Magician David Corsaro on Growth and Creativity

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to Magician's Workshop. I'm your host, Dr. Todd. And today we have a very special guest magician, David Corsaro. I first met David at the D.C. festival of Magic, where he was part of an incredible weekend of performers. What stood out to me wasn't just his skill on stage, but how genuinely interested he was in learning about the other performers. I got the chance to go out to lunch with them, and one thing I noticed is he was asking a lot of questions, learning about the other performers, not just talking about himself. That kind of humility and curiosity says a lot about who he is, not just as a magician, but as a person. So in our conversation today, we're going to explore David's journey into magic, his approach to engaging audiences, and some of the most valuable lessons he's learned along the way. He also may share some practical advice for magicians looking to grow their careers, including insights on marketing, booking, and what separates a good magician from a great one. So let's all get ready for an inspiring and fun conversation with one of the most engaging performers in the business, David Corsaro. [00:00:56] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Todd. Appreciate you. Appreciate you having me on. This is going to be fun. [00:01:00] Speaker A: Yeah. And you've done. I mean, you've not even to mention all the other stuff, fooling Penn and Teller, which you talked about at the D.C. festival of Magic in one of the lectures. You don't do anything small. It's really cool. [00:01:09] Speaker B: Thank you very much. I sort of come from the school of just get out and perform as much as possible. So whether it is a small show, a big show, a high paying show, a low paying show, not a paying show, I think there's a lot of value in just, when possible, getting out and performing as much as possible. [00:01:30] Speaker A: Awesome. So before we get into marketing and your and some of how you perform, I want to talk about the early days. What was your earliest memory of magic and what made you want to pursue it seriously? [00:01:44] Speaker B: I mean, one of my earliest memories was my father was a science teacher, and one year he was trying to come up with sort of like a unique way of having some fun and doing something in his classroom that related to science. So he took like a little night class in magic and he had a bunch of little props that he had in a little suitcase in our basement. And I remember kind of like knowing he was doing it but not really caring so much at the time. We're literally talking about me being five, six, seven years old, but I do remember this. And then I saw a magician in town and said to my father, wow, that was. You know, I saw this magician, it was so neat. And he was like, well, I can do a couple tricks, and went and grabbed it and did a couple little tricks for me. And then even that, it kind of just. I thought it was interesting and I kind of moved on. And it wasn't until I was about 15 or so in high school when all of a sudden I used to watch David Copperfield on TV every year. And then I kind of watched one of the specials, remembered my father had this trunk in the basement that I opened up and all. All the magic shined out like the suitcase in Pulp Fiction kind of a thing. [00:02:49] Speaker A: That's amazing. [00:02:50] Speaker B: And then just didn't stop. [00:02:53] Speaker A: Wow. Were there any specific magicians who influenced your style? [00:02:57] Speaker B: I would say, in a weird way, like, all of them. I mean, it sounds funny to say, but, you know, I watched David Copperfield every year, and then for a while I dressed and acted like David Copperfield. And then I was really into Harry Anderson, who used to be the judge on Night Court, who did magic. And every single time he did any kind of magic, I started to dress and act a little like Harry Anderson. And so, I mean, I was influenced by a ton of different people. And it wasn't until I got much more serious and began meeting a lot of other magicians that I all of a sudden started to understand that I didn't need to be like David Copperfield or like Harry Anderson or like David Blaine or like, I could just kind of be myself. And that was okay. That was allowed. And once I got that and then I started to figure out who I was, not just as a magician, but as a person. That's the other really benefit that magic had was it really gave me a lot of insight into who I was and gave me confidence, both in terms of being a magician and many other things in my life. So magic's been a huge influence on me everywhere. And. And in a way, every magician's had an influence on that. [00:04:09] Speaker A: Wow. When did you take performing? When did you begin performing more often, I should say, as a regular, as opposed to, were you in high school or college or past that? [00:04:21] Speaker B: I mean, it was a slow build. It really was. It started off 16, 17 years old, doing a couple kids birthday parties and a couple Boy Scout meetings and Girl Scout meetings and things like that. And then in college, I would occasionally get a corporate gig, and then I found a restaurant that I could do once or twice a month. So there was never a point where I Went from it's a hobby to it's a job, it's a gig. It's something. It was just this very slow burn over time where every