Touring and live shows. Booking live shows and figuring out when it's the right time to tour. An overwhelming task for an artist, speaker, podcaster, comedian, or any type of live performer when you have no idea where to start. Live shows are a big part of the entertainment business and your potential income. So learning what to do is important early on in your career. Tour is defined as a journey from town to town to fill engagements as by a theatrical company or an entertainer. The first question you may be asking yourself is, when is the right time to tour? This doesn't have a simple or clear cut response. However, there are a few indicators that you could look out for and keep in mind. A growing fan base, look for an increase in engagement via streaming numbers, elevated viewership on video platforms, and an increase on social media. Positive reception, gauge the responses you get from recent releases, feedback that you're getting that presents differently from the normal flow of interaction, reviews from specific places geographically that seem elevated, and any overall measurable growth. Practical considerations, balance your desire to tour with your preparedness, availability, and all logistical considerations that go into touring. There is no crystal ball when to start booking shows. There has to be a desire to perform live. That's the first step. It's the right time for you when you're ready to put in the work and start performing live. Keep in mind, there may be no financial gain when you're ready to put yourself out there. So be prepared to put in a lot of freebies just to work on your craft, sharpen your claws. I commonly hear, how do I book a show or a tour? Which is a simple but great question. Let's face it, most people don't have a touring agent or a manager that has connections. So this task isn't as easy or obvious as it sounds. Let's start with a few basics. It's not crazy that some of you may not even know who your target audience is yet, but there are ways around that. For example, if you're a comedian and you wanna get on stage, a healthy first step would be to look up every single comedy club in your city and surrounding cities, then pick up the phone, call every single one and see when they offer an open mic night. The same steps apply to musicians, public speakers, DJs or performers of any type. There's plenty of resources available online to help you figure out where people in your situation have had opportunities to perform. You could figure it out too. Networking is a big resource. The people in your circle or five degrees of separation from you are going through the same obstacles you are. Ask them where they have performed. Ask them who they spoke to that helped them make it happen. What was the process for them? Gather information. The more you know, the easier it all becomes. I used to think pitch decks and compelling PDFs were valuable, but I learned that everyone is sending them and they have little to no effectiveness. So I'm not gonna sit here and recommend them to you. Connecting with the people who book talent at the venues is the most important tool you can utilize. The most important asset you have is meeting with the people you're trying to work with. Show them you're serious. Put yourself in the places you want to be in. Emails do not cut it anymore. Take it a step further. If you're serious about getting on stage at a certain venue, go there and offer your labor for free at that venue to make yourself more available, present and seen. See if you can get hired there. Do whatever you have to do to get closer to the spot you want to be in. Looking to get booked by venues isn't your only option either. If you wanna put on a show, you can also get a space yourself, get all the necessary audio gear, self-staff and bring a show to life. A shining example of this is the California hip hop artist, LaRussell, who created a ticketed venue in his own backyard. LaRussell used the access he had to his fan base and literally drove his live shows right to his own house. He cracked an antiquated business model wide open and made it a pay what you think it's worth model to his fans. LaRussell created social awareness, maintaining low overhead and space for viral videos to be manufactured. His demand exploded in every other market around the country. He is a pioneer in the live space and his creativity paid off big time. Let's discuss how to determine appropriate show compensation. Here are a few important pieces to always consider. Venue capacity, consider the size of the venue and the amount of sellable seats. Market demand, do you have demand in a marketplace or are you performing in a venue that is packed every night of the week whether you're there or not? Recognition level, evaluating your level of popularity where you are performing impacts how you can get compensated and negotiating strategies. This is where you will learn to find a sweet spot, balancing fair compensation and relationship building. Remember, there are costs the venue is responsible for to make a show happen, staffing, electricity, security, insurance costs and other overhead that will impact what your bottom line is and what you're able to make when you perform. An alternative to getting a guaranteed fee is looking for a door deal, which means you will take $0 guaranteed upfront and do a split with the venue on each ticket that is sold. Let's discuss some different streams of income that you can make while doing live shows. Ticket sales, merchandise sales, meet and greet packages, tiered seating, CDs, vinyls, USBs and QR codes for exclusive content that you could offer your fans. A common mistake artists and their teams make is hitting the road without doing proper budgeting beforehand. They get so blindsided by the site of potential fees and guaranteed money, they forget to budget for all the expenses and costs they're responsible for. Travel expenses, including the cost for transportation, hotel accommodations, the crew you take on the road and every single meal. It may not sound like a lot, but see how quickly hotel rooms, gas, flights, breakfast, lunch and dinner for six to 10 people add up. Equipment, factoring and renting and maintaining gear that may need to be secured for a show or extended tour can add up to. Problems with transportation like rented vans, cars or sprinters don't always go as planned either. There have been many tours where I've rented a suburban, a sprinter or a bus and things start to go wrong. And guess what? You can't just throw up your hands and quit. You have to fix them and fixing things costs money. Here's a big one, budgeting strategies. Plan for all the unforeseen expenses. Don't act like you have money that you don't have. When you're planning a tour, you have to become your own travel agent, call hotel chains and see if they will cut you breaks on the pricier stays if you use their hotel chain in each city of your tour. Maybe they'll even include a free meal or two for you and your team. Same goes for transportation rental. Don't be ashamed to save a buck while you're building a business on the road. Almost everyone has social media now and uses it to promote their shows and tours. Let me be clear. I have mixed feelings about putting all the pressure of tour promotions on the artist and their social media because traditionally speaking, the venues and bookers used to have teams that would help promote shows in the past. They would empower street teams that would hand out flyers, put postings up around the city and utilize their own mediums to promote upcoming shows at their venue. However, those responsibilities mostly fall on the performers and their teams now. Don't discount that your direct connection to the people and fans you have is almost always your best way to make them aware of what you're doing. It's part of your duty as a performer to find creative ways to make them wanna see you live. Performers of all types have the ability to make creative videos, put together thoughtful written messages directly to the fans and compose emails to reach their supporters. This may sound like a daunting task, but it's what comes with putting a successful show together when you're not an established artist. If you expect everyone to run to your show just because you put up a flyer, think again. Here's another curveball for artists. Your favorite social media platform has already caught on to you using the platform to sell tickets that they can earn no money off of. So flyers are gonna get blocked by the algorithm. You'll need to find a much more creative way to reach your audience today, which is gonna take work. If you care about having people show up, then let your ego go and get to work. It's not easy and you'll have to humble yourself if you wanna have success. Buy ads on Facebook and IG that are geo-targeted to the city you're performing in weeks ahead of your show. As you begin to do shows and work your hardest to fill up rooms, work with local artists and DJs in each city that have established followings to help cross-pollinate and fill the rooms up. Collaborate with radio DJs from the local markets to have them on your shows and in return, they could potentially promote your shows on air. Buy flyers, posters, and stickers, then hit the streets to get the word out however you can to build awareness. Building relationships with venues and tour promoters is probably the single most important factor as you begin your live show journey. These people are the arteries of the live scene. In most industries, who you know helps with what you can do and that sentiment is even more highlighted in entertainment. Remember to be humble and good to the people at every single venue. They are working just like you are. Shake people's hands, remember their names, and be a match. People connect with kindness. Stay professional at work. There's no reason to be getting drunk and messy at your workplace even if you are a performer. Rock and roll can be done the right way. You wouldn't go into your workplace and trash your office or reputation. So carry the same practices into the venue. So the booker, manager, and staff members remember you for the right reasons, not the wrong ones. Promoters respect hardworking artists and their teams. Be on time to every single show. So many artists have trouble with punctuality. So an easy way to stand out to promoters and the venues is to be on time every time. Don't forget that good relationships last. And a lot of the people at these venues will go on to bigger and better gigs in the live space. Remember, your first impression may be your first of many or your last. Treat all interactions with respect. If you do make it on the road and get to do shows, you've only done 50% of the job. The back end of the job comes after you get off the tour. I call this the post-tour reflection and planning phase. Revel in the experience, of course, but it's time to evaluate what happened. Identify the areas you succeeded in and the areas you could improve on. Study the analytics and data you get from touring to see what shows could have been better performance-wise and business-wise. Compare what cities had empty audiences versus the cities that had packed out shows. Keep a book of these data points because you can track your progress over time and avoid certain places that didn't fit your plans for the future. Knowledge can help you double down in certain areas and drop dead weight in others. Getting on the road and doing shows is hard work. There's no way to minimize the incredible experience to see people interact with your craft in person. It's a business and an experience. There's so much to gain from doing live shows if you're a performer, but there's a lot to consider beforehand, during, and after the shows too. You'll need to learn from the people that come before you and be creative to accomplish the goals you have in the live space. Starting is the most important factor. Remember, the best way to build an audience is to consistently put on a great show. I'm glad you guys tuned in for our discussion today about touring and booking live shows. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. Thank you for tuning in to Roll Call.