37: The Business of Magic & the Magic of Love (w/ Chris & Ryan Zubrick)

Foreign. Today’s guests are not just magicians and in my opinion, they’re full blown wizards. These guys turn impossible into a common occurrence in their world. And so I can’t thank you enough, Chris and Ryan and Kelby here in this studio for taking the time to come on our show.

It is incredibly meaningful to me that you take, I, I can’t even imagine how busy you guys are and we’re going to get into that, but you are both the creative force behind the Zubrick Magic Theater, one of the most immersive and mind bending entertainment experiences you will find in St. Petersburg and in my opinion, in the world. And I’m not just saying that. I, I’m, I am seriously serious about that.

I’ve seen a lot of shows from Cirque du Soleil to bigger concerts that I’ve watched, I’ve been a part of on stage. I’ve been on stage with that guy running the sound there, Jordan shout out to you. And I’ve seen other magicians like Penn and Teller.

You are by far my favorite performance I’ve ever seen. When I saw your show, it wasn’t watching magic, it was, you felt it, you were absolutely immersed in it. It was an entire experience from the sound to the lights to the actual magic itself.

I, I, from the first illusion to the very last, it was incredible. And like one word that comes to mind is a masterclass. Your absolute top of the field, in my opinion.

And so when I’m surrounded by people like at that caliber, I’m getting shivers right now just thinking about it because it’s so meaningful and you don’t just pop there. That took so long for you guys to get where you’re at. So the professionalism, the precision, the smoothness of it, your storytelling, it was just like clear love that you poured into every single aspect.

From when I walked in the doors to like left. It was unbelievably mind blowing. In my opinion.

You’re not just putting on a show, you’re, you’ve built an experience that, that people walk into and then walk away. And in my opinion, you’re the heartbeat of magic right here in St. Pete. And I just couldn’t be more excited to have you both in here.

And you’re going to share your story. You’re definitely not going to tell us how you do any of the tricks. I promise I won’t ask.

Although it’s so hard I have you here, it’s like, how do you do that? You literally made things vanish. I mean, I feel like I’m decently logical and skeptical and I can see things. But in a flash, something was there and then it was gone.

I just. I don’t even know. I don’t even know.

And, and by the way, this, it’s an intimate setting. It’s an intimate theater. It’s a great size, perfect size, but I’ll stop.

So, Chris and Ryan, I’m going to start here with, with what drew you to magic in the first place. How early. And then kind of maybe walk us through what got you to.

To cross paths. Well, thank you so much for having us on the podcast. We’re very excited to be here and share our story and tell you a little bit more about us and about Zubrick Magic Theater.

So we both got into magic independently from a very young age. For me, I found a magic trick in the bottom of my cereal box. Do you remember when they used to put toys in the, in the bottom of cereal boxes? So I found a magic trick in the bottom of my cereal box.

I practiced, I rehearsed it and I showed it to my older brother and he was fooled. Now, as the younger brother, being able to fool my older brother, that was everything to me. So that was when I got bit by the magic bug and it just kind of stuck for me from there.

Oh, my gosh. I received a magic set when I was about six or seven years old for a birthday gift and I was immediately hooked again, being able to do something that my parents or my relatives or my friends couldn’t do. I’d start doing little shows for family re and it just progressed and I stuck with it.

My dad helped build some small scale illusions as I continued to perform for cub Scout packs and churches and whatnot. And then as I went to college at Michigan State University, we were actually double booked for the same event. The event coordinators accidentally booked us both.

We both showed up expecting to do our shows and we’re like, whoa, we’re both here. So we put our two shows together instead of fighting over the spotlight, we kind of just collaborated on the spot. And not to sound cheesy, but the result was magical.

Like, it just worked. So that’s not cheesy at all. I mean, like, the movies are based on real life in some circumstances.

Like those kind of things happen once in a blue moon and you guys, your whole story and everything. Like, to Saturday, what I experienced into this moment, I feel like, is magic. Like you, you guys are living a dream and obviously a hurricane affected you and things like that.

There are ups and Downs and business and probably a trick not going right. But overall, if you look at your life from at least my perspective, an outsider perspective, it’s beautiful. And I got that feedback immediately from my family who, who was there, that they felt that.

And so there’s something so special about that, especially now. You guys are partners in business, you’re partners in life, and you’re raising a family. Can you talk about like the unique aspect of that? And maybe I would imagine how powerful that is.

And it’s not always easy, I would imagine, because now you’re around each other all the time. But that’s not a bad thing, this powerful thing. But just maybe talk about that.

Yeah. So being partners on stage, that’s what started first. And then of course, we decided to be partners off stage as well.

So we’ve been together for what, 20 years now? Yeah, over 20 years. 20 years. And our son, he’s seven years old now and he’s involved in magic as well.

He has his own act that he performs when he wants to on stage. We don’t force him to do it, but if he wants to perform, he’ll get out there and perform. Cool.

But we, you know, we, we are so similar in everything that we do both on stage and off. We just, we have a love for theater, we have a love for magic. And I’m an extrovert.

Ryan’s more of an introvert, so we’re kind of Ying and Yang in that respect. But I enjoy all of the marketing aspects and meeting people. He enjoys all the technical aspects and everything behind the scenes.

So we kind of can join forces that way and really build the show. Yes, we definitely balance each other out very well. Like you said, I enjoy all the technical stuff, behind the scenes stuff.

And we’ve also. You’ve met Kelby. We formed a team now because it is.

There’s a lot happening day to day. You know, we not just are just doing a show like we used to, you know, when we were overseas for 13 years, we were just hired to perform. It was easy.

We went into the show focused on the magic. Now we’re focusing on the business. So everything from, you know, SEO to advertising, marketing, hiring, you know, all those things, insurances that you just don’t think about are now consuming our day.

So balancing that, that with having a family and putting on a show, you know, it can be a lot to juggle, but we do our best, best to make it all work. Oh yeah. Doing your best is an understatement.

I just want to say That I appreciate you saying that. It’s refreshing to hear because you know, again, in the day to days we just get caught up in all these other things. So like hearing feedback from somebody that saw the show or just someone that experienced, you know, what we do is very refreshing and we appreciate that.

Oh yeah, yeah. Well, it’s well deserved. And.

And you had mentioned the balance of the. The business aspect and it’s really cool. The balance that you take.

You like marketing and you’re part of the production, Ryan. So from what I understood, Kelby filled me in a little that you’re doing the projection mapping, the sound design, the lighting. Am I correct? Absolutely, yes.

I went to Michigan State University for technical theater with an emphasis in lighting design. So I program and design all the lighting in the show. We projection map the walls of the theater so there’s many segments where you’re totally immersed in an environment.

There’s lots of special effects, sparks, fog, things like that. And then, yes, all the audio, we edit the audio, the video, all the technical elements. And we’re a very small team, so we don’t have stage crew per se.

So Ryan, inside of his pocket has a remote control and he is firing cues throughout the show. How many cues are in the show now? There’s over a thousand. There’s over.

Yeah, almost 1200 cues in the show. So some of them hit the button 1200 times? No, a lot of them will follow each other and the show pretty much runs itself. But there are times when we have an audience member.

