Bankrate: Now that you're a year into it, how has the show affected your career?

Bret Michaels: Here's the great thing for me and Poison. We have been fortunate. Whether I did or didn't do the show, we continue to play music. We have had a strong career. What happened with this show is, it has let a lot of people into my life that may not normally come to a Poison or Bret Michaels show. All of a sudden there's people watching the show who go, that guy's a cool guy, or, wow, he goes through the same things. I think people related to me on a much more real level, and that adds to record sales. All the music played on the show was my music. That's why I did it. I'm all about the music.

Bankrate: Is the money from the show enough to make a significant difference to you?

Bret Michaels: The show pays well, without a doubt. On a related note, I just signed a book deal with Simon & Schuster to do an autobiography, and part of my autobiography is that one of the things through my whole career has been to work hard and play harder.

The one thing I try to stress to musicians is that just because you're creative, you still have to be able to take care of the farm. You can be as creative as you want, but it's not embarrassing to also know it's a business. Get the best deal you can. If you're getting a deal from a promoter and they're trying to underpay you, look at the size of the venue, what they're selling tickets for, the gross income, the net income ... all of that matters. Because you're also taking care of your fans. I'm playing a place that holds 3,000 people. I don't want him selling $70 tickets but offering me $50,000. I'd rather he do a $30 ticket, and then I'll do it for $60,000.

You have to look at everything going on around you, and I think that so many musicians forget that you have to take care of what's going on in your business life so you can do this for the long term. In the book, I'm gonna talk about situations in real life, including making sure there's guarantees; that the deposit is paid upfront, and paid before one ounce of gear is loaded into a building. Just protecting yourself as a musician. But also, you wanna help the promoter because you wanna sell tickets.

Bankrate: It's a partnership, in a sense.

Bret Michaels: It is a partnership, and the best way for me is to be straight up with everyone. Live Nation, Clear Channel, all the guys out there doing big festivals ... they know I'll bend over backward to do radio and help them promote the show, but at the same time I wanna get paid properly.

Most important is, I'm extremely passionate about everything I do, sometimes to a fault, but I always treat the fans great. I've never backed out on a meet-and-greet, I throw a good bus party every night, people come up and hang out. I take good care of the fans.

I also wrote a completely separate book called "How to Succeed at Anything ... Almost." The first is the autobiography, the second is a book about succeeding, and how to put success on three different levels. The first book is coming out in the fall; the second, beginning of 2009.

Some of the things I talk about in the book include how anything you want to succeed at in life, you can succeed, but it's never quite how it looks in the brochure. For me, making it in a band wasn't like you get a record deal and then walk onto a Learjet. Everything takes work.