Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #376 - Magician

Episode Date: October 21, 2016

Mark talks about being a magician in his youth and what he learned that he brought to Magic.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for me to drive to work. And I took my daughter to her new job. Okay, today I'm going to do another, I haven't really named these, but what I guess I'll dub lessons from the past. So what I like to do sometimes is talk about something I used to do, a different job, and how the lessons of that job impacted my current life, how I do design. Because as I always say, I'm a big holistic believer. I believe as you learn lessons in life that they're not segregated, that lessons you learn in one field affect you in another.

And so today, I'm going to talk all about magic. But not the game of magic, which I talk about all the time, but rather the art of illusion. So when I was a kid, for a while in my youth, I was a magician. I mostly did kids' parties. But anyway, I'm going to talk about being a magician and what I learned about being a magician and how that applies to how I make magic. So the lessons I learned back in those days and how those lessons shaped me as a person

and how I apply those lessons today. That's today's topic. And along the way, maybe you'll learn a little something about magic. Okay, so let me first explain sort of how I became a magician in my youth. So I had a good friend named Steve. And Stephen, I was fascinated by magicians and ended up taking classes and stuff and becoming a magician. And so I, too, took classes. And I, too, became a magician, inspired by Stephen.

Um, and really what happened was, um, I think I, I, I followed Stephen's lead and, um, I then started sort of branching out. So essentially for those that don't know, so, uh, magic, the art of illusion, um, we were talking about sort of from like kids parties, there, there's two different major types of magic. There's what they call closeup and stage magic. So closeup is things where there's a lot of manipulation with your hands, car tricks and coin tricks and stuff. I try to learn some of that just because when you get into magic, you learn some of that. I've never

particularly great at the close-up stuff. I was much better at the stage magic. What stage magic is, is you have tricks, you purchase them, and you learn how to do them, and then you perform them, and usually you want a smidgen of distance. The close-up is like people get as close as you can because they're looking at your hands, where stage you want them sitting back 10 feet or so, 15 feet. I usually actually use about 10 feet. So what happened was, like I said, I took a bunch of lessons.

I really got into magic. I learned how to do a lot of different tricks. And eventually, I had enough of a repertoire that I was able to start doing birthday parties. And I did a whole bunch of birthday parties. I filled in for my friend. Steven had a gig at the Ground Round, which I'll talk about in a little bit. And I filled in for him from time to time. So anyway, here's what I'm going to do today. I'm going to walk through just lessons I've learned and then talk about how the lessons apply to being a freelance magician and then talk about how those same lessons apply to making magic. Now the word magic is going to get confusing today because I'm talking about two different types of magic.

But when I mean magic at the gathering, I will say magic at the gathering today because I will use the term magic to mean magic and not magic of the gathering. Normally magic means magic of the gathering. But today, just for today, if I say magic, I mean magic in general. Illusion magic. And I'll say magic of the gathering when I mean magic of the gathering. Okay. So lesson number one.

You have to keep them entertained. So let me talk a little bit about my ground round experience. So what happened was I trained, I got a bunch of tricks together. So real quickly, I did a whole podcast on my time as a stand up. And in some ways, a magician has a lot of similarities to a stand up. And basically the way that is, is you have a number of tricks, just like you have a number of routines, you have to sort of plan them together, and then you perform them in order for a show. And depending on where you're giving a show, there's an expectation of how long the show is. But one of the places I performed was a place called Ground Run. I don't

even know if Ground Run still exists. It's a franchise of restaurants. So basically the idea is they show movies. They show old black and white silent movies. Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy. I guess not all of them were silent, but they were all black and white comedies. Slapstick sort of

comedies. They would show that on screens and then they would have very kids friendly burgers and stuff. But one of the things about it is they had these giant barrels of peanuts. And so anybody, the kids could just, you could scoop them out. There's bowls of peanuts everywhere. And the thing about it was they were in the shell, and you could crack the shell and eat them and throw the shell on the ground. So there always was, the ground basically was covered with a whole bunch of sawdust and peanut shells.

This was the ground round. So one of the things I learned early on was my friend Stephen had a regular gig performing every weekend at the ground round. And whenever he couldn't do it, I would fill in for him. So I had a bunch of experience of doing shows there. And the way it would work is the ground round would bring in birthday parties and then you would

perform for all the birthday parties. And in one day, you know, you would have anywhere from like, on the low end sometimes you'd have two or three birthday parties and the high end you could have like five or six birthday parties. But the idea is they would bring in birthday parties in that the birthday parties were a set amount of time. My show would always be about, I don't know, 20 minutes to half an hour, usually about half an hour. But the thing was the kids on the tables had peanuts in shells.

