Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
My world is full of amazing women. I am so grateful to know each one of them. And while I’m usually all about gifting experiences like my dear friend Megan - sometimes badass women are also crazy busy women. In those cases, this list of awesome gifts will let them get back to taking over the world.
Clear Membership ($179 Per Year)
If a strong woman in your life is a frequent flyer, then a Clear Membership will be a huge time saver. Fly through security and then even go through to the front of the TSA PreCheck line. It’s truly the best. It saved me HOURS this year.
Tile Slim Tracker ($49 for 2)
This is my whole life: Where are my headphones? Where’s my phone? Where’s my Kindle? That is why Tile is like an extra brain. It always knows where my things are - and shows me the way.
Physician’s Formula Boosting Serum ($11.99)
Let me tell you what I need in life - makeup that lasts from 7AM to 7PM. This is the one and only liquid eyeliner that I’ve found which can withstand 12 hours of hot or cold. It’s a winner in every way.
Any of These Books (Up to $20)
It’s easy to lose enthusiasm for business books after you have read more than 3. They are all meant to teach and rarely do they get you pumped up to do the work. These non-business books for bitches who mean business are the east right thing.
Old School Desk Nameplate ($28)
I can’t think of anything more silly or funny or true than these nameplates. They would charm any girl boss and certainly give them something fun to talk about with their team before getting down to work.
Chatbook’s 2016 Book ($15)
I’m obsessed with this service. Get your instagram photos and ANY photos from your awesome year in one beautiful little printed book. And here’s a great bonus: Rifle Paper Co partnered with Chapbooks to offer some gorgeous designs.
Sugar Paper Business Card Holder ($5.99)
I love this. It’s cute. It’s easy. It does what it is supposed to do. And it’s stylish and wonderful. And it’s super affordable.
If you are as obsessed with strategy as I am and you’re thinking about starting a business, you’ve probably taken a long walk through the business book section - and stacked your Kindle with all kinds of texts on finance, business planning and leadership. And all those books are great, but these books, well these books are the ones that are going to fill your gut with the sense of passion you need to get through the ups and downs of building a business.
1. On Writing Well by William Zinger
Here’s the thing that I am best at in the world: writing. I don’t tire of it. I find solace in it. And I never wonder if I’m any good at it. My main contribution every day at the business is not strategy, it’s writing. Writing emails. Writing proposals. Writing scripts. Writing presentations. Writing pitch decks. Writing speeches. Writing concepts. My words are my business INSIDE my business. So keeping fresh on how to do it well? It’s key. If you’re in a creative role or you will be serving as the voice of the business - you have no choice. You gotta write well.
2. The Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes
Workaholics know another workaholic when they see them. Or in the case of Ms. Rhimes, you know it because the badass has three shows on the air right now - making her some kind of super human. But as I’ve written before, you truly have to enjoy your life if you have any intention of enjoying your business. Think of this book as a guide to celebrating and protecting the balance in your life.
3. Nora Ephron: Everything is Copy by Liz Dance
If writing well (#1) is my bible, then this idea is my constitution. The laws to live by in order to get through the hard parts. Every time there is a moment of overwhelming stress, I think of Nora’s words and remember that this is how life works: It must be hard, so we have something to write about later. In this book, you get an inner look at the wonderful Nora Ephron’s point of view.
4. Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
Pixar wasn’t built in a day. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that the film studio that produces some of the most perfect cinema in the history of the medium ever had an ugly period, but as you’ll discover, there are plenty of “ugly” moments in even the most beautiful business. While your cakes might be picture perfect on the day of the wedding or your artisanal lotions might be absolutely delightful once they hit shelves - there is usually a lot of really uncomfortable not-so-greatness that leads up to that moment. This book has taught me to embrace the ugly/messy/figuring it out stages of my business.
5. How to be a Person in the World by Heather Havrilesky
So much of growing your business is putting yourself out there to be judged and chosen (or not) by customers. And that process can really make you feel like a sales robot. Very little of this book actually covers the details of how to deal with being a sales person, but it does deal with the nagging self-doubt that most of us feel from time to time. Or all the time. Remember that we are all people. And we are all trying to figure it out.
So what non-business book changed your view of your business or your journey?
My first business was a blueberry stand. While my friends and I had tried countless times to run successful weekend campaigns for lemonade stands, I noticed that the revenue on those operations were abysmal from the beginning. Instead, I focused on picking blueberries at my grandparent’s place with my dad. My brother and I would sell a cup of blueberries for $2 on our corner on 10th Street South. And the first weekend we did it, we made $48. Not bad for a couple of kids.
It should be no surprise to anyone then when in the 6th grade, I asked my mom if I could be businesswoman for Halloween. She let me borrow one of her only suits. And I traded the traditional plastic pumpkin for a briefcase for the occasion. I had no idea what businesswomen did all day, but I felt completely comfortable in that costume.
