Discourse in Magic

Jonah is joined by Eric Dittelman where they talk about performing on TV, the usefulness of having an agent, the challenges of the past year going virtual, and the importance of creating a space where you can be bad. Eric has competed on America’s Got Talent, appeared on Ellen, and performed on Penn & Teller Fool Us. He’s toured the United States performing at colleges and has produced shows in New York like the experimental magic and comedy show Amazeballs.  Doing His Own Thing Eric wasn’t even aware there were magic organizations or clubs until he was in college. Until then he cultivated his interest in magic by visiting random shops and pursuing his own hobby on his own terms, which he looks back on now as a strength having not been influenced by other people he was able to come into his own identity as a performer.  That independent streak led him to mentalism where the cross between improvisation and psychological studies really appealed to him. As he found books to read by people like Bannachek and Bob Cassidy he began seeking them out, if there was an event where one was hosting a discussion he would be there to meet them and make connections. Those connections would foster lifelong friendships and mentorships, which Eric notes was very important to have.   Stumbling Onto The Small Screen Eric is quick to point out that he stumbled into all his tv performances. If you have goals and you work towards them everyday they’ll eventually manifest and it’s just being ready and prepared for when those opportunities arise. After a producer saw one of Eric’s viral video gags he posted online he was encouraged to apply to America’s Got Talent, which lead to someone scouting him for Ellen, which opened doors later to appearing on Penn & Teller Fool Us. At first Eric kept his expectations low, at most he expected to be able to get a single clip from appearing on TV that he could use to compete for booking on the college circuit and he didn’t even tell anyone he was auditioning for America’s Got Talent. Eric shares his strategy on AGT and the risks he took at the end performing a trick for the judges that had only worked once before in rehearsal. Surviving In Virtual When the pandemic closed every live show in New York and across the country in March, Eric pulled back to take time to consider his next move. At first he was convinced that mentalism could not perform in the virtual space but after thinking about radio shows in the past and the shows he enjoyed listening to he decided to try a livestream show on Youtube with a “call in” line where viewers could join in via Zoom one at a time just like a radio call in show and have their minds read.  While sharing his story about setting up his virtual shows Eric expands on that to include his history in improv and the importance he’s learned in being able to create spaces where you can be bad in. You can’t be bad at a paying gig so you also can’t take the same risks or experiment with ideas you haven’t fully formed. But by creating a space, either with friends or colleagues, or a low-rent studio where the cost of failure isn’t going to harm you, you can push your creative limits and find new innovative ways to improve your performances. Never underestimate the power of letting yourself fail.  Wrap-Up Endless Chain Mat Franco or Michael Kent or Peter Boie or Colin Cloud or Vinnie Deponto (is that enough names?) What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? Eric loves the moment of creativity where people find their own voice and find their own way Eric doesn’t like the arrogance in the magic community which he doesn’t think is necessary to be a good magician.  Take home point Create your own space and find a place to do your thing, and to actually DO the thing! “You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing.” ― Amy Poehler, Yes Please Plugs ericdittleman.com (try and find a misspelling of the domain that doesn’t work!)  Twitter – @EDittelman  And check out Mind Over Magic, his new podcast with Mat Franco! 

