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As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the 2x Webby Award Honoree Be A Marketer podcast!
Dave Charest: Today on episode eleven of the Be a Marketer podcast, you'll hear from an impresario that knows how to stay in his lane. And I'm sharing why decision making shortcuts can keep you from getting bogged down by analysis paralysis. This is the Be a Marketer podcast. My name is Dave Charest, director of small business success at Constant Contact, and I've been helping small business owners like you make sense of online marketing for over 16 years. You can be a marketer, and I'm here to help. Well, hello, friend, and welcome to another episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. As always, grateful to have your attention here today. So there was a point in time when both my wife and I were very much into playing Texas hold'em poker. And with most things that capture my attention, I got really obsessed with learning everything I could about playing the game. And one of the things that most people don't really realize is that poker is really about making the right decisions over a lifetime of playing the game, rather than just getting lucky on one hand. And when you're first learning the game, you're really trying to put yourself in situations where you're not going to make too many mistakes. In order to do that, you have to make the decision making process easier for yourself. And that means you're only going to play starting hands that have a high probability of winning, and you just fold everything else. And then to just simplify the process even more, if you're playing in a tournament, for example, and you have one of those premium hands and the circumstances are correct, you would just move all in, which means you just bet all of your chips. And now really, you have no more decisions to make, right? All of your chips are on the table, and there aren't opportunities for you to make a mistake later in the hand. And so all of the pressure now is on the other players to decide if they want to continue with the hand. And if they do continue, the odds are likely in your favor because you started with a strong hand. Now, as I mentioned, you're making the decision making process easier because based on your circumstances, you know exactly what to do. And I think there's something to be learned here in a business sense as well, whether it's just running your business and making those everyday decisions, or marketing your business and deciding what to do there. Now, as I'm sure you know, you have to make a ton of decisions every day, right? Some are more important than others, of course, but they're all meaningful in some way. And sometimes having to make those decisions can feel like a burden, and it's a burden that ends up stalling the forward momentum of your business. And so sometimes the best thing you can do is create these shortcuts that allow you to make decisions quickly while also giving you a higher probability that they're going to be good decisions, which means then you're constantly moving your business forward without getting bogged down. Now, I'll give you an example here. At a certain point in my career, I was in charge of managing the constant contact blog. And as you might imagine, people would always reach out wondering if they could guest post on our blog. And so we would get a lot of these inquiries coming in. And in order to simplify that process for myself as to whether or not I should move forward and take that next step with somebody is, I would ask myself three questions. Is the thing that they want to talk about, is it an area of expertise that just benefits our audience? Right. If it's not related to our audience at all, there's no need to have somebody guest post on it. Is it something that we don't already cover with our in house subject matter experts? Is it going to add something to the things that we're already saying? And then lastly, does it offer our practitioner's point of view on that particular subject? And so we don't want just the surface level of somebody guest posting. We want somebody that can go deep into a subject and offer something of value to our audience. And so that's how, you know, I, and we would shortcut that decision making process. And similarly, you know, you want to make it easier on yourself to say yes or no and then move on. Now, of course, you're not always going to be right, but you're going to be right more than you're not. And you're going to be moving forward. And I'm excited to introduce today's guest to you because, you know, he has a process that he uses to know whether or not he should book an act as a contract concert promoter. And this process really allows him to have more wins than losses. Well, friend, allow me to introduce you to today's guest. Tom Augustino is a concert producer and promoter that's been celebrating his 20th year bringing quality folk acts to the Prescott, Arizona area. Now, when Tom first moved to Prescott from LA, he wasn't really expecting to continue in the music business. In fact, he had shifted his focus to his graphic design and marketing services for organizations in the local area. But when he got the opportunity to host the stage at a local folk fest, a new opportunity started to come Tom's way. First, he was offered a live radio show at a fledgling radio station that was broadcast throughout central and northern Arizona. Well, that's when the call started coming in from musicians passing through town looking to pick up gigs. This led Tom to start a successful concert series that's been going strong for over 20 years. Well, that's pretty darn cool. I asked Tom if he ever had any doubts about getting started in this business. So let's pick up the conversation there.
Tom Agostino: Well, you know, it happened so organically. You know, the radio station was a gift. You know, you want a radio show? Yeah, I love to talk, so that's no problem for me. I can talk forever. I love music. I'm a music buff, especially in the folk and Americana music. I lived in New York, so the whole Greenwich Village scene was something I knew. And just having a radio, the concerts just kind of came from having a radio show. People would contact me, and what I say to people is that I ran a circus. And once you do a circus and once you deal with clowns, you can deal with anything. So putting on concerts is like. It's like, really not a lot of heavy lifting.
Dave Charest: Yeah, it's a cakewalk at that point.
Tom Agostino: Yeah. Musicians are not a little different than clowns, but I. A little bit.
Dave Charest: A little bit.
Tom Agostino: Just a little bit.
Dave Charest: Where's the love of music come from?
Tom Agostino: I'm italian. I'm an Italian from Brooklyn. All right, what do you need to say than that?
Dave Charest: My wife is italian and born and raised in Brooklyn as well. She grew up in Sheepshead Bay. Whereabouts in Brooklyn were you?
Tom Agostino: Ah, Bensonhurst. B e two is my phone number. And, you know, music was just always in our house. Sinatra, you know, and all of those great italian singers. And I always sang. I just always sang.
Dave Charest: Yeah, we were just been in a Sinatra record a couple of weekends ago, actually. I was like, yes, this is so good. Well, you know, as you were kind of growing up in this, really. Right. It seems like you've been doing this, you know, like I said, for a long time. And did you have any mentors along the way? Do you have anybody kind of showing you the ropes or you just figuring it out on your own?
Tom Agostino: Well, pretty much on my own, you know. But when I moved to Los Angeles and when it kind of got a little bit more serious, you know, in terms of the events I was being involved in a little bigger. I joined a thing called the Music Industry Network, which was started by a guy named Mike. I can't think it was the last time now, but he had a magazine called Music Connection. That was a Hollywood music magazine. That was the Insiders magazine. And he started this group called Music Industry Connection, where a bunch of us went and we kind of learned a business. It was one of those kind of things every time we got together, somebody, and this is LA, right? So a and r people would come in and learn the business. And through that, I made some really good connections and got involved in some bigger shows than I had been doing at that time. La, you know, again, was involved in a lot of big shows, and then I became a partner with a person who, he married somebody from the, who was involved with the chinese government. And we got access to all these chinese things, you know, like doing a Rod Stewart. We did a Rod Stewart concert in China, took him to China, and then we toured that big chinese troop here. And after I did that, you know, again, this is 120 member chinese troop. Just a little side story. We did this incredible tour, and it was really difficult because none of them spoke English, of course, and they had the party guys with them. It was kind of serious stuff. But we all became friends through a big national tour, of course. And the day the tour ended, we were having our rap party in LA, was the day Tiananmen Square happened. And so all these 120 members of the troop had to fly out that night back to China, and they were seeing this thing on the tv because they can see it here. We're having a. That was probably the most emotional time of doing this. We had several of them asked if they could stay, if we can kind of, and we couldn't. I mean, you know, that was pretty intense. Yeah.
Dave Charest: When you look back at, you know, over the years and the things you have going on, what have been some of the biggest challenges you've had?
Tom Agostino: Selling tickets is always a challenge. You know, this is a marketing base, marketing. If you're marketing a product, you kind of sit out there and help people shop and everything. Selling tickets is really instantaneous. You put something out, you know, within hours, whether you get a response, whether you sell tickets or you don't, you know, and it's like instantaneous reflection. So as I was learning the business, learning what music people wanted to hear and wanted to see was the biggest thing here, a group I liked. But I realized that either my audience wasn't that interested in them, or they didn't have the steps they needed to have taken a. To allow me to present them in the best light because the kind of music I do, which is folk in americana, you don't turn on the radio and hear a lot of it, you know, it's not, you know, that kind of music. So basically, what I've had to do is educate my audience to this kind of music and get them to trust that if I'm bringing somebody to town, they're good. Yeah, that's basically all you need to know. I'm bringing them, so they're good. And so I had to earn that, you know, I had to earn that respect, you know, and I. So I. Fortunately, I haven't done many bad shows. I did several, you know, and every time you do bish, I go, oh, I'm going to pay for that one.
Dave Charest: How do you find people?
Tom Agostino: They find me. Yeah, I answer the phone and I look at my emails. And because of where we are, Prescott is kind of central Arizona, about an hour and a half north of Phoenix and an hour south of Flagg, which is the two biggest, Flagstaff and Tucson Scabbard, 4 hours south. So when groups are traveling, this is what I have learned. They're traveling from Texas, which is a big folk coming through. There's not that many places playing Colorado. There's nowhere to play in New Mexico. And they're coming through Arizona, and they're going to either Vegas or California. They need to pick up gigs. Otherwise they're paying, you know, hotel rooms and buses and feeding themselves. So I've become a place where they. In fact, just earlier today, I booked this incredible, incredible female artists from Nashville. She's in LA doing like, five gigs. And she has to travel, so she has to come through Prescott. So I'm able to get these really good artists. And oftentimes I'm able to get them on at a deal because basically they're trying to pick up a date so they're not having to pay out of their own pocket. So if they can get a nice hotel room, I put people up in really nice places. I feed them really good. My venues are gorgeous. You know, they walk into the venues and they go, this is better than the bar I played in two nights ago.
Dave Charest: Sure. Yeah.
Tom Agostino: You know, and so I have a three step process I go through because a lot of these folks I've never heard of before, because I've never heard of them. One, they have to have great photos. I mean, I have to see their photo and I go, yeah. Two, they have to have a quote from something other than their local hometown paper. They have to have a Rolling Stone quote, a folk alley quote and New York Times quote, a quote that's significant. And they have to have a video that I can watch in 20 seconds say I'm going to see them. If it's longer than 20 seconds, I'm done.
Dave Charest: So I love that.
Tom Agostino: Right.
Dave Charest: Because I'm a big believer in life is all about decisions, life, business, whatever it is, and you're constantly making decisions. And I think the more you can simplify the process of making a decision, and hopefully it sounds like you've got a good thing that helps you make the right decision or the better decisions more often than not. That system is amazing. I love that. That's so cool. And when you think about all you've kind of accomplished in this area, how.
Tom Agostino: Does that make you feel? You know, it's funny you say that because it's 20 years, so I'm doing all my 20 year stuff, and I'm all of a sudden getting a lot of feedback from people, you know, just acknowledging what I've done, saying nice things about me, and it's cool. It's really nice. It's kind of humbling, you know, it's fun, you know, because basically I'm just putting on music. I'm not feeding the poor or anything like that.
Dave Charest: You're feeding the soul, though. Come on.
Tom Agostino: And. Yeah, very much so. Very much.
Dave Charest: Yeah, absolutely.
Tom Agostino: And so it's really nice. You know, there's, you know, in Arizona is a kind of nice folk community, all the Phoenix folkies. And Tucson has a huge folk scene. In fact, big folk fest has come up, and so I know all these folks now, and I'm getting nice things said about me. And next week we're having our 20th anniversary concert.
Dave Charest: Okay.
Tom Agostino: There's gonna be a lot of hoopla involved with that.
Dave Charest: I was gonna say, is there a bunch of artists coming for that? Like, what does that look like?
Tom Agostino: Well, not too many yet. Last year I did too many artists. None of us got to play much, so it's a little smaller this time, so we all get to play a little bit. But I have a really incredible musician from Nashville. In fact, he's Steve Earl's brother in law. Mark Stewart is coming to kind of headline it, and I invited a few local friends to come on stage with us and join us.
Dave Charest: Nice. What do you love most about what you do?
Tom Agostino: Two parts of it. I love booking an artist. That's really, really cool. And I know people are going to that. Once I put that out that this person's coming to town, people can go, whoa, I really like that moment, you know, then the work comes to having to sell tickets. But when I get their stuff and I like them, and I reach out to whoever, their agent or them, whoever I'm dealing with, and we agree, and bah, it's on, and I make the show live. That's really cool. Everything else in between, it'll work. The second part I like is I like sitting in the theater. I sit way in the back or behind the stage, depending on the theater. And I like feeling the audience get what I got. I like it when they hear the first chords or like when I did Tom Chapin last week. He's so incredible. He does his first song, and everybody in the audience is his friend. From that moment on. For me, it's tangible. I feel it, and I know it hit. And that's even better than getting the check at the end of the show, you know, is knowing that what I did matter to all those folks that are there, and they're. They're experiencing something, and then at the end, when they come out.