There’s a lot of audience interaction as you experience cool and that timing can vary and so there are some variables in the show when we need to hit some manual cues. So that’s usually what I’m doing through my pocket. But the show kind of runs itself.

Or sometimes if one of us is on stage, the other one might be advancing a cue or definitely opening or closing a curtain. Kelby will step backstage a few times if there’s some complicated routines. And we also have our dancer who will do some, you know, moving of props and things like that as well.

So it is a small team, four of you? That’s correct. I didn’t realize that because I. I just assumed there was a couple stage hands back that we just never saw. That’s.

Geez, you continue to blow my mind. I’m not just saying. So you having a controller on top of having particular things that you are making appear out of thin air on top of that, like the way that you use your hands, like with a controller as well.

How are you juggling all of that? How do you manage all that’s going on? I know that’s a loaded question, but it’s definitely a lot to think about. And I have to, you know, accredit our years of performing overseas. We did two shows a night, six nights a week on the islands of Saipan and Guam for 13 years straight.

So we logged a lot of shows. So if the dove act was something that was in the show regularly that I’ve done thousands of times, so I can do it in my sleep almost. So at that, it’s, you know, it’s being able to.

To kind of when you have to. I don’t like to. But when you have to get on autopilot about some of those other things, you know, or if I’m like, oh, this.

There was one night, the other night that an electrical outlet, the fuse blew. So I know, okay, that trick’s not going to work because the electric. The electricity is not running to it.

So while I’m doing. While I’m producing doves, I might be thinking about, okay, we’re going to segue from this to this. And the show is programmed that way, too.

So, you know, we can hit a certain button backstage if we’re going to skip this routine. If we don’t have any kids in the audience, we eliminate routine A and routine B, and we swap in C and D on the fly. On the fly.

So, yeah, but it’s. That’s where coming together as a team, we all, Kelby, our dancers, Ryan and I, we all work together, and we kind of have this unspoken language. Just a look, just a glance that goes, okay, we’re moving to this.

We’re shifting, we’re pivoting. We’re going to, you know, try something different tonight. It’s.

It’s constant ebb and flow. Yeah, I mean, it’s clear that you guys have this, like, symbiotic relationship. Like, it’s.

It’s that that level of production is not just teamwork. It’s. It’s your own language.

It’s because you’re the show on no matter what. And if people feel a snag, it just kind of throws a groove. Like, we’ve played music together.

If I just, like, stop drumming or, like, stop for a bit, that just throws. Everybody stops moving. That’s not gonna work.

So you have to play through it. However it is. Play through the wrong note.

Whatever it is. It’s just. It’s.

It’s incredible. And Kelby is also helping some of the. Like, you had a more elderly woman who came up on stage and helped her back to her seat, popped the flashlight on, just like fluid.

Even offstage while paying attention to what’s happening on stage, what’s happening in the lobby? We have monitors backstage. So he’s watching the lobby, he’s watching backstage, he’s watching onstage, he’s watching the audience. So I really wish we could magically duplicate him because we need more of Kelby.

Oh, yeah. More Kelby’s. Because he does a lot throughout the whole show.

And his world is changing, too, depending on what audience volunteers on stage, what’s happening out in the lobby, what might, you know, somebody might need assistance. He’s. He’s on top of it.

Yeah, clearly. It’s just impressive all around. Before I forget, do you guys play tricks on each other at home? You get each other.

Not really. No. No.

Maybe during the show, you’d wake up and you’d be, like, in a different area or something. I don’t know. I think, well, once in a while we’ll play games on stage or, you know, little practical jokes that the audience wouldn’t necessarily know happening, but I don’t.

Nothing really so much at home. Okay. Okay.

I just. I just imagine, like, living with a magician and I’m just, like, always looking over my shoulder like a dove’s just going to fly out of my pants. I’m glad you said doves, because I even, like, was trying to not say doves.

I’m just trying not to say anything. Yeah, no, it’s good to talk about the show. You know, as you witnessed, we do have a spectacular finale that we try to keep a secret for Most Lips Are Sealed patrons.

But, yeah, there’s many elements in the show that we enjoy talking about. The doves are our family, so they come home with us every single night. They live with us at home, and they have an aviary outback, and we bring them.

Yeah. So they got a good home they’re not just living in. No, no.

They’re family. They’re. They’re.

They’re part of. Part of our cast. Yeah.

They’re our family. Oh, that means so much because, like, the way even you’re treating your animals that are part of the show. I mean, come on.

But the crazy thing is I looked at your. Your wardrobes and, you know, you’re not wearing this baggy. Yeah.

You know, there are no doves in my sleeves. And where are they coming? I know I can’t ask where they come from. Where do they Go.

It’s wild, but we. Can we talk about the. The Rubik’s Cube trick? Absolutely.

So you. Well, I don’t want to say, but you, Ryan, have mastered the Rubik’s Cube. Am I correct on that? I don’t know if I’d call myself a master.

I can solve it in about a minute and a half. I know there are people that can do it a lot faster. You said that you’ve done it and probably quicker than that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I’m not. I wouldn’t call myself a speedcuber or a master, but I have always enjoyed, you know, playing with Rubik’s Cube. I think it’s the puzzle aspect of it that gets my mind going.

So we’ve created some magic in the show around that. And as I mentioned to you at the meet and greet after the show you saw on Saturday, there are no gimmicks to the Rubik’s Cubes. On the Rubik’s Cubes, anything like that.

They’re, you know, legitimate Rubik’s Cubes that I have, you know, learned some algorithms, and I’m just kind of showcasing it comes across as magic, but it’s kind of a different talent in that respect. Well, that’s the cool thing is your performance from start to finish is not like one thing strung out over the hour and a half or whatever it was. It felt like a blink of an eye, and I didn’t want it to end.

But there, every performance was something new. It felt so dynamic, and I never knew what to expect once it started going, okay, what’s next? This is like. And what could come after this? And that is impressive.

And it kind of leads me to what is the spark? How does a trick get started from start to finish? What’s the process look like? Where are you guys brainstorming together? And then for a year or for a week, you’re working on it. You have to build some machines for this stuff. And I’m sure crazy planning.

What does that process look like? I’ll let Chris speak to the process, but before we move to that, your comment about the flow. It’s something we spend a lot of time working on, the dynamic of it, the ups and downs. The show needs color.

The show needs light moments, dark moments, different emotions, different feels, different volume levels, different, you know, speaking routines versus music, mentalism versus levitation. All these things factor into it. And we try to really take the audience on a journey without anything being too jarring.

We don’t want to take a, you know 180 and throw them for a loop, but really take them on this journey, tell some stories, but also just show some, you know, fast paced magic. And we really take a lot of pride in, you know, creating that dynamic. And there’s days we will tweak the amount of silence between two routines by half a second.

No, add a half a second more, you know, no, that’s too long. The energy died or, you know, so there’s a lot of science and thinking behind that to make sure people don’t lose the energy or they maybe they need a moment to catch their breath after someone just vanished in thin air. So, yeah, a lot of thought goes into that in terms of.

I’ll let you, Chris, speak to how we kind of compose some of our routines and illusions. Right. So we find inspiration from movies, from music, from other performers, from just general things that we enjoy that we like.

You mentioned our props and equipment. Most of that is built in Las Vegas by a professional illusion builder. He builds for David Copperfield, Chris angel, all the big names in magic.

So we really enjoy the classics of magic. So some of the magic that you see in our show now has been done for centuries. And people aren’t really doing the classics of magic anymore.

They’re doing more cutting edge grand illusions. So we really like the classics. And it could take years, it could take a few months.

All depends on what that illusion is that we’re currently working on. But I think what also makes it so unique is that as you mentioned, we are, I think like six feet away from the front row. Like, this isn’t the Vegas show in terms of being 40ft away.

You know, it is very intimate. There’s only four rows in the theater, 93 seats. So there’s really no seat that’s ever too far away from the stage.

And we are doing some big scale and, you know, some sleight of hand too, but some large scale illusions very close to the audience, which I think people are not used to seeing. And it keeps us on our toes. Like we have to be perfectionists.

You can’t let anything slip when you’re that close. Yeah, it’s clear that like perfection, I mean, that’s another word that I would, I would describe just like you were talking about a half a second change because I noticed when you hit something and you like tapped on it three times, it was right to the beat of that particular song, you know, So I knew there were cues where I saw your, a wave of a hand or something, your gestures. It was on beat so you have every second of your show programmed,
but it’s, it’s telling that you’re thinking about that rest.

Right, the, the processing of that. Okay, how long does the black go for before we pop on to the, the next phase of the show? So it’s just so well thought out. Again, I feel like I’m going to be a broken record.

But that level of, of perfectionism, in my opinion, makes you world class and masters at your craft because of every aspect of it. And the thing that you didn’t mention regarding the process of a trick from start to finish is then goes to Ryan. Okay, what’s the lighting going to look like? What’s the projection map for this? What song, what vibe are we going to capture? And so that’s part of the process too, right? Absolutely.

Sometimes we start with the song first and we go, hey, we really like the song. Let’s see, what type of an illusion can we put towards us? Sometimes the illusion comes first. We go, okay, what is the feeling? Then we can get into the song.

Ryan will get in there, he’ll work on some of the lighting. He’ll bring Ryan or myself and Kelby in there, we’ll sit down, we’ll take a look at the lighting in the scene and make little edits and changes and try to step back and look at it from an audience perspective. But this is, this takes time.

You got to get a lot of those flight hours in. So you, you put it before an audience and see what their reaction is. We sent out a post show survey after every single show goes to all of our patrons.

We get a lot of feedback from that. So those illusions, those routines that the audiences really enjoy, we keep them in those that maybe they don’t enjoy so much, we can kind of tweak and repackage and rebrand them and put them back out again. We don’t hit them all out of the park.

Show number one, you know, these are evolving over time. Yeah. How often does your show change? Show changes, not completely.

From beginning to end. Every three, four months. We’ll take a routine out, we’ll put a new one in.

And then our biggest show change happens between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. It’s our holiday spectacular. So we change up.

It shows about what, 75, 80% different. A jolly guest may or may not make an appearance on stage. I won’t say who that is.

You’ll definitely have to come back for the holidays. The last, I mean, ever since we’ve been open our holidays. But spectacular has Sold out historically.

So it’s, it’s one of the highlights of the year for us and for our audience members. Oh, yeah. I mean, going to your show is definitely a highlight of my year.

So, like, you’ve got a forever patron and fan and evangelist, so, like, hence having you guys on and, and, and I wanted to mention, you stay after your show and you take pictures and interact with the people who come to your theater and experience that. Here you are on a podcast with someone who experienced that part of, you know, the edge district with you that go, that is just yet another level of how you run your business and your operation and in your commitment to that. And I think that’s,
that’s super wonderful.

Obviously that’s intentional and I want to kind of circle back to you. Talking about the balance of all of this happening is just maybe you could walk us through a typical day of like, what’s it like to be a magician and the business aspect now versus you’re practicing versus your enjoyment with your son or your hobbies elsewhere. There’s an old saying in our industry that this is show business and business being the larger of those two words.

Right. So we spend more time working on the business and then the show. When we get to be on stage, that’s our reward at the end of the night, that’s the time when we get to be on stage and we get to have fun with the audience.

Sure. So during the day, day to day business is, you know, working with Kelby. We’re in meetings, we’re, we’re talking about our marketing and promotion.

We’re doing podcasts, news interviews, we’re ordering the liquor, the concessions. We’re in the workshop painting the props, you know, tightening the bolts and the nuts and the screws. Ryan will be working on lighting design, looking up what he’s going to do for the projection, mapping Kelby’s in the theater, sewing fishnets and ripped out seams.

So it’s just a constant process to keep the show up to the level that it is. Yeah, I think balance is a super kind word. I think we’re juggling more and it’s sometimes a challenge, you know, to keep all those balls up in the air, you know, having a family and, you know, making sure Oliver is entertained.

You know, we go to Disney a lot. We go to Busch Gardens. We like to take him on cruises.

So, like, we really live by the whole card play hard motto and want to teach him that too. You know, we put in long hours at the theater and we work very Hard at what we do. But we also like to take some time off.

And now that we own our own business and our own theater, we have the luxury of doing that. So, you know, this summer we’re going to go to Switzerland and Germany. Last year, we went to Paris and London with Oliver.

So, like, just travel is something that we’re all very passionate about. Definitely lifestyle, business. Yeah.

Well, you earn it and. Yeah. Do you.

Do you go to other magic shows? We do. We do. I think Disney is a big inspiration, you know, seeing how that machine works, from their merchandising to their production to their lighting, all of that is a big inspiration to us.

We like to get on cruise ships and watch the shows and see how all their productions run. We like to see magic shows from time to time. Before we built our theater, we toured around in an RV from the east coast, west coast, stopping at other magicians theaters, little magic theaters just like ours, and took a lot of inspiration, asked a lot of questions, got a lot of answers, and eventually found St. Petersburg and built our own theater.

Did you plan St. Petersburg? So how did you fall to St. Peter? That’s a good question. So again, we were in the rv, traveling all over. We were in Key west, looking at Key west as a possible place to put down our roots, and on our way back to Michigan, where we’re both from, came across the skyway bridge, dumped us out in St. Petersburg.

Wow, this place is great. And it kind of checked all of our boxes. One, there was no Michigan winters.

We knew that we did not want to go back to those Michigan winters. There was no competition. The closest magic show at the time was in Orlando.

So we knew that there wasn’t going to be any competition. There was nothing for families to do once the sun set on the beaches. After that, what do they do? They go back to their hotel room and sit.

They couldn’t go. You know, they can go to the bar. But we wanted some kind of entertainment for families to enjoy after the sunset.

It was LGBT friendly, someplace safe for our family to grow, definitely. So really, it checked all those boxes, and we looked at a lot of different spaces. I don’t know if you know this, but there’s not like a magic theater just sitting vacant, waiting for somebody to go in and take.

So we found this space. It was an old AAA call center. It was a clean vanilla shell, just a concrete floor.

That was it. So we went in there with Oliver’s sidewalk chalk, and we marked out where the stage was going to be, where the seats was. Going to be the lobby, all of that.

And kind of it took that vision and brought it to fruition. That’s amazing. When you walk into the Zubrick Theater, it is the brand even.

