Wednesday May 23rd, 2012 – North Chicago, IL
It’s time to transform theory into reality, and make something positive happen. Whining won’t accomplish that, so it was up early to attend the quarterly breakfast meeting of Visit Lake County of which I am a member to kiss hands and shake babies - and verse vicea. Networking is a must.
Lake County, IL is an excellent location for me. It’s halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago, and also very near Kenosha, WI where I have a number of friends in addition to ‘The Mothership Connection’ radio show Sunday nights on AM 1050 WLIP. I wasn’t thrilled about moving out to the sticks when I did, but I’m finding it much to my liking now. This is the perfect spot for me.
That being said, planting some roots is a smart thing to do. Joining Visit Lake County will help me do that if I follow through and use all the resources membership offers. The staff there are all down to earth sweet people, but my main contact is Jayne Nordstrom. She has been a sweetheart to deal with and always directs me to anything in the immediate area she thinks might be useful.
She suggested I show up for this quarterly event to see what’s going on in the area this summer and I’m glad I did. There’s a lot going on throughout the county during the summer, and tourism is a huge part of it. I have to believe I can fit in somewhere, and I want to. This is my home now.
As I’ve said before, I’d also like to do this same formula in Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison and Rockford, IL. Between those four places and everything in between which includes Lake County there have to be countless possibilities off the radar of what would be considered ‘normal’ work.
I want to establish myself as the go to source when it comes to holiday party comedy shows or emcee work all kinds of events. Pressing the flesh at meetings like this will help plant seeds to be sewn at a later date. The good thing is, I’m not competing with an ocean of others as in comedy.
Getting booked consistently in top level comedy clubs is getting harder and harder, but this is a whole new potential market. Awareness is the first requirement, and then word of mouth kicks in after that. I know I’ll be able to deliver when someone hires me, and be easy to deal with as well.
That’s when word spreads, and hopefully before long I’ll be asked to do all kinds of events that nobody advertised. And, it’s all close to home on top of that. There are far more than the 100,000 number of potential fans Lenny Bruce used to talk about located between those four cities, and it might come close in Lake County alone if I work these contacts hard enough. This is prime area.
The paradigms of what used to be absolutely etched in stone are now changing completely, and keeping close to home is a tremendous perk. Gas prices aren’t going down any time soon, so this is absolutely worth my effort. Profits of traveling entertainers of all kinds are being sucked up by fuel costs, so it’s time to adapt or get out of the business. But I don’t know what else I would do.
And truth be told, I don’t want to do anything else. I love the creative part of what I’m doing; it just doesn’t bring in enough consistent cash at the moment. If I can cut way down on travel costs and find more local or at least regional sources of income, it would improve my life dramatically in a very short time. Everyone dreams of Hollywood, but right now I’ll settle for Lake County.
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