’s called “Value Engineering.” In value engineering, you try to reduce costs of production as low as possible without reducing perceived value. For a fast food company that sells billions of potatoes per day, they can geek it down to putting 5 fewer fries in every small fry order. That saves them a lot of money in the big picture. For a board game maker, it could be a conversation like “we love these cards, but if we use the lighter cardboard and the cheaper printing, how much money could we save in a year and would anyone notice.”

“Would anyone notice?” is a very tough question…

I see entertainment pros who go too far in both directions. Some folks think audiences are stupid and basic, or at least it’s not worth the trouble… and some people get really hung up on getting the very best microphone and using it perfectly… then end up having no life in their performance. Or, they get paralyzed worried that the audience will see thru them.

The part that makes the whole thing extra murky is it’s not a question of whether they’ll complain. So, they might be completely silent about your lack of value, but they’ll feel it. You probably won’t say anything about a wrinkly shirt on your neighbor, or a hollow chocolate bunny, or a ticket to a movie theater using generic tickets, but you’ll feel it. Part of you will notice “this is not premium”

It might be a feature; not a bug

By taking an empathetic view at your entertainment for your audience, you might find that some of the holes in your creation are portholes. They might think it’s funny that all your character names start with “G” by accident. Sometimes you luck out like this.

Planning for flaws

If you define clearly your brand or the experience of your stuff, you can make bold decisions about where to put the flaws.

With Scot Nery’s Boobietrap, we know that the hand soap in the bathroom being too thick to easily pump out of the dispensers is weird, but also kinda funny. We would rather have extra bubble machines than have the stairs to the stage be clean. For a show with 30 people involved every week, this doesn’t seem like a trade-off we’d have to make, but it is. And every organization with any resources has to do similar. We know if we are serving cupcakes for an anniversary show, every single food safety protocol must be followed, but if I get hurt during the show, that’s okay and probably fun.

The limitless world is not the place to find your fanbase. The easiest way is to connect with a tribe.

Advertising is expensive

The way advertising works is saturation. You repeat a connection with an audience until they start to trust your offer. So, advertising to everyone is very expensive for a few reasons.

1. If you could get the message to the world – like i don’t mean make it available to the world by putting it on MySpace, but by really getting it in their attention – one time would not be enough
2. The companies that own peoples’ attention charge for it
3. You need to make advertising that speaks to the needs of people directly and people are different
4. You need to make advertising that clearly communicates your offer
5. You need to make advertising that deserves attention
6. No matter what you’re offering – even if it’s Coke- it’s probably not for most people.

When I say expensive, I’m not just talking about cash. I’m talking about all your jellybeans. When I’m talking about advertising, I’m talking about everything you do to find new fans.

A tribe is small

A tribe is a collection of people who gather and talk, who have a similar set of interests. Having a small group of people takes the expense out because you know where to find them, you know the message, and you can saturate the same people with your message.

The original tribe is locals

That’s people who live in the same geographic area. With the internet, tribes can get really weird. You could target the tribe of people who dress up hamsters as drag queens and probably still have an audience.

Serve that tribe

If you serve enough people from the tribe of your chosing, you will have a fanbase. Then, you can serve and reserve them as fans and have them buy into the things you offer.

A tribe is not just people that are similar

Don’t shoot for “people that are happy” or “people who want inspiration” because you need a gathering place to reach out them.

I keep talking about fulfillment. People keep telling me they like making people happy. I believe emotions are…

• temporary – here and gone in 15 seconds… think: laughing at a funeral
• irrational
• not controllable – by one’s self, let alone by entertainment creators.
• beautiful gifts
• equal in importance – there are no good or bad feelings, they’re all wonderful in life’s garden ( or whatever )

For these reasons, feelings are terrible goals.

Fulfillment is a mindset

It’s not a feeling. It’s possible to lead others to a mindset. It’s possible to decide to be in a mindset. Mindsets are great goals. Fulfillment / satisfaction is a wonderful thing to achieve in entertainment. It sticks, it infects other experiences, it’s manageable, and it’s expandable.

Entertainment pros want to figure out how to crank out more hours in their day, or how to work more efficiently, but this is not what’s holding them back from kicking more tush!

Battle 1: Assume you are on the wrong mission

We have something that drives us, that is at the core of our being. It’s probably a generous pursuit that we care about. This is our unstated mission. As long as it’s unstated, it can be dethroned by whatever is in front of us. This is how we get locked into projects that don’t take off and are ultimately unfulfilling – we think the project is the mission, or when we’re looking for a project, we are too specific about the mission to find a project that clicks. So, before you state your mission, just assume you’re doing it wrong.

Battle 2: Take the time to compose and state your mission

Battle 3: Face being wrong

The highest functioning showbiz people have a high tolerance for being wrong. Their ego is more tied to the mission ahead of them than to justifying the decisions behind them.

This is the key to all of the efficiency and productivity we want to tap into. If I set up a way to work every day for my mission, I will face all of the mistakes I’ve made. My comfort-seeking mind will want to revert.

Escalation of commitment is a human behavior pattern in which an individual or group facing increasingly negative outcomes from a decision, action, or investment nevertheless continues the behavior instead of altering course. The actor maintains behaviors that are irrational, but align with previous decisions and actions.

We can’t do this 24/365 because it’s exhausting. We need something to drag us through it

Make a sandbox

Facing being wrong for a period of time ( like a month ) were we work to reprogram ourselves and find more helpful habits is revolutionary. Sandboxing ourselves in using a time duration and a key performance indicator like income will remove some of the cognitive burden during this time. Then, we need tension (probably accountability) to keep us working thru all the shittiness of the experience.

Don’t work harder.

Don’t work smarter.

Work less wrong.

The ultimate mission statement is one that will guide you for life through all your projects, through all your careers, through all the drudgery you need to do to live.

If you haven’t written one, it can be really helpful in tough moments of decision making and at times when you really want to accelerate your impact.

It also gives meaning to the greater work you’re doing in entertainment. This can help prevent burnout on a project.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s just for you, but it’s gotta be massively flexible and it’s gotta be the thing that fulfills you in work.

Hubspot has a good guide to help you get started…

You don’t want it to be too specific that your mission boxes you into only doing one kind of project in 20 years, but you also don’t want it to be too broad so it has no guidance or meaning.

The test for my clients is this.

I propose to them ridiculous ways that their life could go — but ridiculous within their mission and ask if they would be fulfilled doing that thing. If yes, great. If not, it will take a little more specificity.

• owning a horse ranch
• running a hospital
• digging graves

if it fits in your mission, it’s fair game.

If you have ever handed someone a show flier and they looked at it for less than three seconds, the entertainment that flier promised… and the resulting experience and memories of that entertainment were not worth three seconds to that person.

That flier was not perfect for them. Maybe if you handed them a flier with their face on it, they would have taken a moment to figure out what was going on, then they might have read deeper and found that the show was great for them.

It’s a commitment

This process of taking a moment, then taking another moment, then doing more is a thing I call commitment chunking. Even deciding to spend one second reading a headline is one of the gajillion commitments we’re making each day.

This is a thing that needs to happen in graphic design as well as entertainment.

Here’s a meme…

These micro-commitments are the only way that we commit to anything. By the time someone downloads a show on netflix, they’ve committed to a lot of things that led them there. Someone doesn’t determine to buy a ticket in one moment, it’s a long path leading up to it. Someone doesn’t watch a whole movie, they have all the moments during the movie, where subconsciously they’re deciding whether to stick with it.

If a commitment pays off, we continue

With a newspaper,

1. you see the photo on the front page, it is something you like,
2. you commit to reading the headline, it looks interesting,
3. you check out the caption of the photo, good stuff,
4. read the first paragraph, boring
5. done

This is a case for empathy

We, as entertainment pros, need to understand this process and that we don’t deserve attention just because we’re “good.” We need to give our audience small commitments, and reward each of those commitments. Downloading your game is not just a few seconds of their time, it is a complicated decision-making process that involves them sacrificing time and energy. Reward them completely.

The network effect enhances the core value of a service to the customer by getting their peers to join. It means the thing you’re creating has a built-in crucial component that depends on a growing or large network to make it awesome.

• If I tell my friend to watch this show, we can talk about this show and I’ll enjoy it more
• If I take a friend to this theater, I’ll have more fun
• If my friend plays this multiplayer game with me, it will be more enjoyable
• If my friend attends this zoom, we can battle in the comments

Giving a gift or a discount is not the network effect, it’s a referral program incentive and it’s kinda expensive for you (managing the referrals, time and shipping and stuff). A gift like “tell a friend, get a free watch” does not enhance the core value of the service you’re offering.

Some different ways to get a customer to share what you’re doing…
natural network effect (best) facebook : “you joined to connect with friends. tell your friends, get more connection”

artificial network effect (good) dropbox : “you joined to get storage. tell your friends, we’ll give you more storage”

referral program (not super)  “you joined to get a funny show, tell your friends and we’ll give you a DVD”

asking (least effective, but free) “you joined for golfing tips. tell your friends who need golfing tips”

The opposite of the network effect

It’s possible to work against the network effect.

If you have an underground project that attracts people that love the underground, they might tell a few in the underground, but they will not proudly announce it because they want to preserve it.

If you do a show that asks for requests from the audience, you can have an unlimited audience size and you can only take one or two requests, I’m not gonna tell my friends because I want my request to be heard.

A lady is standing outside a grocery store handing out $50 bills. Your first question is, “Since these are easy to get, are they worth fifty bucks?”

Talk shows are easy to make because they’re not worth $50

Successful talk shows (like ones where there’s an audience) are not easy to make. In fact, the format is so rigid and boring in itself that it’s harder to grow than other entertainment platforms.

Here are 3 things for audience retention and growth.

• network effect
• lock-in
• entertainment value

It seems that the talk show format is democratized and open to anyone because all you need is a desk and a way to publish video, but the the three crucial parts of success are not democratized at all.

But, there are very successful talk shows! When we think about the most successful talk shows, we think of the big ones on the networks.

Network talk shows – especially before everyone had cable – had powerful network effect and lock in. Everyone would talk about it. If you hadn’t seen The Tonight Show the night before, you were a loser. The more of your social circles saw it, the better the show was because you had something to talk about. If you were a person that didn’t get to catch the news, you would at least pickup on the headlines and find out things that celebrities were up to. The entertainment value – and the thing that drew people in to watch was the celebrities. Once you picked which one of the two talk shows to watch, that was locked in as part of your identity.

Entertainment value is not that important.

A friend of mine who is one of the most charismatic entertainers in the world worked on doing a talk show. He did it live in a theater and recorded and he did it supremely from an entertainment value perspective — for his level. He had minor celebrities, he had writers, he had added in his personal style and extra entertainment.

I believe he didn’t sell his talk show to anyone because TV execs care about having an audience. They sell ads to an audience. Bringing his show to their network didn’t bring an audience. They could set up a desk. They could hire a more famous host. They could get the celebrities. The talk show – even though it was very entertaining and the live audiences loved it – didn’t have intrinsic value.

So, once you get into this game, part of it is about how big of celebrities can you get… unfortunately, it’s not as important at the real stuff.

It’s possible for an online talk show to be worth $50

Cable talk shows still have a very broad reach, but not as broad, so they get more specific. Sport Center focusses on the sports world. The Colbert report focused on news and current events. Tucker Carlson focusses on his audience.

Even though it feels like the internet gives you the broadest audience possible, you don’t really have the ability to reach out to everyone and say “give this a try” and you’re also probably not going to make something that gets lock-in from the general population. It’s unlikely you’ll get the whole world talking about you at school or around the water cooler. So, if you’re starting up a talk show online or trying to figure out why your talk show online isn’t doing too great, look at getting the most specific.

Can you serve everyone in one small town? I think my home town has 6k people. If you had 3,000 views every episode, wouldn’t that be nice?

How about a group of people with one shared interest who are already a community and already talking to each other? EG your show is just for the people who are interested in monster makeup.

There are other ways to setup lock-in and network effect beyond the social pressure way, also. Maybe you offer something every episode that people need bad and can’t get it anywhere else?

Obviously, this is only a starting point

You’re going to work hard to be specific, make a talk show that’s just for a specific kind of person. Then, you could grow that audience once those people adore it and can’t go without it.

Consider: is a talk show even something you want to do, or do you just want to be interesting and serve an audience? There are a million formats for that and many of them are more fun at their core than a person sitting and talking to a person.

What entertainment people create is ludicrous and nonsensical and amazingly life-giving. The genius of the absurd helps us release all of our self-importance, material-importance, and time-importance and observe our vulnerability as a connection to all of reality.

