From Magician to Speaker - Part Two
by Quentin Reynolds

Over the next few issues I will take you through the basic details of getting into professional speaking.  We'll cover the different types of speaker and the variety of venues where you would present.

First, I think it would be helpful to give you some background on how I started in speaking. It will at least give you one possible way to get started.

I started performing magic for money back in 1972. Every penny earned from then until into the 1990s came from performing magic shows. In 1989 I listened to a tape set by American motivational speaker Zig Ziglar and thought, "I'd like to do that."

A few years later, a neighbour and I were talking about following your intuition, something I've always done.  She was very interested and asked if I'd come and talk about intuition to the local Ladies Club, where she was secretary.  They met from 7.30 to 9.30pm with a coffee break in the middle.

At the time I specialised in children's entertainment but was putting together a mentalism act.  So this sounded like the perfect opportunity to try out speaking and mentalism in front of a tame audience.

When you're a working pro adding new material to a polished act can be a worry.  Putting on ninety minutes of new material is terrifying.  My plan was to talk on intuition for 45 minutes, break for coffee and then do 45 minutes of mentalism.

Fortunately the evening went well and the ladies were delighted.  They also recommended me to other clubs so a trickle of bookings started to come in.

At each evening I'd mingle with the ladies and many of them would have interesting comments and questions.  I started keeping notes of these and incorporating the information into my main talk.  Eventually these notes became a book "INTUITION, Your Secret Power" which was published in 2000.

In the mid 1990s I developed another presentation for schools, teaching the pupils basic memory systems.  It always occurred to me that schools have children from the age of four and spend the next twelve to fourteen years stuffing their brains with information without ever showing why this information is relevant or giving them a system to remember it.

If I were a teacher I'd spend the first few weeks of the school year selling the pupils on the benefits of my subject.

Next issue we'll cover what kind of topic you might choose and how you become an expert on that subject.

© 2009 Quentin Reynolds. Quentin Reynolds works as both magician and speaker.
http://www.PsychicGameShow.com

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