You can’t win if you don’t play
I was sitting in an airport lounge this morning waiting to fly to LA for some meetings and I struck up a conversation with a fella sitting beside me. We were talking about the Super Bowl and gambling and the conversation eventually came around to lottery tickets. He was saying his Mother spends upwards of $300 a month on the lottery.
Apparently she always tells him, “You can’t win if you don’t play.”
I was thinking about that after he left and I compared her playing the lottery to me spending my hard-earned money to fly to LA this week to meet some Producers.
This guy’s Mother spends $3600 a year hoping she’ll win a jackpot, I probably spend around that much each year flying different places to have meetings with Producers and Broadcasters.
I know some people who have given up on their dreams of making TV. Some say the market isn’t looking for their kind of show, some say it’s taking too long, and some say it’s too expensive to keep pursuing.
I say this: If I had quit three years ago when it was difficult I wouldn’t have been flown to Washington, DC and Los Angeles to meet with TV Executives and the biggest agency in the world who all wanted to know more about me and my show ideas.
If I had quit two years ago when it was difficult (yes it was still difficult) I wouldn’t have sold a show to History Channel US last year.
If I had quit last year when it was difficult (by the way, it’s difficult every year) I wouldn’t have received an email two weeks ago asking me to come to LA this week to meet with the EP of Hawaii Five 0 and a colleague of his who has some show ideas he wants to discuss working with me on.
So I think in a weird way the random airport lounge dude’s Mom is right; you can’t win if you don’t play.
Now please excuse me but I have a flight to catch. Next stop Paramount Studios, Hollywood.