Looking for a little #MondayMotivation? We’re pulling out past stories that are still just as relevant today. Here’s a pearl from Jim: Does Our Industry Make It Harder to Buy Tickets on Purpose? Here’s the thing about live entertainment: It’s inconvenient. It’s just a fact. A potential customer has to transport her actual human body to a place other than her own sofa at a time that she doesn’t get to choose. That may sound stupid and obvious, but that’s only because it IS...

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Looking for a little #MondayMotivation? We’re pulling out past stories that are still just as relevant today. Here’s a pearl from Jim: Full Buildings Drive Everything. Success carries within it the seed of failure. The things that make something strong also make it vulnerable to future decline. The sports industry has a problem, and I feel obligated to point it out. Just as a few years ago, I identified some problems that the NFL was about to experience. I see structural problems for all major sports...

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Looking for a little #MondayMotivation? We’re pulling out past stories that are still just as relevant today. Here’s a pearl from Jim: Go Big or Go Home? Fixing a Broken Business Model. When people inside an organization either can’t or won’t confront the reality of their business model, bad things tend to happen. Symphonies and orchestras are having an increasingly hard time balancing their P&Ls. Here are two unfortunate but typical recent stories detailing these challengs, about the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra and the Delaware Symphony Orchestra. It’s...

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Looking for a little #MondayMotivation? We’re pulling out past stories that are still just as relevant today. Here’s a pearl from Jim: Sometimes People Prefer to Pay More. At LA Stage Day in 2014, I talked about Revenue Per Seat and the potential dangers in managing by Average Ticket Price. We also had time to open the discussion up to any and all questions about pricing, and there’s one I’d like to share. If your mission (this mostly applies to non-profits) includes accessibility, how do you...

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Looking for a little #MondayMotivation? We’re pulling out past stories that are still just as relevant today. Here’s a pearl from Jim: The Perils of a "Break-Even" Price. If you’re not careful about the way you evaluate the price at which you need to sell tickets in order to break even, you could be setting yourself up for some big losses. Here’s how a “break-even” price gets established a lot of the time: somebody, somewhere takes the total cost of delivering a show...

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Looking for a little #MondayMotivation? We’re pulling out past stories that are still just as relevant today. Here’s a pearl from Jim: The Easiest Mistake in the World to Make About Pricing ... The easiest mistake in the world to make about pricing … is thinking there is such a thing as a “discount buyer.” And I can prove it to you. Next time you’re gathering six or eight of your co-workers for a meeting and have a few minutes before it gets started,...

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Looking for a little #MondayMotivation? We’re pulling out past stories that are still just as relevant today. Here’s a pearl from Jim: Ticket Buyers Don't Care About Your Costs. That sounds a little harsh, but it’s essentially true. When it comes time to evaluate what they are willing to pay to see your show, ticket buyers do not care what you are spending to create that show. Cost is your problem. Price is theirs. This is a confusing subject for people, and my goal here is to...

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Looking for a little #MondayMotivation? We’re pulling out past stories that are still just as relevant today. Here’s a pearl from Jim: The Fastest Path to Devaluing Your Tickets. It’s simple, really. Build a good email list for your venue/show/organization and send them discounts to your own show. If you want to Turbo-devalue your tickets, always follow the same or a similar cadence in how you do this. I know of a major organization (that I’m not even going to name or say...

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Looking for a little #MondayMotivation? We’re pulling out past stories that are still just as relevant today. Here’s a pearl from Jim: Good Pricing Is Free Money. Good pricing is free money. This means that if you’ve paid little or no attention to how you set prices, or if you’ve done it mostly based on costs or based on what you’ve done before or what other people are charging for “similar” shows, you’re in luck. A small amount of focused thought and...

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Looking for a little #MondayMotivation? We’re pulling out past stories that are still just as relevant today. Here’s a pearl from Jim: Emotional Pricing is Like Drunk Dialing. Many of you would never, ever drunk dial. You would drunk text. I liked the alliteration of “Drunk Dial” so I went with it in the presentation, but it doesn’t matter because the idea is the same: Don’t do it! It feels good to express some powerful emotion via text to that person who really...

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