It’s a good problem to have:
You’re good at something creative and people you know start asking you to do that thing for them.
That means 1) you really are good at it, and 2) there’s probably a way for you to make some money doing it.
I’ve had this happen to me in a few different creative domains. And while it’s exciting at first, I learned a few things about what kind of hard questions you should ask yourself before committing.
Do you still own the upside?
This is the most important question to ask. When someone comes to you and wants you to do something creative for them for free, or for a nominal fee, you have to ask yourself: do you still own the upside?
Because if you’re giving up the upside in a scalable domain for not a lot of money, it’s probably not worth it.
Think of it like this. Let’s say you’re great at shooting and editing videos. And someone comes to you and wants to hire you to do that for them for a video that will live on their YouTube channel. Say they pay you $100 and you do it.
Then, that video that you shot and edited happens to go insanely viral, and earns the person who paid you to do it $1,000 in ad revenue.
Well, you don’t get any piece of that upside. And because it’s in a scalable domain (digital media), the outsized returns can be really, really big.
In the long run, you’re better off using your skills to build your own YouTube channel so you own equity and upside in the creative work you do.
Now, you can always do both. You can offer your creative services for a fee AND build your own channel so you have upside and income. It just depends on how taxing the creative work is and if you have any energy leftover for yourself.
Tara and I have learned that writing a screenplay is extremely hard. It usually takes years to get a script into the right place. And years of work on a movie for a nominal creative fee without ownership of the potential upside (career advancement, possible theatrical residuals, streaming residuals, etc.) is simply not worth it.
That’s why I vastly prefer to work for free for myself (maintaining the upside) than work for a relatively small amount of money for someone else.
In a scalable, digital medium like filmmaking, upside is everything.
Is the person asking someone you really want to work with?
Now, just because Tara and I work for ourselves does NOT mean we don’t work with other people.
Every career break we’ve gotten has been the result of working with some really talented people ahead of us in their careers.
In fact, right now we’re rewriting one of our movie scripts for a well-known director who read it and had some notes.
But this is a respected directed with a great track record of making movies. Simply put, it’s someone we want to work with.
And here’s the key: because we’re doing it for free, we still own the upside as writers on the project.
And because the director has been around the block a few times, we’re bound to learn something about getting a movie made.
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Will you learn something?
This is final question to ask yourself. If you are early in your career, it’s almost always worth taking on as much as you can so you can learn as much as you can, as quickly as you can.
When Tara and I started writing our first movie, it was under the tutelage of a well-known producer who is an expert in our genre. We basically got a two-year masterclass in screenwriting over the course of working with them. And it was an incredible (and difficult) experience.
You can’t put a price on that kind of learning because it’s specific knowledge. It’s knowledge passed down through mentorships. And it can only be learned by tinkering and iterating in your domain.
Sure, you can go to screenwriting “class.” But it won’t teach you what to write about. Or how to write about it. Or how to get your material read. Or what makes a scene jump off the page and what doesn’t. Or how to get something made within the giant machine that is Hollywood.
All of that is learned through trial and error, and if you’re lucky, with the help of a mentor who has done it.
So, creator beware. When you get good at something, people are going to ask you to do it for them. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn’t.
Just don’t lose yourself in the excitement of someone else appreciating your skill and blindly say yes. Consider the time and energy it will take, and ask yourself if it’s really worth it.
Thanks for reading!
-Thomas
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