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Hello all, I belong to a business network thing that I attend every Friday morning, and every six months or so you have to do a 10 minute presentation about your business. Thing is I did my last one about my decorating business about four months ago and decided that rather than plod through the same thing again I'd do some magic for 'em instead. The room usually contains about 30 people and they're sat in a sort of long horseshoe fashion round a table. This makes things a bit tricky for visibility and my best stuff is close-up so I decided to try my hand at some mentalism as I have enough practiced material to go on for a good 30 minutes if necessary and there's nothing to see as such.

Now, this is the first time that I've stood up in front of an audience that size for an allotted slot of time and I was pretty nervous. The other problem is that they all know me fairly well and they've seen me do standard sleight of hand before so my main challenge was to at least present it as something that wasn't a 'trick' and do so believably. I also wanted to avoid claiming I was psychic or pretending to use NLP etc, although I could have got away with the latter I think.

After much thought and several script re-writes I decided to talk about the fact that I'd been studying magic for years and over time I'd learned a lot about behaviour and how people interpret the strange little events that crop up from time to time, like when you think of someone and then they ring you immediatley. I went on to say that when you get down to the nitty gritty and work out the cause behind the effect then you can start to manipulate it and have some fun... The idea was not to mention any buzzwords like suggestion or psychic explicitly and leave them to draw their own conclusions.

So, how did it go? Well the day got off to an appalling start. I generally get down to the meeting at about 6.15am which involves leaving the house at 5.45am. I set my alarm for 4.30 as I wanted to get up and fully prepare before going out, imagine my surprise then to wake up at 5.35. Go knows what happened to the alarm, I certainly don't, but this created 10 minutes of running round swearing and looking for my ID, which was nowhere to be seen. I eventually found it in a place that I'd already checked twice and dashed off into the rain grumbling. One hairy motorway journey later and I waded into the room with my lucky lock of Markdini's hair in my back pocket and ready for action.

My plan was to open with an ID routine with the benefit of a bit of pre-show so that I could spread the deck with the card reversed before it was said out loud. The way I'd scripted this would make it an appropriate and powerful opener to then lead into the BIP book. Unfortunately for some reason that I still cannot fathom (probably the same goblins that doctored my alarm) my imp pad failed to produce the goodies. No problem I thought, I'll go ahead with it anyway as usual. The time came when I'd done the intro and opened the deck, at which point the nerves were jangling a good'un and I managed to somehow mess up an ID by revealing the 7C rather than the 7D. This is the sort of thing that only advanced morons can do, especially in front of 30 eager yet stern business folk, as your opener.

I managed to treat it as an example of the erratic not-quite-right events I was talking about and moved straight in the BIP book, but there was a definite feeling of disappointment in the room, particularly from the volunteer who'd chosen the card. The BIP book went fine, I managed to choose the four volunteers well so that there was the minimum of pumping and the potentially disruptive couple were no brainers. Reactions were good, pace was good, hit the ten minutes bang on time. I had intended to do PK touches as a closer but the wind was out of my sails after the beginning and I thought it best to end on a high note.

So what did I learn? Firstly, if it can go wrong it will. I know this anyway but to mess up such a foolproof opener really irks me and I don't think it'll be out of my head for a while. I think I'd have been ok if it hadn't been for the general disaster of a start to the day, so maybe just chalk that one up to life and get on with it. On the good side I had some very positive responses afterwards, with people coming up to me and giving me their own ideas as to how I'd done it, which ranged from subliminal suggestion to advanced intuition to clever knowledge of body language. Only one unimaginitive soul said "Very good but I'd like to see that book again," to which I replied "There's always one eh?" with a wry smile as I patted him on the shoulder. Seemed to do the trick. For me these reactions were a success as people weren't looking for 'the trick' but did in fact think that I was using some sort of advanced skill to achieve my shenanigans. I'm happy with that.

It didn't massively tickle my mental bone but it was an interesting experience and one that I might repeat one day, if only to exorcise those nagging demons that keep telling me how good it would have been if I'd done it all right.....

Oh well mate one lives and learns.

Good on you for having the balls to get up and do it, I say. Next time, you could use Beyond Esp2, some of the routines in the book are killer ones and convince people you have 'some kind of power'.

We've all ballsed up the ID once or twice mate!

Sincere congratulations - gutsy or what? !

ah, but thats the thing though bronz, dont focus on the negative parts...re-examine what you wrote, you'll see it in a different light:

though not a complete hit, you got very close with the 7
BIP went well
people thought you were an expert almost on body language, or were gifted with suggestion...

they enjoyed it, you learnt something...

keep on going...

the only thing im puzzled about is, if you're going to use pre-show for a card, why use an ID at all?

On balance, it was probably just as well that bronz used an ID, or he really would have been up the creek!

It doesn't sound like it went too badly, bronz, but the fraught journey probably frazzled your concentration, which is why you got the wrong card.

To be perfectly honest it sounds like quite a success. Well done that man.

Why thank you all for your kindness. Having now slept on it I reckon I did alright, it's just that seeing as I did actually put a fair bit of planning in the miss irritates me. Never mind.

Abraxus, I have a minor obsession with revealing the card face down in an ID before it's been named out loud. Probably just me over egging the pudding really but yesterday's effect was essentially that I'd given a pack of cards to the spec who had then thought of one and written it down for future confirmation. When it came to performance time I could then retrieve the cards and show that one was face down before the spec handed the paper to someone else to read. I hoped that this would look nice and impossible as the spec had had the cards even before I asked them to think of a card and I went nowhere near the paper at any point so there couldn't have been any peeks or owt. I like that sort of double method to hide any possible reverse engineering of the effect, what Darwin Ortiz calls the 'veils principle'.

Like the others have said - keep your focus on the good things that came out of it. Do NOT undersell the fact that you stood up and performed in a venue where it was not expected. It takes a lot of confidence to walk into a place completely cold the way you did, and you should be applauded for that alone.

I really liked your application of the ID - Giving the deck to the spec is a very nice subtlety. The finish could have been better - but you did get the 7! Remember - not one person in that room could have gotten that close!

Congratulate yourself and keep on going. Great job!

Also a lesson for all inspiring mentalist , Mentalism on the whole is the hardest type of magic to make look good.

I know Bronzy has rahter good presentation skills but he sometimes thinks like a magician and that can cripple one when you move over to mentalism / mental magic (to please craig ).

On the subject he still owes me a red deck of beyond esp 2 cards.