Tina and Martha are friends on Facebook. Tina is friends with four cartoon producers. Martha does 100 cartoon voices and wants to get more gigs as a voice actor in cartoons.

Failure 1 … The reel

Martha makes a voice reel showing off a bunch of voices to try to impress the powers that be. She works super hard getting the perfect recordings, trying to make it flow and hiring the perfect editor that pores over every detail.

One piece of content goes out. Tina might watch it, might not. Likes it on facebook.

Failure 2 … the brags

Martha feels she needs more visibility and more impressive stuff. She does projects for free and brags about them before, during, and after.

Tina sees some of them

Failure 3 … blood hound

Martha starts painstakingly digging thru all her facebook friends’ friends. She finds some of Tina’s friends who are cartoon producers. Sends Tina a message asking to be introduced to them. Tina makes a couple introductions. Martha says something like “If you ever need a voice actor, I’m available! Here’s my reel.”

The producers say “good to meet you” and possibly watch the reel. They don’t ever need a voice actor. They have voice actors falling at their feet and they have voice actors they know and love and they have a casting process for new roles. They are not impressed by Martha’s reel.

OOPs Success

Martha says, “forget this hustle, I am not gonna be able to make things happen, but I love cartoons. I love making voices.” Martha makes a youtube channel reviewing her favorite cartoons as other cartoon characters. Eg: Bart Simpson reviews Bojack Horseman.

She gets to make things. Good things that she likes.

When Tina sees that Minnie Mouse reviewed season 3 episode 12 of Rick and Morty and it’s hilarious. She sends that video to the producer of Rick and Morty. That producer sends it around to his team. The team starts talking about this series and watching more of it. Many of them subscribe to the channel.

When they need a new role cast, they are excited to bring in someone they are all a fan of… Martha.

Serve

Because Martha created a service for her potential clients, they wanted to…

• see what she’s creating
• hear from her again
• meet her in person
• get work out of her
• recommend her
• share her
• trust her

It’s great to make a reel. It’s great to make our work visible. It’s great to ask for introductions to people.

Unfortunately, we can’t look at these things as magic top hats that are going to bring our frozen careers to life. We gotta start serving our people before they buy.

With our global economy changes, people are using the word ‘pivot’ more and acting like it’s an abrupt, new activity. It’s not new. Being FORCED into a pivot is not new. Companies are forced into changing direction all the time.

• Coca Cola used to be a cocaine drink. Now it’s a bunch of drinks that don’t have cocaine. ?
• Redbull used to be an energy drink company. Now, it’s basically an entertainment company sponsored by a beverage.
• Netflix used to be a mail-operated company
• Levis used to be just some people named “Levi”

Solopreneurs who don’t change their careers for their whole lives are rare AF too. Some people estimate that it’s normal for a human to change careers 7 times in a lifetime. That number seems high, but the principle behind it is we’re not living in a single career world.

1. I did odd jobs to buy candy and toys
2. Age 11, I started performing professionally at birthday parties and banquets
3. In high school, while performing, I worked in a bunch of jobs to make money
4. When I graduated, I worked more jobs ( like concierge, and park maintenance )
5. I street performed across the country
6. I got a job performing opening for a band
7. I toured comedy clubs
8. I produced theater shows for myself
9. I became a corporate entertainer
10. I became a juggling teacher
11. I am a consultant and producer now

It kinda feels from the inside like I haven’t changed careers because it has been a flowing transition, but I have done a lot of different stuff and I will continue. Please join me ?

If we’re running businesses / we’re freelancers, we’re not victims to the state of the world any more than Netflix is a victim to the rise of the internet. The economy is changing and bringing new opportunities for us to make fun.

While I’m coaching people, we get to work to find their blind spots. We as entertainment badasses usually think our blindspots are the things that aren’t working, but there’s a large chunk of things that are working that we don’t notice.

In fact, everything that we’re doing right now is working. It’s all working together to get ourselves and our projects exactly where we are at this moment. SUCCESS!

