Latest / The Magic Guys / Memory Master - The Amazing Nigel! #178
Transcript
- 0:00They're guys they do magic they are the magic guys,
- 0:09ladies and gentlemen welcome to episode 178 of
- 0:13the magic guys this is incredible we've made it
- 0:16this far and not uh killed each other but to my left we
- 0:19have nick k welcome to the show friend
- 0:22oh yeah down below we got doug khan as
- 0:26if there's animosity why would we kill each other there we've
- 0:29never even been like any grumbling in the ranks ever that's so true that's so
- 0:36true i think i think it's because you know we just get along so well and there's
- 0:40no money involved so that's probably it it's not commercial we don't have money
- 0:45involved that's fine otherwise,
- 0:48we're all a minimum what three four hour flight away minimum that's right yeah yeah true true True.
- 0:55It would actually be difficult to have it out with one another, wouldn't it?
- 0:59Yeah. But look, we're here again. We're here and we're here with some friends.
- 1:04We can see Dragotea, Josh Logan, Jimmy Farris.
- 1:08We got our boy Christopher Wayne in the building as well, otherwise known as Daddy. Dad joke magic.
- 1:16Scotty P, Adonis. This is the goods.
- 1:19Tim Askin. And we want to start off today's episode with one of you guys giving
- 1:25us some love on our SpeakPipe.
- 1:27Remember, you can send them in anytime and we play them on the episode.
- 1:32Speakpipe.com forward slash TheMagicGuys or just head to our website to do that.
- 1:37Anyway, let's listen to a little message from our friend, Jimmy Farrister.
- 1:42Hey, guys. It's Jennifer, Jimmy's wife. We are sitting out here on the back porch.
- 1:48It's Sunday, Father's Day. We're just hanging out here and wanted to let you
- 1:52guys know how great the magic show went at the country club It was table magic and it went fabulously.
- 1:59I mean he just rolled around Babe, i'm the magician i'm supposed to be talking
- 2:03I love that jennifer's weird.
- 2:06No, but she is my backbone. She's Yeah, it's great.
- 2:11You know what? If you want to
- 2:12speak, you can. He made $275 for like three hours. Woo! Doing what I love.
- 2:19It was great. We got a couple gigs off of it. Oh, they covered her alcohol,
- 2:22too, and all our food, too. Yeah. Boom. Food and alcohol covered.
- 2:27That's where it's probably triple the fee. This RV thing. We're going to...
- 2:31I mean, yeah, I've been doing this as a hobbyist for 20 years.
- 2:34Most of our parties that we host, I'm doing some kind of silliness.
- 2:38Oh, man. We went to a friend's house last night. I just have to get this in
- 2:42there. I heard the biggest laughs that I've ever heard from his magic.
- 2:46Like it was big laughs, big, big, big laughs. Anyway, people that hadn't seen it.
- 2:52Anyways, great. So that's our gig RVing through America. I see that my time's ending. Shit.
- 2:58Go, babe. Go. Nope. That's what we're going to do. We're going to do the magic
- 3:01and we're going to make, we're going to have the.
- 3:03Thank you guys for all the influence that you've had on Jimmy.
- 3:05I don't know that he'd be worries without you. Bye.
- 3:08So. so off that's yeah we're
- 3:13really making a difference people it is all about community can
- 3:16we please have more wives calling
- 3:19in gloating about how great their husband's magic is to have a wife that talks
- 3:27you up like that is like she's still amazed by the magic like that's yeah happy
- 3:33that's the word i was looking for that won't last forever though he'll eventually ruin in her.
- 3:38That's so good. It never lasts, right? The wife always ends up disgruntled.
- 3:46Honey, get out of my face! In the best way. Yeah, that's right.
- 3:50She just hasn't picked enough cards yet.
- 3:52Well, you know what, folks? Speaking of people who are entirely talented with
- 3:56the ladies, who better than our next guest? Take it away, John. Oh, yeah.
- 4:01So this gentleman, I've had the pleasure of introducing every week at the Theatre
- 4:06of Magic, where him and I and Christopher Wayne run this show.
- 4:10But in the meantime, in the business world, this guy is a beast.
- 4:14He's an underground magician, I call him, because you never really hear of him.
- 4:18He hardly has a website, but he's booked every bloody week to facilitate and
- 4:23emcee events and just run conferences.
- 4:26And he has this amazing skill set, which we'll talk about, which a handful of
- 4:30people in the world, I feel like, have this and use it wisely in the entertainment space.
- 4:35So we're going to bring him on. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the amazing Nigel. Let's get it.
- 4:41Music.
- 5:03That's something we should talk about too but yeah you may
- 5:06or may not realize this nigel but you've been such an influence on the i will
- 5:10definitely say the austral asian scene both myself and magicians in nz it's
- 5:15so cool to be able to share you with the rest of the planet so everyone knows
- 5:18who you are so please tell us nigel tell us who you are i'm nudge yes i'm a
- 5:24corporate entertainer so i don't all i do is
- 5:26i focus on corporate only magician comedian mc facilitator
- 5:31keynote speaker team builder do you
- 5:34have a business card and if so what's what's the
- 5:37title of the car i don't have any marketing
- 5:40i have no real social media
- 5:43i have no social media we
- 5:46had to con him to starting up an instagram and he's
- 5:50like when we make clips from our show and
- 5:52i'm like can i put this up and he's like yeah i don't care like do it i
- 5:55don't put whatever you want anyway one of those guys who was
- 5:58successful for 20 years before social media happened and
- 6:01now he's just people know he's good so he gets work so
- 6:04he's telling the wife how happy it is to have an actual worker on here for once
- 6:08yeah um yeah i do that i do a lot of other things as well as doing all that
- 6:16stuff as well is it not always magic when you perform or like sorry when you When you perform,
- 6:23you do like a keynote speaking, perhaps maybe it's not magic or.
- 6:27Yeah, I, if it's a keynote, I'm doing it on memory because what I'm known for
- 6:31in this country is I'll do my show and then I'll, before the show,
- 6:36I'll go around and meet everyone.
- 6:37And at the end of the show, I rattle off everyone's name as my closer.
- 6:40And when we say everyone's name, we mean like a room full of like 300 people plus.
- 6:46Yeah. Could I, could I share that story and what that experience was like?
- 6:51So i remember it really well because you
- 6:54were the opening act of the final night of
- 6:57the genie convention it was the very first time i actually done
- 7:00a lecture it was a lecture organized by sean
- 7:02taylor one of our one of our greats here in oz and i didn't met nige before
- 7:07i didn't know that we had this caliber of like world-class talent entertainment
- 7:11like it was amazing and then nigel's walking around the table and just going
- 7:17your name cool your name cool your name nice to
- 7:20meet you and your name nice to meet you and i was like that was a weird interaction and
- 7:23then he just runs off into the night show starts
- 7:27and he does awesome magic and then at the end of it he gets everyone to stand
- 7:33up now just to put to paint the picture we're all seated at tables i believe
- 7:37it was close to 300 people 200 something odd people that night well i think
- 7:41there was 200 because i knew i only had a short time frame to learn it all so
- 7:45it was a high pressure one that one.
- 7:47Yeah. So we had like 200 people in the room.
- 7:50Everyone at their table stood up and then one by one, he went,
- 7:54he, they, he even let people choose the table number if they wanted to.
- 7:58And he would choose the table and then he would say each person's name and each
- 8:02person just sat down and he remembered every single person's name.
