Re: Some truth about investment and growth
Kristian -
Very good advice and an interesting issue that I've been thinking about a lot lately.
This is very true. Whenever I look at the cost vs benefit of picking off gigs that are smaller than us, they never make sense given our structure, quality of equipment, and system packaging.
It is often tempting. More gigs equals more days work for our guys. $650 more $ for a night can be helpful for cash flow. But there is a big opportunity cost there. Not only would we be exposing our equipment to additional wear & tear, but would be opening ourselves up for additional liability, without a real $ reward attached. And, having your guys booked up on small gigs could be a good thing, but then half the time you end up wasting an A1's talents on a B gig, and when the A gig pops up you are scrambling for staff.
I spent a long while running the numbers to see if there was a smart way to do a "Lite" version of our company, for small events. A smaller inexpensive truck, a compact and manageable system that still achieves reasonable performance standards but is easily enough to load and deploy with only two people. And the only way I could make any of the numbers work was if the OWNER of the system was always the A1. Which would mean I would be wasting energy at little gigs that I should have been using for our regular clients. Having a loose partnership with a friendly, though smaller, company can be very handy for these situations.
To be clear, we still do little gigs. But we try to treat the clients at these gigs as we do the clients at our larger events. And just as importantly, we get paid well enough for them that it makes sense for us to do so, or otherwise we leave them be.
The big issue I have found is that sometimes you have to grow to survive. Our clients that were OK 12 years ago with a point source system and Crest consoles are now requiring a name brand line-array and Profiles. The venue capacities haven't changed necessarily (though some of our clients have grown as well...) but the artist requirements have somewhat. Yes, quality equipment is a little less expensive maybe. It is certainly lighter and more efficient. But it is not that much less expensive than it used to be to meet riders 
Jason
EDIT: wow I must be a slow writer. When I began typing this, there were no other replies
