Discourse in Magic

This week Jonah shares with you three tips on how to transform your five figure magic hustle into a six figure magic career. Twelve months ago, Jonah launched the Discourse in Magic six figure mastermind. Jonah launched the mastermind to help people grow their magic business from five to six figures. Now, he’s watching student after student hit the six figure mark. So in this short episode, he’s going to share with you the three biggest keys, the three biggest ideas and shifts of mindset that go from being a five figure magician to a six-figure magician Tip 1: Generate Leads  When you are starting to perform, the idea is, “where can I get a gig”? But once you get a handful of gigs, you start to realize that looking for gigs is only so good. What you really want to do is you want to look for leads. You want to look for where people might be inquiring with you. How do you do that? Well, instead of focusing on short term things like, messaging people or calling a friend, you start focusing on long-term things like SEO, referrals, running ads, email outreach, and hiring people to go and find leads for you. It’s a shift of mindset from saying, where do I find a gig to saying, how do I ensure that there are leads constantly going into my system. A shift from gig flow to lead flow.  Tip 2: Focus Your Sales When you’re getting into magic, you don’t want to say a price that’s so high that somebody says no. As a matter of fact, you want your price to be just low enough that they absolutely say yes. You want to perform? You need the photos, you need the testimonials, you need the videos, but to get from five figures to six figures, you can’t just charge the least amount you possibly can. You actually have to do the math and figure out how much you need to charge to actually make things work. You go from auditioning for your clients to them auditioning for you. You are the prize and they are hoping to get it. Tip 3: Systemization All this stuff feels like it takes 30 full-time jobs, but it doesn’t, it takes organization. It takes systematization. And it takes hiring talented people. A five figure magician can do every last bit of this alone. They can answer every email, send every inquiry, make all the graphics, make every video. You can do it alone, but a six-figure magician realizes that you don’t need to do every single last bit. You can hire people that are good at things and you can get software that makes things really easy for you. Now you can focus on what’s most important to you, performing.  You can go from scrambling to manage absolutely everything yourself to learning things like automation, systematization, and of course hiring and having a team of people so that you can rely on. This will help you take time off and focus on the things that you’re awesome at, which is performing magic.  Reach Out For More Help If you want a little bit more help going from five to six figures in your magic business in 2022, then send Jonah an e-mail with the word “Scale” to info@discourseinmagic.com and Jonah will send you all the info about working together in 2022. If you’re already doing five figures and you want to be doing six, send Jonah a message with the word “Scale”.

This week Ben Train fills in for Jonah and offers up some tips on what he is doing to overcome his fear of returning to the stage after so much time away. Exciting, Scary, Times These are exciting times. After a year and a half of being able to do nothing but virtual shows, the public spaces around us are opening up. With theatres reopening, Ben is about to return the stage, along with Jonah and friends, who are doing the show for 150 people. For the past year and a half, he’s been in his house, working on ideas and playing with tricks that he wanted to eventually do. And now he gets to do them! But he’s also scared. It’s scary to do new material, it’s scary to hop up on stage because anything can happen, including tricks going wrong or worse. Or worse, the trick goes right but nobody gives a shit. If you have been working on new material and you’re both excited to share it, but you’re also kind of nervous, Ben thought he would share some tips on what he did to work on the material that he is excited and scared to do. Step One: Pick One Trick The first step is pick some material you want to work on. We have almost unlimited access to material now with downloads and streaming and books and DVDs and everything. Find a book or a video or whatever source you want and narrow it down to three tricks and then pick one trick to focus on. If you really want to, you can do all three, but pick one trick to focus on and start by focusing on just the mechanical steps. Step Two: Focus On The Mechanical Don’t worry about the scripting, don’t worry about adding additional props or audience engagement, or what kickers you can put into it first, just get the minimal viable product, just the working mechanics of it, so you can start doing it without. If you rush ahead and start thinking about the presentation and you’re still awkward, you’re going to make the trick look no good. Spend some time working on the mechanics, getting a feel for the routine. Once you have the mechanics down, then you get to get to play with the scripts and the other stuff. Step Three: Rehearsal Rehearsal is different than practice because now you’re not focusing on the little details like stopping and going to analyze where your fingers are going. Now you’re going from start to finish using the script, going through the routine. If you can do that and feel comfortable and start to engage with the imaginary audience while you’re rehearsing, it will be a lot easier to go up on stage and do these because you’ve thought about how you’re going to talk to the audience and how you’re getting in and out of the routine. Step Four: Perform Once you’ve gone through all that, you’ve picked the material, you’ve gotten the mechanics down, then you’ve rehearsed the tricks, you’ll feel confident. And once you have that confidence, it’s a lot easier to go up on stage and do things. So go out there and perform the magic. One last thought from Ben, and it’s something he heard in a talk a few years ago from a designer of one of his favorite games, Magic: The Gathering. He said, “Stop worrying about evoking a negative reaction and focus on evoking a strong reaction.“

