Pithy

Seth Godin on change: -

Comfort the frightened, coach the clueless and teach the uninformed

Betting the house

Another out-of-town gig this week meant another few hours idly chatting with comics positioned on different steps on the comedy career ladder. Late on the drive home a particular question crystalised: -

Under what circumstances would you decline the opportunity to appear in a pilot for a TV comedy?

Unsurprisingly, popular wisdom's answer to this is 'never'.  For the vast majority of comics anywhere in the world, television is the ultimate goal if not the sole reason for taking up stand-up in the first place.  Why would anyone ever decline such an opportunity?

Well, because most TV pilots are horrible. Often career-limitingly so.  The shows that make it through to series often aren't much better.  Ridiculous production deadlines, poor decision-making and inexperienced directors all conspire against the first-time writer-performer. In an industry as absurdly fixated on novelty, you don't get too many failures as a fresh-faced new talent before your face is no longer fresh and the talent that got into the room in the first place gets called into question.

Holding out for the 'right' project takes a combination of strategic nous (is this the right idea backed by the right team?) and sheer nerve (can I survive financially as a jobbing comic until that right project comes my way?): -

Under what circumstances would you accept the opportunity to appear in a pilot for a TV comedy?

A serious and talented Australian actor I know has a great response to this.  Real estate.  She'd sign onto absolutely any project (except pornography) that would put her within five years of owning property.  The contract itself didn't have to match the purchase price but it had to amount to a deposit sizable enough to make her five-year plan a realistic one.  She worked out that property ownership was the one thing that assuaged the fears of her thoroughly middle class parents.  Achieving a permanent roof over her head put her in a place where a lot of other questions stopped being asked.

To her, this was success.

The caveat here was that there was a well-paid TV job at the beginning of it all; she wasn't so naive as to attempt to service a mortgage based solely on the proceeds of her live performance. That way lies madness.

You're the 'hot new thing' for such a short time in a long career.  But if you have sufficient talent (and sufficient belief in that talent) then you have more choice over the timing of that short time than you perhaps realise.  If you make that horrible choice then at least be able to look around your own kitchen and think, "Hey, it bought me this."

An Australian in a European winter

The comedian in me should be happy; in the last week I've amused onlookers in Zurich and Oslo.

Leather soles + icy ground = indignity.

A procession of small humiliations

This week I had lunch in Switzerland with two clients, an Egyptian man and a Cote d'Ivoirean woman. As is the way at such things the table talk inevitably turned to travel. The Cote d'Ivoirean had only recently relocated from Africa and we bombarded her with recommendations of weekend trips to Strasbourg, Munich and Milan.

It wasn't until I stood in line at Swiss border control later that day that I realised how thoughtless I'd been. Every white traveler in the queue was pretty much waved through without a glance whereas every black or Asian, regardless of passport, seemed to be held up by demands for permits, work contracts, proofs of residence and even medical certificates, often spending fifteen rictus-faced minutes standing at the counter.

This was to get out of the country.

In the past I've described air travel as a procession of small humiliations but I'll never be subjected to anything close to that degree of institutional racism. If I lived in Switzerland and carried an African passport there's no way I'd have my current enthusiasm for short cross-border pleasure trips.

Sales v. Marketing

Why is it that the senior sales guy who publicly declares that his company brooks no divide between Sales and Marketing is the one to run down his colleagues in private?

He's also the guy who backs the marketing strategy 100%, unless of course that entails any on-the-ground behavioural change from the sales team.

And he's the man most likely to insist that it takes years to gain credibility as a salesperson but that marketing can be mastered in months.

It's going to be a long week.

Would you rather?

Yesterday's comment about Steven Fry got me thinking: -

Would I rather read something by a really good writer on a subject about which he or she is passionate or a badly written piece about a passion of mine?

Standing at the intersection

This week is all about the iPad.

As an Apple loyalist I guess I'll own one sooner or later but for now it's fun watching the commentariat contorting to either damn the thing or else worship unquestioningly at the altar of Steve Jobs (the Economist cover is fantastic). Stephen Fry is an unashamed Apple fan and as a good writer passionate about his subject is always worth reading I recommend his paean to the iPad. I especially liked Fry's improvement on a Jobs quote from the launch: -

Apple stands at the intersection of Technology, the Liberal Arts and Commerce

The idea of the intersection is intriguing to a small-shop consultant like me. I arrived at self-employment by stepping off the road that everyone else was on and the only niche that I can genuinely inhabit must derive from the sum total of my experiences.

What is self-branding if not an exercise in standing proud at the intersection of your own talents, skills and experiences and convincing the world it's worth paying to spend some time with you?