Find Your Currency then Say Please
When I started making Life In Perpetual Beta, I was no filmmaker, I was just really interested in finding things out and knew a camera was my currency to conversation. I opened up my mouth and asked for interviews, and made sure to say please (actually I turned on my laptop and typed please, but that’s beside the point.) I was not a filmmaker, but I was open to becoming a filmmaker by behaving like and asking to be treated as one. It still surprises me when people assume I have always been in film, that’s it’s film and not the subject matter that I’m interested in pursuing. Film was just the best currency I could think of using to get the information I wanted, and it worked!
It’s the same reason I started the Pitch Conference. It was not because I am an expert at delivering ideas or a career conference organizer, I started it is so that smart people with good ideas could learn to pitch more effectively, so that I could learn to pitch more effectively, and I used an audience of interested conference attendees, like myself, as my currency to get the speakers there, and it’s working.
I realize that it’s the same with almost all of the things I do, I ask myself “what is the most interesting way to learn XYZ.” and then do it.
I don’t know if this would work for everyone, but I do wonder how much more interested and interesting the world would be if more people used the most effective currencies they could think of to get what they wanted, then opened up their mouths and said please.
