This entire business is about giving back to the performance world. As much as we would love to share everything for free, unfortunately, a lot of our course information comes from hard working professionals, and as you know, we can’t all pay our bills with exposure!
However, take a look at our free videos and articles below for some tips and tricks that are sure to help you with your business. Feel free to also join our facebook group HERE for personalised questions and advice.
Follow the link here to here about the 5 worst things about being a performer and how to deal with them.
Q and A with Gemma and Tor
Q and A with Dave and Marky
The importance of consistent pricing.
This little story will scare you and will hopefully make you realize why
Price consistency is important
Facebook jobs are bullshit
Actions have unseen repercussions.
Click to read more
I've been hiring these 2 great performers for a while now. They usually quote me from £250-£325 depending on the job.
The other day I saw them applying for a job with a fee of £140.
If they're willing to work for that price why don't i just pay them that price and pocket the difference?
Because if i look at it from a 100% business perspective If i can earn an extra £100 per performer why wouldn't I.
Every action you do has repercussions you just don't realize it. Pulling out of that one job could loose you £10,000 worth of work over the years. Dropping your fee could mean your now working for that fee for the next year.
Are you in a race to the bottom but you can't even see it.?
If you're sick and tired of working for shit money at shit events,
and want to learn how to keep your fees high and still work 100s of events each year then I'll see you in October.
Investing is so important
Promo, costume, props, training new skills. I'm not just talking about investing money I'm also talking about time and effort.
So how do you decide what is best to invest in?
Before I ever invest in something I do a little INVESTMENT VS RETURN scale. What requires the minimal investment (Think a venn diagram of time-money-effort) for the most return.
Click to read more
What is the least effort but can earn you lots. Stilt walking is a prime example of this!!! It costs £50 for a pair of stilts, £200 for a decent costume and 3 days effort to get really good. And you can easily earn an extra £5k a year from that skill alone.
A lot of the time simply buying an amazing costume because there's a gap in the market can be a great investment because all it takes is money. No time or effort.
Or learning a new skill which takes a lot of time and effort but no money could be also a great investment.
Q and A with Kris and Josh
Q and A with Marky and Jon
Contacting agents for the first time!
Sound On!
Call ahead
Email everything
Be specific
Have amazing promo
Got a shitty side job that you don’t want to do?
Yeah most people have at some point. You're in the hardest part, the transition phase.
It's really important not to rush this part. If you rush and don’t have the right preparations you will likely fail. These are going to be some long days for you but you can do it!!
Here is exactly what I did-
1. Have the right job. Have a well-paid job that allows you to answer the phone for your performer work. Something in sales with a base wage is ideal. As performers, you should be interactive (and you are literally selling yourself!), sales is just that.
2. Reduce your living costs and save some money. This is going to help you adjust to the initial lower income.
3. Book out your summer. But don’t work festivals! Instead, spend your Oct-April fully booking yourself May-Sept. This period is the largest time of the year where you can have back to back gigs. I've had 70 back to back events over this time and I know of people doing 120+
4. Always leave your job in May.
5. Keep your 9-5 working head. Most small businesses fail because the owner treats it like a play toy. It's not, so keep working your 9-5 hours, only now you're your own boss.
Not many people know that I left this industry and went to work as a door knocker for virgin. It was fucking great money and I was good at it but the thought of waking up at 40 and looking back on my life as a door knocker was not for me.
Follow this method and you will be out of your Job by next May. The longer you spend prepping the better your entrance into full time entertainment work will be.
But trust when you are ready!
10 Point plan for starting out.
- Register with HMRC
- Get an email address and Gcalender
- Get your accounting software
- Learn a skill (be specific)
- Buy a costume
- Get your promo, TR, RA, Ms and insurance - Learn gig protocol
- Direct market to get work experience
- Contact agents
- Make an act
Struggling with money?
Everyone struggles with money. But as circus performers, we're terrible in the down season. I'm going to teach you a super easy side hustle where you can turn £300 to £3000 in a month. (And no, this isn't a pyramid scheme, as much as it sounds like one!)
Go to Poundland, discount stores, second-hand stores or car boot sales.
Scan items and look at what it's selling for on eBay and Amazon (not what people are asking for, look at what it sold for)
If you can buy it cheaper, buy it.
Sell it online.
Buy £300 worth of stuff say you make a 40% profit.
You've now got £420.
Repeat the process with slightly more expensive items.
This is called flipping. Anyone can do this type of flipping and you can apply this model to the performance industry too, that's more complex but I will be teaching it on the course.
If you have the time to do this and you do this every day for a month you will turn £300 into £3000. Just be patient keep looking for the right items to buy with the biggest profit margin. It's not bullshit, and I have done it when I've got lots of time and no cash.
And if you have no time and no cash... you're doing something wrong.
Mental Health
How to Promo
Pricing?!
Apparently, a lot of us have issues with how to price art, who would have thought it?
Here's one of many methods I've found useful for pricing.
Take your monthly living costs for me its about £1200 a month
X12 months in a year £14,400 just for me to survive
Now divide this by 52 weeks of the year (Assuming an average over the year of 1 gig per week)
£14,400 / 52 = £276.92
Soi start with my price of £277 If you hit your target of 52 gigs this year your living costs are covered and any gig after that is money to invest.
Say you're consistently hitting 100 gigs a year at £277, Amazing! That means you're in demand.
and basic business tells us the more you're in demand the higher the price. So every year your hitting 100 gigs the price goes up 20%.
This is a double-edged sword though. because if you don't hit your 52 gig's it means your charging too much. So something in your living costs has to go in order to reduce your price.
(you can't start with a high price and no demand, When I started out i did 4 sets of acrobatic walkabout for £125 now I charge £450 to new clients and work 180 events a year because I'm in demand)
***** This is all assuming you have a shit hot act, skills, promo and marketing. If you are sub 4 years of training this method won't work for yo
Speed up your admin
1. Break it up - 1 hour emailing, 20 minutes accounts, 1-hour marketing etc
2. Actually, do it! - Sit there and hammer it out as fast as you can, Don't watch a film in the background, Actively try and do it as fast as you can and you'll get it done way quicker.
3. Be productive, Don't be busy - Honestly think about what your doing is it keeping you busy or is it something that is a stepping stone to getting more work and being better
Living off Facebook jobs?
Are you constantly scrolling through facebook looking for jobs? Don't worry most people have but it's bullshit.
You shouldn't be reliant on jobs posted on facebook, yes it's fine to get the odd occasional job through facebook but if your wasting 5+ hours of your day scrolling through facebook looking for jobs then you're being BUSY, not productive.
Click to read a method to stop -Get an app tracker on your phone spend 1 week doing your normal thing.
-Calculate how much time you spend on socials.
-Then don't touch socials for 1 week instead put that exact same amount of time into direct marketing.
Your results won't be instant but direct marketing builds much stronger relationships than facebook ever will. That's going to lead to more better quality gigs.