Fulfilling expectations? Bah! Overrated!

Participation, participation, participation. Keys to the kingdom.

I wrote this on Saturday morning, prior to heading to the Expo (it'll make sense in a minute):

I got up at 6:00 this morning to go to the Chicagoland Kid's Expo where I'll be manning a booth with 2 magician acquaintances, pitching our shows to families from all over, well, Chicagoland. Last year there were 10,000 attendees, so there is a lot of potential. I spent all this week before and after work (and sometimes during lunch) working on promotional and marketing materials: a party tips newsletter, a raffle entry form, a coupon, a "book it now" discount form, show descriptions, etc. None of the sexy fun stuff, but all the important business stuff. And I enjoyed this"business" work more than I thought I would.

The thing I'm most excited about is the opportunity to sell my magic to 10,000 people for two days. Regardless of the outcome, this is a great opportunity to practice having conversations about people hiring me to perform. Practice, practice, practice. THEN the key will be to take my share of the leads and market intelligently to them. Hot damn. The game is afoot.

That was written on Saturday morning. So how did it go?

Good. Really good, actually. Would say minorly great, but not fantastic. Got a number of leads (fewer than I thought we would), made a good number of contacts (more than I expected) and just got to practice being in the business frame of mind and taking action correlate to that. I felt very competent, confident and up to the task. All those years of thinking, reading and absorbing the business side of show business paid off. Despite the general lack of practice in the "business."

The biggest lesson, though, was that things are generally not going to go as I expect. Especially early on. We had too much material to hand out (which is better than too little), there was less traffic than I thought, the kids were generally younger than I expected, the presentations didn't go as I imagined, and the people I was working with didn't behave the way I thought they should. Pretty much everything, to some extent, didn't follow the plan I outlined in my head.

However, it still went great. Lots was produced and I'm definitely glad I did it.

Save the Earth my ass

Just got an email from a friend asking me to go the Al Gore’s website and sign a petition that he will present to Congress when he testifies on the climate crisis on March 21st. (The website is: http://algore.com/cards.html)

I went to the website and signed my name, but that’s not my point. The email subject was “The Next Step to Save Our Earth.” While I think we should continue to take action to change the direction we as a society and culture are moving, I think part of the problem with the climate comes from us believing that we can save the Earth.

I don't believe the earth needs us to save it. It'll be fine long after we're gone. Different, but fine. Just as it's always been. However, if we plan to stick around, then something needs to be done. Acting like "stewards" of the Earth rather than guests has gotten us into the problem in the first place.

No fanfare

Not talking about the long time lapse or making any declarations. Just blogging.

Kicked ass yesterday at the office talent show with this crazy, involved, multi-cast member juggling routine. I may post the video here. I realized after the show that when I have a bad performance, I tend to make it mean I don't have talent, rather than owning my talent and just figuring out what didn't work about the set.

On a related note, last week I worked as a craps dealer at a birthday party for 2 hours. Made some cash, but more importantly, I remembered/relearned that I am in fact entertaining and good at what I do. (Just like what I relearned after the juggling performance yesterday.) Everybody had a great time, learned to play craps and I got a number of compliments. In fact, the hostess liked me so much she tipped me quite well. I sell myself short, but I realized I'm actually not an amateur in the world of entertainment. My skills are actually worth paying for. I just have a hard time remembering that sometimes.