Dr. CK Lin | Productivity. Innovation. Entrepreneur Profiles

Movie Producer Reveal Hollywood Movie Alchemy

Read this if you are interested in how to have people pay attention to your story.

One afternoon amongst 500 other people, I spotted an older more distinguished gentleman.  You know the kind of person who you can spot amongst 1000 people.  I introduced myself and turned out he is the executive producer of Pretty Woman, one of the most memorable film in my youth.

What do you think I did?  Given that I am a student of successful people, I seized the opportunity and had a brief interview with Gary.

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Here is the synopsis of the interview:

How many times have you been asked “What do you do?” at any kind of social gathering.

How many times have you answered the question and the other person then moved on to the next person?  Leaving you feeling unimportant. Snubbed.  Even a little hurt.

By answering the question directly, we put a ‘label’ on ourselves.  And based on the the listener’s perception you are either boring or interesting.

Sure you can say: how rude!  But the fact is that we have so many people to meet and so much information coming our way.  There is no way for us to care about everything and everyone at everywhere.  We have evolved to have phenomenal multitasking ability as well as filtering ability.

You are either boring or interesting.  Bang.  Done.

When Gary Goldstein asked me what is it that I do, my answer was ‘blogger’ and I am interested in interviewing him.

If he wasn’t curious and had a blogger interviewed him already.  That would have leave no room for more development.  That would have been the end of conversation.

Gary asks me to consider answering the question with a question.  “What if thousands of people get to listen in on this conversation?”

By demonstrating value in the form of a question, that would have been intriguing to you, wouldn’t it?  From that intrigue, we can then develop a relationship.

If you think this only applies to conference networking events, think again.

Recall how you or someone you know intimately, how do you initiate conversations in the dating scene?

Inevitably they start out with the question “what do you do?” and launch into a monologue of how great their latest project may be.

All features and no benefit.

Yawn. Boring.

You start to look around for more interesting targets.

As the talker, you want to have something that demands an unusual response.  But I digress.

Here are some of the other points he touches on:

• He shares how he is changing the business model of Hollywood by inverting the model of production and distribution.
• He shares what’s possible beyond the realm of Hollywood
• He shares how you can develop the ability to overcome hardtimes in Hollywood
• How to get the inroad of Hollywood
  • Inner game: persistence, commitment
  • Outer game: dream100 and the strategy to reach anyone you want

If you ever get an opportunity to see him speak, see him.  His insight and analogy will change how you operate in business relationships.

Even if you don’t listen to the entire interview, here is one thing you can do right now to get results:

Write down your list of dream contacts that will take you to the top.  All 100 of them.  Reach out to their gatekeepers for advice.  Be persistent.  Result will come.

“Opportunity never knocks, it sits quietly on the roadside and waits to be found.”

Are you waiting for opportunity to knock?  Or are you going to find it?

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.