My Story...

I sent this excerpt in an email to a new friend.

I grew up in St. Charles, IL which is about 35 miles west of Chicago and went to a private Christian High School called Wheaton Academy. As a teenager, I was a golf caddy during the summers at St. Charles Country Club, which is where I started earning my first dollars (technically not true. I was a paper boy from 8-12). Caddying would eventually afford me the opportunity to go to college for free on the Chick Evans Scholarship: (http://www.wgaesf.org/site/c.dwJTKiO0JgI8G/b.6021361/k.8BED/WGAESF_Home.htm)

At Northwestern, I lived with 40 other Evans Scholars both men and women in our 'fraternity' house. The program and the scholarship were the greatest blessings I could have possibly imagined. I studied for 4 years at NU and got my degree in Communication Studies with a minor in Religion. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do for a job but it just so happened that, in April of 2008, while on my way toward spring-breaking in Spain, I met a man at a bar at O'Hare who was an Area Vice President for a company called Covidien, which manufactures and sells surgical supplies. At the time, Covidien didn't hire anyone with less than 3-5 years of sales experience, but a few weeks after meeting, that guy emailed me to tell me that Covidien was starting a new program where they were going to hire a class of Sales Associates right from undergrad and we thought I would be a great candidate.

Long story short, I got the job. I moved to Connecticut and worked for Covidien as a member of the very first Sales Associate Development Program. There were 11 of us, all between the age of 22 and 26 and we spent 15 months together learning how to sell Surgical Devices. I spent 6 months on an inside sales team, where I brought my base of 140 accounts from trending towards the high 70% to quota mark all the way up to 104% to quota. In that time, I might have been one of the wealthiest self-made 23 year olds in the country. I also met my current girlfriend, Amanda Markoya while I was there (www.amandamarkoya.com). 

From that role, I was promoted to an outside sales position out in Los Angeles where I co-managed a $6.3 Million territory. My partner, Eric Scharmach, and I, brought that territory, (which included accounts like UCLA) up to just over 100%. It was a very high visibility position within the company and, though I bumped heads a lot with my partner and my manager, at the end of the day, we did what we needed to do to reach 100%. Amanda and I lived together in North Hollywood for about 8 months, while she trained to be a makeup artist. 

In October 2010, I was promoted to take over my own territory as a Surgical Device Rep. One of the youngest people to ever do that within the history of the storied US Surgical (now Covidien). It wasn't until shortly thereafter, I realized that, even though I was continuing to pass through wonderful thresholds within the company and was making a good amount of money, I wasn't quite sure that selling surgical equipment was what I was meant to be doing. I pondered on that for about 6 months before I decided to leave the company in April 2011 to pursue 1. Starting my own companies 2. a career in comedy.

As you can imagine, this was not an easy decision to make but I did it anyway. I packed up and moved back home to Chicago where I focused on starting my companies and pursuing comedy (Amanda and I broke up and she moved back home to Connecticut). I worked at Chili's to pay the bills between July 2011-December 2011 and then in January, quit that job, sublet my apartment and went to live in San Antonio with my friends Josh, Rebekah and little baby Grace Gulley who essentially have been like my family. They helped me in every way possible while I focused more intently on developing my start-ups. In December of 2011, Amanda and I got back together and began our long distance Connecticut Girl, Nomad Boy relationship. I moved into the city more permanently in May of this year, when I started working at Wildfire. In August, Amanda moved to Brooklyn, so we now have a much cooler NYC Girl, Chicago Boy connection.

It wasn't until I began going around trying to raise money for my ventures (a video-sharing app vision and a surgical quality assurance company) that I realized how close I was getting to doing something that I wasn't ready to do, i.e. be the CEO of a company. While the idea of running my own startup is, and will always be, appealing, and I know that I would be successful at it, I realized that I more so should be focused, in this time of my life, on pursuing my passion: comedy.

