Titillating Tuesday Business Tip
with The Luvely Rae
The 3rd problem: The cocktail napkin business plan
Does your burlesque business plan look something like this?
Book shows. See shows. Get booked at biggest local venues. Add more rhinestones to costume.
Submit to festivals. Submit to Exotic World. Win! Travel worldwide.
Not bad, but that’s not really a plan. What if you don’t get booked at the biggest local venues? How long do you keep trying to get booked at them? How long do you keep trying at festivals? How much are you willing to spend to get to participate in these festivals? What’s more important to you? Traveling worldwide or winning Ms. Exotic World? A good plan should include both action and reaction. Let’s go back to the example of hats from last week (click here to read Part 2 of 3) for a moment.
The plan: Make hats. Tell people I have hats. Sell hats. Win!
The first thing I need to figure out is what is my end goal. Selling hats can’t be my end goal. Selling hats, opening my own online hat store, quitting my day job, and retiring based off the income from my hat business. Now that’s an end goal. I now get to create a plan that will allow me to determine if whether the sale of hats alone will allow me the income I need to be self-sufficient financially. Calculating how many hats I would need to sell, who can afford my hats, who is most likely to buy my hats, whether I would want to outsource hat manufacturing (what if I get carpal tunnel from making hats all day long), and how long I can afford to work towards my end goal.
Now let’s go back to that burlesque cocktail napkin.
Book shows. See shows. Get booked at biggest local venues. Add more rhinestones to costume.
Submit to festivals. Submit to Exotic World. Win! Travel worldwide.
If my end goal is to get booked at the biggest local venues in my town so that I may retain steady work/ increase my fan base so that my art can be shared with the masses, then I have to look at whether my product lines up with what those venues would offer. If my product is polished and I’ve inquired as to why they won’t book me, then I have to look at whether I can achieve my end goal (steady work/ increased fan base) in other ways.
If my end goal is to Travel worldwide as a performer with a full expectation to be self-sufficient financially then not being hired by the big local shows is not of great importance because what matters more to me is being paid as a traveling performer. Instead of putting more energy into convincing the local big shows to hire me, I should put energy into creating a great resume and pitch letter for those overseas shows. I should look at creating a demand for my work in the countries I want to perform. I can evaluate the pros and cons of traveling full time, part time, or seasonal. After all maybe retirement might mean moving to a country where the cost of living is low and the money I’ve saved from retiring will be more than sufficient.
Of course many performers after 2 years realize that for them burlesque will simply mean booking local shows for fun and seeing local shows for fun. There is nothing wrong with that and as long as the work remains fun then when you do decide to hang up your g-string you can consider your career a success.
Titillating Business Tip: Plan for success and plan for failure. By planning for both you will never feel as though you had to sacrifice.
Part 3 of 3
click here to read Part 1 or click here to read Part 2
