In examining the lives and work of so many creatives, it’s obvious that human beings of all drives and ambitions and personality types feel most fulfilled when they’re being used. I mean being used fully. The more an activity exploits all aspects of a person, the more they feel valued.

It works the same from the outside. When a job position or a relationship requires someone’s complicated pile of assets, the person in the job position or relationship is more valued.

When Taco Bell hires someone to show up and follow directions, that person is using a very small part of themselves — mostly their presence. The work is not fulfilling and is not worth paying more than minimum wage.

When Ryan Gosling is hired, It’s the special cocktail that is everything Ryan that makes him get paid so much and that makes him enjoy his work.

“Exploitation” seems criminal

The problem with this word and words like it like “being used” is that they are often seen as one-sided. A person in power is exploiting a person weaker.

If we seek instead to have mutual exploitation, we can get more out of every relationship than the sum of the parts. We can have extremely fulfilling and productive collaborations that change the world. The best performances that I’ve had were because I there were parts of me used and energy in me used and discovery in me that was rare.

We can seek this rare gift of mutual exploitation with a generous spirit. Knowing that getting the best out of someone is also GIVING THEM the best of themselves.

An easy gig sounds nice. What’s really nice is a gig that feels easy because it comes out so naturally. A gig that taps in to our strengths and history in a way that flows.

Money is the same

maybe the question comes up when money comes into the picture… what’s mutual about getting paid? People really like to buy things that are great. There’s probably something that you can think of that you really like purchasing. It feels good to spend good money on something incredible. So, risking our money is just as much a part of this flow as risking our reputation or our knowledge of 18th century self-help in Poland. It’s a unifying of resources to make something great.

Take action : figure out how you can give more of yourself to your next project.

It’s the call to action.

We wrap up our proposals with a request for action. We have nothing left to say except “do this!” The recipient already knows why and they have a picture of what will happen if they mobilize. Now, we put the button in front of them and tell them to depress it.

The call is simple.

A pill that can fix my back is better than a stretching regimen. How simple can we make this next step. Hopefully it’s only one thing to do. It’s easy and it’s fun.

The call is rewarding.

Hopefully, we’ve already clarified what’s going to happen and it’s going to be a dream come true. “just reply to this email saying ‘it is on’ and I’ll take all this off your hands”

The call is now.

We’re trying for the next step to be immediate. They can pull the trigger and we can give them something right away.

Take action: think of something you’ve asked someone to do — maybe a proposal that hasn’t gotten a reply – and ask them to do something in a better way.

In the LOOTERS format, we have already talked about the objectives and how we’re going to make it happen. The idea of getting back to the results is that the cost has been stated. We want everyone involved to focus on the results and not on the math. The math is not the important thing. Math is based on a highly distorted, cognitive view of our reality. Math carries the deception that it’s concrete and safe. If we put cost before desire, we’d get nothing and achieve nothing big.

So, the order of the way we think best is…

1. do i want a rad hat that makes me look cool, protects me from the sun, will make me look like i belong at Coachella, is easy to clean and pack?
2. it’s $76
3. I’ll be able to have a great time with my friends and have confidence to meet new people and dance

The results part of the proposal is a quick description of what happens at the end. It summarizes the objectives and reflects confident success. It’s a promise.

The scope of work / effort shows how it’s done. The results are what the customer gets.

Take action : think about a way you were misunderstood in the past month.

What was a promise you could have made that would have been exciting to everyone and fulfillable?

Most performers want a website that gets them bookings. The idea of a fan site is great for people / companies that pay their bills with ticket sales. I mean, that’s the actual source of income.

I’ll talk more about fan sites later.

When we’re trying to get booked for things, a public appearance calendar can show up as a lot of red flags.

• outdated events listings – looks like we’re not able to maintain our business
• events that might conflict with the booker
  • ethically / politically
  • timewise (like “we want to book you in idaho on june 3, but you’re in atlanta that week”)
  • industry overlap ( you’re performing for the other book shop in town! )
• looking too exposed – if a rock club wants to book us, they may not want us performing the week before in the same city. It’s easier to sell tickets to a hungry following
• gaps in calendar make us look unpopular
• events that are off our brand : eg we’re labeled as luxury yet hitting up “Wacky Family Fest of Gorgia, TX”

The fantasies of the ticket calendar

• makes us look successful
• our fans are going to check our site regularly, then eagerly buy tickets
• people are going to randomly find our site and buy a ticket

One gig or 20 tickets?