Dave Charest: So you mentioned, obviously, the work part of it. Right. And I think that's obviously this is an important part of it. And getting that paycheck at the end, is it just you? Do you have anybody else that works with you, or.
Tom Agostino: No. So many of the kind of things that I do, people create nonprofits to do it, nonprofit music. But I never did that because I don't want to have anybody else ever tell me what to do.
Dave Charest: Interesting.
Tom Agostino: Yeah, it's always just been me. I have a couple of friends who help me with shows. I have one friend who's my concierge seats. Everybody is really great at setting a room up, making everybody comfortable. I have my sound guy and my volunteers who sell the tickets and do raffle stuff, but it's 100% my decision. I have a couple of companies that I work with. They'll book the artist, and I'll sell the tickets for them. Then they get the headache, they get to sleepless night. And I like that because I just get to do what I do good at. Selling tickets. Yeah, but for my shows, no, it's just 100% me selling tickets.
Dave Charest: Obviously, that is one of the things you enjoy doing, things I've heard you say multiple times that you're good at. I'm assuming then that's one of your strengths. Right. What does that entail, though? What do you have to do to sell these tickets?
Tom Agostino: Wow. These days, and it changes so often. Just over the 20 years I've done the folk sessions ticket business has so changed because the amount of ways you reach people, it's so diverse now. Used to be really simple, you know, radio, newspaper, but now it's like this has to be multi platform. But what I have found, and this, I think you would almost agree, the best audience I have are the people I know who already know what I'm doing, already in communication with me. I've already joined my mailing list. Once you come to one of my show your mind, you and my mailing list. I send things to you and I send things. Unless you opt out, you're getting it. And I find, you know, that's my number one audience because they already know what I do is good. They tell their friends who this show's really good and they spread it that way. You know, every once in a while take out an ad because we have a local paper and they support me. Incredible. I mean, the support I get locally from the news, the radio and the newspapers and our magazines is really nice. Partly, one, I bring in really good artists, so it makes talent look better. And two, I'm a really nice guy and they like me, but I know them all and they're friends, you know, and I get really good local coverage, I get good press, I get good free pr, but I'll take out an ad. Everyone's out there, give me a good idea. Or if I ever show that it's a little bit bigger, I have to sell more tickets than normally, but even when I do it, I always go. That's almost like a contribution to their cause because I find mostly I sell people. Bye. Sending out e blasts and sending out putting fate, you know, through my networks that I already control is truly how I sell most of my tickets.
Dave Charest: Yeah, I love it. So obviously I was going to ask you about community, and obviously that sounds like a huge portion of what allows you to do what you do. Are you setting goals for yourself each year? Like, I want to do this amount of shows or like, what's your process there?
Tom Agostino: Not really. I don't have to because it's more like I say no than I say, oh, I need another show. You know, so up to like a week ago, I was also the marketing and communications director for another company that actually has, I do constant contact work for, which is the Highland center for Natural History, which is our nature center up here. And it's a beautiful nature center. For many years I've been there, marketing, communications guy, and so I've done my concerts in around my work too. So it's been a lot. I'm not doing that anymore. I've left that so I can just devote my time to doing shows. But, you know, again, you don't want to wear out your art. And so I basically do as many shows as I think I can. So it's not so much as setting goals, like, I need to do more or less. It's more like, what new things can I bring? Like, how can I, like, this new venue just got built in Prescott Valley, which is next to Prescott. It's kind of, you know, this is called the Quad Cities area. It's Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, and Dewey, Humboldt, they call it the Quad Cities. And Prescott Valley is a very commercial. A lot of businesses there. The Walmarts there. The big surprise, you know, but they just have that where the event center is, where you would go watch the rodeo and big shows, and they just built 150 seat family theater there. Friends of mine built it, who I've known for many, many years, but they have no idea how to market. I mean, Kahluas, it's almost sad. It's sad I'm helping them out. So I did my show, my Tom Chapin show, and bring in a couple of others because I wanted to see this theater succeed. So my goal going forward now is to help this theater become a successful venue. And just started doing shows at the rodeo grounds, and I've never done a show at rodeo grounds. So now let's see what that's like, bringing some bluegrass music to the rodeo.
Dave Charest: Grounds, keeping it interesting, right? Yeah.
Tom Agostino: And this area, you know, where we are, I don't know if you're familiar with this area.
