Countdown to Millions

What, you don't trust business advice from a 40 year old with no shirt and long hair?

As some of you may know, I spent a good number of years as an illusion designer.  Creating and designing large-scale stage illusions and effects…you know, magic tricks.  I did that until last year when a book I had written on the topic, just 2 months shy of release was lost to a hard drive failure.  After losing a book I spent the better part of four years writing, I decided to call it quits for a time and have since been developing and planning other ventures like my Countdown to Millions.

And although I may be out of the “biz” I still carry with me all the lessons I learned from my years designing and performing magic.  So, here are five lessons I learned from magic that can also serve me (and hopefully you as well) in the business world:

5. Show off your Dancers

Let’s be honest, magicians in general are not a good-looking bunch.  Most of them spend their time dancing around in outfits that the 1980’s would have found ostentatious.  So, when they’re onstage, you’ll notice that most magicians hardly ever actually do anything.  They stand around while their assistants dance seductively in skimpy outfits.  They wave their arms mysteriously, while an assistant in a box is doing all the hard work.  It really makes you wonder why the magician is even there.

In business, you don’t have dancers…unless you run a dance studio.  However, what you do have are assets; whether they be products, sales people, or simply a new twist on an old idea.  It’s important to focus on these, because these things create excitement.  Sure there is some creative force behind it all (Like the magician), but without attractive assets to present to an audience, no one is going to care about what you’re offering.

…Unless you happen to work with a lot of tigers.

4. Stay Flexible

As majestic and graceful as a good magic performance looks, there is a lot of torso twisting and back-bending being done by the assistants (and occasionally the magician) in order to pull off the feats that you are witnessing.  There’s a reason that magicians tend to pick flexible dancer-types to be their assistants instead of, say, butchers.  If you can’t easily stick your own foot up your own…well, umm, let’s just say you won’t last long as an assistant.

Likewise, if a business wants to be successful, it and it’s leaders must always be willing to bend and twist to avoid the swords and saws being thrust at them.  And before I stretch this metaphor any thinner, I’ll move on.

3. Always Try to Stay in the Black

As any of your, ummm, “larger” friends can tell you, black is very slimming.  This is a secret that magicians have been exploiting long before the Style network started promoting it for all of their plus-sized viewers.  In magic, black is generally used to thin or obscure a hiding spot for the magician or one of his assistants, tricking the eye into thinking that there is no way a person can fit in a certain space.  So if a magician can stay in the black, he’ll stay out of sight, and not be exposed.  Thus the show goes on successfully.

Similarly, in business if a company can stay in the black, then it will stay out of any bad press.  So, while it’s okay to take on some debt in order to start or grow a business, after a certain point you have to expect a company to make money

…Facebook and Twitter, I’m looking at you.

2. It’s All About the Performance

There are some amazing illusions out there being performed by some of the best magicians in the world, but those same illusions are often performed by some of the worst.  The effect that they are trying to sell is not the important part, their ability to sell it is.  A bad magician tries selling himself, an okay magician tries selling himself, and a great magician does sell himself.  People are not really there to see effects they are there for a performance and a good magician will give it to them with or without the fancy effects.

In business if you can sell yourself or your company as a concept and become greater than your products, then people will give your company the attention rather than just the products.  This is how Apple created their legendary “cult of Mac.”  The experience of owning a Mac (and also Steve Jobs) were built up to be the real product.  Once people bought into that, they practically had to buy the computer to go along with the attitude.

Full Disclosure: I only use Macs, so I guess I got suckered in with this trick too.

1. Criss Angel is only Famous Because he Sold his Soul to the Devil

…Either that or he’s got the best marketing team in the world.

In magic terms, Criss is a hack.  He utilizes camera tricks far too often and is a horrible performer in general, but he is successful.  Why?  His team markets him as the greatest magician ever.  Couple that with his ability to sell himself as the “real deal,” creating a cult out of what would normally just be fans, and you have a very powerful marketing tool at your disposal.

So, let that be a lesson to you: If you want to be a magician, but you happen to be horrible at magic, just get the best magicians around: a PR and marketing firm.

And while good marketing might not be able to save a horrible business, it can definitely help one that isn’t the best.

So, what do you think.  Are there any lessons from magic or any other field that you can think of that can also apply to business?  Let me know in the comments.

-Nick

From now on, this is the only crazy thing on this blog.

I often joke that I must be crazy, or at the very least daft, to attempt to start a business in the current economic climate.  But just today, I found an article that has my back in my endeavor to start a business and make millions.

And this isn’t just any article; no.  It comes straight from the land of fancy accents, queens, Mary Poppins, and Sting: England.  And as we all know, England is without fault (Unless you count bad teeth, the enigma of beefeaters, and all the people they’ve killed in the pursuit of an empire that has since fallen), so such an article is always welcome around these parts…especially when it makes me seem nearly sane.

In the article it discusses many of the reasons that I decided to start this mission, including the simple idea of trying to overcome a challenge, and even goes so far as to say that a new golden age of entrepreneurship is on the horizon.  Now, I’m not saying that I will in any way contribute to this golden age, but it’s comforting to know that there are others like me who see this time not as a cause for fear, but rather as a prime opportunity to create and change the world around us.  Whether the world is simply limited to our own personal life, or whether it reaches into other spheres of influence, there’s no denying that there is great potential for the entrepreneurs in all of us.

So, with that in mind, over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting some thoughts of mine on how to foster that creative, entrepreneurial spirit.  Who knows, with some training maybe you too could become part of the coming entrepreneurial revolution.  And just as with any revolution, it’s always the crazy ones that seem to lead the way.

-Nick

"We Love Business, LOL!" Not one of Daft Punk's more memorable tracks.

If Daft Punk ran the business world, we would all have four choices when it can to how services were rendered: Harder, Better, Faster, or Stronger.  Those damn French robots are such over-achievers like that.  However, in the real (Non-robotic) world of business, it has often been said that there are only three choices, good, cheap, and fast; the challenge being that you can only ever choose two.

If you choose good and cheap, you won’t get what you’re looking for quickly.  If you want good and fast, it most certainly won’t be cheap.  Finally, if you choose cheap and fast, you can bet yourself that it won’t be good.  So, which do I want to choose for my countdown to millions?

Well, it doesn’t take too much figuring to realize that with a self-imposed time limit, one of my choices has to be fast, but do I want that speed to be at the expense of quality or cost-effectiveness?  It’s not as simple a decision as you might think.

Business isn’t so much about quality as it is about marketing.  Think of all the horrible products that your friends (or even you) buy on a regular basis, from companies who sell nothing but horrble products (*cough* Dell *cough*).  Those companies tend to be doing pretty well for themselves if they can manage to get their foot in the door and market the hell out of themselves.  But is that what I want for my business(es) and product(s)?  No.

I’m a classical perfectionist (Which I think means I enjoy listening to good performances of Beethoven’s symphonies), and to release something that I know isn’t my best might sell, but I would never feel quite right about it, always feeling like I sold out.  So in the end, in my Countdown to Millions looks like I’m going to have to do this thing Good and Fast…let’s just hope I find the money to support that choice.

So, if you wanted to make millions, which two would you choose?

-Nick

I was reminded today about the importance of value, not just of money, but also of the work that we do and the reasons why we do it.  That, too, is a type of currency, with a value all it’s own.  When I tell people that I intend to make a million dollars in such a short amount of time, they often assume that I have merely substituted one form of value with another.  I assure you that is not that case.

Money is nice, but it is only a product of the work that we do.  If I had a company that made solar panels, people would say that those had a type of ethical value to them (It’s a stretch but it’s hard to find a product with a moral value), however that value would be lost if the machine that made the solar panels was powered by babies blood and spewed harmful gases into the air.  That company would have sacrificed one type of value, simply for the sake of the product.  But, it is not the product that should be the focus, just as it doesn’t matter that solar panels are the end result if the means to those panels is not inherently valuable itself, but rather the means.

