Distribution for me happened once I got into my first major film festival. I thought it might make sense to start understanding the landscape prior to this -- but largely I found this to be a waste of time. Get pre-vetted somehow and your world changes. In my case, the change happened when I got into Nashville. Keep in mind -- this is Nashville; not Sundance, SXSW, Toronto, True/False, AFI, etc. Nashville is a lovely festival but obviously not as prestigious as those festivals. As soon as the lineup for Nashville was announced, I remember getting a phone call from maybe MTV? -- but some network and the person I spoke with basically said, "We heard you got into Nashville. We don't know anything about your film but would love a screener." More inquiries like this would trickle in over time -- sometimes from networks (e.g. Showtime), sometimes from just big people (e.g. Ron Meyer's office asked for a screener; though I suspect that was more for his own personal screening series that I read about in The Hollywood Reporter rather than anything official to do with Universal -- though I'm sure those two things blend together sometimes), and then from other folks like Circus Road Films (a producers rep). 

Now when I was at Nashville, I talked with another filmmaker who had a doc there who Circus Road also approached and he was adamently opposed to working with a producers rep. In his viewpoint, anyone working with him should believe in his film so much that they should be willing to take a commission. (Just FYI, back then the fee they were charging was a $5k flat fee -- this was around 2012). I too was a bit skeptical but remembered them. As I mentioned, at the time, I also had "names" calling me so I kind of thought that I could just hold out for someone better known to rep me.

Fast forward to a year later and my film was still not sold / placed / etc. I got back in touch with Circus Road and to their credit -- absolutely no ego. No "you should've gone with us when you could've" etc. They were more than happy to chat further and rep me. One additional detail -- prior to signing with them, based on the advice of a friend of mine who worked in film distribution -- I asked them for references. They gladly supplied two filmmakers, one whose film got into SXSW and another whose film sold to Showtime. The gist of what each of them replied was, "I signed with Circus Road. They sold my film. My film now plays on _____." Good enough for me.

Circus Road basically told me that the way they work is they have a list of distributors / platforms / etc. (at the time, everyone from networks to well known doc distribution places) that sort of went more prestigious to less prestigious (can't remember exactly -- but it's basically like an ordered list based on some order). They said they go down in order and see who bites. That's what they did. I would occasionally hear from them, usually with a question or needing some additional material. Once, maybe twice, it seemed like a pretty big player was interested (I can't really remember now, but it was of the order of like an HBO or maybe a real well known indie company). Then nothing. For a while. Then they said Gravitas Ventures was interested. They set up a meeting -- just a conference call with them where they walked me through a PowerPoint presentation about their business, how they work, what the splits were (75/25) and that was that. Before I signed I asked Circus Road what they thought and they basically said that Gravitas was good. I signed with them and Gravitas was *excellent*. They got me onto iTunes (with excellent placement on launch weekend; we ultimately got as high as #12 in the Documentary section I believe), Amazon Prime, and Hulu. We also had amazing placement in Hulu but I think that was b/c I had at the time a friend who worked at Hulu who was able to advocate for my film a little bit. I couldn't have asked for anything more. 

Some errors I made. I think I made an error not signing with Circus Road immediately (about a year past between meeting them and signing with them) -- though frankly, I'm not sure if that even affected anything associated with my film. No one really knows or cares when the film was finished -- at least not at the scale I'm operating at. 

Another possible error is that someone interested in distributing my film internationally reached out and I ultimately didn't go with them. This was more just a fear of the unknown than anything (and also they weren't willing to provide references.) I couldn't really tell how big or legit they were and quite honestly, I wasn't sure how my Gravitas distribution agreement might or might not affect things (something I obviously could've reasonably figured out). It may sound strange (it even sounds a little strange to me in retrospect) -- but at the scale I was operating, I was basically a one-man band and the volume of decisions and stress coming out at me was just pretty high. So more uncertainty froze me a bit. I could've easily reached out to doc filmmaker friends or just other people I knew in the industry who might have some experience (or know some people who did) and I could've sorted that out well.

