The big pitch...

Nothing happens 'till someone sells somethin'...

It's true.

Especially if you're in business as a 'Church Planter' or 'Filmmaker'.  

(To clarify: for my purposes, a CP'er is someone who starts a Church from scratch--the hyper-entrepreneurial kind of Pastor/Preacher-- and a FM'er is a writer/producer/director/editor or some combination of the four...)

See, nobody believes you and nobody wants to help you and nobody cares if you succeed or not. 

Life's a bitch 'aint she? 

My Dad puts it somewhat more delicately, "Never let anyone else champion your cause."  They don't care, don't want you to succeed, and don't give a whup' whether you can feed your kids or not.

So you have to sell them.

A phone call with a major record label in the U.S yesterday got me thinking this way.  I'd been in touch with one of the honchos at the label a month ago (a relationship that's been simmering for almost half a decade...) and took the opportunity to pitch him a few of the concepts we've currently got in production.  I was hoping to get him to 'bite' on helping me find a way to align his label's interests with mine.

Aligning of interests--remember that one.

So out of four pitches, he bit on two.  One I'm following up on.  The other got thrown to another person in a different dep't.  The honcho said he'd let her know to expect my call and I could take it from there.

Mission accomplished part 1.  He'd 'bought' my pitch enabling me to move onto step two.

It then takes me two, no THREE, weeks to get her on the phone.

So we talk yesterday and I do my dance all over again.  Norman Jewison famously refers to what we Producers do as 'dancing', whirling and twirling and smiling and hoping to make our audience want what we've got...

"So this kid gets sucked back in time to the eve of the very first Christmas..."

And it takes me nearly forty minutes (and if they give you more than four minutes on the phone you know you've got them at least partially interested) but at the end of it she 'buys' what I'm selling, enabling me to move to step three.

This is why my wife doesn't do what I do.  

She can't stand the steps.  It'll probably take me twenty to thirty steps to close this deal, stretching over three to six months.  And in that same period of time I'll probably pursue another five to six equally complex, involving, pitches pouring my whole heart into trying to 'sell' them to one party or another and each of those will fall flat at some point.  But this one might stick and I won't know for sure unless I complete the steps and I won't get to another step unless she 'buys' this one.

So the call yesterday ended in a 'victory' which means I get to do more work.  A full-out proposal that she's going to shop around her department and if (from a distance) I (through my proposal) get them to 'buy' what I'm selling I'll get to go to step six (four=creating the proposal, five=her dep't 'buying' it) which will be to travel to her head office (two hour flight, ten hour drive in my new sports car, hmmmm....) to do my dance in a flashy boardroom for her boss and peers.

I'll wear my suit and shave and flirt up a storm for that one.

D'you see how hard it is?

And the thing is so many Pastors see themselves as 'mystics' and treat 'selling' as beneath them and so many Filmmakers see themselves as 'artists' and treat 'selling' as selling out...

Which is why you get so many broke, bitter, unsuccessful folk in those lines of work.  And hey, I'm not sayin' I've got the lock on any kind of virtue here.  

Mostly I'm just terrified.

Terrified I won't rise to my potential, won't feed my babies next month, won't feel that fierce sense of fulfillment that comes from achieving something you've dreamed of, won't enjoy that deep peace that comes from being 'obedient' to your calling.

I'm damn scared.

Which is why I sell.

And y'know how I learned?

By failing.

I've got so many rejected proposals and show ideas in my files it should make me want to throw myself off the nearest bookcase.  But I learned something about ten years ago.  I realized that if I ever started keeping track of all the dead ends I'd lose my joy.  I'd lose my ability to believe. I'd stop trying.

And you know what's happened?  

Those hundreds (thousands maybe) of hours of what could very fairly be called 'wasted effort' have turned me into a selling machine.  I just do it.  Intuitively, almost effortlessly.

(and, truth be told, that's why many people dislike me to greater or lesses degree--because I'm always 'selling', always dreaming out loud, always talking about what might be and that makes me say too much by times and that pisses people off and I understand and I'm sorry...)

'Cause I still believe in the dream.

And if you don't believe you can't sell and if you can't sell you won't work 'cause...

Well, nothin' happens 'till someone sells somethin'.

(and that shot off the top is one page of 37 prep pages for a script that I wrote a year and a half ago that I still haven't been able to set up but in which I still believe...)

Deeply.

T