Christmas Contacts

Wednesday December 19th, 2007 - Lake Villa, IL

Good day of work today. I sent out 66 Christmas cards to bookers and fans and people I know will be glad to hear from me. I am sending them out this late because I don’t want it to be the game of ‘he sent me one so I need to send him one back’. I never liked that. This isn’t about getting anything back. I just wanted to send some sincere greetings to people.

Most relationships in show business have a one sided flow. Comedians ALWAYS call a booker they want to get in with. It’s not the other way around. Opening acts call people in higher spots to try and get bookings with them. It’s also almost an exclusive thing. It goes one way and rarely goes the other. It’s just how life works but especially in show business.

What I tried to do today was send cards out to people going ‘the other way’. It really is a great feeling to get a greeting of any kind from someone ahead of yourself in the game. I know what that feels like and I try to do it in return if I can. When I was starting out I met a guy named Tim Cavanagh who treated me very well when he didn’t have to. He made an effort to learn my name and he sent me a Christmas card that year and I felt like a big star.

I tried to do the same thing with as many addresses as I could find today and it felt good to see the pile grow to 66. It will cost me under a buck with stamp and card and just a few minutes to hand write a greeting but I know it will be worth every second and penny. I can sit and brood about how much I hate Christmas or I can try to make someone else’s day.

I’m running out of time and tomorrow is my last day but I have a lot more cards left and a few more addresses so I’ll see how many more I can do before I call it another year. I’m laying a good foundation for next year by doing this too. It will help me clean up my list of contacts and make them current. I’m way behind on it and that’s yet another big project to get to in 2008. This one is important though. Contacts are the life blood of my business.

I’ve been letting them lapse lately and that’s got to stop. My list of contacts has a header on it that says ‘Contacts - 2003’. That’s five years of people coming and going and getting married and divorced and dying and moving and graduating and who knows what else? I’ll start all over and make a list with categories of all the people I plan on working with now.

It’s amazing how that list changes from year to year. People drift in and out of life and it doesn’t always have a pattern. It just happens. Looking through my old list today I noticed a lot of people who were very close to me just a few years ago that aren’t now. I also saw a few people who weren’t very close back then that are now. It’s a list that always grows.

What this basically is is ‘myspace’ without a computer. I could just send an e-card but it doesn’t have the same impact in my opinion as a hand written snail mail greeting card with a funny joke on it that has personal meaning to the individual person. To me that’s special.

I want people to feel special because that’s how we all want to be treated. I know I do but it rarely happens so I am going to try to do it to others as much as I possibly can. I have a huge task ahead next year to make my contact list current but it’s always worth the effort.