At one point a division of Gravitas reached out about potentially selling DVDs (and presumably Blu-rays) and I quite literally had no idea how to handle it. That division didn't pursue it any further. But I could've figured this out and made it easy on Gravitas to do that too. My suspicion in retrospect is they probably wanted a reply to the effect of, "Yes, I have DVDs / Blu-rays available and ready to ship." Again -- would've taken some work and effort, but I could've gotten it done. People obviously know how to do this.

But beyond that, I got really lucky with Gravitas. At the time, the industry was still really focused on getting theatrical distribution which was pretty rare, even then, for docs (outside of like limited NY/L.A. runs). Gravitas basically was like "our specialty is digital distribution" -- a pretty good business model particularly now.

Bottom line, total money I ended up making -- low 5 figures ($20k? $30k max?). Got paid quarterly and there were very detailed breakdowns of how much I made on each platform (and Gravitas got me into all sorts of places including apparently airplanes, etc.) I'm sure that dollar figure might strike some people as low -- but my film did what it did. I actually think we did ok. Could we have done better? Obviously. But I think outside of being a top-20 doc for the year, there's just not going to be a ton of money -- but that's just a guess. With the growth of content platforms everywhere, it's quite possible there's more industry (and audience) appetite for docs resulting in more $ -- but I don't know. 

As someone who has been to many Q&As -- the audience question part can be wild, particularly in Los Angeles. I went to an awards screening of "Master of None" where a woman in the audience accused them of stealing her work to make the show. More typically though, you often get a questioner (or two) who somehow is trying to break into the industry or otherwise rise up and somehow the interaction goes astray. Perhaps the questioner goes on too long or the filmmakers react badly -- in my experience it's honestly 50/50. You can almost feel the audience turn on the questioner as the question is being asked -- almost like, "Look at this rube." I've always found this dynamic particularly strange -- because if there's anything this town knows, it's starting at the bottom.

A questioner said that he (I believe it was a he) -- was an aspiring screenwriter and had found it particularly difficult to break into the industry, to get his work read, and to basically create a career for himself -- and if he had any advice for him. This is pretty standard. I would say I hear this question at 60-80% of these types of Q&A. Charie Kaufman's response -- I never hear. 

He -- if I remember correctly -- beyond talking about work habits and always being able to write on your own -- posited that the two of them were not all that different. That he had the seeming trappings of career success when in reality, he had to really grind, using the making of "Anomalisa" as an example. Just how stunningly difficult it was for him to get financing for it (they even had to raise the initial funds on Kickstarter) and how many no's he received when taking out the project.

But the real difference between that and almost every answer I ever hear to that question was -- was that Charlie Kaufman didn't hold himself off as even a whisk better than this person. On some level it was borderline tragic ("Wow! It's this hard for Charlie Kaufman.") On other level, it was one of the most generous and gracious answers I've heard from someone in that position of esteem and power.

So there's roughly 50k slots and 150k applicants. More applicants than slots. How to allocate this fairly? Apparently, the NYC marathon has 4 ways you can get in:

1. lottery -- completely randomized, one entry per person

2. merit -- run below a certain time in another marathon

3. desire (money) -- they give away slots to charities who then give those away to people who raise money for those charities (~$2,500) and if you're overseas, you can buy travel packages that includes an entry into the NYC marathon

4. effort / 9 + 1 -- run 9 other marathons and volunteer at 1 other marathon (I assume in the past year)

I found this fascinating and there are lots of great reasons why this is a good system. But it got me thinking -- especially because the episode starts off talking about what economics is -- the study of the allocation of scarce resources -- and mentioned, of course, housing.

