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 Rockstars, this is your host Reggie Dawson, and again this is the Being On Stage podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in, whether it's your first time, or if you've been listening for a while, thanks for listening, I greatly appreciate it. First and foremost, have you put your email address into my website yet? Two things are going to happen. One, you are going to be subscribed to the Rockstar Lounge. It's an occasional email, it's not a big marketing type email, I don't send out a whole lot, maybe once or twice a month right now. But it's an email. Nonetheless, it dives deeper into the podcast, and then there's also a free download for you of an e-book that I wrote, Confidence On Stage. So you definitely want to take a look at that, beingonstage.com. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. I think we've all heard that before. We've probably said it to somebody or heard it ourselves, it's a fairly known saying. But imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. What does that mean? As entertainers, I think there's a lot of times. when we feel like someone is purposely copying us, and purposely trying to progress and find success using what we feel is our property. Like our intellectual property, our look, our outfits, our moves, our lines, our lyrics, you know, whatever it is. But a couple of things that I want to point out. One, imitation truly should be the most sincere form of flattery. Think about yourself as a performer. How do you get your ideas? Most of the time, the creative mind, as we are, we take in our surroundings. We take in, you know, the smells and the music and the everything. We take in everything in our surroundings, and that is where we get our inspiration for our art. We get it from our surroundings. Every other performer is the same way. So if you're the person that they're getting their inspiration from, are you not doing exactly what it is you're setting out to do as an artist, as a performer? You're inspiring somebody else to go after their dream. Yes, they may mimic a couple of things that you do. You're their inspiration. You are the person that they look up to when they're starting their path. And I think that that's where we need to remember that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. When someone's imitating you, you should be honored. Like, you should feel. You should feel something emotional, not anger, not frustration, but you should feel something. So, last episode, you know, I talked about professional respect. This is also part of that story, is professional respect. And one of the things I said I was going to share was a time when I was accused of stealing someone else's dance moves. When I was 20, 21, I met this other entertainer, and I immediately was enthralled by what he could do. I mean, he could really dance. Like, not only was he a performance artist and a lip-sync artist, but also a professional dancer. lip sync artist, but he could really dance. He truly performed. He captured every audience without fail. His moves were completely on point. His timing was impeccable. He had a connection with his crowd. He had facial expressions. He had everything that you would want in a good performance. And I seriously looked up to him immediately. It was one of those immediate things. Have you ever had a person that you've seen perform and you just immediately look up to them? I mean, usually we think of people like Usher or like Katy Perry and even Cher and Madonna. And even into more, maybe it's someone who won a recent contest in your performance type. Maybe it's the top belly dancer in the world. Maybe it's one of the Cirque du Soleil performers, if you're an acrobat of any type. There are people that you've looked up to and strive to be like. That's how I felt about this person. It's one of those people that, I was going to strive to be like because I really enjoyed his performance style and I felt a connection to that. I felt like he was where I aimed to be. And I got to meet him and actually, I mean, I thought we'd become pretty good friends. We'd chat back and forth and he would help me with dance moves. And I mean, he's hung out in my house and everything. What eventually happened was I got a random text message. I was just shouting out like, hey, it's been a while. How's it going? And I was like, hey, how's it going? And he was like, hey, how's it going? And the text I got back was just completely and utterly, to me, random. I mean, he ripped me a new one through text. He accused me of stealing his outfit designs. He did accuse me of stealing his dance moves and saying that I was trying to copy him. And like some of the things he said, like he told me, lose his number. He told me I was a terrible performer and a terrible person. He said all these really mean things. And I was, I was floored. You know, like I was really taken back. Like, what did I do wrong? I looked up to him. You know, I, he taught me things. And in my mind, it's like, well, I mean, of course I'm going to dance similar to you. You're, you're the person that's teaching me to dance. That's going to happen in the outfit situation. I did take an inspiration from one of, from an outfit that I've seen him do, but I did, you know, my, my intention was to make it my own. And, you know, I tried to rectify the situation. I offered to send pictures. I offered to stop dancing completely. And it just, it, unfortunately, you know, it really couldn't be rectified, but you know, this is a situation in which he had an opportunity to, to mean something to