Let’s get dispassionate

Understanding that we’re not doing certain things right and certain things wrong can help us make small dispassionate decisions that have big effects. We can take the burden and shame away and see what we want to modify.

Sometimes it take an outside eye to help identify what’s working.

For example, someone might say “I’ve been selling CDs on the street for three years. It’s terrible. I have to go out and talk to strangers and force them to listen to my music. I have to duplicate the CDs myself and sell them one by one.”

I would say to them, “Did you just say ‘three years?’ You’ve been supporting yourself and your family for three years doing this! It is working! As we move forward, you would like your work to look different. You would like to make more money. We can examine ways to modify work, but let’s do it from the perspective of thriving, because you’re killing it!”

The fear of dispassionate

I believe it’s common for creatives to think they’re driven by passion. We often ascribe calm with passivity, but calm is usually a strong position for progress.

Think about driving a car…

1. we are making progress
2. we are not asleep
3. we are not lazy
4. we are focussed
5. we are not freaked out

When we freak out, when we get tense, when we get sleepy, we are in more danger as drivers. Same with making. Calm focus.

We don’t jerk the wheel back and forth to stay in the lane while screaming. We appreciate that we’re safe right now and we make calculated adjustments.

We want our brands (or the message that we’re consistently putting out into the world) to be as specific to our audience as possible. It’s great if we need 50 fans to support our project and we have a message that speaks directly to only those 50 people.

As our minimum fanbase gets bigger, the more generic our brand needs to be; but we can have micro brands that speak more specifically to different subgroups or individuals.

Every fan / customer / client / audience member has their own take on the personality of your service anyway. If we have the opportunity, we can help guide their take.

The macrobrand

We speak a message that sounds positive and helpful to our smallest viable audience.

With this example “bat soda” we’re only trying to reach people who purchase for the family. It’s not for everyone in the world, but it is for a big population.

People get who this is for and what it does.

The micro brand

When we can speak to a sub-group of our fans, we can be more specific. The more specific we are, the more valuable.

If a stranger walks up to me on the street and recommends a movie, it’s not as valuable as if my best friend recommends a movie. The value comes from my best friend giving advice that includes my tastes, hates, mood, lifestyle, and a million other factors.

If bat soda sponsors a female CEO summit, they might make their ad more specific.

Now, it’s not serving a generic issue of “bonding with family” it’s serving…

• “bonding with family”
• “struggling as a woman”
• “being a good mom”
• “keeping up energy”
• “balancing work and life”
• “being productive”

Go more micro

If we’re selling something higher priced (like trying to get a salaried job or a half-time show, or a book to a publisher), we can delve more into the individual needs of a person. Bat soda would probably never be sold at a price to warrant this.

Our microbrand — without breaking the original message of our macro brand — can become a response directly to an individual person’s needs. That means more points of value and exactly the points that matter to that person.

Forming the macro

I think something helpful about this is that we can remember that our macrobrand is most likely not the last time we’re going to talk to our fan. We’re going to have other chances to speak to them more directly and specifically. We don’t need to say everything possible in our macro approach, we can wait to tell them the details of the awesome things that apply.

I didn’t meet my wife thru a dating app, so I’m not an expert on that, but just as another analogy…

Tom would set up his dating profile to show his core values and eliminate any easy ‘no’s. Then, when messaging someone, maybe they like a certain movie, Tom could start a discussion about that movie. He wouldn’t need to have that movie on his general profile, because it’s not a deal breaker. In the discussion, it’s a way to find specific connection.

A common problem for people using automatic cameras (like webcams) is that the details of the subject are lost. The subject appears too dark or too bright. There are a few easy solutions that don’t involve buying a fully manual camera. This applies to faces as well as objects.

The solution: average brightness in a scene

Your camera will try to adjust to the average brightness / darkness of a scene. If a scene is mostly dark, the camera will try to brighten everything up. If the scene is mostly bright, the camera will try to make everything darker.

This works the same way with dark stuff

Folks tell me, “Everyone wants the lowest price.” I tell them, “How much is a haircut?”

Selling things for a price below value is how selling things works.

