Children's Entertainment - The Business

CHAPTER ONE



How To Beat The Recession And Start One Of The Easiest And Most Rewarding Businesses EVER!


I have purchased so many get-rich-quick schemes hoping to live the life of a millionaire, dreaming of a passive income coming my way as I bask in the sunshine on a beach somewhere in the Pacific. It never happened, but the next best thing did!

I was on holiday at a holiday park in Wales with my two children, who were five and two years old. They had seen a sign saying “Children’s Club”, and of course they wanted to go and see what was going on! It was about three thirty pm as I recall; I took the children to the club at the time stated on the sign. We had a good seat and waited eagerly for the entertainment to begin. Suddenly the music started up, and out came this clown. All the kids were delighted to see him, and it didn’t take long for my two long to leave their seats and join in with the rest of the children. The thing was that this entertainer wasn’t very good at all, yet he had the kiddies mesmerised; they were loving it! I thought “I COULD DO THAT!” I thought about this all night; I couldn’t sleep at all. The next morning I told my wife about my thoughts… She laughed her head off! “You? You can’t even entertain your own kids,” she cried. But what she didn’t realise, and me for that matter, was the actual earning power of this little business. Now, there are two ways to run this business. You could just earn a few quid to top up your wages or run it to capacity and make a jolly good living.

It was 1986; I was working like a Trojan maid to keep my family fed and pay our mortgage. I hated my job which was a machine operator at a steel stockholders in Birmingham. I had more than one reason to start a business of my own, one that really worked. I had always wanted to be my own boss. I had tried and failed many times. The businesses that I had failed at were a printing business; this was a very ambitious venture that never took off and ended up losing money, not making any.

Next, there was the market trading fling which was great fun, but I never made much money at this either. I tried Party Plan, selling ex-catalogue clothing and ended up practically giving the stock away after finding out that my stock was disappearing; they were trying on a bunch of about six items upstairs and bringing back three.

Then I was made redundant in 1984 with a payout of one thousand pounds, which was a lot of money in those days, and now with that sort of money to invest I could buy a ready-to-go business. I looked at carpet cleaning, car cleaning and renovating and even buying a catering van, but my wife said that I should hang on to the money and try and get another job.

While looking through the paper for a job one day, I came across this advertisement for a horse racing system, so I sent for it. The system arrived in the post a couple of days later. It was pretty simple to understand, and I watched it for a while and found that although there were a few very scary moments, it was working! So, I decided that I would give this a go. I can tell you now that it was most enjoyable period of my working life. I would get up in the morning, read the papers, check out my system and sit in the bookmakers and back my horses. My wages at work were sixty-five pounds per week in those days for a twelve-hour day; I was now winning fifty-six pounds per week sitting in the bookies for three hours a day.

Why am I still not doing that today? I got greedy and over-confident and lost the lot! Yes! It all went in a day. I was devastated! I had to go home and tell my wife that we couldn’t eat now because all of our money had gone. She was pretty ok with it though because she said she knew all along that this would happen! My wife knew me better than I knew myself. I can laugh at it now, but it wasn’t funny at the time. Anyway, all went well, because I asked if there were any jobs going at my old place of employment and got a job in a different department, working SHIFTS! For less money too! You can imagine why I was so happy that I thought that a career in entertaining children was my next venture.

My wife’s attitude to it was “Ho! No, not another doomed attempt”, but she knew that I was so unhappy at work that she even said that she would help! I think that secretly she knew that this was going to work, and besides I could actually start this business part-time without it affecting my job! Actually, most of the work that I would be doing would be at the weekend; I think that my wife had already worked this out and she knew that if it worked out I would be earning a bit extra on the side, so to speak.

We went back to that club several times during that week, and I was making notes about what this entertainer was doing, what he was saying and most important of all how he was controlling the children. As I said earlier, he wasn’t that good, but there was something about him that I and all of the children liked about him; it was his attitude towards them. This was to be the best thing that I would learn from this guy, and it has stood me in good stead ever since. His secret was that he came down to their level; he became a BIG KID himself, and when the kiddies got naughty or out of control he wouldn’t tell them off or tell them to be quiet; he would use various routines to get their interest back. He had a great character, which was another lesson that I learnt from him – TO CREATE A CHARACTER.

