Until you become a famed magician...

This one is for the newbies.

Let’s suppose you’re just starting out. You’ve never even done a card trick before. How do you slap together a show ASAP so that you can get off the ground and start making money in the shortest amount of time?

You don't need to be Lance Burton or Gregg Frewin in order to be a well-paid professional magician.

In order to be a full-time pro, you just need 45 minutes of solid material. It has to be fresh, captivating, well-rehearsed, visual, reliable and commercially attractive.

Guys like David Copperfield spend millions on their shows. They hire the best experts in the business to design original, never-before-seen illusions that blow their audiences away. This is an expensive process that takes a lot of work. In the end, nobody knows if the market will appreciate the end-product.

Creation of new material is a long process that required a lot of trial and error. But the big names will take these risks in the name of art.

Thankfully, there is an easier way.

Fact is, people don't like new things. Given the choice, they usually prefer the familiar. They just want to see the same things over and over. And originality is actually a turn-off. Don't believe me? Just open the newspaper and look at the top 3 movies out right now. It's always the same series of clichés.

People like to buy things that feel familiar. They don't want to think.

The average consumer couldn't care less about Houdin's orange tree, or the see-through cups and balls, or whatever super-advanced one-handed triple false cut pass card move you can do. Your customers don't want to see art. They want the same stuff you've seen a thousand times. So just give them what they want.

• Cups and balls
• Chair suspension
• Cut and restored rope
• Linking Rings
• Card to pocket
• Zombie
• Spring snakes in a can
• Break-away wand

The more overplayed the better.

Find simple, adaptable routines and rehearse them to perfection. 20% of your time goes into memorizing and practicing the routine. The other 80% should be spent on rehearsal. (We've already gone over this in a different post)

And keep it clean. Make the jokes super-corny. (Think Bob Saget) No politics, sex or religion. Avoid effects that involve fire, knives or anything else kids might want to imitate.

So now I can hear the moaning. "I want to become a famed magician, and this guy's telling me to do the same tricks as everyone else. I don't want a boring act. I want to be original."

There's nothing wrong with originality. That's art. I love art. Art is my reason for living.

But that's the hard way to make money. When it comes to cash, I like to take the proven easy road. And that’s what this blog is about.

When someone asks about your show, you should be able to just say "cups and balls, bunny from a hat, linking rings". You don't want to be stuck giving a 2 hour explanation about some brass tube with different colored disks. Nobody cases. Keep it simple and easy to communicate.

Of course, famous performers have it easy. When someone asks Chriss Angel about his show, he just say "I do that stuff from TV." He can do that because he’s already become a famed magician.

Since nobody knows your name, you don't have that luxury... yet.

Penn and Teller, David Copperfield. These guys already have established reputations. They already come with built-in credibility. They can afford to be different ant take risks. Nobody pays to "watch a magician produce a tiger from thin air". Instead, they pay to "watch Siegfried and Roy ". But it's very difficult to do this without an established brand and a strong marketing team.

Thankfully, all of these repetitive effects already have established reputations of their own. And you can piggy-back on their fame in order to make easier sales. Best of all, these overplayed effects are usually very portable, reliable, adaptable and easy to perform. That's why everyone does them.

And unlike magicians, laypeople don't care how technically difficult your act is.

Remember, most people have seen fewer than 10 live magic shows in their whole lives. So anything you do will seem imaginative. If you need to make a bunny appear, do it in the safest, easiest and most reliable way possible. Nobody will know the difference.

So to summarize...

You're not a performer. You're a businessperson. It's not about you or the magic. It's about the service you provide and the problems you solve for your customers.

You can build an entire career by sticking to the established meat-and-potato routines.

As you develop your character, and you can add your own stuff. Just make sure to rehearse and put out a quality product.

So give them what they want, and you’ll become a famed magician.

Keyword: become a famed magician