Ben Train Is Mental | S01E11

[00:00:00] Speaker A: My name is Dr. Todd and I interview magicians. Today on the show we have a mentalist and I'm just going to let him introduce himself. [00:00:06] Speaker B: Hello, suckers. I'm Ben Train and this is the Magician's Workshop. Magic noises. Are you looking to add magic to your next event? Something absolutely incredible. Entertainment your guests will remember for years to come. The good news, you're in luck. Hi, I'm Ben Train, co founder of the Toronto Magic Company and I'm a corporate comedy mentor. I perform at hundreds of events all across Canada, just like yours. Every single year I've been featured on breakfast television, ctv, Apple tv, and even a spot on Kenn and Keller's Foula. Boy, that's a great trick. We are really, really impressed. I've entertained for companies like Microsoft, Rogers, Bell, Shopify, Kellogg's and so many more. [00:01:01] Speaker A: Hello, magical people, and welcome to the Magicians Workshop where we talk about everything magic. Our next guest is a full time magician doing over 200 shows a year, has lectured in 100 cities around the world and runs his own magic entertainment business. Welcome to the show, Ben Train. [00:01:16] Speaker B: Oh, thank you very much, Dr. Todd. [00:01:19] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a new one. I'm trying out a new thing. [00:01:22] Speaker B: Did I talk over the intro? Was I supposed to wait longer? [00:01:24] Speaker A: Nope, you're totally cool. I can mute you anytime I want, so just talk away. [00:01:29] Speaker B: That's like a superpower. I bet you many people in my life wish they had the power to mute me whenever they wanted. You're a lucky man. [00:01:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it's so good. [00:01:40] Speaker B: It's one of the things I loved about doing virtual shows. I mean, me and my partner Jonah, we were very early adapters to doing virtual shows. And one of the cool things is you can mute people, you know, and also not mute them, you know, if the engagement of the conversation they're having is adding to the show. But yeah, you can't do that in an in person show. You know that guy who won't shut up or the people who are having a conversation in the back of the room that's unrelated to what's happening and distracting everyone. You can't be like, you're done, you're muted. [00:02:09] Speaker A: Yeah. I was taking a class from Michael Amar and a virtual class during COVID and there was this one guy and he would not shut up. But Michael Amar is too nice to mute people. And the rest of us were kind of like, mute him, please, Michael, we want to hear you. [00:02:26] Speaker B: I've been in. Unfortunately, it happens in these zoom videos where it's like someone that you really want to learn from or hear from. And then someone is monopolizing the video and sharing their thoughts and you're like, we came to see X. Shut up. I was once, I'll never forget this. I was in a lecture in Oklahoma, and I was at a convention there, and one of the speakers was David Williamson, and he was about to present a 90 minute lecture, and he walked out in front of the room and he said, I didn't prepare a lecture. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start showing magic tricks, like card tricks. And whenever you want me to stop and explain something, ask. And there was an older gentleman beside me and he grabbed my thigh and he squeezed hard. And he looked at me and he said, don't open your mouth and say anything. And nobody said anything. And he just did 90 straight minutes. And everyone, like, collectively, we made a pact. We're like, we don't interrupt. We see him and he crushed it, you know? So, yeah, sometimes when you can just let them shut up and speak, and it's like, oh, there's the gold. [00:03:29] Speaker A: I did get in trouble with Eric Casey. He told me that I didn't talk enough. I didn't laugh at his jokes, and it made him feel very awkward. So I will try to. I'll do my best to fake him. [00:03:37] Speaker B: I'll tell Eric Casey he should be funnier. That's how you get more laughs at the jokes. [00:03:41] Speaker A: That's actually what. That's actually what people were telling him. So there you go. This is all of his best friends, too. So take that, Eric. Just love you, man. Friend of the show. All right, I want to ask. I'm going to ask you the same question. I ask everybody first, and it gets a little. It can get a little deep. Answer as much as you want, but. Who is Ben Train? [00:04:03] Speaker B: This podcast is over. You just broke me. I don't know what that. Who is Ben Train? The thing that drew me to magic and the thing that excites me in my social and professional life is community building. So I like being parts of community. I like bringing people together. I like hosting parties, I like putting on magic lectures and doing open mic magic shows, and I organize regular magic barbecues and jams in my backyard where we invite like 20 or 30 people. And like, you know, for me, that's. That's the best part of life, is I like being around people. I like connecting with people, and I like bringing them together. So part of what I like about magic is that especially with the show is even walk around mingling. I'm meeting people and bringing them together, giving them a shared experience, a memory. We're making friends like it's a lot of fun. And when I'm not performing, that's what I'm doing is I'm calling my friends and organizing dinners or game nights and parties. So I would say if you ever meet me in person, don't talk to me because I'm very standoffish. No, I would love to meet you. And you can buy me a drink anytime. Even at 9am in the morning, you can buy me a drink. It'll have to be a coffee, but you can. That's me. [00:05:15] Speaker A: Okay. [00:05:16] Speaker B: Oh, and I at every dog that I meet, even the dogs that I probably shouldn't, you know, like the ones that are kind of barking and maybe they'll bite me. But it's a risk. You got to live your life. That's me. [00:05:28] Speaker A: I agree 100%. What's your first memory of magic? [00:05:33] Speaker