NicheKnot - where news niches knot into the big picture

TV Guys - Episode 6 - Come On Down

by Jon F. Merz, novelist (author of the Lawson Vampire novels), screenwriter, and now TV producer for the new TV show The Fixer 

Note: This episode contains language that may offend some readers.

While I busied myself with other production factors – small things like writing episodes, getting graphic design elements and a website in place – Jaime continued our hunt for financing.  It felt by now that we’d exhausted our lists of potential investors.  Jaime had pored over issues of Fortune, Forbes, and Boston magazines in his hunt for locating wealthy benefactors – all to no avail.

When we’d first come up with the idea of doing THE FIXER, our first thought was to approach one of the Boston area’s most flamboyant businessmen, a local car dealer who had inherited his empire from his father, but who still used the same motto that his father had screamed at television screens for years.  I’d made the initial approach but gotten no response.  Jaime, demonstrating his normal inability to take no for an answer, had kept dogging the man’s personal assistant.

Finally, Jaime called me one afternoon.  “Tell me I’m great.”

I paused.  “Tell me you got us $20 million first.”

“Almost.  I got us a meeting with Chalk.”

That got my attention.  “How’d you do that?”
   
Jaime proceeded to tell me that he’d finally managed to get his assistant to look at THE FIXER website and see what a cool project it was.  She had managed to locate some time on Chalk’s schedule for a meeting. 

Monday. 

3PM.

We were stoked.  Given the fact that Chalk was all over television through his ads and in bit spots on one the best shows on television, we felt certain he might be our guy.  We spent the better part of a week preparing for our meeting.

First, I researched as much sales data as I could find on the web about his empire and what figures he might be moving in a given year.  Our plan was to show him how backing us would not give him a tremendous return on his investment, but also give him fantastic product placement opportunities, enable him to gain a larger market share over his competition, and much more.  I wrote up five small character roles that he could play in THE FIXER itself if he wanted.

Nick, our web guru and one of graphic design wizards, put together a poster of one of the villains in THE FIXER and got it to me at midnight the day before our meeting, handing it over in the parking lot of a mall as if we were in a drug deal.

But Jaime and I felt certain that we had this thing locked up.  Our presentation was solid; we had all the materials we needed to make our case, and things felt…good.

We drove to the business office where Chalk reigned supreme.  My first impression was that it looked like someone had cornered the market on faux wood paneling.  The place was pretty much a dump.

Inside, Chalk’s personal assistant greeted us warmly and had us take a seat.  We waited for about three minutes and then Chalk himself came out.  We shook hands and then he looked at us.

“Who are you guys again?”

After explaining who we were, and trying to quell the uneasiness I suddenly felt, he brought us into his office and had us sit at the conference table.  As I sat and got my materials out, a magazine suddenly got shoved under my nose.

“Check it out!”
   
I glanced at the cover.  Billboard.  I looked up.  “Excuse me?”
   
Chalk jabbed a finger at the Top 100 charts.  “Check it out.  That’s my record label.  My first band.”

I looked back and saw that he’d sold 7400 copies of the CD for the band that he’d signed.  I wasn’t impressed.  The band had had national hits back when I went through Basic Training and if all they could muster was 7400 copies, I didn’t think it boded particularly well for the label.

But Jaime and I said “wow,” and “amazing,” until he seemed satisfied that we were impressed enough.  Then he dropped his lanky frame into a seat and looked us over. 

“So, a TV show?  What’s this all about?”

We went through our pitch, which by now, we’d honed to a fine point given all of our other experiences.  Jaime and I delivered it perfectly.  Chalk, however, was anything but impressed, and let us know in a high-pitched whiny voice.

“What?  You wanna do what?  Why?”

I told him about the Lawson Vampire books sitting on the table in front of us.

“Wait-“ he grabbed one of them.  “You wrote these?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my god, I have to get you to sign them.” 

I said sure, and took out my treasured Mont Blanc.  But Chalk waved it off.  “No, no, no, no, you gotta use a marker.  Don’t you have a marker?”

As I started to explain that the marker didn’t work well because the paper would make it bleed, he got up and raced back to his desk, returning with a thick Sharpee.  “Ya gotta use a Sharpee.”

I dutifully signed the books and he patted them.  “I’m gonna read these.”

Swell.  Jaime and I got back into our pitch. 

“So, I sold Bobcat Goldthwaite a car last week.”

Huh?

Chalk explained how he’d sold the comedian a car the previous week.  He then proceeded to explain how he and Goldthwaite got into a conversation about a certain actress and her rather impressive physical attributes.

“She’s got great tits,” said Chalk.

I cleared my throat.  “You know, that’s Bobcat’s ex-wife, right?”

Chalk stopped.  “Really?”

Chalk’s phone rang.  He looked at it.  “Hold on, I gotta take this.”  He then proceeded to have a fifteen-minute talk with the head of a record company.  Jaime and I respectfully waited until he was done.  Then we started up again.  After this, we waited.

“It’s just so fuckin’ risky.”

This then became Chalk’s mantra for the remainder of our meeting.  He would bring up problems and questions he had with the project and we would answer and address every one of them.  Every time we delivered a suitable response, he would counter with his newfound mantra.

“You know what you guys need to do: you need to find someone who doesn’t mind losing a few million.  You know, someone who can afford to do that.”
   
I cocked an eyebrow.  “All due respect, Mr. Chalk, you’re a billionaire.  And the Sultan of Brunei isn’t exactly returning my calls right now.”

Jaime and I had been in a lot of meetings by this point, but this was something else.  Chalk was anything but professional.  His manner betrayed a complete lack of grace and his speech was uncouth, given the nature of our meeting.

I’d had enough.

While Chalk looked over one of our handouts, I calmly eyed him and said, “Why on earth did you have us come in here today?”

He looked up.  “Huh?  Well, Christine (his assistant) told me about you guys and you know, I kinda like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and stuff, and so…” his voice trailed off.

Jaime and I gathered up our stuff.  It was time to go.  We thanked Chalk for his time and left.

There are a lot of colorful terms I could use to describe Chalk.  But I think you have a pretty good idea of what he’s like and I’ll leave it to your creativity to conjure up a suitable moniker for him. 

And just think: this is the abbreviated version of what actually happened.

Note: Jon's latest thriller PARALLAX is now out as an ebook! Check it out HERE!

Back on Stage: French Horn Player to Chief Information Officer

by Linda Cureton, CIO of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

I had the pleasure of participating in Government 2.0 Boot Camp at my old Alma Mater Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, DC.  I hadn’t been there since that glorious day 32 years ago where I graduated as an 18-year-old French Horn player. 

I called the panel moderator that morning to get my marching orders for the day. I chuckled to myself as the instructions sounded a little like a treasure hunt or adventure game. 

Come in the front door you’ll see a round table with a bunch of “stuff” on it.  Take a pen pick up a badge and put your name on it along with your Twitter “handle”.  Look around and you’ll see a wall with  some 4x6 index cards that have sessions and locations written on them.  Find ours and meet me at our venue. 

Got it. 

