The value of re-inventing yourself

I’m a BIG believer of re-inventing yourself. It keeps you young, you learn new things, and in this economy and marketplace it just provides you with more options.

The entertainment world, in particular, is changing every minute. This is partly because technology is changing every thirty seconds and the industry is desperately trying to keep up even though they have no idea what they’re keeping up with. Old business models don’t work (not that they all worked before), and everyone is scrambling trying to get a toehold in the future. Trouble is that’s like trying to hold a soap bubble.

But if you made a living doing one thing for twenty years there’s a good chance that job doesn’t exist, or if it does, they don’t want you doing it. I’ve always believed that it’s a good idea to find an alternative skill before the bus that takes you out of show business pulls up in front of your house.

For me it was directing. But I’m an extreme case. I also became a baseball announcer, and set off to write in different formats (like say a blog for example). So I’m not saying emulate me. I’m crazy. But finding something else that sparks your imagination or you feel might serve a need is a good course of action to consider.

A number of my friends have done that and I want to salute them.

Bonnie Hoffman has created the impossible – a healthy cookie that is actually delicious. With the help of her husband, Howard they have started Bonnie’s Survival Cookies and they’re available on line. I’ve been watching their progress the last year with great admiration. Think “the Manhattan Project” but with chocolate chips instead of plutonium.

Another future cookie mogul is my buddy Ray Richmond. Ray has been an entertainment journalist since before cable. For years he was at the Hollywood Reporter. Currently he’s writing for Deadline Hollywood Daily, the Nikki Finke juggernaut. But on the side he came up with a great idea – ACCURATE fortune cookies. Our whole lives we’ve opened fortune cookies and read these lame optimistic predictions. Imagine slipping somebody a cookie with a fortune telling him he’s a hopeless loser who shouldn’t even try. This is one novelty item I want when I invite friends over and fire up the wok. You can check them out here.

Other colleagues I know have started restaurants, a limo company, become radio talk show hosts, and self-publishing has opened a whole new world to writers tired of having their spec screenplays rejected because Miley Cyrus is not attached.

But my favorite example of all is Jane Espenson. She’s a fabulous writer with a career that’s in the stratosphere. In the blogosphere world she’s a goddess. But not content to just write great scripts for other people, she created her own web series, HUSBANDS that has become a big hit. Mix talent with initiative and magic can happen. Is it too bad of a pun to call her the Mother of Re-invention?  Yeah, probably is.

But the common denominator is that all of these people took it upon themselves to go off in a different direction. Good things can happen. And I’m a firm believer that you make your own momentum.

You may change your life for the better – and that turns out to be an accurate fortune.