Crowdfunding Roundtable

Crowdfunding offers indie theatre groups the opportunity to fundraise that doesn’t require the task of creating and organizing a fundraising event. Crowdfunding gives us the opportunity to get our campaign seen outside of our personal networks and potentially reach new people that we might not have been able to reach before. Unfortunately, many indie theatre groups do a very bad job of using crowdfunding, and seem to see it as just another way to solicit donations. But crowdfunding doesn’t really work that way. Crowdfunding needs something more. But what would it take to make crowdfunding work for indie theatre?

Siobhan Richardson (@fighteractress), Adrianna Prosser (@adriannap) and Hayley Pace (@haelaaaaa) join host Phil Rickaby to talk about Crowdfunding theatre.

Siobhan Richardson
www.SiobhanRichardson.com
twitter: @fighteractress
Instagram: @fighteractress

Adrianna Prosser
http://www.adrianna-prosser.com
Twitter: @adriannap
Instagram: @adriannaprosser

Hayley Pace
www.hayleypace.com
Instagram: @haelaaaaa
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hayleypacee

Hayley’s crowdfunding campaign, mentioned in the episode: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-teeny-tiny-music-show#/

Stageworthy:
http://www.stageworthypodcast.com
Twitter @stageworthyPod
Facebook: http://facebook.com/stageworthyPod

Transcript

So I’m here with Hayley Pace, Siobhan Richardson, Adriana Prosser. We’re going to talk about crowdfunding and theatre. And I sort of come from a certain spot on this where I think that indie theatre does a really, generally, a really bad job of crowdfunding.

Because to my mind, and we can get into this, I’m going to talk for a little bit, and if I’m talking bullshit, please tell me I’m talking bullshit. But generally, I think the kind of thing that I see on a lot of these things is basically treating it like it’s a charity. Where we see the kind of thing, like our perks, we have this thing like, help us do this thing and donate to our cause.

And for $10, we give you a social media shout out. For $40, we’ll put you, we’ll thank you on our website. For $75, we’ll thank you in our program.

For $100, we’ll give you a letter of thanks, signed by the cast. And for $125, give you a ticket to the show. And usually the show really only costs like $20.

If that. And so these are the kind of things that I see in a lot of crowdfunding campaigns for indie theatre. And I think about the campaigns that I have funded.

And there’s two things. Either I really love the people, and I fund a few of those. But of the crowdfunding campaigns that I have funded because I love the campaign, it was always because I wanted the perk.

The perk made me say, I got to have that. And so there’s a couple of things that I kind of see in terms of the way that we use crowdfunding when we use it in indie theatre is that number one, we look at it, like I said, as charity. And number two, our perks suck.

I don’t know what the answer is. And when we look at it as charity, are we, I don’t think that’s what crowdfunding is. I think that crowdfunding is, I think they’re investors rather than donators.

I think that they’re, to my mind, I think that they’re investors rather than people who are donating to your cause. So the difference being then for you, an investor, someone who gives to a crowdfund is really looking to get something back. Yes.

And it’s not necessarily, I’m giving you this to support the show, but I’m giving you this because I directly get something out of it. It’s not the same as the kind of investor where it’s like, and maybe you’ll get the cut of the house, of the profits. It’s a different kind of investor, but the people are investing their money to get something.

And you see that in like, you know, Exploding Kittens was like this crowdfunding campaign that I backed. And number one, I mean, it had the advantage of, it was the oatmeal, the guy behind the oatmeal, which is a big web comic, putting this game out. And he, so he had a following, but the game looked so awesome that you were like, okay, so for $50, I get a copy of the game.

Plus I’m in, you know. But the problem with theatre is that it’s an experiential process. And so it’s not a, it’s not a tangible thing.

It’s a moment. And so when you’re crowdfunding, I feel like a lot of theatre companies don’t know how to make a perk outside of the show that they’re making. Well, I have seen a lot of people give that one level or the first level even is tickets to the show.

So it’s essentially pre-selling the show. Sure. Yeah.

And then on top of that, but yeah, it comes back to the same thing though, is that because it’s an experience where a lot of the campaigns you see, the next thing is some kind of social media shout out. But I’ve seen other campaigns where that’s the first thing they suggest. That is usually the shout out.

But I kind of think that thanking people on social media and on the website and in the program, that’s something you should be doing anyway. That’s like your base. So I guess the question is when we’re looking at crowdfunding, and there’s a lot of questions here.

So, and I don’t want this to be like the fail show of Phil talking, but I think that we, there’s a real problem. And I don’t know what the answer is. Otherwise I wouldn’t have to have this.

I’d do a monologue, five minutes and put that out there and everybody would know what the answer to their crowdfunding woes was, but I don’t know what the answer is. Well, I think at this level, if you’re starting independently, you can’t expect people to care really. I mean, the people who are going to be funding your projects are your friends and are your family or your ex professors who believe in your work.

That’s the reality of the situation. And that’s the reason why I think a lot of perks like those are made. Because it’s not really taking it seriously in that form, but it’s also at the beginning level when you’re first starting, that is who is going to be funding the project.

And when you get to a different level, you can start promising perks that are more expensive because also at an independent level, you can’t necessarily pay for things like a custom made t-shirt that is a beautiful print of the show’s logo. And for that, you need to have good designers. You need to have good people who are behind these perks.

These big companies who are making these perks have designers. They have teams of people who know how to market things. So it’s almost like people who are setting perks need to actually think about their circle of friends or their close network and go, what awesome perks can I create with my network? But you’re doing a lot of asking before you do the asking.

You have to plan it. You have to plan your list of people. You have to open an Excel document and say, who is absolutely going to donate to me? Who is likely to maybe say, yeah, maybe.

And you’re talking the money and how the perks end. Yeah. Because in my experiences, not even half the people got perks.

They donated because they knew me, because they knew my work, or because they were close friends of mine or they were family members. It had nothing to do with perks. Even though my perks were even- Your perks were pretty good.

I mean, your perks were pretty good. Could we talk about the perks that you offered? Yeah. One of them was because my show was called the Teeny Tiny Music Show.

So it was inspired by guerrilla marching bands. So the whole stick of the show was that throughout the duration of it, it would start as a solo singer and a pianist. And throughout the duration, more musicians would come up by surprise.

So it was a love story I was telling. So one of the perks were the band will record a love song for you. So you tell me your love story, I will write the lyrics, and then our music director will write the music and then our band will record the song.

And then you get like a custom- That’s a pretty cool perk. What was the monetary level for that? That was $150, I think. And then $100, we did a cover of your favorite song.

So that guy who did $150 gets a cover by the band and he gets a love song. So that’s not only creative for us. We have to get together.

We have to get the band together. Everyone’s going back to school. We have to reorder the recording equipment.

It’s going to cost me money to do the perk, but it’s awesome. We got $150 out of the guy. So it’s like, our show is funded.

We pay the musicians. It worked out, but he’s paying for it in the end. I guess that’s a good question about perks because you want to make sure that you can afford the perk.

So do you set your perk at a level where you sort of research, at what point is this affordable? If you’re offering a t-shirt, if the t-shirt costs you $20, you can’t really offer the t-shirt at the $20 perk level. But then you can’t just get- If somebody gives you $100, they can’t just get a t-shirt because then it’s like, this cost you $20. Yeah, you have to do the other things that follow.

It costs money. And I know Indiegogo offers shipping rates. You can add on the extra $4 it takes to ship the item to the person.

So that’s why you get sometimes weird numbers when you’re raising money. But even that doesn’t cost the production element, right? That’s why I think sometimes the artist has to eat shit. And just if you want to get money for the show, sometimes you have to eat shit and it costs money to make art, just like it costs money to make anything.

I really do think that- I’m going to sort of disagree with you there because if I wanted to eat shit, I can do that on my own. I don’t need the crowdfunding to eat shit. So my idea, what I really want to try to find out is what could we do to not eat shit? And I’m going to call them out because they didn’t do it this year and the artistic director is not the director.

But last year, the clown festival, the last year, the year before, clown festival, Toronto clown festival did a crowdfunding campaign. And those were basically their perks, except that for like $100, you got a clown nose or something. And I thought, the clown nose costs you 75 fucking cents.

Why is this a perk? But they were like the poster child for the kind of crowdfunding that I hate. It enrages me because we wonder why these campaigns don’t meet their goals. Like they never came close to their goal.

And they were pinning a lot, I think, on their crowdfunding campaign. I think it all comes back to the approach to crowdfunding. Like we were saying, is this a charity or not? A lot of people seem to, and I know this from some of my own research and from some of the stuff I was actually doing is looking start crowdfunding campaigns.

A lot of people approach it like, oh, I put this up and then it goes out on the internet and people give me money, as opposed to that’s got to be your day job for that amount of time. Like I think people don’t often realize what you’re saying before Haley about you’ve got to, who’s going to give you money? You’ve got to open that list. Who are the hundred people you’re going to contact and assume only 10% are actually going to give you money? And they talk about some of the research that I was doing for raising money for another project, talking about getting a certain percentage of your funding beforehand because the successful campaigns have a ton of money promised already.

So that by the time your campaign is up for like a day, you are already 20% funded. Because you’ve all, and I was talking with another producer who said they were doing a crowdfund and they wanted to make their numbers that they had on the website. So at the end hour, they were doing all the phone calls and he’s like, I’d rather not do a crowdfund in future because I’m just going to make those phone calls and get the money.

However, if you reverse that, if you do all of that asking beforehand so that on the day of, and depending on what kind of relationship you have with your funders, you either call them up the day before on the day of and say, Hey, don’t forget today’s the day. Please make your payment this morning. Or you get their credit card number beforehand and you make their payment for them that morning so that you start really strong because that’s what’s going to get you trending.

That’s what’s going to get you more money is what do you do to make it look like you’re more successful? So it’s not just a perks thing. Like we seem to be focusing a lot on what the people get, but it’s the process of coming, building. You need a good, if you’re going to have a months long campaign, you need a month long ahead of time to plan it.

And that show can’t pop out of nowhere. You have to, especially with social media nowadays, like everything is in front of your eyes constantly. And people are like this constantly.

And that’s a great opportunity for me as an independent artist to put my images in front of your face. So you know, everyone on my Facebook knows I’m doing a show because everything on my wall is about my show. So yeah, six months before I started a crowdfunding campaign, I didn’t even know I was going to do this show.

Because you’re building your network. You’re building your network. You’re getting people excited.

People are seeing your process. People love that. Well, that’s what they say a lot about the perks of crowdfunding is depending on how you approach it, a lot of what people want is they want a personal engagement.

Oh, yeah. That’s why you pay 50 bucks for a t-shirt is because part of your perks beforehand are not just the shout out, but are the windows into like, maybe you get to watch a live cast of a reversal. Yeah, maybe you are, or if you can’t be actually in the hall, maybe there’s some kind of thing that people don’t know about what we do as artists in our own time that they get to be a part of.

But it has to be something that’s exciting enough and accessible to people who aren’t just artists. Yeah, like a table read is maybe not the most exciting thing. People love things.

They love stuff. They love stuff and things and, you know, like crowdfunding that I see that are successful are like candles that are wax cats and are metal skeletons underneath when you burn them. People buy that shit because they love stuff.

So it’s like if you if you have to get into the mind of who is going to be finding you and think about what they would like, what do they want? They really want to see a rehearsal. They probably really don’t give a fuck. They want something that’s like that that is given to them, right? Something that they would care about.

