Collaborations v. Partnerships

I no longer have a business partner in any true sense of the term.

The IP on which my consulting work is based is shared with my ex-partner in New Zealand. And right now I have a number of collaborators in both spheres of my world (consulting and comedy), especially in comedy in the lead-up to the Edinburgh Fringe.

The truism is that a functioning commercial partnership is like a marriage. It takes communication and shared values and an acceptance that at different times partners will make different contributions to the enterprise but also require different things from it. It's all about managing each other over the long-haul.

My collaborations work best when they are focused and finite. X project will be completed by Y date for Z reward. I find that enthusiasm and commitment to the cause are more important than any broader alignment of personal goals: -

We don't all have to get the same thing out of the project, just as long as each of us get what we wanted

At the conclusion to a successful project there's often a temptation to morph the relationship into a partnership. At 42 I'd rather have a sequence of wonderful collaborations where nothing is assumed at the beginning of each new adventure.

Headcount: 1

Monday's post prompted a response questioning the wisdom of ever going into business with friends and I couldn't agree more.

I would make a distinction between short-term collaborations and open-ended partnerships. Twice I've been in serious partnerships with friends and neither ended well. In one we consciously downgraded the friendship to keep the business going. In the other case neither business nor friendship survived.

Hence the title of this Blog.

Degrees of difficulty

Most small businesses fail because they should.

We spent the Bank Holiday Weekend with a couple who live outside London. She had recently invested in an (existing) online fashion business owned by a friend. That was a few months ago. Money is unaccounted for. Cheques remain at best uncashed at worst deposited in the 'wrong' place. Accountants unmet. No clear understanding of roles, responsibilities or even equity stakes. That sinking feeling that this is all going to end in tears.

Most small businesses fail because they should.

A three-step plan

I was asked about life plans. Put simply, mine has three steps: -

1. Make money
2. Tell stories
3. Make money telling stories

In Toronto

I am in Toronto for a few day's consulting work. I've visited about half a dozen times over the last few years and I've always enjoyed coming here. A big part of that enjoyment is due to knowing people on the local improv scene.

When I travel I make an effort to gig wherever I can. Not only is it good for the bragging rights, it makes me question the 'comedy assumptions' that naturally build up when you only perform to one sort of audience, even if that audience is as vibrant and varied as London.

I didn't get on stage this trip but instead hung out with improvisers, some of whom I've known for years and some I was meeting for the first time. I gave myself the minor goal of checking out small theatres to see if I might stage a Canadian iteration of Scenes from Communal Living in 2010 but really it was as much about hanging out as anything else.

A commonplace observation that I've made before is that because improv is a necessarily collaborative craft, improvisers tend to have more social skills than stand-ups. I doubt that the Toronto stand-up comedy tribe would be anywhere near as welcoming of a foreign producer in town to set up a show.

Five quid comedy

A couple of posts ago I aluded to the comedy staple of drawing attention to the (low) cost of a show as a way for a compeer (MC) to get a cheap laugh. Typically the exchange goes as follows: -

MC: So mate, you're here with your girlfriend?
Punter: That's right
MC: Been going out long?
Punter: About a year*
MC: Well, you're really keeping the romance alive if your idea of a Friday night out is a five quid comedy night in a dingy room above a pub

(cue: audience laugh)

Obviously the joke is damaging to the night's 'brand' as it forces everyone in the audience to ask just why they are where they are on a Friday night. This means that the comics have to work that much harder to remove the question from the collective mind.

The above exchange occurred verbatim at last Friday night's gig in Soho. But the acts proved to be worth much more than £5 and the audience went away happy.

On Saturday night I did an improv set as part of the amazing Midnight Matinee series at the Tristan Bates Theater.

The two gigs are no more than 200m apart and both were £5 entry.

Saturday night's compeer made the audience complicit in the night's proceedings. Here we were in the middle of Soho starting a show at midnight; just when everyone else is closing up shop. Your five pounds didn't just just get you the promise of entertainment, it got you one-night-only membership of a very exclusive club.

Pricing is only a signal in the marketplace until the punter takes his seat.

* This response can be anything from "This is our first date" to "Ten years" and the joke still 'works' (from the MC's perspective)

Balancing act

Yesterday I drove to Brighton to do an unpaid ten-minute spot. It was about a five hour round trip with the justification that I can now add performed at the Brighton Fringe Festival to my biog.

All seven acts on the bill were men aged between 21 and 45. The gender imbalance in stand-up comedy is an endless debate that got a recent refueling by Germaine Greer's tremendous exercise in hole-digging.

All of this is preamble to an industry-specific joke that came to me on the drive home: -

What do you call a comedy night with three or more women in the line-up?

A benefit night for breast cancer

Boom. Tish.

What it says on the tin

I wrote a post a few days ago arguing of the need for a seller of services (in this case drama classes) to manage the expectation of the buyer. Suzie, who blogs about cooking but knows about many things, disagreed in comments.

The essence of her argument was caveat emptor ('let the buyer beware') and in a strict legal sense she is 100% correct. The marketer in me despairs.

To build a brand you have to do what you say you do

Any recourse to caveat emptor is a brand damaged. Every comic who grabs a cheap laugh with a line like "What did you expect for five quid?" weakens his own brand and that of the entire night.

So much has been written about 'delighting customers' and 'exceeding expectations' and so on but at the heart of it is this: -

If you sell me X and I get X+Y then I should be delighted

If you sell me X but give me Y then let's hope you get lucky

Cut-through

In the career of every successful comic there is a tipping point after which the inclusion of his name on a bill creates additional demand for the show. From a paying customer's perspective the logic jumps from: -

I'd like to see some comedy tonight. The local club is advertising some somewhat familiar names with some cool quotes from reviews from well-known papers and magazines to assuage my doubts*

To: -

Eddie Izzard is touring. Let's get tickets!

The vast majority of (very decent) acts will always operate under the first dynamic and much of the art of promoting is understanding this.

Comedy promoters must keep their 'aficionados' happy because these guys are the bread and butter. They need a good reason not to turn up to a night because they're so passionate about comedy. They're hanging out for the chance to say that they saw so-and-so do ten minutes in a tiny room about five years before she got that hit TV show.

The problem is that most promoters are also aficionados** and their passion for The Next Big thing can blind them to the actual cut-through amongst non-aficionados. Wishful thinking prevails and money gets lost.

Last night I compered an out-of-town gig where the promoter misread the dynamic. The headline act is an astonishingly good comic with a well-earned reputation on the touring and festival circuit. He'd been paid over the odds with the expectation he'd put more bums on seats than an average night. As the audience was the usual size and the breakeven point had shifted the promoter recouped little, if anything, from the additional investment.

The alternative would have been a one-off price hike, a dangerous thing to do in these straitened times. And a price hike strategy is an admission that the act's brand is stronger than the club's own brand.

An audience rarely gets its money back. This is why branding is a such a core dynamic in live comedy.

* There is a dark art to 'pulling' usable grabs for promotional purposes from even the least sympathetic reviews

** Every promoter is full of stories of the famous names they booked way back when. The classier acts who 'make it' are gracious enough to always acknowledge this

So, how many Facebook friends do you have?

During the auditions for Scenes from Communal Living I joked that the six spots in the cast would go to the people with the most Facebook friends.

The truth wasn't that far different. As is the case with most small theatre shows a big chunk of the total audience were friends and family of the cast and crew. This was accelerated by a two-for-one offer for any member of our Facebook group.

Reflecting on Seth Godin's latest piece I recognise that we treated audience members we knew ('friends') differently to those that we didn't ('strangers'); at least in a post-show context.

Few performers I know come off a stage with the inclination, let alone the grace and energy, to chat to the punters. But those that can and do so will create a fan base that means that their every new show opens to a full house.

Writing for Edinburgh

Like the burlesque comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement

Philip Larkin

Intended consequences

On the weekend I went to a barbecue where almost all the guests were other Australian expats*.

I spent much of the afternoon chatting to a successful actor with a good drama school background who supplemented her income by running Saturday classes. The angle being that there are plenty of actors who didn't go to RADA or Guildhall who need help with 'difficult' playwrights like Shakespeare and Pinter for audition purposes.

I have no doubt that the classes are first rate and that they really do help students get to grips with the likes of The Caretaker or Coriolanus. My quarrel is with the underlying premise: -

That by attending these classes you will be more successful in auditions and so further your dream of becoming a professional actor

The classes were pretty much open to anyone who wanted to attend. No requirement that you carry an Equity card and certainly no formal audition process. The only attempt at quality control over applicants was a coffee meeting with a teacher before signing up but I got little sense that many were told they weren't suitable. She was honest enough to admit that most of the students had no genuine chance of 'making it'. A cynic might call the whole thing an exercise in taking people's money so they can pretend to be an actor on weekends.

With tact like that it's no surprise she became defensive.

There were plenty of corollary benefits to studying Shakespearean text. The old canard about confidence in public speaking being an absolute good. I'd say that if you're citing the role of the agora in Athenian democracy then you're not arguing from a position of strength.

I pay my bills by providing consulting services to a small number of pretty large companies. I also direct and produce comedy. In both situations I charge what I think I'm worth for the intended consequence of the experience. If clients or audience members take away something additional then that's a bonus.

* Given that there are about 350,000 Australians in London at any time, it probably wasn't the only one on in London that day

Getting noticed

I can't log on these days without seeing another piece on 'getting your Blog noticed'. The advice is always the same: -

Find a niche that you can credibly inhabit and stay there. Write specifically and often. One day a readership will find you. Money will eventually follow

I'm okay with everything aside from the last part. There are too many Blogs out there for them all to monetise successfully. And that's just counting those written by persistent, eloquent people who are in it for the long haul. To me the sentiment is little more than that nice but essentially unprovable hippie notion that if you just do what you love then the cosmos will somehow look after you.

The marketer in me certainly relates to idea of writing for a niche. Being someone who is known for knowing about sharks might get you a call if the other expert has his phone off when the reporter needs a quote. Being the recognised expert on hammerhead sharks gets you on TV whenever hammerheads make the news. If fate shines a spotlight on hammerheads then for that moment you're the only show in town.

Do you spend your energy trying to predict where the spotlight will shine or do you get on doing what you love and deciding that you'll be happy either way?

For Bloggers the answer is pretty clear: learn to write well about what you love and see what happens. It's different for comics; the spotlight itself is the thing we love.

Endpoint

I've pointed out a number of times the similarities between stand-up comics and other self-employed solo operators. Things like a need for personal branding, understanding that you're really only being as good as your last job and being able to deal with career vicissitudes on your own. There are blatantly obvious differences in that most people would see a career of telling jokes to random strangers as a version of hell.

A less obvious difference is the end-point of all the effort. Most self-employed people I know want to achieve little more than a level of financial well-being without having a boss, whereas every comic wants to be famous.

This means that most self-employed people are only ever rivals when in a competitive pitch; occasionally if ever at all. The rest of the time we're just people trying to pay the mortgage who happen not to have to book their holiday time months in advance. There's plenty of room for everyone.

In UK there are maybe 30 genuinely famous working comedians. By famous I mean well-known enough to get stopped on the High Street. They are all on television. And they are the envy of hundreds and hundreds of other comics.

Because it has such a specific definition, a field like 'UK stand-up' will inevitably disappoint the vast number of players who enter it. Something as vague as 'being self-employed' has room for many more success stories.

You can do better than seeing 'paying the mortgage' as being in any way remarkable. What do you really want to achieve?