#407: How To Get Dragged Into Your Dream Job w/ Matt Farnsworth
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, creative, write, gpt, movie, called, rhino, lived, talking, creativity, marketing, ended, dude, creative process, acting, couple, process, heard, films, business
SPEAKERS
Speaker 2 (49%), Law (42%), Eric (8%)
Eric Readinger
0:00
Progress yeah guys
Law Smith
0:11
into the zone
Law Smith
0:20
Can you hear me? Yeah. Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah give us a couple of minutes we're still no worries tech issues
Law Smith
1:00
good No,
1:05
no
Eric Readinger
1:07
no, that should that figure out how to get that
Law Smith
1:11
maximized?
Law Smith
1:56
What's going on this is not going to be connected
Law Smith
2:13
you shooting only fans in him but you're only fans
Law Smith
2:33
Hey our production software's acted out so give us a couple of minutes.
2:39
No worries. Man. We can always reschedule it if we can't get it going.
Law Smith
2:44
Oh no, no. We didn't we have so behind. We're looking at a zoom on this laptop. That's why it's our audio Do you sounds bad but it's going in the mixer into a computer off to the side. We have to
3:20
Numis just suck and right now I can't even hear you.
Law Smith
3:24
We took we took out the we took out the cat five core that was connected to Wi Fi or we were doing a couple of little MacGyver issues, I think right now.
3:42
See down in Tampa.
Law Smith
3:44
Yeah. Where are you at?
3:47
I'm in Knoxville,
Law Smith
3:49
Knoxville, Tennessee other side. splitters Comedy Club wise.
2
Speaker 2
3:54
I didn't know that. No, I lived in LA for like 25 years. I've only been out here a couple years.
Law Smith
3:59
Why Knoxville? Are you doing anything with Tennessee?
2
Speaker 2
4:03
Yeah, there was a company that like I used to have a company called Revelation media and like my biggest client was here. And I ended up just being done with LA. I was like, I can't anymore man. It was just ridiculous.
Law Smith
4:18
How long did you live in LA?
2
Speaker 2
4:23
I lived all over LA me I lived in. I had a house up in Los Angeles and I lived in Santa Monica. I lived in Glendale, I lived in the Palisades and then I lived in Long Beach which I kind of dug the most I think down Sal
Law Smith
4:37
is a lot that is that so I was I looked out there from like oh six to 2010. And like I always thought Curb Your Enthusiasm was weird. Because you're like how would you run into people in LA? It's like Seinfeld running into people in New York kind of thing. There's way out of their own neighborhood. And then I realized LA is basically like, the same people kind of stay in like Marina del Rey, up to Santa Monica over to West Hollywood. And then those same people kind of stay in those neighborhoods that like Blanca did. Yeah. And my seat you
2
Speaker 2
5:19
can't drive out of a bra. There's no traffic you can't get anywhere anyway.
Law Smith
5:23
Right right. I just noticed that like I would run into people like anywhere from that like dogleg left over on the map. And when you think about Los Angeles, it's like, oh, you know, Riverside right next to it's got 11 million people. And that doesn't even count. I know, count into the LA County.
2
Speaker 2
5:49
I know. It's insane. We lived in anacreon for a while. We call it Ana crime because like, yeah, do you live in Anaheim? It's like you get to get robbed like at some point in time.
Law Smith
6:01
I went down there for a couple of baseball games to see the Tampa Bay Rays play and then the angels and then I did a few gigs there that were definitely sketchy.
2
Speaker 2
6:12
Yep, yep, for sure dude, and that because river tucky is right there. What's that? We call it river tucky. Riverside. Oh, really? A lot of people do all the kind of hoity toity people in Newport call. It that right. I don't
Law Smith
6:34
know death Can you can you say something real quick.
2
Speaker 2
6:41
Testing testing. How're you doing out there?
Law Smith
6:45
Better Yeah. And then you might want to put your computer on Do Not Disturb. Oh, because I heard pink noise. Oh, Grindr notifications.
