percentages - time, energy, earnings

[malcolm russell]

Following an interesting conversation the other day comparing notes with a magician and a comedian, I thought I'd put these questions out for others to answer as well. (By the way, by 'you' and 'your' I mean you as an individual - not, for example, 'us mimes' or 'us jugglers').

What percentage of your earnings come from each of the following:
- 'real' street performing (ie not fests)
- festivals
- paid corporate gigs
- other paid gigs (but not for companies, eg community special events etc)

Also, what percentage of your time (however you want to break it down - months, hours, including travel time or not, whatever) is spent on each of the above?

How much time per year is really-dead-time - (ie not actually performing and not working on the business side of things - you know, the nothing-to-do-but-go-for-a-walk time), versus semi-dead time (ie no gigs, but still working on other stuff), versus full-on lots-of-hours-diary-full time?

[ 08-22-2002: Message edited by: malcolm russell ]</p>

[Peter]

To reply;

"What percentage of your earnings come from each of the following:
- 'real' street performing (ie not fests"
60% came from the streets

- festivals
Last year I did 10% from this

- paid corporate gigs
30% here

- other paid gigs (but not for companies, eg community special events etc)

Very little under this catagory

"Also, what percentage of your time (however you want to break it down - months, hours, including travel time or not, whatever) is spent on each of the above?"

The time spent is roughly the same as above.

"How much time per year is really-dead-time - (ie not actually performing and not working on the business side of things - you know, the nothing-to-do-but-go-for-a-walk time), versus semi-dead time (ie no gigs, but still working on other stuff), versus full-on lots-of-hours-diary-full time?"

Last year I had more down time due to the 9/11 incident. This put a damper on busking here for about 2.5 months. Spent that time writing and bothering the hell out of my friends rehearsing in front of them.

Hope this helps.
Peter

[ 08-25-2002: Message edited by: Peter ]</p>

[Stretch]

No busking, no busking festivals, lots of community and or neighborhood festivals, concert in the park, Independence Day celebrations, chili festivals, oatmeal festival, parades, girls scout toop meetings, school festivals, circus promotion at a community art festival, art festivals, holiday festivals and the like. Slightly smaller amount of corporate events, nursing homes, company picnics, grand openings, sporting events, shopping mall promotion, trade shows, and auto dealership promotions.

And a fair amount of pro bono stuff: festivals, 5 & 10K charity races,
Dublin Ireland marathon (twice on stilts, raised over 10K for the Arthritis Foundation), parades with the Colorado Clown alley .

All this takes less than half my time. The remainder is spent with my residential window cleaning business that I have had for quite a number of years.

Walking tall, and Stretching imaginations!

Bill "Stretch" Coleman
Home of Stretch the nine foot clown and his 18 foot tall giant puppets Thirsty and Stretchy!