And there wasn't a lot of, like normally when I do a performance in someone's house, well, I have the parents there. There's some expectation of you're going to behave, you're in a house. But in a restaurant where kids are screaming and it's loud and there's peanuts on the table and shells, it was hard to contain the kids. And so one of the first things I learned is the importance of keeping them entertained. And in some ways, like I said, some ways you learn best when there's just really strong feedback and when the feedback is kids throw peanuts at you in shells, they throw the peanuts at you, if you're not entertaining

them, if they get bored, they find things to entertain them and that involves things like throwing peanuts at you but what I found was, and I got pretty good at this is if you keep the kids entranced the kids are excited when they're watching you they're not thinking about it. They're not bored.

And it really taught me the importance of how do you keep kids entertained. And I would argue that how you keep kids entertained is not that far apart from how you keep adults entertained. Kids have a shorter attention span than adults, but not by that much, really, when it boils down to it. It's also a little more civil, I guess, than kids. Kids are a little wilder. But that was the first lesson, is how do you keep them entertained?

And the answer is by understanding what it is that the audience wants. What do the kids who are watching your show want? And so one of the things that I did early on is I would figure out, like, whenever, if kids would start throwing peanuts at me, I'm like, okay, what did I do? I wouldn't get mad. I would say, what did I do? Why did the kids throw peanuts at me? How could I improve upon that? And I think that same strategy carries through today. That if I mess something up, I'm not mad that people are upset. Like, you know, if people don't like something, I'm not mad they don't like something. I want to learn why they don't like it.

What did I do wrong that I could do better? You know, for example, I write yearly state of design speeches where like, let me talk about how I think we did. And I try to be really honest. My goal is I'm not going to improve unless I understand what it is I did right and I did wrong. going to improve unless I understand what it is I did right and I did wrong. And a lot of not getting peanuts thrown at me the round round was figuring out what the kids liked. Which tricks do they like? Which, you know, presentations do they like? And so that was kind of the early lesson of really understanding, like, take it. You want the feedback and you want to learn from the feedback. Don't get mad at the feedback. Getting mad at the feedback doesn't change anything. If I got mad

every time kids threw peanuts at me, I just, I would just be mad and the kids would keep throwing peanuts at me because I wasn't learning from it. And so the first lesson really was to figure out how to learn from it. How do I keep them entertained? How do I keep them happy? What can I do? How do I keep them entertained? How do I keep them happy? What can I do? Okay, which leads into the next thing. So when you do magic, there's two parts to magic.

There's what they call the patter and what they call the trick. So the trick is, like, if you're doing a magic trick, there's some, you're doing something. I'm not planning to give away any secrets today, but, I mean, there's some physicality to the trick. There's something you have to do. Clearly, you know, anyway, there's some actual act of doing the trick. The other thing is what they call the patter. The patter is the story you're telling, the presentation you're doing, what you're saying. And one of the things I learned early on was, I think when I first started, I said, well, the most important thing is the trick, the pattern or whatever. And what

I came to learn is no, no, no, no. Whether or not people like the trick is more about the pattern than the trick. That it's more about the presentation. It's more about how you present it. And because when I first started, started, let's say, for example, I'll do the classic. I'm pouring a pitcher of milk into a newspaper cone, right? That's a trick. I mean, at some level, I'll get to this down the road

that it's a trick people know, but it's, yeah, yeah, yeah, the milk's going to disappear, okay? That's not the most entertaining thing about the trick. The entertaining thing about the trick. The entertaining thing about the trick is the means by which you do it, how you present it, and what you say, the presentation. Most of the entertainment in a magic show is not the actual trick.

Yes, you do the trick, they go, ooh, they do that. And I'm not saying that's not the most memorable part, but it's not the actual thing that keeps them entertained. If I wanted to keep the peanuts from being thrown at me, it wasn't necessarily, because remember, when you do the full presentation, the pattern is 95% of the trick. Most of the trick is the setup and the jokes and all the talking about it. The actual doing the trick, the actual ta-da, is just usually the very end of it. And so what you come to realize is how important the patter is, that how important the presentation is. And my big lesson there was that I think it's so easy to get caught up in the minutia on the mechanics of it,

of how exactly does this work, that what you miss is there's a show. That when people want to be entertained, you are not judged as a magician whether or not your tricks in a vacuum are exciting. You are judged as whether you, the magician, are entertaining. And the majority of whether you're entertaining is not at all about the tricks. That took me a while to understand. It took me a while to realize that your job as magician is to entertain them. Yes, part of the entertainment is the magic, is the tricks, but that's not the only thing. How you do it, the jokes along

the way that make them laugh, the sort of set up, the play with the audience, how you interact with them, how you sort of create this relationship with the audience. That is the important thing. That's what determines whether or not someone's going to have a good time. And when I bring that to Magic the Gathering, the idea is it's not just about an individual card in a vacuum. It's about how the cards and mechanics play in the big picture. It's holistically what's the set about? What's the feel of the set?

And what I've learned is it's very easy, when you first start designing magic cards, it's very easy to just go, well, in a vacuum, is this card cool in a vacuum? What you don't realize is

it's not just about is that card cool in the vacuum? It's about does the larger picture, are you creating something that's entertaining on a larger vector? Are you,

it's not, when people judge sets it is not just like were there some cool cards it is did I like the whole experience and one of the reasons that we work so hard the reason that I work very closely with the creative team and the development team and the editing team

and everybody who was making the thing is we wanted to all come together as a cohesive whole. It can't just be pieces, you know, the best magic set is not just like, ah, individual things are kind of cool. There's something which they come together to make something larger than their parts. And that was the lesson I learned from doing magic was it is not just the pattern and the trick.

It's the whole presentation and how important that presentation is to the trick. That, you know, in the end, a lot of the magic tricks you do, they're cool and they're exciting, but they're just small moments and that you want to make it part of a larger cohesive whole. Like one of the things you do when you do magic is you like to do what they call callbacks, where I do something where I make reference to something I've done before, where I make it feel like all the individual tricks have a sequence to them, that I'm putting on a show for you, that I'm not just sort of, here's a trick, here's a trick, here's a trick, I am presenting. Okay, next lesson, learn how to

pull focus. So one of the big things about doing magic is you don't ever want your audience paying too much attention in the areas where you're, like, most of magic is you're doing a little bit of manipulation. There's something you need to do because you want to do something the audience doesn't expect. So somewhere along the line, you have to find a way to do something in which you can, you know, that the audience isn't seeing what you're doing. And a lot of this is about what they call misdirection. Magic is classic, a classic, it is an art all about misdirection.

And a lot of what you want to do is you don't want your audience paying attention to the area where you're like, you don't want them catching you doing the trick, if you will. You want to make sure that they're, by the time, I mean, here's a general rule, but if a magician ever wants you to look someplace, then that's a safe place to look. The magician will never make you look someplace that you can't look. And that one of the things you want to do, and this is a big part about the patter too, is you want the audience having fun and not thinking about you doing the trick at the time where what you are doing is being done. And so a lot of magic is learning how to, like a lot of the work of magic isn't done

by the time you're ready to do the big ta-da and everyone's looking at the hat and whatever, you know, for you to pull the rabbit out of it. Once everybody, once their focus is on what you're doing, you, you, you the magician are done. You've done the thing you need to do. All you're doing now is trying to sort of properly get the audience excited so there's payoff on the trick you're about to do. So a lot of learning that is learning where and how to pull focus, how to draw attention

away so the attention is where you need it to be at the moment. And a lot of magic is about having the attention not where you don't want it to be. That's a big part of it. If I'm doing something over on the right, I want you looking on the left. If I'm caring about some small thing here, I want you thinking about something over there.

I'm always trying to make you, the audience, not aware of what I'm up to or when I'm up to it or where I'm up to it and a lot of what magic is is getting people is misdirection misdirection is a big part of magic that if I'm going to do something I don't want you watching what I'm doing I want you entertained and looking elsewhere and the lesson from Magic the Gathering is that when I'm making a set, there's a lot of that same sense, which is I want you looking where I want you to look. That a lot of trying to do

presentation and trying to make a set is keeping the audience knowing where the focus will be. When somebody looks at something, knowing where the focus will be. And I've talked about this a lot. A lot of sort of crafting things is getting the audience to focus on the right part of the card. Sometimes, for example, one of the things, the reason you want to make your designs really clean is if you add extra gunk in a place you don't want, it pulls the eye of the player. You know, sometimes adding text that isn't necessary and doesn't add to a larger thing doesn't make the card better. I mean, I've talked about this where, you know, I make a creature that is a great vanilla creature,

