The moment that changed how I evaluate my performances happened at a company retreat outside Linz. I had been hired to do a thirty-minute show as part of an evening program — dinner, my performance, then a DJ and dancing. Standard corporate entertainment setup.
The show went well. Genuinely well. The effects landed, the mentalism pieces got strong reactions, the audience was engaged throughout. Afterward, the organizer shook my hand and said all the right things. The audience applauded warmly when I closed. By any metric I was tracking at the time — laughs, gasps, applause intensity, the organizer’s satisfaction — it was a successful night.
Then something happened that reframed everything.
As I was packing up my props backstage, the DJ started his set, and I could hear the crowd loosening up, laughing, settling into the social part of the evening. I walked back into the room to say goodbye to the organizer, and as I passed through the crowd, something struck me. Nobody stopped me. Nobody waved me over. Nobody said, “Hey, come sit with us.” A few people smiled and nodded in recognition, the way you might acknowledge a waiter who had done a good job, but nobody seemed to want more of my company.
This was not hostility. It was not indifference. It was something more subtle and, honestly, more troubling. They had enjoyed the performer but felt no connection to the person. I had been entertainment. I had not been someone they wanted to know.
I drove home that night thinking about a question that has become central to my performance philosophy: after the show, would the audience want to hang out with me?
The Connection Test
This question sounds casual, almost trivial. It is neither. It is, I believe, the most revealing diagnostic a performer can apply to their work.
The reason it matters is that the answer tells you something that no other feedback mechanism can. Applause tells you the audience was entertained. Standing ovations tell you they were impressed. Social media posts tell you they want to share the experience. But the desire to spend more time with the performer — to sit down at a table, to have a conversation, to be in their presence without the structure of a show — tells you something deeper. It tells you whether the audience connected with you as a human being.
Ken Weber writes about this in Maximum Entertainment when he discusses his second pillar: communicate your humanity. Weber’s argument is that the audience does not care about you, your skills, your awards, or your practice hours. They care about themselves. They want to have fun. They want a special experience. They want to be moved and touched. And the mechanism through which all of that happens is not technique. It is the performer’s personality.
The personality is the message, Weber says. Not the props. The medium is irrelevant. It is the messenger that creates the experience.
When I first read that, I understood it intellectually. The night in Linz is when I understood it viscerally. I had delivered a technically excellent show. But the messenger had been opaque. The audience had experienced my magic but not me.
What Connection Actually Looks Like
Fitzkee puts it with characteristic directness: “People are more interested in people than in any other single thing.” He ranks the order of audience interest as: first, outstanding personages — who they are; second, why people do things — motivation; third, the things people do — actions.
Look at that hierarchy. Who you are comes first. Your motivation comes second. What you actually do comes third. This means the audience cares more about the kind of person you are than about the magic you perform. The magic is third on the list. Third.
That ordering felt counterintuitive to me when I first encountered it. I had been operating on the assumption that the magic was the product and I was the delivery mechanism. Fitzkee was saying the opposite: I am the product and the magic is the delivery mechanism.
Once I started thinking about it that way, I began to notice the performers who passed the Connection Test and to study what they did differently from those who did not.
The ones who passed shared certain qualities. They made eye contact that felt personal, not performative. Weber is explicit about this — never utter a word unless looking into a pair of eyes, but do not lock on any one person for more than a second or two. The effect is that the audience feels spoken to rather than spoken at.
They revealed something of themselves beyond the performer persona. A preference, a vulnerability, a genuine reaction to something unexpected. Weber calls this “revealing emotions” and says you must stay in the moment — if you want to project surprise, you must actually feel surprised. Share what stirs you, your passions, your inner being.
They treated the audience as participants in a shared experience rather than as spectators of a demonstration. This is the difference between “watch what I can do” and “let me show you something extraordinary that we are going to experience together.” The first creates distance. The second creates connection.
And they were generous. Not in a performative, people-pleasing way, but in a genuine way that communicated: I am glad to be here with you. I am enjoying this as much as you are. Being with you is not a job. It is a pleasure.
Where I Was Failing
Looking back at the Linz show with this framework, I could see exactly where the connection was breaking down. I was performing at the audience rather than with them. My eye contact was technically correct — I was looking at people — but it was scanning rather than connecting. I was covering the room without landing anywhere.