Realistically, are we gonna sell 20 tickets per show from our site? Maybe 3? probably zero? Then, we want to do whatever we can to get the gig. Keep our sites deliberate, to the point. Looking up-to-date (which means avoiding anything that’s perishable) and directly showing value, clarity, and call to action. Here’s more about how we don’t want our sites to be updatable

take action: remove the gig calendar / forget about ever adding one

Ah! It’s scary to say the price of something to a customer. It’s tough to confront the hidden costs and face the fact that we gotta give up jellybeans (time, energy, money, reputation, etc.) to get what we want. In the effort part of the LOOTERS proposal, we are facing it all and laying it out so that we can collaborate honestly and harmoniously.

We can state how much work it’s going to take us (not as line items, but more broadly) eg: I’ll show up two hours before your guests arrive. I’ll take care of my own flights

We can also say how much is required of the customer besides their money eg: I’ll need to have a couple production meetings with you ahead of time just to make sure we get everything right

And, we can give the financial cost.

We’ve waited until this part in the proposal to make sure it’s clear that

1. we’re on their side (love)
2. we’re commited to a big thing (objective)
3. it’s possible (opportunity)
4. we have a solution (trust)

before we get into how much we’re all sacrificing to make an awesome thing happen.

We want to be expositional when sharing the scope of work and cost. We want to cover a lot so that it’s explicit. This transparency gives everyone confidence to move forward.

If i tell you you’ll spend 30 minutes cooking a recipe and you’ll have a meal for your family, you might not have trust for me. Instead, what if I say that i’ll talk to you to find out exactly what’s in your kitchen, I’ll create a recipe that takes 30 minutes from fridge to table. You’ll use my shopping list to pick out a few things next time you go to the store and the cleanup will only require a cutting board, a knife and a bowl. The cost in the second example is higher, but it makes everyone feel more secure. Everyone has the same expectations and we can get thru the cost now, instead of costly surprises along the way.

Take action: write down a few things that cost you jellybeans from a common gig that you wish your customers understood and appreciated.

Many creatives are super concerned with trust. This can work against us. Being confident and answering questions directly and honestly builds trust. Using “salesy” and subjective language doesn’t build trust.

To keep it simple, we make it simple. Making it simple for a customer is the complicated work that we do.

Instead of me saying I have done this thing and that thing and whatnot and whoozit. I try to tell customers exactly what they need to know in order to trust.

Trust the solution, not the provider

Of course if a sleazy fella’s trying to sell you a car, you’ll be suspicious. At the same time, if you trust that the car is awesome, you don’t care how sleazy the salesman is. Our job with selling our stuff and getting their trust is to trust something very specific. That makes it simpler for us and for the customer. Even if you think all the other cars in the lot are crap, if you believe the one car is going to change your life for the better and is well worth the price, you’re buying that thing.

That translates to us offering something specific. It’s not an all in one solution, it’s just perfect for our customer(s)

Use objective proof

People can believe us when we give them something objective. “I’m the best writer in the county” is different from “I just got the county blue ribbon in writing” … “my horse can do anything” is different from “my horse just performed at a venue just like yours.

Take action : get smaller

Think of some things you’re not good at. Things that your service doesn’t really do well. Just eliminate those from your offering. eg: people that are broke don’t really like what i do.

A friend told me that his MO is dealing with the wolves at the door and he wanted to be motivated instead by cheering fans. I think it’s admirable to work for positivity. Part of that positivity is accepting the wolves. The wolves are there to help.

With fear of risk, imposter syndrome, sunk-cost fallacy, all of it… it’s great to accept it and use it. You want to leave your house and there are wolves at the door, just move the wolves to the living room.

Move the wolves

Try to set up a situation where it’s better to deal with the daunting thing than to deal with the opposite.

For example someone complained about something at Boobietrap and it was easily explainable and justifiable. I could have spent some time explaining it to them and giving them a heartfelt apology, but that would have taken me 30 minutes before the show and I could use that time to greet the performers I cared about. Even though complaints feel crazy to me– they give me tunnel vision — I said to myself that the real danger was in not nurturing my relationships. I gave the customer a ticket refund and said “i’m sorry it sucked. We always try to do a great show!”

