The Four Roles of the Filmpreneur
Today, I want to share a nifty technique for focusing your mind, putting your inner world in order, and maintaining your sanity amidst the chaos of indie film entrepreneurship.
But first, a little context.
If you’ve read the Filmpreneur Code, or you’ve done any of the work to identify or research your niche, you know just how much responsibility an entrepreneurial filmmaker takes on.
It’s an awful lot of work, much of which centers around marketing and business activities creatives usually aren’t comfortable with.
I sure wasn’t.
Back in the day, before I reluctantly joined the marketing world, I was a cinematographer and a writer who scoffed at the idea of handling business stuff myself.
I was too much of an artist for that. Or so I told myself.
(Coincidentally, this is a great example of how our internal narratives about ourselves can be extremely limiting. For more on this idea, check out the beliefs episode of the podcast.)
Point is, it’s all too easy to slip into overwhelm, anxiety, or crippling cognitive dissonance when taking on new responsibilities that don’t align with your sense of self.
It’s a very real problem, and if you’re not careful, it may very well hamper your ability to make a living from your films.
That’s where this nifty trick of the mind comes in.
When you apply what I’m about to show you, it not only helps you use your time better, but it slowly and surely morphs your identity into that of a true filmpreneur.
So here it is.
Break yourself into 4 different roles or personas.
As humans, our imagination is one of our most powerful assets.
In additon to using it to envision a better future, set goals, and tell fictional stories, so can we use it to make sense of our inner world.
More specifically, each of us has the power to create personas that live within us. And each of these personas can have their own personality and talents.
Just ask the timid 5-year old who puts on a cape and suddenly has the confidence of Superman. Or the bookish accountant, who, upon crossing the threshold of his CrossFit gym, becomes a brutish force of nature.
Or ask Steven Pressfield, who named his inner saboteur “Resistance” and gave the creative community the tools to beat Resistance by summoning their inner “Professional.”
Point is, we all have this ability to embody characteristics separate from our “normal identity.” And this ability can be useful in a wide range of scenarios in our professional and personal lives.
(If you’re curious, this whole model is partly inspired by Todd Herman’s book, The Alter Ego Effect, and by Michael Gerber’s legendary business book, The E-Myth Revisited, both of which I’d recommend highly.)
Now, here’s where this gets insanely useful for entrepreneurial filmmakers.
If you’re reading this, I’m guessing your primary goal in life is to make a living from the films you care about.
If that sounds like you, I’d like you to create 4 personas, each with a specific role to play in pursuit of that goal.
Here’s the breakdown of each persona and its role.
The Artist: Does the creative and craft work of filmmaking, from writing to shooting to editing.
The Producer: Handles the logistical and monetary side of the filmmaking process.
The Marketer: Works to build audiences and get your films out into the world.
The Owner: Makes big picture strategic decisions about what the other roles do. The owner decides what films are made, how they're made, and how they're sold. The owner is also responsible for making plans that will grow the creative and financial wellbeing of everybody. The rest of the roles execute on those plans.
Now, in order to succeed as a filmpreneur, all of these roles need to be present and performing their duties.
If you (or your collaborators) ignore any of one of them, you won’t get the results you’re after. Each offers a critical piece of the puzzle.
But chances are you already know that. So let’s get back to how to use this model for beating overwhelm and feeling some semblance of inner calm with our work.
Three reasons this model is a godsend for entrepreneurial creatives.
First, it allows us to break free from our preconceived notions of who and what we are.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow. But the world disproportionately rewards not the most talented creatives, but the ones who understand marketing and do the work to create opportunities for themselves.”
Like I mentioned earlier, in my college days, I never would have thought of myself as a marketer or entrepreneur. In fact, I resisted anything having to do with those labels, because they were contrary to my identity as a creative.
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that I didn’t find many opportunities as a creative when that was my primary identity.
It’s a tough pill to swallow. But the world disproportionately rewards not the most talented creatives, but the ones who understand marketing and do the work to create opportunities for themselves.
However, if that feels scary, or contrary to the identity you’ve built for yourself, don’t worry.