This week Jonah is joined by the dynamic duo of Kyle and Mistie Knight. Kyle & Mistie have been on tours with Disney Cruise, they’ve appeared on Penn and Teller Fool Us, and they even have the distinction of winning Wizard Wars! Today you’re going to learn all about how they got to where they are with Kyle’s background in working, building, and creating magic and Mistie’s incredible work on managing the business. Their lives, like everyone else’s, were turned upside down during the pandemic and after years spent living on the road they’ve had to reinvent their magic to work from their home in the virtual space while planning for whatever future lies ahead.  It Started With A Cruise Kyle and Mistie are celebrating eighteen years together and it all began when they met on a cruise. Kyle invited Mistie to see one of his magic performances and even though she never ended up seeing his show they kept in touch and a year later she cancelled her return ticket from Las Vegas while visiting Kyle and they’ve been partners ever since.   Initially Kyle and Mistie’s show was more illusion based with Mistie playing the role of the traditional assistant but after an agent failed to warn the duo that a show they were performing in Europe would be in front of an audience that only spoke spanish it was up to Mistie, who knew enough words to get by, to step up and take on a more featured role in the show. After experiencing how well audiences received seeing the pair share the stage equally it’s become their primary focus ever since.  If You Built It… Kyle also has a reputation as a magic builder with a strong background in behind the scenes support. Most of what he knows he’s had to teach himself, from adapting pieces to fit the shorter Mistie to creating lightweight tables that can easily be stored and deployed at conventions and touring shows, which have now seen a surge in popularity during the pandemic where magicians are searching for efficient constructions to incorporate into their work-from-home virtual setups.  From A Life At Sea to Locked Down At Home For a performing couple who make most of their business touring with cruise lines, to say that the pandemic shutdown of the cruise industry has turned their business and personal lives upside would be a massive understatement. Kyle and Mistie have a lot of positive things to say about working with cruise contracts, from the incredible amount of travelling they get to do, to being able to get feedback from having much closer contact with their audiences who remain with them for days at a time. Now they’ve had to reinvent how to do their business, from having to manage their own clients to constructing their own virtual business from the ground up. You might remember hearing Mistie in a previous episode of Discourse in Magic where she took part in a demo sales call with Jonah. Now, having completed Jonah’s workshop, she’s managing her own client calls and setting up new contracts and despite having lost all their business with the cruise lines this year they’ve managed to end the year earning more than they would have had their initial contracts not been cancelled.  Wrap-Up Endless Chain Naathan Phan and Mike Hammer What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? Mistie is most excited about women in magic. In the last couple years we’ve seen real changes in how audiences view women in magic and how performers incorporate women into their show. Long gone is the days of women only being seen as the assistant on the stage.  Kyle loves how everything is exposed online and you can learn anything and what that is doing to force magic to evolve into something new. Kyle does not like the “seriousness” of magic with the sparkly jackets and serious mood lighting, even if Mistie disagrees and is adamant that there is an audience for every act.  Take home point Don’t be afraid to think outside of your own box. Try new things and take risks. If Kyle and Mistie had said no they would have missed so many opportunities. Say yes and make it work.  Plugs You can follow up with Kyle and Mistie by following them on instagram @kyleandmistie Check out their facebook page at kyleandmistie And visit their website knightmagic.com

Today’s advice from Jonah is directed towards stage magicians who are transitioning from big stage or parlor shows to performing for the camera in virtual shows and he’s looking to the world of acting for the answers. Ready For Your Close Up You used to be a stage performer, or you used to be a parlor performer, and now you are a virtual magician. And one thing that you’ll notice in virtual magic is you’re a little bit closer to your audience than you would be before. You’re quite close to the camera. Sometimes actors have to transition from the world of theater acting to the world of camera acting. And one thing that happens when actors make that switch, is the directors often have to tell them over and over again, to play smaller. Do less. And here’s what that means. It means that they’re used to performing on a stage. That means that they talk with their hands. They express themselves with their whole body. If they’re sad, they’re not just sad with their face they’re sad with their shoulders so that the people sitting in the back row knows that the performer is feeling sad or looking sad.  But for an actor who is acting for a camera for television, they actually need to make their emotions very small. If they’re looking angry, it’s more about adding a little bit of anger to their face, to their facial expression than it is to adding a whole lot of anger to their body. Or maybe if they’re looking excited, it’s about raising their eyes up a little bit. So the viewers at home can really intuit that they’re feeling excited because they’re close up to their face. They don’t have to throw their arms in the air and get incredibly excited. Play Small, Do Less That is the exact same piece of advice that Jonah is going to share for those of you that are translating from the world of parlor magic to the world of virtual magic, which is kind of an alternate close-up magic. You should be playing smaller, not necessarily the magic, but your expressions about it should be playing smaller, especially if you’re positioned close to your camera. If you’re positioned close to your camera, it’s much more important what it is that your face is doing than it is what your arms and what your body’s doing, because your face probably takes up to 40% of the screen. So if we’re looking really bored on our face but we think that doing interesting stuff with our hands is going to really help. It’s not. People are going to see a boring face. If we look excited and overly excited with our face, people are going to think that we are completely out of our minds because they’re right up close to our face. So sometimes if you’re making that transition, from stage magic to the world of virtual magic, we’re going to take the advice that directors give to actors who are transitioning from theater to camera. And that is do less or play smaller. So not big with your arms, not big with your legs, not big with your body, but instead the small movements in your face, that express the way you’re feeling, your excitement, your anticipation. That might be a change that’s going to help you really connect with the people on the other side of the screen. Ask For More Help We hope this was helpful for you. Please let us know and leave a comment. We want to know if this is the kind of stuff that you want to know And if you need help with your virtual magic show, especially getting more bookings, getting higher paid bookings and systematizing the whole thing so it doesn’t drain your entire life, then send Jonah a message. Send an email titled “hello” to info@discourseandmagic.com and he will make sure to help you out.

This week Jonah is joined by Adrian Lacroix who has really popped onto the scene during the era of virtual shows with his videos and creations helping people to get into the business of virtual magic. Adrian Lacroix has worked in some of the most exclusive places in Buenos Aires and in the past year has embraced virtual magic and virtual magic effects releasing tricks through Penguin Magic. He’s also become a prolific participants in panels and discussions helping to rally the magic community around the new normal of virtual magic shows. You can hear him participating in one such panel from our very own UnConventional.fun Virtual Panel. Performing Miracles At Home Adrian’s introduction to magic wasn’t at a party or seeing magic performed in person, it was on a tv screen at 10pm at night when he was eight years old. David Copperfield was performing Misled, a pencil penetration trick, and that amazed Adrian to see a miracle being performed with elements you could find around your home.  That love of magic would stay with Adrian into his teens when he would once again come across another tv special, this time David Blaine’s street magic, and the way the crowds reacted to the street magic encouraged Adrian to try performing himself to see if he could get the same reactions, which of course he did. Reverse Engineering Magic Without anyone to play the role of mentor, Adrian is mostly self-taught. He turned to watching magic performances closely, attending shows multiple times to see how the performance changed with each iteration and tracking down each detail of every trick and people involved to study how to perform them himself. In the pre-internet and youtube era this meant buying every VHS and book he could get his hands on to figure out the process on his own. If you put a problem in front of Adrian to solve, he’s going to try to solve it.  Adrian admits he struggles with finding his inner motivation but if someone tries to prove him wrong his competitive side will kick in and he’ll be able to push himself to create and prove them wrong.  Accepting Change and Accepting Virtual It’s difficult to change, we are all creatures of habit and at the start of this year many accepted that they might not find work for a couple of months but wouldn’t have to drastically change the nature of their business. But now that we’re looking at possibly another year of pandemic related restrictions Adrian has some advice to share for magicians struggling to adapt to the changing landscape.  The first step is to accept that you can’t keep doing the same thing. Even if it means watching someone else and copying what they’re doing that’s working, as long as you’re changing things up and learning how to adapt you’ll fare a lot better than those who are rigidly sticking to their ways. We need to keep things moving forward. You also need to ask yourself why you are doing magic. Are you performing for the audience? Or are you performing for you own enjoyment? These different motivations may lead to different approaches. Then you need to be honest with the audience. Everyone is in the same level now. We’re all stuck in our homes and they are not expecting you to be in a place that you are not with forced background and heavy special effects. Accepting this will help us all find news ways to perform. “If we make them understand the impossibility of the conditions we are working in now and then we make the magic happen, the tricks for me are even stronger. Because you’ve removed the magician physically from the place where the magic is happening.” Wrap-Up Endless Chain Juan Esteban Varela, who performs magic in the dark for blind audiences. What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? Adrian loves the feeling when he performs and how audiences feel when he performs. He loves how easy it is to make new friends in this field. That you can travel anywhere in the world and visit a magic store and be invited to join a meeting. It’s like a big family. Adrian would like to see more diverse innovation and more original thought.  Take home point You should think about why you are doing this in the first place. Why have you chosen to do magic and chosen to perform? If you find this answer you won’t care if you’re doing it over zoom, or in close up, or the stage. Plugs Adrian’s creations can be found at Penguin Magic And you can visit Adrian’s website at adrianlacroix.com

