Mentorship and Why I'm Having Magic Lessons.

Hello, welcome to Real Magic Review. My name is Steve Faulkner and this is my review show. Well, it's not really a review show today. Well, it kind of is. It's a talking about stuff, magic stuff show. But thanks for coming and thanks for watching it. If you haven't come to the live one and you're going to be here later, do comment, ask questions. Mr C, how are you doing? It has been a while, hasn't it? Where have you been on the live sessions? How it's not cardmagiccourse.com, is it? The onlinemagic.co, that's the one. Live sessions, you come tonight. Andy Gladwin's joining us tonight. Yay, because it's our hundredth live session. Hundred uploaded live sessions plus 600 other things on there. Coin magic, rope magic, all those sorts of things. That's my online magic course. Have a look at it. If you like this, you will love that. Learn from a pro, onlinemagic.co. Yeah, so I'm not going to waffle too much for people to get upset, because I do tend to waffle. But have a look at that. You should attend later. I'm glad you shall, Mr C. How are you doing, Tom? Glad it sounds all right. Busy making a game. Interesting. Gary Edge Lambert. Good afternoon, everybody. I wondered why it was hailing so hard outside right now. And then I realized I live in England and it's July tomorrow. Is it ailing? Oh, it's all right up here. It'll be on the way, will it? There we go. Look, we're English. We're talking about the weather again every time. But, you know. Ezekiel, how you doing? Lovely to see you, Tom. Did you get your email? Oh, you're coming tonight. If you didn't get it, email me again and I'll send you the link to the Zoom session, which is after this-ish. So there was a giveaway promise. I make a lot of promises that I don't keep. Not in life, but I do tend to have a promise. I did a giveaway last week. I said I was going to do one every week. Forgot. I forget a lot of things. A lot of things. Even though I write everything down, I forget to look at the thing we're writing down. But I did do Spring. Now, Spring, you know, not a great trip, but I think it's worth having and playing with and enjoying. And, you know, you might not even go and perform it, but you can play with it. And it's, you know, $29. So you can have that. I have chosen the winner. I do do it with a randomizer. So I'll do that at the end, as a cliffhanger. But first of all, I want to talk to you. Actually, no. Yeah. Any questions anyway. Do it while I'm talking, while I'm banging on. I'm not going to go on for ages, he says. But I've been having magic lessons for a long time. Well, for, gosh, maybe six months now. And I've had them. Well, I've had, I wouldn't say official magic lessons, but, you know, been mentored on and off for years. But I was thinking that a lot of people say, why are you having magic lessons? You teach magic. Surely, you know, you know, you know enough. So I think mentorship, a lot of people have asked me about mentorship. And I think it's a really, really, really important topic. And I think it helps everybody. And I, a lot of your, in your magic journey, you won't feel that you need it. You feel like you're learning enough books and that's fine. And that's, that may be true. But I think there's something really special about the, well, first of all, having someone that will give you really honest feedback. And even sometimes when you think people are giving you honest feedback, they won't. But someone whose job it is to look at what you're doing and be brutal and give you honest feedback. And don't mean brutal in an unpleasant way. In that old school way, there's none of that going on. But I think that's really valuable and see someone else's perspective. So my sessions are with Steve Reynolds because I, I still want to increase my card knowledge. Now that's a, that's a hobby. That's something I want that you could argue that, well, maybe I don't need because I know enough and I definitely know enough to perform. I can't, if I want to keep performing what I'm doing now, but if I want to develop and perform different types of things, there's always more to learn. But it's something that, that re, that keeps the passion alive for me is learning. Now I learn on my own. I don't need someone to help me learn, but what, what it does having the sessions with Steve is it keeps me in the lane. So that's one reason I do this. Now, as you know, you know, and a lot of people have the same situation. We've got all our magic books, magic book, magic is such a wide thing. There's card magic, coin magic, rope magic, stage magic, illusions, elastic band magic, everything, Spongebob magic. And each one of those is a kind of encyclopedia of stuff to learn or more. So how do you stay in the lane? And for someone like me, it's incredibly difficult. I have this week, which has been mind blowing, um, but expected being diagnosed with ADHD and it, it's, it's been really profound and it's been a