My means is my creativity.  I’ve been advised many times before to simply “follow my bliss and money will follow,” but whenever I turn a passion into a profession, it has take the thrill out of it.  Four-and-a-half years ago, I began writing a book containing 10 original designs for stage magic effects and illusions, a topic I was very passionate about, something I was and am an expert on.  However, once I started to “professionalize” my passion for magic, it became tedious.  I continued to pursue it though, because even through the tedium, I loved it.  Unfortunately, just over a year ago, after three-and-a-half years of work with the book about 2 months from publication, I lost it all to a hard-drive crash and poor planning (I can’t find my backups).

So, instead of taking something I am passionate about and following that, I have decided to follow an attribute, an innate part of me; my creativity.  Through my book-writing endeavor, it was my creativity that kept me motivated, kept me moving, and it will be my creativity that will keep me moving in this current venture.  In all of the ideas that I have formulated for potential business ideas, I have made sure that there is a basis of creativity.

So, now, instead of working through my passion, I am working for my passion, and by working in this way I will be strengthening that very passion.  That is what I feel is the real value in my mission.  The million dollars is just a by-product…a very appealing by-product at that.  But, in my work, and in your work, the money cannot be the end, if it is, your work will lack all intrinsic value for the sake of monetary value; a sad tradeoff.

-Nick

It was Friedrich Nietzsche who said, “He who has a why to live, can bear almost any how.”  So, I thought I would explain a little about some of the whys you might have regarding my journey of mine before I explained exactly how I was planning on making my millions.

1. Why $1,000,000?  Can’t you be happy with less?  Or are you no better than those greedy corporate fat cats?

Well, one million dollars was chosen, not because it would mark my own personal expectations of success, but rather because it marks a nearly universal watermark of financial achievement.  If I said I was going to try to make $100,000, there are many who would simply say, “That’s all,” scoffing as only the snootiest of internet perusers can.

Had I said I was trying to make a billion, almost everyone would either think I was greedy, stupid, or (to borrow a phrase from the British) having a laugh.  And as high an amount as one million is, it is not unreasonable, nor is it impossible to achieve…it simply takes work (Hell, Regis Philbin used to hand out millions like they were Tic-Tacs).  And if I do succeed in my goal, it is a sufficiently high amount to satisfy most people wishing to determine whether I was a success or not.

2. Why such a short amount of time?  Surely you’re being unreasonable.

On the contrary, I feel that by giving myself a short amount of time, I am increasing my likelihood of success.  If I were to set my goal of making one million dollars 30 years from now, there would be a diffusion of drive towards that goal.  Think of it like a paper you have to write for school, it’s not as if your drive to write the paper is simply a constant, no, there is a finite amount of ‘want’ that you can have to write your paper and the more time you give yourself to do the paper, the less you will want to do it at any given moment.  However, if you give yourself just a few short hours to do the paper, you condense the totality of your drive into some sort of magical ambition singularity.

That singularity of drive is what I aim to create by giving myself such a short amount of time.

3. Why did you decide to blog about this mission of yours?

The desire to be rich and/or famous is a universal one, and I simply thought it would be interesting to allow people to follow my attempts at achieving that dream.

4. So if $1,000,000 isn’t your personal mark of success, then why are you doing this? “Why,” I ask you.

I’m doing this because above all else, I enjoy two things most of all: 1) Autonomy; and 2) A challenge.

Trying to achieve my goal of making one million dollars in such a short amount of time inherently means that I cannot take the road most traveled through the safe, secure world of upper-middle management ladder-climbing nonsense, hoping someday to be an executive with a nice parking space.  I’m going to have to make my own path, and that path will afford me with the autonomy that I seek (And I’m sure a million dollars wouldn’t hurt the autonomy department either).

Secondly, I’ve been told so many times that this dream is impossible, or that I should simply “settle,” but where is the fun in that.  Anyone can “settle,” and if it is something that anyone can do, then I’m not interested.  I want to do this for the very reasons that people think I can’t, because it seems so impossible.  That is why I’m doing this.

5. Why am I reading this?

You tell me, you clearly clicked a link somewhere and ended up in my own personal technicolor Oz.  I can only say, “I hope you enjoy your stay,” and ask that you wish me luck as I continue to Countdown to Millions.

-Nick