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Articles By Nicholas George

Getting Free Publicity

Article, By Nicholas George

ATTEMPT TO MOVE UP IN YOUR CLASS

Now Birthday parties are a great start to get you some good experience and great performance skills, and to get some dollars flowing, but as we will see later, it a HARD EFFORT to make a living.

I constantly see ad’s in popular Magician magazines and on Internet chats, telling Magicians how to get more birthday party shows. It boggles my mind to understand why people want to do more $125 shows, when there is a whole industry out there, right before your eyes, that offers shows that pay $10,000.00!!!

What does moving up in your class mean?

Moving up in your class, means Getting Paid More Money, usually for the same amount of Work - or less!

For example, you can be a used car salesman and sell used cars and get a 5% commission income of $500 per sale, or you can be a used antique car salesman and sell used antique cars and get a 5% commission income of $2,500.00 per sale! The amount of work to sell either car is about the same.

Depending on your motivation, you could even be a used airplane salesman and sell used airplanes and get 5% commission income of $25,000.00 for each plane sold!

In this last case you can see that you need to sell 50 used cars to make the same income as selling 1 used airplane. Is it 50 time the work to sell airplanes? I would say not.

This used airplane salesman is an example of a person that has moved up in their class!

You can apply this by starting to move up to Weddings, and Special Events, and expand outward using these as practice. Then, your ultimate goal is the ‘Big Ticket’ - Trades Shows, Theaters, Cruise Ship, Las Vegas, and Large Exhibitions.

When you work through your 'Goals Agenda' worksheets, you will come to realize that the truly successful performers need to expand to new and better opportunities.

You can’t change the income if you don’t change the act!

There are two ways in which you can earn more money:

Method 1) You work more shows and more hours doing the same thing, or
Method 2) You work the better shows that require less hours - that is doing
something different..

You don’t want more bookings, you want more better bookings!

A silly example:

Suppose you worked at a fast food chain, say McDonalds. You get a wage of $7.00 per hour. At the end of the week you will have $200 left after deductions. You find that that is not enough to pay your rent, so you also go and apply at Burger King to work evenings at $7.00 per hour, and mange to pull in another 12 hours a week and get an additional $60 after deductions. You find that that is still not enough, so you apply at Wendys Burgers as well to work weekends. You manage to get another 14 hours in at $7.00 per hour and now have an additional $70 per week after deductions.

Now your whole life is taken up and you still only take home $330 total! But you find that you are now traveling much more and your travel expense is an extra $50 per week, and your baby-sitter costs are now an extra $100 per week, and your personal free time is all gone!

Sadly enough, many people follow the above example. This is through lack of education. If you want to advance, and have more free time, then it would be logical to re-think your plans. Here is an alternative:

Why not spend the extra time, not working, but educating yourself so that you could now be a manager at the first McDonalds you were working at. It may be a hard sell at first, but if you are good, and you can convince the owner that you will make the best manager ever, and you have some documentation to prove it (i.e. your promo kit), he will give you a chance.

True, you would struggle for a while, but eventually this position would give you $18.00 per hour. This would now give you a total of $500 per week after deductions and would give you much more money than working 3 jobs at $7.00 per hour. And you would still have all your free time, and the work load would probably be less than that of just a laborer!

That's exactly what we want to do with our performing skills. We DON'T want more $125 birthday party shows (i.e. more $7.00 per hour jobs), we want better shows that pay $1400-$2500!!!

THE ‘1-4-8-48’ RULE

Lets look at the following table showing income:

Per show Dollars: (1-4-8-48 rule)
1 Theater show = $6,000
1 Hyp show = $1,500
1 Psychic show = $800
1 Birthday party show = $125

Therefore:
1 Theater show = 4 Hyp shows
1 Hyp show = 2 Psychic performances
1 Psychic show = 8 Birthday party shows
(remember, more shows = more expense)

Therefore:
1 Theater show = 4 Hypnosis shows = 8, Psychic shows = 48 Birthday party shows! (doing 5 birthday shows/week means 2.4 months of income for a ‘1 day’ theater show)

This is the 1-4-8-48 Dollar rule!

Lets look at the following table showing time:

Per show Effort and Time factors:
Prep time (note that prep work includes travel time (15 min), replenishing, props, routines, etc., and assumes that your show is polished)

1 Theater show (3 hr) = 7.0 hours prep work
1 Hyp show (1 hr) = 2.0 hours prep work
1 Psychic show (1 hr ) = 1.5 hours prep work
1 Birthday party show (40 min) = 2.0 hours prep work

Therefore, correlating this with the income (the 1-4-8-48 rule) vs. time:
1 theater-hrs = 8 hypnosis shows-hrs = 28 psychic shows-hrs = 96 birthday party show-hrs! (the 1-8-28-96 Effort rule!)

You can see if you put time and effort together, you will spend most of your efforts ‘catching up’, but never really ‘get there’.

Lets now look at the following weekend time income:

Per date Dollars:
1 Dinner Theater performance ($1,500 per performance)
weekend, fri (1 show), sat (2 shows), sun (2 shows) (2.5 days) = $7,500

1 Hypnosis weekend fair/exhibition performance ($1,000 per performance) weekend, fri (1 show), sat (2 shows), sun (2 shows) (2.5 days) = $5,000

1 Psychic fair weekend, fri, sat, sun (2.5 days) = $3,000

1 Magic Show weekend ($250 per performance average )
weekend, fri (1 show), sat (2 shows), sun (2 shows) (2.5 days) = $1,250

Therefore:
Theater weekend = $7,500,
Hypnosis weekend = $5,000,
Psychic weekend = $3,000,
Magic Show weekend = $1,500!

You can see that you don’t need ‘more’ magic shows, you need more ‘better’ magic shows.

Now read this next statement:

Psychics, Mentalists, and Hypnotists, ARE THE FAVORED AND PREFERRED PERFORMERS IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY!

True, there are County Acts and Rock Star Acts that pull in millions of dollars, but they are extremely few and far in between that actually make it. There are millions of Guitar Players world wide, but only a hand full make the big bucks. Most of the work in small dumpy bars getting $50 per night! I know, I was there too!!!

On the other hand, a Hypnotist or Mentalist, even if he is not that great, can easily pull in $5,000.00 or more per week, easily!

Have you ever seen people flock to see a magician? Yes of course, kids do, at birthday parties. But adults pay the tab. There are literacy 10's of thousands of Magicians available, and they are not as popular as years ago. But how many specialty magicians can perform Juggling, Hypnosis, Mentalism, Fortune Telling and Psychic Demonstrations, as well as Magic? Not too many. You want to be the ‘in demand’ performer. Here is how you do it: