Transcript of #270 Oz Pearlman - The Most Mind-Blowing Mentalism Tricks

Oze Perlman.

Sean Ryan.

I'm scared to death right now.

Wait, I got to tell them one thing. Can I tell them what happened? Yeah. I got in here, which is, by the way, this room is incredible. This is unbelievable. They showed me some history. I walked in, you got in here, I don't know, several minutes ago, I would say, and I made a point of this. I put this down. You guys were gracious to put my book here. I took this out of my pocket. Can we timestamp This is exactly what I said to you. I said, I'm putting this down right here. You've not opened this. You've not seen what's in here. It's going to stay there the whole time. I said, before I take this out of my pocket, you do not make a decision. You do not have a thought. Nothing occurs. Before that moment. Do you agree? Hand on the Bible, I didn't set anything up. I didn't tell you what to do. This has been sitting there since I walked in this room. True story? True story. Okay. You know what? I don't want to touch it again. Can I put it on your side so I can't do any fishy stuff?

No, you grab it. You want me to grab it. I don't want to touch it again because I need them to know that nothing has happened before, and this is in your possession.

Nothing has happened before. Somebody has been in this room from my team the entire time, plus whoever has been watching it on the cameras.

There's cameras everywhere, so I'm in trouble.

They may have even been recording this entire time. Good. All right. That's it. That's it.

Keep that for later. Just keep it here. This represents past, present, and future. Have it just where we can see it in the shot the whole time.

All All right. Right here. Right up front. You got that? Okay. All right. Is that it? We're moving on.

I just like to have a little razzle-dazzle. Something's going to mean something to you in the future. I have a real feeling it will. Okay.

Perfect. All right. So we're good. We're good. Okay.

That was the hook, folks. You better wait till the end of the podcast. Anybody who turns this off the middle and doesn't watch the whole YouTube video is going to miss out on everything.

Right on. All right, everybody starts with an introduction here. Oze Perlman, the world's top mentalist who's blown minds on the biggest stages around the world, went from Wall Street to full-time mentalist, had an Emmy-winning TV special, viral clips viewed billions of times, and freaked out a client list of politicians, athletes, and Fortune 500 CEOs. An endurance athlete who won the New Jersey Marathon four times, ran ultra marathons, a spartathon, and a marathon PR of 2 hours, 23 minutes, and 52 seconds. New York Times best-selling author of the book, Read Your Mind: Proven Habits for Success from the World's Greatest mentalist. Husband to Elisa, father of five children. Dude, it just keeps going. I can't wait to hear what you have to say.

Are you my new PR rep? That sounds better than anything I could put together.

I can't wait to hear what you got to say on Monday Night Football tonight. Tonight. It's the Dolphins, right?

Dolphins, yes, indeed.

Nice. My really good friend, Mr. Balin.

I texted him before I got here. Did you really? What a sweetheart, man. What a great dude. Me and John connected. I love that guy.

So he connected us, said, You would blow my mind. I get nervous for all these. Now I'm really fucking nervous.

Mine is more high stakes than usual, right? Normally, we just interview, but I've got things that we'll see if I can guide your mind in a certain direction.

Right on. Well, a couple of things before we get rolling here. So everybody gets a gift.

Nice.

Thank you. Vigilance lead Gummy Bear's made in USA.

I just saw this on your story. Terrific.

Legal in all 50 states.

Legal?

Yeah.

Love it. Why would it not be legal?

Some states haven't legalized marijuana yet. Oh, God. But But anyways. Then we have a-Thank you. You're welcome. We have a Patreon account, subscription account. We've turned it into one hell of a community, and they're the reason that I get to sit down with you today. We offer each We offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. This is from Tyler Wilson. If everything you do is about showing people how predictable they are, what illusion do you still believe about yourself?

I believe that at some point I will hopefully be... I will have fulfilled my ambition and drive, but I don't think that's an illusion because I just keep... Every time I hit a level that I thought I could never hit, It just makes me want more, which is, I think, the eternal drive, the Sisyphe in the Rock going up the mountain, because I think that you'll never end that desire. I hope you won't, because then what's next? You want to enjoy present, but I just keep biting off goals and trying for new ones. Nice.

I love that. All right, so I want to do a life story on you. Okay.

Where'd you grow up? I grew up in a bunch of places. I was born in Israel. I moved to the US when I was three. My dad was actually in the Navy. Did you ever see the movie Munich? Do you know the one with Eric Bonna? Yeah.

It's funny because- Long time ago.

Yeah. The story was at the Olympics, right? In Munich, where The PLO, they killed a bunch of Israeli athletes. So they made this movie where they went and we're going to assassinate all of those people. It's a great movie. If you haven't seen it in a while, it holds. So my dad was in the Navy, and there's a character in that. There's a scene in that movie where my dad, he's not a speaking role, but you see my dad. My dad said to me, I'm that guy in the movie right now before we dropped the rubber dingy. I don't know what the term is. That dropped them off. And it's the parallel to what you guys, like the SEAL Team 6 in called the Sayeret. So Ehud Barak, famously dressed as a woman, and went in and they took out one of the guys. So my dad was the second in command of that small boat that dropped them off. Holy shit. So my dad came here in a military exchange program and was designing amphibious bridges, what you do to cross a river. So we ended up staying in the States. It was supposed to be a two-year contract, but we stayed.

We loved it here. I moved to Pennsylvania, then Wisconsin, then Michigan. So my formative years were in the Midwest.

Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or Michigan?

Pennsylvania. Until I was in second grade. Then I went to Wisconsin for about five years, which I loved. Man, I had a great time in Wisconsin. I was like a great... When you look at your kids now and they're on screens and We used to just get on bikes. I knew all the kids from my three streets. We would just go do crazy stuff, how we survived my childhood versus the helicopter parenting of now. We just did crazy things. I remember blowing up a watermelon with M80s with my My friend's parents weren't up. My kids never are going to know any of this. Then I lived in Michigan from high school and for college. Went to University of Michigan.

Okay, so when were you in Wisconsin?

Was that the majority of your childhood? I was in Wisconsin. My years from when I was about 8 to 13.

Okay.

No, 7 to 12, right around then. Third to eighth grade.

Right on.

Yeah.

You had a twin.

I had a twin brother, which my mom didn't tell me about until I was 12 years old, who died at birth. We were born right during a war. We were really, literally, I was seven kilometers from where they were bombing. Right now, the hospital was bombed right when I was born. I'm told in hindsight, because I wasn't told this when I was born, that there was, I don't know if it was a medical malpractice, but my mom can only have twins. I have twin sisters. I was a twin, and there were no doctors. The doctors were all on the front lines.

Wait, did you say your mom can only have twins?

That's the condition I'm told. It's fraternal twins. She drops two eggs at a time.

That's a thing?

I'm not a doctor, so please somebody fact check this, but that's what she told me.

Holy shit.

I don't know if that's a weird thing to have where if you're like, I'm getting pregnant, I'm getting two for the price of one every time. I don't know what your pull-out game would be because I'd be like, There's going to be a lot of kids.

Oh, my God.

Damn. But I was a twin, and I have a weird thing where, again, I'm not psychic. I am not supernatural. I tell people that at every interview, mentalism is not me communicating with spirits. It is based in science. It is a learnable, repeatable skill that you could be taught. You understand? It's based on magic. So when people try to debunk me, it's the funniest thing I've ever heard because I said, I'm debunking myself. This is not supernatural. You could learn to do this. It's based in magic. It is magic of the mind. But for some odd reason, and this I can't explain to you, I had very good intuition, and I always thought I had a twin. Now, did I overhear a conversation? I was a kid and I forgot. I don't know what. I can't explain to you, but I really always thought I had a twin. My parents never told me until I became almost a teenager, and my mom me all casually, and it blew my mind because I'm like, Why didn't you tell me this earlier?