I want to get a deal. I want others to get a deal. If you don’t, you’re a thief.

Getting a deal at a world renowned haircut shop in NYC that guarantees you look good is a different price than getting a deal at a rusty scissors shack in a village in Bali.

Having a strong brand saves us time, money, and headaches. A common thinking among independent entertainment people is that a brand is a device for commercializing or deceiving fans / consumers.

A brand is for communication

No matter how important our work is, it’s not as important to others as it is to us. We can’t expect others to spend enough time understanding our work so that they appreciate it in the same way we do. They will not get the whole picture. Most will not get even a big picture. So, if most people only get a small picture of what we do, it’s our job to communicate that small picture with the most honesty and clarity.

This honest small picture is the brand.

We are window dressers for someone peeking through a keyhole.

When an isolated ADHD teenager takes a glimpse at the cover of my book and sees that the book is made for isolated ADHD teenagers, that’s more important than the other aspects of the book that are also important. That teenager doesn’t need to know that the book is set in Idaho, or that the main character’s parents are divorced, or that the writing is in iambic pentameter as much as they need to know that this book is written for them.

It’s great that a brand draws in the right customers.

Then, the book content sticks to the brand. The story is an empowering or heart-tugging story for ADHD isolated teenagers.

The content on-brand serves the customer.

Then, the message that that teenager takes with them is a clear message about what the book is and who it’s for. It’s either for other people like them, or it’s for readers who want to understand people like them. Again, we’re empowering our audience by giving them clear tools to share and connect with others.

The more branded, the more rewarding + the more remarkable

So, our branding is a service to our audience all the way down the line and our branding (if strong) is integrated into every part of our creation.

I understand being unremarkable.

I love bending genres and creating things nobody knows how to characterize. I marketed myself for a long time as “Pancake Juggler” which is interesting, but not remarkable. It’s hard to remark on it. The descriptions of people who saw my shows got even more muddied.

Because of this weak brand, I was constantly questioning…

• what to present in the show,
• how to dress,
• what to put on a website,
• what to say to people when they asked to book me

And I had difficulty getting booked unless someone had seen my show. Even word of mouth didn’t work very well because it was way easier to say “Book this magician” than “Book this guy who is a juggler, but not like only that, he does… he has a pancake that he cooks… on stage… there’s a backpack for America… he has a really fast wit… it’s like a comedy show, but better…”

I know it’s a challenge

My point is, I know it’s a challenge to minimize our genius creative works into a simple little package. It’s hard to put a damper on the ever-expanding wonder of making.

This is our responsibility and also our relief.

Here comes the relief

Imagine the book cover for the isolated ADHD kid book again. I don’t know what you’re imaging, but I know what you’re not imagining.

• A picture of an old man
• a picture of a tree alone in a field
• and antiqued style
• a cover that just has a giant author’s name on it
• black and white text
• anthropomorphized animal cartoons
• a leather-bound hardcover
• lots of guns

While we HAVE to say ‘no’ to some brilliant things when we’re making a solid brand, the brand also makes it easy to say ‘no’ to a million things before we even consider them. These easy ‘no’s streamline everything. Suddenly, we’re not considering every composer to help us with our music, we’re not considering every shirt to wear to a photoshoot, we’re not worried that our video game can scare someone who’s not even supposed to be playing it.

There is power in the ‘no.’ As I wrote about yesterday, the limitation is our fuel. Most badass entertainment creators already think in ‘no’s. We think of all the things that need to be done that aren’t being done. We think of all the mistakes of our ancestors that we don’t want to make.

‘No’ is a great starting place, and when we stand up and say ‘no’ on behalf of our audience, we are giving them a tremendous gift.

About twenty years ago, I was a clown in a show run by a large corporation. I was fun, I was wild. I would get big responses from the crowds. I interacted so much and came up with fun games to play that got people laughing …at least this is how I remember it .

The corporate people saw what I was doing one day and thought one of my bits was a little bit to edgy for their show. I got a note from the director (who was very generous, patient, and a fan of me). Yeah, I guess I could not do that thing.

