Thursday, August 18, 2011

100...

Goal: 100 true fans.

TRUE fans.

People that will come to the show and watch and interact and sing along and clamor for the setlist and wait outside the stage door. Except it will be a coffee shop, so there will be no stage door. But they'll want to show up early to have a cup of joe and chat about life and love and pain and joy and the mundane and the amazing.

There are some constraints...

1. Fans are NOT friends. Your wife, your mom, your son, your best friend, your co-workers, your acquaintances... they're not fans. They can love your stuff, but they're not fans because they're biased. Unless they would love your stuff regardless of the fact that it came from you... then they're fans. But they're also family and friends, which means that as fans, they're afforded special privileges. Which, again, feeds into their bias. They're like "sponsored" folk. People don't normally honestly evaluate that which has strings attached...

2. Fans are NOT fleeting. A fan is someone that is there because you've earned their trust and the right to monopolize their attention. A fan does not latch on to you because you are a trend. A fan is not fairweather. A fan should be appeased and placed first.

3. Fans mean nothing... if you're not being true to yourself. If you're being cheap, relying on gimmicks, shunning the paying of dues and the building of something authentic... your fans will stick like painter's tape.

4. In all reality, 100 is not that difficult... and supremely difficult. When you cut out friends and family... when you need to convert 100 strangers through your craft... when you need to cut through the noise and reach down into someone's being and change the path of their life... 100 times... it won't be easy. It shouldn't be easy. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

5. Fans mean everything. They're your lifeblood. They're an extension of yourself. You are your fans. And in that regard, even though friends can't be fans... fans can most definitely be friends...

6. 100 begins with 1...

It started a long time ago... and it never ends... get to work, Glynn.

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