Author: scot

This is for entertainers pivoting.

I’ve been a “Hard to follow act” for a long time, and maybe I’ll write about that at some point, but right now, I’d like to talk about what if you’re the act that hasta follow?

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A lot of the entertainment companies I work for are small or solo. Here are some ideas for being your own boss.

Please appreciate that it’s hard

You will never catch up. You’ll never do it right. You’ll always feel like you’re missing something. You’ll have lots of blind spots.

Bosses at companies get paid more (theoretically at least) because it takes an emotional toll, it takes responsibility, consistency, and mostly responsibility. Responsibility is heavy. Anyone can make high level decisions, but it’s not worth it to take responsibility for the fate of the company if you’re getting paid minimum wage.

Separate your boss work

The high level thinking, the big picture stuff, the things only you can do get done when you’re wearing one hat. Maybe literally. Put on a boss hat and figure out where your business is going, what needs to be done to get there. What kind of people do you need to hire, etc.

It helps to delegate work to yourself

… by making a todo list or a bunch of todo lists. I like the Getting Things Done (there’s a short course on Lynda.com) method. You can set up todo lists for your different levels of focus.

• I want to do my boss work when I’m very focused and have more jellybeans to take responsibility for bold moves.
• I want to do some communications work, creative drudgery when I’m a little less focussed.
• I want to do cleanup or fun work when I’m tired.

When you’re the employee

… cleaning your office, sending a bunch of emails, the actual work tasks that are not genius, don’t mesh it with boss work.

You might not feel the wind at your back when you’re working for yourself vs when you’re your own boss, but you can make it easy. Putting in long hours trying to please your boss can be rewarding.

Take the emotional weight out of this work, pretend you have a boss that just wants it to get done, and don’t consider whether it’s the right thing todo at the time. Trust that your boss has already figured out what’s best for the company.

If you think of bigger ideas, write them down somewhere for your boss to review later. Don’t expound on them because you will piss off your boss, or distract your boss from the big picture. Your boss does not have an open door policy.

Block out time to be the boss

If you think of a bigger company, a lot of hours are put into the labor force while there’s only one boss putting in boss hours. Similarly, you’ll want to block out a small percentage of your time to being the boss. It will be not a lot of time, but it will be intense.

This practice of separating your boss time can be really helpful when you’re expanding and taking on more of a boss role. You’ll understand the other roles in the company and will be better at delegating to other people that really exist.

If you never separate, you will never be your own boss. You’ll never have the ability to make the boldest crucial decisions and you’ll also have trouble completing the lower level work.

Stick to the time you allocate. Then, you’re not spending a bunch of time dreaming. You’re the powerful executive.

Understand your employee

A good boss incentivizes the work that helps the business. A good boss knows the weaknesses and strengths of employees. A good boss takes long term plans and turns them into short term projects so employees can be motivated. Think shamelessly about yourself as an employee.

1. When are you likely to get distracted?
2. What work are you just never going to do?
3. Why is some work fun and some not?
4. How can you improve your accountability?
5. Where do you flow?

Track something

As a boss, you’re going to track something like audience growth, income, work produced, etc. As the employee you’ll track something like time spent, or whatever other metric your boss wants for representing your labor.

You’re not going to track everything. That gets distracting and tiring. Tracking is for a simple pass/fail scope of the work. Are we meeting our simple goal? Take the next step.

Promote yourself

When things are working, and there’s work that you hate, promote yourself by hiring a freelancer to do that thing for you.

Bosses are usually not at the top

Even if they’re just friends with an outside eye, it can be helpful to have your board of advisors be other people. Check in with them and see how you as the boss can be doing a better job. What are you missing? If your goal is profits, are you meeting your goal? Just talking to someone else about it can make it more clear and more likely.

Something to cry about. We have almost entered the next stage of lockdown in America. The next stage includes no more whining!

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you’re a live performer and you feel you have all this value, but can’t use it anymore, you’re wrong.

YOUR. LIVE. SHOW. HAS. ZERO. VALUE.

