Life's a Pitch : How To Win What You Want In Business and in Life (eBook)

Introduction

No one goes to Hollywood to settle down and have a family. No one except for me.

In Hollywood, breeding is something that can’t be done without the nanny, the cleaner, the PA, the reality TV crew, and ubiquitous entourage in attendance. Public breeding is best left to the Hollywood upper classes; by that I mean the Bel-Air billionaires, and I’m certainly not one of them.

I may not have been able to afford the super posh hospital with secret celebrity paparazzi-proof entrances, but when I gave birth, my vagina had an audience. I gave birth in a teaching hospital spread-eagle with no mood lighting. I didn’t have the PA and the personal chef, but I did have my cell phone close by because I was working up to the last minute.

The publicity machine didn’t stop because my baby was ready for his first big close-up. I did my own hair and makeup, wore standard hospital issue gown, and my husband, Rob, was the official photographer.

Rob works in medical administration, so I was fortunate that I had great care at Kaiser Permanente. Every time I arrived for a checkup, the nursing staff told me I was glowing and beautiful and how great I looked for my age.

Everyone was giving me crazy attention. Wow, I should get knocked up more often, I thought, putting it down to my colorful personality and endless supply of pregnancy and doctor jokes. But the big AMA stamp on my bright red medical folder, which I thought meant American Medical Association, was actually the abbreviation for “Advanced Maternal Age.” Oh.

But that’s okay. I knew I’d gotten this family thing in under the wire. Marriage, my husband, and kid all came to me just before the house lights went up—on the last page of the last act just before the writer was about to write “The End.”

The good news is that we did it the old-fashioned way. We had sex. With each other. It worked! No pins, no needles, surrogates, support groups, no doctors ’til now. I was forty. A defining age. Other people were having midlife crises; I was seeing my dreams come true. My other Hollywood dream. Not the one with the red carpet, the flashing lightbulbs, and the top billing that makes every teenage insecurity disappear (only to be replaced by a million other ones). The one where I have a family. Not a sitcom family, but my own real-life family.

But I worked for it. I waited for it. And I got it. I’ve heard a lot of girlfriends make dumb excuses for why they’re single. My favorite is: “Men don’t like successful women.” Really? Guys don’t like women who can pay for their own shit and blow them? Hmmm, news to me.

More than just having the family, I’m able to help support it with my successful boutique PR and marketing business. I’m one of the lucky ones in this town. I was delayed to the game of motherhood because for years I was chasing another dream entirely.

I haven’t always been a trophy wife, mother of one, and successful Hollywood publicist. For ten years I was a touring stand-up comic and comedy writer, sometimes sharing billing with the daily dinner special. Nothing like seeing your name in lights: “Prime Rib Entree $12, Comedy with Margot Black $8.” Second billing to beef, it does make a girl feel special.

I’m one of the Hollywood middle classes you never hear or think about, and why should you? I’m part of the faceless, flip-flop-wearing middle class who make up 90% of the population of this town. You don’t know us, but without our dedicated masses, there’d be no show business to show.

We are the “little people” you’ll never read about in People magazine, but we’re doing some heavy Hollywood lifting. We are the eyelash extension experts, set decorators, carpenters, caterers, editors, therapists, Pilates instructors, teachers, drivers, sushi makers, dog walkers, grips, designers, personal assistants, boutique owners, red carpet cleaners, and publicists (that’s me).

We are the dedicated craftspeople servicing the fame and fortune you read about on the many celebrity gossip websites or in Us Weekly. We are the creatures behind the Oz curtain.

Some are still out there slogging away pursuing the dream of fame and fortune, but some of us have decided to take our hard-won experience and use it to build a new business—the business of family and kids and a normal job (well, as normal as it gets in Hollywood).

I gave the business of show my best shot, and I have no regrets.

I was born and bred in New York, and after college and several years of working for an international PR firm, I realized I could earn a living and give my dream of working in the comedy industry a shot. Shored up by my PR work through my late twenties, I would leave my desk at six p.m. and head downtown for a full evening of comedy.

My professional strategy to conquer the comedy world was “Just Say Yes.” It worked so well, I was able to quit my day job. Every performer’s dream. I’d done it.

