When it comes to spending money for shows, my philosophy is this . . . get the very best, for the very least.  Simple, right?  Get the best for the audience, and save the most for the investors – it’s the secret of coming in under budget and producing a great show.

Harder done than blogged, for sure.  So here’s a fun little game that I play every day on my shows, with my company, and even in my personal life.

It’s called “Save 10/Make 10”!  (Or as your budgets get bigger, “Save 100/Make 100,” and you keep adding zeros.)  Ready to play?

Here are the simple rules.

Every day you try to find a way to save $10 or make $10 that you wouldn’t have saved or made unless you thought about it.  So if this were your personal life, maybe it would be not going to Starbucks one day.  Or just ordering a tall instead of a venti.  There’s a couple bucks.  Maybe you walk to work instead of the subway.  And so forth.  You’ll save $10.  Do that every day and ch-ching.  You’ll save $3,650 a year.  At the same time, you look at seeing how you can make $10 a day.  Do you put something on eBay?  Do you ask your boss for an hour of OT?  What can you do to make just a few extra bucks?  If you can figure out a way to make $10 a day, then you’ll add $3,650 to your bottom line.

By saving and making, you’ve just changed your life to the tune of $7,300 a year.  Not bad, huh?

On a show, do you look at cheaper batteries for your microphones?  Print a program that’s a page less?  Check out cheaper dry cleaners?

And to make a few extra, is there a VIP ticket to add to your ticket menu?  A new piece of merch to sell?  Do you make some calls to potential group buyers yourself?

Doesn’t take much to add $73,000 to a show’s bottom line (“Save $100/Make $100″”).

You won’t always win this little savings/making game.  Some days you’ll save/make more than others.  But either way, it puts you in the right frame of mind every day to constantly be looking for the most efficient ways to run your shows, your business and your life.

Try it today.  It will work.  And it’s the perfect example of how setting a small, achievable goal in the short term and then repeating it can be much more effective than setting a larger goal for the long term.

Because it’s often a small change that can add up to a heck of a lot more than just spare change.

Good luck!

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