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091 - Build a Mountain - Screenwriters Need To Hear This with Michael Jamin

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On this week's episode, I talk about how writing requires you to continually build mountains. Even though some things you do for your craft might seem small, they add to what you are trying to build. The bigger the mountain you have, the more you will stand out.

Show Notes

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Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course

Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free

Join My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlist

Autogenerated Transcript

Michael Jamin:

Everything you want. Life has comes with a price, everything. And it's either, if you, if you chase your dreams, you're gonna pay in sacrifice. And if you don't, you're gonna pay in regret. And you get to decide which one do you want to pay. But most people, I think, think that regret is a steeper price to pay. But so I don't understand what the hesitation is in not building your mountain. It's gonna take years and years, but so what else are you gonna do? Time's passing. Anyway, what else are you gonna do? You're listening to screenwriters Need to hear this with Michael Jamin. Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin. We're back with Screenwriters. Need to hear this. And I'm here with Phil, Phil Hudson. What up, what up? And we're doing another episode. We're gonna, we're we have a topic. I did a post a I love how you just jump right into this, Phil. A lot of podcasts, they just, they bullshit for a while. But we don't put any fluff in this fluff, except for what I just said right now, that's fluff. This is, but this

Phil Hudson:

Is explanation. And, and what I'm doing is explanation.

Michael Jamin:

But yeah. So this, what we're this idea is called building a Mountain. And I did a post, I don't know, a week or two ago about that subject. And I wanted to just go talk about it a little bit more. I did a post on social media. You should be following me there. By the way, everyone at Michael Gman, writer, I post every day. So I did a post called Building a Mountain, and there's a great quote by Sylvester Stallone. And he, his advice is, is to build a mountain climate and then build another mountain. And this refers to everything you do in life. And I remember when he said this, I thought what was so smart about that quote was, he's not saying find a mountain and climate. He's saying build a mountain. And climate, which is even more work. And I think this is important to talk about in people who wanna break into Hollywood as a screenwriter, as actors, directors, whatever.

Because, you know, you, this is a mountain you have to climb. And, and everyone knows it's hard to break in. And once you're in, you still have to climb a mountain. And I just wanted to talk more about what that really means. Not just climbing it, but building it. Because building a mountain is even more work. You know, building a mountain requires you getting all the rocks in a sled and dumping them in a pile, and then starting your, your climb. You, you have to do all this work before you even start climbing the mountain. And I know it looks like work, but that's how you stand out. Cause most people don't wanna do it. Most people simply don't. Like you'll stand out if you build a mountain, forget about climbing it. Like no one does that. And if you start building a mountain, day after day, whatever that looks like for you, whether it's working on your script or actually shooting something, or working on someone else's script or pro, or helping them, whatever that mountain looks like, whatever the mo, whatever more work you could possibly do, I say sign up for it.

Because people will look at you like, look at that lunatic over there. Look what they're doing every day. They must be committed. There must be, they're doing things. And when I think about, I wanna just talk more about what that could possibly look like, building a mountain. And I actually see people building mountains all the time, and they get my attention and they think that's what happens. Hmm. And I was, this is gonna surprise you, Phil. So like, you know, we have a, a screenwriting course and we have a private Facebook group. And you know, people take the course and they get into the group. And there are people in the, the group that I see are building mountains. They're not just taking the class. They're not just writing their scripts. They are trading scripts. They are having table reads. They are helping each other out.

I don't know if any of them started shooting stuff to me that would be ideal. They started shooting stuff on their phone and start building their own little, I don't know, their own little whatever, whatever. It looks like a film festival. I, I'm gonna call some of these people out because I see their names and I've never met any of them in person. Dave Crossman, Paul Rose, John Evans, Lori Cara Glen Amp, rose, Bruce, Gordon, mark is that Hop, hapah, hapah Mark. Mark Hopa, I believe Hapah and Phil, you're one of them too. These are people who are going above and beyond because it, it's important to them. And then, I don't know, to me, that's just impressive. It catches my notice. Whatever it looks like, you know, it could look like what they're doing, which is great. It could look like you know, they're, they're building a community.

So if one of them rises, if one of 'em starts doing well, the others are all gonna, it's by osmosis. This is their community. They're gonna help each other out. This is their graduating class. And just, this is what you wanna do, but you wanna be around successful people. Find out what successful people are doing and get in on it if you can. And success doesn't have to be the top. It could be whatever they're at, whatever level is whatever your, your cohort is. And, and I wanna say it also, it probably feels beneath you to build a mountain. But when I interview people, even like on a podcast or whatever, and I get their stories, their origin stories, all of them were building mountains. None of them were just like, Hey, I want a contest. None of them were like, Hey, I submitted a script.

Like everyone was like, oh, I had to do this. I had to do that. It was like you know, and I'm like, you, you did all that. Yep, I did. Like, I remember, I, I did one where I talked to Chandra Thomas, who's a writer on Tacoma, and she was like, staging, you know, plays where no one would come to see , and she's handing out flyers to get people to come. You know, you did all that. Oh yeah, I did all that. I, you know, whatever it was to get better, to do more, to be seen more. But all of them do that. It's just, I know it looks like a lot of work. I know it looks like a lot of work, and it is, but that's why you should do it, , because no one else is doing it. You're gonna stand out. I think, I don't know if it's generational. I don't know if people think if it's an entitlement thing, they think they should just be able to hand their script in, or if it's just they don't know any better, but do it. Like, and, and you know, Phil, I'm building a mountain too. I'm exhausted. I feel like I shouldn't have to build a mountain after doing my career for so long. Well, sorry, we all have to do it. . Yeah. It's like,

Phil Hudson:

And two years in. And, and look where you're at now in terms of you were just on Andrew Yang's podcast. Yeah. You've been interviewed for a ton of stuff about the rider's strike. And that comes from doing the following, the advice you give everybody else, which is every single day, build your mountain.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. And take some time. Take whatever time it is. And you may not have a ton of time, but all right, you have, you might, if you don't have a half hour, do you have 10 minutes? Everyone has got 10 minutes. So you could do that on your lunch, whatever it looks like for you. And, you know, talent, talent and connections are not enough, you know, and more important than talent. Although talent is very important, really more important is just, is just not giving up and keep doing the work. And, and just persevering. Like, because I, I know people with talent who have given up. I know people who are extremely talented in real life. Like friends who gifted, people who are like, man, they're really gifted, but they just don't have the, they're not used to failing because they're so gifted. And because of that, I don't think they're as happy as they could be in real life.

Because even though they're way more talented than I am, they just don't, they, they don't have that same, they're not used to failing. So get used to failing. There was a guy, I'm gonna, there's a couple things I just wanna talk about, but oh, oh, yeah. I skipped over something. Like, the people in the group now that we're on strike, I, I get comments from people. They, people say, well, why don't writers band together and make their own studio? Good question. Why don't you, I mean, I don't need to do that. But why don't you do that? Like, why don't whoever's trying to be a writer, why don't you do that? And by studio, you, it could be a YouTube channel, whatever it is. It could be like, why are you not making your own material? Why are you not helping someone else make their material? Why are you like, good question. You don't need the studios. You don't need anyone's permission to write and shoot your own material and put it up out, out in the world. You now, why don't I do it? Well, I, I just don't, I don't, and I'm not, I don't think I'm at the point in my career where I need to do that. But I think other people can do it. You know, why not? You know?

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. That's an, I mean, that's for me, what I'm hearing you say is that we need to spend more time being uncomfortable.

Michael Jamin:

Hell yeah. There is a guy, he sent me a note and I did a post on this. He he, I guess he was from England and he moved to the UK to to Los Angeles many years ago. His dream was to be a screenwriter. He wound up getting a job on the fox lot in Fox Sports. Good for him. Right? cuz leaving England to move here, you're outta your comfort zone. And I'm sure it's very brave. You have no friends and family. It's a different culture. Yeah. I'm sure. It's very difficult and brave. He gets this job and suddenly he just lost his courage and he stopped. He, he, in his own note, he's like, I wasn't dedicated. I wasn't focused. And so he never became a, the screenwriter. He, and he felt like he's so close, but so far he's, so he's literally feet away from the people who have the job he wants, cuz he is on the lot.

But he felt, he feels like he couldn't be further away. And yeah, he, he couldn't be. And it's because, and now that he, he's older, he's like in his mid forties, and he feels like, well, you know, maybe he missed his shot. And I, I made a case for why that wasn't necessarily so, but but you know, he just lost whatever, for whatever reason. He just lost the, his, his courage. And, and now he's gotta deal with that. He's gotta deal with regret. And, and I was talking about, well, in life, everything you pay for, and I know I've mentioned this before, so I'm gonna, you know, zip past it a little bit. But everything you want in life has a, comes with the price, everything. And it's either, if you, if you chase your dreams, you're gonna pay in sacrifice. And if you don't, you're gonna pay in regret. And you get to decide which one do you want to pay. But most people, I think, think that regret is a steeper price to pay. But so I don't understand what the hesitation is in not building your mountain. It's gonna take years and years, but so what else are you gonna do? Time's passing Anyway, what else are you gonna do? Yeah. You know,

Phil Hudson:

There were, I wish I had the name of the, the resource on this, but about a year ago I was listening to an audio book or a podcast, and they were talking about how they started spending a bunch of time in old folks homes. And one of the uhhuh, like universally the thing that they focused on and thought about at the end of life is all of the things they regret not doing. Asking the girl out, pursuing their craft, you know, spending more time with your family, all of those things. And regret is the theme at the end of your life. Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

Right? It's regret. And, and if you go for something, let's say you spent, I don't know, 10 years trying to break into Hollywood, and you don't break in, you, are you gonna have regrets? No. I mean, what you, where you feel like that time is wasted? I don't think so. I think you'd be like, oh, it just wasn't in the cards. It didn't work out for me, but I don't, I went for it. I sure went for it. And, you know, there's so much honor in that. But where's the, you know, but you don't regret that. You don't, you're not gonna regret not making it in. You're, you're gonna be like, oh, it just didn't happen for me. But that's not, you can't put that on the regret list because you tried, you know? Yep.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. I've said on the podcast before that my worst fear in life is sitting a movie theater and wishing, man, I wish I did that. And it's because I have those moments when I go to a movie and I, something really impacts me. I have that, that gut feeling. This is all I want to do with my life. Right. So working in LA as an assistant, you know, sacrificing time with my family or with my hobbies, or not playing Xbox with my friends or whatever it is, you know, cost of living, all that stuff that is nothing compared to the price of the regret. I know I'll have at 55 sitting in a theater thinking I wish I would've kept trying. And yeah, I'm pretty close. I I've had some really great success this year. Thanks again to you and your mentorship and the lessons you've taught me about how to do my craft appropriately. But beyond that, it's you know, I'm that close. But if I had to spend 10 more years trying, I'd spend 10 more years trying. And

Michael Jamin:

You just had a, a setback. You just had a kick in the teeth and mm-hmm. and it's hard to get back up after a kick in the teeth. And that's, that's character.

Phil Hudson:

Well, but I, but I knew that, you know, I had this experience with my daughter. We go to the playground here by my house, we just walk a couple blocks over. Mm-Hmm. And there's the big, the little kid's playground and the big kid's playground. And my daughter Grace is just this beautiful two and a half year old girl. She's like, starts playing with the bigger kids and she goes to the big playground, and then there's this like, ladder, but it's not actually a ladder. It's like a plastic net. And she trips and falls and smacks her face on the plastic mm-hmm. . and she starts crying. And as a parent, you understand this, there's a different cry when your kid's actually hurt. And when they, they're scared and it's like, oh, that's actual hurt. And so I went over and she was pretty upset, and I knew the best thing I could do as a father at that moment was to get her to climb that thing right then, or she would be afraid of it.

So I said, are you okay? And she's like, yeah. And I was like, okay, let's climb this together and I'll be right here and I'll make sure you don't fall again. And I helped her climb up this net to get to the top and I said, you did it. And we celebrated. And I said, do you feel strong? And she's like, yeah. And I was like, great, go down the slide. And she forgot about all her pain and she went down the slide and she wanted to do it again immediately after. Yeah. And for me, it's like you said, you have a friend who is not used to failure, right? Yeah. I hate failing. And so falling down and getting yourself back up is just one of those life skills I learned too late in life and I wish I would've had earlier. So yeah. I'm happy to talk about my experience if you want me to

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Go into it. Go into it a little bit. Yeah. Let people tell a bit what happened.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. So, so for anybody who's listened to the podcast for a while, I wrote this script, and Michael, you were kind enough to gimme notes and we recorded that on the podcast, and I took several months and I did a ton of research. You gave it a b plus, and I really did my best to make it an A plus. Mm-Hmm. , I probably landed at an a, not an a plus, but it's good. And people read it and they're like, man, that's really good. I now see ways I can improve it even a year later. Like I, I know I can make it better, but it's, you know, so anyway, I sent it around to some people and there were some people in this group who were like, read it. And they're like, this is awesome. And then they hired me to write another feature for a couple thousand dollars.