Right now, how is housing allocated? Well, nearly everywhere, housing is allocated by money (arguably a proxy for desire). In some relatively rare cases, there is a lottery component -- like in certain cities, new housing developments have to set aside a number of low-income housing units which are then allocated (I believe) on a lottery system after some screening process.

As a rule, personally -- I think markets generally work better when there are not artificial variables introduced. That being said, markets, on their own -- don't always work well. Environmental economics is probably the best example. A plant may be able to manufacture an item for X$, but maybe that plant is dumping its pollutants into the water (or into the air). They are introducing externalities into the system, the cost of which are borne by other people -- this is where government needs to step in because the system of supply/demand does not materially affect the plant's behavior.

But what if we applied how the NYC marathon allocates slots to housing? So we certainly have:

1. desire (money)

2. lottery -- relatively rarely

3. merit -- so what is merit when it comes to housing? How could someone "earn" their way into housing? Well, I think an argument could be made that people who do societal good -- let's say, broadly, teachers / firefighters / police -- not sure where to extend this; healthcare professionals? Government workers? This obviously gets tricky -- but I think if us, as a society, want to tackle housing more broadly / feel the current system is unjust -- then these are the tough questions that one needs to answer. Because I suspect the best way to enable "merit" in the housing market is actually to give housing vouchers. So if you're, say, a police officer -- the government then gives, I don't know -- some housing voucher / subsidy that can be applied anywhere. But that's funded by taxpayer dollars of course. How is this different than, say, just paying these people more? I'm not sure it is different -- but maybe it just *feels* different. It's like not all compensation is the same even though all compensation could be reduced to dollars. Like universities in expensive cities often have housing allowances. So could we have housing allowances for desirable/merit professions? (I believe this occurs in certain cities, but I'm not sure how widespread it is)

4. effort -- what would effort look like here? I would also argue that it boils down to social good on some level. Now, this sort of exists in the housing market. In large apartment complexes, often the building manager or someone who functions in that capacity will be someone who, in exchange for a free or reduced housing unit, handles tenant issues. What would be the equivalent for a city? Someone who volunteers in some sort of government or local non-profit for a number of hours? Would that then become a system where it's hours in exchange for housing vouchers? (and then would that effectively become a form of payment / employment?) Basically, what is the criteria one could use where someone could express how much they want to live in a particular neighborhood via their time and energy?

I personally think this is hard, but a really valuable one to create. One of the things I've noticed in general, but certainly in Los Angeles is there's such a wide variance in terms of, say, social good. There are lots of little things we do everyday that affect the well being of other people and we're neither incentivized or really dissuaded from doing. Let's take a simple example -- those signs that say, "Drive like you live here" or something like that. Obviously the problem is is people are driving too fast for whatever reason -- and they're trying to shame people into driving more cautiously. Cuts down on accidents, injuries, etc. But that's a good example of trying to promote better community behavior. We could certainly extend this out across the board to crime to helping those less fortunate to positive civic activities. But it sure seems like we should encourage / reward these people -- we should want these people in our neighborhood, right?

It's these two last categories of housing allocation -- merit and effort that I sure would like to see expanded. Our current system is primarily money, with a small amount of lottery, and a bunch of regulation (e.g. rent control) -- and rent control, at its core, is a tax on landlords (not the most sympathetic of a population, but still, let's call a spade a spade -- it's a tax / a taking from them to another population) -- but the rent control is applied, basically, randomly. So, basically lottery. It's the people who happened to be in a unit at a particular time, which of course, introduces all sorts of incentives into the system, many of them not good. 

An expansion of government housing assistance under the merit + effort categories -- frankly, just feels more fair and better for society as a whole. As someone who studied economics, it's fascinating to me that the NYC marathon has what seems to be a very unusual and pretty innovative resource allocation system.

Q. Why are you relevant to talk about UCB?
A. I did the full UCB improv currriculum, was passed into Advanced Study, and auditioned and got into Academy. I've also done the full sketch program, was passed into Advanced Study, and also did some one-off stuff like their Character 101 class. I have *not* been on a UCB house team, I auditioned once for Mess Hall (was invited to their invite-only cycle) -- did not get in, and since decided I didn't really want to be on a Harold/Mess Hall team and have since stopped auditioning for house teams. I continue to practice improv in a weekly improv practice group coached by Brandon Gardner (long-time UCB teacher + performer).

I also did a couple of months of something called "Improv Bootcamp" which is taught by UCB performers + teachers at The Clubhouse -- basically every weekday, 2 hours/day (not strict on attendance, so come when you can). I also previously did the full improv program at The PIT in New York (pretty similar in style to UCB).
 

Q. Ok, let's get to it. I'm an actor. I don't care about improv. Can taking class at UCB help my career?
A. Maybe. There's obviously two sides to this -- how UCB / improv can help you as an actor (from comedy, improv, looseness, etc.) and from the perspective of your career. If you take, say, a UCB 101 class, I'm pretty doubtful that will help you get called into an office. It's possible, but I'm doubtful. So if your resume just lists UCB 101 (or generally, UCB and then a couple instructors) -- I'm doubtful that means anything, but a CD would have a better opinion on that. (This is, btw, for actors who don't already have a relationship with that office). However, if you do the full curriculum -- I think that could be useful. I don't know for sure, but if your resume shows you've done the full improv program -- might a CD or associate give you a shot at a co-star role even if you don't have any credits? Sure, I could see that. Personally, I think CDs love seeing new talent and want to give folks a shot -- and that's a good reason to give them. But a single class? Probably not enough.
 

Q. If I make a house team (Mess Hall or Harold) -- that means I'm moments away from being a famous TV star, right? Or at least a working TV actor?
A. Maybe. If you listen to podcasts with UCB people (e.g. UCB Long-Form Conversations or "The Need to Fail" from Don Fanelli) -- there are certainly many UCB performers who either have become well known or are at least working actors. Many. My sense though, is this isn't the typical path. You definitely hear quite a number of folks who eventually worked in the industry in some capacity -- some as an actor, many as a writer (which makes total sense to me, Johnny Meeks -- who is the educational director at UCB -- has described UCB's improv style as "improvised sketch" which I think is really accurate -- you're basically writing sketch on your feet, which I think is really excellent training if you want to be a comedy writer), etc. A non-trivial number of people, many extremely accomplished and decorated improvisers, have few acting credits. It's a bit staggering and simply no guarantee. They're also really good. So the variance is large. 

A few examples which you can find for yourself:
a. so on the positive end, I think is Betsy Sodaro. I *believe* she said that she got on a Harold team, her first Harold show, Ian Roberts saw her -- was working on a pilot, cast her in that pilot, and from there got her manager at 3 Arts and she's clearly built out quite a list of credits since then. From all the podcasts I've listened to, I find this to be super rare. It's obviously happened, but not a common story I hear.

b. Hillary Anne-Matthews has talked on a podcast about getting on a Harold team and almost immediately getting an email from a commercial agent saying something to the effect of, "Congratulations all new Harold team members! If you're looking for commercial representation, please contact me." She thought she was well on her way (and that this is what happens when you're on a Harold team) -- she contacted the person and crickets. She then also plays in an all-female basketball league and someone on another team is a powerful manager, saw her, thought she could do something with her, signed her, and she was on her way. 

c. Marcy Jarreau (on "The Need to Fail" I believe) talks about being out here for 10 years and getting 2 commercials (non-union commercials she stressed.) Marcy was on Search History, I believe -- which is a weekend team (Harold teams that "graduate" are moved to a "weekend team" status -- basically they have a permanent slot -- so it's above a Harold team). So she's really good! 2 non-union commercials in 10 years! But, after quite a bit of a journey, she now writes for Brooklyn Nine-Nine. If you actually look at the writing staffs of a lot of comedy shows -- there are a *ton* of UCB people around, again, I think it goes back to the training; some of it is directly writing / sketch related, and I think some of it is simply UCB's style being really conducive to comedy writing.

d. Brandon Gardner (my regular improv coach) spends quite a bit of time talking about his journey on "The Need to Fail" in two episodes (and on Long-Form Conversations). I think a case could be made the Brandon is one of the most decorated UCB performers / teachers around -- not only has he been on Harold teams, a weekend team I think, and but also has performed on ASSSSCAT. But I don't think Brandon has a TV credit. This is not crazy unusual. 

I write all this less to emphasize the variance, but moreso to emphasize that the value of UCB really is in the training and sometimes / often -- there are career benefits to it too. But I think the career benefits simply go hand in hand with the training -- you get better at improv which helps your acting (or writing) in a variety of ways, so you're more able to take advantage of opportunities when they arise. I think it's less that you're already a good actor, you're able to add something to your resume, you get in the room, you get cast, and then you can forget about the improv stuff. 

Q. How hard is it to make a Mess Hall or Harold team?
I'm not the best person to answer this since I haven't done either myself -- but I think it's fair to say: hard. Not impossible, but hard. Again, going back to these podcasts, pretty common among guests -- and keep in mind, these are people who are at a Harold team level (often for many years) and beyond (weekend team, ASSSSCAT, etc.) They frequently talk about how many years it took them to make it onto a Harold team (and then sometimes got cut before getting back on again later).

Another example I'll give is a friend of mine, who when I met him, had never made a house team. We were doing bootcamp together (that every day improv thing) -- he had been doing it for years. YEARS! This is also not unusual. In the community, you'll run into people who are doing improv maybe not every day -- but certainly multiple times per week, performing at The Clubhouse, on multiple indie teams, etc. I think Laci Mosley had said on a podcast that in the leadup to her making a Harold team, that she was in improv class or otherwise doing improv 15 hours / week. That's a lot. I bring that up to say that just because you passed through 401 and are eligible to audition to be on a Harold team -- and who knows, you might make it -- there are just a *lot* of people who are really passionate and spend an enormous amount of time dedicated to improv. That's who you're competing against. Not saying that you can't do it or that your special comedic sauce isn't funnier than theirs even with all the extra time they spend -- but just be aware that there are not only those people out there, there are a lot of them out there.

On a similar, data-type note -- I think something like 800+ people audition for Harold teams (maybe it's more now). There are 8 teams, 8 people per team -- so 64 slots. However, the majority of those slots are spoken for (I estimate maybe 4-5 teams come back virtually intact), there might be some turnover in the remaining teams and maybe 1-2 teams are completely broken up. What I'm saying is that there are probably (my guess) 20 slots or so that are up for grabs. (though it's easier to get on Mess Hall as I think it's 6 teams, 8 per team -- and all new teams each cycle) So 800 people who, at minimum, have done the full program, for 20 or so slots (maybe 70 if you include Mess Hall) -- many of whom have been doing the improv indie circuit for years. The odds are just long. Again, not to dissuade on any level -- but it's just a far better place to work from if you're doing it because you love it (or even that you like it enough and want some ancillary benefits) -- rather than primarily doing it because you think it can help your career.

Q. Putting aside career, how can improv / UCB help me with auditioning or the craft of acting / how has it helped you?
Personally, I think the answer is immensely. Now, I should note -- I think its impact was pretty muted for a while. I first got into improv b/c I had asked my first acting teacher what I should take next and he suggested taking an improv class -- basically to loosen me up. That's when I took the full program at The PIT. It was a while later before I got back to UCB. I think I took 101 + 201, took a bunch of time off, then returned, had to re-take 201 because too much time had passed, and got through the whole curriculum. 

