It's Time to Up Your Game

Shut 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, hey, rock stars. It's time to up our game. Welcome back to the Being On Stage podcast. As always, thanks for tuning in. So what do I mean, up your game? You know, you reach that point when it's time to get an upgrade. Whether it's on yourself, your equipment, your performance, your rehearsals, whatever you're doing, it's time for an upgrade. Let me back it up just a bit. Again, my name is Reggie Dawson. I'm the host and founder of the Being On Stage podcast. My passion, my goal, my purpose in life is to. performers in aspects of their career. Whether it be from talent to performance, whether it be getting stuck in your career, creative process, anything, any of the above. It's what I do. It's what I've always loved to do. So, up in the game. How do you know when it's. Well, first of all, how do you know when it's time to up your game? And I'll give you the short answer of that one, because there really isn't a long answer. Any time. Any time you're feeling like it's time to up it, you know, take it up a notch, then it's time. And even sometimes when you feel like it's not time. Sometimes it's time. So, I'll give you a couple ideas of how you can tell it's time to up your game. But, what do I mean by that? And that's the most important piece of this podcast, is what I mean. So, let me kind of break down what I've been going through the last week or so. I am not the most organized person in the world. My wife will be the very first to tell you that I lack the basic, basic, basic core organizational skills. that most adults my age tend to have by now. So, what happens is my desk, my area, my podcast zone, if you will, gets messy. Gets pretty, pretty, pretty messy. And I think if you've listened to the past few episodes, there's a couple episodes that I recorded from a hotel while I was traveling. There's an episode or two that I actually took my laptop and my microphone. I don't have a mobile microphone, actually. I have a. Well. It doesn't really matter what I podcast on, but I podcast on a microphone called the Blue Snowball. Anyways, I've done it from my car, and all of that comes down to my desk being messy. And, yeah. So, my family has a tendency to put things in my life to kind of force me into organizing my stuff. So, what happened for Christmas is I got this great boom arm, I guess you can call it, for the microphones. It's like an arm. It clamps to the desk, and then it has a couple of angles and joints and everything. It kind of can swing. You guys have probably seen these arms. Radio stations use them, things like that. They swing all around. It's so that you don't have to come lean over onto a microphone. So, what I was using before was a microphone. Listen, I have a purpose to all this. I'm going to get into up in your game here in a minute, but I'm just going to kind of give you an idea of where I'm coming from, from my perspective. And then I'm going to toss it back into your perspective. That's how we do things here at The Being On. Stage Podcast. Tell you a story. And I tie it in and give you a nice little nugget of performing wisdom, I guess we can call it. Anywho, got an arm, microphone arm for Christmas. My mother bought me this, it's like a sound absorber, I guess you can call it. So, if you notice any difference in the sound quality of the podcast, it's because I'm not hunched over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame recording into a microphone. That is sitting on a desk. And it's also because I have this brand new sound absorber, so there shouldn't be as many echoes. So, I'm more comfortable. I have a little bit of an upgrade of an equipment. So, what happened was with these pieces of equipment, I was forced to clear my desk, clean my desk, got rid of a whole bunch of stuff, reorganize things, move things off my desk that didn't need to be on my desk. I got rid of a lamp that just kind of sat there in the corner and that opened up a whole bunch of space because it's like old school table style lamp. Long story short. Made myself some new room, installed my new piece of equipment, and I have my sound absorber testing it out, actually. Giving it a test run on this podcast, seeing how it sounds. So, what happened is, you know, I reached a point in which I was feeling kind of static on the podcast. When I was doing the podcast, I was putting in the work, you know, I was getting some calls on the calendar and everything, but it had kind of gotten static. I don't know if you guys noticed it, but I felt it. I think we all go through that as performers, you know. We reach a point in our career where we kind of feel like even though we're having some success, we've reached some goals, we've passed some milestones, we kind of hit this plateau where things just kind of level out. There's not really any climb. We don't really have any challenges. We're just kind of status quo, if you will, you know. Listen, it doesn't matter what you do on stage. It doesn't even matter if you perform on stage. Everyone reaches this point with. With their talent, with their purpose, with whatever they're driven and their passion in life, you reach this plateau. And a lot of times when you reach the plateau, it's when you stop feeling yourself going on that climb and you stop feeling yourself being challenged. That is when it's time to, say it with me, folks, up your game. Hence the title of this podcast. It's time to up your game. So what I mean by that is take it up to the next level. You know, I have this. I have this new microphone arm. So this is supposed to make podcasting a little more comfortable for me. I have a little higher quality. So you guys like the podcast a little bit better. Hopefully there's not any background noise, anything like that. My voice sounds a nice, thick baritone quality that I like. I don't I don't really edit my voice just just for the record. But, yeah, so I'm up in the game a little bit. And and I am going back to work on the course. And if you're just joining us or the past couple of weeks or months. I have been working on this course for performers for probably a year now. And I've spent a lot of time kind of investigating what people are looking for, what's important to them as performers and where I want to target. And so I've come up with a couple of ideas, but I'm going back to work on that. And I got it probably three quarters of the way done. And I just I get complacent. I get that plateau. You know, you hit that plateau and things went crazy in life. And we all have things when we all have times when we have to. Kind of like pause, take care of life stuff and then, you know, get back at it. And I kind of feel I mean, I got to tell you, I'm just kind of sitting comfortably in my chair. I'm not leaned forward. I'm not hunched over. I don't have to hold a microphone in my hand like I do when I record in the car. I don't know. I'm pretty comfortable based on what I'm seeing on the screen. The sounds coming through the volumes coming through. OK, so I think this setup is really going to work. And I think when when you reach that point. And you have upped your game when you feel comfortable with it. And you feel like it's something new, a new toy to play with, if you will. It makes it easier to attack that challenge and start that climb all over again. So how do you up your game as a performer? Well, I can tell you one of the best ways to up your game. And I've said it on podcasts before. And I think that people kind of shy away from this. But I'll tell a story that I just told a couple of months. Actually, probably like only 10 or. Five to 10 episodes ago, but I saw this band that they're all the band members were wearing like they were a rock band, but they were wearing like T-shirt, black T-shirts, jeans, boots. One of them had like a cowboy hat on, long hair, goatee facial, like really rocker style look. And then there was the front man who kind of looked like a hip hop artist. He was wearing baggy, bright blue shorts, cargo shorts and like a black and white checked. Almost looking like a chessboard top, if you will. And it just they didn't they didn't fit. It didn't he did not look like he should be singing in front of that band. And that band did not look like they should be performing with him. So one of the one of the easiest ways to up your game, especially when you're talking about being on stage, is up the outfit game. You know, a lot of us shy away from things that are flashy and flashy does not mean shiny and glittery and sequined. Flashy just means. Attention getting, you know, you look at artists and I'll give you a range of artists. We can range it from Michael Jackson and Prince. We can go all the way to kiss. They're more of a hard rock. You can even gosh, you can even look at circus performers and ballet and things like that. Like every every genre of performing has an expected style, if you will. But who's to say you can't, you know, amp that up a little bit and put in a little more. Into how you look on stage and what you wear. The other way to up your game truthfully is just experiment those things that you've been thinking about trying those things that you're not sure if they're going to go over, do it. I'm telling you, with one hundred percent certainty, do it, get on stage, experiment. Your audience will love your experimentation. If you fall flat on your face and you fail in an experiment, I guarantee they will still love the fact that you were. Experiment. that you were trying something new, trying something different. and trying to reinvent yourself in a way. And that's really what it means to up your game, is to reinvent yourself. And it doesn't mean you have to go back to the drawing board and start all over and scratch all your bookings because you have to reinvent yourself. No! Reinvention is a long-term process. It's not a take a month off and figure it out. It's a process. And in order to up your game or reinvent yourself or grow as an artist, you have to keep performing. You have to keep getting out on stage. And experimentation on stage is very, very cathartic for performers. It helps relieve that plateau, that tension of, I'm stuck! It helps relieve it. It pulls it off of you in a way. It pulls that feeling of stuck right off of you. And I know, I'm not even going to say I think, because I think I say I think a lot. Probably too much. I know that as performers, feeling stuck is one of the worst feelings in the world. It sucks. It does. But you're not alone. Okay, let's first and foremost, when you're feeling stuck, every single person out there has felt stuck at one point or another. How do you get unstuck? Experiment. Do new things. Try something new. Your audience will thank you. You will thank yourself because you're going to drive yourself nuts doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again, living on that plateau, staying where you are, not going forward, not following your dreams, and not having a challenge in your life. We have to be challenged. We have to be on that uphill climb. And the only way we're going to do it is if we push ourselves to do it. Lastly, and I hate saying lastly. Why did I say this? It's like I'm writing a middle school essay or something. The last thing I'm going to leave you with when it comes to upping your game is get help. It's okay. And listen, okay, this is probably a little bit of a cheesy plug, but you guys know me now. But get help. It's okay to ask for help. Ask for advice. Reach out to other artists. Hell, reach out to me. I got a calendar wide open. All you got to do, hop on it. Let's chat. I'll help you out. We'll get you unstuck. We'll get you moving forward to the next thing that you want to do. Go to beingonstage.com slash calendar. Beingonstage, like the podcast, dot com slash calendar. Put in your name, phone number, and email, and I will call you at the date and time of your choosing, and we will get you unstuck. Let's talk about the next experiment you want to try. And so get help. Reach out to people. Reach up to people. Talk to people that you know. Network with other reformers. It's okay. Everybody needs help sometimes. Everybody needs advice. Everybody needs mentorship sometimes. It's all good. So there you go. It's time to up the game. Get yourself some new outfits. Get yourself some help. Not clinically help, but performance help. And experiment. Try new things. And always keep on shining.