Maria (00:01.522)
So that is recording, that's good. Now if I get the audio, this is the main bit.

Maria (00:18.632)
Okay, so hello, Mike, and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast. Thank you so much for coming on. How are you doing? I hope I'm doing fine. Good to see you, And thanks for inviting me to this podcast. you're welcome. And thank you for coming here. We are filming this today in the Purple Turtle in Reading. It's Reading's most famous music club, would you say? That's a nice summary. Absolutely. Yeah. brilliant venue. So yeah, if you haven't been, which I'm sure you have, get on down here.

So to jump straight in, could you please tell us a little bit about yourself? That would be very difficult because I'm 76 years of age now. And in that time, we tend to do a lot of things, different things. Some things are great. Some things are not so good. Some things are successful. Some things are a disaster. But essentially, have a career that spans a lot of different projects.

First half of my career was spent working for corporate. So 25, 30 years working for large corporates, largely in the food area and largely in marketing of foods, of branding, so communications, making TV ads and that sort of thing. And then when I was too old even then to be working in a young marketing department, God, I must have been 35.

I started consulting to large companies and when you start consulting, you get involved in all sorts of funny little projects with people who frankly don't fit into corporate life, but you find very interesting. So I had a stint working for the UK's best, most successful, should we say, where there was just the two of us when he was the crazy inventions man and I was a straight man trying to actually

make all this guy's ideas fit into some kind of marketing, substantiation and, and, strategy and then selling that idea into the corporates, which we did pretty successfully. and then as a result of seeing how these different things, different technologies could actually, change things dramatically in a business situation, markets changed over times. So the introduction to technology, I mean, I've been there thereabouts when

Maria (02:38.856)
The technology revolution has been phenomenal. In my time, when I started working for corporates, we did not have computers, even no desk computer or anything. You actually had to fill out a form that said, I want you to do this run on the mainframe computer, which is somewhere down the bowels of the building. You never got there, never near it. And then you were told a day later, you're number 55 on the project list. We will give you that data, that run. We'll do that in three months time. And in three months time, you get the results. What the hell did I want this for?

It's completely useless now. So obviously actually having a computer on your desk changed a lot of things and I got involved into computer driven technologies such as computer voice recognition. We bought a company, me and a couple of colleagues bought a company and from Branson, fact, from Virgin, which was Europe's leading computer voice recognition company. And we applied that to all sorts of things and had fun doing that.

And I dabbled in property development and got my fingers burnt through the great Wall Street subprime mortgage scandal. And I thought that was it. I've had enough of what I do. So went down at South Coast, threw myself into music, which I'd always been fiddling around with. And as a lad, I played in kind of punk bands, not for very long, but for seven, eight year period.

and then had to do sensible things, as I've just described. But once I decided actually I wanted to be involved in music, that meant actually learning to add a few more chords to the three chords I knew from punk days. In those days, if you knew three or got a bit of four chords, you were showing off. So I spent the last 15 years

involved in and around music, either playing music, writing songs, organizing events, and that's what I do now. Yeah. Well, obviously since you've moved to Reading, I know music has, as you said, that's why we're in the purple turtle, spoiler alert, but music's been a very important part of your life. So could you tell us a bit more about how it's influenced your life since you've come to Reading? Yeah. I mean, I think once you throw yourself into music, it becomes the all consuming part of your life.

Maria (05:02.136)
and you find that it actually applies to all sorts of areas that you never thought, you know, music would have a role in. So, I'm, I'm laughing, but I think it's a bit of a nervous laughter because I'm thinking about the time I got, diagnosed with cancer last year. and you would think music then, or leave that to one side and just concentrate on, on, know, what you've got to go through and get better, but actually found that music, gave me loads of techniques that I could use to handle the worry of having cancer.

And I come from a generation where, until recently, if you're diagnosed with cancer, that's a death. That's the end of you. Of course, we recognize now that massive progress has been made in the treatment of cancer. And it's not as bad as it once was. You've got a very good chance of surviving. Still a scary thing, you know?