7:00
A lot of those popping up, huh?
Eric Readinger
7:01
Getting
Law Smith
7:03
well you know, Eric societal man
Eric Readinger
7:10
my bad dude. No worries. This will record to Vimeo right. Zoom.
Law Smith
7:18
Right. Yeah, it should. I mean, I'm just gonna have to, is it Do we have it recording? Are you sure it's recorded?
7:25
It says recording in the corner for me. Alright, good.
Law Smith
7:28
Sorry. I the laptops like three feet away from us. It's a long time.
Eric Readinger
7:32
Okay. We're good.
Law Smith
7:36
Yeah, this isn't usually how we will we're usually we don't prepare for the interview. But we definitely prepare the tech part usually Yeah. Usually,
7:49
it'll be a good one.
Law Smith
7:50
Well, let's get into it. Yeah, we're good. All right. That that Farnsworth dot.net. That's easy to say the name and give the link to reach out to you anything else you need to pull out? And we're trying to do a top but the episode you'll find you'll find what you need. The audio was
8:16
in my name and bro you'll find stuff Yeah.
Law Smith
8:20
For people that don't see this on video you got a very cool guy, la look. Today, you got the beanie, you got the clear specs, you know, a white t shirt that could be $2 or $200 one of those kinda I can never tell. How long did you live in LA?
2
Speaker 2
8:45
Gosh, I think I moved out there in like 90 No 1999 2000. I lived there until two years ago. So 21 years.
Law Smith
8:55
Yeah, and what took you out there
2
Speaker 2
8:58
I went out there to pursue filmmaking and ended up jumping into acting early on. I was on a couple TV shows did some independent films did I did a lot in show business in terms of like the whole acting thing. I was kind of at the top of the game out there with that in terms of like CAA and like screen testing for huge movies all that stuff. Wow. Yeah, it was crazy bro. Like I mean I screen tested for Star Wars went up and met George Lucas like I've done a lot of cool stuff like on the I was it was kind of mind blowing actually times like sometimes you wonder like, what am I doing here? For real? But no, obviously didn't do that. And sort of writing my own films. I sort of kind of wanted to. I wanted to do it on my terms because there's a lot of terms in Hollywood. You have to slow things you got to do to get places.
Eric Readinger
9:52
Like what yeah, like I said it was my road
2
Speaker 2
9:55
bike. Really want to know what's important. Yeah, man. Like 24 Hour Fitness West Hollywood. You nailed it.
Law Smith
10:05
Once I heard something in the bathroom, I was like, I don't need it. What do you hear? Slapping
Eric Readinger
10:10
of? Oh, like gossip?
Law Smith
10:13
No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. That area is so gay. It's one of the gays places in America. It's so gay on the cop cars it has pixelated rainbow flag. Most people don't know that. That on the side of the cop car is supposed to be what West Hollywood looks like on the map. And they didn't they made it a little square as gay. Right, right. I mean, it's okay. I know that but I want to be gay. I wish I was.
2
Speaker 2
10:45
It's a different kind of place, man. And I used to laugh a lot about like the the use of the funniest titles on the porn theater on Santa Monica Boulevard. Because it would be like the most hysterical titles ever. When you drive by like you drive by and one week it'd be like, put it in coach. Just like read this titles. But yeah, it was it was it was weird place man Hollywood Hollywood's Hollywood and you know, there's definitely there's definitely accommodations that they want you to make. You know, the Harvey Weinstein thing that's no joke like some of that's real and,
Law Smith
11:20
you know, difficult before broke. Yeah, I
2
Speaker 2
11:23
mean, of course, there's so much going on in Hollywood. And
Law Smith
11:28
well, you know, I heard about Cosby's thing like 10 years before it really broke when Hannibal Burris talked about on stage and then that video went viral. I'd always heard it but I'm so far. I'm so far down the totem pole that it doesn't. You know what? I've just heard it a bunch. But you know, it's one of those things that a lot of comics heard it, but they've never what was I gonna do? I don't know.
