Passion is great for understanding our mission (the great purpose of our work) but it can be very distracting when we’re setting up goals (achievable milemarkers).
I get emotional about making stuff
The emotions can lead to black and white thinking…
Sell out the show or it’s a failure
Everyone needs to know about this thing
It’s gotta be the best or it’s a waste of time.
The emotions can lead to abstract thinking…
I am bad at comedy
We need to make more money
We need to get more views
Good goals are clear.
Things only become achieveable when they’re failable. We have to set up an expectation for our goals based on something concrete — usually numbers.
An example of this would be “We need 20 more tickets sold in order to break even.” Getting to this clarity takes responsibility and dispassionate math. It’s not as exciting as “Sell out or die” but “Sell out or die” is daunting, high-stakes, and might not be achievable.
If I’ve got a butter factory and I walk to a cow place 100 miles away to get milk, it’s better for my finances to set up a deal with the cow place next door than to hire some talent to go get the milk.
Some projects are built on talent – we need everyone involved to be top level. These are often stressful. The main job of a project like this is making sure that everyone’s on-board and doing their best and nobody will ever quit or slow down for any reason. I’m really into hiring the best people possible and giving them an environment to thrive, but I’m not into the high-stakes realm of keeping a zero-error environment.
If I’ve got a live show where every performer is fit for the crowd and a badass, stand-alone entertainer, I could just put them up on stage for any random amount of time with any kind of context and let them do their thing. It would be good. The problem is, we’re never in this situation. We live in a world of limited resources.
We have to get our milk transport system strong so that when we’re ready to hire, or invest in machines and stuff, we are not wasting time on nonsense.
I don’t know if I’m rambling or clarifying.
Here’s the point. It might be better to make a show where we have someone super dependable doing a simple task, than to have a complex and incredible performer doing something amazing and having to rebook that slot every week.
Punctuation gives us relief. Punctuation gives us confidence. Punctuation points toward a safe structure.
In entertainment we want our audiences to melt into us — to become sheep and let us lead. We want them to be alert sheep, though. We want them in the flow. If we wanted them to be zombies, murky is better. Put them to sleep because of lack of cognition. If we wanted them to be autonomous and stressed, we could keep it confusing. But even when creating a thrilling experience, we need trust.
Punctuation builds trust. Talking about punctuation in a live show, I mean…
Applause points.
Transitions.
Segmentation of bits.
Pauses in sound.
Deliberate lighting changes.
Curtain draws.
Punch lines.
Etc.
These are clear, abrupt moments that label the rest of the experience and help the audience block out what is happening. They’re also signals that this is not an endless experience. It’s got chapters, and the creator has a plan to get to the end. The creator is gonna take care of us.
When doing a lot of experimenting in shows, I thought it was avante garde to not give applause points in the show. I thought it was interesting to purposefully walk over my laughs so the audience had to decide when to laugh for themselves. Really it’s just stressful to experience a thing with no punctuation.
I’m seeing people in Zoom shows with a ton of lights and the lights are all spread out and far away. We want large light sources as close to us as possible. When we move a light away we lose a lot of power.
The inverse square rule says that we loose double what we might intuit.
If a light is 1 foot away from my hand, and I move it to 2 feet away. The brightness of my hand is not cut to 50%. It’s cut to 25%. That is much dimmer. Every little bit counts. We’re talking 4 times the brightness every time we move a light halfway in.
When I was talking to a mentor, I was asking him for help with business building. I was telling him my background, where I’m hoping to go, what is fulfilling to me about the work and he interrupted and said, “Your goal with your business is to make more money than you spend.” I thought at first that he wasn’t listening. I thought I had a lot more to tell him before he could give me advice. Then, I paused and said “Thank you.” He was extremely helpful. He cut through the crap to the point. My story was interesting and wonderful, but not when it got in the way of my current challenge.
I believe that every creator has a generous mission. I want them to achieve that mission. As we’re working toward the things we want, we all have piles of mental junk that slow us down, hold us up, or divert us from our intention.
