Right now, I’m on the Boston to New York Megabus on my way to film a commercial for Yahoo! And it got me thinking, “How did I get here?”

I mean, two years ago, becoming a director was the last thing I would have imagined. Climb the ladder to creative director? Sure. Own an agency some day? Possibly. But film director? Those were the specialists. The hired guns. That could never be me.

Yet here I am, one and a half films and a few commercial shoots into my new career as an independent film and commercial director. There have been so many divergent paths along the way. But as the months go on, I am doing more directing and less ad-guy freelancing, and I have to say, it’s incredible.

So I thought it would be a fun exercise to plot my career path in much more detail than the greatest hits you’ll find on my resume and LinkedIn page.  I think it’s a pretty good example that even if you’ve spent most of your life doing one thing, it’s not too late to evolve into something else.

Here’s a rough time line of my work history from college graduation to present day:

• 1993: Graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a Bachelor of Arts in English/minor in Journalism.
• 1993: Worked for the Boston Phoenix Personals department in their call center, helping singles write things like: “29 yo man seeks woman for long walks along the Esplanade. Must share  passion for leather masks.”
• 1994: Realized this was not a gateway to more serious journalism. Quit and moved to San Diego without a car or a job.
• 1994: Became a receptionist at Flowers Group Advertising & Design in San Diego. Published my first ad copy. (A coupon ad for Sea World.)
• 1995: Homesickness and a desire to pursue copywriting bring me back to Boston. No job, but a clarity of purpose.
• 1995: Odd jobs at mutual fund companies and call centers as I worked on my spec copywriting portfolio. Most likely interrupted your dinner to sell you an MBNA credit card. Sorry about that.
• 1996: My first advertising job! The Morrison Agency in Atlanta takes a chance and hires me as a junior copywriter. Start to believe I’m hot shit.
• 1997: After roughly a year at TMA, I get homesick again and move back to Boston. This time, though, I had a job lined up at Allen & Gerritsen. My account was to be Sybase.
• 1997: Writing sales sheets for enterprise software was not exactly what I pictured when I got into advertising. Where were the frequent flier miles? The Super Bowl commercials? The stays at Shutters?
• 1998: Enter the portfolio program at the Creative Circus in Atlanta (my second stint in that city). Even though I was working in the business, I wasn’t doing the kind of work I wanted to do. And my portfolio wasn’t strong enough to get me into the agencies that were. Time to start over.
• 1999: Graduate from the Creative Circus. Get a job at a Boston-suburb startup agency called the Donovan Group.
• 2000: Win my first advertising awards.
• 2001: The Donovan Group closes its doors after several dot com clients stop paying their bills.
• 2001: Move to Cleveland for job at Brokaw.
• 2004: Move to New York for job at Lowe
• 2005: Lowe restructures management. With new management, I go “out with the old” and rack up my second layoff.
• 2005-2006: Permalance at StrawberryFrog.
• 2006: Move back to Boston for job at Arnold
• 2007: Create campaign that won Volvo business. Feeling secure.
• 2008: Get offered raise and promotion from direct boss.
• 2008 (two days later): Get laid off. For a third time.
• 2008: Start writing this blog.
• 2009: Make a movie about people who reinvented themselves after a layoff.
• 2010: Begin production on another movie about the reinvention of Detroit
• 2010: Get my first commercial production work for Dell.
• 2011: Get my second commercial production work (also for Dell).
• 2011: Finish 15-minute short of Detroit film. Continue production of feature.
• 2011 (today): Hired for more commercial production work, this time for Yahoo!

I’m having a blast, and I have the forced exploration into alternative careers to thank.

A few weeks ago, I joined a rag-tag team of do-gooders to launch an alternative fundraising site for our next film, “Lemonade: Detroit.”  The idea is this: you buy individual frames of the film a dollar. In return, you get producer status both in the end credits and on IMDB.

Why am I so excited about this?