So you have to think really hard about. And by all that thinking, though, it goes back to all of the preplan. Like, I think the fact that a lot of people don’t when they think of crowdfunding and when they think of social media and whatnot, because this is where crowdfunding really lives, that these are all called campaigns.

And that’s what Indiegogo and Kickstarter call it. They’re like, would you like to start a campaign? Because it’s like you’re campaigning for president. You need to knock on doors.

You need to say what you’re going to give them. You need to be transparent. You need to be authentic.

You need to do all of these things. And that’s hard. And so I don’t think a lot of people understand just exactly what they’re getting into when they’re actually crowdfunding, because it’s actually really hard work.

And that it goes back to when you first sign up for Twitter, when you first make your branded page on Facebook, when you first make your Instagram account, that it starts with, hi, we’re here and this is what we do. Because that’s when it starts. It doesn’t start the day when you’re like, oh, I’m going to make an account on Indiegogo.

No, it has already begun, because you need to build the audience that’s going to listen, because you can’t just shout into the void, because too many people do that. You get lost. And there’s not enough promoted tweets and boosted posts that can get you to the people who want to listen to you.

You need to actually have a network to build off of, like you need something to stand on beforehand. And so it’s frustrating when people want to dive into and result without knowing just how much effort it takes to begin with, because when you’re saying you need to think and you need to do that. And I, as a person who lives in social media a lot, is the listening part to get you to start thinking that you need to do the listening part beforehand, like how you were saying, who’s going to actually show up? Who’s at the 50%? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I might.

And who are the people who are going to be pushed over the edge with a really cool perk that you have these different divisions? And you do that, you understand that from your analytics, from listening to your audience that already exists. And I think that’s the hard part of indie theatre, being like, well, I don’t really have an audience that already exists. And therein lies the rub.

You know what’s interesting is I want to actually talk about that Excel list that you made, about who are the people in your network? Because, I mean, one of the things about one of the questions that I always have, like, I’ve done a couple of Indiegogo campaigns. And I think the mistake that we made was thinking somehow, we’ve got to get outside of our network. The only way we’re going to be able to do this if we can get outside of our network, and of course, we couldn’t get outside of our network.

But to go back to your list, if you know who’s in your network, you can create the perks that appeal to the people in that network, you can sort of think about, okay, so who’s on this list? What would push these people over to support us? What kind of perks? What would make them go from a $10 donation? I think that, you know, the kind of people we know who give us money are very diverse, and they don’t always fit in the same category. Like, for example, like, my former professors are in a completely different category than, like, my mom. You know what I mean? But your mom is going to give you money.

And same with the professor, for nostalgic reasons. Like, if there are other people who are on your list who are not immediately going to give you money, what would push those people over? Because people are already going to give you money, they’re going to give you money, and they’re going to give you what they can. But there are those people who, they might not, like, they might be interested, but they might not have given you money.

What could you offer them to make them say, now I’m giving you money? And value is hard. Yeah, value is super hard. Very, very hard.

A lot of people just love the free ticket thing. Well, yeah. You know? I mean, that’s, I mean, that’s our, the one thing that we have is the experience, and the way to give the experience is the ticket.

But that ticket is only going to get us so far. That ticket is, it’s not the answer. Because we, we only have so many of those.

And we only have those at a certain rate. Yeah. Yeah, they only make you so much.

If that, that bum in that seat was going to need that much money anyway. Yes, yeah. I think, like, ideally, your, let’s say your $20 level, you get a ticket to the show.

Ideally, those go first, like in the first couple of days. Because those are your, those are your pre-sales, those are the bums are already going to be in seats, and those are the ones that you want, you want to fill that first 24 hours with. I think you want to limit though, like, you don’t want to be, because, you know, you can either put your perk out there so that it’s unlimited.

Or you can say, you can say, you can cap it at, like, we have 20 tickets here for this much. Like, I have, like, 10 t-shirts or whatever. I don’t know, why would you only offer 10 t-shirts? Unless you like the super special ones, like, maybe they’re the embroidered version.

They say things are, um, what is it? More desirable then. Yeah. They’re in, yeah, they’re in demand, right? So, I mean, there is that psychology too, where it’s like, oh, there’s only five of the things? I want that.

Yeah. I think that they are sometimes uncomfortable for, for some artists. I won’t speak for everybody.

But the idea of, you have to understand how to manipulate and how marketing manipulates. You have to understand what those mechanisms are. That’s so true.

And for some of us, that’s really hard to be like, I don’t want to manipulate people. Yeah, it’s not, it’s about, it’s a business. But it’s, and that’s what’s, that’s what’s hard for a lot of people, is they can’t separate the art and the business.

I know. We’re not like, oh God, like, we are, you know, we’re artists. We give, we do the, we do the thing.

But we don’t often look at it like a business, like it has to. Because it’s so personal, it’s made from us. Yeah.

And that some people I find when I’m, when I’m helping them, when I’m helping clients, that they have a problem boasting or not even getting to the word boasting, but even just selling what they’re doing and, and, and, and putting it out there in such a way. And also like the fact that it’s like, oh, but I need money. Like money is such a dirty subject for, for a lot of artists.

And it’s just like, but we all need to eat. Yes. Because we’re kind of fed this idea that the art should come from you.

You should do it. Even if you, even if you weren’t paid for it. So it’s somehow.

And suffer for your art. Brown coded with this idea of like, you shouldn’t ask about money as opposed to being like, no, we are valid citizens of the world. And what we do is a valid profession as well as a calling.

Some people are born to be accountants and they love it. And they love being able to do that. But there’s no shame in someone following that passion and asking about money.

I mean, yes, it’s their job, but maybe not the best example. But it’s funny because, you know, I’m thinking about all the times when I might like, I was thinking about, okay, so I need to tell people about my show. I want to tell people about my show.

