5 Things Famous Magicians Do That You Can Do Too

I just finished writing my definitive magic book. It’s now with the copy editor, and the tutorial illustrations will be delivered this week. The book is much more detailed than I originally planned it to be, and I’m so proud of the six weeks I spent writing it.

I’ve decided not to share the title or cover just yet so it can be a surprise for all of the members who pre-ordered it. The book already sold out twice in about thirty minutes when pre-order batches were made available to One Ahead members. Pre-orders go to print this month, and if there are any extra copies, then we’ll release a small batch for free readers of One Ahead next month.

The book showcases ten essays and ten trick tutorials for dedicated magicians. The goal was to pack everything I’ve learned from a decade of writing magic for performers like Dynamo, Justin Willman, and Neil Patrick Harris. I’ve helped produce magic for famous magicians all around the globe, from China to The Netherlands to Canada and New Zealand, to name a few.

I’ve consistently been amazed by how so many of the rules most magicians have been led to believe are actually holding them back. Famous magicians find success and perform stronger magic because they break the rules, so many magicians have been lied to about needing to uphold. The ten essays in my magic book tackle each of these rules head-on with the goal of reframing how you think about your magic and how you can break free from the misgivings of the magic community to perform great magic.

As I was writing the book, I started to think about all the other smaller things famous magicians do that everyday magicians might not—the sorts of tactics and methodologies that have made them so successful but don’t necessarily fit into my book's brief of breaking the so-called rules of magic.

In this article, let me share some of the things famous magicians do that you can do, too. If you’re a hobbyist, these tactics might help you in your everyday life and professional career. If you’re a professional magician, some of these tactics will help you boost your business in a positive direction.

Make a note of names.

It isn’t easy to become famous without being nice to the right people. Even celebrities with the most controversial reputations, like James Corden, are also very well-known for being incredibly kind and generous to the most influential people in the room. It’s hard to wrap your head around the stories of Corden yelling at waitstaff in New York restaurants compared with the story of him quite literally naming his child after a member of The Beatles in an effort to convince him to film a Carpool Karaoke episode with him.

Gordon Ramsay is one of the nicest celebrities I’ve worked with. I was called on a Friday afternoon by a late-night producer who said to me, “I know it’s going to be a no, but the executive producer said I needed to call you because apparently he thinks you’ll be able to make it happen. Can we put Gordon Ramsay’s hand in a blender on Monday afternoon’s show recording? The exec wants lots of blood. I already told him you couldn’t do it, but —“

“Yeh, we can do that,” I interrupted him, “But the budget’s going to need to be quite high because of the turnaround time and also the safety concerns. The production management is not going to want to sign it off for insurance reasons that quickly just because of the context of the stunt, so you’ll need to hire a prop builder who is willing to take on the risk and be the one to sign off on it — maybe £3,000.”

“Ummm, right. Okay,” The producer said.

We blended Ramsay’s hand in a blender on Monday, and the clip ended up being one of the most viral moments from the show. On a somewhat related note, one of my favourite random facts is that Ramsay’s viral “Idiot sandwich” line, which was, in fact, from a sketch on James Corden’s show, was written by the head writer on Netflix’s Magic for Humans.

Anyway, Ramsay remembered everyone’s names on the shoot. He even did something I’d never seen before — he asked for the name of the person operating the teleprompter. Ironically, no one in the gallery knew their name, so they had to send someone to find out. I remember standing at the back of the empty studio auditorium and thinking, Holy shit, who teaches you to do that, like? How does he even know that’s the right thing to do? He spent the week on the show asking for the teleprompter to go back a bit, forward a bit, etc., as any host would and was able to constantly say the name of its operator as he thanked them.

Nowadays, whenever I meet someone new or important, as I leave, I’ll make a note on my phone with their name, where I met them, and any important details. There’s actually a lot of psychological research behind why we love occasionally hearing our names said in conversation. Add notes to contacts in your phone in ways that are easy to look back up at a later date.

