Discourse in Magic

This week Jonah connects with John Graham who has just released his new book, “Stage by Stage”, which is all about transitioning to stage magic. Jonah goes behind the scenes with John and asks him every question he has about stage magic. The Magic Shop Of Solitude John was fortunate enough to grow up in Pennsylvania where Mel’s Magic City, which is still open today, was his place of solitude. The owner had the shop almost as a hobby so John would spend many weekends there by himself learning all he could and meet anyone he could meet who wanted to talk about magic. Even as a teenager he knew he loved magic and he saw lots of people who loved magic but also had other jobs and couldn’t devote more time to developing their own magic.This seemed like a travesty to John that they would only have a few hours in the day to work with their magic. That’s when John decided to make magic his career so that he could work on magic all the time.    Transitioning To The Stage John had been doing close up magic his whole life until he was 25 when he decided to do his first stage show. And it was hard. He made some disastrous routines that performed terribly. But all those trials helped him get better as he learned from them.  One example he shares with Jonah is a Sands of the Desert routine. He thought he had a great idea to change up the effect where he would have more than loadable and while he was pouring water from one hand he’d be filling water up with the other… the only problem is this process took forever and the routine went on and on and on and on. John could see him losing the interest of the audience and even when the effect happens it wouldn’t matter because it took so long to get there. He learned from that experience that you have to trust your material and you have to work on it and be realistic as you’re working on it, so that when you’re doing it on stage you can trust what you know and you can trust what you’ve rehearsed and do it the way you’ve planned so you don’t doubt yourself in the moment. The Opening and The Closing John and Jonah also break down the process of finding a good opening and how to develop a memorable closing.  For opening, John recommends one of his favourite effects. The Nielsen Bottle Vanish. It’s quick, it’s easy, it doesn’t require special clothing, and if you happen to arrive at your venue or event space and the set up is not as you were expecting you can still open with this effect and calm your nerves with a really effective trick that will jump you right into your show. For closings, John suggests that you say something at the beginning of your show, almost as a question. Something for the audience to ponder. Then, later, do your closing effect and the audience claps and they take their seats and when you’re thanking them you recap your show a little bit and go back to that question you asked and then reveal an answer or an opinion about it. Now that becomes your closer. So your closer is not necessarily an effect. There might be an effect but there is a closing that happens after it.       Wrap-Up Endless Chain Asi Wind, even though he’s already been on the show. He’s got his new book out “Before We Begin” and always has something new to talk about. What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? John loves that more things are coming out for magicians where people are giving away their actual working routines and working acts because there is still so much work to be done. There’s a lot there if you’re ready to absorb it.  John does not like that there is a rush to judgement. It’s too easy to put a product down by people who have never really seen it or worked with it. Plugs John’s new book, “Stage by Stage”, is published by Vanishing Inc and is now available.  John’s website is JohnMagic.com and John’s instagram is @thejohngraham The post Transitioning To Stage Magic with John Graham appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

This week Jonah reveals to you what the best tool you can use to help grow your magic business. And it’s something you already own…   The tool that Jonah is talking about is the video recording app on your smart phone.Videoing your performances is the best thing you can do for your magic. If you have video footage of your performance, you can edit it and clip it out. You can find great moments and make promo videos. You can share your videos with your clients and you can post them on social media. The Highlight Reel You can attract the right people to your brand by just sharing the highlights of what you do. Proof of what you do is what every single client is actually looking for to have the conviction that they need to hire you for their events. So if you’re having trouble getting clients to pay you what you want, what you deserve, or even hire you for the events that you know you’re great at, then having some incredible video footage of that event is phenomenally useful.  Watch Your Footage There’s another thing you can do with your recordings and this is the thing that makes your magic better and that is watching it back. The only thing that is as good at making your magic better than performing for live audiences is watching back on footage of your performances for a live audience. The person who knows what your magic needs the most is you. The person who knows what you did wrong, what you did right, and what you need to do better, is you. A lot of the time, we avoid doing the things we need to do. Just watch the video of your performance and look at it. Sometimes it hurts, especially if you’re early in this. It hurts to watch the performance, especially if it doesn’t go the way that you want it to, but watch it, take notes, and be your own director. Even if you’re entertaining at the highest level, if you are hiring coaches and magic consultants to help make your magic better, the last thing that you want is to show them a video of your performance and have them tell you what you already know but you did not implement because you didn’t watch back the footage and see. So across the board, whether for your business growth or for your actual entertainment, the number one tool that you should be using all the time is the video recording app on your phone. We hope you learned something from this episode. And if you’re busy this December, we hope this was a little tiny reminder for you to record some of your performances, especially if you don’t have a great promo video. The post Magic Appetizer: The Best Magic Business Tool You Already Own appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

This week Jonah shares with you his top three picks for magic theory books that will make the biggest impact on your magic. The reason why this podcast even exists in the first place is because of magic theory books. This podcast is Jonah’s fight against the world of magic to help there be more resources about theory, about opinions, about ideas, and the way that things should and could be performed. Most importantly there are thoughts about how to structure a show, how to perform, how to say things, how to practice saying things, how to get a script from your idea to the paper and to the actual real world. There’s not that many resources to help us with all of those things. So these are Jonah’s top three favorite magic books about theory. The ones that he thinks would help make the biggest changes to your performance. Magic theory is all about figuring out how to perform and how to perform well. So in this episode, Jonah talks about his three top recommendations for magic theory books that are going to change the game for you and your magic Book One: Magic in Mind This first book is the broadest resource with the most options, the most authors, the most ideas, and it’s all free. This is the best resource on the planet. It is an e-book by Vanishing Ink called Magic in Mind. The author, Joshua Jay, has gathered and got permission from the most incredible magicians to take their top essays and their top ideas from their world famous books about magic theory and put it all together in one free e-book. Magic in Mind is an absolute buffet of magic theory. When you read it, it’s going to shake up what you think, because these are the most impactful essays. Don’t read the whole book like it’s a novel, read one essay at a time and try to internalize how a paragraph or how a chapter or how an essay really applies to your magic. If you start here and you don’t listen to anything else on the podcast, then this will be the beginning of an incredible magic theory rabbit hole that you’re going to love. Book Two: Designing Miracles This book is Jonah’s absolute favorite. When new magicians start learning magic, they want to start creating magic. And if you’ve ever seen somebody show you a trick, sometimes that trick doesn’t make any sense. There are rules to the world of magic and if you make something vanish and appear, when do you have to show it? And when should you not show it? If something is disappearing from one place and appearing to another, can those objects go close together or not? And Jonah can tell if a new mind to magic isn’t following these rules and it’s obvious that they haven’t read Designing Miracles yet. Designing Miracles by Darwin Ortiz is an absolutely incredible book and completely opposite to Magic in Mind. This is not a buffet. It’s almost a textbook about a very specific subject. This is the only magic theory book that is fully about structure. This is a book that is about the different rules of magic. If you like creating, making things, making tricks, or bringing ideas into the real world then this is a must read.  Book Three: The Magic Rainbow This may be the biggest magic theory book ever. And that is a Testament to how much brilliance is packed in it. This is Jonah’s favorite magic theory book of all time. The Magic Rainbow is an incredible book. It is well-researched and is filled with lessons about every style of magic and every situation. It’s about arranging routines, putting them in the right order in your show. It’s about performing, practicing, and scripting. It is about the pure love of the art of magic and the pure love of theory. Every question that comes to mind, it feels like the answer is in that book and it is huge because it’s packed full of brilliant knowledge.  Get In Touch If you go and check out one of these books and if one of these is new to you and you had never heard of them, send Jonah a message. He would love to know if you liked them and if you learned something. What would you recommend to him? Maybe there’s a favourite book that he’s never heard of that he should check out, he would love to know.  You can e-mail Jonah at info@discourseinmagic.com Links Magic in Mind – Joshua Jay https://www.vanishingincmagic.com/ebooks/magic-in-mind/ Designing Miracles – Darwin Ortiz https://www.vanishingincmagic.com/magic-theory/designing-miracles/ The Magic Rainbow – Stephen Minch and Juan Tamariz https://www.vanishingincmagic.com/magic-theory/tamariz-magic-rainbow/ The post Magic Appetizer: Top 3 Magic Theory Books appeared first on 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”. The post Magic Appetizer: Grow Your Magic Business From Five To Six Figures appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

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.“ The post Preparing For Your Magic Comeback with Ben Train appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

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. The post Magic Appetizer: Unconventional.fun 5 appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

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.  The post The History of Magic with Professor Richard Wiseman appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

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. The post Magic Appetizer: Getting Gigs appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

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 The post Teaching Magic Theatre with Jeff McBride appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

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! The post Reinventing Your Magic with Giancarlo Bernini appeared first on Discourse in Magic.