First of all, I take great personal satisfaction in giving my perceived obstacles a beat down. If Hollywood studios aren’t lining up to produce my film about Detroit’s reinvention, it’s on me to find another way.

Second of all, it’s working. In just a few weeks, 750 producers have funded almost 19,000 frames. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan has agreed to match funds through the end of the year. And the momentum is gaining.

On top of everything else, it provides a framework to crowdsourcing that I can get on board with. While I’ve always been intrigued by the potential of crowdsourcing, most  existing models have rubbed me the wrong way. Too many rely on tons of effort by tons of people for a very slim chance of reciprocation.

What excites me about Buy A Frame is that the effort/reward ratio is pretty even. Invest a dollar and three minutes of your time in a single frame of the film, and you’ll get your name in the credits. Invest the same amount of time with a $24 investment, and you’ll get a digital file with your second of the film, along with your name edited into it, as well as an invite to the premiere. There’s an actual return on your time and investment. Everybody wins instead of just me.

Will we be able to fund the entire film like this? Let’s put it this way, in a 90 minute film, there are 129,600 frames. In theory, we could shoot a feature length documentary for less than $130k. But that would require favors, an abbreviated shooting schedule, and sacrificing some crucial spit-and-polish post production. So on top of BuyAFrame, we’re also seeking additional corporate sponsors to get behind the film.

Not to mention, part of the mission for “Lemonade: Detroit” is to put Detroiters to work. And if all we’re doing is accepting favors, then it tips the scales in favor of an out-of-town filmmaker. And that’s just not what this film – or the spirit of Detroit – are all about.

In a recent conversation with a kick-ass photographer friend, I asked why on Earth she wasn’t doing it full time. Everyone who knows her knows she has a gift. She’s done a couple of projects that have gotten her some pretty decent buzz. Clearly, she should be taking pictures for a living, right?

Not according to her. In my friend’s mind, once she’s shooting for money, it would cease to be meaningful. Her work would become “work” and her motivation would then shift from passion to paycheck.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love her ideals, however misguided. She’s been snapping pictures since she was barely old enough to say cheese. And I appreciate that she wants to hang on to that passion, that love, that desire, and not let a thing like money take that away from her.

But I’d like to cite two examples from “Lemonade” that prove her logic is bullshit.

First, Bob Weeks: For two decades, Bob roasted coffee on the side, as a hobby. Then he got laid off from his ad gig, put a $10k roaster on a credit card, and now does it full time.

Think he likes coffee any less? Think every time he makes a pot of coffee, he thinks, “Oh, man. I used to love roasting coffee. But now that I’m getting paid for it it’s such a grind.” (Pun intended.) If anything, Bob is more passionate about his craft than ever. Now that roasting coffee is directly tied to his livelihood, he’s constantly searching for new beans, experimenting with new roasting methods, testing new coffee concoctions. Bob’s having a blast. And he’s running a successful business not in spite of his passion, but because of it.

Second, Kevin Kearns: Once upon a time, Kevin was an artist in his spare time. Never sold paintings for money. Art was nothing more than an expression and an escape for him. That was, until his freelance advertising business dried up.

Kevin then decided to pursue his hobby as a career. He painted and painted and painted some more. He moved out of Manhattan and into the country. Now he sells 40-60 paintings every year, and his work is on display at the Stricoff Gallery in NYC.

Now, there are times when passion and money cannot co-exist. “Lemonade,” itself, was one of those examples. Other than a couple of hotels and a few meals for the crew, the production budget was exactly zero dollars. It was a passion project for everyone involved. The crew, the director, the producers, the cameramen . . . they all did it because it was a project they believed in. And because of that passion, the film got their best efforts.

If I had a $10k, $20k, or even a $50k budget, I would have had to place parameters around their efforts. Even though everyone involved would have appreciated the compensation, it would have become a day’s-pay-for-a-day’s-work exchange. Instead, people contributed for reasons more valuable to them than money. And there’s no doubt in my mind it was a better film because of it.

