Well, for thirty years I ran an international advertising agency and I learned the art of winning big name advertising accounts against much bigger agencies. And it was successful. I won Airlines, Cruise Lines, National Tourist Offices, Nikon cameras, Garrard the Crown Jewellers, New York Times and other name companies and organisations.. It was largely achieved using a marketing strategy called “The KISS Principle” and when I retired I applied the same technique to the business of selling magic.

So for the last twelve years I’ve worked as a professional magician and performed magic in Paris, Athens, Estoril, Marbella, Copenhagen, St. Petersburg, Istanbul, Morocco, Florida and Osaka. I’m not a star in the mould of Michael Ammar, Greg Wilson, Nick Einhorn, Martin Sanderson and other giants of the corporate field,  but I am a competent middle-of-the -road performer who because of my advertising and marketing background  knows  something about selling oneself and generating business. And that is what KISS is all about and I have had many letters from magic club members who’ve derived ideas and inspiration that’s taken them to a new and profitable level of entertaining with magic.

The members of the Chester Guild of Magicians, both established performers and hobbyists gave me a wonderful evening in which many ideas and practical suggestions were freely discussed and adopted and they were most generous in their comments.

If you’d like to know more about the KISS principle lecture you can always contact me through this web site or by email on europro (at) tiscali.co.uk [please replace the (at) with @].

Question. Why do you have business cards printed? To give to people who enquire about your services. Wrong says Martin. And this is how he pushed the interest factor to the highest level.

He presents his close-up magic at a banquet table and towards the end of his performance he notes that he has say ten guests around the table. In his pocket he has his business cards packeted with a rubber band in tens.

At the conclusion of the magic he says “I hope you’ve enjoyed the magic and my name is Martin Sanderson. And if you like to see some more magic please call me anytime” And so saying he pulls the packet of ten cards from his pocket, removes the rubber band and drops the packet of cards in full view in the middle of the table. I guarantee that nearly all of them will be picked up. How do I know? Because I’ve used this strategy ever since Martin mentioned it to me and it works.

You will not get a telephone call the next morning but in a month or two you’ll maybe get a call from someone who will say “I saw you doing magic at so-and-so’s and wondered if you could  do some tricks for us at my daughter’s wedding.”

You’ve opened the door. Trust me. This works as many of our busiest best professional close-up magicians will tell you. But make sure that your business card is a quality printing. And make sure you’ve got a quality act that’s echoed in your publicity.