Speaker 1Shut up, and sit down. Welcome to Being On Stage, the only podcast that gives you motivation, inspiration, and confidence to be better on stage. No matter how you entertain, sing, dance, band, comedian, public speaking, MC, drag, burlesque, performance art, or street performer, this is the show for you.
Speaker 2Hey, rock stars. Reggie Dawson, your host of the Being On Stage podcast, the only podcast for performers to improve their confidence, seek inspiration, and motivation to keep doing what you love and rocking that stage. What is going on, everybody? Listen, so I'm kind of on a bit of like a, I don't want to call it like a high, but kind of like a blitz, like an adrenaline rush almost. I got a guy coming today to fix some drywall in the bathroom. And I only have like 12 minutes to podcast, so it's like, wake up, shower, do this, do that, do that, podcast. And, you know, I'm telling you, the commitment to do something every day for a month has kind of helped my priorities a little bit. So as a procrastinator, professionally procrastinator, I'm happy to report today I took my first step to getting past procrastination. It's not my first step. I come and go. Sometimes I get really good, and sometimes I fail miserably, and I think we all do. So listen, a couple of days ago, and it's kind of been weighing on my mind for a while, because I keep mentioning it, I keep bringing it up, I keep like sliding it in there. I keep mentioning like getting paid, how to get paid for performing. And it can be, honestly, from personal experience, it can be an uncomfortable topic to broach, especially if it's something that you've never done, you've never asked to be paid for what you do. But it can be, if you're not sure what you're worth. I think that's something we all struggle with. And it's not just performers. I mean, people running businesses, people selling products, everybody struggles with what's my price point? What is this valued at for the consumer? And for us, performers, our consumer is our audience. You know, we step on stage, we present our talent, and they applaud us. They're consuming our art, our talent. So. What's the value of that? Because here's the thing. When we perform, we're we're kind of like the middle party. You know, we're we're the entertainment. OK, so the venue makes the money and they're looking to make money. And how they make money is they sell drinks or food or a combination of the things. And this is assuming that you're not, you know, headlining a concert or anything. Listen, if you're performing at a festival, it's it's still the same thing. The venue is making money somehow. And in order to get a return on that money, they have to bring people. So the venue, no matter who it is, whether it's a festival or a bar or even a theater, the venue makes money on sales, whether it be ticket sales, door charges, drinks, food. If it's a festival, the vendor fees, the cost of admission for the people, the sponsorships. And in order to get a return on that or even order to make that money, you have to bring the people. Festivals make money because they bring the people. The people patronize the vendors and the vendors are happy. That's how that's how the festival works. Like as an organizer, that's how the festival works. The entertainment is there to draw the people and keep the people. That's that's what the entertainment is there for. Same thing in a restaurant or a bar. The entertainment is there to keep the people and bring the people and entertain them and help them have a good time to stay longer while they're there. So really, we're we're we're kind of being used in a way and it's not a bad thing. I actually think it puts us in an incredible position because unlike a restaurant or a bar or a business or, you know, my girlfriend does graphic design, my wife, whatever my wife, my girlfriend, same person. I use them interchangeably. But my wife, she is a graphic designer, photographer, and she struggles all the time with what do I charge for this? And I think we struggle as well because we want to make money. What we're with what we're doing. But one of two things happens. Either we don't believe we're worth such and such amount of money. I say, let's say, let's say two hundred dollars is our first price point. Two hundred dollars. If we don't think we're worth two hundred dollars or the venues don't think we're worth two hundred dollars. Either way, there's some work to be done. On one hand, you have you have to know that you are valuable. Now, there are ways to make yourself. More valuable, you know, rehearsal booking more and more gigs, networking with other performers. There are ways to make yourself more valuable. The way the true way to make yourself more valuable and worth more money is to keep growing in your talent, trying new things, expressing yourself in new ways, doing the unthinkable out of the box thinking. And really, I mean, honestly, creating that connection. And you do that through yourself. Like you unleash the truest, most raw, energetic side of yourself. Like the truest portion of you that you hide from everybody. You release that on