10 Habits of Unprofitable Face Painters

1. Discount to get business and you will always be known as the “negotiator” or the low cost entertainer. You will have to work longer and harder to make a reasonable wage, and you will never feel as if you are valued by your customers.
2. Focus on the time-one hour, two hours, minutes of travel, etc.- instead of the feelings you provide to the people at the party. When you describe your services you do it as an hourly rate..so the emphasis is on how much? for how long? Value is in the results of your involvement. How is the event made better by your presence? Describe and charge for that!
3. Your promotion suffers from “shiny bauble syndrome.” Today it’s Instagram, but what about FACEBOOK ads? or snapchat? Ooh, don’t forget to post that video, even Facebook LIVE is cool! Eek, did you forget about TWITTER, or LinkedIN for the corporate client? It’s not about where you post, but how consistent and solid your message is across platforms.
4. You have no marketing strategy. You don’t know your ideal customer, or what needs they have. You don’t know what problems you solve for them or how to convey your company’s image or personality to like-minded people. As a result, you post everywhere (or nowhere), inconsistently.
5. You have no web site, but run your entire business from your Facebook business page. When you launched that page, you asked all your FACEBOOK “friends” to LIKE it, so now you are being followed by several hundred face-painters and family members. They are NOT your ideal customer.
6. You desperately mimic, or chase the competition, and try to match their offers, their pricing, their techniques, their social media posts, and if you are really brazen, you stalk or steal their clients.
7. You buy everything advertised in a class, on FABATV, at conventions, or mentioned in any of the dozens of FACEBOOK groups you belong to. As a result, you don’t even know what supplies you have (I’ll tell you, you have too many) or what you like/use the most. More expenses? Less profit. But at least you know face paint doesn’t expire, and you can write off your purchases against your income as a business expense.
8. You are constantly learning new skills (and stocking more supplies) so you can offer whatever it is that the customer needs for that event. Facepainting is you love, but you also do balloons, caricatures, games, magic, henna, tattoos. You’ll even do pumpkin painting, make custom stencils and bring cupcakes if the customer requests it. As a result, they don’t know you as anything special, but a jack/jane of all trades…which waters down your value in their eyes. How can you be excellent at everything?
9. You are somewhat unresponsive since you don’t answer the phone or emails as promptly as you should. A couple of days to return an email? You return phone calls after a few hours. No problem… you are juggling family, job, school, laundry, making dinner, online shopping, and posting all your photos on social media. At least that gets immediately!
10. You share all the benefits you bring to the event, get all the info. from the host, and quote a fabulous price. But you never ask for the GIG! It’s better that they take a few days to think about it. Perhaps you think you don’t need to follow-up, because if they want you they will definitely call you back.

If these descriptions match your business, you might benefit from my help to turn your passion into a full time profession.

In the meantime, don’t miss another booking, or fail to follow-up! I have an Inbound Client Sales Process that I use for every call or email, to make sure I don’t lose track of any prospective gig. I keep it on my bulletin board above my desk.

You can download it for FREE here.

“People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it..”

Simon Sinek