And you need kind of props, need your family around you, you need that sort of support. I'm kind of just lucky because I'm the person, I'm the type of person who would talk about it. good, I've got something to talk about now. I've got cancer, right? And I meet people along the way. Everybody says, you're on a journey now. It is an interesting journey. And you do meet people who really don't want to talk about it. I mean, they're kind of happy to skirt around the edges, but they

really want to talk about the details at all. And I found that music actually gave me and has increasingly given me content in my life. Right at the early stages when I was first diagnosed and before I had my operation, which was kind of a quite a big operation, I had colon cancer. So that's quite a big operation. The operation is like a five hour operation.

I didn't know how it was going to be. What was the state of my mind going to be just before the operation? Never had an operation, never been in hospital for myself. I visited before. You don't know. So I thought, well, just as well, how can I use music to actually get me through this? And what I thought I'd do is I'd pick a song, pick a verse from that song, pick a line from that verse. And I would sing that song in that side room.

Maria (07:23.804)
where they're just prepping you for the operation. And when I realized it was the last thing that was gonna happen to me, and who knows whether you come out of this operation or not, but the last thing I was gonna do was sing a line of that song. Sing it out loud, know, is a bit of a shock for the team that's prepping you. And then my challenge was, when I come out of the operation, the first thing I must do when I regain consciousness is sing the second line. Well, I felt miserably. Because I was about to sing.

the words from Lakes of Pontchain. And actually then I got the injection in the back, which actually knocks out the whole of your legs and your spine, et cetera. And I just sang, I sang out loud, I don't like that. And then the voice came back, it's all right, you're going under now. And of course when I came to after the operation, I'd completely forgotten about it. That's amazing. But kind of like in terms of the screening as well, when I

having the screens, again, I would use, it's kind of an anxious time. sometimes you're in a big machine, etc., which has got strange noises going on. So I try and sing a song in the beat of the strange noises that were going on. And I would just absolutely keep my eyes shut and just sing the words, sing the words of the song. So you can use music in all sorts of ways to get you through when you're weakling like

I wouldn't say weakling if anything I think everyone needs to do that you need some sort of anchor to see you through anything difficult like that so thank you very much for sharing that now it's the the music you sing obviously a part of a band called Dream Sellers was it the music that you were singing from the band and could you tell us a bit more about your your band well it was not necessarily written by me I do write and but I'm kind one of those people that I don't like

copying word for word, note for note. But I take the attitude that there are some incredibly good songwriters, both in this country and in America. it's often, can, in the time that you can learn a great songwriter's song and take it into the band, you can do 10 of those, whereas,

Maria (09:43.676)
you might be struggling to write your own song and then it's probably not going to be good enough. I I consider myself to be a songwriter, but I write very few songs that I think are worthy of singing to the public. mean, is, when you listen to a good song, you think, God, that's so easy. Didn't that sound easy? I can do that. And then you try any creator would know it's not that simple. And you've got to have content. You've got to the ideas. I put Dream Sellers together like five years ago.

And it was in that organic way that I think typically happens. It normally happens when you're at school and other school kids, you you get friendly with them and you're playing music because school is a great place to learn music. Wasn't for me. Music was taught just appallingly in my day. So I had to wait for like 60 years later before it kind of the organic thing happened to me. But if you go to I would bring and talk a little bit about this in reading. Reading is a great place for live music.

And I would always advocate going to see live music if you want to get involved in music. And you have these things called open mics. I was amazed that people can get through their lifetimes never having heard of it and not realize what open mics are. Open mics is just a collection in usually a small venue like a pub, back room in a pub or even a front bar or whatever. Smaller than this, this is where you get, know, purple tailed, you get seriously good bands here.

We played here twice. was going to say, including yours. But if you go to, if you see an open mic advertised, you go there and you see all your local guys, just like me, who are learning a few songs, want to try them out, youngsters who are playing in front of a public audience for the first time. And it's the kind of atmosphere in which you'll always have a host who really wants to encourage new music, youngsters, oldsters, whoever, just to...

play if you haven't played much before, it's the atmosphere in which you yes, you will have those nerves, everybody gets nerves and those are good thing. I mean, I kind of like that feeling that you get before you do a performance, especially a bigger performance. And it is a bit of a junkie for that sort of feel I am and, and I think there's, there are sort of basically two types of people, people who hate that and will try it and think, God, I didn't like that, you know.

Maria (12:07.208)
the nerves were awful. I'm not going to do that again. And other people say, yeah, got the nerves, but that was fantastic. And then she overcame the nerves, you know, and I forgot about the nerves when I was singing, etc. And same with me when I first when I first sang properly solo when I was 60. 16 years ago. And I thought, I, because I come from a background of bands ages ago, where I just played rhythm guitar, my two, three chords, and did a little bit of background.

both support singing. thought, I'd go solo. I tried to learn lead guitar, which was okay, but it wasn't satisfying me in any way. And there's just so many good lead guitarists around. And I went down to my local open mic night in a local pub, down in Pevensey Bay, what a great place. And got halfway through the first song and hit the brick wall. What the hell is that next line? I don't know, I

blank stopped, got going again. Now, often in my life, if I'd had that experience, I would come out of it and say never again. That was so embarrassing. My reaction, which is just my natural norm, that was fantastic. I just want to go home now. I want to learn that bloody line. sorry. Learn that line and get back out there next week and do that properly. So I knew I'd found my thing. And still, I think I've done over 1000 gigs in the

That's amazing. think the moral there is obviously you're never too old. I know people get to 40 even and think, I've wasted my time. I'm too old. No, you're 40. That's crazy. One of the things that runs through business or my business career and my music career certainly is just two things I think that come together. One is talent. Okay. And kind of that's God given talent.

And if your vocal chords aren't great, doesn't mean you can't sing, but you probably won't be a great singer, but you can work at it. And that is the second thing, hard work. Business is hard work. As you know, you're in business. You've got to be buttoned down. You've got to be detailed. You've got to do the things that you said you would do. And it's exactly the same with music. You can be great. You can be really good from a really low bass, but you will have to put the hours in. You will have to get through.

Maria (14:33.2)
If you're a guitarist, first thing that happens to you is the ends of your fingers start really hurting. what you've got to do is you've got to develop hard pads on there. Literally your skin dies and then peels off and then it forms again a hard pad. And eventually, a few months, you've actually got hard pads on it, it stops hurting. The throat, not so much. I think you can just sing, sing, sing, sing. But there are techniques that you need.

couple of lessons, my son -in -law happens to be a West End superstar. And I managed to bully him into giving me a singing lesson. And he just taught me a couple of things, which I found, yeah, God, I understand now. I realize why. Like if you want to sing loud and sustain, you need to relax the throat completely. Whereas the natural thing to do, the intuitive thing to do is tense. Because when you want to punch something, when you want to use your muscles, you tense them up.

Well, it's the opposite with the throat. Don't use those muscles. You have to relax them. And once you realize that and try that, then it's all changed and you sound so much better. And initially when I saw that I was having to consciously do that, like now is the point now I'm gonna relax my muscles. And then after a while you just do it automatically. Yeah. Wow. That's a really great tip for anyone who's interested in playing music. obviously we've spoken about how it's helpful for

people who are older and you never told to do anything. Now, if there's anyone who's younger, who's older and is just starting out in their music career, obviously you've been doing this for a few years now, do you have any tips for them, anything that has or hasn't worked for you if they want to find opportunities, promote their band in Reading? Go back to, if they want, I think probably the majority of people want to play in a band. And that's when it gets tricky

It's very easy to understand why bands don't last very long. Cause you've got a collection of three, four, five, maybe even more people who are creative people, all with strong ideas about what they should do. You can imagine, you can imagine art. Here's your canvas. There's five people who are told to write, to paint a picture. And they've all got equal rights, they think in their heads, although they all think they're better than the other, but they've got to paint that picture. They don't have five canvases, this is one canvas.

