QR:     Whenever I get interested in something as a hobby, for some reason, I end up figuring ways to make money from it.  It is not that I am money mad.  I just figure, why not?

Many people go through life trying to figure out what they are best at.  I am the opposite.  I have so many interests that I don’t really have time to give each of them the full attention they deserve. 

SW:    What is your website plan?

QR:     It’s a bit like buying property. If you can buy one, why not have ten – or more. I thought, why build just one?  You can spend all your time trying to promote it, yet you build one and you do a certain amount of promoting, but when you get it to a certain level, you will improve it a bit more, but not a lot more.

If it has 80% of the potential market, you can spend all your time trying to get it up to 90% of the market, but you would be far better off building, for the same time and effort, a few other websites and let them get up to 80% of their market.  So maybe you’re getting 80% of a lot instead of 90% of a little.

SW:    Your plan is to build 10 websites.

QR:     The first one is for the memory licensing product.  The second, for the children’s entertainers course.

SW:    Give three others.

QR:     A product for children’s entertainers on using puppets in your show to get the maximum entertainment.

There is another one for ventriloquists.

I bought the rights to a book.  It’s not an E-book.  It’s a proper book.  It’s quite rare in magician’s terms. It went off to the printers today. As a bonus purchasers will get a free DVD of the book’s author. This product will have its own website.

As you can see I’m exploring the “magician’s niche”, one I know very well.

SW:    Tell me about magic for professional speakers, sales people and executives.

QR:     If somebody is an executive or sales person, the use of a simple magic trick can be a great icebreaker.  However, if somebody is doing a talk, using a magic trick can be a powerful way of getting a point across.

Don’t actually finish with a trick.  Then your close should be your strongest bit.

SW:    The market’s changed.  What has been your experience?

QR:     Looking at the children’s entertainment market it certainly has. By the early 90’s, there was a lot more competition.  There were a lot more magicians, but my main competition was not coming from the other magicians.  My main competition was coming from Adventure playgrounds, Bouncing Castles and many other things fighting for the same birthday party market place.

Instead of just doing a 40 minute show or an hour show at a party, I reinvented the whole thing and we did a full two hour party package where the magician would also run the games for the party.  There would be a little break for food which the mother would provide, then finish off with the show.

So there was very little for the mother to do.  She just provided the food, provided the kids and the venue, and the magician would come along and do everything.  This repackaged product became extremely popular.  I trained three Dublin magicians in my system and my office took the bookings. One of them won the UK Children’s Entertainer of the Year, and the following year another came second.  Eventually, I sold them the business.  In the process of teaching them, I realized how much I knew about entertaining children and that’s what led me to produce the course to teach other magicians.

SW:    Tell me about how magic can advance people’s careers.

QR:     When I started at the age of 16, the clients I was dealing with were at least twice my age.  Suddenly, there was this school kid dealing at the professional level with other professionals, so I had to start thinking and talking like an adult.  You are providing a professional service to people in their homes. To succeed I had to talk their language.

You learn very quickly selling and negotiating skills. You learn to present yourself. To stand up in front of a group. How to deal with awkward clients.

My friend from my first show, John Schutte, became a lawyer and found that these skills were an enormous benefit to him in his law practice.  He had already learned those skills when he started as a lawyer.

SW:    Now let me move on to the intuition.  What are the key points of intuition?