You’re immediately in a world it’s just like from outside and then you’re inside and you are in Zubrick land. The purples and the blacks, the nice leather like padded wall. There’s a lot of textures and we wanted to create an immersive environment.

And I appreciate that you noticed that, that once you walk in, you are in a whole new world. And there’s a cage in the corner with a dancing handkerchief. I was wondering if I could say I was 2 inches away not knowing how it started working.

Yes. Occasionally he does a act in the show. We call him Hank.

He wasn’t in the show that it’s all Saturday. Again, we rotate some material in and out, but he’ll do act in the show. But yeah, as you mentioned that in the lobby, even the hallway to the restrooms has, you know, interesting lighting and pictures and information about our story.

That’s one thing we learned when we first started our show. Of course, we told a little bit about ourselves, how we found St. Pete, how we met each other and teamed up. But people wanted to learn more about us and they want to hear more of our stories, which was surprising.

So we’ve added more into the show. You know, Chris does a number about his, a grandmother and we talk about, you know, some of our childhood memories and you know, from the toy we received like a Rubik’s Cube to a memory that we might have. So we try to incorporate that into even before the show.

And again, every little detail matters. The scent in the theater, the temperature, the volume level, you know, the, the warmth of the lighting pre show. So we, we do take all that into consideration and try to make a really well rounded experience.

Yeah, it’s clear that it’s all well thought out. Like your brand is on point. So you’re, you’re professionals at your, your craft, but also with the production, with the marketing, with the branding.

It’s really, really impressive. And speaking of marketing, I haven’t been there yet, but Doug Jackson just told me, have you been to the airport? And do you want to talk about what you what? I think this is brilliant marketing idea that you’ve done at the airport. And I wish I could say that it was solely ours, but it wasn’t.

So we took inspiration from a magician that both Ryan and I looked up to growing up Lance Burton. Have you Heard of Lance Burton? I have not. He performed in Las Vegas for many, many years, last at the Monte Carlo Hotel and Casino.

He has since retired, but he had the most brilliant marketing gimmick at the airport in Las Vegas. And when he closed down his show, Ryan and I reached out to him and said we loved it so much. Would you gift that idea to us? And he said, absolutely.

Take it. You can use it. So what it is is the traditional sawing a lady in half.

You know, the two boxes. You put a blade in, split her in half. So it’s just the bottom half of the box.

But we made it to look like luggage, so to speak. So it’s got a handle on the top. We have a luggage tag on there.

And you see these two feet sticking out of the box. So it’s at the baggage claim and said, many bags look alike. Make sure you check your bags.

And then it’s got our QR code and says, visit the Zubrick Magic Theater. So brilliant. It, you know, it says something about you guys that you asked permission for that, because I don’t think you, you know, you didn’t need to do that.

It’s your. Like, you’re ethical. Like, that just says something about you that is, again, illustrating of who you are, because you absolutely did not need to do that.

You know, it’s an idea in the world. But I think that’s really admirable. Yeah, it’s important to us.

Yeah, for sure. I think. I feel like the magic community might be like that.

You guys keep your secrets for the most part. I’m sure some people spill the beans and there are people who expose or whatever, but overall, I don’t. Maybe you could talk about the community of, like, being in a community like that.

It’s like you guys are in, like, you go to the wizarding world and then you pop back or. I don’t know. It is like a special.

It is a small community, and there are organizations, so there’s the International Brotherhood of Magicians, the Society of American Magicians. We belong to those organizations. Okay.

There are magic conventions, just like there are conventions for any industry. So we go to Magic Live. It’s in Las Vegas in August of every year.

And magicians from all over the world converge on. On this hotel. And there are lectures, there are magic dealers selling the latest magic wares.

There are contests, there are evening shows. And it’s a fully immersive and educational time. Can you.

Yeah, it’s a small community. And the community of magicians that are now opening Small magic theaters is growing dramatically as well. Cool.

And we are by no means the first people to do it. We had, you know, amazing people that we, you know, checked in with and offered us advice as we were doing it, and we’ll forever be thankful for them. But now people are coming to us saying, you know, hey, how did you guys do this? Or, what did you use for that? And it’s kind of become a fun second job, you know, kind of consulting for these other magicians and entrepreneurs that are opening up little theaters.

You know, one just opened in Reno last week. We kind of consulted with them and helped them open up their theater. One’s opening at Niagara Falls.

So we enjoy helping others and kind of, you know, giving that knowledge forward, and it’s a great additional revenue stream as well. Sure. I was about to say that you’re not doing that for free, but also, it is like.

Like a kindness because you’re helping your competition in a way, but they’re far away. Yeah. As long as you’re not opening a Theater in St. Pete, we will definitely be here to help.

That’s huge. I mean, that. I can’t imagine.

How fun is it a week long, that conference? Four days. Four days. You guys have, like, a ball.

It’s. It is boring till night. Yeah.

We just got back a few months ago from the Mystify Magic Festival in Las Vegas, which was the first of its kind. It was very femme forward because there’s not a lot of ladies in magic. Also very LGBT friendly, and that was really fun and new and innovative.

So Leah Orleans put that on. Did a fantastic job, and I enjoyed that. Are there some magicians you’ve met that blow your mind that are like, how are they doing that? Are you really good at spotting the tricks at this point? There’s definitely some magic that definitely gets us and, you know, keeps our wheels turning.

I think a lot of the principles of magic will recognize or. Oh, they put a twist on that. That’s clever.

You know, I enjoy going to shows and seeing the technical aspects of it. You know, from the stage to the lighting and all that technology is advancing so quickly that I try to keep up with it and put a tiny portion of it. Eight or ten principles of magic.

So there’s appearance, vanish, levitation, penetration, all of these different principles, and then it’s about how you package those up. So let’s talk about appearance. You can make a pencil appear.

You can make a helicopter appear. You can make a person appear. So it’s as a musician, you know, there are certain amounts of notes, but it’s how you arrange those notes that makes the song sound different.

Same thing applies to magic. There’s a certain number of notes or principles in magic, but it’s how you rearrange those to create or put together that act that makes it look different. Yeah.

And even the rests, like in music, like the black or the causes moment of darkness or the moment of one spotlight is usually more powerful than the most advanced lighting flash and trash cues there are in the show. So. Totally.

Yeah. Focus. All your focus is on that one spotlight or whatever that is.

Yeah. And then the music to go along with that to accompany it. That’s what I noticed is even the sound, because I had talked to Kelpie beforehand, and then he told.

He dropped that bomb, in my opinion, on that. Ryan. Oh, yeah, he does that too.

I was like, are you kidding me right now? And so throughout, for me, like, when my wife and I go to a concert, she has to, like, nudge me because I’m just sitting there, like, just studying. And since it’s a small theater, I had to keep checking myself because, you know, you were making eye contact with the audience quite well. And I feel like sometimes you look over at me, and I didn’t want to not be smiling.

And I realized I was just in that mode of, like, awe. And I’m probably. I would imagine you’re maybe used to that, where people are.

Are having a great time, but they’re in shock. And. And it kind of leads me to a question of when you’re.

When you were overseas compared to America, what are the differences that you experienced over there? Great question. Yeah, very good question. Vastly different.

So performing for 13 years overseas, our audiences were primarily Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Chinese. Chinese, okay. So a few sprinkling of Americans if they were on vacation or at the military bases.

Japanese people love magic, and I feel like they enjoy it through the eyes of like a child. It’s just. Just really, everything is so magical.

And they’re so, so amazed at the production. And the Korean audiences are more vocal in the way that they express their enjoyment. Where the Japanese are very quiet and polite when they applaud, but the Koreans are a little bit more loud.

But we definitely got used to that performing overseas for so long. So coming back to America, we also didn’t do a whole lot of speaking in the show because we had so many different languages in the audience. So we would learn a little few lines.

And Chris can speak Japanese, but not fluming. Put me on the spot. Yeah.

We know enough to get by, you know, through our show. But again, it depended on who was on stage, you know, because, again, there was four or five languages out there, but we didn’t do a lot of speaking. But coming back here to the States, you know, we knew we had to do a lot more speaking, you know, for our audience.

So it was a big learning curve for us. We had definitely kind of gotten out of practice for 13 years of doing that. Magic transcends any language barriers, though.

It’s a very visual art. And looking at our illusions and our props and the tricks, these are all just vehicles for really what the magic truly is. And the magic truly is coming together as a family, putting down your cell phone, getting off social media and experiencing live entertainment as a family, and experiencing that childlike wonder again.

That’s really what the magic is. That’s really what our end goal is. It’s amazing.

We’ll have people come up to us after the show and share with us stories of what brought them to the theater. And it’s not always because I just want to see a magic trick or I want to be fooled or I want to try to figure out how that’s done. But they wanted to experience this with their kids, with their grandkids.

We’ve had people that just became recent cancer survivors, and they just got out of the hospital, and they wanted to come and just have wonder. Yeah. Forget about their worries.

A family member might have been diagnosed with something. And we just wanted to forget about that for, you know, 75 minutes and laugh and have fun. Yeah.

We had a woman come, and her husband just passed away, and she wanted to come and just escape reality for a moment and just experience magic and wonder. We’ve. After the hurricanes, I can’t tell you how many families showed up just to get out of the house, get out of the FEMA hotel and just have fun and laugh.

Our show’s very funny. It is. And so it just makes people just.

Just relax, let go and experience magic and laughter. Yeah. That’s the beauty of magic.

But like show business and music is, it’s in art. And in my opinion, people. It’s odd because I’ve been in the art and creative realm since 2008, professionally.

In my whole career until near this point, I’ve been struggling to get the perceived value of what this is in the world to equal what sustains me and my family in our bank account. It’s wild because you would ask somebody, look, what if there was no magic, art, or film or music? How would your life be? Let’s think about that for a moment. Are you cool with that? Does that sound fun? Then you absolutely should value what’s going on in that.

It’s important for all these industries to work in tandem together to support one another. And art is integrated into everything. Music is playing at bars and that’s a business, you know, but someone wrote that music.

You know, it’s, it’s, it’s wild that, that people can. Maybe I’m ranting a little now, but ultimately that escape I think is maybe more needed and necessary than ever, especially in this area. We just got hit with hurricanes and I know you guys were quite affected by that and maybe we can dive into that.

Although I don’t want to give you PTSD or anything like that because obviously it’s. But you have come out on top of out whatever happened because I don’t know the exact details. You just know you were hit.

Sure, yeah. You, you. I walked in there, there’s no sign of any, anything anymore.

You guys just obviously crushed right through that. Yeah, easier said than. So it was, it was our house that we lost during hurricane Milton.

So Helene came first. We were fine, no problem at all. Now we’re in a non flood zone.

Our neighbors have lived there for, for 40 years. Said, you don’t have to worry about getting out of here. You’re going to be fine.

Our houses are going to be fine. Well, Milton came and we got 22 inches of fresh water, rainwater in our, in our home. So everything was destroyed.

We got back the day after Milton and opened up our door and just started hauling everything out, furniture, flooring, walls, you name it. The hardest part was Oliver, our son’s room. You know, going in there with him and having to see us throw all of his toys to the curb.

But he’s resilient. He lost his school during Helene. So at school they had a group that would get together once a week, all the kids that had lost their home and they would get together and have therapy and talk and color and it was, it was a great, great organization that they had set up for that.

But we have since bounced back. Thankfully the theater sustained no damage aside from power outage. So we were living on our stage for about a week until we got our FEMA hotel.

So we had blow up air mattresses in the theater and we lived there for a week. And I’m thankful for that. I’m thankful that our business didn’t get destroyed.

Yeah, a lot of our equipment was stored at the house. We did lose quite a bit of equipment, some stock as well. But the community has come out and supported us tremendously to make sure that we got back up on our feet.

And we were able to open our doors after a couple of weeks off and just bring that magic and that wonder to our community, which needed it desperately. Wow. Number one, I think your son having to go through that, he’s going to be extra resilient.

Also being reminded that those things are replaceable. Maybe some things are irreplaceable, but it’s still a thing. But you guys as a family are still okay.

And then second, is that as silver lining is, it’s neat that you kind of slept on the stage. Like, how. In a way, how special is it that you had that space that you’re sleeping there on stage when you normally perform and that dynamic of air contrast.

Yeah, right. And I don’t know, it’s just impressive. But I’m glad that you guys made it out on top.

You’re clearly bounced back and it is a testament to the community. And. And like I had mentioned before we started recording, I’ve been telling everybody about it to go and I’m going to continue to do that.

Thank you. Because you absolutely deserve to have that place packed, by the way, the. The whole theater was packed on Saturday.

Are you guys normally pretty. Pretty well full. So it is seasonal.

Our busiest time of the year is June, July, August, so summertime. Okay. And then November, December and January for our holiday spectacular.

It ebbs and flows depending on when the snowbirds are in town or if, like right now, school’s just about to get out. So a lot of people aren’t going to the theater because they’re doing graduation parties and planning for their summer. We have Mother’s Day weekend coming up, so that’ll be busy.

Obviously, Father’s Day weekend will be busy as well. And then we take a little break off, like Ryan said, when we go to Switzerland and Germany and then we come back and we just hit it hard. Maybe we can get Kelby to jump in here on the podcast, talk a little bit about the tickets and our different seating arrangements as well at the theater artiers.

That would be wonderful. Yeah. Yeah, hop on there.

So, Kelby, your position is officially at the theater manager. Theater manager. And.

And I’ll just say really quick before you speak, your communication from start to finish regarding this podcast and helping out your. The personalization of your care about making sure that had all the information that I got my tickets. Fine.

That, yeah, you can book through me or go online, it’s okay. Whatever your preference is. Again, that is a step above a normal experience.

That’s an experience that’s not just buying tickets. Tickets. And so I just wanted to point that out.

So, Kelby, the floor is yours. Thank you. So as far as purchasing tickets, we have three different seating sections.

We have the VIP seating section which is going to be the premier front row seating closest to the center. Like I said on the front row there. Then you have the standard seating.

We do have that on all four rows. As we mentioned, there’s four rows in our theater. So on the first, second, third and fourth rows, that’s going to be the seating closest or excuse me, furthest away from the center.

And then the preferred seating would be the center most seating on the second, third and fourth rows right behind the VIP section. Okay, that makes sense. And by the way, every seat in the house is a solid seat.

That’s the cool thing about what you’ve done with the design of that. So where would people purchase a ticket so they can go to zubertmagic.com to purchase the tickets if they’re interested Tickets if you want to make it a little bit easier and then. Or just give us a call and phone number is 866-982-7425 and extension three will get you straight to me at the box office.

Look at that. Yeah, straight to you. I mean, how cool is that? That’ll also be in the show notes, I’ll make sure of that.

But we’ll, we’ll share this everywhere to make sure that people see that because it is quite an experience. But Kelby, I think it goes without saying that you know, for, for like me and my team and you know, I’m very front facing with my clients and not here on this podcast. But Jordan, working the sound here is equally as important.

Same with the rest of my team who develops our websites, who does the designs. It’s a team effort and it’s clear that you guys have this rhythm that’s, that’s just inspiring. So for me at the show, even speaking to you and meeting you and texting with you, for me that part of the experience is also inspiring because I understand the whole of it.

Well, I’m trying to understand it and that you’re certainly helping me. But you know that that all adds up to who you are as a brand and why people would continue to engage with you or be an evangelist about. You gotta see these guys every, it’s everything.

So I mean, hats off to You. Thank you on that. Yeah.

And just to. I say this to patrons all the time, but I actually started as a patron myself. I was literally on the front row vip.

My partner and I were just looking for an apartment here in St. Pete and came and saw the show. And I’d worked for a magician in the past, and I’ve always been obsessed with it. Art in general, theater in general.

Saw the attention to detail they had, and I was like, wow, this is incredible. Left review, and they had just lost their stage manager. So a few months later, I hopped in as just front of house and then eventually worked my way up to theater manager.

How cool is that? I mean, that in itself is like a dream story. Now you’re. You’re part of the magic.

It really was magical. Yeah. Yeah.

That’s a great word. Magic. Yeah.

Well, thanks for hopping on. Thank you. I appreciate you letting us know about that.

And now we get to know a little bit more about your team. We do get a lot of repeat visitors, and Kelby, he’ll recognize them as soon as they enter the door. Just this last weekend, I’m like, what’s this on the shelf? He’s like, oh, those are cookies that Linda brought me.

She’s been here six times now. So he keeps amazing track of all of our repeat patrons and contacts, some of them personally, whenever they need tickets. And that’s very important to us.

We want that connection. We want that feel of family. You know, we are the Zubrick Magic Theater family, and we, our patrons are our family as well.

And we want everybody to come and experience it. If they’re not a VIP patron, everybody feels like a VIP patron. Yeah.

Yeah. You give that treatment. I did feel that it’s not just a business or an experience.

It’s this whole experience. Family is a great word for it. It’s holistic.

And I wanted to point out, before we get to a fun segment here next, talking about purpose and your mission and, like, kind of what you had just said. But one thing that I bookmarked in my mind is after the show, when you’re. You’re closing things out, which is like, how do you tie a bow on a.

You know, a performance like that? And as a. As a performer myself in music, it’s like, what do we close with? With. How do you say bye? You know, how do you leave them? And I made a note that I thought it was awesome, that the last words out of your mouth are, you know, make sure to be kind to one another.

Am I correct on that? Those Were your last words, if you can be anything, be kind. Yeah. We finish our show, every show with that statement.

Yeah. For me, that gave me shivers through because I was just like, heck, yeah. Like, there they are.

You know that, like, it tied a bow. All my expectations, my experience, having met you guys before is just like, there you are. And.

And for me, I don’t know, the world needs that. And it’s interesting because that’s not like a hard thing to say or do or do exactly. But yet somehow it seems to be that way.

And just reminding people, like, I’ll close this show. And I’ve started to close that show saying that. And I did that before seeing your show.

And that’s why it’s interesting that that happened because I started to incorporate that in this show. And I just don’t know. I think more people need to hear that and obviously more people need to embrace it and do that.

One of the things when we set out to build this theater is we wanted to be completely authentic and transparent. You saw the show, you know about our family, you know about how our magical family began and what our story is. So we tell the audience the story of our family.

And when we decided to expand our family and have Oliver, we knew at that moment too, that we wanted to live authentically and transparently so that he could see that his daddy and papa were just being themselves. So I would be lying if I sat here and told you that we did not receive hate mail from patrons that have come to the show and did not appreciate us telling our story or being open on and authentic. So from show number one, we’ve always finished the show with, if you can be anything, be
kind.

And we just hope that that will eventually pass and, and move on to others and. And everybody will eventually be kind to each other. Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s the way to move the needle forward is to exemplify it and to say it and to.

To announce it, to proclaim it and. All right, don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back after this quick break.

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Now back to the conversation. How do you deal with the people who. Who, you know, I. I imagine that you get an overwhelming positivity, but of course, there are bad apples or people who are just mistaken or have always grown up particular way thinking one thing.

Sure, they haven’t really been able to get out of their bubble. What’s your. What’s your ways of kind of getting past that? Oh, that’s.

That’s a tough one. You know, you have to have a thick skin in entertainment, regardless, are not trying to change anyone’s views or even educate, but just be visible and just be ourselves. So if you don’t understand something or agree with it, like, that might be okay.

But again, the amount of positive encounters that have happened are far larger. And just at meet and greet, you know, there’ll be a young queer person that kind of stumbles up, you know, in front of their parents, and they say, you know, they don’t know anything yet, but, like, thank you so much for just letting them see that, you know, so there’s a lot of situations like that that really warm up. I can remember a time when somebody wrote in a post survey that they brought their conservative
religious parents to the show, and they had said very negative things about the LGBT community in the past.

But after they saw our show and saw that we were a successful and thriving and normal family and had a normal, well, somewhat normal career. We’re magicians, but. But it changed their viewpoint.

And if we can just do that for one family, one person, then I think we’ve done our job. Yeah. So how do we deal with the negative? We take it with a grain of salt.

What can you do? People are going to be people. It stings for a moment, but we move on and we just keep forging ahead, doing what we do, and that’s all we can do. I think doing what you do is the.

The. The combat is just doing being, living authentically, reminding people to be kind and being kind, like, living that. That life.

I will say before we jump, while being careful, a person that I brought, right, I only brought a couple people. One of them is from a country and in town who cannot be out. And so he was really Inspired by seeing you guys.

And afterwards, he’s. He told me, I want to live that dream. And I like, sorry, but, you know, for me to, like, hear him say that and be inspired by you guys, it’s just like, you know, again, there’s, like, many levels to what you guys are doing and how you’ve affected me as well as him.

And, you know, on top of the magic, like, that alone was so powerful, and, you know, who knows how much that changed his life Saturday. Yeah. You know, and so I wanted before, like, I thank you for your time, but that particularly.

Thank you. You’re most welcome. But that’s.

That’s what it’s about again, it’s not about making the dove appear. It’s not about cutting the lady in half. It’s about something much more deeper and more meaningful.

There is to us. Yeah, for sure. I think that goes with, like, when people do something that’s just true and something that they absolutely love, and you are who you are, that stuff shines through and is just so powerful.

And so I just. I’m sure you’re reminded of it consistently, but just as another reminder, what you’re doing is very powerful, and just please don’t stop. All right, with that, we have reached a special segment of the podcast called the Rapid Fire.

Oh, no. Okay. Yeah.

All right. So we got all the gestures going, hand movements to this section and everything. I wish, like, doves just.

I was trying to throw you guys, but there’s no way I can trick you guys. So ultimately, I ask similar questions to all of our guests that are on the podcast every time to see the similarities and the differences. And ultimately, the.

The goal of Rapid Fire is to. To keep your answer short. However, if you want to expand on them, that’s cool.

You just lose points. Okay, so we’re going to start, and we’ll go just so that everybody knows. We’ll go Chris and then Ryan, just so that the order is that.

Or do you want to go Ryan? Chris? No, no, we’ll keep it. Chris. Chris and Ryan.

All right, I didn’t study for this, so let’s go. No, that’s not the point. All right, all right, here we are.

Number one, what is your biggest source of inspiration? My husband. Oh, boy. Well, how do you follow? I shouldn’t even answer after that one.

I would say music. Awesome. In general.

We’re going to get to that here in a moment because I have a feeling we’re aligned on that. Wow, you guys are doing great so far. Do you have a Favorite book.

Ooh. How often do we read nowadays? I can tell you all of Oliver’s books that we read together, but I would say Maximum Entertainment by Ken Weber. It is.

It is a deep dive into magic theory staging. I guess it could apply to pretty much any performing arts comedians, speakers, but I remember, like, going through and highlighting things and just trying to apply them, you know, in our performances nightly. And, like, it changed.

He. He has distilled it down to. There’s.

There’s. He’s trimmed all the fat off of this. This is just what you need to know now and in performing.

And I. I could go back and read that book today or three years from now, and it would still apply and still find it useful. So. Yeah.

Okay. So he took your book. Yes.

Do you have another one, or would you just concur? I would concur with that one. Okay, so good stuff with that one. Yeah.

And would it. You. I think you were maybe alluding to it, that that would maybe be good for other people outside the industry in performing arts.

Okay. Any performer, musician, actor, comedian. Sweet.

Awesome. Cool. Maximum entertainment.

Sweet. All right, this might be a hard one for you guys. And this.

I haven’t asked any other guests, but I gotta ask you, what’s your favorite trick or yours or someone else’s? What’s your, like, favorite magic trick? It’s like asking who your favorite child is. I would say the. The multiplying bottles that I do in the show because it’s a tribute to my grandmother.

She passed at 100 years old, and her and I enjoyed drinking wine and just chatting. So in the show, as you saw, there was a video of my grandmother and her cheersing. That was so cool.

So we, you know, I knew that grandma wasn’t going to live forever, and so I asked Grandma if she would mind if I take a video of her cheer sing so that one day I could put this into the show as a tribute to her. So she did. And, yeah, it’s an audience favorite.

It’s a classic of magic. It’s challenging to do, so it keeps me on my toes and. But it’s also not a somber piece like we’ve all seen magicians do.

Like, you know, I miss you, Grandpa. Like, you know, there’s comedy in it and it’s lighthearted. And, you know, even after she passed, your family was like, always keep that in a show and always keep it fun because that’s what Grandma would’ve wanted.

So it’s not one of those typical, like, I miss you so much. But grandma was able to come to the show twice here in St. Pete and see that, and it was so much fun to do that routine and then just tell the audience and my grandmother’s here tonight. And she would stand up and, yeah, she was so fun and always so funny.

So if it was a somber routine, it wouldn’t fit her. And she loved that routine and wanted to keep it in the show all the time. So I would say that would be my favorite.

I would say my dove act. It’s just something I’ve been working on since I, you know, got my first doves at, oh, gosh, I don’t know, nine or 10 years old and just have been practicing it. I’ve competed with that act when I was younger in competitions.

Like I said, we did it continuously overseas, and it just kind of always grows and evolves. And it keeps me on my toes, too, because they’re live animals, so it’s fun. That’s a wild thing.

Like, almost literally, like, the fact that you are somehow controlling and multiplying. And I’m not going to say too much more, but, like, that’s incredible. You know, the manipulation of a being and then more and where those come from.

I just don’t get it. And that the bottles. Anyways, I’m not going to say much.

I was just racking my brain. Like, sometimes I’m going to sleep. I’m, like, thinking about the bottle one.

I’m just like, how. How you doing? How do you do it? Magic? Do you both know. Obviously, you both know everything about the tricks, but is there a trick? And this isn’t part of the rapid fire.

Do you know a trick that he doesn’t? And vice versa. Is there anything that you keep secret? We know how everything works, but there’s definitely many routines that we can’t do of each other’s. Okay, I can’t solve a Rubik’s Cube.

Yes. Okay. And I can’t multiply bottles, but I can doves.

So when we were overseas, you know, the show never stopped. So we had one magician versions of the show. And I know this is rapid fire.

I’ll try to make this fast. But there was a show, speaking of unexpected things happening, where something happened backstage. Chris ripped his eyelid open.

This was after the first number, and the production manager rushed into the ER and kind of just told me in passing, and the show never stopped. We kept going, and it just flipped into the one magician version of the show. Whoa.

And so I went out there on stage and told. I think we had like 8D that were on stage in the middle of a routine as this was all going down. And I’m like, only me the rest of the show.

One magician show. And it just never stopped. And then we had two shows that night, and the whole second one, you know, you were still there.

And I did the second one alone. So, yeah, we kind of. Again, I mean, that was unfortunate.

I was like, I don’t know what exactly is happening. There’s blood rushing down his face. But, you know, I’m trusting our team that he’ll be fine.

And the show just doesn’t stop and it must go on. And that happens here as well. You know, something could go wrong during the show, and you got to keep moving.

Yeah. But there are routines we would swap in for one another if we had to do a one magician show. So instead of Dove act, he would do something else in that spot and vice versa.

So we don’t really know all of each other’s routines, but we know how it works. Yeah. Right.

That’s special. That’s cool. I was going to ask you, but I want to be conscious of your time on Mishaps and things like that.

When I saw Penn and Teller, I’ve only seen them once, but, like, halfway through, it was just like. And the. The entire power in the whole building shut down.

And I don’t know if it was part of their act, but they. I don’t think so. But they immediately boom, candles on stage, hopped into no power tricks.

And I was like, whoa. And it was so good, it was so well done, that I thought, oh, is this part of the show? We were, like, questioning, like, is this just a interesting thing? So anyways, I just want to mention that that was kind of cool. Yeah.

When you do so many shows, you’re bound to have something. Experience everything. And I’m sure we all could write a book.

You could probably write a book about things that have happened, you know, in productions. And, you know, we’ve had. Oh, gosh, we’ve had sprinklers go off.

We’ve had just recently Kelby. It was a couple weeks ago. Right.

The. Somebody had vaped. Somebody blew vape into a smoke detector in the restroom, so set off the smoke alarms.

Yeah. We had to evacuate. Things happen.

You move on. You just move on. Vape for an hour or whatever.

Yes. Okay. Wow.

Well, I’m glad we took that detour. Okay. All right.

But back on. I’ll. I’ll take that.

Points off for me. Okay. All right.

Just a couple more. You can listen to one musical artist for the rest of your life or one album. What is it? And I know, I know this is so on the nose, but I’d say Lady Gaga.

I was gonna say Lady Gaga. I had to go first. Lady Gaga first.

Now you can’t say. We saw her piano and jazz concert in Las Veg and it was life changing. Just Lady Gaga, the amount of talent.

Yeah, cool. Phenomenal. Okay, so you both Lady Gaga, that piano and jazz.

So it was like a kind of a subdued. It was her more classic music. It wasn’t pop.

It was all the old stuff. It was so cool. And some of it was remixes of her songs, but done on the piano.

And there’s a full orchestra there, which also gets my rocks off. Like music and like strings and. Anyway, that’s too much information.

But yeah, phenomenal. That’s what. You know, we were talking earlier about, you know, where we go and experiences.

We have that influence. And one of my favorite things is going to Disney. And they’re so good at, like, if you walk into the Harry Potter world, like, you will hear the strings coming from where they should be coming from in the orchestra.

Like, the sound is so well balanced and separated that it was. It’s, you know, normal people don’t pick up on that at all. But those are things that I’ll pick out and be like, oh, my God, that’s amazing, because that’s where the drums should be.

And like, sure, it’s interesting when, you know, production, like, for me as a designer, I do logos or just design in general, or knowing the production pipeline of film and documentaries and podcasts, like, the magic is still there. But when I’m in enjoying a show or something, kind of like looking at it from a different perspective and it sounds like you guys are doing that in the same. In the same boat.

Which is nice that we’re not alone, but I think that makes it more special. Absolutely. You can appreciate it at another level.

Not to say that people who don’t know that don’t appreciate it. It’s just like there’s a complexity to it that you can appreciate the craft. All right, last one.

You guys are doing great. How do you define success? Gosh, Dramatic boss. How do I define success? I knew from a very young age that I did not want to be a famous magician or the wealthiest magician.

I just wanted to be able to perform my craft, put food on a table for my family and entertain audiences. So people come up to us all the time and say, why St. Pete? You could Perform anywhere in the world, in any size theater. Why are you in a 93 seat theater in St. Petersburg, Florida? I just love it here.

I love St. Pete, I love my community here and I’m able to raise our family here. So to me, that success, I have reached that success. If I was to pass tomorrow, I’d be completely happy.

Yeah, I mean, piggybacking on that. The first word that came to mind was just happiness. You know, we’re happy doing the show.

We’re happy, you know, with our family life and the travel that we’re allowed to do and running this business. We’re happy with the team that we surround ourselves with. We’re happy with the community as you mentioned.

You know, we’ve never lived somewhere and felt this sense of community so quickly and so strongly. So I think just happiness again. I don’t care to be famous.

I don’t care if people know my name. I don’t care if I make money. I mean, we gotta make some money.

I don’t mean to. I don’t want to be rich. But yeah, just being happy I think is the most important thing.

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more with both of you. And it seems like I’m glad that you admitted you have achieved success. That’s there’s no doubt about it.

And so I’m very happy for you because also how I know for a fact personally that you’re inspiring other people to achieve success and go for their dreams and things like that. So it’s really important. And again, like I said, powerful on what you’re doing.

You both won rapid fire. So you get T shirts to go. Thank you.

So congratulations. Just in closing, a couple things. Number one, vision for the theater and Zubrick.

Any new shows, expansions, surprises coming down the line? Good question. Obviously we’d like to expand the theater one because if you were to go backstage, you would see how little space we have back there. So eventually I would like to expand.

We’ve got I don’t know how many more years, four or five more years on our lease where we’re in our current space. Okay. So, you know, we may stay there, we may able to expand and St. Petersburg is gentrifying daily.

It’s just booming, so who knows where we’ll be. But we’d love to stay here in St. Pete. As far as show changes go, we’re working on new illusions all the time.

I just finished refurbing an old piece that I hope will go into the show in the next couple of months and then of course we have our holiday spectacular which starts again Thanksgiving until New Year’s Day. It’s our biggest show change. It’s, it’s a whole lot of fun.

Fun. Very festive. Awesome.

Did he say it all? He did. Okay. Good job, Chris.

Thank you. Bonus points. You both have the vision that’s clear to wrap up before I let you again remind.

Yeah, I’m waiting for someone else to appear. Here’s our son. Told you he’s coming.

What advice would you give to a magician or anybody? What. What is your biggest piece of advice? Young or old, magician or not? What. What’s something that’s resonated with you that you’d like to leave people with? My two initial thoughts are like, just hurry up and fail.

You’re gonna have failures. Like just, you know, learn from them and turn them into positives. And then my other initial reaction was just take risks, which I don’t do.

And that’s why we’re the perfect yin and yang, because he’s a huge risk taker. And I, if I had never met him, I would not have opened a magic theater and taking that risk. And we still, as we were building it out, we’re like, are people going to buy tickets? Are we going to make any money? Are we going to lose a ton of money? Is this going to be remotely successful? So I think just taking those risks, we’ve been able to experience the amount of success that we have and the amount of happiness that
we have.

So I think looking back in hindsight, that’s super important. Again, he’s a risk taker. I’m super reserved with all that.

We’re the perfect yin and yang. He’s very extroverted. I’m very introverted.

He’s a spender, I’m a saver. So we balance each other out in that respect. Oh, that’s great.

I resonate with that because that’s. It sounds like you’re describing me and my wife as well. For magicians, young magicians that are just getting started, I would say try to stay off the Internet because the best kept magic secrets are in books.

What is a book? Nobody reads books these days. That’s why when you ask what’s my favorite book? There are are tricks and illusions and theories inside of magic books inside of libraries that have been untouched for so long that you could open up a book and learn a new trick or build a new trick from that book and present it to somebody and blow their minds. And last bit would be just whatever it is that you do just raise it up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes.

That’s what we did. You know, we just, we tried this. We try a routine.

We, we raised up the flagpole and see what the reaction is. Well, salute to you. Thank you.

It worked and I’m glad that you took the risk. And yeah, it’s taking the risk. You don’t know until you try.

In something like this, there’s no guarantee. But I think the guarantee as well as you could do is doing a phenomenal job in pouring your love into every piece of it. And that’s clear that you guys are doing that.

So with that said, how can people experience that? I know Kelby filled us in, but if you could just remind us how do people connect with you and buy tickets? Sure. You can connect on all of our social media platforms at zubrickmagic Z U B R I C K M A G I c and visit zubrickmagic.com it’s got our most up to date performance schedule. You can purchase tickets, read our blog, read more about us and if you do come to the show, stick around after the show and say hello and let us know that you heard
about us here on this podcast.

Absolutely. Yeah, definitely stick around. It’s been a pleasure knowing you and getting to know you better and I look forward to what’s ahead and seeing more shows and bringing more people to shows.

Your time here is incredibly important and powerful and I just, I really appreciate you both you three and, and what you’re doing and thank you for the inspiration. So really quick, in closing, if this conversation casts a little spell on you, please make sure to subscribe. I’m trying to say that more so that people can not miss an episode.

And also if something resonated today, which I would imagine many things did, share it. Please send it to a friend, post it on your story, or drop us a message. We love hearing how a conversation like this has inspired you in some way.

And if you’ve got a story of your own or someone you know whose journey deserves a spotlight, please reach out. This show is all about community, creativity and real, meaningful conversations. So until next time, stay curious, embrace the magic, and please don’t forget to stay kind of Sam.

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