Maria (17:00.2)
Well, a band's like that. You have to come up with one song, and not just one song, you have to come up with a set of songs, which may be 10, 20 songs. Now, that's a lot of rehearsing, that's a lot of compromise. If you've been spending the last maybe one, two years practicing your own music and with your own tastes, in a band you will have to compromise. It's difficult for me to do, I find it difficult. And you

A band does have to have a genre, I think, just has to have a distinctive sound. So if you let everybody have, you know, like two songs, you have two songs, you have two songs. You end up with a band that's just a mishmash of, know, people can't understand where you're coming from, what kind of sound you're trying to create. So the most successful bands are where you've got these fantastic moments when four or five people come together with similar tastes, or you get somebody who's a brilliant musician, doesn't care. Doesn't care, wants to be in a good band.

and can fit in. But I do think you have to have a dominant force in there that the majority of the time is saying, these are the songs we're gonna play, this is the style. And you obviously have to have people trying to get you gigs. and families are a great place to start off with. You often find that moms and dads, you'll provide that kind of support, especially in getting gigs and getting you two gigs when you're very young, maybe you don't have a car to get to a gig. So family is important.

And confidence in your own abilities is huge. Now musicians, they do tend to fall into extreme camps. Those musicians who don't have the confidence in themselves and are not sure and unsure, and those who have massive confidence in themselves and know exactly what they want to do, and they will move heaven and earth. I'm to say unfortunate, that's not the right word, but it's the guys who get their elbows out, the girls

get to the front of the stage and she sing the loudest, they have the best chance of success. Next thing you have to say is that you have to go in with your eyes open. What most parents would say, go to university if you can, get a degree, then follow your music career. Because your chances of actually a successful music career are very, very slim. So I think one of the early things, I mean, it's a difficult thing to do when you're young is to actually just try and think about what your objectives are.

Maria (19:28.464)
is your objective money and success and fame and everything that comes with that. Or just want to enjoy your music. Those are two massively different things. And I think if you're driving down that I want to be successful, you know, it's a business, it's the way I'm going to make money. That's tough. That is tough. And it's even tougher to actually enjoy that. Yeah, I've done some marketing for big, big music companies, record companies, and I found them very unpleasant.

places to work and I found the level of understanding. I've got a marketing degree. And when you get to the marketing departments and the A &R people, you find there's a minimum understanding of what I would consider to be normal marketing practices. It's very subjective. It's very table thumping. And obviously the business has changed. I mean, I'm talking about 20 years ago now, streaming, everything's changed dramatically.

And maybe things, hopefully things are a bit better, although I sense from what you hear when, you know, I've sold a million streams, but I've made like 10 pound 50 out of it. It's, I think just as difficult. It's a difficult industry. Apart from the old one or two, would never be lucrative. Now, I know you hinted before, if people are interested in...

learning more about the Reading music scene. I mean, I've never really got into the Reading scene. I've never really known how to. So for people like me, how would you suggest they dip their toes into the Reading scene? Find music musicians. me just switch that question around a little bit, because funny enough, I've been a sort of turn up plug in play character. And I mentioned earlier that I had cancer last year and I went through that full process of major operation.

then you're into chemo, you have that for several months and then you should rest, et cetera. Well, I was so massively impressed and thankful for Rollbox hospitals treatment of me in every aspect of it. That's from the nurses to the specialist nurses to the consultants to the consultant surgeons. They

Maria (21:44.136)
If you go into an NHS hospital right now, and I know there are pockets of changes around the country, but you would think it's a war zone. RBH is fantastic. I can only speak as I found, as I was treated. Everything went according to plan. Even meetings which would just discuss things like the operation, the whole operating team was there, including Simon Millington, who's the senior consultant surgeon there in the hospital.

He was at that meeting and he basically chaired that meeting with me and told me what was going to happen, what the chances were, what the risks were. Answered every single question. was in the end, I was kind of edging to the door because I thought I can't waste these guys' time anymore. They should be in there operating. But they were fantastic. And on the second day after my operation, and there is a point where I'm going through this, on the second day after my operation, Simon came around to see me with his team and said, 100 % successful.