Since making the decision to pursue comedy whole-heartedly, I have began creating a Kirk Sells brand on the Internet and everywhere I go. I continue to create content, perform shows, release videos, etc. While I work towards greater exposure in the comedy community. I stopped working on one of my companies and just recently turned the other into a production label so that I can help myself produce high quality creative material. I am trying to brand myself as a Comedy Rapper but have talents that include Standup, Improv, and Writing. I am also training in 3 classes at second city: Acting 1, Comedic Songwriting, + Clowning & Physical Comedy and will be auditioning for the 2nd time for the SC Conservatory next Friday. My goal is pretty straight forward: It is to be on Saturday Night Live. 

If you haven't seen some of my stuff online, here are some links:

Who Am I? - Kirk Sells

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFap9-qdXTI

Oregon Trail, Bitch- Kirk Sells

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n947p2QREqs

Kirk Sells - Comedy Demo Reel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJPPVpzyR14

In the shorter term, I should have a new rap video out by the end of October, done in the similar style of Oregon Trail, Bitch and I plan to have a 6 song EP out on iTunes by January 1, 2013. I will continue my improv and acting training at Second City.

Anyway, I know thats long-winded but that is my story. Hope we can learn a bit more about one another and I certainly have some introductions that I would like to make between you and some other influential men and women that I know.

A Quick Preview of the Upcoming Oscar Season Movies

My friend, Pete Spedale, does a hell of a job keeping his friends in the loop on upcoming movies. As someone that doesn't really keep tabs on what is coming out, I found this to be incredibly helpful. Take a look...

1. The Master (Sep 21) - Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood) created a story loosely based on the Scientology Church creator (L Ron Hubbard). Philip Seymour Hoffman is the leader of "The Cause" and Joaquin Phoenix is a lost soul loyal follower. Tom Cruise was supposedly unhappy with this movie's creation.

 

2. Looper (Sep 28) - Director Rian Johnson (Brick) teams up with Joseph Gordon-Levitt again to craft a sci-fi feature where he is a time-assassin that has to come face-to-face with his future self (Bruce Willis). Lots of great buzz from the Toronto Film Festival.

 

3. Argo (Oct 12) - Ben Affleck stars in and directs a movie about hostages freed from Iran using a fake film crew making a fake movie. Ebert predicted it would win best picture.

 

4. The Sessions (Oct 19) - John Hawkes is a man who can't move his body from a disease so he hires a sex therapist (Helen Hunt) to help him through his first time. Acting Buzz surrounds this one.

 

5. Cloud Atlas (Oct 26) - A historical/sci-fi movie directed by the Wachowskis (The Matrix, Bound) that spans several milennia from the distant past to distant future. Hugh Grant, Halle Berry, and Tom Hanks star. Lots of great buzz out of Toronto.

 

6. Flight (Nov 2) - Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Back to the Future) and Denzel Washington team up to tell the story of a pilot who impossibly lands a crashing plane saving lives, but a lot of the story lies beneath the surface.

 

7. Lincoln (Nov 9) - Spielberg's biopic on Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day Lewis) and how he got us through the civil war. Everyone should be excited about this one.

 

8. Anna Karenina (Nov 16) - Kiera Knightley teams with her Atonement director (she was oscar-nominated in that movie) to retell Tolstoy's psychological study masterpiece. Should be good, but will be overshadowed by Les Miserables.

9. Life of Pi (Nov 23) - Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) director a story of a boy and a tiger who are shipwrecked and learn to live with each other to survive. The visuals look stunning, and it should be family friendly.

 

10. The Hobbit (Dec 14) - The pre-story to Lord of the Rings tells the story of how Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) came to acquire the Ring. First movie of 3, with Peter Jackson directing. Should be visually engrossing and long.

 

11. Les Miserables (Dec 14) - Tom Hooper (the King's Speech) directs Victor Hugo's tale. Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman, and Russell Crowe star. Should be the frontrunner for several oscars including best picture.

 

12. Zero Dark Thirty (Dec 21) - Kathryn Bigelow (the Hurt Locker) directs the tale of how the US and Seal Team 6 successfully found and killed Bin Laden. Very controversial, should still be very tense and patriotic.

