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To Pivot or Not to Pivot. That is the question I ask Vegas Guitar Guy, Shawn Eiferman, when I welcome him to the show! 35 years in the music business, the entrepreneur tells us “Everything is Temporary” and how important it is to know how to pivot! Meet Shawn live on the next Caren Glasser LIVE!
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0:00
hello everyone karen glasser here and welcome to the show i welcome guests from all across the globe who
0:07
entertain us excite us and wow us and today is no exception so whether you are here
0:13
live or on replay make sure to stay high in the comments my guest today is sean eiferman and the
0:20
topic of the show is to pivot or not to pivot that is the question sean began playing
0:26
guitar at an early age of nine growing up in bellingham washington before his family relocated to las vegas nevada where he
0:34
currently resides with 35 years in the music business he is known as that vegas guitar guy he has performed with
0:41
or opened for hootie and the blouse fish sugar ray barenaked ladies demi hagar
0:47
pat benatar todd running i can go on and on just to name a few he is an inventor an entrepreneur or a
0:53
shantra pater as he likes to call himself so without further ado let's welcome sean to the show
1:03
karen hi everybody show entrepreneur that was a joke one day
1:08
trying to be like a poet i took and you didn't even know it right and i
1:13
posted it or whatever i put it in my i changed up i pivoted and put that
1:19
as a like it asked for a job title i love it i am psychologically unemployable uh i
1:25
don't do the job thing i haven't had yeah we know about that i don't know what to put in there for a job title
1:31
what do you put entrepreneur yeah perfectly you and i have known each other for a lot of years
1:37
i think over 15 years if it may be even more we met at the house of blues
1:43
in las vegas there you go i distinctly remember sitting there listening to you play you
1:49
were not eating in the restaurant you were playing you were the entertainment and i remember saying to my husband michael i said oh my god this guy is
1:56
good and so i did what i always do i i got up i walked over to the stage and i
2:01
invited you to have some dessert with us and i think from that point on we remain friends and we had gone through ups and
2:07
downs together um you are an amazing guy if you're just tuning in we are talking sean eiferman that
2:15
vegas guitar guy and we're talking about pivoting specifically we're talking about um
2:20
dessert being the great connector that's what we're talking about right now without
2:29
an attraction to brownies brownies or apple pie or all of it yeah or whatever it is was
2:35
probably bread pudding oh they got great bread pudding oh my gosh we it was so much fun and you know that actually becomes part of
2:41
the story because here we have you who have played all over you have you have
2:46
opened for so many stars you have been your own star you have cds you have albums out
2:52
and we now get hit with something the likes of what none of us have ever experienced
2:57
and there's that magic word pivot and who else for me to go to but then to you sean
3:03
because you have pivoted so many times in your life um of which i i think that you're a perfect example
3:10
to really talk about what pivoting is all about so tell us a little bit about your story
3:16
and then we'll dive in yeah i mean uh i guess we should start kind of
3:21
late later than uh i was born in here i'm a sagittarius and i love walks in
3:27
the rain i uh uh yeah i mean i've been a full-time you working musician obviously no grammys on
3:34
the walls i'm not a household name but i but i made a living for since i was 15 years old give or take
3:41
with a guitar in my hands or some kind of instrument or singing or entertaining juggling uh
3:48
whatever all of the above i'm not actually a juggler but uh uh and
3:54
uh and i've been really lucky very fortunate that all of that has been based for the most part
4:00
in vegas which is the entertainment capital of the world right it just makes it so much easier to be a professional
4:06
working musician um and and then as you i mean that's really my story leading up
4:12
to it i mean i've got a couple of kids that are now not kids anymore my son turns 23 in a
4:17
couple of weeks my daughter's 25. uh i just got married congratulations
4:22
of my life i couldn't be happier i'm the luckiest dude ever um i'd have her she's in the car she's
4:28
waiting you didn't come in the house all right we won't even go there right now
4:34
very coachable i told her i need silence for the show this is karen glasser here we can't have a bunch of noise going on
4:40
so she's just sitting in the car waiting okay well hopefully it's not too hot there because if it's anything like where we are
4:45
right now it's it's a little toasty out there uh i gave her a rubik's cube okay good
4:51
thank goodness thank goodness totally kidding i can't wait to see the hate mail
4:57
one of the things that you know yeah we got married uh march 7th and as
5:04
you know covet hit like days late like days everything was shut down a couple of days later
5:09
yeah the pivot thing for me uh which i guess is really the most prevalent
5:15
uh important relevant story uh is that as soon as it hit
5:20
uh i mean i'm no bill gates by any stretch of the imagination i'm definitely not gandhi but uh i
5:27
i i would say three or four days into everything into the real quarantine here where we found out
5:33
everybody in town just lost their bookings like there were zero gigs it was just a red x next to a red x next to
5:39
a red x on the calendar um i started getting like text messages and calls and and stuff from
5:45
my peers from my right local working entertainers musician guys and they're
5:50
like um i don't know how i'm gonna pay my rent there's talk of some like you know government
5:56
check coming maybe like in those first couple of weeks right everything was petrified nobody
6:02
had any answers and uh and you know it was a great thing in the bathroom
6:07
yeah yeah exactly so during the great toilet paper famine of 2020
6:13
guys he literally went to sing in the bathroom but there was a reason for that there's great acoustics in the bathroom
6:20
lighting was good lighting and the sound was good but you were doing something that um first of all kudos to you you
6:27
didn't just think about yourself you thought about all these musicians out there that were now
6:33
without work and so what did you start doing yeah so that would my first pivot was to do what
6:38
you just said and i appreciate the way you put it but again i'm not you know gandhi like i can't
6:43
save everybody or whatever i just i realized people were all of a sudden telling me that they don't have any gigs which means they can't pay
6:49
their rent which means they don't know where the next grocery store trip is like they were freaking out and so i just went in the
6:55
bathroom and started singing songs and let people know that they could contribute they could donate to
7:02
a a fund that i put up on a quick little website right see and we raised i can't believe
7:09
it but we raised ten thousand dollars in just over five weeks so we've paid out to
7:15
30 plus musicians 300 each yeah a lot of people we didn't even know like
7:20
i didn't want anybody to think there was any nepotism going on we we had the one musician that got
7:25
nominated by me the first one right he had to nominate the next one and so on and
7:31
so on and everyone helped each other and but again it started with you because
7:36
you like to say everything is temporary right we all everything
7:41
well let me put you in forward did you have that up there that tattoo right there says everything is temporary it is
7:48
temporary and how how perfect because
7:53
i do believe that you are absolutely right some things are less temporary than others um but you have
8:00
pivoted over and over and over again let's talk a little bit about the things that you have been involved with
8:06
um you do something and you still are involved with this with something called shawnee grams yeah let's talk about that
8:12
for a second that i've been messing around with that forever and it's just a singing telegram idea
8:21
forever uh and then all of a sudden this bathroom thing that we were doing there were a
8:26
handful of people that did two things by the way i i want to hammer home this one thing that happened during that
8:32
first pivot and that is if you i believe this if you help enough people get what they want you will in turn get
8:38
everything you want and out of nowhere during that first couple of weeks it was all going in one direction right
8:45
which was i believe the right direction for the right reason to the right people and then all of a sudden people started
8:52
reaching out to me and asking me two questions that were interesting one can i sponsor your show
8:59
well like crazy and then all of a sudden i went well i'm not gonna say no and i just put a
9:05
tablet up here another pivot that said today's show is sponsored by teriyaki madness
9:11
or or the richardson real estate group or all of a sudden i i had like i felt
9:16
like johnny carson i hadn't sponsored it was pretty cool and then the second thing that happened during those
9:22
bathroom shows is that people said hey would you do me a favor i'll send you
9:27
50 bucks if you'll sing happy birthday to my dad there you go he's in the
9:34
hospital has coveted like like all of a sudden i started getting like maybe two or three a day and then
9:42
mother's day hit and when mother's day hit probably about four or five days before mother's day
