How Magicians Can Inspire Themselves

Somewhere in the world tonight, a magician is getting paid thousands of dollars to spend an hour performing the invisible deck, double cross and ambitious card. If you're a pro and the thought of a magician performing easy tricks for such crazy money fills you with frustration (that's jealousy, by the way), your time is now.

In today's post, the aim is to inspire you to get up and take action, whether you're a pro or a hobbyist. We'll discuss magic's compounding interest, successful magician Doug McKenzie's business advice and something social media magician Dan Rhodes told me once that I think about all the time.

Plus, to get you started, we'll go over the best ways to get free press for your magic, and I'll teach you an easy way to predict anything, like number-one charting songs, newspaper headlines, and lottery numbers live on your local radio show.

Bear with me because this post goes over a lot.

We've discussed this before at One Ahead – magic has a compounding interest. What we mean by that is that the effort you put in compounds just like money added to an interest savings account every year.

If a magician puts 10% more effort in every year, they'll advance their career something like twice as fast over time on average. This is why no one in the industry is ever shocked to see which magicians become successful.

Regardless of whether you agree with the type of magic they perform, the route they took, or the kind of success they built – anyone who met them early could have easily predicted the rise of magicians like Dynamo, David Blaine, Justin Willman, Derren Brown and their teams.

When Jack Rhodes decided to try going full-time on social media recently, none of us doubted him because we'd seen how hard he's been working for years. The same goes for Anna DeGuzman – nothing about her reaching the finals of America's Got Talent surprises me, given how consistently she's put in the work over the years (she even competed in Australia's Got Talent first).

Instead of looking at someone doing what you want to be doing and feeling jealous and a little lost, focus on what they were doing or would be doing if they were in your position.

Justin Willman was the premiere kids' party magician, running around Los Angeles performing dove magic for kids and performing last-minute spots on stand-up nights decades before he was the face of magic on Netflix, touring the country with his own family magic show.

Dynamo was sneaking into nightclubs and doing all he could to convince bouncers to let him perform for the celebs in the VIP areas long before he had a global arena tour and a TV series that aired in over 180 territories. Many of the stars he befriended ended up on a list of people who said they'd be on his TV show if he got it commissioned, and this list helped tremendously with landing his first show.

I'm guilty of it – my life goal is to be a TV writer and novel writer, and from the age of 18-23, I drove myself insane, wanting desperately to have my own TV series. This frustration quickly drove me to become the lead magic consultant on multiple primetime shows worldwide by the age of 21 and an assistant producer on late-night TV at 23. It was a lot of work, seven-day work weeks, with long days, and I secretly wished I was writing my own projects the whole time.

My life became 1,000 times better when I decided to view time as an asset instead of getting frustrated about not already having my own TV series. I began writing this newsletter to take control of my income, and now I get to spend one day writing a post and four days writing on my personal projects. I still work on TV shows, but only in a writing capacity.

Maybe one day I'll have my own TV series on Netflix, and I'll be able to tell people about how it was only possible because, in my twenties, I wrote a weekly newsletter for magicians, which freed up my time and gave me an outlet to practice a healthy writing habit.

I think about Dan Rhodes a lot. It bugs me that I do. I know he can sometimes be a bit of a controversial figure in the inner magic community, but Dan definitely cares about magic much less than his larger goals.

He's the most subscribed YouTuber in the UK (yep, that's right – you missed that milestone, didn't you), more than KSI and the Sidemen, so he is worth paying attention to.

I interviewed Dan on a project for another company outside of magic last year. He said a lot of insane things – which I believe to be a product of the fact his entire career is built around manifesting success. Anna DeGuzman discusses manifesting a lot. Both creators accept the careers they want and believe them to be already true, and it's working – they believe it's possible.

Anyway – one thing Dan said really stuck out to me, and it's not when he said, "Content is currency", which I found fascinating too. About halfway through the interview, Dan went off on a big sidebar about pen and paper. He said to me, do you know how often you hear people tell you what their dreams are? Maybe they want to be famous, get rich, buy a house, or travel the world – how often do you think those people sit down with a pen and paper and work out how to make that happen?