Now, as a young French Horn player and newly minted driver, I had no problem getting to the Washington, DC neighborhood of Georgetown from anywhere in the city … navigating circles, cross streets, Rock Creek Park, Whitehurst Freeway, and occasional alleys.  But, as a grown-up CIO, I needed my Navigation System.  Humm, how weird.

As we approached the familiar stately white building, I had an obsessive and familiar urge and said to my husband “Quick, grab that parking place before someone else gets it!” As we crossed the mall in front of the school, I reflected on the last time I was there – my graduation day – 141 talented artists about to start the rest of their lives.  I remembered nearly getting into a fight with a classmate who grabbed my cap after I tossed it in the air – by the way, a CIO skill that I honed during budget negotiations.

Climbed familiar steps and entered an unfamiliar foyer with an inspiring art gallery and a welcoming entrance into the renovated theater.  Gee, I’ve never seen this place before. Anyway, found the table, found the index cards – we’re backstage.  Oh, oh.  The last time I was back there, I ran off the stage crying. I hope I don’t do that again.  Today, as a CIO, I have managed to wait until I get home to cry.  Lots of progress there, I tell you.

I sort of knew where it was, but didn’t really want to remember. Down the hall on the right and turn left.  Ok. Oh, my old locker was here. Hardly kept anything of value there … just staff paper and tennis shoes.  Anything of value stayed with me or in the car.  Come to think of it, I still do that, much to the dismay of my husband who complains about all my briefing papers in the backseat of my car.  He also notes that his wife is a bag lady with about a dozen briefcases full of valuable CIO stuff littering the mudroom.

Here we go about to break the plane that marks the territory of drama and dance students --- a place where music students, denizens of the pit, do not cross. Through the dance studio – that mirror is still broken – there it is … backstage.  A Mozart French Horn Concerto.  Good embouchure, good intonation, a missed note, a traumatized teen-aged girl. The head of the music department dried my tears and told me I had to play again next week.  So, I sucked it up and played. Good embouchure, good intonation, didn’t miss the note, poor phrasing from nearly hyperventilating. I decided that this was much too stressful to pursue as a career and chose … to be a … wha?! CIO. Oh, the folly of youth.

I realized later, that I learned a lot about leadership that day as I ran off the stage crying. Thirty-two years later,  yesterday’s lessons are today’s critical skills:

• How to play through the tears;
• How to be resilient;
• How to muster courage; and
• The importance of taking deep breaths. 

I never dreamed that I would be back on that stage again not as a French Horn player, but as one of the CIOs at our nation’s space agency. Many seasons have passed.  I don’t think so much about scales, transposing, valve oil; I think about skills, transformation, and mission value. I did learn a lot about being a CIO that day.

Journo vs Blogger Wars and the Future of News

by Pam Baker, veteran journalist, and famed blogger Robert Scoble (Scobleizer)

The cut-throat, bloody bash between journalists and bloggers at war over  creds and print space is chronicled by many. There’s just one small problem with that: there is no war. There is only noise that distracts everyone from the real threats that face journo and blogger alike: online, offline and bylined news is dying. So, I extended my hand across the aisle (as pundits are so fond of saying in politics) and Robert Scoble, famed Scobleizer and Fast Company blogger, reached back. Together we are writing this post with our thoughts on the true ills of the news industry and the treatments we think may be cures, or at the very least, will help relieve the symptoms.

We encourage the “boots on the ground” troops – journos, bloggers, editors, publishers, book authors, anchors, readers, etc – to join in the conversation and add helpful ideas to revive an industry that protects democracy, educates the public, enables commerce, enlightens some, and entertains us all.  

On the State of the Union (Bloggers and Journos):

Both of us believe the brouhaha over defining journalist vs blogger – and thus determining which is “better” -- is an utter waste of time and energy. The bottom-line is that writers are either good at their job or not, and readers either trust them or they don’t. The medium is irrelevant. The line between the two writing forms is blurred more and more each day. Much of the smudging is caused by journos who also blog (like me) and bloggers that also report for a publication (like Robert) – people I think of as “cross-over artists.”

Nonetheless, here are our thoughts on the new roles for news hounds:

Pam Baker: Bloggers are more immediate and tend to write from a personal perspective. Journalists take longer, but often dig deeper, and tend to rely heavily on expert sources. As a matter of fact, most news articles written by a journalist require a minimum of three independent sources. Bloggers may or may not quote sources. There is no hard fast rule on sources in the blogging world, as far as I know. The blogger’s fact-checkers are the readers who are quick to publicly decry an error and some do so without fully comprehending the blogger’s message first which seems to me, a bit unfair. The journalist’s fact-checkers are publication staffers and an editor but the readers also freely comment and subjects sometimes try to sue.

Citizen journalists are basically eye-witnesses. They typically are on the scene, in the midst of the action, and they send in that report right away on a tornado, a terrorist attack, or a plane landing in the Hudson, for example. The position arose largely from the proliferation of camera-equipped cell phones and then, of course, social media. A citizen reporter can be anyone who is in the right place at the right time. Citizen journalists are all about immediate news, for the most part, but they do not provide as much information and scope as the professional blogger or the professional journalist. 

The combined roles add up to exceptional news gathering on a scale never seen before. But they are not competing positions; they are links in the news chain. 

Robert Scoble: I think the major difference between journalists and bloggers is that bloggers are incredibly committed to their craft. Bloggers will work hard and for free, if they have to, to get information out on anything they are passionate about. The next two years are going to be bloody for everyone, but I’ll blog from my tent if I have too. I don’t see journalists willing to do that. They seem more likely to change careers. 

Both bloggers and journalists are held accountable. Even if you are on your own, you are still accountable to your audience. Peer pressure is intense and legal liabilities still exist. Although, in some ways it’s harder for companies to bully bloggers as they can Twitter and blog faster than lawyers can draw up the paperwork, much less get to court. Journalists, however, have the might of the publication and its legal team to back off corporate bullies -- in and out of the courtroom. They also have the clout to get information that corporations and governments try to hide. Bloggers have a tough time pushing through the veil to do investigative journalism on their own.

On the Bastardization of News Content:

Pam Baker:  In theory, an editor keeps a reporter’s emotions and biases in check and the story is then stronger and more useful to the reader. I say ‘in theory’ because there have been recent cases where this system totally broke down thus embarrassing and harming the public and the news organization. However, I write for many publications as a freelancer and I can personally attest that having an editor overseeing things is an extremely good idea as it goes a long way in establishing and maintaining authority and integrity for news organizations and journalists alike. 

But journalism has been bastardized lately as print and broadcast journalists jockey for shrinking slots and try desperately to be what they are not – bloggers. Before bloggers and 24/7 TV news, both print and broadcast journalists moved slower on news, cautiously checking their facts, quizzing their sources (sometimes ruthlessly) and answering hard questions posed by editors in a grueling editorial meeting. 

The Watergate story, for example, was not “breaking news” until the journalists had fully completed their work, checked every fact twice, and called Nixon’s people for a reaction – all before the news was released to the public. These days, the pressure is on for a journalist to produce multiple stories in a single day, on the fly, without pause for additional thought or the subject’s reaction. In other words, journalists are pushed to keep pace with the uber-producers (in terms of speed and volume): the bloggers.  Journalists are even pressured to blog and Tweet on top of their increased reporting workload – all of it without extra pay or reprieve. 

In reality, news consumers are better served if bloggers lead, much like radio and TV journalists have for years, and print follows with more in-depth information. That way, consumers get immediate information followed by more in-depth detail a little later. If you look back you’ll see that most of the comprehensive investigative reporting came from print journalists. 

But there are other forces bastardizing the news. News aggregation was a good concept that has since turned ugly and gutted the news industry of its wealth of original content. Aggregators are great for researching information and should remain in place for this very reason. But, online and offline media soon started regurgitating content from aggregators to cut back on the costs of generating original content. This practice diminished the value of all media as readers increasingly get only repurposed material and quickly tire of visiting multiple media just to hear or read the same stuff. The same problem exists in broadcast news as TV anchors continue to drone on and on about the same old story, over and over again. Perhaps that is why they are inclined to add far too much personal opinion to their reporting. You have to fill the time with something.

The news industry, regardless of medium, needs to remember that our product is news – that is NEW and FRESH content. Without production of original news, the industry has nothing to sell. If a news medium is merely reselling content it is not truly a news vehicle; it is merely a distribution vehicle much like the vans that transport print publications to newsstands and book stores. 

Robert Scoble: I am really worried about what’s going to happen with investigative reporting. Even superficial reporting costs money. When I travelled to DC and met with senators it cost a lot just to spend 15-20 minutes with each of them and you can’t dig deep into issues in that amount of time. Still, the trip cost me a bundle just for that much. 

True investigative reporting can take six weeks or more of your life and involve 50 sources or more to drudge up all the facts. It’s like writing a book or something. So, if mainstream media dies, who’s going to do this very important work? Who can afford to do it? 

On the other hand, whistle blowers can come to me or other bloggers and we’ll get the story immediate attention… and a lot of eyes to look it over. Whistle-blowers can even tweet the info to the world themselves. The only problem is that not every story that should be uncovered will have a whistle-blower willing to step forward. 

I and other bloggers don’t have the resources, contacts and willingness to go to Iraq or Afghanistan to cover the wars and other big stories like that. We just can’t do what a team of 40 or so journalists can do. Newspapers will survive if they figure out how to keep that kind of reporting going strong.

On Reviving the Newspaper Industry: 

Pam Baker: Print is not dead. Radio, TV and the Internet have all tried but failed to kill print although each wounded it for awhile. Print is merely in a wounded stage – but so is the rest of the country.

No, print isn’t dead. But it is broken. Instead of revising business models and changing content to fit market need, most newspapers and magazines dumped writers by the truck load, cut pages of content entirely and otherwise wrecked their brand. A few newspapers even hired writers in India to write local news.  You can’t cut costs indefinitely and stay in business. Stop cutting and start rebuilding. It’s time to return to print’s core competencies.

Content must become more relevant, more personal and more localized. It should empower people to survive and prosper in these trying times. For example: Millions of people are now without health insurance. If newspapers print which local doctors accept patients without insurance, and what each doctor charges for an office fee – this empowers people to get the health care they need. It also makes it easier for them to spend money, rather than hoarding it, which helps the economy recover. 

People are now eating at home more and dining on cheaper foods. Bring back the recipe section but fill it with “budget” recipes. With the upcoming price pressures on staples, such as corn and wheat, brought on by the burgeoning biofuel industry, newspapers should be warning people in advance and giving advice on coping strategies such as growing gardens at home or using alternate ingredients in recipes.  People are unsure of local banks and investment opportunities, so fill the business section with this information. Really dig into those banks, expose bad practices and good players, thereby restoring faith in the industry and a measure of consumer control through knowledgeable choices. In the end, people will feel more empowered and more secure and therefore engage economically again. Advertising revenue will increase accordingly as struggling businesses seek to engage with consumers who are actually spending money. 

Beyond content relevancy, newspapers need to change their business model. Yes, advertising revenue is down in both retail and classified. But that is the case on the Internet too.

IDC’s report Worldwide and U.S. Internet Ad Spend Report 4Q08 by analyst Karsten Weide (soon to be released) says “fourth quarter U.S. Internet advertising sales have been much worse than anticipated. Growth was essentially flat year-on-year: Total U.S. advertising spending increased by just 0.4% to $7.13 billion from $7.10 billion in the same quarter a year ago.

Search ads still grew at 10% year on year in 4Q, barely keeping Internet advertising at large afloat. But display ads declined by 7% in the past quarter, largely because brand marketers were compelled to save such a lot of advertising money that they also had to pull back on display ads even if they didn't want to. And classified ads were affected even worse and declined by 18%, largely because houses, jobs and cars are not traded as actively in the current situation, and because of the continuing weak performance of eBay, the major company in this segment.

All of this does not bode well. U.S. online ad spending may very well experience a decline in 1Q09, and perhaps also in 2Q09. This suggests that the low double-digit growth rates that most industry forecasts assume for 2009 (including IDC's 10% growth forecast) are too optimistic.”

New models are needed throughout the news industry and the excuse that one medium wrecked another no longer holds. 

A good first start would be to consider content the product, and each medium merely distribution vehicles. Make print news useable as a stand-alone but also as an integrated piece of a larger model that includes all distribution points, the Web, TV, radio, etc.  Look at regenerating classified ads in new ways; the Internet is no longer king of classifieds – jump on that! With new job creation coming out of the stimulus plan, send a few reporters out to report on what jobs are coming -- and where and how to apply -- to drive traffic to your classified ads again.  Give the reader multiple channels to access your content.

Look at cutting costs by using new technologies (historically not a strong suit for print media).  Instead of cutting your content producers (employees on the editorial side), look at cutting production costs. There is some incredible software out there that can do wondrous things in this regard. 

For example, Atlanta-based startup Screen 5ive Media has a cool set of all-in-one publishing tools that allows the creation of content for print, Web and mobile in a single pass and to build communities around each nearly effortlessly. That means one person can do the job of dozens in production with little or no training as Screen 5ive products are intuitive and automated.  

Specifically, Screen 5ive’s products are an interactive publishing platform called OTTO; first generation derivatives: Pixurebox and Pixel press; a community collaboration platform: 360/5; and first generation communities: cliq.in. Today, Screen 5ive’s products are primarily used by schools to produce traditional yearbooks and online, multimedia yearbooks, both surrounded by social media and completely produced by students with no production or publishing training – and all within the means of the smallest of school budgets. 

In the interest of full disclosure, I do consulting work for Screen 5ive which is why I am so familiar with their products. (Do notice, however, that I have never included them in my own news reporting to avoid conflict of interests). As far as I know though, Screen 5ive does not yet have a full competitor.  My point, however, is that it is time print media got up to speed on new technologies from production and community building to customer relationship management (CRM) and business intelligence (BI). These technologies cut costs in responsible ways and magnify views of customers so the product can be tweaked as needed in near real-time.

Robert Scoble: If I was running a newspaper, I would try to build a community and get them to report a lot of it for free or for very cheap. The days of paying a journalist $50,000 a year or so just to cover city hall meetings are gone. You can pull a lot of good content from the community.

Then I would restructure the newspaper into a sort of directory of news. Look at how USA Today shook the industry a few years back with their short articles, snappy headlines and punchy graphics. I would go further with that idea. Have fewer newspaper pages so print costs are low and fill them with 1 inch stories on the front page and 3 inch feature stories inside and link them all out. You could use MS tags so a reader can aim a cell phone at the story and immediately read more about it on the Internet. That way you have tons of stories but few printed pages. The paper could be a directory of what’s cool on the Internet in the last 24 hours which could be a tremendously helpful resource for readers. After all, people with phones and Kindle readers are the people with disposable income that advertisers want to reach so reaching out to these readers would increase your revenue.

You could produce a newspaper in three to four pages with as much or more info as you have in 40 pages now for considerably less cost. 

You have to take advantage of the old and the new. Newspapers have great distribution models, for example, they should leverage that. They also have investigative reporting and the resources to produce incredible original content – that should be the center of the branding effort and an “exclusive” value to the readers. 

Technology can be better used by mainstream media, too. Some of that is happening now but more needs to happen. I saw a NBC cameraman at the White House who was cameraman, anchor and crew – much like I work. Reuters has used some flipcams as has CNN. Flipcams have come a long way and are almost good enough for daily reporting. Incorporating new technology controls costs and opens your opportunities. 

With newspaper sites incorporating video and audio, and broadcast media using text, blogging and social media, the lines are blurring between who is print and who is broadcast. Technology will further blur that line. It will all come down to content and sophisticated multimedia approaches. 

There you have it, our combined thoughts on the news industry. Now it’s your turn. Tell us what you think is the future of news and your ideas on how it can be done better. 

The Leadership Muse: Leaders Finding Inspiration

by: Linda Cureton, CIO of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Yesterday, one of my Facebook friends asked for inspiration for his blog.  I told him to write about what inspires him.  As I thought about what I said to him, I reflected that I’ve felt a lot like a CIO under siege lately.  Then I thought, physician, heal thyself.  How can I keep pushing and driving staying in the ring … round after round … taking it on the chin while scoring enough points to win the fight?  I gotta find a Muse.

 

The ancient Greek and Romans had lesser Goddesses, called Muses, who inspired creativity in music, dance, poetry, and writing.  Yep, I think there needs to be a Leadership Muse.  Absent that, I’ll talk about three things that inspire me.

 

People

 

It’s inspiring helping people learn and helping people be successful and self-actualized.  I’m frequently counseled that I probably think too much about people.  I don’t care.  I feel good breaking things down into terms that people understand. And I feel good when I can make complex things simple … like IT Governance, Algebra, and Sweet Potato Crescent Rolls.  Being able to relate things to Star Trek inspires me also.

 

There has not been one thing that I have accomplished in my leadership walk without people.  I am humbled to note that what I have accomplished has been solely due to being inspired by the people who have helped me.  Maintaining this attitude of humility and gratitude inspires me to press forward during adversity.

 

Music

 

Maybe this is the value of the song Whistle While You Work.  Sometimes I have “theme songs” for interesting times.  Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive helped me through a tough job assignment.  Jazmine Sullivan’s Bust Your Windows helped keep me from actually busting the windows out of someone’s car. More recently, I hummed On a Clear Day while I prepared a power point for a panel on Cloud Computing.

 

For me, the real value of music is that I am a right-brained person in a left-brained workplace.  I can do both reasonably well, for sure.  But, I prefer right-brain.  So, humming through mundane, detailed-oriented and sequential tasks is actually entertaining for me.

 

Technology

 

I hate computers, but I love technology.  I am motivated to figure things out. Try new things. Or try old things in new ways.  I’m not afraid of technology. Second Life seemed to be pretty cool technology.  I was motivated to learn about Virtual Worlds it by volunteering to moderate a panel on it.  Being a PC person, I’ve just taken the dive and started playing with a Mac.  Kind of fun, actually.  Oh, and I love my iPhone.

 

Technology for technology’s sake is downright stupid.  But, finding ways that technology can solve a problem is … as they say priceless.  In my youth, I needed to teach myself Basic Programming language.  Couldn’t really get into it really.  Then decided that I would write a Hangman Game.  Wow, a purpose.  It worked.  Technology needs to solve a problem.  Not just exist in a vacuum.

 

Leading an organizational change to transform how we manage IT in a pretty stubborn workforce wears on you.  And during this leadership gig, like any other reasonably capable leader, inspiring and motivating a workforce to work hard doing the things they wouldn’t normally want to do. 

 

One thing that gets overlooked by leaders during organizational change is how to manage the impact of the change on themselves.  In my personal leadership journey, I have consistently been challenged with my own needs for motivation and inspiration.  I really need to find that Leadership Muse.

Why Neither Bush nor Obama Killed the Economy

by Pam Baker, veteran journalist and business consultant

All the political pontificating, politician posturing and anything- but- unbiased media sideshows are distracting us from the one single, simple truth we should be addressing: businesses failed. They simply and undeniably failed. 

You can demonize Bush and fawn over Obama; or, fawn over Bush and demonize Obama – it really doesn’t matter, because whether a company is profitable or not is more a matter of management than public policy.

So get over yourself and your politician or party of choice already. Politics and policy are no excuse for business failure. Yes, Bush threw out all the rules; some say the Clinton administration had a hand in that as well. To which I say, so what? You mean to tell me that Fortune 500 companies failed because the teacher was out of the room? 

If that’s the case, then the onus is on boards, stockholders and stakeholders for putting unruly children at the helm in the first place. And, they deserve the bruising they are taking now if they stubbornly and foolishly keep those children in place.

Had these companies held to solid business principles, ethics and best practices, they would have prospered no matter who sat in the White House. That, my friends, is the bottom line.

Since so many business leaders lack basic business acumen, self-discipline and solid ethics, government will institute regulations again and rightfully so. Trash the room and bully other kids, and the teacher inevitably comes back into the room. 

You want to stop the red ink bleeding and bring business back in the black? Then simply return to tried and true business principles. Here’s a starter list to get your business moving in the right direction:

1) Adopt the physician's credo: "First, do no harm."

2) Never invest in a get-rich-quick or shady scheme, e.g. bad mortgages packaged as derivatives.

3) Don’t invest in -- or with -- friends; invest based solely on facts and pragmatism. Be diligent; there is a Bernie Madoff on every corner.

4) Do your homework before proceeding in any direction.

5) Build a business case before making any major decision.

6) Remember the customer is always right.

7) Put all costs and profits on the books.

8) Never “play with the numbers.”

9) Weed out sandbaggers from your ranks.

10) Remember employees and customers are vital elements in your business plan.

11) Police your own actions before someone else does so that you gain tangible rewards and avoid painful punishments.

12) Don’t bend or break rules just because you can.

13) Remember what you do to others can be done to you.

14) Do away with any sense of entitlement: no, management doesn’t need a million dollar bathroom make-over, for example. Make it clear that bonuses are for exemplary achievement, not for just showing up to work.

15) Hold upper management completely accountable for every decision – or lack thereof. Reward or punish accordingly.

16) Put solid turn-around actions in play long before you hit bottom.

17) Plan for the long-term rather than react to today’s stampede mentality. 

18) Business should never be “as usual” it should be “as planned.”

19) Remember demonstrable integrity and goodwill are better safeguards against lawsuits than the best of lawyers.

20) Be mindful of politics but not overly so. Remember power shifts from one party to the next regularly and your business must prosper throughout.

21) Never, ever let the clowns run the circus.

22) Always, always, always have ample cash reserves on hand.

TV Guys - Episode 5 - Of Lunatics & Liars

by Jon F. Merz, novelist (author of the Lawson Vampire novels), screenwriter, and now TV producer for the new TV show The Fixer 

Along the way to making THE FIXER television series, Jaime and I have encountered a whole slew of people.  All of them have usually been extremely interested in the project, and some have even offered to help out.  This, of course, is very nice.  When you’re out on the edge, it’s nice to know you have company.

However, not everyone actually lives up to what they say they can deliver.  And we also started running into our fair share of crazy people along the way.  Usually, the conversation would go something like this:

Them:  “Oh my god, I love your project!  Vampires!  Spies!  How can I help?”

Us:  “We’re looking for investors.  Do you know any wealthy folks who might be interested in coming on-board?”

Them:  “Yes!  I have an aunt who has a ton of money and she loves television.  I’ll bet she would invest.”
   
Us:  “Awesome!  How can we get in touch with them?”
   
Them:  “Uh, well, the thing is she’s kind of dead.”
   
Us:  “Kind of?”
   
Them:  “Yeah.”

This exchange actually happened more than we ever would have believed possible, leading both Jaime and I to surmise that people are either a) blissfully oblivious as to the exact nature of death and how it might interfere with such mundane things as financial and investment transactions or b) a lot crazier than the evening news would have you believe.  I suppose they could also be both.

But the crazies we dealt with usually by chuckling about the whole thing and continuing on our merry way.  We had scores of people yet to talk to and a few minutes taken out for a grin or a smile was a welcome thing – especially when rejection has been a constant companion.

Liars, however, are something else entirely.

We met one woman who swore she could help us.  Turns out her mother had worked for a guy who owned his own energy company.  Every year this guy threw a party for his employees that ran him at least a million.

To Jaime and me, that sounded like a cool dude – someone who took care of his people - and one we’d like to speak with.  We told Hillary that we would welcome her help in getting our material in front of him.  My wife went out one afternoon in the pouring rain to overnight copies of my novels, the prospectus, and everything else to her.

According to Hillary, this man was worth at least three quarters of a billion dollars.  He had money to burn and had even looked into getting involved in the entertainment industry a few years before.  He loved movies and TV.

More pluses in our minds.

Hillary told us it would probably be a few weeks before we heard.  She wanted to make sure she caught this guy at just the right moment.  She knew him very well; they’d been friends for a long time.

After three weeks, however, we still hadn’t heard anything.  And my usual gut instinct told me that something was wrong.  We emailed and called Hillary who put us off, saying that she needed more time.  We gave it to her.

Another week or so passed.  Hillary she came back and told us that she hadn’t heard anything yet, and that she didn’t want to pester this guy too much.  We understood that to a point, but when days stretched into weeks and we still didn’t have an answer, both Jaime and I started getting concerned.

We called Hillary back and spoke with her.  The outcome of the conversation didn’t sit well with Jaime and I.  Both of us started to suspect that Hillary wasn’t being entirely honest.

So Jaime called the guy’s office and here’s how the conversation unfolded once Jaime explained who he was.

Personal assistant:  “Yes, we received the material.  It was very interesting.”

Jaime:  “So would he be interested in coming on-board as an investor?”

Personal assistant:  “No, I’m afraid not.  He actually decided not to invest about a month or so ago.  We told Hillary that he’d decided not to invest.  Didn’t she tell you?”

No.  She hadn’t.

We immediately contacted Hillary and asked her why she hadn’t told us.  Instead of admitting her mistake and the fact that she had obviously lied to us, Hillary went off on a verbal rampage, accusing us of being unprofessional and that she’d never been treated so horribly before in all her life.

Um…yeah.

We told her to send the books back and while Hillary updated her Facebook status with snide oblique references to us, we scratched her name off the list of helpful people who actually have supported THE FIXER along the way to reality.

The thing is this: we’re always glad for help.  But Hillary had made herself seem like she could deliver our entire financing goal easily – even going so far as to tell Jaime that she was 90% certain she could get the money.  Well, if you tell that to two guys who are eager to set the world alight with a new kick-butt TV series, they’re obviously going to ask you to step up to the plate and deliver.

If Hillary had simply gotten back to us and said, “he said no,” that would have been fine.  Case closed on that prospect; on to others.  And we had plenty of people yet to speak with.

Instead, Hillary chose to lie when she told us she hadn’t heard anything.  She tried to ingratiate herself into the actual production of THE FIXER and secure her own standing there before telling us it was a no.  And by doing so, all she actually guaranteed was that we would never trust her or employ her in any fashion.

As we’ve found, people will say almost anything.  But getting them to step up and deliver is something else.  We don’t have time for liars.

Only for success at what we’ve committed ourselves to achieving.

Enjoying TV GUYS? Join THE FIXER group on Facebook and show your support!

Uncomfortably Numb

My Claim to Fame: Part 2

by Michael James, motocross racer, journalist, screenwriter

As I mentioned previously I jumped into screenwriting full steam ahead. But that was mid-2001 when I met my friend and producer John Nemec (more on John in forthcoming articles). As we all know what happened later in the year, the world changed with the terrorist attacks of the World Trade Centers. That was the day the world lost its innocence and for better or worse my job as a columnist at that point was to speak my truth, not the false truths being splashed across the television screen for the following weeks, but my own personal and painful truth. The article that follows is exactly as it ran in the issue of MX East that ran soon after the WTC attacks happened. Where I live is a little over a mile from the banks of the Hudson River and from the Yonkers Pier I could see the buildings burning, all the while knowing people, thousands of people were inside them.  I have often been accused of writing straight from the heart and this piece was no exception; I can re-read it now and the tears and emotions well up as if  9-11 was yesterday. All writers have their own style and the trick –and my advice- is to stay your course, don’t imitate someone else’s style; speak and write your truth… the world will eventually come around to it.

Write on,

Michael

"Uncomfortably Numb"

By the time you will read this I am sure you will be aware of the tragedy that has struck America for the second time in it short history. A gutsy but ill-advised enemy has snuck inside the gate and did irreparable harm to our land, our people, and our psyche. Fifty six years ago, Japancame waltzing into Pearl Harbor and sucked us into World War Two.  Now an insane Islamic coward has tried to initiate the start of World War Three. 

