By Mitch Rice
If you want your band to be successful, you need to practice effective business management. But this is especially tricky to do if your band is on tour, depriving you of access to physical spaces where you can conveniently manage your business.
What are the solutions?
Hire the Right Manager
First, consider hiring the right tour manager to keep the band going. Bands and musicians are sometimes averse to hiring dedicated management personnel, since this represents an additional expense – and even relatively small expenses can compromise the profitability of touring, which already operates on a relatively thin margin.
It’s also possible to assign managerial responsibilities to a member of your band, who will be on tour with you. There are many advantages to this, since this person will have a much better understanding of your goals and perspectives. However, if your manager is on tour with you, you’ll need to figure out how to handle certain responsibilities (like collecting important mail) remotely.
What’s important is that you find the best fit for your band. Obviously, someone with more knowledge and experience is going to be more helpful to your band, but they’re also going to be more expensive. Review a wide range of different candidates – and don’t choose someone purely out of convenience.
Utilize Virtual Services
Virtual services, like a virtual mailbox service, could make remote business management much more effective. With a virtual mailbox service, you’ll have all the business mail sent to a specifically dedicated address; this mail is received by on staff professionals, who can then scan and send the mail to you digitally. If there’s anything that requires you to respond (like a contract that needs a signature), you can have the mail forwarded to a different address, or you can transmit different instructions for how to handle it.
It’s an incredibly convenient way to stay on top of your physical mail while traveling around the country – and it’s just one of many similar virtual services you can employ.
Prioritize Effective Timing
When it comes to management on the road, timing is everything. You have a limited amount of time to take care of all your responsibilities, and if you miss any deadlines or face significant delays, it could compromise the tour in unexpected ways.
These are some of the most important tips to follow here:
- Plan conservatively. If you think it’s going to take half an hour to travel to the venue, plan on an hour. If you think the meeting is going to take an hour, plan an hour and a half. Conservative planning gives you much more wiggle room.
- Arrive early. Always aim to arrive early. This will give you extra time and compensate for any unexpected delays or problems you face.
- Stay on top of communications. If you don’t stay on top of emails and phone calls, you’ll quickly become disorganized. Spend time as you can, even if it’s only a few minutes at a time, responding to messages.
- Schedule heads-down time. It’s also important to proactively schedule heads-down time, so you can focus on important matters without being interrupted.
It’s easy to become overloaded, so managers should look for novel and innovative ways they can get extra work done.
- Travel time. Are you traveling on a bus? Use this time to catch up on messages or complete background tasks.
- Hotel time. Are you checked into the hotel? Take advantage of the free Wi-Fi.
- At the venue. You might want to enjoy the concert, but you can also do some tasks at the venue itself.
- Local shops. Failing that, you can try to work at a local café or library.
Look for Coworking Spaces
Coffee shops and tour buses aren’t exactly optimal for ongoing productivity, so if you need to stay focused and get some real work done, be on the lookout for coworking spaces. A coworking space near the venue could be the perfect spot for you to set up shop and knock out your most important tasks.
Proactively Communicate
Proactive communication is important for almost every conceivable job or role, but it’s especially important for bands and musicians on tour. Don’t just assume the venue is ready for you; call and confirm. Don’t just assume the protocols for unloading; talk to whoever is in charge. Proactively communicating is practically the only viable strategy for reducing potential problems and miscommunications.
Pick Up an Extra Assistant If Necessary
In some cases, even a dedicated tour manager may not be able to handle everything in a timely manner. If you find there are too many extra tedious tasks to take care of, or if you just need an extra pair of hands, consider getting a remote assistant to fill in the gaps.
Managing a business while being on tour can be difficult and stressful. But with these helpful strategies, you should be able to take control of your time, handle your responsibilities, and still deliver a knockout performance at each venue.
Data and information are provided for informational purposes only, and are not intended for investment or other purposes.