But this is not the case for my friend. Money would not sully her passion for photography. It’s inside her. And it’s important to realzie that who she is and what she gets paid for don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

If you can earn a living doing what you love, you owe it to yourself – and the people who would pay you – to at least explore that possibility.

We just finished the trailer for “Lemonade: Detroit.” Truth be told, it’s still not done-done. It needs a logo treatment. There are some small mix issues that need adjusting. It could use a (much) better web site.

But at this stage, it was more important for me to get it out there than it was to make all four wheels gleam to a shine. The way we’re going to get sponsors so we can shoot the feature (before the weather gets too crappy in Michigan) is to generate some buzz beforehand.

I’m glad I did, too. Because it’s only been up for two days, and the chatter is already incredible.

Have a look at the preview. Let me know what you think. To be clear, this is not yet a feature film and we are actively looking for sponsors to make it so. If you have any connections to a brand that wants to get behind this project, or even a philanthropic rich uncle who wants to generate positive change in Detroit, please let me know. You can also download the sponsorship package here:

DOWNLOAD SPONSORSHIP PACKAGE

Thanks again for all your support. Hope you enjoy the preview for “Lemonade: Detroit.”

Cheers,

Erik

Ever hear the Hindu story about the tree that grants wishes? It’s a good one.

An uncle tells a group of kids that a banyan tree will grant any wish that they desire. They rush outside to the tree and excitedly make their wishes. But unexpectedly they find that the tree also gives a wish’s opposite. With candy comes stomachaches. With toys, boredom.

Hopelessly focused on end results – fruits of actions – the kids try to solve their dilemma by asking for bigger toys and sweeter candy. The opposite continues to follow: more boredom and stronger stomachaches.

As the kids get older they ask for wealth, power, money, fame. They get these things along with greed, insomnia, paranoia, anxiety. Some are convinced they aren’t wishing smart enough and keep trying. Some become frustrated and wish for death to end it all, only to be granted the opposite: rebirth, under the same tree, with the same level of awareness.

To some, this story is just an athletic way to say “be careful what you wish for” (who knows? maybe it’s the fountainhead for that saying). But I think it’s more sophisticated than that. For me, it’s a reminder that turning lemons to lemonade is a process. It rarely (if ever) has a well-defined end.

Long before creating our dual-independent life, my wife and I made many choices that set us up to live the life we strive for today. (My wife is the driver of this, by the way. Without her I’d live in a van down by the river. Forever adjusting my pants, barking about what you need to do to make a meaningful life.)

But without a doubt the most important part of our process is dedicating ourselves, everyday, to avoid the temptation of focusing on some kind of end result. We’re simply happiest when we aren’t focused on the fruits at all.

Not that there aren’t pragmatic, rational things that you need to deal with. There are. Savings, cost-cutting, spending discipline, life insurance. But they make the process possible. It’s the picking of lemons when you don’t feel like it. Getting up everyday to mix it. Sticking to the pure sugar when the bad stuff is more convenient.

I bring this up because for all the talk of changing the world by focusing on the passion you have within you, it’s all too tempting to focus on some kind of endless search for a result. If you work toward a rigid idea of a big payoff, the payoff will inevitably come in a different form than what you had in mind. You’ll be disappointed, and the cycle carries on. And on. And on.

The self-guided professionals I admire get up every day to pursue something in line with their own conscious, ignoring the pull from the fruits to the best of their ability. Lives that are simply led. Giving not back, but along the way instead.

Every now and then – especially when you’re starting – temptations arise that pull you away from a productive focus. Like when you see someone in your industry bullshitting and getting paid for it. How does that idiot make money and I’m scraping this month? How does that blowhard get the speaking gig and I’m stuck on the sidelines?