It’s nice to see you.

This was something I picked up on quite early when working in TV. There’s a real subtle shift in conversations between the phrases “It’s nice to meet you” and “It’s nice to see you.” Famous magicians meet new people and see the same people all the time, and it can be incredibly difficult for them to remember everyone off the top of their heads.

Most strikingly, you’ll notice that even small interactions are viewed as more valuable to the everyday person rather than the celebrity. A woman might remember the one-minute interaction they had with Dynamo for the rest of their life in a way that Dynamo might not do similarly.

I’ve worked with a lot of celebrities inside and outside of magic, and I must say there’s nothing quite like being a famous magician. I noted it in my first week working for Dynamo — even when he was getting money out of an ATM, a crowd would form around him. I realised they all thought he was about to perform a magic trick. I suppose if your entire public persona is you performing magic in public for people on TV, then when people see you in real life, they anticipate you’ll do the same. They, indeed, imagine you to be as approachable on the street as you are on television.

“It’s nice to see you,” I started noticing people say it again and again. And then a producer let me in on the little tactic. If you say “It’s nice to meet you” to someone you’ve met before, it doesn’t make them feel excellent. By saying “It’s nice to see you” instead, you remove the risk of upsetting them, and for anyone you haven’t met, the wording still works, if only slightly different from what you’d expect. For anyone who hasn’t met you before and does hear it and wonder if you think you have, in fact, met them before, well, most people take this misunderstanding positively. Them believing I think I've met them before when I have not feels a lot better than them thinking I don’t remember meeting them.

Accept exposure as payment.

I’m not on Facebook at the moment. I deactivated One Ahead’s Instagram page and will do the same for its Facebook page this week. I’d rather the team put all their efforts into delivering value for our members than recording TikTok videos—if we deliver great value, we trust our members to tell their friends.

When I was on Facebook, I was constantly amazed by the rhetoric in magic groups about never taking gigs for exposure. In fact, this rule was going to be one of the rules I’d break in my book. Then I remembered the target reader — dedicated magicians, not necessarily professional magicians.

I understand how frustrating it is when someone enquires about booking you for a gig. You go through all the motions until they eventually admit they have no money to pay you for your work and offer exposure as compensation instead. It’s not okay, and if it happens to you, I would put some serious effort into shifting your market towards people with a lot more money.

The most successful magicians in the world perform for millionaires and corporate businesses—the sorts of people who don’t get upset with you asking for $3,000+ per gig. Shake off the false idea that a successful magician performs more gigs when, in fact, high-earning magicians simply perform higher-paying gigs instead.

The other crucial thing to remind yourself of is that this rhetoric of exposure = flawed payment method is not a good one to live by. Do not let the conversations in these Facebook groups deter you from considering accepting exposure in return for a gig.

Remarkably, almost every famous magician I’ve worked for does at least four or five engagements in return for exposure each month. I have witnessed famous magicians cancel high-paying gigs in order to perform an online show for a pop star. One of the magicians I worked for performed a fifteen-minute set at a member of One Direction’s girlfriend's university project of organizing a charity event. I’ve watched famous magicians leave production meetings early, jump onto trains, and change plans to perform at all sorts of events in exchange for exposure.

Even on TV shows, I’ve yet to meet a famous magician who gets paid a lot of money to perform on TV, whether that’s their show or appearances elsewhere. They’re doing that work in exchange for exposure — it’s that simple.

And I can think of two magicians off the top of my head who landed TV shows because they performed at birthday parties in return for exposure. Heck, Dynamo built the foundation of his career by sneaking into nightclubs and performing for celebrities for free.

I get it — it’s frustrating when someone who should pay you cash wants to pay you with exposure but don’t let it cloud your judgement. Exposure, if pursued correctly, is a brilliant thing that has been fundamental to the success of every famous magician. Seek out exposure, change plans, lose your own money, and accept it as payment whenever it will further your career directly or indirectly.