I said at the time, I'm so grateful. The only thing that I can do, I think, to show my thanks is to organize some fundraising through music. I thought at the time in my head was, I'll do a quick pub gig, maybe pass the hat around, get a hundred quid and pass that over to their charity. Well, it's grown much more than that. And I've had to actually find out myself really how the Reading music scene works because we launched back in beginning of this year.

a music charity program called Raise the Roof. And it's basically pulling together, it's me kind of pushing and pulling, et cetera, but pulling together Reading musicians from all the venues that I can find in Reading. And the aim is to conduct a number of concerts we've done four already. The next one we're doing is on the 25th of October here, partly why we're here in Purple Turtle.

That's got a great bill. It's got a band called Thousand Yards Stare, who are well well known. They're Glastonbury, ex -Glastonbury, ex -Redding Festival, Elucidate, who are an upcoming young Redding band, and then my band. We're all playing here on the 25th of October. And actually, because I've needed to actually really get into where is the music being played, what sort of

Maria (24:10.696)
talking to people like the management of Purple Turtle have been incredibly helpful. They spent time with me, they told me how the music scene works in Reading. And that's one of the things that I think is important on any level is don't think because you're either 21 or you're 71 or whatever, you know everything. You probably only know 1 % of what there is to know. Go and talk to people who've done

People who've done it and successful always have the time. They will always talk to you. You will always save yourself a hell of a lot of time and trouble by learning from the people who know. And the music scene is no different. In fact, it's a perfect example of lots of people. In Reading, we've got record producers. We've got people who write music and film music, scores for film music. They're the type of people

you know, have a brilliant studio in the back of their house and they'll record it all. And you don't know about them and you probably won't be able to find out about them until you ask around and then you'll find them. You know, I've found the simply by somebody has said to me, you know who you need to go and speak to? He'll tell you about that. And you find these guys running charities, know, massively bigger than mine, but they started somewhere 20 years ago. And now they, you know, the charity that's got a festival attached to it that is running every year at a reading.

And I don't mean the big Reading Festival, because that kind of is more international, where I think young musicians can really benefit from knowing at the grassroots level what's happening. There are some smaller festivals that are easy to get in to play at, and of course all the pubs. So I'll just name a couple, like the Fisherman's Cottage, just down by Blake's Lock.

That has a weekly open mic evening run by a guy called Rob Sadden, who's renowned for being the man that makes all this sort of stuff work in his area. And then the butler, which is the pub just opposite the Irish club, you know that one. That's more rocky. Maybe it's a bit younger. think if you're in my age group, you'd go to the Fisherman's on a Wednesday night or a Friday night.

Maria (26:38.396)
Wednesday every week and Wednesday once a month on the Friday, where there's probably going to be fewer but longer acts. Butler is great. Butler has every Friday, it has a night. It's run by great singer. And if you go onto the Butler Facebook page, you can see all the details there. they also, now Steve, the owner has actually extended

the side of the pub to be quite a big reception room, capacity maybe 100, 150. We played at a private party there a couple of months ago. So there are all those sorts of events. If you start there and talk to people, you can go then on to anywhere and everywhere. That's a great tip. So for Raise the Roof, obviously we've mentioned Raise the Roof that you raised money for for charity. What a challenge that must be. Could you share some of

I wouldn't use the word challenge, I'll say opportunities for progression. have you shown you've learnt? The challenge is right. Could you show how it or hasn't worked for you in raising money for the charity? Well, we're early days. It's kind of worked to the extent that, as I said, I started off by thinking, do a gig at a pub, pass the hat round and that's it. So it's worked in as much as now, you know, we've gone this far, we're to go a lot further. So I put no...

I mean, maybe three years, maybe do it three, four years and maybe I'll pass it to somebody else, hopefully, if we got it to that stage. But certainly it's kind of the the organization of it and the challenges in there are such that you learn, you you do learn what works, you do learn what doesn't work. That doesn't mean that you're going to achieve necessary success. That's the same in music. But actually, what it's what

The simple things that, and you think, well, that's pretty obvious, isn't it? Is you've got to keep your costs right, right down. If you're trying to run a commercial operation, then, and you're not starting with a big name, that's your problem. This whole thing relies on the good nature of our local musicians.