I should note that part of the reason I returned and finished the program was that I had a bit of an ego for a while -- I was like, I finished an entire improv program! Why do I need to do another improv program?! I then had an audition for that Showtime show "House of Lies" -- the lines for the role had not yet been written yet -- so casting gave me sides for ANOTHER CHARACTER. Did the first take. Goes fine. Casting is like, let's just do another one -- feel free to improvise, etc. Again, these aren't the actual lines! You would think that I had enough improv training to handle this situation but I basically gave 3 takes that were EXACTLY THE SAME. After some reflection, I was like, "I think I need to do some more improv." Not even for the comedy skill of it necessarily (though that's obviously a huge benefit) -- just to make my mind looser and more receptive. 

My feeling is that probably somewhere around 401 (maybe after that a little bit) -- I started to be pretty competent. I wouldn't say good, but I had a degree of proficiency. I would say this was also reflected in some external things too (being invited to a practice group, classmates inviting me to their teams / practice groups, etc.) It took me a while after that (taking Advanced Study classes and a continuous, weekly practice group, occasional drop-in workshops) -- before I feel like I went past competency and I was relaxed and really able to just do comedy within the context of improv, if that makes sense. Before that, there was just so much processing of trying to figure out, where in the scene am I? What still needs to be established? What needs to happen next? It just frankly took years to get past that point. And this is way after I started getting pretty positive feedback. Improv is hard.

So how does it help with auditioning / on-set, etc. Here's where I think the UCB training shows up for me:
--not as concerned with the words; you gain more confidence and facility to not only not be so precious with the words (but hopefully you can be word perfect when you need to be), but also able to navigate things so if you drop a line or the other person drops a line or something weird happens, that you can stay in the moment and continue acting, frankly -- or even generate material in that moment to continue making it make sense
--better in the room; just more at ease in the room, even new rooms (and frankly social situations too) -- because I just have more facility to interact. 
--better listening; so much about improv is listening -- it's tricky to get to that stage because you're listening and then have to write in the moment, but obviously you HAVE TO listen when you do improv because otherwise it won't make any sense. So I think this does positively impact your listening as an actor.
--just more open when it comes to whatever preparation you're doing or direction you get in the room, etc. I think a lot of it is the fundamental nature of improv (yes, and -- and all that) -- the openness to direction is probably a consequence to just the nature of how UCB teaches (do a scene, get notes; repeat thousands of times)
--able to write and write in the moment; so this certainly applies to doing alts if you're offered the opportunity to do them / it's a looser set where each take they're basically fine with you doing alts as long as you're in the confines of the script. But again, sometimes you get gold because you're in the moment and someting unexpected happens and now you're able to respond in character rather than freezing up (which I've seen a not infrequent amount of times -- some actors just don't really go with any deviation from what they had planned.)
--doing a lot of comedy helps you with... comedy. Just as a random example -- if you've ever been coached on a piece of comedic material, often the coaching, at least at some point -- is a little technical. Turn here, build here, try this on this line, etc. And you get a lot of great ideas and options. I think one of the things that really helps by just doing a lot of comedy is you can really start to feel comedy -- sometimes there is a left brain element to it (oh he's being unusual, I should play the voice of reason here) and other times, you'll just feel it and have more ideas of what might be funny. Frankly, not just in auditions or with sides, just in every day life. You'll start to see patterns and places to be funny and get a good handle on timing. At least that's how it was for me.

Q. Back to my career. So... will taking classes at UCB help me get into comedy offices?
Maybe. I think it's worth it for anyone to take the full curriculum and get passed into Advanced Study. Even if you don't like it. It's good training, good for your resume -- and I can see scenarios where that actually gets you into offices you've never been in for before. (and like I said earlier, don't take less than this. Less than this is better than nothing, but just make the effort to go through the full curriculum. Thousands of people have done this, you can too!)

Beyond that, the time spent relative to return is so high that I would argue you should actually like doing improv to keep going. 