It can feel very wasteful to be drawn into a blog post by detecting a typo, for example… but maybe that was actually the best use of your time at that moment.

I did a big corporate show 1500 people in Vegas. They were there in this casino all week. The planner was hanging out with me beforehand casually. He said the casino wanted to charge $8 per can of soda they served.

He decided to innovate.

He said “We’re partners with Coke, so we’ll get them to sponsor our event and give us free soda.” The casino charged a corkage fee on every can of $3. He was not excited about it, but he saved the company over 60% in beverages.

How many cans of soda do you think they served to 1500 guzzling attendees in a week? That many cans times $3 is what they spent just for people to open cans of drink. It’s a shit-ton.

When you feel like companies or people don’t have money to spend on entertainment, just remember that they might be spending more on pkshhhhhh than on you.

When I consult / coach entertainment companies, I start with looking for the boundaries. How far are you willing to go to stick to your mission? If I can show you that you can have a bigger impact and a more profitable year by taking down your youtube channel and sending texts to people, would you do it? What if you would delight more people by setting up a rug factory?

The limitations are where the creativity starts

The greatest moves in sports happen only because of rules. That’s where the innovation and the excellence shows up. So, we definitely need limitations and the more deliberate and concrete the limitations are the more fun the game.

I am (we are) this

The trouble starts when we draw the limits for our companies apart from the clarity of our mission.

I was a vegan for ten years

I thought (and still mostly think) animal based food is inefficient and unecological. This wasn’t the popular way to be vegan. The popular mindset was “animals deserve rights.” When I told meat eaters my logic, they often were surprised and curious.

This difference stood out to me when I walked up to a pro-vegan kiosk at an outdoor event. Everything about it was pictures of tortured animals. So off-putting … and i believe bad marketing.

I told the dude “Hi! I’m vegan. I don’t care about animal rights. Do you have any brochures that aren’t covered in sad cows?” He 1. didn’t believe me 2. told me “of course not”

What a missed opportunity. If that organization’s mission was to save animals’ lives (which i don’t totally believe it is), they could get so many people on board to reduce meat consumption by giving more reasons and focusing on the positivity. What if 10% of the vegans they inspired didn’t believe in animal rights? It would serve their mission, but maybe it was more important to them to publicize their mission than to achieve their mission.

What if they taught the best cooking classes in town (and charged for them) with omnivorous chefs teaching how a small portion of meat can compliment a healthy vegetable-rich meal? If they reduced the meat portions by 50% for thousands of people, that could make a big difference for the farm friends. The non-profit’s biggest donors would probably be outraged!

Flexibility is generous

The best entertainment pros are care-givers. They’re generous and they want to share a spark. Being flexible in how one achieves that mission is generous. Being rigid is defensive and selfish. Make rules; have a voice for sure, but make them deliberately based on a mission that’s open to giving your audience what they really want.

Eli Broad was an accountant

He told his wife she would never be poor. He got the opportunity to start a home construction company. He revolutionized how houses were built based on the economics. Then, he researched recession-proof businesses. Discovered life insurance was the thing. He bought a life insurance company and changed that industry. Now, he has changed the landscape of Los Angeles art through the money he’s brought to downtown and beyond.

His mission wasn’t be an accountant. His mission was “don’t be poor.”

For some reason it’s easy for us to understand when someone will change their pursuit for money. It’s hard to understand when they’ll change to serve people better.

I spent the week leading over 100 entertainment pros through a branding challenge — the project of refining their brands.

I have worked with a bunch of companies and individuals directly figuring out their brands. I have simplified the process down to something really straightforward. It was a completely new challenge for me to convey this process generally for all to access.

It was really incredible to be able to help so many people and to be inspired by them joining in. I’m grateful that I’m in this position to take a week to share. I’m grateful that I get to share on this blog, too.

I think the best things get created when creators are thriving. Some magical creators have a very low thrive threshold. They can be in poverty and persecution and still make amazing stuff, but most can’t. My mission is to help badasses be in their own thriving situations so that they can release their need to survive and develop the next level of stuff.

It’s hard to seek help, to join a class, to ask for expertise and this group of people did that with me. Makes me hopeful that I will be able to make a big mark on entertainment!