Performances

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Business, Chris Hamilton, Performance, Roger Skai, Thomas J. Bellezza, top of the bottom pile

Performances

We love performing. How often we perform depends on if we are on tour, working material, or walking around. Busy does as busy is. There’s a sense of interesting concern in comedy. A thought that if you are not seen performing then you are not doing anything. Is performance really progress? How aggressively should a person be performing to be considered professional? Paid/unpaid!?

If a comedian performs every Friday / Saturday, and is being paid, are they more successful then a comedian performing for free seven days a week? What about a comedian performing only three months out of the year on tour? Our feeling is performance is our reward for doing our job. The job of making a career and getting all our business in order.

We look at everyone with the same amount of respect. Working, paid, unpaid, touring, just starting out, or whatever your situation is, we love and respect the crap out of you. This is a hard business, comedy. It’s beautiful when you see people doing what they love. The idea should be to judge less, working together more, and inspire one another to be successful in both business and entertainment!

“Look to the future, because that is where you’ll spend the rest of your life.” ~ George Burns

Top of the Bottom Pile: The best of the worst, your second best choice!

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Another Top Meeting

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Business, Chris Hamilton, comedy, Meetings, Roger Skai, Thomas J. Bellezza, top of the bottom pile

Another Top Meeting

A good meeting makes things great. What makes a good meeting? Conversation, trust, and a willingness never to hold back thoughts, ideas, and brainstorming. This week was the first time, in a while, we met face to face. It feels so much better than Skyping. The physical aspect of it really brings teams together. You get a chance to remember each of us are real.

Our meetings consist of laughing, S.M.A.R.T. Goals, planning out City walks, and really learning about one another. These are people who are going to be working together and making a difference. Changing a game which continues to remain stagnate. A system of ideas which maintain a status quo. We want others to change their game and make a difference too.

There is an amazing feeling when our efforts make others change up their style. Start working as a team, and more importantly, know that we too want to help other people in this industry. What we have planned for comedy is more than just jokes, more than a scene, but an empire to see others succeed. To open doors for ourselves so we can break down walls for other entertainers who deserve a chance. 

Top of the Bottom Pile: The best of the worst, your second best choice!

Why Our Brand Building is so Important

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Business, Entertainment, Networking

So many Comics get wrapped up in the idea of “I have to be brilliant before I can be a brand. I have to get so good at my craft that everyone loves me right off the bat and I become this huge success and get to live my dream.” We are doing both. People love the journey, so just posting pictures of ourselves at an Open Mic or hanging out with like minded people can do almost just as much for us as slaying a crowd.

People may find you funny but once you’re off stage, that set ends and what you shared stays there. They want to be able to connect with you to create conversation beyond the stage and they do this because they buy into you as a brand. They are interested in what you have to offer and little things like an Instagram, Twitter, or blog can keep the interaction going long after the performance.

Getting people interested and talking about you is a way to the top. Let people buy into you as you’re getting better and those people will stick to you throughout your career because that’s what it’s all about; getting people to buy into your brand — what you’re selling. Those will be the people, when your craft is perfected, saying “Well we were there since the beginning. We’ve watched you grow as an artist, we watched the foundation get built and now see what is built on top of it” and they’ll be just as valuable as the people you pick up when it’s all nice and neat and in a little bow.

Our website is our social hub for people to find out who we are, what we’re up to and if they’d like to talk with us, here’s how you can do it and meanwhile we haven’t said a thing about performing. It may sound cliche, but if it’s already built when they come, you’re seemingly one leg up on the foundation already. Lay the groundwork, and reap the benefits as you learn. You’re going to have to do it all anyway, why put a time frame on “getting perfect” first, if you can just do it all little but little as you go?

Stay piled, friends.

From,

Support Systems

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Advice, Business, Comedians, comedy, Entertainment, Funny, Kenny Murdock, Roger Skai, Thomas J. Bellezza, top of the bottom pile, tour

This past week we checked out a show at Gotham Comedy Club called “The Sisters of Comedy”. It was a showcase of talent where every comic was of African descent. We weren’t just hanging around hoping to get a spot as there would be nowhere we fit for the obvious reason; we’re not females. We were there to experience a different side of Comedy, with material we can not possibly write ourselves since we have no experience as Women. It was a time to just sit back and enjoy our colleagues work on their craft.

It was a terrific experience. Every lady was just as funny as the last and it really showed how we support the cause more than exploit it. We don’t have to be put on stage every time we pop into a performance because there’s much more going on off stage than there is on. Making our peers laugh is almost as valuable as making an audience laugh, to us anyway. The friendships we built that night are going to blossom accordingly with how we treat them, and much like flowers, that is a beautiful thing.

You don’t have to be a Comedian to follow the advice we give. Your job in itself can utilize a lot of the teachings throughout this blog. Be nice to everyone, talk WITH people and not TO them, and learn the importance of building the foundations for relationships. The more people you know, and the strength of the bonds of that network can only help you, not hinder you. There will be no snakes in the grass, because snakes don’t build relationships, they exploit shortcuts and easy moves. In the long run however, they will fall, and on the way down no one will be there to catch them.

Stay Piled, friends.