NCEC in the News!
Donna Washington: Storyteller
Researched and written by Tai Caldwell
“This is the only job I’ve ever had,” says Donna Washington of her career as a storyteller. At Northwestern University, studying theater, Washington got cast to play a storyteller in a play. “It’s a different art form; it has its own conventions and its own mode of being, and it sounds different.” She then took a six-week course in storytelling, and that was transitional for her--she found her art form. A professor, Rives Collins, took her under his wing for two years and turned her into a storyteller. Donna was focused on and immediately started getting work as a storyteller. After a frustrating turn in TV movies, she decided to focus on storytelling in earnest. “Storytelling went from being my ‘day job’ to being my job.” She also began to write: “I met an editor when I was performing out in California, and she said ‘You should write books,’ and I said ‘Okay!’” The editor spent the next year helping Donna become an author. Other people seemed to notice her talent and help her foster it. “I’m surrounded by people who are right.” Would she be where she is today without them? She replies with a hearty, unhesitating, “No.” She sees ten to fifteen years down the road and then asks, “How do I get there?” She has people, people like Rives Collins, Nancy Donoval, Katherine Tegan, Carmen Deedy, and Jay O’Callahan--around who can help get her there. “I can tell you unabashedly that without encountering the people I have encountered, I do not think I would be doing this. What would I be doing? Not a clue. But I know I would not be doing this. I wanted to be a magic person: being able to stand, a single person, alone on a stage, and transport an entire audience somewhere else.”
After Northwestern, Washington worked in a few temp agencies to pay the bills. Things got put on hold, however, around age thirty when she and husband David had kids and moved from Chicago to North Carolina. When their youngest was three, she decided to go back to work. This was when it occurred to her that “this needs to be more than just me going out and making some money.” Two cars and two kids dictated a greater focus on pursuing the career vs. the temp jobs.
Donna began her career quest by making a list of the things she thought were true of her as an artist and the things she wanted to accomplish and put them together into a mission statement that mirrored her Unitarian Universalist values. David was convinced that her storytelling could be a business to support the family, so he quit his job and threw his weight behind Donna. She couldn’t manage doing both the artistic and managerial sides, so David took up managing her.
As work increased, Donna and David consulted an accountant who gave them advice on finances and told them “the business itself had outgrown a simple storyteller-artist doing something.” They met with lawyers, retired business people, and did research on incorporating. Realizing they needed long-term financial goals, they moved to develop a business plan. With her travel, a book, and CD sales, etc., what she did had outgrown just her, so they incorporated. “We actually sat down and became a real honest-to-goodness business,” she reports, “with a board and stock and the whole thing, because the business was bigger than I was.” They were paying mad crazy taxes on their money and incorporating moved that cash into a different tax system. Now the company pays them a salary and reimburses them for travel and food per diem. Their budget also goes to necessities (office supplies, insurance, stage costumes, etc.), stock, IRA matching, college matching, medical fund matching. Royalty money comes to Donna personally. Their artist-accountant recommended “highly, highly, highly that anyone who is an independent artist, when they get their taxes done, go to a tax preparer who specializes in working with artists. I cannot stress that enough.” Those CPAs know the laws that affect artists and know best how to manage their money. The self-employed are taxed at a higher rate because they must pay all their own Social Security and Medicare. Now, after incorporation, they pay less than before, and it went from there to where they are today. “Every step of the way, we have discovered that there’s something else,” Donna noted, however. Laws change, per diem changes.
This business oriented approach made the Washington’s lives easier and harder--easier because they were freed financially from the “crazy stuff that can happen in business” but harder because there are more hoops. They used their financial advisors to help not only with taxes, but they developed a retirement account, health insurance, and child college funds. “I think that most people who really are into their art,” she points out, “are into the creative part of it and just don’t do as well with the other end, the business.” Not that a great artist can’t be a great businessperson--they simply tend not to be. Artists focus on their art. Donna finds herself lucky because she has a husband who learned how to be a businessman so she would be free to pursue her art as she saw fit. They are an artist-entrepreneur team: she’s the artist, he’s the entrepreneur.
Once or twice a year Donna and David sit down and revise their business plan: one-year goals, five-year goals, ten-year goals. Currently, a long-term company goal is to have some sort of office so they can move their business out of their home once their children get older.
Donna Washington, unlike most artists, was on strong financial footing when she and David created the business. She likes to pay for things upfront rather than work on credit. “We don’t buy anything on credit with the business.” They make sure they have money to spend before they spend it. Their main focus has been on staying in the black, not relying on loans, making goals, saving up for them. And they make sure they have a financial cushion in case Donna gets sick and can’t work for months.