stage, whether it's high energy, emotional, whatever. You release that on stage and you create that connection. Now, what that does for the audience is it draws them in. OK, so once you create that connection, you draw in your audience, then you start getting repeat customers, repeat, you know, people wanting to know where you're performing next. People following you. People following you on social media. That's how you help determine your value and how you become more valuable is bringing in the audience, the fans, if you will. OK, and if you don't think you have fans, let me let me just back way up. OK, I was at a position a few years back where truthfully it felt like I just had a bunch of friends that like to hang out at the bar where I perform. And turns out it was not the case. And it's it's kind of unfortunate to realize this a few years later, because, you know, when you think you have all. All these friends and they're actually just fans. And that's OK. Like, it's it's OK to be friendly with your fans and for your fans to be friendly with you. But I guess for well, for me, it was a bitter note because, you know, I felt like I lost all my friends when I stopped performing. But if you stop performing, you just lose fans. And that's what I lost. So I'm OK with it now, you know, and I'm not tooting my own horn and I don't want to devalue any of my relationships with people. I was very friendly towards my fans, but they were fans nonetheless. And you have fans as well. You know, and it's not to say that these people are just with you because you're performing or they're just friends with you because you're an artist or whatever. You know, they truly admire what you do and they want to see more of it. That's what a fan is. A fan isn't someone that thinks they're going to be be something by standing next to you. That's a user. That's that's an idiot. That's an ass. Oh, that's a you know, that's a different person. A fan is someone who wants to support you and wants to see more of what you do. So you draw them in with your personality and you draw them in with your connection and what you do on stage and you keep doing better and better and better. They're going to keep coming back. That's your value to the venue is the people that you bring. That's how you can determine that you're valuable. So then the second thing I said was that the venue doesn't find you worth that much. Well, at first you may not be worth that much. Even if you have a thousand local followers on social media, you may not be able to get them to come out. For the venue to pay you two hundred dollars. You may have to work a couple of open mic nights. You may have to offer to do an event for free. Yes, I said it free and you should be used to doing for free. What are we talking about here? We're one right now. I'm talking about people that have not charged yet for what they do or they're charging very little or they're accepting money as it comes. You have to step up and understand that you're valuable and how you, you know, how you calculate your value is by. How many people you're bringing to these venues don't make the same mistake I did. OK, I was bringing people. I mean, I was bringing I mean, when there was 40, 50 people at the show and I performed a lot of smaller crowd events, it's it's what I like. I don't I don't really like the over 100 crowds. I do like the lesser. So when I would have like 40 people, a smaller audience, like 30 to 40 people, half of them are people that came because I invited them, but I only accepted her. I. I only got paid like 50 bucks. Now, granted, you're thinking, oh, that's only 50 people. Well, yeah, if you're at a venue where you're performing in front of 100 people at a restaurant, how many people do you bring in or how many people did the restaurant bring in? You know, you have to be able to bring people and get them to come out. So, yes, you may have to do an event for free at a place. You may have to work out a deal that says, OK, listen, you know, for the people that come for me, give them a 10 percent discount or, you know, let me. Let me get 10 percent of their meal or their their bar or whatever. You can work out deals like that. Or if it's a cover charge deal, let me get, you know, 10 percent of the cover. You can work out some sort of deal like that until they realize this, this, this guy is, you know, I'm going to lose money this way. I need to just I need to just pay a flat rate, you know. But if you wait for that, you're also going to be devalued because the venue is going to wait until you're bringing in like 500 people. Then it's a business. You know, it's a business. They're not. they're not gonna pay until they get a really nice return. So sometimes you got to force it a little bit. Sometimes you have to tell them, like, listen, I'm going to need to start charging you about $150, $200 a show because the amount of people I'm bringing in. And that's okay to do that. So I'm going to tell you one more story, and then I'll kind of get to the end of the podcast and wrap it up. So I was performing in West Palm, and it was my second night performing there, and I