Guy Laliberté is the sole proprietor of Cirque du Soleil, which is now nearly 20 years old, but it wasn’t built over night. It was, however, built by one man, Laliberté, and his vision that evolved over many years.
Laliberté was born into a rather large middle-class Canadian family. He left his small town home of St. Bruno in Quebec City at the age of 18 with plans of hitchhiking across Europe and supporting himself as a street performer. He actually spent his first night in London sleeping on a bench with just his backpack and a couple of small musical instruments.
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While traveling, he met other street show acts, learning new talents such as stilt-walking and fire-breathing, as he worked for very little pay. Eventually, though he somehow managed to turn a couple of sideshow acts into Quebec’s second biggest cultural export, after Celine Dion. He says he never planned on Cirque du Soleil, he actually wanted to return to school and lead a normal life, but when he returned to Montreal, he was so enlivened by his experiences that he started producing parties and street festivals.
By 1984, he was 24 years old, and had signed a contract with the Quebec government to construct a street show for the city’s 450th anniversary. Bringing in only $40,000, this event was simply a trial run and Laliberté was already having thoughts about his next event. The next event ended up losing $500,000, but it was so popular already, that the success of the show quickly grew.
The success of the Cirque shows has grown out of the ability of Laliberté to tap into the audience’s inner child. He believes that “inside every adult there’s still a child that lingers. I think we tend to forget we were children before. We’re happiness merchants—giving people the opportunity to dream like children.”
As the shows have evolved, human art form has played a major role in shaping each production. This circus has no animals, no speaking parts, and no star performers. With each new show must come ingenuity and new ways to amaze, so at the Cirque du Soleil headquarters in Montreal, a state-of-the-art creative studio and training facility has been developed. Laliberté’s shows are a montage of distinct variety show-like acts complete with story lines, developing characters, and plots that are set to soundtracks that are just as whimsical and extraordinary as the acts themselves.
Today, Laliberté is one of the top entertainment impresarios, worldwide. More than 30 million people have attended a Cirque du Soleil show, and this man has single-handedly created one of the most magnificent and revolutionary live shows of this generation’s entertainment industry. With five permanent shows in Las Vegas including Love, Mystère, O, and Zumanity, 9000 people are in the audience every night, which comes out to about 5% of Vegas visitors.
There are eight Cirque du Soleil productions being performed on two continents and in one year, 7+ million people attended these shows, paying out more than $650 million to see them. Corporate sponsorships and television licenses also bring in millions of dollars, and with very little debt and a pretax margin around 25%, the Cirque du Soleil productions have made Laliberté a very rich man. In fact, his self-made fortune has earned him a Net Worth of more than $1.5 billion by the age of 47. He ranks at #664 on the Forbe’s “World Billionaires” list.
Laliberté is not only rich in money, though, he is also rich in worldly responsibility. He says, “We are in a position of financial and social power, and we could be agents of change in our society. Without pretension, I believe we could be a nice little gardener who takes care of the garden, and hopefully our neighbor will do the same. Then, maybe we’ll achieve a better world.”