Artistic Finance: Stay Invested With Zak Borovay

In this episode of Artistic Finance, we chat with projection designer Zachary "Zak" Borovay, who has designed Elf, Xanadu, and Rock of Ages on Broadway. He has also done work for Disney and Universal theme parks, lots of cruise lines, and the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular. He recently joined Image Engineering as a drone show designer and producer.
 

Highlights:

⭐️ Keeping your investments;

⭐️ The protections of a union and a bit of the history of projection designers being accepted into their union, USA 829;

⭐️ Freelancing versus being employed at a production company;

⭐️ Making sure you recommend projects to the people you’re working with. Because when you don’t, it is very noticeable.

Key takeaways:

⭐️  Zak mentioned the theme park gigs were the ones that are the most well compensated. I didn’t follow up on that and wish I had. Hopefully Zak will be back one day to explain that. But take note, he’s done a lot of Broadway shows and yet his answer was… the theme park work;

⭐️  Interviewing for Book or Mormon but deciding to cut projections. Ouch!

⭐️ Unions - crazy to think that 2009 was the first projections union contract on Broadway. And also, Rock of Ages, a show I know well, closed on Broadway in 2015 which means it has been gone for 11 years, which besides making me feel old because I use it as an anchor point of my life, it shows how time keeps moving, and so few Broadway shows get the honor of staying relevant as pop cultural references;

⭐️ Don’t sell investments early! I know life happens, so obviously it’s a moot point because if you have to sell, you have to sell. But investing is really best when you invest, and never di-vest. Though I will say that Zak mentioned it was Apple stock he regrets selling. BUT… I will say that general financial advice is to NOT own individual stocks. Individual stocks I support divesting from BECAUSE, when I’ve learned by investing for the Artistic Finance 6k episodes is that individual stocks can just disappear. Whereas, an index fund doesn’t disappear because if a stock within it disappears, it gets replaced with a new one.

But anyway, stay invested!

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