Jonah and Ben are back for one more time to talk about the fifth, and final, UnCoventional.fun virtual 8-bit magic convention. They’ve been to a hotel lobby, to the Magic Land amusement park, and even to space. Now they’re taking the final Unconventional.fun event to the prehistoric past. Thanks right, DINOSAURS. The next, and final, Unconventional.fun takes place on November 27th and 28th. What To Expect This UnConventional.fun has been reorganized by Ben to put jamming front and centre with more spaces set aside for attendees to jam with other attendees and for headliner guests to jam as well. With another roster of amazing guests, this is going to be a must attend event to wrap up this series of virtual conventions. What? Why Is This The Last One? Ben and Jonah will explain more about why this is the last Unconventional.fun convention in this episode. They had always intended to reflect and take stock of the events by November and looking back they’re confident that they’ve accomplished what they set out to do. When Unconventional.fun started we were all in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic that had us all stuck at our homes with no events to go to, which also provided an unprecedented opportunity to invite guests from around the world participate together in an event that could never have happened at any other time before. Now, as the world is returning to normal and in-person events resume, more and more would-be guests are no longer available to spend a weekend on their laptops as they are all, thankfully, busy and getting back to performing. So, reading the writing on the wall, Ben and Jonah have decided that this next Unconventional.fun on November 27th & 28th will be the last. Get Your Tickets Now! If you’ve never attended Unconventional.fun, don’t put it off. This is, literally, your last chance to go. You can still get your tickets at Unconventional.fun and we’ll see you there on November 27th & 28th in the prehistoric past.

This week Jonah connects with professor Richard Wiseman to discuss co-authoring his book with David Copperfield, debunking supernatural claims, and the ethical responsibilities that magicians have with their audiences. Go To The Library Richard’s introduction to magic was through his grandfather who, after performing a coin trick for him, told Richard to go to the library and find the answer to the magic himself. When Richard found the trick and taught himself he learned that his grandfather had been using a different method and had sent his grandson to the library to learn how the trick was properly performed.  Moral Responsibility Richard has a lot to say on the topic of the supernatural and it’s overlaps with the magic community and he believes that magicians do have a responsibility to call out other magicians who are faking being psychics and mediums when they are not trained counselors or psychotherapists. He shares an example of running a theatrical experience of a Victorian séance, and clearly stating the audience that this is a theatrical experience so as to leave no room for interpretation that this is not truly real. Because, as he states, people have their own beliefs about the after-life and a magician has no right to step on and exploit those beliefs. Evolution of Magic Richard shares his fascination with the evolution of magic. How there is no other artform that builds on itself and its history quite like magic does. In David Copperfield’s History of Magic, Richard worked to follow that thread from P.T. Selbit’s sawing a woman in half to David Copperfield’s Death Saw.  Wrap-Up What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? Richard does not like the fast-paced eye candy social media magic that is catching on. He finds it meaningless, without a narrative or a story. Richard likes anyone who can surprise him. Anything new that combines magic with other performing arts but don’t show Richard something he has seen before. Plugs Stay up to date with Richard on twitter at @RichardWiseman David Copperfield’s History of Magic published by Simon & Schuster Canada, and co-authored by Richard, is now available wherever books are sold, and covers the history of twenty-eight of the world’s most groundbreaking magicians. 

This week Jonah shares with you three tips to help you get better at booking gigs. Over the course of the last two years Jonah has helped about sixty magicians book virtual gigs and over the past few months he’s helped a couple dozen magicians to book real-world gigs. Jonah will walk you through the three biggest problems that magicians struggle with when booking gigs. #1. Missing Authority At first Jonah thought it would be good to market himself as an all purpose magician. But very quickly realized that if you are an everybody magician, if you are an all-purpose magician, like all purpose flour, then you’re a magician for nobody. Nobody’s going to go to your website and say, “oh my goodness, this person is perfect! They’ve done so many bookings, just like this”.  When looking at all of the successful magicians that Jonah knows, one thing that just became immediately clear is every single one of those magicians performs for one type of audience. What is the first big thing that people struggle with when they are booking gigs? That is missing authority. Overall,the way to really unlock getting bookings is not to try to be everyone’s magician, but to try to first pick a specific group.You want to figure out which group of people is the perfect group for you. #2. Sales Discomfort Not every single person is naturally inclined to say very high numbers and say risky numbers. And a lot of the times when Jonah speaks to magicians, they either don’t talk to their clients on the phone or they quote themselves for very low prices because they don’t want anyone to say no. What is the solution? You have to be really comfortable. How do you do that? You have got to know what you’re selling. You have to know the price that you’re selling it at, and you have to be confident about that. And you have to be able to sell it on the phone and know what to say and how to say it. And a system is the best way to do that. #3. Lack of Leads The truth is it is Show and Business. You have to be good at the show, but you also have to be good at the business. The big issue that magicians struggle with is not that they don’t have gigs coming in, it’s that they don’t have leads coming in. And what are the three easiest things that you can do right now to help you actually book some leads? Number one, peers and past clients, your very close friends, and people who you’ve maybe done volunteer or some paid gigs for in the past. Number two is social media, a great place to connect with people who love you and want to support you.  And number three is email outreach. There’s many different systems using software and data scraping to connect with your target market. Need More Help? If you are interested in working together, Jonah has a group starting this week to help magicians get 3k to 5k a month in magic gigs. It’s a 10 week program and it is starting next week. If you think that might be for you email info at discourse dot com and send Jonah an email with the word “gigs” as the subject line.  If you’re already at 3k to 5k a month, and you want to get up to six figures a year, then send Jonah the same email but with the word “scale” as a subject line.

This week Jonah connects with Jeff McBride to talk all about the theatre of magic, the phases that every magician might go through, and his thoughts on the growth of virtual magic shows. Jeff comes from an era of magic when there wasn’t street magic and social media but a strong emphasis on theatre. Combining his love of various forms of theatre and rock icons like David Bowie and Alice Cooper, Jeff’s on stage presence is a unique style that has left its impact on the magic world. Mystery School Jeff McBride’s Mystery School has been online and streaming every week for eleven years so when the world locked down during the pandemic Jeff was already in a unique position help fellow magicians and aspiring students to get set up in order to face the challenges of the year to come. Fitting The Virtual Screen Jeff is a master of stage magic, creating theatrical experiences, but social media magic has to fit into a small frame on a small screen. Adapting his theatrical background to virtual zoom shows hasn’t been without its challenges but Jeff has found online performance to be very rewarding and he believes that it’s here to stay, both in the corporate and public market, so Jeff has been shaping his performances to fit into the virtual screen.  Phases of Magic Jeff teaches classes on the styles of magic, what he calls the Trickster, Warlock, Oracle, and Sage stages. Each of these are the archetypes and different ways that people access information. Most of us get into magic because of the wonders of magic, the trickster stage. If one sticks with it and hones their communication and stagecraft they might end up with a career in magic, the warlock stage. Some people dive deep into the magic and examine the philosophy and psychology of magic, the oracle stage. Finally, the sage stage represents how most people interact with magic, not as performers but as collectors and lovers of magic. Plugs You can reach out to Jeff directly at jeff(at)mcbridemagic.com, and while it might take him a week to get back to you he does respond to every message.  If you’d like to learn more about the Magic Mystery School, visit magicalwisdom.com