Starting out without loans or credit, Donna admits, may not be possible for every artist; but she advises to pay them off quickly. And once they’re paid off, don’t accrue more! Through careful planning, and Donna’s success, the Washingtons were able to accomplish their fifteen to twenty year goals in only three years! This forced Donna to reevaluate herself as an artist--should I be making this much? What do I do with the money? Indeed, when she shared the story of her success with another highly successful woman in the business world, she was told, “You haven’t hit the ceiling; there is no ceiling.” When her husband used to raise ticket prices, it would freak her out, but now she understands that’s just basic business, demand driving prices. There’s a reason the Rolling Stones can charge hundreds of dollars for concert tickets. “David is not emotional about the business, and that makes it a lot easier for him to run it. In terms of artistic goals, however, David’s also unemotional while I’m very emotional about the artistic goals. If he’ll demand two CDs, I’ll say I have good material for one; he’ll say ‘you don’t have to love it’ for it to be a product worthy of producing."
Goals do change over time, of course. Donna would like to do voice over work, but it would require more time than she is willing to invest right now to break into the business. “That is a goal that has been pushed down the road. It isn’t gone, it’s just hanging out there.” She has far-off goals like that and commercials, but for now she is focused on storytelling and will come to those other goals when she is willing to invest the time and energy they will take (like when they aren’t raising small children). There is also the possibility of setting up a talent agency since other people keep asking them for advice and management help. This, too, is a possibility for the future.
Every artist, every entrepreneur, faces obstacles along the way. Many of the obstacles are financial, but for Donna Washington financial success has made the obstacles more psychological and artistic. Since finances must be completely separate between business and family accounts--family can’t borrow from business, business can’t borrow from family--a big problem has been that she feels she’s sort of divorced from herself: company and family, art and business. “The thing that I spent twenty years creating is separate from me. I find that very uncomfortable.” Most obstacles are her own personal, emotional obstacles about being a successful artist. She feels that if she is successful, she is somehow betraying her art. “We can only really move at the pace that I’m ready to handle.” But this is probably a good thing and has kept the Washingtons from getting in over their heads. For instance, they have a long-term plan on which markets to enter and when. They just opened Long Island, however, which wasn’t one she necessarily wanted to open; but with the economy sinking and disposable income shrinking, they needed a place where the economy isn’t that great of an issue. Long Island, home of the illustrious Hamptons, is one such place. Many people don’t have the money to spare right now to go out and see a show, so the Washingtons are focusing on wealthy markets that can afford to see the work Donna does without cutting back on more pressing wants and needs. In addition, she can’t take as many free or reduced jobs these days because of the economy. They aren’t feeling pinched yet, but do feel that they should be wise and “put some money in the mattress.” The world sometimes gets in the way of their well-thought plans. How can they serve the population that needs to be served and the population that can afford to be served? They often are not the same. How can she balance travel with family? How do they balance art with business?
Looking back over her career, Donna Washington reflects that university prepared her for her career only, “Kinda.” She learned performing and writing, but nothing about business. “What they should do is force every artist in college to take a finance class. They should force us all to do that. Introduce us to the reality of what it means to be an artist and pay for stuff.” That said, she wouldn’t be a storyteller without her time at Northwestern. It didn’t prepare her necessarily for where she is now, but it prepared her to look at art and the world as a storyteller. She says university is a good place to go “while you’re still cooking as a grown-up person. Because at that age you’re not quite finished cooking as a grown-up person. Moreover, a lot of the decisions you have to make in business are counter-intuitive. They have nothing to do with how things actually work. A lot of the things that you have to do are not obvious.”
In giving advice to young artists, Donna Washington believes in the rule of threes: Year one, you’re an independent artist; nobody knows who you are. You fight for every penny and every show, and you have to get yourself out there. Year two, at least twenty to thirty percent should be repeat business from year one, and you should have some word-of-mouth. Year three depends mostly on word-of-mouth and repeat business and about twenty percent fighting for it. If your audience doesn’t grow like that, something is wrong. It may be the market you’re trying to penetrate or the quality of what you’re offering. If you aren’t getting repeat business, swallow your pride and call up some people you’ve worked for and find out why you haven’t been called back. Get reference/recommendation letters to see how people talk about what you do (that is, are you accomplishing what you’re trying to accomplish as an artist?). You always need a sense of where you are as an artist.
Now that she lives in Greensboro, Donna Washington urges UNCG to offer a financial course for artists, maybe half of the semester learning and half creating a business plan for an artist/entrepreneur. Each student should create a mission statement to help understand what one does best and focus on it. Today there are more storytellers than there used to be, so a lot of people caught on: “the magicians became magician-storytellers, and the jugglers became juggler-storytellers, and the clowns became clown-storytellers.” There’s a lot out there, more than you’d think, so as a storyteller you must find your voice--not your gimmick. “Gimmicks come, they go, they change. A good story, well told, lasts forever.”