profound experience. And I don't want to go into that in detail here. I will answer questions about it, but for someone like me to have all this is very, can be exciting more times than not. It's stressful. I don't know where to go with my learning. So having someone to be accountable for, and the same way I learned piano and things like that, I can learn this stuff on my own, but I just go off in tangents and sometimes every five minutes. So to have something, you know, that I know is coming up in a week or two that I know I've got to learn a certain thing for has been incredible. And even sometimes, you know, like four days beforehand, I've gone, I'm really practiced. So it will make me practice this stuff. And sometimes by that time, I've kind of forgotten why I'm practicing. I've forgotten how much I enjoy it, practicing that thing. And when I get back into it, I kind of, I really enjoy it. And when I turn up for Steve sessions, yes, there's been the odd one where I haven't practiced enough, but I feel like I've done something that I definitely wouldn't have done had he not been there to guide me. And he's not kind of there going, you know, if you don't turn up this, I'm going to be caught, you know, it's like, you know, that if you don't turn up and practice, there's no point. And it's been just wonderful. It's I'm going down routes that I do find hard to go down on my own. And part of who I am, you know, and what I am, and is I do find learning how books difficult. Now, I find it a lot more easier than I used to. And I still love it. But it's very hard for me to sit for hours about getting quite jittery, you know, because of what I've talked about. So to have someone to send me off and go read this, read this, read this again, stops me from doing either getting jittery and having to sit down for ages. But also that thing of, I don't mean sitting down with cards, I mean, with a book and, and to be able to do hours of that, but also to, to sort of give me something to go and read, come back and discuss, which is really important as well, I think that that idea of discussion and also avoid that thing, which I do sometimes purposely out of this context, but avoid that thing of me going, try to learn a trick and go on that references down and going off and learning that and referencing that. And again, in certain contexts, that's really useful for me. And I enjoy it. I love that, that going down the rabbit hole. But if I want to kind of keep my learning or part of my learning, because there's still time for play and exploration and all that, going where I want it to go, which is improving certain things, then it's, it's just so, so, so valuable. So that's one reason. And if you have those kind of issues, I really suggest being accountable to someone. You don't have to pay someone, you can be accountable to a friend and businesses do this all the time. They create mastermind groups, they say, right, let's meet up again next week. And you just, we both got to go off and learn this and book groups, the idea of them is to make sure, you know, you keep reading. And I think it's magical groups are fantastic, by the way, and it just keeps you on that thing. So it doesn't have to cost money, but on it costing money. I think that a couple of things I've got to say about that on first blush, it can seem quite expensive, but actually, when you break it down, it really and when you still compare it to things like meals out and all that kind of thing, I don't think my sessions with Steve are expensive for what I get and what it gives me. There's also something about having skin in the game, you know, you're paying for it. And again, for those of you that may struggle, it motivates you because you know that if you don't practice, you know, the thing you're you're chucking your money away, because when you turn up, you're doing something else. And then you've got a backlog. So I think having skin in the game, a bit of money. And we know this works for a lot of people, because there are certain websites where you you pledge to do a certain thing, if you haven't done it, they'll donate a certain amount of your money to a charity you hate or something like that, or a political party you hate. So you've got that thing of this consequence. But I think having skin in the game paying for something, even if it's a small amount, even though it's even if it's between friends can be I'm not talking about gambling here I'm talking about or you know, there's a forfeit or something like that can be really, really powerful. So use that in your magic clubs, use that thing, maybe the whole club can do it. But and I suppose they do in a certain way, because they have a night which is maybe a bill switch night or or packet trick night. So you have that that time thing to you've got to learn something by them. So it kind of keeps it gives you some structure. And especially if you're like me, you really struggle without it. The other reason