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, host of the show. Welcome back to the Being On Stage podcast. What is going on? So, I have to share one of my hobbies with you, and it's kind of an embarrassing hobby. Actually, it's kind of a lazy hobby. Most people have things like, I don't know, swimming, fishing, sailing, paddle boarding. I mean, where I live. I live in Florida on the east coast, like right on the ocean. I like watching television, and you know what? I'm not really ashamed to admit it, but on some levels I am, because, I mean, not like most people watch television. I mean, I watch it as a hobby. Like, I'll just sit and watch. But, you know what? I believe that there's, I don't watch like meaningless things. Like, I believe there's lessons in the things that I watch. Even, listen, there's lessons everywhere on television. Sometimes it is blatant, right out in the open. I am, you know, for example, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, even the Travel Channel, the Home and Garden Network. And you may not get these where you are, and that's okay, but there's a lot of lessons on television. Not just on those channels. I mean, there's lessons in soap operas, guys. There's lessons in teenage dramas. Even when, you know, for example, I'm just going to throw one out there. Even when Brooke's mad because Lucas kissed. Peyton. Like, there's a lesson in there. One, don't kiss other people while you're dating someone. Two, don't date someone while you're clearly in love with someone else. And three, don't date somebody who's in love with someone else. See? Three very valuable lessons from one episode of one teen drama. Those are very, very valuable life lessons. But that's not really the lessons that I want to talk about on this podcast. You know, this podcast is built for performance. It's built to help you further your career and help you, you know, get on stage, do your best on stage, and just keep moving forward towards that dream. You know, I think we all have a dream, right? And some of us just dream of being in the spotlight, and I want to help get you there. But one of the things that I rarely step back and talk about, and I should probably talk about it more, is the reason behind why you perform. And not really why you perform. But who you perform for. And yes, the obvious answer is you perform for your audience. Yes, of course, you perform for your audience. You share yourself on stage. But why? Who's that ultimately all for? And it's not a question of ego, but it is for you. And this actually was a really good lesson I saw on a Netflix special, well, original series, I guess. Mr. Iglesias. It stars the renowned comedian, Gabriel Iglesias. And personally, he's one of my favorites. I really like his comedy style. I really like his stories. And he does a lot of cool impressions and some great sound effects. It's really weird, really weird sometimes. But I don't know. He's one of my favorites. But he has a Netflix series called Mr. Iglesias. And it's where he's a teacher, if you could imagine a comedian teacher, which I'm sure. I'm sure we all had one at some point. If not having one, we had one that thought he was a comedian at some point. I got to give credit to my 12th grade pre-calculus teacher. He thought he was the funniest man ever. Anyways, that's neither here nor there. The point here is Mr. Iglesias is a comedic teacher. He teaches a history class for the troubled kids that don't really do their work, aren't really committed to school. And he engages. He engages them in everything through comedy. And it's really cool. So one of the valuable lessons that I've learned in. I think it was episode 5 or 6. It's the one where they have a talent show. Just watched it last night. You'd think I would remember it. But I do remember that there was a talent show. And he had to get the kids to perform. So Mr. Iglesias, he agreed to do something on stage. And he ended up doing this robo-pop-lock dance with a buddy of his. It was pretty fun to watch. Even though it's a TV show, it's still pretty funny to watch Gabriel Iglesias popping, locking, and doing a robot. But one of the kids also decided he was going to do stand-up comedy. I mean, of course, Gabriel Iglesias is a TV special. Somewhere, someone is doing some stand-up comedy if there's a talent show. It's got to happen. But it couldn't be Gabriel because, you know, that's an obvious choice. So this kid, and he's probably like the most out-there kid that you could imagine. And he's like red hair, pale skin. And the school, and it's actually, it's a quote from the show. But the school is primarily, well, it's primarily black and Hispanic and Asian cultures. It's not, there's very few, very few white kids. It's, he's the offset of what the normal norm is for this environment. He's the odd one out, if you will. And he decides he's going to do comedy. I guess he's got some problems at home, parents are divorced, things like that. And he gets really excited because his dad's going to come. Now, these are high school kids. These aren't like little, little kids. These are like, you know, juniors and seniors in high school. So he gets excited because his dad's going to come see his comedy. I mean, I'd be excited too. My dad did make it to one of my band concerts when I was in high school. That's, I didn't invite him regularly just because we didn't have that type of relationship. But, you know, it is really nice when, your parents support you, especially if there happened to be the normally absent parent or the not full custody, like full-time parent. It's really nice to have them come out and support you. And so this kid was really excited. I can't blame him. I was excited too. At the last minute, the father cancels, says he can't make it. He's got some other, something that he's doing. And it doesn't really matter why, you know, to not be there to support your kids is kind of, I kind of messed up, I guess, but it depends on the situation. I get it. So, you know, whatever. So let's go with the flow here. So the point is in the, God, I'm seven minutes into this podcast. I'm just getting to the point. So Gabriel Iglesias goes to the student and he, he tells him, he's like, you know, listen, you know, it's all, and I'm paraphrasing of course, but it's all well and good that, that your father was going to come in. But truthfully, you don't, you don't need him here. You don't need him here to do, to do your, to do your thing, to get out, get up on that stage. You can't do it for him. This is not about him. You got to do this for you. You got to do this a hundred percent for yourself. And that's, that is 100% true for every single person. Everyone that steps on that stage has to do it for themselves. So here's, here's the thing here. You don't need anyone else. This is approval to get up on that stage. I mean, ultimately, and let me, let me just wrap it up, not to leave you hanging. The show ended, the kid killed it on stage to stand up comedy routine. It was great. Um, killed, absolutely killed it. But now we're back to, you know, Reggie talking to you here. Um, you, you, you gotta do this for you. When you get on that stage, if you're doing it because someone wants you to, if you're, if you're doing it for, for someone else, or if you know, whatever it is, the reason that you're doing it for, if it's not personal, if it's not for you, then why are you doing it? I mean, really? So one, and this, this may be geared towards people that are struggling in their career. This may be geared towards people who haven't even stepped on stage yet. The point I'm getting at here is you have to step on stage for yourself. You have to put yourself out there for you so that you can share. Your talent, your creativity, your genius with the world. That should be your, that, that's gotta be your, your primary inspiration for getting on stage has to come from inside you. Your primary inspiration for getting on stage is you, right? You don't need anyone's permission. You don't need anyone's approval. You don't need your self, your emotion, your authenticity. You are your inspiration for getting on stage. You gotta do it for you. You can't do it for someone else. You can't do it for your mom. You can't do it for your dad. You can absolutely dedicate a show for them. You can invite them to your shows, but you cannot make your purpose and stepping on stage to please somebody else. And yes, this counteracts everything I've ever said about. connecting with your audience and performing for your audience but this is this is a separate purpose. You know, of course, when you're on stage, you want to engage with your audience and connect with them. That's how you get further in your career. That's how you get to continue doing what you love. But to start doing what you love, you cannot do this to please anybody but yourself. And I know that it's selfish, but performers have to be selfish. We have to be selfish we have to be confident on some levels we even have to be egotistical i said it i finally said it you know i've denied it my entire career but i finally said it sometimes performers have to be selfish sometimes we have to do it for ourselves and put our own ideas and our own creativity and our own heart on that stage okay i'm done i'm gonna jump off my soapbox now i want to help you out if you're if there's anything you're struggling with anything you need to work through as a performer coming up with something new uh working through some ideas you have figuring out what your next steps are how to how to market a performance how to get people to come out to your shows how to get a show uh any anything you need just hit me up on my social media page and i'll see you soon me up uh reggie at being on stage.com i can send you a link to my calendar or you can just go to my calendar uh being on stage.com slash calendar it's open in public anyone can just sign up to talk to me for 20 30 minutes um and i'll call you no charge no nothing like that i just want to help i just want to help you work through and break through to your next big thing so i appreciate you listening to my rants and my raves and everything about performing i hope you're getting some of that and i'll see you next time something out of this uh as always rock stars please please keep on shining
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