NEGOTIATING, AI & BRAD PITT

Hope everyone’s Tuesday is off to a strong start and welcome to Potentially Focused! Today we share…. a Brad Pitt reference that may give you a deeper appreciation of your life, tips to become a better decision-maker, and ways to master AI so it doesn’t master you.

Plus, I’m excited to feature our second interviewee, who’ll bring a global perspective to Potentially Focused.

Roy Ackerman is a respected storyteller who has produced great docs and series in both the UK and the USA. He’s had a track record of success building great companies on both sides of the pond (yes, I used that cliched reference, sorry couldn’t help it…) Roy is also one of the most passionate and productive people I’m lucky to call a friend. When he’s not busy creating his next show, inevitably you’ll find him donating time to a charity or singing in his choral group or running a marathon. You get the idea. He doesn’t let time slip by and I admire him for that and many things. Stay tuned for much more including a reference to his amazing dog later in this post…

Potentially Focused is a newsletter for busy people in the TV business (or not) who are curious. Who want to move forward. Everyone interested in new possibilities, new stories, the stories we tell ourselves, and what makes us tick. Each edition shares at least one great piece of content on professional development and one centered on personal growth. It's practical information for your journey to what’s next.

Please subscribe and tell your friends or in honor of this past weekend, your moms. Sometimes, they need change too.

Let’s get started…

THE FIRST STEP TO MASTERING AI

In the late 1960s, the first handheld calculator was invented. By the time they came to market, personal calculators were selling for around $400 or more. All for a machine that could do little more than add, subtract, divide, and of course, multiply.

And multiply they did. Prices soon came down and by the early 1970s, they were everywhere. And with that, came the backlash. In some parts of the US, parents refused to allow their children to use them in school. The reasoning was that kids needed to learn the underlying skills and that using a calculator was cheating.

While there is a good argument to make about mastering the basics, there’s also a point where it’s pointless to keep doing the basics when you’re tackling more sophisticated problems or situations. In those cases, it’s a good idea to find tools to help.

With every technological advance (and not all of them are good), there is inevitable resistance.

I’ve heard and seen a lot of resistance to AI. Will it destroy us? I have no idea.

But, what I do know is it’s here to stay. And, I believe it will be the great divider. You will either be someone who knows how to leverage it to your benefit or not. For the nots, I’m not bullish on their future.

Yet, for many and myself included, there’s a been lag in our embrace of this new technology. I’ve started to use it for writing (not this newsletter or maybe there’d be fewer typos) and research, but I’ve only scratched the surface. I know I need to learn more.

If you’re in the same boat, the good news is there are free online courses you can take. In a second, I’ll share links to articles that can help you find them.

But if you’re reading this and have taken a great free course, please let us all know.

Here are links to articles from Lifewire, ZDNET and Mashable. Good luck on your journey to embracing the future.

NEGOTIATING LIFE

In our last edition, we made the case that we are all salespeople and life is basically one long pitch. More than that, we shared practical information to help you become better at selling.

Solid stuff.

But, once you have someone interested in your pitch…. How do you make sure you can not only make the deal but make a good one?

Life Kit is a great podcast that offers out help for being human. Each episode is a deep dive into handling one aspect of daily life and the situations and challenges we face. It’s a great cheat sheet to quickly get you up to speed on a wide variety of helpful topics.

I love their episode on negotiating, a skill that covers everything from where to go to dinner to your next pay raise. And becoming better at negotiating has the added bonus of helping you become a better decision-maker.

One piece of takeaway that is helpful is a negotiation doesn’t have to be a win-or-lose situation. I believe a lot of people are intimidated by the prospect of negotiating because they feel/dread that it must be all or nothing, winner take all. But the good news is effective negotiation is often about being flexible and creating new solutions. You may not get everything that you want, but with effective negotiation strategies, you’re much more likely to end up with a lot more than you started with.

Here's a link to an article summarizing four classic negotiation tactics as well as a link to the full podcast episode.

BRAD PITT HOLDS THE KEY TO A HAPPY LIFE

I can’t believe I’m three editions into Potentially Focused and I have yet to mention Malcolm Gladwell. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a huge podcast fan. Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History is a great one, but I’m actually NOT sharing an episode of RH today.

