Ben Stein How Not to Ruin Your Life

On June 30, 1976, when Gerald Ford was President and we were just getting over Vietnam and Watergate, I opened my eyes in my apartment in New York City and closed them in Hollywood in a very cool hotel called The Sunset Marquis. My plan was to sublet my place in New York, work for six months or at most a year in Los Angeles, and then go back east.

In a couple of weeks, it will be 30 years, and I'm still here. Now, for the past many years I mostly travel around, speak, write about finance (which was my training), appear on TV about money and finance, and do commercials.

But for many years, I worked in Hollywood as a writer, producer, and actor. I got to see what works in terms of success here and what flops. Comparing that experience with what I've seen of journalism, finance, government, and sales, it's clear to me that what helps you make it in Hollywood is pretty much what helps you get ahead generally in any business.

So, since I'm mentally always lecturing the way I did in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" -- only a little more interestingly, I hope -- I sat down with my long-time best friend, Al Burton, a successful producer here, and churned out a book about how to succeed in Hollywood or anywhere else.

Now, I usually write about investments, and I will again. But for most of us, our main earning asset is our selves. We make much more from our labor than from our investments unless we're in a super rarefied stratum. If we work smart, operate with an eye on what works, we get ahead and make a decent livelihood.

So, herewith are a few deathless words about 26 Steps to Succeed in Hollywood, or Any Other Business. This a two-parter -- click here for the second part ("Wise Words for Getting Ahead in Your Career").

Learn a Useful Skill

You get paid for applying makeup or writing a script or lighting a stage or catering a crew's lunch. You have to have a specific skill that Hollywood needs, and you must have developed it to a level that makes the studios or networks want to hire you.

Make Yourself Invaluable

Do your work with such zeal and quality that your employer realizes he or she must have you at work every day to get everything that he needs done in a day accomplished. Don't be a slacker or waste your boss's time or anyone else's. Do your work so that when you leave, your employer says, "How did I ever get along without her?" Be that good every day, and you'll become invaluable -- and you'll get paid as if you were.

To Serve Is to Rule

This was suggested to me by my friend Barron Thomas. If your work on behalf of the costume department head is so good that your boss looks great and can brag about her department, you gradually become not the servant but the master. If you're a beginning chanteuse and your agent wants you to sing Hava Negila at her son's Bar Mitzvah, do it -- and do it so that everyone in the room is on the floor dancing. Then you'll get nightclub gigs.

The agent serves the client. The writer serves the producer. The hairdresser serves the star. The producer serves the studio -- and most important of all, the studio serves the audience. "Everybody's got to serve somebody," as Bob Dylan, the greatest poetic genius of our era, sang. If you serve well, you eventually become the boss.

There Is No Quitting Time

If you work at the Postal Service, there's a quitting time. If you work in a coal mine, there's a quitting time. If you work at Tara in "Gone With the Wind," there's a quitting time.

But you don't have a life outside of Hollywood. Hollywood is your life. Your career is your life. You work until you've done as much as you possibly can, then you read a script, and then you go to sleep. That's your life.

Connections Are Everything

You don't get ahead in Hollywood by taking the Hollywood SAT's. You get ahead by being noticed by the people who are already ahead. You can go to the best film school in America and get super grades, but if you're not a pal of the movers and shakers, you can just forget about everything you've learned inside the ivy-covered walls

The landscape architect who does a great job on the studio boss's pool area and has a script has a much better chance than you do coming from New York University's film school without a friend in town. (Of course the best film schools often provide connections as part of the degree, but not always, as I can assure you.) You'll do better as a waiter who serves the big-shot agent his pepper-crusted tuna piping hot at Morton's than as the winner of the acting contest at a Big 10 University.

Make connections any legitimate way you can, shine them up nicely, and you'll be a happy guy or gal.

There's No Such Thing as Being Too Likeable

Remember how it was in high school? The friendliest, most self-confident kids got to be chairman of the student council and had a crowd hanging on them. Well, it's exactly like that in real life in Hollywood (or anywhere else). Men and women gravitate to those who are likeable and easy to be around.

Think of your own bad self. Who do you like to be around? Sourpusses or friendly, encouraging, smiling people? That's how it is in the workplace, too.

Your likeable self is the self who gets ahead. Remember it, and win in Burbank, Beverly Hills, or Bergen County.

Well, that's enough for now. I'll give you more in my next column. Remember, I have seen this, and it works. The people who have the Aston-Martins and the houses in the flats of Beverly Hills know it, even if the wannabes at Starbucks don't.