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When should you stop working for cheap?


Galactic Turtle

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Galactic Turtle
I'm a tour manager. Specifically, my work centers around figuring out all the production and logistical components of various concert tours. Naturally, I got into this by being in the right place at the right time with the right skill set. In the past, both in college and directly out of college, I'd take on pretty sizable projects getting paid basically nothing (think of the bigger name K-pop acts from the mid 2010's). I was on international tours by the time I was twenty.
 
Last year someone I'd done a project with back in 2016 reached out last minute because he had started his own touring company but took on an artist more complicated than he was anticipating. Six weeks until opening night he calls and offers me $275/show, no pre-production pay, to basically make the entire tour happen. I hated my current job, a management position at a music venue I'd been getting suffocated in for eight months after trying to convince myself I was fine not being on tour, so I quit and pulled off four months of planning in one.
 
A couple weeks after this tour ends, he calls me up again saying he'll put me on retainer for $1000/month plus $300/show while on the tour that was now scheduled to happen in four months. Not great. In college I was on retainer for $2000/month. That combined with my various club gigs held me over. But I reasoned it was a new company and a woman who I really enjoy working with was also on his team. I accepted the job.
 
Despite the initial offer, as soon as I start he says he made a mistake with his calculations and can now only pay me $600/month. Probably should've backed out then but because I really wanted to work with another member of his team again, I stayed on. Again, despite being on retainer, as soon as this tour ended I was told I wouldn't be getting that $600/month again until I was actively working on another one of his tours. Both tours he had planned for the summer got cancelled which left a huge gap until just last week when his new tour started.
 
Between then and now I headed the logistics for a major music festival and got offered a touring gig from an established company. Now I make $6000/month which in the touring world is considered the absolute low end of the spectrum for tour managers yet here I was coming from making a fraction of that.
 
His current tour is a hot mess. The friends I have on it are crying themselves to sleep almost daily and are stressed out of their minds. Instead of hiring another me, he hired two people who have no idea what they're doing to assist the woman I enjoy working with. Our tours happen to overlap in one city. Tomorrow I'll be going to their show.
 
In this business when you really click with someone, naturally you want to work with them more. My friend, the woman, who works with him is the reason I'm stopping by. I know she wants me to join their projects again once my current tour finishes up in June. Given my current trajectory, I'll have around $50,000 in savings by then. She passed up a great job in Korea to work with the guy now in charge of producing all of BTS' concerts to keep her life in LA working with this guy and staying close to her boyfriend.
 
It's not so much the money that has me hesitating, it's the trajectory. Before my current gig, I wasn't the most confident in my abilities. All the tours I've done have been for friends or friends of friends. This time a company has picked me out of who knows how many to do a ten month long North American tour. After this project, I feel like I could look around and get involved in all sorts of new things.... but always the back of my mind is saying "you have enough money, you can afford to work for close to nothing after this for a little while."
 
Even if I love working with this woman more than anything, should I move on if the man running the whole thing doesn't change?
 
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Having your life go down the drain (both immediate life quality as well as future opportunities) just to work with someone you like doesn't seem like a good enough reason from how you describe it :(

But that's just how I read it. I like running the thought experiment: "What will your life be most likely to look like depending on which choice you make?" - and then pick based on the one that has a happier future you in it :)

 

Also, while it may not work: If you like working with her: Consider trying to convince her to get a job where she'll be working with you! =D (And even if that's currently not viable, there's always the chance you'll end up working again together at some point in the future! E.g. when that other person's venture finally crumbles for good)

 

Either way, that ten month North America tour sounds like an awesome gig - hope it goes great!!! :)

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