Business Cards: Part 1

Let’s take a quick look at the most common way that magicians promote themselves. The business card.

I’ve taken an examples from the magic business card museum. I strongly recommend that you take a look at this site for more concepts.

The average business card looks like the one above. There are some points that I feel could be improved:

• “A show for every budget” This is terrible. It sounds desperate and makes you look amateur and inexperienced. We’ll get into this more in a later issue. But for now, I’ll just pose the following scenario to you.
  
  Let’s suppose there are 2 identical used car companies. One has the slogan “We stand behind the reliability of our cars”, and the other’s slogan is “Lowest price, no matter what we have to do”. Asan average consumer, where would you rather shop?
  
  


• “A legend in his own mind” Alright, I understand what’s going on here. The card is too formal for this sort of approach. This would be better with a card that establishes the magician’s character. But right now, there are too many confusing messages. Here’s an example of a card that works in this style.
  
• The card fan logo. Every magician in the world uses either a top-hat, or a fan of cards as a logo. If you put this card in a stack of other magic business cards, you couldn’t tell it apart. It would just get lost in the generic clutter.
  
  Although this is a custom logo, I suspect it’s homemade. For just $99, he could’ve hired an online company to redesign his logo and put together something that really expresses his individual style. This investment would pay for itself in just one show.
  
  


• The address and phone number line. This is ok too confusing. The address comes before the phone number. In my entire career, I’ve NEVER had a customer send me mail when they already had access to my e-mail and phone number. Get rid of the address line. There’s simply no reason for it to be there.
  
  Now that we have some empty space, I would replace it with a call-to-action. Tell them exactly what to do. Odds are, your customers have never hired a magician before. They’re really confused. They don’t know how to buy, or what questions to ask. Part of your job is to guide them through this process. Try something along the lines of “For customer testimonials, call 555-555-5555 or email ppp@pppp.com” or “To book your event, call 555-555-5555 or email ppp@pppp.com”
  
  


• Magician MICHAEL WINTERS. In any area of life, a specialist will always beat a generalist. Let’s assume you had a heart problem. Would you rather see a heart surgeon or a general practitioner? Your customers are the same way. They’ll take your business card because they have a birthday party coming up. Then, they’ll shop around for performers until they find one that specializes in children’s birthday parties. (And this specialist will usually be more expensive)
  
  Now I'm being controversial. Yes, I know it sounds counter-intuitive. I’ll explain this in more detail in another post. You’ll just have to trust me for now.
  
  


• Assuming this guy mainly does birthday parties, I would change “Tailored to your group needs” to “A fun birthday party they’ll remember forever”. And I would change “Magician Michael Winters” to “Birthday Magician Michael Winters”

So in summary, here are the changes I’d recommend for this card:

• Change “Tailored to your group needs” to “A fun birthday party they’ll remember forever”


• Get rid of “A show for every budget”


• Change the logo and slogan to something more congruent, differentiated and reflective of the performer’s individual style.


• Replace the address line with a call to action.


• “Magician Michael Winters” to “Birthday Magician Michael Winters”

This is a really deep subject, and I could elaborate for days on each of these points. For now, let’s just cut the lesson short and let you absorb some of these broad concepts. In the next lesson, we’ll look at some business cards that got it right.

Link: Magicians Links Directory

Performance Standards In Your Magic Business

One of my best friends was in a gang as a teen. His main job was to enforce debt collection for the drug dealers in the group. Despite his sketchy past, today he’s one of the smartest guys I know. And he once imparted me this piece of advice:

“People aren’t stupid. If something is good, someone will figure it out, and they’ll find a way to get it.”

Remember this saying, because I suspect it’ll be a recurring theme throughout this blog. It applies to so many different areas of your service. (you don’t “do magic” anymore, you “provide a service”)

For today we’re just going to talk about the difference between practice and rehearsal, and how it affects the quality of your service. The difference is small, but in no way trivial.

After watching a video or reading a book, the typical hobby magician will pick up a deck of cards and do the moves over and over. Sometimes he’ll practice hundreds of times until he does the move perfectly, but usually not. Either way, he’ll go out and start his own magic business so he can start showing people as soon as possible.

The result is usually something like this. (No disrespect intended. We were all like this at one point)

A professional magician takes a different approach. He’ll watch the video and practice until he does the move correctly. Then he’ll sit down and write a script, complete with choreography. If you ever watch a full-time pro, you’ll notice that every trick at every show is performed exactly the same way, with the same words, timing and movements.

Of course, there’s some occasional ad-libbing. But that’s the exception rather than the rule.

This is the typical process that a full-time pro will go through before adding an effect to his repertoire:

• The professional will learn a trick and spend 25 hours practicing the moves.
• Then he’ll spend another 25 hours scripting, choreographing, memorizing and rehearsing the new act under real-life conditions. He’ll keep doing this until he does it exactly the same way, with the same timing every time. Just like a robot.
• Then he’ll spend another 25 hours rehearsing his robotic act until it seems more natural.
• Only now will he test it in front of a live audience, constantly refining the act and making small changes as needed.

And that's when the effect gets added to their repertoire. The result usually looks something like this.

Beautiful.

And after all this work, the trick might get thrown out if it doesn’t quite mesh with the audience or suit the performer’s personality. And the whole process starts over again.

That's the difference between practice and rehearsal.

Keywords: Magic Business

Welcome to Magic Business

Hello everyone, my name is Thomas (the lion) Dugas, and I’d like to welcome you to my magic business blog.

First, some background on me:

• I have a business degree.
• I’ve spent my career managing marketing campaigns for everything from small organisations to Fortune 500 companies.
• I’ve produced more over $2,000,000 in new business for one of my clients.

And it all started with a close-up pad and a thumb tip.

Like you, I once was a struggling magician trying to create a name for myself. It took a lot of time and effort, but I eventually made it. In fact, I used magic to support myself while I was in college.

Having successfully started my first company, I fell in love with business. And since then, I’ve been working in sales and marketing.

It’s been 5 years since I’ve picked up a wand. And now I return with a fresh perspective. I keep meeting young magicians with so much opportunity. But they lack the basic tools needed to fully unlock the potential.

This is my chance to give back to the art that’s given me so much. (Single tear rolls down cheek)

This isn’t going to be like any other magic blog. It’ll deal mainly with professionalism, and hard work , and all the stuff performers don’t want to hear about. In fact, I expect this to be the most unpopular blog in the magic community.

Having said that, I’d like to officially announce the grand opening of Magic Business. I’m always looking for new topics. So if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment. I’ll be more than happy to answer.