Whether it was by someone volunteering to be an extra in our show, or part of the crew, or someone buying a DVD at a convention, or a superfan who tattooed our characters’ faces on her calf, my career has been built fan by fan. I wouldn’t trade that relationship, or collection of dolls of myself, for all the money and fame in the world.
-?10?-
The Deletion of Myself
That time I had a nervous breakdown and dreamt nightly of slashing my face with a straight razor while screaming, “DO YOU BELIEVE I NEED A BREAK NOW, GUYS?!”
I was born anxious. My mom must have watched a horror movie marathon while I was in utero or something, because I freak out at loud sounds, driving at night scares me because all the lights make me feel like I’m inside a UFO, and I’m traumatized, never delighted, by things that are startling. (SCREW surprise birthday parties.) My biggest fears in life are to be locked in a department store after hours, or to be kidnapped while walking to my car at night and my body disposed of with a wood chipper. Clearly, you can understand how challenging REAL problems are for me, like being late to a lunch meeting. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t find a parking spot. Where would you like me to shoot myself: through the face or heart?”
It might be genetic, but it feels like I’m a stupid flouncy flower, destined to wilt at any second. I definitely didn’t take that fact into account when I decided to dive in and create a multimillion-dollar entertainment company with absolutely no previous business experience.
Classic Felicia.
In 2011, Kim and I pitched YouTube the idea for a brand-new channel focusing on geek entertainment called Geek & Sundry. We went in armored with a bitchin’ PowerPoint deck of all the cool shows we wanted to make. Even bought skirt suits to look official.
“Let’s get in there and get us some funding!”
We high-fived like we were in some bro-comedy plotting to save our fraternity, then marched in to do businessing. And rocked our presentation.
Afterward, YouTube selected our channel as one of one hundred it would invest in. It was awesome. I mean, all those years of acting like a secretary in commercials was about to pay off in running my own company, right? Uh . . . kinda.
As much as I love creating things, the amount of work was, frankly crushing. As part of our deal with YouTube, we produced more than 420 videos in 2012 alone. More than sixty-two hours of content in a year. To put it in perspective, The Guild released one and a half hours of content in the same amount of time. A real television show releases ten to twenty-two hours a season. With a crew of up to a hundred to help.
We had eight full-time people. Total.
So the scale was . . . different.
But I hung on, like a tiny four-year-old grasping the curved bars of a playground merry-go-round when someone’s older cousin spins it too fast. YAY, THIS IS FUN, KINDA! Then the months rolled along. And as time passed, I started to realize, Holy crap. This “own-your-own-business” thing doesn’t have an end point.
The responsibilities of running a small company with huge ambitions shoved me squarely into areas I was not suited for. Like insurance liability coverage and an icky concept called “Management.” Most of my time morphed from making things to supervising the making of said things. Kim and I had created The Guild by stretching ourselves as thin as possible to do everything. Perfect for a control freak like me. But in this new company, when I saw an employee doing something even slightly different than how I would have done it, I couldn’t help it—I flipped.
“She used the wrong font? But the video is due to be uploaded in an hour! She’s a North Korean spy sent to destroy us, isn’t she?!”
It did NOT help that the skills I’d built up over the years didn’t apply 100 percent to this new venture. Sometimes the opposite. Getting out from behind my computer and into people-meeting networking events was particularly jarring. Especially when it involved the advertising world, one of the places I had to spend a lot of time schmoozing, because it is the most backward, chauvinistic world I have ever encountered.
I’ll never forget the time in Las Vegas when a supremely powerful ad exec I was encouraged to “get to know” looked me up and down as I approached and said, “Nice dress. I’d love to see it off you.”
Um, hello. Nice to meet you, too?
When we launched Geek & Sundry on Sunday, April 1, 2012 (April Fool’s Day, oh irony!), we did it with a day-long livestream “Subscribathon!” We invited tons of guests, held virtual panels, giveaways, dance competitions, you name it. We did anything we could to fill twelve hours of programming. I hosted the entire time, and at one point, in hour eight, I was so loopy I punched a unicorn in the face. Thank goodness the unicorn didn’t sue.