Reframing Income Inequality?

My life has been about learning from financial loss.

I had worked in The Arts and Education Fields while also dabbling in Social Work (because of the films I had made). The only success I knew was based on passion, drive, education, and hard work. Money was never addressed. In Education, we were paid depending on the degrees we had and not by how much money we made for others. Or, at least that's what I knew to be the truth. I also knew that, "We did our work because we loved it, but we were never paid enough (grrr administrators)!"

I never made money. I was paid a rate or a salary for my work and I then spent that money on living. I could never figure out how to turn my resources (other than my labor) into something that people would pay for. The projects I made were well received by people, but those people were never willing to exchange cash for it. Granted, I never learned how to ask. I had spent my time learning how to make cool stuff and no time learning how to strategically develop it, market it, or sell it. I found that I had locked myself into an unsustainable situation.

To me, this was unacceptable and I started to immerse myself in the world of business. I gave up teaching and jumped into Los Angeles to learn the entertainment industry - or any business for that matter. I needed to know how people made money. As I moved into this world I noticed a shift in the speech regarding said money.

Money was no longer this dirty thing that we didn't talk about unless "The Man" wasn't paying us enough. Money was now the lead enticement. People told me to do "a thing" because of how much money it could make me. They also told me that they only worked with "entities" that had money because those "entities" had dollars to spend. I learned that business people only volunteered their time to "A Cause". They never worked with them because "The Cause" never had any money.

Granted, many of these people were sales people or brokers - which can be a culture unto its own, but I also had contractors, financial analysts, and film producers saying the same thing. For example, a person makes a documentary not because it HAS to be made. They make a documentary because there is an audience that will buy it and there are people who are willing to pay for it to be made.

The language was filled with concepts such as "risk", "leverage", and "providing value to a customer".

I was no longer talking about the "the cause" or "the artistry" or even "the need".

The term "passion" was still bounced around, but it was used in a different way. Instead of being the driving force that gave you direction to do good things regardless of how much someone paid you, it was the thing that drove your business. An Israeli contractor I met had the passion to be a successful business man in The US. A network marketer friend of mine used her passion for personal health and fitness to help families buy safe products for their homes. And, a producer I saw speak used his passion to make successful films to secure the trust of his investors. The simple passion for teaching poor and underserved communities, for making art, or for getting homeless people off of the street had disappeared. The passion was now (in some way) tied to money.

There was also a huge push to justify this tie (in order to not make money a dirty thing). Your passion was providing value to your customer - and that was a good thing. You justified the cost of your service or product by how much value it added to the people that were buying it. To do this, you asked yourself: How much money did I save them? How much time did I save them? And, how many more happy years did I give them?

The exact amount of money was never covered. This was the one constant among my last life and this new one. Specific amounts were never defined or were at least very slippery. Numbers were for the negotiation table and if you weren't at the table, that information was not talked about. "The right" people knew the exact amounts and that was good enough.

As I navigated my own journey to be a full time filmmaker, producer, and public speaker, I started to think about my day to day value to the people that I worked with. I found this practice to be both refreshing and frustrating because even though I liked the thought exercise, it was difficult for me to define my value (due to my lack of experience in this practice). But, part of the reason I had left academia was that keeping my head down and working for just "The Cause" was not rewarding my life. The only thing it was doing was burning me out and letting more and more work get piled on top of me. So, I desperately worked to define my value.

In between developing my next film and booking speaking gigs, I was careful to not get overwhelmed by the day to day work I needed to take in order to "make ends meet". I scaled my expenses down and took temporary and clearly defined jobs - with work that did not overtake my life. Ideally, I was in the right place to do this. Los Angeles is a great city to support working within your priorities because there are so many part time jobs and so many people hustling to get ahead, that employers generally understand your split in dedication.

I was taking technical theatre work when I could get it, running deliveries, and even background acting. Then, I was given the opportunity to work for a non profit serving a population that I was unfamiliar with. The prospect of learning something new excited me. The job was specifically defined, I accepted the offer, and I was hired. But then out of necessity, the job turned into work that I was actually very familiar with. I felt that this situation opened the door for me to renegotiate my rate due to my experience and the "value" that I was adding to The Company.

I sent a couple of (what I thought to be) very non-aggressive and explanatory emails to my boss - stating my case, but at the same time making it very clear that I would do the work regardless of the outcome. The emails were not received well. They were not replied to and instead I was ultimately pulled in to the office and told that I was not a good fit for The Organization. The CEO explained to me that this company was a family that covered for each other out of simple good will. This company was a family who's members did not expect extra compensation for their extra work.

I had made a mistake. I had applied my new found business model to my old job systems, and the model was rejected! This non-profit "family" took pride in their "working in poverty" - just as the artists I used to work with took pride in their "struggle" and felt that they had "sold out" if they were ever able to turn their art into a good monetary life.

I can't say that either model is right. But, I can say that some businesses depend on other people to not ever define their specific value. For these "people of the cause", I feel that they are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to making their lives financially sustainable. I argue that these "good people" should know their value.

That said, what do I know? I lost my job with a cause because I tried to define my value. This irony does not escape me.