Me: “Really, you had a successful show that earned you plenty of money, auditions and brand recognition, yet you feel like no one wants to talk to you at a party because your show is off the air?”
My Client: “Pretty much.”

It sounds very much like the Hollywood cliché, fragile-actor bullshit.

But it’s not. I get that now. During my days in corporate america, I had the same problem – it’s called project work, and it’s very common and much more identifiable for average folk. You came up with a great idea (premise for a show). You convinced someone with enough money in their budget that other people would really want what your vision delivered (pitch). They gave you the capital and helped you create a team (production funding/casting/crew). You worked your ass off to deliver on time and within budget (shooting/production). The end result was a great success (twice as many viewers as expected). You got a big bonus check and a promotion (holding deal). Everyone loved you (500K Twitter followers).

But then the project ended (show canceled). Now what? Below are the Do’s and Don’ts I discuss with my clients the day after shooting wraps:

What to Do:

• Engage your fans. Now that you have some time on your hands, donate it to the people who follow you and love what you do. Use your online presence to make sure those same fans will be there to support your next project. Respond to comments on your IMDB page. Talk to your Twitter followers. Post exclusive information and pictures on your Facebook fan page. Redesign your website. Blog more.
• Create your own buzz. Suggestion: Run a contest for your Facebook Fans, YouTube subscribers, Twitter & Tumblr followers. And be creative, no signed DVD’s.  Think projects.
• Stay sharp. Go to shows. Read scripts. Do research. Write a new show. Join an acting class. Watch movies. Attend a meetup about new media platforms. Evolve your craft and improve your skills.
• Do quality pro bono work. Not to be mistaken with free favors. The company you keep will go a long way towards getting the next job.
• Save your money. As in, don’t spend it on anything that doesn’t further your career. You don’t know when the next paying gig is coming.

What Not to Do:

• Feel sorry for yourself.
• Travel like Ferdinand Magellan.
• Drink in dark places with other out-of-work actors every night (and most days).
• Play so many video games that your Xbox becomes your best friend.

If this is something you are currently experiencing, you are not alone.  I understand what you are going through. Keep at it and good things will come, now is the perfect time to invest in yourself.

1. Figure out your #1 financial priority. Do one small thing everyday for the next week to make sure you move closer to accomplishing it.

2. Open your mail everyday, the day it arrives, for one month. Read it. Pay attention to what it says. Deal with it that day. Then, if you really want to get a handle on things, make sure you never receive another piece of mail from any of those senders again. Register your accounts online, keep the information safe and go paperless. Set up a separate gmail account specifically for your finances. For everything else, here’s a great list of 5 things you can do to stop getting junk mail.

3. Learn something. It’s easy to keep doing what you are doing. But it usually isn’t good enough. If you are a web designer, learn how to implement two new wordpress plugins. If you are an actor, watch a foreign film without subtitles. If you are a musician, learn how to tweet. Stretch yourself in some small way today. Make yourself more valuable and more desirable to those who pay for your skills.

I’ve been using Evernote with clients to improve their organization so I thought I’d share some real, honest-to-goodness ways you can use the software to improve your life as an actor. Evernote is free software used to capture information via text, pictures, audio and the internet. It simultaneously syncs the information on your desktop, smart phone and your internet account. And no, I am not affiliated with Evernote (or Jott) in any way.

Please note that not all of the features mentioned here will work without a fairly new OS.  Additionally, the sharing functions are limited unless you purchase the premium version ($45/yr).

1. Do you use a whiteboard in the writer’s room? Take a picture of the board before it — and your memory — gets erased. Not only will you have a picture of the notes on the board, the handwritten text becomes searchable from anywhere. That’s right, all text, including the text in a picture, is searchable in Evernote. You only need remember one word from the idea to find it.

2. Real-time collaboration. Need to share information with your writing partner, agent or business manager? You can set permissions to share certain notebooks with other people. I have clients who have a receipt notebook that is set up to be shared with me. Anytime they get a receipt, they take a picture of it, tag it (e.g., “The Ivy” “George Clooney”) and shred the hard copy. I now have every receipt scanned and sorted for them and the accountant come tax time. Done.

