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[0:00] Ken Davenport: Hey everybody, guess who? I told you I'd be back when I had something very important to talk about. And listen, we are debuting right now a very special six-part mini podcast series. Here's what we did. We did a live stream theater maker challenge on Facebook recently called Places Please. What theater makers can do right now to get ready for the rebirth, the renaissance, the reopening, whatever it is you want to call it of the theater. This is a pivotal time of theater going. We need to be ready for it. So we got some fantastic speakers to join us. And all they did was talk about strategies, tips, techniques, hacks, what they are doing right now to get more theater and better theater out there in the world.

That's what we're gonna do. We're gonna do the six-part audio series now, which is ripped straight from this Theater Makers Challenge. You're gonna hear from some fantastic speakers over the next six episodes of this special mini-series podcast. And I guarantee you this you stick it out through the end of this thing, you are going to be ready to make more theater and better theater than you've ever made in your entire theater making career. So, enough of me. This is not about me. This is about these great speakers that are ready to entertain, inspire, and educate you into the rest of 2021 and beyond. So let's get to the Places Please challenge. It's the Theater Makers challenge. Places please, places, places, please.

[1:55] T. Oliver Reid: Today my tip is just about how we want to proceed in our lives and this is our, you know, in our artistic lives as well as just being human beings. And for me, it is leading with grace and offering grace to others if we expect the same in return. Especially after this last year, and for all of us figuring out how we want to proceed with our lives, uh, leaving the pandemic, hopefully better people than we entered it. This past year has shown us a lot. It's shown us a lot with theater in general and how we approach equity, inclusion, diversity and belonging, and how we want to, the kind of artists that we want to be, the humans that we want to be, uh, the shows that we want to tell, the stories we want to see on stage, and all of that for me goes back to being clear on the human being that I am or that I espouse to be and I want to be and the direction that I'm leading.

I happen to have the joy of being in a show with the greatest of all times, Mr. Andre de Shields. And one of the things he says that I hold with me all the time now is the universe is conspiring with you. So to know that with everything you're doing, and it may be a week later or it may be 10 years later, that once information and a desire is put into the universe, the universe will conspire with you to lead you in that direction. And that direction always includes offering grace to those who are around.

[3:44] T. Oliver Reid: Daily you have those moments when you want to scream out at someone or you want to fall back into the ways that we have always gone through the world and the chips that are on shoulders and the tough layer of skin that we have. But to remember each time that when you approach someone or someone approaches you, it's like, am I responding with grace? Am I leading with grace? Am I offering the person that I'm in conversation with the opportunity to be a better person or to be their truest selves because I am opening up to them and leaving the floor and leaving the opportunity in a place that allows them to tell me how they're truly feeling, to really share themselves in a way. And it's the thing with theater, we expect that those on stage and creating to be that open when we put so many roadblocks in front of them.

What happens if we don't put those roadblocks? What happens if we truly say, I am open to who you are and what you bring to the table, and let's make something, let's create something. So for me, that really is about that moment of stepping back and out and sometimes out of ourselves and out of a norm, out of what we how we would normally respond to something and allowing people the opportunity to truly be themselves.

[5:03] T. Oliver Reid: So that's a tip. It was a lot less than 15 minutes, but I'm all for short and sweet carry these days. It's great to be able to wax poetically all the time, but that sometimes is me. I leave that to greats like Mr. De Shields. For me, it's like let's get in quick and get back out. It's like my favorite scriptures, if you are a religious person, are the ones that are short. Like keep your mouth shut and don't bother people. That's the one I love. So this for me is like if you want grace from others, you have to show grace to them as well. And I could have listened to T and Carrie talk for hours. But today I'm very much a practical person. I love to give people practical tools. And with 15 minutes, I was like, how do I get practical tools in place for everybody in these 15 minutes?

And to me, I feel one of the biggest shifts that's happened for a lot of us in theater over the last year and a half, two years, is a lot of theater people who maybe poo-pooed social media or building an online presence in any way, kind of realize the importance of it when everything's shut down.

[6:25] T. Oliver Reid: Because if we didn't have an online presence, how are we gonna get our message out there? How are we gonna get our work out into the world? And to me, as a performer, as a coach, it's my mission to help as many artists be visible out there because our message can heal the world. Being a peacemaker is what we can do as artists, and I believe that what we do is an act of service. We can serve people, make them see the world differently, see themselves differently, feel something different. And so, my mission is to help people really have the courage to step into their spotlight. And today I want to just talk about how you can just three things you can do right now to help you align your online presence with who you are as a person. Because as T was just sort of mentioning, one of the most toxic or dangerous businesses that can exist is one that says it's one thing in public, but then is another thing behind closed doors.

[7:33] T. Oliver Reid: And it's so important in order to be seen as somebody authentic or as an authentic artist that what we see is exactly what you get, right? You want your social presence, your online presence to match the person that's in the room. And that can be, a lot of people can have resistance to that. It can feel vulnerable. So I'm hoping today I can help you unlock some of those things. I sort of look at marketing, social media sort of like you as an artist are throwing a party, right? Whatever you're creating, whatever you do, whatever your interests are, are this awesome party that you are just inviting people to every time you make a post, every time you audition, every time you have a networking meeting, it's just an invitation.

And your opportunity in all of those things is to just extend your creativity out into the world. I sort of think of it like social media is this opportunity to go go gadget, if you're a member of Inspector Gadget, go go gadget arms, take your creativity and extend it out into the world. But for some people, we can get stuck because we think we have to promote, we have to sell. And what I want to challenge you today is that if it feels like promoting, you're forgetting why you do it. All we have to do is invite people. Invite people to the party, because you as an entity, as a human being, are a party.

[9:03] T. Oliver Reid: You're awesome. But not everybody's gonna always want to go to your party. Our job is not to be liked, our job is to become known. So allowing people to know and then giving them the human, the thing that makes them human, which is the opportunity to decide whether or not that's the party they want to go to, and allowing them to and allowing yourself to really be cool with that. So it really starts with number one, just knowing who your audience is. So I think you know, what I have a lot of clients do when we start working on their social presence is nail your ideal audience, create your ideal audience. So a lot of us are trying to make things for too many people, right? We're in and a confused mind says no, right?

If you're trying to please everybody, you please nobody. So I have people really create a fictional person, like almost do a character analysis of who their ideal audience is. And everything you do is serving that person. Every day, that person needs to hear from you. You can help them, either help them laugh, help them cry, help them learn something, feel something. And every day that you don't post or make something, that person is not getting the message that they need. And so just know like you have an opportunity every day with social media. It doesn't cost anything for you to reach out and serve somebody on a daily basis, right? So that's number one. Create an ideal audience.

[10:39] T. Oliver Reid: Number two, I think it's super important that we be consistent. And in order to be consistent, you got it's not even so much about consistency in the amount of content you create, but it's the type of content and what it is that your message is. So I like to tell people to really create what I call, I call them the BS4. I call it the BS4 because when we can when we start to like be strategic about our social media content, it can feel a little bit like BS, but also BS is my initials. So with the BS4, really what we want to do is think of four things. And one of them should be what you do as an artist, but then also three things that you could literally talk about for days. Like for me, I could talk about Disney for days.

I'm a Disney nerd. I could talk about coffee, I'm a total coffee nerd. I could talk about personal development, right? And then, of course, theater, acting, arts. I'm so passionate about that. And with those pillars, you can start to build consistency in your message, and you become known as this person, right? People get to know you.

[12:01] T. Oliver Reid: And it can feel vulnerable. You might think, well, who am I to share, you know, my nerddom of coffee or of Disney? Who are you not to, right? That's what you know. What I talk about is this idea that you have to bridge your credibility with your vulnerability. The people who really grow a following and have built a presence are the people who can, or even artists that we know, are the people who perfectly bridge that credibility and vulnerability. Think of Oprah, right? We know about her childhood and growing up in Alabama and the sexual assault she had, right? Or yeah, and yet we also know she's this amazing journalist, right? And it's her, who she is plus what she does that together perfectly balanced that helps us understand who she is because there's a lot of great journalists, right?

But they're not her. And so there's a lot of great artists, writers, actors, singers, but they're not you. So let people know who you are by sharing some of those things. And if you use these pillars, it becomes a little bit easier to show up consistently and not get so overwhelmed in all of the things we could share, right?

[13:19] T. Oliver Reid: And then the third thing I like and just to kind of finish off the pillars idea, you know, just remember that quantity breeds quality. A lot of us can get stuck in perfectionism. I only want to make stuff that looks amazing or that I only want to share things when I have something amazing going on. But the way you do anything is the way you do everything. Showing up and doing it consistently breeds quality. It's how you grow. No one who has a social media following who has built a brand in any way started off good at it, right? They got good at it. And so now's the best time to do that. All right. And then the third thing, since I know I could talk about this for days, is what I call just understand we can all suffer from shiny object syndrome, which is a new platform is out.

Oh no, I need to learn all these social media platforms, or I need to blog, or I need to get my email list. Yes, but I like to tell people to dominate, don't dabble. Pick one to three platforms, one to three things, you know, tops, three platforms that you want to dominate, right? And focus on just being really good at that thing and know that in time you'll be able to get better at other things. But if you can dominate one platform and you become known and people get to really build a relationship with you and community, that's how you make change, right? And build relationships and that's all marketing is, right? We're just building relationships with people.

[15:04] T. Oliver Reid: So hopefully these three tips can help you get started. If you haven't, if you want to go further, I have a free download. It's a roadmap. I call it the imposter to influencer map. And if you go to impostertoInfluencerMap.com, you can download it for free, and it'll help give you a whole bunch of other tips and tools to help you build your online social presence. If that's if you're in the ballpark of doing that, now's the best time to do it because I'm telling you building your presence, building a personal brand, or letting people know who you are, is what's going to help you stand out, especially in today's world post pandemic. So check out impostertoInfluencerMap.com. And I hope to see some of you in the VIP room. And thanks. I hope this was helpful.

[15:54] Ken Davenport: Thank you so much for being a part of this special podcast mini series, the Places Please Challenge. Are you inspired? Do you have strategies? Are you ready to make more theater and better theater? Well, listen, if you enjoyed this series, here's what I want you to do. If you like listening to speakers and getting these kind of strategies, then I want you to check out the TheaterMakers Summit. This is a virtual conference that is coming up, coming up right now on November, November 6th and 7th with a bonus day on the 8th. It's all virtual, all virtual. Go to theatermakerssummit.com. It's our fifth anniversary of what I believe is the largest conference for theater makers anywhere. Last year we had over a hundred speakers and over a thousand attendees. This year we've got even more speakers, and we're expecting even more attendees, lots of education, lots of networking opportunities. I hope to see you there.

[16:55] Ken Davenport: The summit is my favorite event of the year. My favorite event of the year. And now, because it's virtual, you can attend from the comfort of your own bedroom in your pajamas. I mean, what's better than that? Learning about the theater in your PJs. Go to theatermakerssummit.com, theatermakersummit.com, or just Google it and you will find it. Grab a ticket, join us for the TheaterMakers Summit. I promise you, you're gonna leave inspired and with more knowledge than you came in ready to tackle the renaissance of the theater. I look forward to seeing you at the conference, and I look forward to seeing one of your shows on a stage. Thanks again for joining us at the Places Please audio podcast Challenge. It's the theater makers challenge. Places please, places please, places please.