B: So I have two answers. So the first one is not a memory I actually remember. But when I was eight years old, I saw a magic show. And I know this because I took notes at the magic show and I drew pictures in the notes of the magic I was seeing. And what's amazing is as an 8 year old who didn't know anything about magic as a grown up, now I recognize the what's next with the die, the domino that you turn over, or I recognize the linking rings or the stratosphere. And I see it in the drawing. So I know I actually saw those drinks. And the drawing is me watching the show going boo. Because I hated the show. I did not like it. So that I guess is my first interaction with magic was I saw a show that I didn't like. But my first real vivid memory is I was like 14 and I bought a trick deck of cards at the magic store called Cheek to Cheek. And I don't think I'm revealing anything. It's like a Berlin Hulf from the 40s, this trick. But it was a trick that lets you do a trick called Triumph where you shuffle the cards face up, face down, you spread the cards and they all afterwards and I learned the trick and I went back to the magic store the next week and someone said, do you want to see a trick? And I said yes. And they performed this trick. They shuffled face up, face down, cards together snapped when they spread. All the cards had fixed. And I said that was great, but I know how it's done. It's a trick deck of cards. I bought it here last week and the guy said, oh, this is a normal deck of cards. And he handed it to me and I looked at them and my brain exploded. I was like, wait a minute, I just bought a whole deck where every card was specially made to do this one trick. And you're telling me you can do that with a normal deck of cards? And I was like, what? What else can you do? And then that was it. Like, I was hooked. From that moment on, I would buy, I would use my bar mitzvah money and money I got from spare time gigs and shows and other stuff. And I would go to the store every single week. Every Saturday I would go there. I would actually go to my aunt's house on Friday night and I would stay overnight. And in the morning, as soon as the magic store opened, I go. And the owner of the store was super kind Jeff Pinsky, and he had a table set up where you could pull books off the shelf and just sit and read them for free all day. And what I would do is I would read books for free all day and then at the end of the day I would buy one of the books. So I spent all day reading and then I take a book home and then next week I'd come back and we repeat the cycle. So that was my first experience, going to the store, seeing a trick that I thought I knew how it worked, having my mind blown. And then I was like, I want it. I want this. This is fun. [00:08:07] Speaker A: Wow. What was your favorite magic book that you can remember getting from that store? [00:08:13] Speaker B: I mean, one that I loved for a while. I hated it when I was 17, loved it when I was 19, was the expert at the card table. And at the time I loved it because I felt it really opened a lot of doors. If you told someone you were studying the expert at the card table and you knew about the history of the book, I, I collected different editions. I still have them. And you could do this stuff. People were like, well, this guy's serious about the art. So they would be more willing to share. At the time, I liked the writing and the art and the style. I'll be honest, now I'm a full time magician and I perform, like we were saying, lots of shows. And I don't use anything from that book. And I don't even think I used the philosophy from that book. You know, there's the expert, the card table philosophy, there's the New York's card style that came out, like from Vernon and Miller, those guys. And then there's the Spanish school with Ascanio and Juan and Danny. And like, there's all these different things. No one looks at my magic and is like, that's a student of the expert at the card table. That's an Urdane. So I love that book. I loved studying it. I loved reading it. It changed the way I thought and explored magic. One of my favorite books right now is I got it right here because I love it so much. Magic with Everyday Objects by George Schindler. George Sendler was the president of the IBM or Sam, I can't remember, but for a number of years. And this book is just really easy stuff, but beautiful stuff and stuff that I think, like, holds up today. Like, you know, imagine you go up to a table, it's at dinner, and someone says, do a trick. So you take someone's cloth napkin off the table. You tie a knot in it. They hold one end of, you know, each end of the napkin, the knot in the middle. You then borrow a coin from one of them. The coin disappears, gone completely. They untie the knot, and in the middle of the knot is now their coin. That's dope. That's the dope trick. I've never seen anybody do that trick. It's in the book. There's tons of cool stuff. So I like stuff like this now where I read it, I'm like, wow, if I was, like, traveling and I was at a Starbucks, I could do this trick. Or if I was walking around at a cocktail bar, I could do this trick. So I want stuff that I'm going to use and really use for people. So this is a great book. This is, I'll say, Magic with Everyday Objects. George Schindler, you're amazing. I love you. If I see you in person, I'm going to give you a kiss. [00:10:33] Speaker A: Aw, that's so sweet. So you're more of a card guy, more of a coin person. [00:10:37] Speaker B: I grew up being a card magician, so I always had decks of cards. I collect cards. I practiced the Steve 40 gambling stuff. So I was doing bottoms and seconds and false shuffles and mucks and bombs. And I was working through the Vernon and Marlo stuff, and I loved sleight of hand with cards. That's not how I make my living now. I'm a stand up comedy mentalist. So my show is very funny. I try to be very funny. It's up to the audience to decide if I am. But if the show is designed to be very funny and I Read people's minds. I predict the future. I influence decisions. And it's a show that