[ad_1]
Arnie Weissman
In the year By 2000, Steve Cohen was doing well as a chamber magician, performing private shows in the homes of wealthy people in Chappaqua, NY, pulling in about $2,000 per show.
Then he met Mark Levin, a market expert who Cohen described as “brilliant.” Levi Cohen saw more potential in Cohen’s act than he did himself. He urged him to stick close to his old self and position himself as a “millionaire magician”.
Cohen thought this was a serious proposition. His wife thought this was a cruel idea. His parents and best friend advised against it. “I thought I would lose all my customers, no one would come to the so-called magician.”
But Levy was persuasive. “If you can’t leave the $2,000 door, you’ll never get the $20,000 door,” he said, referring to the pay-per-view. “Be true to who you are. Get in there.”
Cohen moved the show to a room at New York’s Waldorf Astoria, wearing a long-tailed tux. He explored the conversation with reference to luxury products. Dress code for customers. And he began to burn through his savings. Many times, he was ready to throw in the towel, but he pushed forward.
Fast forward 20 years. At that time, Warren Buffett drove Cohen home. He was also hired by Michael Bloomberg and Martha Stewart to do private shows. Barry Diller took a front row seat and was an enthusiastic volunteer at the public show he attended. Cohen has played for Russian oligarchs, Middle Eastern aristocrats, Chinese billionaires, the queen of Morocco and the (former) crown prince of Saudi Arabia. When he’s not performing on weekends (two shows on Friday and Saturday now at New York’s Lotte Palace), he’s flying around the world to perform on private islands, megayachts and villas.
And in time, he became not only a “magician of the millionaires”, but a millionaire magician.
Most people who see Cohen will not spend $20,000 to $25,000 for a private work, but will pay $125 to $350 for one of the 64 seats in the public exhibit. At the event I attended, many of the audience members were likely to be tourists whose admission was a fraction of what they would have spent on a Broadway show.
I spoke with Cohen later, and what struck me most during our conversation was that there was a lesson in the story for people who sell or want to sell luxury travel.
- On positioning value: “People want something they can’t find anywhere else, delivered by someone who offers them a unique and new experience. That’s a very important thing for someone who can afford anything.”
- On changing doubters: “I never put people down who challenge me. They come in expecting to know how I do what I do – it’s a bit of a game of cat and mouse – but in the end they don’t. And they give me the benefit of the doubt. ‘We paid for magic, you’re giving us miracles,’ shouted one skeptic afterwards.
- Understanding the Basics of the Craft: “The themes of magic are classic. Everything is a variation of one of six or seven techniques: making something disappear, making it appear again, defying the laws of gravity, making an object penetrate another, reading someone’s mind, two things. By transforming, you’re shaping the elements, molding them, and turning them into something else. So everything I do is original, and nothing I do is original.
- On selling an intangible experience: “Magic always happens in your head, between the ears. Once you convince someone to believe in what you’re doing, you double down on their belief.”
- On the importance of editing for your client: “Each show is different because each audience is different. Each show, I don’t know what will happen, and the audience enjoys watching an artist at work, creating and performing.”
- On setting limits for people who push the limits: “I used to do midnight shows, often booked by billionaires. They paid in advance, they saw me as committed, and they often saw me coming in late, and I was already wiped out before I did two shows. So I stopped doing midnight shows.
- On the importance of customer referrals: “At the end of every show, I always say, ‘If you like this, please tell your friends.’ My success is based on word of mouth.
- On stretching yourself but being true to yourself: “In the beginning I was trying so hard to please like a court jester. It’s not like that anymore. We see eye to eye. But in the end it’s really just a matter of who you are and who you work for.” If I lived in Iowa or Idaho, I would probably call myself a farmer’s magician.
[ad_2]
Source link