Later on in the week I found out that the clown was also the bingo caller, the cabaret artist (twice a week), and he was the close-up magician who wandered from table to table showing people his magic with cards, coins and ropes,. He was also the DJ seven nights a week for about an hour and a half at the end of each evening, and three nights a week he was the singer in a band, and guess what? The band consisted of his wife on the organ, his daughter played the guitar, and his son was the drummer. WHAT A FAMILY! They must be raking it in, I thought, but that’s not all; that guy, the one who was the clown and all the other things, was also the entertainment manager at the holiday park.

Before we left I managed to speak to this guy because I wanted to congratulate him on his various performances. “How on earth do you keep this up?” I asked him. “First of all, I love the job, and secondly, we only work five months of the year, the beginning of May to the end of September; the rest of the year we go to our villa in Spain and just enjoy the break!” I also chatted to him about becoming a children’s entertainer, and he gave me some good hints and tips, and one thing that stood out more than anything else that he told me was “THIS IS THE MOST REWARDING BUSINESS I COULD EVER HAVE BEEN IN.” What I think he meant was that he would rather be in this business earning a good living than earning loads of money and not knowing when his luck would run out. He also said “I will be entertaining children long after I would have retired at sixty-five years old in a normal job.”

I couldn’t wait to get home and start planning out my business. I remembered when I was a youngster, we had a children’s club at the local cinema where there would be entertainment before the film started, and that gave me an idea. I could run a Saturday Kiddies’ Club! I checked out the local church hall and was able to hire it on Saturday mornings from nine a.m. till eleven a.m. Two weeks on and I was ready to start earning. I had the disco covered; the music was on tape (I used a Black Lace album with all the party music on it; you know the kind of music – The Conga, Music Man, Superman, etc.).

The games were all planned, and I’d sorted out some prizes for a colouring competition which would be judged the following week; this was to make sure that they came again. I also recruited some help from local mums that we knew from our children’s school plus a couple of ladies from our street. Another advantage of running a business of this kind was that I could get a trade card for a wholesalers; we encouraged the mums and dads to stay and wait for their child, thus giving us more takings plus we were selling tea, coffee, biscuits and sweets for the children.

We gave out FREE tickets and put a display advert in the local free paper. The first week wasn’t that good, but we made a small profit. By the second week, they were queuing down the street! Yes! We had finally created something from nothing. I did a really good job at entertaining the children, and I remembered what the entertainer at the holiday park did. The kids really took to me, and I will never forget the comments from some of the mums of the children, especially the one who said “You certainly have a rapport with children.”

During the next week I had the local press phone me up to ask if they could do a write-up on the club. I thought, crikey, I’ll have to get more gear. I decided to go to the nearest magic supplier, which was a fancy goods and joke shop with a magic studio at the back of the building, to purchase some props. What a waste of money! I bought a load of stuff – don’t get me wrong, it was quality stuff and it was good magic but not for a children’s show. I think that this is why most people who give this business a try fail at the first attempt, because they don’t know what works and what doesn’t.

The next Saturday the press were there. They asked about the children’s club. I told them everything. I asked if they could take a photo of all the children in a large group. I thought that if all these children got a copy of the local free paper, they would see their picture and then they would show all of their friends; they would tell their friends what a great time they had down at the club. I had also prepared a press release. I had written a long one, as they seemed very friendly when they first phoned me. It worked! They printed the whole thing, even my contact details, which worked out well because a local agent phoned up and asked if I could do a job for them in West Bromwich. I said I could, then she told me how much my fee was going to be. “You will get forty-five pounds after I have taken my cut,” she said. And this was for forty-five minutes.

Remember, this was 1986. I had already done one birthday party for two hours and charged fifteen pounds; WOW! I was a professional children’s entertainer already, and I had only been in the business for a few weeks; things were really going well! My wife Lynda said that she was scared that we were going to lose our connection with this agency, so she told me that she had been saving up some money for a rainy day; I think that there was about four hundred pounds in her savings account that I never knew about.

Then, out of the blue I had a letter from a company called Supreme Magic Company, from Devon. They were holding a magic convention in Weston-super-Mare that very weekend. I phoned them up and arranged to pay at the door. Both myself and my wife went down there and had a great weekend, and as we were not on friendly terms at that time, being involved in this new business and sharing an interest brought us closer together again; that’s another thing that this business has done for me!

When we got to Weston-super-Mare and booked into our hotel, we found that it was full of children’s entertainers who had come to the magic convention too! In fact, they said that it was an annual pilgrimage! They were a friendly lot and gave me loads of tips. When we eventually got into the Winter Gardens, where the event was being held, we were literally overcome to see so much magic on sale. There were people demonstrating the props and the tricks, and there were books on every subject of magical entertainment and shows. The weekend ended with a gala show which included a couple of magicians that I had seen on TV. We spent all of the money that my wife had saved for us, and we had a fabulous weekend into the bargain.

