Discourse in Magic

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  The post Adapting for Virtual With Jon Armstrong appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

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 The post Defining Magic for Yourself with Erik Tait appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

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. The post Magical Appetizer #18: Facebook Ads appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

Recorded live during UnConventional.fun, Jonah hosts a virtual panel on hosting virtual shows. Joining the panel is David Parr, Ben Seidman, Haim Goldenberg, and Adrian Lacroix. Together they discuss the good side and the bad side of hosting virtual shows, how to develop your virtual show business, and tips and tricks they’ve learned along the way as the entire magic performing world has had to adjust to the new normal. Virtual Shows Require Innovation On one hand you get to work from home but on the other hand you get to work from home and that can be both a blessing and a curse when you never get to leave your home. From the lack of audience reaction, to staring at computer screens for extended periods of time, there’s a lot of work that goes into making a virtual show work. Virtual shows also present unique advantages like working inside the frame, when you’re hosting a virtual show you can have the frame of your camera work to aid you allowing you to perform moves that would be impossible on a stage in-person.  Hosting virtual shows requires that you have to write an entirely new show for the medium. This is a great time to create new magic. Everything is still new and there’s lots of room still to innovate how virtual shows are hosted and presented.  Building New Tools How do you connect with people across the screen? You have to get used to talking to a camera like it’s a person, the lens is your intimate connection to your audience and it will take practice to build the skill to make eye contact with your audience through this medium. David points out that sincerity is part of the engine that makes this function. Many of the skills used in television specials will be the same skills used in virtual shows. Engaging with people on a human level and being in the moment is critical. You don’t want your show to be a passive experience, where they can sit back and lose interest in what’s happening. Treat your shows like a live television show, pay attention to your lighting and your environment. Starting out, it might be ok to make it look like you’re live in your home but Haim suggests that this time is passing and having a professional looking studio is becoming the expectation. Is It Worth The Effort? Virtual Shows are not the same as in-person shows but they are also not the same as a TV special. If you keep comparing virtual shows to in-person performances you may be setting yourself up to defeat yourself. The only way to discover the strengths and weaknesses of virtual shows is to take the plunge. You might just start with a laptop and the built in camera and microphone but if you’re anything like Ben you’ll find solutions to lighting and camera rigging to build innovative environments that work for your show and your needs.  Choose To Do Something If you are presented with two possibilities between do nothing and do something, why would you choose to do nothing? Every single person presenting shows right now is having to innovate and face the challenge of virtual shows. You might be worried at first but once you get some road time you’ll build your experience and your confidence to be able to show your clients how good of a show you can produce for them.  Links David Parr – Curious excursions into magic and mystery, myth and history Ben Seidman – Magician, Comedian, Pickpocket Haim Goldenberg – Real Life Mentalist The Mental Magic of Adrian Lacroix The post UnConventional.fun’s Virtual Show Panel appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

Jonah was invited to the Better Business with Magic podcast, to join host Nolan Webster to discuss the intersections of math and magic and how they can work for anyone who wants to improve their business skills. Math and Magic Math helps you in many ways and for Jonah it was all about helping with problem solving. Math has a creative nature and requires ingenuity and problem solving to come to a solution. In math you have to define your terms and plan how you will problem solve. In magic you really have to understand how to define everything that’s happening. To pull off something you need to be able to begin with the end in mind and a background in math helps build those skills. Iterate Again  As a magician you go on stage and do the performance and keep doing it over and over and over. After a year you’ll begin to notice that the same things will happen again over and over and over whenever you interact with the audience. Eventually you’ll be able to predict what the most likely outcomes are in seemingly random moments which you can use to figure out your best joke or your best strategy. The same thing applies to business. After enough iterations you’ll see what sticks and what doesn’t for your product. The post Better Business with Magic Podcast appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

This week Jonah talks about how to break into the virtual magic business. The virtual magic business is an important new wave with lots of money in it. If you’ve been listening since the pandemic hit you’ve heard Jonah get slowly more and more excited about virtual magic. In this short episode Jonah will tell you everything you need to know to launch your virtual magic business.   The Catch 22 Paradox If you’re interested in virtual magic shows you know that there’s a paradox when you’re trying to book shows. In order to book shows you need proof that you’ve done virtual magic shows. But in order to book your first show you need to show proof that you’ve done a virtual magic show before. So how do you show proof that you can run a virtual magic show even if you’ve never done one? Jonah will share the same strategies he’s used to fix this paradox that he’s used to get into the summer camp industry, the school business, and to start booking venues.  Start Booking Shows Once you’ve overcome the first hurdle and have the proof that you need it’s time to start booking your shows at low to medium prices so that you can build up real testimonials and real photos and videos. Make sure you record everything, keep screenshots, and collect your testimonials.  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 see what it would be like to work together. And of course don’t forget about Unconventional.fun, it’s the most exciting project that Jonah has ever started. A one day virtual magic convention that takes place in an 8-bit world. It’s happening on September 27th, 9am to 10pm EST, and Jonah would love for you to be there! The post Magical Appetizer #17: Getting Into The Virtual Biz appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

UnConventional.Fun Jonah is joined by business partner and co-founder of the Toronto Magic Company, Ben Train, to discuss the details surrounding their upcoming virtual magic convention, UnConventional.fun! They also share stories about their past experiences with magic conventions and how vital it has been to both of their own personal journeys as magicians. What is UnConventional.Fun? Jonah and Ben have been running virtual events for most of 2020 and have really missed the unique connections and experiences that can only be found at magic conventions. So they got thinking about all the performers they’ve worked with in the past, and all the performers they wished they could work with but were separated by distance and conflicting schedules and figured out a way to replicate the magic convention in a virtual space. Unlike other virtual convention experiences, the attendees at UnConventional.fun will create an 8-bit character to represent them as they move around the convention like a video game. As they approach other attendees and guests their webcams will fade up on the screen and allow them to meet and interact with them face to face. This means you can visit a table where a demonstration is happening, or hangout at the virtual bar, or go to a room where a lecture is being held, or just mingle around in the jamming space with other magicians who are in attendance. Jonah and Ben have custom built the magic convention of their dreams, pixel-by-pixel. It promises to be thirteen hours of magic programming unlike anything you’ve ever been a part of. Growing Up With Magic Conventions Magic conventions have been an important part of both Jonah and Ben’s lives going back to their childhood. Jonah was spoiled by going to Magic Camp every summer, a week long magic convention, but it was after university that he began visiting more conventions more frequently. His favourite memory is visiting John Luka’s Motor City Close-Up Magic Convention and constantly jamming with amazing magicians. Replicating The Magic of Magic Conventions For Ben, his favourite parts of the magic convention are the gala shows and the hanging out and jamming in the lobby. This is why it was so important UnConventional.fun was more than just logging into Zoom. He needed an awesome convention where people could set up in the lobby and jam and tables between lectures and get to experience the magic convention magic that’s so important to him.  Limited Space Available Tickets are limited to only 300 attendees so visit UnConventional.fun right now to find out how to get involved and join in on the fun on September 27th from 9am to 10pm (EST) The post UnConventional.fun appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

Jonah was invited to the Preconceived Podcast to talk about magic and understanding the craft and business of magic. This episode is a selection of that conversation that Jonah had with Preconceived host Zale Mednick. Check out the Preconceived Podcast for the complete interview. It’s a fun conversation with a magic layperson and a rare chance to hear Jonah talk about the introductory philosophies of magic in the magic communities. Magic Is Closer To Cooking Than Comedy In stand up comedy no two acts are the same. But in magic you can go and purchase a trick at your local magic shop and you will end up performing a trick that others have seen before. Instead consider that you’re cooking chicken soup. Lots of restaurants make chicken soup but you’re the only chef who makes your chicken soup. Just because your trick is the same as another performer doesn’t mean it can’t be unique.  Is It Cheating? Or Is It Magic?  It’s very hard to say that you only perform a magic trick a certain way before it becomes cheating. Sure there are some practices that are frowned upon, like planting stooges in the audience, but at the end of the day the most important takeaway for your audience is that for one moment they couldn’t look up the answer and they were confronted by something they couldn’t explain. It doesn’t matter how the magician has created that environment, and yes the method might involve being a cheater, but where do you draw the line? If your audience knows it’s not true but feels like it’s true then you’re doing something right. It’s Important To Know It’s An Illusion That said, some magicians do believe it’s important, especially in the hard to believe it’s true but it feels like it’s true styles of mentalism, to offer a disclaimer at the start of their show that what you are about to see isn’t real even if it feels like it is. Having someone like a lawyer actually believe that it’s possible to read someone’s mind could become really problematic and even when you’re creating a space for someone to experience the rug of reality being ripped out from under them in a safe and controlled environment it may also be important to remind the audience that nothing you do is, in fact, reality. The post Preconceived Podcast appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

