By Eric Cager

Touring and booking dates are the backbone of most performing artists livelihood. Doing that effectively can influence the kind of dates you book, the amount of money your get paid and the size of your fan base. So when I recently reconnected with Jeri Goldstein, long-time friend and workshop presenter here at the Cutting Edge Music Business Conference, we talked about booking and touring and new strategies that artists need to add to their way of working in these challenging economic times.

You may remember Jeris many appearances here during the early years of the conference. Shes presented workshops on Negotiating, Marketing Your Act, Creating Effective Promotional Materials and is the author of How To Be Your Own Booking Agent THE Musicians & Performing Artists Guide to Successful Touring. I ran into her in Austin, TX 3 years ago, at the Folk Alliance Conference where she was teaching and coordinating the Booking Agent Training School. I thought I would share our conversation and let you in on some of her recent projects since they may be useful to you and help you steer your booking & touring career through these challenging times.

Eric: Well Jeri its been a while since youve been down to Cutting Edge and since we last spoke in Austin. Whats been keeping you away?

Jeri: You know I love the steamy weather that seems to always linger throughout the days of the conference, but during the four years of coordinating the Folk Alliances Booking Agent Training School, I was kept pretty busy. That tract of training during their conference had 12 or 13 workshops taught by agents, managers, presenters, lawyers and I had to line up all the speakers, organize the material for each session and I even taught a number of them myself. Austin was the last one I worked on. Then I focused on learning some new technologies to enhance my Internet marketing.

Eric: If Im not mistaken, its been at least 10 years since the first edition of your book came out. I know you keep updated it. Have you had to make many changes to the information over the years?

Jeri: Each time I reprint, and thats been 7 times now, I completely update all the resources at the end of each chapter. But, this year I just finished the 7th printing, 3rd Edition, I also rewrote parts of some of the chapters and completely rewrote the Internet Marketing Chapter.

As Ive witnessed the changes that the Internet has made in our lives and the way we conduct business, Ive been constantly translating that information to how it impacts musicians and performing artists methods of doing their business. This past year I took a number of courses taught by Internet Marketing entrepreneurs so that I might help performers get a better handle on how to more effectively communicate with their fans, their booking contacts and their media contacts. All the information I gleaned from my study resulted in a revamped Internet Marketing Chapter in the book, and a new e-book on Internet Marketing thats a bit more expanded than the chapter and completely downloadable as a PDF.

Eric: What kinds of technologies were you interested in learning and what did you do as a result of your studies?

Jeri: My main goal was to figure out how to reach more performers on a regular basis who were based all over the world without doing an in-person workshop. I had experienced and participated as a listener in many teleseminars throughout the last year and found that the technology, although not necessarily new, was now much more financially accessible to anyone. With a number of different services available from free conference calls to paid services with webcast capabilities, my goal was to learn enough to run my own teleseminars. I wanted to make them interesting, informative and be able to teach booking and touring strategies that performers could put to immediate use in their careers.

My first step was to reach out to some folks in the industry that I knew had large mailing lists of performers who would be interested in what I had to share. I did this by doing some interviews helping these folks promote what they had going on, to their list while also introducing myself to their list of members or subscribers. My first teleseminars and interview was with David Wimble, author of the Indie Bible. He was ready to release the first version of his new resource directory the Indie Venue Bible, so it was the perfect opportunity to talk to his subscribers, try out this technology and introduce myself. Well it worked like a charm and we had over 600 people on the call or on the webcast. The service I use allows me to record the call and then I can offer it to my website visitors as a download or just to listen to on my website.

I did a few more Interviews and then a few free one-hour teleseminars using the same teleseminar / webcast service. Each call was recorded and now lives on my website and is free for anyone to listen to and learn. The two classes I did were How to Work with Agents and How to Work with Managers. I tried to offer these classes to answer some of the most frequently asked questions that so many performing artists are concerned about.

Eric: Now that you were getting more proficient at using these teleseminar services, what was next in your plans to incorporate these technologies?

Jeri: My next big goal was to create a five module online teleseminar course that would take some of the information included in the Booking Agent Training School and weave that into a 10 hour course. I really wanted to expand on the course info as well as update some of the information in my book with some of the newer Booking & Touring strategies that Ive been teaching to my consulting clients. So this past October, I offered a 5 module live teleseminars course, Booking & Touring Success Strategies & Secrets. Folks had to either call in or log onto a webcast page at a given time once a week for 5 weeks. All 10 hours were recorded. I even offered 2 bonus Seminars on Copy Writing and Maximizing your website to sell yourself more effectively.