3. Have a great idea but no writing utensil? A joke, a character or a gift idea for your financial consultant? You can record audio notes from your computer or phone and have them automatically saved and synced for later. If you want them transcribed, you can combine Evernote with Jott and all your audio notes will become searchable text that is shared and archived with your writing partner moments later.

4. For people like me who hate business cards. When someone presents you with their card, kindly accept it, take a picture of it and save it to your contacts notebook. You can then return to them their card, save a tree and add a few digital notes about them. Never again will you look at a card 3 months later confused.

5. Job information. This is a big one. Say you are shooting a one day commercial. You get your lines and a call sheet. You can drop them both into a note so that you can create a job database, take notes about the experience, add photos and learn your lines from wherever you are. And since it’s all searchable, you only have to remember the first name of the casting director to keep in touch.

6. Using the browser tool, you can take a snapshot of any web page, or just a piece of a web page, and read it later on your phone. This allows you to browse at home where it’s convenient and read it later in the green room when browsing is difficult.

7. Wine. If you are like most people I know, you can never remember the name of that great bottle of wine your friend bought at Silver Lake Wine. Now you can start a wine notebook, share it with your friends and have a whole file on your phone with the pictures of the labels from the best of the best. You’ll even look like you know what you are doing at checkout.

8. Shopping. You and your husband could share a notebook on Evernote with pictures of each ingredient so that when you send him to the store he actually comes home with the right stuff.

9. Never lose your car again. When leaving the airport parking lot for a long shoot, take a picture of your car as you stroll away. By referencing the picture you should be able to find it upon your return no matter how long you are gone…and if you can’t, use Evernote’s GPS system to give you step by step directions back to the location where the picture was taken. Now that’s cool. Also works in malls and at Dodger Stadium.

10. Another travel tip – take pictures of your Driver’s License and Passport so that if they are lost or stolen, you can combine Evernote with the charm you use to win over your audiences to convince the Passport Control in Costa Rica to let you through (ok, maybe not, but it’s still good to have for ID).

Bonus – Save your tweets. You can create a Twitter notebook and set up your Evernote account to store all of your tweets for lifetime archiving. Just put @myEN anywhere in your tweet, and it will be sent to Evernote.

How will you use Evernote?  Please share your thoughts in the comments section and feel free to contact me with any questions.

In January 2008, Brown endured the public embarrassment of declaring bankruptcy, the approximately $15 million he earned during a 12-year NBA career mostly dissolved in poor business decisions of real estate and restaurants.

“It was humbling,” Brown said. “When I retired from basketball, I became my own business person with all these people I thought were my friends. What set me back was when I signed my name to a bunch of stuff that I shouldn’t have.

“At the time, I thought it was a great opportunity for me and didn’t even think about it. Then everything started going downhill and I looked around and all those guys were gone.

“But I can share with my players that if you go into business ventures, get attorneys to read stuff over and don’t always sign your name because at the end of the day, people come after you.”

My main takeaways:

1. When you work as an athlete, actor, musician, etc. you must protect the financial gains from the good times because you never know how long they’ll last.
2. Be very careful about trusting friends with your money or reputation; it is better to put a yes/no financial decision in the hands of an unrelated and independent party.
3. Make sure you are receiving only the highest quality advice from your manager and lawyer by getting second opinions regularly and verify information you receive.  Specifically, when it comes to financial accounts, either speak to the source about balances or access your account directly while not in the company of your advisor.

While there are plenty of people who think life began when Al Gore invented the Internet, it actually did exist prior to that. In fact, people were alive and well during the end of 1979, when musician Rupert Holmes released Escape, which would go on to become his most popular song. If you have ever been to a wedding, roller rink, or a dentist’s office waiting room, you’ve undoubtedly heard this song.

How’s that? You never heard of Rupert Holmes or his song Escape? That’s probably because he changed the name. It is now called Escape (The Pina Colada Song). Recognize it now? As Wikipedia tells it, good ol’ Rupert released the song but it didn’t really catch on because no one could remember its name. Fans kept calling it the Pina Colada song when discussing it or trying to find it at the record store or on a jukebox. Rupert reluctantly agreed to change the title of the song (actually, he was so stubborn that he kept the original title and added the vox populi one in parentheticals) and only then did it become the first and only song to be #1 on the charts during two different decades.

