Thursday, January 31, 2008

Money lessons from rock star Bret Michaels

I am a teen of the 1980s and of course a fan of Bret Michaels the lead singer of Poison!! When his reality show. Rock of Love came out last year I was instantly addicted.

Bret was in Bankrate's Fame and Fortune column. He shared some of his philosophy on how he deals with the business of money in the music industry.

Get the best deal you can. If you're getting a deal from a promoter and they're trying to underpay you, look at the size of the venue, what they're selling tickets for, the gross income, the net income ... all of that matters. Because you're also taking care of your fans. I'm playing a place that holds 3,000 people. I don't want him selling $70 tickets but offering me $50,000. I'd rather he do a $30 ticket, and then I'll do it for $60,000.


And

It's simple business common sense. My biggest strength is using common sense financially. I excelled at consumer math in high school, when they sent you out with a fake $50 to go grocery shopping. I was the A-plus student in my class. It helped when we lived in L.A. without two nickels to rub together. They would send me to the store to get the food, and Bobby was a fry cook, so he'd cook the food up. Now we laugh about it, but in the game of rock 'n' roll, it's about survival at the very beginning, literally -- it's about not starving and having to say, "I have to go back to mom and dad in Pittsburgh."


Bret sounds like he knows how to live within his means even though he has millions of dollars to his name. He keeps reinventing himself from rock star to reality star to what can keep his business afloat.

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