WHen does trhe time come that you know your ready to start advertising for gigs and getting out there.
Charging people for money?

Is it when someone says "wow I'd pay for that!!"
Is it when you have done a 10000 free gigs
Is I when you can do a 30 hour show? (joke)


When is it? is it just a time when it feels right?

Im very negative towards myself, everytime I perform for people I walk away upset thinking "I could have done better, I ruined this and ruined that".
People I perform for tell me to settle down as they never noticed mistakes and think I'm bloody brilliant.
I still think I'm kidding myself when coming to perform for any form of gig.


When do you think its right?
Second question-
How can I make myself not be so negative towards myself? i.e I think I forget how powerful a trick is to laymen but I constant think "wow that was ****, I gotta go and pratice it for a few months (after praticing the one trick for 2 years already).
Im always putting myself down..................

If you have a product to sell, an entertaining presentation with a beginning, a middle, and an end, then I would say you're ready (notice I said you're ready, not your ready). Get the word around through family and friends, and get your first paying gig.

Jim

You don't have to pass an exam to make a few business cards and a website.

If you want to do it just go do it!
If you are good, people will book you again, if you are not, they wont.

Just go do it!

if you do too many free gigs you will never get offers of paid work, start off as you mean to go on

If you are nervous, then charity work is a great place to start. To be a professional you must inspire confidence and to inspire confidence you must either have it or fake it. Your first shows, you'll fake it. Fake it enough and it becomes a habit and you stop thinking about it, and that's when it turns real.

It helps to have good grammar and spelling or people will just laugh at your advertising. Work on that first before you expect to get any paying gigs. In your short post alone, there are 12 errors I spotted on just a quick read-through.

After you've improved that, put together an act that you think is the best you can do. Perform it in front of an audience of people who don't know you. Don't ask them how it was afterwards because they will just lie. If people watched intently, oo'd and ah'd, clapped, complimented you without you asking first, etc... you're good to start advertising. If they seem bored, unresponsive, easily distracted by other things, abusive, etc... you might want to improve a bit first.

Bryan,

I wouldn't assume anything about what his advertising might look like from a casual post. You probably wouldn't guess from my casual posts that I am the Son of very successful authors, a book author in my own right, and get paid a WHOEL lot of money for mostly writing documents in my primary job as CTO.

This is not business for me. I don't treat it like I do business writing.

Sure, that's true to an extent, Cyberqat. However, it is very much the case that those who are good writers naturally write well regardless of the context. Yes, people are more sloppy on Internet forums, and that's forgivable. It is also fairly easy to see when someone is actually in need of some improvements to their skills even in a casual environment. People who can write well tend to write well even when they are not trying. Therefore, people who regularly write poorly are probably unable to write well.

By the way, just for fun, I went and randomly sampled 15 recent posts by you. Out of 15 posts, I found 5 errors. That's quite a bit better than 12 errors in 1 post.

You'll always notice the things you did wrong. That never goes away. (Otherwise you'd start getting sloppy.)

The key is to not consider it a failure (even though it may well have been a disaster on stage). Instead focus on it as an indicator telling you what areas need more work. Possibly something does need to be pulled out until it gets better. But at your level I'd imagine the handling itself is probably ok. You need to build your confidence.

Remember that you're doing something that not everyone can do. In fact most people can't even wrap their minds around how some simple techniques (which they may be aware of) can be turned into the spectacles we produce. Even the hecklers who watch you-tube and then sit in the back "ruining it" for everyone else: if you walked over and handed them your props, they couldn't do what you do! Probably ninety percent of your audience wouldn't even be able to speak in front of a group. (Surveys show fear of public speaking ranks higher than fear of death!) You're already ahead of the crowd.

And if you do make a small goof, most of the audience will be blissfully unaware of what was "supposed" to happen, unless you telegraph it with your body language. That's where live performance becomes the best kind of practice. You'll learn how to handle whatever can go wrong in real time, and you won't forget.

Do live shows. Whatever it takes. It won't always be volunteer, although the occasional pro bono never hurts. Here's a thought (haven't seen this done with magic, but it works for other businesses): offer do to a "free" show in exchange for five names and permission to use them as a reference. If you're really not good enough, you'll find out quickly.

Also ,see this thread...

http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......rum=27&3

Sometimes, the best improvements to your act come out of accidents.

Just remember the cat's motto: "I meant to do that..."

If you screw up a little, no one will notice or care just as long as you don't act like it was a screw up.

If you screw up a lot, just play it for the comedy it is and move on

In magic we have something called "outs". There are "outs" for almost anything. I had a friend who juggled fire wands. Every so often he'd grab the wrong end, which is a lot less painful then it sounds as long as you drop it IMMEDIATELY. He'd just pick it back up, say "that's real fire folks" and go on with his routine as if nothing unusual had happened.

I think Bryan has a legitimate point. Professionals can rarely afford a "vacation", and bad habits can become hard to break and embarrass one at the most inappropriate time. I would encourage WazMeister to slow down and take the advice...

Jim

Get some business cards, a web site, and some costumes. Work hard to perfect a 30 or 45 minute show (only buy quality props), then try it out at a senior citizen's center (for free) and if they don't throw vegtables at you then you are ready. I did that over twenty years ago, and after thousands of shows I'm still learning.

BREAK A LEG

The simplest answer and probably the most useful is "when you have an actual product to sell". When you have put in the work to develop an act. You practiced the techniqes and rehearsed the full show timing everything our again and again. You've taken it out and worked for some audiences and tested the reaction, using that knowledge to tune up the overall act, etc.

You 'have' something that you can actually offer to a client. That's when.

Now, as you take it out and perform you will find ways to improve it and the doing of it over and over will perfect it.

Good luck,

I would agree with the advice about having a product to sell. You need to routine an act of some sort, have rehearsed it, even tried it out on a few folks to see how it plays. Just knowing a bunch of tricks isn't a show. What you are selling is a show.

All of us feel like we could have done better. That is human. Plus 99% of the time the only person who knows you were a little slow, or a little fast, or messed up a bit is going to be you. The other 1% of the time, the person who thinks that is just mistaken. Having a routined act, that is well rehearsed, will get rid of a lot of the "willies". You can hit a grove and just keep going.