2
Speaker 2
11:52
I mean, I enjoy I love my time there but I didn't enjoy the process of like, you're the right guy for the role. We're gonna put you we want you to do this role, but the director wants to hang out with you, Joel Schumacher and like to hang out. And you're like, Yeah, cool.
Eric Readinger
12:12
We're talking about Batman. Batman
2
Speaker 2
12:17
and I'm like, I'm like, I'm really kind of naive, right? I'm, I'm like from the Midwest. And I'm like, you know, what do you mean hang out did I'm like I said, I don't know. I mean, I just didn't work for me that way. Because I just I'm like, moralistically I come from a very different place and you know, it just didn't work. So So I've started making my own films, and I did. One a movie called Iowa was at Tribeca, and it was kind of cool man. It was released in theaters. And it was about like the crystal meth epidemic and in the Midwest, and then I did a horror movie that I made called the orphan killer. He doesn't kill orphans. He is an orphan that kills people. It's a slasher, and it like blew up do like 10 million downloads online and just like went, like viral about 12 years ago. And I think everybody and their mom pretty much just, you know, pirated the film that was into slasher and horror. So pretty much everybody seen that and then since then, I had a crazy like life in terms of my my breakup with my ex and just, dude, I had a crazy time like I went, I went off the deep end about seven years. ago, and just blew my life up. Big time. Why we like to hear crazy stories.
Eric Readinger
13:35
Yeah.
Law Smith
13:36
Wait, pause on that for a second. Okay, that we forgot to forget. Now. We forgot to ask the question we asked everybody the first time on on the show. This isn't the question but I want to I'm curious. Did you listen to an episode before coming on?
Eric Readinger
13:53
No. Thank you for grad school.
Law Smith
13:55
So the question we asked everybody when they come on the first time is, what advice would you give your 13 year old so
2
Speaker 2
14:05
you want to cliche answer, like your mom knows about the magazines underneath the bathroom counter underneath the towels, right?
Law Smith
14:14
It could be practical like that. It could be it's it's your choice, your 10 Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure phone booth. You go back in time you go right in front of you. And you come out and grab yourself by the lapels and go because you're wearing a blazer, I imagine. And you're
2
Speaker 2
14:33
like your Viking genetics should you should never drink.
Law Smith
14:38
Yeah, probably pretty good.
Eric Readinger
14:40
I'm probably pretty good.
Law Smith
14:41
I think that's the first time I've heard that too.
Eric Readinger
14:43
Yeah, we probably and a lot more people probably should say,
Law Smith
14:47
right. You're just not that good at drinking. That's what I like to tell my wife.
Eric Readinger
14:53
Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Yeah,
Law Smith
14:57
so let's fast forward to it. Sounds like to that's a major part of what you're just talking about kind of broke up with your girl. And you're kind of spiral spiraling. Is that fair to say?
2
Speaker 2
15:11
Yeah, well, I mean, I was I was sober for a long time, but look, there's a difference between sober and emotionally so but like, you can take away the chemical, but you're still not emotionally sober, right? Yeah. You're like a creative dude. Like me. I was doing I was like, you know, I'm playing these different roles and I'm auditioning for all this different stuff. And I'm using alcohol to sort of mask all these feelings. that I have. And, you know, it was cool. I met a woman. We had a relationship. We had kids, and I didn't drink for like 13 years. And whenever things blew up, you know, I was I was shooting a movie. And I met this with this bar and they're just walking 13 years right and just walking around offering shots to the crew, and I just grabbed one and just slammed it. Tequila just done 13 years just unconsciously grabbed it and started drinking. The things were on the decline with her at that time. But it got so bad so fast, that I ended up flipping a car six times. Okay, I broke my neck, my wingtip vertebrae, one inch to the left, I would have been paralyzed from the neck down. So now here I am in this hospital bed and I'm still not all there. I mean, I'm still being a baby. I think I checked myself out the next day when against my on my own recognizance against the hospital's wishes and I was like, you know, fuck it. I'm gonna I'm gonna take off from here. I'm in this hospital gown. I get in this cab and they like, I go to the residence and I'm staying at this is like where my life went to right. And what I do, I drank Wow. Right? I mean, huge kind of my head blood everywhere. I mean, it was just a mess. But I ended up having to go to rehab. And that's kind of where they said, Dude, you know? You're you're a baby like you need to wake up. Like seriously, like, you need to have some humility. You're not the all being all singing dancing crap with the world. So let's get you. Let's get your head straight. And I kind of got straightened out and after a couple years, I ended up with a career shift and I had marketed my own films to the point they had like a million followers. So I was good at marketing. And so that's where I started segwayed into starting my own company and starting to do digital marketing. And you know, I'd be saying no video because I've shot movies. And so that's kind of how that all happened. And then oddly enough, I ended up as a corporate executive at Transamerica.
Eric Readinger
17:36
Weird. That's that seems like a big job. Yeah, that isn't that out. Of that
2
Speaker 2
17:41
house. Like the way life works written thing you never imagine that it's gonna work the way it turns out, but what happened was is I have a good friend in Knoxville, and he had a company called Tag resources, which is a really great TPA. They're a third party administrator. So what they do is they are basically like the they handle all the back end of a retirement plan. So they handle all the fiduciary responsibility all that kind of stuff. And they needed marketing because they're there look wasn't just wasn't there man they you know, financial industry. Standards for creativity are not exactly soaring. So I started helping him and the company look better and eventually Transamerica came in and was interested in us we did a lot of channel marketing to and CO branding and Transamerica came in. And they ended up buying tag resources. And in the process offered me the position of the director of digital experience trans America.
Eric Readinger
18:46
I'm gonna take this bottle and
Law Smith
18:49
that was, that was
Eric Readinger
18:50
not normally our decoration. Just wanted to have a sad Dude, I
18:56
don't mind it.
Law Smith
18:57
Well, yeah, you don't hang out with a lot of sober people. They don't care most of the time. It's not like they're like, a lot of you can reach through, they'll do
Eric Readinger
19:06
EBIT in his face. That's all
Law Smith
19:10
I was just trying to make a penis kind of sculpture the two Tito's tween with dried zero sugar right yeah, on your penis heavy show pretty
2
Speaker 2
19:26
pretty good. That's great man. South South Park it up bro. Last episode. What was that? That gumballs the
Law Smith
19:33
Yeah, the but but I mean, our logo was a tidy deck. It's a deck that's a tie there. Should get credit for that is my best work. Yeah, no ha moment. Yeah, we're creativity. Yeah, right. Why?
19:48
I love creativity in any form.
Law Smith
19:51
Well, I want to kind of I want to go back to like, I'm always interested in the setbacks people have and how they got out of it. So like, you had a career change. You know, how did you kind of cope with that? How did you kind of I always like to know like, alright, what was the routine to get into this? The second career was it fight kicking in fight screaming was it I don't know I have these skills but I don't know kind of thing because there's a lot of that going on nowadays. You know, I don't want to read the question too much.
2
Speaker 2
20:28
It was it was all humility. You know, it was all like, taking what came my way, you know, and being like, okay, you know, they're gonna bring that out of the blue. They were like, do you want to just make changes to this website, where you're going to do changing? We're doing co branding, we're gonna we're co branding with our clients. Do you want to just change the colors on this and change the logo and change the the name of the company that we're co branding with? And I was like, man, you know, this is like, nothing was beneath me at that. Point. And so I just started doing it. And then as I saw what they were doing, I started seeing how it could be improved. And then as I saw how it could be improved, I would present to them my concepts of how I think that they could improve it with different technologies. That I understood. So that's how that sort of segwayed and then I realized I kind of enjoyed it, you know, and life is about hard work and not everything comes easily and do the work, you know, and I was so used to this sort of luxurious life where you get paid X amount to be on a TV show and all this you know, this easy sort of lifestyle where you show up you say your lines you get paid a lot of money and I had to relearn
Law Smith
21:46
you gotta wait to be picked right for that. That's what sucks about that industry. Like, people are like when I was out in LA, I was like, I just wanted to stand up, but they're like, You should go for this commercial audition. I got a friend that's gonna go put it in. I can't fucking read out loud number one. And number two, the show has proven that almost every episode almost I think I'm dyslexic, some sort but you know, that thing of waiting to be picked? Right? This happens in corporate America too. And not a great I don't know, I don't think it's the best strategy to wait around to be picked. It sounds I'd be happy well, but you can't there's you can do as much as you want to do that role. But it's kind of limiting and at a certain point, especially in acting.
Eric Readinger
22:39
Yeah, it's not sports. You can't go out and score 30 A game and be like, I'm the best obviously. Look at the scoreboard. It's
Law Smith
22:45
like meritocracy. Yeah, there's no it's politics. And so like a lot of actors when you're doing auditions, they like they know who they want before he walked in, you know, like they know the work they're looking for. And so, and it's and a lot of the time, even if you crush it in there, someone else might be on hold that they they're trying to negotiate. And so you might be like the best one, and then you go okay, but we're waiting for this set clean.
2
Speaker 2
23:14
Yeah. I mean, there are multiple roles where I would get the call and say you're the best actor sorry, we gotta hire Devon Sowell, we gotta hire Hayden Christensen. We got to hire this person, but we really wanted to hire you. But they've got the resume. They did a couple of things before you did that are a little bit bigger. So we're gonna go with them. I mean, it happens often. And a lot of times they're already picked out and they'll say, Hey, you're the best actor for it. I mean, I think if I'd hung in there, I would have broken through because I was just so close on so many big things that something was going to happen, you know, but that's the way it turned out. Yeah. It's hanging in there. Right. They have that hope. What do you have? So I mean I had a lot of good. I had a lot of a lot of good opportunities. No, and I think that I was real close but I'm not regretful I'm pretty happy with my life right now. Great family. great kids, great wife. You know, I'm in nice house. I'm, I'm blessed man. Seriously. So fame is not all it's cracked up to be. I can tell you that.
Eric Readinger
24:15
You still have that itch to act and stuff right stuff. Do you do anything like that?
2
Speaker 2
24:20
Yeah, dude. Yeah. I'm writing a drama. Right now. crime, crime drama. That's a period piece I've been doing it for. I can't like sometimes like it'll be like five years nothing will come to me. And then I'll just a lightning strike will happen and I want to write that and then I'll go and I'll start writing and then I'm up at four o'clock in the morning like writing for three hours before I even work and I do have solid connections to a lot of people in Hollywood. I mean, I had my agent was at William Morris, and then he moved over to CAA. And I have a lot of people that I know there that are at high levels and some some people that didn't medium levels. I think really honestly the level that really gets things done is not that high end level. Once you get to that level, nothing happens like you. It's really the real middle middle, middle range working area where people really get the jobs and they're out there hustling for you and the agents are working for you. And so I've got connections to that level and I plan to take this movie out and get it made.
Law Smith
25:17
Nice. That's awesome. You have to keep us updated on that I for sure. I definitely think Glad to have you back on because I feel like there's a lot to go to talk to you about you know, sure. All right, are you so you're gonna make an independent out of this. I want to really I want to ask. I think creative process was really interesting. It sounds like you do lightning in the bottle method. You know, Trump's do, you know, it's like, shut everything down. I gotta write this down. I gotta get this out. Do you have to walk away? Yeah, you have other than lightning in a bottle because that doesn't stop really you can have as whatever process you have to flick creative, but you know that that'll happen no matter what that you'd have to like. I have to like walk away and be like, let me record this real quick. This bad dad
Eric Readinger
26:06
joke I have an idea for a movie the other day. Somebody's thinking about that. So there's he's gonna pick you one white rhino. Live in the world and there's a guy designated to like, guard him until the thing dies. Just a movie about this guy and this Rhino where he does do it. You know, the first scene he's in the military sucks at something and they're like, you're on Righto duty. And he's bullshitted and he has to go out there and guard this Rhino. And of course they start to like each other countries
Law Smith
26:34
isn't somewhere in Africa. Obviously,
2
Speaker 2
26:38
that'll work. That'll work but you but you have to arc the story. So the rhino is going to be shipped from one place to another place. Worked in his job. Right? Yeah. Then he has to guard it as it's transported and as it's transported. It's attacked multiple different times by multiple different enemies right?