It's not a ton of money, but it's like, hey, it's, it's work and I'm getting paid. Right? Then that turned into, they're, one of 'em is producing a film in, in Georgia, and the guy had to, the producer of this film had to fire his screenwriter for trying to take money out of his account or so he said, and I'll get to that, I guess . So anyway, that was probably not what happened as we learned, but Okay. Yeah, probably not what happened. There's some foreshadowing for you. That's a writer term, right, Michael? Yeah. Yeah. So anyway my friend who's, who's was asked to produce this film out there because of these hiccups, he pitched writing the screenplay for this project that supposedly has 12 million of budget with another potentially 22 or 20 million being committed from other people. And it's about this famous American moment in American history that is apparently doesn't have a film about it, public domain, really cool project.

And so he and I went together, we went in, we had a zoom call with the guy. We pitched our idea, walked him through our, our process. He said, let me think about it for the day. We got off the call and he emailed within an hour. I was like, I think we're aligned, let's move forward. And that was about three weeks before the writer strike. So we negotiated a bunch of things. I negotiated that he, we would be wga he would join the guild after we turned in the script and become a signatory. It's retroactive, it's all kosher, don't worry. And then that we would get paid minimums, which for me is like, man, it's a hundred and like $60,000 split two ways, but still big fat money to write a feature film. And I called the wga, made sure everything was good, the rider strike happened, nothing happened.

And then he was like, all right, let's get it going. And so we called our attorney, he connected with his attorney, we did the contracts, the back and forth. We got the contract. He was gonna fly me out to Baltimore, Maryland mm-hmm. to do research. We submitted the script. We, he, we signed the contract. And then the next day, the day I was supposed to fly to Baltimore, he fell and broke three fingers in his car door. Mm-Hmm. . And I was like, crap. Well, and the whole time there's like this weird spidey sense going off, like, this is too good to be true. There's too much here, but you're, I'm ignoring it because I want this so badly. Mm-Hmm. . And then he signed the contract after he broke his hands and, and sent it back through DocuSign to get it to our attorneys.

Awesome. My attorney was smart enough to put a line in there that you have to make the initial payment, which is a required step to execute the contract mm-hmm. . And he said, no problem. I'll wire the money. The trip fell apart, no flights were given all this stuff. And then the wire was supposed to come. He said he sent it on a Tuesday, Thursday comes around, there's no money. Friday, there's no money. Calls are being made, don't know what's happening. I'm calling my bank. He's not giving us a confirmation number, which pretty easy. Your bank can just track a confirmation number on a wire cuz it's in a database. And so then I start thinking about it some more, and then I start realizing that this guy might not have any money and this guy might be selling dreams. Mm-Hmm. . And I start feeling a little abused because of the whole situation. And you gave me some good advice, which I'll go into. But ultimately here I am two and a half weeks later with a signed contract that will get me in the WGA and pay me $75,000 to write a feature film and be a producer on the film, which I included in the contract and they agreed to mm-hmm. and I have no money in my account and I have a basically void contract.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Because the guy was just a, he was a psycho, he was just a, he wasn't even a scammer, he was just a,

Phil Hudson:

He's got access to my bank account. I sent him wire information, he can technically pull money outta my account with an ACH withdrawal or write checks off that account. None of that has happened. And you would think someone who was scamming you, that's how you do it. Find people who look like they're successful in Hollywood because I have an IMDB credit that makes you look successful and take money out of their account, selling them the dream. That hasn't even happened. And so you pointed out, you know, these are delusions of grandeur. Yeah. And you said, don't feel like that guy robbed you of a dream or stole your dream and scamming you that guy. That's that guy's dream too. Yeah. And my wife pointed out in his mind, he probably legitly thinks he's gonna make this happen because there's a level of mental instability here.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. This is his dream is to be a producer or director or whatever. And it doesn't really matter. I'll, I'll, I'm gonna make it happen. But I mean, he is obviously nuts, so that's heartbreaking to find out that you were this close. And the guy is delusional. So,

Phil Hudson:

Well, we'll, going back to what I said about my daughter, like thinking, I literally just thought of that moment and you know, I shared this with you too. The moment I signed that contract, I recorded a video for my kids talking about how you can chase your dreams and it will go true. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. And that is a fake false moment. Yeah. I felt all of the emotions, all real, not true. But I thought of my daughter and I thought of her falling down on that playground and I said, all right, get back to work. And so I just started writing something else

Michael Jamin:

And I'd write about that immediate, it's so I'd I'd write about that guy , I'd write about that. And how, you know, you, I don't know, I I, cause I, you know, I write personal essay. If it happened to me, I'd be like, oh, that's, there's a story in there for sure.

Phil Hudson:

Sure.

Michael Jamin:

But yeah, there's so much, there's just, I, I just think people, getting back to what we were talking about, I just think people are you know, they just want it to happen. They just want to turn their script in, get hired. But in truth, if you look at successful people, they, you know, they all, they all suffered for a long time. And they built a mountain. And I, you know, I don't know what you're obviously what your plan is or what you're gonna do. It'd be easier to have your script obviously made by someone else and bought. But obviously there's things you could still do on your own. Sure. And you know.

Phil Hudson:

Sure. And you know, we, I think that's the conversation with the attorney is can I still write that script? Even though it's public domain, they didn't bring anything unique to it. Probably Okay to do that. But there is a, a paper trail now and, and I don't know, but on the other hand, I think this is something you talk about all the time mm-hmm. and in h in hindsight,

Michael Jamin:

The money never changed hands. Was it his idea

Phil Hudson:

Contract was never executed. He brought the idea to us. Oh. But it's a public domain historical thing. Okay. And he, nothing he brought us is not in the public domain.

Michael Jamin:

Right. Okay.

Phil Hudson:

Okay. So, and the contract's void, like, because he didn't exchange money. So. Right. On what I, what I was gonna say is, you said this for a long time. I think we said it on the webinar, we just did like producers, like we're talking about pitch fests and and stuff. People who want to hire professional screenwriters go to the wga, cuz that's where the professional writers are. Yeah. And if someone with a 12 million budget offers you to write that script, and I'm not saying it's not gonna happen or has never happened, but I should have, that should have been red flag number one. But I was blinded by that dream, so I was trying to find a shortcut. I was trying to get ahead Yeah. By working the system. And at the end of the day, I didn't pay a price for it, but I learned a valuable lesson, which is, you know, don't get your hopes up until money's in your account. Make sure you cross all the T's and do your research.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. But we've talked, we've spoken about, we have, have, I'm sure we've spoken about this guy who did this movie called Thunder Road

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Didn't think we talked about it

Michael Jamin:

Once. How, how he shot this. And it turns out it was a it was a feature that he submitted, but it was, I, I only saw the scene and the scene that he shot was that I, I was totally impressed by. It's on Vimeo or YouTube, I don't know, it was just took place in a church. It was one scene, a handful of extras. And he was pretty much the only talking part. And that could have been shot to me. It stood on itself. It was a scene that could have been a short, it could have lived on its own. I didn't know it was part of a larger movie. And to me it was brilliant. It was brilliantly acted and written and it was emotional and it was funny. And it's something, it, it's, it got my attention and I'm sure I got the attention of a lot bigger people than myself. And it's something he could've done. I mean, he, if he wanted to, he get a shot at in a day using an, a couple of iPhones, you know? Right. It didn't have to. And it was, you know, all you need is good sound and, but do something like that. And I mean, all can, all of us can do something like that. Something small, you know.

Phil Hudson:

For sure. For sure.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. I, I think, you know, this is I think a lesson that a lot of us need, which is you need to be comfortable being, you need to put yourself in situations where it is difficult by choice, right? Mm-Hmm. , you need to almost experience death, if you will, but in a controlled environment. And that's what I, I mean, I've talked about it before. One of the things that impressed me early on is like, you have a hill that you run up regularly.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Push up

Phil Hudson:

Today. You push to run up a hill up

Michael Jamin:

Today. Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

You run up a hill. Why? Because it's hard.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. You

Phil Hudson:

Don't run on flat ground, you run up a hill.

Michael Jamin:

It's a little harder. There is a wonderful video by that. David Bowie talked, you know, spoke about where he talks about if you wanna do something great, you have to swim in waters just deep enough so you can't touch the bottom. And so, you know, talking about outta your comfort zone and, and yeah. You have to be willing to, to risk. And that's where you do, that's where art is made. And that's where like, you know, that's where all the, that's where the advances come. That's where the growth comes, is when you're in over your head. So God. And so what if you make something terrible? Yeah. And what, so what, so what? Yeah. You know yeah. What you get trolled by people who don't do anything with their lives and what's their, what's their point? You

Phil Hudson:

Know? I know, I know we've read the quote, the poem before, but it's the I believe it's Teddy Roosevelt wrote the poem, man in the arena, right? Yeah. Which is right. Yeah. Yeah. Every, everyone goes after and has words to say about the man in the arena. Yeah. But at the end of the day, you can't listen to him cuz they're not in the arena getting punched in the face. Right? Yeah. And that's, that's what this is. It's getting punched in the face willingly knowing that your body can heal itself. Your ego can heal itself, your mind can heal itself, and you get stronger and more resilient. And you do that by degrees. You don't have to go drowned. You can do a cold plunge in your shower, just turn the water cold. That sucks. That's not fun.

Michael Jamin:

Brene Brene Brown talks about this on, on, you know, on her list special or Netflix special. Yeah. That's what vulnerability is getting outta your comfort zone. And that's when great things happen. And, and it's not just a cliche, it's not just talk. It's like, no guys, this is where good things happen is when you do things that are hard outta your comfort zone. And if you, I'm always amazed, I'm always inspired by people, whatever. You can see 'em on social media and there could be doing something, I don't know, riding a skateboard on a, on a rail. They could be doing something, you know, some, like, none of that is easy. And all of that requires a commitment to like doing this over and over again and taking your knocks. And, and I, you know, sure. I may look at it and think, well yeah, but you're, you know, you're just skateboarding. But no, they're not just skateboarding. They're like, they're, they're getting their head kicked in and they make it look easy, but it's only because they've been doing it so damn long.

Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my videos and you want me to email them queue for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creative types. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not gonna spam you and it's absolutely free. Just go to michael jamin.com/watch

List.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. I think society looks at skateboarders and we're using skateboarders as a skateboarders, as a metaphor for people who do things that are strange or not common. And, and art and craft, I think fall into that category. Yeah. Shooting your videos, putting your YouTube videos up, doing a podcast, doing your TikTok videos, whatever. But, but there was a, a psychologist who talked about skateboarders and they're like, don't worry about the skateboarders. They're gonna be fine. They know of adversity. Yeah. It's the other people. It's the people sitting at home not taking risk. That's it. And right about that time I saw this video, it went pretty viral and it was a kid and he's just out practicing this move on, practicing this move on a skateboard over and over and over and over. And the feeling I got was just like, I don't know that I've practiced anything with this much intensity and courage. And then when he lands it, like I wanted to cry, I wanna cry now thinking about how happy I was for that kid landing this thing that he spent all day Yeah. Trying to do. Yeah. And that's just triumph of the human spirit. That's literally what moves us as humanity. Yeah. It's overcoming, overcoming obstacles. It's story, right? It's you, it's your definition of that.

Michael Jamin:

I it's funny you mention mentioning cuz you've helped me. You know, I ran the marketing, my, my wife had a girl's clothing company called Twirly Girl for many years. And I helped her with the marketing of that. And in the beginning you were a big help. That's how we met. Because I didn't know anything about digital marketing. You were, you were big help on that. And the company was flailing for a long time, like, you know, barely making any money. And I, I signed up for something called 10,000 Small Businesses, which is a, a program sponsored by gold. Goldman Sachs almost created the economy, you know, way back in, I don't know, 2008 or something. Maybe it was longer. I don't know. And so as their penance, they decided to create this small business program where they help small business owners kind of become more profitable.

