The other night I went out for dinner with a group of people and experienced some serious magic. It wasn’t in fact the cooking (although my pork belly was very yummy) but proper "How the hell did he do that?!" close-up magic. The sort of magic where I was incredulously shaking my head shrieking "How is that possible?!" (yes, I was the one choosing the card that ended up in the wallet–in a zipped pocket, in a ticket case–when I had been holding the wallet in the palm of my hand AND it had my name written on it in my handwriting?!).
The point of this piece is not to ask how I join the magic circle and find out how it’s all done (but it’s still intriguing me a week later, so I still might look into that), BUT the reason why this person had learned magic. The reason this person had learned magic was because they sold something that had no USP–it was simply a commodity or service that didn’t even have the option to trade on price (in fact, it literally was price... it was a foreign exchange trading service). And so this very smart individual had an idea. What if there was something ELSE that he could compete on to win customers. His idea was magic.
When I say his idea was magic, I mean it literally. Because the ‘result’ of the service this person provided was EXACTLY the same as any other brokers (an exchange of one currency for another at a rate set by the market). How exactly would he close deals with almost nothing apart from charm and perhaps a better lunch invitation up his sleeve? So up his sleeve he went (I’m not certain that’s how you do those card tricks, but he wasn’t wearing short sleeves so I can only assume!). He started to perfect magic tricks to perform over those lunch meetings with key clients. And guess what? Suddenly he became memorable, suddenly he was ‘sticky’... his story was he was the broker who did magic. And everyone loves magic...
So guess who got lots of deals? The brokers who only had lunch to be remembered by or the chap who did incredible magic tricks? You’ve guessed it, the magic won hands down (or were they behind his back?) every time.
The thing about magic is to find a ‘Thing’ you do that’s different to everyone else in your market with your product and service so you can stop competing on price (if that’s even an option) and compete on something much more ‘magical’ instead.
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For a whole year i have been trying to Find my thing via the do it yourself route and i have had a few false starts where i thought That’s It! I have done it! …Finally it has come to me where i have almost given up. I wish i had gone to you but lacked the finance. But thankfully your Book and a few others had helped me sort through my Painting Jungle. Thanks Lucy ( I now can be a happy Artist, as oppose to being a grumpy one)