CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, November 02, 2022

Lessons Learned: Instructive Anecdotes From Four Decades In "The Biz"

ProSoundWeb: I’ve been at this for more than 40 years, and in that time, I’ve learned a few things about people and money. Here are a few of them.

2 comments:

Carly Tamborello said...

It is almost absurd the extent to which people will go to pull a fast one over you where money is concerned. We like to think that most people are good and will generally respect the rules of business, but the truth – as shown by these anecdotes – is in this day and age, that’s pretty naive. Clearly this person has learned through experience and they were able to set better practices to make sure they were getting the fees they deserved and not overpaying where they didn’t need to. The first story about the guy taking off $20 from each gig sticks out especially to me. If you have agreed to do a job for a certain price, it is disrespectful to your time and labor to try to reduce that without warning, especially if someone else is simply claiming that money when it had not been earned.

Sydney de Haan said...

It’s really a shame that so much of our industry he will run into people to try and scam you out of the money that you’re out. Especially since we’re doing predominantly freelance gigs where there’s not a third-party for your funds to go through. My big takeaways from this article is always make sure to invoice on time And be persistent about when you were old money otherwise you’ll probably never see that money again. I also took away how it’s important to understand that sometimes people are having emotional moments when it comes to finances and that it should be handled with a certain level of caution. Far too often we hear stories about the club not paying a DJ the correct amount because she did XYNZ even though she performed it was agreed and hired that set. In the sun to stream many people trying to save a buck or two but never let people walk away with the money that you are owed.