- 8:06And we're not talking like, we're talking about people's names who you can't
- 8:09even like, if you met them, you'd be like, hi, what's your name?
- 8:12And it's like some strange Korean name that you never heard before that immediately
- 8:16goes in and out of your head.
- 8:17It sticks in Nigel's brains and he remembers every single person's names of
- 8:21all ethnicities. It's so impressive.
- 8:24Sometimes you meet like Anabil or Rajwan, and I'm like, I'm not going to remember that name.
- 8:29But somehow he does that, and he remembered every single person's name.
- 8:34When you say it's a short time span, how long would it take you to memorize
- 8:38a room full of 200 people?
- 8:40Okay, so 200 nowadays. nowadays if i'm
- 8:43on song now it comes a lot down to a believe
- 8:48it or not mental state you've got to be incredibly positive when
- 8:52you do this stuff it's it's as soon as you
- 8:54doubt yourself you're screwed when i first started
- 8:57it would take me a solid two to almost two and a half hours to learn 200 names
- 9:02because i did eight years of theater restaurants and that's where i started
- 9:06the name thing so it's actually started as a bet for alcohol one of the one
- 9:10of the boys in the in the show said i bet you to do the room sure what's the
- 9:13bet uh beer sure i'm in and then.
- 9:1745 the first night and then uh you
- 9:20could not memorize 45 names is
- 9:24that that was the wager that was the wager he said i couldn't do 45 names so
- 9:28i spent literally two hours going around go what's your name again what's your
- 9:31name again trying to get it just wrote memory for that sorry you just did like
- 9:36hard memory you didn't it was i'm curious of your techniques like there's There's
- 9:41different ways to approach these things. So there is.
- 9:44So when it started for me, it was brute force.
- 9:47I did 45 first night, 90 the second night, 154 the third night.
- 9:51And then I took it happening.
- 9:53So going back to your original question, Doug, how long does it take?
- 9:56When I first started, it was two, two to two and a half hours.
- 9:59Nowadays, if I'm on song, I can get 200 names in less than an hour. Wow.
- 10:04And that just because this thing is just a muscle, a muscle that needs to be exercised.
- 10:07I mean, it takes that long to meet that many people. you have
- 10:11probably three or four seconds a person how do
- 10:14it all yeah it's literally bang bang bang bang bang
- 10:18and when like when i do it and i rattle it off it is fast it's not i'm not even
- 10:23thinking i'm just going okay here's john george margaret frank it's like okay
- 10:27so you can do that what about the table number and connect the name how does
- 10:32that all fit in your brain that'll be a different techniques.
- 10:35So I'll do, so the base technique that I use, and these techniques are as old
- 10:40as a hill. So when I started, I,
- 10:43I basically brute force, and then I came up with a system, and then I started researching it.
- 10:49You developed your own approach first? My own approach first.
- 10:53So this is the way my head's going to think about it. And Josh knows him.
- 10:59Researching it, give us some recommendations there, if we could start with that.
- 11:03Wherever a person interested, go.
- 11:05To make it simpler, we meet people on a daily basis when we're roving or even
- 11:10just at a party, dinner table.
- 11:13Let's go small scale so that we can get anyone what
- 11:18is the simplest way on a small scale or even
- 11:21something as primitive as like the dude that makes my coffee every
- 11:24morning i can never remember that cat's name right okay so let's say you're
- 11:27doing a close-up gig and there are four people in the group normally when i
- 11:32come up to that i'll get their name straight away and for me it's it's straight
- 11:35in but if you're new to this type of scenario the number one thing is you have to to listen.
- 11:42If you don't listen to the people, you're not going to remember.
- 11:46Don't worry about what you are and what, you know your patter,
- 11:49you know what you're going to do, you know your presence, focus on them. It's all about them.
- 11:55Listen to what they're saying and then repeat the name straight back to them.
- 11:59So if you go, oh, what's your name? And Doug goes, oh, I'm Doug.
- 12:02Oh, g'day, Doug. How are you, Doug?
- 12:04Now I've said Doug twice already. And then
- 12:07if you get a foreign name or an asian name
- 12:10you can then go back oh ramajan okay right
- 12:13yeah was it am i saying that right you know i love rolling
- 12:16my eyes i want to do it and then they'll go
- 12:19oh not quite and then they'll put an inflection on it and then you'll need to
- 12:22change your tongue position so you listen to the sounds that they're saying
- 12:25if it's an if it is a a foreign name for you so you listen you repeat the name
- 12:31and and i can tell you right now if you pay attention to someone's name like
- 12:36doug Was it Doug? Was it? Which country are you from, Doug?
- 12:39I'm asking you questions and it makes you feel nice.
- 12:43Like how many times have you been at a place and someone's calling you by name
- 12:47and asking you questions that are personal to you? It makes you feel special.
- 12:52I love hearing their name. Yeah. People love it. I've made good coin out of it, so I'm happy.
- 13:01So you listen for the name, you repeat the name. Now, the next thing you want
- 13:04to do is you want to grab, and this is going to sound horrible,
- 13:08and it is horrible, you want to grab a facial feature.
- 13:11The most negative facial feature on them, just don't tell them.
- 13:17Oh, wow. Well, so the notion is look at the name and associate it with a physical feature.
- 13:26So by that notion, ugly people, easy to remember because you remembered me like
- 13:30immediately. And now I don't know how to feel about it.
- 13:33Well, I've got some images of you, Nick, and they're not appropriate for this podcast. Yeah.
- 13:41So listen for the name, repeat the name. You want to grab a facial feature.
- 13:44Now you can, it's, I like using the negative because you get a good gag out
- 13:49of it, but it's the most prominent feature on that person's face,
- 13:52whether it be positive or negative, it's up to that person because everyone
- 13:55will see someone differently.
- 13:57I'll look at Josh and I'll see something and then Nick will look at Josh and
- 14:01he'll see, yeah, exactly. He'll see blowfish. He'll see something else.
- 14:05So you want to understand yourself and what you're doing.
- 14:09Next thing you want to do after that is you want to come up with another image for the name.
- 14:14So i switch everything into images so i'm using both
- 14:17my audio and my visual i think it's kinesthetics it's called where i'm using
- 14:21both those factors into it and then i place that image back on the person's
- 14:26face those techniques were developed back in the 1600s so i came up with that
- 14:31technique and then i researched it and then went oh this is as old as the hills 500 bc 800,
- 14:36bc and then all the modern techniques that you find nowadays are all dated back
- 14:40down to the 16th century.
- 14:42And basically I went, okay, so
- 14:44someone's already thought of this stuff and these are all just my little.
- 14:47It's in bits that it's like, like you grab a magic routine and then you grab that base routine.
- 14:53And like Nick, when you sat at my place and we worked on that,
- 14:56that routine that we've come up with, we started with one routine and then we've
- 15:00developed into something else. And memory is the same thing.
- 15:03You get a base route, memory technique, and then you, you build it to what you
- 15:08want. So it was interesting.
- 15:09I was disappointed when I found out it was as old as the hills.
- 15:12I thought it was new here. No, no. Yeah.
- 15:14Back in the day when there was no Google, they had Titus on the hill who just
- 15:19memorized all the knowledge.
- 15:21And you'd go ask him, and he knew
- 15:23what it was because he had some memory palace as a popular way to do it.
- 15:28Yeah, that's another one. Peg system,
- 15:30Roman rooms. There's a whole heap of different techniques you can do.
- 15:34What I found interesting then is that you tie it to a physical feature because
- 15:38one thing that I tend to do is to tie it to a non-permanent feature. So for example, Mr.
- 15:45Blue shirt, you know, you know, Madam Red dress, whatever it might be.
- 15:49But the point is, is that the moment they put a jacket on, I forget their name.
- 15:53Yeah. Yeah. I used to do that. Okay. Here's a, here's an interesting thing.
- 15:57So I'll look at this, right?
- 15:58So you boys look at me and obviously if you listen on the podcast,
- 16:02you can't look, but if you're on the, on the YouTube, you can look at me.
- 16:06So have a look at me. All right. Shut your eyes.
- 16:08Okay. Everyone shut your eyes. Yep.
- 16:11Yeah. Open your eyes up again. yes i've changed
- 16:14haven't i son of a bitch and so have all you
- 16:17boys it's just like um yeah so
- 16:23in answer that nick you have to be present of what they're wearing and particularly
- 16:28if you're going to meet them again obviously they're not going to be wearing
- 16:30a blue shirt or a red dress the next time around so you need to be conscious
- 16:35of everything like with the theater I've got now a system set up where when people come in again,
- 16:41I know exactly who they are, what they look like.
- 16:44So that way I can come back when they come back again, I can get them and go,
- 16:48oh yeah, you were with these people. These are the people you saw.
- 16:51This is, and we just chat like we're old friends.
- 16:55This is actually really crazy. Could you talk a bit more about that?
- 16:59Cause I've, I've, I've seen these files of like our audience photos of our audience and stuff.
- 17:05Yeah. Yeah, so it's almost too good a secret to share, man. Like, I'm going to say it.
- 17:10Unless you know how to remember everyone's names. Like, it's not of use.
- 17:14You're at the theater of magic.
- 17:15People are coming in and you're getting this information as they come in the door, right?
- 17:20I get all the information, come in the door, and then I write lots of notes at the end of the night.
- 17:24So basically, my day at the theater starts at around 11-ish.
- 17:29I get all the rest of the paraphernalia ready. I bump in the show, set up.
- 17:36The three of us do the three shows. We all bump out, and then I come home for
- 17:39another two hours writing notes about what's just happened.
- 17:44After the show? After the show. So if people return, you have that knowledge now in your banks?
- 17:50And yeah i have all the information i have when
- 17:53people rock up and is that sorry so people
- 17:59will come back come back to the show and you'll oh yeah yeah i'll definitely
- 18:03use it that's so some people come back only to see nigel's show because they
- 18:08they just feel like he's a friend now yeah idiots no that's how you know you're
- 18:16good when your audience feels that
- 18:18way yeah and look so could we take that to the corporate world so like why do
- 18:23you think you've done so well in the corporate world the last 20 years or however
- 18:28and how do you apply that to,
- 18:30getting so much worse that's an interesting question 30 years in the corporate
- 18:33world is a long long time look from a corporate perspective from a business
- 18:39if we if we're switching from From that mindset to a business mindset,
- 18:44then it allows other opportunities.
- 18:48If you're not just doing a magic show, you're actually providing educational
- 18:53benefit or knowledge to the people to help them, particularly in sales and customer service.
- 18:58Those are the strong sets. They need to know people's names and know information about people.
- 19:03So if you can give them tips and trips to help them out.
- 19:07Do you offer an educational experience as well? Yeah, I do a keynote and a workshop
- 19:13as well on memory techniques where I sit down and I actually force them to do – oh, jeez.
- 19:21It's got me. Sorry, that was my stomach playing up there. Sure.
- 19:26Just a little bit of crop dusting, weren't you?
- 19:30It's – yeah, so I've forgotten the question now. No, well, basically,
- 19:34I mean, I can summarize it.
- 19:37Nigel's – that was my plan. That's on it.
- 19:40Nigel Nigel does so well in the business world because he can emcee an event.
- 19:45He can facilitate a conference. He can do a keynote speak.
- 19:48He can do magic. Yeah.
- 19:51And what I was alluding to, Nigel, was like, how has being able to use your
- 19:56memory in an entertainment sense, like being able to remember clients and like
- 20:00the fact that how long have clients been working for you?
- 20:03Like, sorry, been rebooking you for it. That's what I'm kind of getting at.
- 20:07Like, aside from memory work, how have you, what, like, what do you think the
- 20:11skills are that you bring to
- 20:12your clients that's made you get rebooked so much and have so much work?
- 20:16I know the answer, but I want to hear from. Um, I, I care about it.
- 20:20It's, it's never about me.
- 20:22I go into a corporate gig and it's never about me. It's about, it's about them.
- 20:29The ego is left at the door. And if, if my ego gets too big,
- 20:33my brother knocks me down big time.
- 20:36He, he seen a lot of my shows and I'll, I'll do a show. I get a standing ovation
- 20:39and he went, well, you got that wrong. You did that wrong. Your timing was out out here.
- 20:44You should have done this when this happened. And I'm like, okay,
- 20:47right here, head down back to work.
- 20:48Josh has seen me do it at the theater where I will do a killing show.
- 20:52And then I'll go, I should have done this better. I could have done that.
- 20:54I should have worked on this.
- 20:56And then Chris, Chris, our other partner, he's actually taught me to actually
- 20:59stop, enjoy the moment, and then analyze it later on. Just enjoy the win.
- 21:05So going into a corporate thing, it's all about the client.
- 21:09If you make that client happy, unhappy, they'll rebook you. You make them the
- 21:14star, not yourself the star.
- 21:17Other things I do in corporate that would be a little bit different is I'll get there early.
- 21:23I'll rove. If they turn to me, I'm not merely meant to do a show and they go,
- 21:27oh, our MC's dropped out. I go, sure, I'll MC for you. Not a problem.
- 21:31And just do it. And they go, extra fee. And I go, no, no, don't worry about it. She'll be fine.
- 21:37You got me for the night. Use and abuse me as you see fit. And that's pretty much my philosophy.
- 21:43Do you have an agent or self-booking? I would assume you're mostly the latter.
- 21:49I started out. So I did theater restaurants for eight years.
- 21:52I did three years at Crazies Comedy Restaurant and five years at Brantley's. Now, Crazies. Sorry?
- 21:58The Trenches. The Trenches. Yes. The Trenches is exactly right.
- 22:02So my first night at Crazies was me standing on stage.
- 22:06Doing stand-up for
- 22:0910 minutes no one laughed no one
- 22:12applauded so then it's like okay well i got a
- 22:14mortgage to pay here let's do it again the next night so i
- 22:17get up next night night two pull up the pants
- 22:20second night no
- 22:23one laughs i get this that's just
- 22:27a single person doing a one unclad it's
- 22:32almost better to get nothing than the one the one
- 22:35no oh it's just the one that was like okay in between
- 22:38the legs wiggles nice oh man it was
- 22:41and then it was just um yeah just keep working at it so it was a it was a tough
- 22:47lessons well if we could focus on the comedy aspect that perhaps a lot of people
- 22:52don't think about with their lines and so forth that you know we read a lot
- 22:55of books from different periods of time where there might be some jokes or gags
- 22:59in there that might deem appropriate.
- 23:01Do you find now, with the year being 2024, that comedy has changed so much and
- 23:06people do tend to get offended?
- 23:07Or is it something that you've always been clean cut? Or have you had to find
- 23:12that you've made some adjustments as time goes on?
- 23:16Best piece of advice I was given by the owner of Crazies, which he didn't take
- 23:20his own advice, was I want you to be, because he said, go on stage.
- 23:23He says, I want you to be clean, but clever.