I now had enough material to do a forty-five-minute show. The only downside to the whole thing was the fact that we both fell in love with a prop called the Rainbow House. This was a children’s prop that produced a live rabbit! This prop was very expensive but really well made; in fact, all of their props were very well made. Supreme Magic Company no longer exists. It was run by two gentlemen called Edwin Hooper and Ian Adair. Edwin is dead now, but Ian is still with us and doing fine, and he still performs. A great many entertainers still miss Supreme Magic Company, and when the company ceased trading it was like a close relative had died.

It was getting close to the time that I was to work for my new agent, and Lynda said she was worried that I hadn’t bought enough good material, so she came up with the cash to buy the Rainbow House. Now my act was almost complete! Just one more item – yes, you’ve guessed it– THE RABBIT! It wasn’t hard to find a rabbit. In fact, our local newspaper was full of adverts selling baby rabbits. I had to try out my new prop, and I had a great idea! My daughter, who would have been about three years old, would love a rabbit, so I thought, if I could produce it by magic then give it to her, how wonderful would that be?

That same day, Lynda asked a few of our neighbours with children if they would allow them to watch my new act; we had a full house. This was great because not only would it give me a practise run, it would also allow me to give my daughter her rabbit. I ended my show with the rabbit production, and my daughter was delighted. One thing in particular that I noticed when I actually produced the rabbit was not only the fantastic reaction from the children, but the mums too expressed their delight in seeing this incredible trick.

I was immediately booked by one of the mums who was there because her son begged her to have me at his birthday party, which was just a week away. It was not until I did the show for this child and produced the rabbit that I found out why! The little boy, who had welcomed me into his home and willingly assisted me in my show, was now screaming in hysterics as I packed the rabbit away. I later found out that he thought that because I’d given the rabbit away to my daughter, he would get a rabbit to keep too! You can’t do right for doing wrong!

I had to purchase some decent props for this one particular job but still got all the wrong stuff. When I saw these tricks demonstrated I thought, these are great, but I hadn’t realised that these tricks weren’t for children’s shows! They were ok for the seven- to ten-year-olds, but what about the three- to five-year-olds?

You know, I still get tempted to buy a trick that I see demonstrated and find that when I get home, it doesn’t fit my style of performing. Here is a little tip for you if you ever think of going into this business and you are at a magic convention and you see tricks demonstrated: always think in entertainer mode, not in magic mode.

I remember paying seventy-five pounds for a disappearing bottle trick that lasted only fifty seconds. Thinking back, I could have bought enough props to last about thirty minutes for seventy-five pounds.

This book contains all the information that you will need to know to be up and running in no time at all. Each chapter is set out in order for you to understand easily and progress at your own pace. Chapter One tells you how I personally got involved in this wonderful business. Chapter Two is very important because this is where you have to choose what type of entertainer you are going to be, and what you will be doing.

Chapters Three and Four are just as important because it’s about running your business, how to answer the telephone and what to say to the client. Also in these two chapters there are the dealers who sell the props you will be purchasing. Plus there are bits of GOLD to anyone in this business.

Chapters Five and Six are the scripted routines that helped make my reputation. And the last chapter, Party Games - only four and a half pages – but enough material to run a complete games party.

This is a business that you could start up and run on a part-time basis at weekends and then, as I did, go full-time when you get established. Anyway, no more talk of my course; you will learn all about it at the end of this book. On the morning of the West Bromwich show for the agency, I was very nervous. To tell you the truth, I was so nervous that I spent most of the morning on the toilet, but I needn’t have worried because when I arrived at the home, which was where the party was being held, I forgot all about my nerves and remembered the clown at the holiday camp, and this is what got me through! I had such a good time that I forgot what time it was and did an hour instead of forty-five minutes.

I learned a good lesson that day. ALLWAYS PERFORM TO MY PRE-ARRANGED TIMES. Why? Well, the food was to be served in the last half hour of the party, and by the time I’d finished it left just ten minutes. I am certain that if my show hadn’t gone as well as it did, this lady would have been very angry. As it was, she was so pleased about the way I’d entertained the children that she didn’t mind. I was worried now about whether she would tell the agent, but I needn’t have worried because the agent telephoned me later that day to say that the lady had given me a glowing report.