Casting Breakdown
It’s a generous thing to create a casting breakdown when asking an entertainer to do a job. A breakdown lists the details of the gig as thoroughly as possible so that a potential hire can imagine the entire job. HERE’s an example – to submit for this job, send an email to scot@scotnery.com. please send […]
More About Jelly Beans
I want to keep reiterating we are not lazy. We are doing great. It comes up in so many conversations with creators. Things are hard to do. It takes a bunch of jelly beans to do what look like straightforward tasks. Simple things are not easy. Here’s a story to illustrate. It’s not a good […]
Ticketed Shows & Holidays
Scot Nery’s Boobietrap occured every Wednesday for five years, so we ran into some holidays. We didn’t stop for Fourth of July or Christmas or Halloween. Ticket selling gets weird with all the holidays. So, we gotta think about the experience of the ticket buyer. Gasp! Another post about empathy! In line with that, I’m […]
Death Zone / Comfort Zone
Quick weird lifehack: when I think, “Why is this thing such a big deal to me?” I change the question to “How do I think this thing is gonna kill me?” If something’s big emotionally, I can usually reduce it down to survival. Examples: Having trouble writing an email to a booker 1) I will […]
Setting Up A Stage
Setting up a performance space is a deep craft that is incredibly effective and affective. Even experienced entertainment pros think that we just gotta setup some chairs facing a platform and we’re good. I recently did shows at a resort and the room was not set up right. I got there early and helped rearrange […]
Demoitis
Demo-itis : the swelling of the demo. Musician records a demonstration (demo) of a new song Musician falls in love with this draft recording No ensuing recording will stack up Demoitis is a mental block. It doesn’t apply when the demo is actually the best version. If that happens, great! Demoitis is holding a musician […]
Be The Meme
Let’s think for a second about non-fungible things as viral content. Everyone has of course read my blog about virality. Everyone has committed to believing what I say — things are most shareable because they are tools for social status. Because of “Share” buttons, we often think of fungible stuff (videos, images, tracks, webpages, etc) […]
Can It Get Any Worse!?
I had an email to send. A simple reply for a simple sweet note from a client. It wasn’t a groundbreaking piece of prose. The question a robot would ask is “What’s the minimum viable action?” I find it little easier to ask something like “can I make it worse?” Inevitably I’m delaying on something […]
The Culture Of The City On Tickets On Crack
I did street performances across America. April 1, 2000 I started in New Orleans, then Boston, San Francisco. Later, L.A., Baltimore, New York, and more. Every city, I performed in tourist areas and every city had different audience types. These were basically the same people ( a mix of US and Foreign folks on vacation) […]
Unmystical Art
Maybe this sounds familiar. I used to believe in magic. I was a child magician performing tricks I learned in books and bought in kits. The tricks were obviously not magic to me, but my hope was that I would get there. I thought the deeper I got into illusions, the closer I would come […]
Why I Kept My Lineups Secret
We didn’t publicize lineups or special appearances. We had a weekly show and we wanted to sell out every week. We succeeded. Brand The main reason to not promote the lineups was for building a brand. We wanted a show that people trusted. The message was, “No matter what week you come, you’ll get a […]
The Fear Of Success
“Am I afraid of failure, or am I afraid of success?” The answer is easy. You’re afraid of failure. We’re afraid of failure. We’re afraid of public failure. Even when our work is private and we are “my own worst critic” we are trying to protect ourselves from public failure. We might think if we […]