I don’t believe in laziness. I find procrastination is a signal or a symptom instead of a condition. Writers block or stage fright are treatable. Even some depression can be solved with tricks. Tomorrow, Chris Ruggiero and I are doing an interactive Zoom for you with techniques for getting unstuck. Methods we use and suggest for moving forward on important stuff. Whether it’s a big project or the next action, it can get heavy and I don’t want you to have a single slow day.
Tomorrow Chris Ruggiero and I are doing a Zoom workshop with your questions about selling creative work. Hopefully it will help people feel less creepy and get more gigs that make them giggle.
My main technique is to talk to a potential client in a discovery call, get an idea of how to offer them the most value, and charge less than that value. I’ll go over that more in the workshop.
Tomorrow, I’m partnering up and doing a free Zoom workshop thing about my style and Chris Ruggiero’s style of managing tasks. We have two different ways of dealing with the endless todos of life.
My style is based on GTD (Getting Things Done by David Allen) combined with time blocks. I’ll put more notes here as I think of them, but basically. We make a big list of everything. We stay on top of the list of everything. Then, we split up our day by the things that are important to us and we get those most important tasks done in those time blocks. Each time block is a different context for my GTD tasks, so it’s easy to see what’s next.
It’s hard to see what our audience / clients see as our value. Really Really hard. Ken Honda offers a great question for examining our gifts from a different angle.
Why were you scolded as a child?
The things we did wrong are often the way we continue to stand out. Like every great hero, our flaws are our super powers.
I love this for so many people I know. For me, I was scolded for mischief. I would always try to find the edges of the rules, question their logic, and push boundaries. This continues to be my style in stage shows as well as my business strategies. So fun!
Comedians have told me they don’t want to lose weight or gain weight because they will lose what’s funny about them. Writers have bragged to me about their isolation tendencies. I want you to know…
There are people creating things in good health
There are lots of people who are creating things while taking care of themselves. There are aspects to every experience of humanity that can be powerful and important to express in entertainment. There are lots of the experiences though. We don’t have to go thru the harmful ones, and we don’t have to stick with them just because we feel they might be working.
We’re not better because we’re
If we want to have sex, but we think our virginity is causing us to make great video games, we’re wrong.
We don’t have to change who we are or what we’re doing to something more healthy, but we have the freedom to do it. Healthiness can lead to longevity and endurance. That can lead to creating more greatness for the world.
Comedians can lose confidence. Even in a week, we can feel like we don’t got nothing! Then, we get on stage and we get the first laugh and everything’s back. It’s not just feeling that we’re good. It’s feeling that being good doesn’t matter that much. We are useful. We are serving people.
If we are useful to others and serving them in our actions, we feel great. We are not being self-centered anymore.
When I am about to talk to a potential client, I might feel completely nervous or I might feel like it’s a waste of time to talk to them. Then, when I ask them questions and learn their situation, often I have something great to offer them that actually helps them a lot. The nervousness disappears.
What’s the first laugh? What’s the little chunk of evidence that shows us our usefulness? Let’s get it quick so that we can serve big!
Yesterday I shared a showhack and I didn’t call it a showhack, but let’s be honest. That’s what it was. Emotion. Showbiz hack #2 Immediacy / recency. We can make things better by making them happen nowish.
“I saw this guy a week ago” is not as good as “I saw this guy outside” or, “I see this guy right here”
We experience things in stories, and we absorb stories because they share survival information with us. What survival information is most useful to us? The most current survival information. This game is about finding how to make something happen now. The bomb is not in the tundra somewhere. The bomb is not on it’s way. The bomb is in the room, people.
I’m from the magic and juggling world. We are often seen as cheezy. That’s another word for shallow. Great jugglers and great magicians bring in their humanity. One thing humans have… emotions! Easy trick: include emotions in what we do. This applies to any entertainment. Audiences can not absorb anything without a story of a person or people – even if that person is an anthropomorphized cartoon bunny.