Maria (28:57.224)
who people are kind of on their they're used to seeing them free. So yes, you've got the argument that, well, okay, you're going to see those guys. Yes, you might have seen them free once in time, but these are the best of the locals, you we're pulling those together and you're 10 pounds for a ticket. So that goes to the charity. Certainly net profits. You do have some costs. can't not incur costs. Now I had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with probably the most successful guy who's running charities.

music charities out of Reading. And he said, what you've got to realize is that if you just keep going down the road of expecting everybody to do these things for free, they will evaporate over time. You get them to do it once, maybe, even maybe twice if you twist it off. But there comes a point where actually you can't continue like that. It's not sustainable. So it's not sustainable. So you have to then to think, well, if I'm going to actually start paying people, maybe not, you know, a market price, maybe it's going to

you know, a charity price, then I've got to increase my revenue. How are you going to increase your revenue? Okay. I should know this marketing. spent 50 years in marketing. God, great idea. yeah, but it costs money. Are they going to do it free? No, they're not going to do it free. But you can utilize a lot of, there is a lot of free stuff around as in local media. Local media will be happy to run charity information. by hook or by crook, you've got to get it out there.

And by hook or by crook, you've to get it out there, not the week before, that's what I've learned. You've got to get it out there two to three months beforehand and then start getting as much information as you can. Use any creative idea, anything you can do. And now this is not a particularly creative idea and it's more to do with the fact that I'm utilizing my resources, but I've written a song about cancer and you think, God, you know, what a terrible idea.

Yeah, it is until you actually write a song that's helpful, that's light, doesn't go down the woe is me route, but says, you know, this is what you can do. And you write it in a lighthearted beat. So the tempo of the song is upbeat. It's very catchy. can vouch could listen to the song without listening to the words and think, that's a good song. And then hopefully the idea is obviously people then listen to the words, but it's something that I can actually send to media. I can get it recorded.

Maria (31:23.1)
well with maybe lots of people who are actually participating in the Raise the Roof program. We all go into a studio, we all go into somewhere like just across the road here, the Minister where we've had two concerts already, and we film it in there. And I can get that off to the BBC, I can get that off to ITV, I can get that off to Sky. And you say, well, why would you do that for a reading base? Well, because you actually have to have multiple streams of revenue. So our two big streams, obviously, are ticket sales. secondly is donations.

Now you can be anywhere in the world and make a donation. So if I can get a message out by getting my music played and somebody is in Newcastle listening to it, somebody is in Edinburgh, whatever, there's nothing stopping them going onto the website and the donations page. So we have two donation pages and we can drive traffic onto that. You don't have to come into Reading to go to one of the gigs. So I think the answer is it's like any other business. You look at all the revenue streams that you can possibly create.

you have a strategy, we have a strategy document. The next big thing that I'm going to is because I started this sort of fairly quickly, et cetera, it's just a personal thing. Whereas it needs to be put onto not a full charity setting, but what I've learned is actually there are sort of junior charities that have been set up to help people like me without going through the full charity process. So I have a thing called a community interest organization.

and CIO. And this is a simple way, but it's registering it. It registers it with the Charity Commission. So it's a full charity and it's a not -for -profit organization that is, as it says, of community interest collecting money for charity. The charity that we're collecting for is, again, the Royal Barks, but it's the Royal Barks charity, which is the charity arm of the Royal Barks Hospital.

You can, I'm working closely with that office, with the guy that runs that, Martin, who is also a singer who I've had on the bill. My next big challenge actually is to get all the nurses down. I'm just designing the posters at the moment for the next gig and you'll see on there. That would be great if they were singing the song. Nurses free. Well, can get them in that year. So nurses are in free. I mean, how many nurses got to get down from the hospital? There's hundreds and hundreds of I can't wait to see.

Maria (33:49.96)
So that's where we're going. We're giving ourselves targeting fewer gigs, but do it better, do the marketing better and actually make what it demonstrates. If you do it well, you'll make more money out of one well -run charity evening than out of 10 badly run ones that kind of fall by the wayside and you don't collect much money.

I love your strategic approach and also the way that you've gone like, you know, glocal, it's sort of local, but like you said, to get the revenue streams, you can go online to people and get people further afield to help get money to run you locally. So I think that is a great suggestion. So how can listeners, if they want to get involved and help it or how can they help if they're local, if they're not local, what can they do? Well, the best help we need is actually to come to gigs. That's what will make it all work.

And it's just repeat of that. It's raise the roof is the campaign. -A -Z -E, raisetheroof .com. The link will be in the show notes. So we will be updating the, we've got a full website and just raisetheroof .com. Go onto that. We will, if we need anybody to actually physically help, then you can drop us a line on that. We've had a young man from Oxford coming down to Oxford to actually learn to monitor our engineer.

So that's something we need people to be front of house. We need people to, you we have a little square, which is the electronic device that takes credit cards for if we are charging tickets on the door, which we do, and people to pass buckets around to help us basically. The next gig we've got on Raise the Roof is the 25th of October. So we don't actually need anybody.

Right now, we're just now organizing all the marketing side of it. We can do that. Unless, you know, somebody listening to this or watching this says, I've got a great idea for you. Yeah, more ideas, the better. Get in touch. Get in touch. And also bands. We are going to, we've got Penciled in at the moment, a gig in 360 at Reading University, who again, been enormously helpful there. The guys there have

Maria (36:12.612)
helped us. And we are provisionally booked in for, I think it's the 14th of December, to do a gig there. And that will be a longer, almost an open mic gig. Certainly all the people who have performed in our gigs to date will be invited to play probably longer sets. But there'll be room for I can get all the people that I know from the ready music scene, invite them to come and play on a big stage with a big PA system, et cetera. That'll be fun.

So, but you can go onto our website, raisetheroof .com and enroll in there. There's a page in there for you to drop in your details about your band, the genre of music, et cetera, and contact. And we'll listen to it. If you've got a video on YouTube or something like that, we'll listen to that. And then we'll have you in one of our concerts. That's great. I mean, you've got so much knowledge and information that you've been very generous to share with us here today.

Do you have any other tips from the music work that you've done, the charity work that you've done, any, what are the most important lessons that you've learned, would you think? If you could say one or two important lessons. why? Make it so you can sleep at night. That's my most important tip. Keep fit. Don't worry too much when, I work on another basis that if I have 10 ideas, one of them will happen, nine of them will go by the wayside. Don't worry about it. None of us are perfect.

There is no such thing as a perfect night. Well, maybe they do perfect nights here in the Purple Turtle, but I don't. And I think it's just so important that you can be at one with yourself, happy that you've done your best and you sleep at night. Yep. That's great. So do you have any, you've already said when your next performance is, is 25th of October is that? That's the next raise the roof. Yep. That's next performance. We've got probably a few before

for the band. Yeah. And people can find out about that from your website, raisetheroof .com. So do you have any final takeaway you want to leave everyone with? just look forward to seeing you at any of our gigs. You know, the more the merrier. It's the nice thing about being local when you do a gig like this, you go to an open mic or whatever is music brings people together. I mean, there are occasional fall outs, you know, I know. But generally speaking,

Maria (38:32.368)
Music brings people together. If you're interested in music, and even better, you can play music, you're a friend of everybody else in that building. I go to several places around the country. I go to Manchester, I go to North Wales quite regularly. And I go to places that are similar. And I'll walk in there. I might not have been there for two years. how you doing? They might not quite remember my name. But they remember that I've performed there, and you're welcome. There's a long lost friend. And that's what music does. It brings people together. That's what it should do.

And that's what it does 99 times out of 100. I think that's a wonderful thing to leave people on. So Mike, thank you so much for coming on My Local Marketer podcast. yeah, looked forward to seeing you at your next gig. Good. I just expect to see you there. I will be. Backing vocals. can't promise that. Maybe you need a bit of a warm up first. I'll go and practice that lesson from your son -in -law. Can we ask one bonus question for you?