Dave Charest: Not too much. No.
Tom Agostino: It's called the Central Highlands. And it's not only is it beautiful, I mean, it's physically very beautiful, but it's fairly affluent. And especially now, with all the California and Phoenix folks moving in, it's become even more affluent. And so what I do, because my ticket prices aren't low, they're pretty high. It works for me because I have an audience that can afford it. Yeah. That can buy tickets to my shows and things. So what I want to do is see a few of these newer venues be able to become hospitable to live concerts that normally have it. You know, I've done poly shows in about least a dozen places in town that normally don't have live music in them that I started. Now they're music venues because I did the first shows there. So there's two new ones that I'm trying to kind of now start to bring stuff into and see if we can create another, you know, we need a 150 seat venue in this town would be really nice.
Dave Charest: What's a typical day look like for you?
Tom Agostino: Well, now, these days, now that I'm not doing, you know, my Highland center work, I get up early. I'm an early riser, and I check all my emails to see if any tickets sold, you know, and see what updates I have to do on my shows to see what agents have gotten back to me. Because right now, I'm at a place where I'm putting together my summer. My fall season ends March 25. I'm taking April off, going, traveling, need a month off. And now I'm starting to put together May, June, July, and August. And so we have three really good shows right now in bubbling, and so it's kind of taking the next step. Eric Anderson, the great, folky Eric Anderson. Jackson Brown's younger brother, Severin Brown, who's really good, and this Nashville artist who I really like. So we're looking at bringing these artists and getting the date scene. You know, that's kind of what I do. And, you know, at this point, you know, I like space. I like sitting on my beautiful. I live on two and a half acres, and it's gorgeous. Sitting in the sun with a good book, taking some time, you know, and then getting back into it, you know, I do every day. You know, when you do, like, shows, like, I have right now four shows that are live, one sold out, so I don't have to worry about that one. So I have three shows that I'm selling tickets for right now. So every day, I further, you know, them a little bit, whether it's releasing a new video from, you know, one of them on Facebook, doing a little, you know, Facebook ad behind the back. I send out my e blast once a week, I send out an e blast, and I might send out a targeted one a second time to select groups if it's a select artist, like a cowboy artist or something. But, yeah, just kind of keeping it out there, keeping in touch with my friends, making sure they know what we're doing, and my sound guys alive.
Dave Charest: So I was gonna say, obviously, the radio show must have been a huge proponent of this. Right? So, like, did you say you're doing.
Tom Agostino: A podcast now to, like, I'm still doing some podcasts, but I have to tell you that it's been about. A little over about a year and a half since the radio show ended. I miss it every single day.
Dave Charest: I was gonna say that's gonna be rough, right?
Tom Agostino: Like, that was so much fun.
Dave Charest: Yeah.
Tom Agostino: Boy, was that fun.
Dave Charest: But it also allows you to promote these things, right? Like, so that's got to be a little bit different for you now, right?
Tom Agostino: Oh, yeah. Because, you know. Yeah. Every artist I have, I have them create me a little 22nd audio promo that I have on my show, but I still get the medum videos now. I just, my Facebook, you know, is large. I have a large following on Facebook, and my constant contact e list is five and a half thousand folks in this little area. That's a lot.
Dave Charest: That's a lot. Yeah.
Tom Agostino: Yeah. So I still send out, do my podcast. I always send out. And I think that's one of the reasons I get a lot of people look at my stuff is every eblast has one or two videos in it, has a podcast in it, has some, you know, there's stuff to interact with. It's not just text x, buy text x. There's a lot of fun stuff in it, too. Yeah.
Dave Charest: Well, talk to me a little bit about what's your approach with the marketing then. Yeah. Like, how do you kind of come up with a plan and strategy to do that?
Tom Agostino: Well, one of the fortunate things is I'm a graphic designer, so all my graphics, everything I do are really nice. So it's not, I create, you know, for every show that comes in, I create all the different levels of graphics. I create the ad, I create the poster, I create the Facebook banner. I create, you know, there's like, eight different ways, but I could do that all myself so I don't have to hire a designer or have one thing that, you know, I can do more. So I'm constantly creating new feelings of the thing. If I, you know, new quotes, not necessarily new photos, I like to stay with the main photo I have, so I don't want to confuse people. I find they, you know, confuse enough. One good photo, that's all they need to see. But I can change quotes. I can create new videos. Like, every time I'm going to send you something on Sadie's artist, it'll be a different video in it. It won't be the same video I sent you last week. And I'll kind of try to kind of theme a little different. So it's not like, oh, this guy, this artist again, you know, I try to combine it with, say, I'm doing four shows, each one, I'll feature one of the artists. So if you're into bluegrass, you'll open it to see the bluegrass guy. But then I'll also have my folky and my cowboy guy in there.
Dave Charest: Gotcha.
Tom Agostino: Or if you're into the cowboy guy, you'll open it. Then you will see my bluegrass, you know, and they keep it interesting, I keep it entertaining, and not long, you know, and the design style is very good. So people tend to at least open it and see what's going on and look at a video.
Dave Charest: Do you do any, just like, in terms of, like, let's say, like, social. Right. So obviously you mentioned Facebook. Is Facebook the only platform you really focus on from a social standpoint?
Tom Agostino: Twitter.
Dave Charest: Twitter as well. Okay, cool.
Tom Agostino: Yeah.
Dave Charest: Like, what do you do to create content for those channels? Is it just kind of replicating the things you're already doing in the email? Or do you do interviews?
Tom Agostino: I do interviews. What we like to do is I get every artist, especially the bigger ones. Like, we just did the guitar God, Albert Lee. And he's like an incredible guitarist. He's like, eric Cotton calls him the best guitarist in the world. I have. Good. He is.
Dave Charest: That's pretty good. Good recommendation there, right?
Tom Agostino: Yeah. So I got him to create me a little 22nd video. Hi, I'm Albert Lee. And he, you know, and then I put that all over the place. You know, things like that. You know, some people, if they're not super well known, I'll just give me a 22nd audio and thing. The. Hi, we're coming up. We're looking, you know, kind of. So not everybody gets into you, but most do because they want to promote their show, too, because.
Dave Charest: Sure.
Tom Agostino: Yeah. You know, I set up my deals with as a back end, so behooves them to help me sell their tickets. And so I just try to change it up a lot, you know, especially the artists I deal with. They have usually a pretty good repertoire of YouTube videos and things they've done. So if I just keep changing them, you know, so there's always something new you can sing. Oh, yeah. Or an interview. I have, like, on my podcast, I have a Soundcloud channel. So I have my own channel. So I put that out and you go there. And I have one of my playlists. It's called artists of note with my interviews with famous musicians.
Dave Charest: Oh, cool.
Tom Agostino: You know, so I'll set those kind of as much as I can. Like, I'm interviewing AJ Lee, who's the bluegrass. Molly Tuttle's stepsister. Molly Tuttle just won best bluegrass artist Grammy last week, so I'm playing on that a lot. Marty Tuttle, stepsister.
Dave Charest: What's the name of the podcast, it's.
Tom Agostino: Called artists of known. It's just the folk sessions channel.
Dave Charest: Oh, it's the folks. Okay, gotcha. Folk sessions channel.
Tom Agostino: Got it. Yeah, it's nice. And I have a bunch of different playlists on there.
Dave Charest: Got it.
Tom Agostino: Like, I put playlists together for every holiday, like, over Valentine's Day. I shout out, like, two different playlists of Valentine songs, 1 hour.
Dave Charest: I'm curious as to, you know, obviously, your live event industry, right? Like 2020 comes along lockdown. What was that like for you?
