Hey, I'm 16 and I have a huge passion for magic and flourishing but today I was looking into magic shops I can apply for and my mom said magic won't get me anywhere, that it's a waste of time. What do you guys think?
Being discouraged
- Thread starter Cooljellymonkey
- Start date
My mother said the same thing til I did that first trade show gig. Honestly you are 16 and most mothers say the same thing about kids who want to be artist musician magicians ect ect.
What you have to understand in two years you will be 18 and it kinda doesn't matter. What kinda changed my mother's mind was two fold. One was the corporate gig check I cashed when I was 19 that was about what she made in a month but the other was my mentor picked us up for diner in his Benz. She was introduced to the other magicians in the area. Doctors CPA and lawyers. She saw that these people of the community were magicians and that they made something of their lives. My mother saw that yes you can a living with magic if you are willing to put in the hard work and understand that it's a long road to get there, but that is a popular hobby as well among educated professional. As a back up I studied music education as a major and audio engineering as a minor at Ohio State.
What does she mean "get you anywhere"? It'll get you somewhere. If you want to become a professional magician, then magic is quite a key element to concentrate on. If you want to be a surgeon or a scientist, maybe not so much, although I would suggest that developing manual dexterity with sleight-of-hand, an ability to multi-task, the social skills that come from performing and the exercise of your creativity wouldn't do you any harm in whatever profession you choose. Orson Welles, George Melies, Cary Grant, Martin Gardner, Stephen Fry, Persi Diaconis, Richard Wiseman and many others have all achieved great things in their chosen non-magic professions, despite, or, in some cases, because of, their interest in and practice of magic.
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My manager at a sales and consulting firm that I used to work for told me the same thing. I told them to go to hell and walked out. Several years later I've been on a TV a couple times, in a movie, toured the nation three times, and worked for all kinds of people including celebrities and dignitaries alike.
If magic is a passion follow your heart and to hell with what anyone else has to say about it!
If magic is a passion follow your heart and to hell with what anyone else has to say about it!
Man, William Dravel is completely right!
If you want my opinion, I think your mother doesn't know magic good enough to judge where somebody could go with it! I make pen spinning, foosball (not football), drum, magic and I love everything I do even if some people tell me that's useless! Nothing it's useless, you just have to find something to do with it!
Keep training, never be discouraged! =)
(Sorry for my bad English)
If you want my opinion, I think your mother doesn't know magic good enough to judge where somebody could go with it! I make pen spinning, foosball (not football), drum, magic and I love everything I do even if some people tell me that's useless! Nothing it's useless, you just have to find something to do with it!
Keep training, never be discouraged! =)
(Sorry for my bad English)
As already stated, the potential for a career in performing magic is always there to those who are willing to work hard enough to do that.
However, there are a lot of side benefits to learning and performing magic. Many of them have already been mentioned - social skills, dexterity, mental exercise, creativity, etc. My buddy, Kyle, is a salesman for ADT (Security system company here in the States, not sure how big they are internationally) and he got that job, and does very well, directly because of magic. He has become extremely comfortable talking to people and interacting with them through magic. He's totally comfortable being on the spot and convincing people to buy things, because he's spent the last 14 or 15 years doing just that with his magic.
I, personally, don't like the idea of making my living through performance only. It's a rocky field and very few performers have a retirement account. The personal strain is incredibly stressful until you're well established and even then it can all go south in no time. It's best, in my mind, to have multiple streams of income and also something to fall back on for when gigs are scarce. I am a bit advocate of having a day job and performing magic on the side for a nice boost of income. Jamie D. Grant talks about this in The Approach, which I highly recommend for anyone wanting to make a go at performing professionally or semi-professionally.
If you want to be a professional magician I recommend going to college for a degree in business/marketing as well as a minor in design or theater (and make sure you take classes in all of those things, you will need them). And then be prepared to be very hungry for a few years while you build up your income potential.
However, there are a lot of side benefits to learning and performing magic. Many of them have already been mentioned - social skills, dexterity, mental exercise, creativity, etc. My buddy, Kyle, is a salesman for ADT (Security system company here in the States, not sure how big they are internationally) and he got that job, and does very well, directly because of magic. He has become extremely comfortable talking to people and interacting with them through magic. He's totally comfortable being on the spot and convincing people to buy things, because he's spent the last 14 or 15 years doing just that with his magic.
I, personally, don't like the idea of making my living through performance only. It's a rocky field and very few performers have a retirement account. The personal strain is incredibly stressful until you're well established and even then it can all go south in no time. It's best, in my mind, to have multiple streams of income and also something to fall back on for when gigs are scarce. I am a bit advocate of having a day job and performing magic on the side for a nice boost of income. Jamie D. Grant talks about this in The Approach, which I highly recommend for anyone wanting to make a go at performing professionally or semi-professionally.
If you want to be a professional magician I recommend going to college for a degree in business/marketing as well as a minor in design or theater (and make sure you take classes in all of those things, you will need them). And then be prepared to be very hungry for a few years while you build up your income potential.
Hey Cooljellymonkey, something I would suggest is to perform for people maybe film it and show your mom and see the joy and wonder it brings to others. Another thing I would is make an original trick and put it up on the wire or something like that. When your Mom sees that people enjoy something you made, that is pretty convincing. Just my thoughts, you can do what you wish with them.
To be balanced with some of the above advice: you have to be good or have potential to be good. Sometimes your parents know you best and are being brutally honest with you to redirect you. Think about it like American Idol TV show. There are so many people who were told to follow their dreams - sometimes even by family- yet they should be doing something else. Following your dreams is great, but you need to find out how to best do that based on a realistic look at your skill sets. Those who know you best may give you much better advice about your skills than an anonymous group on the Internet.
Sorry, I disagree - to an extent.
You do not have to be good when you start. No one is. You have to become good at it, and it's entirely possible to do so. All it takes is effective practice and dedication - and several thousand hours. No one is just 'good at it'. Everyone who has succeeded has put a ton of work into it. Even so called prodigies don't start really putting out their best work until they've done about 10,000 hours. Read Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" - it will make you re-examine your idea of talent.
I think what it really comes down to is this - Parents care about their kids, and they want them to be safe and secure. A perfectly understandable concern. A career in the arts is not safe or secure unless you're skilled in business. You have to know how to manage an unsteady income, how to build a client list and get repeated bookings, and how to put away for retirement or health issues. It's perfectly understandable that a parent would be inclined to push their kids to a more steady, stable career.
It's a shame, though. I know people who are very talented who have never done anything with it because their parents couldn't get the concept of a dual-income. I know a girl who's a very good singer, but her mother always told her that a career in singing wouldn't happen and that she 'missed her opportunity' by not pushing harder when she was in high school. Ignoring the fact that the mother was the one keeping her from pushing. Now this young lady has the idea that she's too old to start a performance career. And here, I didn't start performing until I was in my 20's and seriously only in the past couple years.
I maintain that the best way to start is by not jumping in with both feet. Get a day job. If you're lucky, you can find one that suits your performance aspirations. Like working for a magic company. Use that day job to have a steady income while you build your performance resume until you get to a point where you're earning more through performance than your day job. Make sure you have at LEAST 3 months worth of living expenses in the bank at all times. I would actually advise much more than that if possible. 6 months to a year. You never know when a car will break down, or you will.