The most successful magicians in the world are not just great entertainers, but great businessmen as well. David Copperfield, for instance, is worth $875 million and he didn’t get to that level solely based on his sweet card tricks. Here are some things that you can learn from magicians to apply to what you do:
1.Building a team: Behind every magician is a huge team behind them that nobody knows of. There’s someone who comes up with the idea of the trick, someone who physically builds the trick, someone who comes up with the script for the magician to say, someone to write the jokes, someone to book shows for the magician to perform this trick, and many more team members. One of the magicians on our roster, Michael Carbonaro, has an enormous, trusted team that creates what you see on the TruTV show, “The Carbonaro Effect”.
Just like in magic, in business It’s important that you surround yourself with people who are able to take your product and ideas to the next level. Take a chair sold Wayfair, they have people designing the chair, building the chair, taking a photo of the chair for the website, selling that chair to consumers, packing up the chair to be shipped, etc. All of these people work in tandem to create the seemingly simple action of selling a chair. In magic, the best magicians have the best teams behind them. In the business world, the best products and companies have the best teams behind them.
2.Selling: Magicians are expert salespeople- they are able to convince their audiences that “the bag is empty” or, on a broader level, to suspend their current conception of reality (i.e. in real life a dove doesn’t appear out of thin air, but in a magic show that can be commonplace). The magician is able to do this by having the confidence since that they’ve rehearsed for hours, sometimes months or even years. They have paid attention to every single detail that the audience sees, hears, and sometimes even feels which drives home what they want the audience to believe.
Similarly, when preparing your sales pitch or some other type of business presentation, really analyze what your potential buyer sees in both you and the product. In addition, it can’t hurt to actually write out a script, or at least a bullet list of points you want to get across. Practice this, just as magicians do, to enhance your pitch and to truly convince and sell to your potential buyers.
3.Creativity: In the magic world, there are rarely any “new” tricks… most of the time magicians take old concepts and make them their own by adding in elements of their personality and other unique additions to create something that can look and feel brand new, while at its core it’s rather old and common. This enables Magician A to use the exact same principle as Magician B, yet the audience will see two seemingly very different tricks. Think Starbucks and Dunkin’- their core is selling coffee, just like hundreds of other business. However Starbucks added chic stores that made them a destination for professionals while Dunkin’ sells coffee to people who are on the go. They are totally different business models, yet at their core they’re exactly the same. How will you be able to create the same product that your competitor sells, yet make it very different in the customer’s mind?
At the end of the day, magicians are selling products too! They’re selling a concept or belief to the audience by convincing them that the supposed impossible feat in front of them is really happening. Next time you see a magician in person or on TV, keep these aspects in mind and think about how you can add a bit of what that magician does to what you do.