Here is what I have used this notebook for and I suggest you do the same.  The first thing you should do is record all your thoughts about clowning and your clown character(s) in the journal. This is not just limited to writing, in fact a majority of mine is full of drawings. I have about twenty five drawings of potential clown faces and costumes. This may sound silly but it will help you visualize what you are want to look like and what your dream costume is.

Another handy thing about a clown notebook is that it allows you to keep track of where you have found props and supplies online. You can record the prices and what you would order if money was no object.  That way when you do have some money you are able to pick through your clown notebook and choose what will be the best investment for you.

What you need to do is get a notebook that you are comfortable writing in and start using it everyday to record ideas and sketches of whatever strikes your fancy.

A face page from my notebook

A costume page from my notebook

Table of contents for 5 Steps to Better Clowning

1. 5 Steps to Better Clowning: Simplify
2. 5 Steps to Better Clowning: Practice
3. 5 Steps to Better Clowning: Marketing
4. 5 Steps to Better Clowning: Plan
5. 5 Steps to Better Clowning: Execute

It is finally time to finish this series off. We have covered everything from the importance of simplifying everything, practicing, marketing and planning; now we need to coer the final and most difficult step: Executing the plan! Please go back and reread the previous posts and make sure have completed everything in those posts. The more prepared you are the better this step will go.I will wait here while you do that…

Welcome back. Here we GO!

Get out all of your marketing materials and look at your plan. Where do you want to entertain? Start by making a list of all of the people that you know. Start contacting those people in groups of five or six. Send an email, a post card, call them or meet them in person. You want to turn these people into either customers, investors or advertisers.  Of course you are probably not really looking for investors so instead focus on turning them into customers or advertisers.

Over the long haul it is going to be better to convert these initial people into advertisers. That way they will help you get them jobs. Also converting people into advertisers is as easy as giving them a stack of business cards and then asking if they need more the next time you see them.  Customers have the short term benefit of giving you money, but with a little luck can turn into advertisers. You do this by blowing their minds with your show. That way they tell their friends and spread the word about you. Once again, leave them with a stack of cards.

The next step is going to be making a list of places that you think would benefit from your services and which of your services will help them the most. This is not a list of places where you want to work but a list of places that you should work. Try to keep in mind that their is no guarantee that you are going to convince them that they should hire you, however they now know your name and will hopefully think of you first.

With this list you want to select two or three at a time and focus your energy on them. This is especially important if you are a part time clown. You will also benefit from doing a dress rehearsal of your sales call with a business person that you have done a job for in the past and have a good relationship with. They can provide you with feedback and that feedback can make all the difference in the world.

Here is the most important part of this step. Do it. It is really easy to sit around and talk about how you need to go do this stuff. That will not get you any business. So get off you behind and get to work. Make sure you let me know how the plan works for you, unless you get too busy to come back and visit us.

• Redesign- This could be the perfect opportunity to try a new clown face, develop a new character or put together that awesome new costume you have been dreaming about. Or it could be a great time to make that old looking website and make it look more Web 2.0. I am currently working on making my site look more fancy, which will hopefully make me more likely to get jobs. There are thousands of tutorials online on how to make your site look the most cutting edge and with a little practice and a lot of patience anyone can learn to build webpages.
• Re-invent- Is there a part of your act that you are not 100% happy with? I know that I have numerous parts of my act that I wish I could change. Well it is time to stop wishing and start doing. Start practicing again. Use the time that you normally would have used performing on the weekends and run through your act figuring out what needs to be fixed. Not only will this make your act stronger but you will learn something new. Plus you can then offer a new and improved show to your clients.
• Reconnect- Call up some of your older clients and say hi. Let them know that you appreciate their business and see if there is any event that you can help them with. It can’t hurt to let them know that you are still in business, plus everyone likes to be thanked. If it is a client that has hired you numerous times you might offer them a reduced rate to help promote both your businesses.

Well good luck. I am off to juggle.

Most of the time you can rely on the less is more treatment. This means that you give them a general idea and leave them wanting more. If you go to over the top with your description of your act it is possible to build yourself up too much. Another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the physical skills that you have as a clown do not translate well to people who are not entertainers. If you tell someone on the street that you can do a cascade with five balls followed by a full shower, that is not going to mean anything to them. On the plus side you can say, I can juggle five balls and they will most likely be impressed. Heck I’d be impressed.

The other thing to keep in mind is that once you get started most clients are going to come to you after talking to a past client. They have already had you cat described to them by a person who has not reason to sell your abilities. That means that their description of you is already more believable then on you give because you are trying to sell yourself, and your past client is not. Alright, head out there and start talking.

What I came up with disturbed me. I had done all the work for the gig other then recieving the phone call. I had driven to the job, about 30 miles, provided all my own equipment and recived numerous compliments on my performance.  The math I did showed me that of the total amount paid for the gig by the customer I recieved 60% and the company I worked for recieved 40%. Talking to some entertainers that I know has led me to believe that this is an insane amount of money for the non-performing agent to recieve.

What is your experience with being booked by another agency? What do you think I should do in the future to prevent this? Does that seem crazy to you?  Let me know in the comments.

This will make it quick and easy for you to find out how much additional charge there is to go to a certain area. If someone calls from an area outside your map, you just need to figure out how much further it is and what the charge will be. Once you have worked in an area not on your map, remember what you charged so that you have that number figured out in advance the next time someone calls.This is one of the best ways to not limit yourself to a certain area and provide you with the ability to charge a little more for your travel time. Doing this is especially important if you have a website. If someone finds you on the web there is no guarantee that they are going to be in your normal area of operation.On the flip side of this, don’t be afraid to say no if you don’t feel comfortable traveling that far to entertain. What I ususally do then is try to find another entertainer I know and refer the client to them.Hopefully that entertainer will do the same if they get a call for a gig they can’t do.

I always leave about fifteen minutes earlier then I need to when traveling outside my normal area. This allows for me to get a little lost, which is inevitable when traveling to a new town or even a part of a bigger city that you don’t know. If you find yourself lost, always call the people who hired you to let them know you are lost and get directions.

Table of contents for 5 Steps to Better Clowning

1. 5 Steps to Better Clowning: Simplify
2. 5 Steps to Better Clowning: Practice
3. 5 Steps to Better Clowning: Marketing
4. 5 Steps to Better Clowning: Plan
5. 5 Steps to Better Clowning: Execute

Advertising is usually the most costly part of having your own business. Luckily for you clowning is almost self advertised once you get it started, this means that if you have a well put together show and hand a card to every single person that sees you, there is very little left for you to do. This is because most of the advertising is done for you by the people you entertain. But we are getting ahead of ourselves first you have to understand Why.Why advertise? Especially if you can get your audience to do it for you. Because it is so simple to do. Once you have your cards (l) printed up all you have to do is hand them to everyone in the world. Grocery clerks, church members, coworkers, you get the idea. They all have kids or at the very least parties. Keep in mind that you may only get one call for every 10-25 business cards handed out. That means that one box of 250 cards should net 10-25 clown jobs at at least $50 a party you are looking at $500 – $1250 for the cost of the cards. That is a pretty good profit. But in order to do that you need to hand your cards to everyone, even people you might think have no use for a clown.Aside from getting your name out there this will also get you a collection of business cards from other people. For some reason you cannot hand someone a business card without getting one in return. These cards are the seeds for your off season marketing plan. Using the names and contact information on those cards you can start to sell yourself to local businesses for grand openings, sales and anything you or they can think of. If you give out enough cards you will be able to coast for a year without having to look for a job. I would advise against that as you should always be looking for jobs so you can clown forever.How you give someone a cards is as important as the card itself. One thing that you need to keep in mind is that age old first impression rule. The first impression is the most important and may be the only one you get. This means that at all times you need to carry yourself in a professional manner. This doesn’t mean that you need to dress like a business person, you just need to look like someone people want to invite into their home or business. Also, when you are in public out of your clown outfit you are not a clown. Not even a little. You don’t what to approach people in the same way that you would approach them in your clown outfit, you’ll just come off as weird and your card will disappear into the waste basket as soon as you walk away.The other part of this that is hard for even experienced clowns is when to distribute your cards. It all depends on the venue and the event. If you are making balloons at a restaurant you should give cards, see the ‘s’ on cards that means you give them at least two, to every table you visit and have a stack of cards up at the host stand. If you are at a festival, hand them out after every show, performing at a business have a stack at the counter as well as hand them out as necessary. When you are doing a birthday party make sure that no kid leaves without at least one your cards if not two or three. This will ensure that their parents see the card as well as give their parents something to give to their friends.As you can see the trick with marketing yourself is word of mouth. The more people that have seen you perform that have a card with your phone number the more people will call you. Even if you think someone could never use a clown they might have a friend or relative that could. Leave no card unhanded out.

The first thing to do is to look back on how you started working originally, if you are like most of us you just kind of fell into it. It all started at a friend’s kid’s birthday party and suddenly you where hooked. You made some business cards and bought makeup and poof you where a clown. Your clown evolved over the years and you started to get busy.

