Don’t say “no” for them

Here’s a marketing/sales tip for you.  Don’t reject the sale before the client has reviewed the offer.

As entertainers, we’ve all done it. That email, or phone message, or web request comes in asking for a price to do a performance at an event. You read into the message and make assumptions. And you immediately think of all the reasons why they aren’t going to be able to afford your regular fee.  It’s for a small group. It’s in a small town. It’s a kid’s birthday party.  I’m sure you have your own set of filters. As a result, you decide to tell them “no thanks”, or you quote a rate that is less than your usual fee.

Here’s my tip for the day – Respond with your full fee and let them be the ones to say “no thanks”.

I recently received one of those requests. So many of my “this will never fly” alarm bells went off I lost count.  And guess what – I got the gig.

What is the event?  It’s a family gathering, celebrating the birthday of the youngest daughter who is turning 14, in a suburb of Los Angeles, CA.  Oh, and it’s being held on Thanksgiving Day.

My first reaction? I don’t travel that far for a birthday party. You can’t afford what I would charge to do that.  Then I thought, what the heck?  I’ll put it out there and let them make that call, not me.

I have a standard fee structure that I use.  Hopping on a plane is my highest rate. As another performer put it, “You’re not paying for my performance. The performance is free.  I do this for fun.  You’re paying to get me there.”  The logistics of taking my act on a plane require a great deal of effort and that is reflected in my fee structure.

In terms of cost to the client, this is one of my highest paying events for the whole year (so far).  And yet it’s for one of the smallest groups.  (About 30 people.)  Yeah, sure, I won’t be spending Thanksgiving Day with my family. Oh, well.  Believe me, I’ll be giving thanks on that day.

Negotiating fees

Are you struggling to book shows lately? I’ve had numerous conversations with people about pricing, discounting, negotiating fees, etc.  Here are a few of my thoughts.

• Rule #1 – Never negotiate your fee, but do offer discounts.  OK, the cynics are saying, “isn’t that the same thing?”  No, it’s not. Discounts are temporary. They are a special offer, not guaranteed to be available in the future. Whereas, if you negotiate your fee, you’re stuck with that as your new going rate.  In my contract package, I include a formal invoice. I list the performance fee, which is what it always is, then I list line item discounts that reduce the final price to whatever we agreed on.  Feel free to make up discounts.  One example from a recent invoice is, “Special economic stimulus discount”.

• Rule #2 – Always ask for something in exchange for a reduced rate. Do you have products to sell after the show? Maybe offer a discount to your performance fee for explicit permission to sell stuff.  Are you trying to build video footage for promotional use or even a DVD?  Ask for them to provide video recording services.  If nothing else, at least ask them to provide you with at least 3 people whom you can contact using them as a reference.

• And here’s one last idea I’ve been using. I’ve been doing shows for retirement communities around town. Primarily I view these as a service project.  I love doing them as I have a soft spot for senior citizens (I plan to be one someday.)  And it’s really helpful to me in continuing my efforts to ttaallllkkkk ssslllllooooowwweeeerrrr.  My deal with these groups is, “what’s your budget? OK, that’s what I’ll charge you.”  Their budgets barely cover my expenses, but I’ll continue doing this as long as I am able. There are a number of caveats that go with the deal. The main one is that I reserve the right to cancel at any time if I get booked for another event.

The work is out there, folks. Go find the people who need what you have to offer. Don’t give it away, but do work with them to find creative solutions.

Missed opportunity

The show in Zanesville went great last week. It is so cool to have an audience of people who made a conscious choice to leave the comfort of their homes and pay money to watch me perform. So much of my work is for captive audiences: corporate events where people are expected to show up. It is hard to express how amazing it feels that these people last week chose to attend the show.

It became clear early on that I missed an opportunity while I was there. Several people asked me whether I had anything to sell.  T-shirts, DVDs, anything.  Both of these are in the works, but not quite ready.  Actually, the DVD will quite likely incorporate footage from this very show.

How many other shows have I done where I could have made a few extra bucks – and distributed promotional materials at the same time! – but missed the opportunity for lack of product to offer?  Well, stay tuned, because I hope to never miss this particular opportunity again.

I’d love suggestions and comments on possible T-shirt designs. Eugene and Jose’ are the most likely characters to have their own shirts. And, of course, there will be some playing around with “I’m No Dummy” text. What kind of shirt would YOU buy? Let me know. Heck, shoot me a design! If I use your design, I’ll send you a free shirt.

Billboard

This is so cool.  My face on a billboard.