somebody. And instead he, he kind of crushed me a little bit. And to be on this side of it, it really makes you think, you know, when you look at other people and you have these conversations with people, and maybe you say some mean and nasty things to someone that you feel is, you know, imitating you or trying to copy you, you know, like they're a copycat. It can really crush their dreams and, and they may not have any idea what they're doing is wrong. If it's wrong. I think first and foremost, as entertainers, I've, I've said it before. I'll say it again. We got to check the ego sometimes. Like, are they really copying us or are they being inspired by what we do? And sometimes that that's an ego thing. And you really got to stop and think about that. Like I've had to check myself numerous times. Like, am I being egotistical? Am I being an ass or is there a serious problem here? And that's something that we are going to, we have to constantly do in our careers is check our ego. Because if we get, as my mother used to say, too big for our britches, if our ego gets too big and it gets beyond the scope of our talent, that's when people stop tuning in. That's when people stop following. That's when people lose interest. And when you have these conversations and you, you know, verbally, or sometimes physically, I've heard if you attack these other performers that are striving to be you, they look up to you. They see something in you that they want in themselves. And that is powerful as an entertainer. That is truly, truly powerful. You feel disrespected when you're copied. And I get it. I do. But there's no reason to feel disrespected. Have that conversation, that adult conversation that I talked about last episode. It's going to come up again when we talk about the next episode. Those adult conversations that we need to have, we have got to stop being too proud and too egotistical and too cocky to have these conversations. Because performance art is not going anywhere, but it certainly is not as popular as it used to be. And as entertainers, we've got to stop competing with each other and start working together to keep what we're doing alive. There's so much out there for people to easily access online. We need to keep what we're doing on stage alive before it disappears completely. Don't attack other entertainers. We all get our ideas from our surroundings. We all get our ideas from something or someone that inspires us. Instead of thinking, oh my God, they're copying me. Why are they trying to be like me? Why are they trying to steal what I have? Why are they trying to be just like me? That's not right. Instead of having that reaction, think about it this way. Maybe you look up to a Madonna or maybe you look up to a Cher or someone like that in your niche, in your performance style. If you look up to someone like that, you're going to be like, oh my God, they're copying me. How does it feel to know that to someone else, you're in that position? You're their Madonna. You're their Cher. You're their Katy Perry or their Eminem or their Usher. You are that person for them. How does that feel? That's got to feel so much better than feeling like someone is attacking you. Like most things, there's always a negative side to it. There's always going to be good with the bad. Sometimes there are going to be people that are legitimately copying you and trying to copy you. Sometimes there are going to be people that are legitimately copying you and trying to steal your success or gain success using your ideas and your creativity. But here's what I'm going to say about that. Let them do it. Because one, eventually everybody that does that, everybody that steals ideas and everybody that is not authentic and not true to themselves, everybody in any performance niche, in anything really, in business, in life, in relationships, anybody that is not truly authentic with who they are, and what they put out there, anybody who's not original and consistently going out there and doing something new and different and giving themselves to the audience they're not going to make it they're going to shoot themselves in the foot so just let them do it because i got news for you the audience they're going to notice they're going to see it and they're going to recognize the true authentic talent that you have and they're going to separate the fake poser that is just out there trying to make a quick buck and get some attention your audience is not dumb they're going to be able to differentiate so let them do their thing let them shoot themselves in their foot let them think that they can pretend to be you there is an entertainer that i worked with that used to say this and it's actually like a tagline of hers on our website often imitated never duplicated people can imitate you but they will never be you so if they are truly stealing your stuff and trying to do it themselves and you've had that conversation and you know that 100 without a doubt so what let them do it they're going to prove their worth eventually and you're going to prove yours keep doing what you love and keep doing it authentically and original and you will be just fine none of these posers are going to mean anything to you i promise that's all for now that's all i really have to say about imitation and copying and you know what furthermore if you are one of those people that is truly copying somebody cut that crap out really just go out there and be yourself be authentic with your crowd you can be amazing just being who you are you don't need to be anybody else keep on shining guys
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