is that I teach magic. That's what I do mostly now. I perform it still all that kind of stuff. But really, my my main thing is to teach magic. And then I think I have talked about this before, but in coaching, when you're a business coach or a personal coach or a life coach, it's seen as kind of unethical if you don't get coaching yourself for a number of reasons. I think the main reason is that you're going to need it because there's a lot of stuff being put on you and you don't really get that as a magic coach. It's a different thing. But also it allows me definitely to empathize with with someone who is a student that's learning off me because it's very easy. And I know this because I went to school, but if you're a teacher for a certain amount of time and you're not in that situation, you kind of forget what it's like. And it's really interesting. When I started with Steve, I hadn't had those sort of lessons for a very, very long time or ever really. I've had one off things with friends and all that. But it reminded me what it's like to to listen to someone and follow it. And and all those things that once you get used to teaching, you can lose contact with. And I think to be a good teacher, you have to be taught. You have to know what it's like. You have to feel that. And I think it's been invaluable. I know a lot of other teachers do. They might not do it in the same structured way, but actually doing it on Zoom with Steve, because that's how I teach, has been interesting. How am I taking this image? And is it clear enough? And and it has been, of course, it's been wonderful, but it's just helped me so much. So that was the main kind of I think the the main reason why I got it is because I knew I was teaching. I wanted to sort of reconnect with that. It's been really, really useful. I absolutely love it. I really recommend it. Find someone that can mentor, teach you in the aspect, the parts of magic you maybe don't know as much about and you want to know about and you find you're not finding a time to do it or you're you're finding motivation difficult. It's great. I don't think I've got anything else. No. So that's why I think I can't edit this, can I? It's live. That's why I think you should you should get mentorship. And there's a great book. Is it called Mental? I think it's called Mentorship by I'm not going to Google it, because that'd be boring, wouldn't it? I think it's called Mentorship. If not, comment below not on this comments, because these will disappear probably when when we stop going live, but below and I'll put a link to it. That's a great book on mentorship and you realize how important it is. And also, by the way, if you're ever getting told, don't worry if you're chatting a lot and you're thinking, I need to get magic lessons, which I never think, by the way, because the little nuggets of information and stories and anecdotes are just as important to me as the slides. You know, where does this come from? Oh, there's a story of this person did this and I was doing this the other day. All that kind of stuff is really important. It's sort of it feeds you and it feeds your knowledge and it gives you ideas as well. Now, Steve, incidentally, I will do a separate review, but Steve does an output series and he doesn't know I'm doing this. And it's a monthly publication. I think it's monthly. I've got twenty three of them. I think that's phenomenal. It's concentrating mostly on Marlowe's kind of offbeat work. And Steve is a student of Marlowe, a student of John Rackabama, who was a student of Marlowe and people like John Hammond was influenced by. So it's and Marlowe can be hard to read. Actually, I'm getting into it now and I'm not finding it that hard. But for some people, it can be a difficult way. And so for someone to help you and someone who's an expert in your field to guide you through something that may be overwhelming for you again, is really, really valuable. So check out Steve's website. The links will be below. Again, it's not affiliate or anything like that. It's his genuine kind of I think it's great. You can ask. You can email him about his his teaching and coaching, which he does on Zoom and output and all those things. And, you know, beyond this, have a look at his stuff, you know, everywhere else as well, even right back to Seek 52 and Route 52 with great DVDs amongst weight, all that kind of stuff beyond the Zara work is incredible. And that's been really good. Finally, I've got a Zara shuffle that I'm happy with. So we'll get in there. And the detail, you know, I need someone to get me down into that detail because I don't do it. I'm big in general and I kind of try and get away with it. So it's revelation. Right. Thank you very much. Got any questions? Beggin Brothers, how you doing? Good, thanks. I'm good. And how are you? I hope you're well. Jordan, how you doing? Is it sunny in Blackpool? Nice. Mr. C, that's good. Who's going to the session? Someone just said