Dan was convinced that the key deciding factor on whether a magician would find success was whether they'd actually sat down and made a plan.

I couldn't stop thinking about this. I remembered Richard Young's post about how magicians get their first TV shows on the plane ride back from interviewing Dan. Young's takeaway from interviewing 100 magicians was that there was no set route to getting a TV show as all the magicians took a different one. But, thinking about Dan's quote, I decided to reread Young's post, and I found that all of the TV magicians had a plan.

Every magician I know who's found colossal success had a plan. Yeah, maybe the plan changed, but they always had one. Perhaps not even a plan – that sounds too rigid – they just knew what was needed to get there – or at least the direction they needed to go in.

I heard another magician, someone whom every magician I respect respects greatly, Doug McKenzie, say something recently that I found equally as fascinating. Doug has been one of Blaine's main consultants for decades, and I met him due to his work as the lead consultant on Dynamo's TV series.

If you do not want to be famous but want to have a successful career in magic – Doug's name comes up a lot as the gold standard magicians wish to be like. He was the first magician I knew to combine close-up magic with tech and get booked by well-paying tech companies (this is a trend I see many magicians doing now, fifteen years later).

In a recent interview, Doug was asked what his advice would be for aspiring professional magicians. His advice might shock you, as it wasn't anything about which tricks you should be performing (Doug was the first person I ever saw perform with menmonica stack and it blew me away). What was Doug's advice for magicians in a business sense?

Imagine that. While the magic industry might convince you to buy the latest product to be successful, here's one of the world's most successful working magicians giving you sound, straightforward advice:

His advice struck a chord with me. Not just because I'm building a Book A Magician platform with the long-term goal of making booking a magician as easy as booking a flight. But I think it reminded me of what One Ahead is trying to do, too – we're the antidote to all the companies that tell you every week that you need to buy the next best magic trick.

I've worked with the big-name magicians, and we've all seen clips of Blaine performing ambitious cards at his close-up gigs. Love magic, care about it dearly and perform absolute miracles. But maybe step away from the hype and put some time towards the fundamentals that, I hate to say it, if you want to have a successful career in magic, are perhaps more important.

See this essay as a pre-game rally call. Get inspired and increase your reach or optimise your bookings. And on that note, here's a quick and easy method for a prediction effect you can perform on your local radio station.

If you're sitting there reading this and thinking to yourself, my local radio would never have me on. Firstly, you'd be surprised – magic is often an easy yes. Secondly, give it a go and prove me wrong – email them, call them and drop by their reception.

I heard a story many years ago about one of the most famous people on the planet. Early in his career, he would go to BBC Radio 1 every day with a book and tell the receptionist that if anyone dropped out, he'd happily be a guest on any show if they needed him. That's the kind of insane action that leads you to become a world-famous person. Sitting in a radio lobby every day reading a book incase they're desperate and need a celebrity at short notice.

But why not call your local radio station or email fifty podcasts today and tell them what you do and that you'd happily come on their show if anyone ever drops out and they need a last-minute nearby guest? Why not tell them you'll predict the front page of a local newspaper, the results of a local sports game or lottery numbers?

Tell them you'll mail them a prediction they'll need to keep safe until you come on the show. Send them a small sealed box, and when you get on the show, have one of the hosts open it for you – inside, there's a small tube box, like one that would hold a roll of film. The tube box is taped shut, too, so you hold the box still as the host cuts the tape with scissors. You ask the host what they can see inside after removing the lid; a piece of folded-up paper is inside. They place the scissors down on the table, and you hand them the paper, and when they unfold it, the prediction written upon it is accurate.

Is the method a groundbreaking device that's never been seen before that I can sell you for the perfect price of $34.99 and ship flat to you? No – the method is a thumb tip, which you ditch inside the tube as you reach in and remove the paper you already placed inside the thumb tip before you arrived. There was a genuine piece of paper in the tube, but that remains in there below the thumb tip.

Simple as that.