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Another approach to being rejected is to set up camp on the chopping block. Stay in it. Set yourself up for rejection a lot. Increase your Rejection Opportunity (RO) rate

This is a 3 part series on rejection. Doing it, avoiding it & embracing it.

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Acceptance is usually a way for us to skirt responsibility

This is a 3 part series on rejection. Doing it, avoiding it & embracing it.

Here’s a scenario. Purely hypothetical. You work really hard on your craft. You decide that someone or some committee has enough authority to rank whether your work was worth it, whether you’re a worthy, valid person. You put yourself in front of them. You get rejected. It’s crushing. All your life is wasted!

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Curation is how we get the good. Someone with a voice rejects stuff.

This is a 3 part series on rejection. Doing it, avoiding it & embracing it.

Humans are basically constantly all curating. We’re saying no to 1000 possible lunches / outfits / tv shows, etc. These are usually kinda easy. It can get scary when we start rejecting people.

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What good’s all this brilliant knowledge I give entertainers if they’re not using it? We gotta get going making entertainment better! I keep hearing similar sentiments from entertainment pros right now.

• “I’ve been really lazy since the quarantine began”
• “I haven’t been very productive”
• “I got really depressed from all that’s going on in the world”

This post is not motivational, it is non-de-motivational.

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I work with a lot of small entertainment companies. Often, there are too few staff members to separate the brand from the product.

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I performed at a weed party thrown by a dispensary. It was a show with seven standup comedians and me in a windowless room with a secret entrance. No ventilation. Audience all smoking non-stop.

First glance, this might seem like a dream audience. I usually like a very alert audience, but wanted to see what this was about. Wanted to see if I could meet them where they were and give them a ‘memorable’ experience.

I usually try to watch as much of shows as I can. I am a sponge for learning more about performance; and also I want to understand and empathize with the audience before I go on. I could only watch a little of this show because I was gonna get really stoned from the ambiance and I needed to juggle for these people.

What I saw in this show amazed me and stuck with me.

The comedians were generally not doing well. The audience was very unfocussed. They were respectful. Most of the comedians were poking around. When a great live entertainer is flailing, they’ll keep adjusting until they find what the audience wants. Nobody was really finding it. I was in and out of the room checking each act.

The fourth act was reading jokes about marriage out of his notebook (ugh) and getting nothing from the audience. Five minutes in, he stopped. Looked up at the crowd. Said “I’m really nervous here because this room is full of smoke and I’m a Jew.” Killer. Big laughs from everyone. People shifted in their seats when they laughed. They were on board! This guy had done it! Next he said, “Oh, so you guys don’t like heady jokes about my wife, but you’ll laugh at Holocaust humor.” A little laugh. “My wife…”

WHAT!!!?!!! WHY!!?!???

I walked out flabbergasted.

When I came back in, it was my turn to perform. I killed. I scared the fuck out of them by juggling knives, I used short jokes. Changed the pacing, volume, proximity, and everything else non-stop to deal with short attention spans. Big laughs and engagement and it was fun. Just want to clarify that I am great here. It’s not the funnest type of audience, but it was good to know it’s possible to engage them.

This dude

This dude’s actions so stuck with me because of the attitude. I could not believe it. Here are some parts of it.

1. He pulled out a joke that was actually funny.
2. He connected with the moment.
3. He got the first solid laugh of the night.
4. He noticed that the audience liked it.
5. He determined what they liked.
6. He announced he knew what they liked.
7. He gave them no more of it.
8. He was not a beginner – pro over a decade and had made some TV appearances and stuff.

I had seen performers deny an audience the good stuff before, but never this knowingly and this blatantly. It was a certain apex of understanding for me.

It’s kill or be killed

Entertainment is a trade. Like other trades, it’s pass / fail. You shoe a horse or you don’t. You weave a rug or you don’t. You make them laugh or you don’t.

You don’t want your plumber to say “There’s still water pouring in your bedroom. My work is done. Your pipes didn’t really like my type of plumbing.”

