When our egos butt up against conflicting ideas, we are delighted. When we are reminded of our loss of control, we get the goodness of life. This is the only time we get it. When a cat does something to surprise us, when a movie teaches us something new, or when a friend roasts us, we are opened up to reality and we are given the opportunity for joy.
Entertainment creators who are trying to make people feel comfortable are missing the point. It’s not comfortable to have a friend (or a cat) or to watch a good movie.
There’s this phrase that so many people use. “Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.” It might be relaxing, but enjoyment is active.
If a play is relaxing, I will be going to sleep. I guarantee it.
I would rather people say “Sit up and pay attention, because tonight your life will change for the better!”
We need to get what we want as entertainment creators. The ultimate thing we want is the opportunity to lead our audience from where they are to a new elevated experience. We can’t lead anyone anywhere if we don’t join them where they are. To get the good stuff, we’ve got to understand our audience. Here are some ideas for getting there quickly.
Experience other entertainment
I have been very baffled by performers who don’t watch other performers, or movie directors who claim to not watch films. If I have the opportunity to check out something similar to what I’m doing, it’s an early Christmas gift to my audience. It’s so awesome for me to get a chance to see stuff through their eyes. It isn’t easy – it’s work – but it’s awesome.
I get to see when I feel cared for, when I feel like something is missing, when I’m bored or excited… and what I walk away discussing with my wife.
Experience the before and after
Standups can watch the comics that are on before them and meet the audience there. Video game designers could think about the experience of getting their game from the app store.
With Scot Nery’s Boobietrap, we put a camera at the entrance. When we watched the video playback the next day, we got to see how people arrive. Some people wait for friends, some people don’t know how to get tickets, some people smoke, some people are early, so they go to some other bar for a drink.
Before that, I didn’t think too deeply about it, but I kinda imagined that people showed up, got their ticket and went inside. The reality was more loose and individual, it helped us think about what we wanted to nurture and serve once they got inside. They don’t fall in line like good audience soldiers ready to do what everyone else does. They need individual activities that bring them from their zone to our zone.
Watch the audience
I’m not much for focus groups, but I love recording a video of the audience at a show. When I make a new website, I like watching someone use it. A million discoveries can be made watching the audience. I guarantee they do not take in entertainment the way we imagine or plan or even remember.
I have learned a poo-ton thru online advice and IRL mentors. The advice I’ve given is even better! The greatest entertainment makers get lots of counseling from other masters, but we can sometimes do it wrong. We can see an opportunity to connect with someone’s wisdom and waste it.
I want to reiterate that people like to help. People like to feel useful.
Ask a lot. Go for it. But do it right.
Saying “Could I pick your brain” Sucks
This is a gross phrase
What are we asking? It’s like “could I talk to you?”
Why?
An example of a bad way to transfer wisdom
Us – “You’re so cool. May I pick your brain?”
Successful person – “Uh, I guess so…”
Us – “What’s the best way to break into Hollywood?”
Successful person – “Uh, well, it’s not locked.”
1. Be specific to the advisor
“You’re an animator with a unique style and you’ve found lots of success. Could I ask for a little help with my own style?”
“You are an incredible networker. Could I ask you some questions about connecting with the right people for this project I’m working on?”
“You’ve been really good in this biz. Could I ask you a little about my direction starting out?”
Notice, we’re complimenting the person’s wisdom/skills (not their resources), then telling them what we will be asking. Even if the conversation leads in a different direction eventually, we’ve expressed the main thing that we want.
2. Be Candid
“Because of my day job and family, I only have about an hour per day to work on my writing career. I have a book that’s half finished. I have no agent and only 20 followers on twitter.”
“I tend to jump from project to project. The way I’ve gotten most of my work is thru family. I’m scared of really going public.”
If folks don’t know the truth of our situation, they will give us nothing useful. We gotta be honest and vulnerable to get the best advice.
3. Be clear
“My goal next month is to sell 100 more tickets. Do you have thoughts about how to do that better?”
“When a client asks how long a project will take, I feel like I’m trapped and I often under-bid. How do you respond?”
“I feel like I’m wasting time on casting. Do you remember what the process was for casting the Gothic Ballet you produced?”
Stating clear goals gives the advisor a problem to solve. If they need to guess the goal, (“like what color is best to paint my car”) it’s more work for them and probably not fulfilling.
4. Show prototypes
“The following is the email I’ve been sending out to agents”
“I spend four hours per day coding and four hours per day streaming live to promote my game”
Giving advice on a premise is the worst. We don’t want to say “I have this idea for a tv show that’s about pickles and comedy, what do you think?” We want to say, “here’s a draft of the work I’ve done, what can be improved? What am I missing?”
Don’t ask
Sometimes we meet someone who looks like they can help us a lot. If we can’t do the stuff above, we don’t need to ask them anything. We can be grateful we met them and stay in touch until we are ready to ask the right questions.
October will be DAIDNAIS (Do as I do, not as I say) month. This month, I will practice what I preach because currently the cobbler has no shoes. I’ve been coaching and consulting tons of people, been an advisor and a contractor for great folks. While I help get other people in awesome places, I sometimes forget about my own crap!
It’s hard to face
People use me as a coach because they need help facing it. They aren’t incapable of it, but it definitely takes some emotional wind to look in the mirror and figure out what message we’d like to send. This month will be good for me to empathize more with my clients and what my abrupt direction uncovers.
Advice is often made for the giver
When the advisor is similar to the advisee, good advice is given. The more we know the person we’re counseling, the more powerful our words. Sometimes I’ll get off the phone with a friend who was asking me for something and I’ll say, “Dang! I just said the words I needed to hear!”
In the professional setting, I try to make sure this doesn’t happen much, but I am ready to step in and see if I hold up to the scrutiny of me.
Public accountability
I might not complete this list, but this month I’m shooting for improvement on…
Cleaning up the branding and messaging for all my performance work (not too hard since I’ve got some distance from it)
Doing the same for my coaching (harder)
Improving my outreach & attention for coaching
Organizing my fanbase
Serving my fanbase more
Consistently blogging
Cleaning up my unused channels ( youtube, linkedin, insta, twitter, etc. )
I’ve been making a fewer blog posts, but recording my entire collection to audio for a podcast series. I read whole article, then give my commentary on each one at the end… search your pod app for scot.fun/damentals
In my first few years as a street performer, I did way better when there were no other entertainers around. I could connect with the crowd and give them the good stuff that they wanted. I didn’t have to worry about being innovative, creative or a genius. I was more generous and giving. I lost myself to the act of entertaining.
Our tribe is the audience
When we hang out with a lot of other people who do what we do, we get into this incestuous way of thinking. It’s easy to find crave the validation of other peeps in our industry. But that makes us self-centered.
Our tribalism kicks in and our performer tribe becomes the one to protect. The audience / the gatekeepers are seen as a different tribe. They are the enemy. They are the threat.
Tribalism is an evolutionary instinct and it’s going to happen. The solution is to remember who our tribe really is. We are connecting and building a brand new tribe with every new audience. Not only is tribing up with the audience gonna help us do better and adjust our priorities, but it’s also gonna trigger a tribal response in the audience.
We can so easily become the outsiders. When I’m about to step on stage for 1000 business investors, I might have thoughts flash that I’m not like them. They are from a different world. So, I remind myself I’m not here as a visitor from a different village bringing my weirdness. I’m here as the weird part of this tribe. I’m a business person too and I want us all to have a good time at this event. I care about people, friendships and family. I love laughing. We’re the same tribe and I’m going to do my part for the tribe.
This is what you’ve been waiting for. You can do less. If anyone asks you if you have permission to do less, send them to this page.
I’ve talked about how we get burdened by too many tools. We get caught up in tool-bloat and service-bloat.
Trader Joe’s is not a public company. It doesn’t offer curb-side or delivery. It’s doing fine.
There are people doing business with a phone and a pencil. Imagine if your whole business was run with hand-written postcards. How many postcards could you write in a day? Probably a lot. Imagine if you don’t respond to emails, you only take phone calls from people who are serious about buying your thing.
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.