9:49
i posted an example of one of these little singing telegram videos of me
9:54
just singing happy anniversary or whatever it was anyway i did 300 orders
10:00
almost 280 something orders just for mother's day of of literally just this just going
10:08
happy mother's day to you or different you know what i mean uh but you took but here's the thing i
10:14
mean this would not have happened would you agree that you wouldn't have exploded as fast as it did had we not
10:21
been in a in a situation as we are still in right now oh no i was i
10:27
was doing five shows a week right steady
10:34
i mean you you were busy busy well before we continue let's give a definition to pivot we're talking pivot
10:41
but let's talk what that really means in my world pivot means that you shift and go in a
10:46
different direction that for me is pivoting you just you just don't sit there and feel sorry for yourself i
10:52
mean you maybe for five minutes and then you you pivot how would you define pivot
10:57
yeah boy i agree with that uh i think my pivoting i didn't know you said go in a different
11:03
direction your definition and i got to be honest to myself
11:08
i took a look at a few things maybe three months into the quarantine
11:13
and thought that it was going to be a complete shift and music was not going to be part of my
11:19
my pivot at all i got i got people interested in in what i do and how i do it right and some
11:26
of those things like i got a an offer to be involved in an insurance business
11:32
now i think insurance is a fantastic product uh these this company focuses on nothing
11:37
but life insurance right um and and uh police officers school
11:42
teachers and fire people that fire people sort of thing
11:50
so i wouldn't have to be like hey karen want to buy insurance yeah hey let me take a look at
11:56
your policies so that i can maybe save you eight dollars every two weeks it was nice that i didn't have to do
12:01
that but boy talk about like a pivot in the other direction completely over there and i just couldn't resonate with
12:07
it there was something that didn't feel right i don't know what it is maybe it's because i started looking at some of the material to test
12:14
and i failed the first three quizzes i mean i haven't taken a test or
12:20
so maybe that helped push me back over playing and you just yeah but there were a handful of other
12:26
things there was a couple things there was a invention company you guys have everyone's heard of invent help
12:32
um with the little caveman logo right right that was another opportunity that i could have pivoted completely out of
12:37
music there's a handful of things very flattering that people thought that i was qualified or you know could could benefit their
12:43
company or whatever they're doing um but it wasn't in i i don't know if i it's maybe i didn't
12:50
have the energy to do a complete 180. or maybe i felt like my crystal ball
12:55
wasn't completely broken and there was something right here that i could just kind of go
13:01
and that pivot was still something that you know so let's let's talk about that
13:07
you were doing airbnbs you had several houses that you had tricked out and you were renting these things out
13:13
like nobody's business a couple of things happen vegas changed their their laws and things
13:19
but clearly um in this pandemic so what did you do you're now you're now
13:26
renting out rvs i mean really you have a uh we have a private
13:32
motorhome rv fleet luckily the home that we live in our our home home
13:37
has uh a big spot on the side of the house that can fit two full like 35 foot
13:42
motorhome rvs meant to be boat storage right and then we have a three-car garage and
13:48
a a whole side thing there so technically just between the driveway and the
13:54
the storage on the side we realize we've got enough room for five maybe six vehicles aside from our vehicles and if
14:01
we rent them out on outdoorsy or rv share or one of those type of solutions
14:06
they wouldn't all be here at the same time anyways they'd all be on the road creating residual income and so
14:13
we had already started doing that about a year ago we bought a brand new motorhome right and and we've i've been in that
14:21
world before for years but music you know you end up behind the wheel of a of an rv uh anyway i knew a few things
14:29
about a few things and realized that the airbnb like you mentioned for rvs
14:36
is the market is steadily going up yeah i said look if we buy a brand new
14:41
one let's go ahead and dictate that we want to use it we want to take as many trips as we physically can for
14:48
vacations and stuff like that we love it right so we bought the brand new one put it up on one of those sites and like
14:54
within four days we had thousands of dollars worth of rentals we had to like block stuff off we're