And it's free. All you gotta do is apply to it and open up your book. So I applied, I found out about it and it's like a first class program. It's like, I don't know how many, 10 weeks, one day a week for 10 weeks. And I managed to make time to get into it and I got into it and it was a blessing. And it was, honestly, it was first class and they described it as not a you know, MBA teaches you about all business. This was a mini mba, which teaches you about your business. So I had to come in and I had to do a business plan at the end of the 10 weeks. You gotta do a business plan on your business. How you gonna make your business profitable? I'm like, I don't, how do I know I couldn't, I haven't done that in forever.

Why would I know now? So, but I did all the steps that they tell you to do. And at the end I came up with this business plan and this is just when Facebook advertising was kind of taking off. And so I was like, okay, maybe if I did this on, if I made up a whole business plan for Facebook advertising and I had projections and I had a budget and I told my wife, I go, I'm gonna spend, I don't remember how much money, maybe it was like a thousand dollars. I go, I said, I know we're not making any money, but I wanna spend a thousand dollars doing this. And I had this whole strategy mapped out. I go, if it works, we'll make money. And if it doesn't, we're out a thousand bucks. Are you okay with that? And she was like, yeah, you, we have to.

Right. So I did this business plan and I had projections and, and I, you know, I, I mapped it. Yeah. My projections, if I, if I spent this much money, this is how much I think we'll make. And then we spent the money and at the end of the month I added up the projections versus reality and I was off by something like 10 cents or something. Wow. But, and but that, that was probably, that was probably like a giant coincidence. Like I could have been off by 300 or $200 and it would've been fine cuz there's a margin of error would've been fine. So the fact that I was off by like 10 cents is like, it was a lot of luck.

Phil Hudson:

Mind, mind blowing though.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. But it was mind blowing. And I was so, like, I remember I went for a run that day and I was almost in tears. Cause I was like, oh my God, we finally figured it out. Like it took so long for us to finally make money with this business. We were just bleeding money for all this time. And we tried everything. And the fact that this finally worked after just not giving up, I wanted to cry. I was like, oh my God, thank God I didn't stop. You know?

Phil Hudson:

So Yeah. That's, it's resilience. It's resilience. I went to a Tony Robbins event and say what you will about Tony Robbins? But I went to an event and he said, the thing really just impacted me. He's like, I went to the Olympics in Atlanta and they bring out an Olympian, a gold medalist from like the 1940s who was still alive. And everyone in the stadium stood and cheered for this person. And it's like, why? Because that person did something unimaginable. They, they were world class at what they did 60 years ago, 50 years ago. And we still respected. And it's, it's about the effort and the time and the sacrifice that went into that. And it applies to everything else. I mean, how much time have you put into your craft of writing? How much time are you writing when you're not being paid to write Michael? All the time.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. All the time. But, and when people said like, well I have a script, or you know, or sometimes they, it's so, it's very frustrating when they, they, you know, they talk about the gatekeepers and they talk about why everything's so unfair. And it's like, well what? And I ask like, well what have you done though? You know, where do you live? Oh, I'm in Cleveland. You know, you're gonna complain about gatekeepers cuz there are people out here trying to break into Hollywood. They got a leg up on you. They're sacrificing more and you're gonna complain about gatekeepers. What do you know from Cleveland? What do you know? What do you know about Hollywood? You are in Cleveland, you know, but they have these preconceived notions about what it is they've already given up and you haven't even tried. And you think they, they think they've tried, but they haven't. They really haven't. They haven't done everything. You know, and the people who are here who've given up more, guess what they deserve to be at the front of the line

Phil Hudson:

Season three of Tacoma f I was it was like we were shooting late and the producer from a 24 Savvy, she came in and she was talking to us and she was talking to me and the other pa and we were just talking about like our experience in Hollywood so far. And she was like, she heard my story. And she's like, I asked her how, what her story was. And she's like, well I pulled a Phil and it was very kind of her to say that, but she's like, I did the same thing you did where I started working on a show as an assistant mm-hmm. . And then they kept me on for the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And I just worked on that show year round for several years. And then I became the line producer's assistant and then I learned how to do a producing. And she just worked her way up the exact same way that I was trying to do. She's just younger than me, but she's on the, did the exact same path of sacrifice. Right. That's probably dozens if not hundreds of people in LA who have done the exact same thing of busting their butt doing things that they feel are beneath them to make it work. It's not unique. It's about the commitment. Right. And how much can you tolerate?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Right. And, and it doesn't even take a lot of talent. It doesn't take a lot of talent to, to do the work. It doesn't, it just takes you a commitment to doing the work. Doesn't mean you're gonna be successful. No. Cuz talent does play an element, but the, the, the hard the the building the mountain just takes no talent at all. It, you know, that, that's just work. Anyone can do that.

Phil Hudson:

We all know what a mountain looks like. Right? Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

And, and, you know, and to to, to build on that metaphor, you know, what is mountain climbing? Like mountain climbing's, just walking guys, when people go to the climb to the top of Everest, guess what? They're just walking, they're walking in the cold, they're walking with a oxygen mask at times they're walking hooked up to ropes with little air to breathe. I get it. But they're still just walking, you know? Right. So, and what they do is impo, you know, incredible. But again, it's walking. So if you wanna climb your mountain, can you, do you know how to walk? I mean, that's it. It's just one step at a time.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. I might have talked about this on the podcast before, so forgive me if it's redundant, but someone asked me recently like, well how did you get to la? Like how did you transition out of doing SEO and digital marketing to do this? And it was like 2009 or 10 mm-hmm. . And I started volunteering at the, at the Sundays Film Festival. And I was living with some roommates at the time and I just started this job in sales and I was not very good at it. And all I wanted to do was write. That's all I wanted to do. And for two years had been writing really bad features and they were just horrible. And I was like, well there's, I know where I want to go is be in Hollywood and be a professional writer. And so the shortest path, the direct line is just write, write, write.

But at the same time, I had just gotten out of the recession and I was just making my life better. And I was like, okay, how, how am I gonna make this work? I need to get to la. How am I gonna get to la? I need to have money. What kind of money? Because if I wanna write in LA I'm gonna have to have a lot more money than I have now and I'm gonna probably gonna need some sort of passive income. And I don't know that passive income's ever actually passive, but I'm gonna need something that generates money so I can spend time on my craft. Well, I know how to do e-commerce and I'm at a company that teaches e-commerce and I can get really good at that and then that will generate money. So I'm just shipping things and handling customer support instead of waiting tables.

So, so that sounds good, but what do I need to do to be able to afford that? So while I need to learn how to sell things, I need to make money now to be able to afford that. So I went home that day, I said, in five years, here's where I'll be, I'll be in la I'll have a pr, a profitable e-commerce business, which is what our company did. And I will be able to write and work for three hours a day and then write. And it may not be a lot, but I'll survive. And I literally went home and I went into my room and I took my Xbox and I unplugged it and I put it in my roommate's room and I set it down. And then where my t where it was on the tv, I took the TV and I put it in the closet and I sat down at my desk and I would go to work and I would suck at selling.

And then I would sit there and I just read sales books. And within a week I started making money because I put time and intention and focus into my mountain, which was sales. And within six months I was the number one sales rep at the entire company with the worst leads. But I was making so much money that I was like, okay, now I can take a step back. And it's not tons of money guys. Like this is like a ton of money for me at the time. Cause I grew up super poor. It was like $74,000 a year at 24 years old. Stupid money for a 24 year old kid in 2010 or 11. And so beyond that, the next thing that I did was, okay, now I need to take the same amount of time I was putting into sales and put it in e-commerce.

And I would just sit there and I'd put in the DVD training series, which is like the equivalent of your screenwriting course. And I would just watch the guru teach people how to do the job. This is what we sold. And I would just do what he said. And within three months, my website was making more money than I was making in commissions at the job. And then I went in and I talked to him cuz he had an open door policy at the company. And I said, Hey Parker, do you mind just looking at my site? He looked through a bunch of things, he's like, you did this? And I was like, yeah. He's like, this is a success story. Congrats. And I was like, awesome. And I just kept doing that and doing that. And then when that started doing well, then I started focus on riding and I, because that was my next mountain.

And then I took a huge detour through Santa Fe to go to film school because of my Sundance stuff. But I was also volunteering for 40 hours at Sundance while working. And that was my way of staying in the business and doing it. And I would write for a couple hours on the weekend. So that's, that's not unique to me. I'm not saying that to toot my own horn. What I'm saying is, for anybody listening who's struggling is you need to define where you want to go and backfill the steps to get there. And I think what you're saying is those are the mountains and the mountain screenwriting. How am I gonna get to la? That's a mountain. Once you're in LA how do you get a job in the industry? That's a mountain, right? It's just step by step by step,

Michael Jamin:

Right? Yeah. You gotta put the work. And this, this shouldn't be, I don't know why it's surprising to people sometimes when I say stuff like, make these comments on in these posts on social media, like, man, this guy gets it. He's under like, he's dropping bombs. Like, what? I don't know. This is just the truth. I don't know. It's like, isn't it just obvious? You know? Yeah. there's just no shortcuts. I wish, you know, wouldn't be great. Like you, you don't get to take a helicopter to the top of the mountain and and plant your flag. It just doesn't work that way.

Phil Hudson:

You gotta climb. And if you do, you will very shortly fall down the mountain because you don't know how to have sure. Footing on the mountain

Michael Jamin:

And you won't appreciate what you've done there. You won't be able to take a celebrate. Cuz it'll be like, yeah, I, I took a helicopter. You know, and so that's the problem with what I see sometimes with people. Like, well, how do I sell my screenplay? How do I sell my I my idea? Your idea? No, no, no, no. You don't sell your idea. You know? Yep. You wanna write it fine. Learn how to write. Everyone wants to skip that step. That part's too hard. They, they just wanna sell it.

Phil Hudson:

Right? From an action perspective, other than, you know, the classic self-development or personal development five year goal and backtrack, you know, five year goal, one year goal, six month goal, quarterly goal, weekly goal, monthly goal, weekly goal, daily goal. Like doing that to keep your focus and stay on a trajectory beyond that. As a writer, what do you see are the actionable steps people can do to build the mountain? And, and I I think this might be more related to craft. You've done a lot of content on go do it yourself, don't let people hold you back, make your own content. But from a, from a craft perspective, what do you think people can do? Cuz that seems to be the place where most people struggle, is knowing how to tell a good story and do it properly.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. I mean, the people wanna skip that part. You know, obviously we have a course and you're welcome, anyone's welcome. We only open enrollment a few days a month, but if they wanna go check that out, it's at michael chapman.com/course where I teach you everything that I've known, everything I learned at the feet of better writers than my myself working on pro, you know, professional television shows. And so I, that's what I teach you. Like how we break a story. It could every day because we can't wait for inspiration. You, you get paid, you have to get paid, you have to make a TV show this week. So I teach you that. And I think it's actually like, what I recommend is for people to just go through the course and watch a half hour. It's a long course. I say watch a half hour a day and which is not gonna kill you.

It's a half hour. And then at the end of the month, you'll have finished the course and then you'll have a habit. Like, okay, from nine 30 to 10, I always write, I always work on my writing. So, so do that. And you know, and, and stop worrying about, I also say like, people always say write one screenplay. They they polish it, they work on it, work on it. No, no. Put it, finish it, put it aside and working on another one because it's the, it's the beginning to end process that will make you better. And then when you look back on your fifth screenplay, you compare it to your first, I don't care how much work you did on the first number, five's gonna be much better. It just is. And, and that just from doing the work, you know. But any, you know, anyone can do it. Anyone can just sit down and work.

Phil Hudson:

Yep. You put out tons of free content on your social media as well. And there are probably a lot of people here who found you. So you know that. But for those who stumble upon this podcast or a friend shared it with you, Michael Jamon, writer on social media, tons of great stuff. Podcasts,

Michael Jamin:

Instagram,

Phil Hudson:

Tiktok. Yeah. This podcast has a ton of great info on it as well. Yeah, it's just, I mean, look, the answer is do the work, right?

Michael Jamin:

I also, you know, and I, I have a ton of like posts, ton of free stuff and people are like, whoa, you have too much. I have too much. Like, so sit down and watch a post. Now you're complaining that you have too much free help . So watch a post a day, watch five a day. Is that gonna hurt you? Each one is three minutes long, so it's 15 minutes. Like I don't, I don't know what to tell you. Like, it's free, it's there

Phil Hudson:

. Yeah. That, that's upsetting to me right here behind my diploma. I have this book and it was the first book I wrote on screenwriting. Cause like, I didn't even know, I didn't know until I was 21 that there was a, a format for writing TV. And I knew I wanted to do it since I was 12 because the internet was new when I was a kid. Like you don't know. And so I went into a Barnes and Noble and I went through the movie theater section. I found two books on screenwriting. Mm-Hmm. . I bought the one that made the most sense to me. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Screenwriting by Skip Press. And I went home and I just devoured that book. All I wanted to do was read that book and I got to the end and it was resources and there's a link to a couple websites in there.

And one of 'em was word Player by Ted Elliot and TecIO, who were like legends in the screenwriting world. And I went to their site word player.com and I found, and it's not a pretty site, it is like forums from the nineties mm-hmm. . but there were articles that they would do on a o l in the late nineties that they had republished there. And I just started going through them one by one and reading them and rereading them. And I was so committed to this. I set it as my home tab on my computer. Wow. So when I logged in, I would see their site load and the first day I did that I got a notice saying I was banned from the site and couldn't access it. And I had to contact the webmaster and the server had flagged me for spamming the site because I went to it too much.

Michael Jamin:

They thought you were spamming it just cuz you were reading it.

Phil Hudson:

That was cuz I was just kept going. Cuz every time I opened a browser it would load that site. And so it was, and it felt like I was like spamming. It's out of time on the web. But you know, it kept flagging me because my IP address was being flagged as like a brute force attack or a DDoS attack or whatever you wanna call it. And so I had to contact the webmaster and be like, Hey, I'm just really committed to my craft and I just really wanna be able to look at the site every time I feel like I might get distracted by something on the web, I can remember my purpose. And she's like, okay. So she whitelisted my IP and I could keep going back to the site, but Wow. There were like 40 articles on that. Michael, you've put up a post every day for almost two years. That's almost, that's over 700 pieces of content. Yeah. Not including, we're at like almost 90 episodes of the podcast that are between 30 minutes and an hour each. Mm-Hmm. not to mention the articles in your website. Yeah. Not to mention the free course, not to mention the free PDFs that we give away in your webinars. Yeah. Not to mention the monthly webinars. So it's actually kind of upsetting to me that people say you have too much cuz I was dying in the desert hoping for water, and I found an oasis. Right.

Michael Jamin:

Someone, you know, I don't think they were talking my be either left to comment my, my posts, you know, saying you, you Hollywood gatekeepers. I'm like, gatekeepers, dude, I'm on here every fricking day trying to tell you what to do. Who's the gatekeeper? Who's the gatekeeper?

Phil Hudson:

You know? Yeah. And that all that is is a, it's a, it's a belief that you have in your mind and it's a, a very subtle way, your unconscious mind is protecting you from failure. Yeah.

Right. You talked about friends who have tremendous talent or who come out here and then wash out. Yeah. And I have friends, I have people I moved out here with. I have people who from my film school moved out here and they had roommates and out of all those people, I think I've said it on here, there's like three of those people in LA of all, all of Los Angeles. Mm-Hmm. from the hundreds of people I went to college with. And one's an agent's assistant or maybe an agent. Now one is an actual WGA writer, one is the head of creative development for an actual production company. Mm-Hmm. , there's me who's just a guy who handles plumbing on a TV show effectively. Right? Mm-hmm. . But, but there are very few, and I do have friends who are literally afraid to push themselves and do work because they don't wanna disappoint their dad. His dad gave them crap for wanting to pursue art and said, you will fail and when you fail, you'll have a home here and we can find work for you, God. And so they don't want to fail, so they won't take risks because as long as they're tangentially working in, in around the industry, God, they haven't failed. So they, they no won't push themselves.

Michael Jamin:

It's so sad. Like my daughter wanted to be an artist when she was in grade school and then she applied to the School of the Arts, which is a, a free, it's a free school you know, public school for the high school, but you have to apply for it. And I was like, I'm not helping you do this. Like, if you want it, you're gonna have to do it yourself. And she did do it herself. And she got in and she went, now she's at Cooper Union, which is a great art school in New York City because like, being an artist is hard, but she's so committed. And the other day she sent me, she said, Hey I'm gonna submit my film to a, like a film festival, like an art film school, art festival. Like, not not narrative, but Mark, you know, kind of avantgarde. And I go, gimme the bill. You know, it wasn't even alive. It was like 78 bucks. But I was like, I'm paying for it because yeah. Like that's it. I want, I want her to be able to, you know, so cool. I don't, I like, that's like the least I can do because I didn't support her then because I didn't know how serious she was, you know, because Yeah. You know, and she's

Phil Hudson:

Proven herself.

Michael Jamin:

She's proven herself now. So, no, I'm doing, I'm paying. I, I go, I wanna pay for this cuz you've proven it yourself. So

Phil Hudson:

It's, it's easy to say you want to be a professional NBA player. It's hard to sit there after everyone goes home and keep shooting for he throws and then shoot three pointers and then run sprints and do ladders. It's like, yeah. That's the work no one wants to do. It's not sexy, it's hard, it's sweaty. And that's, that's so hard.

Michael Jamin:

Right? And when that person does the work though, then you wanna help them. You don't wanna help them before, right? Yeah. But when you see someone busting their ass, you go, okay, please let me help you because you are busting your ass. Yeah. And so bust your ass first and then maybe someone will help you. But don't ask for help before you haven't done anything, you know, because no one wants Yeah. Because it just feels like, ah, you know, how serious are you? I don't, why am I gonna get behind you if you're not serious?

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. And, and I might err too far on the other side of this personally, but, you know, I had a, a call with Paul Soder of Broken Lizard who, and I had the opportunity to help them outside of the film quasi they did on Hulu, but also like, ran their social media and went on tour with them, which was super cool experience. And I had a moment where I was like at dinner with them, and I believe Kevin Heffernan brought up something. It's me, Kevin, Jay, and Paul. And we're sitting at dinner and he's like, he brought up something and it was talking about how, like, it was talking about hard work and effort and you had to put in and, and I just had this moment where it clicked for me. And I said, you know, Kevin, I appreciate what you're saying. And he's basically into the fact that if we complain about the fact that we think we've earned opportunities and people, other people get them, that we need to understand that many of the things we're frustrated about serve a very valuable purpose.

You know? And he said, he said that, and I said, you know, I'm having the realization now that the fact that I'm sitting at the table with you guys is because anytime I've not gotten something from you guys that other people have told me I deserved, I've never said a word to you about it. Mm-Hmm. . And he said, exactly right. I don't, I'm not looking for anything from those guys. Right. I'm looking to earn it when it's time. And it stings and it's frustrating when it doesn't come and other people told you should, but those are expectations people put in my head. They're not expectations I have in my heart. And I let that get in the way, and then I have to work through that pain and, and frustration to get back to my baseline of it doesn't matter. And look, Paul Suter was calling and asking for help with what I do in the digital marketing world. And I was like, I'm happy to help you. And he was like, no, no, I want to pay you. And I was like, look man, I think it's important that I help you as a way of giving back for what you've already done. He's like, well, you know, and it's like I had to, I had to help him understand. No, I feel gratitude. I feel a debt of gratitude, not the other way around.

Michael Jamin:

I mean, think about that though. Felt whatever, 10 years ago. How long, when did you move to la?

Phil Hudson:

I moved to LA in 2016, so it's been almost seven years.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, okay. So if I had told you seven years

Phil Hudson:

Ago, but, but I would've, you told me to move here in, to be fair, in 2013 when we met, right. And I got the scholarship opportunity like a month later, you're not gonna turn. And so I took like a three, I took a three year delay to get here,

Michael Jamin:

But, all right, but if I told you seven years ago that you'd be sitting at the table with these filmmakers in their, in their presence, who they're very successful and you know, just absorbing and learning from them. Like you'd be, are you outta your mind? I mean, those guys are,

Phil Hudson:

I would've, I would've thought you were crazy in no way. Yeah. I, I had that moment too. We were on tour and they were taking a photo and I was like, oh, let me get outta the way. And they're like, no, no, Phil stay and mm-hmm. I never asked them for photos, I never asked them for autographs. I never do any of those things. And now I, it's like weird too. Cause I had to check myself to say, and anyway, I have this photo of them at dinner which is really cool cuz it's not something I would ever ask for. But at the same time I recognize that I, I see them as friends now. Yeah. Which is even crazier, right? Yeah. And I had to check myself on tour when I'm standing at Wrigley Field on the ma like on the field. You're on the field while field Jay's throwing out the first pitch. Oh

Michael Jamin:

Wow. Isn't that great? And I

Phil Hudson:

Have the, I have the ball over here cuz Jay gave me the ball after.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, that's nice. So like, that's nice.

Phil Hudson:

I had to check myself and say, this is a dream I would've killed for in 2000 2, 3, 4 when I was in high school. I would've killed for this.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. And think how close you Yeah. You're, I mean, so you're taking these steps. You're, like I said, you're, you're one of the guys building the mountain. So

Phil Hudson:

I appreciate it. It'll take us

Michael Jamin:

Long takes, I takes,

Phil Hudson:

You know, I just wanna reiterate to everyone and, and I understand that there's a lot of cynicism on the internet because there are a lot of self-serving people who focus on how can I get ahead? And there are a lot of people who accuse me of being insincere. Michael, you know me, that's

Michael Jamin:

Cra it's cra I don't, I don't know who's, who's, I don't know what context they said that.

Phil Hudson:

It's a lot of people who don't know me. And I get it cuz there are people who are insincere and doing things to get ahead. And I run into those people. I'm not that person. And when I tell these stories or anything that's successful, I almost feel ashamed because it feels braggadocious and prideful and mm-hmm. , there is pride behind it. Cuz I am proud of the work that I have put in. I have climbed the mountains Yeah. That have gotten me to where I am. But at the same time, I'm, I'm just trying to help inspire you at home to put in the time, energy, and effort necessary to pursue your dreams and surround yourself with the right mentors and people who have been where you want to be.

Michael Jamin:

Yep.

Phil Hudson:

Serve them with every skillset you have. Anybody can go pick up drag cleaning, anybody can go walk a dog. Yeah. You don't need, you don't need to understand digital marketing and the complex nuances of Facebook algorithms to do w what I'm doing. You can do it yourself and do it freely without expectation.

Michael Jamin:

As, as a wrap up, I wanna leave people with the wise words of my seventh grade English teacher, , her name was Miss to and she was, and her name was Miss Tomb. And she used to say, time's passing, but you are not . Ooh. And I fucking, I always love that. And I was like, miss Tomb, I'm in the honors program. I dunno what your talking, I don't know what this empty thread is, but but like, yeah, don't let time pass and, you know, and, and not do it. I love that time's pass. So, you know, make sure you use your time. Use your time. May build a mountain.

Phil Hudson:

That's

Michael Jamin:

Beautiful. All right, Philly.

Phil Hudson:

Okay. Well, Michael obviously we've talked about a bunch of the resources you have. Yeah. And we always end with this is just because again, there are a lot, there's a lot of content, but you have the free lesson from your course. It's available to anybody, teaches you what story is and the definition, again, literally the first thing you ever taught me, you shot me an email, I failed miserably. Mm-Hmm. , go learn. So you don't have to fail, but that's michaeljamin.com/free. You have the course you can get, you can learn more about it and sign up to be notified when it's open @michaeljamin.com/course. You have your book that you're working on and touring. Any updates on touring?

Michael Jamin:

No updates. I'm still, we're still agonizing over the title. I'm working that out. I, it's been a process. But yeah, all this stuff is free. I got a lot of time, ton of free resources on my website. Michael jam.com. Just go visit

Phil Hudson:

And michael jamin do com. Michael jamin.com/upcoming is where they can get info about the book though. Right. And tour

Michael Jamin:

And all that stuff upcoming is for my tours. Yeah. Cool. And that's it.

Phil Hudson:

Alright. If it was a pleasure, Michael, I appreciate the time. It's very fruitful hour of conversation for me. I feel better,

Michael Jamin:

I feel better

Phil Hudson:

Too. Have this conversation. It's good stuff. Hopefully you guys at home do as well.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, I hope so too. Every all right. As Phil says, we concluded by saying keep writing everyone, so thank you. All right. All right. Bye. Bye-Bye.

Phil Hudson:

This has been an episode of Screenwriters. Need to Hear this with Michael Jamin and Phil Hudson. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for Michael's monthly webinar @michaeljamin.com/webinar. If you found this podcast helpful, consider sharing it with a friend and leaving us a five star review on iTunes. For free screenwriting tips, follow Michael Jamin on social media @MichaelJaminwriter. You can follow Phil Hudson on social media @PhilaHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It was edited by Dallas Crane Music. By Ken Joseph. Until next time, keep writing.


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On this week's episode, I talk about how writing requires you to continually build mountains. Even though some things you do for your craft might seem small, they add to what you are trying to build. The bigger the mountain you have, the more you will stand out.

Show Notes

Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/

Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course

Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free

Join My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlist

Autogenerated Transcript

Michael Jamin:

Everything you want. Life has comes with a price, everything. And it's either, if you, if you chase your dreams, you're gonna pay in sacrifice. And if you don't, you're gonna pay in regret. And you get to decide which one do you want to pay. But most people, I think, think that regret is a steeper price to pay. But so I don't understand what the hesitation is in not building your mountain. It's gonna take years and years, but so what else are you gonna do? Time's passing. Anyway, what else are you gonna do? You're listening to screenwriters Need to hear this with Michael Jamin. Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin. We're back with Screenwriters. Need to hear this. And I'm here with Phil, Phil Hudson. What up, what up? And we're doing another episode. We're gonna, we're we have a topic. I did a post a I love how you just jump right into this, Phil. A lot of podcasts, they just, they bullshit for a while. But we don't put any fluff in this fluff, except for what I just said right now, that's fluff. This is, but this

Phil Hudson:

Is explanation. And, and what I'm doing is explanation.

Michael Jamin:

But yeah. So this, what we're this idea is called building a Mountain. And I did a post, I don't know, a week or two ago about that subject. And I wanted to just go talk about it a little bit more. I did a post on social media. You should be following me there. By the way, everyone at Michael Gman, writer, I post every day. So I did a post called Building a Mountain, and there's a great quote by Sylvester Stallone. And he, his advice is, is to build a mountain climate and then build another mountain. And this refers to everything you do in life. And I remember when he said this, I thought what was so smart about that quote was, he's not saying find a mountain and climate. He's saying build a mountain. And climate, which is even more work. And I think this is important to talk about in people who wanna break into Hollywood as a screenwriter, as actors, directors, whatever.

Because, you know, you, this is a mountain you have to climb. And, and everyone knows it's hard to break in. And once you're in, you still have to climb a mountain. And I just wanted to talk more about what that really means. Not just climbing it, but building it. Because building a mountain is even more work. You know, building a mountain requires you getting all the rocks in a sled and dumping them in a pile, and then starting your, your climb. You, you have to do all this work before you even start climbing the mountain. And I know it looks like work, but that's how you stand out. Cause most people don't wanna do it. Most people simply don't. Like you'll stand out if you build a mountain, forget about climbing it. Like no one does that. And if you start building a mountain, day after day, whatever that looks like for you, whether it's working on your script or actually shooting something, or working on someone else's script or pro, or helping them, whatever that mountain looks like, whatever the mo, whatever more work you could possibly do, I say sign up for it.

Because people will look at you like, look at that lunatic over there. Look what they're doing every day. They must be committed. There must be, they're doing things. And when I think about, I wanna just talk more about what that could possibly look like, building a mountain. And I actually see people building mountains all the time, and they get my attention and they think that's what happens. Hmm. And I was, this is gonna surprise you, Phil. So like, you know, we have a, a screenwriting course and we have a private Facebook group. And you know, people take the course and they get into the group. And there are people in the, the group that I see are building mountains. They're not just taking the class. They're not just writing their scripts. They are trading scripts. They are having table reads. They are helping each other out.

I don't know if any of them started shooting stuff to me that would be ideal. They started shooting stuff on their phone and start building their own little, I don't know, their own little whatever, whatever. It looks like a film festival. I, I'm gonna call some of these people out because I see their names and I've never met any of them in person. Dave Crossman, Paul Rose, John Evans, Lori Cara Glen Amp, rose, Bruce, Gordon, mark is that Hop, hapah, hapah Mark. Mark Hopa, I believe Hapah and Phil, you're one of them too. These are people who are going above and beyond because it, it's important to them. And then, I don't know, to me, that's just impressive. It catches my notice. Whatever it looks like, you know, it could look like what they're doing, which is great. It could look like you know, they're, they're building a community.

So if one of them rises, if one of 'em starts doing well, the others are all gonna, it's by osmosis. This is their community. They're gonna help each other out. This is their graduating class. And just, this is what you wanna do, but you wanna be around successful people. Find out what successful people are doing and get in on it if you can. And success doesn't have to be the top. It could be whatever they're at, whatever level is whatever your, your cohort is. And, and I wanna say it also, it probably feels beneath you to build a mountain. But when I interview people, even like on a podcast or whatever, and I get their stories, their origin stories, all of them were building mountains. None of them were just like, Hey, I want a contest. None of them were like, Hey, I submitted a script.

Like everyone was like, oh, I had to do this. I had to do that. It was like you know, and I'm like, you, you did all that. Yep, I did. Like, I remember, I, I did one where I talked to Chandra Thomas, who's a writer on Tacoma, and she was like, staging, you know, plays where no one would come to see , and she's handing out flyers to get people to come. You know, you did all that. Oh yeah, I did all that. I, you know, whatever it was to get better, to do more, to be seen more. But all of them do that. It's just, I know it looks like a lot of work. I know it looks like a lot of work, and it is, but that's why you should do it, , because no one else is doing it. You're gonna stand out. I think, I don't know if it's generational. I don't know if people think if it's an entitlement thing, they think they should just be able to hand their script in, or if it's just they don't know any better, but do it. Like, and, and you know, Phil, I'm building a mountain too. I'm exhausted. I feel like I shouldn't have to build a mountain after doing my career for so long. Well, sorry, we all have to do it. . Yeah. It's like,

Phil Hudson:

And two years in. And, and look where you're at now in terms of you were just on Andrew Yang's podcast. Yeah. You've been interviewed for a ton of stuff about the rider's strike. And that comes from doing the following, the advice you give everybody else, which is every single day, build your mountain.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. And take some time. Take whatever time it is. And you may not have a ton of time, but all right, you have, you might, if you don't have a half hour, do you have 10 minutes? Everyone has got 10 minutes. So you could do that on your lunch, whatever it looks like for you. And, you know, talent, talent and connections are not enough, you know, and more important than talent. Although talent is very important, really more important is just, is just not giving up and keep doing the work. And, and just persevering. Like, because I, I know people with talent who have given up. I know people who are extremely talented in real life. Like friends who gifted, people who are like, man, they're really gifted, but they just don't have the, they're not used to failing because they're so gifted. And because of that, I don't think they're as happy as they could be in real life.

Because even though they're way more talented than I am, they just don't, they, they don't have that same, they're not used to failing. So get used to failing. There was a guy, I'm gonna, there's a couple things I just wanna talk about, but oh, oh, yeah. I skipped over something. Like, the people in the group now that we're on strike, I, I get comments from people. They, people say, well, why don't writers band together and make their own studio? Good question. Why don't you, I mean, I don't need to do that. But why don't you do that? Like, why don't whoever's trying to be a writer, why don't you do that? And by studio, you, it could be a YouTube channel, whatever it is. It could be like, why are you not making your own material? Why are you not helping someone else make their material? Why are you like, good question. You don't need the studios. You don't need anyone's permission to write and shoot your own material and put it up out, out in the world. You now, why don't I do it? Well, I, I just don't, I don't, and I'm not, I don't think I'm at the point in my career where I need to do that. But I think other people can do it. You know, why not? You know?

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. That's an, I mean, that's for me, what I'm hearing you say is that we need to spend more time being uncomfortable.

Michael Jamin:

Hell yeah. There is a guy, he sent me a note and I did a post on this. He he, I guess he was from England and he moved to the UK to to Los Angeles many years ago. His dream was to be a screenwriter. He wound up getting a job on the fox lot in Fox Sports. Good for him. Right? cuz leaving England to move here, you're outta your comfort zone. And I'm sure it's very brave. You have no friends and family. It's a different culture. Yeah. I'm sure. It's very difficult and brave. He gets this job and suddenly he just lost his courage and he stopped. He, he, in his own note, he's like, I wasn't dedicated. I wasn't focused. And so he never became a, the screenwriter. He, and he felt like he's so close, but so far he's, so he's literally feet away from the people who have the job he wants, cuz he is on the lot.

But he felt, he feels like he couldn't be further away. And yeah, he, he couldn't be. And it's because, and now that he, he's older, he's like in his mid forties, and he feels like, well, you know, maybe he missed his shot. And I, I made a case for why that wasn't necessarily so, but but you know, he just lost whatever, for whatever reason. He just lost the, his, his courage. And, and now he's gotta deal with that. He's gotta deal with regret. And, and I was talking about, well, in life, everything you pay for, and I know I've mentioned this before, so I'm gonna, you know, zip past it a little bit. But everything you want in life has a, comes with the price, everything. And it's either, if you, if you chase your dreams, you're gonna pay in sacrifice. And if you don't, you're gonna pay in regret. And you get to decide which one do you want to pay. But most people, I think, think that regret is a steeper price to pay. But so I don't understand what the hesitation is in not building your mountain. It's gonna take years and years, but so what else are you gonna do? Time's passing Anyway, what else are you gonna do? Yeah. You know,

Phil Hudson:

There were, I wish I had the name of the, the resource on this, but about a year ago I was listening to an audio book or a podcast, and they were talking about how they started spending a bunch of time in old folks homes. And one of the uhhuh, like universally the thing that they focused on and thought about at the end of life is all of the things they regret not doing. Asking the girl out, pursuing their craft, you know, spending more time with your family, all of those things. And regret is the theme at the end of your life. Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

Right? It's regret. And, and if you go for something, let's say you spent, I don't know, 10 years trying to break into Hollywood, and you don't break in, you, are you gonna have regrets? No. I mean, what you, where you feel like that time is wasted? I don't think so. I think you'd be like, oh, it just wasn't in the cards. It didn't work out for me, but I don't, I went for it. I sure went for it. And, you know, there's so much honor in that. But where's the, you know, but you don't regret that. You don't, you're not gonna regret not making it in. You're, you're gonna be like, oh, it just didn't happen for me. But that's not, you can't put that on the regret list because you tried, you know? Yep.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. I've said on the podcast before that my worst fear in life is sitting a movie theater and wishing, man, I wish I did that. And it's because I have those moments when I go to a movie and I, something really impacts me. I have that, that gut feeling. This is all I want to do with my life. Right. So working in LA as an assistant, you know, sacrificing time with my family or with my hobbies, or not playing Xbox with my friends or whatever it is, you know, cost of living, all that stuff that is nothing compared to the price of the regret. I know I'll have at 55 sitting in a theater thinking I wish I would've kept trying. And yeah, I'm pretty close. I I've had some really great success this year. Thanks again to you and your mentorship and the lessons you've taught me about how to do my craft appropriately. But beyond that, it's you know, I'm that close. But if I had to spend 10 more years trying, I'd spend 10 more years trying. And

Michael Jamin:

You just had a, a setback. You just had a kick in the teeth and mm-hmm. and it's hard to get back up after a kick in the teeth. And that's, that's character.

Phil Hudson:

Well, but I, but I knew that, you know, I had this experience with my daughter. We go to the playground here by my house, we just walk a couple blocks over. Mm-Hmm. And there's the big, the little kid's playground and the big kid's playground. And my daughter Grace is just this beautiful two and a half year old girl. She's like, starts playing with the bigger kids and she goes to the big playground, and then there's this like, ladder, but it's not actually a ladder. It's like a plastic net. And she trips and falls and smacks her face on the plastic mm-hmm. . and she starts crying. And as a parent, you understand this, there's a different cry when your kid's actually hurt. And when they, they're scared and it's like, oh, that's actual hurt. And so I went over and she was pretty upset, and I knew the best thing I could do as a father at that moment was to get her to climb that thing right then, or she would be afraid of it.

So I said, are you okay? And she's like, yeah. And I was like, okay, let's climb this together and I'll be right here and I'll make sure you don't fall again. And I helped her climb up this net to get to the top and I said, you did it. And we celebrated. And I said, do you feel strong? And she's like, yeah. And I was like, great, go down the slide. And she forgot about all her pain and she went down the slide and she wanted to do it again immediately after. Yeah. And for me, it's like you said, you have a friend who is not used to failure, right? Yeah. I hate failing. And so falling down and getting yourself back up is just one of those life skills I learned too late in life and I wish I would've had earlier. So yeah. I'm happy to talk about my experience if you want me to

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Go into it. Go into it a little bit. Yeah. Let people tell a bit what happened.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. So, so for anybody who's listened to the podcast for a while, I wrote this script, and Michael, you were kind enough to gimme notes and we recorded that on the podcast, and I took several months and I did a ton of research. You gave it a b plus, and I really did my best to make it an A plus. Mm-Hmm. , I probably landed at an a, not an a plus, but it's good. And people read it and they're like, man, that's really good. I now see ways I can improve it even a year later. Like I, I know I can make it better, but it's, you know, so anyway, I sent it around to some people and there were some people in this group who were like, read it. And they're like, this is awesome. And then they hired me to write another feature for a couple thousand dollars.

It's not a ton of money, but it's like, hey, it's, it's work and I'm getting paid. Right? Then that turned into, they're, one of 'em is producing a film in, in Georgia, and the guy had to, the producer of this film had to fire his screenwriter for trying to take money out of his account or so he said, and I'll get to that, I guess . So anyway, that was probably not what happened as we learned, but Okay. Yeah, probably not what happened. There's some foreshadowing for you. That's a writer term, right, Michael? Yeah. Yeah. So anyway my friend who's, who's was asked to produce this film out there because of these hiccups, he pitched writing the screenplay for this project that supposedly has 12 million of budget with another potentially 22 or 20 million being committed from other people. And it's about this famous American moment in American history that is apparently doesn't have a film about it, public domain, really cool project.

And so he and I went together, we went in, we had a zoom call with the guy. We pitched our idea, walked him through our, our process. He said, let me think about it for the day. We got off the call and he emailed within an hour. I was like, I think we're aligned, let's move forward. And that was about three weeks before the writer strike. So we negotiated a bunch of things. I negotiated that he, we would be wga he would join the guild after we turned in the script and become a signatory. It's retroactive, it's all kosher, don't worry. And then that we would get paid minimums, which for me is like, man, it's a hundred and like $60,000 split two ways, but still big fat money to write a feature film. And I called the wga, made sure everything was good, the rider strike happened, nothing happened.

And then he was like, all right, let's get it going. And so we called our attorney, he connected with his attorney, we did the contracts, the back and forth. We got the contract. He was gonna fly me out to Baltimore, Maryland mm-hmm. to do research. We submitted the script. We, he, we signed the contract. And then the next day, the day I was supposed to fly to Baltimore, he fell and broke three fingers in his car door. Mm-Hmm. . And I was like, crap. Well, and the whole time there's like this weird spidey sense going off, like, this is too good to be true. There's too much here, but you're, I'm ignoring it because I want this so badly. Mm-Hmm. . And then he signed the contract after he broke his hands and, and sent it back through DocuSign to get it to our attorneys.

Awesome. My attorney was smart enough to put a line in there that you have to make the initial payment, which is a required step to execute the contract mm-hmm. . And he said, no problem. I'll wire the money. The trip fell apart, no flights were given all this stuff. And then the wire was supposed to come. He said he sent it on a Tuesday, Thursday comes around, there's no money. Friday, there's no money. Calls are being made, don't know what's happening. I'm calling my bank. He's not giving us a confirmation number, which pretty easy. Your bank can just track a confirmation number on a wire cuz it's in a database. And so then I start thinking about it some more, and then I start realizing that this guy might not have any money and this guy might be selling dreams. Mm-Hmm. . And I start feeling a little abused because of the whole situation. And you gave me some good advice, which I'll go into. But ultimately here I am two and a half weeks later with a signed contract that will get me in the WGA and pay me $75,000 to write a feature film and be a producer on the film, which I included in the contract and they agreed to mm-hmm. and I have no money in my account and I have a basically void contract.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Because the guy was just a, he was a psycho, he was just a, he wasn't even a scammer, he was just a,

Phil Hudson:

He's got access to my bank account. I sent him wire information, he can technically pull money outta my account with an ACH withdrawal or write checks off that account. None of that has happened. And you would think someone who was scamming you, that's how you do it. Find people who look like they're successful in Hollywood because I have an IMDB credit that makes you look successful and take money out of their account, selling them the dream. That hasn't even happened. And so you pointed out, you know, these are delusions of grandeur. Yeah. And you said, don't feel like that guy robbed you of a dream or stole your dream and scamming you that guy. That's that guy's dream too. Yeah. And my wife pointed out in his mind, he probably legitly thinks he's gonna make this happen because there's a level of mental instability here.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. This is his dream is to be a producer or director or whatever. And it doesn't really matter. I'll, I'll, I'm gonna make it happen. But I mean, he is obviously nuts, so that's heartbreaking to find out that you were this close. And the guy is delusional. So,

Phil Hudson:

Well, we'll, going back to what I said about my daughter, like thinking, I literally just thought of that moment and you know, I shared this with you too. The moment I signed that contract, I recorded a video for my kids talking about how you can chase your dreams and it will go true. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. And that is a fake false moment. Yeah. I felt all of the emotions, all real, not true. But I thought of my daughter and I thought of her falling down on that playground and I said, all right, get back to work. And so I just started writing something else

Michael Jamin:

And I'd write about that immediate, it's so I'd I'd write about that guy , I'd write about that. And how, you know, you, I don't know, I I, cause I, you know, I write personal essay. If it happened to me, I'd be like, oh, that's, there's a story in there for sure.

Phil Hudson:

Sure.

Michael Jamin:

But yeah, there's so much, there's just, I, I just think people, getting back to what we were talking about, I just think people are you know, they just want it to happen. They just want to turn their script in, get hired. But in truth, if you look at successful people, they, you know, they all, they all suffered for a long time. And they built a mountain. And I, you know, I don't know what you're obviously what your plan is or what you're gonna do. It'd be easier to have your script obviously made by someone else and bought. But obviously there's things you could still do on your own. Sure. And you know.

Phil Hudson:

Sure. And you know, we, I think that's the conversation with the attorney is can I still write that script? Even though it's public domain, they didn't bring anything unique to it. Probably Okay to do that. But there is a, a paper trail now and, and I don't know, but on the other hand, I think this is something you talk about all the time mm-hmm. and in h in hindsight,

Michael Jamin:

The money never changed hands. Was it his idea

Phil Hudson:

Contract was never executed. He brought the idea to us. Oh. But it's a public domain historical thing. Okay. And he, nothing he brought us is not in the public domain.

Michael Jamin:

Right. Okay.

Phil Hudson:

Okay. So, and the contract's void, like, because he didn't exchange money. So. Right. On what I, what I was gonna say is, you said this for a long time. I think we said it on the webinar, we just did like producers, like we're talking about pitch fests and and stuff. People who want to hire professional screenwriters go to the wga, cuz that's where the professional writers are. Yeah. And if someone with a 12 million budget offers you to write that script, and I'm not saying it's not gonna happen or has never happened, but I should have, that should have been red flag number one. But I was blinded by that dream, so I was trying to find a shortcut. I was trying to get ahead Yeah. By working the system. And at the end of the day, I didn't pay a price for it, but I learned a valuable lesson, which is, you know, don't get your hopes up until money's in your account. Make sure you cross all the T's and do your research.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. But we've talked, we've spoken about, we have, have, I'm sure we've spoken about this guy who did this movie called Thunder Road

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Didn't think we talked about it

Michael Jamin:

Once. How, how he shot this. And it turns out it was a it was a feature that he submitted, but it was, I, I only saw the scene and the scene that he shot was that I, I was totally impressed by. It's on Vimeo or YouTube, I don't know, it was just took place in a church. It was one scene, a handful of extras. And he was pretty much the only talking part. And that could have been shot to me. It stood on itself. It was a scene that could have been a short, it could have lived on its own. I didn't know it was part of a larger movie. And to me it was brilliant. It was brilliantly acted and written and it was emotional and it was funny. And it's something, it, it's, it got my attention and I'm sure I got the attention of a lot bigger people than myself. And it's something he could've done. I mean, he, if he wanted to, he get a shot at in a day using an, a couple of iPhones, you know? Right. It didn't have to. And it was, you know, all you need is good sound and, but do something like that. And I mean, all can, all of us can do something like that. Something small, you know.

Phil Hudson:

For sure. For sure.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. I, I think, you know, this is I think a lesson that a lot of us need, which is you need to be comfortable being, you need to put yourself in situations where it is difficult by choice, right? Mm-Hmm. , you need to almost experience death, if you will, but in a controlled environment. And that's what I, I mean, I've talked about it before. One of the things that impressed me early on is like, you have a hill that you run up regularly.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Push up

Phil Hudson:

Today. You push to run up a hill up

Michael Jamin:

Today. Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

You run up a hill. Why? Because it's hard.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. You

Phil Hudson:

Don't run on flat ground, you run up a hill.

Michael Jamin:

It's a little harder. There is a wonderful video by that. David Bowie talked, you know, spoke about where he talks about if you wanna do something great, you have to swim in waters just deep enough so you can't touch the bottom. And so, you know, talking about outta your comfort zone and, and yeah. You have to be willing to, to risk. And that's where you do, that's where art is made. And that's where like, you know, that's where all the, that's where the advances come. That's where the growth comes, is when you're in over your head. So God. And so what if you make something terrible? Yeah. And what, so what, so what? Yeah. You know yeah. What you get trolled by people who don't do anything with their lives and what's their, what's their point? You

Phil Hudson:

Know? I know, I know we've read the quote, the poem before, but it's the I believe it's Teddy Roosevelt wrote the poem, man in the arena, right? Yeah. Which is right. Yeah. Yeah. Every, everyone goes after and has words to say about the man in the arena. Yeah. But at the end of the day, you can't listen to him cuz they're not in the arena getting punched in the face. Right? Yeah. And that's, that's what this is. It's getting punched in the face willingly knowing that your body can heal itself. Your ego can heal itself, your mind can heal itself, and you get stronger and more resilient. And you do that by degrees. You don't have to go drowned. You can do a cold plunge in your shower, just turn the water cold. That sucks. That's not fun.

Michael Jamin:

Brene Brene Brown talks about this on, on, you know, on her list special or Netflix special. Yeah. That's what vulnerability is getting outta your comfort zone. And that's when great things happen. And, and it's not just a cliche, it's not just talk. It's like, no guys, this is where good things happen is when you do things that are hard outta your comfort zone. And if you, I'm always amazed, I'm always inspired by people, whatever. You can see 'em on social media and there could be doing something, I don't know, riding a skateboard on a, on a rail. They could be doing something, you know, some, like, none of that is easy. And all of that requires a commitment to like doing this over and over again and taking your knocks. And, and I, you know, sure. I may look at it and think, well yeah, but you're, you know, you're just skateboarding. But no, they're not just skateboarding. They're like, they're, they're getting their head kicked in and they make it look easy, but it's only because they've been doing it so damn long.

Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my videos and you want me to email them queue for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creative types. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not gonna spam you and it's absolutely free. Just go to michael jamin.com/watch

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Phil Hudson:

Yeah. I think society looks at skateboarders and we're using skateboarders as a skateboarders, as a metaphor for people who do things that are strange or not common. And, and art and craft, I think fall into that category. Yeah. Shooting your videos, putting your YouTube videos up, doing a podcast, doing your TikTok videos, whatever. But, but there was a, a psychologist who talked about skateboarders and they're like, don't worry about the skateboarders. They're gonna be fine. They know of adversity. Yeah. It's the other people. It's the people sitting at home not taking risk. That's it. And right about that time I saw this video, it went pretty viral and it was a kid and he's just out practicing this move on, practicing this move on a skateboard over and over and over and over. And the feeling I got was just like, I don't know that I've practiced anything with this much intensity and courage. And then when he lands it, like I wanted to cry, I wanna cry now thinking about how happy I was for that kid landing this thing that he spent all day Yeah. Trying to do. Yeah. And that's just triumph of the human spirit. That's literally what moves us as humanity. Yeah. It's overcoming, overcoming obstacles. It's story, right? It's you, it's your definition of that.

Michael Jamin:

I it's funny you mention mentioning cuz you've helped me. You know, I ran the marketing, my, my wife had a girl's clothing company called Twirly Girl for many years. And I helped her with the marketing of that. And in the beginning you were a big help. That's how we met. Because I didn't know anything about digital marketing. You were, you were big help on that. And the company was flailing for a long time, like, you know, barely making any money. And I, I signed up for something called 10,000 Small Businesses, which is a, a program sponsored by gold. Goldman Sachs almost created the economy, you know, way back in, I don't know, 2008 or something. Maybe it was longer. I don't know. And so as their penance, they decided to create this small business program where they help small business owners kind of become more profitable.