few months I would look at the numbers and they would be just gradually increasing. Number of shows, types of shows, number of people per show, amount of money I made per show, it just kept growing over time, and then it became just a snowball down a hill. It just kept. Kept gathering more and more steam, which is why I sort of subscribe to that philosophy of just get out there. Get out there and perform as much as possible. Don't worry about the money. Don't worry about the size. Don't worry about the prestige. You need to get your. Your. Your wheels rolling first. [00:05:26] Speaker A: Okay. Wow. That. All right, let's. Let's fast forward then. So I want to talk about your style a little bit. How would you describe your style of magic to someone who's never seen you perform? [00:05:39] Speaker B: That's a great question. How would I describe my style of magic? I really. I really want to come across as the everyman. I don't want to come across as having powers. Even when I do, and I do a lot of mentalism. I really don't play it like I am reading your mind and struggling with thoughts and vibrations and feelings. I know a lot of people who do that and do it extremely well. It's not who I was. So I have always tried to come across as just. I'm somebody who studies some psychology. I'm somebody who knows misdirection and putting it all into. To my show. My show is, in my opinion, as close to like a TED Talk as possible, but while still being a magic show. So for me, the style is I want to be the guy that after my show, you want to head down to the bar, get a drink, talk sports, make some jokes about Seinfeld, and, you know, you might see me sitting next to you on a plane, and it would just. You would think I'm just the. Every other person that you're sitting next to that's always been sort of who I'm. I'm sort of shooting for. [00:06:48] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that. I think that comes across and because, you know, one of the things you're known for, your strong audience engagement, what you seem to be able to build kind of almost like instant rapport with people. Is it just though, is it how you're coming across? Or is there any tips that you. You go for when you take, you know, when you call someone on from the audience and bring them up. I mean, you seem to be very good at that. [00:07:14] Speaker B: Thank you very much. I, that's really important to me. So I really appreciate you, you saying that. I think it all stems from a sincere, genuine interest in everybody I talk to. I'm the kind of person who believes everybody's interesting. You just got to dig through it and find out what it is about them. So, you know, one of the other influences on me was there's a magician named Paul Harris who wrote a series of books years ago called the Art of Astonishment, and he had a couple essays in there that were really, really impactful to me in terms of considering magic to be a very powerful tool to give your audience emotions that they rarely get to experience. And I don't want to go too deep into it because I think it's a really fascinating essay. People should really look it up, try to find it. Paul Harris, Art of ASTONISHMENT oh, I, I, everything I do, I try to flip this script around. I try to turn it and make it about somebody else. Like I said, I'm not somebody who says I have these powers. If anything, I love the idea of my presentations being you have these powers, and I'm just going to try to help you unlock them a little bit or help you see things in a way that is a rather unique way of seeing stuff. So every single person I have on stage, and you saw this at the show, my stuff's all about their favorite music, it's about their interests, it's about what they do for a job. And I try to tie the magic into that. One of the tricks I taught in my lecture, it's literally all the entire trick is about me, about yourself. Tell me what ice cream you like, Tell me where you like to travel to. And I sort of created a magic trick from that. That trick, in a slightly different format, is ultimately what I did when I was on Penn and Teller, fool us and fooled them. But it still, to me, all boils down to my interest is in the audience. I've had other magicians, when they've given me thoughts or suggestions about my show, tell me that I, I leave the stage too quickly, that I don't kind of take the applause in. And it's because in a weird way, applause kind of makes me uncomfortable. Like, it's weird for people to applaud me when I'm trying to help you, I'm trying to do this for you. And I have other magicians who I know and really respect who do a great job of doing a trick and then Kind of fading into the background. So it's all about the magic and the person you did the magic for, not about. Okay, now give me some applause. So for me, it's all about the audience. It's all about the engagement. It's all about making them feel something and remember something that they're never going to lose. [00:09:47] Speaker A: So speaking of one of the tricks, the tricks you. You did, the lecture, the one that absolutely blew my mind was there was the chart of the mall. So I want to. If you could talk a little bit of the process of creating or refining an effect, how you turn it. Take something that maybe exists already and turn it into something that fits your personality or invent something new. I mean, because the both of the tricks that you taught