What corporate magic costs, and what you are paying for

Field Notes · July 2026 · Corporate

It is usually the second email. The first asks whether I am free on the fourteenth. The second asks what this costs, and it deserves a straight answer.

So, a straight answer.

The short version

Cocktail-hour close-up work for a smaller gathering starts around $3,500. A featured after-dinner show for a bigger room usually runs $5,500 to $8,500. A full evening written from scratch around your company, or a December date, runs $8,500 to $12,000 and up. If your budget sits under those numbers, I’d rather say so early and point you somewhere good.

What moves the number

Three things, mostly. The size of the room, because a hundred and fifty people experience close-up magic differently than forty. The format, because roving cocktail-hour work and a seated after-dinner show are different jobs. And the writing time. Anything built around your company and the people in it takes weeks, not days.

December is its own market. Every company in Boston wants the same six Thursday and Friday nights, and I can only be in one room at a time. If your party lands in that window, booking by early fall is the difference between choosing your entertainment and taking what is left.

What you are actually paying for

Not forty-five minutes of tricks. You can book that for less, and for some rooms it is the right buy. The fee covers the weeks before the night: the writing, the rehearsal, the site visit, the backup plans. Before I walk into your room I have read about your company, asked what this event is supposed to do, and built material that belongs to you. The show that results can mention your product without embarrassing anyone, which is rarer than it sounds.

It also covers the unglamorous things your finance team will ask about. Five million in liability coverage, a signed contract, a W-9 on request, an invoice that doesn’t need chasing.

The show is the last hour of a job that starts a month earlier.

Twenty-two years of doing this full time, and the events I remember going wrong were never the expensive ones. They were the ones where the entertainment was an afterthought.

If the budget is genuinely small

Then spend it well. A strong strolling performer during cocktails does more for a small budget than a stretched-thin stage show, and there are good ones in Boston at a range of prices. Whoever you hire, ask three things: whether they carry insurance, whether they use a contract, and what questions they ask you. The last one tells you the most. Someone who asks nothing about your room is planning to give you the same night they gave the last room.

— E. N.