Business Plan

Putting up a gig in a small venue

I would like to begin with explaining what my main goal would be. Of course, this would be much further within the process of this plan because at this moment I do not have the money or connections to make it succeed, but that is why I am setting up this business plan:

Under ideal circumstances, I would run a well known events company specialising in music performance. My main idea would be that my roster would be divided in 4 colours and so 4 genres of music:

-orange: folk, country

-purple: electronic

-blue: soul, blues

-red: Jazz

I would have found these artists by going to gigs and searching for the people who I think of fit the profile and by contacting people I already know in the music industry.

On the other side, I would search for venues and decide what the most suiting colour for it would be, and propose to set up a gig, which I will explain in further detail later. Eventually, venues would be contacting me, asking for a particular colour and I would recruit the specific artists of my roster.
The targeted audience would be very diverse, depending on what colour the gig would be. But, no matter what colour, I want my audience to be people who sincerely listen and appreciate music. Live performance is, in my opinion, the most intimate way of performing and I would like the crowd to share that experience with the musicians. 

Obviously, this goal is very unrealistic at the moment so I need to start small. 

The best colour to start with is, in my opinion, orange. I say this because folk and country music can be executed in a very simple and acoustic way, which would be perfect for a small gig. The audience for this kind of gig can vary a lot. You do not have to be massively into folk and country to enjoy a nice acoustic gig. As I have mentioned above, the crowd should be there to listen to the music and have a connection with the artists. This gig would not be suitable for loud and rowdy people, but people are of course aloud to talk and have fun. There is no specific age for this kind of gig either, as long as you appreciate music. Because the venue I chose can only play live acts until 11pm (all explained below), I will also make use of the colour purple, electronic music.

The next thing to consider is finding someone to collaborate with. Someone who would see my idea happen as I do and who is willing to put as much effort in this as I will, even though we will not get paid, or even lose money in the start. This person also needs to have contacts within the music industry, like venues and artists. 

In my experience, finding a partner is not that hard, if you are able to sell your idea. The only tricky thing is that they might not be as devoted as you are, especially because there is not much earning involved at the start.

Secondly, we would have to find a venue that would let us use their space to make this event happen. A few things to consider are:

-license: Do they have a license, an early or late one? alcohol? live performance? if they don't, are we able to get a temporary licence?
-Day of event: What day will the event take place?

-capacity: How many people fit into the venue, is it the right size? too big, too small?

-stage: Is there a stage? If not, can we build one? 

-Equipment: do they have equipment such as amps, speakers, microphones? monitors etc? If not, where do we get it and how do we get it there?

-Engineer: Is there a house engineer? If not, where do we get one and how much does he want to get paid?

-Staff: does the venue come with staff such as door people, cloakroom people, bar people? If not, where do we get them and how much do we pay them?

-Finance: How much do they ask for a night? How long do we get? Deposit? Alcohol?

-Backstage: Is there a backstage area? 

-Promotion: Does the venue promote the event, do we need to do it ourselves?
-Music policy: Does the venue have a music policy? What genres are you allowed to play there? 


I was given access to information on setting up an event in 'The Silver Bullet' in Finsbury Park. Based on the information given, I am answering the questions above.
-Licensing: The Silver Bullet has a 4 am license, which allows them to play music until that time. They do mention that they are based in a residential area. This means that live performances can only go on until 11 pm. After this time, the sound has to be through the DJ equipment which has a limiter on the sound. This would mean that DJ's have to be provided as well as live acts or your event has to end at 11pm. They are also allowed to sell alcohol. 
-capacity: The 'Main Room', where the music will be performed, has a capacity of 200 people and is 80 sq. metres. Considering that this is the first event, I think this is the right size. Is is not too big and is fairly easy to fill if you promote it properly. 
-stage: the size of the stage is 2.2 by 4.0 metres (8.8 sq. m), which is a good size for a solo performance or a small band. 
- Equipment: Underneath you can find a screenshot of the a list of equipment provided at the venue. They also provide a drum kit, a bass amp and a guitar amp. As you can see they are well prepared for a live performance or a DJ act, which means there is not extra equipment required. Because the venue already provides such a big list of equipment, if it turns out an act needs an unusual piece of equipment, they should be capable of providing it themselves.

