Christopher Ming's Blog

What do great assistants do?

At 24, my father owned his first restaurant. The first Chinese delivery spot in downtown Albany, with stats like quote you’d get off the phone with Lee Fong and the delivery boy was ringing your doorbell unquote. When five p.m. came ‘round, it was sweet ‘n sour and Moo Shu out the wazoo. And my father, he’d storm the kitchen, up to his nostrils in hand-scribbled orders, and 1X1 he’d Gatling gun it to his partner and chef, Sam.

As quick as he shouted orders, Sam prepped the ingredients into wire handled white boxes. His hands dove in and out of his prep fridge like a conductor’s stroking his orchestra into the climax.  No premeasured portions, this wasn’t no Subway operation run by teeny boppers paid minimum wage to pretend to be sandwich artists. Fresh broccoli crowns and snappy peapods and crisp baby corn was weighed by their texture against your palm, by their feel, not by numbers on a scale. Sauces didn’t come in La Choy glass bottles, they were recreated from pinches and dashes of soy, sesame oil, ketchup, salt, sugar, mirin. Nothing written down, nothing completely standardized. Every improvised off the top.

Ticket minders lined every wall, and by five thirteen, white tickets with mental math computed totals surrounded my father. He and Sam were very fast, very smart. Both retained information like a sponge retains E. coli. But those qualities alone didn’t make them a good team. That wasn’t what made them a success.

Anticipation made them a success. My father didn’t just read the orders; he watched Sam, constantly aware of how fast he was packing, that if he was packing Orange Chicken, he only memorized the next seven dishes and he forgot there were two Kung Pao dishes, not one. It was a jazz duo between the two, never missing a beat even as they trampled notes and forgot orders, because at the end of a string of tickets, Sam would ask, “What did I forget?”

And my father knew. No hesitation, straight off the top.

The story sticks, on this slow descent towards Santa Monica Blvd, after day one on a manager’s desk, my introduction on How to be an Assistant. It sticks because amidst the coagulated information on the brain stem, the major takeaway, the 90 to the 90/10 is: great people anticipate. Don’t matter the industry, of food or film, the most important skill is the ability to anticipate the needs of the people around you. That’s what makes someone an asset to cause and company. Anticipation.

It’s not some voodoo extra sensory perception, neither – no ting-tangling spidey-sense alerting you of lasers or sentient metal claws in the immediate vicinity. Good anticipation is measurable. Actionable.  It’s work and research and focus on the details that directly affect you. The other components of a good assistant: phones mechanics, conferences and schedules and messengering, how fast you read and write; all trimmings. Anticipation, attention to detail, that’s the turkey. Not just saying it, not just putting on the resume because it sounds good. Living it, breathing it, delivering on it:

What’s on next week’s schedule? Next month’s? What meetings must The Big Cheese take? With whom, pertaining to what deals? Where and at what time is each of these meeting? How many glances and double-checks till you’re positive? Are you confident enough to schedule appointments on the fly, Blackberry unattached to fist, and without a peek at Outlook?

How far back have you read their e-mail? What projects are in the works?  Are you researching everyone in the phone log: who they are, who they work for, what’s their relationship to your employer? Are you building your own mental dossier of the people in the business? Why not?

Who are the clients? Who are the important clients? How does he speak to them when he’s got them on the phone?

Do you know when to interrupt? Which calls to give him when says, “no calls?” After your third reminder of who he owes, do you know who he’ll actually return to and who he won’t?

Who is the competition? What is their relationship to these people?

The assistant position isn’t a fair one. It’s not fair to get dumped on with miscellaneous chore, to take on work outside of the job description, or to get screamed at for failure to communicate, especially when the failure happened on someone else’s end. It isn’t fair that mind reading is required to succeed as an assistant. But since when was any aspect of this industry fair? Agents and managers get paid to make deals, not have myelin coated communication channels. That’s what the assistant is for.