It is now 4 A.M. New York time on September 12th, and I have just gotten off the couch in the basement to come up to bed. Needless to say I didn’t get to sleep after a day of watching my fellow New Yorkers live through the hellish nightmare of a terrorist attack.

            At 8:50 A.M. yesterday morning, I got a call from my girlfriend, Susan, who works at Rockefeller Center, which is not far away from the World Trade Center. Susan was in a panic as she looked out her window many floors above the Manhattan streets and told me an airplane just crashed into the Twin Towers. I ran to the third floor of the building where I report to work at the telephone company and turned on the TV in the lounge. What I saw boggled my mind and little did I know this was only the beginning of a grim fairy tale. I told a few of the workers who were not busy what had happened and immediately the urgency of the situation unfolded as people who overheard ran from their desks and broke down crying when they saw the images on the screen. They had husbands and sisters that worked high above the streets in one of those buildings.

            My heart sank when I saw the look of desperation on their faces. As more people filed into the lounge, we all were still thinking that some pilot lost his way or had a heart attack and couldn’t steer the plane. The initial reports were that of a Cessna or other small plane and we wanted to believe that. But the amount of smoke and fire billowing from the building didn’t correlate to a small plane. It is amazing what the human mind can force itself to believe when faced with the unbelievable. As the Channel 7 (ABC) news copter hovered and sent us the drama, we could see a large plane bank left and veer around tower number one which was in the foreground of the shot and go behind it. Four seconds later and orange explosion erupted in tower two, which sat in the background. It looked like a bomb had been set off and we realized that this was a terrorist attack. Little did we know at the time that this was the jumbo jet we had seen fly past that was crashing through the middle floors of the 110-story structure.

We were floored as we stood there watching and the two women who had relatives that worked in the Trade Center went into panic mode. Their piercing screams ripped at the heart of even the toughest men standing there. We all felt their pain as they tried to make frantic calls to their loved ones but most of us were too mesmerized by the images on the screen to even move from where we stood. Verizon had many major trunk lines that passed through the W.T.C. and the telephone switches were on overload as word filtered out and calls from loved ones tried to funnel through the log-jammed switches as a result of the calls being re-routed around W.T.C.  Susan, in the meantime, was giving me a blow by blow of the first couple of minutes of the invasion. Within seconds, I could hear people in Susan's background yelling and screaming and Susan running with the pack. Her heavy breathing made me realize that she was too close to ground zero for my comfort. I was scared senseless and fought to not let her hear it in my voice.

She said they were evacuating Rockefeller Center and that she would call me when she next could. For the next hour, I proceeded to bite off the ends of my fingernails and call as many people as I could to see if they were okay. I didn’t know it at the time, but my best friend, Terry was a mere two blocks away when the first plane hit. He would later recount to me that the blast of the first plane hitting the building knocked him and others on the entire block off their feet. He would tell of the panic that struck people and the horror of looking behind them and seeing their once-invincible symbol of American might, American manhood burning like some prop on a blockbuster disaster movie.

All of the images for the next several hours were surreal… like we were all in a collective nightmare that none of us could wake up from. In the movie 'Independence Day' there is a scene where the aliens blasted Manhattan to bits that was all too realistic and my mind kept trying to wake up from this real-life movie shoot. I didn’t want to see any more of it. Someone, please…turn the TV off, turn the lights on, wake me up from this unwanted nightmare. But there was no letup. My cell phone rang again and it was Susan. She was now outside and telling me that people were panicking and running all over the place, trampling anyone and anything in their path. She spoke of a woman who was running with her baby in her arms and of how this baby was knocked to the ground and repeatedly stepped on by the panicking crowd running for their own lives. I was in tears now and knew that anything at all was possible in this lifetime.

Susan, along with thousands of other workers, was trying to flee the heart of the attack. Pandemonium was the order of the day even though the rescue workers were on hand in a matter of minutes. When the word filtered down that the orange explosion, we saw was the 767 jumbo jet I too fell into panic and begged Susan to run like hell and get to a safe place. The cell lines as well as the land lines were now dangerously slow, locked up, or non-existent. My heart sank further when we were cut off. I turned to the television set again to see what was happening, hoping for information that could prove useful to Susan when she called again. By now almost every employee had left their desks and gathered in the cafeteria to look in horror at the destruction that was unfolding. I can’t express the multitude of feelings that flowed from all of us. There was fear, shock, anger and outrage at the inhuman horrors we were watching, relief that it wasn’t happening to us, and guilt that we were happy it wasn’t happening to us.

For another hour, I was heartsick not knowing what happened to Susan as there was a near communications blackout. I prayed and left the outcome to God. For moments I had lost faith in Him. How could God let this kind of thing happen? How can anything borne of human flesh have so callous a heart as to orchestrate something this horrendous? The scenes were like a hatchet through the skull; the pain and the reality of it all was mind numbing and emotions left my body and came back in waves… waves too big for me to swim above. I hated humanity for our ability to create weapons and think of treachery capable of planning such an evil, heinous, unprovoked attack.

By this time, I had gotten a cell call from my ex-wife, Dawn, who was in tears asking me to pick our son Brian up from school. She would get our daughter Jessica and take them to her job at the sugar factory. There was no work for her to do as her industry lives and dies by the commodities trading which was shut down at this point due to the lack of communications. Brian seemed in a daze when we met at the main office of his high school. Fourteen-year-old children were not meant to see the kind of destruction we were enduring. They aren’t supposed to feel the fear that I saw in his eyes as he wondered out loud of the possibilities of more attacks where we were.

Manhattan is less than six miles away from the city of Yonkers as the crow flies. I did my best to explain to him what was happening and who is likely behind it: a multi-millionaire madman who has convinced the peasants of the world that America is bad because we all are richer than them and are intent on keeping them and their faith down. All the while "Osama Big Loudmouth” is hiding the fact that his own personal fortune could easily help pull his own countrymen out of their impoverished life if that was his intent in the first place.

By 5 P.M., it was time to leave work – I got absolutely nothing done today-- and the whole city of Yonkers seemed like a ghost town. Not that there weren’t any people around, there were plenty, but there was a silence that is indescribable. No one spoke at all... no one looked up to your face, and no one smiled. The sky was eerily tranquil. It was such a beautiful day to live, not a beautiful day to die. The waves of pain inside was crushing as the magnitude of what had taken place weighed heavily on our shoulders. The skies were deafeningly quiet as the whole country shut down all air traffic save for the occasional F-16 fighter jets that strafed the Hudson River. Not even the birds were flying much. The fighter jets were so fast that if you were lucky enough to see one, it would streak by silently and five seconds later, you would hear the thunderous roar of the engines on full afterburner. I felt hope seeing the jet jockeys up there knowing they would not be taking prisoners should anything else come up.

I was uncomfortably numb by the time I drove through the pockets of people huddled on various street corners.  Even the bad guys/drug dealers in the seedy neighborhoods were stunned and looking scared as they huddled in front of the stoops where they lived. They looked so scared, so innocent, so vulnerable, and so… human. I stopped to talk to every telephone service technician I drove past for there was nothing to do but talk about it and vent a little as this was too much for any person to digest on their own. It just defied logic that what we saw really happened. We saw structures that were hundreds of feet wide and nearly a quarter of a mile high fall to the ground like a crumbling deck of cards... all the while knowing that there were still thousands, possibly tens of thousands of people still inside. The only saving grace is that their deaths were swift; they didn't suffer long and drawn out deaths.

As I stood there talking to Marcus, a co-worker, an Arabic woman and her two children walked past us and I must tell you that the rage that built up inside me was quite ugly. I had to fight the urge to do harm to her and her kids. I had to remember that they too are Americans and have nothing to do with the antics of a madman, an Anti-Christ with a heart as cold as Jesus’ was full of love. I had to pull my faith back and remember that I am not alone, I am not dead, and as a journalist, have an obligation to help rebuild this mighty nation’s pride. I have an obligation as an American to hold my head high and not let the savage jaws of terrorism steal my sunshine, steal my joy at living and steal the dignity away from those who perished yesterday for simply doing what all good Americans do: go to work. If these religious zealots could see the work, time and effort that it takes to make America the great country she is, they would have less time for jealousy and put more effort into building up their own countries. I am not rich like Osama "Big Loudmouth," and likely you aren’t either, but we are vilified by people an ocean away for the fact that we live in the richest country in the world. For a moment I wish these zealots would see that America's wealth is not it's true strength, it is the strength of her people that makes her wealthy.

I wish to ask that anyone reading this say a prayer for the victims, their family and friends, and for all people of this great land. I pray that we recover and rebuild, rebuild the two monuments that were destroyed to honor those who lost their lives. We must never forget them and the world community must now act in a swift and decisive way to ensure that the germ, the stench that is terrorism be eradicated from this planet for good. The world is changed forever and history will record this day, September 11th, 2001, as the day the entire world lost its innocence. By the way, Susan and Terry both made it home safely.

TV Guys - Episode 4 - Waiting for Decisions

by Jon F. Merz, novelist (author of the Lawson Vampire novels), screenwriter, and now TV producer for the new TV show The Fixer 

Bob, Rose’s Chief Executive, had initially told us that we’d have an answer by the end of the week.  Rose was going to take my novels and head home, give them a read, and then let us know if she wanted to get involved.  We said great.  We could wait a few days no problem.

Friday came and went without a call.

Any sales professional will tell you that the longer it takes to get an answer out of a prospect, the more likely it is that it will be a no.  The sale goes cold.  So, when the weekend passed, Jaime and I made sure to call on Monday.  Rose, however, wasn’t around since she’d flown down to her six million dollar home in Florida.  Her assistant would give her the message that we’d called.
   
We kept waiting.

Days turned into weeks.  And our initial optimism about the meeting quickly started to dwindle.  Rose was nowhere to be found.  She was busy.  Messages were passed on to her (presumably) and we kept up the calls.

In the meantime, we’d started a group for the project out on Facebook.  We had a few hundred members and I took pains to search for Rose’s sons on Facebook and friend them.  They accepted my request and I then promptly invited them to join THE FIXER group.  They both did.  This helped restore some measure of hope in me, but the continued failure of Rose to contact us nibbled away at any of the confidence I felt.

Jaime and I replayed the meeting over and over again, trying to dissect and see where we might have made mistakes.  We Monday-morning quarterbacked that thing so often and we both came away with one conclusion: we could not have prepared any more or done things any better than we did.  If we lost this prospect, it simply wasn’t meant to be.

That slammed home a hard truth: while it’s absolutely vital to be as totally prepared as possible for any meeting like this, preparation does not win the game.  It only makes defeat a little less likely.  There are still plenty of variables that can derail what looks to be a promising partnership.  And most of those variables are things you can’t prepare for.  That makes it all the tougher to take when things go badly.

Finally, after the better part of a month, my cell phone rang.  The number that popped up on to the screen matched the number on Bob’s card.  (I’d positioned Bob’s card right atop my keyboard from the day I’d returned from the meeting knowing that he would eventually call us.)

His assistant said hello when I answered and asked me to hold while she patched Bob through.  I took a few deep breaths and steeled myself for the conversation, my heart thundering in my chest.  Memories of the dangerous situations I’d been lucky enough to survive during my life flashed through my head as adrenaline raced through my system.  It seemed to me that I had stepped out on to another kind of battlefield, one where hope is the casualty of war.

Bob came on the line.  We exchanged the obligatory pleasantries.  I noticed he made no apology for the enormous length of time it had taken them to reach whatever conclusion he was about to deliver.

“So, you know, we don’t know very much about the entertainment industry.”

I frowned.  We’d covered this already in the meeting.  “It’s new ground for you,” I said.  “I understand.”

“Yes, so I know Rose was really interested in pursuing this, but her advisors think it’s a bit too risky at the moment.  I really don’t think this is going to be the right move for us right now.  Especially since we’d be the lead investors on the project.”

This was true.  We didn’t have any other investors at that time.  If Rose decided to come onboard, she would be our first and most prominent investor.

Bob continued.  “So, what I’d suggest is you guys keep doing what you’re doing.  We had a great meeting – very impressed with the both of you – and if you can find some other investors, we want you to come back and talk to us.”

My heart sank.  This wasn’t what I’d hoped to hear.  “So, you’re saying Rose wants to boogie.  She just doesn’t want to be the first person out on the dance floor.”

Bob laughed.  “That’s about it, exactly.”
   
I thanked him for his time and said we’d be in touch.  I hung up.  Devastated.  We’d had a great meeting.  Rose clearly wanted to get involved, but her money people had convinced her it was too risky.

I called Jaime and told him the news.  We were both floored.  Pissed off.  Why, we wanted to know, would anyone worth about a billion dollars take financial advice from people who weren’t even millionaires?  Rose had seemed like a strong woman who was capable of making her own decisions.  But apparently not.

We allowed ourselves an hour to mourn the fact that we hadn’t succeeded. 

Yet.

Then it was back to searching.

As one last gasp at trying anything, I reached out to both of Rose’s sons and asked if they would be interested in coming on-board for a smaller investment.  Jaime and I figured that a couple of young playboy types might really enjoy doing something like this.  But neither son showed any interest, citing the exact same reasons that Bob had told me on the phone.  Too risky.

Until we had another investor, Rose was a dead-end.

We took the hit in stride.  Both Jaime and I have dealt with a lot of tough things in our lives.  We still had a killer project that we knew was going to be an immense success.  All we had to do was find someone with the courage and foresight to recognize its greatness.

The next morning we went back to work.

(Next time: The search continues!)

My Claim to Fame: From Motocross to Screenwriter

by Michael James, motocross racer, journalist, screenwriter

 

I started off wanting to write children's books. Lots of classes and subsequent stacks of rejection letters later I realized I wasn't going to make it.

An article in a Writer's Digest issue suggested "write what you know."  On a whim while I tried to figure out what I wanted to write about I sent in several slogans to a company in Oregon named Ephemera, they sell bumper stickers and such. Three made the finals and one was picked and made into a product_"I Don't Do Mornings"_ which I have since seen all over the place. The high I got from getting paid to write was indescribable and it pushed me further along in the game.  

After long pondering the situation, I remembered the crazy, funny stories of my days as an amateur motocross racer and put pen to paper. Around that time a buddy and fellow racer had just started a district level paper about the local racing scene and I submitted an article to him; it was printed and the guy asked for more. After three articles I realized it must be good work and requested to get paid for them. I learned the next lesson in the writing game when It took another two months before I finally cornered him and got my 75 dollar check for the three pieces. Long story short, I got an article in a program for a monster truck event he was promoting and that led to another article in the program for the prestigious USGP motocross race in Budds Creek, Maryland and meeting Davey Coombs.

By coincidence of the two articles I had in my hands, I handed Davey the one that mentioned Evel Knievel --I had no idea Evel is Davey's hero. He  printed the article in his underground newspaper Racer X Illustrated and every query for freelance work I sent after that I got based solely on having been in RXI.  The paper went on to become the most read glossy magazine in motocross history.

I  then secured my own column,"Northern Exposure," in MX Southern Style which became MX East and then MX America. I quickly gained a fan base and my confidence grew in leaps and bounds. I secured columns in MRA, a Pennsylvania based motocross paper and in Raceway news, the official paper of Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey.

Even local Pro racers were sending me mail saying how much they enjoyed my articles. I was the voice for a generation of dirt bikers who made them feel good about what they did and each other. While the general public looked at us like adrenaline junkies or daredevil freaks on a death wish....we were nether. We were athletes who lived for our sport, our families, and our friends.  

At one point I even had a reader send a letter to the MX America saying that when they read my articles it wasn't like I was writing for thousands of people but to them directly. That meant a lot to me and I realized I wanted to reach more people... I decided screenwriting was the ticket.  I even went as far as missing a car payment on my Mustang GT at the time to take the McKee screen writing class.

From the beginning it has taken seven years (I started in earnest in 2001) to go from journalist to screenwriter (they are polar opposites) and eight drafts to get Hollywood's attention. Now draft nine is in place with high hopes of a nice check and career change to follow. Stay tuned... the best is yet to come.

Write on,                                                                                                                                                                                         Michael

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MichaelJames_NY

 

 

 

TV Guys - Episode 3 - Meetings

 

by Jon F. Merz, novelist (author of the Lawson Vampire novels), screenwriter, and now TV producer for the new TV show The Fixer 

(Please note: all names have been changed in the interests of protecting the privacy of the people we've met with on this journey.)

The morning last February dawned bright and cold.  Jaime and I suited up and prepared to enter a meeting with a woman who could easily hand us a check for $20 million and never bat an eyelash.  Our hopes, to say the least, were huge. 

Rose was a widow and her husband had started one of the largest private companies n the US, employing tens of thousands of people.  Their business was in recycling metal and a variety of related businesses.  When Rose's husband died, control of the company passed to her.  We’d never heard of them until Jaime had pulled up Rose’s information and succeeded in getting us in for a meeting.

We brought several copies of the prospectus with us to go over.  In addition, our graphic design genius Ari had put together a few great posters that she’d mocked up despite being horribly sick.  Since we didn’t yet have our leading man, the person in the poster was deliberately in shadow.  However, we felt that having a visual aid would help this woman visualize what THE FIXER would eventually look like.

Jaime and I drove into the financial district of Boston for the meeting and arrived five minutes early.  Upstairs in the non-descript, but elegant office, we were shown into a conference room.  We immediately noticed that there were six chairs set out.  We had anticipated pitching only to the woman in question.  It turned out we had a larger audience.

The first person who breezed into the room was Bob and he introduced himself with a hearty handshake and smile.  “I hope you don’t mind me sitting in on this.  Rose asked me to look over your materials and I’ve got a few questions.”

Far be it for us to say no, right?  Rose then entered the meeting and was gracious and warm in her greeting.  Her first words to us were, “Well, you’re not what I expected.”

Apparently, when she heard that a couple of guys from Boston wanted to make a vampire show, the first image that popped into her head was that we would be dressed in Gothic fashion with tattoos and piercings.  Instead, she got two suited business professionals.  Score one for us.

Behind Rose came her two twenty-something sons, who, according to Bob, “Don’t get a chance to do something like this everyday, so we invited them to sit in on this, too.”  The guys were both nice enough and only looked vaguely disinterested.

We all took our seats and Bob brought out a copy of our prospectus that Rose had provided him.  All over this document was bright red ink and scrawled questions.  Bob smiled.  “I’ve been looking over your presentation and I’ve got just a few questions for you…”

For the next sixty minutes, Bob fired salvo after salvo at me.  Jaime sat quietly by and it seemed that Bob was focused solely on me.  Perhaps because they were my novels we were talking about turning into a TV series.  But for sixty minutes there was no let up in his assault.  This was a man who knew exactly what questions to ask of any business in order to make a judgment call about investing.  It was impressive, to say the least.

Bob had questions on every conceivable aspect of our proposal.  He went through the sales figures, budgets, casting, crew, book sales, and pretty much every possible thing he could.  I answered his questions evenly and without pause.  And for the most part, he seemed satisfied with the responses.  Yes, obviously this was new territory.  No, no one has tried this before.  Yes, there is risk.  But there’s also great reward.

And so it went.  At the end o sixty minutes, Bob paused and said (thankfully), “Well, that’s all I’ve got.”  He then looked around the table, first at Rose and then her sons.  After Bob’s barrage, the other questions were a joy to field.

Bob’s role in Rose’s company was of Chief Executive, so it’s no wonder that he really took us through the wringer.  We’d never expected an easy sale and $20 million is one hell of a lot of money.  But Bob was also fair and I respected him immensely for his candor.  Where he didn’t know about the industry, he readily admitted so.  And our presentation became as much a tutorial on the entertainment industry as it did our addressing his concerns.

The biggest hurdle, it appeared, was the fact that they, like other wealthy Bostonians, simply didn’t make any money in the entertainment field.  Convincing them that they could was our biggest challenge.

Finally, Rose stood and said, “Well, I’m really looking to do something different.  And this certainly is different.”  We took that as a great sign.  I’d brought copies of my novels and handed them around from my dwindling supply.  Rose took copies of each and told us she was going to read them and let us know what she thought.

We all shook hands and thanked them for having us come in and that was that.  Outside, Jaime and I walked back to the car and sat there catching our breath.  I had a pounding headache and felt like I’d just run a marathon.  I’d been in pitch meetings before with film and TV types, but those were an absolute dream compared to what we’d just endured.  Bob had never been rude or insulting, he’d just been persistent with his line of questioning. 

Now we had to do the most uncomfortable thing of all: wait.

(Note:  Enjoying reading about our experiences turning THE FIXER into reality?  Want to get involved?  We still have room for a few investors if you’re interested or know someone who might be.  Drop us a line at jonfmerz@verizon.net)