 

13. Django Unchained (Dec 28) - Quentin Tarantino's (Pulp Fiction) story about a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) turned into a bounty hunter who has to save his wife, who is still owned by the slave's former plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio). The sentence describing the movie is so bizarre this is the one movie I want to see more than any other. I believe it opens on Christmas.

Thanks Pete! This is awesome.

The Alien Definition of Laughter

The Alien Definition Series


LAUGHTER-


Laughter is the human body’s physical response to the brain’s sudden understanding of something previously misunderstood. While each individual human has an irreplaceable pattern, pitch, and tone to their laughter, the sound will derivate, in it's most natural form, from the primary communication orifice; generally at a very harsh frequency. 


Often originating unexpectedly and unanticipatably, the sound itself is generally regarded as enjoyable by humans and is sometimes associated with approval (pg. 29) or acceptance (pg. 22) There is evidence, however, that the laughter of some individuals can cause an increased level of anxiety to those within range of the frequency. See: Ax-murderers, Super-villains, Mother-in-laws

Caution: Humans will often generate a 'false' laughter as the result of an awkwardness (pg. 37) stemming from their inability to comprehend something on the level of their more intellectual peers. Despite their desperate attempts to mask it, there is a terribly unsubtle and easily distinguishable difference between the genuine human expression of joy (i.e. laughter) and it’s imposturous counterpart, which humans so often exercise.


The Alien Definition Series, gradually dissects the core definitions, justifications and reasonings behind basic human emotions, actions, responses & institutions.

A Different Thought on Age

If you believe that every second of every minute of every hour of every day is a chance to make your life all that you want it to be, then you aren't the age you tell people you are.

I can't afford to think that I'm 26. I have to allow myself to know that I am exactly 26 years, 26 days, 21 hours, 52 minutes, and 45 seconds old and I have to desire to do something with that information. I have to stop counting my time by days or weeks or months and realize that every moment has as infinite value as the last. Age is not a countdown toward death, rather, a countup toward life.

Be encouraged. Your life will be remembered by the cumulation of your great days... and you are in control of all of it.

#luckmanagement

A Bad Day

today has been a 'bad' day... assuming you believe those actually exist and you still have the capacity to have them. a bad day for me recently has just seemed like a day of growth.

My motorcycle was towed and it cost $500 to get it un-towed. It hurts. I won't deny that. But on a positive note, it was towed, not stolen; It cost $500 not $700 or $800, and they didn't put that annoying sticker on my bike. You know what sticker I am talking about. It's the 'You've been towed' sticker' but it's not even just that, it's the 'Not only have you been towed but now we are going to put a big sticker on your windshield that will require some goo-be-gone and creative use of your ice-scraper (which you never thought you would use in the middle of July) to get off' sticker. So overall, it wasn't too bad.

I guess I also learned a lot today about how I could have avoided being towed (better luck management, being more conscious, aware, perceptive, driven) and how I respond to painful adversity. I didn't handle it well today, in fact I acted quite childish, but I grew from the adversity and promise to 'get em' next time'. Consequently, I did do some great writing today based on all the events that occurred today. And a day with good writing can never be a bad day.

My 5 Favorite Commercials

I decided that I wanted to make a video blog of my 5 favorite commercials. Let me know what you think of these...

5. Heineken Mustache

I love the message in this commercial. There are some things that are just right for the occasion. While the rest of society might think, 'That's weird. Why does he has a handlebar mustache', you just know that some day, in your most epic moment, while the skeptics change their hearts and cheer you on, your handle bar mustache will be the one thing about you that causes people to say 'He's doing it! And look at the mustache... it's perfect'

4.  Michael Jordan 100 foot rim

I love the message of this commercial. The measures in basketball, that were designed in the beginning to contain the physical capacity of the men playing the game, were broken by Michael Jordan. One man was so good at what he did, that he not only beat his opponents every night, but he also beat the game. To make this game challenging enough for the best, you have to change the rules. These rule-breakers exist outside of the limitations of our imaginations, and yet they are the ones...who change the world.