Eric Readinger
26:58
The rhino faces life. Maybe at some point. We were established that emotional connection.
Law Smith
27:04
I think we've both been nerding out about storytelling since we had John let's see, let's say on like two months ago, because he really broke down storytelling in a branding kind of messaging way. Which or like even a sales pitch. Whatever you're doing a deck, you should tell stories, right? Especially presentations. You know, I want to ask you about that but creative process. Do you have a process? Like here's here's how, if I'm on my game, here's what I do.
2
Speaker 2
27:36
Well, I think that really a lot of what I do is make sure I never miss the moments that the moments of clarity that come to me look our minds have to be at some point in time to get really creative, you know, sort of clear of any kind of interference and I think children do it best, like kids have the best minds possible for creativity. They just have nothing that has already interfered with their their antennas that can receive all these creative, you know, lightning strikes that can but I would say at night you know when I get I have a notepad near my bed and I know it's wake up, but in write stuff down, but I have come up with some of my best ideas, you know, sleeping, I'll wake up from a dream or in the state of, you know, sort of half half assed asleep and I'll just get up and I'll start writing you know, and I'll go into the bathroom and I'll write it down or I'll record what I was thinking. And I know that throughout in history, there have been some of the best songs, the greatest musicians and the greatest lyrics of all time had been written this way. And that's kind of one of the processes that I do and then organizationally lately, I've actually leaning on, on chat GPT for some organizational structure, I want to like
Law Smith
28:55
so like, putting structure in the thoughts, right, you got you've got like, I got all this I need to get all this in there, but I need to formulate it which a lot of writers writing teams one guy's that one guy's more Bucha GPT a lot of the time. So the structure of everything. That's what helps you it.
2
Speaker 2
29:17
Like Ceci from a business standpoint, you know, if we're talking business here, my mind doesn't go as creative into organizing the bullet points of how I'm going to get my messaging across and a business plan whereas Chad GPT can help me with that. And I take that, analyze it and then I'll restructured or reorganize it rewrite it how I want to write it but
Law Smith
29:36
in the notepad next to the bed. It's great right Tom? No, it's great, but you have to get out of the habit of going out remember this and not going bleeding. That's I was
Eric Readinger
29:50
gonna say just training yourself to actually wake up and do it.
Law Smith
29:54
But I wake up like that still like I'll wake up probably half the nights in the middle of the night. I have creative ideas but I'll sometimes I do and I'm like yep.
30:07
And then you forget it in the morning if you don't I always
Law Smith
30:09
forget it. Oh no, my memory is fucking horrendous. So I write down almost everything like religiously and so 49% Better memorized if you write it down, or made up such as to the Corrections Department on another episode, I said it was 29 I looked
Eric Readinger
30:26
it up for next time it'll be 53. But you know, whatever,
Law Smith
30:31
man, maybe we're all taking gingko biloba but it's one of those things that lightning in a bottle is very interesting. And using AI is very interesting. You know, how have you kind of done that. I want to ask you about marketing but also the creative side. Because creatively I think it'll help. I think it helps form structure for real creatives. Like you're a real creative. We, I think we can gather that like, there's, by the way, I like being critiqued by people, because I do they think like amusing and flaky, they think I think it's a pejorative business world. A lot of the time unless you're probably where you're at. It's a little different because you're brought in as the creative, but I'm coming in trying to be a fractional cmo for someone and they're like, Don't listen to him. He's creative. I'm like, No, I'm, it's math. To me. A lot of marketing is math and then like, a lot of creative is really iterative in my head. Right? I'm not gonna make anything from wholecloth but I can get that creative done. But I just I hate a lot of creatives in the in the working world, because they are flaky. They are like, Yeah, sort of to do dates. You know, like, yeah,
Eric Readinger
31:47
there's a lot of pressure. I can't work with this pressure. If you give me a date to process.