15:00
like oh crap we were supposed to go to lake tahoe during the week we didn't realize there'd be that big of a demand and so now
15:06
that pivot has created a real cool win-win one we have a motor a brand new motor
15:12
home and we can take trips whenever we want i love it you've been paid for anything
15:18
we made all of our money back from the down payment and every monthly payment for the payment and maintenance is all paid by rental
15:25
income and so now the the shift a real pivot happen mentally right which is we don't spend a
15:33
dime on anything that is not a rental asset i love that and that is really that's an
15:39
important message i mean for almost all of us that there are if you take a look around there are
15:44
things that we can do that um we can repurpose so to speak i'm
15:50
like i call it i'm repurposing queen of the world if you can't use it for more than one thing why bother doing it that
15:57
that's that's how i believe let's talk about your guitar and let's talk about your invention i
16:02
said that you're an inventor you invented something as a musician you saw a need
16:08
you filled it and it's called the leaner yeah i'm going to put you on solo so you can show people what this is for all of the
16:14
guitar players out there this is something that you probably need
16:20
so uh i'll do i just happen to have kind of both here so here this is an acoustic guitar
16:26
i i didn't invent this but the back of this guitar is flat and there's nothing on it
16:31
um and and then this is your traditional guitar stand right and you know they're kind of
16:36
clunky and bulky and and you can't really put you don't want to put this acoustic guitar
16:42
anywhere else but in a stand so that it doesn't slide off of an amp or fall off of a couch or a bar stool
16:49
so i i couldn't understand why none of the guitar manufacturers not gibson not fender not paul reed smith nobody
16:56
took an electric guitar i just happen to have all this sitting around so here's an electric guitar and all of this wood right here is just
17:03
sitting here why hasn't anybody built a guitar with a
17:09
guitar stand built into the guitar that's because they're not shawn eiferman so tell us
17:16
ready the wiener there you go can you guys all see so
17:21
this is the very first prototype ever there's two little magnets right here
17:27
and right here that that do the can you hear that so when you pick it up to play the stand
17:34
just folds right back into the guitar and it is in the guitar it doesn't if you can see that it's not pulling
17:40
right at all it's blocked and then when i'm done playing i simply pull it back out and put the guitar down
17:49
and that it's fascinating to me because again you saw a need regardless of whether we were in a
17:54
pandemic you saw a need it helps musicians it helps it actually helps you yourself and now
18:01
it has been created you now have a guitar and i know you have some great plans for this which we're not going to
18:07
tell anyone until it's up because you know just because somebody else has a leaner and they want to jump in ahead of you i
18:14
don't know the next thing that you have been involved with you when the when the raiders built their stadium in
18:20
las vegas um and this was several years ago already they were building and i can't remember how long it's been
18:26
several years right two or three years and now it's actually there but you said because this is what how you operate
18:34
how can we leverage the um stadium out there so what did you
18:40
decide to do this is fascinating guys well there's there's actually two things that are raider based one
18:46
is going back just real quick to the rv conversation because building that fleet is not necessarily just buying a bunch
18:52
of stuff and renting it we bought a tiny little 13 foot uh fiberglass trailer that we're going to turn into a raiders
18:59
uh tailgate kind of it's going to be a man cave yeah you're right you're right i'll admit it karen the
19:07
last one that we got the fifth wheel that we we just got in louisiana has got yellow butterflies everywhere
19:14
and is very feminine on that side so we have to we have to pivot the other side is that a sheethead yes
19:22
yellow very much so and i can't say that three times fast but that's it is one of those things yeah that's
19:28
the first thing is realizing that there's there's a whole new team here and people are really excited about the raiders
19:34
football team being here in vegas and then out of nowhere a few months back i i got booked
19:39
randomly to play the 50th birthday party for the president of the raiders and i got to meet the president of the team
19:45
wow what was the owner uh mark davis and so now uh you can't see it but i
19:51
have a green screen i can pull over here and i've been doing virtu every sunday i i've been doing uh i've offered up my
