Take a pot full of magic, add a pinch of business, a dash of marketing, and you get them nourishing and highly addictive magician business podcast. Here’s your host, Ken Kelly and Julian Mayfair.

Julian:

Welcome to episode 27 of the magician business podcast. It’s Julian Mayfair here and I’ve sitting here now in the quiet after we’ve had this wonderful thunderstorm that came through. We haven’t had any rain here in Brisbane for about six weeks and it was a 41 degrees today. And the beautiful big funder had clouds built up about an hour and a half ago, and a storm rolled in and I went outside and I was standing on the hot concrete because it was 41 degrees and all the beautiful cold water was running over my feet from the icy rain. It was just lovely. So I’m going to hand over now to our UK office. Are you there Ken?

Ken:

I am. I most certainly here, but can I say that I’m only half here and I’ll tell you why tomorrow morning, first thing I’m off to Europe with the family. Uh, we’re just taking a few days away. We’re going through to Holland, going to spend some time in Amsterdam, cruising on the canals and just taking a break from it all. So by the time that this goes live, uh, I will be in Europe. So I’m kind of one foot in the UK, one foot in Europe, the international man of mystery.

Julian:

It’s a great thing about where you live there. Ken is that you can just literally pop across for a day, a couple of days. It’s so cheap and you know, where I live down floating in the middle of the Pacific ocean. It’s, it’s just a major effort to go anywhere. It’s like a nine hour flight minimum to just get somewhere.

Ken:

Yeah, it’s all on the doorstep for us here. And the flights are so cheap. There’s a lot of competition in the airlines. Uh, so it’s the equivalent of 21 pounds. I don’t know what that is. Maybe 35 $40 that it’s costing me to, to fly. Uh, I, I couldn’t, I couldn’t park my car for that price for the time I’m going to be away. It’s just ridiculously cheap. Yeah.

Julian:

And let’s see, you know, and it’s very, it’s very hard to sort of, you know, make, uh, an absolute measure for, uh, anything to do with income from, I mean, not just magic, but anyone’s proficiency because our cost of living and our, you know, positives and negatives are so different in so many diff different areas. So it is, it is interesting to hear all the feedback we’re getting from people out there. Look, I’ve had a couple of really good conversations this week, um, from magician business listeners. I just want to quickly tell you about them. One listener, uh, I talked to, he’d only listened to three episodes of the podcast, but those three episodes just happened to be the right ones. And they all came together and clicked and he was quoting for a big job that he was going to do. Now. He normally only quotes in the 750 to $1,500 range after listening to the three podcasts, he put in a $10,000 quote, and he said they didn’t bat an eyelid, said short, we’re going to take it to the board and get approval. Now, I don’t know if that’s come through yet, but there’s someone listening and taking action. And, you know, that’s heartening for us, Ken, because you know, this is what we wanted to do. We wanted to try to, uh, you know, make a difference in magician’s lives. So we’re doing it.

Ken:

We are doing an ice similarly to you got a, an email that came in, uh, with somebody who’d taken some of the information we’d share on the autopilot booking system and putting a Weber in place, and then using the free videos that we had on pay-per-click advertising. And he was evidencing and showing me the hard figures of the difference that it made in his business. And it’s made a significant difference in that the price that he was playing for four, a click turning into an inquiry form in his inbox as actually halved that set is harmed what he was paying to get an inquiry just by making some changes. And it’s really heartwarming to hear that the information is of use to some of you, but it’s only of use if you put it into action, if you just listen to it and go, oh, that’s cool. Nothing happens, but there’s the evidence put into action. It works and it’s all free. And it’s all on magician business.com

Julian:

And we’ve got another one listener. Um, I was talking to, um, we suggested to people go out and read the great book called the art of war by Steven Pressfield. I sorry. Yes. The war of art. You’re not the heart of war zoo. Yeah. Um, anyway, uh, it spoke to her, it really spoke to her and she recognized the patterns of resistance that was stopping her getting ahead. And in particular, she realized she was spending too much time on Facebook as, um, know it was sacking the time from her day. And it was like robbing her of all the things she wanted to put into action. So she went cold Turkey and she went on Facebook, which is a bit of a downer for our skin because she was a great contributor. But anyway, I’ll look, I’m happy, you know, for our loss is to be her gain.

Ken:

If you want to hear about that referenced in Barry Friedman’s interview on the magician business podcast, which I think is an under listened to interview because that man has so much value. I know I took that book and went and read it as a result of that, uh, uh, interview. I’ve given that to my wife to read, collect, she’s read it. And it makes a huge difference, not just in our business, more so in our family, to be honest, we’ve just recognized it’s opened our eyes to so much. And there it is. It’s the, the wall of art brilliant book.

Julian:

So we’ve been having lots of discussions. And one thing that keeps coming up is about, um, you know, value adding. We’ve been talking about this quite quite a bit. I mean, what, like, are you getting the most, you can out of every booking, um, are you leaving money on the table? That’s there for you to take, but your you’re not seeing that it’s there. You’re not seeing those possibilities are there. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. And we’re going to do it by talking about, um, a program that, uh, I started doing about five years ago. And it highlights a lot of these, these, these issues. So we’re going to get through that and then we want to hear what you think. So stay through to the end of the episode, because we’re going to give you a couple of little prompters and get you to contribute and, um, a little prize that we’re going to give away as well.

Ken:

Oh, it’s not little that, that is a monumental prize. I want to get my fingers on that price. If I’m honest with you, you can get your hands on Julian, Mayfairs balloon workshop blueprint. This is astronomical. You’re going to hear a Julian speaking about it today. I’m actually honored that we have as a guest on the magician business podcast today, Julian speaking and sharing this information, because you speaking about that leaving money on the table, this is, this just takes that to another level, Julian, the amount of money that you are able to, uh, make by using your spare time at a time that is generally dead for children’s and family entertainers. This is really, it was a massive shift for me. Uh, and I’m looking forward to you sharing this, but you want to stick around because at the end you get a chance to actually get your hands on the balloon workshop, blueprint, worth it, every, just stick around

Julian:

Really. So where I always like to start with things on this, Ken is up at the 30,000 foot view. So come on, let’s zip up a little bit higher and we’re going to have a look at it. Yep. Yeah,

Ken:

Only if we can put our video of the 30,000 view on the show notes. And I’ve got to show that I’ve forgotten about that. Go to the show notes, go to the show notes for four magician business podcast, episode 27, go and see our 30,000 foot view video. It

Julian:

Seemed like a great idea at the time. Didn’t

Ken:

It? Yeah, it was cool. It was cool. Yeah.

Julian:

Let’s, let’s just re uh, fresh in people’s minds. What marketing is and, and, you know, marketing is, it’s simply behavioral. Psychology can bind with maths really to create results. Now, you know, Ken’s really good for stats and numbers, and he’s a practicing psychotherapist me, I’m lousy with numbers. And, you know, like I say, I did really well at school. If you don’t count learning. And I mean, I’ve got no psychology qualifications, you know, that’s why we’re a perfect fit with this, this marketing. But we see two common themes emerging now, from all these discussions in the feedback we get from the listenership here on magician business. And one is that people spend only about an hour or a week or so marketing. And, you know, they, because they do that, they don’t get the work and then they start lowering their prices. And then it becomes a big chase to the bottom. The other thing we’re seeing is that they’re spending lots of time on marketing, but they’re doing the wrong stuff and they’re repeating it year in, year out, or what we like to say. It’s like, you’re spending time on the hamster wheel going round and round and round, rather than putting all that effort into digging an oil well for yourself. And, you know, we’re trying to dig the oil well,

Ken:

And you know, I hear you sharing there, Julian and saying that, uh, uh, I, I look at the stats and I have the, the education psychotherapy. So I have the psychology aspect, but what you have and what you bring to the table. And this is where the balances for me is you have focus and consistency. You’re able to see a goal and you’re able to step by step, do what it takes to reach that goal. And that is so vital, and that is not standing on a hamster wheel. The hamster wheel goes round and round, going to a goal is a straight line ensure you’re going to detour here and there where you need to and readjusted, but it’s about sticking to that plan with focus and consistency. And you’re really good at that. Yeah. Yeah.

Julian:

But you know, the thing is that is, that are not good at that to start with. I mean, all I do is I make it. If I, if I decide I want to do something, then I decide that if I don’t know how to do it, then my next day’s agenda that I literally write down is to work out how do I learn how to do that? And I just go out and I search for the information. And then once I found it, hi, Micah, our step-by-step plan. And I just start doing it one step at a time and you keep your nose to the grindstone. And eventually when you look up and yet come up for a bit of air and look around, you’re sort of there. And you know, the weird thing is, and this is how I always know. I’m there. People start asking me questions about the exact same thing that I set out to learn, but you just apply yourself and you just keep on taking, you know, one small step, one small step. And, you know, you gotta be willing to realize that it might not be a straight journey that you have to zigzag a bit, but as long as you’re going forward, you’re never going backwards.

Ken:

It’s called just-in-time learning. And it’s a smart way to do things. We can’t know everything about anything, but you can do just in time learning and learn the stuff you need at the time that you need it. That’s the smart way to do it, learn it, and implement it. And it gets you that one step further.

Julian:

Yeah. And it’s always about looking to the future. I mean, you know, we, we talk about this, I love that saying that, um, you know, the only usefulness for the past is to mine it for raw material to build the future. You know, we see, we see so many people, you know, walking into the future, looking backwards. And by that, I mean, you know, people saying, oh, it was so much better in the days gone by. And, but of course we know that people listening to the magician business podcasts. Now that won’t be then, because I mean, no, I mean, because I mean, honestly, if you’re listening to this, your thinking about where you’re going, you are looking in the right direction. So we’re gonna do a little bit of digging. And one of the, you know, the best places to dig to start your oil well is to start with what you already know and see if you can squeeze, ring the most out of it before you go on chasing the next thing.

Julian:

And really, this is how I started the balloon workshop blueprint. And it’s a great example, uh, for canvassing a few of these areas, because essentially I was doing kids’ birthday parties and people don’t book kids’ birthday parties when school holidays are on simple as that, they just, you know, just drops off. You get the occasional one. So I had an empty calendar and I thought, well, where can I start looking? And I thought, well, where are the kids when they’re on holidays? And we have these things here called vacation cares. Now, I mean, you could say it’s summer camp, I guess, or, you know, in America they call it recess a lot. You know, you have your big holidays, but then you have recesses. But if parents are working, the kids have to be looked after somewhere. And we, we call it it’s like paid vacation care.

Julian:

And generally that is kids five to 13 years old, and it could be 20 kids, or it could be up to a hundred kids may be at a Y YMCA, Y M site YMCAs here generally have large numbers of kids. So I started taking magic shows to them and, you know, it was okay, I’ve got a couple of bookings, but you know, the magic show was just the magic show really. And they had other magicians doing magic shows for them. You know, there’s nothing really, you know, um, making me stand out and I used to drive to the jobs and I was always thinking, you know, what can I do? How can I, how can I scale this up? And basically I couldn’t, and this is a big problem that faces entertainers.

Ken:

It’s a problem that faces me Julian, because I do those childcare holiday get togethers in the UK. They’re generally held at a school and an outside contractor will come in and they engage maybe the, the pupils of that school and the immediate area bring them together. And I’ve done magic shows like you say, cause they’re pretty easy to find and you, you send your information blurb and you’re going to have a hit rate on that. And I found myself doing magic shows, uh, for a couple of years in a row. And then I didn’t get booked back. So I thought, what a bit of phone and find out, cause I had the lady’s contact number and I phoned her up and she said, oh, well, you know, the kids have seen your show now. And besides there was another entertainer who sent their information and they also do a magic show there. It was gone. I haven’t worked for them since it’s about two years now, I still send my stuff, but they got somebody else. Who’s the flavor of the month because it’s a magic show versus a magic show. I don’t do anything different.

Julian:

And you know, and, and, and, and that’s a big opportunity to miss out on, because the thing about these vacation care is that they know ahead of time. I mean, they, they know when the holidays fall for the next 10 years, I mean, all for the next, for the next thousand years, you, you can project it out where it falls. So they know that they need to book entertainment and it’s like childcare centers as well. Like the preschool market. They know that every year they have to, you know, they’ve got a budget for it and they’re going to book maybe three, maybe six, maybe 10 entertainers or, um, educational shows during the year. So these are great things to build, um, income that you know is predictable. So I, and this is what I was thinking. I was thinking like, oh, you know, like every school holidays, the they’re going to want entertainers, how do I get on the books?

Julian:

So can we go back and just speak a little bit about, um, a bit of business, 1 0 1 here can a little bit. Okay. Okay. There’s, there’s, there’s an old, um, example about, um, building a business. And if you’re going to sell ice creams at the beach and w which is a great place, it, it works because it’s hot and people are in a relaxed mood and they’re willing to treat themselves and, you know, ice creams just seem better at the beach. If you’re going to sell an ice cream, the beaches, a cry place device, the problem is if you set yourself up as an individual person selling these ice creams, you probably going to sell out really quickly. So then you have to go back and stock up again. Now you could go, okay, what I’ll do is I’ll be smart and I’ll buy a refrigerator van and I’ll park it there right at the beach front.

Julian:

And, um, but the problem is you still have to be there every day because you, as the individual are your business. And you know, the whole thing about creating a successful businesses, how do you, they talk about scaling it up. And so if you, in this example, did you match, you could buy five van say and maybe imply employ five people, and you could buy your ice creams in bulk, and you could make all your expenses and you could still turn a small profit. And then that profit can be multiplied over the months and years. Cause it all adds up, even if it’s a small profit profit, but you’ve created a success you’ve created a successful business. And the big key to that is is it, you don’t have to be there for you. You’ve freed up your time to do other stuff and to work on your next project because your not there. This is a problem that we as magicians face. And it was the problem I faced when I was thinking about how do I get into these vacation cares because I had to be there. And yeah, I haven’t found a way around that. And it’s, I mean, I don’t know if there is a way around that.