It’s a toxic focus on an end result – money, fame, position of authority. Recognizing that it’s all a process, my wife and I often help each other pull back from the temptation to judge, be jealous, and draw connections to what we’re doing wrong. If you decide to follow your passion and go it alone, you’ve got to — got to — find someone to help you expel that toxin from your system and bring you back to your idea of success. I’m not much of a sharey-emotionally kind of guy to be giving this advice (just ask my wife), but I don’t think you can do this part alone. I know I couldn’t.

Here’s another temptation that can derail you from focusing on the right things: Jealous people who try to strip you of your power. Anyone who’s gone it alone has experienced this. If you decide to unplug from the matrix, I’m warning you now that there will be people who will find a reason — and unhesitatingly tell you about it — why it is that you’re able to unplug and they can’t.

You have a spouse. You don’t have a spouse. Your spouse works. Your spouse doesn’t work. Your kids are young. Your kids are old. You got a severance. You didn’t get a severance.

Someone I considered a friend actually told me – out loud – that I was lucky to have a Sugar Momma. Crazy. I went from disbelief, to pissed, to confused. The guy clearly chose to forget what kind of professional my wife has chosen to be. Or what our life together actually is. (Or what it means to be a supportive friend for that matter.)

Support for a solo endeavor is a sophisticated thing. It flows in and out of relationships. Your partner might provide more support in one form or another at a particular point in time, but you’re sacrificing in other ways. (If you aren’t, you better. Fast.)

My wife and I sacrifice for a pretty simple notion of success. We went to the zoo together on a Tuesday once. Once we worked remotely together at my in-laws house for a day, and spent the night. And now that we’ve put skiing back in our life after cutting it as an unnecessary expense during cash-strapped startup time, we figured out that of all our ski days this year exactly zero were on a weekend. We followed the snow, not the prescribed days of the week.

Skiing provides another metaphor of our life together. My wife skis well. Really well. She has a passion for it, developed after years of coming to Colorado on vacation when she was a kid in the Midwest. When it came time to find a home after law school, she uprooted with little network support, took the Colorado bar, and set out to make a life for herself in an environment that provided her so many meaningful relationships. And also so she could ski.

She truly followed her heart. When I go skiing with her, I feel like I’m along for the ride. I almost get more joy from watching her do her thing during our days together on the slopes than I do from skiing itself.

This focus on the path and not the destination? Avoiding the wishing tree? It’s a bump run for me. It doesn’t come naturally. I try, and keep trying. And I experience moments of relative success here and there. But I probably would never have been aware of the run, how to get there, or how to prepare before hitting it if it wasn’t for my wife. She keeps me going in the proper direction.

There’s a Sugar Mamma for ya’. More like a Champagne Powder Mama.

Focusing on the money part of the equation also ignores the other, often more difficult and draining aspects of support that the people in your life will give you. Whatever kind financial support my wife has given me, sharing a paycheck will never test her resolve to the degree that my behavior and emotional bullshit does.

The courage to follow our passion and avoiding the temptation of the wishing tree comes in the form of discarding the Jones’s idea of success and never letting anyone strip us of the strength it took to do it in the first place.

And the more I learn to accept the gift that is my wife, the happier we both are.

It’s a process. Every moment of every day. Sometimes I go to the tree and wish for things. It’s inevitable. When I’m strong enough to seek support, I pull back and focus on what’s in front of me.

Because that’s all there ever is: What’s in front of us. There is no end. The means are all.

The banyan tree story ends with a kid who was disabled and couldn’t go outside to the wishing tree with his friends. He observed their behavior from afar. Pained to watch his friends in their doomed loop, he said that if he were under the tree he would wish that his friends would see the errors of their ways. That they’d understand that fruits of end-results only cause more pain and lead nowhere.

He gained Moksha from this, of course, and became one with the universe. An end result that can only be gained by not focusing on it at all.

____________

Aaron Templer (AT) mashes up leadership with strategy, branding and integrated marketing for clients in search of the why. aarontempler.com

There’s a fantastic community of people out there who get off on helping others overcome their bullshit excuses for complacency. One of the best is Hugh MacLeod, the always genius and often surly cartoonist, author, and blogger behind GapingVoid.