Next day, three shows. New note at each show. Each show, a new thing I couldn’t do. The director told me, they’re watching me. It’s going to be an overreaction because they’re very sensitive to every little thing I do. He was wise. It was right. Also, those people giving notes were not entertainment people. They were like HR people from the company. It was more dangerous for them to not say anything than for them to make the show worse.

Next day, two more things I couldn’t do.

The director told me to just do the same things the other clowns did. I took this direction. The notes continued. I eventually wasn’t allowed to do the things the other clowns did either. I wasn’t allowed to touch anyone or come within 5′ of a child (it was a family show). …at least this is how I remember it. Seems impossible in reflection.

The director told me that limitation can be the fuel for creativity. I wish I would have sat down and really talked to him about this because I didn’t understand it. Now, I understand it. Now, I know that he was right, but also wrong. Limitation is the fuel for all creativity.

To me, at the time, creativity was about endless expansion. It was about freedom and breaking down all barriers. No rules. No laws. No reality could hold creativity back.

I didn’t understand that the greatest things I had ever created or would create were only appreciated by anyone because of the walls that surround them. The stronger the walls, the more creative the exploration.

This is not a story of me being a hero. I didn’t do well in this situation. I felt bullied. I felt like a martyr. I felt like my ability to do the job was completely neutered. I stopped trying. I was mischievous. I was unprofessional, and I was not awesome.

If I could go back and talk to myself, I would like to tell me about what the limits will do for me in the future. I would tell myself to look at the limit, then look at the big playground next to it. I would tell myself when people see what limits were facing me in my next inventions, they will be inspired by how I flourished.

This is a time for all of us where many limits are in our faces. The good news is they’re in everyone’s faces. Rarely do we have a chance to create with such a spotlight on our battle. Let’s create great things and give our audiences miracles.

Creators who can easily get in the zone of generosity, generation, and joy when creating say to me on the regular “I don’t like to sell my work, because it feels gross.” We think we need to switch roles for these vastly different tasks. When I coach them thru the process, this changes. It’s not a big secret, but it does take a few big cognitive adjustments.

( I’m talking about selling products, getting gigs, negotiating contracts, selling tickets / downloads, and more )

The selling is part of the making

Making entertainment stuff without an audience is pointless. It’s not entertainment. Making something that people don’t value is pointless in this craft. Understanding what sells informs how we can make things that the world values.

Free stuff still costs

Even if we give away our novels, people are still paying for them. Time is more valuable that money. We don’t get out of selling our stuff by giving it away or making it cheap.

Making something free or low priced lowers the value of the something. It often lowers the value more than it lowers the consumer’s barrier to entry.

Okay, then!

Make sales fun

We can’t escape sales if we’re going to make something that’s great for people. The mental shift to make sales fun is straightforward. “I am going to price what I have below its value”

If we could sell awesome shoes to people that need them and have the money for 50¢ per pair it would be fun. We would want everyone to know that our shoe store exists. It’s a miracle and the more people know, the more lives we could change. We don’t need to trick anyone. We don’t even need to convince anyone. We only need to communicate to people…

• I have shoes
• These shoes are valuable
• The price is ridiculously low

It might still feel icky right now

“But I’m not selling 50¢ shoes, I’m selling $10,000 paintings…” Now, we find our real block. Our block is not sales. Our block is imposter syndrome. The way to remove this block is to understand our value. People pay $10,000 for paintings because they are REALLY GETTING SOMETHING WORTH MORE.

Understand value. go!

Part of our job is to honestly examine our value to our audience, then communicate it. When we can land in this premise; it is clearly generous, part of the creator’s flow, and it is enjoyable.

Michael Gutenplan turned a stageless year into hundreds of performance opportunities.

Marketing our entertainment is not about wandering or pulling. It’s about serving. We have the chance to serve with every single thing that we do. Here are two headlines. One serves. One sucks.

• What’s the Circus Delirious difference?
• Circus Delirious is the most outlandish fire show in England!

