December 2008
--INTRODUCTION--
In this month's installment of what seems to have become an underground throng of mentalism activity I will be showing you why following our gut feelings allows us to be right no matter what, and more importantly how the month of November taught me this valuable lesson. The business section this month deals with a real life case study of my business and a way I have found to increase my productivity in the hope that you might find it useful, and as usual I have a recommended resource which is a DVD this month and a routine starting point to tickle your little gray cells.Before we go in to it, I uncovered something that could very well save you and your magic business throughout the next few years. 2 weeks ago I was sitting down with an insurance broker friend of mine and we got to talking about the economy. He mentioned to me that there is an insurance policy that could very well save me a lot of money.
The insurance policy he alluded to is one where by if the client who hires me goes bankrupt before making payment to me that could cause me problems and activate a domino effect. So a policy is advised which would cover in the event of this happening, the insurance company would pay out the due amount in place of the bankrupt company and thus I'd be safeguarded.
This also frees up some more of my time, instead of having to keep such close attention on the market places of my clients I have more peace of mind in that in the event of the worst happening to my beloved clients I will still survive. It might be in your interest to check with your insurance provider if this kind of policy is available to you. It is for most self employed people and I think in the current times its a great asset to our businesses.
Thanks for your continued attention and support. Enjoy December!
--TALKING POINT--
The big upset. Yes this month I was all controversial and managed to upset a few of our magician friends. On the blog for my website I posted something with the view of getting more people interested in magic, perhaps those who are would not usually.
In the process of doing so I offended some people and recieved some comments and notes to tell me just how unhappy they were with me. Like a scolded school-boy I thought carefully about what I'd done and how I would respond to it. Should I just say "whatever, get over it"?
I decided that magic and magicians have been very good, kind and supportive of me over the past 5 years and the right thing to do was to apologise. So I did.
Sometimes the right thing to do is the hardest, and in this case it went completely against my intention to remove the post, because the plan was to grab people who generally sniff at magicians but alas I realised my patriotism to the mystery arts is far more important.
Reminds me a lot of the ethics of mentalism, some perform as psychics, some as psychologists, some as pure tricksters and it really doesn't matter what i think nor anyone else so long as you can look at yourself in the mirror as you hold your head up high, completely believeing that what you are doing it right for you. - That was deep now wasn't it!
--BUSINESS--I hope that your bookings for December are plentiful and that you're looking forward to a very busy time performing in your market place. That said, this is the time of year when a lot of people slack off on the business and this causes problems in the new year, and it happens time and time again judging from the conversations I've been having with other performers.
What seems to happen in that during December, performers spend so much time on the road, out there performing that they don't have the time to continue promoting themselves and do all of the paperwork associated with it all. This means the start of the new year is a nightmare in terms of the reams of paperwork that has to be sifted through and the lack of new enquiries that have been dealt with.
This year I hired an assistant. I have a lot of business activities which mean I want to spend time on developing and delivering those things and I don't want to have to spend time handling enquiries, answering questions and the like so I decided to hire someone to do that.
The great news is that I can still work from home and so does she. She works remotely from her home and all enquiries go right through to her and guess what - it is working really well. We use Google Calendar to keep the diary up to date and she communicates directly to me with anything I need to do directly myself.
I thought I would write and tell you about it because I have seen a huge increase in my productivity since taking Rebbecca on to my staff (which of course only consists of her and me) because I now have more free time to work on my act, I am not sitting sifting through pointless emails and adverts from everyone who wants to sell me advertising and even better - everything will work just as smoothly over the December madness. So it has created consistency. Actually - its also made me better organised because I wasn't before.
These people are available all over the place and are called Virtual Assistants. Truthfully they are self employed and just send me an invoice for the time I use each month so better still I'm only paying for the hours I am actually using - so no paying anyone to take coffee breaks, no tax or insurance to take care of and what's more if times were to get hard I could cut her out of my staff without any legal risk because she isn't actually employed by me.
This works very well as most of my enquries come via email, however if your primary source of contact is telephone then a call answering service could be just as effective. They pick up the phone with your company name, getting a local company means it has a local accent to and thus sounds legitemate to a prospective booker. Worth thinking about for sure.
--RECOMMENDS--This month I watched a DVD by British performer Looch. It's a pretty good watch, one that I enjoyed. It's packed full of close up mentalism ideas ranging from playing crads to business cards. It's nice to see Looch performing and get a real sense of his style. In particular there is a routine in this using the PATEO force that I think is the slickest presentation I've seen to date. there's also a very simple drawing dupe - it doesn't fit my style but it's very simple and a couple of nice memorised card 'photographic memory' type routines which got me a little excited.
Looch looked a little nervous and uncomfortable during the explanations for some reason - I can't see why he should be as the material was solid.
Worth a look I'd say.
--IDEA OF THE MONTH--
Seeing through a wall. I've been doing some research in to the great Al Mann. One of his manuscripts that I am going to read through on my travels this month is about the ability to see through an unprepared wall.
So sending a volunteer in to an ajoining room you ask him to partcipate in an experiment. One where you reveal that the wall is no match for your incredible mental energy and you're able to reveal phenomenal thoughts and actions that are happening apparently out of sight.
What effect(s) would you perform and how would you achieve them? Email me or post a comment below - there is no need to register or anything just click comment and write your piece.
--TO CLOSE--
I can not promise that January's newsletter will be on time, I only have 5 days off in December but if that's enough time to compile ideas and notes for you then I certainly will.
In 2009 there may be a DVD of some of my performance pieces, many of them I'm still jealously hiding from you. That may be it when it comes to releases from me for a while though. I can just about smell the Turkey!
Until next time, do take care!
Kennedy
"Do you have suggestions, an idea you want to share on the
newsletter. Email me info@mindofkennedy.co.uk!"
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