This week Jonah connects with Giancarlo Bernini to talk all about his journey navigating the pandemic so soon after his major breakout in magic on Fool Us and his innovations in bringing magic to cryptocurrency NFTs. The Year That Wasn’t When Giancarlo graduated college and soon after appeared on Fool Us the rest of his year in 2019 skyrocketed with more bookings and more opportunities than he had ever had. And Before he could even get close to experiencing all that momentum’s full potential the pandemic hit and put a stop to all his plans. From that time he’s worked to reinvent his magic in the new virtual era, which has in turn encouraged him to develop new strategies into his live in-person shows.  Protecting The Ownership Of Magic While developing his own magic, Giancarlo has a particular interest in tackling the tricky problem of magic ownership. As you know, there’s really an easy or elegant way to patent a magic invention, or claim a copyright, or request royalties without eventually publishing your secrets in a way that can be easily accessed by the general public, if they know where to look. Working on that problem led Giancarlo to the current rise in the popularity of crypto currencies, block chains, and NFTs. He helps break down what all these means with Jonah and shares his solution that believes will allow future magicians to protect their intellectual property without also exposing their secrets to the world around them.  On The Road Again As the pandemic has waned and vaccine rates have risen, there’s a growing interest in audiences who want to return to attending live shows in person. But corporate events and other big booking shows that many magicians depend on are still mainly existing in a virtual space. So Giancarlo put his foot down and set in motion one of his bucket list life goals and embarked on his first national tour. How did he choose which cities to visit? And how does he find the venues to perform in? He shares with Jonah his entire strategy for booking and planning a national tour that continues to pick up steam and is lasting a lot longer than even Giancarlo thought it would. Wrap-Up Endless Chain Blaise Serra. He’s the best sleight of hand artist that Giancarlo has ever met. He also does incredible stage stuff, has an incredible eye for theatrical stuff, and has consulted for some incredible people.  What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? Giancarlo likes the intimacy that magic is becoming, especially with certain performances that are redefining what to expect at a magic show.  He doesn’t like to see magic clubs continue to dwindle and disappear and hopes that new and upcoming magicians will still be able to find mentors to learn under.   Plugs You can find more about Giancarlo Bernini at berninimagic.com As well as on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook all under @berninimagic  His tour continues all over the United States and he hopes to see you. You can find out more at berninimagic.com/tour  And be sure to message him if you’d like him to attend your city!

This week Jonah connects with Tyler Rabbit to talk all about his amazing work with coin magic and his thoughts on the suspension of disbelief and the rise of exposure videos. Tyler Rabbit is an incredibly talented coin magic performer, who has also performed at The Magic Castle. But it wasn’t always this way and this conversation Tyler shares with Jonah his love-hate relationship with magic and what pushed him to give up on magic entirely before returning seven years ago and starting fresh with a focus in coin magic. Performing With Limitations Tyler admits that coin magic has a well deserved reputation of having the smallest effort to pay-off ratio. You’re going to put in a lot of work and ultimately you’re not getting that much magical effect out of it compared to putting in the same level of effort into card magic.  That limitation and challenge is one of the reasons that Tyler is so attracted to coin magic. He shares with Jonah how he challenges himself to innovate with such heavy (and with coins that’s literally heavy) limitations. By focusing on making sure his sleights are in service to his concept and plot he’s discovered limitless possibilities for his routine. The Fake Exposure When Tyler is not innovating with coin magic he’s battling online content creators who expose magic secrets. And while he’s found some success in engaging in the comments section, including having some videos taken down, he’s found a more novel approach to both combat exposure culture and satiate his weird sense of humour.  On his Coin Magic Underground channel on Youtube he released a video entitled How To Vanish A Coin From A Spectator’s Hand, a fake exposure video that is the first step in a series of hidden clues and puzzles that will eventually, if the the person is dedicated enough, reward you a treasure trove of actual coin magic explanations. Tyler doesn’t actually hate exposing magic’s secrets, after all it was from a library book that he found that got him started in the first place, but he does believe that someone should put in the legwork if they want to learn the tricks of the trade. Wrap-Up Endless Chain Jackson “Jax” Ridd is one of Tyler’s closest friends and one of the minds behind Four Suits Magic. Cydney Kaplan is an up and coming magician performing at the Magic Castle right now.  Mokoto is wise beyond his years and is primarily known for his coinistry and street magic. What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? Tyler likes all the new stuff, including cardistry. He thinks cardistry is awesome and they go really well with card magic. He also loves that it’s flying in the face of the male stoicism that persists in magic circles. Tyler is not crazy about exposure videos and tutorial videos. He also personally doesn’t like doing Zoom shows. He recognizes that there is amazing work being done there but doing magic live on video just doesn’t do it for him.  Plugs The Coin Magic Underground YouTube Channel You can follow Tyler on Instagram at @tylerrabs