Ken:

Yeah, we were so limited because we’re selling our time for money. Really. That’s what we’re trading. We have to be there to give our time to get that money. So it is, it is finite. You can’t be in two places at the same time, so you cannot double your business. It is not, as you say, scalable, it’s not scalable. It’s a problem. We all face as entertainers. So

Julian:

Then I thought, well, well then what else could I do? I mean, how could I get in there? So I thought, well, how can I value add to myself being there? And this is how I came up with the balloon workshop blueprint because I was there for 40 minutes and I’d already spent all that money in marketing myself to get there, you know, working on the website, um, sending out direct mailers to these people and I’d stay up for 40 minutes and I would leave. But when I left, I mean, I got the real sense that there were 50 or 60 kids. They’re all hungry for something more. And then I would look at the instructors in the entity, not the, not the entertainers, but the instructors and the teachers who were running these services. And they’d bring out all the same old, tired games and activities.

Julian:

So, you know, the first, you know, that saying that marketing saying never opened a restaurant, unless you’ve got a hungry crowd, there was a hungry crowd. So I thought, well, what can I do? And I thought, well, rather than, you know, like look out, I’d want to, I already know. And I knew how to twist some balloons, nothing fancy. I’m going to never call myself a great balloon twister, but you know, I had a small repertoire. So what that triggered in me though, was realizing the power of balloons. Now balloons have a natural pool. Anybody who has twisted balloons knows that there’s something about them. If, if you say they’re a dollar reach, you will get, if you say they’re free, you’ll get a cute people who will stand in the blazing midday, sun, the 30 minutes for an hour to get a silly little balloon dog.

Ken:

We know it’s entertainers that it’s a never ending Q as well, as many as as many people as there, that’s how long your queue is going to be.

Julian:

That’s something that’s very important and great. I’m glad you brought that up because that was a big, a big trigger because I hate twisting balloons for a line for a, I, I, I hate, I feel so much pressure upon me to keep it going and keep it going fast. And you know, it’s one of the biggest things that, how, you know, how do you end it at Q it’s it’s filled up massive balloon posts, your forum posts. It’s it’s one of the most often asked questions. So, but what I wanted to do was capture that natural attractiveness of a balloon, you know, that magnetic pool that they have, but this was also balanced up against, I had an educational schools program called the thumb program, which if you ask me can, it was really good just to ask me, was it any good? It was really good. Kin

Ken:

You’ve talked to me about it before. Is it genius? Really, really cheap

Julian:

Schools. Didn’t want to book it. Yeah, no, no, no, no hungry crowd. And that’s, that’s another story for another time. And I, and I spent $20,000 on that, trying to push that. And I didn’t want to replicate that again. And so this whole idea of the balloons being a natural pool got me thinking, I made up a simple structure for a balloon twisting workshop to take it in. So I do a magic show first because a magic show got everyone in the good and let’s do a balloon twisting workshop. And I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I just started because that’s the way I do things. I throw myself into it. But what it, it was a great test for the market. Because even though they were not great, um, workshops, they were hitting the nail on the head. They were hitting the mark.

Julian:

These people were asking me before it even got out the door, they’re going, oh, okay. We probably shouldn’t get your next holidays, but we’ll leave. We’ll leave a gap. And we’ll book you back for the one after that. And I thought, oh, I’m onto something here. This is really good. I’ve got to put more effort in, in, into that. But I actually hated doing it. I created a monster because it was so hard for me to do. Like it was, I was losing control. I mean, if you give, if you have 50 kids and you give them all, all a balloon, it’s chaos, it’s chaos,

Ken:

I’ve done it. I’ve done it. I, I, I’m hearing you say this. And I know that you’re talking about the, the balloon workshop blueprint, and I’m thinking, how the hell are you going to bring this together? Cause I’ve done that. I’ve had 50 kids with a balloon each in their hand to try and teach them a simple balloon animal. And it is impossible. Julian. It can’t be done. Yeah. Well that’s, that’s what I thought. I mean that

Julian:

Whole process, but it was even, it wasn’t even at the workshop. It was, it was preparing the balloons. It was blowing them. It was transporting them. Look, I’ll tell you a funny story. So when, uh, I, I was doing a job four hours away from me in a place called Harvey bay four hour drive. So I had to leave at four o’clock in the morning. I took 1200 balloons with me and I used to have a trailer that I used to put the balloons in behind the car, but I’d never been on a big drive with them and this trailer. Um, I had a wire cage around it and the, the, it was about an inch square, the gaps between the, the wire. Anyway, I packed up my 1200 balloons all in their baskets and I got my thermos of coffee and I set off and I was really in good spirits.

