I’ve been head down, knuckles up on my keyboard for the past two weeks getting Mindful Meals ready to see the world. It’s been a journey, five years in the making - tears, frustration, joy, liberation, freedom, and tons and tons of words scrapped on the cutting room floor as I piece together the flow. 

It’s been a learning experience for sure.

15 years ago when I started working in Hollywood, I interned at a production office as the script reader. It was my job to read through the stacks and stacks of script submissions, write a treatment, and then judge which ones get passed off to the producers to read. 

I loved it. And I hated it. 

Thank God I didn’t have to meet the writers because as a recovering people-pleaser that would have made my job ten times harder. I wanted to give everyone a shot. I read so many scripts that were “good try’s” but were just...not good. 

I wanted to help them. One of my skillsets has always been seeing patterns that don’t work - whether that’s in the story arc or the story of the beliefs you have like in coaching. 

I asked my boss if I could possibly write to the screenwriters to maybe give them a few suggestions to help them. To which, he pointed to the five-foot stack of screenplays of work I had and asked me if I wanted to do that for all of them. 

Fortunately, after reading through tons of screenplays I learned exactly what not to do, and it made writing my own seem so much less daunting. 

THEN I GOT THE OPPORTUNITY TO WRITE MY OWN. A DREAM COME TRUE!

I pumped out a feature film in two weeks, record time according to my producers. I then went on to co-write and bounce it back and forth with the director and I learned all that goes into making a screenplay work before it turns into an actual movie. 

Now, Bro isn’t an Oscar-winner, but it’s a finished movie that’s on Netflix that did create a culture of raving fans in an industry that I never thought I would have fans in - freestyle motocross. But cool! Rock on, I’ll take it. 

And it’s a story that allowed me to transform at least two boys’ lives to my knowledge. Even better! 

After that experience, the cutting, the writing, the editing, the actor’s input, the director’s input, the egos (my own included), I learned just how special each and every movie is and how much heart, soul, effort, and energy goes into each and every picture. 

Never again have I been a movie critic. Even today, if I watch something bad, I’ll find something good in it, I’ll find some way to praise it. 

BEING A CRITIC OF SOMEONE ELSE’S CREATION IS EASY. 

Judging is easy. 

It takes no guts whatsoever to put down what someone threw their heart and soul into. 

Being a creator takes courage. 

This applies to any creative work, like a book, or a play, or a TV show, or a movie, just as much as it does business. 

This was a powerful learning lesson for me as I saw the amount of work, heart, dedication, soul, effort, love, that goes into building a business, just like building a movie.