I cannot stress enough how often all of the world’s most famous magicians do things in exchange for exposure.

Look after your year group.

I spoke about this in my recent interview on Discourse in Magic. It’s become a fundamental belief of mine when it comes to navigating the magic industry. I am incredibly fortunate to be hired to write on TV magic shows, but almost always, I show up and look around and see the famous magician surrounded by their lifelong friends. I’m there for three or five weeks, but those friends of theirs are there throughout the production and delivery of the TV show.

Famous magicians want to be surrounded by people they trust. There’s also not much talent that differentiates the teams at that level. There are maybe five or six consultants in the world you’d pay big bucks for. But when it comes to choosing the core people on any magic team, it’s almost always best if the famous magician chooses people they trust—and those people tend to be ones they’ve known for a while.

When I decided magic was an excellent way to work in television, I didn’t know anyone who worked in magic, and I set my sights on working for famous magicians. I came close once when I was asked to come up with a magical version of the ALS ice bucket challenge for a renowned magician. I built a prop and sent off a video demonstrating it in my parents' back garden. The method involved a big black water balloon taped to the inside of a black bucket. When pressing a small section of the plastic bucket, a needle would burst the balloon, and water would gush out from it. Gush is a weird word to write, but it's accurate. Nothing happened after I submitted the video, and I was later told the reason nothing came of the trick was that the magician had found out they needed to donate money to charity to take part in the viral challenge.

I started making friends with people in my “year group” instead. That’s not magicians your age but magicians at a similar or "within reach" point in their careers as yourself. I cat-sat for Ollie Mealing in London and then bought Harry De Cruz a Nandos, and those interactions, thanks to their kindness, led me to meet Dynamo that week. Soon, I was hired as a full-time consultant aged nineteen.

Magic has these incredible pockets of friend groups who rise together. All it takes is one of you to find success, and then the rest of you can get pulled up with them. Instead of trying to be like the famous magicians you respect now, take a look back at what they were doing when they were in your phase of their careers. Most of them were doing two things—working hard and making friends. Do the same.

Package yourself.

Every famous magician I’ve worked with has packages ready for potential clients. For some, that’s a fifteen-minute stage act and an hour-long walk-around. For others, it’s a thirty-minute Zoom show and a forty-minute corporate act.

Working with so many famous magicians taught me just how many touchpoints there are with all of their gigs. When you’re starting in magic, you’re likely the person on the phone with the client, and the client is likely one person. It’s a very simple two-way conversation in which it’s okay for you to discuss their needs and create a bespoke quote and a custom package.

The famous magicians, however, are flying off to gigs that have had a ton of touchpoints in between. The magician has an executive assistant, and the gig will need to go through the manager; of course, the gig was probably brought to them by one of many talent agents who sold them into an event being run by an event planner with a showrunner, the head of that company, and their assistant who will need it to be approved by the company who is holding the event. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Most famous magicians have a one-sheet pitch deck that has everything they need for every touch point in that system. I bring this up a lot when I work with magicians 1:1 on consultancy calls. If you’re going up for a TV show or any well-paying gig, you’re eventually going to be printed out on a page of paper, and your future will be reliant on that piece of paper alone. It will be handed to the executive producer, given to the commissioner, pinned to a whiteboard, or sandwiched in a stack of other agency decks with different potential entertainers and magicians.

I have worked on shows and watched casting producers skip magicians after spending less than thirty seconds on a magician's website. There might be no good photo of them, or it might not say where they’re based (a big mistake many magicians make). It’s worth adding this downloadable PDF to your site or as a standalone page. On it, include a headshot, bio, location, performing photos, and testimonials.

If ten different people you’ve never met are going to help you land that well-paying gig or that TV spot, why trust them to pitch you correctly? Create an agency-friendly pitch deck and send it their way.