Today I Was Named One Of Hollywood’s New Leaders

Seventeen years ago I graduated college and moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in Hollywood.

I came without a job.

To a city where I didn’t know anybody but a couple relatives I had last seen at my Bar Mitzvah.

I hoped to become an A&R rep for a record label…

But instead got a job as an assistant at a small entertainment PR agency.

Where I got laid off.

But then I landed a job with one of their clients – a company that produced official websites for kid celebrities…

Where I got paid to ask 12-year-olds to share their beauty tips with a chat room full of tweens.

I decided I’d rather be a real entertainment journalist.

So I got hired by an industry news website just as the dot-com boom went bust.

But I escaped to the safer confines of a legendary print publication just in time.

Where I realized that I didn’t want to cover the creators, I wanted to be one.

But you can’t pitch screenplays to the people you’re writing articles about.

So I quit.

But nobody wanted to buy a period boxing biopic screenplay after Cinderella Man tanked.

So I went to work for a movie studio I used to cover as a marketing writer.

But I fell in love with comedy. And the Internet. And the idea that all you have to do to be a “producer” is to produce.

And I started having adventures with comedians.

But then I came to a crossroads – presented with two very different job offers.

A big studio marketing writer job that would pay double what a comedy startup website offered me.

And the comedy site only had 3 months of funding left.

I chose the comedy job.

It was the best career choice I ever made…

But the company failed.

So I put everything I had learned to the test and set out to build my own business.

A website. A consulting company. A community.

It worked.

It was the new best career choice I ever made.

But then an old boss reached out to me when I least expected it with an opportunity too good to pass up.

She gave me the chance to build a digital media presence for a legendary organization that’s responsible for the biggest entertainment event in the world.

I wanted to say no, to continue to build the business I was so proud of having created.

But I couldn’t. It was too tempting.

I had to say yes.

And now today, about three years from the day I started the job, Variety named me one of Hollywood’s New Leaders.

It’s been a good day…and a great 17 years.