has very little cards in it, but has other stuff where we're painting and making art or things that involve gift wrapping and presents or playing games together, cash and so not a lot of stuff when I'm doing scrolling magic. Yes. Primarily it's card magic though I love adding non card magic to the set. You know, and for me too, it's exciting whenever I get to add like it's so easy to add card magic because you already have a deck and if you can do a lot of the card moves, it's easy to add things. So like I just bought, I was just at magifest. You mentioned Karissa and Eric Tate. I was there and. And Andy. We were all there. And I got this from Jeff Price. This is a necklace that does a magic trick that Jeff, at conventions for years, never bought it. But my niece who's one and I hold her a lot, she likes to play with people's necklaces. So I was like, this way I get a magic trick and I did it the other night for people at a bar and they loved it. They lost their. So having some non card stuff is dope, especially when it's always at the ready. [00:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:12] Speaker B: Stand up mentalism is my go to now. [00:12:15] Speaker A: Okay, what got you into doing stand up mentalism? [00:12:18] Speaker B: Well, I started producing shows for an incredible mentalist named Bobby Mata out of Canada. [00:12:23] Speaker A: I've heard of Bobby Mata. [00:12:25] Speaker B: Incredible. He has a wonderful penguin at the table or not at the table. That's Murphy's penguin live lecture. And it's great. You can check it out. And I was his show manager, like front of house selling and helping backstage. Excuse me. And I would watch after every show and during the shows watch how people would absolutely lose their mind and freak out. And Bobby is one of the guys who got me thinking about the ethics of all this because Bobby was very, very good. And people were convinced leaving his show that he could read minds and influence and put thoughts in their heads. And he wanted them to believe that my show was much more comedy based. So like, you know, people aren't. The premises of what I'm doing are so far fetched and ridiculous that, you know, nobody thinks I'm doing the things that I claim that I'm doing. I still accomplish what I say I'm doing it. But there's a humor element so they know their life is being told. But I watched Bobby and I watched the power and the impact this could have. Revealing People's thoughts and in most secrets and connecting with people in these very genuine ways, like, you know, finding a card. Most people don't have a real emotional connection to a card, but reviewing, like, what's the best gift someone ever got a thought they were just thinking of and telling them who gave them the gift and when, you know, or asking someone to think about a city that they visited once that I couldn't know that something they didn't post about on Facebook. And then I tell them not only the city they're thinking of, but also an amazing memory from that city. You know, it's like, holy shit. Like, so that got me more into it. I wanted to do more stuff like that. And I still love card magic, but now my love is stand up, impactful, get the audience engagement, interaction response stuff. [00:14:12] Speaker A: What is your best audience interaction from your mentalism shows that you can remember? [00:14:17] Speaker B: I mean, there's some ones that have been very meaningful. I mean, like, I don't get standing ovations every day. So, you know, the few times I've gotten standing ovations, it's been, like, incredible. I've had some very funny moments. I mean, a lot of my show is designed to have moments that create, like, spontaneous moments. So I put people in position. So, for instance, you know, there's a moment where I have someone standing behind me with their hands over my face, blindfolded. And sometimes what will happen in a show, like, imagine this scenario. The guy is the CEO. He's got his hands over my eyes. He's towering over me because he's much bigger. I look like a child. And he leans over and he kisses the top of my head. And that happened once in a show, and it got a big laugh. And my show has a lot of weird interactions like this, but I specifically pick somebody who's big, who's going to tower over me. I lean back into them. I have other prompts and things that sort of put that in their head. So I try to put moments in my show where, like, people can do weird things that can be very funny. And then I will encourage that in the future. And if they don't do it, nobody knows it didn't happen. But I incurred that. So there's been a lot of fun ones. I've had people expose themselves at my show, or at least try to expose themselves. I've had people say ridiculous, wild things on stage. I've had people, you know, falling on the floor laughing. I've had, like, trying to think of, like, a specific, really weird really, it's like, I just try to put in a money moment so that we have, like, things, and then if something's funny, we go back to that. You know, we find a way. So I'm sure I'll think of something really wild. I've had people fall off the stage. That's not so fun. But, yeah, I've had some pretty wild ones and more to come. I hope. [00:15:53] Speaker A: That's awesome. Did having a dentist as a father affect you in any way in your career later on so much? [00:16:02] Speaker B: I really think it did. So the first thing is I saw how he lived his life, and I didn't want to do that. And my dad is an amazing guy, and I think it's very admirable what he and you are doing. It's not for me. I don't want to wake up every day and go into the office and do that. And not that it's specifically dentistry, it's that I like the adventure of being on the road. I like the creative freedoms I get. And also the sort of low stakes. Like, if I do a bad show, people are like, well, that guy wasn't very good. And they go on with their lives. If I do a great show, it's great, you know, and people remember me and had. They had a great time and I made the event. So, like, you guys mess up, like, God damn. Like, you go to court, there's litigation. People are injured for the rest of their lives. Like, you know, and it could be very tense and other stuff. And like. And also I. I want the freedom to wake up and do yoga in the morning or have coffee. My life is only positives in many ways. Yes, there are bad shows. Yes, there are shows I go to with the wrong environment and I dread doing it. Yes, there are bad audiences. It happens. But for the most part, 98% of my shows are. 99% of my shows. I go there and it's a fun party. People are excited to see me. We have an amazing time together. Maybe there's some food, maybe there's some drink. People love what they see, and I get to go home and then enjoy my life. I didn't want to do what my dad did. And also he was the one who encouraged me to do magic full time. I was in school to be a university professor. That's what I wanted to do. And he said to me, are you sure you don't want to try magic? He said, you can always. It doesn't work out. There's a fallback. You could teach, but if you enjoy this thing you're doing right now and you have an aptitude for it and you're making money, why not try it? I now have been doing it full time for around a decade, maybe a little longer, and best decision I've ever made in my life. Well, I'm so happy, I'm so thrilled. And I don't know what the next 10 years are going to look like, but the last 10 years have been super wonderful. [00:17:52] Speaker A: I think that's important. Follow your dreams. [00:17:57] Speaker B: I have a friend who has a wonderful career making a ton of money as a lawyer. And he told me he was so jealous of what I did. And I said, well, why don't you, you're an excellent magician. Why don't you quit law and go into magic? And he said, after all the time and energy I spent and all the money I spent getting my certification, passing the bar, he's like, no, I got to stick with this. And I think about that sometimes, you know, like, had I finished all my schooling or got a PhD and then you're like, I can't walk away now. [00:18:24] Speaker A: Like, nah. The amount of debt that you need to have a, you need to constantly have money for, it's, it's just, it's absolutely ridiculous. [00:18:33] Speaker B: I was very lucky that I could afford to be poor. And I don't joke when I see them. If you're lucky enough to graduate without debt, then it's like, well, now you can take all sorts of risks because if you have debt, obviously it compounds and it gets worse and worse. But if you don't have debt, you're like, you know what? I can go away and travel for a bit and try to perform magic. And if I fail, I move in with my parents or xyz, get a new housemate or get a part time job. But if you have debt, you can't. You got to work towards that. Yeah, I got. [00:19:04] Speaker A: And that brings us to our first commercial break. We'll be right back after this. Commercial break. There's no commercial break. [00:19:11] Speaker B: Ah, you got me. I was gonna say, is there commercial break. [00:19:13] Speaker A: No. Yeah, no. How cool would that be though? Like, that's the dream. [00:19:18] Speaker B: Well, I can tell you, here's a little plug. That is because you were mentioning podcasts and other stuff. Now people should listen to yours. There's also the magic word Away. The Magic Word is a great podcast, but the one that I listen to the most, I mean, there's so many great ones. Now I listen to Discourse in Magic, which is run by my business Partner. And people always give me credit for it. I have nothing to do with it, but I think he's done 700 episodes, or maybe not. Maybe 300 episodes over seven years or something. He's done hundreds of episodes with everybody from Juan Tamaris, David Williamson, Justin Willman, you name it. Josh J. You name it. A great magician. He's done the intro teller from. [00:19:56] Speaker A: That's amazing. [00:19:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And they talk about all the secrets and magic except how the tricks are done. So they ask these guys, like, where do they get their artistic expression? What inspires them? How do they create magic? You know, what do they enjoy or not enjoy about sharing it? And all these other questions, you know, so it's really incredible. So there's a little commercial plug for another. And, you know, the great thing about podcast is you drive. You put on. Put on a bunch. So you put on. [00:20:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I actually. I love it because every time I listen, I'll listen to the same person on the. On a different podcast all the time, because you always get something different. I like with. With Carissa Hendricks. I listened to every podcast I could find with her, and she still said things on with talking with me she hadn't said before. So, I mean, he's. He's living my dream. So I'm going to. That's awesome. I'm gonna. I'm actually gonna listen to that one myself. That sounds amazing. Kind of thing. I like to listen. [00:20:50] Speaker B: If you listen to every Carissa interview you may have heard, because she's been on that one as well. But, yeah, he's got great stuff and some wild stories. They're pretty wild. And he does an amazing job. So. Glad you like it. Anyway, end of commercial plug. That's not for me. I have nothing to plug. I got no product right now. [00:21:06] Speaker A: What you have yourself, you're busy. How did you get drawn into corporate magic? [00:21:11] Speaker B: That's where the money is. I mean, that's. The simple answer is. I started working with a manager again. Jonah Babbins. He runs the Discourse of Magic podcast, but he also runs a program that he helps magicians make six figures from magic. And so he and I joined and started a company together, which was. He's my manager. [00:21:32] Speaker A: I've seen the ads. Yes. [00:21:34] Speaker B: Yes. And they're incredible. [00:21:35] Speaker A: So I thought he looked familiar. [00:21:38] Speaker B: Yeah. So he's got. In his program, he's got about 50 people right now, and more than half of them are making six figures. And some of them are doing incredible things, like went from 30,000 to 250,000 a year. Like, it's pretty wild. So working with Jonah, we basically, he does a simple math. So for instance, the math he'll do is he's like, well, how much do you want to make? Let's say you want to make $100,000. Okay, well, how much do you charge for a show? If you charge $200 a show and you want to make $100,000, you have to do 500 shows a year. That's more than two a day. That seems unreasonable. If you charge $1,000 for a show, you have to do 100 shows. That sounds much more manageable. If you want to charge $2,000 a show, you do 50 shows, et cetera. So one of the things he looks at is if you're going to do shows, you want to do the right shows, make X amount of dollars and do extra things. Very quickly we realized a corporate client that has thousands of dollars to pay for a show, it's easier to do one of those than it is to do 10 kids shows. If you charge $300 for a kid show, absolutely. And you have to do 10 of them to get 3,000. Or you call a corporate client and they say, we want a 35 minute show and we'll give you 4,500. You go, well, hold on. And then I show up at the kid's birthday party and they make me wait an hour and the kids are disruptive and it takes me forever to get out there. And I go to the corporate show and they're like, they have a green room for you, and they bring you dinner before the show and a glass of wine. And they've gone through all the specs to make sure the lighting and the sound, and they have a great intro for you. So it was more fun for me. Clients loved what we were doing and we kept getting the work. And so, you know, I just wanted to perform magic. And I found that the corporate shows were other than theater shows. Theater shows where you sell tickets and people buy tickets specifically to come see you do magic, those are the best shows because, like, people come, they're excited, primed, literally to see you. Whereas corporate, you know, sometimes they don't know I'm about to come out or even when they do. And that's the best case scenario. I don't like to surprise people at a corporate show and they're like, who the hell is this entertainer? Better for them for the last week to hear, there's this awesome guy who's been on television and done this. He's coming. They eat Their dinner waiting. Like, when the speech is over, we want to see this magician. And then I come out and they're like, we're ready. But those two shows are the best. I love doing them. The money's great, the freedom is great. They say that they want the show to be clean, but you can push the boundaries. And when clients say, well, what's in the show that we're buying? And you go, well, you know what's in the show? It's going to be filled with engagement and mind blowing magic and humor that's going to star and interact your guests. And they go, wow, that sounds great. And I give them those specifics. So when I show up, I can do any tricks I want at the show, with any premises I want at the show. And like, you know, pretty cool to have a job where like, there's no, you're in full control, right? There's no director that yells at you that you can't change lines. There's no, you know, like, I mean, some shows, yes, I've done shows where it's like, whether it's on TV or at certain keynote things where they're like, we need to know every word you're gonna say. It has to be vetted. You can't deviate from script. [00:24:41] Speaker A: Wow, do you have enough material for like two hours or you mostly end up doing that? [00:24:45] Speaker B: I know 90 minutes is sort of my max. I could do two hours, but like, there's no client that I would say yes to that, you know, I mean, what I would tell them is the honest truth. If they're like, they're like, we need you to do two hours, I would say, no, you don't, like whatever event you think you need me to do two hours, you're wrong. Even if it's a night where they're bringing me in and it's a gala fundraiser and the only thing that's happening is my show, I'd say, well, are there speeches happening? Is there going to be an intermission? Is there going to be a keynote speaker? Are you going to show a video of the cause that you're raising money for, et cetera? If you factor all that in, a 90 minute show still gives you two plus hours with seating and getting out. We never need more than 90 minutes. If you really want more than 90 minutes, I say what you need is two performers. And that's when me and Jonah will do it together. Then they have a budget, they bring them both in. Usually a show is going to be around the 50 minute mark. I like it slightly less than an hour for corporate. Why that's good, usually I found is that if it's. There's their scheduling time, it gives you a little bit of like, you know, five minutes before you go on stage, five minutes after you get staged for transitions. But they know that it's like an hour long, you know, and if it goes a little long or goes a little short, it's in that thing. But again, a client might tell you like, like you might pitch it, say 50 minute show and they go, oh wait, no, way too long. We were looking at a 25 minute show. And you go, great. We could do a 25 minute show. And the price may end up being the same for both shows, right? It may end up being, depending on what we're doing, that if they want a 25 the same way, if they're like, we want it to be an hour instead of 50, no problem. Same price. We do. It might be slight differences between once it gets over the 60 minute mark, then I start saying, you know, we gotta adjust and see some stuff work for. Are you American? [00:26:28] Speaker A: I am actually curious. I think a lot of times things that I stumble with and I have a hard time figuring out is how do you know what your act is worth not getting specifics, but how do you know? Like how do you do the market research? [00:26:41] Speaker B: I mean the easy thing with doing market research is if you get enough call. Like one of the challenges a lot of hobbyists have with figuring out is that they don't have an advertising system or marketing. There's no inbound stuff coming. So if they only email 10 clients and of those 10 clients, they email if they're lucky, if one responds and that one, they say, I'll pitch $300 and they say yes. What does that mean? Was that $300 is you pick the exact amount and if it had been $1 more, you would have lost the gig or did you leave $2,700 on the table? And if, because you only got one person and you might get those 10 emails over the course of a year, it's very hard for you to know. So what we do is we speak to some around 800 clients a year and if we are booked, we adjust, we try offering our show at higher price point and if it's selling well, we can try. What happens is we book a bunch of shows and then people are trying to book us for sale seven months or a year from now and you can say, oh, our show is X amount and we can order A higher price. And if they say no, we have time to fill the bookings. And if they say yes, we go, okay, well, that's good analytic data that we have so we can adjust the prices accordingly. Certain times of the year, you can get more money. For instance, November and December, especially for corporate work. If a client calls us and they say we have a fraction of what we would normally take, but we're not booked, we say, we can't do that. You know, we, you know, or if we're an agency, we might say, listen, you can pay us our normal fee, which is, let's say, $3,000. Or you say you have a budget of $1,000. We could take the booking for 1,000, but if anybody comes along and they want to book us for more, then we'll replace ourselves. And if they go, well, we don't want you to replace us with someone else. We want you. You go, okay, then it's 3,000. So you have to decide you want to lock me in now, or there's all sorts of strategies, but you need to have enough people that you can run the market research and you can test it and you can quote and get rejected. Or people say yes too quickly. And as far as knowing your worth, like, you don't know your worth. Like, I. For years, my father told me to raise my rates, and I said no, because other people and my peers were a certain fee, I think. Like, I was charging $400. My dad's like, other people I see are charging 1,000. And I was like, no, you don't understand, dad. People my age are charging 400. And that's what the market bears and blah, blah, blah. And we raised our rates and 10x them. And people are like, yeah, we're booking you. And I'm like, well, I don't know. And I know people that I've lost gigs where, because I didn't charge enough because they were looking to spend, like $20,000 and we were only 5,000 or 6,000. And they were like, nah, we want someone more expensive with better stuff. So I don't know. I don't know how to find your worth. You just gotta keep working, book shows, collect promo material, and hopefully your worth increases over time, right? Like, your show gets better over time. You're updating it, you're revising it, you're adding better new material. You're getting better on stage. You're also getting better promo material with more videos and more photos and better client list, etc. So, like, you know, you will Keep growing. And if you're not growing, you're doing something wrong. So, yeah, I don't know how to determine worth other than ask if you get it. Great. And if you get rejected enough times, just because you're rejected doesn't mean anything. Right. If you only talk to one person and they reject you, doesn't mean you're charging too much. So you got to get out there and just do a lot. [00:30:16] Speaker A: Awesome. That's fantastic advice for me and anybody. [00:30:20] Speaker B: Jonah likes to say. Jonah is really the business strategist and he likes to say whatever you're charging, you're probably not charging enough. [00:30:27] Speaker A: So do you do it sounds like you do cold calls. Is that how you generate leads? How do you do that? [00:30:35] Speaker B: Let me preface this by saying I don't do anything. So Jonah does everything. No, but it's true. So I don't run ads at all. I don't deal with client calls. Jonah does it. I'm very lucky. But we use a bunch of things. So we run Facebook ads, we run ads on Instagram, we run ads on Google, we have cold email outreach software. We have data scrapers. We have all sorts of stuff that we do. So we're putting out all sorts of feelers. One of the things that we do is after we work with a client, we do a follow up call with each client where he will call them and say, tell us how the show went, what went well, what could be 5% better? What was the highlight that people were talking about? Would you feel comfortable if we sent you a review form and we'll send you a review? And also, can you think of anybody within your organization or colleagues that you have that are in similar roles from you that might benefit from entertainment like this? Yes. Oh, what's their name? Would you feel comfortable giving us a connecting us? Brilliant. So we have all these things, but also we have data scrapers who give us the names of 1000hr people. We email them. Then we run ads on these platforms. People email us. When they email or reach out to us. They get in touch with Sam, who's our, I guess, client manager, and she will email back and forth with them and say, what's a good time for you to speak with Jonah? Then Jonah will schedule a time to speak with them. Jonah gets on the phone, he's able to listen to what they're looking for and then pitch them on the appropriate package. And what's wild about this, when you think about this experience, is we have to pay money for ads. People have to click the Ads, which means we spend the money, then they have to talk to Sam, who we pay, then they have to talk to Jonah for 15 minutes. And about 75% of them or 65% of them will say no. Right. You know, like, so it's a wild process to go through. [00:32:23] Speaker A: Yeah, you got to spend money to make money. That's what my dad always said. [00:32:26] Speaker B: Spend money and spend time. Like, you know, he'll have calls. Like, I know that this is on Zoom, or not on Zoom, but on video as well as on podcast. But for the people watching, I'm just going to show you, this is like our January schedule