Like me, Hugh once worked in advertising. Unlike me, he’s figured out how to fully commit to his art, no longer straddling between the two worlds.

I woke up yesterday to this message on Twitter. Turns out, Hugh created the above Cube Grenade in my honor. (For the definition of a “Cube Grenade,” click here.) He often does these for private commission, so to say I’m flattered is an understatement.

But the truth is, he’s always giving away his art. He’s one of the few entrepreneurs who fully embrace that you get by giving. And not just philosophically, but in real, financial terms. By giving freely of his work, he’s established his brand. People know him now. And he gets hired to do more of it.

I have much to learn from him.

It was a tough decision to write this post.

I’m someone who believes that when you think and act positively and with hope, those things come back to you. Likewise, the converse is true. We all know people with a cloud of doom over their heads. They expect their lives to suck so their lives suck so they expect their lives to suck so their lives suck so they expect their lives to suck…etc.

I choose to be the opposite of that. I try to write about good stuff. People who have succeeded. Stories of adversity overcome. I don’t want to invite defeat into my life, nor into yours. So when things get rocky for me personally, I see no need to report on it. Unless if, by doing so, it helps you in some way.

This is one of those times.

As you know, I’ve spent the past year encouraging people to get off their asses and take risks. This blog, “Lemonade,” talks I’ve given, the book I’m writing…they are all in an effort to both preach the values I believe and be a living example of them. But my biggest fear is that I will be the cobbler with shoeless kids. That at the end of the day, it will all be a bunch of smoke.

So here is an honest breakdown of both the hopes and challenges I face. Not because I believe in what I’m doing with less conviction. But to reinforce how important that conviction is, especially in difficult and trying times.

The Challenges:

1. Seeing more than two feet in front of me: Every month is a fire drill. Will we have the mortgage? Can we afford health insurance? How are we paying for my son’s karate lessons? We’re even applying for Obama’s federal mortgage restructuring program in the hopes that we’ll be able to keep our home.
2. Debt: Every time I travel to do a screening, my expenses are reimbursed. But by the time I see those checks, new expenses crop up. And interest accrues. It’s a frustrating game of catch up that I haven’t experienced since I was in my 20s.
3. Family stress: My daughter is a four year old social extrovert who needs other children to play with. Problem is, extended preschool costs $5k/year, which we can’t afford. So my wife plays countless games of “I Can Do That!” and Chutes & Ladders. Every. Single. Day. That’s not healthy for anybody.
4. Personal stress: Think I like denying my kids the preschool they need? Think it’s easy for me chastise Wall St. for taking bailout money on one side of my mouth and then apply for it on the other? Think I like hearing my wife tell me she’s afraid to open the bank statements? I lose sleep over these things every night.

Why It’s Worth It:

1. “Lemonade” and PFTA are making a profound difference in people’s lives: Emails like this, comments like this, and tweets like this make me feel like the message isn’t falling on deaf ears.
2. The Carrots Are Getting Closer: I have a literary agent from ICM who believes in the book. We’ve been going back and forth on the proposal for months and are getting really close to unleashing it on publishers.
3. We’re close to having “Lemonade” air on TV, potentially exposing it to tens of millions of households around the world
4. We cancelled our cable television, home telephone, and YMCA memberships. This is under “Worth It” because they are un-necessities we should have gotten rid of a long time ago.
5. There is gaining momentum for “Lemonade, Detroit”: The talent working on it is ridiculous. The city is opening its arms to a film that wants to uncover the good instead of sensationalizing the bad. Two of my favorite ad agencies in the world have contacted me about doing the advertising, marketing and promotions for it. And I am in discussions with a couple of different brands to underwrite the whole project.

So that brings me to you. As I said, I typically wouldn’t unload on readers like this. But I think it’s important for you to see that I am committed. And if you’re going through a difficult time while trying to do something new and important and challenging, it’s probably difficult precisely because of how important it is. Plus, you can take some solace in the fact that you’re not alone.

So, please, keep at it. And I will, too.

We’re going for it. With no backers and very few scruples, we’re pulling a Field of Dreams. (Actually, we’re pulling a Teddy Roosevelt. But I digress.) Build it first, get funding later. Gain momentum by doing. Create something people want to be a part of.

It’s what I’ve been preaching for the past year, and now I must put my lack-of-money where my mouth is. As Steve Hall said in “Lemonade”:

If you’ve had an idea you’ve always wanted to do now is the time to do it. Just do it!

We’re about to start shooting a film about the reinvention of Detroit. And oh, what an amazing team of talent we’ve amassed. Here are the early adopters; those people just crazy enough to build it first and trust something amazing will come later:

• Ringside Creative and Doug Cheek: Powerhouse integrated media studio and sponsors of our Detroit screening.
• Finish Post and Andrea Papazoglou: Post-production facility in Boston that polished the hell out of “Lemonade.”
• Peter Nelson: The DP behind “Lemonade,” “Art & Copy,” and Michael Moore’s “Sicko.”
• Chris Perry: A-list producer, former Arnold colleague, and fellow Bukowski’s Dead Author’s Club mug holder.

It’s far too early to thank the Acadamy. But it’s certainly not to early to thank these people. So, thank you for your insanity everyone. Here we go.

Sure, it’s easier at cocktail parties. “What do you do for a living?” needs some kind of reply. But once we define ourselves by our career titles, it places a whole set of generalizations on us. Most of them are half truths. And all of them are limiting. 

This was the presentation I gave at the PSFK Conference last month. I talk briefly about how I got into advertising and spent 15 years falsely defining myself as an adguy. Then I introduce a bunch of brave souls who looked inward to make a living being who they are.

“Would you do it again?”

Yesterday, I asked this question to my beloved wife, who endured months of uncertainty and inflating credit card balances for the sake of “Lemonade.”

Yet there I was, asking her again to look down the barrel of a loaded mortgage. To fall on the grenades of our finances. Wondering if she could see beyond her still-healing scars to support another uncertain film project.

And this woman, this brave woman, who is neither unaffected nor always certain of her decision to support my insanity, said yes.

I am about to embark on the first leg of production for “Lemonade, Detroit” (working title). The plan is to shoot and edit a trailer, attach it to the case study from the first “Lemonade,” then pitch the hell out of it to financial backers.

It’s an uncertain course with an uncertain outcome. And without this support — this amazing, spiritual, affirming, connective, transcending support — nothing great is possible. Everyone needs their spine. Their sounding board. Their muse. Kathryn is mine.

I’ve tried to lure more than one person away from the relative certainty of future paychecks to climb an uphill startup battle with me. In each case, the realities of commitment prevented it.

It’s absurd of me to expect otherwise, really. How do you do that? How do you convince a gainfully employed family man to leave his post and embark on a question mark? You don’t.

Which makes Kathryn’s willingness to do this with me all the more remarkable. It was a theme consistent throughout “Lemonade.” Bob Weeks wanted to start a coffee roasting business with no clients and his wife said “Go for it.” Jonathan Halitsky wanted to change careers and carefully consider next steps, and his wife said take your time.

But it works both ways. If Kathryn asked me to return to the regularity of full time work — either because she wasn’t ready for another go or because the kids and the house and the need for normalcy were just too important to our family — then my answer would be, yes. Absolutely. The Detroit film stops today.

And that’s what makes our unit work. We are a platoon. Decisions made, together or unilaterally, affect us all. I would sacrifice for her the same way she has for me and for our children. If ever the road ahead looked too dark, we would return to the light. No questions asked. It’s our mutual promise.

Am I ready? No. Never have been. But here we go anyway.