3. Tiger Wood's Nike Chip Commercial

The build-up is the best part. What I love about this commercial is the limitations on words. The non-verbals say everything. There is a lot of pressure here. Tiger is the leader. It is hole 16 of the Masters and he WANTS TO WIN! His back is against the wall on this chip. The ball is right on the cusp of the fringe and the rough. Not an easy shot. And to top it off, the green has a major dip from back to front (left to right if you're watching it and front to back from tiger's perspective). Tiger has to measure every element of this near impossible shot and the audience is just mesmerized and lays in waiting. And then...

In the complete silence,

Tiger lines up to his ball, gives a few practice waggles, resets his footing and swings away. The ball comes up quick and lands about 15 feet behind the hole (left if you're looking at it, behind in actuality). 'It's going in' Tiger thought, before anyone else knew. And as the ball started to break hard-right. The audience starts to mumble and the volume rises, slowly as the reality of this possibility started to seem inevitable. And the ball rolled slowly, looking as though it might be a little short (right if you are looking at it, short if Tiger is) and then all the sudden it starts to curl back left and your toes do a little curl right along with it. But then, it doesn't look like it has enough and in fact... it doesn't.

It stops.

And everyone is completely silent and they start to think 'wow, what a good effort' and the 1/2 second feeling that 'wow that could have been something special' diverts your conscious for one second until the ball falls in the hole and everything you envisioned, after all the calculations and planning comes to fruition and all the crowd is yelling at the top of their lungs! And then you see Tiger Woods body is overcome with that same joy, only amplified and in that moment, he is completely and utterly unstoppable.

2. Google Breakup

This commercial puts to practice a good concept that's used in advertising called, enthymeme. An enthymeme is essentially a message that let's an audience fill in the back story and the take home point, without ever saying it'. What Google did here, was just that. They showed you a very common activity that you do every day and they made the consequences bigger. Even though all of us search for things on Google and use all the functions displayed in the commercial, we still liked to be reminded that there are bigger journeys that await us than just trying to find out 'Who's voice is Lois on Family Guy'. At some point, we will use Google to guide our journey through a fairytale of a story of adventure and learning and love.

And the beautiful thing is, Google didn't have to say any of that... for you to get the message. 

1. Ebay Toy Boat Commercial

I have a hard time explaining this commercial without bursting into tears. It is by far the most powerful ad I have ever seen and I think the messaging is stellar. At face value, there is a story about a boy who loses his boat and finds it again on eBay years later. But this commercial speaks to something well beyond that. It hits on the complexity of the universe and the destiny for each memory and each relationship that we have.  Even though we never see it, we can imagine the moment in which the boy discovers that he's lost his favorite boat. It's painful. It is in those moments, we ask:

'why did this happen to me?' and we are overcome with sadness.  More importantly, we start to believe that is the end of the story.

A wise friend of mine recently told me, 'if the end was not what you expected it to be, then it probably isn't the end'. I think that is relevant here as we discover that every thing in this world and every person has a destiny that is in some correlated to our own. When we think we've gone off the path of our own destiny, we need something to come along that reminds us that we're still connected in a grandiose web that, in some way, that supersedes our ability to understand it. When you recognize this truth, you begin to see that there is way more to this story than just you. There is a greater force at work.

Ebay recognized this truth well before you did and that is why the tagline of the commercial is not 

Ebay, 'happiness for all' or 

Ebay, 'find your life'.... 

The message truly is...

Ebay, 'The power of all of us'

Free Invention Idea

If you've ever thought to yourself during an infomercial...

'man, I wish I could invent something and make a million dollars like the rest of these idiots. Ah, but then I'd have to think of something that people need and that never happens until after I see the informercial for 'my idea!'. And I shout, 'Hey! That's my idea!'. I just never came to verbalize the little complaint that was always in my head that I knew needed to be fixed and I had an idea how to fix it, because I think about it all the G**Damn time!...but that's my idea.'

To anyone who's ever thought that they've never thought of a good idea, here is a gift..

Answer this complaint: 'Man, I wish I could sit naked in my home office chair without feeling weird about it'