Instead of “Here’s a song written by Jed Smithers,” Say this is a song my “Mother used to sing to me and it still sometimes makes me cry” Instead of “here’s another thing I can do with my whip,” Say “this is my favorite whip trick in the world. It makes me happy. It’s gotten me through many stormy nights.”
See how easy that is? Please, I’m dying here. Add emotion!
We don’t know. Even the ones of us that seem most confident don’t know. We don’t know exactly what our brand is, we don’t know what people value in us, we don’t know what to do next.
We can get better at understanding our wheelhouse and who we are to others, but all work is experiments. The great thing about experiments is they never fail. Experiments give us information. The better formed the experiment with the bigger control group gives us more info. That’s it. We’re experimenting.
Here’s how we stay in the flow so we can get more information…
If you can’t fail, you can’t succeed.
We are tempted to take safe routes. We’re tempted to do things we know will work okay instead of pursuing things that might work wonderfully. The story of entertainment is a story of risk. Everything that we love is created daringly.
Now, showbiz companies are trying to hedge their bets. People are making stuff based on algorithms. Netflix shows are being written based on stats. I love utilizing technology to examine what works and make something better, but it’s easy to get sidetracked and forget about the power of risk.
Let’s continue to put our necks out. It took us a long time to understand what works, but now let’s find out what works better, or what works better now. Let’s get wild and youthful and rebellious. Let’s bet on ourselves and see if we get in a mess. Being in a prom dress at the 7-Eleven is better than being in a snuggie and crocks anywhere. Nobody comes to us to see us comfortable. They come to us to see what happens when humans dare.
Let’s take risks in our process, in our outreach, and in our end result. It’s heroic to take risks and it’s compelling.
I know. I’ve been grossed out by people who try to sell it too much; people who boast; people who tell me their resume all the time; people who somehow plug every show without embarrassment.
I was heading to a comedy show and was a little turned around, but I heard some audience noise coming from a venue, so went in the back entrance and there was a dude on stage playing keyboard and singing and he was really great and fun and alive and sounded awesome. He owned the room. He was Jacob Jeffries. Sat through two of his songs, then he got off stage and they introduced another act – a musical act. I was not at a comedy show. I was at the wrong place at a music show.
I went up to Jacob and complimented him and then, we noticed that we had seen each other the day before at a vegan restaurant on the other side of L.A. County. There weren’t many people in that restaurant and I remembered him because he was talking to the waiter about his music and giving her a flyer and really getting into it. I thought he was hitting on her.
I later learned that this is what he does. He loves making music for people and he wants everyone to know about it. Isn’t that innocent and lovely?
Jacob was only in town for the two days that I encountered him and I got him booked on a midnight show and stayed in touch. We became friends. He made me consider why I always attributed self promotion to some shallow pursuit? Why did I see it as a objectifying interaction?
We in entertainment are all making something that’s better. It might not be better in every way than everything, but to us, we made it because it has something that needs sharing and something that gives people awesome. The more people we can give it to, the better. Let’s share. Let’s keep serving. People need to know. Even servers. Even people who are lost at music shows.
We waste most of the advice we receive. I give way too much advice and I see it wasted all the time, it’s still worth it to me to give it because of that little bit that takes effect. Here’s how I see it wasted and here’s how to prevent wasting what we receive.
Good advice that’s absorbed and used is rare. It has to have perfect timing, and a bunch of other factors to make it work. Here are some problems with good advice.
If it’s appropriate, we can tell the advisor that we will follow up with them on it. We don’t have to say we’ll take the advice, but that maybe we’ll look into it and get back to them. Thank them. All this stuff is powerful. It adds accountability, it adds an expression of gratitude, it adds a commitment to remember the advice. If I have to follow up with a person later, I’m going to really take in the advice and it will mean something to me.
When we follow up, it has a side effect of motivating the advisor. People like giving advice that’s useful. If I give you advice that helps you achieve your goals, heck yes I’ll give you more advice in the future. That’s fun!