January 15 is the day 90% of people give up on their New Year’s resolutions and goals.
Don’t stop.
Keep going.When I started in Hollywood as an assistant, I spent years “on a desk”—Hollywood speak for paying your dues. It amounts to answering phones, keeping a senior executive’s calendar, reading scripts, and basically learning the business from the ground up. A lot of people never make it past that stage.
After another holiday season without enough money to buy any gifts, I’d start the new year in the same seat at the same desk, wondering when—if ever—I was going to get my shot. In those bleaker moments of doubt, I remember telling myself that if I ever got to produce a movie or TV show of my own, there would be far bigger problems and challenges than the ones I faced now. So I’d better figure out how to get off the desk.
Eventually, I did.
When I wanted to be a producer, I got my first big gig running television division at Legendary Entertainment. I worked for a man, Thomas Tull, who I admired very much. He was successful in the way I wanted to be. Two years later, I was fired when Legendary ended its deal at Warner Bros. After a lot of high profile success at my previous gig, I lost my job at Legendary in the press. The article is somewhere on Deadline or The Hollywood Reporter—it usually comes up right next to the announcement about me getting the job. Two years summed up in the click of a Google search.
So, what did I do?
I started my own company, Elice Island Entertainment and produced my first show.
A couple of years in while producing my first limited series, I realized what I was really trying to do was tell my own stories, which meant I needed to be more than just a producer. So, I went back to writing. First it was scripts. I pitched, I spec’d, I developed. In the first five years, very little sold and nothing got made. I have twenty scripts sitting in digital drawers on my laptop.
When I published my first book, “Beatrice Clover”
I made all the classic mistakes. It blended genres. I published too quickly. Didn’t have a proper editor on it and I got some bad reviews on Amazon. At the time, I was devastated. I had the Stephen King fantasy in my mind when I first hit publish on Amazon…
Big time success here I come!
Since then however, I’ve hired an editor, fixed the mistakes and re-released the book with a new cover, a new title, “The Clover Experiment” and now, the book is a consistent seller and often the book of mine people tell me is their favorite.
I’ve made money, I’ve lost money. I’ve won awards and watched while others went on stage and accepted theirs. In the immortal words of Danny Devito’s Larry the Liquidator, “Easy Come, easy go.”
Personally, I struggled as well. Countless times I’ve told myself not to lose my cool or curse too much, and found myself firing off f-bombs at my kids in a moment of sheer frustration at their behavior.
I’ve been trying to get back to a 34 waistline for over a decade. I’m still stuck at 36. And there’s still a 2 on the scale where I want there to be a 1.
But I’m still hitting the gym, walking everyday, doing my pushups and situps, and trying to limit the bagels (admittedly much harder to do since moving back to New York 🥯😉)
I have failed many times. I have set resolutions that never got resolved. Goals never achieved.
But, I always aim high and I keep after it.
Eventually, I produced my first show. I went on to publish seven more books and write a newsletter fairly consistently for the past two years.
The trick is not to throw the baby out with the bath water. I remember when I tried to quit smoking cigarettes, invariably I’d get to a point in the day where I’d cave and I’d have one. That wasn’t the problem—the problem was then I’d say “screw it” and smoke the rest of the pack.
When I did quit, I did so following Alan Carr’s method which involved smoking while you quit (#iykyk otherwise read the book, especially if you’re trying to quit smoking). What this taught me was that it was a process and most processes take some time. The main thing is to stick with it.
Slow and steady in order to stay consistent is my mindset in the gym as it is in life. With enough effort and time, the result you seek will be achieved.
What’s the mantra: “work the program.”
Of course, the real success is learning to enjoy the process.
I know, I know. Sounds like fortune cookie platitudes.
But the truth is if you learn to enjoy—even love—the process of what you’re working towards, then that will fundamentally change who you are even before you’ve “made it.” In other words, you can enjoy the benefits of achieving your goal before you’ve ever accomplished it.
So if you’ve already stumbled or fallen off the proverbial horse (or wagon if that’s your particular challenge), don’t throw your hands up in the air in defeat. Instead, dust yourself off and get back on the path to success.
This January 15th, as we head into the final days of the first full week of the year—the time when most of us give up—don’t.
I think it was Bill Gates who said, “People overestimate what they can do in the short term and underestimate what they can do over the long term.”
Keep going.
A Quick Update on What’s Coming This Year
Speaking of keeping after it—I’ve got a few projects in the pipeline that might interest you.
The Movie Method Currently on sale. If you’re looking for a methodology to help you find improvement for the new year, I highly recommend it. It’s basically The 48 Laws of Power for people who love movies. Get The Movie Method Here
The TV Method Coming later this year—publication date to be announced, but I’m expecting sometime this summer. It will comb through some of the classic series of television’s golden age for similarly useful life lessons we can all make use of.
Eddie Ankin: Book 6 Also coming late summer or early fall. I apologize for the delay; I know the books have come out a little quicker than this in the past. However, if you’ve been keeping up with the series, you might be aware that Eddie is about to make a major career change. This opens up a host of new adventures for him to get involved in and new mysteries for him to solve.
In the meantime, you can check out all of Eddie’s adventures thus far in the Box Set (Books 1-5) which is currently on sale for $9.99. Get the Box Set Here
A Note on Change One of the things that interests me is when people make changes in their lives. This can be personal or professional—whether it’s a new job, a new spouse, a new house, or a new city—but I believe it’s a fallacy to assume that things stay the same. In fact, things change, and adaptation to change is what we’re built for, even if it’s uncomfortable. That idea is at the very heart of the resolutions and goals we set for ourselves, and it’s why I’m interested in exploring it in my own writing, both fiction and nonfiction.
New YouTube Series: Crawford At the moment, most of my work is focused on the launch of my new YouTube series, Crawford (working title). It combines the best of audio narration with the emergence of YouTube as a platform for reinventing what we watch and how we watch it. The series premieres at the end of February.
In the meantime, check out our first series, Survive the Night, if scary-comedy is your thing. Watch Survive the Night Here