It’s like, you know, I’m embarrassed to sell my show, which is like, why am I embarrassed to talk about this thing that I’m doing? Yeah. If you’re excited about something, people attract that. And it’s magnetic.

Like if you are excited and truly your heart burns to talk about this, people will latch on to that because they love to feel passion. And as soon as like, you’re like, this is my show. This is what it is.

I’m excited about it. People are, they’re excited. I wonder how many crowdfunding campaigns are put out there for, we got to do a show.

Let’s do this public domain show. And they’re doing it because they feel like they should put on a show. As opposed to going, this is important for me.

This is something either it’s something I need to say, or this playwright hasn’t been done in a hundred years somehow. And this material needs to be done. Like, I wonder if there’s a way to find out which of these projects that really get funded are those passion projects and which are the ones that are like, let’s put on Twelfth Night because I haven’t done it yet.

And it comes through the videos, you know, that they really drive those trailers and teasers and whatnot. To be really transparent about your process and what you really need and why you’re here and whatnot. And those videos can make or break your campaign.

I think a lot of people discount that video. They really do. I have seen so many crowdfunding campaigns for theatre where either they didn’t do a video or their video was, I need money for my show.

And not like that because they’re performers, but it’s basically a guy talking to the camera. When you can do so much work. Hayley’s video kicked some ass.

Like, it was… We worked our ass off on it. Oh, I’m going to link it in this podcast. Yeah, you did.

We spent a whole day shooting it. And we had guys cutting it and mixing sound. And we recorded like a voiceover to put the work into it.

But like, I had to have a team of people who were willing to do that for free. And that was the shittiest fucking thing I had to do. Was like, use these people’s talents that they should be paid for.

Like, into the, you know, three figures, you know, money to do this. And it was like, I had good friends. Yeah, that’s what it was.

I mean, it was like, one day. You got to hate on the friends. But yeah.

Yeah, for a little bit. Yeah, it’s not forever. Because… And that’s the thing.

Like, we’ve got people making films for that one. Let’s not ask some… I was at a forum and the one creator was saying, I hate when people ask me about my budget. What? Because I got this film made using my connections and my network and people giving you little perks here and there because they care about you and your piece.

So as much as the asking for money question is difficult and we have a hard time sometimes as artists seeing how it’s a business. It’s so important for us to see it as a business and as that exchange of time and goods. Because that’s how stuff gets done.

And that’s how when you yourself are willing to give to somebody else for their good cause and being able to accept that other people are giving for your cause. It’s part of that exchange. It’s part of the bartering network.

And it’s part of our money network. That, again, as artists, we’re just not… We’re just not cultured to accept that. We’re not… I think we’re just not conditioned to say that’s okay.

And yes, everybody… We want everyone to get paid. I totally agree with that point. So I wonder if the question partly is like, where do we draw that balance? Or how do you yourself reconcile that imaginary balance? Well, that is… I mean, there’s a little bit of a dichotomy there when you’re thinking about, you know… You’ve got people who are willing to donate their time so that you can get paid.

It’s like you love them for it. I mean, partially, I think they do it, number one, because they believe in you. But number two, I think that they do it because they know you might not get paid.

Like, that might be like the crowdfunding thing. That could be all you get, you know? I mean, again, it’s about people around you who believe in your project as much as you do. And that all comes from being really self-critical about what it is you’re making.

Because there are a lot of shows that I see and that I’m like, why is this being made? No one gives a fuck. And I was always told, why this? Why now? And you have to be able to give something to the audience and give something to your performers and everyone that you’re casting. And that’s how you get someone to care, to put that work into it.

It’s like always thinking about the other person, not thinking about yourself and your art. It’s not about you. It’s about an audience.

That is the most important thing. Yeah, no, there’s… I haven’t been to… Man, there were years when I would go to all these events and they’d be like, we’re doing a panel on… Let’s talk about our theatre companies and things like this. And this was like maybe 10 years ago.

But the number of times I heard, like be in a room of people who are like indie theatre makers and they would stand up and they’d talk about the theatre company. And the first thing they say is, we believe in art for artists. And I was like, fuck you, art for artists.

What about your fucking audience? That’s infuriating. It is infuriating. And I think I hear it a little bit less, but sometimes there are people who still, I think, have that.

It’s awful. Or your favorite one. This is about mice.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh my God, it’s your face. Come on, I don’t want to hear about that.

Exactly that, exactly that. I mean, the passion has to come through. It’s really important.

But one of the things that I am… It just occurred to me. There’s, you know, and Kickstarter has a certain way of doing their platform where it is like, if you don’t make your goal, you don’t get your money. And that’s scary.

Oh, yeah. Indiegogo lets you make the choice. And so does the Fund What You Can site.

And Adriana and I were at this workshop last fall about the Fund What You Can network. And there was a guy there. He doesn’t really, he didn’t really know theatre, but he knew crowdfunding.

So he was talking about what tends to work is that while the safe one, where you get whatever you get, seems like a great idea, that apparently people are more likely to donate to a campaign where you risk not doing it. The risk actually pushes people. And it pushes the campaigner, I guess.

Would that be the right word? Sure. Pushes the campaigner as well. They say that because you’ve set that goal and you can’t get it, people are more likely to take that extra one minute, that extra one hour to finally reach that goal because it is that big.

But it is fucking scary. Like if I think about, if I thought about the campaigns that we did do for the Keystone Theatre and stuff, the idea of doing a campaign where we might not get any money, that was not cool. That was like, we could get some money, which is better than no money.

You probably lowered your goal even too. Yeah, yeah, you did. I actually looking like every so often, I look at theatre campaigns on Indiegogo and I see, or on Kickstarter, and I see a $500 campaign.