This week Jonah offers up essential tips to help you break out your virtual magic business from just a fun idea to a viable choice. A lot of the people are getting started in virtual magic right now. They’re trying to take the leap and they want to get their first few gigs from social media but they don’t know how to do it. It’s kind of nerve wracking to try to post and say, “Hey friends, hire me for your events” and you’ve seen your friends do those posts and then not get a lot of traction and not get a lot of excitement. Here are three things that you can do right now. Hashtag Hunting Hashtag Hunting is especially helpful if you have a target market, such as a specific industry like working with schools, with camps, with cruise ships, or with corporate gigs. If you have a target market all you gotta do is figure out what hashtags those groups use when you’re using social media and you search those hashtags. That is going to allow you to find the people and the companies that are hiring you because you know exactly who it is that you’re looking for. The “Media” In Social Media Facebook rewards those who help people stay on Facebook. If you do things that help keep people on Facebook, then Facebook will reward you by having more people see your posts. If you make a post that says “click here to go to my website” then if the post works then everybody leaves Facebook and that’s not what Facebook wants. So instead you should have a post that encourages the user to leave a comment or you should post a video or a live stream because those things keep people staring at the video or watching and engaging with the live stream, which is exactly what Facebook wants.  Let them in behind the scenes so they know what it’s like to be you. Use behind the scenes posts to generate more bookings and more interest than “please hire me” posts.  The “Social” In Social Media If we’re using our social media channels correctly, they should be filled with people that like and trust us and are filled with people that we’ve already built relationships with. So instead of feeling that social media is that black box that you post in you actually have thousands of friends, people that you actually know on those platforms that you can go start conversations with. Go chat with them, ask how they’re doing, ask if they’re still working at The Keg, and then ask if The Keg needs a year-end event, and then you can tell them about the stuff that you are doing. The magic of sales happens inside of conversations. Talk to your friends and family and find out if you can help serve their events, their company events, their family events, their holiday events, whatever it is that’s coming.  Need More Help? Jonah is currently starting a case study program, helping 10 magicians transition into the world of virtual. If you think that’s you send an email titled “case study” to info@discourseinmagic.com. Jonah would love to help you get into the world of virtual

This week Jonah brings you three secret tips for growing your virtual magic business. You probably know by now that Jonah loves virtual magic but you might not be aware just how much he loves sales and marketing. So much so that Jonah spends his own money to hire sales trainers to help him on his virtual sales business. Through this training he’s learned three “aha” moments that has helped him with his own virtual magic sales and he’s going to pass them onto you in this week’s episode.  The Sales Call and Demo Call  A sales call is when you explain to them exactly what is involved in a show and what it looks like. A demo call is when you show them what is involved in a show and what it looks like. Both of these calls work but Jonah finds that both work better than nothing at all. If all you are doing is sending out e-mails you have to ask yourself if you’re willing to commit to doing a sales call or a demo call. Listen to Appetizer #16 “How to Sell A Virtual Magic Show” to hear an example of a sales call.  We Will Manage All Of The Tech For every client that is calling you, this is the time where they have to take last year’s in person event and convert it into this year’s virtual event. But you are different, over the course of the last nine months you’ve performed countless virtual shows and know the technical aspects of it inside and out. You know what works and what doesn’t work and you can make their lives a thousand times easier by offering to handle all the technical aspects of your show. If you tell them, on your sales call, that you can handle all of the tech on your own and manage all aspects of the show on your own you have taken a lot of worry and stress away from them. If they don’t have to solve the entire event because you can handle those issues for them you are much more likely to close the sale. Make Their Lives Easier With A Slide Deck The bulk of the people reaching out to Jonah to book year end shows are HR people inside of the company. After they are done speaking to you on your sales or demo call they are going to take what you have told them and present it to their team or the person in charge and re-pitch your show to them. If you provide for them a slide-deck to present to their team on your behalf you are not only going to have a stronger presentation for them but you are once again taking work off of the HR person’s plate and helping make their lives a lot easier. Your presentation will look nicer than all the other presentations because you’ve spent the time to hire a graphics designer to make it absolutely beautiful.   Need More Help? If you want to learn more about the things that have been working for Jonah, you can book a free fifteen minute call to talk about your virtual magic business and to learn more secrets to help you grow.

Jonah is joined by Alex Boyce, a millennial magician who, rather than something new like other magicians his age, focuses on the old school and classic eras of magic. Alex Boyce is a NYC magician performing for corporate events and at institutions like The Friar’s Club, The Player’s Club, and The Rainbow Room. He can frequently be found performing at Speakeasy Magick at the McKittrick Hotel. It Was Probably A Rerun Alex’s introduction to magic was a television broadcast of World’s Greatest Magic: 5 when he was about four years old. The images of magic tricks got him very excited and his mom was able to find a colour changing silks through the hand, which she assured the young Alex was a professional’s trick and not like those other tricks in his beginner kit.  Soon came the summer camps and a memorable experience when he was eleven where he failed to make into the finals, despite what he believed was a great James Bond act involving a rocky racoon and a flipped over box. Eventually he’d focus on acting and attend NYU. The Frame Of The Moment Alex puts a value on different stage pictures and images with the goal of creating interesting magic. Using props just for the sake of using props isn’t the purpose but a great scene with a great frame is really exciting. The interesting prop comes from the choices to create memorable moments. What’s A Classic Alex isn’t surprised that young people don’t focus on the classics of magic. When their introduction to magic is a David Blaine special then that’s the path they’re going to go down. But Alex will also question what it means to be a classic act? There are lots of acts happening right now that everyone does that should be considered classics. Whenever someone performs acts like Coins Through Table, Coins Across, Ambitious Card, Cups and Balls, or a variation thereof, they’re performing classic magic, even if they don’t realize it.   Wrap-Up Endless Chain Todd Robbins What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? Alex loves the ability to connect with people and magic across age and experience. The community is what he enjoys beyond the actual performance of magic. What Alex doesn’t enjoy is the backend of the marketplace for magic. He feels it puts the goals in the wrong places, making products for magicians that might not be as good as they should be because that’s where the incentives are. Take home point The same way Alex has been able to reach out and create relationships he hopes that others can reach out to him and create relationships too because he gets so much out of the relationships he has in magic. Plugs Boycemagic.com Instagram – @boycealex

Jonah is joined by Jon Armstrong where they share an honest discussion on the difficulty of being a performer in 2020, learning how to embrace virtual shows, and how to plan for the eventual return to in-person performances. Jon Armstrong is a performer, creator, and lecturer and you might recognize his name from any of his lectures, from his appearances at the Magic Castle, from Penn & Teller: Fool Us, or perhaps you recognize him for his very tiny plunger. From Theme Parks to Parlours Growing up in Orlando meant working in theme parks for Jon Armstrong. He fell in love with the magicians performing at Disney and at the age of 14 was brought on to be mentored under another magician and since then magic is all he’s cared about. By age 20 he was working at Disney’s Epcot and taking every job available to perform. After five years of theme parks he moved to vegas to chase his dream and arrived to find no work at all.  Starting back at the bottom it was by the grace of friends he had made along the way that he was able to perform up and down the aisles of theatres before shows would begin. A random happenstance would land his demo video on the top of the pile to be selected to fill in for a show at the Cesar’s Magical Empire’s close up room, The Secret Pagoda. Riding on the success he found in Vegas he left for LA to start all over again at the bottom just to be close to Magic Castle and build his client base. From Cruise Ships to Virtual Shows This year was going to be a banner year for Jon, performing on an extended contract with Disney Cruise, but the COVID-19 pandemic curtailed all those plans. With a newborn on the way and opportunities disappearing Jon is honest about how hard this year has been both for his career and his mental health. Now, like every other magician, it’s all about the world of virtual performances and he’s learned the new skills necessary