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. Hey Rockstars, Reggie Dawson, your host of the Being On Stage podcast. Thank you for tuning in. Welcome back. We're cruising right along, episode 61. But listen, can I get real with you for a minute? Can I just like cut all the nitty gritty, fluffy details and just like cut right down to the nitty gritty and just be real? Listen, you cannot ever assume that that audience is there for you. Now there may be people that show up for you, absolutely. But you cannot assume. You cannot assume that your entire audience showed up for you. Listen, some people came with friends, some people are just meeting up to have drinks, some people are just meeting up to eat, some people just happened to go out and find a place to party that they looked at Google and typed in nightclub or bar or tavern. You know, you can't assume that people come for you. Now, the reason I say this is because there are two ways that people perform. There's the way that people perform when they're in front of people that they know. And then there's the way people perform when they have people to impress. And the second one, the way that you perform when you have people to impress. That's how you should perform every single time. Because, yeah, those five people right there in the front row, they're your friends. Yeah, absolutely. But the other 20 people in the room may have no idea who you are. But that doesn't mean that you should ignore them. It doesn't mean that they don't matter. It doesn't mean that they can't. It doesn't mean that they can't contribute to your success and end up being a fan and a follower. I'm telling you, some performers I've worked with, and no one that I still work with, nobody locally, thank God, but just performers that I worked with like years and years ago, once or twice, here and there, they are so incredibly cocky that they honestly and truly believe that every single person in that audience is there for them. Now, maybe it's an act like, listen, who am I? Judge, maybe it's an act. Maybe that's how they have to hype themselves up to give that amazing show. And that's okay. But to portray that image, to just be that incredibly, we'll call it confident, cocky, whatever you want to say, like you, I've, I've, I have worked with people that truly believe they could take a crap on stage and people would just go nuts. No lie. But for the most part, we got to realize, like, not everyone's there for us. You can't assume. That the audience showed up because you're performing. And likewise, likewise, you can't assume that because you're performing, people will show up. Like you can't assume that your followers are going to show up just because you're performing. You're going to have to, you know, promote it a little bit, put it out there, act excited, get people excited about it. You know, engage with them before the show, engage with them during the show, engage with them after the show. That's how you keep your audience. And that's. That's how you turn them into your fans, the people that aren't there for you. So let me, let me back up the, let me, well, let me back way up for a minute. Okay. I didn't even introduce myself this year. First time listening. I'm sorry. Listen, my name is Reggie Dawson. I call myself a talent coach. I coach entertainers and performers to improve their confidence and their presentation on stage. I love every single thing about being on stage. I love helping other people shine on. It is truly what I do with my life. That is my mission. And that is my purpose in my life is to help performers shine on stage and be their absolute best. Part of doing that is connecting with your audience, engaging with your audience. And listen, I want to connect with you as well. If you would like to hit me up, my email is Reggie at being on stage dot com. You can also join my free Facebook group, the being on stage group. You can get there easily being on stage dot com slash group. Listen, let me get back to the topic. At hand, not everyone's going to be there for you. So what do you do about the people that aren't? Because, you know, the people that are, they're going to support you. They're going to be your friends. They're going to be great. You know, you're naturally going to gravitate towards them. So they're going to get the attention that they need because it's going to happen naturally. You're just going to do it. So what do you do about the people that are not there for you? The people that did not necessarily come to see you? Maybe they're just there. Maybe they met up with a friend for a drink. Maybe they're eating. Maybe they're not there for you. they're out on a date. Like maybe this is the first date, you know? So what do you do about those people? That's where your engagement comes in. That's where your connection comes in. That's where your interaction with the people comes in. So a couple of things you can do. Okay. First and foremost, I am a huge, huge advocate of getting in with the crowd before and after the show and just talking to people, you know, if you listen, if you drink, if you drink beer, if you drink liquor, whatever you drink, if you drink soda, you know, grab a drink and just kind of walk around and mingle with people. Hi, how you doing? My name's John. I'm performing later tonight. You know? Oh yeah. Yeah. I do this. Tell them what you do. Introduce yourself, mingle with people. It doesn't mean, you know, listen, you don't have to flirt. You don't have to, you know, hit on ladies. You don't have to hit on guys. You don't have to act like a, like an ass. You don't have to act like a promiscuous lady. You don't have to act like anything except yourself. You'd be genuine with people. You introduce yourself. You let them know you're performing. You let them know what you do. Tell them you're excited to be there. Thank them for coming out. Oh, you're performing tonight. We had no idea. We just came out to eat. Well, you know, listen, regardless, thank you so much for being here. I hope you enjoy the show. I'll catch, I'll catch up with you later. That's it. Boom. Done. Mingle with people. Get to know them. That's your first step of engagement. Makes them feel like they can relate to you a little bit more. You're a human being, you know? Second step. On stage. Eye contact. Eye contact. Eye contact. It's always going to be easier if the crowd is small, and it's always going to be easier if they're level with you. But regardless, whether you're raised up, whether it's a big crowd, little crowd, eye contact with people. Give someone a look. Try to communicate a message with somebody through the eye contact. You know, give it a little smirk. Give them a wink. Maybe you have like a joke from something you talked about before the show, and you're just kind of like, yeah, remember that? Interact with the people that are there. Even if they're not there for you. If you just met them at the bar before the show, come up and mess with them during your number if that's an opportunity, you know? Make eye contact with them. Shake their hand. Give them a hug. Whatever it is you do on stage, bring them in to what you do. That individual interaction is killer on stage. Because listen, when you interact with one individual, you make eye contact, maybe kiss a lady on the hand if it's one of those types of things. You make eye contact on numbers or anything. If you shake hands with somebody, whatever it is you do with that individual, you're going to affect people that are in a whole other part of the crowd that are watching you. Because they automatically feel like, wow, you know, he's just like me. He's just a normal person. He's shaking everybody's hand. He's really down to earth. So during the show, have interactions. Make eye contact. Shake hands. Give hugs. High five. Wink. Smile. Interact with people. Period. Dance. Dance with people if that's part of your option. I used to bring people on stage to dance with me. It was always a complete disaster. But we had fun and it increased my engagement. And that leads to the third thing you can do is after your show. Now listen, the number one thing that people hate is when the performer or the talent packs up and leaves right after the show. No hanging out with the crowd. Not even talking to anybody. Just gone. Everybody hates that. No matter how big or small or amateur professional you are. Listen, even if you're freaking Beyonce performing on stage, if you leave without giving out some autographs to the people that are crowded around your tour bus out back, you're going to hurt some fans. And you don't want to do that. So even if you're there with 20 people in the place, go out after your show and mingle with people. Hey, how you doing? Thank you so much for coming out. I hope you enjoyed the show. What'd you think? Ask questions. Shoot. Flat out. Ask for feedback. You will not have someone tell you that you sucked. Truthfully, I've never had that happen to me. I've never had it happen to anybody that I've worked with. Even if they feel like you weren't good, you'll never have anybody tell you straight up to your face that you weren't good. So ask people for feedback. It's more about how they feel about it than the feedback that they provide. Now, if they provide some good feedback, by all means, take it. Because you could be talking to like a dance instructor. You could be talking to like a dancer. You could be talking to like a or like, you know, a singing, a singing coach or something like that. So if they offer you some solid feedback, take it. But it's more about how they feel about you asking them. My job recently, I work in a call center. My job recently started doing surveys after every call with customer service. And it's like a, on a one scale of one to 10, how did you like this agent? And was this resolved? And that kind of question, you know, just a quick little two question survey. And it's like, well, I don't know if this is the right way to rate the service of the agent. A lot of companies are doing it. And when this, when this happens, you know, You know, it makes the customer feel like they're important because their feedback is wanted. It's even more so when you're a performer and you're face to face asking somebody, hey, what do you think? You making them feel important, like their opinion matters to you. And that is how you can get their buy into what you do. That's how you gain a fan. That's how you connect with people. You build your fan base by the interactions that you have, especially with the ones that weren't necessarily there for you in the first place. But you got to make them love you. Interact with them in the beginning. Interact with them while you're on stage. Interact with them after the show. Make them love you. A couple of notes I just want to make like wrapping up here. But listen, I just I got to say this. I got to get it off my chest. Stop complaining. About your audience. Oh, they weren't into it. This audience is terrible. They're not really feeling what I'm doing there. They're really dead tonight. Stop. Stop it. You bring the energy to the stage. You bring it to this to the audience. Don't wait for them to respond. Give them the show like you got somebody to impress. Like there's a person standing there saying, OK, if you impress me, I will give you your dream. Truthfully, you never know. Five people in the bar. One of them could do that. But you got to do it every time like you got somebody to impress. You got to perform at your highest level every single time you step on that stage. It's on you to bring the energy to the audience. It's not the audience's job to bring you the energy. I'm getting fired up. I'm getting jacked up. This stuff is I'm telling you guys. If you want to build your fan base and you want to get people following you and really, really into what you're doing, you have to relate to them. You have to engage with them, connect with them, interact with them. That's how you gain your audience these days. That's how you get your fan base started. I'm not saying you're going to be Taylor Swift squad level in like a month, but I'm saying you're going to have people repeatedly wanting to come see you. You're going to see people come out of the woodwork that you start to realize have been at multiple shows. You're going to see this start to happen if you engage. Keep on shining.
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