The mafia and citrus, getting comfortable on camera
“If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook”
:::Issue #13. Why are you receiving this? You’re friends with Cam Houser. This is where I share atypical stories of creativity, entrepreneurship, and the ups and downs of Actionworks:::
🎟 Welcome Brendan, Joanna, K, David, Betty, JD, Guia, Amit, R, S, Jayme, JC, Michael, D, mitch, Carley, Andrew, Dan, Aaron, Lea, GJ, Bryce, Joshua, S, Max, G, P, S, Mef, Hrishi, I, Scott, Garfield, Sara, Doc, Amol, Ardit, Konstantina, Aylwin, S, Hassan 🎟
Greetings, Rulebreakers!
What I’ve been up to:
🚀 Prepping Minimum Viable Video, my November course on how to use video to accelerate your career or your company
🚴 Teaching Advanced Zoom at the Livestrong Foundation’s ICON Summit (Highlight: Gratitude Attacks)
🌶️ Infusing tequila, part 6: delivered first batch to friends and it melted their faces off. More refinement needed…
🇬🇧 Advising entrepreneurs based in Bristol, UK for SETsquared’s 3 Day Startup program. Ten years in, I still get a thrill working with entrepreneurs. Welcome to the list, Bristolians!
🤘 Realizing that the Texas Longhorns need a new head coach. Sigh.
🗳️ Early voting
The Building a Second Brain and Write of Passage Student’s Guide to Creating Video
If you have taken the Write of Passage (WOP) or Building a Second Brain (BASB) courses, you already have a head start for creating video.
(Haven’t taken either of these courses? First off, take them. They open doors to transformative learning experiences and vibrant communities. Second, read on–there will be helpful insights.)
Here are the WOP and BASB concepts that translate to creating video:
Complement your other skills
Mindset over toolset
Intermediate packets
Be collaborative- and feedback-driven
Start now
How to get comfortable on camera, part 1
A quick piece on how to remove anxiety, gain confidence, and become more natural on camera:
https://actionworks.co/how-to-get-comfortable-on-camera-part-1/
(Shoutout to readers Zachary, Zain, Julia, Ayomide, and Adam for helping with this series)
Rulebreakers in history: Mafia edition
I’m fascinated with innovation that arises in unexpected places.
19th century Sicily and its citrus fields certainly qualifies as an unexpected place.
But that’s exactly where the organizational structure known as La Cosa Nostra arose.
When citrus was discovered to cure scurvy, prices skyrocketed, which supported the prosperity and economic power of Sicily.
Businessmen were concerned about how prices would drop if the lemon market became commoditized. So they came up with “extralegal” approaches to maintaining high prices.
Morally bankrupt, yes. But ineffective?
It’s hard to call an organizational structure that has persisted for almost 200 years ineffective.
Random: Also, scenes involving citrus in The Godfather foreshadowed that someone was going to die.
“If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook”
A lesson from The Social Network: execution matters more than ideas.
Concepts in this video:
Execution > ideas
Someone wanting to steal your idea means that someone thinks your idea has value
Learning happens through action
See you in gallery view,
Cam
P.S. Why is video such a powerful medium? Why is now the time to learn it? In this email course, I review those factors: https://actionworks.co/era-of-video/
Web: actionworks.co
Twitter: @cahouser
For professional grade virtual courses and workshops, email cam@actionworks.co
Just for fun: slow motion bird footage from my balcony to your inbox…