to thrive in this environment. He’s rebuilding his shows to work in the unique spaces of interactive video performances and finding new ways to deliver old tricks in a fresh light. Planning Beyond Virtual Beyond his advice to upgrade your computer, Jon’s advice to magicians performing and developing virtual shows is to look to the future and think about how this new arrangement might inform stage shows, when they eventually return. If you’re developing a new trick for virtual shows try to imagine how you can also develop it for stage shows and in-person performances. Having a new repertoire of tricks when you return to stage performances is the light at the end of the tunnel for Jon. One Big Tiny Plunger  But what about that tiny plunger? Jon breaks down his experience with Penn & Teller: Fool Us, his development of the tiny plunger that has become his signature piece and how a small variation on a theme has blossomed into a major magic business venture with tiny plungers being sold around the world and requested at every show he performs.  Wrap-Up Endless Chain Taylor Hughes What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? Jon likes how we have shown that we can be adaptable. That’s something to be proud of that we can adapt to this weirdness. But what Jon doesn’t like is the opposite, that there are still people who are so unwilling to adapt anything into the virtual space and continue to look down on those who are adapting to grow in the virtual space.  Take home point Really think about how you and the audience feels when performing magic. The best way to understand an audience is to understand how you feel from their reactions as well as how they’re feeling from what you’re doing.  Plugs You can reach out to Jon at cardjon.com 

Jonah is joined by Erik Tait to discuss his brand of magic, producing magic for Penguin, and venturing into the world of live stream events. Erik Tait is a top graduate of Toronto’s own Humber College Comedy Writing and Performance Program, has appeared on Penn & Teller: Fool Us, and was the 2018 International Brotherhood of Magicians Gold Cups Close Up Competition Champion Juggling At The Comedy Barn and Sneaking Into Stand-Up Erik Tait did not start out to become a magician, he started out as a juggler. In middle school he met the juggling duo Jessie and James who got him onto the path of becoming a professional juggler. After landing a job at the Comedy Barn, as a juggler, he soon found himself working the magic booth selling magic products and having to put on shows to customers to demonstrate. Thanks to a friendly ventriloquist who taught him what he needed to know he soon found himself as a magic pitch man.  But the bug hadn’t bit Erik yet and rather than magic it was stand-up comedy that Erik was drawn toward. That eventually led him to Humber College’s comedy program where he learned the business of comedy as well as the craft of sketch, clown, mime, dance, tv production, and comedy writing. It was here that he came to learn that performance is a craft as much as it is an art.  Good at Comedy but Great at Magic It’s ok to not be great at something you love. Erik was a good comedian but after years of trying to make his career break out his partner took him aside and pointed out that as good as he was at stand-up comedy he was great as a magician. Within a year after leaving stand-up comedy behind he had appeared on Penn & Teller: Fool Us, won the IBM, and landed a job at Penguin Magic producing their video content for magic demos.  Today he can be found hosting livestream events for Penguin’s Sunday livestream, the host of the Penguin Magic Podcast, and his own Suspicious Wizard channel. It’s Ok To Not Be Great At Something You Love Erik admits that he’d love to be a mentalist but is never going to be good at that. It’s ok to recognize that some people are just going to be better at some things than others. You can still enjoy doing that thing you love, even if you’re not good at it, as long as you’re not hurting yourself or those around you. Erik is also really bad at playing Fortnite, for example, but that hasn’t stopped him from streaming his example of terrible gameplay on his twitch channel. But finding that thing you are good at and honing in on that talent can be very rewarding, even if it’s not the first choice on your list. It took Erik years to come around to accepting magic performance as a legitimate choice for him and it meant leaving behind comedy, juggling, and accepting that he was never going to be a mentalist, no matter how many angora sweaters he buys. Wrap-Up Endless Chain Nick Locapo. He’s one of the best close up workers who doesn’t know he’s one of the best close up workers in the country.  