They’re like, we made our goal. And I was like, what does a $500 campaign even get you? Except for the fact that you get to say, we made our goal. I don’t even know what the point of that is.

Just to say we made our goal. Yeah, so the next campaign is after one successful campaign. Yes, yeah.

Because that’s another thing they add on the Indiegogo when you’re creating the campaign. They say, write about your previous successes if you’ve had another campaign network. So people are more likely to trust you with their money.

Sure. What’s interesting is what you were saying about calling people in advance, Siobhan, was about getting those people, is that doesn’t just get you some money up front. But if all those people do that on that first day, that does raise the profile of the campaign, getting it on the front page of the Indiegogo site or whatever it is, making it more visible to people, which could get it outside of your network.

Yeah, it’s all these factors. Yeah, because you talk about not being able to get outside your network. Yeah.

And they say that that’s one of the ways to do it, is the more successful it is earlier on, the more likely it is to get out. Then again, but the successful campaigns we see out there are like Mystery Science Theatre or Sarah Michelle Gellar, like these enormous campaigns. I so rarely see crowdfunding campaigns that are outside my network by more than one person.

No, it’s interesting because when I think of the successful campaigns, the hugely successful campaigns, the people doing them have some form of celebrity. You have Sarah Michelle Gellar, Amanda Palmer. You’ve got The Oatmeal, who has a huge following.

You’ve got all of those things. The Mars reboot. Yeah.

You also have the money to create the perks that people want. And you have the marketing. Marketing a team of them.

Yeah. You have people. I mean, us, we’re like doing, you know, threefold the work.

Yeah. No, we’re like creating the show and doing all of like the full-time job of trying to get the campaign out there. But speaking of like going outside your network, have you guys ever done an Indiegogo campaign before? I have.

Did you get the emails from people who work for Indiegogo going like, hey, I can help you. Oh, fuck those guys. Yeah.

Watch out for that. And they call you. They call you.

I had people leaving messages on my phone being like, yeah, we see your campaign and it looks really promising. You have a lot of great images and your video is fantastic. And to show that he’s been looking at my campaign.

Yeah. And then he goes, yeah. So if you pay $300, literally.

Yeah. $300. And that’s a discount price from 600.

Yeah. My ass. We can boost your network to over 1 million.

I actually have. I actually have gotten those emails running this campaign. It’s like just immediate delete.

Like nonstop. It is. They are marketing trolls.

It is. And that is their business. That is their business.

Yeah. It’s similar to there used to be this company, the Domain Registry of Canada or Domain Registry of America, who would contact you six months after you registered your domain, saying that your domain is expiring and you need to pay them. But what they’re actually doing is if you read the fine print, you’re transferring the domain to them for more money.

So you pay a transfer fee to them. And then your fee goes from like $10 to $40 and whatever. So it’s like these people who are like scouring the internet to find these things that they can prey upon your need to make that goal.

And I could see why. Like if they could do it. Yeah.

Would that be worth it? If you’re savvy like people who are out to get your money and things like that. I mean, they set it up so nice too. Like when they sent you the emails, it’s all official.

They have the indigo goal. Even the server is under, you know, you’re looking and the emails are nicely framed and it’s just perfect. Wow.

It’s flawless. And you know, there are, I know enough people who are, you know, there are more, I know more people who are like internet savvy. Like they have, you know, that website, Twitter, that sort of stuff.

But I know there are more who don’t. And they might like dip their toe into the crowdfunding thing and get that email and think that, Oh man, this is great. This is great for $300.

Yeah. I mean, there are some more reasonable ones too. Like for $26, you know, there’s so many of them.

They just, they throw things in your face. They throw like the potential of getting like, I’ve forgotten about those. That’s a good one.

That’s a good one for people to hear about. Oh yeah. You got to go for that.

Yeah. It’s such a, it’s such a, a tough spot because for indie theatre makers, the question is, how do we afford to do this? Like there’s only so many fundraisers you can throw. And right.

Once you do it once, you can’t really do it again. Like if you do, at least for a year, like you’ve got to make it, or you’ve got to make it stunning. Like the theatre companies, the theatre companies that throw fundraisers have somebody whose job it is to do that work.

And people to whom to delegate all the nitty gritty tasks. And you see them coming up with ideas that are innovative for them or for their brand or for what they’re doing. So those of us in the indie world where we’re making our own stuff, it’s like, if you’re going to, if you’re going to do some kind of fundraiser, it’s got to be something unique and interesting or some kind of party or some kind of thing that people are really going to find again, that value and experience the value.

And even just how do you afford it? I mean, I like to think of it as, you know what, I am an artist and some people are, you know, work in IT, you know, and those people have to start small too. They have to start doing contracts that only last two weeks and they only get paid 15 bucks an hour. And then they have to find a new job after that.

It’s like, if you think of the world as we’re all the same and we’re all in the same boat, then you start to think less that I’m the victim and I am someone who can’t afford my art. Like you have to think like, okay, now what is my next step? I have a plan of attack. Like I tried crowdfunding.

Now what is my next goal? Okay, I’m going to try to do grants. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to try to do something else. Sometimes I’m going to have to like pay out of my pocket.

But like that is only temporary. It doesn’t work this time. Yeah.

You know, it’s being able to cycle through and to go. And also we talked about a little bit about the project itself. Like maybe what’s appropriate or the best fit for this project? Yeah, yeah.

It could be that the project needs to be shelved for a while as well. If you keep hitting roadblocks, maybe it isn’t, you know, why this project right now, but it needs to be something that needs to be put away and not something else. Because the other thing that I think people forget as well, there’s that old adage about in a new business, because again, we’re talking about indie theatre as a business, um, that you’re not going to be in the black for the first five years, that you need to expect that you will not make a profit for the first five years, that you will actually be in deficit for the first five years.

