My guest today is Simon Coronel. Simon was originally an IT consultant working at Accenture in Melbourne. But he quit his day job several years ago to become a full-time magician. Simon is now based in Los Angeles and is the winner of more than a dozen international awards, including two separate prizes at the FISM World Championships of Magic and Illusion (which is like the Olympics of Magic) and has appeared on Penn & Teller’s TV show Fool Us, where he did in fact manage to fool Penn & Teller. Simon is also one of the few Australians to be regularly invited to perform at the world famous Academy of Magical Arts in Hollywood.
Simon is incredibly eloquent and thoughtful about how he thinks about his profession, and we cover a bunch of different topics, including:
- How Simon worked up the courage to go from working as an IT consultant at Accenture to being a full-time magician
- Why Simon doesn’t like goal setting, and what he uses instead
- How Simon prepares for a magic show
- Where his ideas for magic tricks come from
- Simon’s novel methods for getting audience feedback
- Why Simon thinks about practice in units of minutes, not hours
- How Simon can predict which of his students will become great at magic
- How Simon manages his emotional state pre-show
- How to get better at almost any skill
- How you can differentiate an amateur magician from a professional one
- Dealing with on stage injuries
- How magic actually works and why it’s harder to “trick” kids than adults.
Books
Courses
Penn and Teller on Masterclass.com
