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career

How Did You Do In 2017?

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 07:43 am

The first musical I remember listening to was Miss Saigon. My mother played the cassette on weekends, and we listened to it dozens of times. As a boy, I tried assembling the story by the songs alone: Why did Chris leave Kim so suddenly? Why did he marry Ellen? For years, for some reason, I thought she was stuck in a Vietnamese jail with her son Tam, not hiding in a village.

A post shared by Christopher Ming (@christopherming) on Dec 8, 2017 at 11:06am PST

A couple weeks ago, I saw the musical for the first time, and songs like Why God Why? and I Still Believe transported me back to those weekends, that cassette, those moments wondering what transpired between Chris and Kim.

career

Learning the Language of Growth

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 04:22 pm

I just finished my second week at Reforge and if I had to sum up the week, it’s this:

I’m learning a new language — and it’s hard.

Reforge teaches growth professionals how to advance their skills in growth through online education, networking and mentorship. The students are 3 years into their career at companies like Facebook, Google, Dropbox, LinkedIn, etc. aka some damn smart people.

And after 5 minutes of talking with them, I realize I don’t have the vocabulary (yet) to talk through the ideas and concepts I’ll eventually teach, things like growth models, churn, and viral loops, just to scratch the surface. 90% of the time I’m just a smiling sponge in my chair, trying to absorb as much as I can.

That’s just part of the game. At I Will Teach, we called this “starting with a child’s mind.” The better you are at that, the easier everything else gets.

Fortunately, I’ve done my fair share of starting with a child’s mind. Years ago I moved to Los Angeles, with no idea that Hollywood had a its own language and cadence. I learned it slowly and painfully from scratch.

career

2 Things About SF Tech Culture

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 04:22 pm

Last week I learned some interesting things about SF tech culture. For example:

Investing in cryptocurrencies is a thing
People invest hundreds, even thousands of dollars in “coffee set-ups” — home coffee brewing equipment to make their own personal perfect cup of coffee
Everyone loves wearing Patagonia

But the biggest mental shifts I’ve had to make is about money. Here are 2 ideas about money I’m trying to hold simultaneously in my mind:

notes

“They make you adapt for them.”

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 03:27 am

I caught this absolutely beautiful bit of foreshadowing from Robin Black a few months back. There was something magical about it, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. So I saved the interview and kinda forgot about it.

It wasn’t until recently I connected the dots when reading other old interviews.

This first interview they recorded a day before Conor McGregor knocked out Jose Aldo in a record 13 seconds.

Robin is talking about how certain fighters have learned to adapt to Jose Aldo’s leg kicks. Basically, you have to keep your weight off your front foot.

It gets interesting when he points out that Conor probably WON’T do that, and why (around the 2-minute mark):

OK, well that solves that problem, but it also creates a whole bunch of new problems that we don’t normally deal with.

And takes away all these great things that we do.

And I know philosophically that they do not adapt for you. They make you adapt for them.

That’s SBG, that was Coach Kavanagh, who I’m a big fan of his thinking. And so they will not be dealing with that.

reflections

Where’d Ming Go?

Last updated on November 2nd, 2021 at 05:17 pm

Hey dudes.

I’m still very much here – but have been working on projects that pulled me away from posting on this blog.

Will start posting again soon.

(If you want to see one of the projects that’s absorbed a lot of my time the last few months, click here to read Fighting Broke, my blog on personal finance and career advice for Hollywood assistants.)

Talk soon.

Photo Credit: Mti Abhi

hollywood

What I Learned From My Failed Passion Project

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 04:21 pm

There were dozens of fingerprints on it, but it was my world. I was the Alpha and the Omega, bitch.

Unfortunately, the execution was flawed. I populated my world with creatures to roam the land… but forgot to give ‘em lungs to breathe the air. Oops.

So when my friend Richard brought up a project called SUBTEXT by the Pander Brothers over lunch, it felt like a gut shot at first. He read the logline: “A young woman is led into a tryst by her boyfriend via phone texts, only to discover a painful truth about their relationship.”

That sounds a lot like your TEXT web series, doesn’t it?”

It did

But the idea is malleable, like pressing Silly Putty onto a fresh newspaper: even though the words were the same, there is an infinite number of shapes and configurations. No, the idea wasn’t stolen or borrowed or lifted. It was just a good idea.

My friends and I tried to shoot TEXT two years ago. At the time, I had a good script, but lacked the vision to pull the project together in the only place that counted. Which wasn’t the page. The script was just a blueprint. When a skyscraper wobbles or your tablet crashes, you don’t see anyone crying over the CAD drawings, do you? I didn’t get it right in the fabric of space and time, where I was accountable for light and sound and shots and the intangible goodwill of friends who sacrificed a weekend to make my vision a reality.

But Man, The Idea Was Good

That I know for sure. It’s reassuring. If I have 10 more ideas, if I’m lucky, I’ll have 1 good one. So I have to get through the 9 not-so-good ideas first. Of those 9, perhaps 2 will be worth executing, for the purpose of learning to execute.

Which runs counter to an idea I heard recently, about passion projects. I heard this nugget from a blogger the other day (excuse the lack of attribution, I have no idea where it came from): “If it’s not a joy to make, don’t make it.”

She suggests only taking on projects that are a joy, because that joy will drive you past the Dip. It will drive you to the finish line. But I think this idea deemphasizes the importance of practice. Of learning the chops — which isn’t always a joy.

If you’re a professional, it doesn’t matter if a particular project is a joy, or if it’s your passion project. You bring your fucking A-game no matter what. You prepare, you sketch, you debate, you run over every possible outcome from A to Z. Yes, there are moments of joy. In equal parts as moments of “what the hell did I get myself into?”

Learning Chops

Lake Bell wrote and directed her short, WORST ENEMY first, as a means to learn the chops before she directed (and produced, and starred in) IN A WORLD…

My father opened his first Japanese restaurant in a wonderful but small town. There were only 37 seats. Which gave him the chops to open a bigger sister-store in a more trafficked location, with about 80 seats. He lost a lot of sleep over the restaurants, and took on a great deal of risk. There were a lot of those “what-the-hell” moments. And neither were his passion project — but they paved the way to the third restaurant, which is.

Someone who helped me with TEXT recently, um, texted me, and asked “Whatever came of the Texting short?”

I considered fibbing: saying it was stuck in post, or there was still hope to fiddle with it. No one else had said otherwise yet, so technically it was true.

Instead, I admitted the truth: the project was dead.

Saying it aloud made it true. It made the failure real. More importantly, it embarrassed me, but it didn’t kill me. It did not make the good idea a bad one. It made it clear the only thing left to do was find more good ideas, and make them real. Alpha and Omega.

Photos Credit: Ruben Ras