Writer, performer, management consultant
An Australian living in London. A self-employed training consultant to the global health care industry. A producer, director and performer of improv comedy. A trustee of an adult education charity in West London. A writer and occaisional blogger
Last nights was the long-awaited (by me anyway) premiere of Scenes from Communal Living. Smallish house but the theatre itself is tiny so it didn't feel at all empty, something that can get very disheartening for comedy performers. The show itself was terrifically funny and the audience went away swearing that they'll be back with reinforcements.
Now I can say I've produced and directed a theatre show in London.
Had a Sunday night catch-up with an Australian friend (currently) working for a big UK bank. We were discussing the political hue and cry over bankers' bonuses. She is facing a drop in anticipated income of about 40% (the 'mandatory' 10%* was gone and she reckons in other years she would have seen a discretionary portion of another 30%). Doesn't matter who you are a 40% decrease in expected earnings is pretty tough.
For a couple of years before taking her current position my friend had contracted to the same bank. As a contractor she had bonuses incorporated into her basic fee structure and was now ruing her decision to 'go in-house'.
Last night she was not-so idly contemplating a career change. An accomplished photographer she is thinking about a return to contracting but purely as a means to fund a more 'creative' lifestyle. An attractive proposition but by definition sea changes always are.
My question was this: -
How many contracts would you have to have under your belt before you felt you could decline one in favour of an unpaid photography project?
Obviously you have to take the first one to re-establish yourself as a contractor. And then the second one to 'prove' to the client that you're serious about this sort of work. That takes you through to Christmas and you'll most likely take time off then anyway, which may or may not mean opting out of a contract but without necessarily picking up a camera.Hopefully my friend will have the discipline to get the balance right but there's every chance she'll be do no more than swap one treadmill for another.
* The logical inconsistency of a 'mandatory' bonus would be funny if it wasn't so indicative of a system shown to be so horribly flawed
Even after the warning I gave myself previously, I ditched my old BlackBerry for a shiny new iPhone. I was partly motivated by the lack of love shown by Vodafone UK despite the gargantuan phone and data roaming bills but mostly I've become one of those sad people who use Apple to project a 'non-corporate' personality.
A week into the new regime my fear is that even once I'm through the usual teething problems (as when I switched from PalmPilot to BlackBerry) I'm going to be left with a system that is more focused on convincing me that Life Is Fun! than helping me get my work done.
First impressions: the Cloud / MobileMe set-up does exactly what it said it would so my Mac and iPhone sync in an eerily seamless manner. It's also amazingly cool how the the iPhone Googlemaps function works out where I am and how to get to any address in my database. All great and precisely what mates showed me when they were prosetylising for Steven Jobs.
Rather, it's that when Apple's beautifully shot promo pieces show you all the cool stuff your new kit can do, they don't go on to say that's about all it's can do without a lot of angst. Googlemaps isn't a proper GPS, I've yet to work out how to wrangle the iPhone into playing nicely with non-.mac email and, strangely, non-Mac apps like Things (a To Do list programme) don't synch in the same way that Mac's own software does.
And if one more person asks me if I've downloaded the 'pour a virtual beer' application I'll not be held responsible for my actions.
I am in Sweden to deliver a workshop. As I was in Norway earlier in the week it made no sense to travel back to London in between sessions so yesterday I had the day to myself in Stockholm.
The horns of a familiar dilemma: a day of tourism or a day of business?
Admittedly it was a happy problem to have but I am a dreadful tourist at the best of times and on my own I'm even worse; the deadly lure of the laptop and in-room Wifi trap me easily. In the past I've even been guilty (and I do mean guilty) of using the hotel gym rather than go for a walk outside. And honestly, who amongst us cannot say their working online doesn't include a fair amount of non-work surfing of sites, etc.
I managed to get enough genuine work done in the morning to tell myself that I didn't 'waste' a day. Then I got out and saw a bit of this fantastic city (including a freezing cold harbour cruise) so that I didn't 'waste' the opportunity.