Instead, here’s a link to No Small Endeavor. It’s not a podcast I’m very familiar with. In fact, I’ve only listened to one episode, and no surprise it featured an interview with… Mr. Malcolm Gladwell.

There’s a great anecdote about Malcolm getting lost late at night while going for a run in a Nashville Park while on a business trip. But, listen to the episode if you’re curious about that.

What I wanted to share is something Malcolm shared with the host. He told the story of a friend who realized he was having trouble with jealousy. This friend of Malcolm’s was successful in many aspects of life, but he kept seeing others on social media who seemed to be doing better. For a time, the inevitable comparisons to others’ amazing Instagram, Facebook and who knows whatever posts and feeds, were a real drag on his well-being.

He started to feel like he was forever coming up short.

He knew he needed to change his outlook so he came up with a rule sparked by Brad Pitt.

He thought about Brad Pitt’s life. Accomplished, wealthy, famous, regarded by most as attractive and on and on and on. Those were the pluses. But, Malcolm’s friend fully considered what Brad Pitt’s life must be like.

Brad Pitt is also someone who is forever in the public eye. People always have opinions on the things he does in his personal or professional life and he very likely can’t casually go out in public like the rest of us. Would he really want Brad Pitt’s entire life? The answer, for Malcolm’s friend, was no.

It gave him comfort and more appreciation for the good things in his own life.

Malcolm's friend resolved that whenever he thought about someone else’s life, he’d take into account all the aspects of their life– good and bad. Then, he’d only allow himself to be jealous if he still wanted to switch places with them and take on all of what their life encompassed. That quickly became rare and Malcolm’s friend stopped being bothered by the success of others.

Wherever you are in life right now, and I hope you’re all doing great, there will always be someone who seems to be doing better (and many times seems to be doing a lot better) than you, but I think the Brad Pitt rule is a good reminder. Everyone has all kinds of things in their lives that they struggle with and very often those are things we don’t see.

Remember that and you’ll both feel more gratitude for the good things in your life and perhaps be more kind to others even when they seem to have it all like Brad Pitt.

POTENTIALLY FOCUSED WITH ROY ACKERMAN

Roy Ackerman is a passionate producer, rainmaker and EP. He loves big ideas and has made a fantastic career in both Britain and America working with big talent either as producing partners like Idris Elba or subjects of his docs like Richard Pryor. He’s also built great companies and won awards for his work in a wide variety of genres all driven by his limitless curiosity.

A few years ago, Roy and his wife Ursula decided to move to New York. With apologies to Sting for ripping him off with this old reference, Roy is my favorite Englishman in New York.

As you’ll read in our interview, Roy has a lot to say and gets a lot of out of life both personally and professionally. I’ve had the chance to partner with him on multiple projects, which have been great experiences.

Even greater have been our walks around NYC with Roy’s amazingly cute dog, Dusty. Together, the three of us have walked Manhattan’s streets, explored Central Park, and sipped coffee at Bryant Park while figuring out life together.

Mostly, we’ve learned from Dusty’s example and wisdom. He’s really good at living in the present.

Unfortunately, Dusty’s quote for an interview was way too high for this startup newsletter, and trying to schedule with his team was a nightmare.

So, I’m very grateful to Roy for agreeing to step in. Welcome Roy!

What’s one thing you’re currently excited about?

I’m working on some great documentaries, premium series and formats, but I love learning new skills. So I am most excited by a weekly podcast to be hosted by a journalist friend of mine, with whom I’ve made investigative and pop culture films for many years. I love podcasts and probably spend more of my time listening to pods than actually watching film and TV.

For one thing, they’re great for running, walking the dog, and commuting but I also find that they are a brilliant way of engaging with new talent, with strong narrative stories, and with the things you really care about. In my case news, politics, and the progress – and otherwise – of Tottenham Hotspur, my British football team (and, no, it isn’t soccer).

I know you said one, but I am also working on two short films which we aim to launch on YouTube – I can’t say too much but they’re at the intersection of story-telling and progressive campaigning, both of which have been a big part of my tv and film track record. I’ve long believed that films change things – and there are lots of great ‘impact documentaries’ around but increasingly in our fragmented media landscape, if you want to reach particularly young people, I think we need to go to where they are, which is YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and of course TikTok.

