Teach Bicycle Safety
Not far removed from entertaining on a bicycle as was covered in the last chapter is the idea of teaching bicycle safety. This would be a great service to children (and many adults) that you could be proud of!
To teach safety, you've got to be comfortable in front of a group - or willing to learn to be comfortable.
The usual way to teach bicycle safety is to do it for free, and bore the poor kids to death with charts and silly pictures.
That's not what I have in mind!
I'm thinking of a show - a totally silly, hilariously funny show. For most people, putting such a show together will not be easy. Kids are terrible critics. If you are stupid instead of funny, they won't laugh. You'll have to achieve perfection. There are many approaches. You can be a clown, an inept professor, a cartoon character, a villain - you'll probably want to play some sort of character. One fellow I know in a similar business is a garbage can - his show is about littering.
You'll want an animated show. Perhaps you can do it on a bike and incorporate tricks into your show. The bottom line is that the kids are amused, and they have almost accidentally learned bicycle safety from you. By the end of your show, they know the dangers of 3,000 pound cars, how to watch for traffic, follow the rules, not make unexpected moves, not be out after dark, and so on. And they'll have such a good time at your show, that they'll do what you taught them, because they felt good about the lesson. And, they'll remember the lesson a long time!
Big challenge, are you up to it? If so, then you can be booked at local events, on television, and at schools to perform your show. There are some organizations that handle such bookings at schools. I believe one is called the National School Assembly Board. You can make good money doing this. I know of a family of four who live in a big touring bus for several months a year, and they perform in two schools per day, almost every weekday. I don't know how much they are paid, but I believe it is well over $100 per show. I know they are not short of money!
To be hired by such organizations, or to get national exposure, you'll want a demo tape. This is a video tape of no more than eight minutes, showing the best parts of your act, and the audience's response to it.
When you first develop your act, you can do it as a free community service at libraries, boys' and girls' clubs, summer camps and so on, until you bring your level of entertainment up so high that you have each and every crowd in an uproar! In the process of doing these free shows, as you get good, the adults in the audiences will come up to you after the shows and hire you to do other bookings.
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