I’m really glad that someone had the sense to convince Rupert to change the title because I love that song and even played it at my wedding. I wonder how many people would have been deprived the pleasure of ever hearing that tune had Rupert not listened to his fans.

If you love Escape (The Pina Colada Song) as much as I do, you’ll listen to your fans. And, just as they did for Rupert, they’ll reward you for it.

Shockingly, hundreds of people who are union-eligible are not in good standing, and therefore ineligible for health benefits. That’s inexcusable.

Keep up with your union dues and health plan payments. Seriously. Get organized and pay your bills or have your manager do it for you. It’s borderline criminal to voluntarily forfeit that level of coverage. Don’t waste an opportunity that millions would love to have.

And if you do need healthcare and don’t have insurance, it’s really, really expensive when you go to the doctor. Especially if you are Creepy Guy in the Alley #2.

1983 – year A Christmas Story made all of our lives better

9 – my age when I watched the just released A Christmas Story at a theater in Barrington, Illinois for David Young’s birthday. (Is there a better age to see that movie for the first time?!?!? That’s like being 16 in 1951 and reading The Catcher in the Rye at the bookstore.)

There’s an old saying that I first heard while I was working for Frederic W. Cook back in my youth. Fred was explaining to me why he was still holding his Peapod shares after they started to drop like a rock. We both bought them at $4 and I sold mine at $16. I told Fred to sell his too and I’ll never forget his response…

“Always dance with the one who brought you.”

If you’ve ever heard of Peapod, you know how expensive a dance that was for my old boss Fred. I’m not quite sure if he ever sold those shares. I do know that while it was great advice for your prom, it’s not so good for holding Peapod shares while the dotcom bubble is bursting. Maybe Fred should also have remember the saying, “If you want to dance, you’ve got to pay the band.”

I mention this because today I re-learned that lesson, although not because of any stocks I own (I don’t own any right now, by the way). I did something today that used to be standard fare and has now become a foreign concept…I called a stranger to ask for something. That used to be a staple in my life, reaching out and connecting with people and connecting those people with each other. I was afraid of no one, even that Scott Farkus (He has yellow eyes!!! So help me, God. Yellow eyes!!!) type bully named Rejection McFailureson.

So I was surprised by what happened today. After reading about Tim Geithner’s new request to expand the power of the US Treasury to include putting businesses into receivership — that means the federal government owns them — I was perplexed. I always thought that the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) had that power. And since the FDIC is owned by the US Government, isn’t his request a bit redundant? What is he up to? It sounds a bit like the Patriot Act to me, but I digress. The point is that my confusion led me to Google, where I attempted to find someone at the Treasury Department or FDIC who could explain to me what I was missing. I found the name of Richard Schmalzer, the Ombudsman for the FDIC San Francisco office. So I called him.

When the phone started to ring, a funny thing happened: all of a sudden I got a few jitters, wondering what in the world I was doing. What would I say? Would he refuse to speak to me? Or unleash a diatribe of unpleasantries before slamming down the phone?

Somewhere in the aging process I forgot what I had done to get me where I am today. I had stopped dancing with the one who brought me. People always say “If I only knew then what I know now…”, but today I felt like I should have been saying, “If I only remembered today what I knew then…”

So what happened with our friend the Ombudsman? Did he tear me a new one for disrupting his day? No. I got his voicemail. I left a message explaining who I was and why I was calling. He hasn’t called back, but that isn’t the point. I remembered who I used to be and how valuable that was. I remembered that just because I’m not 18 anymore doesn’t mean I can’t have the ambition and passion of an 18 year old. I remembered that I connected with many more people before I had even heard of email than I do now with my fancy twitter account, facebook,  and this blog. I remembered that my life is now especially rich because of those connections, the ones made years ago by someone I had forgotten who didn’t have bad knees or suffer terrible hangovers. I remembered to remember.

