7/29/2018 0 Comments SLowly becoming more organisedI just finished doing my tax return and was surprised how quick and painless it was, probably because my accounts have been much better organized than they used to be. In this process, I found out that I did 92 gigs in the last financial year. It made me look back on the last couple of years of performing and I realized how dramatically my level of organization and business skills have improved. 2 years ago I never collected deposits for my shows and customers would often flake at the last minute. I didn't own a smart phone and to check if I had time available for a booking I would always have to wait till I got home to check my calendar. I once turned up a week late to a booking. When I arrived at the venue I called the customer to ask where everybody was and they just told me they were just about to leave a horrible review on my google profile because I never showed up for their party. I guess they took pity on me, they never ended up leaving this criticism. I would also always find my way around Sydney by printing maps from my home computer or asking random people for directions. I remember once I had a job at a wedding near Mosman. I had to start at 8pm, and I caught a bus there. I didn't even have a map with me, I just knew roughly the area the gig was in. When the bus driver dropped me off, I asked him for directions and he told me the quickest way was to take a short cut through a forest, and this was what I did. It was about a 15 minute walk through a pitch black section of nature reserve. When I emerged staggering from this jungle I was covered in cobs webs and my shoes were really muddy. Eventually I bought a Samsung Galaxy so I can constantly have a calendar and my customers contact details with me. I also didn't have any vehicle to get around, so I would just catch public transport everywhere and walk, even though my gigs were all over Sydney. I once had to travel from Hornsby all the way to the Sutherland shire between two gigs. I bought a cheap second hand bicycle to make my life easier. I bought a lock for it, but it got rusty from the rain and after a while it was impossible to open, so I cut through the cable with some bolt cutters. After this I just never bothered chaining the bike up because I thought it was too terrible for anyone to bother stealing. The seat wasn't adjustable and it would rattle around for some mysterious reason, the brakes were also extremely worn down. I rode this bicycle around almost every day for at least 6 months without every locking it up. Eventually some people stole it from outside of a pub near Sydney Uni where I was drinking with some friends. I guess some drunk Uni students just decided to ride it around for a laugh. Three weeks later, I found the bike chained to a fence post in front of a terrace house in Redfern. I knocked on the door of the house andtold the woman who answered the door, that they had my bike. She told me that she had just found it ditched in the middle of a park. This clearly was not where I had left it, so I imagine she was not the initial person who had taken the bike and perhaps it had traded hands several times since I had left it. She was happy to let me take it again as it was taking up space on her front porch. About a year and a half ago I bought a decent motorbike, lock and insurance and it has made my life so much easier.
I swear I didn't have any of these problems because I was impoverished, I was purely just an incompetent stingy human being. My family is upper middle class.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
|
Julian is a magician in Sydney helping you make the most of your special events. He has performed many hundreds of magic shows over the last 11 years. Call him on 0437896344 or email julianbullmagic@gmail.com
|