It can be frustrating, thankless work, executing the duties of an assistant at this standard. It’s easy to ask, “Is it worth it?” especially if joining the ranks of the Masters of the Universe isn’t the end goal.  Why kill yourself in this role if it’s not the angle you want to break into the industry?

Because people don’t align themselves with you because you’re acute or obtuse. They get on your side because they see you’re smart, that you’re going to be a success. And an IVY league diploma is hardly a guarantee of that. Getting the small details correct, following up on the miniscule, is.

Nailing the small details is the only way to prove you can handle the big ones.

Categories: anticipation, assistants, restaurants
by Chris
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What’s the play?

There be two.

Numero uno – wait. Wait till you’ve put the finishing touches on your portfolio, spit-polished pitches to crossfire, getting caught up in the BING BANG BOOM, trying to send tingles a-shuddering down spines. Wait till you can show the Masters of the Universe you’re serious about the craft, not no East Coast blow-in blow hard moonlighting through the Denny’s managerial fast track as of two weeks ago, before scribbling THE END on a senior year creative writing thesis, convinced you’re holding Wonka’s Golden Ticket.

If you’re no blow-in, if you made the move to stand toe-to-toe with everyone else in this endeavor, you’re treated with an iota more seriousness. Except seven minutes into the hustle, and the temptation to wait will strike you harder than a Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out! punch-out. You got the first person POV of the cliché: who you know matters more than how good you are.

Because everyone’s saying – no one’s buying.

Because everyone’s saying – there are no jobs.

Because – no baby writer can get a meeting or make a wave – not without the gravitational pull of a star from afar: the phone call from an uncle or cousin, the referral of a family friend.

That first person POV is filled with slush, garbage and shod from coast to coast, peripheral to peripheral.  Without the referral, don’t matter how brilliant the concept or how wonderfully tight the story, it’s just more sludge clogging up the system. So you wait. Till you’ve built your own following, till your reputation precedes yourself, till you’ve paid your dues and the people who matter know you’re the Real Deal.

Plenty of reasons to wait. All of them good.

Opportunity costs are expensive. Every tick tock wasted on writing queries that won’t get read, or setting up meetings that get pushed, is time spent not making cash monies or time not spent working on the next script. It’s not enough to be a worker – everyone’s a worker, and everyone’s got access to the same 24 hours you do. But who’s working smarter? Who’s investing their 19-hour day in the right basket? Without the referral, is it a waste of time trying to get past the gatekeepers?

Maybe.

But isn’t that their job? That’s why these assistants get paid their $10 per hour plus daily bonuses or ridicule and abuse, yes? And why the interns eek out a living on just the latter? They call ‘em gatekeepers, so give them something to keep. Like Elizabeth Gilbert said:

“I often hear people say, ‘I’m not good enough yet to be published.’ That’s quite possible. Probable, even. All I’m saying is: Let someone else decide that. Magazines, editors, agents – they all employ young people making $22,000 a year whose job it is to read through piles of manuscripts and send you back letters telling you that you aren’t good enough yet: LET THEM DO IT.”

Shell out on the opportunity cost to chase the lucky break. Sinking 20 hours into queries that produce squat, yes, that’s 20 hours you’ll never get back. But it’s not like you’re thumb twirling between those 20 hours, staking out the USPS for the rejection letter. You’re still working, still creating, still hustling – point being: go after the big score, but keep notching the small victories.

So GO. Don’t wait. Hustle. Make your own luck and create your own contacts. This means taking some long shots, doing things people say don’t produce results. Remember, they don’t know; nobody knows what works. No one can predict the next hit. The only way you can guarantee it’s not you is by never getting in the mix.

Have a methodology to GO. Target, individualize, meet people in person if you can; doesn’t matter how good a writer you are, it’s difficult for personality to shine through an e-mail. Do not prematurely burn a contact by asking for a favor – not until you’ve earned the right to do so. Target, target, target; don’t waste anyone’s time by sending over something that’s out in left field for them, or less than your best. Do your homework – which is more than a good log-line and a Google search of whom you’re meeting. As a manager said, “it’s not just knowing the pitches. It’s knowing the stories backwards and forwards, never missing a beat. It’s knowing the subtext beneath the stories, the motives behind the characters. It’s knowing everything and having the polish to communicate it in the simplest, clearest way possible.”

