Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jon Savitt. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Jon, thanks for joining us today. The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?

The first time I made any kind of money from my creative work was actually in 7th grade. I recorded a horrible music album on Garageband. I played the piano, drums, and guitar — I might have even sung a bit — and recorded everything on my laptop. It was so bad. Horrible. Like unlistenable. I had no right to do this.

Anyway, I remember being so proud of it. I even made an album cover for it (also horrible). I burned the songs onto an actual CD (I’m aging myself here) and brought it into school for my middle school band teacher to hear.

He listened to it and the next day paid me five dollars. I was like, “What is this for?” He said that I was an artist with a product, and that was compensation for my creative work. I thought that was the coolest thing. Of course this was long before I developed an interest in writing or comedy, but that was probably the first moment where I thought, “Wow, you can make money from doing fun creative stuff?”

Jon, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a writer and comedian. Basically, I spend my days doing anything from writing TV pilots and short films to writing stand-up to working on advertising projects with a humorous lens, and a number of other things that I don’t want to bore anyone with. I describe my comedy as “humor with heart” — essentially I like to tell stories that matter but through a comedic perspective.

Right now, my work is pretty evenly split between working on my own passion projects (and hopefully selling them so I can pay rent) or folks reaching out to me to help develop and write their ideas.

There have been countless ups and downs on this journey — and a lot of things I’m proud of. Making a living doing any sort of creative work is really difficult, so I try not to take anything for granted. I’m most proud that I followed something that makes me happy and that I get to wake up every day working on things that I truly love.

Also, I got to meet Robin Roberts one time so I guess that was a highlight too.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

If there’s one driving force behind why I chose to follow comedy as a career, it’s to make people take themselves less seriously. Nobody knows what they’re doing. Everybody is just kind of guessing — and some just do it more confidently. I love that as a writer I get to kind of play outside the artificial lines that have been drawn, and hopefully shed some light on the more ridiculous parts of life in the process.

I don’t think there’s anything particularly noble about what I do and mostly every day I look at other people and I’m like, “Oh, you’re actually doing something important.” But I guess if there’s one thing I can offer it’s to hopefully help people get out of their heads a bit and maybe be a bit more goofy and vulnerable. I think the world would be a better place with more goofiness and vulnerability.

But if I’m being honest about the mission driving my work: fame and money. For sure.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I truly believe that resiliency is one of the most important traits you can have in creative work — especially in the entertainment industry. You’re going to get a rejection note a lot more often than that “Let’s do it!” note.

I have so many rejection stories but I’ll just share this quick one.

I’ll never forget when I was first starting out as a writer and I pitched a piece to a well-known national publication that I will not name because I’m too scared. I worked so hard on this piece. It was well-researched; took weeks to write. I had to talk to multiple sources. I finally emailed it over to this editor and after a few days he responded with one word: “sigh”. Nothing else.

I mean, what?! That was so crazy to me. But I think I was discouraged for like a day and then I was like: well, okay, back to writing. That kinda has to be your mindset. Everything is so subjective and you never know why you might be rejected from something. So many factors.

You only can control what you can control — and you can control how hard you work. Everything else is out of your hands and whatever happens will happen. But if you truly love what you do, you just have to keep going.

Hopefully that was inspirational, I don’t know.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jonsavittwrites.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/savitt_jon
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/savittj