Simon says his decade as a full-time magician mostly produced poverty-line or lower income despite high artistic achievement. The commercial work rewarded networking, client management, negotiation, timely communication, and constant pursuit of one-off gigs—areas that did not fit his strengths—so he ultimately separated loving magic from wanting it as his profession.

Savings supported much of Simon's ten-year attempt
Artistic ability and business success depended on different capabilities
Each performance gig often required another round of selling
Leaving magic as a profession restored freedom to pursue the parts he loved

“my full-time job was magic for the next 10 years and I would say I failed at it I mostly lived off those savings”
Simon Coronel · 1:50:30

“the tragedy is what gets Financial Success is Not artistic ability it's networking client relationship management negotiating etc etc”
Simon Coronel · 1:50:30

#creative business#magic#career#product-market fit

Hot Take1:56:00

Simon's Ethical Objection to Mentalism

Simon distinguishes magic that openly creates an illusion from mentalism that can imply psychic or psychological abilities the performer does not possess. He is uncomfortable when admiration or relationships rest on that false categorization, and argues that even disclaimers may be overpowered by a compelling illusion.

Simon can truthfully describe ordinary magic as sleight of hand and misdirection
Mentalism may require hiding the entire category of how the effect occurred
He worries that spectators may attribute nonexistent abilities to the performer
He treats Derren Brown as largely exceptional while still questioning disclaimer effectiveness

“with mentalism what you are claiming to do is completely false you are claiming a category of value you absolutely do not have it is…”
Simon Coronel · 1:59:00

“I don't want our relationship to you based on a fundamental miscategorization of my art craft job abilities”
Simon Coronel · 1:59:30

#mentalism#ethics#deception#magic

Explainer· 3

Explainer08:30

Why the Magic Castle Has No Real Equivalent

Simon describes the Magic Castle as two institutions combined: a private nighttime country club where magicians network and workshop ideas, and a public venue where audiences experience the resulting illusions. He argues that mystery must survive in the observer's mind, so magicians need a general audience rather than only other practitioners.

The private side functions as a professional network for magicians
The public side gives illusions an audience that does not know their methods
The Castle became a historically important incubator for magical talent

“the easiest way I think to think of it is Imagine two very separate unrelated things mashed together thing number one is a nighttime Country…”
Simon Coronel · 09:00

“there is no magic without the mystery so you need the target audience for magic is the general public”
Simon Coronel · 10:00

#magic castle#magic#community#audience

Explainer15:00

How Dai Vernon's Naturalness Changed Modern Magic

Simon credits Dai Vernon with bringing the unassuming behavior of card cheats into magic theory. Instead of emphasizing theatrical gestures, the performer hides deception inside actions that appear ordinary and draw no attention, an influence Simon says remains visible in competent modern magicians.

Earlier magic often emphasized showy and dramatic gestures
Card cheating requires deceptive actions to look unassuming
Vernon applied that naturalness and hiding in plain sight to magic

“Vernon's big innovation again oversimplifying was to take this concept of unassuming naturalness hiding in plain sight and start to apply it to Magic Theory”
Simon Coronel · 16:00

#dai vernon#naturalness#sleight of hand#magic theory

Explainer1:01:30

The Magician's Medium Is Human Perception

Simon says cards, coins, and hands are tools rather than the true medium of magic. The actual work is shaping an observer's perception, which requires understanding physical attention, assumptions, prior knowledge, and the angles from which an effect is experienced.

An illusion happens in the observer rather than in the prop
Body language and focal direction can hide actions in perceptual gaps
Physical perception is more consistent across people than creative taste
High-level magic requires adopting the spectator's viewpoint

“you are sculpting the perceptions of an observer into a beautiful amazing shape you need to be present to that that is the sculpture that…”
Simon Coronel · 1:02:00

“perception of physical reality is a much more Universal consistent thing than people's creative preferences or personal preferences or wants or needs or desires or…”
Simon Coronel · 1:02:00

#perception#misdirection#psychology#magic

Story· 4

Story24:00

The Card Trick That Made Reality Break Down

At 18, Simon arrived late to a university magic-club lesson and watched a seven of diamonds apparently turn into the king of clubs inches from him. Learning the simple underlying technique moments later revealed the extraordinary leverage between method and audience experience and sparked his obsession with magic.

Simon had previously assumed he lacked the dexterity for magic
The transformation produced a consuming moment of wonder
A simple method could create an experience that felt transcendent
His initial motivation was to understand what he had seen

“it changed like right 10 inches in front of me into a King of Clubs and this was the most incredible thing I'd ever seen…”
Simon Coronel · 26:00

“from this not easy but simple technique you could do the most profoundly transcendently amazing thing I'd ever seen in my life”
Simon Coronel · 27:00

#origin story#wonder#magic#learning

Story43:00

A Ten-Year Attempt to Make Wonder Tangible

A desperate 2012 competition routine gave Simon the seed of an idea: create an impossible object during an act so the audience's wonder could persist physically after the performance. He shelved the commercially impractical idea, kept returning to it privately, and revived it for the 2022 world championship after believing he had found the missing piece.