The course worked really well. It gave me a chance to talk about negotiating, planning and routing your tours, setting touring goals and what factors might influence where, when and why you tour. I also revealed lots of insights into how to relate to bookers, presenters and promoters and how to work with these folks to come up with the most advantageous performance opportunities for both the performer and the venue. You know so often we dont take the time to build the relationships necessary to understand the other persons perspective. So much of this is about building relationships that last throughout a career.

One of the aspects of understanding the other side is being able to advance your dates and keep connected with the venue even after the contract is signed. Theres a process to building these relationships that makes booking the next gig even easier, so those strategies were discussed in depth. The final module was talking about creating your unique niche markets and how to incorporate those niche audiences into your touring goals to reach new markets you might not otherwise consider or even know that they existed.
I think some of the old methods of playing the venues you know about, following the crowds of performing artists who are playing the mainstream venues is more of a challenge today. The competition is so high, the money is so tight and the touring is so expensive. These times call for new strategies and ideas that help you reach new audiences who will appreciate your music or performance and not only be dependent upon the strip ad in the entertainment section of the paper to reach those new audiences.

Eric: So now you have all this material recorded, what are you doing with it?

Jeri: Ive taken all the audio and set up a single web page that houses all 5 modules of 10 hours of seminars along with the PDF Action Guides that follow the audio so you can take notes. It also has the two bonus seminars with slide shows of that material to accompany the 1 hour of audio. Bonus 1 is the Website Maximizer Seminar and Bonus 2 is the Copy Writing Seminar. The whole thing is set up so you listen right on the web page or you can download each audio as an mp3 along with the PDF Action Guides. Im really excited about this because it means more people can get this information and they can do it at their own pace, on their own time, wherever they might be. They can even listen on their iPod during those long drives while on tour.

There really is nothing out there like this that doesnt require a touring musician to attend a course at some music business school. The reality is that so many music schools or music departments at universities dont even have this necessary information available to their graduating music students who need to tackle the realities of being a touring musician. Id like to help make this accessible to those music schools that need a real Booking & Touring 101 type of course. But for the professional musician or performing artist, this offers them new ideas laid out in a very organized, methodic way to approach their touring career using a very accessible mode of technology that is immediate.

Eric: If an artist wanted to check out this material, how can they do that and how much will it cost them?

Jeri: They can visit the either the website teleseminars page at http://www.performingbiz.com/?content=teleseminars, where they will find a button to take them to the Registration Page http://performingbiz.com/bookingcourse/registration.html , or they can go directly to the Registration Page http://performingbiz.com/bookingcourse/registration.html .

You know while they are on the Teleseminars Page they can listen to some of the interviews and teleseminars that Ive got there for free. They can also sign the form to get a series of preview strategies that I cover in the Online Course that they can put to use immediately, without even taking the course.

The Registration Page provides all of the course details and even some audio testimonials from some of the performers who took the fall live teleseminar course. Part of the information I learned over the course of last year, was about how to communicate with my audience in a manner in which they can readily access the information. My discovery was to communicate with audio, so almost everything I do now has an audio element. Youll hear audio testimonials from former students and that makes this information so much more accessible and interesting.

Ive priced it very modestly, at $197.00, when you consider all that is included with over 12 hours of audio. I even set up a 2 payment plan so it can be spread over two months. Someone moving through the course could be done with the course, using the strategies to make more money before the second payment goes through. Each module gives you action steps to begin using right away. Reports from those who took the fall course were making improvements in their careers throughout the course. I am a firm believer in being able to implement new ideas right away, even if you dont have all the pieces, you can do step on and it will begin to make a difference. Thats a big part of my Monday morning audio Biz Booster Hot Tip! Short action steps that make a difference each week can build up over the course of a month, a year and before you know it, your career is moving along and you are succeeding.

Eric: I can see how using the technology now available on the Internet can help you reach many more musicians and performers who might use this information to help their businesses. I hope this wont totally keep you away from New Orleans in the future. The Oysters are still better when youre getting them straight out of the beds and the food is still more delicious when you visit us in person.

Jeri: Ill look forward to planning another trip to see all my friends and toss down a few dozen soon. Thanks for the phone visit in the meantime and the reminder of how much I love New Orleans, even when its steamy.