I have many friends and clients who are either newly unemployed, scared shitless they soon will be, or safe for now in jobs and industries that have somehow survived the downturn while doing things like they did before. My advice to them, you, and now myself: Take some time to remember how you have accomplished the things you are most proud of in your life and dance with the one who brought you. Just don’t do the robot — you aren’t 18 anymore.

2,432,000 – number of deaths in the U.S. in 2005
4.58 – percentage of people who were cremated in 1970
30.88 – percentage of people who were cremated in 2005
51.12 – percentage of people who are projected to be cremated in 2025
8,000 – average cost, in dollars, of a standard funeral

My best friend Doug is a licensed funeral director and is very, very good at what he does. You’d almost think Widow Schmidt was glad that ol’ Stanley kicked the bucket after watching Doug guide her through her grief with grace and dignity. He’s so good you look forward to the next funeral. And because he is so good at his job and enjoys it so much, I think he should quit. It may sound like bad advice, encouraging someone to stop doing what they love to do, especially if they are remarkable in the Seth Godin sense of the word like Doug. But I have my reasons.

I want Doug to quit because I believe that the funeral business is dying…no pun intended. People don’t get as jazzed as they used to (Did they ever really get jazzed? Who even started this process? Click here for some answers.) for the old school routine of wake at the funeral home; memorial service at the funeral home; procession to the church; mass; procession to the cemetery; and finally — the big finale — rubber chicken and stoic faces at Acme Banquet Hall, Anytown, USA.

My advice to Doug is to ditch the old and tired (no offense Widow Schmidt) and begin the journey of redefining the entire mourning experience. Become a Wedding Mourning Planner! Although you’d probably want a better title. How’s that for thinking outside of the (pine) box! The typical funerals with newspaper-only obits, expensive caskets, hazardous embalming chemicals, 1970’s style funeral homes with baby blue shag carpeting and mustachioed men in cheap suits driving a gas guzzling hearse are over. Maybe not for everyone, but there is a niche market awaiting Doug. And that niche will have sustained growth.

Here’s the simple strategy: remove the cost components that no longer deliver value and leverage the ones that do. Doug can still be the best at what he does, he just won’t do embalming anymore. If you take away all of the overpriced relics such as $7,000 non-biodegradable bronze caskets, and instead produce an event that celebrates and documents the life of someone, you have yourself a business. I don’t want to spend $10,000 for a funeral if it’s going to be the old way. I don’t like funeral homes, I don’t do religion and I hate rubber chickens. I don’t buy the Herald for the obits. Here’s what I do want though:

* a super fun party at my favorite bar or restaurant or Wrigley Field or Grant Park
* with only the people I want (big fan of “By invitation only” funeral celebrations)
* make sure I don’t ruin the environment for my descendants with embalming fluid, funeral processions and land occupancy (grave site)
* Let me or my loved ones chose my funeral soundtrack and allow anyone to buy the songs from my iTunes playlist
* play the video goodbye I taped from my death bed on my Mac Book Pro
* record the eulogies (heck, the whole friggin party) and put it online (password only!) for those who couldn’t make it
* allow people to make donations to my charities or loved ones via PayPal
* have a virtual guest book on my celebration of life webpage
* maybe even have a few laughs at my expense
* make sure someone hits on my widow…

For all that I’ll pay $15,000!

This reason I wrote this article is to point out to everyone that times really are changing. And they’re doing so faster than any of us have ever seen. It feels a little bit like a massive forest fire where the earth is scorched and it takes years for the bounty to return, though the soil will be  more fertile than ever. We’re still in the fire fighting stage but it’s so important to look beyond today and prepare for the future. For the first time in a long time, I see opportunity everywhere because we’ve been forced to start over and can rebuild both quickly and solidly. It’s actually quite exciting, even if you are in the funeral business! I love Doug and always will, but I don’t want him to be stuck with the wrong business model at 48 years-old when the thirteen-sibling Irish Catholic family has gone the way of the Dodo bird and there is no one left to show up at the funeral home. Now is the time to change!

Please feel free to post thoughts of encouragement for Doug in the comments section. Changing the way a group of people think about something as ingrained as funeral traditions is tough and he could use all the help he can get.

Are you like Doug? Do you know a Doug? If you do, please send this along. Changing is hard and we could all use a little nudge.