The original act emerged under severe last-minute constraints
Simon wanted a transient experience of wonder to linger in an object
Commercial pressure led him to shelve the idea for years
The unresolved creative problem continued to draw him back

“can you take this fleeting Transcendent instant of Wonder and somehow preserve it into something physical and tangible that lengthens that moment lets you sit…”
Simon Coronel · 45:00

“I love this but I need to shelve this and work on something else but it nagged me it ate away at me”
Simon Coronel · 46:00

#wonder#creativity#fism#impossible object

Story1:15:00

What Winning the World Championship Changed

After the act triggered a standing ovation and a spontaneous crowd around its impossible object, Simon tied for first in close-up magic and won the overall Grand Prix. He allowed himself to cry openly on stage, then found that the achievement punctured his imposter syndrome and gave him permission to pause after years of forward pressure.

Hundreds gathered spontaneously to inspect the created object
Simon decided not to hide his emotional reaction if his name was called
The win silenced the internal voice that said he was not good enough
He felt able to stop and catch his breath for the first time in adult life

“I realize I'm not gonna hide it I'm not even gonna wipe a tear away I'm just gonna let it rip”
Simon Coronel · 1:28:30

“for the first time I felt my imposter syndrome which nearly everyone has unless there are raging narcissist I think everyone has impostor syndrome to…”
Simon Coronel · 1:32:00

#fism#world championship#imposter syndrome#emotion

Story2:16:00

How Jigsaw Puzzles Recombined Simon's Skills

A geometric-vanish idea collided with an opportunity to redesign conventional jigsaw puzzles, leading Simon into an intense prototype effort and a Kickstarter launch at the start of the 2020 lockdown. The product's success showed him that software engineering, psychology, and magic could all contribute to scalable experience design without the repeated sales burden of live performance.

Simon had reverse-engineered geometric vanish illusions before the puzzle opportunity
The puzzle applied an illusion to a physical product rather than a stage act
Pandemic timing created both huge demand and supply-chain problems
Product design offered scalable delivery of surprise, wonder, and delight
The work revealed a transferable theme of experience design across disciplines

“all the things that I'd learned in software engineering and in Psychology and in Magic they're all kind of the same it's all experience designed…”
Simon Coronel · 2:20:00

“applying that to a jigsaw puzzle to give the same experience of surprise Wonder delight”
Simon Coronel · 2:20:00

#jigsaw puzzles#product design#kickstarter#experience design

Q&A· 1

Q&A1:39:30

Why Consulting Exhausted Simon Despite Competent Work

Simon explains that social interpretation, organization, scheduling, and time management imposed extra cognitive load in a high-pressure consulting environment. Although he completed the work adequately, masking his diagnosed autism-spectrum traits and other possible executive-function difficulties made the job exhausting.

Simon was diagnosed in his early twenties with what was then called Asperger's Syndrome
The diagnosis explained previously confusing social experiences
He learned communication skills while hiding the effort involved
Competent output did not mean the work environment fit his cognitive strengths

“I was doing okay I was getting the job done and doing a pretty okay job of it but it was just exhausting it was…”
Simon Coronel · 1:42:00

“I'm only just now kind of going you know what what if we try not doing that what if we sort of acknowledge it”
Simon Coronel · 1:42:30

#neurodivergence#masking#consulting#work

Tool· 1

Tool2:11:00

Two Magic Recommendations Practitioners Actually Respect

Simon recommends Jim Steinmeyer's Hiding the Elephant as an unusually readable magic-history book covering perception, psychology, history, and Houdini. He also praises Arrested Development's Gob Bluth and its magician subculture parody as unusually accurate, while calling The Prestige a good film with low magic accuracy.

Hiding the Elephant combines magic history with perception and psychology
Arrested Development's magician parody feels accurate to the industry
The Prestige works as a film despite weak technical accuracy
Accuracy and entertainment value are separate judgments

“there's a book I would recommend to anyone a book called hiding the elephant by Jim steinmeyer which is the only magic history book I've…”
Simon Coronel · 2:11:30

“Joe Bluth whoever wrote this knows the magic industry like it's two on the nose”
Simon Coronel · 2:12:30

#books#television#hiding the elephant#arrested development

Takeaway· 1

Takeaway1:36:30

Why Starting Magic at 18 Became an Advantage

Simon believes starting magic later preserved adult memories of being deeply fooled by effects that practitioners may dismiss as basic. Because knowing a method makes it hard to remember ignorance, those memories help him retain empathy for what an audience actually experiences.

Method knowledge makes the original mystery difficult to recover
Simple effects can remain profound to people who do not know the secret
Adult memories of amazement guide Simon's creative decisions
Audience empathy matters more than a magician's assessment of technical novelty

“once you learn how it's done it becomes very hard to remember what it was like to not know how it was done”
Simon Coronel · 1:37:00

“do not underestimate the power of that because I have those memories still and those guide so much of my creative process with magic”
Simon Coronel · 1:38:30

#empathy#beginner mind#audience#magic

Frameworks in this episode

Competition as a Deliberate-Practice Deadline

Radical Earliness

Student-First Skill Teaching

The Sooner-Is-Better Exit Algorithm

The Two Performance Thresholds

Insights & moments

◆Hot Take· 2

Artistic Skill Did Not Make Magic a Good Business