Life In Perpetual Beta

Disclaimer: Melissa edited this interview herself, and while she’ll tell you herself that she’s come a long way, she’s still at best semi-pro. Had the brilliant professional Adrienne Brawley who shot the film edited this video it would’ve been nominated for award after award after award.

  When in May I first approached Seth Godin to interview for Life In Perpetual Beta, I had no clue as to what exactly I was going to do with the film once I finished it.  In fact, I had no idea about many of the aspects of the film and admitted as much.  I guess it was no surprise then that he politely declined my invitation stating that perhaps I should get back to him when I knew more about what I was doing.  My metaphorical ducks were not in a row, in fact, I’m not sure I even had any ducks at that point.

"This job might not work out, this project might not fly, but what will I have learned as a result of it so that I’ll be better positioned to do the next one?"

Six months later my friends, I re-introduce myself and ask again, this time with a much clearer vision of what this film is becoming and a track record of how much it has already become. I was very excited to get this interview, and I was incredibly proud of myself for not giving up on getting this interview filmed once Seth Godin did say yes.  Do you know that all that stood between me and an interview with Seth Godin was the cost of one lousy plane ticket? I don’t know about you, but that asking for help & money part, that took all I had to push through to finish this interview. (Seriously, who takes on a project like this and doesn’t have the $300 to get a plane ticket? This pride over tiny sums of money has been a deal breaker for me with so many other projects.)

"A lot of people start stuff, get 80% of the way, lose interest or lose support and then stop… It’s way better to set up a life where you are pushing through the dip. It’s way better to say, I start a project, I push it to it’s logical conclusion, fail or no fail, but I did that and I have one more brick in that wall and can keep building those together, but don’t be a dabbler, don’t be someone who just goes after experiences."

Anyhow, I pushed through this little dip with the support of some really great people.  I went to New York and I interviewed these amazing people with amazing perspectives, one of which was Seth Godin. And now, I will spend a majority of my time editing all of these interviews into a 90 minute film. Because this duck, this passion of mine, is worth pursuing 100%.

"You can spend a lot of time getting all your ducks in a row, but it’s way more important to do something with the duck."

If you’d like to see what else happens with this duck, subscribe to life in perpetual beta or follow Melissa on twitter.  If you want to contribute to the cause, join the tweet team for $30, email me about how you’d like to help, or scroll to the bottom of the page and support the film monetarily with whatever amount you’d like.

This post is tagged "free prize inside", "life's purpose", "meatball sundae", "quackilicious rediculous tags", "seth godin", "the dip", "tweet team", life in perpetual beta, life's passion, melissa pierce, tribes, twitter