Motivation Have No Much Of?

Everything I know about business I learned from a Muppet

I don’t believe motivation comes naturally. I believe in the “Yoda” school of thought,” as in “There is no try, there is do or do not.” I often get asked by Artists, “how do I motivate myself to do the grunt work of promoting myself?” My answer is, you don’t and you can’t motivate yourself. I believe that at our core, Humans don’t do anything they don’t have to do.

My Father was a sales manager who was in charge of a horde of salespeople. He once told me, when interviewing a potential salesperson for his team, he felt there were only a few pieces of information that mattered. Since anyone can give a good interview and be a disaster later, especially in Sales, where virtually anyone of moderate skill can sell themselves, his questions were simple, “Do you have a family?" “How many children.” “Do you have a mortgage?” “Car payments?” “Alimony?” “Child Support?” “Sick parents?” “Student Loans?” He was only interested in how much pressure that person was under. In his mind, that created an employee that had to succeed. Not a maybe, a must.

The “why” you are doing something is important. Your passion for art, for filmmaking and movies is great and makes you fascinating at parties. But, to do the work of finding work, of building a business, of sustaining that business? Passion doesn’t help very much when you’re looking at a list of cold calls to make. Who feels passionate or motivated for that activity? No one I know. Cold calls are something you force yourself to do, like putting a tired and hungry two year old into a car seat kicking and screaming. As much as you’d like to, you can’t exactly leave them by the side of the road as law enforcement frowns on that. The people waiting for your parking space are honking now, so you sit on your kid until they turn blue and can’t resist anymore and you strap them in. Add pressure to any equation and determination takes over. Purpose and dogged determination are built on the pressure of life, and not being forever transformed the first time you saw “The Godfather.”

You put yourself out there, because you have to, not because you’d like to. If you’d like to, you won’t. You’ll play “Minecraft” until it’s time to eat again. Then scroll Instagram and Tok Tok until bedtime.

Motivation is not something self-creating. Despite it being an action word, it is completely inert without something that brings it to life. So many times I hear, “I’m just not motivated today.” I have to ask, “what days are you motivated and are we waiting for that?”

There is a step before motivation, as in something always pushes you to be motivated. It can be financial pressure, fear, actively holding yourself accountable, or someone else actively holding you accountable. Motivation is a result, not a catalyst. Pressure is a catalyst. Pressure gives you purpose, and it’s purpose that motivates you.

“Show me the incentive, I’ll show you the outcome.” - Charlie Munger

My first day as an agent, I was brought into an empty office with a desk, chair and phone and nothing else. The guy who hired me said, and I quote, “there’s the chair, there’s the desk and there’s the phone. He stuck his arm out with an empty hand for his metaphor; Here’s a rope, don’t hang yourself.” He made the ubiquitous pretend yank of the rope over his head, turned and walked out, leaving me to my thoughts. Once I was able to see through the WTF panic attack, my thoughts were about my wife, my kids and my debt. So, I got down to the work of making it work.

He sounds cruel, but it was actually the best thing he could have said to me as it was already clear that no one was going to train me, at all. On top of that, it was a building full of competitors that would be happy if I failed. But, I was not going to fail. I was going to succeed because failure was not an option. That simple. So, I figured it out. It had nothing to do with motivation. The competition, doing right by my family, and paying my bills gave me pressure and purpose, and motivation kicked in later.

The great thing is that the financial pressure fueled my determination, which led me to get better by stringing successes together, that made me motivated, and that turned into passion. That led to even more motivation to help my clients, and that created joy in them and me.

Our wonderful lifestyle of living in Hollywood, and participating as Artists and Entrepreneurs in the greatest vocation on the planet can easily make us soft. The modern self-help gurus don’t help. When Oprah says “find your passion” as a tag line, she’s ignoring that passion absolutely does not come first. You’ll go round and round in your head trying to figure it out what your passion is and never start anything. You may start a few things, and when it gets hard, you’ll quit, determining that it wasn’t really your passion after all. You’ll stick with something only when you have to. When you get good at it and it reduces the pressure you’re under, you’ll notice that it will become your passion

.It’s tricky for Artists especially. The side projects that kept you engaged during times of prolonged inactivity like a strike or Pandemic, are easy to fall back on as an avoidance mechanism to doing the hard work of finding work. Cold calling, emailing, having coffee with other equally out of work Artists doesn’t feel like creating, but from my perspective it is. It’s not how Artists want to spend their time, but highly necessary.

It’s especially hard for the mature Artist who worked through the necessary steps decades ago and arrived at a self propelling, actualized career full of purpose and passion. Only to be faced now with an uphill battle. I say to you, the industry has changed dramatically in the past three years, and the earth below all of our feet is constantly moving.

Post pandemic, post strikes, post streaming wars, it’s time to dig in again. It’s time to get in touch with the pressure behind it all, which at this point shouldn’t be that hard. So, forget about passion for the time being. Go back to basics and reignite motivation by embracing the pressure and purpose of why you needed to find the work in the first place, and why you need to find the work now.

“There is no try, there is only do or do not.”