The phone call came on a Tuesday morning, and it confused me.
A corporate event planner in Vienna — someone I had never spoken to before — was on the line, asking about my availability for a product launch event in June. She had not seen my show. She had not been given my name by a mutual contact, or at least not directly. What she said was this: “We attended a tech summit last month, and there was a performer who did this incredible thing with predictions and audience psychology. We want something similar for our event. A colleague mentioned that you do this kind of work.”
I asked which tech summit. She told me. I asked who had performed. She described the act — a mentalism show woven into the conference program, with audience participation and a finale that apparently left half the room on their feet. She could not remember the performer’s name, but she could describe, in vivid detail, three specific moments from the show.
I knew exactly who she was describing. A colleague I had met at a magic gathering in Salzburg the previous year, someone whose work I respected enormously. We were not close friends, but we ran in overlapping circles, and I had seen clips of his corporate mentalism that were genuinely world-class.
His incredible show at that tech summit had not just earned him applause and a rebooking. It had created demand for an entirely different performer — me — at an entirely different event, organized by an entirely different company. His excellence had expanded the market.
That is the flip side of the poison effect, and it is just as powerful. When a performer delivers something truly extraordinary, the ripple benefits everyone who works in the same space.
The Rising Tide
Ken Weber makes this argument in Maximum Entertainment, and it is one of the most generous ideas in the book: strong acts do not just succeed for themselves. They boost demand for the entire category.
The logic is straightforward once you think about it. When an event planner sees an extraordinary magic show, they do not just think, “That performer was amazing.” They think, “Magic can be amazing.” The category itself gets elevated in their mind. Magic goes from being a questionable line item — “Do we really need a magician?” — to being an exciting possibility — “Remember how incredible that was? We should definitely include magic.”
And when they go looking for a performer for their own event, they are not necessarily looking for the specific person they saw. They are looking for the experience they had. They want the feeling of watching something impossible and being moved by it. They want their guests to have that same reaction. And that search leads them outward, to performers they have never heard of, expanding the market with every inquiry.
My phone call from the Vienna event planner was a textbook example. She was not trying to book my colleague. She was trying to recreate the experience he had provided. And because I happened to work in a similar space and someone in her network knew my name, the opportunity came to me.
I did not earn that call through my own marketing or reputation. I earned it because someone else had delivered an extraordinary experience, and the afterglow of that experience was still bright enough to illuminate the path toward another performer entirely.
How This Actually Works in Practice
The mechanics of this effect are worth understanding, because once you see them, you realize how profoundly interconnected the performance market really is.
Event planners talk to each other. I mentioned this in the context of mediocre performances poisoning the market, but the same network effect works in the positive direction. When an event planner has a great experience with a performer, they talk about it. At industry gatherings, over coffee, in planning committee meetings, in the casual “who did you use for entertainment?” conversations that happen whenever people who organize events get together.
In the Austrian corporate world, which is relatively concentrated, these conversations travel fast. A genuinely outstanding performance at a conference in Vienna can generate buzz that reaches Graz, Linz, and Innsbruck within weeks. Not because anyone is running a coordinated marketing campaign, but because human beings are naturally inclined to share positive experiences, especially experiences that surprised them.
I have seen this happen multiple times now. After a particularly strong performance by a mentalist at a banking conference in Vienna, three different financial services companies in the region booked mentalism acts for their own events within the following four months. Not the same mentalist, necessarily. Different performers, booked by different planners, for different events. But the original outstanding performance had seeded the idea that mentalism at a corporate event could be extraordinary, and that seed sprouted in multiple directions.
One great show. Multiple downstream bookings. Multiple performers benefiting. That is the rising tide.
What This Means for How I Work
Understanding this dynamic changed the way I think about my own performances in a way that goes beyond personal ambition.
When I step on stage at a corporate event, I am not just performing for the audience in front of me. I am performing for every future audience that this event planner will assemble. I am performing for every colleague and peer who will hear about this event. I am performing for the concept of magic entertainment in the minds of every person who makes booking decisions.
If I deliver something extraordinary, I am not just earning a rebooking for myself. I am making it more likely that the next magician who pitches to this company will get a meeting. I am making it more likely that the event planner will recommend magic to a colleague. I am making it more likely that someone in the audience, inspired by what they saw, will suggest a magician for their own company’s event.
