Where in the world am I today?: Flying to LA then on to Lima, Peru – Yippee! Vacation here I come!!!
There’s a fine line between being persistent and being annoying, but the fine art of being persistent can often pay off in abundance if you’re clever in your approach.
I’ve been fortunate to experience things from both sides of the equation – both as a performer and as a talent booker. Most recently my experience with the phenomena of persistence came at me from the perspective of the talent booker. When I had to scramble to find more acts for the Pacific National Exhibition recently I got to experience varying degrees of persistence from a variety of performers.
I really was blown away by the response I got from a simple post on Facebook saying that the Fair was looking for Acts. With in about 24 hours I thought I had the line-up sorted out and took it to the creative director of the PNE who proceeded to throw a monkey wrench in my well laid plans by saying that he wanted to see more options… Doh!
I went back to the flurry of performers who had indicated that they were interested in the gig and crafted another possible line-up for the program. Again the creative director wasn’t 100% happy with the selections and options that I presented…
Now every time I thought I had things sorted out I sent out an email to people who were contacting me thanking them for their interest, but indicating that I was likely not going to be able to offer them a job. For may of the performers who had contacted me this was enough to diffuse their interest (or rather their persistence). But for a select few, the emails continued to flow. This persistence by one of the performers I was in contact with lead to a contract for a portion of the Fair.
All this to say that it’s sometimes worth putting in the extra effort to go one step beyond, just in case something changes with the employer and something does in fact open up. Two things will result in the extra effort.
One – You’ll get a gig
and
Two – you’ll be a hero to the person who’s doing the booking because you demonstrated the extra effort to keep the door of opportunity wide open.