Law Smith
31:54
Oh, dude, I've had conversations where I go, you can't tell me I don't understand the creative process for people in the fucking comic. You get it done. If you can sit down. They can
Eric Readinger
32:04
do it on stage in front of people I'm creating. I don't prepare
Law Smith
32:08
at all. Well, I still go out and do it right in fact, but it's like, but you can overthink all you want about doing the task, you can just start doing it well, right. So like, while I'm trying to hire you as a creative to do it. Don't give me this bullshit that you know, I'm not empathetic or understand it. You have to sometimes sit down with nothing on in a blank room and just do it.
Eric Readinger
32:33
That's like, taught me we saw the guy that made that shitty movie. The room was in the room. Yeah. Somebody on Twitter was like Tommy Do you have any advice for on burning up by
2
Speaker 2
32:49
deliberately Yeah, yeah billboards up all over you know I made that successful. He that was marketing. He put billboards up all over Sunset Boulevard Highland in the Brea and he just marketed the shit out of that movie. And it became this like cult, you know, phenomenon. I know Greg Lindley over there who runs a Lemonly theaters and you can get the movie in there you can for Wallet. So what he did is he for wall the movie, which means you pay a fee to get the movie in the theater. And so what it was bankrolling him was allowing him to make that a cult classic, but I seriously doubt that movie was making a lot of money.
Eric Readinger
33:26
It's like that guy had a weird financial backer somewhere like he's
Law Smith
33:32
an example of a guy that's void of creative right.
Eric Readinger
33:37
Well, pointless. Advice is good enough. Somebody asked his advice. How do you start making films and all you wrote was start Yeah, yeah. period start by aka
Law Smith
33:45
was a director and taught it over. You University of Texas Fort Worth and like, that was his thing. Just go go. in there and dirty like go just go stop overthinking it, you know,
2
Speaker 2
33:58
now, especially I guess, because we all have these phones that have 4k capability. I mean, you could technically do that. Is it going to be useful? I don't know. I mean, you know, some of the weirdest ideas and some of the things that seem like accidents sometimes end up being the greatest creative, you know, creative pieces that we work on. I mean, I think that commerce and creativity are really where I've had success and merging those two together, just the creativity with the business and because I was raised by a businessman, my dad was a salesman he worked for IBM. He worked for Microsoft. He was very successful, really smart guy. And so I learned a lot from him. Right? And
Law Smith
34:38
yeah, yeah, different echelon of salesmen. That's, that's especially back then that was like, I'm guessing ibm 80s. Microsoft 90s.
2
Speaker 2
34:48
Right. Yeah, he was he was with Bill Gates. And he would, he went with Bill Gates, he would meet with Bill and he was in with all those guys. And, you know, he just was a he's a really smart guy. And so he taught me how to, you know, how to work hard, hard effort, hard work ethic. It was difficult for me because I was creative, but he taught me how to structure you know, sales, how to structure a business plan. And so I think that really benefited me on this side of the on this side of things, you know,
Law Smith
35:20
so yeah, so part of the process is Be present around you know, around the kids around the free time, right? I've had to figure that out as well. It's like, you gotta let your brain great. The reason you're getting the ideas in the middle of the night is why shower thoughts is the best read it said it you finally don't have anything else to do. Yeah, your brains turned out there. You can look at your phone. That's like the only place people don't look at their phone out in the shower. But it's like, the reason you get these kind of left center thoughts for yourself is because you're like letting your brain kind of read and not have to work on anything at
Eric Readinger
35:57
all input. And it's like, oh, I don't want to do maybe I'll do some output. I get
Law Smith
36:01
the best ideas working out a lot of the time because I can't really my mind goes blank for a little bit and then back it gets it all going.