And it's free. All you gotta do is apply to it and open up your book. So I applied, I found out about it and it's like a first class program. It's like, I don't know how many, 10 weeks, one day a week for 10 weeks. And I managed to make time to get into it and I got into it and it was a blessing. And it was, honestly, it was first class and they described it as not a you know, MBA teaches you about all business. This was a mini mba, which teaches you about your business. So I had to come in and I had to do a business plan at the end of the 10 weeks. You gotta do a business plan on your business. How you gonna make your business profitable? I'm like, I don't, how do I know I couldn't, I haven't done that in forever.

Why would I know now? So, but I did all the steps that they tell you to do. And at the end I came up with this business plan and this is just when Facebook advertising was kind of taking off. And so I was like, okay, maybe if I did this on, if I made up a whole business plan for Facebook advertising and I had projections and I had a budget and I told my wife, I go, I'm gonna spend, I don't remember how much money, maybe it was like a thousand dollars. I go, I said, I know we're not making any money, but I wanna spend a thousand dollars doing this. And I had this whole strategy mapped out. I go, if it works, we'll make money. And if it doesn't, we're out a thousand bucks. Are you okay with that? And she was like, yeah, you, we have to.

Right. So I did this business plan and I had projections and, and I, you know, I, I mapped it. Yeah. My projections, if I, if I spent this much money, this is how much I think we'll make. And then we spent the money and at the end of the month I added up the projections versus reality and I was off by something like 10 cents or something. Wow. But, and but that, that was probably, that was probably like a giant coincidence. Like I could have been off by 300 or $200 and it would've been fine cuz there's a margin of error would've been fine. So the fact that I was off by like 10 cents is like, it was a lot of luck.

Phil Hudson:

Mind, mind blowing though.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. But it was mind blowing. And I was so, like, I remember I went for a run that day and I was almost in tears. Cause I was like, oh my God, we finally figured it out. Like it took so long for us to finally make money with this business. We were just bleeding money for all this time. And we tried everything. And the fact that this finally worked after just not giving up, I wanted to cry. I was like, oh my God, thank God I didn't stop. You know?

Phil Hudson:

So Yeah. That's, it's resilience. It's resilience. I went to a Tony Robbins event and say what you will about Tony Robbins? But I went to an event and he said, the thing really just impacted me. He's like, I went to the Olympics in Atlanta and they bring out an Olympian, a gold medalist from like the 1940s who was still alive. And everyone in the stadium stood and cheered for this person. And it's like, why? Because that person did something unimaginable. They, they were world class at what they did 60 years ago, 50 years ago. And we still respected. And it's, it's about the effort and the time and the sacrifice that went into that. And it applies to everything else. I mean, how much time have you put into your craft of writing? How much time are you writing when you're not being paid to write Michael? All the time.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. All the time. But, and when people said like, well I have a script, or you know, or sometimes they, it's so, it's very frustrating when they, they, you know, they talk about the gatekeepers and they talk about why everything's so unfair. And it's like, well what? And I ask like, well what have you done though? You know, where do you live? Oh, I'm in Cleveland. You know, you're gonna complain about gatekeepers cuz there are people out here trying to break into Hollywood. They got a leg up on you. They're sacrificing more and you're gonna complain about gatekeepers. What do you know from Cleveland? What do you know? What do you know about Hollywood? You are in Cleveland, you know, but they have these preconceived notions about what it is they've already given up and you haven't even tried. And you think they, they think they've tried, but they haven't. They really haven't. They haven't done everything. You know, and the people who are here who've given up more, guess what they deserve to be at the front of the line

Phil Hudson:

Season three of Tacoma f I was it was like we were shooting late and the producer from a 24 Savvy, she came in and she was talking to us and she was talking to me and the other pa and we were just talking about like our experience in Hollywood so far. And she was like, she heard my story. And she's like, I asked her how, what her story was. And she's like, well I pulled a Phil and it was very kind of her to say that, but she's like, I did the same thing you did where I started working on a show as an assistant mm-hmm. . And then they kept me on for the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And I just worked on that show year round for several years. And then I became the line producer's assistant and then I learned how to do a producing. And she just worked her way up the exact same way that I was trying to do. She's just younger than me, but she's on the, did the exact same path of sacrifice. Right. That's probably dozens if not hundreds of people in LA who have done the exact same thing of busting their butt doing things that they feel are beneath them to make it work. It's not unique. It's about the commitment. Right. And how much can you tolerate?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Right. And, and it doesn't even take a lot of talent. It doesn't take a lot of talent to, to do the work. It doesn't, it just takes you a commitment to doing the work. Doesn't mean you're gonna be successful. No. Cuz talent does play an element, but the, the, the hard the the building the mountain just takes no talent at all. It, you know, that, that's just work. Anyone can do that.

Phil Hudson:

We all know what a mountain looks like. Right? Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

And, and, you know, and to to, to build on that metaphor, you know, what is mountain climbing? Like mountain climbing's, just walking guys, when people go to the climb to the top of Everest, guess what? They're just walking, they're walking in the cold, they're walking with a oxygen mask at times they're walking hooked up to ropes with little air to breathe. I get it. But they're still just walking, you know? Right. So, and what they do is impo, you know, incredible. But again, it's walking. So if you wanna climb your mountain, can you, do you know how to walk? I mean, that's it. It's just one step at a time.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. I might have talked about this on the podcast before, so forgive me if it's redundant, but someone asked me recently like, well how did you get to la? Like how did you transition out of doing SEO and digital marketing to do this? And it was like 2009 or 10 mm-hmm. . And I started volunteering at the, at the Sundays Film Festival. And I was living with some roommates at the time and I just started this job in sales and I was not very good at it. And all I wanted to do was write. That's all I wanted to do. And for two years had been writing really bad features and they were just horrible. And I was like, well there's, I know where I want to go is be in Hollywood and be a professional writer. And so the shortest path, the direct line is just write, write, write.

But at the same time, I had just gotten out of the recession and I was just making my life better. And I was like, okay, how, how am I gonna make this work? I need to get to la. How am I gonna get to la? I need to have money. What kind of money? Because if I wanna write in LA I'm gonna have to have a lot more money than I have now and I'm gonna probably gonna need some sort of passive income. And I don't know that passive income's ever actually passive, but I'm gonna need something that generates money so I can spend time on my craft. Well, I know how to do e-commerce and I'm at a company that teaches e-commerce and I can get really good at that and then that will generate money. So I'm just shipping things and handling customer support instead of waiting tables.

So, so that sounds good, but what do I need to do to be able to afford that? So while I need to learn how to sell things, I need to make money now to be able to afford that. So I went home that day, I said, in five years, here's where I'll be, I'll be in la I'll have a pr, a profitable e-commerce business, which is what our company did. And I will be able to write and work for three hours a day and then write. And it may not be a lot, but I'll survive. And I literally went home and I went into my room and I took my Xbox and I unplugged it and I put it in my roommate's room and I set it down. And then where my t where it was on the tv, I took the TV and I put it in the closet and I sat down at my desk and I would go to work and I would suck at selling.

And then I would sit there and I just read sales books. And within a week I started making money because I put time and intention and focus into my mountain, which was sales. And within six months I was the number one sales rep at the entire company with the worst leads. But I was making so much money that I was like, okay, now I can take a step back. And it's not tons of money guys. Like this is like a ton of money for me at the time. Cause I grew up super poor. It was like $74,000 a year at 24 years old. Stupid money for a 24 year old kid in 2010 or 11. And so beyond that, the next thing that I did was, okay, now I need to take the same amount of time I was putting into sales and put it in e-commerce.

And I would just sit there and I'd put in the DVD training series, which is like the equivalent of your screenwriting course. And I would just watch the guru teach people how to do the job. This is what we sold. And I would just do what he said. And within three months, my website was making more money than I was making in commissions at the job. And then I went in and I talked to him cuz he had an open door policy at the company. And I said, Hey Parker, do you mind just looking at my site? He looked through a bunch of things, he's like, you did this? And I was like, yeah. He's like, this is a success story. Congrats. And I was like, awesome. And I just kept doing that and doing that. And then when that started doing well, then I started focus on riding and I, because that was my next mountain.

And then I took a huge detour through Santa Fe to go to film school because of my Sundance stuff. But I was also volunteering for 40 hours at Sundance while working. And that was my way of staying in the business and doing it. And I would write for a couple hours on the weekend. So that's, that's not unique to me. I'm not saying that to toot my own horn. What I'm saying is, for anybody listening who's struggling is you need to define where you want to go and backfill the steps to get there. And I think what you're saying is those are the mountains and the mountain screenwriting. How am I gonna get to la? That's a mountain. Once you're in LA how do you get a job in the industry? That's a mountain, right? It's just step by step by step,

Michael Jamin:

Right? Yeah. You gotta put the work. And this, this shouldn't be, I don't know why it's surprising to people sometimes when I say stuff like, make these comments on in these posts on social media, like, man, this guy gets it. He's under like, he's dropping bombs. Like, what? I don't know. This is just the truth. I don't know. It's like, isn't it just obvious? You know? Yeah. there's just no shortcuts. I wish, you know, wouldn't be great. Like you, you don't get to take a helicopter to the top of the mountain and and plant your flag. It just doesn't work that way.

Phil Hudson:

You gotta climb. And if you do, you will very shortly fall down the mountain because you don't know how to have sure. Footing on the mountain

Michael Jamin:

And you won't appreciate what you've done there. You won't be able to take a celebrate. Cuz it'll be like, yeah, I, I took a helicopter. You know, and so that's the problem with what I see sometimes with people. Like, well, how do I sell my screenplay? How do I sell my I my idea? Your idea? No, no, no, no. You don't sell your idea. You know? Yep. You wanna write it fine. Learn how to write. Everyone wants to skip that step. That part's too hard. They, they just wanna sell it.

Phil Hudson:

Right? From an action perspective, other than, you know, the classic self-development or personal development five year goal and backtrack, you know, five year goal, one year goal, six month goal, quarterly goal, weekly goal, monthly goal, weekly goal, daily goal. Like doing that to keep your focus and stay on a trajectory beyond that. As a writer, what do you see are the actionable steps people can do to build the mountain? And, and I I think this might be more related to craft. You've done a lot of content on go do it yourself, don't let people hold you back, make your own content. But from a, from a craft perspective, what do you think people can do? Cuz that seems to be the place where most people struggle, is knowing how to tell a good story and do it properly.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. I mean, the people wanna skip that part. You know, obviously we have a course and you're welcome, anyone's welcome. We only open enrollment a few days a month, but if they wanna go check that out, it's at michael chapman.com/course where I teach you everything that I've known, everything I learned at the feet of better writers than my myself working on pro, you know, professional television shows. And so I, that's what I teach you. Like how we break a story. It could every day because we can't wait for inspiration. You, you get paid, you have to get paid, you have to make a TV show this week. So I teach you that. And I think it's actually like, what I recommend is for people to just go through the course and watch a half hour. It's a long course. I say watch a half hour a day and which is not gonna kill you.

It's a half hour. And then at the end of the month, you'll have finished the course and then you'll have a habit. Like, okay, from nine 30 to 10, I always write, I always work on my writing. So, so do that. And you know, and, and stop worrying about, I also say like, people always say write one screenplay. They they polish it, they work on it, work on it. No, no. Put it, finish it, put it aside and working on another one because it's the, it's the beginning to end process that will make you better. And then when you look back on your fifth screenplay, you compare it to your first, I don't care how much work you did on the first number, five's gonna be much better. It just is. And, and that just from doing the work, you know. But any, you know, anyone can do it. Anyone can just sit down and work.

Phil Hudson:

Yep. You put out tons of free content on your social media as well. And there are probably a lot of people here who found you. So you know that. But for those who stumble upon this podcast or a friend shared it with you, Michael Jamon, writer on social media, tons of great stuff. Podcasts,

Michael Jamin:

Instagram,

Phil Hudson:

Tiktok. Yeah. This podcast has a ton of great info on it as well. Yeah, it's just, I mean, look, the answer is do the work, right?

Michael Jamin:

I also, you know, and I, I have a ton of like posts, ton of free stuff and people are like, whoa, you have too much. I have too much. Like, so sit down and watch a post. Now you're complaining that you have too much free help . So watch a post a day, watch five a day. Is that gonna hurt you? Each one is three minutes long, so it's 15 minutes. Like I don't, I don't know what to tell you. Like, it's free, it's there

Phil Hudson:

. Yeah. That, that's upsetting to me right here behind my diploma. I have this book and it was the first book I wrote on screenwriting. Cause like, I didn't even know, I didn't know until I was 21 that there was a, a format for writing TV. And I knew I wanted to do it since I was 12 because the internet was new when I was a kid. Like you don't know. And so I went into a Barnes and Noble and I went through the movie theater section. I found two books on screenwriting. Mm-Hmm. . I bought the one that made the most sense to me. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Screenwriting by Skip Press. And I went home and I just devoured that book. All I wanted to do was read that book and I got to the end and it was resources and there's a link to a couple websites in there.