Tom Agostino: That was intense. In fact, I had this wonderful band called acoustic Eidolon. In fact, you can see them up there with the cello and wonderful band. We're playing in a venue, and it's the day they're coming into town. I get a call from the venue saying, we have to close down. One of our staff just came down with COVID We're shutting the venue down. All the concerts are being canceled. I call Joe and Hannah. They're just checking into their hotel room, and they're standing there, and Joe turns out and goes, that's Tom canceling the gig. My name, me canceling the gig. And so I had to cancel my shows. My summer shows, fortunately, were outdoors, so we were able to do them. But normally seats 120, we can seat 50. So we had to do two shows, which makes for a really long day. And the main thing, how it affected me was there was two theaters that were just going to open, bringing in, like, delma, Corey, some big artists, and they were hiring me to do their marketing for them, and they cancelled. So two of these biggest partners, I was just. I love partnerships. That's one of the things that I most like to create is partnerships. I do part of it. You do part of it. You take on the financial responsibility, I'll take on the marketing responsibility. So I have, besides my own company, I have several partnerships that I do with other promoters who bring in artists who do fundraisers and things. And so two really good partnerships got canceled. And then eventually we started being able to go live again. But even now, I talk to a lot of other people, do what I do. A lot of other promoters and a lot of folks are noticing. And touring musicians is still a drop. Really? Yeah. But it's an interesting drop because people are still going out, but they're being much more selective on what they're seeing. That's why, in a sense, tribute shows are doing really great right now as opposed to live new music, because people are like, I just want to see somebody I like. I know, their songs, I can sing along and it makes me feel good. And, you know, we're still seeing that, you know, when I do an artist that people know, I sell it out like this, but when I do a new artist, I'm having to work a little harder than I used to. Yeah.
Dave Charest: My wife and I are big in live music, and so we're always trying to see. So I get. Right, it's like. I get that. It's like, yeah. If you're gonna go out to do that, you want to make sure that it's going to be worth doing it, I guess. Right. That's interesting. I want to talk a little bit about just constant. How'd you end up with constant contact? What brought you to constant contact?
Tom Agostino: How did I end up, boy, so long ago? I mean, what were the choices? Mailchimp, constant contact at the time. And I think we actually started, like I mentioned, I have a graphic business besides doing concerts, Garnet mountain graphics. My wife and I have been in LA. We had Agostino marketing and design, and we did for casinos, and we did large graphics, and we moved here. We still kept our graphic company. And I think we originally started constant contact for a graphics company.
Dave Charest: Okay.
Tom Agostino: But very soon, if I. Because I looked at it when I had to find my username, and it was Krista A, which is my wife, and I was her graphics, I guess, you know, it's gotten my graphics, it's her company. So we initially started for a graphics company, but very soon I stole it for my music company, and I've been using it. Gosh, I don't know how many is, but for a really long time, I think I went through and it was like, it goes back, you know, I looked at my way long time ago. And for me, again, for what I do, it's such a good way to. Because you can share videos, you can share audio, you can share those interviews, photos, you know. And I mentioned to you, the artists I click on have to have really good photos. So you share some of these photos, you photo montage, little slideshows, or, you know, I do an interview and put on my Soundcloud channel, and so I import it into it. You can put lots of things into it, into constant contact. And I always have a video or two in there, good quotes, a whole thing, you know. And again, I'm a designer, so to design, format some of the templates I kind of take on, and I have made it my own.
Dave Charest: Sure. Yeah.
Tom Agostino: And now you guys have gotten a lot more interactive, you know, it's like. Which helps me a lot, too. So.
Dave Charest: Yeah. Adding the motion in there and stuff. Yeah.
Tom Agostino: And I just find, you know, it just works, you know, like I said, I sent out a. It's really funny, too. The other thing that's changing marketing, and I'm sure, you know, this. It used to be, oh, you can't send out too many things to people. Oh, you got it once a month. Are you kidding? I do once a week, and I think I'm a slacker, you know, because people can choose to get it, open it or not. You know, from anything I'm part of, I get every day, I'm getting things from every travel group, you know, that I do chore, so I do once a week, and I'll. And then I'll do a resend three days later if they, you know, to. And then I do little side things, maybe in there, if I feel it's important, something I want people to know, something just happens. But I'll segment those. I'll do once a week to everybody on my list, but then I'll do, you know, I've had my list broken into about 20 different things, and I'll just. These three will get this one, these two will get that one.
Dave Charest: What would you say is your favorite constant contact feature?
Tom Agostino: It's just so easy to click on a link and go to my website and buy a ticket. Bam, you're there. You know, it's just, there's no steps, and it's very clean, you know, very clean. And I used to not like your spacing. There used to be too much. But now with this new thing, I can create the spacing. My.
Dave Charest: Adjust that the way you want to.
Tom Agostino: Yeah, yeah. So now I'm fine with that. The spacing isn't a problem. And I also like the social media connection, too. I do a thing in bam, and.
Dave Charest: Oh, okay. So you're using that, too?