Personally, I think a better use of your time is making sure you have footage / lots of footage / lots of good footage -- for your reps to use / for you to be make available. I for sure have found that to be one of the most successful avenues for getting into an office. As an example, there's a piece of cop footage I have; there's no one famous in it and it's not from anything you've heard of. It's probably the most successful piece of footage that I have -- my reps have used that to get me into multiple offices (multiple offices that have never seen me before too) -- basically, there's a breakdown for a cop (preferably an Asian cop, but sometimes an open ethnicity cop) -- they write in, here's my client as a cop! (more than that, but you get the idea) It's not some generic "you should see this actor" or "here's what they've done lately" -- it's "you're looking for a cop, here's my client as a cop."

You're trying to get into an office, any reasonable way you can -- and then you can build a relationship with them based on the quality of your work and the progression of your career. Having an extra line on your resume is one way to do that, but another way which I've found quite effective is to get footage.

Obviously booking stuff is a great way (though hard, especially if you're at an earlier stage), making your own content is a great way to go (but also hard, I've done it myself) -- but there are lots of services out there that do one-off scenes. It costs some money, but if you do your homework on them -- you'll often find ones that create high quality footage, solidly written scenes; basically stuff you can use for your reel or a one-off clip. Brandon (who I mentioned earlier) even did a series of improvised shorts -- all filmed -- and one of the actors in them told her that her agents liked the footage so much that they primarily use that when they pitch her now. I say that less to pitch any one route specifically, but moreso that this is a pathway I find to be very effective and isn't years in the making.

Recently, Daniel Altschuler published an op-ed in the Washington Post about the recruitment of Rhodes scholars at Oxford [link]. 

I wanted to write about McKinsey because the firm had a particular hold on me -- so strong in fact that I wanted to work at McKinsey before I even matriculated at Princeton. Obviously most people, even incoming Princeton freshman, have no idea what McKinsey is -- but I think partly I was obsessed with business so had a somewhat wider berth of knowledge in those areas and partly because I was so prestige focused that I was also aware of McKinsey. (Also, my brother went to Princeton so I already had some exposure to the environment.)

I told myself a good story about McKinsey -- it was the best (arguably true; certainly in terms of the pick of candidates, at least back when I was in school, it went something like McKinsey -> Bain -> BCG -> major accounting firms who had a consulting practice -> small / unknown firms who did strategy consulting). Consulting was a "smart" career because [this is standard schtick for consulting firms] one would get wide exposure to a variety of industries, wide exposure to senior level management of said companies; just better and broader work than one would get by simply joining a regular company. Consulting was also one of the most "prestigious" or at least conferred a lot of psychic value among many high achieving individuals -- I think consulting + finance was like 50% of the Princeton grads (!). That's astonishing. McKinsey was the top firm; Goldman Sachs was right there too, but not everyone wanted to work in finance -- whereas seemingly anyone could work in consulting.

I think all this is true or probably still true. That being said, I have a slightly broader point of view on the whole situation now, a number of years removed. I should note that I've had quite a bit of exposure to McKinsey over the years -- I was exposed to them on the client side when I was an intern at Reader's Digest, I had numerous friends who worked at McKinsey, my first boss at Amazon had been an Engagement Manager at McKinsey before joining Amazon -- at Google, I was there when they formed the Business Operations group which was run by and staffed by numerous ex-McKinsey consultants (and worked with them on a project). 

But this blog post isn't about the ins and outs of how good McKinsey consultants are or how they reflected on their experience or what not -- it's more about what I think gripped me (and certainly grips a lot of undergrads at places like Princeton) -- was is this prestige trap that a place like McKinsey represents. McKinsey offers up a next rung on a ladder for people who have spent their lives climbing rungs on a ladder. It takes a highly accomplished sub-population (e.g. Rhodes scholars) and says -- we're going to take a subset of you, pay you a lot, give you the opportunity to work at the highest levels of numerous global companies -- frankly, make a difference in the world in a way that you couldn't anywhere else doing anything else.