And one of 'em was word Player by Ted Elliot and TecIO, who were like legends in the screenwriting world. And I went to their site word player.com and I found, and it's not a pretty site, it is like forums from the nineties mm-hmm. . but there were articles that they would do on a o l in the late nineties that they had republished there. And I just started going through them one by one and reading them and rereading them. And I was so committed to this. I set it as my home tab on my computer. Wow. So when I logged in, I would see their site load and the first day I did that I got a notice saying I was banned from the site and couldn't access it. And I had to contact the webmaster and the server had flagged me for spamming the site because I went to it too much.

Michael Jamin:

They thought you were spamming it just cuz you were reading it.

Phil Hudson:

That was cuz I was just kept going. Cuz every time I opened a browser it would load that site. And so it was, and it felt like I was like spamming. It's out of time on the web. But you know, it kept flagging me because my IP address was being flagged as like a brute force attack or a DDoS attack or whatever you wanna call it. And so I had to contact the webmaster and be like, Hey, I'm just really committed to my craft and I just really wanna be able to look at the site every time I feel like I might get distracted by something on the web, I can remember my purpose. And she's like, okay. So she whitelisted my IP and I could keep going back to the site, but Wow. There were like 40 articles on that. Michael, you've put up a post every day for almost two years. That's almost, that's over 700 pieces of content. Yeah. Not including, we're at like almost 90 episodes of the podcast that are between 30 minutes and an hour each. Mm-Hmm. not to mention the articles in your website. Yeah. Not to mention the free course, not to mention the free PDFs that we give away in your webinars. Yeah. Not to mention the monthly webinars. So it's actually kind of upsetting to me that people say you have too much cuz I was dying in the desert hoping for water, and I found an oasis. Right.

Michael Jamin:

Someone, you know, I don't think they were talking my be either left to comment my, my posts, you know, saying you, you Hollywood gatekeepers. I'm like, gatekeepers, dude, I'm on here every fricking day trying to tell you what to do. Who's the gatekeeper? Who's the gatekeeper?

Phil Hudson:

You know? Yeah. And that all that is is a, it's a, it's a belief that you have in your mind and it's a, a very subtle way, your unconscious mind is protecting you from failure. Yeah.

Right. You talked about friends who have tremendous talent or who come out here and then wash out. Yeah. And I have friends, I have people I moved out here with. I have people who from my film school moved out here and they had roommates and out of all those people, I think I've said it on here, there's like three of those people in LA of all, all of Los Angeles. Mm-Hmm. from the hundreds of people I went to college with. And one's an agent's assistant or maybe an agent. Now one is an actual WGA writer, one is the head of creative development for an actual production company. Mm-Hmm. , there's me who's just a guy who handles plumbing on a TV show effectively. Right? Mm-hmm. . But, but there are very few, and I do have friends who are literally afraid to push themselves and do work because they don't wanna disappoint their dad. His dad gave them crap for wanting to pursue art and said, you will fail and when you fail, you'll have a home here and we can find work for you, God. And so they don't want to fail, so they won't take risks because as long as they're tangentially working in, in around the industry, God, they haven't failed. So they, they no won't push themselves.

Michael Jamin:

It's so sad. Like my daughter wanted to be an artist when she was in grade school and then she applied to the School of the Arts, which is a, a free, it's a free school you know, public school for the high school, but you have to apply for it. And I was like, I'm not helping you do this. Like, if you want it, you're gonna have to do it yourself. And she did do it herself. And she got in and she went, now she's at Cooper Union, which is a great art school in New York City because like, being an artist is hard, but she's so committed. And the other day she sent me, she said, Hey I'm gonna submit my film to a, like a film festival, like an art film school, art festival. Like, not not narrative, but Mark, you know, kind of avantgarde. And I go, gimme the bill. You know, it wasn't even alive. It was like 78 bucks. But I was like, I'm paying for it because yeah. Like that's it. I want, I want her to be able to, you know, so cool. I don't, I like, that's like the least I can do because I didn't support her then because I didn't know how serious she was, you know, because Yeah. You know, and she's

Phil Hudson:

Proven herself.

Michael Jamin:

She's proven herself now. So, no, I'm doing, I'm paying. I, I go, I wanna pay for this cuz you've proven it yourself. So

Phil Hudson:

It's, it's easy to say you want to be a professional NBA player. It's hard to sit there after everyone goes home and keep shooting for he throws and then shoot three pointers and then run sprints and do ladders. It's like, yeah. That's the work no one wants to do. It's not sexy, it's hard, it's sweaty. And that's, that's so hard.

Michael Jamin:

Right? And when that person does the work though, then you wanna help them. You don't wanna help them before, right? Yeah. But when you see someone busting their ass, you go, okay, please let me help you because you are busting your ass. Yeah. And so bust your ass first and then maybe someone will help you. But don't ask for help before you haven't done anything, you know, because no one wants Yeah. Because it just feels like, ah, you know, how serious are you? I don't, why am I gonna get behind you if you're not serious?

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. And, and I might err too far on the other side of this personally, but, you know, I had a, a call with Paul Soder of Broken Lizard who, and I had the opportunity to help them outside of the film quasi they did on Hulu, but also like, ran their social media and went on tour with them, which was super cool experience. And I had a moment where I was like at dinner with them, and I believe Kevin Heffernan brought up something. It's me, Kevin, Jay, and Paul. And we're sitting at dinner and he's like, he brought up something and it was talking about how, like, it was talking about hard work and effort and you had to put in and, and I just had this moment where it clicked for me. And I said, you know, Kevin, I appreciate what you're saying. And he's basically into the fact that if we complain about the fact that we think we've earned opportunities and people, other people get them, that we need to understand that many of the things we're frustrated about serve a very valuable purpose.

You know? And he said, he said that, and I said, you know, I'm having the realization now that the fact that I'm sitting at the table with you guys is because anytime I've not gotten something from you guys that other people have told me I deserved, I've never said a word to you about it. Mm-Hmm. . And he said, exactly right. I don't, I'm not looking for anything from those guys. Right. I'm looking to earn it when it's time. And it stings and it's frustrating when it doesn't come and other people told you should, but those are expectations people put in my head. They're not expectations I have in my heart. And I let that get in the way, and then I have to work through that pain and, and frustration to get back to my baseline of it doesn't matter. And look, Paul Suter was calling and asking for help with what I do in the digital marketing world. And I was like, I'm happy to help you. And he was like, no, no, I want to pay you. And I was like, look man, I think it's important that I help you as a way of giving back for what you've already done. He's like, well, you know, and it's like I had to, I had to help him understand. No, I feel gratitude. I feel a debt of gratitude, not the other way around.

Michael Jamin:

I mean, think about that though. Felt whatever, 10 years ago. How long, when did you move to la?

Phil Hudson:

I moved to LA in 2016, so it's been almost seven years.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, okay. So if I had told you seven years

Phil Hudson:

Ago, but, but I would've, you told me to move here in, to be fair, in 2013 when we met, right. And I got the scholarship opportunity like a month later, you're not gonna turn. And so I took like a three, I took a three year delay to get here,

Michael Jamin:

But, all right, but if I told you seven years ago that you'd be sitting at the table with these filmmakers in their, in their presence, who they're very successful and you know, just absorbing and learning from them. Like you'd be, are you outta your mind? I mean, those guys are,

Phil Hudson:

I would've, I would've thought you were crazy in no way. Yeah. I, I had that moment too. We were on tour and they were taking a photo and I was like, oh, let me get outta the way. And they're like, no, no, Phil stay and mm-hmm. I never asked them for photos, I never asked them for autographs. I never do any of those things. And now I, it's like weird too. Cause I had to check myself to say, and anyway, I have this photo of them at dinner which is really cool cuz it's not something I would ever ask for. But at the same time I recognize that I, I see them as friends now. Yeah. Which is even crazier, right? Yeah. And I had to check myself on tour when I'm standing at Wrigley Field on the ma like on the field. You're on the field while field Jay's throwing out the first pitch. Oh

Michael Jamin:

Wow. Isn't that great? And I

Phil Hudson:

Have the, I have the ball over here cuz Jay gave me the ball after.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, that's nice. So like, that's nice.

Phil Hudson:

I had to check myself and say, this is a dream I would've killed for in 2000 2, 3, 4 when I was in high school. I would've killed for this.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. And think how close you Yeah. You're, I mean, so you're taking these steps. You're, like I said, you're, you're one of the guys building the mountain. So

Phil Hudson:

I appreciate it. It'll take us

Michael Jamin:

Long takes, I takes,

Phil Hudson:

You know, I just wanna reiterate to everyone and, and I understand that there's a lot of cynicism on the internet because there are a lot of self-serving people who focus on how can I get ahead? And there are a lot of people who accuse me of being insincere. Michael, you know me, that's

Michael Jamin:

Cra it's cra I don't, I don't know who's, who's, I don't know what context they said that.

Phil Hudson:

It's a lot of people who don't know me. And I get it cuz there are people who are insincere and doing things to get ahead. And I run into those people. I'm not that person. And when I tell these stories or anything that's successful, I almost feel ashamed because it feels braggadocious and prideful and mm-hmm. , there is pride behind it. Cuz I am proud of the work that I have put in. I have climbed the mountains Yeah. That have gotten me to where I am. But at the same time, I'm, I'm just trying to help inspire you at home to put in the time, energy, and effort necessary to pursue your dreams and surround yourself with the right mentors and people who have been where you want to be.

Michael Jamin:

Yep.

Phil Hudson:

Serve them with every skillset you have. Anybody can go pick up drag cleaning, anybody can go walk a dog. Yeah. You don't need, you don't need to understand digital marketing and the complex nuances of Facebook algorithms to do w what I'm doing. You can do it yourself and do it freely without expectation.

Michael Jamin:

As, as a wrap up, I wanna leave people with the wise words of my seventh grade English teacher, , her name was Miss to and she was, and her name was Miss Tomb. And she used to say, time's passing, but you are not . Ooh. And I fucking, I always love that. And I was like, miss Tomb, I'm in the honors program. I dunno what your talking, I don't know what this empty thread is, but but like, yeah, don't let time pass and, you know, and, and not do it. I love that time's pass. So, you know, make sure you use your time. Use your time. May build a mountain.

Phil Hudson:

That's

Michael Jamin:

Beautiful. All right, Philly.

Phil Hudson:

Okay. Well, Michael obviously we've talked about a bunch of the resources you have. Yeah. And we always end with this is just because again, there are a lot, there's a lot of content, but you have the free lesson from your course. It's available to anybody, teaches you what story is and the definition, again, literally the first thing you ever taught me, you shot me an email, I failed miserably. Mm-Hmm. , go learn. So you don't have to fail, but that's michaeljamin.com/free. You have the course you can get, you can learn more about it and sign up to be notified when it's open @michaeljamin.com/course. You have your book that you're working on and touring. Any updates on touring?

Michael Jamin:

No updates. I'm still, we're still agonizing over the title. I'm working that out. I, it's been a process. But yeah, all this stuff is free. I got a lot of time, ton of free resources on my website. Michael jam.com. Just go visit

Phil Hudson:

And michael jamin do com. Michael jamin.com/upcoming is where they can get info about the book though. Right. And tour

Michael Jamin:

And all that stuff upcoming is for my tours. Yeah. Cool. And that's it.

Phil Hudson:

Alright. If it was a pleasure, Michael, I appreciate the time. It's very fruitful hour of conversation for me. I feel better,

Michael Jamin:

I feel better

Phil Hudson:

Too. Have this conversation. It's good stuff. Hopefully you guys at home do as well.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, I hope so too. Every all right. As Phil says, we concluded by saying keep writing everyone, so thank you. All right. All right. Bye. Bye-Bye.

Phil Hudson:

This has been an episode of Screenwriters. Need to Hear this with Michael Jamin and Phil Hudson. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for Michael's monthly webinar @michaeljamin.com/webinar. If you found this podcast helpful, consider sharing it with a friend and leaving us a five star review on iTunes. For free screenwriting tips, follow Michael Jamin on social media @MichaelJaminwriter. You can follow Phil Hudson on social media @PhilaHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It was edited by Dallas Crane Music. By Ken Joseph. Until next time, keep writing.


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