When we use our imagination to comparmentalize our inner world, we can protect our “inner artist” while still developing the skills, and doing the work, that will lead us to success.
So if you feel ambivalent towards marketing and business, try this out. Create an alter ego—the Batman to your Bruce Wayne—who specializes in marketing.
For more in-depth instruction on how to do this, check out Todd Herman’s Alter Ego Effect book. Alternatively, he does a nice deep dive on this podcast episode with Rich Roll.
Just by creating an alter ego who’s a savvy marketer and promoter (I use a real dude named André Chaperon for my marketing alter ego), we can maintain our “creative integretity” while still handling our business like professionals.
So that’s the first reason I like the persona model.
It helps us transcend our self-limiting identities, and become who we need to be to get results as filmpreneurs.
The others two reasons this framework rocks is that it allows you to compartmentalize both your energy and your time.
First up, your energy.
Think of each of those roles I outlined earlier as a “work mode,” where you focus solely on the responsibilities of one role at a time.
When you’re in artist mode, you don’t have to think about anything other than making the best damn art you can muster.
Same goes with the other roles.
When you’re marketing, you needn’t worry about the tasks of the owner or producer. You’ve only got one job right now—telling the world about your art, and turning people into “true fans.”
When you’re producing, you’re building the logistical and budgetary scaffold so that the artist can do what they do best. But you don’t have to fret about any of the other work to support this filmmaking business.
By thinking and working like this, a couple of things happen.
First, it reduces the cognitive overwhelm that comes from taking on so much divergent work. You’re able to focus on what needs to be done for this specific role right now, while leaving other work to different roles at different times.
It tricks your brain into thinking everything else being taken care of by someone else, so you can confidently focus on the tasks at hand.
Second, by focusing on just one role at a time, you actually increase the quality of your attention, and thereby the quality of your work.
Your creative work will benefit when your mind is devoid of all the marketing tasks piling up, or the logistical nightmare faced by your producer.
For a moment in time, you can turn aside those other concerns, and do your very best, most focused creative work.
(For more on this concept, check out Cal Newport’s amazeballs book, Deep Work.)
So, by breaking yourself into pieces, and giving each piece a specific job, you can do better, more focused work in each of these roles.
Compartmentalizing your time as a filmpreneur, and building the ideal schedule
Like I mentioned before, when you’re operating in a role, you’re focusing as much as possible on that role’s responsibilities, and as little as possible on those of the other roles.
This means you can effectively start controlling how much time you give to each role, crafting the perfect ratio that makes sense for you and your business.
You also get to decide when, where, and how often you’ll take on certain roles.
Here’s an example of the ratio you might adopt between these roles. These numbers represent how much time you devote to each.
5% Owner
10% Producer
20% Marketer
60% Artist
Now, you’ll have to discover the ideal ratio for you and your own film business, and it’s always bound to change based on what you’re working on, etc. But this is a good place to start.
Once you have a ratio like this, you can design your days and weeks to make the best use of your time and energy, and work towards your current priorities.
So for instance, if you’re in the midst of editing a film, you might spend your early mornings on the marketing work, then spend the rest of the day operating as the artist in your edit bay.
If you’re in pre-production, you might swap out the creative work with the work of the producer. And then, when production rolls around, you give your inner artist and producer center stage, while the other two take a back seat.
Then, when you’re between projects, your owner might take over for a bit, while the artist and producer take a much needed vacation.
Regardless of how you divy your time up between the others, though, I can’t recommend highly enough that you never put the marketer persona aside.
Marketing is the common denominator in successful filmmakers these days. They might be brilliant strategically, beautifully creative, and incredibly well organized, but if the marketing piece isn’t in place, opportunity will be limited.
So, no matter what stage of the filmmaking process you’re in, I urge you to keep your marketing hat on, even if it’s just 15-30 minutes a day. A little bit goes a long way.
Anyhow, that’s all I’ve got for this concept.
I hope this concept of personas and alter egos, along with these four crucial roles, gave you a new “lens” for how you view yourself, your priorities, and time.
Good luck, and godspeed!
-Rob