and all those things are sales calls. So, you know, like, you can see this is after show call, after show call, client call. That's just one day, you know, and then this will be another day. And so, you know, he does so much work to speak to these clients because the way that you, you know, if you're going to ask for a lot of money and you want to book a lot of shows and any of this stuff, you have to talk to a lot of people. So we talk to 800 to 1,000, and that means that's who we talk to in a year. So think about the number of people that see our stuff. Don't respond. You got to put feelers out to get the stuff. [00:33:22] Speaker A: Wow. When does he have time to go to Spain to interview Juan Tamaris? [00:33:26] Speaker B: He is the hardest working dude I've ever worked with in Magic. But also there's a schedule. For instance, when you think strategically, when is a good time to reach out to someone in HR and try to talk with them about organizing it. Is it Friday afternoon? Probably not. So, you know, when you think about when you want to try to schedule calls with these people, Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday are your ideal days. You know, which gives you Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday to do gigs or other stuff. I also do about 70% of the gigs or 75%. So we booked them. He books the two of us, but I do more of them. So. [00:34:01] Speaker A: Okay. [00:34:01] Speaker B: His time is on the phone and doing. Running his coaching business. And, and again, he's the hardest working dude I know. Like, he's wild. Well, he's working and then when I'm out playing, like, yeah, he's great. [00:34:15] Speaker A: That sounds like a great, A great relationship though, because in order to have the, the person that wants to do. If you have somebody that wants to do analytics and do that stuff and, and take over that, that's awesome. And then that leaves you to do what you really want to do. So it seems like you're both kind of doing. You both have great roles and they seem to synergize really well. [00:34:36] Speaker B: We're very lucky. And also we're very close friends. You know, we've had. We live together, like, think about that for a second. We work together full time and we live together. And we've had one fight in six years. Like, one real fight. And that's pretty incredible. We travel on the road all the time together, doing shows on the road, sharing hotel rooms. Travel, sharing hotel rooms, living together, working together, running a business, finance. We've had one fight. [00:35:06] Speaker A: That's insane. [00:35:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Very loud. [00:35:08] Speaker A: Yeah. That's crazy. That's awesome. [00:35:11] Speaker B: I cannot say that about any woman I've ever dated in my life. It scares me. What advice I have to young people who want to do shows. And I'll extend the same advice to older people, middle aged people, whatever. People who want to start doing shows that aren't. And my advice is do it. Just do it. The first step to success is to suck ass. And I know that sounds silly, but it's the truth. It's the truth. You're going to go on stage no matter how much you prepare, and you're going to suck. Or it'll go well, but you'll see all the holes and mistakes you had. And the thing is, nobody cares. You care more than anybody else. Go up there and try doing it. It's so much fun. And once you start doing it and start getting comfortable, you'll start developing material. You'll feel good doing it. Don't wait. I waited so many years. I did magic practice and I wouldn't show anybody tricks because I was so nervous that it wouldn't be good or whatever. And had I just started actually sharing magic 10 years earlier, I don't know where I'd be now. I don't know. We organized open mics for years. Just get up there, practice some stuff and share it. And as far as putting a show together, very general advice is like, you want to think about. You don't even have to think about what the show is necessarily about. It can be a collection of tricks. If you want to get more advanced, there's things you can do with character arcs and full circles and other stuff. But I think you want a fast, strong opener and you want a powerful closer. And then everything else in the middle is experiment with pacing and speed and rhythm and stuff. But a fast, powerful, dynamic opener. I've seen too many amateurs go up on stage and they open the show by doing, like, the weakest possible material. So they go up on stage and they're like, I want you to think of a word. What's the word you're thinking of? Cat. And they go, no. And you go, that's what I wrote. No. Okay, next joke. You know, they do jokes like that. You know, they do this bit where if you can't see me on camera, I have a deck of cards and Dr. Todd, think of one card. You ready, Dr. Todd? What was the name of the card? One card just rose out of the deck. Magic. What card were you picking up, Dr. Todd? [00:37:12] Speaker A: Two of clubs. [00:37:18] Speaker B: I got it wrong, so the card dropped inside. It's weird if you have to explain the joke, but they do stuff like this over and over and over. It's a funny bit. But if you open your show by going out and you're screwing up trick after trick and it's just these silly little gags, people are like, why would I want to watch this doofus? And imagine the opposite where you walk out and you pull out a paper bag, it's folded up, you crack it open, they can see it's empty. With your empty hand, you reach inside and you pull out a full bottle of beer and you go, you guys ready to start the show? Cheers, everybody. Like, holy smokes. Now, I want to see what's going on. So open with something that's strong, that's going to get their attention, that's actually good. And then the closer, you have more time to do it. But it should be the piece that everyone talks about. So whatever. You're like that trick in your show. And you will know what the trick in the show is when you talk to your audience after. What was your favorite part of the show? Oh, man, I love that thing you did with the book or the Rubik's Cube. Great. That's your closer. And then the stuff in between. Some of them are five minutes, some of them are a minute, some of them are 7 minutes. Some of them are multi phases, some use 4 spectators, some are just you alone on stage. Experiment with different. Maybe a silent trick, maybe one dramatic piece, and the rest are comedy. You can experiment with all these different pieces, and the more textured variety and stuff you have, the more you can sort of find whatever your voice is. So that's my advice. Go out there, do some stuff, share it. Find sitting cool to open with, setting strong to close with, and start performing, do gigs. [00:38:36] Speaker A: That's the best advice I've ever gotten. That's the Best advice that I've gotten for how to set up a show. [00:38:42] Speaker B: I think about it a lot. So when I. The way I started doing full time standup work was I created an open mic. And this is something I've recommended to a lot of people. And they've done it in other cities. Jacksonville in Florida did it. Boston Magic Lab started it with some feedback from us and underground magic and all these spaces. And I said, start an open mic if you're in a town and you're like, where do I share my magic? If you have two or three magic buddies, take a night, go to a bar that has 30 or 40 seats. Say, hey, we're not going to pay you any money, but we're going to bring a show here and we're going to fill this place with 40 people that are going to buy food and drink. You put on a show, you do it once and you can do it every month or every four months or whatever and just start trying stuff. And we did that with our open mic and lots of people came through and we saw how people were developing shows, what they were struggling with. Another thing that hobbyists and beginners struggle with a lot is transitions between tricks. They finish a trick and they go, was that your card? Yes. Thank you very much. Okay, for my next trick. And it's like, okay, well, what's the transition? How are you going from one to. And that's something that comes with experience and with editing and writing. Another piece of advice I give every new performer, film your set. You have an iPhone or you have an Android that everyone goes, oh, my Android has better picture quality and video quality. Great. Film your set, give it to someone to record or put it on a stand, film it, take it home. You can pay a director tens of thousands of dollars to watch it, or you can watch it yourself and give yourself notes. And you're probably going to be pretty critical. And also, you probably have some sort of good taste in magic or you wouldn't be doing it at trying stuff. So, yeah, sorry, I'm rambling off top because there's so many pieces of the. [00:40:16] Speaker A: No, this is so good. You know, like the best stuff is the rambling. [00:40:22] Speaker B: Well, I'm all, I'm a rambling man, baby. That's what I got. But yeah, try it. Put stuff out there. Think about how you're opening. Like, not just the opening trick. You know, we did a lot of these open mics. 250 different magicians came through on our shows over five years. And like, you know, when I go, ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together. He's a dentist by day and a wizard by night. Dr. Todd, everyone. Well, when you hear your name and people start clapping, where are you coming from? Are you coming through the audience? Are you coming from the wing? How do you walk up on stage? What's the first thing you do? Do you go up to the microphone? Do you put a prop down? What's the first thing you say when you address the audience? Do you adjust your coat? A lot of comedians will see them do a very similar thing, which is they walk past the microphone stand, they take a bottle of water they're holding or a drink, they put it on the stool, then they go to the mic, they take the mic stand out of the mic, they take it, they strike the mic stand by putting it behind them. Then they say, detroit, how are you doing? But they go through this thing where they thought about it, I'm going to walk past it, I'm going to put this down here. I need the stool in this exact spot. I need the micro stand to go here and I need it to be. And a lot of magicians don't. And so we see those fumbling, we see the transitions in between. And if you think about all those moments and the opener and the closer, your show is going to be better than 70% of what new people do. [00:41:48] Speaker A: All these gems, these verbal gems are raining down out of your mouth. [00:41:54] Speaker B: These are the clips I want. Best advice I've gotten in. Verbal gems falling out your mouth. You're going to cut where I look like a dingo. I'm going to say the stupidest things. That's going to be the sound bites. [00:42:06] Speaker A: How do people listening to this find out more about you? [00:42:09] Speaker B: You can find me on Facebook. My name is Ben C. Train on there. I recommend follow me on Instagram Train Ben. Or you can follow the Toronto Magic Company on Instagram. All our magic stuff's on there. Or you can follow me on LinkedIn, which I think is Ben TrainMagic LinkedIn. And if you follow me on LinkedIn, I post a lot of, like behind the scenes stories about, like how events went wrong and what we can do to prevent them from going on or common mistakes I see with event planners and, you know, inspirational stories or how I develop material or other stuff. So there's a lot of the LinkedIn is like articles about magic and performing. Instagram is photos and fun videos and Facebook is if you want 1:00am weird posts like me complaining about why no one takes Medieval Times so you pick which content you want. Okay. [00:43:01] Speaker A: All right, Ben Train, thank you so much for coming on the show and spending time with us. Ladies and gentlemen, one more round of applause for Ben Train. [00:43:10] Speaker B: Wow. Thank you, Magic. [00:43:13] Speaker A: Thanks for listening. Make sure to, like, comment and subscribe to the podcast. Get in touch and make your voice known. And of, of course, don't forget to be magical. Goodbye.