to me, Ollie on Messenger said you look forward to next week. And I was like, it's next week, isn't it? Blimey. So I work every week a session with my teacher, mentor, maestro. We work on a particular thing. It's really valuable. The exchange of ideas. It is, isn't it? It's great. And, you know, I'm not somebody I don't I've not sat down in session with people for hours. I haven't done that before. So it's it's kind of a good way to do that. That kind of coming up with ideas. And Steve showed me a brilliant thing, which he's going to release soon. I don't want to say it, but it's amazing. This week, that was great as well. I mean, that's the winner of the giveaway. No, I haven't. I'm going to announce it now. All right. So here we go. I have done this. You put it in a bit of software and it chucks out the one. So it isn't, you know, no bias here. And it is me. No, it's not. So the winner is I don't think he's here now. He's going to get spring is Martin Circus Skills Workshop. Yeah. So Martin Circus Skills Workshop. I have to email him or something. Well, I don't know his email, but put it on here. If I don't write it down, it doesn't happen. And if I do, it usually doesn't either. He's won. So there you go. I said I'd do I'd try and do a giveaway every week, but I haven't got anything. What have I got? I can't remember things. So I'll do one next week. I'll try and remember. And if I don't, I'll do one a week after. Sorry. Terrible human being. So there you go. There's my little talk on mentorship. Any questions, comments, put them below. Oh, I'm going to do a few comments while you're here because it is comments on comments as well, isn't it? Based on I haven't done any reviews this week because of my big revelation and trying to get my head together. A good friend at ADHD, but he watched his own television for a while and I'm about to be in just AD. Oh, ha, ha, ha. Silly man. I thought it was going to be something to make me feel better about my life. No, I'm only joking. So loads of good comments. I'm going to do that because there's some great ideas. And these giveaways, I will do another one. Do them because there's not many of us, you know, when I announced them on the live one. So that's good. Thoughts from Tom. Thoughts for future videos. More interviews with magic people like you like or get inspiration from. Share your thoughts on finding a mentor. Talk about some of your favorite books. Discuss sources of inspiration. Give tips on how to get the most of magic. Yeah, that's a big thing, isn't it? We all struggle with magic books. I think we all do because they're big and we've got too many of them. So I think part of it is taking the heat off ourselves and just having a look and not having that pressure to learn everything. But yeah, that's a great idea. I'm really going to look at all of these. Maybe do some performance only videos. Yes, I did. I went out and did. I've got a review coming out. I was going to put it out today, but it'll be out tomorrow, I think. I went out and performed all around the area. Very funny. It's very funny when you go and perform and people aren't expecting it. The response is like, what's going on? What do I do? So yeah, I'm going to do some of them. Some of them will be a bit chonky. I've got some good stuff to edit as well, which I looked at. So I'm going to be putting lots more performance only videos. Very hard for me to stay focused, but things should be easier now. Videos and slides and practice drills. Yep. I would like videos on theory, character development. Great idea. Top 10 favorite tricks, effects, such as top 10 closeup tricks, 10 stage tricks, and even 10 worst tricks in certain areas in your opinion too. Tom Cocker, official. I find it so ridiculously difficult to come up with my top 10 of anything. I think it's probably because every time I review something, I get so deep into it. I'm reviewing still learning every single trick on Harapan Ong's optics, 26 tricks. And when I say learning them, I mean learning them and not, I don't think getting to unconscious competence. Why do I do it? There's no reason for me to do this, but I suppose because I might be able to get some performance footage. Um, so when I do that, I miss loads of other stuff. So it's, I'm not, I'm not a super knowledgeable person and all the releases and all, and don't get me wrong. I know a lot of tricks, but you know, I know other reviewers, you know, they churn a lot more out. So, and I'm not saying that's a bad or good thing or anything. It's just a different thing, which is good because we do it differently. Um, saying that they do still learn. I'm not saying they don't learn it, but it's, it's, yeah, I kind of tend to get too obsessive sometimes and I lose stuff. So this stuff's hard for me because it's not like I've got it all in my head, but I will try that because I do want to do it. I've done a little bit and I did me one of them doing it at the moment. Uh, videos on