-Engineer: The Silver Bullet gives you the option of either getting your own front of house or using theirs. Their front of house charges 10 pounds p/h and is, according to their reference, very good and reliable. Because this is the first event it would be best to go for the house engineer. Firstly because there is already a lot to organise and you can immediately cross this off the list and also because he offers a fair rate. Unless you find someone who does it for less or you have a friend doing you a favour, this is probably the best option. Also, the house engineer knows all the equipment and how to use it to it's best capacity, which excludes a lot of risk during the performances.
-Staff: the Silver Bullet recruits bar staff and security but you need to take care of door and cloakroom staff yourself. If you are working with a partner, at least one of you can cover one of those and you'd have to hire someone else to cover the other. If you are working on your own, it will be risky to take care of one of the jobs, as you will be needed in the main room to make sure the night runs smoothly. Those people will need to get paid.
-Price: The Silver Bullet demands a £150 deposit, of which 50% will be returned if the bar makes £2.000 and will be fully returned if it makes £2.500. They mention that, on a busy night, they can make up to an average of £4000. As an events organiser you do not get a cut of the bar as they provide the alcohol themselves and therefore have paid for it. Another reason is that is the only way they make money on an events night, as the organiser gets to keep all the money made on the door and on the cloak room etc. I will go into further detail on funding below.
-Backstage: The Silver Bullet has a backstage area. This is a big plus, because you want to make the artists as comfortable as possible considering they are not getting paid. They can also leave their personal belongings there.
-Promotion: The venue does not provide the flyers and posters, but gives you a list of the requirements needed: 
 - The artwork has to be printed in an A3 layout, so the quality of the posters has to be good enough for this.
 - The design has to be clear to read and has to be appropriate for the event, hereby considering the style, colours and how it is presented.
 - Preferably use a minimal number of fonts.
 - All the information has to be on the poster, such as: Date/Day of week/Time/Price/Address.
 - You also must have the Silver Bullet logo on the poster.
 - They demand a lay-out of the poster 8 weeks prior to the event, considering they have to approve. They ask for PDF, Printwork and High-Res JPG and Low-Res Web Version (Under 1 MB). When you do this on time, they offer 3 hour flyering on the night of the event by their team for free.
 - They will print the poster for the venue, but they want you to print A6 flyers for them and to print the posters and flyers for your own use. They recommend printing at least 200 A6 flyers for their use, which gives you an insight on how much flyers you need in total considering they are only doing 3 hours of flyering.
 - All the rest of the promotion has to be done by yourself or someone you hire.
 - Music policy: The Silver Bullet does not have a music policy, as long as it is good enough for people to come and for them to make money.

Marketing
DATE
The first thing to think about is to set a date for the event. Considering that the due date for the flyers is 8 weeks prior to the event, it is probably best to take 10 weeks for the organisation. Obviously, this is a lot of time and organising a small gig will not take that long, but not every week has to be as busy as the other and because I have got work and education as well, it is important to not let those two suffer under this event. 
So, 10 weeks from now will be the second week of August. Because I will be hiring the venue from 6pm till 4 pm, I will want to make the most out of those hours so I want to start early. A good day for this is a Saturday, where a lot of people with regular jobs are off and the day after as well so they can stay out later. 

ACTS
Because the event will start at 8pm and the live music can only be played until 11pm, we have got 3 hours to fill with live acts. I think, on a tight schedule, we can fit 4 acts in the night, all playing 30-40 minute slots. This means we have got 5 to 10 minute breaks in between the acts. 
I would have to tell them the slots are 30 minutes, considering that they are going to have to set up and they might do an encore. This is necessary because I do not want to disappoint one of the acts because there is no time left or get past the 11pm curfew. 
Obviously, there is still 4 hours to fill with music after 11pm, which will be for the electronic performers. I will give 4 people a 1 hour slot, which is an average DJ set. I will have to be careful with who I choose because I do not want the music to be too rough because of the country set before, but I know quite some DJ's who play a mix of country/disco house, which I think will be suitable for this gig.
I do not think it will be too hard to get acts to play. Mainly, because I live in a warehouse community where a lot of musicians live and I know a lot of them who would be happy to help me out. The only problem that stands in my way is that I do not have the money to pay them, but I will cover travel expenses and drinks (see funding below). In contradiction to this problem, because the music industry is quite tough, musicians tend to say yes to unpaid gigs anyway, just so they can show their music to people and create a fan base. Getting money for travel expenses and drinks is already quite a treat sometimes, unfortunately. Also, if this event is a success and I can make my main plan become reality, there will be a possibility for them to get regular paid work.
Another good reason for them to take the gig is because the Silver Bullet has ability through record all the sounds through the amps for free, which means they get a really good live recording which they can use to promote themselves. The Silver Bullet also shares it on their MixCloud.
As said above, this gig is going to be folk/country based, so I would mainly want acoustic acts on my event. I will set a maximum of 4 people per band, because of the size of the stage. I will contact the people whom I know of are suited for this genre and this set up. I will also ask my partner whether he or she knows any artists that will be suitable for this gig. Then we will listen to all of them and decide which acts we want. 
We will have to contact them and ask whether they are available and willing to do it. If they all say yes, than the acts are sorted. If not we will continue calling the people we want until we have all the acts needed. The artists will all have to be at the event early, considering they have to sound check. Let's say they have to show up 3 hours in advance (5pm), to make sure everything runs smoothly. Artists do not have to pay entry to get in, and I will give all the acts a +2, which adds up to 24 people who will get in for free. The artists will get a special stamp that will get them into the backstage area.




PROMOTION
Because I do not have the budget to print lots of flyers and poster, I am going to do all the promotion through social media and listing. The only physical flyering for this event will be done by the Silver Bullet themselves. As I said before, they offer 3 hours of flyering on the night itself and they will hang posters in the neighbourhood. I am mainly going to focus on making a Facebook event and on mouth to mouth promotion. I think a Facebook event is useful because you can invite your entire friends list in one click. Also, when you make it an open event, other people can see when someone is attending, so they might be curious and check it out. 
I am also going to ask my partner, the Silver Bullet, the acts and my friends to share the event on their pages, so that it gets pushed. 
Hopefully the person I am hiring for the design, will also create a design for the cover page. If not, I can make an easy design myself.
The Silver Bullet provides a Listing service, where they will push your event on all the free listing websites. Listing websites have lots of different event on them and a lot of people look on them to see whether there is anything they want to go to. This service costs £15. 


STAFF
Staff will not be hard to find for me. I know a lot of people who are up for casual work at events to earn some money on the side. The people themselves can decide whether they want to work the full night or want to split it with someone, but they would have to let me know in time so I can make sure I have enough people to cover all the hours. The staff does not have to pay entry but they do need to pay for their own beverages. They are allowed to have a drink but they have to stay sober. The staff only has to come 15 minutes prior to the event. I am not setting up a dress code.

FUNDING
For this event I would have to have money for the deposit, for the staff, for the promotion and for the bands. The deposit is the one that comes first, because without the deposit there is no venue. The deposit is, as mentioned above, £150, which is not that painful.
For the staff there is a couple of things I can do. First of all, I need to consider how much I would be able to pay them and still hope to at least break even. Let's say on the door, the person gets paid £8 per hour. I would not need a person on the door for the entire event. I could say that the doors open at 8pm and close at 2am, which leaves 6 hours to fill. This adds up to £48 for the entire night, which I can pay cash in hand at the end of their shift. I can pay the person for the cloakroom in two ways. I can either offer them the same amount of money as the door person or I can let them keep all the profit they make. The person for the cloakroom has to be there until the very end, so if the event ends at 4, he or she might still have to be there until 4. This means, that he or she would be working 8 hours straight, which would be £64 for the night. If he or she keeps all the profit, and a space in the cloakroom is £1, and say 200 people decide to hang their coat, he or she would make a lot more than if he or she would get paid with an hourly rate. The only reason why to consider giving the cloak person the profit, is that, because it is the first event, the night might end up being a complete flop. If not many people show up at the event, at least I do not loose lots of money by paying the staff. And, also considering that it is summer and not many people are going to have jackets on them, I might be making less money on the cloakroom than having to pay the cloak person, which would be a loss.
Because I have decided to provide flyers for the venue, but do the rest of the promotion through social media and links, I only need to pay the person for making a design/layout for the flyers and the websites, and for the actual flyers. I am also asking the Silver Bullet for the listing service, which is £15.
Because of the low/ budget and I'm not asking for an amazing design, I am not going to pay the person more than £30. Because I live with a lot of creative people I can ask one of my housemates to help me out. This also works out well because I can chase the person up and be there in the process of making the design, so I can give my opinion. On http://www.instantprint.co.uk/flyers-leaflets/a6, they offer 250 flyers, printed one sided, for £12.
As I said above, I am not going to be able to pay the bands any more than for travel and consumption, so that they at least break even and have a good time. There is going to be 8 acts, but not everyone is going to need a taxi. I am going to have to be strict and say I will only pay for the travel expenses as long as it is reasonable and in favour of the performance they are going to do. Say 3 acts are going to need a taxi, which would be an average of £25 one way each, that will end up costing £150. For the other 5 acts, assuming they are going by tube, it will cost £10 for a return so £50. All together that is £200. 
Because I can get drinks for cheaper, I am going to put drinks in the back stage area for them to consume, such as beer, wine and water. If they want something else, they are going to have to buy it themselves as well. The drinks are going to cost me about £100.
Estimation of everything together:
deposit: £150
staff  : £ 48
promo  : £ 57
bands  : £300
_____________+
total  : £555

To include problems along the way, I am going to set a budget of £600.
The next question is how I am going to fund all this. 
I have got a savings account for money I am setting aside to invest in my future. I think this would be a good opportunity to use that money as I will gain a lot of experience out of this event and I can hopefully make an ongoing things from it.
If I would be working with a partner, we could split it and pay £300 each, but even without a partner, funding it myself would be the best option.
I would not borrow this money from anyone else simply because I have it myself. If I end up not getting all my money back at least I do not have to worry about paying people back as well as losing money. 
It is good to consider what has to be paid before the actual night of the event.
The deposit is the first thing that needs to be paid. With a partner, that will be £75 each. 
-Second comes the promo, together with a partner that will be £28 each. 
I also need to have the drinks ready, which with a partner will be £50 each.
this, in total, adds up to +- £310.
The staff and the band can be paid at the night itself. 
Before we get to their payment, I need to decide what to ask on the door. Because it is an unknown event and people do not know whether it is going to be good or not, I can not charge too much. That's why I think £5 is a reasonable amount. 
To break even for the entire budget, I would need at least 120 people to show up, which will make £600.
With this money, I can pay the person on the door, the bands and keep the rest of the money I have spent and split it with my partner so we won't loose money.
profit:
I am going to assume that there will be 200 people coming to my event throughout the night (which does not mean all at once), which means I will make £1000, which is £400 profit. 
If every person would spend £12.50 on drinks, I will reach the £2.500 limit and get my full deposit back. 
If that would be achieved, I can take off £150 from the budget which means I will make £550 profit.
In the end, me and my partner would both be getting £275. Hopefully my partner would still want to cooperate with me, which means we can set the money aside and use it for the next event so that eventually we will not have to pay the budget out of our own pocket but with the money we have earned, and we will make a profit from using the profit. 

THE EVENT
On the day of the event I am going to have to be there in time to receive the bands and the staff. Considering that the Silver Bullet is used to having events like these, I do not need to set up the place.
I will be there at 4pm so I have time to talk things over with the people in charge. 
The acts will come at 5 for their sound check and I will help them set up their gear and make them as comfortable as possible. 
The people will slowly come in from 8 onwards and I will be in the main room to make sure the night runs smoothly. 





Because my sources come from a PDF file which I can not upload on the blog, I will send it to you by email.