but I put an ability on him that's not a really good ability, and all of a sudden the card becomes worse. Even though without that ability, the card's pretty cool. With that ability, it lessens the impact on the card. So you have to be careful that you want to make sure that where the focus is when you do it. Another big lesson, the same tricks work. That, you know, one of the things you figure out as you do magic again and again is there are things that work and things that, you know, work less well. And the things that work, work. That when the audience likes something that, you the magician had to know what your best tricks were and when and where

and how to space them and use them. And that, don't be afraid as a magician. Like, I think sometimes there was a fear that I did a trick and there was another trick that was, oh,

it's too much like that trick. Like, don't put them back to back, but if the audience likes trick A and trick B is a lot like trick A, especially with kids, they'll like trick B. You know, I know this idea that, oh, you want to be a peer sometimes.

Oh, it's too similar. And that is never the case. Kids, if they like trick A and trick B is a lot like trick A, they like trick B. Don't put them next to each other. But Magic the Gathering has a lot of this,

which is we do a lot of things similarly and that this idea of, oh, no, we've done that before. No, no, no. If people like something, if you've done something and they enjoy it, odds are they'll like it when you do it again. Once again, I mean, you want to break up your things. You don't want to do a set and have the very next set do the same thing.

But if people like something, odds are they're going to like it again. Know what your best work is. Know what your best stuff is and dole it out. So one of the things when you make a show, you figure out what order you're doing things in. Know what your best work is, know what your best stuff is and dole it out. So one of the things when you make a show, you figure out what order you're doing things in, you want to know your strongest things and you want to use for support. The same is when you design a Magic the Gathering set, which is know what your strength is and make sure that every set has a few things that are strengths and then build around them. Make sure that you're taking your strongest things and using your strongest things as a structure

to be able to experiment with new things. Because, you know, if I want to try a new trick, I don't know how that's going to go. I want to bolster it with stuff that I do know. I want to make sure my show is going to be a good show. Same with magic is, I want to make sure that, look, I want to try new stuff, but I always want to make sure I have some old stuff

that I know will work. And that, you know, you want to have a stuff, but I always want to make sure I have some old stuff that I know will work. And that, you know, you want to have a mix of old and new. And then the old stuff is there because you understand it. You know what it does. And people like it. They enjoy it. So make sure that you make use of that stuff. Okay, another thing about magic.

Business is about word of mouth. So I would get birthday parties. Well, how would I get other birthday parties? What was the number one way that I got more work? And the answer was a kid would see my show, go home, rave about it to his parents. And then when it was that kid's birthday party, his parents would like, oh yeah, he really liked that magician. And they'd call the first parent and say, hey, where'd you get the magician? That word of mouth was key. And what that meant was that everything I did when I did a show was important. It wasn't just about the magic. It was about making

sure that every kid and every parent was as happy as possible with me. The reason I got more work was someone going, wow, I really like what you did. And people would say positive things about it. But that meant that I had to, at every level, like one of the things I would do is I'd have to do prep work to prepare my show. I'd always be spotless. I'd make sure I cleaned everything up. I'd make sure that when I left,

things were as clean, if not cleaner, than when I got there. When I was dealing with kids, I would make sure to deal with every kid in the audience. And I would try to make sure that every kid, if I could, could have a moment. I would do a lot of kids' things. I'd do a lot of kid in the audience. And I would try to make sure that every kid, if I could, could have a moment. You know, I would do a lot of kids' things and do a lot of interacting with the kids.

I would try to mix it up. You know, you always focus on the birthday kid the most because it's their birthday party. But you want to make sure that you reach out to all the kids because you wanted to make sure that all the kids had the best experience. And that carries over to today in that the reason magic succeeds is word of mouth.

I'm not going to be the person that makes people, you know, I'm going to be a voice and help people understand things, but really the loudest voice is the players talking to each other. And so what I want to do is I want to make sure that I make the best possible experience so those players go out and rave. You know, the way we get new magic players is a lot less about wizards finding new Magic players. I mean, we want to make sure our stuff is ready for new Magic players, New World Order and stuff. But the number one place we get new players is getting the players who play to evangelize

and say, wow, this is a great game, you have to play this. And so we want to make sure that we put our best foot forward to help do that. Because word of mouth, just like in magic, and magic is the same in Magic the Gathering. It's very important. Okay, another important thing is, so in magic,

there's something they call a sucker trick. So what a sucker trick is, it's a trick in which you do something very subtle to make the audience think they understand. When I say subtle with kids,

it's sometimes a little less subtle. But the idea is, you essentially do something and the audience goes, oh, When I say subtle with kids, sometimes it's a little less subtle. But the idea is you essentially do something and the audience goes, oh, I know how he's doing that trick. And then you let the audience go, yeah, you know, really? You think you know how? Okay, how am I doing it?

And they tell you how you're doing it. And then you demonstrate that that's not it at all. It's called a sucker trick. And there's a whole bunch of sucker tricks. They were my bread and butter. Kids love sucker tricks. Adults love them too, but kids love them even more. And that there's something about wanting to figure out what's going on. And a lot of what I've learned to do over the day is I want people, I want people to sort of get pulled in. I want them, I like showing a lot of behind the scenes because I want people to sort of get pulled in. I want them, I like showing a lot of behind the scenes

because I want you to sort of get a sense of what's going on because I want you to get excited and I want you to sort of, it is fun to sort of have a sense of seeing what's happening. And I carry that through in my Magic the Gathering work of I want people to sort of get a chance to see. I don't tell you everything. That's one of the secrets is. I got some secrets up my sleeve. I don't necessarily tell you exactly how I do everything,

but I want you to know enough that you can look behind the scenes and see things and get excited for them. Next, know your audience. So one of the things is I had a whole bunch of shows, but one of the things I would always ask whenever I got booked for a show is how old is my audience? Who is my audience? Because the answer is if I have an audience of six-year-olds, One of the things I always ask whenever I get booked for a show is, how old is my audience? Who is my audience?

Because the answer is, if I have an audience of six-year-olds, that's very different than an audience of 12-year-olds. I had tricks for six-year-olds, I had tricks for 12-year-olds, but I had to understand who they were so that I could make it appropriate. Same is true for Magic the Gathering. There are different audiences, and I've got to make sure, depending on what my product is, who is this aimed at? Now, Magic tries to have a little bit for everything, especially in the main expansions,

but I do need to know, in any one set, who is this set leaning toward? Is this more of a Johnny Jenny set? Is it more of a Timmy Tanny set? Is it more of a Spike set? Who is this set for? Who am I slightly leaning toward? And make sure that I maximize what I'm trying to do for that audience. I mean, I want to shake it up.

I mean, when I was doing magic, it's like whatever audience is what I got. But I like with Magic the Gathering to sort of shake up who the audience is. But make sure that I always deliver. Okay, next. Lead your audience where you want them to go. So one of the big things about magic is part of your job as the person doing the magic So one of the big things about magic is part of your job as the person doing the magic is making sure your audience's attention is where the attention is supposed to be when you want it. That when it's time to do a big dramatic ta-da, I want all eyes in the right place.

You know, I talked earlier about pulling focus. That was about how sometimes you don't want people looking somewhere. This lesson is the opposite of that. Sometimes you do want people looking somewhere. This lesson's the opposite of that. Sometimes you do want people looking somewhere. Sometimes it's very important that people are paying attention. Like, when I'm going to do a big trip at the big moment, I want people paying attention

at that moment, at that place. And a lot of creating exciting moments is getting all eyes attuned. And a lot of this calls to my work as a spokesperson that one of my work is hyping a set. I want to get people right and I want them hyped about the right thing.

So one of the things that happens is part of my job is to tease the right kind of things out and have people have the right expectation so the right moment we get to surprise you all with something cool. And the key is I don't want to give away what the cool thing is. I just want you in the right mindset

looking at the right place at the right time. And that is a very similar aspect. A lot of the showmanship that I learned in magic is a showmanship I use in Magic the Gathering. And that's very important. Okay, next lesson. It's okay for your audience to know where you're going. I think sometimes this is a worry when you're first starting out that if I do a magic trick and the audience knows the ending of the trick that they'll be unhappy. And what I say is no no no there's a lot of classics. Like I talked earlier about the pitcher of milk and the newspaper cone. Look the milk's going to disappear. It's not rocket science. I know people know that. You know I know when I show you something that I mean I'm not saying I as a magician can't surprise you and

I will and I can. But sometimes I'm going to do something and you know where it's going. The issue is how I get you there. It's not that you're not aware of it. It's kind of like Titanic, which is like, look, the ship's going to sink. It's the Titanic. No one went to the movie Titanic and go, ooh, what's going to happen? Well, the ship's going to sink.