Despite all these signs, I had no idea I wanted to go into business when I started looking at colleges. I focused entirely on writing and journalism programs, because deep down, writing has always been my first calling. Or maybe it was my first medicine. I wrote when I was sad. I wrote when I was happy. I wrote when I fell in love. I wrote when I got my heart broken. I wrote to process my feelings. And I wrote to make myself feel safe.
Writing felt like this deep passion. I couldn’t help but believe that when people say: “turn your passion into your career and you’ll never work a day in your life” - that they were speaking to me. That’s the funny thing about platitudes. They apply until they don’t.
After finishing my journalism program and attempting to use my skills at the keyboard for good and a paycheck, I quickly burnt out on the constant screen time. I felt a constant longing to get out of my cubicle and into the world. I still remember turning to the cube next to me where our cameraman Justin worked and asking him to please, please let me go out on a shoot with him. He obliged. And today I’m so grateful. Having the intuition to ask for an opportunity opened the doors to what I wanted to do for the rest of my career.
Even after you find something to do with your career, it’s no guarantee that you actually know yourself. It turns out that knowing yourself is a process. The interior of the mind like a snow globe, constantly changing as new flakes and glitter distort the picture of life, the future and perception. Even now, I’m aware that my interior world is changing and evolving by the minute.
But that costume. Those blueberries. They were like veiled insights into who I am and who I was going to become that I had’t seen yet. And when the longing towards entrepreneurship initially took hold in my mind, I wasn’t even sure that it was the right decision. It took two years of studying my mentors who owned their own businesses for me to find the bravery to step into forming my own business.
I think about those blueberries far more often than I care to admit. Partially because wild blueberries in Minnesota are a rare, rare delight - nothing like what you buy in the plastic pints at the store. But more often because I wonder what things are taking hold in my own life now that I may not be noticing, serving as waving flags towards a future I have yet to imagine for myself.
Too many times, I have heard myself say to others: “what is the world putting in front of you that you can take advantage of if you’re just brave enough to try?” while knowing full well that I was scheming and plotting inside my mind to try and plan the perfect thing. Trying not to just jump into the thing in front of me, but rather, have a plan A, B, C and D.
There is no planning blueberries. Blueberries just happen.
Friends, life has been crazy exciting recently. Between celebrating new wins with our business and enjoying the very first days of summer, I am proud to say that I’m involved in a lot of amazing and inspiring stuff over the next few months.
And wouldn’t it just be delightful if you were part of that? Or we could meet? I would love that. One of my favorite things in life is meeting my internet friends IRL. (I mean, one of my best friends is someone I met on Twitter!)
Here’s where you can find me and my film this summer:
Thursday, June 9
Victoriana Showing with Q+A at the Sie Film Center
Denver, Colorado
Tuesday, June 14
Networking at The United State of Women Summit
Washington, D.C.
Thursday, June 16
Victoriana Showing on Facebook Live
(Followers of the Being Geek Chic page only - so go “Like” if you don’t already!)
From Minneapolis, Minnesota
Thursday, June 16
Showing at EFP Denver at the Bug Theater
Denver, Colorado
Saturday, June 25
Victoriana Showing for Private Audiences
Online
*If you wish to take part in this online screening - please email [email protected]
Wednesday, June 29
Speaking at 1 Million Cups
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Thursday, June 30
Speaking at Ignite Denver
Denver, Colorado
July TBD
Victoriana Showing with MNWift
Minneapolis, Minnesota
September 15 - September 18
Showing Northstar Science Film Festival
St. Paul, Minnesota
This list will be updated in the coming weeks as more things become confirmed, but please reach out on Twitter if you’re around for any of it. As always, tweeting @lizgiorgi
And thank you for dealing with a little bit of shameless self-promotion today.
I started a creative company. One would think I spend most days being CREATIVE! Go ahead: Imagine confetti and balloons wafting around the word. For my sake. Can you see them? Good. Me too. Now imagine all the balloons popping at once and the confetti getting stuck to your face. Yeah, that’s how I feel about spreadsheets.
Over the last three years, I’ve watched other companies like mine startup and fail. I’ve also seen others startup and succeed far beyond Mighteor. And I’ve seen lots of companies do something kind of in-between the two. Over time, I tried to watch carefully at what made the companies that failed, well, fail. Because avoiding their destiny is key to our future.
What I noticed again and again was that many companies failed to build a structure and promise around their creativity - and as a result - their business failed to grow. They loved their equipment and tech and beers on Fridays - but they didn’t see how the really boring tasks of balancing budgets and doing proper legal led to meaningful outcomes.
Structured creativity says that fanciful doodles and spreadsheets can coexist.
And so this has become my ethos as a creative, as a CEO and as a leader. In fact, it’s on the second page of our Mighteor company handbook: “While we are a creative company, we are still a business. Our creativity is how we make our money, but without structure and management - it is impossible for us to do our job well, deliver product on time and consistently produce at a high level. Creatives get a bad rap. In all areas of creative work, the people that do it are often stereotyped as inconsistent, unprofessional and difficult to work with. At Mighteor, we must always strive to be the opposite of this stereotype.”
My stringent worship of structure does not come easily to me. It’s a forced skill I find tiresome at best and, at its worst, makes me not want to do the work at all. But when I’m in my darkest corners of resentment for my own self-imposed point of view on how we do business - I occasionally see just how magical it can be.
Creativity is not a math equation. There are not right answers. There are not wrong answers. There are many paths that can lead to artistic and strategic success. And while the spreadsheets help us keep track of budgets and how much we can spend on locations and talent - it doesn’t tell us where to shoot or who to cast. There is freedom to having a clear picture of what the resources will allow us to dream up. And I appreciate how much opportunity that provides each project to adapt and grow.
Creativity is not nearly as random as people may suggest, either. Every new client with my company goes through a creative briefing, a process where we ask all kinds of questions about their company, their video, their aesthetic preferences. We take a metaphorical microscope and assess their strategy or vision. Part of the creative process is coming to a place of shared goals and objectives. If we know what we need to achieve with our creativity, we can be all the more brilliant.
And constraints are actually your best friend. When I think about the client projects I love most - I always come back to the projects where the sky wasn’t the limit, but rather, where limits were everywhere. In fact, the limit was something like 6 inches above the baseboards for a few of these projects. And yet, again and again, we found a way to make a vision come to life. We used a skate park in the suburbs instead of the city - or we got the wardrobe from Target. When you stop focusing on just how BIG YOU CAN BE and instead focus in on just how effectively you can creatively stretch - you find new limits.
However, those same constraints can make things scary. Add the risk and the money and well, suddenly we’re making video by checklist. As a client, it’s really important not to lose sight of the gray areas where creatives need to live and work. The mind has a remarkable ability to stretch and adapt. Part of our jobs as creatives is to develop a vision so compelling and vacuous in how it draws you in - that the viewer can’t help but watch. So often, when projects go wrong, it’s because our clients lose faith in the viewers ability to stretch. When we treat viewers like they need to be spoon-fed, we immediately lose their trust. And there is no amount of money or resources you can throw at that. You must be willing as a creative and as a client to take the risk of allowing the viewer to explore the gray space with you.
I call it Structured Creativity. On my best days, I call it Magic. Whatever you call it, if it works, embrace it. At least, it does for me.
But here’s the thing: like any good thing that works (like Starbucks, Instagram filters and kisses) it can be killed. And it’s not by the things you would expect. It’s not by being bold. Or by getting too excited. It’s not by being risky. Or by being willing to try new things. Creative magic is killed by fear.
Fear that it won’t work.
Fear that people won’t like it.
Fear that the client won’t be happy.
Fear that we can’t technically pull it off.
Fear that we don’t know what platform it belongs on.
Fear that it’s too risky.
Fear that we won’t have planned enough.
For all the years I’ve been doing this work in one capacity or another - I have met hundreds of people pursuing creative passions and if you ask each of them why their project failed, why their painting didn’t sell, why they never finished the screenplay - not one will tell you that fear killed their project. But the number of times someone has told me they ran out of money or ran out of time or just ran out of whatever was inside them - well - nearly 100% will say because there wasn’t enough of something.
But if you ask me, the hard truth most creatives won’t say out loud is that fear killed them.
Fear of rejection.
Fear of failure.
Fear of mediocrity.
And there won’t be a spreadsheet to point to that outlines said fear. Or explains it’s existence. Or how to overcome it.
Here’s my point: As creatives we must learn to control two things - our process AND our fear. Our process is possibility. It makes it humanly achievable to take our creative dreams and turn them into creative realities. If we can control that, we can actually break down our beautiful brains into something tangible - an actual, finished product.
And then we must learn how to control our fear. The fear that the process won’t be enough. The fear that we won’t make the client happy. The fear that we will fail to deliver. And in turn, we must ask our clients and creative collaborators to not bring fear into the birthing of ideas that we are trying to bring to the table. No successful creative project was ever formed out of fear. And no creative person can possibly sustain a career formed on a foundation of fear. Let me say that again in all caps just to make it very clear: NO CREATIVE PERSON CAN POSSIBLY SUSTAIN A CAREER FORMED ON A FOUNDATION OF FEAR.
I could type for hours on the topic of how fear destroys so much more than just our creativity - but I’ll leave you with this final thought about the power of structured creativity when we choose to be fearless: When you stop worrying about failing and start working toward succeeding, what will you have left to be afraid of?