So do projects that are not to the scale of Broadway musical wicked in your first five years, but have like long-term goals of like, this is what I want. But for now, let’s do some site-specific things. Let’s build some clout.

Let’s do some two-hander shows. Let’s get my following on Twitter. Let’s get, you know, 50 seats at Red Sandcastle Theatre filled first before, you know, you start booking factory or whatever.

Like it’s, it’s the steps. And I think that as artists, our hearts are so full and our babies that we create are so precious that we forget that we do need to scale it back to the business side where it’s like, I want to put, you know, my proverbial baby, the script that I wrote, or I’ve just found this beautiful Jacobian piece that I could definitely see myself in and whatnot. And I’m going to Kenneth Bronner that shit.

I’m going to produce it. I’m going to throw my weight behind it. And I’m going to do that.

Nobody shows up. Like, it just is a depending of why this, why now. If I’ve been doing, you know, successful two-handers at fringe, where I only have to foot the bill for 750.

And, you know, I show up every day instead of paying people, I show up every day. And it’s my time instead of my money, where I billboard myself. And I go and I shake hands and I give out comps.

And like, you rise in that ladder. A lot of people tend to forget that there is also a ladder in theatre, not so staunch and not so visual as in the corporate ladder. And that’s a direct.

Yeah. As well. Not, yeah.

Oh, and it’s wibbly-wobbly timely. Like, you know, it’s very Doctor Who. Like, you can be the bell of the ball of fringe and sell out and do the cross Canada tour.

And then the next year, where are you? You know? You’re back at Starbucks. Yeah. That is not a failure.

And I think that the other thing to believe it is we are. We are led to believe that’s very, very true, is the fact that just because you’re not at the top, top, top or the bell of the ball anymore, you feel that you’re a failure and you start seeing your work as a failure and you start going through that as well and not seeing it as a building block, as a stepping stone and as a clout builder and seeing it for a positive. Everything, everything that you do builds towards the thing that you’re doing.

So one failure, that’s a lesson learned rather than a failure. Yeah. That’s hard.

That’s life. Failure is hard. It’s hard to swallow.

Failure is hard to swallow. I hate it. Yeah.

But it does come back to like, how are we conditioned to see that? Are we? Yes, it may feel awful, but then get yourself to having a conversation with yourself or with someone who’s professional in that area of, well, what can I learn from this? If you had no bums and seats, talk to a marketing manager. If you had some bums and seats, but all really terrible reviews, so nobody came back and no one shared the word, then I mean, if you wrote the piece yourself, maybe you do need to draw a turn or maybe you do need to talk to a playwright that you trust, whose structure you love and go, what didn’t work about this play? Yeah. It goes back to our listening.

Yeah. You have people advising your work who are honest. Someone who’s going to tell you that your work is bullshit.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s the only way you learn.

I mean, I’m very blessed and fortunate to have a very close relationship with one of my professors who comes and sees my shows and tells me everything that didn’t work. Absolutely everything. And I’m sitting there like, oh, okay.

My heart is being ripped out of my chest. My baby is ugly. My baby is ugly.

I know that he’s doing it for the better good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know he wants me to do well.

And that’s what I want. So tell me everything that didn’t work well. I want to know everything.

Yeah. And then I know my work is on the right track, right? Make changes that night. And I went on stage and I did a different beginning to my show because that’s what you got to do.

That’s the industry, right? Yeah. And that’s the other thing is not being precious about your babies. Listening and providing space to change.

It’s hard. But more buttons will be in seats. More people will be listening to you if you do make that change.

And someone who knows more than a theatre who has designed or directed 150 shows in their lifetime and you just started. I don’t have the kind of knowledge that my professors have. Not even close.

I admit that. But I have a lot to learn. That’s important.

And it’s putting your focus on what is the work as opposed to what is the work I have done. Yeah. What’s the thing I have put out is not the same as what’s the work itself.

The work itself is the doing, is the listening to the audience and saying what resonates with them. What’s the story I’m trying to tell and am I telling it? But again, kill your babies because we get attached to this idea. The thing I’ve done is so perfect.

I actually want to bring what you said back to the idea of crowdfunding. Telling the story. The crowdfund is a story.

And you have to make the people care about it. Even the people who already care about you, make them care about the story of your project. It is a story and you have to look at it like that, I think.

Because I think a lot of places, there are probably a lot of indie theatre companies who look at, okay, so I can’t throw that big fundraiser because I don’t have somebody. The answer is crowdfunding if I do this thing. And it’s not if you don’t do it well or right.

And especially with the video, you have to capture someone in the first five seconds. You have to have your elevator pitch down to five seconds because people’s attention spans these days are only like 30 seconds. I wanted to mention that earlier, this idea of the elevator speech and all these little things that are really important for business and enticing people to like your product.

I think sometimes when we get embarrassed about wanting to talk about our projects is because we have a history of going, I’m doing this most amazing thing and all you can do is burst about it. And for some people, it’s too much. So again, it comes back, what’s that manipulation? How do I entice you to ask me more? How do I market myself? What’s my elevator speech? What are the little things I can do to get you excited about the thing I’m doing? Because yes, I’m excited, but how do I temper that? As a person that can often say too much and go too far, this is the thing I need to learn.

But I guess for some people, it’s the other way. It’s learning to be able to say enough in the right times and actually burst about it. It’s being concise.

This was like the last thing. Which took me three minutes. After last year, my program was learning how to condense what you want to say your show is in what it would take to get to the next floor in an elevator.

It’s like the hardest thing. It’s high school-ish. And it’s the same thing with like a mandate for a company.

50 words takes you days to write because you have to know what it is that you’re making and people have to get that. Like one sentence. There’s so many mandates I read around like that’s garbage or yeah, I understand exactly what that is.

Like Soul Pepper, for example. What does Soul Pepper do? They produce original Canadian works. I think, yeah, they do, right? I think, yeah, they pretty, no.

