7 Things About Magic That You Should Have Learned In Business School – #2
#2 – Mystery is valuable. It’s one of the primary rules of magic: don’t reveal the secret of the illusion. If you tell the audience your secrets, then the wonderful moment you created for them only seconds ago will lose a lot of its impact. Mystery, in the context of magic, is not about lying […]
7 Things About Magic That You Should Have Learned In Business School – #1
#1 – Audiences will pay to be amazed. What does magic have to do with business? I mean, David Copperfield is nearly a billionaire, but he’s certainly the exception. Why would anyone think magic has any relationship to business principles? The truth is, the art of magic is loaded with important concepts for sales, marketing, […]
Branding, Acting, and the Given Circumstances
Branding, Acting, and the Given Circumstances Sometimes we talk about the art of acting as if it were somehow dishonorable, and about nothing but lying and ego. But the reality is that great acting is about the truth, and understanding that can affect the way you make decisions about your brand and your real life […]
Pride Goes Before the Fall – So Stay Proud!
Pride Goes Before the Fall – So Stay Proud! I’m sure you’ve heard the idiom “Pride goes before the fall” sometime in your life. You may recognize it as coming from the Bible – Proverbs 16:18, to be exact. In the original context, it is a traditional two-part warning: “Pride goes before destruction, and a […]
The Gratis Factor: 5 Tips for Convincing Performers to Donate Shows
The Gratis Factor: 5 Tips for Convincing Speakers or Entertainers to Donate or Discount Fees (Note: The original version of this article appeared in February 2011.) Last week I had the opportunity to be part of a wonderful tradition here in Atlanta. Bert Weiss, host of Q100’s “The Bert Show,” created a foundation (along with […]
Turner Voted 2013 Greater Atlanta Magician of the Year: 3-Time Winner!
Joe M. Turner Voted Greater Atlanta Magician of the Year 2013 by Industry Peers Popular Corporate Speaker, Entertainer is 3-Time Winner PRLog (Press Release) – Jan. 24, 2014 – ATLANTA — Atlanta speaker, mentalist, and magician Joe M. Turner has been named 2013 Greater Atlanta Magician of the Year by the combined memberships of […]
The December “Plus 1” Challenge
The December “Plus 1” Challenge Every day from now until Christmas, post a genuine compliment to one large brand’s and one small brand’s Google+, Twitter, or Facebook page. I’m a small business owner and a lover of small business and entrepreneurship. But I am not a fan of envy-driven activism or divisive campaigning. I’m weary […]
Five Kinds of Amazing, Part 5: Hypersight and Vision
Five Kinds of Amazing, Part 5: Hypersight The fifth of the Five Kinds of Amazing relates to another branch of mentalism effects which I’ll group under the umbrella term “hypersight.” This category is distinct from the prior one in that while it includes apparent psychic abilities, this specific type of inexplicable knowledge is not derived […]
Five Kinds of Amazing, Part 4: Contact
Five Kinds of Amazing, Part 4: Contact We all want our audiences to perceive our brands as “amazing,” and the “Five Kinds of Amazing” model provides a way to organize our approaches for making amazing experiences happen. In reviewing the first three elements, the magic metaphors all relate to primarily visual experiences. – Talent/Expertise: relating […]
Captain’s Log: NetFlix Customer Service Boldly Amazes!
4 Great Lessons from NetFlix’s Amazing Customer Service Interaction When I speak to conferences on how to create amazing brand experiences for their audiences, one of the key points is to create amazement within the very processes that your audience would normally consider the most boring or irritating. Tom Cheredar’s post on VentureBeat last week […]
