The quick answer is ‘no’ but for some reason today, Easter Sunday 2022, I have received that phone call several times.
Everybody has a different path to becoming a magician. Mine started late and by surprise because I never had an interest in magic. My background is banking and financial sales. To improve my career I took sales classes, read sales books, and assisted in the Dale Carnegie Sales Course. Over time I even had my own sales training company, Sales Magic.
Teaching the Dale Carnegie Sales Course we taught sessions on ‘showmanship’ and I visited a local magic shop to find a trick that I could use in my demonstration of showmanship. Over time I visited the store 8 to 10 times to purchase new tricks and the owner of the store was always willing to find a trick that was easy to incorporate into my sales presentations.
I signed up for a magic class at a Community Center and learned some basic magic ideas and disciplines. Some of us in the class continued studying for a few months at the home of the instructor of the class. All of this was over 5 or so years; a very slow process but my focus was not on the magic. My focus was on sales and sales training.
I was always showing magic tricks around the office and one day a lady I worked with asked if I would go to her son’s first grade class and do a magic show. I did and that was the start of where the focus was on magic, not sales. Today that first grader is a PhD in Physics having graduated from MIT and Stanford on full ride scholarships.
Other schools started requesting magic shows and I did them for free as a community service. Then I did magic for Service Clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Banquets all for free for several years. I did not keep good records but I am sure I did more than 100 free shows over several years (much more). My company, Mortgage Magic, had a community TV show and I would open each show with a magic trick. For more than 230 TV shows I never repeated a trick for the opening. By now I had met Jon Pon, owner of Misdirections in San Francisco and was buying Videos and Tricks so that I had a new trick every week. (We had a weekly show) Joe has always been extremely helpful.
My first professional or paid event was an open house for a bank. They had a BBQ behind the bank and paid me $500 for a 30 minute show. That led to shows all over California and the Western States. Magic never became full time for me and I always said it would be when I ‘retire’ but that has not happened because I still enjoy my work and employees. Maybe someday ?
For me magic has been a long slow learning fun process. Even now I do not consider myself a talented magician but I do have an extraordinary ability to entertain a crowd. I have done outdoor shows for crowds over 1500 and my largest indoor crowd was just over 900 at a University.
My advice to learn magic? Walk into a magic shop and talk to the people at the shop. Of course today you can learn a lot of magic online but the shop will listen to you and offer you magic that fits YOU. To me, magic is like music; there is Country, Jazz, Blues, Folk, Classical. Then there are so many different musical instruments to perform with. Magic is the same.
After years I settled on Comedy Magic for my shows and my close up magic has to be simple, fun and quick. I enjoy magic but I do not teach magic.