Adding Other Services

The birthday party business has its busy periods and not so busy periods through the year.  It seems odd because kids are born year round, but winter parties seem to be less in demand (at least in my area of the world).  It may be a different time of year in your area, but the fact remains that there are slower periods and you may want to fill in those gaps by adding other services to your business.  Here are examples of a couple of things that I've added and comments on making these things worthwhile for your pocketbook.

Costumed Singing Telegrams - I usually do this as a chicken, but I also offer a clown as an option too.  I make a large balloon sculpture (like the birthday cake in the video below or a bouquet of balloon flowers) and show up to sing/cluck Happy Birthday to them in front of all their friends (usually at work).  The whole thing takes about 5 to 10 minutes with pictures and stuff.

Holiday Elf - yes, I know a lot of clowns like to dress as an elf for the holidays.  It's fun for holiday events to be sure, but I've also added another service.  I get a copy of kids' letters to Santa and write them a customized letter back.  I try to make it as personal as possible, commenting on the letter, on what they are asking for and try to find out something about their family/home life to comment on as well (like "be extra nice to your little brother, Jack" or "don't forget to feed your cat, Fluffy").  This can be for individual kids at home or a whole classroom of kids all at once.  I'll sing some carols and read Santa stories as well on these visits.

Monetizing this kind of thing - Yes, these visits are a lot shorter than your average party.  As a result, you can't use your regular hourly rates as a comparison for the amount to charge or you'll put yourself out of business in gas and wear yourself out running all over creation.  These are not the kind of services that you will market towards cheapskates.... these are premium services for people with money for extras or corporate situations.  I've had workplaces hire me directly to do a chicken-o-gram for a manager.  Private schools and daycares may have the extra funds for special things to do with their class for elf deliveries where an individual family might not spend that kind of money.  These are also services that can be hired during the week while we, as clowns, are usually only hired on weekends.  You'll notice if you look at my prices for these services though, that I have to charge almost as much as my hourly rate for one of these visits... while the visit itself is maybe 5 or 10 minutes, when you add in my driving there, costume costs (wear and tear, makeup, etc), and material costs, the expenses are almost the same as one hour of regular work anyway.

Have fun and be creative!!

Perry Noia the Scaredy Clown :D

My NEW YouTube Channel

I needed to change things around a bit with email addresses and such... as a result, I've had to move my YouTube channel to a different spot.  The old one will stay up there for now so you can still watch all that stuff, but new stuff from now on will be posted to the new channel.

Thanks!!
Perry Noia the Scaredy Clown :oD

Putting out feelers about classes in Windsor

I am thinking about offering to share some of the things that I have learned through my experiences as a clown the past few years.  But before I start trying to pick a date and book somewhere to do it, I need to know if anyone would even think about coming.

The subjects that I feel confident that I could offer are:
Intermediate Balloons (Monkey in a tree, Super Hero/Ninja, Birthday Cake, Penguin...)
Approaching Uneasy Children
Beginner/Intermediate Face Painting (I'm certainly not the Wolfe Bros. but maybe some feel intimidated or financially unable to attend those?)
Applying Clown Makeup
Marketing your clown on a shoestring budget

If any of these would interest you, please comment below with which one you think you might like and what days are easiest for you.  If you want to see the kind of balloons and face painting that I can do and hope to share, you can look on my website at www.perrynoia.ca

Approaching Children that are Uneasy

Let's start this post with a definition of a phobia because it is often an overused term with respect to clowns.

(from Wikipedia) A phobia (from the Greek: φόβος, Phóbos, meaning "fear" or "morbid fear") is a type of anxiety disorder, usually defined as a persistent fear of an object or situation in which the sufferer commits to great lengths in avoiding, typically disproportional to the actual danger posed, often being recognized as irrational. In the event the phobia cannot be avoided entirely the sufferer will endure the situation or object with marked distress and significant interference in social or occupational activities.



The official term for a phobia of clowns is Coulrophobia.  It does exist, but it is far more rare than most people may think.  The people with this phobia will not come anywhere near you as a clown.  They will be on the other side of the road, park, or house.  They will not stand next to you and say, "you're freaking me out, man!"  Those people are playing the game that is for some reason "cool" right now to say that they are "afraid" of clowns.  As someone who has many phobias, I can tell the difference.  They would respond to me the same way that I respond to dogs, cats, bees, the dark, etc.  


Moving on, you will occasionally find that some people are uncomfortable or shy around you upon first seeing you.  There are ways to respond to this behaviour that will also help people with real fears to feel less anxious as well.  In my personal experience, if given at least half an hour, I have been able to win over every child to be comfortable with me at this point.  There may come a time when there is one or two that don't come around, but I'm ok with that too.  There was ONE instance where I had won over the child to play with me, only to find that he had an extreme balloon phobia and had to leave the room at that point since I had been hired to twist balloons for all the children... he went to another room with a colouring book and crayons and was happy there, however, so all went well.


On to how to do this.  This lesson could be taught more easily in person, but if even this amount helps you in your work, I'm happy.


1. Be Aware - of everyone around you.  And I mean EVERYONE.  You should know they are there before they know you are there.  This is hard, especially when you are also trying to entertain and interact with the people that are already there, but it is important that you notice their initial reaction to you immediately.  It greatly affects how you will interact with them.


2. Eye Contact - make eye contact with everyone, but with the people who seem uncomfortable, make it out of the corner of your eyes or with your head down.  You want to look shy towards them.  You cannot look confidently towards someone who is uneasy with you or they will feel intimidated by your confidence.  With little ones you can play a peek-a-boo kind of game with this, but I'll get into that more later.


3. Body Language - if you can, you want to make them taller than you.  You want to make them feel completely in control of the situation.  I will get down on my knees usually for these children or (hopefully) their parents will be holding them and they'll already be taller than me (I'm short).  Your body language should indicate shyness or slight submissiveness, but not be unfriendly or unwelcoming.  Pretend you are a shy 3 year old yourself, that's something they are familiar with even if your makeup and appearance is not familiar.


4. Voice - don't be Binky the Clown from Garfield.  We all have a tone of voice that we use with babies and young children.  Let's be clear that I don't mean that you should change your vocabulary or grammar (I speak with children using the same word choices and grammar that I would use with adults because that is what I want them to learn), but use your soft tone of voice.


5. Breaking the Ice - This is where you need to draw them in.  You could do all those other things and just let them walk on by, but that isn't going to help your cause.  Here is where you can play peek-a-boo, little "hiding" games that always let them see where you are and allow them to control how close they get to you (hide behind a narrow pole and cover your face like you are hiding), etc.  Let them know that it is ok for them to stay 'over there.'  I always have stickers in my pockets.... stickers are both a gift for children whose parents don't want to buy them a balloon or face painting and a peace offering for children who are uneasy.  Your peace offering can be given at arms length or given to a parent to pass along, it will have the same effect.  At a party, invite them to come and play whenever they are ready, but don't push and invite them to watch from the safety of their parent's arms if they are not ready yet.  Every once in a while, check in with them and invite them again, but remember that as long as they are happy watching from where they are, they are enjoying you and your performance in their own way.  The one that was climbing their mother's leg when they first saw you, just might be posing for pictures with you by the end of the party.


I really do hope that this helps you to be comfortable with all the "fearful children."  Really, they are just not sure what to expect from you.  They have been trained to avoid strangers and you are about as strange a thing as they have ever seen, but everyone just expects them to jump for joy at your mere presence.  You need to show them that you are safe, you need to earn their trust, not just expect it.

Keep Smiling!! :D

Perry Noia the Scaredy Clown

Customer Management

As a clown, I have a new client for pretty much every event that I do.  Not to say that repeat customers are unheard of, but it IS usually a once a year or less kind of situation for most people.  This means that I have a LOT of different customer information to organize.  So, I thought I'd take a blog post to talk about some of the ways that a clown can keep it all straight.  I'll try not to make this sound like a commercial for all my little gadgets by mentioning some "low tech" methods that I've used in the past too.

When I first got started with all these parties, I had a paper binder that I sorted this stuff in.  There were two sections to it:
1. Calendar - a day timer type page with things divided into morning, afternoon and evening because I'm not comfortable booking things too close together.  I'm obsessed with being early for everything, so I need lots of time between things. ;)

2. Booking Sheets - pages that I fill out for every event with blanks for all the information that I need to get on my phone calls.

This worked well for me for quite a while and I kept all the past event forms in a duotang.

If however, you happen to have an ipad and/or iphone...

Cozi has been a fantastic calendar app for my family.  It updates everything between the Cozi website and all connected mobile devices.  It has a calendar (sorted by family member), shopping lists, to-do lists... it's just a really good app.

As far as sorting customer information by events, what you need is a database.  There are a few different apps that do those, but the one I'm using is pretty easy to use and customize.  It also exports files to a spreadsheet so you can keep a backup of all your information periodically.  My choice is called TapForms.  I use the one for ipad rather than iphone because I like to have more room on the screen while I'm doing it and I can do it while I'm on my iphone without switching to speakerphone.

What information do I collect?
Date
Time
Customer Name
Guest of Honour
Phone
email
location of event
mailing address (if different from event)
type of event (select from: party, greeting, hourly event, fundraiser, stage show, pay per face/balloon)
character (select from: Perry Noia, Cadenza, Freddie Farensquair, Chicken) ... probably adding an elf soon
estimated number of children
length of time
price quoted
deposit paid (check box) (although you could do an amount if your deposit amount varies)
party show (check box)
balloon twisting (check box)
face painting (check box)
stage show (check box)
greeting (check box)
large balloon sculpture (check box)
contact source
notes

I can edit fields, add fields, etc as needed and it goes really fast to take information down on a call.

The most important thing when taking customer information though is to keep it very well organized and up to date with ALL of the information that you have.  It's a good idea to keep as much of your old info as possible as well.  You never know when you'll want to look back at that information and if it's as simple as keeping a few spreadsheet files, it's not as hard as some very full duotangs.