After a long and very successful TV career in the UK, a few years ago you decided to move to the US. As someone who’s done great work in both markets, what’s helped you succeed in both places? And did you have to call on different skills?

We are two film & TV cultures, divided by a common language. I think that, to succeed in both markets, you need to be sensitive to the ways the industries work in each place. In unscripted TV formats, the US versions of my shows were at least 30% more entertainment-focused and the social issues had to be sweetened, like with American food and drink, with a lot more sugar. For a long time, British TV was at the forefront of cutting-edge unscripted commissioning, led by the public service tradition in the BBC, Channel Four and ITV where we fought for audiences but were able to deal with complex issues without bowdlerizing them or talking down to the audience.

The streaming revolution has reversed the polarity somewhat, with big checks being paid by US-based buyers. I tried to bring the best of the British development process, which involves a lot more interaction with buyers before the full pitch, with the directness and audience awareness of the US end of things.There are hundreds of subtle differences between the skill set of top US and UK producers, and each are different for each genre.

For example, so-called Premium Unscripted in the age of Netflix supremacy, differs in many ways from the best of British unscripted, more cinematic, more global in approach, with bolder big populist-relatable themes. All in all, with the current reset in the market, I think streamers are going back to focusing on audiences, and less on reputational and cool vibes, becoming a bit more like a mix of pre-streamer cable and networks so the mix of skillsets for both markets is changing yet again.

Your wife, Ursula Macfarlane, is a talented storyteller as well doing wonderful work including her Anna Nicole Smith doc for Netflix. What is your creative dynamic? Do you come up with a lot of ideas together?

We talk a lot and have worked together on a couple of films. We help each other with our respective projects even when we aren’t actually employed together. We have a couple of films we are developing together and, as long as I don’t ever try to be the boss, I think it works.

You are a terrific writer and have done a number of thought-provoking pieces about the state of media and documentary filmmaking for UK outlets, what’s your latest thinking on the state of things?

Thanks, that’s kind of you. It feels like what’s happening in our industry is a bit like what happened in print and music, where an existing business model was radically disrupted by digital technology (and now AI). As with those industries, I don’t think we were very prepared for how different things are going to get – young people don’t have anything like the same viewing habits as baby boomers, Gen X and older. They will watch long-form content, including unscripted, but the kinds of shows that producers have put their time into developing are just not getting commissioned, so all producers are having to look hard at what unique skill sets they are bringing to the market and all creatives are having to do the same.

?It’s challenging for the large numbers who aren’t earning what they need or are getting less exciting opportunities and my concern is for those in the first phases of their careers and are unemployed; it’s our job to help them get into work and to develop their skills. For baby boomer dogs like me, learning new tricks is exciting and refreshing.

?In an alternate universe where you were happy, but weren’t doing any of the things you are currently doing professionally, what do you think you’d be doing professionally?

Trying to write the book I have been working on for 15 years. Playing saxophone in a funk band. Singing with a residency at some cool East Village venue. Hanging out with my pals, playing cards, and running a marathon faster than I currently run half marathons. Having fun with the grandchildren that I don’t (yet) have.

But I will stay in film, TV and the creative industries as long as I can, i.e. until someone tells me not to.

In a time when many are looking for new possibilities, any book, podcast, or thought leader you find helpful?

I would passionately recommend the aptly named The Art of Possibility, a book by inspirational conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and leadership coach Ben Zander, a wonderful guide to twelve breakthrough practices for bringing creativity into all human endeavors. Zander is a genius for designing innovative paradigms for personal and professional fulfillment with his therapist co-writer, the late Ros Zander. Their uplifting stories, parables, and personal anecdotes provide a deep sense of the powerful role that the notion of possibility can play in every aspect of life.

Thanks very much, Roy! And much love to Dusty!

THAT’S IT!

See you for our next edition on Thursday. Wishing you all good things till then and always.

Please let us know what you want more or less of. Please feel free to share information you’d like me to pass along to our readers. Also, always happy to feature guest contributors.

And of course, please subscribe and share.

Thanks to you all for reading,

Marco

?