THURSDAY
18 September 2008
I parked my butt at The Coffee Bean in West Hills again today to get through some applications, research and what-not. While I was working, it hit me (again) that I need to find that next action step. Job applications are all well and good, but everyone knows that statistically speaking, that method of job hunting has the lowest success rate. I need to be out and about! I need to be meeting people! And that’s not just for the “real job,” but for the stop-gap job as well. At Borders, at Target, at Starbucks, at a gym – I’m just Applicant Number X. I’m not a name or a face or a personality.
The library was just across the street from Coffee Bean, so I decided to head there for a while. With my body in rebellion, I’m pretty tired, and the library isn’t a great place to be when you’re sleepy. Anyway, I fired up the laptop and logged onto mandy.com again. I wanted to click through the site more thoroughly. It was interesting, but I was still thinking, “I’m missing an element here. I need to figure out the missing something-or-other!” Clicking through mandy.com, I came across a small ad for a seminar that was happening tonight at 7:00pm in Burbank. It was about networking and it was aimed exclusively at people working in the entertainment industry. Hmmm. Coincidence? I visited the LA Metro trip planner to find I could get there by 7 on the Orange Line and the Noho Media District bus. At this point in the day, I even had enough time to head back home, down multiple sore throat/mucus remedies, get ready AND relax for a few minutes before I had to head out again. On top of everything, the event was only $5. OK, I could afford that. I figured this was probably an introduction to a longer and more comprehensive – and more expensive – workshop the speaker had to offer. I’ve been to those kinds of events before. Of course that’s not in my budget, but I still figured I could easily glean $5 worth of industry knowledge and tidbits to tide me over for a while.
The woman leading the seminar is a film producer named Suzanne Lyons, and she runs a company called Snowfall Films. She explained her story as such: years ago she realized that many, many people in the entertainment industry have no concept about marketing their talent/business – no business plan, no marketing plan, no measureable goals for the next year, 5 years, and so on. Every actor, composer, writer, director and so forth is and needs to think of themselves as the President of his or her own one-person company. Not startling news by any means, but good information to be reminded of on occasion.
I was correct in that this 2-hour seminar was to give all of us a glimpse of the larger program she offers – the one I can’t afford. Still, I could tell I would leave tonight’s event with some concrete action steps for the upcoming days, weeks and months. She singled me out for one of the exercises, where we list unique things about ourselves that are completely unrelated to our careers. The second part of that exercise is for the rest of the group to tell me what they think those unique things might say about me as a writer. It was pretty cool, I must say. In another exercise, we helped another fellow brainstorm how he could get more work (many of those ideas I wrote down for myself).
The program Suzanne teaches is called Flash Forward, and it’s designed to help entertainment professionals make leaps and bounds forward in their careers. The program offers a support system, brainstorming, accountability– where you are not only held accountable for following through on your own daily/weekly/monthly action plan, but you are also held accountable for the success of every other person in your group. There are networking exercises, marketing exercises, relationship building exercises. Dang! All of the stuff I really need. It was an invigorating couple of hours.
Afterwards, I wanted to stick around and gab with people a while, but I knew I had a long trip home. Still, it was important for me to make sure I found Suzanne and told her “Thanks,” even if I couldn’t afford to take the bigger program right now. While I waited for her, I chatted with some of the other seminar-goers. One woman named Tori swore she knew me from somewhere. I gave a complete history and background, but we never did figure it out. Out of the blue she asked what I was doing this weekend. She had some friends having a party and she thought they would be a really nice group of folks to meet. Mostly gay, I believe. Magically (or not so much), she had determined that I was a giant ‘mo, and she thought her friends would be a nice group of new people to meet. Maybe it was standing on my chair and breaking out into “Rose’s Turn” that tipped her off… I don’t know. So now I have a party to look forward to on Saturday! It’ll be my first trip to Silverlake, so I’m excited.
Tori asked if I would take the seminar, but I explained how poor I was. The only money I had for a deposit was the $5 in change I was given after paying for the evening’s seminar with a $10 bill. Tori said I needed to talk to Suzanne regardless. Either way, I knew I wanted to say “Thank You” to Suzanne for such an inspiring evening, and that I was going to figure out a way to take the Flash Forward seminar in the future. I was the last person to get to her. Here’s how that conversation went down, more or less:
Andy: Thank you, Suzanne. I enjoyed that a lot. Fantastic. I have to figure out a way to do this program in the future. I really want to do it. I think it would really help me out.
Suzanne: That’s the first step right there. Wanting it.
A: Yes.
S: So the reason for not taking it now… is it time or is it money?
A: Money.
S: OK. Are you a fast typist?
A: Yes.
S: Would you be interested in doing some transcription work?
A: Absolutely.
S: If you would do that for me, I’d take that as payment.
A: Like a barter?
S: Exactly.
A: Yeah, I’d do that! Would the barter be just for the $100 deposit?
S: No, it’d be for the full amount.
A: I’d love to! Plus it’ll give me some work to do!
S: Well OK then. Perfect! I was hoping I would find someone who could help me with this transcribing. This way you’re helping me, and you’ll get to participate in the program. Plus, you’ll be transcribing my workshop on low-budget film production, so you’ll get the benefit of all that information too.
Um. Wow. How amazing is that? I really was estatic. Here I was… the LAST guy in the room to talk to her once the seminar was over. She could have made that offer to any other of the 23 people in attendance who went up to speak with her. For whatever reason, it came down to me… the guy who only 15 minutes earlier had said, “This would be great for me. I HAVE to do this. I HAVE to trust the ‘how’ will present itself.” And then the way appeared.
I call that my $5 Wink investment, and I think the return will be huge.
