Fear the new, resent the old! That’s what our brains tell us. Creators often want to give the audience what they need and want, but it’s confusing. Folks want the newest, latest thing; but also are afraid of anything completely new. Even though it varies from person to person, every audience member has this inner conflict.
How do we give people enough newness that doesn’t trigger their neophobia?
How do we keep things familiar without them seeming stale?
These are not questions to answer. These are questions to ask while making. There is no balance to strike. There is no all-or-nothing choice. We can’t be motivated by fear or by resentment to make something truly fulfilling.
Seth Godin is a constant inspiration. I’m a marketing geek and his blog post today started my brain. This is all his blog post says…
When we say, “here, I made this,” we’re not seeking credit, we’re taking responsibility. To be seen, to learn, to own it, to do it better next time. Hiding is too easy. And hiding is a trap.
There are irresponsible entertainers who don’t last long. They jump in, try to get attention, maybe do something loud and controversial, then don’t want to deal with the fallout. They don’t want to take responsibility for the attention granted to them. They are given the collective trust of an audience and they don’t have a safe place to harbor it.
On the other end, there are badass entertainers who understand that any time they do something in public, it’s going to be hard.
When we buy a car
The price tag on the car is not the only thing. We also have to pay for…
Fees
Taxes
Insurance
Gas
Car washes
Repairs
Mods
Dash bobble heads
Parking
When we create some entertainment bit, we gotta follow thru. We also have to pay for…
I would be told over and over by teachers in school that I just wanted attention. It always perplexed and bothered me a little.
I thought learning was really fun. I thought being around other people could be really fun. But school sucked. I wanted to bring everyone up and engage them in the moment. That was bliss for me. I couldn’t articulate it, but I was doing the job that I thought my boring teachers were failing at.
When I made jokes about the lesson or the situation, it brought the attention of the class into the moment. That was so sweet for me. I loved sparking laughter and interest and learning. I took on a responsibility.
Now, I feel tremendous responsibility.
I have all this experience, skill, and a network. I’m putting myself out there more than ever. When a new project idea comes in, I write it down, but I’m not excited by it. I’m in love with the work I’m doing right now. I want to do it well and deliver on my responsibility.
It’s incredibly fulfilling, and I’m at an age where people aren’t accusing me so much of being an attention whore.
We have value to offer. We never know 100% of the value we have to offer to someone, but we can use certain techniques to learn, including the blue sky discovery call (BSDC). The way my mind works, this is my favorite and fastest way to get there.
A normal discovery call is specific
A normal discovery call leads to selling a certain thing. It’s a conversation that a sales person has with a potential customer to find out if it’s a fit — mostly if the potential customer is an actual prospect or a dud.
BSDC is unlimited brainstorming
Used by major creative forces, blue sky thinking and research are ways to check out what would be possible if everything was possible. It gives us an opportunity to glimpse the artificial limits we’re creating for our endeavors.
BSDC is not sales
Although it can lead to sales, the goals are…
Learn the pain points of the other person (this is the big one)
Answer questions
Insert our own value into the conversation
We don’t close on this call. We don’t need to offer anything because we’re going to get off the phone, put our thoughts together, and then offer them something — maybe as a proposal in an email.
Maybe we don’t offer them anything…ever! The pressure is completely off because we don’t have to offer them something. We only offer them something if we can take away their pain.
The value is in being a pain killer. It is not a fun life to offer things to people who don’t need solutions. That’s how we get into low priced work without respect or impact.
When to use BSDC:
When we know our audience, but we don’t know our service. When we might be starting from scratch in our business (this can be right now for many of us) and we want to discover the needs of our favorite tribe. It might be when we get a client call and we just aren’t sure what they want from us, or when we have a client we believe has a large budget and wants concierge service.
BSDC is not a trick
This kind of call works really well, and it could be used as a trick, I guess. The way I use it is not as a trick, but rather to find the hidden value fast. Find out what someone really needs and make a bespoke solution.
I don’t like the pressure of closing on a phone call.
I come up with better solutions after I get off the phone.
I might pitch solutions in a confusing way verbally before I get organized.
The client might need to share my pitch with someone else after we talk, so I would rather offer them a shareable proposal.
I cherish the opportunity to have a relationship-building call.
Canned services are good…kinda
We can offer one-size-fits-all services which can work well for scaling and it doesn’t take such a complicated creative process. If we try to create a new service from scratch, it will require prototyping and iteration that adds up to a lot of work.