This is for a performance next week in Zanesville, OH.  You can find more information at the Muskingum County Conference & Welcome Center’s web site. At least, you’ll be able to once their web site gets fixed. As I write this, it is unavailable as they are in the process of launching a new version of the site.

Zanesville has been very good to me over the past several years. I’ve done more shows there than in my own suburb of Upper Arlington. In many ways, I feel more at home there than I do in UA.

A few years ago, the head of tourism in Zanesville had me listed as one of the local attractions for the area. You can see the result here in the listing for the Fairfield Inn.

All of this is very cool and very humbling. It is truly amazing to have other people promoting you. I hope that you have an opportunity to experience this same joy.

And if you can get to Zanesville, OH, next Thursday evening, I’d love to have you in the audience.

ASCAP part 2

Several months ago I blogged about getting an ASCAP license.  At the time, it seemed like a great idea.  That opinion has changed.

What I thought was an “annual” license when I paid the money in September, was actually a license that is renewable each January.  They have no concept of pro-rating the fee.  Nor did they clearly disclose that this was the case.  Had I understood all of the details at the time, there is no way I would have paid a full year’s license fee for 3 months.  And believe me, I let them know this over the phone when the renewal bills started coming.

The technicalities of the license are these:  If you are doing purely entertainment, it is the responsibility of the venue to provide the license for any music being used in your performance.  If the purpose of the presentation is educational, it is then the responsibility of the presenter to carry the license.  The woman I spoke with today confirmed this as being correct.  Why they make this distinction I have no idea.  Also, we didn’t get into any fuzzy areas of “main purpose” vs. “side benefits”.

Bottom line is, I no longer carry a license.

Attitude of Gratitude

I’ve been trying something new lately and it’s working for me – an attitude of gratitude.

As I struggle with the business side of my business, it is so easy to get depressed and grumpy. Am I making enough money? Can I survive on this? Is it going to work out? Am I going to have to go back to a “real” job?

The answers are: No. No. Yes. Maybe.

Then it struck me.  So what?  I am living the dream. Right now, at this moment, I am doing exactly what I want to be doing.  I get to bring laughter to people’s lives.  How cool is that?

So, rather than whine about how the higher-paying gigs are not coming in at the rate I’d like, I’ve started telling myself every day how cool it is that I get to do this at all.  Rather than immediately turning down events that are below some artificially set fee threshold, I talk with the client in more detail.  What is your situation? What can you afford?  Are there ways we can get creative with the financing of the performance?

Now, understand, I’m not doing this kind of “creative financing” for gigs that are 6 months out and I’m not doing it for corporations that are just being cheap.  I’m mostly talking about those last minute calls. Shows that are 2 weeks from now (or less!) and I can see that my calendar is empty on that date. I know that the chances of another gig coming up in that time frame are slim.  Why not take it?

I’m also actively seeking opportunities to donate performances.  These fall into my guidelines that I spelled out in an earlier posting.  Last night I got to do one of these.  I did 3 hours of strolling close-up magic for the Children’s Hunger Alliance.  It was a blast!  They brought kids in from all over Columbus, mostly inner city areas, to the Nationwide Arena.  The kids got to ice skate on the main ice, the same place the Columbus Blue Jackets play their games.  How cool is that?  Half the kids skated while the other half got a good, hot meal.  Then they traded places.  There were about 600 kids plus another 150 volunteers to run the event.  I strolled around the tables while they were eating their dinner.  Sign me up again for next year!

What are you grateful for today?  What are your gifts?  Share them!

Hardware store

I went to the hardware store yesterday.  I bought 2 screws at 7 cents each.  A whopping total of 14 cents for my purchase.  This isn’t the first time I’ve gone to a hardware store and made a purchase totalling well under a dollar.  Each time, I’ve left wondering whether they actually made any money off of my purchase.  By the time you factor in the time it took for the cashier to ring up the sale, or in many cases, the store clerk’s time in helping me locate the specific nut or screw that I needed, there is no way they are making money on that particular transaction.  And yet, they are still there.   They are still in business. And I continue to go back.

Years ago I worked in a bicycle shop.  When we did repairs, we often would have to replace various items.  Many times these were nuts and bolts.  Every item was itemized on the bill.  Most of these miscellaneous pieces of hardware were 2 to 5 cents apiece.  I remember grumbling about having to track those items.  I asked the store owner why he bothered, why not just eat that cost as a part of the total?  Here would be a $70 repair bill, with 3 items listed at 3 cents.  Did that 9 cents really make a difference?

The light bulb is finally starting to come on.  I’ve been looking back over the past year, contemplating all of the shows that I turned down.  A birthday party here, a campground there.  I turned these down because what they would be able to pay was so much less than what I would get if I booked a corporate event on that same date.  I was afraid to commit a slot on my calendar below a certain price threshold for fear of losing an opportunity on that same date for something bigger.  As I consider this, I am not aware of a single instance where a bigger show actually came through on one of those dates.  Hmm…

Leaving the hardware store yesterday, it occurred to me that I have been following a broken model.  If a hardware store operated like I have been, they would only carry screws in 100-packs.  To get the 2 screws I needed would have cost me $5 instead of 14 cents.  And I’d be stuck with 98 screws I’d probably never use.  How many potential clients are out there who don’t want the full stage show complete with sound system and lights?  A typical corporate event consumes 5 hours of my time on site.  What if I changed my model and offered a lesser package for less money?  How can I offer 2 screws instead of forcing everyone to buy the whole variety-pack?

See you at the hardware store.

Fully licensed for music

I took another plunge.  It was actually over a month ago, but I’m finally getting around to writing about it.  I purchased a license from ASCAP to cover the use of copyrighted music in my presentations.

There are some interesting things I found out along the way.  For those of you wondering whether you need to do the same, here is what I discovered.

As I was pondering the purchase of my license, I spoke with a number of people.  I asked fellow performers/entertainers and I asked fellow speakers, who are also members of NSA.  The responses were strong from both parties.

Entertainers (primarily magicians and ventriloquists) told me unequivocally that I as an entertainer did not need to get a license.  They explained that it is the responsibility of the venue to pay for the license to cover any entertainment held at their facility.

Speakers told me just as strongly that I did need to get a license if I wanted to legally use music in my presentations.

It turns out that both were right.  Wait.  What?  How can that be?  Here is how it was explained to me by the person I spoke with at ASCAP.

If you are doing purely entertainment for entertainment’s sake, it is up to the venue to provide the license.  However, if you are doing “speaking”, where you are giving a message or educating, the burden of license falls to the speaker.

It seems strange, but that’s what I was told.  Since I do both pure entertainment and providing a message in an entertaining way, I sprung for the license.  I got a discounted rate as a member of NSA.  I only got the ASCAP license.  I haven’t bothered with BMI.  That’s the other major music licensing agency.  It took some research, but I found that all of the music I’ve been using in my “entertainment” act is covered by ASCAP.  None of it is BMI.

It’s amazing the mental freedom this license has given me.  I had been working on creating music myself using various computer software and exploring other ways of obtaining music that would not get me into trouble.  Now that I am “official”, I am free to go through my CD library and use pretty much anything I find there.  So far I have not come across any music that I’d like to use in my shows/presentations that is not covered by ASCAP.

The licensing process itself was incredibly easy.  The person I spoke with at ASCAP was very helpful and there was no tone of “Oh, you’ve been stealing from us all this time.”  In fact, she had do so some checking to find out whether my situation even required a license.

Basic guideline?  If you’re doing purely entertainment, you’re in the clear.  If you’re doing “edutainment”, however, get yourself a license.  It’s not as bad as you might think.

County Fair

I recently had a week-long engagement at the Warren County Fair in northwestern PA.  It was a hoot.  I did 3 shows a day for 5 days.  1:00pm, 3:00pm and 5:00pm.  I’ve done a number of festivals and other outdoor events, but this was my first multi-day engagement.

The first show on the first day started with 1 person in the audience.  That was a bit disarming at first, but I just jumped into it, hit the intro music, had that one guy read my introduction for me, and started the show.  People rolled in to fill the seats pretty quickly.  We finished the show with 50-60 people, the lowest attendance of the week.  All of the performances except for that first one overflowed the seating capacity and we had people standing pretty deep.  My best guess is from 150-300 at any given show.  The 5:00pm show was always the busiest.

After the first show, I started getting on the fair’s PA system to announce each show about 10 minutes before they started.  I had fun with it.  I’d mix it up, throw in some character voices over the PA, crack some jokes on myself.  My goal was to get at least a smile out of the ladies in the office.  They were disappointed when I played it straight.

The weather was great considering what August is usually like in this area.  Leading up to it I had been very concerned about the heat, humidity and probability of rain.  It turned out to be a week of low 80’s temperatures, breezy and random brief thunderstorms.  I got completely rained out of one show, and the final show got cut short by a fast-moving storm that blew through.  Other than that, it was fantastic.  I invested in some new summer outdoor performing clothes that really paid off.  Lightweight wool/silk pants and silk blend shirts.  I looked good and stayed cool.

