I want to start performing magic commercially again – How?

Stuart wants to start performing magic commercially again, but worries that times have changed..

Stuart writes:

Dear Dominic, I thought I would take up your kind offer of seeking advice and ask this:

I used to perform regularly as a walk around, table magician but other factors (children, day job etc) got the better of me. Now my children are a touch older I want to get back to more general/ close-up work in order to generate more income from magic and also simply because I love performing this type of magic and would like to do more of it again.

So there’s the background, but my question would be if you can offer any tips on how to get back in? The world is a very different place to ten years ago when websites, showreels etc weren’t so important and it seemed all I had to do was walk into a place and show the boss a trick.

(Lastly, I’m 46 years old, still have most of my own teeth and can still muster the energy to do the leg work for chance bookings etc!) Many thanks in advance for your advice and your time.’

Hi Stuart

That’s great news that you are thinking of getting back into performing close-up magic.

You may think that the world of magic is very different from a decade ago, but it’s actually pretty much the same when it comes to working locally as a magician. Granted, there are a wave of magic enthusiasts performing and promoting themselves online, but that tends to be it’s own bubble, often aimed at fellow magicians, and is quite distinct from ‘real world’ commercial marketing for work. The core techniques for doing magic commercially remain the same.

Who’s following you?

I often get magicians coming to the magic shop and talking about how many followers, subscribers, or facebook friends they have, yet they complain that they don’t get many bookings from those channels. I usually ask them if they know the percentage of their online followers that are magicians, or magic enthusiasts, compared to how many of them are event planners, venue owners, industry service providers, etc. It’s usually the case that magicians tend to collect other magicians in their social networks, but that is the least valuable group from a marketing perspective!

It’s not how many people you reach.. it’s who those people are! The most important activity you can do to get more work is:

Meet people that make the decisions about entertainment for events!

This could be a restaurant owner, a venue events manager, or simply people planning a party or wedding. Having a high end website or a huge social media following is great, but it all depends on who visits your website or follows you.. magic fans/friends Vs. people that are actually looking to book a magician.

Stepping back into performing magic commercially again

For you, the first move is to brand your service as a close up performer so you can market your services again.

I’m assuming you already have a range of material to perform as you were working as you were performing magic commercially in the past, so it’s mainly the approach to getting gigs that you need to kick-start.

First step:

You need a website and magicians business cards dedicated to the market you want to service. A base for clients to contact you and find out about your services. You can set one up yourself easily ( www.weebly.com ) or have a designer build it for you.

Once you have a website and some business cards, you are ready to get out and start promoting your services.

Approach 1 : Performing magic in restaurants : It’s low paid, but will springboard you into other bookings and get you out performing. Find a busy restaurant area and visit a load of establishments. See if you can get a few to allow you to perform for one night free of charge per month, so they can see you performing, and appriciate the effect of the entertainment. In exchange, you can hand out business cards to hopefully get work from it. It’s a hard slog, but you should get some gigs from it, and can go from there.

Do this now: Go online and make a list of all the local restaurants in your area. Set a date to contact or visit each one to introduce yourself.

Approach 2 : Wedding exhibitions. Look at local wedding events going on in your area and book a table. You should get a few gigs out of it.

Do this now: Read my free ebook on how to do wedding exhibitions.

Approach 3: Market to venues and corporates: Visit local hotels and event venues to chat with the event planners.

Do this now: I would recommend that you read this excellent free ebook on marketing as a close up magician. It will give you a load of information and templates to start looking for work and getting gigs: One Minute Magic Business

Hope this helps

Dominic Reyes

Why People Don’t Remember Magicians Names

by Dominic Reyes Leave a Comment

By Dominic Reyes

Why Magicians Names Are So Hard to Remember

I recently read a post by professional magician Jon Armstrong, talking about something that happened to him after appearing on the TV show 'Fool Us with Penn and Teller'. John performed Tiny Plunger on the show and it went down really well.

Shortly afterwards, he was at a gig when a spectator asked:

"Have you seen those magicians on the Penn and Teller Show? We love that show, do you know the guy that did the trick with the little plunger?"

Jon took out a plunger from his pocket and showed it to the spectator, who then replied:

"Wow, you know that guy!"

Jon laughted this off, but it happens all the time to magicians. People see the magic and love it, but they fail to remember details about the performer, especially their name. How can magicians combat this?

Audiences failing to remember the performer happens to everyone. It's a symptom of Amygdala Activity in the brain. The Amygdala is associated with the successful encoding of events, But not the source information when a stimuli is emotional.

A magician shows someone something amazing and they freaked out. How often does that happen in the spectators experience? The next day, they remember what happened to them, but not the performer… It's how memory of events work. The 'details' being overshadowed by the more emotional significance of the events. The event doesn't even have to be that emotionally significant, just more meaningful than the performer. Entertainers that link themselves to the emotional event rather than present it, don't suffer from that as much. Look at Penn and Tellar or Copperfield. They are VERY good at using this to their advantage.

