I like to look at creative industries — where people are churning out and packaging up ideas and turning them into real world value. Maybe they can teach me something about the info publishing world as well.
Today, I wanna tell you about the movie industry, or rather, a different perspective that’s emerged in the movie industry over the past decade.
As you might know, the classic 20th century Hollywood movie studio is a home-run business.
A movie studio experiences lots and lots of strikeouts, which are offset and then some by one big hit, which can gross $100M or $1B or $100B (ok, maybe not $100B, not yet).
But there’s a subtle cost to this way of doing business, as you’ve probably seen at the local theater:
All Hollywood movies eventually become comic book movies.
The reason is both that comic book franchises already have proven stories and characters, with a built-in fan base that can be sold to…
… and that comic book movies make low demands on the viewer, and therefore have mass-market potential (this comes from someone who has spent 6 hours of his past 2 evenings rewatching two of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies).
But there’s another way to make movies.
Perhaps you have heard of A24 Films. A24 is a film and TV production company that got started in 2012. They are best known for making arty, creative movies, often with very small budgets. Some A24 movies have become hits. Some barely managed to recoup their small budgets. But all are cool, unique, and beloved by fans and critics alike.
I read an article about A24 recently. A top executive was quoted in the article with something that struck me:
“To use a baseball metaphor, we hit singles and doubles. And when you set up movies to hit singles and doubles you can let your partner—in the best version of this—really take creative risks. We don’t need to gross a hundred million dollars. We don’t need to gross forty million dollars to actually have a successful financial outcome.”
Here’s how I interpret this translates into the info publishing world:
If you’re only creating a few offers a year, each needs to be a big hit if you’re gonna be a long-term successful as a business.
And that means that over time, you will experience “audience capture” the way that Hollywood has experienced with comic book movies. In other words, you will find that you’re forced to create stuff because the mass mind of your audience dictates it, whether you genuinely believe in it or not, whether you enjoy creating it or not.
This can be fine — you might care about other things in life and get your kicks there.
But if creating cool stuff you’re proud of is something that matters to you, then there’s a lesson in what that A24 exec says. That lesson is to work on hitting lots of doubles and singles, both to cover your nut, and to give you the freedom to keep doing what you want, how you want, when you want.
So much for cross-pollination.
Now I’d like to remind you of my Daily Email Habit service, which gives you a daily email “puzzle” to help you start and stick with sending daily emails.
Daily Email Habit currently sells for $30/month, which means you can get a daily email prompt and ongoing education in how to expand that prompt into a fun and valuable email for just $1/day.
In a few days, I will be jacking up the price of Daily Email Habit to Martin Shkreli levels. If you want to get in before the price increases, or better yet, if you simply want to start writing your own daily email habit today, so you can start hitting singles and doubles regularly: