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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 just offer the same stuff to get more money. We need to offer tremendous value to our potential clients. If I’m a video editor, how to I offer more valuable video editing to people than some dude with a super low cost of living? Here are some ideas.

We have built in value by living in the US.

• We were raised with English as our first language
• we understand the language and culture of the United States
• We were raised with great public education
• We know how to connect with other Americans
• We have dependable internet
• We have health
• We have network connections in the united states to solve tangential problems
• We’re in the same time zone
• If location matters at any point, we’re there
• We’re legally on the hook. It’s hard to sue someone in another country
• Familiar feels safer

Taking a moment to consider what all these things might mean to a client can help us explain our value a little better. There are a million more ways we can exploit our ingrained value. It’s not just about “Buying American” There’s more to it than patriotism – although that works too.

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 can bookend a task with them.

Text: “I am sitting down to send ten emails to agents. I’ll text you again when I’m done.”

The other person doesn’t even have to respond for this to work.

Text: “I need to call this publisher back. It’s been 3 days. May I check in with you after?”

This bookending expects very little from your accountability partner. It also may give some great emotional support on the other end to reinforce that we took a great healthy step toward our future.

I used to hate going through act submission videos for Boobietrap because I held myself to a high standard of curation and I did not like sending rejection emails. After bookending a bunch of these submission sessions, I absorbed a lot of friend encouragement and started appreciating the process. I started seeing my patience, attention, kindness, and responsiveness as a generous act. I built that activity into a much more positive part of my life.

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 much younger than him. He would train them and hope to retain them as underlings. If they got to be too influential, he would let them go. This worked well for some things, but ultimately didn’t work. He became embroiled in scandal, was too diverted from the business and could not be the only tent-pole holding everything together.

There are many people like him.

Type #2 Hire Ups

There are also people who have no idea what they’re doing or what they want to do, so they hire someone who does. Then, they hire the next person who is also great. They hire people who are better than them and by doing so, they look genius. The work they do has impact and the work their staff does is self-driven and high-level.

Both types can fail

There are all types of failures and successes that can happen with these styles. Hire Downs can be extremely strong in vision and voice. They can manage from their strengths and, by respecting others, can be very well branded and established.

Hire Ups can fail because they get too wishy washy, or they have trouble locating the team that truly serves their mission.

I’m a Hire Down in transition to becoming an Up

The thing I’m calling for is an evaluation of how we’re operating. Are we trying to be the thing holding up everything we’re doing?

Freelancers consider: are we willing to invest in progress, or are we trying to constantly learn new skills to expand our realm of control?

I don’t believe in laziness. I find procrastination is a signal or a symptom instead of a condition. Writers block or stage fright are treatable. Even some depression can be solved with tricks. Tomorrow, Chris Ruggiero and I are doing an interactive Zoom for you with techniques for getting unstuck. Methods we use and suggest for moving forward on important stuff. Whether it’s a big project or the next action, it can get heavy and I don’t want you to have a single slow day.

Tomorrow Chris Ruggiero and I are doing a Zoom workshop with your questions about selling creative work. Hopefully it will help people feel less creepy and get more gigs that make them giggle.

My main technique is to talk to a potential client in a discovery call, get an idea of how to offer them the most value, and charge less than that value. I’ll go over that more in the workshop.

Tomorrow, I’m partnering up and doing a free Zoom workshop thing about my style and Chris Ruggiero’s style of managing tasks. We have two different ways of dealing with the endless todos of life.

My style is based on GTD (Getting Things Done by David Allen) combined with time blocks. I’ll put more notes here as I think of them, but basically. We make a big list of everything. We stay on top of the list of everything. Then, we split up our day by the things that are important to us and we get those most important tasks done in those time blocks. Each time block is a different context for my GTD tasks, so it’s easy to see what’s next.

It’s hard to see what our audience / clients see as our value. Really Really hard. Ken Honda offers a great question for examining our gifts from a different angle.

Why were you scolded as a child?

The things we did wrong are often the way we continue to stand out. Like every great hero, our flaws are our super powers.

I love this for so many people I know. For me, I was scolded for mischief. I would always try to find the edges of the rules, question their logic, and push boundaries. This continues to be my style in stage shows as well as my business strategies. So fun!

Comedians have told me they don’t want to lose weight or gain weight because they will lose what’s funny about them. Writers have bragged to me about their isolation tendencies. I want you to know…

There are people creating things in good health

There are lots of people who are creating things while taking care of themselves. There are aspects to every experience of humanity that can be powerful and important to express in entertainment. There are lots of the experiences though. We don’t have to go thru the harmful ones, and we don’t have to stick with them just because we feel they might be working.

We’re not better because we’re

• obese
• underweight
• depressed
• manic
• isolated
• mean
• frantic
• drug filled
• tired
• dishonest
• overtraining
• etc.

If we want to have sex, but we think our virginity is causing us to make great video games, we’re wrong.

We don’t have to change who we are or what we’re doing to something more healthy, but we have the freedom to do it. Healthiness can lead to longevity and endurance. That can lead to creating more greatness for the world.

Comedians can lose confidence. Even in a week, we can feel like we don’t got nothing! Then, we get on stage and we get the first laugh and everything’s back. It’s not just feeling that we’re good. It’s feeling that being good doesn’t matter that much. We are useful. We are serving people.

The key is generosity

• The key to getting unstuck from anything.
• The key to doing something tough.
• The key to not feeling creepy selling ourselves.

If we are useful to others and serving them in our actions, we feel great. We are not being self-centered anymore.

When I am about to talk to a potential client, I might feel completely nervous or I might feel like it’s a waste of time to talk to them. Then, when I ask them questions and learn their situation, often I have something great to offer them that actually helps them a lot. The nervousness disappears.

What’s the first laugh? What’s the little chunk of evidence that shows us our usefulness? Let’s get it quick so that we can serve big!

Yesterday I shared a showhack and I didn’t call it a showhack, but let’s be honest. That’s what it was. Emotion. Showbiz hack #2 Immediacy / recency. We can make things better by making them happen nowish.

“I saw this guy a week ago” is not as good as “I saw this guy outside” or, “I see this guy right here”

We experience things in stories, and we absorb stories because they share survival information with us. What survival information is most useful to us? The most current survival information. This game is about finding how to make something happen now. The bomb is not in the tundra somewhere. The bomb is not on it’s way. The bomb is in the room, people.

I’m from the magic and juggling world. We are often seen as cheezy. That’s another word for shallow. Great jugglers and great magicians bring in their humanity. One thing humans have… emotions! Easy trick: include emotions in what we do. This applies to any entertainment. Audiences can not absorb anything without a story of a person or people – even if that person is an anthropomorphized cartoon bunny.

Instead of “Here’s a song written by Jed Smithers,” Say this is a song my “Mother used to sing to me and it still sometimes makes me cry” Instead of “here’s another thing I can do with my whip,” Say “this is my favorite whip trick in the world. It makes me happy. It’s gotten me through many stormy nights.”

See how easy that is? Please, I’m dying here. Add emotion!

We don’t know. Even the ones of us that seem most confident don’t know. We don’t know exactly what our brand is, we don’t know what people value in us, we don’t know what to do next.

We can get better at understanding our wheelhouse and who we are to others, but all work is experiments. The great thing about experiments is they never fail. Experiments give us information. The better formed the experiment with the bigger control group gives us more info. That’s it. We’re experimenting.

Here’s how we stay in the flow so we can get more information…

• Don’t treat our experiments like bets on the future. We’re not putting a bunch in hoping for a certain result except information.
• Enjoy the work of it and get compensated for the work.
• Get help
• Do one thing at a time
• Know that this experiment is not the end. The next one is coming up next.