The same effect has been used for evil ends too. Years ago there was a man who attacked women in Oxford, England. He didn't use a disguise, but his victims could never remember details about him. The reason was he had written a very offensive swear word about what he intended to do to his victims, in large letters on his forehead. That's all his victims could recall about his face. The emotional stimuli blocked out all the other source information.

How to make magicians names easier to recall

If you use a backdrop, it's a good idea to have your name clearly on show. For walk around magicians, the key take home for performers is to hand out those business cards and bookend your act with your name. Paul Daniels told spectators to 'say yes Paul' often in his act for the same purpose.

Magicians Marketing Problems

by Dominic Reyes 1 Comment

By Dominic Reyes

Dear Dominic,
I am struggling with my marketing. I fail to put into action what I know are good strategies with regard to marketing myself as a magician. Apart from not being the most organised person in the world, I guess that deep down I don't really like marketing & admin. One thing I cannot or will not do is outsource or hire someone to do it for me – I think this would be uneconomic for me.
Regards,
John

Hi John,

Why not just practice and perform magic for fun just as a hobby? Do you really have the desire to perform as a working magician? It’s a lot of hard work, and will take up time you could spend having fun learning new tricks…

Most people just stick to that, and are very happy with their choice. However, if you definitely want to perform commercially, you HAVE to get involved in the business side of things and that involves magicians marketing.

You are going into business as a magician.

I’ve no quick and easy fix for you. You just have to DO IT or get someone to do it for you. If you are not happy to pass on control of your marketing to someone else, then you simply have no choice but to make a PLAN and put that into action.

It sounds like you already know plenty of actionable steps you can take to move your career as a magician forward. So what’s really stopping you?

Is it fear of failure?

Doing nothing guarantees failure. ANYTHING you do, other than sitting and wishing for something, takes you a step closer to your goals.

Is it because it’s no fun?

Playing with magic is fun. Paperwork and magicians marketing can’t compete. But it’s vital groundwork for creating opportunities to:

Perform and get paid for it!

There really isn’t a better way to make your living, than by doing something you would happily do for free anyway. Creating a business out of your magic is worth all the time it will take to build up your reputation, contacts, and client base.

Fear of Decisions

Designing a website, producing marketing material, creating a showreel, finding venues and clients all require decisions. Choice is hard work and scary. It’s always easier to find something else to do, that allows you to avoid committing to a decision. Learning new magic tricks, feels like progress, but if you spend all your time practicing, without doing the work required to market your services, you are practicing for something that isn’t going to happen. That’s a waste of time..

Worried about the cost of magicians marketing?

You don't need to pay an expensive agency to market for you, or shell out for an online service. Do you know someone locally who will help you market for a share of the fee's the work they bring in generates? If not, contact your local university and reach out to the business, marketing, and media departments. Put up a sign on the department notice boards. Would someone like to take you on as a really interesting project? It's good for their CV and you can offer them a percentage of the fee's the extra work brings in.

What to do:

Dreaming, hoping, and praying for something is useful, but it's main benifit is 'hope'. In the face of something that looks impossible, we need to dream or hope that it may be achievable or happen one day. The problem is that hoping doesn't make things happen all by itself. You need to define goals that you can work towards in small manageable steps to make big things happen.

Break up the tasks involved in your marketing into small actionable parts.
The goal can be seen as a ‘project', and the small steps involved in reaching that goal can be seen as ‘actions'.

Here’s an example:

Project:

Creating a magicians website.

Actions:

Look at other magicians websites and make a note of the best points of each.
Create a list of features you want on your website.
Look at design companies to create a website for you.
Create an email that describes the sort of website you would like, with images of design ideas.
Get quotes
Commission a designer to build your website.

The big scary project of designing a website is enough to put anyone off, but if it’s broken up into individual tasks, each one isn’t that scary.. You can do one action each day, working to complete the product over a set period of time.

Now just take the first action and DO IT. Then on to the next and so on until the project is completed.

Here’s another example:

Project:

Get a local residency as a magician.

Actions:

Make a list of local restaurants and venues using google
Call each venue to ask who is responsible for event planning
Create a short letter of introduction
Send out introduction letters to each of the venues
Call each venue to ask if they have received your introduction letter, and ask if you can meet the event planner.

The big ‘project’ is broken up into small, quick, and defined short actions that don’t require too much choice or thinking. You then take the first single action needed to move the project forward and that is you NEXT ACTION, do it and then move onto the next.

If all this sounds like too much hard work, then you need to find someone that will do it for you. It's an essential part of being a professional magician.

What advice would you give John? Leave a comment below: