Don't Be Afraid to Ask

My son Ben is a singer/songwriter. Last week, he traveled to Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest music festival, one of the biggest gatherings of indie musicians in the country. Ben was there to make connections and learn, but he did bring a guitar. One night he went into one of the many bars in downtown Austin (all of them with a stage and sound equipment) and saw that the stage was empty. So he found the manager and asked if he could play for awhile, and the manager said yes! So Ben and his friend Jeremy played for an hour during the SXSW festival, and made some tip money. All because he had the nerve to ask. By the way, you can download Ben's CD, "Soft Watches and Altered States," on itunes, or buy the CD from Amazon.com or CDbaby.com. Just search for the CD title. When I first started in television programming, I didn't know anyone in the business outside of HBO. I knew that if I was going to learn, I needed to make connections outside of my company. I sent letters (this was in the days before e-mail) to people I admired in the business asking if they could give me 20 minutes of their time to answer some questions. I met several people in the programming business by doing this, including the VP of Programming for USA, David Kenin, and Bob Greenway, who later became my boss at Golf Channel. Again, this only happened because I asked. Creating content is a collaborative business. Even if you write, direct, and star in everything yourself, you will still need people to help you get your content distributed. Whether you're hoping a network executive will sign you, or you want frieends to forward your video so it goes viral, in every case you need to reach out to people. People will tell you "no" a lot in the entertainment business, but if you don't ask for what you want, you have no chance to get a "yes." Don't be afraid to ask for what you want and need from collaborators, distributors, agents, and even your audience. Who knows, you might get a "yes." In a recent post I talked about dealing with rejection. You must learn to deal with it, because it's a certainty that you will get rejected sometime. But don't let the fear of rejection stop you. The answer is always 'no' until you ask.