History in the Making

Wednesday Morning Run-Down

• Just spent two days in Baltimore with Tally Wilgis and some incredible leaders planning a citywide initiative. Unprecedented collaboration among churches.
• If you didn't catch the Emmy Awards opener with Jimmy Fallon and the cast of Glee, it's worth a Google. He proved pretty much anyone can write a Glee episode.
• "Professional wrestling is the longest running drama on TV because people love a good story about primal fear." ~ paraphrasing of Blake Snyder in his book Save the Cat
• My friend Vince Antonnuci is hosting a church planting lab in Las Vegas on Oct 18-20 called Vault. Have at it.
• I'm continually impressed with the Tumblr blog platform... and the creativity of those who use it.
• I caNNOt believe my boys are due back in school next week. Summer is a cold-hearted lover.
• The one good thing about winter in Virginia Beach is the empty oceanfront Starbucks where I hold office.
• Anyone avoid Southwest like I do? You never get a good seat and the passengers who beat you make it horribly awkward to find one of the remaining middle seats.
• Still waiting for Squareup to offer a more robust solution to processing credit cards. $700/week limit? Innerfence?
• The Dream Year website was scheduled to launch to-DAY. It very well still could... Also dying to show the short film, but I think it all needs to launch together.
• Confused about why twitter feeds would be private. Isn't there e-mail for that? Am I complaining a lot this week?
• The 'How He Loves' mash-up for STORY is getting mashed-up THIS week. Hologram is finishing up. The souvenir programs are on the press... and on and on.
• Manufacture your own products.
• Gotta love a good metal stencil for doodling.
• Always get a kick out of the ideas on Kickstarter.
• Looking for a chance to use Stilt Show
• One of my Dream Year participants, Josh Brickey, successfully used photo marketing to generate over a thousand relationships. Fascinating.
• I'm looking for a nice meeting spot in downtown Nashville to hold a Dream Year weekend (open to anyone) this January. An interesting but comfortable location near hotels for out-of-towners. Any suggestions?

I Used to Love Football

I love football season.

I should say... used to love it.

But one year, I replaced every game I would have watched with time spent on a writing project... and I haven't returned to football ever since. Every fall, I begin a new project that takes the place of my old favorite sport.

Think about it... a soft, comfortable recliner with a bag of chips by your side... or a dream brought to life.

A big pot belly that your wife lovingly doesn't discuss and atrophied leg muscles... or your dream brought to life.

Rooting for a team that has no idea who you are and certainly doesn't want you wearing one of their jerseys... or your dream.

15 Seats Opened at STORY

We've just opened 15 available seats to STORY. This is your last chance to get tickets if you haven't already. They'll go quickly, I'm sure. The event sold out 2 months beforehand. Grab one of the last available seats HERE.

The Advantage of Princes

Every Monday, I send an private e-mail to my Dream Year participants. In celebration of the Dream Year website and short film premiering later this week, I'm sharing today's article with you...

You may have thought you were dreaming big, but you're only dreaming as big as your experience will let you. The past has conditioned you for the size of your idea. Everything you’ve experienced in life has amounted to the scope and the scale of your dream.

If you’re intimidated, scared or frightened, it’s because you’ve never done anything like this before.

You haven’t been exposed to it.

Let me be frank with you. There are people out there doing exactly what you want to do who are not challenged by it at all. They’re not intimidated or overwhelmed, stressed out or worried. Your dream comes naturally to them because their background is vaster than yours. Or perhaps they have more exposure than you.

This is the advantage of princes.

They grew up in the castle. They understood how the kingdom was run. Leading an empire is no big deal to them because they grew up watching it being done. It has nothing to do with their capabilities. It has everything to do with their conditioning.
 
When Sylvester Stallone wrote the movie Rocky and insisted on playing the lead role, it was no real stretch for him. His mother was a women’s wrestling promoter. Sylvester grew up around gyms, locker rooms and fighting rings. He intrinsically understood the fighting sub-culture. As for the slurred speech that made his character so unforgettable – blame it on a forceps mishap during his childbirth. He was made to write and play that role.
 
It happens in every field. Even ministry. When Ed Young Jr. was invited to lead Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, he wasn’t stepping into unfamiliar territory. His father, Ed Young Sr., had been leading one of Houston’s largest mega-churches for decades. The same goes for Andy Stanley, Priscilla Evans Shirer, Joel Osteen, and Matthew Barnett.

Look at the sons and daughters of notable leaders. They enjoy the advantage of princes. It’s not just influence that comes with being related; it’s the exposure. They lack the fear and intimidation of operating at a higher level because it’s a normal way of life for them.

While you and I were born with steep learning curves, they were born with open terrain. They’re used to balancing checkbooks with more zeroes in them. They know how to operate the equipment. Their business relationships already existed. Their blood pressure doesn’t rise at the little things that would otherwise stress us out.

When I think about the advantage of princes, it makes me want to pave the way for my kids. I want to face steep learning curves so they can launch out with familiarity and confidence. I want them to grow up around the “locker rooms” and “gyms” of my industry. The things I do will become second nature to them.

For years, I’ve wanted to write and produce a feature-length film. Writing is not hard for me. I’ve been a short story writer, an advertising copywriter, a newspaper reporter, a magazine columnist, a blogger and a book author. I write at least 2,500 words every week of my life.

But there has always been one impenetrable barrier for me to write a film – the format and structure of a screenplay. I’ve never been able to make sense of the Courier typeface, the three-act structure, the cryptic abbreviations from scene to scene, and words like “log-line.”

Until now.

For the past year, I’ve read every book on the subject of screenwriting I could get my hands on. I’ve ordered original screenplays to study and rented classic movies to analyze the structure. At first, I was re-reading chapters over and over until I understood the terminology. And I nearly gave up on several occasions. But I broke through a wall.

Now I can tell you exactly the “inciting incident” and “key incident” in any movie you name, not to mention the midpoints, the plot points, and where exactly act one breaks into act two and so on. This wasn’t just a wall for me; it was a wall for my kids. Now they’ll grow up around film sets too. In 2011, I plan to write and produce my first feature-length film.

Can you imagine growing up in the home of renowned film director Francis Ford Coppola? You’d probably know a thing or two about filmmaking by the time you were 16 years old. This is exactly what happened to Francis’ daughter Sofia. She has gone onto write and direct several movies, including the Academy Award winning film Lost in Translation. Making great movies became second nature to her.

You may not have been born with the advantage of princes. But you can certainly defeat learning curves now and pass along the advantages to your kids.

Sister Act

It doesn't take long to figure out how proud I am of my little sister Heather. She's a video designer for World Vision in Seattle by day, but a gangsta by night. Check out this video she conceived, shot, and edited for the Amazon Kindle.

Wednesday Morning Run-Down

• Flying to Chicago today to meet with my incredible STORY operations team of nearly 15 people.
• Love this post by Seth Godin's alternative MBA students: "Design is the last great competitive advantage."
• Hiring cheap design work is like putting up porta-johns at your wedding for the sake of convenience.
• A movie about Facebook? Still not on it.
• My friend Kary Oberbrunner's new book is out - Your Secret Name. He's done an unbelievable job building suspense for the book. Can't wait to read it.
• Here come the rival tablet computers. I got @ainsl3y an iPad, but I'll never use one until it has an OS.
• Huge fan of The Moth - Stories Told
• Overhead is a business model of the past. Anything can be "pop-up" including restaurants.
• Seth Godin has created quite a stir by announcing that he's leaving conventional publishing to release his books.
• It's true - the publishing industry opts for people with existing platforms rather than simply great writers. What did they think was going to happen?
• HTML5 has got to be on your radar if it's not already. Here's a player. Here's an app framework.
• One of my Dream Year participants Justin Wise just announced his new Be Deviant Social Media Summit. So proud of Justin. I'll tell his whole story later. It's incredible what happened to him this year.

The Day We Stopped Learning

Before settling into a career, we subject ourselves to steep learning curves. They're awkward and difficult but they lurch us forward in new understanding.

When you're young, humiliation is par for the course.

I remember showing up to a TV station every Saturday morning at 5 am during college to learn broadcast news writing from a tough producer... driving nervously from Ohio to Washington DC to be the only non-Ivy League intern at the White House... starting a church without a clue... It was all undignifying.

But then we settle into a career and all of our learning becomes incremental. We find dignity in being an "expert" in our field. We read books about management theory, how to make meetings more productive, and how not to eat alone.

But there's no true advancement about any of these things.

When we stop approaching learning curves... when we stop undignifying ourselves... we stop learning.

Cameraman

The evolution of film happens mainly through cinematography.

The fundamentals of a good story don't change. It may be rearranged a bit. But stories are made up of time-tested principles. And the concepts and characters might change to suit the current culture.

But it's the camera work that propels filmmaking. The lenses, the angles, the perspectives...

In 1975, the film Rocky was one of the first films to feature the Steadicam. This hand-held camera device was used to capture the smooth shot running alongside Rocky during his training run up the stairs.

A different camera angle can cause the audience to sit deeper in suspense or be overwhelmed with emotion.

I remember watching Lakewood Church on TV many moons ago and being awed by the "behind and to the side" camera angle of John Osteen preaching to his congregation. Turns out, his son Joel was behind that creative perspective...

It's why we're shooting experimental footage of STORY this year. Forget jibs and straight-on shots. We're going for perspectives that have never been seen before.

The Incubation of Ideas

Sometimes it takes an artist a long time to birth a great idea...

In 2001, when Christopher Nolan first pitched a film about dream stealers to Warner Brothers, he saw that it wasn't getting the reaction he wanted. He decided at that moment to gain experience with other films. So he wrote Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight and Memento. Nine years later, he was ready to go back to his first idea. You know that movie as Inception.

And sometimes it takes an audience a long time to embrace it...

When Ken Follett released the book Pillars of the Earth in 1998... read that, 1998... it realized his publisher's worst fears. Poor response. But over the next decade, it build a readership - slowly but with the force of an ocean. By 2003, it was ranked #33 among England's favorite all-time books, and in 2007 Oprah selected it for her book club. It's Ken Follett's best-selling book by a long-shot.

Wednesday Morning Run-Down

I thought it was Tuesday today =(

• Only 5 weeks until STORY. I can't even believe that.
• I'm not sure everyone coming to STORY realizes we're going to have a full-blown hologram set by Clark. The event is being covered by one of the top tech blogs in the industry for crying out loud. This is epic.
• We're shooting experimental video largely with SLR cameras. If our risk pays off, we'll offer a DVD.
• Flying to Baltimore in a week to meet with Tally Wilgis and the Captivate team to talk about a missional event for young adults in the city. So excited for them.
• One of my Dream Year participants, Jason Jeong, has created a new concept. Not a "think tank," but an "action tank." Jason's formed an organization to actually tackle issues, not just think about them or promote them.
• The best "curated" videos from YouTube: Devour
• Virb is offering a nice website building tool. Back in the day, they offered profiles for creative-types. But it appears they've opted for a good business model.
• Getting ready to launch one of the biggest initiatives I've ever done - in partnership with James MacDonald and Harvest Bible Church in IL. It's pretty historic.
• I'm adding weekend retreats for anyone to attend as a part of Dream Year in 2011. The first event will be in Nashville on the weekend of Jan 21-23.
• I'm flying to Chicago next week to meet with 15 amazing volunteer team leaders for STORY. They represent some of the finest churches in the Chicago region. Serving them Portillos with chocolate cake and milk for dessert.

Burning the Candle at Both Ends

I don't think I've been busier in my whole life. But it's all enchanting stuff. Masses of creativity are pouring in for September 1 deadlines and new projects are taking off in the fall. Some snapshots...

The Struggle of Creativity

I have never seen Facing the Giants, Fireproof or Flywheel. But I have a tremendous respect for Alex Kendrick who wrote and produced these Christian films.

He's a media minister at Sherwood Baptist in Albany, Georgia who decided to start making movies. Love what he said in this article about getting pitched to make other people's scripts...

"I have probably 12 scripts sitting on my desk that people want me to read and make into a movie. I think that’s someone trying to find the easy way out. It’s easy to find someone doing what you want to do and to give them your story.

That says “I don’t want to do the hard things: finding funding, managing a production. I’m not going to struggle.” Personally, some of my best growth happened in the struggle.

If your dream has a steep learning curve, that's no reason to outsource the dream.

Crazy Things I Saw Online Yesterday

You may have to click on these graphics to enlarge them...

Yesterday, I was downloading the Dream Year short film, and when it started, I had 1 day remaining. That's a big honking file.

The Arment family is a Shaun King fan club. Yesterday, he wrote a touching post on Facebook about some troubling things in his life. Three people "liked" it. What's wrong with them?

Grandmothers should stay off Twitter.

