Hollywood Insider Help by Nancy Fulton Nancy Fulton

As creatives, we invest time, effort, ideas, intellectual property, and our reputation in the projects we do. A project that goes well becomes a stepping stone to other great projects. Failed projects, or projects we fail on, are thus damaging from many perspectives.
Our work is more or less collaborative, based on our desire or willingness to collaborate. Working with the "right" collaborators lets us do our best work. The wrong collaborators disable, distract, and disaffect us. They take us out of the zone in which we are most effective.
In order to find the right collaborators, we need to understand what kind of creatives we are, what we do best, what we need to do our best work, and where our weaknesses are. We also need to understand how to work with (and sometimes side-step) those collaborators with whom we are not perfectly matched.Learn what kind of creator your and why that matters so much to your work as a producer, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, or author making media for money. 

Music in this Episode was licensed for commercial use from Pond5.com. 

Writers, actors, filmmakers, artists, designers, and other creatives are taught young that choosing to be a creative professional is risky business. It doesn't have to be. 

In this workshop you'll learn: 
Why earning a living as a creative looks like luck or magic from the outside. Why it is not the tight-rope walk you've been told it is since you were born. How to understand exactly what you need to do to build a creative business so you can swiftly do it. How to find fans and turn them into paying customers.Why taking big risks, and making big investments usually doesn't pay off, but running lots of inexpensive experiments almost always does. How having money to invest into your creative business can be a blessing or a curse. How to figure out what you might have been doing wrong. How to determine what "works" and what doesn't when it comes to the products and services you sell. Practical examples of how most creatives go off the rails in trying to create a sustainable way to get paid for their work. This is a very practical, brass-tacks, rational workshop that helps you understand, intuitively, what you need to so so you can do it. Furthermore, you'll understand why what you've been doing previously hasn't been working wonderfully well even though you've got a lot of skill, talent, and commitment. 

If you have any questions about this workshop, please email me at nancy@nancyfultonmeetups.com. You can find in-depth live and online how-to workshops at www.nancyfultonmeetups.com and NFM24.com. 

Music in this Episode was licensed for commercial use from Pond5.com. 

You need a business network within the entertainment industry that will actively help you find the people who actually want to buy what you sell.

You learn how to find networking events that lend themselves to making real connections, how to meet people at events, how to introduce yourself to a group, and one-on-one, so people remember you kindly, how to reach out to people after an event comfortably, how to give people leads, and how to accept leads from others graciously and without obligation.

Justin Sterling, founder of The Sterling Firm, a full-service civil litigation and transactional law firm devoted to Business Law, Entertainment Law, and Personal Injury cases, addresses

3 Myths People Believe About Litigation
5 Mistakes People Make that Often Lead to Litigation
What to Do Business Deals Start to Fall Apart
Things to Say (and Avoid Saying) When Someone Offers to Sue You
Preparing to Win the Court Battles You Hope You Never Have
What to Do When Litigation is Inevitable

Over time most of us working in the entertainment industry develop close personal, professional, and creative relationships with people who seem to share our vision for the kinds of projects we want to produce. Some of us are even fortunate enough to have family members in the industry who want to work beside us to bring common dreams to fruition. And, indeed, one can point to some very long term production partnerships like the Coen Brothers, the Wachowskis, Michael Bay, Brad Fuller & Andrew Form, that have turned out to be incredibly profitable and creatively powerful over many decades.

Having said that, one of the most dangerous things you can do from a financial, personal, and a creative perspective is to commit to producing a project with a friend or a family member without carefully weighing the risks and taking significant steps to limit them. It would be a shame if deciding to produce a film with someone you love and love to work with resulted in the termination of an important relationship and an expensive financial disaster. It’s also true that even people love you can make expensive mistakes that cause you significant personal, professional, and financial harm.

Jim Jermanok (jimjermanok.com) is an award-winning writer, director, stage and film producer based in New York who started his career as a beloved agent at ICM representing leading lights like Alan Arkin, E.L. Doctorow, Helen Hayes, Ben Kingsley, Shirley MacLaine, Arthur Miller, Dudley Moore, Andy Rooney and Henry Winkler, among many others. He is also an entrepreneurship expert and speaker who actively works with creative pros to help them earn more from their work. His recent bestseller, BEYOND THE CRAFT: What You Need to Know to Make A Living Creatively! (http://amzn.to/2hmx6YQ), and the workshops he delivers worldwide help entertainment industry creatives master the skills they need to achieve their personal, professional, and financial objectives.