“I’m An Artist. I’m Bad At Business.”
I talk to people who have been in showbiz for decades who say “I’m bad at business.” To be blunt, this is just victim mentality and victim mentality is shirking responsibility. I will tell you how to take responsibility. According to Josh Kaufman, there are 5 parts to a business… Value Creation – Discovering what people […]
Nine Eleven / Two Thousand One
Daniel Packard, Chris Karney, and I were performing at comedy clubs in Seattle. We stayed together in a youth hostel. News spread through the hostel. People woke us up and we saw the second plane hit. So surreal. I don’t remember being extra displaced by visiting a strange city. I do remember them shutting down […]
Lynn Ruth Miller
Lynn Ruth Miller recently died. She was a friend. She was fun and old and a woman. I think those are the important things she’d like you to know. I found out about her passing last night and I thought, “Here we go. Here comes the sadness…” but it didn’t come. I have good feelings. […]
Good Graphic Design Doesn’t Have to Look Nice
Graphic design is not just a way of presenting communication. It’s a way of communicating in itself. The tricky thing; when people are looking for a graphic designer, they’re often looking for someone who can make things look good. Great graphic design is about function. The left coupon is actually good The coupon on the […]
Why Magicians Suck
Magicians are an example of entertainers who have it easy. A person can buy a trick at the magic shop and perform it within a few minutes. It’s basically show and tell. “Look at this thing I bought.” It works immediately. It gets applause right away. What we get from great entertainment is human connection. […]
Fake People in Los Angeles
When I moved to L.A. from San Francisco, a lot of people told me that L.A. was fake, that the people are fake, that the culture is fake. Well, first, there is no culture. It’s a huge city with a million things going on. Nobody’s decided that L.A. has one unifying culture, and there’s not […]
Updateable Websites Are Deadsites
Lots of entertainment companies are going with WordPress. It’s running a lot of the web. People also jump on Squarespace or Wix or Weebly or whatever and that’s great. I highly recommend 8b.com also if you want to do things fast and cheap. Sometimes a person just needs to get a site up and have […]
Major Change For Morons
When I suggest big course corrections for people or organizations, they are often flabbergasted. This gast of flabber doesn’t come from them being dumb or even surprised by the idea of change. They are going thru a little bit of a window of pain where they realize that the way they’ve been doing things might […]
They Need Us
Over the past 500 days I’ve been able to connect with a lot of entertainment people. I don’t know anyone who’s making more than they deserve. I don’t know anyone who’s getting more attention than they deserve. That means we’re over-delivering. We can feel good about that! When we question whether we’re good enough, whether […]
How American Freelancers Can Compete Globally
We’re in a new place where companies are finding that remote workers are still working. This can lead to the idea that very remote workers (overseas) can do the job just as well. In some cases they’re right. As we small business owners and freelancers in entertainment are pitching for gigs we need to not […]
Bookending
Some tasks are uncomfortable. In fact, all the crucial things we want to do to move ourselves forward are uncomfortable. Accountability and social pressure are the best ways to move through uncomfortable tasks, but asking someone to hold us accountable is kinda annoying. Here’s a bitesize version of accountability. We can ask someone if we […]
The Hire Ups
Type #1 Hire Downs I heard this story of a guy who ran a tshirt company that was at first very successful, but eventually crashed. He was charismatic and driven and he was the powerhouse behind his company. He started very independently and built the company around this cult of personality. His employees were mostly […]