Keep Smiling! :oD
Perry Noia the Scaredy Clown

Helping Your Search Results ... freely or cheaply

I'm not an expert, but I've done some research on my own and it seems to be working alright so far.  We all want our websites to show up at the top of the google search results for our area.  As clowns, most of us couldn't care less how we show up in a global search, so a lot of professional SEO type things are really unnecessary for us.  These are a few things that I've done and have discovered that are bumping my page ever upward without spending more than I'm making.

1. Links - if you read anything about your google rating, you'll see that links to your site are the biggest thing.  You need QUALITY links from related sites to your site.  To be at the VERY top of the list, you generally have to pay a fortune for the biggest sites (like yellowpages) to link to you.  But if you show up on the first page, you're doing pretty well and some of the other things might bump you to the top anyway.  Find all the free directory sites for your area, province/state, country, type of service and put your listing on there.  Prioritize the sites that will post your link and not just your phone number... those are ok too but most people probably don't look at the directories and it won't help your search results.  Get as many as you can find without paying for them, I've paid for a couple in the past and it doesn't accomplish anything.. the only people who look at the actual pages are you and your competition.  You can also do a link exchange with local businesses that you think your customers might like as well... you post their link on your site and they'll post your link on theirs.

2. Keywords - if you want to and can figure out how to do it on your site yourself, you can add keyword meta tags, but it's not a big deal.  What you really need to focus on is that the keywords that people will use to search for you are ON your pages!  I can't tell you how many clowns/face painters have websites that don't list the area they serve on their site.... anywhere!  It needs to be at least on your index page and it doesn't need to be listed in a weird way, just somewhere on there.  For me: clown, windsor, ontario, face painting, balloons, party, etc. If they are not on your site somewhere, then how will google know to show you for those search words?

3. URL - pay for a custom one or not, I personally don't think it's that big a deal... the free ones that come with free hosting are not all that bad.  I did recently start paying for one, because I wanted it.  The biggest issue with the URL is to do with time... your site will automatically move up in importance in searches once it has been around for at least a year.  A whole year??? Yes, a year.  This is where a little patience comes into play, but keep in mind that most small businesses take a good 2 or 3 years before they really start to do well. You can do it!

4. Google Places - sign up... get a google places page.  It's as simple as that, it's free and it puts you at the TOP of the search page.  Yes, it is slightly separated from the "regular search results," but you're at the top so whatever.  A few extra clicks here and there and it's worth the few minutes that it takes to set it up.  I think you can even set it for an intersection rather than your home address if you don't want to be so specific as to where you live.

5. Google AdWords - ok, so here you have to pay a little bit.  But, you get to pick just how much you want to spend.  You sign up and fill in all your info, then you can set a daily budget... when your ads reach that budget, they stop showing up for the day and start again the next day.  The nice thing with adwords is that it not only shows on google searches, but in all those little sponsored ads on other websites.  A friend of mine told me she was watching YouTube with her kids and my ad showed up!  The other great thing about adwords is that you can set who sees your ads based on where they are searching from.  The only people that see my ads are searching from my area.  Because I'm in a border town, it means that a few people from Detroit occasionally click it, but it's pretty good anyway... I don't have to advertise across Ontario or across Canada, just where I tell it.  I can type in actually cities and towns or pick a point on the map and tell it how many km radius from there.

So, there are my main tips on bumping yourself up the search results line.  There are many more.  If you'd like to share a couple of your tips in the comments, I'd love to hear them!!

Keep Smiling!! :oD
Perry Noia the Scaredy Clown

Twisting your way to happiness

When I started clowning, I asked my mentor clown if she'd get me started with face painting.  She told me, "Well, I have a lot of face painters.  What I really need are balloon twisters." So, I started with balloons!  I went to face painting within a few months of that, but that's for another entry.

To start with balloons, you need a pump and a bag of balloons.  Don't go to the dollar store for this or you won't get past a 3 twist poodle.  Get yourself a good pump and some good balloons.  You will start with what are called 260 balloons either by Qualatex or Betalatex most likely.  Both are good brands with little poppage which will help.  The good starter hand pumps are from Qualatex.  You'll want either a single action (the red one) or a double action (the pink and purple one).  I like the red one because it only pumps in one direction and the air does not come back out when you stop pumping.  The double action pumps in both directions but if you stop, the air starts coming back out of the balloon... to me it isn't as precise.  I like to count my pumps for sculptures rather than looking at the length of the pumped section or length of the tail, so the red fits my style best.

Once you have your pump and your bag of balloons (any bag of 100 assorted colours will start you off with learning to do it), then take yourself over to http://www.balloon-animals.com and try all of the single balloon sculptures on there.  Once you can confidently do all of the single balloon things on there from memory, you can get away with calling yourself a twister and doing it at a party or event.  You won't be the best in the biz with just those, but it will get your feet wet with doing it faster... if you can get through 12 kids before any of them have managed to pop their balloons, you're doing OK ;)  That's why I always do balloons at the end of the party... make them and RUN!!

In all seriousness, I will usually do one or two repairs before I leave, but I'll give you a one liner that will save you from having your one hour party turn into two hours of fixing balloons:

"Balloons are like vitamins, you only get ONE a day."

Happy Twisting!!
Perry Noia the Scaredy Clown :oD