Russ.....here's mine (and I wish I could do it again).

I lived overseas a lot of years and was playing regularly and successfully. When I came back, I had to start all over again getting "known" and re-establishing myself in a whole new environment. One day I sat down and analyzed the whole situation.

My thinking went like this...in this order:

I know I'm good......how do I get other people to know I'm good.....how do I reach the masses of people in one go to present myself to them....where do people congregate.......where do people congregate where I can play amongst them?

I thought......an airport waiting room.....a train station waiting room....play on a street corner? And then, it hit me....the shopping malls! I live in an area they call "shopping mall heaven." I then called up the first one I thought of and I hit it lucky. Told the event director that I'm a one-man-band and I play great music that would give the mall some ambiance and that I'm willing to come down on a Saturday, set it all up, and play for nothing, until you....ask me to stop. Well, I played all afternoon and 10 more years of Saturdays after that smack dab in the middle of the most upscale shopping mall in the area. People were talking my cards by the hundreds. Most every day I would come home and find 2-3 calls on my machine asking can I do their party? And then THOSE parties branched out to other "upscale" persons who attended them and I found myself working regularly for the longest time.

One day, I decided to change locales, so I called up another Mall in another area and used the first mall as a reference. Bam......I fell right into that one too. And I made sure I positioned myself at the foot of the escalator so people could see me and listen to me as they came down from the floor above. Of course, I made sure my cards were right in front of them when they got off. That went another two years of even more work.

I don't remember how it all ended, but it was really a good run I had from one simple idea.

You can't do that anymore.....too many restrictions now, insurance and safety issues, shortage of hallway space, etc.

That's why I like your posts, you always keep me thinking and right now that I'm still in "burn-out" that's what I need the most.....mental stimulation.....before I end up in the "poor house" or on welfare with no money coming in.

Now that I think about it all.....I wonder how I went from being a "king of the hill" to being a "nobody?"

Mark