They’re classic. They do classical theatre. They do both, I think.

They’re getting more into original Canadian work. King’s Convenience was like a big one for them. And they are fostering it a lot.

Yeah, yeah, like new development. Like that’s what Soul Pepper does. Or like Stratford re-envisions Shakespeare.

That’s what they do. Okay, I get that. You know, that’s for a certain audience.

So what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? The interesting thing is that a really good experience for coming up with that elevator pitch is actually fringe. Oh, yeah. First off, my nightmare is what I do, is what I have to do for fringe is walk up and talk to total strangers.

That’s like makes me ill. But it’s like you have to walk up to somebody, talk to them, quickly give them your pitch for the show, grab them quickly. And then, you know, you’re done.

Like you have to learn how to be concise. And that’s sort of like how you would do like your crowdfunding video. You know, grab them in that.

Grab them quick, get them quick because they probably are not going to watch your whole video. But maybe if you can grab them early, they will like, you know, maybe fund your thing. So I guess that comes back to also knowing why this, why now? Absolutely.

Say it with excitement in five seconds. Yeah, I mean, we’ve said it a couple of times is that the why now, why this? Like that kind of passion, like knowing why you’re doing it and the passion for it comes across in your campaign. Rather than I’m doing, you know, I haven’t done Midsummer Night’s Dream before, so I’m doing it now.

I’m getting too old for this role. Help me put it up. These are words you hear a lot.

Why here, why now? And I think we hear them so much that they become almost soft language that we ignore without actually thinking about it. I think another way to rephrase it to give it a fresh perspective is something I read recently. It was instead of asking what you want to be or answering what you want to be when you grow up, the question is, what do you want to change about now? What is it that you want to see change? I’m like, yeah, like how do we make a change, right? That’s what we’re looking for.

That’s what we should be reflecting. What is it that we want to change? Yeah. I definitely want to see that more than how can I waste this hour? Like I feel like theatre that is asking what will I change by doing this? Like why this, why now? It does definitely change my mind too if I put this on, you know, what will people see and how will it change their lives? How will it change, you know, on that? Like just how that bubble gets bigger because that is more interesting to me as an artist.

And I think also, you know, going back, going back, going bigger rather, like that whole human condition of like, I would rather see that show than, you know, the 700th showing of Romeo and Juliet and Ruff’s in, you know, classical thing. Like I just, I don’t need to see the same thing over and over again. But if it’s going to, if there’s going to be change, if there’s going to be something that actually stimulates me, then yes, I want to be here now.

So definitely, I agree with that. For Schneer, and a lot of people do not ask that. No, they don’t.

Because they want, they want to. They want to do the cool show that has like cool bits. Or like they’re self-serving.

Yeah, there is actually a lot of, and we all know, I’m not calling anybody up, but we all know the, I’ve always wanted to play that role. So I’m going to do it. Or your example of, I’m getting too old to play Juliet.

Like how to do it now? So whatever that is. I mean, to each their own, because I’m probably going to do that in another five years. For the last five years, I’ve always wanted to play Kathy.

God forbid you people see it. It’s like, it is definitely, it’s something that, again, as long as, I mean, that can be the reason of why this, why now. But, but do you really think that people are going to throw money behind this? Yeah, that’s not a satisfying answer.

That is a realistic question. People understand that, sure, you can do theatre the Kenneth Brunner way because you want to play Hamlet and you want to be the star and you want to direct it and you want to do all of the things, but people probably won’t pay for it. So, I mean, just like own that ugly baby and you go girl.

But yeah. And know that and be like respectful of that. Because that’s the other side of crowdfunding is the shaming that comes after it.

It’s like the, you know, this didn’t get made. How dare you? I was really excited about this and they might shame their audience. I’ve seen that as well.

Have you seen that with the crowdfunding campaign? I have. The campaigner shames or the potential funders? No, no, the campaigners are just like, well, guys, we’re going to have to call off. We didn’t make it.

Thanks for nothing kind of deal. Like that coming across on their channels being like, we really wanted to bring this to you, but hands in the air. You know, like, what are we supposed to do? We asked you and you didn’t support us.

I guess this isn’t getting made. I’m like, wait, all right. That’s the same kind of guy that writes a rebuttal to their bad review.

Oh, we all know that guy too. Specifically, I know that guy. Yeah, yeah, no, I know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can’t do that. You can’t do that.

Please, everybody listening, please don’t do that. There are two things that you don’t do. Do not shame your audience.

Do not rebut a review. And if you don’t make your crowdfunding campaign, genuinely thank the people who backed it. Yeah.

Genuinely thank those people. Because they might do it again. Because they might do it again.

Shaming your audience is totally not thinking about the long-term goals. Again, it comes back to like, I want to make this project as opposed to what is my raison d’etre? Why am I here? And that continues beyond this project. Yes, it sucks when you don’t get to do the thing you want to do because you believe and you want that thing to happen, but you can’t then go around and say, fuck you all.

Funding. You definitely won’t get things because it follows you. That just means it’s not just the project that dies.

It goes with you as your crowd, right? In social media, you’re going to lose followers for that. Or you’re going to get the kind of followers that are like, yeah, he just told everyone to fuck themselves. I want to back that guy.

They’re actually not going to back you. Those guys, those friendly trolls are not going to back you. There’s no such thing as a friendly troll.

No, because they’re just trolling you. They’re not actually going to back you. They’re going to be like, yeah, do another one.

So we’re going to watch you say, fuck you. But it’s like, no, they don’t. But it’s, it’s, it’s like, it’s, it’s all about like, you know, you have to think about what does this mean? If you don’t make your goal, how do you deal with that? Learning from your failure.

How do you learn from it? Because if we just do the same thing over and over again. That is a definition of insanity. It is.

