From Rabbit to Cheetahs: Siegfried & Roy’s Risky Bet Takes Off

You know Siegfried & Roy. They’re those majestic magicians chalk full of mullets that owned Vegas for a few decades. They also had the White Tigers. You can’t forget those. 

In all seriousness, Siegfried & Roy had a career that’s nothing to sneeze at. They generated more than $1 billion in ticket sales in Las Vegas with a cadence of shows that held a blistering pace to amass more than 5,700 stage performances. At their peak, they performed twice per day, six days per week. 

While we know how successful the pair would ultimately become, I’d like to call your attention to the beginning when the two made a daring risk. The performers we now know as Sigfried & Roy got their start on a cruise ship doing a magic act with humble beginnings. While animals were always a part of their act, they used the usual suspect for disappearing acts: the rabbit. 

Ready to up the ante, the two decided (unbeknownst to the ship’s captain) to smuggle a live cheetah onboard for their next performance.

This risk could have easily got them fired from their modest, but reliable gig on the ship. Instead, the cheetah blew the minds of the spectators and the over the top show feature would lead to them being recruited in the United States. 

As they say, “the rest is history.” When you consider the uncertainty they faced, making the jump from disappearing rabbits to disappearing jungle cats seems incredibly courageous. Furthermore, it seems perfectly understandable for a magician to continue his/her successful routine pulling a rabbit out of their hat. Without the risk, however, Siegfried & Roy most definitely wouldn’t have reached world fame and perform for fifty million spectators. 

The question, then, becomes where are the assumptions in your career? Where could embracing risk take you to the next level?