Self promotion. What's up with that? That's me wearing a sports coat with the sleeves rolled up in a Seinfeld voice. I have always said that there is nothing worse than that guy that invites you to see his band play on Monday night. He's almost kind of guilting you into it. You want to support the guy but you really don't want to go out on Monday night. You're burnt from work and you just want to zone out in front of the TV, overeat, masturbate and then fall asleep. You see him inviting another guy at the other end of the room and you try to avoid eye contact and make it by him, but no, you've been spotted. He makes a B-line for you and you're caught. I inevitably agree to go, with expectations that this is gonna suck. Having expectations of it sucking, dreading the event, and thinking of ways to get out of it probably don't set you up for a mind frame of having a good time.
Is it the guy who is asking me to see his band play the one that puts me in this negative space? He obviously, at least consciously, wants to have good vibes spread about in regards to his band and his Monday night show. So how does he ironically pass out the bummer vibe? It's anyone who shamelessly self promotes we seem to have an aversion to. I love the Movie the Tao of Steve. He had three rules for getting the Ladies and I'll try to paraphrase here: 1. Do something excellent in their presence. 2. Be desire-less. 3. Walk away. I'm pretty sure this was the general idea of the Steve philosophy for getting chicks.
So I go to see this guys band and guess what? The whole thing sucks. The music sucks, the singer sucks, the drummer sucks, songwriting sucks and the overall mix is wrong. They talk in between songs about how this song is going to be on their next album. One girlfriend in the audience is really excited. The audience is about 8 people who were most likely dragged to be there. Chicks don't give a fuck sometimes. If your in a band it just turns them on, they love the rock and roll bad boy. The guy sucks lady!! What is your problem? It's women like you that are allowing this guy to think his band is good and I blame you for me being guilted out tonight. But enough about my resentment towards women.
Back to my point, this guy in the band is breaking all the rules. Number one he's supposed to be excellent. Just be an incredible band and we'll love you for it, but no these guys suck. So instead of doing something great for us they decide to do something terrible for us. Number two is be desire-less. Don't want it. Be able to take it or leave it. I remember a business guy once told me that the best and strongest sales tactic was indifference. Don't give a fuck either way. These guys gave a fuck. These guys tried so hard, so hard that I wanted to puke. Number three is walk away. In the movie it was the guys that hung around the chick and clung to her and tried to hard that failed. It was the guy that was awesome in front of her, didn't give a fuck, and then walked away that the girl went for.
I listened to a podcast with Dave Hill on the Sound of Young America and he spoke of how he wanted to do comedy so he started an hour long talk show. The first show was awesome. The next four shows sucked and no one wanted to come see them anymore. His first thought was that he just started doing comedy, so why was he trying to do an hour right from the start? Maybe he should do a couple minutes? His realization of why his show began to suck? He tried too hard. Lesson learned: Don't try hard. Just open the nozzle and let it flow freely.
When I first started my talk show I had found something special. It felt new and it really felt like I was on to something. I'm a natural leader always have been, President of 6th grade, student council in Jr. High and class president my Junior and Senior year in high school. One thing that I have been able to do in the past on a number of different occasions is bring people together. I was bringing people to my talk show and it was something different. I wish I could say that I didn't care but I did. I think the physical act of bringing different and strange people into my bedroom was what ended up being some type of secret ingredient that turned the beginning of my show and overall vibe into something new and excellent. It wasn't me but it was the result of this perfect storm I was creating that was excellent.
I was always self conscious about becoming the guy asking people to see his band play but now I was not feeling that at all. People were approaching me to come to the show. I was mentioning to people that I was starting a talk show at parties and it was an interesting and fun thing to talk about. Even if I invited someone to come to the talk show I didn't mind it because it didn't feel like dragging people to something they didn't want to do it felt like I was letting people in on a secret that they were excited to learn.
I've written enough now, more on this topic later
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