You don’t have to have a nickname. There’s a much longer list of successful acts who don’t have a nickname.
But if you want, a nickname is a gift to your fans. It’s a signal to the others that I’m on the inside too.
If I reference The Stones instead of The Rolling Stones, I’m in a different group. Someone else who also calls them The Stones hears me and now we can immediately dive deeper because we both know the band well enough to call them by their nickname instead of their advertised name.
Nicknames are a great little shorthand for your fans to connect with the other fans.
You wonder if the show is going to be good as you’re walking on stage. That’s a bad time to be wondering.
You spend $50k on the record and $500 on show prep. Your show isn’t good enough. To actually get closer to your potential, you’ll have to be risky and risky might get you laughed at so it’s safer to do what most acts do…which is to do the least amount of work possible to make a show that won’t get laughed at, but will never be cried over and always forgotten.
You had that amazing show, the one that comes to mind and yet doing that again seems elusive and ultimately out of your control. See I think you are your best show much more than you are your worst show.
You can be an artist who creates a show that is 94/100 every night. 5 for the part that no one can control and 1 for the way you pushed yourself that didn’t work perfectly. But tell me really, do you think you have a 94? If you don’t, what are you going to do about it? Sit on the bus and hope? Wonder?
Your show gets better by putting your best foot forward. By telling your fear and insecurity to come with you and watch you work. Your uncomfortableness is a guide post of the right path. Your show isn’t good enough but it can be if you’re willing to work to make it good enough.
If you’re ready, let’s go.
It’s a hard choice to make because chances are in your career there’s not a pattern of making a great show.
Your patterns have been established and show creation isn’t one of them. There’s a pattern of songwriting, releasing records, doing photos, hiring pr, but barely a trace of building a show. So it feels like a daunting big risky undertaking. The hard part is breaking up your patterns to implement a new pattern into the overall cycle. Show creation.
And the byproduct is infinitely valuable. You will no longer wonder if you’re going to have a good show. You already have one. Better people want to work with better shows. People enjoy better shows more. People pay more money year after year for better shows. You walk off stage with full awareness of what you delivered and who you delivered it to. Better shows equal better days. And better days equal a better life.
So again, if you’re ready, let’s go.
The only way to change and enhance your answer for ‘is my show good enough?’ is to try something new. And I’m here to tell you the secret that isn’t a secret: by showing up and working on it on purpose. Showing up by yourself, with a band, with production, with lights, with video screens, with a big rehearsal space, or your mother’s basement. You need to show up and do this work if you want a better answer to the question.
And when you show up and insist on better (without being an evil dictator), the band will want better and the production will want better, the videos will want better and all of that will then come back and cause you to keep raising the bar and then the cycle kicks in all over again. Everyone pushing for their best work instead of what will merely work.
We’re going to try this new way. It’s not a guarantee but an invitation to better. You’ve done it the old way and it’s not good enough. The new way is to start at the beginning and build, every brick, on purpose, on behalf of the people you’re serving.
One more time, if you’re ready, let’s go.
If you need a guide, drop me a message, maybe we’ll be a good fit.
***I’m working on a long form, I dare say a book that dives deeper into these ideas. But for now feel free to share this post with anyone who might appreciate it.
We don’t need to anymore. There’s Amazon and Ebay and checking out with PayPal that make the transaction feel familiar, like we’ve done it before.
And if we’ve done it before it’s easier to do it again.
Sure you make a little more if I buy your t-shirt from your website than if you let me buy it on Amazon…but if your website looks weird and that’s the only place to buy the shirt I’m not going to buy it at all.
After doing all that work to get someone to want one of your products, don’t scare us away.
Make it look good, like a transaction we’ve made before. You’ve already done the hard part, don’t lose us.
I was out on the road with a band recently, there was maybe twelve of us and I asked the question…
Have you ever grabbed a coffee mug out of the cabinet looked at it and then put it back in order to grab a different one?
Everyone said yes.
Who puts extra effort into making sure they’re drinking out of your mug? And what are they telling themselves just as they’re putting the first mug down and picking yours up?
***Here’s a million or billion dollar idea I’m not going to do anything with…
Make a music video with lots of cool stuff in it. Create software and partner with Netflix or Amazon to where at any point during the video you can pause it, and click on ANYTHING you see and buy it.
Even further…Create an TV show episode or season like this. Someone let Kim K know.
Even further…make it so you can do this for older shows or movies like Seinfeld or That Thing You Do. It would be a thrill to rewatch and binge purchase so many fun things.