There were a few things that made the week special for me.  This was a bit of old-home week since I grew up in that area.  In fact, I stayed with my parents all week.  I got to see lots of old friends whom I haven’t seen in many years.  Several people I went to school with dropped by to say hello.  My 5th grade teacher stopped by as well.  He holds a special place in my memory as it was in his classroom that I did my first public performance of ventriloquism.

One really cool thing was the number of people who came back to see multiple performances throughout each day.  My bread and butter is corporate events where you go in, do your one show, then move on to the next event.  It is really ego-boosting to have people honor you by coming back so see you again – and again.  I made a point of doing 3 different shows each day.  Each performance was 25-35 minutes, which means I got to take my regular 60-minute show and do it in 3 pieces.  Obviously there was a little overlap between shows.  There were a few people who came back for multiple shows on multiple days.  How cool is that?

I got to do a radio interview about mid-week.  That was fun.  The DJ is the same guy that was working the local radio station when I was in high school, so I already knew him.  I learned something from that experience – if you’re going to pretend to have characters with you, make sure the DJ knows he’s supposed to play along.  He asked me how many characters I brought to the fair (answer: 6) and how many voices I do (answer: 10).  In the process, I pretended to bring out a character and dropped into character voice and personality.  It took him a bit to figure out what I was doing.  I should have better prepared him for this before the interview.  Sure, i could have actually brought along the puppet, but it’s radio, right?

Another lesson learned was with the sound system.  The arrangements were to have a sound company provide the sound system into which I would connect my wireless microphone and music system.  No big deal.  Except…  They provided a single powered loudspeaker, then left.  Uh, OK.  I thought they’d have someone there to adjust levels during at least the first show, etc.  And a single speaker?  In many situations, this would have been fine.  But, at a noisy outdoor event where you have to crank up the sound level, you need more than one speaker.  The first day, people on the side of the speaker complained of it being too loud, while people on the other side were just able to hear.  Fortunately I had brought along one of my own powered loudspeakers. So, I set that up on the other side of the stage for the remainder of the fair.  Problem solved.

The stage was great.  I wasn’t sure what to expect.  All I insisted on was something stable to get me off of the ground.  What they brought in was a full-scale scaffold-style 12′x16′ stage.  You could have done Irish Step Dancing on this thing.  It was supposed to have a canopy of some type so that I would be in the shade.  They had some problems with their supplier, so no canopy.  I was able to use a 10×10 “easy-up” type canopy that my parents own.  Not elegant, but it worked.

I was concerned about my puppets and the heat, so I specified in my contract that they needed to provide me with an air-conditioned space to hang out between performances.  And since I could honestly say this was an issue of my puppets, not my desire to stay cool, it was an easy sell.  They put my stage area right next to the office building and gave me a key to the basement.  I had outside access to this little-used space that even included a full bathroom.  It worked out great.

Overall it was a great gig and I’d gladly do it again.

Going beyond “Hello”

Earlier I wrote about why I use a number of different characters in my act.  The bottom line is to provide variety to reach a broad range of audiences and individuals in any given audience.  But, lately I’ve been pondering the question of how long each of these segments in the show should run.

Right now my whole act is based on 6-7 minute segments.  Even the various bits of magic I do run about 6 minutes each.  To assemble a show, I simply put the segments together until I’ve reached the desired overall length, typically 50-60 minutes.

Yes, this provides a wide variety and has served to include a little something for everyone in the shows.  But, I wonder, is 6 minutes with a character enough?  My thought process of late is that by the end of the 6 minutes, the audience is just beginning to understand the character, ready to dig deeper.  And that’s when I cut it off and move on to the next thing.

The reality for me is that the first 6 minutes are the easiest.  It is getting beyond that point that is most difficult.  Kind of like going to a party and meeting someone new.  Saying the usual pleasantries, mentioning the weather, commenting on the salsa dip, all those little things that take up the introductory phase of a conversation.  That’s the easy part.  Then it gets hard.  Now what do we talk about?  How much of myself do I share with this person I just met?  How open am I willing to be?  What if they don’t like me beyond the surface?

When you get beyond the 6 minute mark, things get a bit more intense, edgier, rougher, more “real”.  Elements of the underlying personality start to come through.  You start to uncover the skeletons in the closet.  Therein lies the potential for the biggest laughs – and the biggest chance of offending some number of people in the audience.  Others have said that if you’re not offending some of the people then you’re not trying hard enough.  Humor is pain separated by time.  Some people are not yet ready to laugh at certain topics.

The challenge is to move beyond that 6 minute introductory period, open the closet door and examine the bones.  Time to add some depth to the characters, get beyond the “hello” and dig deeper.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.