were very, very clever. And in a way that I was. I especially, I would say for me, the standout was the map where you get. You were able to predict where they're going to be on a map and with a free choice. And I just thought every way that that was such a clever way to do that. [00:10:26] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:10:26] Speaker A: So how did that come about? [00:10:28] Speaker B: In a weird way, it really came about in exactly the reason why I'm. What I'm talking about, about it being for the audience. I was doing. I was performing at a restaurant, and I went up to a table and. And I did a piece of magic. And somebody at the table knew how the trick was done. I didn't. They didn't notice something. They knew a little bit of magic. So this was somebody who has some experience as a magician. Maybe he wasn't a magician, but he knew a little bit about magic. And then he told the entire crowd what happened. And it. It upset me not because I did a piece of magic and somebody said it, but because you saw the audience kind of. And they dropped. And I literally thought to myself, I really wish there was a trick that I could do where if I ever met that person again, they would think they knew how to do it, but couldn't. Couldn't figure it out. Let that person wrestle with the method while I can take the rest of the audience on the journey I want to take them on. And then I saw a card trick that I really, really loved, but had to me a part of it that I just wasn't comfortable with. And as I sort of looked at the trick, I discovered this way of taking the design and applying it to a completely different thing. Not taking a card trick and making it a different card trick, Taking the principle of the card trick and turning it into Something completely different, turning it into literally a map. And all of a sudden I said, wait a minute. If I take this map and I give it to that smart guy at the table and let him wrestle with it, there's no way to figure. There's literally no way to figure it out. And I said this during the lecture, but the closest he can do. And I've done the math, the closest he can do is figure out about 25% of it. That's literally it. [00:12:24] Speaker A: That's awesome. [00:12:25] Speaker B: And I said to myself, if I do that, not only is this actually a good trick, but it's a trick that I can kind of give that guy to wrestle with, and it'll give me time to play with everybody else the way I want to. Again, ethics and things like that are really important to me. And I reached out to the original creator of the card trick and said, are you cool if I take this basic principle and apply it in a completely new way? And, you know, I might not have legally had to do that, but it was just important to me that he kind of gave a blessing to it. And he did. He loved the idea. And it's kind of taken off in its own direction. [00:13:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's it. Is that going to be. Is that going to be something you publish that trick? [00:13:05] Speaker B: It. So I have a. There's a magic website called Penguin Magic. And Yep. They. Yeah. And they've asked people to do lectures on there. So I've done a lecture on Penguin Magic and I've explained that trick in that spot. Perfect. That's the only place that I've really published it, so to speak. It's just that's. I'm not the kind of creator who. Who can do hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of brand new material. I'm not an Andy Gladwin or a Josh J. Or Joe Reinfleischer, a Jay Sankey. I'm not one of these people who just has that creative gene like that. The stuff that I've ever created has been minimal, but hopefully impactful. And so I don't publish a lot. That's just that one trick was in that one Penguin lecture. [00:13:49] Speaker A: I love Penguin lectures. So make sure you check out the Courseroom Penguin lecture, because I love. I love their lecture. I probably have about 40 or 50 of them. You might. You might be one of the ones that I have. I'm not even. [00:14:01] Speaker B: I've. [00:14:01] Speaker A: There's. There. There came a time where there was too many of them to even go through anymore, but you can learn. I Never technically need to buy another magic trick again, because you can go through there and you can make everything that you could ever want from something. Those principles that you can. [00:14:17] Speaker B: 100%. [00:14:18] Speaker A: I have a question. How do you know when. If you're looking for something to put in your actual. How do you know? Because there's just. There's for. For me, and I have a 40 minutes that I like. But. And when I start thinking of if this doesn't fit here, like, I had an egg bag, but I couldn't figure out how to make the. A lot of times the only. The only finale I had for the egg bag was a shot glass. How do you know what. There's so many tricks, and I'm inundated constantly with emails of all of these things that may or may not work for me. How do you know what. When you want to put something in the act or try something new, how do you know when it's ready? [00:14:53] Speaker B: For me, it's the end. So for me, I'm always thinking about the end result. So when I get inundated with those emails and I see all the cool new toys out there, I'll buy them and I'll play and I'll have a good time. But to me, those are all tools, and they're tools that I have in a toolbox, and I. I