I am taking a Crown financial class at church. This week's verse to memorize is "The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel." Proverbs 12:15 (NASB)

I have a friend who is so hooked on his own style of entertainment that he won't take advice. He is an excellent magician, ventriloquist, and script writer, but his whole focus is on a medicine show theme. He is great at what he does, but he has been advised by many to add a different character to the mix. Dickens for the holiday season could actually wear the same outfit.

It's a hard change for him. He has invest thousands of dollars in a special wagon that turns into a stage for festivals. But festivals are a small part of his potential market.

I am using him as an example to cause you to think, "Have I been given advice and just sluffed it off?" I find that most of us, myself included, interrupt the person giving advice as we give reasons for what we do. (The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.) What we should really do is say, "I really appreciate your input. Do you have any specifics? (A wise man is he who LISTENS to counsel.)

I had a friend who used a guillotine for a school assembly with first graders present. The teacher spoke to ME about it because I had recommended him, and I spoke to him. He said, "Don't change your show just because someone didn't like something." I totally disagree. If you hear the same thing 2 or 3 times (The Bible says something about 2 or 3 witnesses) then you need to seriously consider the advice! You may opt not to change, but you need to LISTEN to what they are saying.

One example is that I had a school that thought that something the Axtell bear said was inappropriate. I didn't know if they meant the part about eating children or the part about dreaming of going to school in his bare skin. So the next year I left out the bare skin part. It must have been the other part because I haven't been asked back.

I listened, I considered, but I'm going to keep the part about "eating some new freinds today" instead of meeting, the audience loves it!

Now the real advice: Is there something you are hanging on to that really should be let go? Perhaps it is a skit about Mr. T and Rocky Balboa that you love, but the audience can no longer relate to. (I used one for 5 years and finally had to let it go.) Or perhaps it is a magic trick that you spent a lot of time on, but the audience just doesn't respond well. Perhaps it's a puppet song that was great at one time, but now... Example: Read It, based on Michael Jackson's Beat It. That was great for a long time and may still be, but sound quality recording has improved so much I have opted for better sounding recordings.

The HARDEST thing to change is yourself. People ALWAYS compare me to Mr. Rogers because I'm gentle with the kids. "Now, Robert, is this really the place for throwing knives? Why don't we show the boys and girls how the switchblade closes and put it back in our pocket. That's a good neighbor."
I don't mind that because the puppets are the laughgetters and the wilder ones. BUT if I wanted to do adult shows I would have to change myself, which is much harder than changing the act. More on that later.

Tony,
You bring up a very interesting point. I feel customer satisfaction is #1.
Here in Louisiana, my average 45 min. show is $135. I feel that is hard earned money people are spending on me. I have been doing magic for 26 years. Of course in the beginning my shows were for free and cheaper magic items. As time went on I performed more and was constantly upgrading, and finally getting paid to do shows. Since I retired I advertised and started to do more shows for all different types of audience mix.
Most of my shows are for birthday parties. Now this is just how I feel I should prepare for a show. What is the predominate age of the kids I'm performing for. Generally, boys and girls under the age of 8 are the same. Girls 9-11 are in another group. Boys 9 up are in another group. Teenage girls and boys in another group and then adults in another group. Of course, one also needs to understand the difference in performing for a church group as opposed to a beer drinking party group.
In the 59 shows I have done since I advertised I have always gotten great feedback except on 2 occasions. 1 show was for a group of Asians, and there was a language thing with some of them not understanding. And another show I did for a 9 year old boy who had older friends at his party. It would have been better if I had brought my funny dagger through head trick, hand chopper, sawing through body as opposed to the magic coloring book.
I know of a magician that just does mostly card tricks. He is great at it, blows my mind all the time, but is he entertaining to a 5 year old?
I'm lucky on one respect because I have a 8, 4, 3, and almost 2 year old granddaughters. I usually run kid tricks by them first. This brings me to something I did that was funny. In getting ready to add ventriloquism to my show by using my dragon puppet. I thought it would be funny to rig him up so that he could spit. The premise was that he is learning how to breathe fire but spits instead. I spent about $10 rigging this up. My 8 and 4 year old are at my house when I do my routine. My 4 year old got up and was offended that Puff spit on her. 6 months later she still talks about it, so I took my water device off of my dragon.
A magician, or ventriloquist that does a bad show for money is bad for all of us. Someone at Little Johnny's party might be somewhere and someone suggests hiring a magician and they say; Debbie had a magician at her son's party and he was horrible.
I like to keep an open mind and have learned from my own mistakes and hope that I will be always able to learn from others as well.

You brought up several good points.
1. Language barrier. If doing a program for an audience where language is a barrier (this includes young preschoolers) you may want more magic to music. Ventriloquists can have the puppet sing. Picture yourself watching someone perform in another language. What would you like to see? Don't forget miming. I recently visited a friend who is in a wheelchair. While we talked he had the movie "Maverick" on with Mel Gibson. But he had turned the sound off so we could talk. I was totally amazed that one could completely follow the movie and the story even with no sound. Amazing director and film editing.

2. Audience age: Wow! I never do teen shows so I never considered things like the hand chopper or saw through the body tricks. I don't even do the flaming book for the ages I work with. But I'm sure the youth would LOVE those tricks!

3. Mixed ages. Fortunately parents understand when you are asked to perform for their two year old that the 14 year old cousin might not stick around after a coloring book trick. I know one magician that has two shows, based on age, but half the tricks work for both. He essentially has three halves of a show ready to go at all times. That way he can do the common half and pull out tricks from the younger or older set. Granted, his older set includes card and coin tricks, so that is easier to pack than a dagger through the head and saw through the body.

Oh how I love to do these now. After some normal tricks like the linking rings, linking ropes, linking both and a few other normal tricks, I then ask for volunteers. Of course hands go up like crazy. Now the fun begins. I made up a fake no liability form having the volunteers sign it along with 2 witnesses. Of course it says they can not hold me responsible for any accidents or injuries. By the way, everything I do is 100% safe, but I do not tell them this. If the audience is in front and no one is on the side of me I proceed to do the dagger chest. I say that this has been on back order for 4 months and I just received it as I was backing out of my driveway to come to this party. Please give me a moment to read the instructions. My instructions say that this trick is one of the most dangerous in magic and that it should be safe for any magician to perform after many hours of practice. (Real fact) The last time I did this I had a 30 something year old dad freak out and he chickened out. A teenage girl wound up doing it instead.
Next comes the hand chopper which had been covered by a large cloth. I say this was something I bought off of E-bay real cheap. Of course it came without instructions. I say I used this trick only one time before for a Halloween show. I say that they may have read about it because it was in the newspaper. My volunteer had his hand cut off. The surgery to sew it back on was successful. I'm going to prove that is OK now by cutting through a cucumber which will not be cut in half. Of course it does get cut in half and I act shocked. 3 times I had people chicken out after the cucumber was cut in half. Next is my favorite trick. The sawing through body routine. I put on a bloodied lab coat from my last performance of this trick. I show that the table is not gimmicked in any way. I show that there is no room between the tip of the saw and the table. I prove the saw is real by cutting through a piece of styrofoam. Lastly, I put on some goggles to keep any blood out of my eyes and offer my volunteer a pair. As you can guess, I had several people chicken out. I tell them I do not blame them because I would not do this either if I had a choice.
I end my show with smash and stab, (I made a fake hand that has a spike coming out of it and on my last smash the audience thinks for a moment that I messed up), a bobcat trap routine I made up, and a fantastic trick I see nowhere now. It has 2 parts. The first basically proves a dart gun is real. The next part has someone shooting a dart at my head which pops a balloon and I catch the dart between my teeth.
I have one of these shows coming up on June 12th. I can't wait.

I did a new show on Sunday and had several positive accolades. But when I asked my wife what she thought, she had several suggestions. I struggled to remember my own advice about listening instead of defending. I will be repeating the show on Thursday at a camp and her advice was necessary.

We are fortunate in that we have a job where we work one hour and then get praised (and paid) for our work. Amazing! So on those few occasions when we can get constructive criticism we really need to value it! As I look back over 17 years of doing this full-time I find that those who had constructive input were the most valuable in the long run.

One must act like they know nothing about a subject in order to learn everything about that subject from others.

