Getting Work To Work

I was struck by a phrase Marshall McLuhan said, “The future of the future is the present.” As I consider what is being said, I think that the future is built through your actions today, not getting stuck in the quicksand of the past or daydreaming the day away. In this episode of Getting Work To Work, I’m going to share four ways that you can build your future today from knowing where you are to knowing where you are going.

“Fail fast and often,” they say. “But what if you don’t want to?” That’s how I usually respond to this mantra of the failure-obsessed entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs. That said, eventually we all face failure and the accompanying lessons that educate and grow us into stronger people. In this episode of Getting Work To Work, I’m going to share a few ways to learn from failure when you are in it and when you are beyond it.

I kept getting drawn to the title on my bookshelf, it was calling out to me: The Freaks Shall Inherit The Earth by Chris Brogan. While there are so many topics in the book that are worth exploring, I was captivated by this notion of the fear of not knowing. How many decisions have I made out of this fear? Could it be the source of my procrastination and communication styles? All this and more in this episode of Getting Work To Work.

I was sitting with a customer the other day when he got a call from a review company. “They call me every day,” he said. We started talking about the value of reviews vs. relationships and I said, “Sounds like a good podcast topic.” In this episode of Getting Work To Work, I’m going to talk about reviews, relationships, and where we should focus our time, energy, and money in order to build trust with our customers.

The other day I tweeted that if I were to describe my creative journey through the past decade, it would be doubt, despair, and delight. That got me thinking about the insecurity and lack of confidence that has crept into my life. How would I go about rebuilding my confidence? In this episode of Getting Work To Work, I’m going to share how to do that through remembrance and action.

Beth Harrington is an independent producer, director and writer with a passion for American history and music. In this episode of Getting Work To Work, we talk about what it means to be independent, technology and nostalgia, the economics of filmmaking, how stories affect her as the storyteller, and taking risks and being courageous in later stages of her career.

I’ve been thinking a lot about creativity and the process of connecting the dots of thoughts, ideas, dreams, and visions. When I try to force connections to happen, sure I may make incremental progress, but an underlying thought sits there: What would happen if I let the connection process breathe and occur naturally? In this episode of Getting Work To Work, I’m going to explore this process of connecting the dots of thoughts.

You ever read a phrase in a book and have it stick in your mind? I was reading The Courage to Teach by Parker J. Palmer recently and he mentioned Gandhi and how he referred to his life as “experiments with truth.” What a beautiful phrase and way to describe life. In this episode of Getting Work To Work, I’m going to explore what living a life with this focus on experiments with truth could look like for the creative professional from self to society.

The other day a friend mentioned that she wanted to do something simple with a project she was working on. After explaining what she was going to do, I thought that it sounded complicated to me. I then started thinking, maybe simplicity is relative and a mark of where we are on the journey of our work? In this episode of Getting Work To Work, I’m going to investigate the idea of simplicity in creative work.

Lauren Guiteras is a Los Angeles-based cinematographer and in this episode of Getting Work To Work, we talk about learning visual language, the importance of looking at art other than film, how context and collaborators can help you with comparing yourself to others, using Instagram as a way to showcase your taste, the value of tests and experiments, and the best definition of collaboration.