Hollywood Insider Help by Nancy Fulton

Remember you can always find videos, workbooks, and live interactive events designed to help you earn a good living doing what you love at NancyFultonMeetups.com. In this podcast I provide four strategies I think every creative pro needs to know in order to fund projects both large and small. They include raising money from investors using Regulation D or Regulation CF, presales, donation-based crowdfunding through sites like IndieGoGo and Kickstarter, and swiftly selling your creative work directly to customers through services with few if any start up costs.

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.

In this episode filmmakers learn what executive producers look for when funding films. Note this is a posting of an interview which is a couple of years old. I'm making it available now because it helps those seeking executive producers and/or co-producers understand what stage a deal should be in before they approach those they want to work with.

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.

In this podcast we are going to talk about how to become profitably famous when you are a writer, actor, producer, or other entertainment industry pro. The mechanics of creating your own fame, and earning a great living while you do it, are something anyone can learn quickly. In fact, by the end of this podcast you will realize you already understand how fame is profitably manufactured. What this podcast will do is help you see how to apply this insight to your own work.

This is an important podcast for you if you feel like people only ever get famous or wealthy by accident, or if it seems that nothing you do really moves your career toward the kind of success you would like to achieve.

In this episode you learn what financially successful standup comics do differently to ensures they earn a lot more from their work than their competitors do. Talented standup comics who master their craft are in the unique position of being able to learn quite a lot of money specifically because they can perform anywhere, and their content can easily be packaged and sold in many formats. But being talented and prolific isn't enough. In this podcast they learn 4 specific things they need to do to actually be financially successful. The same tips will prove useful to those who wish to earn a living as professional speakers, lecturers, etc. Remember to find events to attend live online or face to face, visit nancyfultonmeetups.com.

A quick shout out to Burt Teplitzky who asked me to address this topic before one of his shows. Burt runs one of the best clean open mic's in Hollywood at the Kibitz Room in Canter's Deli which has been a Hollywood Hotspot for almost a hundred years. If you are looking for a place to try out your work, and you want to go where the pros go, this is a great open mic to sign up for.

In this in-depth video interview, Scott Hadley Morgan reviews his decades writing, co-writing, ghostwriting, and pitching screenplays here in Hollywood while working with Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros, Universal, and Chinese Studios/Production Companies etc. He also addresses how indie producers can find the content they want, and why sometimes screenwriters need help to tell the stories they most want to tell.

Questions: If you have questions about this interview, please email me at [email protected]. Visit NancyFultonMeetups.com to find more resources, online events, and face to face workshops designed to help build your career as a media professional.

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

Nancy Fulton, founder of NancyFultonMeetups, interviews Actor-Writer-Producer Bridget Fitzgerald.

Bridget a member of National Lampoon's sketch comedy team, making a sketch comedy podcast heard by half a million monthly listeners. Her web series SmileyBridgeTV has had 1/4 million views, and she attributes some of that success to two audiobooks: "How I Exiled My Inner B*tch” and "iHumpty".

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.