Scared Money Never Wins

I was scared.

Legitimately terrified.

Breathing? Shallow and rapid, check. Pulse? Faster than a hummingbird, check. Skin response? Palms clammy and sweaty, check.

I gripped the microphone tighter and tried to focus my eyes on the tiny words on the third generation photocopied page.

Oh crap, the music’s started! My mouth opened and a noise similar to a muffled groan came out.

I was singing.

Correction. I was butchering my karaoke debut. Everyone in the audience was avoiding eye contact, their bodies slowly shaking as they held in laughter. Dear God this was a train wreck. My mouth mumbled the words as my brain silently screamed.

My mistake was taking that bet. Why oh why did I take that bet?

Oh crap, I think I’m half a verse behind. Accelerate the lyrics!

It started off as such a fun night.

I was celebrating with 5 friends from our office. We all were independent distributors for a direct selling water filter company in the spring of 1991. My suit jacket was like a strange grey shaker knit weave complete with shoulder pads, hanging over my chair in front of a table covered in pitchers of draft. I had sold $29,500 worth of filters that month. The nearly 7 grand in my pocket meant I was buying, at least a round or two. No worries. Money had no meaning back then. Easy come, easy go. No wonder they say youth is wasted on the young.

My critical error was in betting Justin Title that I could drink a pint of beer faster than him. He kept refusing to race me. Looking back he played it like a genius. Total beta male, bowing to my superior super man status. I goaded him for twenty minutes. He ever-so-casually sweetened the pot by saying the loser has to sing a karaoke song and then he gave me the book. He looked me in the eye and begged me not to make him sing anything like Karma Kameleon by Culture Club. That set me off on 5 minutes of thumbing through the book to find something even more humiliating for him to sing without success.

“Fine, when you lose you have to sing Karma Kameleon. Let’s drink.”

“Ok, and if you lose David I’ll pick something for you to sing. Ok, let’s drink,”

We picked up our pints of Rickard’s Red, clinked them together and I began to gulp down the frosty brown nectar. In less than a second and a half I heard a clunk, the word DONE! screamed at me and raucous laughter from the table. Justin was in front of an empty glass and I wasn’t even halfway through mine.

My mind raced in scrambled panic. How was this possible?

“BUWWAAAHHHAAA did you see that? He unhinged his jaw like a python. That was freaking incredible!”

I had been set up. I walked right into the trap and stepped on the land mine. Justin smiled a wicked little grin and reached for the book.

“Ooooohhhh, toooo bad David. Nice try though. Here we go….how does Candle in the Wind by Elton John sound?”

But I Was Just A Kid

How low budget was this karaoke machine?

One giant speaker the size of a box of motor oil. No graphics. No words on a screen. Just a cd of the music playing with you holding an ancient stained photocopy of lyrics. Within 5 beats of music I was completely lost. I was drowning. And there were no water wings to save me.

My voice quivered and trembled. I mumbled softly, trying to pretend I knew the song. My brain whimpered silently inside the fleshy giant skull that is my head, begging for more booze. I was nearly totally sober before I got up here. The massive adrenaline dump ensured that I was aware of every eyeball staring at me. The pain….the pain. I’m sure it was no picnic for the patrons in the bar either. The slightly hot waitress with too much makeup had her meaty hands clamped over her ears.

It felt like an eternity up there. Mercifully, time continued in a linear fashion at roughly 60 seconds per minute and within 300 heartbeats it was over. The DJ was red in the face, holding his blubbery ribs stretching the limits of his Kool and The Gang t-shirt. He grabbed the mic and blurted into it, sounding remarkably like the announcer at a strip club…“Give it Up! Big Round of Applause for David! Wasn’t that dreadful?”

I slumped down onto my chair. My compatriots were high-fiving and howling. I was drenched in the sweat of a hundred sit ups, exhausted. I felt like I had been in a fight.

Fear can be a terrible thing.

As I write these words I reflect on how truly terrified I was, and what that terror did to me. The next day my joints ached. Yes, my head hurt from the cheap draft bear, but my body genuinely felt like it had been through hell. The massive amount of hormones that the body generates during a fight or flight response is astounding.

If I could go back in time twenty years I promise you it would have been different. I would have taken a deep breath, fired up my adrenaline and attacked the song. I would have turned it into an art piece with growling vocals from a death metal band like Sepultura or Cannibal Corpse. I would have been so intense the crowd would have been the scared ones. Heavy metal Elton John.

Embrace The Fear

I would have been bold and brave instead of a sweating trembling mess. I would have embraced the fear instead of letting fear win that day.

But you know what?

I survived it. It was good for me. That experience on stage in front of a microphone was easily the worst of my life. The good news is it got better and better. No, I tried never to sing again, at least not on purpose. As Clint Eastwood says, “A man’s gotta know his limitations.” Ok, there was 1 time when I helped 4000 people from on stage in Montreal in singing YMCA by The Village People. Another disastrous moment. Who knew the French version had different gestures?

Yes, singing was out. But I spoke on stage. A lot. And the crowds grew. And so did the pay checks. Within a decade I was pulling in $10,000 paydays from 40 minutes worth of work with a microphone. The biggest crowd was in the 9000 cheeks in seats range. So surviving the karaoke nightmare turned out ok.

There’s an old saying in poker that “Scared Money Never Wins.”

When I got up to sing in 1991 you could tangibly smell the fear. You see fear a lot in advertising, especially online. Begging and pleading is rarely effective. That’s why spam is so hated. The “spray and pray” method of attracting business is reviled. Once a friends list on Facebook gets past two hundred the wall turns into the deal of the day dumping ground. When you see a troll hijacking a conversation thread to mention their new diet product, you can smell the fear.

Where are you scared in your business?

Where can you eliminate fear in your marketing?

Where can you be bold and brave for your customers?

If you’ve never had the experience of singing on stage I urge you to try it. It’s truly horrible. But anyone can belt out Taking Care Of Business or Take This Job And Shove It.

Remember to have fun with it.

Explore the stage, move your body, and breathe!

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