What do you mean you always thought you had a twin?

Well, my sisters were twins, and I always used to... Like an imaginary friend. I would always play act that I had a twin. I wrote stories about it. When I was a kid, it was creepy. It's creepy in hindsight. But my twin died at birth. It was stillborn, but he was alive a week before during the ultrasound. Today, this would be a major lawsuit. This would be malpractice. I don't know the details of what happened. But I was not supposed to be named. My name is O. It looks like O's, but in Hebrew, it means brave and strong. It's like a biblical name. They weren't going to name me that, but I was named that because I survived and the other twin didn't. So they changed it to me being brave and strong. That's the meaning. Even though my physique does not really elicit brave and strong, got to hit the weight room. But that has been a defining part of my life is that I survived. The other didn't. Wow.

Damn. So did you Did you ever vocalize that you thought you had another twin?

All the time. Yeah, I mean, I play-A twin?

What's that? Or a twin, not another twin.

Just me and it was two boys. It was fraternal twins, not identical.

Why did they tell you at age 12?

Did you have a mom in here? I can't understand that because I think it was too painful of a memory for them. For them, it was very painful to have lost a baby and to have lost a baby at that stage. A lot of people, I think, have had miscarriages. It's very common. But even losing a baby in the process is pretty difficult. To have lost a baby when you got the room ready, two beds, everything. I think it was very... I don't know. Maybe my mom told me she didn't know how to tell me.

Yeah, I was just curious if you were a press of them, you're writing stories about the twin. I would imagine every single time you write a story, talk about it, there's a conversation between your mom and dad going, You should probably tell them.

It's weird that now as a parent, I haven't really addressed it with them and the mindset It was... You know in certain families, have certain things, I don't want to say are taboo, but once you hear, you're like, We don't talk about this with grandma. There's certain things for some families, it's money. For some families, maybe someone in the family is gay. There's different things that become taboo, and they shouldn't be. You should shine a light on them. But for us, after I was told, I was so shocked that I hadn't been told before that we really didn't address it for a while because I think there was residual anger.

Got you. So You got into this stuff, Magic. Magic, yeah. At a very young age, correct?

Not as young as a lot of people. I was a teenager, so I was 13.

Well, what were you into before Magic?

Annoying my sisters, I would say, my older sisters. I was a swimmer since I was really young. I played Nintendo a lot. I was really good at math. I have a very weird thing where I was, I don't want to say false humor, I was a mathematical genius as a child. No kidding. It was almost like savant-level genius. I skipped fourth grade, which I always like to tell my kids, my claim to fame is I won the fourth grade spelling bee when I was in third grade. I was like, What nerd level are you? 12 out of 10. I was really good at math, but I wasn't in a nerdy way. It just was like my mind worked in a certain way where math was easy and I did it naturally. Anytime I walked upstairs in a building, I'd count the stairs. It It's really savant style. I don't think I was on the spectrum, but even when I was young, when I was seven, I started to understand how arithmetic worked and math and how it was the language of the world. I'd always ask my mom, Why when you order the groceries, is It's in at the same number as all the stuff?

She goes, Oh, there's tax. What are percentages? I started to learn that the percentage is you multiply it by this, and this is in second grade. I would challenge myself when we're at the grocery store to add all the items, add I did the tax, and figure out what the price would be before they did it on the machine. Then I'd say, Oh, my mom's going to give them 100 bucks. It's 87. 26. Boom. In my mind, I instantly know that's going to be 13. 74 back. How many dollars? How many cents? It was a game I played with myself off, not to impress anyone else. It was just how my mind worked. Really? And that has been very, very effective at what I do for a living because my mind can hyper focus on what are the outcomes that could happen when I do something, and I try to plan for all the eventualities.

That's interesting. And that was happening in second grade.

Nobody forced me. This isn't like the stage mom that's like, Get out there, kid, be an actor. That's what I did. Everyone's different. I always see the movie when I see the born identity and Matt Damon, the scene where he lost his memory, he's in a diner and he doesn't know what he does. And he goes, Why is it that I can tell you right now? His situational awareness is insane. That guy's 300 pounds. This person, I could run He knows everything that's going on in a room in a hyper concentrated way instantly, the way I'm assuming a military operator would be paid to do. But that for me, when I'm performing, I'm doing the same thing assessing my crowd. I think from a young age, I would do that mathematically in a certain way.

Wow, that's interesting. Yeah, most trade military people can't pull off what happened in that scene, to include myself.

Well, that's why it's entertainment.

Yeah, but Man, holy shit. What got you into it?

I saw a magician. We went on a cruise, which was instead of me having in lieu of a big party for my 13th, it was a bar mitzvah, and we didn't really have a lot of money. This was the first time we'd ever gone on a cruise. We saved up a bunch of money. My folks were not doing well. They actually got divorced. This was a tough time. We went on the cruise, and they'd gotten back together. This is a weird thing for my bar mitzvah to try to make things go better before they blew up Long story short, we go on the cruise, there's a magician on board. I have never seen a magician in person that I can recall in my life. I think I saw David Copfield once on TV, but it didn't connect the same way. This guy brought me up on stage. He did a classic trick in magic called the sponge balls. It's a well-known sleight-of-hand magic trick. It's a beginner trick. You put a ball in my hand, you put a ball in his hand. We close hands, he does Al-Khazam, Hocus-Pocus, bam. I have two balls in my hand, his disappeared.

He does this to me a few times. I go back to my seat, and it is akin to what I think people that are born again. You've seen Jesus. I don't know what just happened, but I have to figure out how that happened, and I have to learn how I can do that, too. I also stalk this guy. It's in my book. It's a funny line where I say, There's shockingly very few places a grown man can hide on a cruise ship when a teenager is determined to find I was stalking this guy. His name is Doug Anderson. We didn't really keep in touch. Shout out to him because for him, one quick trick on a boat changed the course of my life, which I always remember that when I meet somebody who's young and does what I do, look them in the eyes, remember their name, give them that attention and respect that I would another adult because you might be changing this person's life. His passing two minutes on a cruise ship has set in motion the fact that I'm able to live my dream, support my family. It's wild how that does.

That little thing can make such a big difference in someone else's life. But I got back home. I went to the library. I checked out every book, like Magic. I checked out as many as I could. I went home, cover to cover, read them, little post-it notes. I was obsessed. I bought the books at Borders. That was the store by me. It's out of business since, but I was just for the next year, that's all I did was Magic all the time. Card tricks. I started doing rope tricks a little bit, like stuff that was cheap, coin tricks, and just learning how to do sleight of hand. Wow. Yeah, my mom, God bless her, my dad, to some degree, has picked a card, any card, about eight million times. She's like, You do the trick. No, you pick it, mom. My grandma came to visit us when my folks got divorced, and she was just I'm the best audience ever, too.

I bet you got good really fast.

I don't think so. I think I sucked. Really? Oh, yeah. Even now, I look at videos of me two, three, four years ago, and I'm a perfectionist. I go, Oh, God, I could have done that better, that better. I was on Jimmy I fell in a few weeks ago, and it still pains me because the day after I was on, I go, I could have done this so much better. Oh. And my wife's like, You killed it. I'm like, I'm going to beat myself up because I just know this one thing I could have done different that I should have thought that day. But I'm constantly, it's what you asked me earlier. I always am trying to improve.

Right on, man.

I think it's been a secret to success.

High expectations, right?

