For The Love of Money
For The Love of Money
By Jeff Stone
I must be on some sort of movie kick this month. In this month’s Roots and Branches, I got hung up on Star Trek, and now this article is named after yet another great movie. For The Love of Money stars Michael J. Fox as a hotel concierge who is well connected with all of the local businesses near his hotel.
His connections land him plenty of free passes and discounts to many of the local businesses. These freebies are then given to his hotel clients in an effort to schmooze them and hopefully land him a fat tip.
This concept can hold true in many other places, like . . . oh . . . say . . . magic. Think about it as part of your pay for working for a restaurant, negotiate some gift certificates. Have you ever performed for a doctor or a dentist? I have. Why not get a free cleaning from the dentist, or a free adjustment from a chiropractor, etc.
These freebies, of course, can be used as part of your pay, or as a tool for you and for the client who hired you. I’ve certainly done work for trade: give me 20 chiropractic adjustments, and I’ll do a show for your staff. However, the true power of this concept is not in the trade, but in the networking.
Let’s just look at the restaurant example for a moment. One of the main reasons a restaurant owner/manager hires you is to draw a crowd. If you’re not drawing a crowd, you’re a waste of money, just another person on payroll. So in addition to influencing people to come on “Tuesday night because the magician is there that night,” you can also be a bit of an ambassador outside of the restaurant.
This is where those gift certificates come in handy. Get a small handful of discount cards or gift certificates from the manager. Let the manager know that you’ll be using them to get more people in the restaurant. Now when you do private gigs, you can give these out as a thank you gift to your client. You can also just use them when you meet people who ask you what you do for a living, you can give them a gift card and tell them to come and see you perform.
Of course, if this person already frequents the restaurant, you may just want to tell them to come on the night that you work. It may be better to reserve the freebies for people who don’t frequent the restaurant. However, an argument can certainly be made for giving it those who frequent the joint as well . . . sort of a gift for their continued business.
When giving these out to people who don’t know you and have not seen you perform, you win, and the restaurant wins. The restaurant gets a new potential customer who will likely bring a friend. You win because you’ve brought people into the restaurant and thus are doing your job (job security), and finally, you win because this person could be a future client of yours now that s/he’s seen you perform.
These types of gifts can be gained from many different venues. They don’t even have to be places you perform. For example, why not do a couple of gigs for trade and a get a handful of gift cards, etc as payment. Then hang on to them and give them out as gifts to other clients who do hire you. The bottom line, is that if you’re connected, you can save yourself some money by not having to buy gifts for all of your clients, and secondly, you can promote yourself with the use of these gifts.
Finally, the biggest advantage of being this connected is that people know you; people know your name, and that equals good advertising.
Please “like” this article and post any questions or comments below: