Hello beautiful people!
Let’s get paid!
One of the many reasons I encourage creatives to become producers is to level the playing field. Another is to make the “I can walk away at any time” factor at least an option. To make the convo about money one that doesn’t cause you ridiculous stress and anxiety.
Today may challenge your baseline of enoughness so let’s dig into that little bit of goodness first.
As we all know, there’s great disparity between the “copy, credit, meals” stage and the level at which celebs land deals for $10M a picture or live as series leads with producer credits, thereby earning many many many millions of dollars over time. That’s obvious. What’s perceived as less drastic is the gap between what life is like for the working actor earning overscale wages and the $125/day actor who’s nowhere close to dropping the survival job just yet. But if you’re living the CCM to $125/day reality, those $1000 co-star days and the $10K guest-star gigs seem way far out there, maybe even forever just out of your reach.
The way we move more quickly from the “I’ll work for free” to the “Fuck you; pay me” stage of our careers involves two steps.
- Moving as high up the enoughness scale as possible and living pretty far up there (#BigOl5 or very close) on the daily.
- Not being afraid to talk about money. Ever.
Shift to this way of thinking: Identifying the collective of people most likely to be excited by what I offer (targeting) and being sure my message is clear and focused (branding) does not mean I’m less of an artist. Nor does getting paid for what I’ve created. Getting paid means I’m a professional artist. (Tweet it.)
Click to watch the Mike Monteiro talk to creatives that inspired this print. Especially my non-showbiz creatives! This is gold. The value of getting specific, of having a contract, of hiring an attorney is made *so* clear in this vid.
Producers are always going to try and keep costs down. We can’t fault them for that! Our ability to insist upon having an exchange of value for value — which, as you recall from Day 9 is ALL getting paid *is* — is what’s required first. Our self-worth informs our net-worth! Anything that is of value deserves to be shared with the world. Once we stop buying into the idea that who we are is never enough, that branding is dirty, that marketing is manipulative, and that getting paid for our storytelling abilities is tacky, we can begin to see the wage gap lessen.
Of course, being able to have powerful conversations about issues surrounding money involves not only the enoughness we’ve been fortifying for many weeks now, but also fluency with what contracts are about. That means reading contracts. Every word. Asking questions about what certain clauses and terms mean before you’re in a position to have to negotiate quickly on any of these points. Getting pay-or-play worked into your deals (so you get paid even if the project doesn’t happen). Hitting the SAGindie low-budget contracts workshops in LA or NY (and no, you don’t have to be a union member to hit these, since they’re created for producers). Even going to the trouble of scheduling a visit TO one of these large markets to get to hit one of these workshops would be an empowering move. Skyping, Zooming, or FaceTiming with your LA-based or NY-based ninja accountability buddy after he or she attends one of these is a great runner-up. Reading first-hand accounts from #SMFAninjas all over the internet as they post about these events is a bare minimum.
Read that last bit again. Because this work is NEVER done. Right now, you may think that when you regularly get $10K/wk. for your consistent guest-star work, you’ll have no money issues. Truth is, the same enoughness issues that caused friction as you moved from copy-credit-meals to $125/day still exist when you’re trying to go from a $10K/wk. guest-star to a $50K per episode series regular.
Should you be agentless, consider that sometimes the most ninja move you can make when you’re offered a role is bringing your contract to a very well-targeted agent, asking them to help you negotiate your deal. You just brought them free commission, showed them you’re a booker on your own, and — if your targeting was on-point — you’ve initiated a convo with someone who will happily help you out with this deal and take you on from there! But don’t come at ’em all “babe in the woods,” here! Really know what you want out of the deal (there’s that fluency in speaking contract terminology, yo) and then ask for a pro to give it a once-over on your behalf. If you’re not ready to do this with an agent but you’re a union member, your union rep will look over any contract you’re presented to be sure there are no red flags!
We don’t want to do all this work to get you there and then have you freak the eff out the second you look at your bank balance and see more zeros than you’ve ever thought could be in there. We want you to stare the realities of the next tier in the face and go, “Yup. That is correct.”
Important work, y’all! Let’s get to it!
’til tomorrow… stay ninja!
