The Value of Persistence
May 31st, 2017 by Katherine Moller
As a musician. one learns the value of persistence. Recent examples of this in my life have appeared in the guise of booking performances and running a fan-funding campaign.
Throughout my career I have made many cold calls (calling people who don’t know me) to try to book gigs. I have heard the word “no” many times! I
have also had people that I have contacted not reply to my inquiries. In past years, I have often taken the path of least resistance and accepted silence as a “no”. Various mentors that I have had through the years have stressed the importance of following up. When someone does not reply to you, it is not necessarily the case that they are saying no. It could be that they got busy doing something else and have forgotten to get back to you. Apparently, there are also some people in the industry who wait for you to follow up to see how serious you are about working with them. This year I have made it my motto to keep asking until I hear the word “no”. It has worked out really well and I have booked several gigs that I thought I was not going to get. I also managed to get four sponsors for my CD release concert. Two replied to me on their own, but two I
had to follow up with, and both agreed to support my project!
The value of persistence was also evident in my fan-funding campaign. I ran my campaign for 30 days, and several times throughout
I thought “I guess I won’t get any more contributions. Everyone who would want to donate has seen it and done so.” I kept pushing myself to get the word out, and had donations right up until the 11th hour. Five people donated on the final day of my campaign! The thing is, I know how easy it is not to donate. A friend of mine ran a campaign a few years ago, and I wanted to donate, but at the time that I saw it pass by my Facebook feed, unfortunately it was not convenient. The next time I heard about it, he was closing his campaign because there had not been enough donations. Also, both with e-mail and social media, not everybody sees your message every time that you send it out. As the person running the campaign you feel like you are inundating the world with notice about your campaign, but most people are not seeing it all that often.
This year has been a great year to date, and I chalk that up to persistence. Doing the follow-up until I hear the word “no” has been an amazing change, and I hope that I continue having the strength to do so!
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