Jonah is joined by Ken Weber to discuss his revised and expanded Maximum Entertainment 2.0. Ken Weber is a renowned mentalist and hypnotist who was named “one of the most frequently requested” performers on the college circuit by Newsweek magazine and was awarded the Dunninger Award for Excellence in the Performance of Mentalism by the Psychic Entertainers Association. Now, having almost completely retired, Ken Weber is a sought-after mentor and performance consultant, author of the acclaimed book Maximum Entertainment and Maximum Entertainment 2.0.  “Hey Kid, You Like Magic?” At the age of 10, Ken lived at a home for asthmatic children in Denver, Colorado. A chance encounter while walking the streets of Denver would land him in a teen magic club. By age 12 he had returned to New York with his business card ready. By the time he was in college he was a mentalist and after graduating and unable to find a job, despite two university degrees in theatre, he accepted a two week gig working on a cruise and from that point on he never looked back.  Magic and Money Ken has two hobbies. Magic and investing. In the late 1980’s Ken started up a newsletter to help other people avoid being taken advantage of by stock brokers, which led to him doing a good deed here and helping someone out there and one thing led to another and Weber Asset Management was formed. Now he advocates for the rainy day fund, especially among performers. At a time when he’s advising clients to have money saved away for the changes happening in the world he can see how many performers are not prepared for the hard times ahead.   There’s a lot of mistakes beginners make and Ken’s advice is to focus on the business and not rely on spending every dollar made on tricks and new products. Polish what you have and don’t kill yourself trying new material over and over.  Have You Heard It Before? Don’t Use It!  From music to jokes to phrases every performer has used the same lines or the same songs from other acts. Ken’s advice is to never use a line you hear another performer use. It takes away your creativity, instead ask yourself how you can get the same joke without using the exact same words. Ken’s warning is that eventually you’re going to work with agents and bookers and if they see you performing the same tricks with the same phrases to the same music then that is not going to help you. Classics are fun but Ken thinks you should make your own classics.  To Script or Not to Script For a long time Ken was a non scripter but he noticed that as soon as he began to write things down it forced him to ask himself if he really needed to say what he was saying or say it in that way. Now Ken is a strong believer in scripting everything you do and recording as often as you can. A script helps you identify when things aren’t clear and improve on the details of your performance in a way that adlibbing everything all the time simply can not achieve. Additionally, When it’s time to edit your videos, hire someone from outside your magic circles and let them bring their dispassionate objectivity to the editing and help you direct your videos without your ego getting in the way.  Wrap-Up Endless Chain Harrison Greenbaum (note: we’ve already talked with him in “A Masterclass in Comedy Magic with Harrison Greenbaum”) What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? The level of magic and commitment is astonishing. And it’s gratifying to see the ingenuity and skill levels even among very young performers. But Ken does not like the advertising in magic. Every trick is “The Greatest Trick Ever” yet many of them are just tweaks on classics. The worst is when the advertisement is edited in such a way that you can’t see that you would have been able to see how it’s done if you had seen it performed in a magic shop.  Take home point Every day ask yourself, “what did I do today to move my career forward?” whether it be marketing stuff, learning a new routine, perfecting a routine, or taping something and then looking at it later but every day you have ask yourself what did you do? For the professional, Ken used to advocate that you have a three month rainy day fund but now that we know that there is such a thing as a pandemic Ken wants all of his professional show business friends to have six to twelve months socked away in a bank account. Investment is important, not just because of a pandemic but because you can also literally break a leg! You have got to have that rainy day fund and you have got to build it up as soon as possible because you never know what tomorrow is going to bring.  Plugs Maximum Entertainment 2.0 can be found in every major magic dealer. You can learn more about it at max-ent.info. The post Maximum Entertainment 2.0 with Ken Weber appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

This week Jonah talks about one of his favourite obsessions, virtual magic shows. How do you sell a virtual magic show? What are the factors that are really enticing for someone looking to book a virtual magic show? And what are some of the factors working against you? Key Strategies Jonah will go over his key strategies and break down the specific things he does when booking a virtual magic show (hint: it’s the same strategies he’s been using for years to book in person shows) and then follow up with a demo sales call. What You’ll Learn After this short lesson you’ll learn why it’s so important to Be Wonderful, to Listen, to Crush Any Fears, to Problem Solve against what you’ve heard, and to never forget the Flying Monkey Principle! Wait, You Have A Flying Monkey? Looking to learn more about what Jonah touched on this episode? Sign up for Jonah’s free webinar on August 26th at 8pm EST where he’ll show you his exact strategies for pricing virtual shows to maximize income The post Magical Appetizer #16: How To Sell a Virtual Show appeared first on Discourse in Magic.