Entrepreneurs, Part 4

The work of an entrepreneur is art. Let me put that another way... the construct of a business can be art.

How it lives and operates on a spreadsheet.

There are creative solutions for how it generates revenue and how expenses are reduced.

They say music is essentially mathematics. I wouldn't know for sure; I'm neither a musician or a mathematician. But I understand the concept.

It's like rolling a custom Harley out of the shop to see if it'll start for the first time. Sure, it's mechanical... but it's art.

Entrepreneurs, Part 3

I tell my Dream Year participants that a great idea is a spreadsheet with skin on.

You can have a great concept, a compelling brand, a fascinating idea... but it has to lay on top of a profitability grid. "Revenue in" has to be greater than or equal to "expenses out."

If you can't project that to ever happen, don't do it.

Entrepreneurs, Part 2

In the old testament, there were two classes of people who entered the Promised Land: warriors and priests.

As an inheritance, the warriors got plots of land and the priests got "the Lord himself."

When the cross happened, suddenly the "warriors" got access to the Lord himself.

And the priests... the priests... could be warriors.

Entrepreneurs, Part 1

I don't believe there are two classes of people: "entrepreneurs" and "employees."

Every employee is an entrepreneur who is merely selling her services to one organization.

How to Succeed as an Event Sponsor

Sponsors are really important to me at STORY. I refuse to let anyone be stuck in a corner or come away less than thrilled by the experience. This year, we're providing lunch for sponsors, lavishing them with love, and assigning a team of four people, led by Katie Strandlund, to serve them hand and foot.

I feel a strong obligation to coach sponsors on how to be effective. I want them to succeed in getting out their message, and succeed wildly. So here are some tips we're sharing ...

• Be able to identify a "win" in being at the event - what does success look like for you?
• Make sure your win is measurable
• Communicate your win to the organizer so they can help
• Have one, clear call to action for all of your activity (notebook ads, exhibit, stage mention)
• Find a mechanism to exchange contact info. Some give away iPads, but you could also build true friendships
• If you hand out something, make it an interesting object, something people can't throw away easily
• Follow up with your new friends after the event
• Did I mention follow up?
• Build a long-term partnership with an event. Build a shared community.

Wednesday Morning Run-Down

• There are some days - with all of my projects - when I talk on the phone for no less than 6 hours straight. It's a very good thing I'm an extrovert.
• This office gallery site will make you waste hours of time at work in your sub-par office surroundings.
• Amy Grant's intimate fall tour looks nice. If Christian concerts don't change, I'm pretty sure I'll keep not going.
• We're setting up a gallery area at STORY where you can meet my Dream Year participants and interact with their projects. 19 of them are coming. Here are a few examples:
• Kate Schmidgall is launching Bitter Sweet magazine at the event, which profiles social justice issues and sells the wares of struggling entrepreneurs in other countries. Let me know if you'd like to advertise in the first edition.
• Bjorn Amundsen is unveiling his first short film in the form of a storyboard that he shot completely in photos.
• I'm shocked at the number of e-mails asking for tickets to STORY now that we're sold out. I'm both sad and happy. We also have no more need for volunteers.
• Praying for Vicky Beeching. I don't know much, but medical issues are precluding her from being at STORY. We have a surprise replacement you're going to love.
• I recorded a talk for The NINES about another result of the temple veil being torn - not only can ordinary people become priests, but priests can become entrepreneurs.
• I've been surprising my Dream Year crew with spontaneous 3-way calls with friends who are experts. If you see my name on caller ID, please pick up. =)
• Joan Ball gets more press than any author I know. Last night she told me God prompted her not to promote it herself - no website, no banners, nothing. But the book is virtually everywhere. Very George Muller-esque.
• The artist is the new pastor, as my friend Blaine Hogan says. There are very few pastors you know these days who aren't being filtered through the lens of an artist.

Inglorious E-mailers

We create new language for ourselves with each new medium. Twitter's got me writing "u" for "you" and "cuz" for "because." But I'm baffled at e-mail. It's more convenient than picking up the phone. But we treat it like a to-do list. Short, pointed, lifeless statements we'd never speak to someone in person.

Here's to conveying personality through e-mail. Use the entire span of punctuation God gave us. Throw in a grace-filled greeting. Sign off warmly. Let people know you're glad to hear from them. Try to make Dale Carnegie proud by winning some friends and influencing people.