I had strong individual effects. I had good material. What I did not have was a build. My early shows were like eating dessert for every course -- impressive in isolation, exhausting in sequence.
Read MoreI thought putting my strongest effect last meant I was building to a climax. Weber showed me the difference between ending strong and engineering the entire arc so the ending feels inevitable.
Read MoreI once watched a performer do the most incredible magic I had ever seen, effect after effect, for forty-five minutes straight. By the end I felt almost nothing. That is when I learned that a blur of great magic is still a blur.
Read MoreMy first thirty-minute show was all one texture. All talking, all cards, all the same energy. The audience had no reason to shift gears because I never gave them one. When I finally introduced variety, everything changed.
Read MoreThe first time I tried the exaggerated pause in a live show, the silence nearly killed me. Five seconds of nothing -- no words, no movement, just my hands hovering and the room holding its breath. Then the reveal. The reaction was unlike anything I had experienced before.
Read MoreI thought having two big finishes made my show twice as strong. It actually made it half as powerful. Here is the lesson that changed how I think about peaks.
Read MoreI used to lead with my strongest piece and watch the energy drain from there. Then I learned the sequencing principle that flipped my entire set on its head.
Read MoreI started drawing my show's emotional intensity on graph paper and discovered that what I thought was a mountain was actually a random city skyline. Here is how I learned to design the arc deliberately.
Read MoreI stood in line at the Prater in Vienna and realized that the queue was doing exactly what I should be doing in my show -- turning the wait into the experience.
Read MoreI experimented with the pause before my closer -- one second, three seconds, five seconds. Each version produced exponentially stronger reactions. The silence before the reveal is where the magic actually lives.
Read MoreMy early shows were collections of effects with nothing connecting them. Each trick was self-contained, polished, and completely isolated from the next. The audience clapped politely at each one and forgot them all by the end of the night.
Read MoreI used to fill every second of my show with energy, action, and impressive moments. Then I learned that the quiet moments between the peaks are not dead time -- they are the foundation that makes the peaks possible.
Read MoreWeber says you can take the audience to the mountaintop only once. But nobody tells you how to recognize the mountaintop when you are standing on it. I learned the hard way -- by walking right past it and performing into the void.
Read MoreI spread my index cards across a hotel room desk and rated every piece in my set from one to ten. The result surprised me, challenged my consulting instincts, and fundamentally changed how I open and close a show.
Read MoreMusic has been my other passion for as long as I can remember. When I finally applied the logic of a symphony's crescendo to my magic show -- tempo changes, dynamic range, the final swell -- the show became something it had never been before.
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