Using BSDCs for the initial step can help us majorly in finding what our people actually want before shoving something in their faces.
At the outset of the pandemic lockdown, I was pretty buoyant. I definitely didn’t suspect or hope for the fallout that has happened. So much death and suffering. I was optimistic, as usual, that things would work out. That’s a conscious decision I always make.
My position was that nothing changed…
It always feels like the universe is trying to kill me
I never know where my money is coming from
I like canceling appointments
I get to spend more time with my new baby
How terrible this must be for all the people who thought they had their lives together.
As the lockdown continues, I’ve gotten to have so many heartfelt conversations with so many people in different fields – not just entertainment. Everyone’s having their moments. So am I. #rutlife
Being alone matters
Our social isolation has effects on us that we don’t understand or immediately notice. Most of us will probably be recovering from this and relying on our coping tools long after society opens up.
Lack of distraction matters
We don’t have all the social activities and limitless errands pushing us around now. For many of us, this constant motion was the only break we got from intense thought and cyclical emotional churning.
Fulfillment matters
I think when people talk about “being happy,” they really mean “being useful.” For creatives, that means making something that not many people (or nobody else) could make. Many of us have felt less rare due to the pandemic.
Here are some of my tricks for dealing with this stuff
isolation: 5 second meditations throughout the day to remind myself of gratitude, take a breath and remember that the world of people I love still exists. Make calls and texts to random people even though I’m afraid they’ll be bummers.
dis-distraction: Setup appointments to meet with people. tell people weird jokes. make things that are unnecessary (but don’t take up a lot of time) be spontaneous. Look up the answers to weird questions that pop to mind.
uselessness: This is the big one. Break down the things that are special about me. List out my skills/ resources. Figure out ways to use as many of my resources in a single process or project as possible. I’m coaching entertainers now and it makes me feel extremely useful. I don’t feel as world-class as I did on stage, but it seems I’m growing a skill that can make an impact and I’m able to connect so many dots from my life to help people.
When I worked on Scary Movie 5, I was the villain, but I was also Snoop Dogg’s stunt double (because we look exactly alike). My dressing room was right down the hall from his.
My dressing room was practical. I had a few personal items. Most of the room was empty or occupied by work stuff. I could go to the snack table and bring in whatever food I wanted. They took good care of me, but it was not as nice as being at home.
I had to get there earlier than most of the other actors because of the extensive makeup and other rigamarole. I was getting rigged up to dangle from the ceiling or put on a costume or a series of masks.
One morning, I got a peek at the assistants loading up Snoop’s dressing room…it was huge. He had a big TV with two video game consoles, an ice bucket of fancy waters and energy drinks, food plates, couches, and more. When he arrived, he came with an entourage in a cloud of weed smoke. Wow, what an upgrade!
In making movies, there’s a lot of waiting as shots are set up and everything is prepared for the actors. While I was sitting in my dressing room waiting, I realized that 20′ away was Snoop also waiting. He had to wait just like me. And just like me, his dressing room was not as nice as being at home.
I get to fly first-class more now than I did then, but it changed the way I looked at first-class people. For some reason, I thought they were sitting there going “heck yeah! I’m flying first class! I get free champagne!”
I started to realize they are in first-class because they fly a depressing amount or because they have a more expensive life.
I started to realize that it is nicer to live like the rich and famous, but day-to-day it’s not so much of a game changer. The people in first-class are still sitting there trapped in a seat that’s probably not as nice as their earth life. The people driving Lamborghinis still have a weird coffee smell in their cup holders.
I started to realize that as more of the mundane tasks are taken away, the more responsibility we have to spend our time on developing great entertainment.
This is a challenge we develop as we find more and more success. Not only are we setting up an expectation for continued success, but we have more space to create more, faster, better. We are still at the same level, though. We’re still dealing with life on its terms.
I guess the main takeaways I had from this epiphany were…
Learn gratitude now, because life will not look that different when we have more. If we’re not grateful now, we won’t automatically be then.
Success is not going to show up as a victorious moment.
Success is not the end. It’s not even a point in time. It’s a mindset.
Great work and success will lead to more great work, so we’d better enjoy the work.
Great entertainment cannot be created if there are haters. Haters have loud voices that overwhelm the satisfied crowd. As long as a hater has a megaphone, the rest of the audience won’t be able to get the good stuff.
Now that everyone’s on a global stage, we have access to billions of unwanted opinions.
Haters aren’t real people
Haters are roles that we assign to people. Sometimes they’re roles that people accept for themselves. Roles are not people. They are a simplistic lens to view a whole person. They are objectifications of people. So, to kill a hater, we don’t have to kill a person, we have to kill our labeling of people.
Kill a hater just the same way you kill Marty McFly – go after the parents. Haterism has three parents:
We get creative validation from our mission, not from our audience or from strangers. Our fuel comes from doing great things in the big picture, not from individual projects or versions of a product.
Personal validation is something else altogether. It’s an umbrella over all. If we’re letting negative comments affect whether we feel lovable, there’s some major backtracking to do. Therapy and stuff, dude! It’s in common parlance to say that someone “hurt our feelings,” but our feelings are our own and are not in the hands of critics, let alone our loved ones.
When we personally are not safe to exist, we can’t create great stuff.
2. Be Generous
Give more. Find people who need help and serve them. This is how we started creating and it’s how we’ll continue. Definitely, we need to take care of ourselves, but then go forward and shift the spotlight from our own preservation to the improvement of the world.
3. Appreciate bad brains
We gotta look at, and accept our negativity bias. Haters are loud because we amplify them. This is natural and common.
When we’re driving down the street, there are a lot of things we could hit with the car. They’re all moving fast and diverse in color and size. So much stuff we could give our focus. It would be so dramatic and interesting to crash. The road itself is monotone and seems to not move at all. Yet, we focus on the road (most of the time) because — even though we know it’s not as engaging, it’s the important thing to keep us moving forward.
Take a peek behind the curtain
It doesn’t really matter what justification people have for making critiques of our work, but there is justification. There’s a good reason for them to make remarks from their standpoint. They have complicated lives and important perspectives. They have their mission and we have our missions and I am driven by the idea that my mission is one of the most important missions in the world, so I can’t slow down because they’re doing their thing.
I’m not trained as a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Get legal advice for contracts. I’m speaking from experience about the contracts I’ve seen for friends, clients, and myself. Most of these contracts are between an individual and a corporation.
Many entertainment pros I know think of contracts all wrong.
A contract is a love letter, not a declaration of war
This is the #1 problem with many entertainment pros getting into contracts. It’s not about the contrast, it’s about the clarity.
They’re called “agreements” for a reason. Contracts are an incredible step into trust and deeper collaboration.
Often we get this idea that we want everyone to be on the same page automatically. Hopefully everyone has “good” intentions and wants to do the “right thing.” We read each other’s minds and nobody does anything “amorally.” If all this stuff is not true, then we need a contract in order to draw the line for our enemy and prepare for war.
I assume people, in general, are trying to do the same things.
People want to be kind and make the world better whenever possible.
Most of the time, concepts of what is kind and a better world are mostly the same. But the actions and situations that lead to kindness and better-worldness are relative based on perspectives.
A set decorator might think that getting themselves paid a lot is better for the world because they’ll be able to do better work, while a theater company might think they need to save as much money as possible to put into making more great work. So, the contract is a great opportunity for both parties to work together to define how best to make a better world.
If a contract is thorough and clear, it frees everyone up to work together without questioning the scope, direction, distribution, and transaction of the work. It makes the relationship more fun and more motivational.
I won’t see you in court.
I have never gone to court or arbitration over a contract, and I’ve dealt with a lot of them. Usually a legal battle is the last resort. It’s annoying and expensive.
On the other hand, I have brought up contract points a lot as a way to remind everyone of our goals. These are simple conversations and a splendid way to get back into alignment.
Take some time and get it right
Because we think of contracts as conflicts, we often try to rush through the process. By doing this, we aren’ setting ourselves up for all the awesomeness possible. If we think of them as love letters, we wanna get everything in there!
I had a lot of roommates in my young adulthood.
There were so many conflicts with my first roommates because we had different ideas of what home was supposed to be. We had different ideas of our responsibilities. After going through the fights and the resentments and the whatnot a bunch of times, I learned to start communicating upfront about what these expectations were. After I had discussed with my roommates how long dishes can stay in the sink, we might not have both liked the rules of our agreement, but we didn’t have to revisit again. Our collective home could then be more sanctuary-ized.
So
Yes, a good contract will protect us in the case of a lawsuit, but more importantly it will make our work better.
Personally, I avoid transactional relationships. I don’t do favors that are owed later. Either I want to do something for someone or I don’t.
Professionally, I try to do as many things to help others as possible. Then, when the work gets bigger, more special, or impacts my life more; it becomes transactional. I’m trading for something. Usually money.
I love giving as much as I can and I truly love helping people achieve more of what they want, but…
help is a dirty word.
We don’t want help. Getting help is admitting a weakness. If we’re going to be respected, we’re going to need independence.
Be a bonus
Offering help is often rejected, so it is sometimes more productive to offer to…
chip in
add to
be a part of
gift
donate
If we recognize people are doing good things and we want to add on to what they’re already doing, it’s not a challenge to their capabilities. It’s a compliment to their capabilities.
Being on the other side works gang-busters
Requesting help has the opposite effect. It can be one of the most effective ways to START a conversation. When we’re reaching out to a booker, publisher, media person, or other gate keeper, sometimes it’s better to ask them directly for help than to make an offer to them.
The help people like giving is not simple
When requesting help:
The request is best if it’s specific to that person. What special things does that person have that would especially qualify them to help. Folks like feeling useful for their special mix of who they are.
We need to show that the help will be valuable to us. People don’t like spending time with no result.
If the helpers don’t know us, we need to show that we have a mission they like.
Make the assistance easy to provide. If help can be boiled down to a single yes / no question, that’s baller.
The help needs to have an obvious result. Eg: “I think your feedback could make my mom love me again. Could you please tell me what you think of this holiday card?”
Ask for something unusual. It doesn’t have to be weird, but if you’re asking Richard Branson for money for anything, you’ll probably be outta luck.
You know what else?! That Mia Dolan La La Land! And Rabbit from Eight Mile! Yes I said it! I’m controversial.
It seems like we have one shot at the big stuff in life because our shots are truly rare. Of all the attempts we make, of all the opportunities we try to open up for ourselves; many of them don’t lead anywhere. Many of them don’t even have the chance to lead anywhere. Although our shots are rare…
We have more than one shot
First impressions mean little
Maybe they mean something, but it’s more helpful to think of them as meaning little. A gatekeeper can write someone off because of a bad first impression, but that doesn’t mean there are no more impressions to make. Remember…
Making a good first impression means presenting relaxed confidence. It’s hard to do that if we think it’s our only chance
We must never give up in showing more value to our people.
Chris Ruggiero won’t stop
Dude got on the Ellen show because he got a shot to send a video in to the producers. They said a polite, “not yet.” He sent in new videos every single month for five years. Bingo
He wanted to get on the James Corden show. It didn’t work. One new video shot from his living room each week for a year. Bingo
He wrote to every agent in the college market and tried to get them to take him on. Nada. He paid his own way to go to a college booking convention. Showcased. The agents approached him. Bingo
Get better
A crucial thing about Ruggiero’s pursuit is he got better. He learned what his gatekeepers didn’t want and gave them what they did want. This is what we have to do. We don’t just continually try to clarify our value, we also try to add value. If I really feel that a certain publisher is right for me, I don’t just have to convince them, I have to work more to be perfect for them.
As we decide which directions we want to grow, we might discover that that gatekeeper isn’t actually guarding the treasure we want. Or, we might focus on that gatekeeper and grow myopically toward their gate.
Make more first impressions
When first impressions mean less to us, it makes it easier to make more of them. Let’s get bold and reach out to people who might not want what we have now, but may be able to communicate which directions we can grow.
You have nuance not nuisance
Why would a gatekeeper want us to be better? Why would a gatekeeper give us another chance? Because gatekeepers want something. They want to find really awesome creators. They NEED ‘EM! Gatekeepers are praying right now for an email for something awesome that is an easy yes. If a gatekeeper can see our fight, and can see progress, and can see that we’re listening to them, their dreams come true.
I liked Hamilton, La La Land, and Eight Mile by the way. I hope you give me another chance to prove my good taste.
It’s easy to get caught up in all the technology of today. I love human advancement! The thing about human advancement that matters is humans. We care about humans. We think like humans. We assume other humans think like humans. We even assume doors think like humans (“that door just shut on me”). We want objects – animate and inanimate – to think the way we do. We want them to have stories.
The promise of technology is to connect us more to humanity, to make humanity better, and to foster more humanity.
When we’re thinking about how to adapt entertainment to the higher-tech world, it isn’t about pushing more tech on people. It’s also not about avoiding or burying tech. It’s about remembering the promise of tech and fulfilling that promise. JJ Abrams is so successful because he uses modern movie making technology to amplify his core interest in people.
No matter how we feel about the aspects of humanity that we see, social media shows us more of humanity.
When we’re letting people know about the entertainment we’re making, or even when we’re making the entertainment, let’s not forget. People are not coming to consume content, production value or the latest software… they’re coming to consume our “souls.”
People keep asking me if I plan to do Boobietrap (or something similar) online. We are not planning on it. I’m not pursuing solo shows online either.
I like killing
I perform to destroy! I love taking the audience on an incredible journey and giving them insanely good entertainment beyond anything they’ve seen before. I like dropping jaws, surprising and delighting. It took me years to develop things that can have that impact. It isn’t me that’s awesome, it’s the things I’ve worked to create (alone or in collaboration) that take audiences by storm.
I love it. I don’t like trying new things in front of an audience. I don’t like getting applause or laughs for a new bit. I like owning the moment completely.
Gotta hit the boards
The work is in trying things out, developing them, experimenting and refining. I don’t enjoy trying things out, but I love the results – just like I don’t enjoy sleeping, but I love being not-tired.
Gotta know the medium
Being a legendary entertainer requires deliberate exploitation of resources and limitations. A great tennis player is incredible because they use their energy, skills, time, and mind to do everything within the rules to win. Same with a great comedian.
A fishnet for a sock puppet
Scot Nery’s Boobietrap was created week after week in an underground venue in Los Angeles, and it couldn’t have happen anywhere else in the same way. When we moved, we looked for a similar venue and the show was built around what was available.
It wasn’t made to have comfy chairs, or clean bathrooms. It definitely wasn’t made to be live streamed. It would lose many of its great qualities…
exclusivity
tribalism
environment
drinks
intimacy
dead air
and it wouldn’t have the possible great qualities of online shows…
intense interaction
chat
control of the show
production value
detail
seamless digital experience
If I did make an online show, it would be from scratch and it would take me a long time. Maybe I will, but not today.
You can read more of my ideas about streaming shows on my blog and imagine what I’d create. That, I’m sure, will be more entertaining than me getting on a video chat with you to juggle for a while.
Amazon wanted to be the most trusted source of reviews. They wanted customers to come to them first to understand what people are really saying about products. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t what their competitors were doing.
Other e-commerce vendors only wanted to share favorable reviews because people buy things with favorable reviews.
Amazon wasn’t going for the cheap shallow branding of “we have good things, buy from us.” They were going for a deeper relationship. “We will always help you with your purchasing decisions even if it’s not good for us.”
As a result, a 5 star rating on a product actually means something on Amazon, and it was hard-earned trust.
We can be pretty dumb
As freelancers and small businesses in entertainment, we often see the purchase point, but we don’t see the relationship that the customer has had with us leading up to the purchase. We don’t see all the times they’ve noticed us or heard about us. We don’t hear about all the things that remind them of us. We don’t know what history they’ve had with our competition, so it all seems like alchemy.
This alchemical feeling means we have no real agency. We got paid for our work by luck, and so we pursue new promotions waiting for that same luck.
Check out someone bigger
An easy exercise for exposing how much trust matters is to look at someone who we think is better than us in our field. How does this person or company appear to us? How many hundreds of times have we seen them? How many times have they consistently proven to deliver?
We don’t have to worry that they are “better” than us because our customers probably don’t have the same relationship with this “better” company than ours. This dig into our trust process demonstrates that our concept of value doesn’t come from one email blast, one website, or one instagram post. We trust that Mercedes Benz is a luxury brand because of a lifetime of indoctrination.
Channel the Amazon approach
Amazon treated reviews as a tool for its users. What tools do we supply to our potential customers? What services do we offer, not to drive sales, not to get fans, but to get gatekeepers one step closer to trusting us? How can we be the very first (and last) stop for our fans when they want to do something?
It’s much nicer to have someone in a park say “here’s a shady umbrella to relax under” than “listen to my music and you can buy some through 4 different download sources!”
Yes, it’s less direct. Yes it’s more work.
But it is work that translates into trust. It’s fun to provide good service, and its actually desirable.