Obviously you've got such a long career in marketing. Do you have any marketing tips and advice for local independent businesses and entrepreneurs as a former obviously marketing director, marketing career that you've had for promoting themselves? Because it's obviously hard for locals to promote themselves when they've got minimum time, budget. It's the big. To be honest, I have very, very mixed feelings about that because when you've done...

You know, what I did 20, 25 years in corporates, you get used to just doing everything properly. You know, you'll have a research company, you'll have a PR company, you'll have an advertising agency, you'll have a promotions agency. have all these people. of designers behind you, one with their own. In my day, would be, know, a couple of million. Today, probably 20 million is nothing much to spend on those brands. Now, you can't do that as a small business. You have to find what works at your local level.

And that may be what a large company would kind of turn its nose up at, but flyers, posters, you know, that's incredibly cheap these days. So it's one thing, raise the roof. You know, I got thousands of flyers and posters and then think a little bit just about where you place them, because there are great places which are free of charge. And it's amazing where they'll go, you know, just things like local libraries. Obviously, we were playing in the minster on one of the or two of the

Maria (40:57.394)
concerts, but we distributed them. think about places where people are coming and then going away again. So churches, any local point where you can actually get information and pin it up or give flyers to take away, et cetera. They're great. Obviously make use these days, everybody knows how to create stuff on the internet. do you get on to social media?

Do all the social media stuff that everybody knows about. So Instagram, know, gotta be on Instagram. I mean, I've got daughters now who have like hundreds of thousands of followers for their different business ventures. my kids seem to have learned way, way more about communications than I knew. And they're all using it successfully in their local businesses. And even if you can't do it yourself, know, HTML designing for websites

very easy now. The WordPress packages of this day and age with formats already there, you just have to import your picks into it, et cetera. It's actually much easier to do than you think. But there plenty of people around, especially freelance people who will do that for you anyway at little cost. I use a guy who's been a graphic designer all his life, semi -retired, came down to Reading recently.

He does all my design work. I mean, can do the basic, I do the HTML side of it. He does all the actual clever stuff. Gives that to me. You get it in there and then you promote it in whatever way you think you can promote email marketing. Email marketing is obviously depends on the quality of your list and depends on the legality of your list as well. But email marketing has always worked. That's the sort of

Look to the future if you're in a small business. Don't assume that you're not going be around next year. Have a strategy, have a long -term plan, make sure everything you do is in line with that long -term plan. Use your stuff, but people don't do it. Just do the common sense. that. And if you've never done a marketing course, people don't understand what marketing is. People think anybody can do marketing. No, it's a whole set. It's hundreds of As you said, it's trial and error. Everything is trial and error. You can make a lot of errors.

Maria (43:25.66)
It's a very expensive way of going about running your business. So, know, read a textbook. There's so much stuff on the internet now. Even GovBid YouTube has fantastic videos on how to do anything and everything in business. Spend some time, you know, reading. I mentioned it earlier, don't think that you know everything. You know, you might be in your 50s and been in business for a long time, but...

Business changes, there's so many new things. I mean, I'm so far out of date now because I stopped working seriously in businesses, know, 20 years ago. It's a new world since then. Now, I try to keep up to date with it to an extent and where I want to actually use these things. And I do, I go on lots of tutorials online. Use everything that you can. brilliant. Thank you, Mike. Perfect, we're finished.

Let me just close what these are.

get everything that you wanted to say? Yeah, I was conscious that, haven't actually got onto razor roof. But I think, you it was kind of like when you first said razor roof, come onto that. And it does float to come onto that. Yeah, it does. it kind of it builds up, like it's natural to talk about razor roof after I've established who I am and what my experiences are. Exactly. Having had the cancer.

Maria (44:53.08)
So what happens now with it? I take it away and edit it and I think maybe in about three to four weeks the thing is that the video side of it that I'm trying to do