You probably made some mistakes and I am almost positive you went through the scary clown stage. Everyone does. The great thing about moving is that you can avoid all of those mistakes. This means that you are brand new but have all of the experience you got while making all of those mistakes.

The first thing you should do is get a new phone number. Go to Grand Central and register for a number in your new area. This number can be set up to forward to your cell, home or pretty much whatever number you want. You then need to get some cards made up with your info on it. I would suggest using your old card design and just putting your new info on it. If you are renting or buying a house in the new area give a card to every realtor you talk to, in fact if you go and visit before moving follow the steps discussed here. Follow those same steps and you will be up and running again in no time.

One of the most important things you can do, once you have moved, is to interact with other entertainers. Talk to them, get to know the area, learn the average pricing. You don’t want to price yourself out of work or undercut your fellows to much. Make sure that you fit in with your pricing model. One of the easiest ways to turn other entertainers against you is to move into a new area and be a hundred times cheaper then all the other entertainers. So to be safe adjust your prices accordingly.

A quick story that will illustrate this point:

When I first started out I was 15 years old. I was excited, this whole entertaining thing was new to me and I was looking for other entertainers to learn from, practice with, etc. The only entertainer in the area at the time was a magician/juggler/Christian entertainer. It just happened that my family where members of the same gym he belonged to and I had seen him practicing on the aerobics floor. So one day I worked up the nerve to talk to him and asked if he would like to juggle together sometime. During this conversation I explained that I was new to the business and was excited to get started working. I also explained that I was going to be a clown (not a juggler, magician or Christian entertainer). Apparently he viewed me, a fifteen year old with zero experience, to be a threat to his hold on the entertaining market in a small to medium sized town. Since that time, eleven years ago, I have never once referred a job to him because I didn’t want to risk him doing a poor job and having that reflect on me in anyway.

At the time there where only two entertainers in Greeley, me and him, and so when I needed to refer someone to another entertainer because I was busy I had to give them to number of an entertainer out of town, thus increasing their cost. Since then a few other companies have sprung up and though I may not agree with everything they do, we all agree that we should get along.

One way to foster a sense of community with other entertainers is to have balloon jams, juggling clubs or other entertainment related evenings planned through out the month or year. This will allow you to get together, trade stories, work on ideas and generally have a good time together. You may find a partner to work with that will allow you to broaden your shows or you may find someone who will be able to cover for you if you are sick.

Keep in mind that not every entertainer is going to have time to come to these, that dosen’t mean that they don’t care or you should treat them differently, it just means that they are busy or may not feel comfortable with all of the entertainment stuff yet. Remember hanging out with a large collection of entertainers takes some getting used to and not everyone is ready for it from day one.

Try to hold your meetings in a neutral area, such as a church or school gym, that way you won’t be infringing on anyone’s hospitality to often. The other option is to have a rotation of whose house it is at and stick to the rotation. Also make sure that you put together some rules so that people are polite to one another, this will also help keep people from directly stealing another’s ideas.

As I mentioned in my last post The Call: Restaurants, it is very important to work your hardest to impress the management of the restaurant. The more impressed they are the more likely they are to hire you on. This doesn’t mean that you need to where a suit and tie, but the clothing you where needs to be presentable and let them know that they are dealing with a professional.

One thing to keep in mind is that unless you are planning to build a balloon tying business in restaurants there is no real need to charge the restaurant a fee for doing your balloons in their establishment. The whole purpose that you are there is to grow your business by giving out cards with every balloon and cards to every table that you interact with in a positive manner.

Take me for instance, I live in a small-medium town in Colorado. I work in two different restaurants in the same chain, on in Denver and one in Greeley. I work only two nights a week and make about the same both nights. Granted if I where to charge I could make more money but the tips that I receive are just a bonus to the publicity that I am getting.

This last weekend I made as much as I make in a night of ballooning in an hour thanks to the card that I gave a family just the week before. Especially when it is getting closer to your busy time this will really help your business pick up and go crazy. And in the slow times those tips will help keep you a float and possibly land you some more parties when you normally have none.

The important thing to keep in mind is that everything you do as it reflects not only you and your business but the restaurant you are performing in. So if you upset a customer, who yells at the manager; it will get back to you and an upset manager is not going to be understanding if you offended someone with something you said. If someone complains about a balloon popping that is one thing, but if you ignored someone or even if they perceived that your where ignoring or harassing them you will get in trouble.

So go out, approach a restaurant that you like and start making balloons for tips and grow your business.