In entertainment, we’re not just picking our careers from a catalog or a guidance counselor’s list. Usually, the work we do doesn’t fit into a job title and it doesn’t match anyone else’s career. Basically, we’re making it up. Recently, I’ve been re-making mine up many times over. I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing. Here are three things that are helping to guide me.
1. Establish my Mission
Knowing what my mission is is really helpful. I’m trying to figure out all the time where the limitations of that mission are because that’s how I can feel safe in my choice. If I know the boundaries are strong and I’m within the boundaries, I’m on the right track
2. Figure Out My Daily
By making a schedule of a dream day at work,
I can understand where I want to be in a year or whatever.
I can get practical about how I want to spend my time.
I can get away from career paths that are going to push me away from my desired daily.
3. Determine progress
The question is, “If I do this thing for a (month/year/decade) will I be ahead of where I am, or will I just feel like I kept up?”
I used to be really into rebelling, trying to figure out how I could get away with everything maximum perpendicular to the grain. I wanted to do what nobody else was doing. I wanted to break all the rules of entertainment.
It might sound like an old man thing, but I didn’t find that to be the way to get what I wanted.
I thought I would be liberated to get what I truly wanted by doing something different, but different becomes a trap. When we’re trying to be different, we’re missing the opportunities of being the same. We’re handcuffed to the opposite of the norm.
It’s much more helpful to our mission to handcuff ourselves to the mission — to our intention. Then, we don’t even examine what is the norm and what’s avante garde. We look for what works best.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving day and I know thousands of you will be disappointed to know I won’t be blogging. So, hopefully this will give you something meaty to stuff your mind.
We are generous. We are fueled by a mission that is giving. To get to action on this mission, we need gratitude. We don’t need to express gratitude to others, but we need gratitude for ourselves. We need to remember that our life is full and we have more great stuff than we need. Otherwise, we can’t give.
The opposite of gratitude is wishing. Ambition is fun, but if we’re wishing and wanting with the majority of our thoughts, we will be in victim mode.
“Victims” are the most dangerous people in the world.
Folks that make victimhood the majority of their identity will not act from their intentions because they’re too busy trying to protect themselves. They are subject to the whims of the world. Wherever is threat, there is the attention.
We need to fill ourselves up with gratitude. Remember how great we have it, then we have everything to give.
I sometimes feel like being grateful is an arrogant recounting of how much better my life is than others. It isn’t. It’s a mindset.
I sometimes feel like being grateful will lead me to losing what I have. It’s the opposite. If I strengthen my gratitude muscle, I will always have plenty and I will never lack.
When we take up space and are vocal about what matters to us and who we are, it gives others permission to do the same. We have good stuff to do. We can be loud with it and that adds to the lives of others. Let’s go!
I talked about how to show value in a site and one of the ways is an awards section. These don’t have to be an Oscar or “World Champion!” They don’t have to be from contests.
They can be…
A contest won
A contest finalist
A contest selection
A repetition of success “5 Time Guest Author”
“Official” something eg: “Official Speaker”
Certification
Top of a category
If we don’t have a stats section, you could let a stat fall in this area too.. eg: “20+ published works”
We’re trying to turn information graphical in every part of the website possible. We want the user to glance and get the message, so we need to make the text of the award graphic as short as possible and with hierarchy that boosts the important part.
Many folks are drawn to entertainment as a way to fit in. They feel that they were an outsider, except when the stage happened to them, or when they had some kind of art to share.
When this feeling comes up for us again with our audience, it can really screw us. The thing that makes our creations great is the connection, not the specialness of us. I’ve had this hit me when I’m going on stage for a big corporate event or two. I think, “These people all have jobs. They’re normal. They’re in sales and they are around other sales people. They want to hang with sales people. They don’t want to watch this show. I don’t fit in here.”
With this kind of thinking, I’m a mess. I have no power, I have nothing to offer them. So, I can change my thinking to, “These people have never been in this place before, they’ve never experienced what I’m about to do. They don’t know how to deal with it or each other in this situation. If they think they know, they are going to be surprised. I’m going to help them fit in.”
I’m just a person. They’re people. We’re connecting. We’re together. I’m doing my part.
Being decisive is what we do in design and what we do in entertainment. We take responsibility for making decisions for our audience. Then, we can guide them along like happy sheep to a wonderful place, an important experience, or a fulfilling message.
I used this meme before and here it is again…
We notice things in order because of the hierarchy of letterforms presented in the meme. The headline is the king, then it descends down to the serfs of letters. Good graphic designers guide a viewer through what’s important first, second, third and on and on. We make intentional decisions and use empathy and psychology to help make a message absorbable.
In the western world, we scan a document top left to bottom right, but things (like big headlines) can disrupt that flow and create a new path. Disruptions are stimulating and make observance fun / engaging. This is true with entertainment also. Some people want to make entertainment that is top left to bottom right, but the badasses always look for ways to get people looking somewhere else first. They might not be comfortable with their audience being uncomfortable, but they know that it’s worth it.
