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 here, your host of the Being On Stage podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. Welcome to episode 65. I have to tell you, I'm so thrilled how far this podcast has gone. I never imagined I'd be on episode 65, truthfully. This concept and the name and everything, it was about a year ago, around this time a year ago, that it really was coming into fruition and really coming to be. And, you know. You know, it started in the beginning of December, but in October, the beginning of October, is when I came up with the name Being On Stage. I came up with, you know, the concept. I started doing some notes on the show and what I wanted to talk about and really putting together some pieces and, you know, trying to decide next steps and set goals and everything. And I gotta tell you, I met some of my goals. Some of my goals I didn't meet. But, you know, that's the thing about goals, is sometimes you're gonna set the goal and you are gonna knock it clear out of the park. I mean, hands down, you shattered that goal into a thousand pieces. You know, a couple of years ago, I set a goal to win a contest. And when I say a couple of years ago, I mean like, you know, 12 years ago or 13 years ago. Over 10 years ago, okay? So it's been a while. But anyways, I had set a goal to win this local contest and I entered it three times. Three times I entered it. The first time, I lost. I didn't even place. The second time, I came in second place. And then I took a year off and I, you know, traveled a little bit with my, you know, performing. I performed a lot down in West Palm Beach, which is about an hour south of where I live. And I came back after taking the year off and I really just knocked it out of the park. I mean, and I'm not telling you this to brag. I'm telling you this to make the point about goals, you know? So sometimes, like those first two years, you're not. You're not going to hit your goal. You can be an excellent performer, but you just may not hit that goal, especially if that goal is win something. Because you have to remember, everyone else in that contest, they have the same goal. So one person's going to accomplish their goal that day and everyone else is not. That's the importance of being smart about when you set your goals, for example. Long-term goals are great. I know we all have long-term goals. Long-term goals are excellent. You know, you're thinking five. Ten years in the future. Hell, six months in the future is considered a long-term goal. Where do you want to be six months from now, a year from now, five years from now? Those are things that you should be thinking about. I don't want to be that person that's going to say, whoa, hold your horses, homeboy. Back that trailer up a little bit. What are you going to do in the next week? I mean, the next week is important, but I also want to tell you it's okay to dream. It's okay to look way, way out in the future, but you do have to reign it in. You also have to set short-term goals to help you accomplish those long-term goals. So let's break it down a little bit. And this is in no way what I planned on talking about in this episode. But the beauty about this podcast being authentic, I take a little notes here and there and then I just kind of go. But that's kind of the beauty of it is it's kind of going to go where the conversation takes me. And this is a conversation. Short-term goals are equally as important as long-term goals because those short-term goals, are the steps that you're going to take to accomplish your long-term goals. So again, let's break this down. So we're going to think about, I've been really into like the circus entertainers lately. So I'm going to use juggling because it's, you know, it's eclectic. Not a lot of people can juggle. I learned to juggle at summer camp. It's, it's quite tough to be that coordinated in my opinion. So kudos to anybody that can juggle and this, this can be used in singing, dancing. I know, I know I have singers and dancers that listen to this podcast. But this can be used across any type of performing, but I'm going to use juggling. So let's say there's the world juggling competition and your goal is to make it there. Not necessarily to win because truthfully, you should never set a goal to win. Your goal is to make it to the world juggling competition where all the best jugglers in the world meet. Trouble is, you've only been juggling for six months. You can juggle five balls. You can juggle bowling pins. But you haven't perfected the art of juggling plates and flaming objects and ten balls and, you know, partner juggling. I'm just using all examples I can think of and I apologize to my jugglers if I'm ignorant about terminology. So you're, you're a pretty good juggler. You've been doing it about six months. The world juggling competition is a year away. It just happened. So it's a year away. So that's your goal. You want to get there. That's your long-term goal. You're short-term. Your long-term goal is how you're going to get there. So you've been doing this for six months. You have one year to prepare to make it into this competition. Now in order to make it into that competition. Let's say you have to win a regional competition to make it into the world competition. So then your next, you know, I believe in working backwards from your long-term goal. That's what someone told me a long time ago. Like they they told me it about business. But that's the other thing you're going to find about this podcast as you listen, I'm going to take. Concepts that I've learned in business and marketing customer service, and I'm going to take those concepts and I'm going to use them for performers because I believe that those concepts are perfect for performing as well. Because performing is a business guys. Like if you plan on doing this for a living and making money, it is a business. It's a business that you're going to own and you're going to be a part of and you're going to have a blast doing it, but it's a business. So your short-term goal is working backwards. So working backwards from the world juggling competition, you have to win the regional juggling competition or we'll call it the regional Expo regional juggling Expo. There we go. So you have to enter that competition. You have to pay $100 fee. Okay, so you maybe don't have the hundred dollars. How do you get the hundred dollars? Well, why not go back to juggling and use juggling to get your hundred dollars so you can enter that competition. So how are you going to how you're going to enter that competition? You're going to pay your hundred dollars. How are you going to make a hundred dollars? You're going to go out and juggle. How are you going to find places that are going to pay you to juggle? You go online, you search for events, you write emails, you reach out to people. These are all little goals. So now your goal is to get hired to, you know, perform as a juggler. Okay, so maybe you're not hearing back from people. How are you going to get hired from them if you're not hearing back from them? Okay, there's other ways, you know, some events will let you just show up and juggle for tips. You know, busking on the street in a lot of cities, you can still go out and be a street performer and make tips in your hat or, you know, your case or your jar or whatever. So a lot of cities and a lot of places allow you to do that. And if your particular area doesn't find the largest city near you, and they probably do, and maybe it's an hour drive, but you're talking an hour drive. You could come back with a hundred bucks. You could go there for the weekend and come back with 200 bucks. Then you can pay for your competition. And you've got money left over that pays for your gas to get to that street corner and back. And I mean street corner as a street performer, not anything else. So you see where I'm saying where you work backwards a little bit and you find where that first step is. So maybe that first step is more practice. Sometimes that is going to be the first step. If you got, if you able to juggle three balls and that's it, and you need to, you need to work up a little bit, you can still go out there and juggle your three balls. On the street and try to make tips. You can do children's birthday parties. You can do all sorts of, you can do church events. You know, a lot of nonprofit organizations will would like to hire more amateur performers because you'll do it for next to nothing or you're do it for free. There's nothing wrong with doing it for free because you got to look at that return. Okay, just like a business. There are businesses that go to these events for these nonprofits and they give I put on a festival local. Festival and we get donations from Walgreens. Walgreens donates a whole bunch of water free water for everybody that comes to the festival courtesy of Walgreens. They don't give us any money. They donate that why because when people at that festival get that free water from Walgreens, not CVS, they're going to go to Walgreens. Same thing's going to happen for performers when a performer gives their talents for free and I'm not talking like if Beyonce's listen to this podcast. I'm not telling you to do something for free. Although she has truthfully she has so when you give and donate your talent to a nonprofit or to a festival or charity for some event. First of all, you can write that off on your taxes. Second of all, it's that return, you know, people are going to see you. You don't know who's going to see you plus the event organizers are going to recognize how nice it is to work with you and how amazing you are. Because you're going to be respectful. You're going to be courteous. You know, you're going to be giving you're going to be humble. They're going to realize how amazing it is to work. work with you and later on they're going to give you something paid and so you got to look at that return so you know we're talking about goals we're talking about long-term goals short-term goals so you have permission to dream like seriously i want to i want to tell you you always have permission to dream think about those long-term goals where do you want to be in 10 years where do you want this talent to take you think about it dream about it dwell on it i want you to but how are you going to get there is equally as important step one is more important than step 10 step two is more important than step three step three is more important than step four why do you think that is the next step is always the most important step because that's the step that moves you forward 10 years from now you're going to be amazing but it starts with something that you're not going to be able to do in 10 years from now you're going to be amazing step one is always the most important step because that's the step that moves you forward step two is more important than step three step three is more important than step four step one so please again set your long-term goals dream big go to that world juggling competition but set short-term goals about how you're going to get there that leads me to my challenge i challenge you i challenge you for this week and it doesn't matter what week it is i don't care if you're listening to this podcast in december of 2020 what are can you do this week to get to that long-term goal i don't care if it's send an email i don't care if it's write a post on facebook i don't care if it's make a phone call make an outfit i don't care what can you do this week today even what goal can you set this week to accomplish this week that is going to get you to that goal for five years from now or one year from now or whatever wherever your dream is taking you what can you do now to get you moving to get there because once you get that momentum going you're going to be able to get there and you're going to be able to get there and you're never going to want to stop you're just going to keep going and keep going and keep going and keep shining
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