This kind of defense mechanism doesn’t have a place in show business and it’s not rewarding for the performer.

Vulnerability is very rewarding and it’s the thing that connects best with an audience. Great standup is beautiful because it is so exposed and everyone in the room feels the stakes. “This person needs to make us laugh or they will die!”

We can always get locked up in “artistry” or “taste” because we get scared of facing the grade. Finding your audience and being amazing for them is one thing, but this story isn’t a case of a the wrong audience. He committed to this audience. If you have an audience that showed up for you, or you decided to make something for them; it’s up to you to provide them entertainment.

Seeking celebrity is just as shallow as seeking to be a self-respecting entertainer.

We all wanna make a dent in the world. We want to leave a legacy. We want to affect others. When people seek celebrity, I believe they’re trying to replicate people who they saw made a difference in the world.

Let’s drop candy

You have a hundred candy canes and you drop them one at a time from a balcony on people at a cafe. Annoying. Put all 100 in a bag and drop them on one person. That person gets knocked out. Which tactic makes a bigger impact?

• what if the unconscious person is a boxer and being knocked out doesn’t really bother her?
• what if 3 of the 100 are deathly allergic to artificial peppermint?
• what if a cult who believes in sky candy saw one of the incidents?
• what if passers-by were having diabetic attacks?

There are a lot of unknowns. Even if everything was as it seems, and everyone’s equal, it’s still a judgement call whether to make a small annoyance on many or a KO on one.

Is it better to be on a sitcom where you’re reciting lines you don’t believe in or have a poetry night with 1000 people who hang on your every word?

Shut Up, You’re fine

Every time you do anything, you’re making some impact on others and society. I would even say you’re making relatively the same impact on the world no matter what you do.

Popular people are doing a thing that society wants them to do. Break from the thing we want, and yoink! There goes the spotlight. So, celebrities are really playing a role that we want them to, not just doing everything they want.

Measurability

I think the main issue that keeps us in the game is fulfillment. In order to keep on going, it’s helpful to feel like we’re really making a change for people.

A helpful way to horde fulfillment is to stick to one measurable path. If your key performance indicator in life is how many followers you have on Insta, you can look every day, see how many you have, get some more, and you’ll get a lot and you’ll see the progress.

Not everything in life needs to be measurable, but figuring out, “I want to talk to one person after a show who really gets what I do.” Can give you that sense of purpose and help you see how much impact you make. It can make life more of a game.

The roots.

I encourage you, when trying to figure out what you’ll measure, to think back to why you make entertainment? How did it start? That can help to understand what really drives you and what will continue to make life great as you continue to serve people impact.

Finally, Intention

Pick a measurable thing that you feel is really good for the world. Something you truly deeply believe in. Annoying people at a cafe might be exciting, but there are probably better ways to enjoy a balcony.

“Starving artist” is stuck in our heads like “for the birds.” Both phrases rarely apply.

The danger

Creative workers are vital. As more stuff is automated, the work that will be left for humans will be solving complicated problems (creativity). Harnessing creativity becomes more valuable as time goes on. Skills like compliance and memorization diminish in value.

The idea that “starving artist” is such an earworm implies the opposite. It makes parents fear a black sheep. It makes children get back in line for a law degree. It makes creatives devalue their own work to find legitimacy. It makes employers and art buyers expect a discount.

From privilege into poverty

When humanity got good at acquiring food, water, and shelter; life got easier. We had time to make tools, and life got easier. We had time to make weapons, and life got easier. We had time to make art.

Same now. If you’re from a poor family, you’ll most likely need to work and pursue things that will help earn money for your family. But, if you’re from privilege and fear of poverty isn’t on the radar, your parents are more likely to encourage you to choose a career considered more frivolous… less directly about acquiring food.

More rarely, resilience can be a privilege that leads to creative work. You might be born into a scarce situation, but learn to thrive in scarcity, so you have more wiggle room to try stuff.

The worst college majors

1. Miscellaneous fine arts
2. Composition and speech
3. Clinical psychology
4. Cosmetology services and culinary arts
5. Visual and performing arts
6. Human services and community organization
7. Educational psychology
8. Drama and theater arts
9. Interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary studies (general)
10. Library science

There’s this study done by Bankrate that ranked college major above by lowest income and employment rate. Regardless if artists are less paid or more paid than other workers, there are some problems with the study.

• This is based on people having college majors, and how work panned out in their major field.
• Artists are more qualified by experience than certification (unlike, for example, engineering).
• Many artists don’t go to college before starting a career.
• This study may exclude a lot of creatives who began working immediately, and therefore got faster experience than college kids.
• An artist might train in one field and move to another, so according to this study, they would be unemployed in their field.

The baller artists

1. Kanye West > college dropout
2. Tyler Perry > high school dropout
3. Howard Stern > majored in broadcasting and film
4. Dwayne Johnson > majored in criminology and physiology
5. The Chainsmokers > majored in music and music business
6. Ed Sheeran > failed college
7. Taylor Swift > signed at 16
8. Post Malone > college dropout
9. JK Rowling > majored in French and Classics
10. Ryan Seacrest > journalism major dropout

According to this Forbes article these artists are in the top 20 earning celebs. They are probably not starving (involuntarily).

Unfortunately, celebrity is often seen as the flip side of the starving artist coin. You go from hungry with purpose to empty and rich.

Artists don’t starve. They become baristas

The way capitalism works, if you come from privilege, you probably stay in privilege. If you can’t afford food, your community, family, mental health, and knowledge of society will probably help you out quickly.

If you fall out of privilege, you become an entry-level worker, not an artist anymore. From my experience, this is unlikely to happen.

Alternate phrases

If you’d like to change the dialog, the culture, and the potential for weirdos; here are some alternate phrases…

• thriving artist
• impactful artist
• legitimate creative
• world-builder
• cultural icon
• passionate creator
• soul engineer

This is why so much poop is produced and why delusional people will swim against shit creek’s current. People are not asking for great anything.

General audiences are asking for…

1. incomplete
2. uneducated
3. familiar
4. comfortable
5. average
6. egocentric
7. off-base

The customer’s always right & wrong

They are absolutely right from their perspective

The most impactful advice I got from Frank Olivier is “There’s no such thing as a bad crowd.” This has carried me through. It helped me understand that entertainment has an objective goal of entertain no matter what. This has helped me listen to audiences and understand that the thing I had planned might not work out.

The listening must include listening to their perspective. This is the part where your audience is wrong — I hope. I hope your perspective on entertainment is way different from your audience. You are a pro. You’re an expert. That’s your job.

When I go to the doctor with a broken nose, I want the pain to stop immediately. The doctor knows that there’s more to it than current pain. Gotta set the nose back in place first — which adds more pain. The pain killers that can take my comfort to 100% might be addictive or bad for my overall health, so the doctor recommends an over-the-counter remedy.

If your audience can choose what to do, it will be the most boring thing possible that they do every day. That’s why they come to you, Dr Feelgood.

Get Delusional

I like Oxford’s definition of “delusion”

An idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.

I wrote more about how to stick to your voice earlier. We as entertainers need to take a strong position that is not popular, defend it, and lead our audience to receive it.

Shift Creek

We can help people shift their perspective a little bit, but we will never bring them completely into our perspective. The doctor rebreaking my nose doesn’t have to explain to me all the literature and broken noses they’ve seen. I trust them and am open to being lead. Bringing audiences to the good stuff is a combination of clarification and leadership.

It’s hard

There are a bunch of difficult pieces to taking care of an audience the right way. You don’t have to do it. You can chicken out. You can go into reality. The hard pieces are…

• getting more educated in showbiz
• forming a new perspective that is delusional
• testing that perspective
• defending that perspective
• taking responsibility for an audience’s experience
• hearing criticism for not doing it the normal way
• becoming a more persuasive leader