I know that I still look at days like yesterday as avoiding a negative ('waste') but I am making progress. What's the point of constructing a life where you get to wake up in cities all over the world if you never see life outside the hotel?
I am a latecomer to this technology but as WiFi access heats up it has amazing potential to further lessen the competitive gap between large and small consultants, especially in the area of teleconferencing. I am in a hotel in Stockholm about to have a three-way discussion with contacts in Sydney and London.
Amazing.
The lower echelons of the London stand-up comedy ecosystem (which is certainly where I reside) are presently in a conniption over something called 'pay to play'. This is where a promoter charges acts for the opportunity to perform as well as charging an audience for the opportunity to watch them do.
Andrew Watts has thought more deeply about this issue than most and describes it's implications well. Because it relates to something I've been focused on recently, I'd like to expand on one aspect of his blog where he observes that: -
The promoter is always doing a new act a favour by giving him stage time.There is a logic here on two related levels: a totally unknown act is by definition a risk; and an inexperienced act is usually of variable quality. But I'm interested in the lack of emotional intelligence in the sense that someone is 'being done a favour'. A promoter who is motivated even in part by an unequal power relationship with the acts is going to end up staging joyless shows.
I've performed for free for promoters whose pride in staging a great show shines through; equally I've been paid well by promoters who've handed over the cash with the same big smile. In either scenario I've been both thanked and thankful.
Everyone is doing everyone a favour when a great show happens, regardless of the acts getting paidThis is comedy we're talking about. If the performers aren't happy then sooner or later the audience won't be either.
I can't seem to pick up a newspaper at the moment that isn't predicting that businesses like mine (i.e. small consultancies) are either going to thrive in this financial environment or else that we'll go to the wall quicker than anyone else.
The arguments seem to run as follows...
Thriving: -
Failing: -
March-April is a wonderfully energising time of year on the UK stand-up scene. Everyone is working frantically to deadlines for the Edinburgh Fringe submissions. The talk is all about show titles, marketing spiels, photography and artwork; all of which is exciting. If nothing else it's a sideways step from the grind of actually writing the comedy.
Stand-up comedy is a battle for control. Onstage you want control over the audience so you can deliver the funny. Offstage is all about controlling the immediate environment but also your broader career.
This coming Friday is Red Nose Day and well-meaning amateurs across Britain are organising charity fund-raisers all week. It's a busy time for comics because inevitably someone who knows you 'do comedy' will ask you to perform for free and also to recruit other acts.
Everyone's happy to help. It's for charity and it's a chance to perform to audiences that don't see a lot of comedy and that's almost always nice. For us less established acts it's also likely that you'll be on a bill with much bigger names than usual. Not only is this good for the ego but it's when someone influential might see your stuff and pass on your name. This is the upside.
The downsides are (a) everyone's happy to help means that the line-ups are usually overcrowded and (b) well-meaning amateurs usually don't get the organisation quite right.
I was booked to do this exact gig tomorrow night. The organiser, a mate, contacted me about eight weeks ago so I shuffled my schedule around to accommodate the show. It was just another date in the diary until last Monday when the emails starting flowing. Now the night has fourteen comics (each to do a ten-minute set) plus the MC, a raffle, an auction and 'X-Factor Karaoke'.
The performer in me is furious, the producer is merely resigned.
The upside is that the room will be full of happy, non-comedy regulars. The downside is that my mate has bitten off far more than he can chew and that the night will run late from the very start. He certainly hasn't factored in that his comics are free but his karaoke machine costs money. Also knowing the other comics on the bill I can guarantee that the early acts will go longer than their allotted 'ten' and so later on he'll be squeezed for time. As a newer act and a mate there's every chance that he'll ask if I wouldn't mind not taking the stage at all.
Control?
The only control I have here is to opt out now. The night will go ahead as there's plenty of comics to go round so I won't be missed. And I'd rather my ego take a battering over the disheartening fact that I'm in less demand than a karaoke machine before the show starts rather than once I'm in the room.
Last night I did a lovely stand-up gig in Derby to a friendly roomful of punters out on a chilly Monday for £1.50 drinks and cheap comedy.
What made the night noteworthy was the compere's warm-up. The compere (or MC) is there to act as a sort of safety net for the show, revving up the crowd at the beginning, introducing the other comics and re-balancing the mood throughout, especially after an act 'dies'.
Last night's compere was a hugely experienced guy who was also the promoter, so to say that he knew this audience would be a massive understatement. He led with what was obviously his usual banter, directing specific questions to friendly-looking individuals in the crowd: -
What's your name? What do you do for a living?The first punter replied: -
Dave. I'm recently retired.The compere dug a little deeper but had to pull back as it became clear that 'retirement' was a euphemism and that Dave had very recently lost his job. Cutting his losses the compere went elsewhere: -
What about you? What's your name? What do you do for a living?
Karen. I'm unemployed.Further questioning again revealed that for Karen too this was a recent and troubling turn of events. Again the compere was forced to pull back and talk to a third person.
Same result. The audience began to get restive.
Happily he then changed tack, used a totally different approach to finish the warm up and a few minutes later the first act took the stage to enthusiastic applause. The compere did a great job in understanding that his audience was there for a fun night out, not to bear witness to a procession of local casualties of the Global Economic Crisis.
I remember the day I told my mother that I was quitting my job in the marketing department of Coke Australia to work for myself. An inveterate worrier, she despaired that I was throwing away job security to chase a pipe-dream.
That was almost twenty years ago.
Yesterday I was talking to three friends all working in the UK banking sector. They lamented the fact that their current jobs would most likely end after a single meeting with the boss. These days having a spread of consultancy clients around the world and at different stages of the decision cycle looks a lot more secure than waiting around to see if you survive the next round of downsizing.
My (first) theatre project of 2009 is now officially under way.
We met as a cast for first time at last Wednesday's rehearsal and it's been an age since I've worked with so many truly talented and genuinely passionate performers. So there's the rub: -
Other people's passions must be treated with the utmost of careLondon is full of comedy promoters who understand the ratio of surplus acts to scarce venues to mean that they're doing performers a favour by affording them 'stage-time'. I've written previously about a demand for 'professionalism' amongst unpaid acts. Often this is no more than a byword for an unwritten and inequitable code of conduct between promoter and performer.
So putting on my producer's hat I know what's at stake. I'm not pretending that any of my cast are so delicate of sensibility that mishandling on my part will drive them from the industry. Rather, that they've already signed up to give me their talent, passion and time; which is all I asked for.
And given how I feel about time, the very least I can do is to do my best to never waste theirs.
As a consultant I work solely in the business-to-business sector. For this reason I have never delivered a 'new' programme.
Whereas individual consumers often love the idea of something 'new', companies usually hate itCompare the adverts in a business magazine like The Economist with those in GQ. Businesses buy solidity and reputation ('the past'), whereas individual consumers want The Next Big Thing ('the future').*
For individuals 'new' means exciting, cutting-edge and state-of-the-art; and you'll pay more. Conversely to a company, 'new' can mean a gamble, uncharted waters or flying by the seat of your pants; so you want a discount.
Where the perceptions of individuals and companies converge is at 'tailored'. Both groups are happy to pay over the odds for custom-made or bespoke. Even though by definition 'bespoke' is also 'new', for a corporate buyer there is the sense that as a supplier I will pay even more attention to your specific issues than usual. And that's worth paying for.
I don't charge a premium for bespoke/new programmes but this sort of rebadging means I don't have to offer a discount either.
* This is a generalisation I know. Still, consider the old business cliche No one ever got fired for buying IBM. Businesses rarely reward genuine risk-taking and even when they do, that risk is often passed onto smaller externals like me for the reasons I'm discussing here
Professionals don't waste each other's time. More than that, they actively manage time. If a meeting starts with the question: -
"When do you have to leave by?"I pretty much know I'm in good hands.
Seth Godin is sort of obsessed with tribes and since finishing his new book I've started to find them everywhere.
The UK stand-up comedy scene is especially tribal and membership comes with a definite code of conduct. When circuit comics socialise they spend most of the time talking about all the out-of-London venues they've played. The room is usually described as either 'hard' or 'easy' depending on layout and the crowd as 'really nice' or 'neanderthal' depending on how the gig went last time.
It's easy to see why: out-of-town gigs are almost always paid so it's a way of staking your claim as a professional comic.
Consultants talk about the various airline lounges for exactly the same reason.
Following yesterday's musings on the nature of 'success', I was reflecting on the notion that most of the 'successful' stand-up comics that I know want to work in television. The frisson that goes around a room at the Edinburgh Festival when the guy from Tiger Aspect arrives is almost palpable. And everyone I've met who started an advertising agency or research firm has some unformed fantasy about the day that WPP buys them out.
This question occurs: -
Isn't a successful career just one where you do what you love until you don't have to do it any more?
This week I gigged in Swindon and so spent 5+ hours in a car with two other London comics. Being the least experienced act of the three I spent the time listening as the 'alpha comic'* held forth.
He'd been on the professional circuit for twenty years and was a ten-year veteran of the Jongleurs chain of comedy clubs that is the equivalent to Yuk Yuk's in Canada and that club in every American city that caters for office parties, birthdays and bachelorette's nights. Jongleurs is simultaneously the holy grail for UK comics (it pays well) and a focus of intense derision (audiences full of drunk 'comedy illiterates').
His conversation (well, monologue) was peppered with the names of comics from back in the day. Some he mentioned are now genuinely famous and others would be known to British comedy aficionados but most were common-or-garden variety circuit comics still telling their jokes at clubs and pubs up and down the country.
As a headline act he was earning between £150 and £400 a set, so a show a night for five nights a week means he probably earns about £70K before tax. As I was musing a few weeks back, here is a man who's his own boss and who gets paid for doing something he obviously loves, occasionally as far afield as Germany, Holland, Dubai and Singapore. He even has a mortgage; the gateway to Middle England respectability.
So is this what success looks like?Ten years ago his thinking had been that now he'd made it to the rarefied heights of Jongleurs, it was just a matter of time before he picked up a radio or TV deal. After that he'd be in a position to cut back on the unedifying experience of spending your nights in strangers' cars driving to places like Swindon to perform to fifty non-paying punters for £150.
His analysis was that just as he'd paid his dues multichannel digital television came along and changed everything. Time was when once you'd been on the box you didn't look back. Even if you chose to do a live gig those magic words As Seen On TV! meant you'd be in a larger venue, perhaps even an actual theatre with a proper dressing room and seating hundreds.
In other words his career plan was based on a world where television equaled popularity. Unsurprising when a full 50% of the population of Great Britain watched the 1977 Morcambe & Wise Christmas Special. These days the fact that a comic has appeared on television is no indicator of anything more than the fact that he's been around for a few years. Stick it out on the circuit and sooner or later you'll find yourself doing something for BBC4 at midnight. Except now it's just another £150 gig and only your mum will care.
The fact that I was going to Swindon in the same car to do the same gig for substantially less money means that there's always going to be downward pressure on his earning ability. That mortgage isn't success so much as a predictor that he'll be spending the next twenty years as he's spent the last twenty; in cars going up and down the M4.
* In his wonderful book House of Lies: How management consultants steal your watch and then tell you the time, Martin Kihn has a fantastic graph showing how much junior McKinsey consultants should talk when interacting socially with senior team-members. The parallels between my two worlds never end
In the last few days I've received confirmation that I'll be staging at least two shows (and possibly as many as four) at this year's Edinburgh Fringe.
An annual gripe-cum-conversational bonding topic amongst Fringe performers is the dearth and therefore expense of decent accommodation. Much of the joy of the event stems from Edinburgh being quite a small city but that means that demand for flats will always outweigh supply.
This morning I went online and started emailing each of the five the accommodation brokers recommended by the Festival organisers. Before I'd finished writing email no. 3 my phone rang. It was a personal response to email no. 1. The woman quickly and efficiently reviewed my needs and then wonderfully put my mind at ease with the following: -
As someone who grew up in country Australia, today it's hard to think of anything at all except this.