Julian:

I thought, oh, I’m going to make this work. You know, a big, big day, it’s a long drive, but he was going to net me a fair bit of money. So I’m driving up and it was in the middle of summer. And so, you know, it gets light about here, about four o’clock in the morning in summer. So it was about four 30 and I was on the freeway and I was drinking my coffee and I sensed someone beside me pull up, pulling up in a car and hovering next to me. So I looked over and his person was spinning their hands round and round and round, like, like wind your window down. And so I wound the window down, they yelled out, look in your rear view mirror. And I looked in and the balloons were being sucked out of the trailer through the wire cage.

Julian:

So it was something like, um, you know, like a Venturi effect or something and, you know, physics, it was, something was just suck. The air was sucking the balloons out. And it looked like this multicolored Medusa, you know, with all these heads. And I all flapping violently as is going to get a hundred kilometers and they were, and they were tumbling down the highway behind me in front of trucks. And there were trucks sort of trying to move, uh, like, like not to hit the balloons. Anyway, I took the first exit. Ah, I didn’t know how many I’d lost, but, um, I got some, um, um, uh, jumpers. I had a, you know, like a coats I had out of the car and trying to, you know, put them around the balloons and thought, oh, that’s good. You know, it’s all covered them now. And I drove off down the highway and I didn’t get much more than about 10 minutes down.

Julian:

I sent someone pulling up beside me again. Why do window down looking in your rear view mirror? I looked in a get arm, no balloons again. So I pulled over again and then I got car mats out of the car and I got everything I could to put over the top of these balloons. And I thought you beauty, I’ve done it. So I drove off down, sipping my coffee, feeling quite good again. And I’ve got about half and half down the road. And I sent someone pulling up beside me. So I ran the window down first and I just yelled out. I know, I know I would go and do these things and they would love them and they would want me back. And so I started to see my calendar feeling. So basically I just thought to myself, I’ve got to make this work.

Julian:

And so I started just applying myself and I started applying all the techniques. Um, I knew about keeping control. And one of those things I do in my shows that keeps control is a very tight script. I’m hugely script driven. So I took that script idea and I put it onto the balloon twisting workshop. And I started to study the words that I was saying to people. And if words were getting a bad reaction, I would change them. It was basically like split testing. You know, when we do our web traffic is split Dez and I would test different words. And if I saw our word had a certain effect that was positive, I would work on that and then mix it up with some other words. And I eventually got down to the super tight script that works. And it’s amazing the difference that, that, that it makes now I can.

Julian:

So here’s a, here’s an example of, of how much of a difference it makes. I will book one of these YMCAs that have the a hundred kids in them. And if it’s one I haven’t been to, they’ll go, oh, well obviously you’re going to need to do two sessions if 50 kids, cause you can’t do a hundred kids. And I say, we’re going to do the one session with a hundred kids. You wait and see, and it is no harder. It’s 10% harder. Let, let, let me say that it 10% harder for me to do a hundred kids than it is to do 20 kids because I have this tight script and it’s been tested like over literally hundreds of these workshops and it works. It’s just amazing, the difference, the power of words. So once I had that worked out, then I had to go back to the front end and about the production and about how to blow these balloons up.

Julian:

And I used to do stupid things as I used to count all these balloons out and, and, and lay them all in order with all the little nozzles pointing in the same direction. So it’d be easier. And it was really stressful. And then I used to look at all the different colors and I used to try to, you know, like I used to asked about putting the, the balloons in the baskets, in the right colors. Anyway, I just applied myself to that and I started to think smarter. And I’ve worked out a system now where essentially what I do, I’m looking at them on the wall as I speak to you. Now I have all the charts and it’s just a chart. And I literally, um, we’ll ring up the afternoon before and say, what are the numbers? And they’ll say, we’ve got 56 kids booked in and I’ll go to the chart and I can walk down.

Julian:

And within 15 seconds, I know exactly how many balloons of exactly how many colors. And then I have a process, uh, of blowing them. And now I can, uh, if I’m doing a hundred, okay, let’s look average would be 60, 60, 70. I will do it takes me two hours to, from once I get that number to having them in my van. And that’s the other thing I did, there was enough income from this, that it was regular income that I knew is worth me buying a van. So I bought a like, you know, a mid-sized van. So I don’t have that problem with the trailer anymore. So glad to hear that this worked out is, uh, um, a really good way to make money.

Ken:

Uh, I just got to say, as you’re saying that, what you’re, what you’re saying is that this is a formula. And I was thinking, as you were saying that, that me, myself, as you were saying that I held up a bunch of balloons because we do balloons and we’ve got, so I’ve got a show today and I’m doing balloons and there’s the balloons. I’ve put one side, but we count them out like this 1, 2, 3, 4, you don’t do that. You’ve got your chart. I know that, that you have special ways of working out how many balloons you need and how you do that. And I mean, you may share that with us in a moment, but if you’re listening to this, you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, yeah, but I do believe, yeah, I do believe in workshops. That’s the same as somebody saying, yeah, I make hamburgers. And there’s a big difference between hamburgers and McDonald’s hamburgers. The only difference is it’s a formula. McDonald’s, we’ve got a formula that is tried and tested and has been refined down to the tiniest detail. And that’s what you’ve done here. You’ve taken that formula and really boiled it down into the essence of what works. And then you’ve tried and tested that step-by-step, it is genius,

Julian:

But you know, the thing is it works so well that I’ve got a list of about 120 schools now that, that I do this for. And, but the thing is that I basically don’t have to market this because it’s so much fun. The kids consistently voted one of the most popular activities that they just go, we’re going to get you back. And some services, I might not, might not go to for a year, but next year they’ll, they’ll get me back. Some, just leave one holiday break. And even those ones, which I mean, I, and I do some the next holiday, they just go, no, don’t worry. Just bring it. The kids had a great time. We just want to book you again. So I don’t market it.

Ken:

And can I ask you a personal question? You know, how, when we have guests on, we always try and kind of get them to say how much they make out of their niche of, of their branch of magic. What is this worth to you? Because you’ve mentioned that you, you won’t buy a band from this. What do you get from it?

Julian:

Okay. I made over the last five years, a hundred thousand dollars out of this, right?

Ken:

Yeah. You’ve been balloon. You’ve been workshop, but yes,

Julian:

From balloon workshops. Wow. The only got to do it eight to 10 weeks a year because that’s all, all the, all the holidays. So, and that’s Monday to Friday. So that’s Monday,

Ken:

The Friday time was generally dead for you. You’ve taken dead time and turn to that kind of money.

Julian:

And this, this came from looking with what I already had, what I already knew. So this is eight to 10 weeks a week. Uh, I year, uh, just Monday to Friday. Yeah. It’s basically five to six hours a day. Generally not make many, many more than five. It takes me about two hours to blow the balloons. It takes me about an hours driving. And then the workshop is, is I’ve got the 30 minute magic show and the 60 minute workshop. And I’m basically out of there. Like, I mean, I don’t stay behind. I mean, I’ve worked at, at how they do all the cleaning up. It’s not, you know, you, you, you actually make that in to a fun activity for them to do so it’s generally five, sometimes six hours a day. Uh, and half that time when I blow the balloons, this is, I love this bit is I watch my favorite DVDs.

Julian:

Now, you know that I’m a bit of, a bit of a workaholic, Ken, and I don’t allow myself time to relax. You know how I said, I used to hate doing these right at the start. I actually enjoy them now because it’s my relaxation time. I sit here, I’m in a seat that I’m doing and I have it all set up and it’s just, you know, the pump’s on my lap. And I just blow these balloons and look, look, honestly, once you’ve blown a thousand balloons, it’s like riding a bike. You don’t have to look at it. You just do it by, by feel basically, and I’ll do these, you know, six, 700 balloons in two hours. And I watched DVDs, what do you call the ones? Ah, yeah, the box sets. Yeah.

Ken:

And I know this, you know, I’m filling in those words for you. And the reason I know this, because I can’t tell you how many times during your school holidays, Julian, that we’ve had our Skype conversations for, for a, um, a magician business. And the background has just been balloons everywhere. If you’ve got a picture of that, pop it on the show notes. It is something to behold. Go and look at this show notes, just to see this big jar of Juliet with, with all these balloons behind it. And then, and then you say, Hey, Ken, have you seen breaking bad? Brilliant. I got to watch breaking back as you’re watching the series and you share that with me. So that’s how I know you make your way through the box sets.

Julian:

But the other thing, the thing about this is that you don’t actually need any balloon twisting skills. And I know that sounds counterintuitive, but, and it, it actually, it actually goes the other way is that if you try to make anything more than the most basic and I’m talking, I mean, it’s the most basic is just basically squeezed and twist balloons together. If you try and do that in, and if you let your ego get in the way, because you want to people to see you as a good balloon twister, it will work against you go. And just, just, just go and try it. I mean, go, go try it my way, go try it your way. I guarantee you you’ll be back to the way that I do it.

Ken:

That makes sense from what I did, because I was out there trying to teach them how to make a balloon animal. And it was just a nightmare. And you’re saying your formula is based in that simplicity and you don’t need any balloon modeling skills. So this is open to anyone, even if they’ve never made a balloon animal, because it’s balloon B,

Julian:

It’s not about you. It’s all about them. And it’s all, you know, which is what we talk about in his marketing all the time. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s benefit driven. It’s what’s in it for the customer. And you’ve got to understand what ha how these centers work. You know, these people who run these centers, are they a Monday to Friday looking after kids who aren’t their own for the whole day, struggling to get through the day with activities and, you know, basically they’re bored Witless. So I come in and I do the magic show first, a 30 minute, minute magic show. And you know, it’s so easy for me to do, because if anyone’s seen my build your magic show, because you see my, my, my setup and pull down from my show, it’s like spare 24 seconds. It’s so fast that it’s no effort to do this.

Julian:

All of a sudden, they don’t have to do anything. Now they can sit there and enjoy the show if they want, or they can go off and text, or they can go off and prepare the food. It’s like this extra time that’s been given back to them and they value that more than anything else. And then they see all the kids really happy, like really happy, really engaged, really interacting. And then they get this massive balloon photo at the end. You know, one of the big things at the end is you had this, you know, big balloon photo and there’s techniques for doing that. I mean, it took me years to work out how to get those kids in one spot and I can do it. So simply now, which is works like a dream every time. But anyway, they get together in this massive balloon photo. And then now they’ve got this photo then to send out to the parents, you know, in the next newsletter, I’m like, wow, this is a sort of activity that we provide. And they love that. And see, this is, it’s not about me. I mean, when I originally started going in and I started doing this, I wanted them to see how clever I was. And, you know, the first step I said, I had to rethink, this was getting over my ego and about just letting that go. And that’s when started things started to ramp up

Ken:

Just on that photo. You speaking about, I’ve seen one of those fairly recently, because I know you’ve been building on the balloon workshop blueprint very recently. And I saw one of the photos that you shared with me of a group of children that had done this balloon twisting. It looks very impressive because it fills the whole frame of the photograph. So any parent at that is going to go, wow, in fact, I’m going to ask you Julian, share one of those photographs of the groups of the kids on the show notes as well. Because that, that I think is, is such an important marketing piece of marketing for this. Cause it just looks amazing. It’s full of color and it’s big and looking at it, it looks like the kids have done so many difficult. If I’m honest, it looks like they got skills.

Julian:

And that’s the thing. I mean, they, they, they, they take these balloons home if, uh, if they actually make them home, because most of them drag them on the grass of the concrete, not my problem, but you know, they, they take them home and then they talk about them and they show the, you know, they show the, the, the parents and they also last, you know, the last about a week and just get a little bit smaller and then they end up popping them and snapping each other. You’re snapping a little sister with them or something like that. So, you know, it’s fair. It’s value adding to that. But you know, the thing is that this, this, this works. So I made the a hundred thousand in five years just working, you know, those eight to 10 weeks a year and five, six hours a day.

Julian:

But you know, the profits are there, but there’s a great saying, I love the saying profits as simply the applause you get for running a decent business. And yeah, it’s nice, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. And, and they, you know, it’s taken me a lot of hard work to get this, but it, it, it, again, it was, it was looking at what I had was that magnetic pull of balloons. And I thought there’s gotta be something here, just stick with it, just stick with it, just stick with it. And I finally, you know, um, ironed out all these problems, but do you know, the thing is now I take this outside of vacation care, 85% of what I do is, again, I don’t have to market this, but I do have it on the website and other groups. See it. Now I do leadership courses with it. So this has particularly with high schools, generally 16, 17 year olds. They have leadership camps and, you know, they have a lot of heavy sessions and they want something light and fun, but that’s also hands-on and something that they can learn something to show somebody else because that’s part of leadership is actually passing on information. It works perfectly for that. And so I do that. Ask

Ken:

If you’re using the same script for, for the, for the high school children, as you would for a group, it’s pretty

Julian:

Much the same. It’s pretty much the same. It would be about 80% the same, because the thing, what you’ve got to understand is that every way you do these in vacation care, uh, in these leadership courses. And I also do them at, at awards nights, particularly for sporting clubs. So you get, you know, kids who are five years old, right up to 18, 19. So, you know, like a, like a hockey club, a swimming club, and I have a yearly awards night and they want something to do works really well for them because, and the adults get involved in it as well. All of these places are reward based. They’ve done the hard work for the year, you know, swimming and, and doing well. And this is a reward, you know, the big night’s supposed to be fun. Uh, vacation care for schools. They’ve been in school the whole term.

Julian:

They’re not there to learn. They’re there to have fun. So it’s critical that you spend the first half hour of the instruction. So it’s a 60 minute balloon workshop. The first half hour is instruction. The second 30 minutes is free form. You put the music on and you know, they, they can make anything I want, it’s just a hallway per fund. So that first half hour, you want to make that as fast and as easy as possible they’ve been in school. They don’t want to be in class again. They just want to have fun. It is a workshop and you have to instruct them, but I’ve constructed it this way with a script that it’s fun and it’s fast and they enjoy doing it, but we get through it. We bang, bang, bang, bang, it, literally steam rolls through. And that’s a great thing. You know, it’s part of control and you, you, I, I basically don’t get any discipline issues and noise. I mean, even, you know, I was talking about words. You use words to control noise is actually I use anti words. I don’t use words at all. I’ve worked out, there are certain things, particularly when kids are squeaking balloons, if you say, don’t squeak your balloon, Ken, you’re a psychotherapist. What are the kids going to do?

