Presuming the cost of a happy meal is $3.00, and lets say that Gentry’s cut of each replay is 3% of $15.99, then he would be making $0.48 per yoyo, so he’d have to sell just over 6.
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That sounds about right! Except a happy Meal cost $4-$5 now!
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Why does the word a s s u m e get covered up with white boxes? Assume
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I have no idea, but I edited it to “presume” and “lets say.”
Seems that is a setting that could be changed.
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Buy more Replay Pros!! Gentry is pretty skinny!!!
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hmmm - The Swear filter catches the first three letters and blocks out the entire word I guess. Maybe @codinghorror can change it to allow your as sumptions?
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Short answer is no, except for a very few.
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There was a really, really good post some years ago about this that’s been reposted several times. Steve Brown wrote it originally, and while it might not answer your questions exactly, I think everyone should read it. I’ll try to find it…
The following is a quote from the post circa ‘09
I had a conversation with a fellow yo-yo professional recently that really twisted my noodle. He was talking to a yo-yo player, young kid, probably no older than 18 or so, and talking to this kid about doing store demonstrations. The kid looked at him, and said “I don’t do store demonstrations. I’m a professional.”
His comment was that he had never wanted to smack someone so hard in his life. My feeling was that he probably should have done it.
There are a lot of yo-yo players in the world right now. Not as many as there were, say, in the 1950s or 1960s, but a lot. And there seems to be some confusion over just what exactly a “yo-yo professional” does and does not do.
See, a lot of kids have learned almost entirely off the internet. They never saw a demonstrator come to their local store or mall. They saw videos of kids standing on a stage at a contest, staring at their hands, and shredding out tricks as fast as possible to take advantage of the fact that quantity, not quality, is what wins yo-yo contests. So they look at this, and they think this is what it means to be a professional.
Of course, they are dead wrong.
Here is what it means to be a professional, in case you are wondering…
Being a professional means rarely, if ever, doing any tricks harder than the ones you are trying to teach. It means slowing down what you are doing, so that people can really see it…and see it in such a way that it actually looks possible for them to learn.
Being a professional means the knees of your pants get dirty, from spending a lot of time crouched down and trimming strings for kids.
Being a professional means smiling, and looking at the audience instead of your hands. It means making eye contact with kids, throwing them a wink, and doing a trick that you can teach them after the show.
Being a professional means that you are there to entertain, or to sell product, or possibly both. You are there, on that stage, in that store, to inspire someone to pick up a yo-yo and want to be like you. You are not there to show them how hard your tricks are. You are there to show them how easy your tricks are, so that they want to buy a yo-yo and play like you.
Being a professional means that the only people you need to impress are the people who aren’t yo-yo players. If your player buddies show up to your gig, you smile and acknowledge them, and move on to the people who came to see The Yo-Yo Man. You do not sneak away to hang out in a corner with them and compare tiny knot tricks.
Being a professional means sometimes you only get one uniform shirt. Sometimes you have to spray it with deodorant for a few days. Sometimes you have to wash it in the sink with hand soap, and dry it with the hotel blow-dryer. And you don’t complain, because it simply needs to be done and there isn’t time to do it any other way.
Being a professional means you stay until the kids have gone. You count the stock when you get there, you count the stock when you leave, and you try to do twice as well the next day.
Being a professional means sometimes you have to be in 10 locations in a single day. And you get there. On time, every time.
Being a professional means you are never too good to teach or show someone “Walk The Dog” or “Rock The Baby” or any other trick that your skill level has surpassed. You are never too important to stop and sign a yo-yo, or show a kid a part of a trick that they cannot figure out, and you are never too busy to stop and talk to someone. Being a professional means you make time, as best as you can, for everyone who is interested in what you are doing.
Being a professional means you are there for them. This is not a paid practice. You are not there to amuse yourself. And if you are unlucky enough to perform or demonstrate somewhere that there is no traffic, you talk to the store manager/tour manager/supervisor and find out what they want you to do. You don’t wait for them to tell you.
There are a lot of yo-yo players in this world. There are very few yo-yo professionals. Anyone can learn how to play…it’s being the person who teaches others that sets you ahead of the pack. It’s a special, sacred thing to be responsible for someone’s inspiration.
Being a professional means never losing sight of that.
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In other words, being a professional yoyo player is unlike being a professional in just about any other sport in the world (or at least in the US).
Not necessarily true. There are tons of pro athletes, they make just enough to get by and get paid only when they play or a small amount when their jerseys sell. You are thinking of the absurdly small percentage that make millions. The yoyo community is just a fraction of that size. So there are only a few making enough to be comfortable.
I have a bunch of pro hockey player friends. They play professionally in the minors. They make a couple hundred a week and get a place to stay during the season. When the season ends so does the pay. Unless the are on an NHL contract. A couple of them are coworkers of mine now that the play has dried up for them. I also have several pro football co workers. One from the CfL and a couple former NFL. They get paid when they play.
I had this problem earlier today! It must a s s u m e I’m trying to use the bad word for butt lol
Well, what I mean is that professional athletes in most other sports don’t see the evangelizing of their sport (and inspiring the next generation to play) as their primary job; it isn’t what they are paid to do. They are paid almost exclusively to play and encourage, by winning, paid attendance by fans. Yoyo contests just don’t seem economically big enough to be the essential income engine for pro yoyoers they way it is for professional minor leaguers in other sports.
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I’m pretty sure the word evangelize is exclusive to Christianity. It means to share the good news of the Gospel. I have never heard this word used in any other context, other than the one that you used here.
No big deal, it’s just odd to read in this context.
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I agree with that. Nothing to disagree with. So much great stuff packed in there! We can all be yoyo demonstrators in that way.
Edit: a large number of us wonder when the next yoyo boom will be but how many of us have used a cheap yoyo to show someone some easy tricks and then try to teach them? I think we are a pretty closed community staring at our hands during complex tricks that we practice in seclusion while wondering why there aren’t more people yoyoing.
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But practically every school has sports teams so it’s not like there’s a shortage of ways sports are introduced to people.
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It may have religious origins, like many other words, but I assure you “evangelize” is used in a general sense of “help make X thing more popular” quite commonly.
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Fair enough, I’m just not use to hearing it like this
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In the early 1980s, Apple Computer had official job titles like Software Evangelist, of which Guy Kawasaki was the first, and arguably most famous example. Since then, evangelism has come to have a secular meaning as @codinghorror has pointed out.
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Spreading the good news of YoYo.
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This needs to get reposted more than it does. It remains as important today as when Steve wrote it.
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