My personality was hidden behind the performer mask. I was delivering scripted material with practiced timing, and the material was good, but there was no window into who I was behind the material. The audience saw a competent performer. They did not see Felix. They did not see the guy who bought his first deck of cards out of boredom in a hotel room. They did not see someone who genuinely finds magic fascinating and wants to share that fascination.
Weber’s Superman analogy resonated with me here, but in a way I had not expected. Weber says the performer is Superman — a regular person with extraordinary abilities. But the key is that Superman is also Clark Kent. The audience needs to see both. If all they see is Superman, they admire you from a distance. If they also see Clark Kent — the human being behind the extraordinary abilities — they connect with you.
I had been all Superman. All confidence, all competence, all polished delivery. And zero Clark Kent. Zero humanity. Zero vulnerability. Zero “here is who I actually am when I’m not performing impossible things.”
Rebuilding the Bridge
The changes I made were specific and deliberate. I started opening every show with a genuine personal moment — not a scripted anecdote that sounded personal, but something true and specific about why I was there, what I was feeling, or what had happened to me that day. Sometimes it was as simple as mentioning that I had spent the afternoon exploring the city and found a coffee shop I loved. Sometimes it was acknowledging that I was nervous, which I usually am, at least a little.
Weber talks about acknowledging your surroundings — referencing the venue, the event, the environment — as a way to show you are present rather than pressing play on a mental tape recorder. I took this literally. I started arriving early enough to notice specific things about the space and the people, and I worked those observations into my opening.
I changed how I interacted with volunteers. Instead of the efficient, professional management I had been doing — “Please take a card, remember it, place it back” — I started having brief, genuine conversations with them first. Their name, what they did, something small and human. Not as a script. As a real interaction.
The results were immediate and striking. The quality of reactions did not change — the effects still got the same gasps and laughs. But the quality of the post-show interactions changed completely. People started approaching me afterward. Not to ask how I did a trick, but to talk. To tell me about their own experience with something I had mentioned. To ask about Vulpine Creations. To say that they felt like they knew me a little, even though we had just met.
That last comment — “I feel like I know you” — is the Connection Test passed.
The Business Parallel
In my consulting work, I see the same dynamic play out in business all the time. Companies that sell products but not personality create transactional relationships. The customer buys the product, uses the product, and feels nothing toward the company. The moment a competitor offers a slightly better product or a slightly lower price, the customer switches without hesitation. There is no loyalty because there is no connection.
Companies that sell personality — that communicate who they are, what they believe, why they do what they do — create relationships that survive competitive pressure. The customer stays not because the product is marginally better but because they like the company. They feel connected to it. They would miss it if it were gone.
Fitzkee understood this at a fundamental level. He writes: “If they want the tricks, any magician will do. If they want YOU, only you will do.” The minute you stop selling yourself and start selling your tricks, you create demand for the category rather than for you personally. Then someone cheaper can take your booking.
That is the commercial argument for the Connection Test. But the real argument is not commercial. The real argument is that performance without connection is incomplete. It satisfies without fulfilling. It impresses without mattering.
The Ongoing Practice
I still apply the Connection Test after every show. Sometimes I pass. Sometimes I do not. The shows where I fail are almost always the ones where I was tired, or distracted, or fell back on autopilot and let the polished performance machine run without putting myself into it.
The test is not about being liked. It is about being known. It is the difference between an audience that says “that was a great show” and an audience that says “I really liked that guy.” Both are positive. Only one means you have made a genuine human connection.
Weber summarizes it with a line I come back to often. He says the performer who has all the entertainment cylinders firing — timing, enthusiasm, humor, emotion, surprise, and enlightenment — is the one who makes people feel something real. And the foundation of all those cylinders is the simplest thing in the world: being a person the audience wants to spend time with.
Not a character. Not a persona. A person. The polished, confident, best version of yourself — but yourself. Recognizable. Reachable. Real.
The show matters. The effects matter. The technique matters. But the person performing all of it matters more. And if the audience would not want to have a drink with that person after the show, no amount of technical brilliance will fill the gap.