- 23:26And that is the best piece of advice I'd ever gotten. I can go into any corporate and I'm clean.
- 23:34There's no religious jokes. There's no political jokes.
- 23:37There's no swearing. There is nothing that's going to be considered inappropriate at all.
- 23:42And then you learn and you work harder because obviously you can you know some
- 23:49jokes that are inappropriate will get a good laugh so to be clean and funny
- 23:55is a lot more work to get there but a lot more benefit at the end of the day
- 24:00if you want to do corporates.
- 24:03That's great advice clean and clever yeah if
- 24:05you want to be asked back for sure you don't want to
- 24:08upset anyone right no no and
- 24:11on the it has changed over the years
- 24:14over the 30 years nick it's changed a lot one
- 24:18of the gags that i absolutely love i can't do it anymore and it's like i got
- 24:23a whole set where i'm getting pulled over by the cops and there's a whole heap
- 24:27of other gags in there and then eventually goes the the copper see copper says
- 24:32step out of the car so i step out of the car and the cop is a dwarf.
- 24:36He goes, I'm not happy. I said, well, which one are you then?
- 24:39The gag hill absolutely kills.
- 24:43And I did it one night in corporate a few years ago and the client's gone,
- 24:48love the show. And I went, dwarf.
- 24:50She went, yeah, you can't say it to anyone. And I went, you're kidding.
- 24:55So you just adjust. You go, think about it.
- 25:00Well, no, can't do it. And one thing that Nigel does too at his corporates,
- 25:04which is something to think about for us magicians, is instead of charging an hourly rate,
- 25:09Nigel will charge an appearance fee so that he's just, the client isn't worrying
- 25:13about, oh, when can we have him rove to make up that hour?
- 25:17Not that he does much roving, but it's like, instead of them going,
- 25:20oh, but there's going to be speeches.
- 25:22Will he still do the hour? Is that going to, it's just like,
- 25:24I'm there to entertain everyone for whatever time you need. And then that's,
- 25:29you know, like you said, use and abuse me.
- 25:32And I imagine that's worked out pretty well because some people think clients
- 25:35might overuse that, that appearance fee, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
- 25:40You have to be a jack of all trades to make this work for you so that you can
- 25:45offer them multiple, you know, benefits. Yeah. Yeah.
- 25:51They'll come back and they'll bring you back as just an emcee to emcee their awards.
- 25:54Or if it's a multi-day conference, I'll come back and do the whole conferencing.
- 26:00And that's a whole different kettle of fish from just doing a magic show if
- 26:04you want to get into multi-day conferencing.
- 26:06And everything, when I'm emceeing and doing awards, everything's memorized as
- 26:11well. All the notes. You don't say.
- 26:15All so it's literally i get up
- 26:18there and i'm introducing people and they they
- 26:21they are which part of the company do you work for if you can
- 26:24get that from a crowd then you
- 26:27know you've done your job properly because they think
- 26:30because you know so much about the company so i
- 26:33do a lot of due diligence beforehand i'll do research i'll
- 26:37get it back do you have a reference book that
- 26:40you would suggest like for people that wanted to
- 26:43study something along mnemonics is
- 26:46there and if not that's fine yeah well harry
- 26:49lorraine's got fantastic stuff for memory
- 26:52stuff he i went through when i started out i came up with it i grabbed all his
- 26:56stuff yeah so he has the memory book right which that's a great suggestion harry
- 27:01lorraine one of our magic teachers yeah living as a memory expert He was on
- 27:08like the tonight show in the United States.
- 27:10He called the audience's names out there. Yeah.
- 27:14So, yeah. So that would be my go. If you want to get into memory, that would be my go too.
- 27:18Because as you go into the topic of like doing due diligence and memorizing
- 27:21client features, now you can use some of these other techniques and now you
- 27:25can memorize the speech in a short amount of time and things like this.
- 27:29Right? Yeah. I've got a booklet that I've written, which goes into the names,
- 27:33peg systems, link system.
- 27:35Well, there's the resource. Source? Where do you get that?
- 27:38I'll send it to Josh and he can forward it on to everyone. Okay.
- 27:43Maybe we'll put that in the Discord, perhaps. The Magigo Discord. Man, I am interested.
- 27:49Yeah. And that, cause that, so that's something you give to the attendees of your keynote.
- 27:54Yeah. So I'll do a keynote speech, a keynote at a conference,
- 27:57and then everyone, every delegate gets the PDF at the end of it.
- 28:01Now, one thing that you sort of just breezed over was that you familiarize yourself with the company.
- 28:06So what does that look like? Is that just you basically doing a Google search,
- 28:11reading what their web page is about? What do you kind of do there?
- 28:13Okay. So old days, it was, you'd jump into the websites, you'd get as much information,
- 28:19You'd work out what their strategies are, their culture, their key values,
- 28:23so you understand from an executive level what direction their company's traveling.
- 28:33Then you'd use that information. Then you'd obviously talk to your client,
- 28:39your contact, and then if you get an opportunity to talk to some of the executives,
- 28:42you talk to them as well, get the information they want,
- 28:44find out what the theme of the conference is, what
- 28:47direction they want to go with the conference and then
- 28:50make sure you're in line with the messages they
- 28:53want to bring across as an emcee
- 28:57here's the uh grab all that information there's so much i want to try to put
- 29:04in in words here nowadays chat gpt is fantastic yes I did a gig up in Cairns
- 29:13and I had to, it was an international conference.
- 29:17So everyone from around the world, it was a symposium for a bunch of engineers.
- 29:21So exciting stuff, incredibly boring personalities, but geez, I had to drink.
- 29:26My job was- I like performing for engineers. Oh, mate. For magic.
- 29:32Mate, oh, I find different personalities or different occupations have different
- 29:38personalities and you have to edit accordingly. Yeah.
- 29:41So I did this gig up in Cairns and I had to interview 15 CEOs from different
- 29:47companies around the world.
- 29:49So I went chat GPT. So obviously I did my due diligence first on each of the companies.
- 29:54And then I went to chat GPT and found out more information and went,
- 29:57okay, structure me a questionnaire for them.
- 30:01And then I, I wore it all set up, lined it all up. And then literally it was
- 30:05like, they were like 10 minute interviews.
- 30:08And then as the days went by, people would come up to me, I'll ask,
- 30:12ask the president about women in the network.
- 30:15It'll, it'll, it'll set him off. It's like, okay, sure. No trouble. I'll be there.
- 30:19So people asking questions, right, let's explore this avenue.
- 30:24And, like, I think I spoke to him for about 20 minutes. We were discussing this
- 30:29whole topic, and it was fascinating and stuff.
- 30:32But doing all that stuff does help you if you're having to interview or run
- 30:36panels at a conference, understanding what the objective of the panel is, each of the panelists,
- 30:42because sometimes you'll get panelists that won't talk, and you need to get it out of them.
- 30:49And different little techniques. And if you know a little bit about them and
- 30:53stuff that they're interested in, it sparks them to start talking about it.
- 30:58Nigel, get it out of him. Now, 30 years of corporate gigs, you've got to have
- 31:04some doozies of some stories, whether things have gone wrong,
- 31:08just some weird stuff's happened.
- 31:10Things that have gone wrong, mate. Like you've had to do gigs when you're sick.
- 31:13Can we just spend a bit of time on some of the good stories?
- 31:17Because I know this is what I want to hear, but also, yeah, all the guys want
- 31:22to hear what happens to a seasoned pro when you collect all these.
- 31:25These stories. Okay, you guys, you had the podcast last week.