19:57
services as a two things one is a virtual uh either tailgate before the game or a
20:04
virtual halftime show because for normal games there's nothing really on for the super bowl it's a great halftime show
20:11
right during it's just it's just chevy commercials all day like so that's been pretty cool so i've got a
20:18
picture of the inside of the radio state raider stadium that i put up behind me and it looks like i'm in the stadium it's kind of
20:24
cool wow and then and then i started i offered up to the raiders
20:29
for all of these vip season ticket holders anybody that has a birthday
20:36
uh you know the raiders can't play in that big beautiful stadium with fans there's nobody in this stands
20:44
so it's kind of weird so all those people bought those tickets uh so anyway i've been singing happy birthday i've been doing singing telegram videos
20:51
um for for everything actually i i've been very specific this past week all i'm focused on the raiders thing is
20:59
ancillary what are you focused on are car dealerships this is my biggest pivot personally
21:05
musically is i want to i want to make a living singing
21:11
telegram videos to car dealerships that just sold a car
21:17
karen you just bought a a new uh bmw right now right uh uh still right
21:24
are you still a beamer we we we have a yeah we are we have a well we have a countryman mini
21:30
cooper that's not so many that's made by bmw so i think that counts it does absolutely 100 so that
21:36
uh maternity wards and hospitals how great would it be if new parents a week after they had their
21:42
baby got a singing telegram congratulations to you uh thing instead of you know a box of
21:49
diapers or whatever i don't know what the hospital sends these days or the ob gyn um and then my biggest this shauna
21:56
graham crazy singing telegram thing that i also pivoted into um uh most of my orders have come from
22:05
real estate agents would you would you say that you have a strategy behind your pivoting
22:12
no no it's probably it's funny you ask that it's kind of a problem
22:19
i uh thank goodness i'm 50 years old and and these muscles have not atrophied
22:25
at all yeah my those creative juices um don't stop i'm constantly thinking up
22:33
crazy stuff constantly and so that creates a really good list
22:39
of things over here that we can pull from and that list gets bigger on this side and
22:46
it gets like herding cats and i'm not good at that and
22:52
the leaner is the first time where i have been very smart
22:58
in uh delegating i finally realized uh i think it was tony robbins that just
23:03
said it in a thing i just watched and he said you have to hire your weaknesses that's so true that's so good i've not
23:10
done that i've been terri bad sean it's one of the things i've got
23:16
to get much much better at i got to get better at saying no and i got i have to get better at
23:21
delegating i've been a one-man guy right you met me with an acoustic guitar and a microphone
23:28
nope nope uh can i swear i won't swear um you could except they
23:35
might knock us off so i'm gonna i'm gonna curtail this most musicians are dipsticks
23:42
and so i m my whole life playing music is surrounded by musicians and most of them just want to smoke pot
23:48
and and try and make out with the you know hostess at the venue it's it's
23:54
a weird mentality for me i don't resonate well with it over the years i'm not a drug guy
23:59
i don't you know i enjoy a glass of wine with a meal and beer with pizza but i'm not really a drinker
24:05
so you put all that together and and i just keep separating myself from all my my musical peers right
24:13
um and that becomes a now a voice in my head that says well
24:20
you can't really rely on anybody and i know that's not accurate
24:25
but my you know luckily the past doesn't equal the future right so i i've been working on that
24:31
during the quarantine i've been really realizing that i can't do all of this myself i've had a couple moments
24:36
with jax with my wife during this this pivot into the rv thing
24:41
um where we definitely have different roles and as soon as it started to overlap a
24:48
little bit i got overwhelmed i had a moment about a week ago where i was like babe wait
24:55
i have no idea what rv you're talking about i don't know where we're supposed to go to pick it up
25:01
and that's obviously yeah it's way more about me than her or even the situation was
25:08
dealing with all this other stuff and all of my again hurting cats and god bless her when we talk about
25:16
that we did you need to stay in your lane and let other people do what they're good at and you do what you're good at and
25:22
you know so i mean i am sure that people who are listening to this whether you're live or in replay we're talking to sean eifferman about pivoting
25:28
