I am sure that in some point in your entertaining career you will move from your starting location and have to basically start your business over from scratch. This can be one of the hardest things for your business as well as one of the best things for your business.

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.

As you are trying to grow your business there is a chance you will come into contact with other entertainers: clowns, magicians, balloonists and many others. Some of these people will be positive towards you and some of them will be negative. The important thing to do is to make sure that you are positive towards other entertainers, no matter how they act towards you. This is important because you never know when you might get a referral from them when they can’t do a job or are sick.

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.

I have recently been spending a large quantity of my performing time at a restaurant working for tips. More specifically making balloons for tips. If you are interested in growing your clown business then it is quite possible that making balloons for tips is just the thing you need to do.

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.

As most books on clowning will tell you, the first contact with a potential client is the most important call of the whole gig. Most of the time you have about 30 seconds to two minutes maximum to impress the client enough to get them to hire you. This doesn’t mean that you have to blow there mind, you just have to make them intrigued enough to keep talking to you.

The hardest call to make is the restaurant cold call. This is when you just show up at a restaurant, ask to see a manager and convince him that hiring you to make balloons for tips or otherwise is a benefit to his restaurant. It dosen’t matter how fabulous your balloons are. If he, or she, dosen’t see it as a benefit to his business he will not hire you.

So what do you do, I would suggest these three things: Dress to Impress, Show Value and Ask Questions. Those are the three things that I have done when approaching a restaurant and while I can’t guarantee that it will work for you, it has a better success rate then being a slob, not showing the value and bragging about how good you are.

1. Dress to Impress: A lot of children’s entertainers that I have met feel that since they are “goofy” that they can look goofy when interviewing for a gig. This is so far from the truth that its not funny. If you approach restaurant manager wearing jeans, a t-shirt and sneakers, his immediate thought is going to be that you are going to show up to entertain in that same outfit. The same goes for faded clothes, outdated clothes, tight or baggy clothes. You want to exude professionalism and the best way to do that is start with the dress and the rest will follow. You may have noticed that when you are dressed up you have a different attitude then when you are in sweat pants. That is the attitude that will carry you on towards success and not hold you back. The flip side of this is that you want to look comfortable. So if you hate ties, don’t wear a tie, if you hate skirts don’t wear a skirt. Just make sure that you look nice.
2. Show Value: Showing value in a restaurant situation can seem daunting if you have never entertained in a restaurant before. This is because you don’t have a job description, so you don’t know what your duties as an entertainer is. Well here is a description that should hopefully get you in the right mind set. Your primary job is to help the restaurant run smoother, not to entertain the guests. That’s right, entertaining the guests is secondary to getting people in, fed and back out quickly and efficiently. This means that you don not approach tables until their menus are gone and they have ordered. If asked, politely tell them that you will be back after they have ordered. This also means that you stay out of the servers way. If they come to a table to see how everything is, step back and let them talk to the table. Doing this will also prevent the servers, most of them anyway, from resenting you and thinking that you are stealing tips from them. With those two goals, helping the restaurant run smooth and allowing the servers to interact with their tables, you will be more successful and potentially get more tips.
3. Ask Questions: This means that when you are meeting with the manager(s) you actively find out what they envision or need from an entertainer. By asking them what they want or need you will be able to decide if this restaurant is for you as well as figuring out if they really want a balloon artist. While you are asking them questions you can find out if they have worked with entertainers before and what kind of experience they had with them. When you ask them questions you will be able to allay their fears and help them see you as the superstar entertainer that you are.

These three ideas are just part of your overall presentation. You need to know what you offer to the restaurant, other then adding value. There needs to be a good reason for them to hire you over another. That is something that you have to figure out for yourself since every entertainer does everything a little bit differently.

One of the hardest parts of being a professional entertainer is when the economy starts to decline and people start making the choice to pay bills instead of hiring an entertainer. If this hasn’t hit you yet I hope that it never does. There are a few ways to adjust your clown business model to compensate and adjust to still maintain a prosperous business. It is important to plan these things in advance so that you don’t end up scrambling for business and your over all quality suffers.

The first thing that you need to do is sit down and make a list of all your expenses and income for the past year. This will help you get an idea s to what you can expect for the coming year as well as help you make decisions as to what can be cut. When looking at your expenses really decide what you need and what is just a luxury. We all would like to get a new costume or a new electric balloon pump but it isn’t really a have to have item. What you need to order are balloons, face paints and any other perishable or give away items. When it comes to costumes, learn to sew. That way you can fix any problems that you might have and possibly learn to make you own costumes in the future. When it comes to ordering balloons try to work with your fellow balloon users and try to make your order together so you can get a better bulk price. Also most juggling props can be fixed if broken, plus they are meant to be dropped so they shouldn’t break.

Next you are going to want to change your target market. Most, or at least a lot, of us spend a majority of our time entertaining for families with children and those are the people that are going to be hit the hardest when money gets tighter. Businesses are also going to get hit, but they are going to be trying to instance people into spending money at their business. That is where you come in. Make them see you as an advertising asset. Make sure that they know that you will give 110% to there event and will do additional promotion on your website to make sure people know you are going to be there. This is a good time to get in the good graces of businesses by offering discounted rates on multiple dates, filling up your calendar while giving them a discount making them like you better

The third thing you need to do is increase the area that you are willing to travel. Even an increase of 10 miles broadens the impact of your brand and gives you a new area to work. When broadening your area try not to raise your prices any more then to cover the cost of your car and gas to get there. Increasing your brand awareness will not only help you now but in the future, allowing you business to stay big when the money is good again.

Remember that you want to keep agile in the slowing market. you don’t want to be caught stagnant and crumbling as the economy starts to grow again. Another thing to keep in mind is that good will shows will go a long way to help everyone get through these tough times. So volunteer, help out or just make people smile everyday.

Oh and we’re back to posting, thanks for waiting and enjoy.