- 31:28We were talking about travels.
- 31:29Yeah. And traveling around. So my traveling story, I'll start with that one.
- 31:35I was doing a gig for Nissan, and it was in Catherine, which for the listeners
- 31:40out there, Catherine's pretty much in the middle of Australia.
- 31:43It is a four-hour plane flight from Brisbane to Darwin, and then a two- or three-hour
- 31:49drive from Darwin down to Catherine.
- 31:51I've got to the airport early in the morning because it's a six o'clock flight.
- 31:55Plane's being delayed, delayed, delayed. Engine has blown up.
- 32:00Plane don't work. I've rung my management, and we'll go back to management as well.
- 32:05Doug, I'll tell you what I've done with that as well. That's another question
- 32:08you had that we got sidetracked on there. Okay.
- 32:11So yeah, so the plane, I rang my management and then they've gone,
- 32:14I'll just stay at the airport. I'll see what we can do.
- 32:17So my management comes back and goes, okay, we've got stuff organized.
- 32:20The plane, so the plane I'm leaving on doesn't leave until three o'clock that afternoon.
- 32:27Now, I start work at six and it's a four-hour flight. So I'm not landing in Darwin until seven.
- 32:34So I get on the plane, we land in Darwin in seven. While I've been on the plane,
- 32:38I get off the plane, I ring my management again. What's happening?
- 32:42They go, you should find someone there. What we've organized is a private charter plane for you.
- 32:47So I've gone, righty-o, cool. So there's a private charter plane.
- 32:50I find the guy who's the pilot, private charter plane.
- 32:53I've left half my show on the carousel. I'm just going, grab what I want for
- 32:58a show, put it in my pockets, grab my costume.
- 33:00We hop into this little two-seater plane.
- 33:04And then he goes, oh, hang on a sec. He rings up the traffic controller, Darwin.
- 33:07He goes, right, yeah, we're good to go. He flies the wrong way up the airport,
- 33:11up the runway, because he's got clearance from the control because it will save us 15 minutes.
- 33:16You take off the wrong way. We fly into Catherine, land in there,
- 33:20and then there's a limousine waiting for me.
- 33:22While in the plane, when we're flying in the plane, like I'm excited to go,
- 33:26oh, I'm flying up the front seat. This is great.
- 33:29He takes off. In the air, I get to the back. I get changed, and I get on my
- 33:33show set in the back of the plane.
- 33:35We land. There's a limousine that basically drives me to the venue.
- 33:40I get out of the venue. They're eating desserts.
- 33:42There's 120 people. I've got 20 minutes before showtime. I've gone around,
- 33:47ripped around, learned all the names and then did an hour show and then got
- 33:53up the next morning at five and drove back. That's insane.
- 33:57Going back to your question before,
- 34:01Doug, in relation to management so i have exclusive management i go through
- 34:05onstage entertainment i have for the last god 25 years it was interesting someone
- 34:12calls you do you just say call them.
- 34:15They, they, sorry. Exclusive management.
- 34:18Does that mean if someone was like, if someone, if someone rings you up night,
- 34:22I'm like, Oh, I saw you at a thing. Can I hire you?
- 34:25Doug saying, do you just then send them to me up direct?
- 34:28And they go, Oh, can we go direct? And I go, no, no, no, no, no.
- 34:31I'll go. Sure. Happy to chat with you. Happy to do the gig.
- 34:34I'll pass the information onto my management and then they'll,
- 34:37they'll handle the rest. Oh no, no. We want to go direct.
- 34:39No, no, no, no, no. That's not the way I work in the business.
- 34:42I'm very ethical and I believe very much in ethics and doing the right thing.
- 34:46There is enough work out there for all of us and agents and managements are there to do a job.
- 34:52Like, for example, that gig where I had to go up to Darwin, I did nothing.
- 34:58I just made one phone call and they took care of the rest.
- 35:01That's what they're there for. They're there for those situations where stuff's
- 35:06going wrong and you need that scenario.
- 35:10It was interesting when I moved to onstage, my old management and my new management
- 35:17and myself went to lunch and they traded me like a soccer player.
- 35:21My old management's like, well, okay. So the first year I would like 10% of
- 35:26whatever he takes for the year, plus a small trailer.
- 35:29And I'm like, boys, I'm right here. I am right here and I can hear you both.
- 35:35They're like and now when he gets grumpy you want to get him a beer and you
- 35:39want to like so and what i do as well is and i'm happy to share this is i have a set fee,
- 35:48that my management goes out so and
- 35:52then if there's other bureaus because i work through all the bureaus in the
- 35:55country if there's another bureau in the country that wants to use me they obviously
- 36:00contact my management which goes through me they get their full commission right
- 36:04and then my management takes a cut of their commission and left it means I'm
- 36:07left with less of my fee but a little,
- 36:12It doesn't matter what bureau's flogging me off.
- 36:15They're both going out at the same fee. It then comes down to relationship that
- 36:19they have with those clients.
- 36:21And B, it's a level playing field for me.
- 36:24Yeah, you're not getting undersold out there. I'm not getting undersold.
- 36:28I'm happy taking the cut that I take.
- 36:32And these other people get paid accordingly for the jobs that they do
- 36:36rather than going through and
- 36:39saying hey oh i'm gonna he's he's
- 36:42such and such oh plus he's an extra this much it's all
- 36:46it's a one set fee and as josh said they they
- 36:48got me for the day they can use and abuse me as they feed i really
- 36:52like that approach and when i'm traveling to work for corporate clients that's
- 36:55what i encourage people to do is to book a daily rate and then i'll offer whatever
- 36:59they need yeah and the other thing uh this is something else that stood out
- 37:04to me and I've tried to adopt this from Nigel, is when we first met,
- 37:09it was Nigel emceeing a gala dinner and I was booked to do the roving around the tables.
- 37:15And even though we're both magicians, Nigel saw me, got my business card,
- 37:20took a photo of it and sent it to his agent that night saying,
- 37:25hey, there's another magician out here.
- 37:26Here's his details. And I think I got an email from your your management that
- 37:31same night because you actually were interested in another magician getting work,
- 37:37even though some people might have
- 37:40that closed mindset of that's going to jeopardize what I do kind of thing.
- 37:44If you see someone good, I'm happy to straightaway tell my management.
- 37:50If I see a good band, if I'm working with a corporate band or I see another
- 37:54speaker, straightaway I'm on my management going, hey, you need to check out this person.
- 37:58Cool. And they'll ask me to check people out as well. All right.
- 38:02Do you have a weird story?
- 38:05I have. Which weird story? Two strokes, epileptic fit, 20% roll.
- 38:12Oh, yeah. That was recent. That was recent. Was there actually fighting?
- 38:16Yeah. Give us that story. Yeah. And that was this year, I think.
- 38:20It's a good story. It's a good story.
- 38:23That's not this year. This is back in my crazy days in theater.
- 38:27Oh. But there was one this year you told us about.
- 38:30A story with violence on Pineweather, for the record. I'm trying to remember
- 38:34which one that was now, Josh.
- 38:36This was at the drinks afterwards. I think it was like a rival.
- 38:41Oh, my God, yes.
- 38:43You can't mention any of the companies here. How am I reminding the memory guy of something you did?
- 38:50Shocking memory. I bet he knows all their names, though. Yeah, true. Yeah, they do.
- 38:55Funnily enough, the CEO of one of the companies turned up to a function I did
- 38:59up the coast, and I've gone, you know, Pete, how are you, mate?