Right. I mean, you've got some, too. Look at this, this podcast. Look, we're not talking And linear growth, we're talking hockey stick, baby.

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You're going to get first dibs on new merch drops and limited edition items that will never be sold again. Plus, exclusive offers from our partners you won't find anywhere else. So subscribe to the Vigilance Elite newsletter right now. How do you put it all together? When does it start? Does it start on the approach?

The magic thing, you mean like, Where did I get to where I am today? Yeah. So my first hustle was I needed to make money. And I was 14, my folks had split up, and magic tricks are very expensive. That's the barrier to entry. Otherwise, you trick and you're like, I want to learn how to do that. So most of the time, they make it expensive. So if you go to a magic store, they weed out the people that just want to know how it's done from the magicians. You have to pay to learn it. It was very expensive for a 14-year-old to get a lot of the tricks I wanted. I go to the store. There was a store in Royal Oak, Michigan, called the Wonderground. My mom's not dishing out cash. I don't have cash. I started working. I I started working very young. I worked at a place called Bean and Bagel, making bagel sandwiches and cleaning the toilets, which was what they did to the first person, to the newest employee. I volunteered. I actually had to clean toilets in my house. I'm like, not a big deal. I do this at home.

Then I started working at a restaurant that was near my house that was about a half mile away. It was an Italian-owned restaurant, and it wasn't a chain. I somehow learned early on, I don't know how you realize this, that I got a sweet talk them into hiring me. Who's going to want to hire a 14-year-old who's never done this before to go table to table? There was another place called Max & Irma's that is a chain, and they had a magician. So that's what got the idea in my head. I could go there, I could get tips, and I could hand out business cards and start doing parties because the people would see me and be like, Oh, could you do a kid's birthday party? I go, Sure I can. How much do you charge? And I tried to get some competitive intel and charged cheaper than my competition. I charged about $125, which was so much money in 1996 for a kid to make. I'm making minimum wage at the bagel store. That's me working, and you can only work so many hours. I go into this restaurant, I walk there, I don't have a car, I'm 14, and I somehow know how to just approach.

I start thinking like they are. Don't go during dinner when it's busy. The manager is not going to give me the time of day. Don't go during the lunch shift when they're busy, too, with all the people from corporate. I went in right after school with my mom at about 04: 00 PM. Even then I knew we sat down, go in with somebody else so that you're not selling, you're a customer. They have to treat you with respect. Then I started doing tricks at the bar because it was a little quieter for the bartender who's usually very social in front. I did a couple of my good tricks. Oh, my God, you come over, you come over. Everyone's in between shifts. Everyone comes over. At that moment, after I've done about three good tricks, they bring the manager over. That's when I'm ready to go. I do my best trick, and I say, What's your slowest night? They go, Usually Tuesday nights, Monday night football. I go, Have you had entertainment here before? They're like, No. I go, Well, I I do this everywhere. I've never done it anywhere. I'm just completely lying, fake it until you make it.

But I go, Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to come in and I just do it for free. Why don't we do next Tuesday? Do it for free. No money. If everyone that walks out doesn't tell you that this was amazing and that they're going to come back with their friends next time, we shake hands, we say goodbye, and no harm, no foul. What do you have to lose? They go, All right, kid, we'll let you try it. I go in there, and that was my goal that night. I don't want any tips. Everybody, I would tell them when they walk out, Tell them how great I was. Tell them. If everybody walks out saying how great you are or somebody sends back a steak that's overcooked, I'm the secret weapon. Bring the kid over, get O's over there, do some tricks while they're waiting, and now they're not as pissed at the server. I do a couple of tricks. The steak comes out, we sweeten the deal. I just learned early on how to sell. I just had this innate gift of figuring out in a restaurant how to approach people who don't want me there and how to win them over.

That's where I started. That's literally a couple of chapters in the book. It's telling you how those lessons I learned at age 14, 15, and 16 at a restaurant have allowed me to achieve success throughout the rest of my career.

No kidding. I think so. You know what's interesting is usually people with the skills that you have, being really good at math, savant, all that, I mean, usually those are introverts.

I think I was naturally introverted, but magic allowed me to open up because it gave me... I was pretty insecure as a teenager. I was clearly a bit nerdy. I think that when you When you approach somebody, there's a fear of rejection that we all have. Oh, yeah. That we all have, which is in every part of life, which is meeting somebody new, trying to ask a girl out on a date, and she's like, No, it's like,. I mean, that hurts. To this day, I'm not going to say her name, but There was a girl I had a crush on. I was 15, and I'll never forget in French class, this other girl found out that I liked her, turned around in the middle of class and says to everybody, You like her? She'll never date you. She said it so loud. I was like, Yo, pump the brakes. It was literally like somebody stabbed me. That That hurt for years. And so that type of pain you take with you. Meanwhile, I met that same girl, not the one who was her friend, but the girl in college, and she was all over me.

Frankly, she didn't look as good anymore. The things had switched. It was like full circle, Sean. I felt very good about the fact that she wanted to date me and I didn't want to date her now. So I was like, really, that's like when you come back to school at the 20 high school year reunion and you've become successful and you're like, a light flex felt very good. But that pain you carry with you. When I was 14, I realized when I'd go to a restaurant and people would be mean to me, and it's not their fault. They don't want to see me. I've approached them, they're at restaurant. I don't go away. That I couldn't take it personally because if I did, I started to get sour and angry where if two or three tables did that in a row, I would take it out on the fourth table. I'd go to them and not be nice. I'd be a jerk because I'm still residually mad at the other people. Then I couldn't make money, I couldn't earn tips. I I couldn't get parties, and I wouldn't be able to buy more magic tricks.

So I realized I can't let these people dictate my success or mood. They're not in charge of my future. I am. So I created this... The only way I would describe it is a split personality where I no longer took it personally. When you rejected me, I didn't think, you don't know me O's Perlman. You met this guy O's the Magician, and maybe you didn't like that trick. Maybe you had a fight with your wife before I walked over to the table. Maybe you haven't eaten yet, so you're hungry. All of those excuses were a defense mechanism so that I no longer internalized the pain of you rejecting me. That happened to someone else. So I walk up to the next table, I don't care. I'm free and clear. And that is a superpower I have had for the rest of my career, that when people will reject me, I don't take it personally. I don't even care. I'm going to overcome whatever you thought. And instead of you saying to me, Oh, no, no, I don't want you, that's a not yet. That's how I convert it in my mind. I'm very keen on when people close doors in my face, that's not a no.

If I'm going to tell you that one day I'll be on a show or that this next year I'm going to have a collaboration with the biggest influencer in the world, or I'm going to make a video or a TV show, no, no, no, no, closed, they're jammed. I just have to find the right way to pick that door and jiggle the key and crank it this way and that way and open it, and it will open eventually. It's jammed. It's not locked. Got you.

I learned that at age 14. Age 14.

I had to, Sean.

What rejection are you getting? You're just a magician at a Max and Hermes.

Well, you describe it. Everybody describes rejection differently. But I would argue that some people, things that happen to them in their childhood and teenage years, minor trauma, it could be serious trauma, I'm not telling you, will haunt you for the rest of your life. Because a lot of people, it's like a Jurassic Park, a mosquito in Amber that sucks, and they suck the blood, and they make dinosaurs, that same thing. Something that happened to you years ago can haunt you for the rest of your life, I found, where you will have insecurities, you'll have moments where you will doubt yourself because of doubt that someone placed in you earlier. Maybe it was a teacher that called you stupid. Maybe it was one of your parents or someone else. Now you start believe in those false narratives that other people put in your head. When you look in the mirror, you talk to yourself with the voice of someone else who put you down instead of with your own voice that lifts you up.

Got you. That's figuring that out at age 14.

I don't know if I did. It's a work in motion, but I just realized that I am not going to let others be in charge of my success. I would be at a restaurant and I would hear people say to me, and they'd say, Oh, man, we got to have you at our party. I'm taking my business card. And mind you, I made these business cards myself. This is the era of there's no online. I'm a child of the '80s. I went to a Kinkos. I printed them myself. I had to cut them myself. I had no money shot. I'm like, If I'm giving out a business card, I want this to turn into a party. So if somebody took that card and never called me, it haunted me. I realized, I'm not letting them call me. Screw that. They mentioned, Oh, man, how great was it to be at the party? I go, Let me take down your number. When's your party? I want to make sure I get this in my calendar right away. I'm calling you. I'm not waiting for you to call me.

Smart. How fast did your career develop? At 14. You start doing a couple of tricks at 14. You started doing some stuff at Max & Hermes. What does that look like?

I wasn't Max & Hermes. My competitor was at Max & Hermes. Oh, my bad. That was the chain. He's the one who got me thinking I could do this, too.

Okay.

You always need to see... A lot of the time, you need some, I don't want to say a mentor, but you got to see the person who is who you want to be in one year, three years, five years, 10 years, and try to learn from their lessons. I was doing the restaurant. I graduated high school at 16. My mom had actually moved back to Israel, and then my dad was a new woman. I didn't get along with them. So I was, in essence, I moved out and I was an adult.

You're out at 16 years old.

I graduated high school because it was a July birthday. I started school a year early, and then I skipped a grade. I finished high school at 16.

Shit. So what are you doing at 16?

I went to college. I turned 17 that summer, and I had to pay for everything. I had actually saved up money because I'd been doing magic since I was a kid. I had a couple of other businesses. I was like, for lack of a better term, at the time, I was pretty pissed about this. I was seeing all my friends buying cars and their parents buy them a car, and I didn't have any of that. I had silver lining. I was a hustler since I was young, and I had to achieve success or I couldn't pay for college. I went to school and I immediately started working at school. I worked at a place called BD's Mongolian Barbecue, Go Blue in Ann Arbor, right there on Main Street. I was working there and I was also doing all these other events. Then a buddy and I started a boat dock installation and removal company. Shout out to Mark Wachsberg. He's in the book, too. This is another thing where I learned how to appeal to people, which is a skill that you can use in all of life. This book does not teach you how to be a mentalist.

It doesn't teach you any tricks. It teaches you just how to know what other people are thinking, not to trick them, but to know how to appeal to them, how to win them over, how to win their trust, which is what you have to do in life. You here have built an amazing team. How have you done that? Leadership skills, rapport, trust. They're hitching their wagon to you. And so in life, whether you're building a team or having clients, you have to find a way to connect with these people where they trust you. We started our company, we called it Wolverine-Sparton Boat Dock Company. Why did we do that? It was a very smart choice for a couple of 18, 19-year-olds because We realized we went to lakes around in Michigan. 95% of those people had either a direct connection to either the University of Michigan or Michigan State and rooted for one of those two teams. When we walked up to them, we immediately won them over with a joke, which is they come up to you and they go, Oh, who's the Spartan? Because we hand out all the flyers in people's mailbox.

That's all we did every Saturday morning. We just put flyers in mailboxes. As soon as they were a Michigan State grad or they cheered them, they go, I'm working with him, but not him. Oh, yeah, I don't even like this guy. We had a joke. We walked up, we'd win them over. All of a sudden, we're two clean-cut college kids. We're saving money for college. This is something people can get behind. We want to give you the business instead of somebody else.

Man, it's just surprising to me. You consider yourself a nerd, savant, not on the spectrum, very good at math. I'm very ADHD.

But the spectrum, I don't think I am. I don't know, maybe.

To be able to just What am I trying to say? To have that much of an understanding on human interaction and how it works at that young of an age with the... It's It just doesn't happen very often.

You don't think so?

No, not with those skills. Like I said, they fit with a very introverted, I don't know, probably typically not very confident individual.

I think confidence is something that gets developed over time, or once you learn the right skills, you can fast track it. Because what is confidence? Confidence is just building on experience. Something goes right, you build a little bit more confidence. Something goes right, you build a little more confidence. Something goes wrong, do you take a hit to your confidence? I think some people do, and some people allow that to bring them down, especially if you take too many hits at once, you decide this isn't working. I If I failed, I'm going to give up. I think that in my career, one of the luckiest things I have, one of the biggest blessings, is I get to meet so many fascinating, interesting, successful people at the top of their field, literally in the world. That's Celebrities, people that started companies, presidents, hosts, TV personalities, athletes, the best of the best of the best. And across the board, if you watch them, what defines most of them? The ability to continue even when they fail. The overcoming adversity, different levels of adversity. But there's no one I've ever met who's just been spoon-fed success and made it.

Those people don't make it. That's why second-generation wealthy typically are the ones who shit the bed. The company goes The third generation, they haven't been... You can see the parallels in life throughout where... I'm worried about my kids. I don't know how you are with your kids, where they're not going to have the same struggles I had because of the material success I've had. So how do you create that adversity for them or something else that's without being difficult, that toughens them up in a certain way?

You got any pointers?

I'm trying to figure it out. I meet people all the time. I met somebody recently at just a social party where they have five... He's one of five, and him and his siblings all live near each other geographically within about 20 minutes drive of each other, and they all get along. And I go, Yo, man, I want to talk to your parents, honestly, because that's so rare that the siblings don't have any strife. Because what creates strife? Maybe somebody marries someone that you don't get along with. Now we got, maybe they raise their kids differently. Now we have squabbles. Maybe somebody's not the same socioeconomics where we can't go on vacation together because I want to go in an RV and I want to stay at the Four Seasons. How do you all stay close? That's winning in life. Yeah. I've heard so many speeches at Milestones. I've done 60th, 70th, 80th. I just said 90th birthday three days ago. I've done a couple of 100th birthday parties, and I sit there like a sponge. I want to soak up what those people say. I was with a guy who's worth, I don't know, a couple of billion who had a great speech.

His speech wasn't about his flexing on his private jets and all this crap that doesn't matter. He had something that was, The amount of money in your bank doesn't matter. I'll never forget this speech. He goes, Ask yourself this when you're in in the later years. Do my adult children genuinely want to spend time with me? That's the real measure of success. That was an arrow in my heart. I'm like, Wow. Ask yourself if you feel that way about your parents. If you do, I feel like you've really wanted life. You've raised kids who genuinely want to be with you, and hopefully that then trickles down to their kids. And again, you don't have to have kids. I'm not saying that's the factor of what's successful in life. But for me, I said that's what I would want to do. That's where I want to be in 20, 30 years.

That's a damn good statement, isn't it? Right?

I don't want to claim originality. I heard that from someone else, and it hit home.

Man, that one's going to stick with me. So when did you start? When did it go from restaurant?

Side trip like crazy.

When did it go from restaurant? When did you start showing up?

So I did this as a side hustle. I swear to God, I never, at this point, said to myself, I'm going to be a professional magician or a mentalist one day. I didn't think that was a possibility. On a multiple choice Scantron, that's not in my... For A, B, C, D. That's in the E, Other, because I wasn't raised to think that I could be in showbiz or have some weird career. I was very much first-generation immigrant of, this is the path. You get a job, you go to college, you get a good grades, you get a job, and that's what you do. Is that that's what people do. I don't watch a movie on on a big screen and say, I'm going to be that movie star one day. That's impossible for me to imagine. I didn't know anyone who had done that and then heard the steps. I always did this as a way to win people over to achieve my other goals and aims. For example, when I was doing interviews, when I was in college, I went to school for engineering at Michigan. I feel bad for the person who was after me in a job interview.