Ken:

And I ask, wait, kind of a line, right? So I’ve,

Julian:

I’ve, I’ve worked at there’s, there’s a look that you give them and they’ll stop squeaking the balloons. It’s just these little things I’ve just learned by testing them

Ken:

Really interesting that you’ve taken that formula, that you’ve really niched it down. Cause that’s what you’ve done with this. You’ve niched it down into something that is really profitable. And you’re able to get income during your downtimes times that you were sat at home, wishing that the holidays would end, so you could get out and do those kids’ parties again. And I guess if we broaden that horizon to our audience out there, what are you all doing out there with your time? Where are there ways that you can make that extra bit from what you’re already doing? I mean, there’s loads of ideas out there. You’ve maybe got party bags that you might sell at the end of your party. We in our business sell balloon animals as an upsell at the end of Alba’s, uh, shows. And, and we make a good few thousand dollars a year from doing that. But I think it’s more about you as our audience, having a think about what do you do? What can you share with the magician business community?

Julian:

And we want you to share those, those ideas. I’ll tell you about a guy in, in my local market. He’s a, uh, kid’s magician. Same as I am. He’s got snakes in his act. Now, when I first heard this, it was just like, you’ve got to be kidding strikes in a, you know, for a kid’s magician. It is worked so well for him because he used to have, he used to, you know, keep snakes. And he started to realize that there was, it had this huge pulling power. Seriously, he errands so much extra money from doing things like, uh, he works with tour companies who, you know, busloads of Japanese tourists who come in and you know, how Japanese like having their photo taken well in Australia, they like the animals, particularly holding a furry cuddly koala and the snakes. They love the snakes. So he just gets and goes on to a function where these Japanese tourist takes the snakes.

Julian:

Stanzi gives them to them, earns a fantastic extra money. Again, he just looked at what he had and thought, well, how can I capitalize on that? How can I leverage what I already know and get something extra out of it in the corporate area, backroom room sales. I mean, that’s the, the, the, the obvious one give you got any other skills that you’ve got that you can offer in breakout sessions, you know, in training sessions, can you incorporate, you know, magical juggling and some messaging into that that could help. Can you emcee an event? I mean, this is one of the great schools we have as magicians we’re public speakers. We know how to get in front of people and work with an audience. So can you offer something extra? Can you stroll around and do some close-up magic at a cocktail event? You could maybe write content for the newsletter. You could maybe make a promo, a fun promo promoting their event that they could send out to people in, in, in their company. Maybe you could go to a, do a radio magic spot to promote a risk

Ken:

Magic workshops. It’s also big. It’s about you having a thing. Well, what can you do to not leave money on the table, taking the skills you already have the resources you already have and turning that into profitable income. Julian, should we give something away for this? Let’s make a prize. Well, what are we going to give them

Julian:

Obvious one here can let’s. Yeah, if you do this and you put a great idea on there, and we think Ken and I will have a look at it and, uh, we’ll give away a free membership to the balloon workshop blueprint.

Ken:

How’s that is, that is a fantastic prize. It really is.

Julian:

Or you need to do, to be part of this is go to the show notes page that’s episode 27 of the podcast@magicianbusiness.com. Leave your comments in the comment section. We’ll go check them out and let you know.

Ken:

And I think if anybody wants to see the balloon workshop blueprint to have a look at what that is, because we’ve spoken about what it is that you do. But I know that you’ve got a page up. If anybody’s interested that they can go and register their interest in that, and you’ll let them know when that goes live. Where do they go to see that Julian it’s

Julian:

WW dot balloon workshop, blueprint.com. And you’ll see, there’s a page there. There’s a video up there now, and you can have a bit of a look and see what we’re talking about. Uh there’s. If you want to leave your name and email in there, uh, get on the list. Speakers we’re going to release this soon.

Ken:

Um, I’ve got to say, I’m really looking forward to seeing what comes out, what ideas our audience have to share, because when we’ve asked for people’s comments before, um, you’ve shown yourself guys to be real out of the box thinkers on this. So I’m really looking forward to, to maybe learning from you. And that’s what the magician business podcast and the magician business.com brand is about. It’s about us learning from you. We’re not the experts here. We’re just the ones that kind of create the platform. This is as strong as your input and your comments. So get onto that page and comment. Let’s see. One of the, a Facebook fan page. Well, not fan pages on Facebook group. Isn’t it. Let’s get in there. Let’s get the discussions going. I love learning from you guys.

Julian:

Can you have a lovely time picking tulips in Holland? Everybody else, please stay safe and we’ll see you back here next week.