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If you want to make money, just do something amazing ten years ago.  That’s not a joke, that’s just the way opportunity works. You just start doing things. Usually in silence. Without recognition or remuneration. And without a guarantee that any doors will open for you.  But you trust that, eventually, one of those things will earns its way into the right person’s memory. And when the time comes for them…

Pathetically puttering around with your fingers crossed until you get that one email that changes everything is no way to live your life.  It’s an inefficient, disempowering and unsustainable way to manage a career. And unless you’re the one percent of incredibly famous, independently wealthy or impossibly lucky people, consider finding strategy that provides surer footing.  I was listening to an interview with a famous actor who struggled for years as…

Every artist sells.  It’s not the easiest or most enjoyable part of the process, but without it, we’re just winking in the dark. Like my mentor used to say, if you’re not there to sell, you’re just a visitor.  The secret is making selling a regular part of your daily creative workflow. Viewing the business surrounding the art as a part of the art itself.  To do so, you…

Tweedy is a prolific songwriter, but also a promiscuous reader.  I once heard an interview in which he explained that he reads a lot, but he doesn’t necessarily pay attention to every word. Jeff said that it’s comforting just to read. That he buys books that are rich in language and are about interesting things, because the words are so fun to just absorb.  And he doesn’t beat himself up about…

You can’t rush someone else’s journey. No matter how badly you want them to succeed, no matter how much you believe in their ambition, you still have to let them fumble, frustrate, flail, and even fail.  When you jump in too early, too often and to intensely, you fractionize their experiences, rob them of valuable learning opportunities and prevent them from taking complete ownership over their own process.  Whitman…

One of my favorite actors was recently interviewed about his critically acclaimed new movie.  Ethan told a story about the night before the big award show. Dozens of his industry colleagues sent him messages and prayers of good luck, hoping his movie would take home all the awards.  Of course, he wrote them all back with the same message. I already won.  Not because the academy revealed the results to…

All creativity begins with the moment of conception. That little piece of kindling that gets the fire going. That initial source of inspiration that takes on a life of its own. That single note from which the entire symphony grows. That single spark of life that signals an idea’s movement value, almost screaming to us, something wants to be built here. Based on my books in The Prolific Series, I’m…

I was listening to a conversation between two comedy veterans who came up in the late eighties.  Both agreed that having a car was more important than having an act.  Back in those days, they laughed, if a young comic was reliable and arrived early and acted responsibly, he could get booked every weekend. That was the nature of the industry during the comedy boom. Clubs were just happy…

Making money is a meaningful metric. It legitimizes your business and feels like success and gives you fuel to keep the train on the tracks.  But in the early stages of an enterprise, sometimes in the first few years of an enterprise, revenue and profit and income might aren’t always available to you.  And that’s okay. The money will come in time. For now, release the claustrophobic pressure of having to…

Dolan’s positive psychology research found that experiences of happiness fell under two broad categories, those that felt pleasurable, i.e., joyful, content, excited; and those that felt purposeful, i.e., worthwhile, meaningful, fulfilling.  The secret, he says, is finding balance between bing a pleasure machine or and purpose engine. Because while it’s possible for life to be meaningful but not happy, few people manage to be happy if their lives feel…