Hard Work Pays Off

11 Aug, 2009 by James L. Clark in Magic, Musings, Publishing

When I first set out to become a publisher and producer, I decided I didn’t want to go about it the typical way. That is, going to some media school, then moving to a major publishing area like NYC or television production area like LA just to become oh, let’s say a PA (production assistant) or associate or junior editor for several years, which really means I’d be getting coffee, running errands, and basically being someone else’s biattchhh until I had "paid my dues", as the saying goes.

I mean seriously, let’s put things in perspective. I was in my mid 30s, had served in the military for nearly two decades, written a couple of books, had two post graduate degrees, lived all over the world, and had worked at the executive level for several companies already—so I just didn’t have the stomach to subjugate myself to someone else’s authority while not being able to have some control over my life, express my own creativity, and be allowed to learn at my own pace, which is generally much faster than most people I know. Really, I’ve always felt the best way to get experience is to do something, so I did.

As an entrepreneur, I looked at all of my hobbies and then examined which ones had strong niche markets. I figure, if you’re doing something you love already, it’s not really work. At least that’s the theory. Having owned businesses before, it’s not really a major leap.

Of all of my interests that I hadn’t yet ran a business in yet, Magic seemed like the best one to try out. Since most businesses take around three years to make a profit, I decided I’d give myself one year to make a significant splash or I’d move on to something else.

Well, I made one hell of a splash. Just ask anyone in magic. In less than a year, pretty much everyone had either heard of me personally, or had been exposed to my brand. No, seriously. That’s not me boasting—it’s pretty much a fact. For one thing, magic is a pretty small world, and when you compound that with how utterly aggressive I am in business and marketing, it’s easy to see how it all happened.

In less than two years I produced over 50 products. In 2008 alone, I lead a production team at one of my sister companies to create, film, edit, and market some significant instructional DVD projects; let’s just say we did a couple. Just to illustrate how productive we became, here’s some of the products we released. And for the record, I did the vast majority of the product design. Hopefully that’s a good thing!

That’s not all of them, but it’s most of the DVDs we put out; 27 were produced in less than seven months. Accomplishing those kinds of numbers isn’t a joke. You really have to dig in and get to work. Not too bad considering I hadn’t ever produced a DVD before. Sometimes you just have to go for it.

Here’s some of the other products I produced that didn’t have DVDs with them, but might have had video for demos or instruction that was distributed online. These examples are all print. I produced them using photoshop, illustrator, and most importantly, indesign. I learned all of those programs by reading books, websites, and just trial and error.

I really should mention, I was the editor of two magazines in as many years (examples shown here). If you think producing and editing a DVD is a big deal, try editing a magazine while writing for two others at the same time, AND making all of these DVDs.

Dang man, and I don’t even take drugs.