I encourage people to learn about the common cognitive biases so they can see them when they pop up. To me, the trick isn’t to avoid them completely (that’s impossible) and not to always catch them (that’s impossible, too), but to be aware of what they are and give them reverence. We can accept that we’re susceptible and they may be affecting us at crucial moments.
Another thing in the mental junk pile is our own personal cop-outs. To us, it might feel like an interesting personal story “I grew up speaking three languages, so I never got that good at French.” or whatever. We can listen to ourselves talk, or read our diaries. We can find the stories or phrases we use to hold ourselves back.
We don’t have cop-outs because we’re lazy or jerks. We have cop-outs to protect us. They have defended us from heartbreak, failure, and maybe death in the past. Our cop-outs are powerful and benevolent.
We can memorize them. Know their names. Know what they look like. Understand what different forms they can take. Then we can recognize them when they appear unnecessarily. They will appear when we don’t need protection, but we just need to make progress. Often we can find ourselves saying “Why is this difficult?” Instead of “What’s the next step from here?”
Every line in graphic design takes energy from the viewer. Lines tell us where to look next. So, to make good clean graphic designs, we give the audience clear, direct, fulfilling communication. We don’t wear them out with a bunch of lines. Examples of the kinds of lines I’m talking about…
outlines on text
borders on sections
borders on tables
angles and elements in photos
boxes
drop shadows
complex fonts
Fulfilling lines are lines that point somewhere or lines that define things.
There was a time when people said “You need to get a 1-800 number to do business!” There were businesses that didn’t get 1-800 numbers and some of them survived. A lot of them did. It turned out toll-free phone numbers were not the only way to do business.
Having a storefront isn’t the only way to do business.
Having a fax machine isn’t the only way to do business.
Having a website isn’t the only way to do business.
Having an instagram account isn’t the only way to do business.
Selling pizza by the slice isn’t the only way to do business.
Mostly, I want to talk about social media here. We keep getting advice that we need our social media to be popping, but it’s actually impossible to keep up with all the major social media platforms if we’re solo or small operations.
Social media is helpful as a tool, but not necessary.
Social media is meant to be social. We are supposed to interact on social media. That means, we can’t just post something cool and hope that leads to work or fame. People make comments or reacts, we enter into dialog with them, we build relationships and that leads to work or fame. Relationships take jelly beans. We don’t have enough jelly beans to spend all day on all of the platforms.
What I recommend is finding a social network that is fun. I like spending time on Facebook, so I use that one. Because it’s fun for me, I can make it fun for other people to interact with me there. I can spend less energy and more time interacting with people there. I can build relationships there.
We gotta keep…
creating stuff
figure out a few channels to reach our audience
dive in deep to the few things that work
track progress and adjust
It’s a red flag
The main fear is that it would be a red flag to not have a following. I get it, but we we need to think about what our audience actually needs and we can determine what red flags are real for them. If I ran a video production company and we don’t have a youtube channel, is this a red flag? Not necessarily. If i have a way to share videos with potential clients without youtube, I could be killing it. Customers might be more interested in hearing how I could solve actual problems for them than whether or not I’m popular.
It could be a red flag to have a flagging following. If I’m trying to be a popstar and have an tiktok account where nobody is following, folks might realize I’m not cool.
Intellectual property is pretty crazy to me. I’m not totally against it as I have been in the past, but it’s a wild world for sure. People can protect and sell a concept over and over again for infinity. What protects their concept is the courts, so lawyers need to be involved for protecting and selling and possibly recovering lost / stolen income.
I have never had anyone steal my services. People pay me for the gigs I do and services are very easy to keep track of.
I am always looking for ways to create more services and serve more people.
If we’re looking at a potential way to sell IP and it doesn’t turn us on, we could instead think of how to make a service. A simple example of this is… “I don’t know how I’m going to sell enough albums to pay for the recording, so instead I’ll sell 50 tickets to a show.”
