Time management skills are a quality nearly every individual wishes they could hold on to, whether it’s for an upcoming meeting, staying on track with business transactions, appointments or simply for a handful of minutes at a time. Nonetheless, booking agents face the biggest struggle when it comes to time management. Why? You may ask, well life is unpredictable.
At one point or another, as a booking agent, the band you manage will miss a flight. This is an almost automatic guarantee simply because of a sudden injury, airline gate numbers have been switched at the last moment without notifications, only a few band members have made it to the boarding gate on time, and the list goes on and on. Many of these incidents happen because everyone is rushing to pack everything and get to one place at a certain time. This is where those trusty time management skills will come in handy.
- Be sure to contact each band member and tour manager at least 5 hours before take off to remind everyone what time the flight leaves and what the gate number is
- Then check in via text message or phone call to see if everyone actually made it to the airport
- Utilize a Group Chat, this may be the only time Group Chat is seen as helpful and not annoying
- Check with the airline to ensure no flights have been delayed or canceled, this can typically be seen by either downloading the airline app or locating the airport website
- And with a final check-in by making sure everyone has successfully made it to their assigned seats on the airline
This seems like a lot of unnecessary work but, overall this is a secure way to keep an ongoing schedule without too many bumps in the road.
Now for the next section that involves arriving on time or near the right time in each city to perform a show. Most likely a band travels on a tour bus from city to city, this right away will entail highly entertaining time management superpowers. Yes, superpowers, because no matter where you go traffic will always be there and so will tour bus maintenance. Along with the fact that the bus driver needs adequate sleep, everyone on board needs supplies such as food, water, toiletries, clothes and etc.
Inside of a tour bus
Being able to plan a month long tour means being able to make a block schedule. Block scheduling means breaking every day down into 30 minutes to an hour long increments. If it takes almost six hours to travel from Columbus, Ohio to Chicago, Illinois the booking agent should be in contact with the bus driver to ensure arrival and set leaving times. Most of the time a lot of traveling will be done at night since music venues tend to open later in the evening. However, this does not result in any excuse if a band completely misses their time slot to perform, this will also result in the venue manager asking for payment as well because the band was a no-show.
Having a time schedule printed out and hung up next to the door on the tour bus has been one maneuver that works fairly well. This allows everyone on board to memorize what times they need to be rehearsing before the show, when to go get something to eat, possibly look around, when to get everything setup and ready for the stage, to hanging out with fans afterwards and finally the last call before departure.