- 39:02And I'm like, I'm not going to mention anything about what happened.
- 39:04So back in the theater days, so the crazies is 18 to 35-year-olds.
- 39:10They're to heckle and get drunk.
- 39:14Brentley's, I did five years there. That was 18 to extinct.
- 39:18Sorry, 35 to extinct. Literally, we'd have days where they'd wheel in the aged
- 39:23care people and they'd eat lunch.
- 39:27And the owner, she'd go, oh, you're going to go on during lunch.
- 39:31Whatever sure that's the
- 39:35trenches oh man you got
- 39:38these old people clunking away eating so i've gone
- 39:41screw this i did the needle through the arm you know harry anderson's
- 39:44needle through the arm yeah yeah and i've done that trick while
- 39:47they're eating and i'm like and i've got spit
- 39:50drooling from my mouth just and i'm
- 39:53just just right stop i'm fine you want to put me on
- 39:56while they're eating sure we'll do this so yeah
- 40:00so we're at crazy's one night and then i'm on stage and then everyone's was
- 40:03appropriately named yeah oh crazy's was
- 40:06so much fun if we could all go back we we'd do
- 40:09it all again in a heartbeat it was just so much
- 40:12fun so i'm on stage looking and then everyone's just done this
- 40:15and i've done and looked
- 40:18over and there's these like 20 people just going for
- 40:20it on one of the tables and just laying into
- 40:24each other and i've like gone on all righty yeah like completely calm with it
- 40:28because it's not like the first time this has happened it's like all right folks
- 40:31you want to watch the fight or should we get on with the show and they've gone
- 40:34yeah fight's over let's get back to the show and we went back to the show another
- 40:38night we did a sketch i'll tell you a good routine we did a crazy two.
- 40:44This is this started out serious and ended up in
- 40:46a piss take we had did one night with a sketch sketch and
- 40:50one of the guys and it's basically a i come out and i blow up it's mining i
- 40:54blow up a doll and then i try to kiss the doll and so it's all inappropriate
- 40:57whatnot and at the end this gay guy comes running out from the stage and then
- 41:01i'm like ah and that's the end of the set but we've done this and then one of
- 41:05the guys in the audience has turned to his missus and gone hi honey i'm gay,
- 41:10and i was just like oh my god i'm out oh i'm gay and like she's at the back
- 41:17with this crying and he's on.
- 41:19It was just, oh, it's a carnage of fun.
- 41:24And that happens every week. Every week. I did a routine at Crazies.
- 41:30I loved it. It was a three-ring linking ring routine, but it was all glow-in-the-dark.
- 41:38So I taped.
- 41:39So this is back in the 90s. I taped my rings with glow-in-the-dark tape.
- 41:46I had white gloves on, and so these white gloves would come out,
- 41:49and I'd come out, and you'd have the glow-in-the-dark rings,
- 41:52and it was all like a minute 46 routine, all serious.
- 41:57It was like beautiful moves and whole thing, and then the routine.
- 42:01By the end of the season, this routine had turned from this beautiful,
- 42:06lovely, serious routine to I would come out, and then halfway through the routine,
- 42:12another two hands would come out.
- 42:14They would undo my pants. they'd pull my pants down i'd
- 42:17have while in the dark y fronts on then they'd
- 42:20bring out this glow in the dark sheep and next minute the
- 42:23sheep while i'm doing this ring routine whoa so
- 42:27from the start of the season to the end of the season stuff had changed we'd
- 42:32constantly have to try to throw each other off on stage it was just so much
- 42:36fun another story from cans for you josh which which it's incredibly painful
- 42:42for me, but it's one of those stories that you do.
- 42:45I went up to Cairns. I was doing a gig up there.
- 42:49Ended up getting violently ill, and I mean violently ill, where I am throwing
- 42:54up and diarrhea every 15 minutes.
- 42:57So I've, thank God, the event organizer I knew is a good friend.
- 43:03And that's the other advantage of working with management as well,
- 43:06is you get to learn all the PCOs, the event organizers, and they understand
- 43:11how you work, they like what you do, they like the ethics, and then you kind
- 43:15of become friends from it.
- 43:16And that helps you get more work in the business.
- 43:19And that's probably why I don't market at all, because I have all these other
- 43:23connections from working in the industry over the years.
- 43:26But anyway, so I've done this gig. I'm violently ill. So I've grabbed Jeff.
- 43:30I said, Jeff, we need to talk to the client. I'm not well.
- 43:33I've said, look, I don't want any money for this. I'll do the show.
- 43:38It's gratis. That's the way it's going to be. The pool area is there. I've come down.
- 43:44I've come down to do, I do one group, close up for three minutes,
- 43:48back to the room, throw up, diarrhea, back down again, do another group,
- 43:53back up to the room, throw up, come back down, do another group.
- 43:56And while I'm doing this, I'm learning the names as well. Oh my God.
- 44:01I'm back down. And then it's showtime. I've gone, right.
- 44:04A show's going to happen. I'm 20 minutes into the show. I've got a woman up.
- 44:08I'm doing the theater sports routine with hands because I do a whole heap of other stuff as well.
- 44:13I'm doing theater sports. Suddenly, I throw up. I've swallowed it,
- 44:17and diarrhea starts coming down my legs. Shut the fuck up. And I'm dying. Oh, my God.
- 44:21I've gone, right, folks, we're going to have a small break. You're going to
- 44:25have some dessert, and we'll come back after dessert for the next part of the show.
- 44:28I've gone back to my room, had a shower, cleaned my clothes,
- 44:32obviously throwing up more, diarrhea more, come back on,
- 44:36on finish the other 20 minutes like i
- 44:39was doing stand-up on my haunches and one minute from the
- 44:42crowd's going you asthmatic i got oh god i wish i was right now
- 44:44i've done this end up i get a standing ovation for the show not that i can remember
- 44:50it because jeff because i spoke to jeff the day afterwards he then i finished
- 44:55the show he basically just picks me up he's just leave your shit there kez and
- 44:59come up and he literally literally takes me back up to the.
- 45:03Room we opened the door to my room and oh my god it's rank in
- 45:07there gone in there we've called the ambulance
- 45:10and we've basically gotten me back together
- 45:13again i've run my management again this is like 11 o'clock at night
- 45:16right my management gone i'm violently ill i'm on a plane
- 45:19at 6 a.m it's not happening fix it
- 45:22so my management gang they take care of that
- 45:24they're on the phone to the hotel was brilliant they
- 45:28basically said look we've extended your stay till five in
- 45:31the afternoon known yeah scotty p what a shit show
- 45:33you that is correct and jeff knows
- 45:38a lot of the other entertainers in the industry next minute i
- 45:41start getting text messages and emails from like phil cass scott williams
- 45:44going mate heard what you did champ well done so yeah
- 45:47it was as you started telling this gig
- 45:50story i'm like he's gonna have a long road to hoe to beat trig
- 45:53watson but i think yeah winner crazy stories
- 45:58to to get to go from getting a standing ovation to then calling an ambulance
- 46:03is yeah just such a contrast man holy mile all the while doing names in which
- 46:09you were supposed to have the coolest calmest collectest mind like are you unfazed by anything.
- 46:15Yeah if my head gets into that into that frame of mind nick yeah nothing will
- 46:19throw me i did My mum died at two in the morning, and then my brother and I
- 46:24went and did charity work for cancer. She died of cancer.
- 46:27And the next day at two o'clock that afternoon, 12 hours later,
- 46:31I was doing charity work for cancer because it was already booked in.