underrated card slides. Well, there's a DVD called materials by Steve Faulkner. That's kind of what that was a little bit. Um, so no, I will do that. And I'll mention them videos focused on pro tips for some classic magic tricks. Absolutely. Uh, maxi max regarding the guy complaining about the mentions of the course. I totally disagree. Hey, it's what's paying the bills. It is. Um, and it's great fun watching you stumble over each video. We'd like to make you to mention the people's palace of prestidigitation. I've had too much of it. If you pay me now, I'm joking. I'll mention it for longer. Uh, no, it's, it has to pay the bills to more. It's also great fun. And you struggle with that. Uh, but as it comes up every now and again in the comments, I'll let you off. Thanks maxi. Yeah. People's palace, the breast digitation, great, um, discord server. Have a look at that. I'm not just saying, well, I'm just saying that cause you said it, but you've reminded me. Um, but yeah, I mean, I, you know, it's something, it's not a list of podcasts and sometimes the ad run five minutes, you know, like cause I paid out to get a lot of money from, you know, you do listen to a lot of podcasts. Um, and that's what, yeah, it is a bit annoying. So it's a lot of time, especially if you drive in, you've got to sit through it. And if you can't go forward, um, but it is part of the game, I suppose. I want to keep doing it. Favorite car. I'm going to see online magic.co talking to which favorite car gimmicks gaps yet and creating a magic. So start to finish your favorite self-working go-to tricks. Um, yeah. So I would really, really appreciate the ideas. I will be looking at all of them and doing my very best to, um, to add as much content as I can. Give away a session. Ah, teaching session. I might do. I'm not gonna promise that yet because my life is so ridiculously hectic. I'll keep trying to put that, but that's a good idea actually. Yeah. There's three minute one. Jonathan Williams. Give away a session. Yeah, that's good days. Can you do me a favor, Jonathan? Can you, oh, and it's so cheeky in it, but my, I just can't deal with it. My, I'm going to forget even though I've written it there. Well, it probably won't, but I don't want to. It's a great idea. Jonathan, can you go back to the giveaway comments on comments 40 and put a comment under there? Because what I'm going to do, I'm still going to go through those comments and write them down as ideas because I think they're great ideas. So if you, if you can do that for me, that'd be lovely. If not, don't worry about it. I'll probably will remember. Uh, if you don't have time to read it, maybe give, give away your talk about tricks book set as a prize. Let me think about that thought about it. Not gonna happen. Uh, you're not having, you're not having that. I find it hard to know how to learn magic. Once I learn an effect and understand it, I don't really understand how to practice. Jonathan, I don't think you're alone. And I think the key is the, the thing about practice is just going off on a tangent a little bit is that a lot of time practice doesn't feel like it's doing anything. I've just written a blog and I'm going to publish it soon about the, um, the two John Allen tricks that I did. And I will do a video on them as well because certain things went wrong in them. And I talk about the, how painfully difficult I'd find rehearsal because when I'm doing it, I don't see the improvement. I'm walking through it and I'm going, right, pick up the thing and do that and say that to the audience. And it's honestly, after three minutes, I'm losing my mind because and I'll finish and I'll go, I still can't remember it. But then when I'm on stage, it kind of works. So I would, I think, and it's not as obvious, it sounds because sometimes when it doesn't feel like it's doing any good, it's the hardest thing in the world to do, especially if you're a certain type of person and you learn a certain type of way. But I would say the way I practice, that's all I can do is I read the trick. I go through the moves and then come away from the book and try and remember the moves. If I can't remember them, I go back to the book. I keep doing that until I know the moves. And then it's put some music on, smooth the moves out, just go repetition, repetition, even listen to a podcast, keep checking in on your technique. And then when I've learned it and I know it really well, I go back to the source, a video, the download or whatever, and just check, because sometimes you'll pick up bad habits, go back to the source and then do that. And then at some point, I just take, I show somebody I know, so it doesn't really matter as much, maybe a family member of the trick, so they can say, yeah, it kind of makes sense or not. And then I'll just have to take it out and try it. And that's still part of your practice. Don't see that as, oh, that went wrong, I better stop. If it doesn't go right in