want that toolbox to be as robust as possible. But at the end of the day, those are tools. And I. I'm not. I'm not building a hammer. I'm using the hammer to build something else. So if you remember that. So, like, in my show, I do this thing about music where I play music. I ask the audience to sing back the lyrics of the song. And I asked somebody what their favorite genre of music is, and that's where that all stemmed from. I just. I wanted to play music and have the audience play back lyrics. To me. I just found that as an interesting premise. And then I went, all right, if I'm going to have an audience, if I'm going to play part of a song and see who in the audience knows the next line, well, then what am I going to do with that person who does know the next line? Okay, well, I'm talking music, so it sort of makes sense that we would talk about the music they like. Great. So now, again, I still haven't picked up the toolbox yet. I'm still just talking about what my end goal is going to be. Well, what about the music they like? Okay. It would be really cool if they thought Of a song, and I knew what it was. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. So now I can go back to the toolbox and go, great. What can I do here that gets me to learn what somebody's song is? So, for example, if you say, I love the egg bag, but I can't produce the shot glass, what I would say is, I would say to you, anytime you're doing a show, write down everything about the venue or the people you're performing for. It's a charity organization. Okay. What do they do? They help blind and visually impaired people. Okay. I'm going to start brainstorming words and phrases about helping that organization raise money or raise awareness and then start saying, okay, now if everything here. What is about the right size? What is an item that's about the right size that I need, that I could produce that aligns with what they have, what they need. And if the answer is I have an item, I can't think of how to produce it. That's a good thing because now you can go now to go back to the tools. Yes. Build my own item to make me able to produce that. So end goal in mind, always. [00:17:30] Speaker A: That's really good. What has been one of your most memorable performances? Because you've performed in a lot of bigger venues and all over. What's been one of your most memorable performances? [00:17:41] Speaker B: I mean, I'm so crazy lucky in the sense that I could tell you that I have 10 to 20 of them. I will tell you that. Being on stage with Penn and Teller. So after you fool Penn and Teller, one of the prizes is that you get flown back out to Vegas and and you perform on stage with them at the Rio. At the end of their show, I had 19 of my friends and family fly out with me and watch the show in the audience. So the idea of being on stage at the Rio in Vegas with two of my idols and them introducing me and Forget it. Mind blowing. I. When I was young, I really only had two goals in magic, you know, two real dreams. I mean, at the time, Penn and Teller fool us wasn't even an item, so I couldn't dream it. But one of them was to perform at the magic Castle. I've done it four years in a row now. [00:18:31] Speaker A: That's amazing. [00:18:31] Speaker B: Every single show at the magic castle. And you do. When you perform there, you do 28 shows a week. And I'm telling you, four years in a row, 28 shows. Every single one of them. Before I go on, I take a breath and think about how lucky I am and how much I love what I'm about to do. Years ago I was asked to perform and lecture in Japan. And so the person involved flew me to Japan and set me up for a week and toured me around this country. And I mean the idea that somebody would do that because I do card tricks, that by itself is unbelievable. So, you know, I've had so many of them and every single one of them humbles me in such a way that I can't even verbalize. I'm just very lucky. [00:19:19] Speaker A: And I, I get to, it's. I see a lot of, of in my day to day interaction, I'll see maybe 40 people a day and I have to come up with something to talk to them about when I walk in a room. So I, I sometimes do talk to them about things like Penn and Teller. And I, I did notice that unfortunately a lot of the younger people younger than me don't know who that is. And, and have you noticed, has that changed? Was being on Penn and Teller did anything major benefit, did that make any difference being a Penn and Teller winner? [00:19:52] Speaker B: I, I actually think it's a little like reverse bell shaped curve. If you look at their popularity and their awareness in the general zeitgeist, I think they, it was really huge. And then for a little while, magic itself kind of weakened a little bit where the awareness of a lot of magicians just, they were still there. They're still two of the most famous magicians alive. But in general, most magic weakened a little bit. However, I think over the last 10 years, 15, 20 years, it's exploded. With David Blaine, Criss angel, you know, Mat Franco agt, Penn and Teller fool us. I think it's exploded in a way where the rising tide raised everybody's ship. Can tell you live near, live near New York City. Fifteen years ago, there was basically two magic shows in New York. I think we counted now there's 13. [00:20:50] Speaker A: Wow. [00:20:50] Speaker B: Like, that's not an accident. That's. It's really not. [00:20:53] Speaker A: And you're at like four of them. [00:20:56] Speaker B: Knock on wood. I'm in, I'm in a good handful, but so I think, I think that's like Penn and Teller I think are now. I think there's a great argument that they're more famous now than they've ever been. [00:21:08] Speaker A: That's awesome. [00:21:10] Speaker B: It's really helped for me. It's helped because the minute people hear, the minute a client hears you were on Penn and Teller, you fooled them. It adds an immediate legitimacy to what they believe a professional magician is Whether or not it is, is. Is. Is irrelevant. It's what they believe. So they'll immediately go, you are. On Penn and Teller. You fooled them. You're hired. That's enough for a lot of people. So that's where that's really helped me. [00:21:38] Speaker A: And I think that's sneaky because that the fooling of them is not really the point. Like, that's the best part, is that they found a way to get a television show and people to watch it in order to elevate magicians. Whether you fool them or not, and it doesn't even matter. It's just. It's a way to get magic back out there, and I just love that about it. [00:21:57] Speaker B: And that's. I mean, from what I've heard, that's a lot. Teller driven. Teller just wanted to see good magic on tv. So they all came up with this concept to make it a competition where it was really just his desire to see great magic. And I've talked to him about it a lot, and he loves just seeing great magic. [00:22:14] Speaker A: That's awesome. Speaking of great magic, have you ever had something go completely wrong? [00:22:19] Speaker B: Sure. [00:22:21] Speaker A: What was the. Is there anything you can remember? I had a really. I had a really bad one this weekend also. I forgot to put contact cement on the walnut, and for a. For a vanish, they didn't notice, but it. God, that was. That was fun. But anything like that, anything akin that. [00:22:39] Speaker B: You can share, my God. I mean, it's gonna happen. Yeah. More than I can. More than I'm proud to say. The one thing I will say, though, is I'm extremely lucky in the sense that I have a lot of really great magicians that I am friends with, and we spend a considerable amount of time saying what could go wrong and how do you get out of it? So for a lot of my material, there's the way it's supposed to go, and then there's plan B, and you kind of hope you never have to get the plan C, but it still happens. You know, 20 years ago, it happened a lot. Now it happens less frequently because I have prepared. Because I've spent so much time saying, here's this trick, and if it goes wrong, you're gonna pivot to this one, and hopefully the audience is none the wiser, you know, so in the show that you saw me do, every single one of those tricks has a pivot plan B. And thankfully, I didn't have to use it the night you saw me, but I definitely have to use it once in a while, and hopefully I'VE prepared myself enough to get out of it as many times as possible. [00:23:51] Speaker A: What do you think is the perfect magic trick? [00:23:54] Speaker B: What is the perfect. I kind of think. I don't know. I'm gonna give you kind of a Hallmark movie answer on this one. [00:24:00] Speaker A: Please do. [00:24:01] Speaker B: I don't think I can define it. I just think the audience can define it. And so my goal is to figure out what that is for each individual person. Again, this guy, Paul Harris, in this essay, talks about how when you and I don't want to go too deep into it, but when you do this moment of astonishment, this moment opens up for an audience, and it doesn't stay open that long. And he's got a variety of different, really fascinating philosophy, pieces of philosophy about how to keep it open as long as possible. But he says, that's my goal. My goal is to jam a crowbar into that moment and hold it open. And I sort of feel like, for me, as I'm performing for different people, I'll find those moments. I'll look over and go, I'm about to get them. This. For this guy, it's this trick, and it's about to be this moment. So hold it open, and then when I'm done. For her, it wasn't this trick. Okay, let's go through the repertoire material in my head, think of something a little different, and try to get that moment open for her. So, like, what is the perfect magic trick? The answer is, to me, it's whatever is going to hold that moment open as long as possible for each individual person I'm doing a show for. And that's why I'll do a show and have people come up and say, oh, my God, the music thing. I thought about it forever. And somebody else will say the number thing, and somebody else will say the card thing, and somebody else will say the name thing. And so to me, for every one of those, that's the perfect trick for that person. [00:25:33] Speaker A: That's a great answer. So, because I have a guru of marketing with me, I'd love to ask you. [00:25:40] Speaker B: Some magic business guru is way overshooting. [00:25:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. [00:25:46] Speaker B: Okay, Please. [00:25:47] Speaker A: A. A person with specific experience in the marketing world. [00:25:53] Speaker B: All right, good. [00:25:55] Speaker A: What is the most important first step in starting a career as a magician? [00:25:59] Speaker B: What is the most important first step? In my opinion, the most important first step is putting. Is performing really good magic. If I would say, sort of, if you. If you have a bad show, if you're not a good magician, I can get you hired once. Probably can't get you hired twice. Jeff McBride once told me, you know, you've put on a good show when somebody would pay to watch you again. So that's been a huge philosophy for me. So just because you do a bunch of tricks and your wife likes it and your mother likes it and your aunts like it, that doesn't mean, that doesn't mean you're a good magician yet. So I think making sure, getting as much feedback as possible, performing as much as possible so that you can get that feedback, you could be honest about that feedback, recording your shows, thinking about them, I think that's number one number. And it's not, it's not a business answer, but really it is, it's doing the best show possible. If you do the best show possible, if you are a good magician, you are actually already light years ahead of a lot of your competitors, then we can start talking business, then we can start talking marketing, then we can start talking advertising and promotion and publicity. But step one, man, you gotta get that show really good. [00:27:23] Speaker A: Okay, so you've got your, we've got our. How much material we talking about to really, to really get started? 40 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour? [00:27:34] Speaker B: Again, what do you want to do? So if you're a close up performer, I think you need to have enough A material to do 20 minutes of strolling magic per person. Now, you're never going to do 20 minutes of strolling per person. Let me make that very clear. At a restaurant, you're not going to do 20 minutes. But I think you need 20 minutes of a material to pick from. When you approach a group, you need to be able to go, okay, let me size these people up. Are they more serious? Are they more funny? Do they want, do they want me to keep going? Do they want to see two tricks and move on? So I think you need, if you're strolling, you need 20 minutes of A material and then you need 40 minutes of B material. 40 minutes of the extra stuff that when somebody follows you to the next group and somebody comes back to the restaurant, two to three weeks in a row, you can dip from that B material and it's still going to be great stuff. If you are a parlor or stage performer, I think you need an hour of what you would be really proud to do. You can't say, well, I've got 20 minutes of good stuff and 30 minutes of filler. I mean, sure you could do that and sure you can make money off of it and sure you can start to build stuff, but if you're Going to start charging and charging good money and building a business. I think you need a material, and then that a material can come and go. As you see pits. You could say, I'm going to take out this A trick and I'm going to put in a B trick and work it, work it, work it until it gets to become an A trick. Great. But still have your mind on how do I take as much stuff as possible to build my hour, my 20 minutes, whatever. [00:29:17] Speaker A: Wow. What, what do you think is the biggest mistake a lot of magicians make when they're trying to get established or get gigs? [00:29:24] Speaker B: The biggest mistakes. [00:29:26] Speaker A: Step one is don't wear a vest with a pattern. Step one. [00:29:32] Speaker B: Step one is. I don't know if it's step one, but it's. There's many step ones. Okay, let's say 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D. One of those ones is just copying what you see other magicians doing. So you watch a penguin lecture and you see Danny Garcia do an incredible trick, and then you do it like Danny Garcia, and then you watch Josh J. Do a trick, and you do that trick like Josh J. And then you watch David Williamson do a trick, and you do that trick like David Williamson, and then you watch Danny D. Ortiz do a trick, and you do that trick like Danny D. Ortiz. Then you do a show, and it's Danny Garcia, Josh J. David Williamson, Danny Diorges. So I think that's. Because now what you're doing, again, from a business perspective, truthfully, is you're telling the audience, I'm this guy, and sometimes this guy, and sometimes this person, and sometimes this person, and sometimes that person. And now the audience is going, well, I'm not sure how to fit you yet into where my business needs are. So I think that's one of the mistakes, is really sort of copying what everybody else is doing. Harrison Greenbaum has an incredible book and lecture called you are All Terrible. But it's really about. It's about establishing a unique viewpoint, and it's about ethics and it's about creativity. It's. It's really fascinating. So I think that's. One, two, I think is thinking you're way better than you are summating your market. I think a big mistake is somebody who says, look, I have this invisible deck, and everybody loves it. So now it's time to charge fifteen hundred dollars an hour to. To my local church. You're. You're wrong three different times on that sentence. There's a, you know, you're reaching the end of the rainbow. You want the gold at the end of the rainbow and you haven't even approached the beginning of the rainbow yet. And these are all hard things to accept. They really are. It's hard to, it's, it's hard to do a show where you are Danny Garcia and Danny D and Josh J and David Williamson and you're getting applause and say, it's hard to say to yourself that was wrong, wrong. I'm putting wrong in quotes. It's hard to do that. And it's hard to charge $1,000 or $1,500 and get one of those gigs and say, but I really probably didn't deserve it and it's probably not good for my long term goal and blah, blah, blah. So I think it's really hard to do that stuff. But I do think for the long term benefit of you and your business success, I think it's important to do it. [00:32:01] Speaker A: Where are some good resources for magicians to learn more about marketing? [00:32:05] Speaker B: So I'll be a little selfish, I guess. Try, I guess. There are a lot of resources on business and marketing out there and 75% of them are horrible. 75% of them are charging you an exorbitant amount of money to give you weak or useless information. There is 25% out there that are great, but you have to wade through a lot to find it. And unfortunately you have to spend a lot of money to find you're. Spend a lot of money and find resources that are not that good. So about a year ago I got fed up with this and I had done a lot of business and marketing stuff for magicians in the past. And about a year ago I got really fed up of people in my community being cheated. So I began putting everything I could think of regarding marketing out there to the magic community for free. So I started putting out a series of videos that really walk through not my philosophy of marketing, the business philosophy of marketing, the way that Fortune 500 companies market their brands. And I took those philosophies, which I know about because I do marketing in my 9 to 5 job, and I began applying them to the business world, to the marketing, to the magic world. So I began putting these out for free. And I began again, one of the lucky things is I've had a lot of really great successful magicians call me up and go, I love what you're doing. If I can help, let me know. So I've talked to the arguably the most successful cruise ship magician working today and he gave a bunch of Free advice on how to become a cruise ship magician. And then I talked to arguably one of the most successful wedding magicians today and he gave a bunch of advice on how to become a wedding magician. And I talked to Carissa Hendricks, one of the most successful touring magicians of the day, and she gave her philosophy of social media marketing. And then I combined that with hours and hours of advice that I had for people. And it's all out there for free. Every single piece of it's for free. I'm never going to charge for it. There's not going to be some little thing at the end where I upsell you on. Nope. My only goal of this is to get enough people interested in it and have it working for them that we can put all those con or con men and women out of business who are trying to make money from other magicians by selling crap. [00:34:37] Speaker A: That's awesome. Where can we get a hold of this information? [00:34:40] Speaker B: All you have to do is send me an email. So the email address is timetobeawesomemail.com so literally one word, t I M E T O B E a W E S o m e timetobeawesomemail.com and just, hey, please add me to your mailing list and I will send you everything I've done up to this point, which is literally hours and hours and hours of great marketing and business material. And you'll be on the list in perpetuity for as long as as I can do this. Now, again, it's not a subscription thing, so you're not going to get a video a week. You're going to get a video as often as I can do them and as often as I can get people to do them. To do them. But I've got about 800 people on this list so far and not a single person has said unsubscribe. So hopefully they're getting some value from it. [00:35:31] Speaker A: That's awesome. Thank you again for doing that. That's a really great. That's a great service to the community. And there's. I mean, it's just great that you've done that. What do you think separates a good magician from a great magician? [00:35:42] Speaker B: Honesty. I'll summarize. [00:35:43] Speaker A: I mean, a bunch of liars making. [00:35:45] Speaker B: A very big statement down to one word. Honesty is good business ethics. It is being very honest about the strengths and weaknesses of you as a person, your show and your magic. And sometimes you can't get honesty from yourself. You have to hear it from somebody else. It's it's having a group around you who will be honest with you. This was a philosophy that was really instilled a lot by me, a magician out in New Jersey named Dennis McSweeney, who for a very long time, really pushed this with me and a bunch of other magicians. We would get together and hang out, and he would look at me and kind of go, you flashed that coin. I saw it. And sometimes your ego gets hurt a little bit. You kind of go, yeah, but you knew where to look. And he would stop and go, you flashed. Now, do you want to get better or do you not? So whether I knew where to look is kind of irrelevant. Do you want to fix it? Yes, I do. Okay, let's work on fixing it. And he instilled that in me and a lot of other magicians that you might know, and I think that really elevated a lot of us. And there are some of the group that Dennis helped who are really, really big names right now. And every one of them will go, yeah, Dennis was influential on me. And it's not so much about Dennis as much as it is about his philosophy of, you need to really be honest about your strengths, your weaknesses to get better. So, to me, a lot. A lot of. Not all. A lot of the great magicians I know at some point in their careers have been very honest. And a lot of the ones who are good but never been great have this ego roadblock that seems to prevent them from that level of honesty that's going to take to get them to the next level. [00:37:35] Speaker A: Wow. That was not the answer I was expecting, but that was the answer we all deserve. You ready for some quick fire questions? Yeah. Get the neck cracked. All right. What's your guilty pleasure snag before a show? [00:37:49] Speaker B: Reese's peanut butter cups. [00:37:51] Speaker A: Good one. If you could perform for any historical figure, who would it be, and what trick would you show them? [00:37:55] Speaker B: Any historical figure. Albert Einstein. Mentalism. [00:37:59] Speaker A: That would be good if I was gonna. One of them is, if you weren't a magician, what job would you most likely be doing? I'm pretty sure if you couldn't do either of your jobs, what else would you be doing? [00:38:08] Speaker B: Psychiatry. [00:38:10] Speaker A: Nice. What's one trick you wish you invented? [00:38:12] Speaker B: 99% of the stuff Danny D. Ortiz invents. Fair. [00:38:16] Speaker A: And this is the last one. When you're not doing magic, what's your favorite way to unwind? [00:38:19] Speaker B: Watching sports with one of my sons and watching Marvel Star wars stuff with the other one. [00:38:26] Speaker A: Fair. Fantastic. So is there anything that you would want to you would want to say that. I didn't touch on. [00:38:34] Speaker B: First off, I just want to say, number one, this is a great resource. I love this. I love that you do this. I really do. I think this is. I think there's a lot of really, really powerful resources that magicians can grab a hold to that are free. Not the business stuff I'm talking about. I'm talking about a million other things that give such great foundations to building a magic career on. And this is one of them. Something like this is 100% one of them. You made a comment a few moments ago about before we started how going down to the D.C. festival of Magic was one of the most fun weekends you've ever had. [00:39:10] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:39:10] Speaker B: Listen, we're in a digital age where everyone's online. I still think getting together in person with other magicians is huge. I think grabbing a meal and building friendships in person is exponentially valuable to your career and longevity as a magician. And sometimes it's not even doing magic. Sometimes it's hanging out and having a burger and making jokes, and it. It. I think that's huge. So to me, if you have a choice of buying 10 magic books or going to one magic convention, go to the magic convention. The books are important. I'm not dissuading that. But if, if you have a budget and you go, what am I going to spend it on? Get to there in person. Meet as many magicians as possible. Tag along for lunches and dinners. People are heading out, go. You guys mind if I join you? Go sit down with them, listen to people, make friends. I think that's huge. [00:40:10] Speaker A: Magicians, but not really practicing. It's. They talked about, they wanted to talk about magic tricks. So it's really neat that the professional magicians didn't talk of all about magic. It was all about the other stuff, which I thought was really cool. [00:40:22] Speaker B: And I'll give you one more insight here real quick, is that I believe and. And some people can argue this point, But I believe 80% of the magic community are some of the best, most generous, caring, loving people that you could ever imagine. The other 20 are people that you want to get the hell away from as fast as possible. There kind of is no gray area in magic. And when you do that, tag along. If you start trying to do a trick or listening and you, you're getting a cold shoulder, say to yourself, that's the 20%. I'm gonna go find somebody else at the next meal. And you will build your community really fast. Of those great people and it will help you exponentially become a better magician over time. [00:41:07] Speaker A: That's fantastic advice. David. This has been such a pleasure. From hanging out with you at the D.C. festival of Magic to getting to dive deeper in your story, I've really enjoyed learning more about how you think about magic and performance. And for anyone listening who wants to see more of your work or connect with you, where is the best place to find you? [00:41:23] Speaker B: I mean, the best place to find me in general? Social media. So VidCoursaro D A V I D C O R S A R O that's Facebook, Instagram, wherever. And if you want to talk more of the business side of things and get the marketing stuff, I've got timetobeawesomemail.com. [00:41:39] Speaker A: All right, well, thanks again for joining me. And if you listening want to learn more about David, check out his links in the show notes to see his work and find out where he's performing next. As always, thank you for joining me here on the Magicians Workshop. If you've enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, share it with fellow magicians or magic fans and leave a review. It really helps us bring more incredible conversations like this to you. Until next time, remember that magic begins with a story. Outro Music. [00:42:15] Speaker B: Sam.