Instead of writing books, become a live story teller.
Instead of pitching acts to a booker and keeping their contact infos secret, sign a contract with the booker and tell them you will find them the acts.
Instead of selling magic tricks, perform the magic tricks
Instead of making a guide for D&D and hoping to sell it online, sell an NFT of it
Matt Kowal from https://majesticcollaborations.com/ had the suggestion to test every audience member of Boobietrap. These tests at CVS are 12 bucks each and are instant, so we could add $12 on to the ticket price, then have every person in the room tested.
I like the idea. It’s of course more expensive than a dozen dollars since we’ll need people monitoring the tests, we’ll need space to do them so that people are not grouped together and it will take at least 15 minutes to get the results, so probably at least 30 additional minutes of the night’s experience.
The tests are not as accurate as other testing systems, but it’s still a boost to safety.
oooh it would be nice to be in a room of guaranteed un-covid people!
Some people get a lot of what they want from secrecy. I don’t. I believe that we miss out a lot on capitalization by keeping secrets. We bring a lot to the world of entertainment when we get paid for services instead.
For example an organizer wants a band. They go to a producer. The producer goes to the band. The producer might charge $10,000 and give the band $5000. This is fine. If the organizer and band don’t know this the case, that could be fine. If the producer keeps it a secret, it’s kinda messed up.
There are some relationships that are worth $5000. If the producer is able to get a band way better than the organizer could get on their own, in a faster amount of time, and do other things to facilitate and make the booking process smooth. That might save the organizer serious money. If the producer makes it easier for the band to do the booking, clears headaches for the band and gets them in a good situation to be able to absolutely kill it at the gig, this is worth money too. The value is in the service. So, if the producer is actually worth this money, they have no reason to keep a secret.
If the band doesn’t know they’re being booked by the organizer for $10k they might not know how much they’re worth, this is detrimental to the band. If the organizer doesn’t know the amount the band’s getting, the organizer is also off track with budgeting for the future.
I would encourage people to talk about their contracts more. Producers, agents, gatekeepers, curators, and other middlemen have value. If we’re transparent about that, we can understand it and everyone can thrive.
It’s gotta be obvious that language is important to me. It gets my goat a little when creators say their mission is “making people happy.” I get what they’re saying, but I want to correct their language so that it’s more clear. Happiness is an emotion and emotions are transitory. We also don’t control people’s emotions, so it’s a rough goal.
What we can actually do with entertainment might not sound so cheery, but it’s awesome…
Gain permission to lead the audience
Set up a new narrative
Lead them into that narrative
It’s beautiful because narratives stick. Narratives can be used by the individual to motivate the feelings they want. Narratives are memorable. Narratives can be recalled. Narratives can be reapplied to new situations.
One narrative I love and produce in my “work” is resilience. Things go wrong. I point them out. I deal with them. I use obstacles to my advantage. I would love for people to take this narrative with them so they can see hurdles as opportunities too. I would love for people to get the relief of knowing that things don’t have to go right for them to go great.
We don’t have endless time to work on unlimited projects and most projects need monetization to be sustainable. If it’s not making money, we can get dragged away by something that does.
Building a big following doesn’t necessarily lead to money and building a small following doesn’t necessarily keep us broke.
We can think through how we’re gonna make money from the get go… even if we’re making a youtube series and we’re okay with working for three years with no income.
Are we going to sell 2000 tickets for $100 each?
Are we going to get 400 patreon patrons?
Are we going to sell 8000 books for $10 each?
Are we going to have 100 people come to our retreat for $1500 each?
Are we going to get advertisers who will pay us $40,000 for our 1 million viewers?
How much we’re making from each person changes our focus a lot as far as dedication, focus, and trust. We don’t always need a big audience for every mode of monetization, but it’s helpful to at least make some guesses about how the work turns into money so we don’t end up ditching our audience when we realize it’s not keeping the lights on.