performance, keep practicing doing it in performance. And I think that's the best I can give you. Can you give away cards too, or gimmicks? I can. I've got, let's see what I've got in my drawer. Hang on. I remember I could look in this drawer. I can't, what's this? I don't want to give away something I've been given to review and I haven't reviewed yet, because it would be really bad of me, wouldn't it, to do that. What's this? What's this? I found something. Am I allowed to? I think I am, because I've reviewed it, haven't I? What's this? It's Facebook, it is. Right, I'm going to give away this, right? This is Twister Magic social print by Juan Alvarez. Now, I remember this being all right, didn't I? Have a Google of it. Oh, it's heavy though. If someone wins this from America or something like that, it's going to cost loads of money, isn't it? All right, that's it. Why do I just say, can you give away a crisp high five? Yeah, I can. Hey, do you know a second deal or bottom deal? I do. Go on onlinemagic.co, got lessons on there, and we've also got live sessions on it. There you go. $9.99 a month, can't go wrong. I'm going to give away that, everything. So if you're in America or something, don't, no. Oh, someone mentioned last night that they live in India, and would you win if you were in India? It was you, wasn't it? Yes, of course you would. I'll send it anywhere. So that's that. I don't know what it is. It's Google that Twister Magic presents Juan Alvarez social print. If you want to enter that competition, you've got a great chance of winning because there's like 14 people before. Under this video, not now, under this video, when it's on live, but it's not live anymore, but it's live up on this thing. Sorry. You're going to, oh, what can I ask you to do? Give me an idea. Dave, what can I ask everybody to write under the video that would be a win-win and be super helpful? You've got to tell me. That's ridiculous. I thought it'd be funny. Tell me how awesome I am. No. Can you give away your Royal Roads Car Magic we have on the wall? No, but take a picture. All I did was take a picture of that on my chair. I could do one, couldn't I? I could get another one printed actually. Dave, come on. Erm isn't good enough. That's all I did. Put it on my chair, took a picture of it, took it down and printed it out. Brilliant. So do that. But yeah, a lot of people have mentioned that. So maybe I'll get another one done. That'd be a giveaway. Yes, please. Magic, magic, mate. Yeah, that's very good. A magic haiku. How do you say that? Haiku. It's not, is it? Haiku. I'm going to say it wrong. I know what it is. So I want, and I'm going to, I'm not going to do this randomly. I'm going to pick the best one. What's the best magic book you've read and why? All right. I'm not going to do the, now I'm getting confused. Right. I don't think people would do the haiku poem. Dave's coming up with some corkers there. What's the best magic book you've read and why? What's the best you rate? Best trick you rate, but is often overlooked. Right. I'm going to nick them. I'm going to take a screenshot of them. Yeah. I'm going to take a screenshot and do the next one. We're going to do the magic haiku, haiku, so uncultured poem. If you're not sure what that is, Google it. It's three lines, isn't it? Or four lines or four or one line. A little poem about magic. Don't take it seriously. I'm not going to do the best one. I'm going to pick one at random and then read them out because it'd be funny. Cause I think it'd be really, really, that's a great idea. And they're all great. Dave's idea is brilliant as well. But that, that magic, magic, man, here's what you got to do. You got to do that. So begging boss, is there any tricks that I'm not going to teach you? Uh, clarify that for me. Send me an email if you want, if you've got a question and you kind of, can I get a discount on your membership? No, you can't. It's $9.99 a month. There's nothing, nothing for what you get. Blimey, coffee a week. And, um, so yeah, stop going on now. Do the haiku poem. Listen, you've got a great chance of winning it. Cause I reckon a lot of people won't do it. And I'll send you that. And if you want, just sign it. Why would you want me to sign it? Okay. Trust my arm. Go on then. Dale, go and win it. Go and have a look at it. Great. In winter, the snow is deep. There you go. There's a haiku poem. Haiku. Tom. So do that. Thank you, Dale. Do that under the video when it's on, not here. Um, so Tom, do that one again. Cause that's a good one. I suppose it is a magic one, I suppose. If you could, uh, but no, well I've got to go now. I'm going now. Right. See you later. Go and see onlinemagic.co. Thanks a lot for listening to my inane wafflings. Well done. Congratulations. Enter the competition. I'm going to send that to Martin's Soakskills workshop and I'll find some more stuff to give away next week. See you next week at five and watch the stuff before then. Take care.