That’s the play after finishing the script.

Go. Do your homework. Take the long shot – and keep hustling amidst it all.

Categories: hustle, scripts
by Chris
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There’s this scene in the flick, Social Network. Two score, seven more bodies circled ‘round five computers and a bottle of whiskey. The dry erase board squishes uncomfortably against the wall. Music blares. Students cheer. In the epicenter, five students write code to break into a security system. That’s fifty fingers — count ‘em! — flying through keyboard strokes; ten individual eyeballs absorbing data at a pace that makes Hoffman’s Rainman look like Special Ed; five shots of amber elixir slammed down throats every seven seconds the bell goes BRING BRING BRINGING. These mad geniuses pound away, hacking to see who hacks it amongst Mark Zuckerberg’s band of merry.

At a distance, Zuckerberg and business partner, Eduardo Salverin, observe the spectacle. Neither knows it, but it’s the beginning of the end. Zuckerberg’s assembling the West Coast Crew, his A-Team; he’s surrounding himself with very own Justice League or Teen Titans or Planeteers and he’s not even trying to save the world or take pollution down to zero. He just wants to be your Friend.

So he gathers his squad of geeks and programmers, all who’ll pursue this passion with what some might call fervor, others call obsession. And Salverin, he’s already opted out of this leg of the gravy train. He believes in the product as much as anyone else, but his dedication is back at stage 1-02 while the Z-Boys polish their plungers and comb their mustaches, readying to storm King Koopa’s castle

Zuckerberg knew it. That Salverin didn’t have the “stand-to-lose-everything, win-at-all-costs” drive. The only thing Salverin offered the partnership was “balance” – sound advice, hedged bets and proportionate responses – everything Zuckerberg didn’t want or need. Zuckerberg wanted focus. He wanted to surround himself with like-minded individuals, all with sights on the same goal, all sharing the attitude to get it done.

Not easy. Not easy to have this foresight. Not with the rhetoric of balance bouncing around like a Plinko chip, preached by everyone and their baby’s momma. Balanced diet, balanced portfolio, work-life balance… advice that probably works for 98 percent of the population. But for the two percent who want to change an established order, determined to win against the house when the deck is stacked clear to the cumulus nimbus, dividing eggs is a waste of protein.

Benjamin Graham said it best: “Don’t diversify. Don’t put your eggs in different baskets. Put all your eggs in one basket.

Then watch that basket like a hawk.”

When odds be long and time short, balance beams and juggling acts don’t impress no one. Balance leads to great stories of how someone once took their shot and missed. Focus, immersing yourself in passion and passionate people, leads to others telling your story for you.

Categories: focus, friends
by Chris
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People know if your heart isn’t in the right place. Don’t matter how smooth you are, how charming, how highly you think of your acting chops. You can be Debonair to the capital-“D,” but that doesn’t mean squat because heart isn’t seen or heard. It’s felt. Heart pours from the pores, and no amount of gleaming incisors or flirtatious grazing can reproduce them pheromones.

If you’re putting on a show, putting up a face to compensate for lack of heart, it’ll seep through the cracks. People front but can’t nobody front forever.

Everything starts with heart. The rest of the package matters: luck, talent, image; but a glossy veneer don’t hold much weight.

What is heart? It’s looking out for others, even/especially when they can’t help you in return. It’s networking with Priority One to put others in position for success, and developing your own career the ancillary mega. Heart is doing what you say you’re going to do.

The service industry – waiting tables – is primo case study for heart. The experiments happen in rapid succession, the outcomes are measurable and immediate (read: cash $) and servers wear their attitude like a paisley tie around the neck. There are servers who see customers with a dollar amount tattooed to their forehead. I don’t want to serve them because they don’t tip well – sometimes a judgment made on past experiences; more times than not, made based on race, dress, or apparent educational level.

Some treat serving as a reflection of themselves. The bartenders who talk more about themselves to the customer than vice versa (when did this start happening? When did it become okay?) Or the seasoned server, coaching trainees about her personal philosophy rather than the fundamentals of good service: When I serve, I’m on a stage, you know? I’m a fun server, I’m a flatter, I’m a schmoozer. (Why not try being professional and helpful, instead of working on your bit?) And the server who postures about, pretending to care beneath a waxy smile, who asks questions like, Is everything delicious? (if you’re not going to give them much of a choice, don’t waste your breath) and says My name is blah blah blah, feel free to ask for me next time (if they planned on it, they’d ask for your name.)

Then, there are servers who want their customers to have the best experience. They look the customer in the eye. They listen. When they train you, they say This is the proper way. This is best for the customer. When they work, they do things because it’s the right thing to do, not because they think they can glean more green.

In the long run, they’re the ones who earn the bigger tips, anyway. Because they didn’t have to rely on gimmicks or bits or up-selling to convince someone they cared.

They just cared.

Heart doesn’t always come easy. Especially not living in a city where it feels like few people are listening, and everyone’s looking out for themselves. But in the long-run, it makes life easier. Because you never have to look around to see what other people are doing, or how they’re doing it. You always walk tall – the consequences be damned – when you start with heart.

Categories: heart, restaurants, serving
by Chris
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All the writers coming in have a certain image, Eric said.

Break it down for me.

He broke it down: hippie-indie-scenester. White, early-30’s. Clean cut intellectuals in square frame glasses. Drink orders come in two varietals: water and tea – as if ordering anything else would be faux pas. Nobody orders coffee, despite the likelihood they guzzle it by the gallon on their ownsome.

Armed with this nugget, how do you cash it in? How do you use this information? Is image another tool in a writer’s arsenal, clanging and jangling in different timbres against the hammering rat-tat-tat of alliteration or sliding rule of simile? By its nature, the writer’s contribution is relegated to the cutting room floor. In any media or production, writing happens in the shadow, behind the spotlight. The writer’s image won’t make it to the final product, or be part of its brand.  So will image play a role in a writer’s career?

In a perfect world – no. In a perfect world, any person in any field would be judged solely upon their work. The quality they produce would be the only factor propelling them forward, and lack thereof what holds them back.

But The Perfect World be pop: nil.

Dozens of factors come out to play in determining a person’s long-term success. Personality. Timing. The ability to schmooze and network and play the game. Politics, conscious and unconscious biases of those reigning from the echelons above. In each factor, everyone stands to gain a little and lose a little. Image is no exception.

If in 95 percent of an executive’s career, the writers they encounter all slot neatly into the same round hole, the edge lies with being the square peg. They are the crucial outliers – the people standing out who stand a chance amongst clutter.

There’s no “right” image to achieve, no magic bullet to stand out in a positive way. It should be organic, coming directly from the heart, and as much a part of the person as hair color, bust size, and talent.

It’s peacocking minus the cock. Aiming for contradictory is a good start – contradictions naturally attract attention.  What’s initially seen as an abnormality can be the springboard bumping you to a higher level of success because of the attention the abnormality garners: the white rapper, the black golfer, the Chinese basketball player, the writer moonlighting as a stripper.

Of course, there’s zero substitute for talent. For constantly and consistently producing quality in an environment of talented people. You must have the goods. You gotta have chops. You must work on the other components of the package: personality, likability, charm, before even thinking about how you’re going to out-image the hippie-indie-scenesters. Coupling the package with a distinct image is only a gambit, but one that offers an edge in a competitive field where you must seize every advantage you can.

A writer’s image won’t make it to the final product. But it can determine if the product makes it to the finals.

Categories: image, selling, writing
by Chris
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