and and you clearly said you don't have a strategy so what would be um some advice that you might give our
25:35
listeners our viewers if they find themselves saying okay this is not going away anytime
25:41
soon i don't know what i'm supposed to be doing now can you give any guidance any advice to how they
25:47
might consider pivoting yeah and a lot of this is new to me so uh i'm still working on the mindset
25:55
and the strategies and uh i mean a couple things have happened where like i've been i've been waking up at
26:02
like 6 30 7 o'clock in the morning like that's not that's not a
26:09
half my day is over by then so keep going this i know i do that i know um and so
26:16
uh the advice i can give you is be open to those changes first and foremost be open to them and then
26:24
the second like with my insurance thing the second it doesn't feel right right yeah get out say no trust your gut
26:32
so so i'll go back to a couple things i've said to answer that question one is be good at saying no
26:38
it's so easy uh well this is my whole life right now find out i have two questions
26:46
for your listeners for your viewers that'll help with this i think what do you want
26:52
and how do you get it good you can answer those two questions i think the pivoting the quarantine
26:59
politics racial stuff covid stuff any anything that your fitness
27:06
life nutrition all that stuff boils down in my opinion to just those two things
27:12
the first one's the hardest question what do you want right what do i want i want to make it's crazy
27:18
but it's true i want to make ten thousand dollars a month singing happy birthday
27:24
with that guitar sitting right here oh i wanna i wanna do that i haven't done that yet
27:30
i came close to mother's day was a was a busy month right
27:35
but uh i think that paradigm shift in the music industry has created the
27:41
need to be creative and i have had to put a target on my wall that says
27:46
what do i want for my shawna graham business right i want to sing enough
27:52
happy birthday congratulations on your new car you just closed on your new house here's
27:57
from the realtor send i want to do that enough times in a day to earn
28:03
ten thousand dollars a day from home with this guitar in front of this laptop
28:08
so now the question is uh how do you do it right i and i i i'm just now
28:14
i've just now put that target out there so now the how do you do it i even started talking with you a little bit in
28:20
pre-production for today's show like i don't know how to get views i don't know how to boost numbers i don't know how to do all of those things i
28:27
need to learn how to and the fun for me is not necessarily answering the first question
28:33
it's important you can't get to the second question without it right when you figure out what you want
28:38
to do it's so much fun figuring out how to do it because you sit there and you just
28:45
spit ball all of it right like stephen covey i love stephen coving and he
28:51
begin with the end in mind it's that's if i can say the one the one thing that he has taught that he
28:57
he's no longer with us but the one thing that he has taught me is that when you begin with the end in mind
29:02
after you figure out what you want how then you decide okay well i know where i'm going but how am i going to get there right
29:09
right yeah i put your i put this website back up for those of you who are listening whether it's live or
29:15
on replay you can go to shawneegram.com and actually get him hire him to sing happy
29:22
birthday happy anniversary happy divorce i don't know whatever it is that they need
29:28
you'd be surprised how people yeah i've done some some just it's only been a few months you know i've been surprised a few times by
29:36
yeah i had a sense that you probably had done that you know um you need to go check shawn out at
29:42
thatvegasguitarguy.com to find out more about sean he is there you can also go to instagram and sean i
29:49
think you are frozen so you may want to refresh your screen on instagram you can find him at sean
29:54
eiferman he lives over there as well and finally as um if you have a guitar
30:00
and you need a leaner um to put on your guitar you can go over to guitar leaner.com
30:05
i'm going to put myself on solo because i think we lost sean um i want to thank you guys uh for for
30:12
joining us today we know that you have a choice as to where to spend your time i'm going to put sean back in
30:20
and there he is see technology pivot
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but i i think you have a connectivity issue over there i'm just thanking everyone they we know that they have a choice as to where they spend their time
30:34
and they decided to spend it with us today we want you to go out give somebody an awesome day and we'll see you on the
30:41
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