I ended up spending a good part of my regular work day morning following up on charitiable requests for my balloon business. I do my best to keep my regular job’s workday seperated from the children’s entertainment business that I run (www.iloveballoonanimals.com) but sometimes I don’t do a very good job. Especially when I accept an event during my workday which always causes a debate in my own brain.
I am often envious of other entertainers that entertain as their main source of income. They have the freedom to travel to conventions and make money no matter where they find themselves. I could have quit my day job a year ago, and my wife and I would have been fine. I am lucky that she does very well for herself, but when we do have children she hopes to be a stay at home mom at least for a few years, and if that’s the case, I doubt that being a balloon entertainer will allow her to do that. So, I keep the day job with the benefits, and my plummeting 401K with the hope that children will enter the picture and I can continue to work two jobs allowing my wife her dream.
The great thing about knowing how to twist balloons is that I can in any instance make money no matter where I am. People assosciate someone transforming an air filled latex tube into a dog with dollar bills. I don’t know why. It’s as if balloon twisters are to kids as strippers are to grown men. Dollar bills flow. I hate working for tips. You will never ever catch me working for tips only, but it’s nice to know that I have that to fall back on if I ever get to that point. I am lucky to be in a position to even turn down tips which I do usually once or twice a night at my regular restaurant appearances. It’s not often you will find me turning down free money, but it’s typically the father that immediately rolls his eyes assuming that I’m just a starving artist begging for tips to get from one day to the next. As I make little Jimmy a very complex balloon sculpture, I watch the dad out of the corner of my eye reach for the wallet and pull out a couple of bucks. When I am done I give him my business card while I explain that I would love to be hired for Jimmy’s next birthday party, he reaches out to hand me the tip to which I reply “no thanks I work for smiles only” as I walk away from the table leaving him to wonder what just happened since I just shattered every pre conceived thought he has ever had about a balloon twisters. Those are my favorite moments as a balloon guy.
Ever since I entered this industry I have always demanded a salary for an event and negotiated that I would keep tips if offered, but I would in no way promote tipping allowing me to essentially double dip my profits.
This whole post started on one track about charitable requests and totally jumped onto a whole new track, so let me finish my original thought since I am all over today. As a busy balloon guy, I am always glad to do charitable events when I can. The word “no” is one word that is not exercised nearly enough in my vocabulary. Last year I was contacted by someone on the board of the American Cancer Society’s Discovery Ball. This event raises millions of dollars for the charity and the silent auction that featured Two hours of balloon twisting by Master Balloon Artist Dennis Scott also featured an actual ride in the space shuttle as well as an all expenses paid trip to the olympics in China among many other amazing items. How my donation came to be with them is a funny story.
When I submitted all of my info through the silent auction donation web page, the page went haywire and I got an error message, so I didn’t think it went through. I never got back around to resubmitting it, so I assumed it didn’t work. I even got a call a week later from the American Cancer Society rep stating that there was an error with my donation. I called them back, left a message and never heard back from them. So, I assumed the donation hadn’t been completed. That was back in March. This past week(almost 8 months later) I was contacted by a woman who said she had won me in the Discovery Ball Silent auctiion and she wants me to entertain for her party in two Sunday’s. To my surprise they had recovered everything from my initial donation and ran with it. Not being one to back out of a donation I gladly accepted even though the woman lives a good hour and a half away from me and I will be missing my beloved NFL for this. It hurts even more since I had been requested to entertain for two hours that day at that exact same time for another company in the city, so now I am looking at this donation not only costing me the two hours of entertaining at the event, but also the 3 hours of drive time as well as the two extra hours I would have actually made money on, brining the grand total value of my donation to the American Cancer Society to more than five hundred dollars. That’s a pretty big donation. I have to believe that they didn’t make nearly that much on me at the silent auction, so I am now trying to decide if it makes sense that I donate to silent auctions any longer or if it would be better to just make a monetary donation instead. If this was just a one time thing, it wouldn’t be such a big deal, but this is the fifth or sixth time I donated a party to a silent auction only to get double whammy’d because they book a timeslot that I would otherwise make money on. I think I am getting a little too greedy lately…
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