I said yes to everything. I performed in Winnemucca, Nevada; Pendleton, Oregon; El Paso, Texas; Pocatello, Idaho; Yakima, Washington; and Ogden, Utah.

I said yes to Butte, Montana, three times in the same year. I said yes to Winnipeg in the middle of winter. I said yes to twenty-eight cities in thirty-two days and yes to working with drag queens, fire-eaters, mice trainers, hypnotists, musicians, magicians, clowns, and cowboys.

I said yes to planes, cars, buses, vans, trains, ferries, and boats. Yes to places like Moose Jaw, Regina, and Punxsutawney. Yes to Auxiliary Clubs, Elks Clubs, Rotary Clubs, bingo nights, bowling alleys, skating arenas, and the back of a Chinese restaurant.

I said yes to the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 269, the Foam Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Society of American Gastroenterologists, and yes to the National Jet Ski Championship people.

I said yes to the Tiki Lounge, the Comedy Shack, and Giggles on Grand. Yes to the Prairie Oasis Motel and Trailer Park, yes to the Golden Arrow Motel, the Imperial 400 Slumberama, the Lakeland College Alumni Hall, the Courthouse Inn, Trails West Motor Inn, Circle 6 Motel, the King George Motel and Truck Stop, the Stagger Inn, and the Deputy’s Den in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

I worked every night, every angle, and encountered every ecosystem, weather front, and frontier. It takes dedication to miss Thanksgiving with your family to perform in Flin Flon, Manitoba (population 5,678), where the outside temperature is -16 and the locals check their guns at the door.

At some point, though, more years on the road seemed like a thankless and lonely endeavor. I decided to unpack my bags in Hollywood and throw my energies into writing for television because that’s what all the successful stand-ups around me were doing. If it all went well, I could potentially earn a boatload of money, which was never going to happen as a middle comedy act selling T-shirts from the back of the room.

Trees died, scripts stacked up on my shelves, agents were met, and meetings were had. I got a foot in the door when a network bought a pilot I wrote, but nothing ever saw the true light of day. By the end of a long, drawn-out, twice-failed TV pilot deal I was single, broke, and exhausted. But hey, at least I’d given myself a fair shot at carpal tunnel syndrome!

It was time for a gear change. Fortunately, I was one of the lucky ones in Hollywood. I had other skills to fall back on and didn’t need to leave town. While TV networks might stall on deals, bills never seem to stall; they always need to be paid. I quickly resurrected my dormant freelance PR career and at the same time took up competitive sailing to take my mind off the previous year’s calamity.

After many years of meetings in dark rooms and the snarly aggression of deal-making, I needed to see the gentle rolling of the waves, get lost in the ocean, and focus on being part of a team.

My sailing buddies were amazing fun, and I enjoyed the competition and fresh air. The man who owned the yacht had two adorable six-year-old twin daughters. They told me one day as we were bobbing around the Marina peninsula, “You’d make a great mom!”

Those six-year-olds were right, and now in my late thirties (when did that happen?), they had ignited a fervent longing in me that I hadn’t acknowledged and couldn’t ignore. It was time to forget the I Love Lucy TV dreams and shift focus.

Number one, I decided to stop dating people with head shots. In Hollywood everyone carries a driving license and a head shot. Unearthing the men who weren’t looking to become the next George Clooney became my priority. I switched gears from comedian and syndication queen-in-waiting to Husband Hunter.

I joined as many dating sites as I could. It became my full-time hobby. I kid you not, in two years I went on a documented 126 dates.

I dated bricklayers, firemen, teachers, talent managers, tile-makers, one rocket scientist, doctors, an Asian, an Indian, a Buddhist, three lawyers, two chiropractors, and a dermatologist. Plus a guy with a boat, a guy with a plane, a guy with a bus, a guy with a horse, and a guy with a Harley. A man who loved dogs, another who loved cats, and one who had a thing for lizards. Then there were the guys with the collections: wine, trains, guns, stamps, baseballs, and goats.

Every other day I was either sipping lattes, eating sushi, or taking walks around museums with another new guy.

It was relentless, but every wrong date taught me to recognize what was right. By the time I met Rob, I knew I’d found my guy.

A week after our first...