2
Speaker 2
36:11
Oh, yeah. 100% I mean, I have a book that I think is one of the greatest books. I don't know where it's somewhere on here. That I think I've read in terms of creativity by Rick Rubin.
Law Smith
36:21
Yeah, I've heard a lot about I've actually heard a lot of people talking about this room, the creative act. Yeah,
2
Speaker 2
36:28
dude. I mean, he just basically sums up who I am in the throughout. I mean, every word he says is like, okay, I get it. I mean, I just I just get it. I think you would want to, you'd be like, Oh, it makes it and he talks about processes that you can try, you know, that might be valuable to you. And so I've been trying to implement you know, some of those, you know, practices even at Trent Arca and, you know, sort of reverse engineering some of the some of the way we think about, you know, do we need to have a structured record this interview with this sales rep that talks about, you know, responsibilities, practices for selling that to an advisor, and I'm like, let's not script it. You've been doing this for how long? Yeah, 10 years. You know what I mean? Just get in there and just do it, bro. Just just I'm gonna roll. I'm going to make you look amazing. You talk Don't worry about it. I want you to pitch it to me like you're pitching an advisor. Don't do a script.
Eric Readinger
37:29
Yeah, that looks way more genuine too. Because people who aren't used to acting or being on camera, if they were told that you have to say this the Certain Way that'll get in their head and you're better off just being like, do your thing. Do you just do it like any other day? And that's where the magic happens.
Law Smith
37:45
Yeah, and it sounds like you're very adaptable. That last kind of story. It was really on the spot, I'm assuming but it seems like you're kind of adaptable to the situation. Previously active and now proactive. Tell us about AI in the creative process, or anything kind of with marketing really. Just kind of you can have it write custom code for you.
2
Speaker 2
38:09
Where Yeah, you can and now there's the just plugins are just popping up on chat GPT so like we're what we're talking about here, I think is prompting and I can send you guys an email after this. There's a great guy online that has like these he's got like a list of prompts. And yeah, they're like so if you prompt and you train GPT on, you know, all of the F stops the kind of camera you want it to use. You train it on all so you want to do an image for mid journey, you train chat GPT on all of the styles that you would like it to be able to choose from, and then you ask chat GPT to create a description based on the settings that you've programmed. And after you do that you hit render me that and it generates this response. You take the spawns, put it over into mid journey as an imagined prompt, and then it creates these ultra realistic images. And it's just wild to me that, you know, learning this process it's like you're communicating and you wonder like what am I communicating with? You know,
Eric Readinger
39:20
it's it's crazy during recording for you. It's pretty much when you don't necessarily know even know what it looks like. It tells you what it looks like. That's crazy. Yeah,
2
Speaker 2
39:30
it'd be like, no one's Gary V's voice like do me write me a speech and like a combination of jokes.
Law Smith
39:37
Got a story for you. It's called I make money. Okay, you do want fans and then you go, bro, you just throw it out throw. Yeah, that's what I'm gonna buy the New York Jets one day. We gotta go. But please send us that email. We'll have to have you back on. Because I yeah, that's part of that's exactly what we'd like to show. Like, did you know about this thing with this thing? Yeah, we don't know about most people don't know about that's awesome. We'd like to we'd like to be resourceful girthy
Eric Readinger
40:10
workers. Yeah, we're good. We're
Law Smith
40:13
all about girthy ROI in this place, man. All right, man. We'll have to have you back on. I'll send the booking link and I appreciate it, brother.
2
Speaker 2
40:21
Yeah, stay in touch guys. Thank you. Appreciate. Thanks, man. For sure. Take care. Buh Bye
Law Smith
40:31
So I read
Summary
Expand All
Can you hear me?
0:00
How long did you live in LA?
4:18
What advice would you give your 13 year old self?
11:27
How to deal with setbacks in your career.
18:49
Waiting to be picked is not a good strategy.
21:46
Tom’s creative process –.
27:04
The importance of marketing your ideas.
32:49
The importance of having a structured record in your marketing.
36:29
