by Tim Talevich

Member: Alan Kratish / Location: Boynton Beach, Florida / Company: South Florida Magic School

Founded in 2015 by Alan Kratish. Mission: to build kids' character, confidence and communication skills through teaching them the art of magic.

What happened: The school started with just three students using a rented room in the back of a local restaurant. It struggled with growing pains and with minimal funds; administrators tried different venues to attract more students, with some success. Then COVID hit.

The response: To grow, staff utilized email, social media and community bulletin boards, and also leaned heavily on public relations, exhibiting at community events and performing magic shows for the target demographic.

When COVID hit, school staff completed a self-taught crash course in Zoom and quickly pivoted to teaching virtual classes. A room in Kratish's home was converted into a makeshift TV studio and teachers jumped in head-first, teaching magic to dozens of South Florida kids quarantined at home.

In their words: In our startup phase, through a combination of perseverance and relentless guerrilla marketing, such as distributing magic-themed activity pages to local children's dental offices, our Saturday morning classes, now held at our local community center, rose from the ashes, to where they sell out months in advance.

With COVID, without the need for parents to drive their kids to a physical location, we were able to draw from an even wider geographic area. The feedback from parents was tremendous, with many expressing their gratitude for rescuing their kids from an overwhelmingly difficult time.

The silver lining for us is that we survived and were able to reach an even larger market.—Alan Kratish, Chief Wizard