Ep 147 Woody Allen's Secret to Moviemaking Success - Media Training May 26, 2016

Woody Allen doesn't own a computer and has never sent an email.

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in Life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

I saw this story in early 2016 about how famed Hollywood director and New York based auteur Woody Allen has never owned a computer and has never sent an email. And at some level it's fascinating. On the other hand, it's profoundly depressing to think that someone who is this productive, let's face it, he's more productive than me and probably you too. And he can be that productive creating content, creating media without even owning a computer. What lessons can we learn from this? To me, it's a great testament to the idea of discipline. And folks, I understand Woody Allen has a checkered personal life. I'm not here to praise him or to pass judgment on his personal life. I do want to talk about his output, his pure creative output. Here is a guy who has not just written more than 50 movies, but produced and directed more than 50 movies and has starred in a lot of them. He's now 80 years old, he's not starring in as many of them. That's a tremendous creative output. That's typically at least one big movie a year that he's writing, creating, producing, promoting all over the world. And he still plays the clarinet every Monday night and does a lot of other things too. It's fascinating how prodigious he is and just the sheer level of productivity, not using any of the so called productivity tools that most of us use. He's not tweeting, he's not using all the different apps we can put on our phone. He's not using Evernote, he's not using any of those things. To me, the real lesson is have a discipline for creating and stick with it. Woody Allen writes a movie script every year he produces a movie script, every year he directs it. There's a discipline, there's a focus there that unfortunately a lot of us don't have because we're so distracted. Oh, let's check Facebook, let's go to Twitter, let's do Instagram, let's do Snapchat. And certainly there is a role for all of those things. I don't want to sound like a Luddite and say, well, throw your computer away and just start chipping away at tablets. That's not the answer for most of us. But at some level we do have to realize that more and more and more electronic tools won't help. If at some point we don't Sit down, block out the distraction and create. With Woody Allen, it appears to be a typewriter paper. He's focused on nothing else and he is typing a script and he just does it until it's finished. Now some people work best by not doing any work and then three straight days, no sleep doing it. I think that's a minority. Some of the most famous writers in the world just treat it as though they are going to the salt mines. They clock in at nine, they clock out at five. They may give themselves a quota of five or 10 finished pages a day. It's there's no one perfect method. But what I do think for all of us these days, or at least most of us, if we run a business, if we are in charge of communications for a business, if we are a one person consulting shop or CEO of a 2 million employee organization, we need to give ourselves some quantifiable goals of output of content. And maybe you're not writing a best selling novel, maybe you're not writing a script for a movie that's going to have tens of millions of dollars behind it and a Hollywood budget, but all of us do have the ability to create content. One of the reasons I do this show daily is it simply gives me a very specific quantifiable goal. I decided in late 2015 I was going to do a daily show that answers people's questions about public speaking, presentation skills and media training. And no matter how busy I am, whether I have to travel or I'm on the other side of the world for two weeks, I give myself this discipline and a goal, an expectation. You know what, it just happens if you tell yourself you're going to do will happen if you simply wait for inspiration. Whether it's a movie, a video, audio podcast, a new novel, a blog post, six months can go by and nothing happens. So my real challenge to you and to myself frankly is how do we really learn from Woody out? What are the real lessons here? I'll share more on that in a moment.

Do you have a speaking related question for number one USA Today best selling author TJ Walker. For more than 30 years, Walker has been a public speaking coach and media trainer to presidents of Countries, Prime Ministers, CEOs, Nobel Peace Prize winners, professional athletes and Ms. Universes. Send your questions to infoediatrainingworldwide.com or on Twitter J. Walker.

Woody Allen broke in really the late 50s, but certainly by the mid-60s his career was flourishing. He got through the gatekeepers. He was seen as a real talent by Hollywood producers, writers and studios. Now he had some what he thought were unfortunate circumstances with his first movie or two. And then he vowed he was never going to write a script for someone else. He wanted to be in control of everything. But he had gotten through enough gatekeepers that he was able to create his own art and put it out to the world. And really no one could say no. But most people back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, even 90s couldn't do that. So you have a gazillion frustrated novelist who had that novel in their envelope in their top drawer and no one's ever read it. They couldn't get it published. These days the gatekeepers for the most part are gone. Or even if they still exist, it is possible to bypass the gatekeepers and communicate directly with the public, directly with an audience. What's now holding us back is not the cigar chomping Hollywood mogul who says, I don't like your style, kid. That's not what's holding most of us back. What's holding us back is focus on a medium where we want to create content and the discipline to create on, if not a daily basis, then at least a regular basis. Woody Allen, to his credit, is producing constantly. He's writing scripts. There's going to be one that comes out every year. He's then going to produce it. He's very, very focused. And now here he is, 80 years old, he's done more than 60 films and has a tremendous, tremendous body of work. There was a time when only a select few could do that. And his films have generated, if not billions, at least hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Even though many of his films were not commercially successful, we are now at a point where almost anyone can create content and reach not as many people as Woody Allen, but can create a significant audience over time. In any one day, I may only have a few hundred people watch or listen to this program, but certainly over the last 10 years I've had millions of people watch my how to videos on YouTube and I'm not a superstar and I'm not funny like Woody Allen and I'm not famous. It's there just by putting out content on a regular basis. And for me it's a matter of focusing on content. Now I've written half a dozen books, but I've decided that my main paintbrush as a creator is going to be spoken word video, because I am a speaking expert and I teach people how to speak. So I've decided this is essentially my paintbrush here talking to you. On a microphone where there's a video camera and an audio recorder. And that's what I am focusing on first and foremost for you. It might be writing novels, it might be writing short stories. My challenge to all of you, whether you are a huge corporation, whether you're an energy company, whether you are a retired person who's taken up a hobby and drones, is if you want to have the biggest impact on life, on other people, helping people, helping yourself, then use the tools that we now all have. We all have the ability to create text and audio and video essentially for nothing. And if you create enough content and you've got something to say that's worthwhile, again, you don't have to be as funny as Woody Allen. If you've got something to say and you're willing to do it regularly and have a disciplined focus to it, you can really reach a lot of people. And that's my challenge to you. Part of what I've tried to do is recently really limit my time on social media because, yeah, there's good things that can happen. And I'm not suggesting you should eliminate your Facebook account, but it's easy to suck up all your energy and all your time just going from LinkedIn to Facebook to Twitter to Snapchat to YouTube and looking at comments and liking other people's comments. There's a role for that. There's also a role for really focusing on deep work, deep concentration of creating content. So when I'm here in my TV studio focusing on you, I'm not at the same time and those of you who are listening on itunes can't see this, but those of you watching this on YouTube, you can see. I'm not like checking my email and multitasking while I'm creating this show for you. I'm focused on 100% on you. I'm focused on creating content for you. That's my challenge to you. It doesn't have to be video, doesn't have to be audio. But I would highly recommend spending at least some time each day where you are in deep thought, immersed in creating content, and then stick with it on a regular basis. We might not become Hollywood stars and Academy Award winners like Woody Allen, but we can reach a lot of people and have a huge impact. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for spending time with me today. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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