This week Jonah connects with Colin McLeod to talk about his return to his live show at the Mirage in Vegas. Together they talk about his journey from comedy to magic, and the very different goals they each have with the audience, and his thoughts on making sure that his brand of mentalism is being presented to the audience in an entertaining but also ethical way. Comedy vs Magic Colin shares with us how his pursuit of magic and mentalism came after his pursuit of comedy. It was the deceptive quality of magic that turned him away and instead he was drawn to the world of comedy because of its ability to connect to apparent truths. Because of this comedy background, everything Colin does is done with the framework of connecting with the audience and impacting them in some way. He would rather use his performances using magic and mentalism as a bridge rather than a barrier. The result is his performances are very interactive and focus on Colin presenting himself as an authentic real self rather than the mysterious god-like magician that an audience might not be able to relate to. The Real Connection When audiences buy into you they then will buy into what it is you are doing. Colin breaks down how his Sherlock Holmes character builds those bridges. The character that will work for you most, according to Colin, is the one you enjoy being most. It will be a version of you that accentuates and highlights aspects of your character that will then further accentuate highlights of your magic. Being the Best You Can Be Very early on Colin made a list of the things he wanted to accomplish. The people he wanted to work with, the stages he wanted to perform, and so on. Having that list gave him the goals to aim towards and pushed him towards being the best he could be in those areas. What Colin really wants to see is other magicians pushing themselves and being the best that they can be in all of their weird and wonderful ways. Wrap-Up Endless Chain David Gerard, the smartest person that Colin knows. He’s been the co-writer and director of every live show and major TV appearance that Colin has done. What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? What Colin likes is also what he dislikes. Which is that a lot of great ideas have come out during the pandemic but the flip side of that is a lot of those great ideas have since been stolen by others, which is a real double edged sword.  Colin loves being in Vegas and being spoiled by all the amazing magic shows. Plugs Colin releases a lot of magic through Theory 11  You can also visit his personal site at psych-artist.com  But you should absolutely be safe and visit Las Vegas to see his live show, Limitless, with Shin Lim at the Mirage.

This week Jonah has advice to help you succeed during the most important time of the year for a professional magician. This month, and the next three months, are very important months for your magic business. September, October, November, and December are ridiculously important months for your magic business. The Most Important People To Reach Out To So aside from doing everything with your marketing to find new people Jonah recommends three groups of people that you may have forgotten about and to go reach out and say hello.These groups are people who are very likely to say yes. The three groups are your Yeses, your Nos, and your Maybes.  If you have been in magic for any amount of time, you’ve had a lot of bookings come through inquiries. You’ve had lots of bookings that will work and not work. And this right now is a really good time to collect the list of everyone you’ve ever done a paid booking for and everybody who’s ever said, “no” and everybody who’s ever said, “maybe”. That list of people is a list of people who already know, like, and trust you. And it’s a list that is going to get you a whole lot of movement this time of year, because it’s very likely that if they put on an event last year, around this time, they may be looking to put on an event this year, around this time. You should be reaching out to them right now. Need More Help? If you need help reaching out to your past clients, if you need help converting past relationships into new bookings or finding new bookings then email info@discourseandmagic.com with the subject line “gigs”. Jonah will tell you about the program he’s doing right now to help you get some gigs right now, a program to help magicians get from $3,000 to $5,000 a month in virtual or in-person magic income. So if you need some help booking gigs, whether it’s for the first time to get to the scale of $3,000 to $5,000, or if you’re just trying to return there, or you want some help with your past clients or with your marketing material, then email Jonah info@discourseinmagic.com with the word “gigs” in the title.