- 46:34And it was like, as soon as I started working,
- 46:36All the emotions went. It was like, I'm here to do a job. It's all about them.
- 46:40It's nothing about me. Get the job done. Don't worry about yourself.
- 46:44That's a skill in itself, a remarkable skill.
- 46:49Another funny gig story for you is, and this is probably my favorite.
- 46:54I was doing a gig for Yellow Brick Road down at the MCG. You two boys don't
- 46:58know what's going to happen to you. Doug wouldn't have heard this one.
- 47:01It was for Yellow Brick Road. I was emceeing and doing a show for them down
- 47:05there. Now, for the people that don't know, the chairman is Mark Borat,
- 47:08who's a famous celebrity here in Australia.
- 47:13He's the chairman, and I had to introduce the CEO. His name is Matt.
- 47:17I've introduced the CEO. He's come up today to do the welcome speech.
- 47:21I've walked off stage, mic in hand, and so the mic's here, and I've just put,
- 47:26like I normally do, I've just put my hands behind my back as I normally do,
- 47:30sitting off stage waiting for him to finish his speech.
- 47:34And then the next minute you hear over over the speakers this because i had to let one rip,
- 47:44so and i put the mic behind my thing i
- 47:46and i hear this sound going oh jesus i
- 47:49ripped the mic out to the front because the sound
- 47:52boys had forgotten to drop me from the booth so this
- 47:56fart has gone on through the speakers the audience
- 48:00starts starts chuckling away i'm at the side stage going oh that's that's funny
- 48:07um and now in true typical form rather than owning the situation i've walked
- 48:14back up on stage to back announce him and do the next thing and i've gone.
- 48:19They literally stitched him up completely and then straight away as soon as
- 48:24i finished i've I've rung my manager and gone, you're not going to believe what I just did.
- 48:28Oh, man. That's funny. It's pretty funny. Wow. Slow clap for that one. That's a slow clap.
- 48:35God damn it. It reminds me of all those jokes about Taylor Swift.
- 48:40The way she holds her microphone, she kind of holds it down at her side or her
- 48:43butt crack while she looks at the audience.
- 48:44And it's just like, she's totally fighting into that microphone.
- 48:47She's totally fighting into that microphone.
- 48:50Far out. Hey, we had a question from Christopher Wayne.
- 48:55He wanted to ask Nige, how does it feel going from being a corporate guy to
- 49:01now sort of moving towards a guy that sells tickets and plays for a theater audience every week?
- 49:07That is an excellent question. To answer your question, I love it.
- 49:11I love the theater of magic. That is my passion.
- 49:15I am very lucky that I get to work with Josh and Chris.
- 49:21Two of my favorite guys, two of my best mates. Like when I left theater,
- 49:26it was like literally, that's all I want to do. I just want to get back into a theater again.
- 49:31And I've seized the opportunity here to do the things.
- 49:35You know how you do something and then you go, oh, I regret.
- 49:37I should have done that a little bit more.
- 49:40And now that what we've set up, and honestly, the three of us,
- 49:44I think what we've set up here is really special.
- 49:47We're ticking all the right boxes. and it's, like I say, it's not just a show, it's an experience.
- 49:54And that's our goal. That's our value that we want to deliver to our clients.
- 50:00So we'll do the little extra things.
- 50:01We'll have a box of chocolates there for them if they've come along the second time.
- 50:05We'll try to remember who they were, who they saw, how their kids are going.
- 50:10One guy comes in, he loves looking at the maps in the map room.
- 50:13So it's like, oh, Steve, you can go check out those maps over here.
- 50:15There's some new ones over here this time.
- 50:16Just remembering those little nuances makes people
- 50:20feel special it's having said that from a corporate perspective to a theater
- 50:27of magic perspective it is so much easier to perform the people are there to
- 50:32see you perform in a corporate setting they're not necessarily there to see
- 50:36you perform you have to be on your a game when you're in a corporate world.
- 50:40That's the difference of all time right there
- 50:43people coming to see magic like that's
- 50:46the dream scene that rarely happens for professional magicians
- 50:50it's so nice that we're seeing these venues
- 50:54pop up not just like yours but around the world where
- 50:57people are showing that they want this and hopefully
- 51:01it will continue it's a great intimate form of theater
- 51:04how many seats do y'all have 40 40
- 51:07is what we set for so i love that number
- 51:10i think it's a great number it makes people
- 51:13feel part of the show they're not watching that's how like hoffsens are used
- 51:18to do it and who dan you know you would come into the salon and witness there
- 51:23is no bad seats either like every seat's wonderful and you know the amount of
- 51:28cross-checking that nige does before each show to ensure that all All the sight
- 51:31lines are what they're supposed to be.
- 51:33You, I know you want it to be an experience and I can say from someone who performed
- 51:37there not too long ago, it, it really is.
- 51:41What's Chris, I can run your artistic brain cares and just do it.
- 51:44Yeah. The current theme I've heard is that you genuinely care about the experience
- 51:48you provide for the people who watch you.
- 51:51And sometimes maybe magicians get self self-absorbed with the things they want
- 51:55to showcase and don't care as much about the, as the people they're showcasing it to.
- 52:00When in fact that needs to be the focus always.
- 52:03Yeah. It comes back to that comment. I said, it's not about you. It's about them.
- 52:07Yeah. And you know what? I think that ethos, I, my dream for you guys,
- 52:12if I may, like, I think it would be amazing to have like,
- 52:16Theater of Magic Brisbane, Theater of Magic Sydney, Theater of Magic Perth,
- 52:19Theater of Magic New York.
- 52:20I mean, I just believe it belongs everywhere with the way you guys are doing it. You know what I mean?
- 52:25I really hope in the years to come that it does really expand everywhere.
- 52:30Everyone needs to experience it. Well, I'm glad you say that,
- 52:32Nick. Stay tuned for Theater of Magic Melbourne.
- 52:36Yeah, boy. Yep. Now, something else that would be, I think, really valuable for the listeners,
- 52:42because Nigel has had quite a successful career in magic and all his businesses
- 52:49and stuff he's been doing, he's actually set himself up to be able to retire
- 52:55from doing this stuff if he wants to.
- 52:56Like, you know, I won't go into all your portfolios and stuff,
- 52:59but he, you know, owns multiple properties and things like that because he's
- 53:05had a successful career and doing what he loves doing.
- 53:07Right. What advice do you have to magicians?
- 53:11What do you have to magicians that are currently working of how they should
- 53:15start thinking about when they want to not have to be running to every single gig?
- 53:20Gig. You mentioned something to me about how we don't think about it,
- 53:24but we should be putting our own super aside and little things like that.
- 53:28What a great topic. Let's hear it.
- 53:30First step, let's say you get $1,000 for a gig.
- 53:34First thing that you grab 10% of that before tax is taken out,
- 53:3810% goes into what's called savings, long-term savings.
- 53:41That could be either super superannuation or long-term savings,
- 53:44and it is never, ever touched.
- 53:48You then grab another 10% and it goes into what's called a mojo account,
- 53:51which is an emergency account. That's your emergency money.
- 53:55Once again, doesn't get touched, but it's used for emergencies.
- 53:59Washing machine breaks down, need a new fridge, car maintenance,
- 54:02that type of big expense items because that'll build up over the years.
- 54:07But that savings thing never gets touched.
- 54:09I'm very lucky that my partner, she takes care of all that.
- 54:13If I was left with the money, I'd spend it willy-nilly like you wouldn't believe.
- 54:16Leave, but she's like, no, no, no. This is what happens.
