Nothing to stop this glorious parade

February 01, 2016 12:15 PM

All open mic nights are the same.

Show up early, put your name on the list, get a drink, pretend to care about other people’s art for two hours, get up on stage, fumble around with a crappy sound system for five minutes, do your allotted time for seven minutes, thank the audience for judging you, pray that people come up to you after the set say hello, get another drink, then beat yourself up until closing time about how nobody recognizes your artistic brilliance.

It’s all permission and no control. It’s high labor intensity for low return on investment. I’m sorry, but there has to be a better way to share your art with the world.

What if, instead of schlepping around from bar to bar every night, you hired yourself as the resident musician for your local public park? That’s what I did. I scoped out an area with a lot of foot traffic, and then just started showing up with my guitar, every weekend, playing and singing as loud as I possibly could, for two hours at a time.

And audiences just started showing up. Real people who actually wanted to hear my music. And not only would they listen and sing and dance and give me money and take pictures and record videos and take my business card and email me the next day, but they would tell their friends. Which meant I had to come back every week.

And so, I created an artist’s residency for myself. I officially incorporated my art into the community. I became a fixture. Not because I put my name on a list, but because I just showed up started singing.

Rand’s famous question says it all:

Are you asking who’s going to let you, or who’s going to stop you?

That’s the beauty of hiring yourself. The world is not going to tap you on the shoulder and say, thanks, but you’ve got to stop now.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you giving open mic nights the power to make or break your career?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “50 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

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Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.

[email protected]