FULL-TIME PERFORMER

Quite Recently I received an email from an amateur magician who asked me "how hard is it to pack up the day job and become a full time performer"? that question prompted me to write this post.

The other night I had a hideous nightmare.

In my dream I worked in the city, I had a company car, a nice office, and earned a good wage.   HORRIBLE!

If I had ever been successful in the above scenario (and yes I did work in an office for many years), desperation and the need to eat would have never led me to where I am now. I would never have experienced the need to concentrate my efforts on becoming a commercial performer; I wouldn’t be enjoying the life I now live.

Many people I know who appear to have successful careers, often hate their jobs, suffer from work related stress, complain about the 9 – 5 and are too tired at the end of a working day to enjoy the vast amounts of money they earn.

Most of them tell me how lucky I am but they don’t realise how incredibly hard I have worked to get to this stage of my life, to be honest luck has very little to do with it (I wish it did).

Many of them say I am very brave due to the insecurity this life style offers; after all it is common knowledge that show business is fickle. Well in my opinion security is an illusion especially when your livelihood is in the hands of another person or people, and to be honest the thought of someone else allocating a monetary value to my time sends a shudder up my spine.

Your boss may think an hour of your life is worth 10, 20, 30 pounds, personally I consider my time very precious and worth at least 200 – 500 pounds an hour. The difficulty in this business is convincing other people you are worth that much.

SO YOU WANT TO WORK AS A FULL TIME PERFORMER EH!

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Dwell on this for a moment ….. No sick pay, no paid holidays, no nice clean office, no regular wage at the end of the month, no pension plan, no health care plan, no Christmas bonus, no bank holidays.

If you are booked to do a gig and you get the flu, the runs, a migraine or are absolutely exhausted because your three year old has been awake all night, you can’t call in sick because you won’t get paid.

As a full time performer, only 10 – 20 percent of your time will actually be spent standing up doing what you love best. The rest is marketing, administration, networking, cold calling, tax returns, rehearsals and miles and miles of travelling in all weathers at all times of the year.

STILL INTERESTED ……….. GOOD.
 
On the flip side, there is the satisfaction of getting paid and sometimes paid well for doing what you love; you will meet hundreds if not thousands of people from all walks of life, the majority of whom, contrary to what you may believe, will be nice people who want to be entertained. You will have time (as part of your working day) to feed your creativity, expand your knowledge and develop your art.

Not only that but any stress you suffer will be the healthy kind, you will find yourself feeling less run down and more alive, which in turn promotes better physical well being and therefore health.

You will spend more time with your family and friends and will stand out from the crowd as someone who is in charge of their own destiny.

It’s not easy, there is a lot of work to do and there will be periods where you will wish you were back on the 9 – 5 grind, but hey anything worth having has to be worked for. You’ll also need to set targets, make plans, suffer sacrifices and most importantly, in my opinion, cultivate the art if diversification.

I’ll be talking about diversification as a performer in my next post. Until then I’ll leave you with a quote, from a very good friend and full time performer Chris Hare.

“I don’t know how anybody who works 9 – 5 can possibly acquire a decent golf handicap”
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Sums it up for me.

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