I hope you’re having a great start to your Memorial Day weekend! I’m currently flying home from Dallas, reading a bunch of post from posers as they attempt to flame me for my guest post on Steve Nixon’s Blog earlier this week. I had no idea that it would cause such a stir, nor did I know that one of the largest music forums on the web had so many contributors with limited reading comprehension skills. Although I’m not remotely interested in starting a bunch of point-by-point rebuttals, there are a few clarifications that I would like to make.
I. Some knob with the handle “TrickyBoy” wrote the following:
“Not to be a dick, but as a professional sales manager, I wouldn’t hire anyone who took this type of approach. Fuck, I wouldn’t trust you to cut my grass. A recap of this article is one sentence: ‘When trying to book your band, lie your ass off.’ This used car salesman sleazy approach drives me crazy in the professional world and I certainly would never apply it to booking our band.
In a nutshell, I would tell anyone to disregard anything in this article.”
I did a bit of research and found out that our buddy TrickyBoy is a guy named Jason. He lives in the southern portion of the US and, as of last update, is an Account Manager for a small technology outsourcing firm. But hey – let’s take the “professional sales manager” thing at face value and disregard the fact that he could very well just be doing inside sales or telemarketing to pay the bills until his band really takes off. Four things to note here:
1. I learned an important lesson about hiring over these last few years. I put down gigging to run sales and business development for a multi million dollar internet marketing company. It went so well that I became president of that same internet marketing company, increased their revenue up by $60 million or so in 36 months and grew the employee base from 8 to 50ish. All before I was 31? That can’t be – according to TrickyBoy I’d never get hired or called back by a single client! I digress – the lesson is this: You can’t teach, train, compensate, or motivate aggression and tenacity. It’s better to start with a salesperson who is too tenacious and mellow them out rather than have an employee who is too tentative. You’ll never turn the latter into a top performer.
2. I never said lie. (This is where I first began to question my detractors’ reading comprehension skills.) I said act as if you are booking a great band and that you are the agent for that band, and don’t disclose that you are in the band. None of that is lying unless you think your band is incredibly shitty and are asked directly “hey by chance are you also a band member,” which BTW has never happened to me. Create a sole proprietorship or LLC (as I did) and act as your own agent. No “lies” or “sleazy” there. I also said “act as your own receptionist.” Is there anything dishonest about answering your phone “Joe Lilly’s office?” No. Not if you are answering while you’re at work, aka IN YOUR F’ING OFFICE.
3. A “used car salesman sleazy approach” is typically a high-pressure, 1-call type close. Used car salesmen are very short term thinkers. Someone comes on the lot, they close a sale, done. None of my techniques can be applied to that environment. So Jason has either never taken a sales training course or he’s never purchased a car. I’m not sure which.
4. Applied correctly, none of your prospects will realize that you are using these techniques. Once they do you’ll have made them so much money that they will think it is funny. More on that below, as we meet another “muso” that we can call NashvilleDoucher.
II. .Some other wank whose user name I can’t recall, aka NashvilleDoucher, wrote:
“…This is a forum for musicians to HANG. I don’t come here and PROMOTE my band(s), I come here to hang and talk with other musos who are digging in the trenches. This dude is your typical biz asshat. Saw TONS of ‘em in my years in Nashville. And some got work, but once word got around, it was funny how their work dried up. I was a sideman for signed artist for years, and I would NEVER recommend someone for a gig who acted like this. So what happens when the owner finds out your are willing to lie your ass off? He’ll look for a reason to NOT trust you. This is the kind of bullshit that gives musicians a bad name…..”
1. What does musicians hanging and you not understanding fundamentals of self-promotion have to do with my blog post? Here’s a free tip for you – if you are allowed to promote your band on that forum (if it’s not against TOS), you would be a fool not to. Google LOOOOOVES links from forums to your site. It will help your search rankings and more people will find you and want to know what band they can come see you in this week.
2. I thought being late, flakey, not drawing, drinking too much, doing drugs and being an unambitious loser is what gives musicians a bad name…but that’s just me. I’m proposing pretty much the opposite of all that – that you act professional, are punctual, and do you what you need to do to get through the gatekeeper/get the decision maker’s attention – and get booked. Simple as that. That said, I’m sure this guy knows what professionalism is all about with his dozens of bands and side work that he’s doing.
3. If you over-book yourself to the point where you can’t draw an audience, shame on you for being a moron. I never suggested you should play rooms that you can’t fill. We didn’t get to my post on “how to get more people to show up to see you be a sideman years ago in Nashville with biz asshats” post. That one is coming soon.
4. I would never ever ever ever screw a venue owner out of money. If I booked a gig I expected to be a profit center. We jammed lots of the places we played, and if I overbooked us (which happened a few times while I was learning about audience management), we took our earnings and used them to tip the staff or we didn’t take any money. That’s right. We played for free.That made it REALLY easy for these guys to book us even when we drew just a handful – in fact, we got quite a few opening slots exactly that way. We met a lot of other bands, networked a ton and pulled a bunch of fans over to our group.
In short, I guess with all their years of experience in sales and music and business and being flamer dicks on forums, these guys MUST know better how to get bands booked. So you should indeed disregard everything in my guest post, unless, of course, you’d like to play great venues (Taste of Chicago, Buddy Guy’s Legends, Great American Music Hall, Hard Rock Casino), get repeat gigs, fill up your calendar, and start making fans and money. We were able to finance all of our band-related activities including equipment, several CD’s, some small regional weekend-warrior tours, and even put some money in our pockets at the end of the year.
But why would you want to do any of that? 
P.S. The best part – I’m not an exceptional singer or guitar player and I STILL got the gigs and the people to show up! I’m sure NashvilleDoucher can play circles around me!