One of my favourite parts of the week is when I take my 8 year old daughter Gracie diving at Ponds Forge in Sheffield. She has a 40 minute lesson and for those who are not local, the diving facilities are amazing. Boards of various heights up to 10 meters and an amazing diving pool, complete with a large video screen with a 10 second delay so you can see your last dive from a side angle. Joyous.

Anyway there are two reasons I love to watch Gracie dive.

One reason is that I love to watch Gracie do anything. It seems like yesterday that she was a baby. So to watch her nervously step out on the three meter board and jump off it is a joy. Every week she improves and becomes a little more confident, and I love to see improvement in anybody. It fascinates me how our minds and bodies adapt to the challenges we throw at them. The process of practice and improvement is a pleasure to see. Everything that I see my kids get a buzz from gives me a lovely feeling of wellbeing.

Anyway, the second reason I love to watch is that at any one time, there will usually be three or four people diving off the various boards. It’s a hive of activity and the rhythm of the plunging bodies twisting and somersaulting through the air into the water is both meditative and satisfying. It’s also very important to my daughter’s progress and improvement.

I was watching this and thinking about my life (as you do when approaching 40), of the little things I have spent time trying to learn and improve.  Many of which have shaped my career and my happiness. Also, I was thinking about new challenges I have excitedly taken up, only to quit after a few weeks. My wife will attest to my weekly ideas and obsessions. Without her to steer me, I would be a jack of, literally, all trades.

If we think about the main ingredients for improvement in any skill, we think about the practice. Practice does indeed make perfect, or the closest we are able to get to it depending how much it means to us and how much time and work we are willing to put in. But there is an ingredient we often forget about which will mean the difference between success and failure. Without it there is no long-term success and only short-term improvement. Unfortunately, many of us don’t even think about the importance of it when we embark on a new learning experience and therefore burn out, get bored and move on, wasting all those hours we have previously spent practising.

The secret ingredient is Belief. We must have no doubt that we can achieve those things that seem so overwhelmingly difficult when we start. Playing bar chords on a guitar, juggling 5 balls, olleing on a skateboard (a very difficult jump using momentum, coordination, leg power and pure knack), fanning a deck of cards and of course diving off the 10 meter board. Oh, and driving a car.

When we look at driving it seems like an easy thing to do. Why? Because we are surrounded by people doing it. We are given evidence that it is possible and therefore we have Belief. We are programmed to believe that we can do it because we all know so many people who can drive. Regardless of talent, upbringing or culture. But it’s not easy. Remember your first few lessons? I have no doubt that if we were learning to drive a car and had never seen a car or seen anybody driving a car, it would take a lot longer to master and most of us would probably quit. But we don’t – this is the power of belief.

So back to the Diving. My Gracie is surrounded by people pulling the most amazing moves off of the 10 meter, the 7.5 meter and the springboards. It’s incredible to watch but now she takes it for granted. To her it is a given that she can achieve the same. These people are not super-human and have no amazing innate talent. They have just taken the same journey as her. It’s just a matter of time, practice, passion and of course belief.

I can honestly say that anything I have ever done, learned or achieved is a result of being inspired by others. In seeing that anything I want to achieve is possible, from learning to walk to performing a challenging magic trick, belief has helped me succeed and deal with reoccurring failure. If you are learning anything or embarking on a new chapter in your life, please find others who have succeeded in the same field. See the possibilities and I promise it will make a huge difference.

As a close-up magician, it is easy to take for granted that everybody knows exactly what a close-up magician does, or how he or she would fit into an event, especially a high-end corporate event. But I have met a fair few people recently who have never seen a live, close-up magician. The cheesy of 1980′s style magician, or the jolly but bumbling uncle that knows a few tricks, do seem to be the default images that spring to mind for many. This can, for me, be both a gift or a curse. A curse because it can be tough to convince someone that I can enhance their event, so tough in fact at I tend not to bother anymore. Think about it, I could bang on about how good I am but my opinion would be naturally biased. So I tend to let the testimonials and a videos speak for themselves, answer as many questions as I can and be completely honest about what I do.

The negative magician stereotype can also be a gift. A gift because when people do see me (or one of my ‘type’) work, they can immediately see the difference. Usually this is a mix of skill level, communication and a feeling of confidence with that all important lack of arrogance. For me, these are the key ingredients for being a successful close-up magician. You can be the finest card and coin handler in the world, but the second you add a bit of ‘look how clever I am’ into the mix, you alienate your audience and become nothing more than a show off. In a time of YouTube, we can see all manner of everyday folk doing extraordinary things. The mark of a true professional is to be able to use your skills and make people LIKE you at the same time. This is usually a case of just being yourself, showing your human side and not trying too hard to be ‘cool’.  Easier said than done I know.

There is also the flip side of the coin. Some people believe you should show no skill at all in your magic as to make the magic more,well…magic. The argument is very valid. However, I do feel that when someone has paid good money for your performance, it’s good to show that you are doing stuff that doesn’t simply rely on knowing a secret or having a gimmick. The sad truth, that we magicians need to admit, is that most people know that what I do is an illusion and that I have no real magical power (and if I did I wouldn’t tell anyway). But it is heartbreaking to walk away from a table and hear someone say ‘my son has one of those trick decks’. Especially when you have just performed a card routine that you have been honing for the last 10 years. Again there is a fine line between showing off and showing a bit of skill. If I feel a bit flash I find it good to add a little self-depreciation after my indulgence, as a softener. I also like to know that if someone goes home and looks on YouTube to see how one of my tricks are done, they still wouldn’t be able to do it without ridiculous amounts of practice. But each to their own.

So one of the many distinctions between a professional and an amateur (neither being positive or negative) does seem to be the work we put into how we present our magic and an understanding that the routine we have worked on tirelessly for years may still die on its arse if we present it in a cocky, arrogant or even insecure way. This can only really be achieved by a lot of trial and error and an acceptance that failure is part of the journey. A good lesson in both magic and business and a rule by which I live.

I’m writing this in Blackpool, where I am performing four shows a day of relatively new material. It’s a HUGE learning curve, both rewarding and frustrating in equal measures. There are a few routines I perform that I have spent years polishing and adjusting, so that they play well pretty much every time. The problem is that I have about six other routines that are fine but need a little ironing out, plus two more that are all over the place and need some ‘work’. So I decided to bring three of these to Blackpool.

Performing four shows a day for ten days gives me a rare opportunity. The tricks are good enough to not be rubbish, as the audiences need to be entertained. But I know that the timing and delivery could be better. I have three tricks, the Miser’s Dream (producing coins from various places), a rope routine and a needle swallowing routine.

The needles routine is the most solid, having been performed the most times. The rope routine is fine, but the Miser’s Dream is a real challenge. Each time I have performed this routine it has been different and I can’t seem to stick to a set format. It’s a challenging and frustrating process and goes like this -

1. Practise at home
2. Practise loads more
3. Get bored and leave it for a bit
4. Feel guilty and practise some more
5. Perform live, badly
6. Practise again with notes
7. Perform again, usually still badly
8. Repeat until improvement occurs

The hardest parts are numbers 5,7 and 8. It’s the most infuriating thing. Hopefully, most performers will be able to relate to this. You get a routine or trick so solid in the practice room that you feel like you don’t even have to think about it. Then you take it out on stage and it all falls apart. Your skill level drops instantly by between 20 and 40 per cent!

Nervousness has a lot to do with it but that seems to be only half the story. I have felt completely relaxed on stage and yet when I start the new bit it can feel and look like I’m a beginner again. Maybe another factor is that in a rehearsal room you literally don’t have to think about anything but the trick. You are totally focused on just the mechanics. And of course there is no pressure.

A relationship with an audience is a conversation. Even if you are performing silently or to music communication needs to be established and maintained. This takes effort and that effort dilutes the focus you can have on a trick. But there is still something else that is so frustrating.

I’m performing the Miser’s Dream every day and I feel fine beforehand – which is one massive bit of progress as, due to the routine dying on its arse in front of 1000 people at a big corporate event, I am usually terrified at the thought of doing it! Also, I have rehearsed the moves over and over until I’m not really having to think about the order of the routine as such. So why is it not clicking?

Last night, just by chance, I think I found the answer. I was watching the amazing TED talk by Dan Pink, The Surprising Science of Motivation. In this amazing talk, Dan discusses the findings of numerous scientific studies on how our motivation affects our performance. The results are indeed surprising.

The findings are that when given a task that is anything more than basic – usually a logic puzzle – the higher the reward (usually monetary) for completion, the lower the performance. Have a look at that again – the higher the reward, the worse people become at completing the task. The ramifications of this are huge and I will refrain from going into it in detail here – have a look at Dan’s talk – but it pulls into question every reward scheme used in many of the companies with whom I have worked.

The upshot is that performance improves only when the motivation is internal – when it means something to you that is deeper than just external gratification, massage to the ego, or a bit of cash.

So what has this got to do with me and my Miser’s Dream routine?

At the moment I am surrounded by other performers and members of the public who I would like to impress. Putting it bluntly, I don’t want to look like a tit. Also, some magicians have watched the show so this adds another external factor – ego. To look like a coin magic master is a huge reward, but an external and ultimately shallow one, and it will earn me nothing in the long-term. Therefore, a big but ultimately short-lived reward has resulted in decreased performance. Looking back on all of my performances, I can now see the times they started working. Here is the usual order of things.

1. I go out with a new routine and it’s a bit of a mess because all I’m thinking about is looking good for peers or bookers. Mistake! I should be thinking about the enjoyment of the audience. Not how professional or clever I look, but how much they, and I, are enjoying it.

2. I go out another few times with the same routine and things improve a bit. I am growing more confident because I now know how it feels to perform the routine on stage. I’ve become familiar with the level at which it’s at. I have something to work from.

3. Things start to improve because I am subconsciously making adjustments. The process is becoming internal or between me and my audience, not between me and my ego and peers. Of course I still want them to like it but IT becomes more important than ME. For example this week many of my friends and colleagues have seen me mess up or perform something that isn’t that tight. I’ve got that out of the way now so a huge weight has been lifted from me. I can feel my focus becoming about the coins and the audiences’ reactions and not about how clever I am, or how I look.

4. The trick or routine becomes more relaxed and with time and becomes a solid piece of performance of which I can be proud.

Throughout this process the motivation for my performance becomes a little deeper and meaningful. The whole thing becomes more relaxed and, more importantly, my performance level increases. This obviously takes time. It can take years. But to be aware of this has made a huge difference. For some time now I have been trying to reach a level where I can go on stage and take my ego out of the equation and just concentrate on the relationship between me and my audience. I feel like I am getting there. If anyone else is interested in the same journey, let me know. It would be fun to compare notes.

Thanks for reading.

Steve

As a performer and a self-employed person, fear has been a part of my life for a while now. Not real fear you understand. Real fear, I imagine, is being on the front line just about to go over the edge, or being on a plane that goes out of control, or being in any situation that provides you with every right to be very scared indeed.  No, I’m on about the fear that is shared by most of us in our society. More of a phobia than a fear because of its irrationality. But fear is quicker to write so we’ll stay with that.

It’s a fear that can stop us dead in our tracks. It can stop us from committing to something or somebody we truly love. It can kill our dreams dead in a second and it can prevent us being truly successful. It can cause us to throw away once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and stifle our experiences. Even though we all know that we only have a short time on this earth (ridiculously short as I seem to be physically ageing by the day), it can still make us balls it up and look back on our lives with regret. The cruel joke is that it seems to have very little consequence when it happens. It’s a heart-stopping fear of nothing. It keeps us up at night sweating and dreading the onset of sunrise. And when, god forbid, what we are scared of actually happens, we look around a little bemused and wonder what all the fuss was about.

What I am writing about of course is our old friend fear of failure.

As a street performer and now more often a close-up and stage performer, people mistakenly think of me, and many others of my ilk, as not having this fear. We regularly put ourselves on stage and seem to be pretty relaxed about it all, but this is the big con. This of course is the act. In fact, the reason many of us take to the stage is because of some level of insecurity or fear (but that’s for another time and another post). I’m not saying that I’m not happy on stage. In fact, when I’m on stage, going well, there is no feeling like it. It’s the other times when the fear sets in. Ask my wife Mandy what I’m like to live with before a big show.

Here is the stuff that regularly keeps me up at night (excluding the important stuff like the day to day worry of fatherhood.)

Fear of:

-forgetting a routine

-getting a trick wrong or exposing the method

-looking amateurish in front of those who expect more

-drying up and not having anything to say

-looking amateurish in front of those who have paid for a professional

-not achieving my full potential ( a biggie at the moment ).

-not fulfilling my ongoing projects

-being unnoticed (pathetic I know)

-not being able to pay the mortgage

-dying before I have read all the books, seen all the films and been to all the places in the world that I want to.

-never getting my house finished and having to do DIY for years.

..the list goes on.

To many of you, this will be familiar.

We all have different challenges and fears, and I strongly believe that if we can get a handle on these fears we can achieve real success in our lives. There have been opportunities I have thrown away and projects I have abandoned which would have been utterly worthwhile, and maybe even life-changing, had I not got scared and bailed. Creeping up to forty I am now at the point where I no longer have the time to get scared. If I want to achieve my goals and dreams, I need to get onto it now. So it’s time to go a little further out of my comfort zone and we’ll see what the outcome will be. I am currently fascinated by what we can achieve if we just keep pushing thought the fear, so I’ll keep you posted.

Until then, if you are anything like me, this may be helpful

http://stevefaulknersshop.bigcartel.com/product/go-do-a-short-book-on-productivity-and-motivation-by-steve-faulkner

Thanks for reading

Steve

This may sound like a rant, and I may sound like one of those complaining hotel guests that anybody working in the hospitality industry (including myself) dreads. But this is far from it. The following is not intended as a vehicle to vent my dissatisfaction, but just something to illustrate a very important point, which, in these times, is more vital than ever.

I have stayed in two hotels this week, and by coincidence, both have been in the same part of the country. I am sitting in the second of these as I write. This morning I find myself in a very rare situation; I have some time spare before leaving for another booking in these parts. Some time to work, practice and god forbid, exercise. As I was performing late last night, the hotel has very kindly given me a great rate and a late check out, which is a good job as the surrounding countryside (of which I am in the middle) is thick with snow. Anyway I am getting off the point.

This hotel is in stunning surroundings and the building itself is old, historic and beautiful. My room has one of those old, rustic exposed roof beams. I love them! The hotel I was in last week was lovely, but more modern, and the surroundings, even though very nice, were less breathtaking. For environment and first impressions, this one wins. But last night and this morning I began noticing some interesting details.

First was the room. Whilst lovely, there was no soap, shower gel, or remote for the TV. Fine, I had my own stuff and didn’t need the TV remote. Just something I noticed. A little later, before I was due to perform, I tried to order a meal. I was informed that the bar food had finished three minutes ago. When I asked if there was anything I could order at all, as there was nowhere nearby to get anything to eat, I was told ‘I dunno, you could ask someone’. I was under the impression that I was already doing so. I then found the manager and asked, very politely and with apology (I have a terribly british affliction of constantly apologising, and I hate myself for it),  if there was any way I could get something to eat. He gave me an exasperated look as if I had been naughty and said,

‘OK, if you need something, order something, but only a simple sandwich.’

I thanked him and ate my very simple sandwich, two hours later. I felt a bit awkward asking in the first place, I felt more awkward after I had asked.

I then began to notice how some of the staff were speaking to the guests. None were outwardly rude or offensive; they just seemed a bit pissed off with it all. As if the guest was asking just a little too much, whatever the request. This was even more apparent at breakfast. Two very nice ladies next to me had asked three times for their coffee, again politely, and then had to repeatedly ask for their ordered food. At this time the restaurant was quiet, with only three tables eating. On top of this the breakfast buffet was very basic and not replenished, resulting in guests having to ask for more eggs, fruit etc. (Stay with me here, I know I’m sounding like a grump but there is a point to all this).

I then went down to the gym (again a rare occasion) and all was good, but when I got into the changing rooms everything looked as though it was on its last legs. The locker doors were falling off, the walls had most of the paint peeling off them and the grouting around the showers was thick with black mould, everything had a very ‘cheap’ feel to it.

In the other hotel, the facilities were clean and maintained and the food was excellent. Nothing flash, just what you would expect from the room rate. The staff were smiling and seemed genuinely happy to accommodate. I didn’t feel guilty asking for anything. This was important, as with a two year old, you have to ask for rather a lot. Notice how much I have written about this place.

So what’s this got to do with anything? Well, back to the present establishment. After performing and whilst packing up, I noticed how the manager was speaking to his staff. Afterwards I found out that they were all exhausted, as the snow had caused mayhem. Many of them had stayed hours after their shift had ended; they were seemingly given no thanks and were still being talked down to like children. I even heard a very friendly waitress told that she must work later, as the night staff couldn’t get through the snow. When she accepted this she was, again, not thanked. I later discovered that she had worked until the last guest went to bed, at 3 am. She was serving breakfast this morning at 7. This was a classic case of poor leadership resulting in unhappy staff, which then resulted in unhappy guests, who had paid well over £250 per room.

After speaking to the staff last night and this morning, I was told that the hotel was struggling to stay in business in the current economic climate. The previous week, I had noticed that the other hotel was extremely busy. The point I am making is that the difference in these two hotels were the details, none of which would cost anything, or very little to rectify. A bit of care, a lick of paint and maybe a decent leadership course for key members of management. None of these things bothered me, I am very easy to please, but then again I was just working and needed somewhere to sleep. Some of the guests had saved up for months to spoil themselves, some of them were celebrating anniversaries and birthdays, and some were celebrating getting married. These were the people who deserved to feel that they had spent their money well.

