” We can’t sponsor your event unless there’s attendees with a high follower count that’ll take photos with our products “ Potential Sponsor (we rescinded our proposal after this reply)
The first two months of planning our second event ever was pretty much just a lot of no’s and the usual “my so an so is a firefighter, but we can’t” kinda bullshit. Calling dive bar after dive bar to be told (when I even got a response) that the event wouldn’t “fit” that particular bars “vibe” was disheartening at first. I might be biased as I saw this event as one that any venue would jump at, but ultimately came to the conclusion that everything would come down to money.
I get it, venues are closing all over town so you’ve gotta be picky on what kinda events/bands you want to have. But an event to help a wildland fire non-profit at the tail end of a horrible/busy summer that’s pretty much ending with huge fires circling Los Angeles county (the county where the events being held) seemed like a no brainer, but I guess it didn’t for a lot of people. Rejection email after rejection email came in as I started to scramble around September as to set a date and time for the event. I’d go back and forth about if I really wanted to do it or if I was just pushing myself to do something I’d rather not be.
I guess it was more the rejection that I didn’t want to endure. I had felt a lot of it when I was trying to get the comic book into stores, I felt belittled by some bookstores as they seemed to look down on “my little comic book”, which is what some clerk at a store had called my book. Sure, the majority of the stories were mine, but I had enough people reach out to me who had seen themselves in the stories that I now felt that these were all of our stories. I had visited a book shop once to see if I could sign a consignment agreement to sell there when the clerk said they didn’t sell comics. I then pointed out that they had zines for sale that looked more so like comics rather than chapter books, to which the clerk replied that their patrons wouldn’t be interested in the comic. I scoffed and said thanks anyway as I started to walk out, I had seen books shorter then the comic, zines about obscure things that only seemingly apathetic “artist” would care about, but not a book about the people who protected our forest, homes, and so much more.
Walking out I looked around at the people in the book store, some with national parks apparel on (the irony I know) , and thought to myself
“Fuck these people, fuck this bookshop, they don’t deserve to hear our stories”.
The bands had been booked about a month or so before the event, but I was still struggling to hire comedians. I had reached out to a woman I had once known (who worked with comedians) to ask her opinion and she pointed me in the right direction. The handful of comedians she suggested were fantastic, but maybe didn’t fit the bill for this particular night. So i dived into trying to find more comedians that could potentially make the night even better. I’d message well known comedians that I knew my buddies on the crew loved in hopes of maybe pulling something awesome off, but none of them returned my emails, so I trudged forward. After about three weeks I finalized things with a few comedians and got the lineup down. But I still needed help, so now I started searching for sponsors.
Begging. That’s what it felt like, begging brands and companies to sponsor us. I was never a good salesperson, so every pitch I sent out or did over the phone started with me stuttering a little. I hated speaking with strangers and asking them to sponsor the event, it just left me feeling as if I was swindling people. Was I? Fuck no, the bands and comedians were going to be paid by me, the tickets to the event would be split between the venue and the wildland fire org we were donating the fee to, the bar? I thought we’d have a beer sponsor at the event, but the venue had its own stock of things and revenue of it went back to the venue, which I understood.
This was our first event with live music and comedians so I was invested, I knew this would be an event I’d have every year and hoped it would only get bigger, so I didn’t care how much it costed me to throw the first few events, it was worth it.
These human beings spent the summer chasing fire, they deserve so much then one night of live country music and comedy, but if I can give them one night where they feel acknowledge and appreciated right before they get laid off, then thats what I’ll do.
Every fucking year. -Robo