Don’t Waste Time

Tell me what’s up! I have other stuff to do. If my time isn’t respected in a headline, it’s probably not going to be respected with the other things the company does.

Readers Will Quit

If a reader (viewer, listener, etc) isn’t served, they will quit taking in what we’re saying. We gotta give them something before they go – a gift that they can remember us by.

The Question is there

If we get afraid that we are not being compelling without a question, we can make a compelling statement. Make it compelling!

When we give audiences something, and make it interesting, they want to see what the next thing is because they assume we will give them something else. When the headline, or the lead-in is a question, there is no guarantee there’s an answer anywhere.

Make bold, dense statements.

We are commitment chunking thru positive reinforcement. It’s the same when we’re creating entertainment for consumption.

1. We set down a treat at the end of a hallway.
2. They take the treat and see the light around the corner.
3. They turn the corner and see another treat.

We don’t hold back the treats behind questions. We don’t put up a sign that says “Treat around the corner”…. or worse “Is there a treat around the corner?”

Got Milk? sucks for us

So many companies have tried to duplicate the “Got Milk?” campaign. It doesn’t work.

• People know exactly what milk is. There was no new offering, so nothing new to communicate
• The milk folks have billions to spend on advertising
• The commercials were funny and the phrase was improper English. Both of these things were novel in advertising at the time

My adblocker on Facebook is not working anymore, so I’m seeing a disturbing trend in bad FB ads from entertainment companies. They’re bad because.

1. I am not a good target of most of them
2. The content is not compelling
3. The content sometimes doesn’t even make sense
4. There is no target audience
5. There is no value shown

Most of the ads I’m seeing are from small businesses.

When I talk to entertainment people about how they’re making ads, most are just shooting in the dark.

What I’m hypothesizing is that facebook is seeing big profits from small businesses who can put in $3000 a few times a year without any expectation of results.

The crazy thing is that FB ads can be great for a small budget project.

Unfortunately, the promise of FB ads is that it’s a few clicks and we have money. This is usually not the case. Studying how it works, trying a lot of things with small amounts of money, and really knowing our customers takes work. If we do it the easy way, we will probably be wasting cash.

Ads are not for every business

If we don’t know who our customer is, or we can’t target them thru an ad, or we can’t track the response, our low-budget project will probably not benefit us.

Targeting

Targeting and tracking are the two most potent parts of online ads.

Our success is not a few clicks away. It starts with knowing our potential customer. We gotta know what our brand is and what our USP is. Getting a lot of eyes on our stuff is not great. It spreads us thin. The ultimate is when we need 100 customers and those 100 customers see our ad(s) enough to trust us and buy.

Facebook ads can target weirdly specific people around the world. Use this super power or piss away money. Get very specific. Laser focus.

Trust

A single ad view does not sell a Ford truck. For any major purchase, major trust needs to be built. Most of us in entertainment are not trying to sell a new truck. We’re trying to sell an album ($9.99) or something, so we don’t need a lifetime of brand building to get there, but we still need to build some trust. If we’re advertising to someone who’s never heard of us, that means what I call “saturation” — repeated attention.

Value

Our customers need to understand the value of what we’re offering (greater than the price) and they need to trust that we can deliver it. This value / trust relationship is what we’re doing with advertising and all other outreach.

Arm & Hammer baking soda made their ads all about the multiple uses. Every new use is more value. Sure, every baking soda can be used like this probably… but are you sure?

Track

Because of great tracking in online ads, we can see how much money we spent per successful customer. This is called “cost of acquisition.” That means we can find a formula for how much to spend and what to expect. For our formula, we also need to know how much the customer will bring us over their lifetime (“lifetime value”) because they might buy from us more than once. The simple version of the formula is…

lifetime value – (cost of acquisition + product cost) = profit

When we don’t

When we just boost a post or throw up some short sighted ad, I’m assuming Facebook is gonna try its best to make the ad work, but it doesn’t have a fighting chance.

I would prefer if to spend advertising dollars buying dinners for friends. Those are people who already trust us and understand our value.