Details. This is something many people seem to brush over. You go to a restaurant and eat good food,  and that’s what you want. You go and see a comedian and he/she is funny and that’s what you paid for. A magician shows you some trick and you don’t know how it’s done. Are all these things fulfilling their desired objective? Absolutely. However, I don’t believe that this is enough anymore. We can eat good food at hundreds of establishments, including our own home. We can see good comedy in any city or town, and again in our own home, and you can see a magician performing tricks to people at corporate events and restaurants across the country and sadly, all over YouTube. These days you can even find out how the trick is done if you are so inclined, again good old YouTube. So why do we continue to spend our increasingly precious pennies on these things. The answer of course is that we are buying an experience, and the ingredients that make the difference between a good and bad experience? The details. The look and feel of the venue, the friendly staff, the manner and presentation of the magician. The details should reinforce a positive experience. If anything causes someone to think anything other than happy thoughts, that is the memory that they may well leave with. I truly believe that the companies and individuals who are surviving this financial mess are those who understand the importance of the details.

One of the favourite quotes of the legendary magician Dai Vernon

‘Details make for perfection, but perfection is no detail.’ Michelangelo

Just a thought.

A few years ago, after sitting at home and bitching about getting hardly any work from my agent, I decided that I needed to be wholly responsible for my own success. The agents I work through are all lovely people, but they have loads of performers on their books. Therefore if someone gets in touch wanting to book a performer, they will, much of the time, be given a choice of many performers at varying fees. Of course any agent worth their salt will be busy and therefore won’t sell you the way you would sell yourself. There is nothing wrong with this but it decreases the chance of getting a booking by a great deal. As a performer you are in a reactive position rather than a proactive one. This was fine until I moved to Sheffield, away from my agents in London. Many event organisers, when given a list of performers, would rather go for the local guy who may do it for a lot less because it’s just down the road. Add to this a credit crunch and a recession and this becomes more of an issue. There are few things more demoralising that waiting desperately for that phone to ring or that email to make whatever quirky little noise you have decided to use as your alert. It reminds me of when I first fell in love. Every time the phone rang, I would run to it with a desperation that was, quite frankly, humiliating. Only to be greeted by someone selling me something, or my Mum. Something had to change. I decided to become proactive.

We seem to live in a society of blame. It seems hard-wired into us, in our culture, to constantly look outward when things go wrong. It seems to always be someone or something else’s fault. The traffic, the weather, the economic situation, the list goes on. I’m not saying that this is never true, but by focusing on the blame we can easily forget to look at what we ourselves can do to change things. A classic example is being late for a meeting or engagement. I have been at so many events where a performer will turn up an hour late and blame the traffic. Is this the fault of the traffic or the fault of the individual for not allowing enough time for the possibility of bad traffic? Would this person have been late if they had been turning up to pick up lottery winnings? No I’m not sitting here on my high horse saying that I am never late, (I am never late by the way), but if I am, it’s my own fault.

When we start to take responsibility it’s amazing what happens. I have heard this story from countless others in countless different businesses. They get into a corner and start to fight rather than curl up in a ball. They start to develop themselves by reading, studying and working and things begin to change. It’s not overnight but it happens. Cause will always lead to effect somewhere down the line and we have to put ourselves at cause.  Now more than ever, as either self-employed people, business owners or employees, we have to make things happen and not wait for things to happen to us.

I am not for a second saying this is easy and it’s not just a case of thinking differently. This is about training your mind to be aware of a new way of looking at things, which takes practice and discipline. But it get’s easier. I am constantly catching myself moaning and blaming others, but the difference is that these days, after years, I am catching myself. I am aware of what I am doing and this gives me the ability to either accept the situation or do something about it.

So, going back to my original point. If  you find yourself in a position where you are not working as much, don’t stop working. Use the time, reassess things and see what you can do to make things better.  Nobody understands what you do as well as you do, and nobody can communicate this the way that you can.

So try it out for the New Year.

Put yourself at cause and see the effect.

Oh and I will still happily work through an agent, just the lovely ones. You know who you are.

Happy New Year everybody and thanks so much for reading.

Steve

p.s. this may help  http://stevefaulknersshop.bigcartel.com/product/go-do-a-short-book-on-productivity-and-motivation-by-steve-faulkner