That's what's going to happen. Now, there's a story they didn't know. They didn't exactly know how things played out. But the basic essence is something you know. And when I design magic sets, it's like I realize that it's okay. It's not a problem that the audience can figure out where things are going to go. Sometimes we want the audience to figure out where things are going to go. Sometimes, you know, it's the journey and not the destination.

Okay, people are knowing where something's going to end up. But how you get there or why you get there is important. And so one of the things I've learned in making Magic the Gathering is that I don't want people to sort of... I think sometimes it's easy for people to get worried, you know, new designers. Because they feel like, oh, the audience will see that from a mile away. And what they miss is that sometimes you want to surprise people. Hey, but sometimes you want comfort or completion. Notice that both comfort and completion are known quantities. Only surprise is an unknown quantity.

So yes, yes, some of the time you want the players to not know where you're going. You want to surprise them. That's great. But there's a lot of comfort in knowing where you're going. There's a lot of comfort in knowing where you're going. There's a lot of comfort in understanding what's happening. And so one of the things that I always say to people is, it's okay.

Don't feel bad if your audience understands what's going to happen. Don't feel bad if your audience has some expectation. That actually is a good thing. Expectation is a positive thing. You want people to sort of walk into it and say, okay, and two things. One is it allows you to occasionally surprise them. One of the fun tricks for magic sometimes with misdirection is,

I think the players know what's going to happen. The audience knows what's going to happen. And then, ta-da, gotcha. And without them thinking they know where it's going, that wouldn't happen. And that means occasionally it does have to go where they're expecting. Second is, sometimes what's fun is I expect something, I just want to see the thing

I know. And that can be very fun. And imagine the gathering design, both those things happen. Sometimes I do something because I want something to happen. Like, for example, a reprint mechanic I know you like, or a card I know you like, and one of the reasons I do that is because it's playing out differently

than it's played out before. It's not playing out in the same way, and that I want that, you know, that I want people to be able to do that. And it's, I know sometimes people worry sometimes that

there's too much, oh, no, no, the audience will know where that's going. It's the same with stories. Oh, no, the audience will figure out what's happening. And the reply to that is, yeah, yeah, yeah, the romantic comedy, they're going to get together, you know, action adventure picture, they're going to save the day. And there are things you know that doesn't mean that you can't be excited by the journey along the way.

And don't be so afraid of your audience knowing things. Sometimes your audience having knowledge, actually, is to the benefit of what you're doing. Okay, next lesson. Your audience cares how you make them feel. What I learned at the end is whether or not I had a good magic show was not necessarily just about the tricks. Yeah, it's probably about the tricks.

People want to be excited. And part of seeing a magic show is having some moments of suspense and surprise and you want to have that. But more than anything else at the end, it's how they made you feel. How you made the audience feel. Especially with kids is I wanted to get a sense of awe with the tricks. It's not just hey I did it. I wanted to set them up in the right place that when things happen, that I created the experience I wanted for them.

It's another reason that sucker tricks, for example, works so well with kids is it's fun as a magician to have the audience not quite know where things are going. And it's fun to direct people sometimes in a place they think they understand just to sort of break that expectation.

But in the end of the day, it's not how perfect I perform my tricks. I can do my tricks with technical precision every time, but if I didn't do the right pattern, if I didn't draw the audience in, if I didn't make them laugh at the jokes where I needed to, then I could do a show that's technically perfect,

but eh, not the greatest of shows. The thing I learned the most about magic is it's not about the magic as much as it's about how you make the audience feel. And holy moly, that's the same as Magic the Gathering. I want you to feel something. I want you to play. I want you to, like,

when people come back to me about a set and how excited they are about a set, it's not, I mean, they'll talk about components of the set, but they talk about the components of the set in regards to how it made them feel. The bonding moment, the clever moment, the wonderful moment, whatever it was where something happened. Oh, I felt this way. That was such a great way to feel. And that is really important. Understanding when you're entertaining an audience that in the end,