And yet, and yet I can look at certain companies, crowdfunding campaigns and see the same thing every time. Same post, same description, the same kind of video, same thing every time. I’ve heard from, from working with theatre companies that they’re like, well, you know, we’re just, we’re going to do it again, but we’re, we’re going to not do it in the fall and the winter months because then everybody’s thinking about Christmas.

So they don’t want to spend money on us. So we’re going to, we’re going to do it again. And we’re going to do it in like February or March.

And I’m like, what? Yeah. I don’t think your wallet is that much. It’s not as informed by the seasons as one thinks.

But often when I see that, you know what they do when they, when they do it in a different month, yeah. All right. All right.

All right. I’ll give you a January. What I see is when they do it in a different month, they just sort of pick up the old campaign.

This is what I’m saying. And they just sort of plug it into this campaign. And it’s the same.

They legitimize it by saying, oh, well, maybe in the summertime, it’ll be better. It’s a great reminder that what are we? We are creativity. So apply that to the business model.

Yeah. I guess that’s the hard part is if you’re not business savvy or you don’t believe you’re business savvy, or you believe what people have told you that, oh, you’re an artist, you don’t know business. Yeah.

Then you won’t feel free to apply it. Like, I think it’s one of those things I’m a big fan of. Like, okay, how do I work within this red tape maze? So find the bits that are meant to be the creative expression part and do that.

And if you’re not a writer, find a friend who is a writer or a better writer than you are, at least. Yeah. Give them your ideas.

That’s how I got my first grant. I talked to a friend who’s great at grant writing. I said, this is the thing I want to do.

Please help me. I will pay you for your time and you’ll get more if I get the grant. Yeah.

Because I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to navigate that red tape by myself. So I called on someone for help. And I think because crowdfunding is so new, it can be difficult to find those mentors or those people who are talented at manipulating that system.

Yes, it is. You know, classes are out there. Look for the classes.

Yes. Look for the PDFs and read them. It’s similar to social media.

Social media is the same sort of thing. Because there’s a lot of people who are like, ah, social media. I just put up my event on social media and it will come.

You know, that sort of thing. Which is like the social media is the solution. And Adriana has her head in her hands because this is what she does.

And people don’t listen to her when they say it’s not that. And yeah, right. So I think that it’s one of those things where it’s not the solution.

It’s a tool. It is a tool. In the toolbox.

Yes. And I just am silently raging. I don’t actually have anything good to say at this point.

Other than I’m just really rageful. Again, going back to, you know, looking to your mentors and stuff. I wanted to say that something that we keep going back to is like, how do you get the perks? And how do you get the people to help you if you don’t have the money? Like, that’s what you’re doing.

You’re trying to find the money. Guys, think like buns. Trade that shit.

What can you give to people? Can you give them your time? Can you give them things that you no longer need? Can you barter that stuff? Like, once upon a time, I reached out to Siobhan. And it was like, you know, can we barter about circus stuff, right? Like that you would teach me circus. And that I would bake for you or something silly.

Like, it doesn’t have to be monetary gain behind all the scenes, too. Cookies are very potent currency. They’re like Bitcoin.

Come on. They’re totally Bitcoin. They’re Bitcoins.

Bitcoins. Yes. Feeding artists is a thing, you know? Starving artists, that’s why I’m leading artists is a thing.

But like, reach out. You never know. Because I mean, it never hurts to ask.

And I really wanted to point out, Phil mentioned Amanda Palmer. And I’m a huge fan of her book, The Art of Asking. And that really feeds into this conversation is it is an art.

Asking, you know, not just being like, hey, give me a thing. There is an art to being able to ask for what you really need. And also to ask with grace and to ask with knowing how to ask.

Like maybe not walking up to some stranger and being like, hey, come see the show for $100. Without knowing your logline, without knowing the reasons why and whatnot. Like, again, doing all of that research before your campaign.

But that reaching out to mentors and, you know, just saying, you know, maybe that very first instances, I would love to take you out for dinner. What’s your favorite place? If you can’t make, if you can’t afford that dinner, make them dinner. See, even if like, do they have dogs? I’ll totally be your dog walker for the next six months or whatever you want to barter.

Like you think outside the box of the money restraints, because I know that that’s something that really gets people itchy, is that you don’t have money to begin with. Try and think outside of that box. And what do you have to offer that would not devalue you? Because that’s the other thing, too, is that you don’t want to clean toilets.

Don’t offer to clean toilets. No, absolutely. Know what you’re putting out there, because somebody’s going to say yes.

And then you’re going to be like, oh, crap, I’ve got to do it. And so know your value as well. And going back to Haley’s Excel sheet, maybe make an Excel sheet for what you’re willing to put up.

And like what monetary and bartering goods that you can put out on the table to be like, all right, what do you give me for this? Because I need your help. Yeah, it’s really interesting that whole, and, you know, a number of times I’ve thought about Amanda Palmer’s book, The Art of Asking, because that art of asking is this thing that we often have trouble with. I have trouble with it.

Like just coming out and saying, like, that’s what a crowdfund is. Like, I need money. And it’s a creative way of asking for it, but also giving for it, too.

And in the same way that we often have trouble with, like, promoting ourselves, we often have trouble asking for things as well. And I found her book, like, really helpful, just generally. We’re almost at an hour, and I never intended to have any, like, this was just going to be a discussion about crowdfunding.

And there isn’t a solution, I don’t think. If there was a solution, I would immediately delete this podcast and sell a course in how to do a successful crowdfunding campaign. And I would, that would be my living.

But I think that maybe we’ve had some really good ideas, and hopefully a lot to think about. I know I got a lot to think about. And I want to thank you all, Haley, Siobhan, Adriana, for coming on and being a part of this first of my roundtable discussions.

It’s great. Thank you.