For roughly two years, my nightly hotel room practice sessions followed the same pattern. I would sit at the small desk, laptop propped open to a tutorial, deck of cards in hand, and drill. I drilled specific moves. I drilled sequences. I drilled until the execution was smooth, until my hands could do what they needed to do without my brain screaming instructions at every step. I measured my progress by how cleanly I could execute technique. And I believed, without ever questioning it, that this was what practice meant.
Then I read a single paragraph in Darwin Ortiz’s Strong Magic that stopped me cold.
Ortiz opens the book with a complaint that most writing on magic presentation falls into one of two useless categories. The first he calls the “clean shirt” school — advice so elementary it insults your intelligence past the beginner stage. Wear a clean shirt. Smile at the audience. Be yourself. All true, all correct, all completely useless for anyone who has already figured out basic hygiene and social behavior. The second he calls the “sermonizing” school — writers who berate magicians for not being entertaining enough but never explain how to actually become more entertaining. “Be more engaging!” is not advice. It is a complaint dressed up as instruction.
And then Ortiz makes the move that rewired how I think about this craft. He argues that showmanship is not a personality trait. It is not charisma. It is not something you are born with or without. Showmanship is a body of technique — theatrical and psychological techniques for eliciting audience reactions — that can be studied, practiced, and deployed with the same rigor as any sleight of hand.
That sentence changed the trajectory of my entire practice life.
The Problem with the Two Schools
Let me explain why this matters, because the problem is not abstract. It is practical and it cost me months.
When I started performing — first at small gatherings, then at corporate events in Vienna and Graz, then eventually as part of my keynote speaking — I ran headfirst into the gap between technical skill and audience impact. My hands were ready. My material was solid. And yet the reactions I was getting were… adequate. Not electric. Not the kind of reactions I saw when I watched great performers on video.
So I did what any analytical person does. I went looking for advice on how to improve my presentation. And I found exactly what Ortiz describes. One camp told me to be myself, make eye contact, project confidence. Fine. I was already doing all of those things, or trying to. The other camp told me I needed to “connect with my audience” and “be more theatrical” and “bring more energy.” Also fine. But none of them told me how.
It was like being told to drive faster without anyone explaining how the engine works.
The “clean shirt” advice is not wrong. It is just aimed at a problem I had already solved. The sermonizing advice is not wrong either. It is just useless without mechanism. Neither school treats presentation as something you can break down into components, study, and systematically improve.
What Ortiz proposes is radically different. He says there is a body of technique for controlling attention, managing audience psychology, building suspense, timing revelations, and structuring emotional responses — and that this body of technique is at least as important to your success as an entertainer as any manual skill. Not more important. At least as important. Which means it deserves at least as much practice time.
The Eight Tools
Ortiz identifies eight specific mechanisms that control where an audience looks. Not personality tips. Not vague suggestions about energy. Eight tools that exploit hardwired human reflexes and psychology.
Eye contact. Body language. Patter. Movement. Sound. Contrast. Newness. Inherent interest.
When I first read through the list, my immediate reaction was that several of these seemed obvious. Of course people look where you look. Of course they notice movement. Of course they pay attention to new objects. But the more I sat with the list, the more I realized that “obvious” and “practiced” are two very different things.
I had never practiced eye contact as a technique. I had never drilled the relationship between where my body faces and where the audience’s attention goes. I had never systematically worked on using my voice to direct attention to specific points in space. I had practiced sleight of hand for hundreds of hours and practiced attention control for exactly zero hours.
That was the gap. That was why my reactions were adequate instead of electric. I was a musician who had mastered the fingering but never studied dynamics, phrasing, or tempo.
What Changes When You Treat It as Technique
The moment you accept that showmanship is technique, several things change at once.
First, the mystery evaporates. When showmanship is a personality trait, some people have it and some people do not, and there is nothing to do about it. When showmanship is technique, there are specific skills to identify, specific drills to design, and specific metrics to track. The performer who seems to have “natural charisma” is actually deploying techniques — consciously or unconsciously — that can be isolated and studied.
Second, your practice sessions expand. I started splitting my hotel room sessions into two halves. The first half was still technical work — the manual skills that needed drilling. The second half was presentation work. I would run through a routine while deliberately focusing on one attention tool at a time. One night I would focus entirely on where I was looking during every moment of the routine. The next night I would focus on what my body was communicating. The night after that, I would record myself on my phone and watch how my verbal patter aligned (or didn’t) with where I wanted the audience to look.
Third, you start seeing other performers differently. I began rewatching performances I admired, and instead of watching the magic, I watched the attention control. Where was the performer looking when the secret work happened? What were they saying? Was their body facing the audience or the props? What created the moment that drew my eyes to the wrong place at the right time?
The answers were not mystical. They were technical. These performers were deploying specific tools in specific combinations at specific moments. They were not more charismatic than me. They were more skilled at a set of techniques I had never practiced.
The Consultant’s Advantage
Here is where my background as a strategy consultant actually helped me, though I did not recognize it at the time.
In consulting, we have a concept called “process improvement.” You take something that seems like an art — leading a meeting, facilitating a workshop, delivering a presentation — and you break it down into its component parts. You identify which parts are working and which are not. You test changes. You measure results. You iterate.
Most performers do not think this way. They think of presentation as holistic, intuitive, organic. And there is something to that — the final performance should feel organic. But the path to getting there is not organic. The path is analytical, systematic, and deliberate.
When I started treating each of the eight attention tools as a separate skill to be developed, I made faster progress in three months than I had made in the previous year of vaguely trying to “be more engaging.” Not because I suddenly became more talented, but because I finally had something concrete to practice.
Eye contact became a drill. I would practice a routine while consciously tracking where my eyes went during every beat. I would notice that I was looking at my own hands during a moment when I wanted the audience to look at the spectator’s hands. I would correct it. I would drill the correction until it became automatic.
Body facing became a drill. I would practice in front of a mirror and notice that my torso was angled toward my table when it should have been angled toward the audience. I would correct it. I would drill the correction.
Verbal direction became a drill. I would record my patter and listen for moments where I was saying “look at this” while my eyes were somewhere else, creating a contradictory signal. I would rewrite the patter. I would drill the rewrite.
None of this is glamorous. None of it is mystical. All of it is technique.
The Resistance You Will Feel
I should be honest about the resistance, because you will feel it too.
There is something in the magic community — and probably in every creative community — that resists the idea of systematizing the “art” part of what we do. People want to believe that great performers are born, not made. They want to believe that the moment of magic is spontaneous, not engineered. They want to believe that studying attention control is somehow clinical, cold, mechanical.
I understand the resistance. When I first started drilling eye contact in my hotel room, it felt absurd. It felt like I was reducing something beautiful to a spreadsheet. But here is what I discovered: the systematic work does not replace the spontaneous feeling. It creates it. When your attention tools are drilled to the point of automaticity, you stop thinking about them and start living in the moment with the audience. The technique becomes invisible, which is exactly what technique is supposed to do.
The parallel to sleight of hand is exact. When you first learn a card technique, it feels mechanical and awkward. You practice it until it becomes fluid. You practice it more until you forget you are doing it. And then, when you perform, the technique is invisible and the magic is what the audience experiences. Attention control works exactly the same way. Drill it until it disappears. Then what remains is a performance that feels natural, connected, and alive.
What I Practice Now
My practice sessions today look nothing like they did four years ago. Roughly half my practice time is devoted to what you might call traditional technique. The other half is devoted to what Ortiz would call the other body of technique — the theatrical and psychological skills that determine whether the audience experiences the magic or merely watches it.
I practice where I look. I practice what my body communicates. I practice how my words direct attention. I practice the timing of movements. I practice the use of sound, contrast, and novelty. I practice building and releasing suspense.
I practice these things with the same rigor, the same repetition, and the same willingness to be terrible at them before I become competent.
Because showmanship is not a personality trait. It is a body of technique. And technique responds to practice.
That is the radical reframing. And it changes everything.