it matters less the details of what you do and more how it impacted them. That's the takeaway they have when they go home. The final thing, my final lesson of the day, is mistakes are going to happen. Especially with magic, for example. There's a lot of manipulation. There's a lot of physicalness to it. And one of the things I learned is when a mistake happens, you have to learn how to incorporate it. You know, don't,

what breaks the illusion is, oh, I messed up. And rather, you make a joke out of it. You know, you make it as if, you know, for example, let's say something fails, you start like, oh, I must have done the, you know, oh, I did the magic word wrong. Maybe, like, I would do something where I would play as if I, you know,

it was part of the show that I messed it up. And then I had to figure out how to get it right. Maybe I needed the kids' help. You know, maybe I did it wrong and with the right way I could do it right. And I would try to take mistakes and work them in. Sort of the lesson I learned was that it's very easy to take mistakes and just think of them as nothing but negative. I've often talked about how you learn from mistakes.

But another thing I learned was, sometimes by incorporating your mistakes, you make something endearing. You make something that you might not have made otherwise, and that it's okay that I... I think there's this desire, and this is an ongoing theme of mine, to avoid mistakes. And my answer is no. You should do the things you need

to do and that if you're truly exploring and trying things, occasionally a mistake will happen. Don't be afraid of mistakes. Mistakes aren't something to be feared. They're something to be careful about. But when you make a mistake, you can learn from the mistake, you can incorporate the mistake. And sometimes the mistake itself can be something that you can build into what you're doing. That, you know, it can be something that is part of the show, if you will, part of the design, that you can incorporate it

and sometimes you can take something that started as a mistake, you can take the bug and make it a feature. So anyway, just a recap of today, of all the different things I learned as a magician. You have to keep them entertained, so understand what you're doing that makes them happy. The patter is more important than the tricks. Understand when you're doing something, what drives the entertainment value, what drives

why they like something. Learn how to pull focus. Know what exactly, where your audience is supposed to look and when, and make sure that you're getting your audience to look at the part that you most want them to look at. The same trick works. Do not be afraid of doing the same thing, that when something works, it's okay to make use of that. Know your best stuff and dole it out. You know, it's very important that you understand the strength of your own work and that you use the strength of old to build things of new,

that you intertwine, you know, allow yourself to experiment with new things by having workable old things as security to do that. Business about word of mouth, that, you know, you at all times have to be doing your best and on your best behavior and make everybody feel the best they can because the way you succeed is in how overall you come across, not in just your technical area, but in what the audience takes away from you. People want to think they've figured it out. There is something about letting people a bit behind the scenes and seeing things and letting them feel connected and feel that

there's some understanding of what's going on. Know your audience. Not everything is for every audience. Know who you're aiming at and make sure that the things you're providing are for the audience you have. Plan your show. You know, part of creating something is knowing all the pieces and putting them together in an order that works that together.

And part of doing that is understanding what order your audience is going to see things in. And with magic together, it's a little harder. And build it. Lead your audience where you want them to go. It is your job to,

the audience will, if you let them go wherever, they might not go to where the important place is or the most impressive thing. Your job is to lead the audience to where will make the best time for the audience.

It's okay for your audience to know where a trick is going. Don't be so afraid that the predictability isn't necessarily a bad thing. It allows you to occasionally be unpredictable, but also there's some comfort and a sense of completion at times

of doing things that people know. Your audience cares most about how you make them feel. That in the end, it's not about sort of the quality level of what you do as much as is the impact of how it has on the person. That if the person walks away bonding with them, they can see how it made them feel, that's the strongest impact you can have. And that's the best response you'll get from an audience.

And finally, mistakes happen. Make them part of the show. Don't be afraid. That part of trying new things and part of doing anything is sometimes you will make mistakes. That you're human. That's part of it. Incorporate it. You know, don't let the audience necessarily know that it was a mistake.

Just roll it into what you're doing and that it's okay to sort of incorporate your mistakes in what you're doing. Sometimes the bugs can become features.

Okay, guys, that is all my lessons from my days as a magician. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this. This is a, I've done this series

a couple times. That's why it needs a name one of these days. But I, anyway, you guys seem to like these series, so I'll keep doing them until I run out of things I've done this series a couple times. That's why it needs a name one of these days. Um, but I, I, anyway, you guys seem to like these series, so I'll keep doing them until I run out of things I've done in my life. Which, uh, I have a few left to go. Anyway, I'm now in my parking space. We all know what that means. It means

the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.