When I get back, I will write the corollary post in which effective magic also means saying no a lot because good magic requires good management.

Get back from where?

Here. Torino. Turin. Italy’s fourth largest city. Home of shrouds and global sporting events.

It takes a lot to get me excited about business travel because it is not a new thing for me. But there is something about saying “I’m going to Italy on business” that really rings my sad little colonial bell.

In my defense, my imminent trip can be considered an unexpected -yet still enchanted for- positive magical outcome.

This particular positive magical outcome may not have happened if I didn’t repeatedly say “yes” to a whole bunch of seemingly random things. When I say “seemingly random” I am confident you know what I mean. The kind of events that make muggles go “Huh, that’s funny.”

And I am going to use a snow metaphor because Turin is in Piedmont which originally meant “at the foot of the mountains”.

1) Smell the weather

As part of my most recent sigil shoal, I had enchanted for more face to face client contact because I am much better at closing partnerships in person than over the phone or via email.

The majority of my major clients have offices in London so you would expect the results to manifest in a few chance meetings, maybe some extra business lunches, and so on.

Then I am unexpectedly offered lead on an event I know nothing about next year. (“Huh, that’s funny.”) I am talking properly out-of-the-blue stuff.

Here’s a crucial magical tip: If you are going to perform successful enchantments then you have to be able to tell the difference between a ‘result of significance’ and ‘everyday randomness’.

Let’s call this “smelling the weather.” As in… Snow’s coming in.

2) Learn from the snowball

When the results of significance start to land you have to go with them. This is the part where you say yes a lot.

• Would you like to take lead on this large award show next year? Yes.
• Do you think you can get around to see all our commercial partners by the end of the year? Yes.
• Does that mean you can make it to this conference in Turin on the weekend? Yes… Sorry, where?

In my case, this presented all kinds of complications. The event is only a couple of days away, the hotel at the venue is completely booked, tickets for the event closed months ago.

But I was going to roll with the snowball until it turned into something bigger.

3) Don’t outrun the avalanche

Then the calls came in. I know the guy running the PR for the event.

He asks if I want a press pass. I really shouldn’t have one because I’m not there in a journalistic capacity this time and there’s a risk of… Nah. I say yes. Now I get entry and a list of everyone I need to talk to.

A friend who recommends where to stay and it turns out to be just down the road from the biggest Egyptian antiquities collection outside of Cairo.

The only available flight is so early I get half a day to be the world’s biggest magic nerd in said museum without impacting my work commitments.

Snowball Magic

It seems like most of the time, magical results manifest as a string of interconnected coincidental results. The real secret is working out when the first little nudges start to take effect. And then running with them. Don’t overthink it. Thinking belongs in the planning phase, not in the implementation phase.

And like a snowball picking up extra mass on the way down the mountain, you can use the additional outcomes that clump to it as yardsticks.

I enchanted for a few extra face to face meetings. Now I’m going to get around a hundred of them -all wanting to talk to me- in the home of solid chocolate and just down the road from a museum I have wanted to see since I was thirteen. All through judicious use of the word “yes” (plus sigils).

I feel a bit Oprah about it. But if I were Oprah I’d take you all with me. Or at the very least get you all a shroud.