Tom Agostino: Oh, yeah. I mean, that's the easiest thing you do. And again, I'm part of, one of the things I've been able to do because I represent all these other groups is I'm also, like an admin person on at least five different Facebook pages, so. And I share it. I share it to all those, you know, so.
Dave Charest: Got it. Yeah. What would be your number one tip for maybe somebody in a similar situation as yours doing the same thing for using constant contact?
Tom Agostino: The main thing, and I'm working with some people, is you have to get their information of people. You know, once you have it, you put it in there. And you can talk, you can segment it. And again, most people, you know, it's like they don't get into, like, some of the deeper things, and I don't, you know, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of things constant contact does that I don't even remotely know about. You know, in fact, when I was researching this podcast, I saw all these little podcasts, how to market a little better, how to do so. You know, there's like, so there's like, if you go to concerte contacts, you know. Yeah, it's like 37 things you could look at that tell you how to do your work better. So I would say, if you're just starting this, look at that stuff, read it, look at these videos, learn these people know what they're talking about, and they wouldn't be doing this if it didn't help you. So take advantage of the tools, you know, take advantage of the tips that people say, hey, you can grow your. How do you grow your mailing list? Most people haven't a clue. They don't know how to grow a mailing list. They don't know where they get people from. So take advantage of the tools that are offered to you. I mean, you know, once you get in design, it's just your ability to kind of make things look pretty, and that's up to you and your color standards and, you know, you have to figure that part out. But I would say the most thing is use the tools that are there. You know, you guys have created a huge amount of help. If you want to learn how to market and sell your product, you know, use them. Don't just go, oh.
Dave Charest: Love it, love it. Anything else you'd like to add?
Tom Agostino: Well, 20 years doing this, and again, I came into it from a very odd place of doing being a circus boy and Chinese shows more. But the love of getting out there and putting things together, just seeing, I used to be, I just watched a Super Bowl a couple of days ago, and I turned them off and said, remember when my dream was to put on the Super bowl halftime show? You know, when I lived in LA, because I did the Fiesta Broadway, which is 75,000 people on downtown LA, I put that on once, you know, so I've done huge events, you know, and she looked at me and laughed. He said, yeah. And now these days, I like keeping it in. What I know I can control that. I've been able to do the folk sessions for 20 years. I maybe in 20 years of doing over 200, 300 concerts, I've maybe done three that weren't successful in terms of at least breaking even things. Because I've not tried to be more than I am, you know? And I think to anybody who starts something, it is so easy to almost dream bigger than it needs to be, think it has to be more than it really has to be. And so to me, the most important thing is know yourself. Know what you can do, know what you're going to be happy doing, know what you're gonna enjoy your life doing. And you don't wanna just be 24 hours a day stressing because this isn't working. And waking up at three every morning going, what do I need to do tomorrow? Figure out, Elaine. Figure out what you're good at and what you can do that works, that makes you happy. That obviously brings you enough money that you're not, you know, that makes it worthwhile to be doing it. But just keep inside of that place where that's you, you know, keep inside of your lane and what you can do to make your life and make yourself happy. Because especially what I do, if I'm doing cocktails and I'm stressed out and people come in the door and they come in the door and I'm smiling, I'm happy. Cause I have a full house and it's incredible music, and I know they're gonna leave and they're gonna thank me, walk out the door and gets bigger than that. Then there's no fun.
Dave Charest: Well, friend, let's recap a few items from that discussion. Number one, it's all about people knowing, liking and trusting you. Your actions and the results you deliver allow you to build a reputation that ultimately determines your overall success. Remember, you may need to share some education freely in order to start building that reputation. Number two, the best audience you have are the people you know. They know what you do, they tell their friends, and they support you. This is why your opt in marketing channels like email and text work so well. Go to that well, first. And number three, focus on product market fit. Knowing your customer and providing a product or service that's right for them is also key to your success. If you're marketing to a group that can't afford your offering, you're not really going to make much progress, nor is your business going to last very long. So here's an action item for you today, friend. Establish some decision making shortcuts. Set up a system that allows you to quickly decide yes or no. With the right guardrails in place, you won't get tied up wondering if you should or should not do something. Look, you're not always going to be right, but you will be moving forward and with the right guidelines, you'll be right more times than you're wrong. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. If you have questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me directly at dave.charestconstantcontact.com. If you did enjoy today's episode, please take a moment to leave us a review. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.