If you’re a singer who wants to make money from music, online singing or in person, prepare for a mind-blowing experience.
In this final video #3, I continue my interview with Paul Draper, magician, actor, singer, and all-around performer who’s figured out how to make money singing online and in person.
If you want to be more, reach more, become more, to make more money singing, this video is for you.
To help you start making money immediately, I’ve taken right from the video, 42 ways to Make Money Singing and put them on this PDF which you can download for free here.
Chuck Gilmore: This is very powerful stuff, Paul. Let me ask you too, if we could take a lot of the things we’re talking about here are big events, and big cities, and big companies and things. What about the singer, who is in a small town, India, small town, USA, small town, UK. What do they do in a smaller place to be able to do some of the things that you’re describing?
Paul Draper: Exactly the same, but smaller. You say what are the major employers in my town? In most towns, that’s going to be the university, the hospital, the Walmart, the Lowe’s, the grocery store, the high school. Who are the big employers? Again, we, as entertainers, we need to get in front of people who are gathering. Who’s the church? Who’s got the most employees and the most people, or who’s serving the most people? If you go to a Walmart, that Walmart may have 1,000 employees. Next, count all of their people, for all of their shifts, and they’re a 24-hour Walmart, maybe 1,000 employees and family members.
Now, if you say to them right now for employee appreciation, let’s say you give everybody a donut and a can of soda. That doughnut is 50 cents, that can of soda is 50 cents, that’s a dollar a person. Well, for that same dollar a person, $1,000 dollars, I’ll show up and I will do a 20 minute show for everybody. I promise you, they’re going to remember that a lot longer than that doughnut and that soda. You look and say what events are these groups already having? You go to the local high school, and they’re going to have a prom, and a grad night, and a pep rally, and a homecoming, and their theatrical show.
Not only that, but they need motivational speakers and inspirational speakers throughout the year, who come to their events and they’re willing to pay maybe a couple hundred dollars to stand up. You just tell your journey about being a singer and what it is to overcome your fears of singing, or your fears of stage fright, and how that helps people, sing a couple of songs and you delight them.
Furthermore, you find who are the employers who care about their people, and you give them an idea that they’ve never thought of before. They have a band every year.
Every year, they have a band. Every third year, they have a murder mystery. I have a friend of mine. I was telling you the story offline. My friend, Jay Joseph, he was Billy Flynn in Chicago, the Broadway tour of Chicago. [Singing 00:30:51] He was in the sit-down production of Chicago that went to Vegas. It was supposed to open in the biggest theater in Vegas and be a long running sit-down show and 9/11 happened. We’re coming up on the 20th anniversary of that, or it just passed by the time people watch this. The show shut down.
Here he is, he’s moved to Vegas. He’s bought a home. He’s there. What is he going to do? In Las Vegas, first, he went and became a singing gondolier. Then from that, he decided to create his own musical murder mystery shows. He created basic plots that have three men and three women. One of them was a leading man and a leading woman. One was a character man and a character woman. One was an ingenue man and an ingenue woman and they had different love interests. At first, they were pretty basic scripts. He threw in some popular musical theater songs, changed a few words to a couple of them. Paid the ASCAP BMI rights to do it.
Then went to everybody and said, “Let’s do these murder mystery musical theater shows.” He not only employed himself, but other actors as well. He went to the casinos, but also Native American casinos and other casinos around the country and they have VIP events. Events for their slot machine players, denser people that spend a lot of money in the casino. He said, “Let me do these events,” and then started running musical treasure hunts. Then I did one for Otis Spunkmeyer Cookies, where I broke up everybody. They’re the group that sells the cookies at the high schools. I got them to break up their teams.
I put a Broadway actor with every team, or a Broadway music director with each team. They each received a classic rock and roll song. They had to rewrite the rock and roll song to be about their company. Then each team had to stand up in front of the entire group and sing that song and that was their event for the night. These big companies, they have big budgets. Smaller companies have smaller budgets. A car dealership might only have $100 to pay you to come to their sales meeting on Monday morning and do something for the sales staff. A big company like doing a national event for Chase Bank, they don’t blink an eye at paying $100,000, if it’s something that actually fulfills their need.
Chuck Gilmore: I could see where someone might say, “Okay, I can do this. I can go talk to people,” but I think people might be concerned that that their need doesn’t necessarily match your set list. How would you recommend then that someone, who wants to go and sing for an event, would prepare themselves for any kind of event, or any kind of need, or any particular angle? You can’t have 10 shows going in your head at once, or maybe you can. Maybe that’s what you’re talking about.
Paul Draper: You can charge more, the more of a bespoke experience, a personalized experience that you create. Now, if you just want to target a market. You’re going to be the person that does Pride events, and that’s all you do, you can book a different Pride event every day in May, June and July. Let’s do an event for the teams that are setting it up, an event for the teams that are sponsoring it, or an event for the teams that are donating things. Furthermore do a pre-event for people that are the VIP buyers. Nevertheless, let’s do the events through June. Now in July, let’s do thank you events.
You can do that or you can be the I only do Renaissance fairs, or I only work a Dickens festivals, or I only work. You can be that person who does that. I have a friend of mine that all he does is balloon animals at county fairs. He makes $100,000 a year in the four months of county fairs. Then the rest of the year, he does what he wants. You can pick a target market. I had a friend of mine that his targeted market was country clubs. That’s all he worked. Every country club, every golf course that’s a high-end golf course, has a country club.
They have memberships and they have membership dinners. All he did was he went from country club to country club, or yacht club to yacht club, doing their events. One thing that I spent a year doing was historic mansions. I went to all the historic mansions in America and said, “I will sing songs and perform magic from your time period. This is a song that was played in Houdini’s show.” That’s too far back. As a voice teacher you’d be like bring it forward. You have to create something that actually fulfills them. Here, name a musical that you might know songs from?
Chuck Gilmore: Well, like you said, Man of La Mancha, or The King and I.
Paul Draper:The King and I, great. The King and I is about changing someone’s heart. The King and I is about saying the way I’ve done things forever, just because it’s my tradition and the way I’ve done it forever, is not always right. That we can learn from each other, and that we can learn from each other through loving each other. I did a commercial for Android phones years ago. The whole commercial was together apart, that even though we’re apart, we can feel like we’re together. I could pull songs from the King and I to do something for Android phones all about even though we’re apart, we can feel together, or pull things from My Fair Lady.
I didn’t think I liked her, but I grew accustomed to her face. You can say what are the key components of these shows? Are they about innovation, about change, about consistency? What are the companies that their messages mesh with those messages? If you want to go work for Coca-Cola, your message just has to be about fun. I’d like to teach the world to sing. They had that commercial wasn’t that Coke, or was it Pepsi?
Chuck Gilmore: I think it’s Coke.
Paul Draper: Coke. They did the I’d like to teach the world to sing campaign. You could bring that back and talk about how you learn to sing, and how much you want to teach the world to sing, because there’s nothing more fun and more fulfilling than singing, and then a dehydrating Coke.
Chuck Gilmore: Yeah. My character in My Fair Lady was Doolittle. With a little bit of luck, they’ll work for you.
Paul Draper: Right.
Chuck Gilmore: That may not go over with corporate America. I’m not sure.
Paul Draper: You can do that, too. The real message of that song is I’m clever and I want to have fun. If you wanted to do a Doolittle song, song about a little bit of luck, go work for a multi-level marketing company. Go work for LuLaRoe go work for one of them, and talk about with a little bit of luck, you’ll be clever and you’ll get all these people to sell your product. I’m not saying to do that. I am saying that with any song, there is a moral, there’s a message. There is a company that matches that moral and message. You can create an entire show for that. You can create a theme show that we’re doing all the songs of Zero Mostel, we’re doing all the songs of the Rat Pack.
It is about doing more than just showing up and singing the song.
What we’re trained to do is give me a song, give me a script, give me a costume, give me lights, and sound, and I’ll find the emotion in the song. I’ll find the moments to take the breath and I’ll emote. I’ll stand here and be a beautiful vessel for this, but you give me everything else. This does take an entrepreneurial spirit, where we have to put on the hat. It’s a bit like this one back here. It’s a bit of a Mad Hatter’s hat of we have to put on the hat of I’m going to be the entrepreneur. I am going to be the director, the lighting designer, the set list builder. Furthermore, going to sell it and am going to come up with this.
I promise you, every company is having a Christmas party and they could use you. Every company is having a conference or a trade show, and they could use you. Every ballgame needs somebody who’s singing, and every fair, and festival, and gallery opening, every shop opening, they need entertainment. You can be that because people need music, and they need song, and they need story.
Humans are story-driven creatures and we connect to story. Yes, be more, reach more, become more.
Chuck Gilmore: Well, this is beyond amazing. This is pure inspiration, really so thank you very much, Paul. Just in conclusion, you’ve just given us a lot of practical things that we can actually do. What would be some parting words of encouragement or some guidance that may be able to help push us over the edge to get out and try some of these things?
Paul Draper: Nobody woke up this morning and said, “I need to book Paul Draper.” Nobody woke up this morning and said, “I can’t go to bed tonight until I get Paul a job.” I have agents and managers, who work for me and work with me but even they don’t care like that. You will never, ever have anyone on earth who’s a better salesman than you are. If you’re a terrible salesman, that’s as good as it’s going to get. You will always have to be sales person in chief of your product, and getting your product out there, and caring about your product.
I remember I have this written down next to my desk and I remember it every day that people don’t know that I exist. They don’t know that I fulfill their needs and they don’t know that I’m available. They don’t know that I’m available at a price they can afford. It is my job every day to reach out to people and tell them I exist. I know your needs. I fulfill your needs. I’m available at a price that you can afford. If they don’t get it, it’s not their fault. They’re not rejecting me. I just didn’t share with them well. I wasn’t good enough at letting them know that I fulfill their needs.
Here, this is a way to test it. You said you charge $75 a half hour for voice lessons right now. I can charge $75 a half hour for business and marketing advice. If you want to contact me, it’s pauldraper.com, pauldraper.com. You can contact me and I will help you to see how to take the next steps in that journey. If you don’t call me, I’m not going to be sad. I didn’t do a good enough job showing you that I can fulfill your needs. That’s all it is, is just deciding, deciding to take charge in this.
Deciding that more people need to hear what I have to sing, and have to share than just the few people in this or that show that I happen to cast in. Now, you get to be a lead in every show that you’re in.
Chuck Gilmore: Excellent. This is terrific. We can find you on pauldraper.com. Are you on some social?
Paul Draper: All of them. I’m on all of them. I’m either at pauldraper.com, or Paul W. Draper, or you can find me on Wikipedia, and LinkedIn, and Instagram, and Twitter, and Facebook. I think there’s even still a MySpace. I haven’t looked at it in 20 years. It’s probably corrupt. Don’t go there. I’m on all the things. I’m on Clubhouse and I’m on all of them.
Chuck Gilmore: Great. Well, thank you very much, Paul. This has been priceless and maybe we’ll have a second round in the future.
Paul Draper: Okay.
Chuck Gilmore: With a little bit of luck.
Paul Draper: Thank you.
Chuck Gilmore: All right. Thank you.
So much good! You can watch these over and over again for inspiration. To save you time and to help you get started making money, get the 42 Ways to Make Money Singing PDF now.
I’m Chuck Gilmore with Power to Sing. For you, making money singing can be second nature!
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