brought a couple of entertainers with me. I've talked about this night before. I grossly misjudged the audience and did performances that were not welcomed. I don't mean it. It wasn't inappropriate performances or offensive performances. It just wasn't. It was in line with what the rest of the night was. The night was like a hip-hop, reggae, house type of night, and I performed rock music. And it didn't flow with the rest of the night. And it was a poor choice. Everyone makes poor choices. That was one of mine. And what happened was they tried to reduce my pay, and I kind of stuck up for myself a little bit. And I reminded them, like, listen, you know. I understand. You know, we had agreed on, like, $250 or something like that. I was supposed to get $100, and then I brought three entertainers with me that were just starting out, like, within the first year, and they were each supposed to get $50 or something like that. So I told them, I said, listen, I understand, like, if you're not happy with how I perform, but I have people that I have to pay. You know, we drove a long way here, and, you know, to do $100, he was trying to cut it to $100 for all of us. I mean, granted, there's four of us at $25 apiece, but I wasn't. I wasn't too happy about that. So I got them off to $150, and what I did was I gave everybody their $50, and I went home empty-handed, you know. And they chipped in for gas when they realized what happened, because my ex-girlfriend just couldn't let me do something nice like that. That's one of the reasons she's an ex-girlfriend. But she couldn't let me just do something nice like that, like just not get paid. And she had a bad habit of doing that, because I don't want to get into this, but just side note. So don't. Don't make people feel bad for doing something nice for people or for taking a hit. Like, I took the hit, and I gave them the $50 each, and we were driving home, and she said something about gas money, and they were kind of like, oh, yeah, like, sure, thinking they didn't think they had to do gas money, because I was getting paid more than them. So she's like, well, you know, he didn't get paid, so every little bit helps. And it's like, what the hell? Can't you just let me do this for people? So they all chipped in, like, $10 to help us get home. I didn't need it, but it wasn't the point. But anyways, don't do that to people. But sometimes you have to, sometimes you're going to have to take the hit, is kind of what I'm getting at. You know, maybe the night doesn't perform so well. Maybe you made an agreement for, you know, $250, and 50 people showed up. So, you know, maybe you reduce your pay. You got to work with people if you want to keep your relationships up. So there's two sides of where I'm going at here, and I know this is running long. And I mean, I don't have a podcast because I don't like talking. If you know what I mean. But I know this is running long, but I'm going to wrap it up here in a moment, I promise. Famous last words. But there's two things I'm getting at here. At one hand, you can't be afraid to charge something. If you're not comfortable with going for $200, $500, then, you know, charge what you're comfortable with to start out with. You know, see if you can make some money doing what you love. Period. That's it. You know, keep working at what you do. Keep growing, keep getting better, keep networking and meeting people like keep communicating with your fans and your audiences on social media, on stage, and even after the show in person. But don't be afraid to ask for money. But on the other hand, on the other hand, what I'm saying is, if you're not performing well or the audience isn't there, allow yourself the flexibility to work with the venue. You know, allow yourself that flexibility to say, OK, listen, you know, you and I both know this wasn't going to work. It wasn't as successful as it should have been. Half of that's on me. So, you know, I'll just take $100 instead of $200. And I'm not saying you got to cut it in half, but even if you cut off 50 bucks, it's a show of good faith that you recognize it wasn't what it was supposed to be. And you're you're a part of that. You have a stake in that. So you're going to take a hit just like they are. So, listen, I could honestly go on and on and on and on about how to get paid for performing. Getting on stage, not the only way. Asking venues for money to perform or festivals or anything, not the only way. I can give you 10 other ways. Easy. Right off the top of my head. But I want you to. So I want you to have those. Just go to my website and put in your name and email. I'll send it to you. Or if you don't want to go to my website, because, I mean, I get it. You can also just email me directly. I can send it to you that way, too. So, all right. Listen, I appreciate you guys listening to me drone on about getting paid. I hope you picked up something. And, you know, I guess if I was like Jerry Springer and I was doing a final thought, it would be. Don't sell yourself short. You're more valuable than you think you are. Keep on shining.
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