That is a form of collective investment. Every outstanding performance deposited into the market earns interest for the entire community.
This perspective has made me more careful about which bookings I accept. Early in my journey, I would sometimes take a gig that was not quite right — wrong audience, wrong format — because I wanted the experience or the fee. But performing at fifty percent in a room that is not suited to my material does not just hurt me. It hurts the next performer who tries to get booked for a similar event.
Better to decline and recommend a colleague who is a better fit than to accept and leave the client thinking magic is not worth the investment. This is not altruism. It is enlightened self-interest.
The Gratitude I Owe
I owe a debt to performers whose work I have benefited from without ever meeting them.
That phone call from the Vienna event planner led to a booking that turned into one of the best shows I have performed. The audience was primed — not for me specifically, but for the category of experience I was offering. They walked into the room expecting something remarkable because someone else had given them something remarkable at a different event. Their expectations were high, which paradoxically made them easier to work with, because an audience that expects to be amazed is an audience that wants to be amazed. They lean in. They give you their attention. They meet you halfway.
I sometimes wonder how many of my bookings have been indirectly created by performers I have never met, whose outstanding shows left ripples that eventually reached my corner of the market. The answer is probably more than I realize.
This is why I genuinely celebrate when I hear about a colleague having a great show. Not out of some forced generosity, but out of genuine understanding that their success strengthens the ground I stand on. When a mentalist in Vienna delivers a show that makes the audience forget they are at a corporate event, my next phone call from an event planner in that city gets a little easier. When a close-up magician at a gala in Salzburg makes a table of executives genuinely gasp, the next performer who pitches to that company will find a more receptive audience.
The magic community sometimes struggles with this. There is a competitive instinct — amplified by social media — that makes other people’s success feel like a threat. But the market for live entertainment is not a fixed pie. A great performer does not take your slice. A great performer makes the pie bigger.
The Collective Responsibility
This understanding carries with it a responsibility that I take seriously.
If strong acts boost demand for everyone, then every performer has a communal obligation to be as strong as possible. Not for their own sake alone, but for the sake of every other performer in the market. When you phone it in, when you perform material that is not ready, when you take a gig you know you are not right for, when you treat a performance as a paycheck rather than an opportunity to create something extraordinary — you are not just failing yourself. You are failing everyone who shares your market.
I do not say this with judgment. I have been the performer who phoned it in. I have been the performer who took the wrong gig. I have been the performer who delivered a show that was adequate rather than extraordinary. And every time I did that, I contributed, in a small way, to the mediocrity that makes event planners hesitate when someone suggests hiring a magician.
The director’s eye, when it is working properly, sees beyond the borders of your own career. It sees the ecosystem. It recognizes that your individual performance is a data point in a much larger dataset, and that every data point matters.
When I watch my video footage now, I sometimes ask a question that has nothing to do with my own success: “If this were the only magic show an event planner ever saw, would they want to book magic again?” If the answer is anything less than an enthusiastic yes, the show needs work. Not because my career depends on it, although it does. Because the next performer’s ability to get in the door depends on it too.
What I Do Differently Now
When I finish a show that went well, I share insights with colleagues — not the methods, but the structural choices and pacing decisions that elevated the experience. If those insights help another performer deliver a better show, that benefits everyone.
When I encounter a client who has had a bad experience with magic, I rehabilitate the art form’s reputation, not just my own. I explain what great magic looks like. I am selling the category, not just myself.
And when I have the opportunity to recommend another performer — because the gig is not right for my format, or the audience would be better served by a different style — I recommend the best person I can think of. Because if they deliver an extraordinary show, the market gets stronger. The client’s next call might come to me. And even if it does not, the ecosystem benefits.
This is the long game. Not about winning the next booking, but about building a market where event planners associate “magician” with extraordinary experiences rather than forgettable filler.
We build that market one show at a time. Every extraordinary performance is a brick in the foundation. That phone call from the Vienna event planner taught me something I will never forget: someone else’s excellence created an opportunity for me. The least I can do is create opportunities for others by holding my own work to the same standard.
The tide rises for everyone. But only if we are all willing to raise it.