I think my quibble with this is when you're a Rhodes scholar (or at a top-level educational institution) -- is that you're arguably benefitting from the world's resources in terms of education. And you have a free pathway ahead of you. You can choose anything. Largely unencumbered. If consulting is the right path for almost any reason (including those that these consulting firms habitually repeat) -- then that's great. Go with God. BUT, my quibble is I think the reason the percentage of people going to consulting / finance is so high at Princeton is... people don't know. They haven't thought through what they want to do and then simply enter into the best high prestige (and perhaps highest paying) role. 

Now, this isn't forever. Pretty much all consultants I know leave consulting after a relatively short amount of time. (e.g. I know relatively few who stayed 5+ years.)

It reminds me a little of a friend of mine in college. He went to an interview but went into the wrong interview room. When he and interviewer realized his mistake, the interviewer said something to the effect, "Well, you're aleady here, why don't we talk?" They did, he got an offer (this was from a boutique investment bank), he went into banking -- then went to business school, and now works in private equity. He went through a chute that maybe is absolutely what he was meant to do, but maybe not. It was just serendipity that he went to the wrong interview room.

That's a bit about how I feel about consulting (and finance). When you're an undergrad, those are the firms that are constantly at Career Services, constantly holding events at the Nassau Inn, have flyers everywhere, ads in the Princetonian -- you're indoctrinated into this from the day you step onto campus. It seems natural and everyone is doing it -- yet the vast majority of undergrads probably couldn't reasonably describe what a consultant does. 

I think I decided to write about this because if you're an undergrad and somehow stumbled across this -- I'd encourage you to just think broadly about your future. The prestige / pull that matters now won't matter in the future -- I promise you. You can do anything.

I somewhat recently renovated my place and as anyone who has gone through renovations could tell you, the scale and scope of decisions one has to make -- almost all of which likely involve things that one likely has never thought of -- is immense. There are, what? Hundreds, maybe thousands of, I don't know, options for door handles? This extends from the absolute mundane like a faucet to the more typical, like appliances.

I worked with an interior designer and as we were finishing up, Susan asked if I had thought of paint. The answer was no. I certainly had not. But I definitely wanted something beyond just the typical white walls that envelop so many homes. I'm a very visual person but also felt somewhat ill-equipped to pick out colors. It's a little silly in hindsight, but I think a natural worry would be to paint a room the "wrong" color and then essentially be stuck with that color and have that color, in your face, all the time.

This process though, getting samples, seeing samples against a wall, making adjustments, etc. -- was extremely useful and resulted in a very warm and creative home. Even the rooms where I do have white, it's a softer variant of white which fits perfectly with how I wanted the room to feel. 

It's sort of with that context that I looked at MyPerfectColor -- I thought this case study at the bottom of this web page really crystallized it for me [link]. In my garage is a storage unit that basically is filled with cans and cans of paint. Why? Well, beyond having some leftover paint from the renovations -- it's also there in case I ever need to do some touchup or just want to know what color something is / was. I'm not trying to sound like a commercial for my former colleague's startup, but it's kind of great that there's an option beyond, "Don't lose this [can of paint]." in case I actually need a paint color in the future.

I think it's funny as I think about it -- paint color is something that can be completely overwhelming. If you've ever been to that section of Home Depot and start flipping through swatches, it's like, "Who knew there could be so many shades of white?" But it's like you want the twin sides -- you want a large, but not overwhelming number of relatively standard colors, and then you want -- essentially, the ability to get any color. Matching, but also, let's say you know you want some variant of orange, but you want to very precisely dial in the shade or type of orange. So in that scenario, having a half dozen swatches won't cut it.

Another friend and I were discussing startups the other day -- but we were specifically discussing non-tech startups. (The one we were talking about is one that's popular out here in L.A. called StretchLab.) As much as I've loved and benefitted from pure digital / tech startups, there's something great in seeing innovation in the things that we see and touch every day.