One thing I have started to do is I bought a video camera and I now set it up to record my magic show. Since it just sits on a tripod I do not get closeups and sometimes might even be off camera, it still helps me to critique myself.
I know I have 1 weakness for sure, that I hope will take care of itself as my assistant, my granddaughter, gets older. This is what I call flow. I use quite a few props. Props that need to be cleared in order to do more stuff. Even using 3-4 small tables I sometimes need a spot cleared and I must take something off of a table and lay it down on the ground behind me. I hate turning my back on my audience.
Tony-I am impressed that you have made this a full time business for the last 17 years. That could be tough some times I guess. I knew a very, very, good magician you may have heard of; Joe Harrison. He even had real macaws, doves, and rabbits in his act. He had some rather large illusions he would transport and needed his grown daughter and wife to help him when he did a show. When anyone mentioned to him about going into the business full time he would tell them to get a real job first.

Here are things that will KEEP someone from staying full-time:

Poor props. We don't tend to notice when something starts to fade, fray, or look old because it happens so gradually. The audience doesn't see your prize magic trick as a valuable antique as much as a dirty item you brought into their home. So keep your props looking as new as possible or replace them.

Too many cooks. Do you REALLY need to have your wife quit her day job as well so she can stick the rabbit in the box, or so you don't have to make an extra trip to the car? If you aren't making enough to hire a teenage helper then you definitely can't afford to ask your wife to quit. Cut out the parts of the show that take an assistant.

Too low of a fee. If you are doing 150 shows or more a year and it isn't paying enough to be full-time then you are charging too little. I know a local magician who probably does more shows than I do in his "spare" time and says that he'd love to go full-time. He doesn't realize that he IS full-time but he gets paid part-time. Divide a year's salary by 200 and that is a fair amount for an average show. You'll have to charge more for public and less for private shows, but nobody should expect you to do more than 200 shows a year. I know clowns who charge $75 for a birthday. At that rate you'd have to do 600 shows a year to get a salary after the travel costs!

Limited venue. Guilty here. I don't do adult events or close-up magic. I don't get that many calls, but if I DID start doing them then the calls might start coming in. If you ONLY do preschools, for example, you won't make it. (You're back to doing 400 shows a year for a low fee.)

No advertising. Meet some other entertainers and ask them what type ads work for them. I get calls from my yellow page ad because I'm the only puppet show mentioned. I know magicians who DON'T get calls because there are several magicians. They advertise online in their city's websites. I spend very little on advertising because I'm content (except for this year) with the number of shows. But next year I HAVE to start advertising to a broader market, so I plan to put an ad or two in a national magazine. I will use Axtell puppets in the photo to grab attention.

Unwilling to change. This was an earlier post. If you are Disco Dave the Magic Rave, don't expect too many calls. Think of your audience. Watch some shows on TV they would watch. Figure out what you can do to become more appaling. Whoops! I mean, appealing!

I always wonder how anyone gets so many shows a year. 90% of my shows are on the weekend. I have had 3 times when I was able to do 2 shows in one day, but that has only happened on those 3 occasions. I've had a couple of shows on a Friday and several at night, but for the most part everything is on the weekend. And I have done a few shows for day cares, schools, and nursing homes, on weekdays. I seem to get a booking anytime someone calls so I believe my price is right. And my advertising cost is as much as I am willing to spend, which is $168 a month, and it covers a pretty large area. But still I only average 3 shows a month.

Most interesting discussion. I think it demonstrates the difference between a professional(does it for a living) and a dedicated amateur(can be just as good but it's not her livelihood). Some other cleavages(now just hold on censors!) are when one plays an audience in a different country. At the annual Vent Haven convention in Kentucky the audience is 99 per cent white and mostly conservative men. The vents from other countries(Japan especially and some Canadians) used vent more as a teaching aid or a social commentary and thus the expected punchline humor was absent.
One also can fail if the audience is upset by material which is not what they are used to. The eastern Canadian/Irish/English routines which pulverize religion,sexual orientation and politics are aimed at audiences which have grown up with sketchy comedy. South of the border,with such routines,one risks a T-Bone by the religious right.
My general summary is that many vents in the States are doing their comedy for money and thus have had to become dynamic, mercantile,and determined to get out in front and blow one's horn. Nothing wrong with this it's a valid ,national American characteristic which over two centuries resulted in a nation which until lately was the zenith of research and development. May I say different strokes etcetera? Ron