Poetry me, please: a $3K poetry showcase side hustle brings in $148K a year

Rashan Brown started writing and performing poetry in high school and paid a $20 entry fee to his first New York open mic in January 2020, which felt wrong: performers were providing the show. In June 2021, while working as an eighth-grade science teacher, he hosted his own spoken-word night at a Brooklyn bar, paying about $3,000 for a DJ, videographers and venue costs, and convinced ten local poets to perform for free.

Run spoken-word showcases where poets perform free and leave with video content; charge the audience instead, and manage ticket data like a product manager.

Brown runs Poetry me, please as a monthly showcase series on top of his day job as a product manager at ESPN. Selected poets from across the country perform for free, get videos, photos and social promotion afterward, and can be booked through his management side; he charges ticket-buying audiences instead, using Eventbrite data on who buys and when to tune each event. When a Queens venue stopped selling out, he moved shows to central Manhattan spaces with better lighting and added early-bird, general and late-admission ticket tiers to pull purchases forward.

By 2024 the side hustle brought in $148,000 in revenue, mostly from ticket sales, on a razor-thin $500 profit that Brown reinvested. Poetry me, please had become what HuCapital called the largest spoken-word platform and content studio in New York, with monthly events averaging 400 attendees, a network of 1,200 poets, and a sold-out Apollo Theater showcase over Thanksgiving weekend 2023 — the city's biggest poetry series since Def Poetry Jam in 2008.

Rashan Brown began writing and performing poetry in high school, and his first open-mic night in New York in January 2020 charged him $20 to perform. The fee bothered him — he was providing the show. In June 2021, then an eighth-grade science teacher, he spent about $3,000 to host his own spoken-word event in a Brooklyn bar, hired a DJ and videographers, and convinced ten local poets to take the stage for free while his friends scanned $10–$20 tickets at the door.

The event grew into Poetry me, please, a monthly showcase series Brown runs on top of his job as a product manager at ESPN. Poets apply from across the country and are selected to perform free, receiving videos, photos and promotion afterward, while Brown also manages poets under the brand and performs himself. Revenue comes from ticket-buying audiences, sponsors and performance income, and the events expanded to pop-up showcases in other cities and venues like Soho House and City Winery.

Brown treats the showcases like a product. He collects attendee data through Eventbrite, tracks who buys and when, and acts on what he finds: after a Queens venue failed to sell out, he moved shows to central Manhattan rooms with better lighting and an intimate feel, and introduced early-bird, general and late-admission ticket tiers to shift last-minute buyers earlier. HuCapital reported the business sold out nearly every show after those changes, and its Apollo Theater showcase over Thanksgiving weekend 2023 was the largest poetry series in New York since Def Poetry Jam on Broadway in 2008.

The business earned $148,000 in 2024 revenue — most of it ticket sales, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It — but only about $500 in profit, which Brown reinvests rather than taking as income. The work is demanding, up to 80 hours a week during his busiest months, yet the numbers kept growing: a November 2025 event at Brooklyn's 3,250-seat Kings Theatre sold tickets from $37 to $147, and Brown had performed at the White House, at NFL games and opening for Rupi Kaur.

Flipping the payment model — poets free, audience pays — created a reliable supply of talent that other venues charged to book.

Free video content and social promotion for performers made every show a recruiting and marketing engine at once.

Product-manager habits, from attendee data to tiered ticket pricing, turned one-off nights into repeatable, sellable events.

Reinvesting the tiny profit and working nights and weekends let the series scale from a Brooklyn bar to the Apollo without outside money.

Charge the audience, never the performer: free stages attracted poets, and ticket data — venue reach, buying timing, tiered pricing — turned a passion into a repeatable business.

By late 2025 Poetry me, please was still a side hustle: Brown remained a product manager at ESPN and took no income from the business, instead reinvesting profits to book bigger stages. His November 2025 showcase at Brooklyn's 3,250-seat Kings Theatre — where he had first opened for Rupi Kaur in December 2022 — was the series' largest room to date, with tickets priced at $37–$147. The model he built, free stages for poets paid for by audiences and managed with data, had turned a $3,000 bar night into a six-figure creative business that outlasted its founder's original plan.