The Magic Industry Is An Incubator For Creator/Business Talent

For the first time in my career, I’ve been sharing a project I’m working on with friends outside of magic, and they all seem excited by it. It’s a strange feeling. I’m not used to working on something that does not have a niche target market. Even when I worked for Netflix, not all of my friends and family would usually watch magic TV shows.

More than ever, I’m learning why so many magic industry names eventually leave the industry for bigger things.

This post is not about performing magicians like Derren Brown or David Blaine. This is about magicians who make most of their money selling to other magicians. These are people whose talent extends beyond performing. These humans are good at marketing, product design, presenting, teaching and video editing.

Magic is an excellent incubator for talent. It’s relatively easy for magicians to make a good chunk of money in magic. Especially back when the magic industry relied on the concept of selling secrets.

Back then, the magic industry could really only be compared to the current OnlyFans adult content industry. Magicians were uploading a self-shot video and asking people to pay for the secret. People were paying for the headrush of revealing the secret and the ego boost of being one of the few to have seen it.

Thankfully, we’re almost beyond the trend of selling secrets in magic. This is hugely because the internet blew up. Most of the secrets are online, and most people can find them easily. We’re now on a trend of open secrets, where magic companies are incredibly candid about how a trick works. Instead of buying a secret, you’re currently buying high-quality teaching or a well-produced magic prop.

It’s a good thing we’re not selling secrets. A few years ago, I argued that exposure was bad for the magic industry but good for magic. I thought that if any audience member could google search to find the secret to a trick, it would force all magicians to be better. Instead of relying on the secrets, they’d have to hone their talents and presentation.

Musicians work incredibly hard to hone their skills and become the best in the world at what they do. They must because we’ve all played the piano before or strummed a guitar. Many magicians just do the equivalent of bringing out an instrument no one has seen before and strumming one chord on it. Taaadaa — you haven’t seen this one before, and you don’t know how to play it, but I do, and that is magic.