Celebrating Holli!

Celebrating Holli! (Interview #67)

Holli manages tours for performers; arranging travel plans, coordinating with venues, managing financials, facilitating media interactions, and scouting local services at each tour stop for the talent, essentially planning and directing all the logistical activities that underpin extensive trips in the entertainment industry. Holli is multi-talented, and recently spent her time on a production filming in New York, skillfully building sets, a job predominantly performed by men.

Describing her life as unpredictable, quality, & love, Holli shares her path, “It’s hard to think of a time where I ever thought of a career I wanted to have “when I grow up”. I’m 37 and still don’t really know what I want to be when I grow up haha. At least not as a profession. I just know I want to be financially secure and have a schedule with some freedom to take time off when I need to because life is what happens when I’m not at work. Work is just where I sell my time. I find satisfaction working with my hands and I love theater. So I manage performing artists in their day-to-day on the road and when I am home I build stages for theater or TV. The work suits me and it’s contract work so I can always turn down a contract to go climb pyramids in South America.”

Holli inspires and encourages women and girls and shares this advice, “Find a female mentor if you can. Most of my mentors were males because there weren’t many female Tour Managers that were accessible to me when I was coming up but I learned more from working with women because they challenged me more. No one is ever going to value you more than you value yourself so don’t undersell your skillset because I guarantee someone else with your identical skillset oversells themselves every day. But also, don’t oversell yourself. The entertainment industry is competitive. Everyone wants to work here. Some people will tell you to “fake it til you make it” and that is TERRIBLE advice. Be confident and ask intelligent questions. Know when to say “I don’t know the best way to do that. Can you show me?” and when to say “I will figure it out on my own.” The show has to happen RIGHT NOW so when you’re too embarrassed to say you don’t know how to do something and drop the ball, everyone remembers. People want to teach you if you want to learn. No one will teach you if you pretend to know. The entertainment industry is one of the hardest but most rewarding industries to work in. It’s hard to break into, but if you want to work here bad enough, you will. It will take sacrifice, but what you will gain in experience and lifelong friends who will be like family will be worth it.”

#lifelongfriends #familyforever