When people ask me generally if I have any tips on how to make it in showbiz, I generally answer them “Don’t do it.” If a person doesn’t really really want to do it, it’s not worth it. I definitely wouldn’t recommend my path in my career even though I love it and I’m grateful for it. It’s rough and I tried to be DIY with everything for a long time. Here’s a picture of me in 2003 with my haircut and clothes that I did myself.
We might be afraid of self promotion and getting salesy. We might be afraid that everyone will distrust us because we talk about what we make… but forget going big. Do we even go little? Have our people heard from us? Do they know our current thing? Do they know how to get our stuff?
Only one big corporate email list
I unsubscribe from lots of email newsletters. Maybe 6 a week. I like getting some, but I’m very picky about my inbox because I try to get it empty by the end of the day. I am subscribed to Apple’s email list. It is complete advertising for their products. I like the way they communicate. I like to know what they’re doing next. So, I stay on the list. They keep sending me things. They don’t need to push anything on me because I already buy the things I want from them. They just need to let me know what’s available.
So many are so silent
So many creators I know are not talking about the thing they love. There’s nothing on their social media that conveys that they have a project now, that they’re available now for hire, that they have something important coming soon. They are obviously purposefully avoiding telling people about that thing that they spend all day and night thinking about.
The people that follow and friend us probably want to know what we’re doing with our lives. They probably want to be advocates, encouragers, and evangelists for what we do because that’s easy and rewarding. They are on board with our mission and they are ready to receive something great.
We’re not repeating. We’re continuing.
Letting people know the next step or the next part of our work is awesome. We don’t need to say over and over “buy my book,” but we can say what the book means to us, exciting news about the book, what it feels like to write a book, that we would love it if someone bought another copy of the stinking book, though.
For Now, Just Say it
Just let people know now. Later, we can work on getting over our fears of big promotion.
We create a vast lavish room of luxury for our audiences. We make wonderful safe place to explore the entertainment we create. This room has it all. It’s great. So much of ourselves.
The issue with getting people into the room is the door. The door is small. Someone feels safe stepping through a door into our our room because it’s a small step. It’s a light commitment. If we try to just get them in the room and skip the door, they’re not going to enjoy being pushed through the wall. If we try to make the whole room the door, the room’s going to suffer.
So, we have to make the door something easy. We don’t have to show our audiences everything in our room. We don’t have to express the entire place. We need to give them something small and appetizing.
A door with a fresh coat of paint and a welcome mat and a functioning door nob seems lame for the wonder we know is beyond. It’s very hard to be so elegant. It might seem like we won’t get the validation we want, or we might loose the interest of the people we want. The opposite is true. If we make a good door, we are performing a generous act. By pigeonholing ourselves, we are giving people an easy portal to the fruits of all our genius and effort.
The door and room are metaphors. I hope you got that.
I used to have this impression that every high-level artist is the same. They function in this beautiful interesting way where they turn it on and you can just see the work flowing.
For instance, I thought every great actor, would have an approach and work ethic in common even though their presentation on camera was different.
I got a chance to see very clearly how wrong this thinking was.
I was cast in a TV special called White Hot Holiday. Taraji P. Henson was the star. Taraji reminded me of my wife in her style of work. Even though she’s intense and fierce in some of her roles, she was super super sweet to everyone on set and maybe a little nervous in anticipation of her scenes, then showed up very precise. Nailed everything with consistency and awareness, then went back to her chair to prep for the next scene. This is how I thought everyone would be.
Terry Crews came on set like Wayne Newton. He was smiling, high fiving people, joking, and prepared. Sets are usually pretty quiet during setups and it’s a lot of clatter of things moving around. There’s communication, but it’s mostly very practical and polite. Terry changed the room. It was like, “Hey we like doing this stuff, and isn’t great Terry’s here. He’s everyone’s friend. I don’t remember him looking at the script. He was ready, loose and dependable. Not as precise as Taraji, but not really a bad take.
Tyler Perry was amazing. He had a gravitas to him but was very friendly and ready to act. He was asking for lines, he was going wherever he wanted. He was changing the lines whenever he wanted, he was wild. I think one time the camera operator couldn’t follow him. He was funny and fun and off the rails.
Each of these people were doing amazing things. Each of their performances were powerful and useful to the production. They were acting. They were doing their jobs really well. As well as you would hope. I’m sure many directors and editors and other crew would usually prefer that all the actors have the same workflow, but that isn’t how people are. There’s no factory that outputs entertainers. We all come from our own paths and bring our strengths however we learn them.
This moment on set with some greats wasn’t about how we all bring something different to the arts. It was about how we all bring the same thing ( in this case stellar acting ) in different ways. When I find someone else’s method or their career daunting to me and feel like I’m doing it wrong, I remember that there’s no wrong way.