What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? Erik likes the awareness and they are affected and a part of the culture and society around them. With the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements happening there are real growing pains that are important and as difficult as it has been for some to face in the mirror, it’s ultimately going to be a good thing. Erik does not like the inexorable passage of time. He regrets not approaching and talking to magic masters he almost met in the past and he knows that one day people that admire him won’t be able to approach him either. So seize the moment and talk to your heroes when you have the chance.  Plugs Erik Tait dot com Penguin Magic Podcast Penguin Magic Facebook Page (and home of the Sunday live stream) Sup1cious Wizard Gaming

This week Jonah breaks down all the basics you need to know about running ads on Facebook. These are the first things Jonah works with when consulting with other magicians to help them set up their Facebook ads.  Through the Toronto Magic Company, Jonah has sold out shows for years using Facebook ads and recently successfully sold two-hundred tickets to UnConventional.fun using Facebook ads. In this episode Jonah will walk you through exactly how to use Facebook ads for your next show.  The Almighty Facebook Pixel The Facebook pixel is a tiny piece of code that you put on all of the pages of the websites that you are using your Facebook ad to send people to. That code allows Facebook to understand what people are visiting your webpage. And later it will help you define rules for specific groups and demographics as you gather who is visiting your pages. In the future, if you want to up rules so that your ads target only the people who visited a specific page on your site but not other people who visited a different page the only way to do that is by using the Facebook pixel now before you start running traffic through the page. If you try to run ads on Facebook without the pixel it’s not going to be very good. And that’s because Facebook needs to be able to talk and listen to your site. It needs to know what people are going to your site and end up buying something, like a ticket for your next show, and what people are not. The Facebook pixel will help ensure that your ads actually work.  The Basics of Targeting  Jonah helps to break down what internal targeting is and the kinds of groups you can target with Facebook ads. As an example, UnConventional.fun was sold using pixeling and targeting only people that had been to the website, watched the video, or engaged with their social media page.    External targeting is much harder because you know the people who liked your page already but now you want to reach a new audience who has never visited your page before. External targeting takes more creativity and brainstorming to think of who might be interested in being introduced to your product. The Power of Testing The secret to Facebook ads is testing. Seeing what works and what doesn’t work. Once you define who you want to target you’ll need to go into your data and see what actually worked and what didn’t. After looking at the data stop doing ads for the targets that didn’t generate results and start doing more ads for the rules that worked.    Every aspect of your ad should be tested. The more you test the better it will work. Turn off the aspects that don’t work. Try at least three to five different images in the ads, see which ones engage with your targets and which ones don’t and lose the images that don’t perform. Same thing with text, try five different versions of the text and see which ones people engage with which ones people don’t and lose the ones that they don’t engage with. By testing, what ends up happening over time is you keep the things that work and you throw out the things that don’t and eventually the ad that you’re using over and over again is the best worded and best presented ad and best targeted ad that you can muster.  Book A Free Call With Jonah If you want to work with Jonah directly to get in depth about the specifics of your Facebook ads and what has worked well for Jonah, you can book a free fifteen minute call to talk about your virtual magic business and to see what’s working and what can be improved with your own marketing strategy.