- 54:20This money's going here. This money goes here. So 10% goes to here.
- 54:2410% goes to the mojo. You then take 30% goes into tax.
- 54:28So that leaves you, that's 50. So half the money's already gone.
- 54:30Okay. The other half, that other 50%, you can grab 10% goes into entertaining myself.
- 54:37So that could be a takeaway meal, going to the movies, that type of thing.
- 54:41That other 40% after bills, groceries, et cetera.
- 54:44And then that's the way you set it up so if
- 54:47you earn a thousand dollars at a gig you're actually
- 54:50only earning four hundred dollars because everything just became
- 54:53my financial advisor now having said
- 54:58that i actually have to quote this is not financial advice you may go see your
- 55:03financial advisor just say that it's well you're my lawyer too that's awesome
- 55:09i did my finance qualifications you have to actually declare that this is not financial advice.
- 55:15That's beautiful part of my other world,
- 55:19Now, just on your other world, you have a title for that other world, Quantum.
- 55:26I am a, okay, so for the listeners out there, I also, not only do I do my corporate. This is crazy, yeah.
- 55:35I do my corporates, obviously do Theatre of Magic, which is about,
- 55:40for me, I think for all of us, it's about 20 hours a week, Josh,
- 55:43isn't it, that we all spend?
- 55:45Probably, yeah. At least. At least. So, and I also, I have for the last 30 years
- 55:51also worked full-time. I have three degrees.
- 55:54I have a Bachelor of Mathematics, a Master's of IT, and a Master's of Finance.
- 55:59I am what's called a quantitative analyst, so nerd, mathematician.
- 56:05I build mathematical model to help. I work in a dealing floor,
- 56:08and I build mathematical models to help people trade or make better business
- 56:13decisions when trading.
- 56:14He's so clever that when he's so
- 56:17clever that when he started working with his management for corporate
- 56:21entertainment he looked at their system and went i can build that better and
- 56:24you didn't you build their website or their booking systeming and yeah they're
- 56:29on stage entertainment their booking system i actually built it for them program
- 56:33you get all the work yeah and then He just tweets the algorithm to send all the inquiries.
- 56:40He's booking himself now. Yeah, that's it.
- 56:45So I do a lot of things. I don't sleep.
- 56:50Wait, we haven't talked memorized deck. Do you use one? If so,
- 56:53what? And do you want to talk about it?
- 56:56No. The answer is no, I don't do it. I use the mnemonic one that Josh uses as well.
- 57:02But I don't use the memorized deck for some reason. I just he doesn't use it
- 57:05but he just knows it like we'll be doing a routine yeah the next card in my
- 57:11routine can you do the deck can you memorize one on the fly is that something you've tried no no,
- 57:17So that, sorry, let me rephrase that for you, Doug. Yes, I can do it.
- 57:21I will need time to practice it and learn it. It's like everything.
- 57:24It's like every skill. Right.
- 57:26It's like learning a double lift, you know, doing a pharaoh,
- 57:28doing whatever coin move you want to do on muscle palm.
- 57:32Great answer. You want to, it's just a bit of hard work and job done.
- 57:39Yeah. Yeah. And in saying all of this stuff, his magic is really great.
- 57:43Like, you know, great Zaro shuffles, great routine-ing.
- 57:47You've got the funniest Bill and Lemon routine I've ever seen.
- 57:52That Bill and Lemon routine, I built that at Brantley's. Now,
- 57:55you've seen how I work now, Josh, because the Theatre of Magic,
- 57:58what I love about the Theatre of Magic is it's an opportunity for us to really hone our shows.
- 58:05Like, I've come up with 20 minutes' worth of new material since the last seven
- 58:10months, and I have honed other parts to my show.
- 58:13I've got a lot more callbacks now. And the reason I've honed it is A,
- 58:18because of Chris and Josh, because we will sit down and I'll listen to the boys.
- 58:24And Chris will go, why don't you try this? And I'll go, sure,
- 58:28I'll give it a crack. And Josh will go, well, why don't you do this?
- 58:31And I go, sure, I'll give it a crack. My favorite part is I do the Cody Fisher book test.
- 58:38And then I moved from that into the Sean Farquhar's.
- 58:44Sherlock Holmes routine. But at the start of the Cody Fisher one,
- 58:49it's like, oh, any word, any word, and you pull out the dictionary and they can get that gag.
- 58:53Josh has gone, wouldn't it be great if we could bring that back later on?
- 58:56And I went, that's a good idea. And then Josh says, why don't you use a billet?
- 59:00I went, okay, yeah, let's do that.
- 59:01So then we've done a billet switch for it. So we've got this jar.
- 59:06And then Chris has gone, why don't you walk on with the jar?
- 59:09So we're doing all different ideas that slowly develop it more and more.
- 59:14And then just the method that I've come up to come up with to get the word on
- 59:20this piece of paper is so bold, but apparently it, you don't see it.
- 59:25Yeah, it's frying. So if, if, if everyone listening, basically what it's gone
- 59:29from is the start of a book test extravaganza routine is saying name any word.
- 59:36And I've, I can tell you, I've got it written down in my case here and they
- 59:39They say any word. And then the joke is, well, here's a dictionary.
- 59:43It's probably in there somewhere.
- 59:44And that was just where he left that.
- 59:46But now we've built up this routine where now that word that's said as a joke
- 59:51is then revealed impossibly in this glass jar that we foreshadowed by bringing
- 59:56out and sitting down at the start of the show.
- 59:59It's a piece of theater is what it is.
- 1:00:02And then the lemon routine, the money, I switched back to a five.
- 1:00:05That money then comes back again wrapped up inside the paper so not only do
- 1:00:11you have the word there but you also have the note from earlier in the show
- 1:00:14coming back so it's a call back again to that and like the insurance routine
- 1:00:19I grabbed a routine with the insurance policy which I've altered.
- 1:00:24Again, to quickly hand out the insurance policy at the end rather than having not to hand it out.
- 1:00:30People are just going to have to come and see it. Now, Nigel doesn't have your
- 1:00:35typical social media pipes, but he is on the Instagram.
- 1:00:38So if fellow magicians want to reach out to you, is that the best place to do that?
- 1:00:44Okay, you're going to have to tell me. You're going to have to teach me what
- 1:00:46I need to look for. I'll just keep an eye on messages then. Sure. Done.
- 1:00:51So hit him up on instagram message send my message
- 1:00:54there because i know you're able you know how to share stuff on there
- 1:00:57so you probably can click a few buttons i'm gonna go sure
- 1:01:00some to be honest sometimes i don't know josh i
- 1:01:03just go yeah or just ask me and i'll
- 1:01:05put you in touch with nigel you can do that too but look
- 1:01:08we're gonna end thank you so much man for coming on i you know
- 1:01:11i'm i'm so privileged to get to spend time with nigel
- 1:01:14every single week at the theater of magic you know we share many of
- 1:01:17farts at the theater and um you know
- 1:01:21i forget how many gold nuggets he
- 1:01:24has to share with the magic world so we're gonna obviously have
- 1:01:27to have him come back again but we're gonna
- 1:01:29end the episode like we do every time with the final
- 1:01:33word uh first of all thanks boys for having me on my final word is this is something
- 1:01:41i wrote when i was at crazies when I obviously started in becoming really professional
- 1:01:46at what I do and when I started Names.
- 1:01:50And it goes like this. It's I dream of something that is impossible,
- 1:01:54and when I have achieved it, I dream some more. That's it. Thanks very much.