As a quintessential Virgo, I never stop planning ahead. The close of any year usually brings the global introspection of what we want to do for the new year. People make frivolous resolutions to start exercising more, eating healthier, perhaps even looking for a new job, love or something more unconventional.
As for me, one of the goals that I had for 2012 after filing my taxes was becoming a millionaire. Since then, I discovered several different ways not to make a profit. Nonetheless, I feel successful because I started my own event, The Austin Writers Roulette. One of the many things that I learned in the process was how to apply my organizational and analysis skills to a new situation. I fumbled in the beginning with all the details of putting together a show. What I came up with was a terrific line up that needed better promotion and a bigger audience to appreciate the poets and spoken word artists who were gathering together once a month to read their theme-based works.
Promoting in such a happening town such as Austin is a challenge. There’s definitely a huge crowd of people who are interested in poetry and spoken word, but those same people are also interested in many other things as well. I’ve felt in direct competition with other venues that have much bigger PR budgets and more people whose full-time jobs were to promote their venue.
One resolution I made two months before the New Year season of resolution-making was to move the roulette to a more viable location, one that had a stage, lights, chairs, tables, a kick-ass friendly and supportive staff, and an impressive PR campaign. I found all the preceding at Strange Brew.
Once I landed a place in their schedule, Carmencita, my right arm, updated our 2013 flyers to reflect their address and I got 2500 postcard sized flyers printed up and started enthusiastically passing them out. So many people claim to love that coffee shop/cyber cafe and to live “just down the street” from it. I’m no longer naive to believe that just because someone says that they’re going to come to a show, they’ll actually do it, but at least they already know where the place is!
Another change that I’ve already put into action is to contact certain artists with a personal email in addition to the all call for submissions. Now that I’ve gotten to know certain artists and they have performed on the roulette a time or two, I’m slowly building a nucleus of artists whose work is good quality and varied in their approach to the theme.
I’m going to continue going to at other venues at least once a week in order to promote, recruit and possibly participate. Truthfully, I need to attend more than once a week, but in reality, as long as I have a full-time job, going once a week will be as much as I can handle when not on vacation.
In the long term, I’ll carry over my resolution to become a millionaire. I’m quite conscience about how much money I’m spending and plan to save as much as I can. I still maintain that money can buy happiness with the right set of priorities. I plan to be much happier in my life as I transition into being a full-time artist.