In all my 18 years of performing corporate entertainment professionally, I have learned quite a lot, both about my art and craft but most importantly about the business side of show business.
I'd like to tell you a story about one of the corporate events that had hired need to do a show. This is many many years ago and it taught me a valuable lesson about professionalism.
The company had hired me to perform at 8:00pm. Since I was young, naive and perhaps a little stupid at the time I decided to turn up at the corporate event exactly at 8 pm. After all, they hired me to work from 8:00pm onwards, right? I came, I did my show and I did a very good job too if I may so!
However something bothered me.
Most of my clients are repeat clients. They like the work I do the first time and end up booking me again for another event.
But not this client.
It was then that I realized my FATAL mistake that day.
And that was to be ON TIME. Yes, a corporate entertainer cannot be on time.
A corporate entertainer must NEVER BE ON TIME.
A corporate entertainer MUST BE EARLY.
Ever since that learning lesson of mine, I always made sure that I am at least one hour early to any corporate event regardless of what time I am performing.
I learned the important lesson of going the extra mile and being a consummate professional.
That means that if the event starts at 8pm and I am due to perform at 9pm I will be there at 7pm.
After many years of now being extra early for all my corporate events, I've discovered that going the extra mile has yielded some wonderful benefits, such as:
- I'm able to be of more help to the client who has hired me because I can help them set up and prepare what needs to be done before the start of the corporate event, including handling any hiccups just before the corporate event starts. Some of these hiccups include projectors failing to work, audio system problems and even helping to entertain guests when the start of the corporate event had to be postponed for some reason.
- I can set up my audio system and microphone without any fussing and do a mic check without disrupting or interrupting anything.
- I am able to organize my performance area and make sure that everything is in order. There have been many times when I have requested for a table with full skirting only to receive a table with no skirting whatsoever. Or even worse, not have a table at all! Being extremely early will allow me to handle such issues, no sweat.
- But most importantly the client will notice that I am ready to go at any time. In fact, what has often happened is due to sudden schedule changes (common during live events) the client can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that I am ready and willing to perform earlier if needed so as to continue the flow of the corporate event and eliminate any dead spots. This only reflects well on the event organizer and has saved the potential embarrassment of many of my clients and it is the one thing that my clients say they appreciate most about me & my services.
If you want to work with Aman Alhamid, head over to his services page to INSTANTLY block your date now!
Also do check out this blog post to see if Corporate Comedy Magic is something your corporate event been missing all this time!