I feel that the negative and fear are always going to be a driving force. They’re ever-present. So, the solution is to look at them as motivators. Are they motivating us to send a handwritten apology to someone who just doesn’t get it and will never get it, or are they motivating us to put on a brilliant show for 10,000 people who get it and want it?

Understand the wolves

Another big part of the wolf thing is that our mind thinks it’s a matter of survival. We think the wolf at the door will destroy us. Most things are not really about survival when we take a breath and look at them from a calm position. So, realigning with what we want, feeling secure with where we are, and trusting that we can handle whatever, gives us great power to know how to walk past the wolves.

Take action : adopt a wolf

there’s always too much to get done. We’re always on the precipice. dedicate a day (or a half day) to not dealing with any survival stuff and see if you’re still alive. Mantra: “I have what i need, i’ll get what i want”

You walk in to a pizza place. The girl behind the counter says…

“before we get started, there’s the exit. Feel free to leave at any time if you don’t want pizza from here. Do you want to leave? You decided to have pizza a little while ago. if it’s not still the best choice for you, there’s a nice salad place next door.”

or

“If you’d really like our pizza, here’s the address you gotta go to.”

or

“I know our doors are open and there are people here cooking pizza, but you cannot eat a pizza. I’m so glad you’re here because we want to tell you about the pizzas we’ll have in the future.”

this is about newsletters

This is what I see entertainers doing with their email newsletters and other promo stuff. They say “It’s been a long time since i sent out an email. Feel free to unsubscribe if you don’t want to recieve emails.” or “if you want to be on my email list, subscribe here” or “my newsletters are going to be about…”

• recipients aren’t gonna want to take extra action for an unsure future email
• recipients don’t need to be pushed away
• recipients like getting good things

If we have something to offer with our email blasts, we gotta just give it to them. Give them incredible value and then leave them alone.

Deliver with confidence

Confidence is a real gift. The pizza person who says “Come in, I’ll try to hook you up with some great food!” is a wonderful thing. Confidence is contagious and we like to feel confident. Welcome people in.

We know where the exit is.

Make your unsubscribe button really clear and easy at the end of the email so people can find it.

Promoting the unsubscribe or making it hard to stay subscribed is like promoting the bathroom in the middle of the performance

Take action: send out the best email blast of your life!

Something that makes people want to talk about the email they just received.

Jellybeans is my way of thinking about total cost or benefit of something. It includes…

• money
• time
• emotional energy
• reputation
• possessions
• and other resources

Getting too much spring mix salad greens costs me jellybeans because i have to pay for them, load them out of the grocery store and into my house, into my fridge. Gotta move them around in my fridge. Stare at them and try to not get angry that they are about to go bad. Throw them all away because the purple leaves are brown.

When we negotiate a deal and get a gig, we want to get the most money possible from the booker. At the same time we want to feel like we’re not ripping them off. And we want to feel like we did great work.

Instead of thinking about how to get the most jellybeans out of the situation, we can think of how both parties can gain jellybeans out of thin air.

If someone pays me a bunch of money and i have more time than money and what i can do saves them time… we both get jellybeans out of the deal. This is the happiest aim of every deal – find how both parties gain a ton.

The jellybeans that i put in are small. The jellybeans the customer gains are big and vice versa at the same time. Mutual exploitation.

I feel the issue that causes many artists to be afraid of money is that they think the jellybeans flow only in their direction. Creative people, we offer something of value to the world!!

Take action: Figure out something you can do for a customer

where they receive more than you give. eg: I know you’re going to be in a rush on 3 hours of sleep. you’ll probably want some comfort. I’ll pickup an amazing caffeinated bev and sandwich for you from my favorite bakery!”

I have a certain body shape that I’d like to attain by Sept 1. I don’t think it will happen at this point, yet I’m still trying… a little bit. I think with dedication to it this month, I could have gotten much closer by now. My main things are that I wanted to lose weight. The healthy rate of weightloss is 2lbs per week. That’s 8lbs in August. I think i started in July. That’s 16lbs. Probably more than enough to have a fun % bodyfat. I also wanted to build up muscle so that my posture looks strong and my step is springy. Running regularly and doing some strength training would have done that.

If i truly believed it was possible, I woulda done it.

I waited because of hope

My biggest daunting factor was hope. In July, it would have been really helpful if I

1. Clearly set what I wanted my body to look like (instead I said “athlete’s body”)
2. Believed it was nearly inevitable

If I had hope that I would get my sept 1st body every day by sticking to my shit, it would have been easy to do planks and burpees and treadmill. It would have been cake to eat less.

Hope is solid and valuable

Sometimes, when I’m talking to a friend, I might spend the whole conversation listening and giving them hope and the way my brain works, that can feel like I wasted their time. I can walk away saying “Why didn’t I give them this advice…” Then, they text me and say, “man! You gave me great advice and it turned everything around!” i gave them no advice. I just gave them positivity and hope.

Sometimes when I give hope to someone who I want to hire me, it feels manipulative until I 100% deliver on that hope. In that case, it was just giving them reality.

Hope to motivate

When we’re trying to motivate ourselves or others to do something good and big, that person needs hope. Lot’s of hope.

In a gig proposal, that hope may look like giving them a way that someone else has achieved the same thing they’re trying to achieve. It might look like showing them a special collision of opportunities that allows for a new solution. It might take showing someone the capital they’ve built up that is ready to be mobilized.

Take action : swing for the fences

Think of a prospective client. write out how confident you are that you are a perfect solution to their needs. Write out the opportunity that’s in front of them because they know you. Maybe send that to them.

Lexus doesn’t build a subcompact economy hatchback, then slowly raise its price.

We want to get somewhere bigger and feel good about it. We want to get there ASAP. We want to have fun in our lives. We want work to be a game.

Many freelancers try to slowly raise their rates dollar by dollar thinking they’ll get to making a ton more. This is difficult or impossible. If I jump from making $30k per gig, to making $100k per gig, I’m changing what I’m offering, who I’m offering it to, what my lifestyle is, how I’m communicating my value, and a lot of other stuff.

With the lexus example, they’d be changing their factories completely, their customer base, the sources of their supplies, their staff, their advertising, their brand, their CEO, their everything.. and it would be really hard for customers to think of them as luxurious.

The way to do it is to set a goal, fail at it for a long time. Then, succeed.

This gamifies it because it’s measurable. It makes the day-to-day work more clear because we’re not trying to arbitrarily “improve,” we have our sights set. Commitment is incredibly rewarding and fulfilling.

We get to practice the actual thing. Instead of practicing getting $30k gigs, then $33k gigs, we’re practicing getting $100k gigs. In three years, we’ll be better at getting $100k gigs. We’lll have our audience we’ve built that are in that range. We’ll know our product and how to deliver it.

Take action: Figure out if you can fail.

1. Define an actual SMART goal 3 years away.
2. Write it down big on a sheet of paper.
3. Look at it and think, is this possible?

I told my friend “I think your mom is abusive.” She said “It’s not that.” I googled “What are signs of abuse?” I went thru the list with her. The second one I mentioned she said she experienced with her mom, but it was justified in whatever way. The third one, she had also experienced. Weak explanation. Then, there were some more. With each one, she lost steam for defending the actions. Then, she started remembering more actions.

This is the pattern I’ve seen in my life with experiences or behaviors that have been impactful. The idea of abuse didn’t match up with what felt like her relationship with her mom.

The look vs feel affects positive little situations too

We can think we know success when we see it and yet still not feel it when we have it. We can think we know how to be funny and not feel funny when everyone laughs. We can witness amazing creativity and not notice the tiniest smidge of it when it’s spraying out of our faces.

Distortion leads to demotivation

If we think we’ll know what it feels like to do the work to win an Oscar, we start the work, it doesn’t feel like we thought, we can immediately be turned off to it.

I forget who said it or what they said, but it was something like “People want to be the best comedian in the world, but they don’t want to live the life of being the best comedian in the world.” This goes beyond the idea that people don’t want to work for success. It’s the idea that people don’t have a realistic view of what the job looks like on the inside. It doesn’t look like it feels.

Take action: prove the feeling

make a list of the things that you want to be. if you don’t believe you are any of those things, write out a list of things that would prove that quality. Just like the abuse list, make it some concrete things. Edit that list to make it realistic.