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Jonah is joined by Scot Nery, a juggler, magician, and entertainer who now helps entertainers with their branding, marketing, and more helping to identify their value and the value they bring to their clients. 

Escaping The Magic Bug

Scot Nery didn’t really stick with magic, not at first. Early on when he first joined a magic club and found a mentor he found that the club he was a part of was not very creative. They would perform tricks exactly as written, right down to the same patter. There was no room for deviation or change and at the time he thought that all magic was, which was repeating stuff that somebody had already seen. It was that reason which attracted him to juggling instead, since every time you see juggling it’s in the moment and the risk involved feels like each performance is something unique. 

What brought Scot Nery back into magic was he saw that it created hope, which is something he feels a lot of performers forget about when they’ve been performing for a while. The magical moment that gets everyone hooked to magic in the first place is a feeling of giving people hope. That a human can go beyond what you think is possible for a human to do.

The Boobie Trap

Scot is also the mastermind behind the hugely successful Boobie Trap show out of LA. It came from a desire to prove that he could host a show himself and to provide a platform for performers to kill it in front of an audience. Every show was different and was packed full of surprises, you never knew what guest or performances you were going to get each night.

But you would be forgiven for thinking that Scot is not a magician, he lied his way into a marketing job and made his name performing in a one-man parody of a cooking show. But he’s also performed at Magic Castle and has made connections with magicians and entertainers around the world. 

Empathize With Your Customer

When Boobie Trap was shut down due to the pandemic, Scot found out about Jonah’s consulting work with magicians. The two connected and now Scot offers consulting work of his own helping to identify the value of and empower magicians to grow their brand and their business. 

One of the big tips that Scot suggests is that if you’re having a hard time identifying your value that you empathize with your customer. You are likely much more than just a host when you are taking on a job for a client and you can offer them work in staging the show, set design, scripting, and lots of other details that a corporate client might overlook when booking a magician to host their big event. In the end it’s not really about what trick you are able to pull off but what problems you are able to solve and learning what problems you are able to solve can make all the difference in the world to a stressed out HR manager booking their next show.

Wrap-Up

Endless Chain

Mark Collier. He’s an amazing clumsy card magician that does everything. He’s like Leonard Green fallen apart. 

What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like?

Scot likes taking a format or a genre and exploiting every aspect of it. Now there are no expectations for that a Zoom magic show should even look like Scot is very excited to see what develops from that.

Scot doesn’t like that he’s still hearing people denigrating virtual shows. 

Take home point

As long as we are trying to survive we are not going to be able to create the great stuff that moves us forward. We’re not going to be able to create the entertainment that changes people’s lives. First we have to thrive, we have to really take care of ourselves, and do awesome stuff for each other, and then we can make some amazing things that people can’t get from Netflix or Instagram.

Plugs

Visit Scot’s page at scot.fun and if you visit scot.fun/dim you can pick up something free from Scot right now just for Discourse in Magic listeners.