They were, capital S, screwed. Because what What does my resume say? It says professional magician from 1996 to present. Imagine if you're interviewing somebody for a job, for an internship, are you not going to be like, Wait a second, what? You're a professional magician? And so right there, this is where you learn how to address people. Right there, if they go, Well, do a trick. You never do a trick when someone asks you right there because you've flipped the power dynamic. In any good relationship, in any good negotiation, you need to know where the power dynamic is, who's in charge in this moment? And if it's not you, how do you become in charge? So in that moment, I want something from that person. I want an internship. They don't get to ask me. I would sweeten the deal, and I'd say, At the end of the interview, if we have time, I'll see if I can show you one thing. Right away, we've just switched everything. Now they want something from me. I've also created a dynamic where I don't know that I'm going to give it to you. You now have to earn it from me.

So now the way that we're talking to each other has changed a little bit where you are now trying to win me over rather than me win you over. Just the way I even set it, the tactic of, If we have time, maybe I'll show you something, that's great. Now we've also left it to the end because if I do it at the beginning, they're not going to remember anything I say after I perform. They're going to be like, How did he just do that trick? They're going to forget all the other stuff about me. That makes me a qualified candidate. But at the end, if I now do something amazing, the last thing you do for somebody is what they're going to remember the longest. The end of a movie better not suck or else the rest of the movie was terrible. It's terrible. Great movie, but the ending, terrible. At the end, I would do one trick, and I'd be about to leave, and then they want to see another one. My 15-minute interview just turned in in 26 minutes. The person after me, I'm getting handshakes being like, We'll talk to later, and this poor guy who walks in after me.

It's like shell-shocked because they're on a high and they're like, Oh, what do you do? Nothing? Screw this kid, right? We got the magic man coming to our company. I used that, and I landed like, internship after internship. No kidding. Because I knew how to win people over. It didn't hurt that I had good grades, but I just knew. So I went to work on Wall Street. I graduated college. I had an internship for Merrill Lynch, and I worked on Wall Street. And while I was there, again, my side hustle was always doing this. It's like the energizer bunny. I don't have a way of not doing this. At that time, this was my way of networking, of meeting people. Within months of getting to New York, had worked I got two restaurants, and then at the restaurant, if I saw a party, I knew that my force multiplier was meeting event planners. The event planner, you get one person at a restaurant, they give you one gig. You get the right event planner, they give you all the gigs because they hire people every weekend to do parties. I was hustling all the time.

I kept building and building and building that about two and a half years after I was working there. There's obviously steps along the way. I was working four nights a week at restaurants. I get done with my gig, I'd go. Then every weekend, usually two gigs on Saturday, sometimes three, one or two on Sundays. All I did was work, but that's a good time to do it in your 20s. I pretty much at that point got to the point where I just said, I'm working so much, I'm going to take a leap of faith and go for it and see if I could do this as a professional.

Damn. Right on, man. What was your first professional... What was it?

When I quit?

Yeah, your first professional gig.

I can't remember because just the gigs blur together. There wasn't a moment. I can tell you one very poignant moment that I'll never forget, which is I was with my girlfriend, my college sweetheart. We lived together. She had a job at Accenture, so she was corporate. I had quit my job. I had a two-week notice, and day one of Monday morning, she gets up, she goes to work. I don't even set the alarm, brother. I'm like, Sleeping in. I sleep in, I wake up, I think I just stayed in my pajamas. I'm like, This is the life. I go get cereal, it's 10: 30. I didn't have to wake up. I didn't have to take the path train out to Jersey City, which is where I I just daytime TV, and I start eating cereal, and I'm watching it, and I have this realization, like a come to Jesus moment of I could just keep doing this right now. I could just sit here, and I could tomorrow morning sleep in, and I could just eat cereal. I could do whatever I want. No one is going to force me to go do anything. I right now have no boss.

It was such a liberating feeling until I realized I I'm my own boss. If I don't right now turn off the TV and make shit happen, nothing is going to happen for me. Welcome to the rest of your life. Exactly. There's no agent that calls me, like in the movies, where you go, I'm going to make you a star, kid. Come on over. Let's take some photos. It's not like that. Also, there's no playbook for success at what I'm doing. There's no book that I can read. There's no get good grades, get A's, and you're going to get the job when you get out. You need to carve your own path in a career like mine. And it took many bumps. I don't want to tell you for a second. This was 2005. But again, these are just moments where I realized, and I try to put in my book, and then I try to just give people that you have to decide You're in charge of your future. And for so many people, there's no accountability. They always have excuses for why they didn't get what they were supposed to get. He has more than me.

I didn't have this. That whiny voice in the back of your head that everyone has excuses. The people that do well decide that even with all my excuses, I'm going to make this happen.

How old were you in 2005?

I'm just curious. 22, and then I turned 23, but I was 22 when I quit my job.

22, so what, about eight years? You started at 14, I think you said?

How long I had been doing this? Yeah, so about-I've been semi-professional for about eight or nine years. Right on.

How would you describe your career at Wall Street? Was it big? Was it good?

No. I was like an associate. Not an associate, what am I talking about? I was an analyst. But I was literally glorified. You could teach a monkey to have done my job. I was a project manager. I was red tape. I was a punching bag at a company. I was on phone calls all day long to tell people far smarter than me and far more experienced than me why they couldn't spend the money they wanted to spend. How much do you want to know? Like 10 seconds?

I was curious. The reason I'm What I'm asking is-I was not overly successful. When you think of a Wall Street career, you think lots of success. And so what I was wondering is what was going on in your magic career that you thought, Oh, this will do better than my career in Wall Street.

No, it was a Crazy. The same way you think about it. So again, I can tell you numbers or whatever, but I left school in 2000, and when did I get my job? So this would have been in 2000. 2000, right? No, 2003, making $85,000 a year. Ton of money, like crazy money to pay a 21-year-old at the time. And for me to quit my job, I was going to take a massive, like just more than slice and half, more than slice me down to nothing. A huge risk.

So you did this because This is personal satisfaction.

I wouldn't have said that. I actually was much more practical and pragmatic, but I had a conversation with somebody who was a magician at the time who just looked at me and debunked all my crap, which was all my internal baggage, which we were... And he didn't do this to be nice, actually. He knows who he is, but he did it just because he's just very direct. And he just broke down all my stuff, which is we met after a magic lecture, and he says to me, What are you still doing working on Wall Street? I was like, Everybody else said the opposite. Of course, work on Wall Street. That's a good job. Why would you go be a magician? And he goes, Well, how much are you making? And normally people don't ask you that question. It's a little rude. He didn't care. I'm like, I'm making this much. And he goes, All right, how much are you making doing magic? And these are very blunt questions. I'm like, All right, I'll tell you. And he goes, So what do you have to do? You get one more gig a week. That's 52 more gigs a year.

And what are you charged now? That's this much more money. What if you raise your rates by 20%? And I was like, Yeah, that's true. All of my internal baggage of why I can't do it, I can't do that, he just broke down in one swoop, explained it to me. And he said, Well, what do you need to make to quit your job? I got to make 100 grand a year. And then he just explained, If you did this, this, this, why couldn't you do it? And I'm like, You're right. But in my mind, I had never connected those dots. I just never... Because I was holding myself down. There was an anchor holding me down saying, That's not how you do life. You got to have a job. How many people listening to this right now have a side hustle or a dream who think, I can't do that. Well, why not? Write down on a piece of paper, why not? What do you need to do for that to be a reality? Most of the time, it's actually a series of steps. Most of them start with step one and two. Most people never even try step one.

I didn't. I was just doing this on the side. And so slowly, that was my first thought of I could do this. And so to answer your question, I was working around the clock. So at a certain point, I decided to have one year of money saved up easy, where if I quit my job, I'm going to go for it, man. You live once. Screw it. I'm going to go for it. Do I love doing magic? Hell, yeah, I love doing magic. I had one moment where somebody just asked me, Ask yourself in the mirror right now, do you see yourself doing this in 20 years from now? Yes or no? I answered immediately. My answer was no. And so That's telling. That's who you really are at your core. So if that's it, you live once, go for it. But at the same time, that's easier to say to a 22-year-old, if you're a 42-year-old and you got kids and I got bills to pay, I don't think I would have done it. So timing is everything in life. But I was going to give it a shot. But be smart about it. Stack the deck in your favor.

I had saved up money. I'd been smart as a kid. I didn't go blow all my money. I didn't go on vacations. I bought a car for two grand in cash that I had saved up. My parents didn't buy it. I didn't I buy some fancy car. I bought this total piece of junk. I was ready when I did it to quit and say, I have one year to make this happen. If I don't, I'll get another job.

What's your girlfriend saying?

At the time? Yeah.

She goes to work, you're like, I'm done.

I'm going to be I don't know if you can tell, but I'm a pretty focused guy where once I do stuff, I don't half-ass things. That's the one thing that I have to my credit. I'm a 110% psycho. If I'm going to get into something, I don't tiptoe in the water. I dive in the deep end. I I think the people around me all believed in me, but to what degree I don't know. Most of them would not have told you that 20 years later, I'd be where I am now. I don't think they would have believed in me that much.

Is this girl your wife later on? No.

We broke up. She dumped me, blessing in disguise. I do really like her. There was no bad blood, but she was not my destiny. She married another guy. They have two kids. We were very friendly. We saw each other at a wedding. I have no ill will. It was like the best breakup I've ever had in my life. She actually just moved away and never told me she was dumping me. I'm like, Are we still together? I was like, I just had a realization, I don't think we're together anymore.

Right on, man.

Yeah, she folded that hand, and I was the hand. Then I ended up meeting my wife. It was such a blessing. I think things happened for a reason.

How did you meet your wife?

I met her online.

You met her online? I did. You didn't bust. I thought for sure you were going to bust out a magic trick in a bar or something.

That's what I always did. You think I learned these powers just to make money? When I was 14 and a dork, I learned very quickly that girls like magic. Not right away, but I was like, Pick a card. How did you do that? They're giving me attention. They like me. So yeah, magic was amazing just for just meeting people. And Any, girls, guys, anybody. But making new friends. When I travel the world, magic is a language that transcends all boundaries, all borders, all religion, all faith, all everything. Wonder is universal. Nothing else is. Music and comedy are subjective. Think about it. You might like a comedian that I don't. You might like music that I don't. But everybody enjoys that. Wonder, awe. It's in our DNA. I normally would use magic to meet girls as my opener, but then hopefully they have to like me beyond the magic because the magic is going to run out. My girlfriend who became my wife, date one, was not into it at all. No shit? No. So it stripped the armor off me. I'm like, What do I? I got a winner over with my My personality? Holy crap.

I don't even know what my personality is.

No kidding. Right on. I feel like you could use this, and I'm sure you do to me, just about anybody you want to target in the world.

I think that it is... I've told people this over and over when people... I used to do a lot of bar and bat mitzvahs and kids' birthday parties, and parents were telling me, Oh, my kid does magic. I go, I don't care if they continue with it. But if you learn two or three good tricks, and the majority of magicians physicians in this world aren't professionals. They're doctors, they're lawyers, they're teachers, they're hobbyists. They realize that magic is such a great way to connect with somebody on an emotional level quickly. And that if you do something, it breaks through your outer a façade. Most people are in a defensive mode. Somebody meets you, they're not meeting you yet. They're meeting your representative. They don't know the real you, and you're on guard. Magic allows you to smile, laugh, connect with them. And even if you just know one or two good tricks, a card trick, or something that you can do impromptu, it's such a cheat code for the rest of your life that I've given magic lessons to kids who then they meet me 10 years later and like, I still know that one trick you taught me.

I'm like, How much does it help you? Because you have no idea. You have no idea. I'm backpack working in Europe. I just met somebody. I did this trick for them. They go, Oh, that was amazing. And it opens them up.

How long did it take you to realize... People talk about this. Neil Strauss, he wrote that book, The Game.

That book is incredible.

That was a big part of his method, right?

That book, there's a lot of that book in here, but not for the same guys. That book has an icky feeling for a lot of people because they think it's being used to just pick up women, and that's duplicitous. You're hacking their brains. There are elements in there where I would say are... But the core of that book, if you look at it, indicators of interest, I-O-I's, is how do you walk up to somebody and get them interested in you? I'm not saying romantically, as a person, just a human interaction What do you do when you approach them in that first moment, our animal instincts, to know when you walk up, somebody puts them at ease or on guard. When you leave an event and you meet 10 people, 20 people, 30 people, I don't care if you're introverted, extroverted, there's always one person that stands out to you, that you go, if you get in the car, the debrief with your wife, Did you meet them? Oh, my God, that guy was great, right? That guy was great. What made them great? Now, most people don't analyze that. I've spent 30 years analyzing that.

What made that person memorable? People don't realize how important that word is. People think that I'm there to fool you. I'm not. That's not my job. I do fool people for a living. That's not my job. Amazing you. Amazing you is not actually what I do. It's a side effect, and I'll tell you why. It took me years to learn this. I create memorable moments. If I create amazing moments, which is what I used to do and I would have plateaued, I would never have achieved what I have in life and how I've gotten to the top of my field. Amazing moments, yes, you like, but you don't talk about for years to come. Memorable moments, you hopefully talk about for the rest of your life. They hit you in an emotional way that connects you that you remember. Amazing movies are ones sometimes where you saw the movie, you eat popcorn, you had a great time. Oh, my God. Action movie. A week later, I say, What happened in that movie? You're like, He did the thing. You don't remember the movie. But memorable movies stay with you because somehow something about it connected.

Most people's memories are connected to what matters to them most, their family, their friends, moments in their life. I used to guess for someone a card. Pick a card, I'll tell you what the card is. Then as they became a mentalist, you didn't pick the card. I'd say, Think of a card, Sean. You thought of the card and I'd say, Oh, it was the two of diamonds. You were like, That was amazing. But I realized at a certain point that if I say, Sean, go back in time and think of you with somebody in your family that you really cared about, somebody you've lost. You go, All right. Imagine you sitting down playing cards with them. Did that ever happen? You go, It did. I go, Imagine them right now putting the cards in front of you and you say to this person, Pick up one card and you look at it. Maybe it was their favorite card. He liked it. I said, You're thinking of your grandfather and you were here and in his hand was two of diamonds. You will tell that story very differently than me just picking a card. It became about your grandfather, about somebody you've lost, about the two of diamonds, about the story attached to it.

Now suddenly, that's a story that you keep telling to other people for a long time. It has an emotional resonance and a book.

Got you. When you start studying this, I mean, how much of this is... It sounds like a lot of it is psychology.

A lot of it is psychology. A lot of it is knowing how people think. That's where I explain that as a mentalist, knowing how people think can allow me... Knowing how people think guides me to knowing what you think or how I can get you to think what I want you to think. I took some classes in psychology in school, but that's not the psychology of what I do. Magic is built on knowing misdirection and what people will do in a certain situation. Group dynamics versus solo. It is infinitely harder to do something what I do with one person, one-on-one like this, than if I had you in a group. It's so much harder because the way that you can get people to behave together is very different. There's a level of peer pressure. Think about it. Think about just how from People will, I'm sure you know it from your profession, is just that one-on-one, somebody behaves different than if you have a group around them because they have to adhere to the group's standards. People are very less likely to be a jerk in a corporate setting. If their boss and their colleagues are with them.

You can get them to do what you want in a different way.

Man, this shit freaks me out. I'm definitely still on the defensive because I've kept waiting for something to show up here.

Oh, there's going to be some stuff. We'll pepper it in. I might do some fun stuff throughout. I can't leave you just talking. Right on. That's like, we got to do the show and tell.

You wound up, you quit your job, you move into becoming a magician. At some point, you wound up on America's Got Talent, correct?

Ten years later. It takes 10 years to become an overnight success.

It was 10 years?

Yeah. Got to get those reps. I tried out for those show three times. I tried out for that show three times before I got on. Which is another lesson of life that so many people... It's funny because I mentor people that do what I do, and it's certain people that will win me over because a lot of people reach out. And I noticed the people that have excuses, it's always like the people that say to me, I've had a couple of guys who say to me, Well, you got on America's Got Talent, and so that's how your whole career started. And I go, Have you tried out? And they're like, No. And I go, Guess what? I tried out twice before I got on. And the third time, took me three tries. And one guy was like, I tried, I didn't get on. I go, Well, did you give up? I go, So you already gave up too early. Was that your goal? So I tried out for that show three times. The third time, go figure, I got third place. And that's the first part of my career where you could say there was rocket fuel where it lit a spark and it started things.

The momentum began. And that was 10 years ago now. So it's like every 10 years, big things have happened.

Right on. Where do you go to study this? You mentioned at the beginning, you go to a magic shop, it's expensive. Most people don't want to pay that. But to get to the level you're at, is that a mentor or are you able to figure all this out on your own?

Where I'm at now is very much innovating. So the only thing that can separate you from your competition at certain fields is either do something better than everyone else, do something different than everyone else, or do both. And that's where you can really become number one. That's where you have to innovate and be different and constantly keep perfecting your doing doing new, bigger things.

Got you.

But I think that's in any industry.

How do you study? How do you innovate?

So for me, I have a series of core foundational skills that I've learned, and now I keep innovating. But the start of it was I did books and videos. Then I had A couple of mentors as I went along doing magic. For mentalism, it's very different because mentalism for me is I start with the end goal and I work backwards. I reverse engineer where I want to end up.

Can you give me an example?

Perfect example. If I'm doing something, like some of my most famous viral clips are with football teams. A great example is something I did with Joe Burrow, which is arguably one of my most viral clips. I said to myself, if somebody is a football fan and they're watching Monday Night Football, and suddenly I come on, and they're like, Who's this guy? I want to watch football. I start with the premise of, Who cares about me? Nobody wants to watch me right there. They're wanting to watch football. I need to win them over instantly. So it's not going to be a card trick because who the hell cares about cards? I'm watching football. I want to know something that if I'm a football viewer, what is the Holy Grail? What is the Holy Grail? Holy Grail is, that's Joe Burrow. He just signed a contract for $275 million. You know what I want to know? I want to know where he's going to throw the ball to next. Who's he going to throw the ball to? Is he going to do a running play or a passing play? Where's the ball going to go? That would be incredible, right?

So I decided to start with the end of, I'm going to show you that I know exactly who Joe Burrow is about to throw that ball to in this room, and I'm going to make every step be more amazing than the one before. I started with that as my end goal, and I worked backwards of how could I possibly pull this off? Now, how do I pull it off? Well, I'm not going to tell you that, But I'm going to tell you that the same way a chef has a series of ingredients, I've got steak, I've got fish, I got chicken, I got tofu. I'm going to create a recipe with all these ingredients and all these little skills and tactics I have in that room of how I'm going to pull this off. I've got to fool Joe because if Joe's not buying it, I don't get a genuine, authentic reaction. He's not going to fake it for me. Anyone who says in the comments, the funniest comment with some guy goes, Dude, totally scripted. He bought Joe off. And I go, Brother, I wish I had enough money to bribe Joe Burrow to do what I want.

And that comment had like 30,000 likes because it's so funny. It's so silly. Of course, this guy didn't fake it for me. Why would he? Of course not. And then when you do that for 15 of the NFL teams and NBA teams, and NABA teams. And then I did it for Jeff Bezos recently. No one's faking it for me. That's why people at this point understand that this is, I don't want to call it real because I'm not a real mind reader. I'm telling you that from the jump. But the skills I'm using, these are real, authentic reactions. Nothing is scripted, nothing is staged. I can't stage it. Would I stage it and script it? 100%. You kidding me? There's no moral compass that I would do in a second. It would get out. It would ruin my business if it scripted or staged. Faking it isn't a long-term play for success.

How do you test your stuff?

That's the best question you could have asked. Because of the volume of media that I've done, hundreds of TV appearances, some of the biggest podcasts in the world, and now the Sean Ryan show, I do things that are different every time. When I make up things, like I was on Howard Stern recently, the day after I was on Jimmy Fallon, both things I did were the first time I ever did them. Are you serious? I am dead serious because I can't I create things for the people I perform for. The thing I did for Jimmy Fallon, I'd never done before. The reason, if you want to ask me why I'm successful, I'm going to tell you clear-cut. Most people that do what I do do not have the risk appetite, the risk talents that I do. It's Travis Pastrana jumping out of a plane with no parachute and getting it from someone else every time. I do different things very frequently, and other people aren't willing to take the level of risk that I am. When it goes right, it goes right exponentially better. And that's how I separate myself from the pack.

Always something new.

Well, always something that goes bigger. And when you see other people that do what I do and you see it, you'll be like, That's formulaic. They're trying to copy those. And you see it because... And occasionally you don't. I love that. I'm competitive, but rising tides raise all ships. I have no problem. I'm leveling up my profession for everyone. So I know that I'm the shiny toy right now and that at a certain point, I will hit a peak and I will go down. But I'll continue trying to do that for as long as I can. But I'm going to elevate the people around me that do what I do because it's good for all of our business. I'm trying to create a category where mentalism, nobody knows what that is. Two years ago, very few people did. Two years from now, when you say to somebody, What's mentalism? Or who's your favorite mentalist? I want that to be Kleenex, Google. You mean O's the mentalist? That's the answer. Household name, directly connected to what I do, and It created a path where everyone knows what this is, this niche field.

Got you. So how long does it take you to... What would we call it?

A trick?

A trick? Yeah. How long does it take you to develop a trick? When you're going on Jimmy Fallon, when you're going to perform in front of Jeff Bezos or anybody, how long does that take from idea to- I do my best when I'm shoved into a corner and necessity is the mother of invention.

It's taken me years and years to get better about not being a procrastinator. I talk about how much I procrastinate and how... But unfortunately for me, if you told me, I have something, the biggest thing in my life in six months, I'm not going to be able to pull it off. I'm going to start doing it. But my best ideas are going to come six days before, unfortunately.

Six days before.

That's where I'm going to get... So today, even today, what I plan to do with you, what I'm actually going to end up doing happened in the shower two hours ago before I came here, and I decided to change one thing entirely. I said, That's better.

I don't know if you want to do that to me.

I know it sounds weird. My best ideas are in the shower, and my best idea is when I'm running, when I'm in motion or when I have no electronics near me. The phone is just I wish I could get rid of it. It's the worst addiction that's ever happened. I believe that 20 years from now, we'll look back at what we've done to ourselves, and it's been an experiment in destroying our attention spans, and I'm guilty, too. But when I'm free and clear of external stimuli, my brain goes into this flow state where I can think better and clearer. It's when I'm running long distance, and it's when I'm in the shower. I don't know why, but in the shower, there's this weird thing where my brain just hyper focuses. I'm like, This is better. This is going to be better. So for Jimmy Fallon, I came up with it in the five days before. Howard Stern was a little earlier. It was two and a half weeks before because I know Howard, and so I know how he thinks, and I know it would appeal to him, and I've got him registered. For you, it's been very instrumental.

Just right now, this hour and a half since I've walked into here, it's like picking a lock, and you hear it click, click, click. I'm starting to get your number pretty dialed in, which feels good.

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That was fucking awesome.

If you've enjoyed watching, there is a lot more waiting for you over at Vigilance Elite Patreon. All right, let's talk about mentalism versus magic. What is the difference?

Mentalism is a subset of magic. It's built off of magic. It's not like a separate super natural or psychic power that some people will think. But magic mostly involves sleight of hand or illusions. Illusions are when you're on stage, David Copfield, big boxes, things happening. Magic tends to be more sleight of hand and close up. Pick a card, find it, put it back in. I produce the four aces. You know how I'm doing it. It's sleight of hand. My hands have been trained in some way, similar to a jugular, and then I'm deceiving your eyes. Mentalism doesn't really have that same thing of deceive your eyes. I don't do anything quick. There's no real trick or prop. Mentalism becomes magic for the mind where you seem to read someone's mind, know their innermost thoughts, secret information about them, know what choices they'll make in a certain moment that they don't even seem to know that doesn't adhere to the rules of science. You go, There's no way that we could do this, minus if you're reading my mind. That's if you're doing it perfectly, what it looks like. But it is not supernatural. There is an actual set of steps that I'm using to get you to where I want you to go.

Interesting. I have some predictions maybe on the thing that you gave me. How much research do you do on your guests before? Or on your guests, on your subject, on your target before?

Target is a weird word, but it depends what you mean by it. I do, last year, did about 140 events, and most of those events are for thousands of people. I go to great lengths during shows to pick people at random. In fact, if you read the comments on most videos, you just see hundreds of people going, He did my company's event, he did my company's event, he did a party in my house. It's an impossibility for me to know anything about the vast majority of people I perform for. No kidding. Physically It's really impossible. If you were to see me do a show, this is coming out after, but December 21st, I have a show for about 2,000 people in Boston area. I literally throw frisbees around the room. Somebody catch, you stand up. It's inherently random to make it believable. So there's no research involved. People like to say that for me, if I'm doing something like this with one person, there's research as to what I think will hit the hardest.

Got you.

But there's not research as in, I'm going to dig up something about that nobody knows. You could think that. I don't really tell people what not to think, but it's silly to believe because we'll see in a minute, but how could I know a choice you make in the moment? There's no way to know.

Well, you did this thing. I can't remember exactly how it went with Tom braided and Grunowski. Is that who? Yeah. They wrote down an NFL player's name, and then there was a common number. I I can't remember what that number represented.

I told them each, I said that when you're on a team, you need to be aligned. If you're a tight end, when you turn around, that ball has got to already be in your hand. You can't wait for the quarterback to throw it to you. You two have a certain level of awareness on a mental of you've run these routes so many times that you know exactly where the ball is going to be and where your player is going to be, and you're aligned mentally. Synchronicity. Teams guys, how many times you tap somebody on the shoulder and know exactly where you're going to go, where it's muscle memory. Am I right? Milliseconds are life and death. So when I am doing certain things, for example, I had them each think of a player, and they're going to swear they picked the player at random. They swore. I said to Tom, Look at mine. He wrote Larry Fitzgerald. I wrote Larry Fitzgerald. I was like, How the hell did you do? I could have just named anyone. Even afterwards, he said he picked Fitsy, who he's friends with, instead of another guy because he changed his mind.

He was going to do a different wide receiver. And so we both turned it around. And then I said, Grank, let me see yours. He turned around as Eric Dickerson. So it was really funny because he totally screwed up the trick. It looked like it was a dud. And then I said to Tom, think of a code nobody would know. I said, Think of your ATM pin code. Tom goes, I don't know my ATM pin code. I go, It's good to be that rich. You know what I'm saying? I was like, Tom, you got people for that. I go, Gronk, we know our ATM pin code. We ain't got goat money. And The time was, All right, I got another code. He said, I got another code. That's when I said to him, You ready? I guessed the code. I went, 1, 1, 2, 9. He freaked out. Then the crazy kicker was I go, What's Larry Fitzgerald's jersey number? He goes, 11. I go, Eric Dickerson's jersey number? 29. Those were 11, 29. That was the code to unlock his phone.

Dude, what? How do you put that together?

Puzzle pieces, man. Usual suspects, Kaiser Sozé. Did you ever see that movie?

How do you even know the Jersey numbers.

That's research. That's 100% research. Yeah, that's...

But how would you know if you didn't know who they were going to write down?

So again, that's where people, Occam's razor, if you want to try to figure out these tricks, a lot of the time you your brain to a pretzel because you go, How do you know who they're going to pick? So even if you knew how they were going to pick, how did you get them to pick those two players? But even then, how could you have known Tom Brady's phone code, which he will swear to you till his dying breath, there's no way he ever did in front of me. He never wrote it down. He never said it. He never anything. He didn't know what we were going to do when we walked in the room. It's like Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan went on a terror. He's like, There's no way he could have known my pin code to my ATM. He goes, Nobody knows that. I didn't write. I didn't say it. I didn't anything. He's like, I don't know how you could have gotten that. That's what creates memorable moments. It's what you asked me before. I start with the ending. I started with the ending of I want to do something crazy.

Was the number the ending or were the players the ending?

They were both. The number was the ending. The final thing was him unlocking his phone and showing everybody that was the freaking, That's my code. How did you know that? I like surprises. So, Sean, for me-I like surprise. I really like... No, but I do, because if you know what's about to happen, it could be amazing, but it's never the same feeling as a shock. At the end of that trick, when all of a sudden you go, What's his Jersey number? And you see his face go, 11. And then I go, What's Eric Dixion? He goes, 29. It was sitting there in plain sight. It was sitting there in plain sight, like that message in a bottle that I took out of my pocket before we spoke a word to each other today. And you just don't know what it's going to be. So you ask yourself, did I really pick what I wanted or did he plant a thought in my mind.

That's what I'm getting at. Yeah. When you gave me the song, what was it? Sweet Home, Alabama?

Yeah. I walked in here and I told you a song for my youth that I really liked was Sweet Home, Alabama. Is that correct? That's why I want to make sure I told you that. How well do you know the lyrics of the song Sweet Home, Alabama?

Probably not very good. But what I thought was interesting is when I scrolled down, I think it was the length of the song is 444, which is my favorite I remember. Interesting. Which is right behind me. Okay.

But- So you think that me saying Sweet Home, Alabama to you?

I don't know. I don't know if the number 444 is going to come up at the end. Maybe.

Is it? I'm just going to rip over my shirt and just have four nipples. I don't know. No. Well, you know what? Let's lean into this. I mentioned a song, and I asked you when I walked in, and I said to you, has music played a big part in your life? And you said to me, not really. Is that right? Or would you say, some people are very drawn to music. This is Music City. So when I said Nashville, I said to myself, maybe I'll connect a little bit with Tennessee, Nashville. Would you say that music is a big part of your life or so so?

I think music is a big part of everybody's life, but not like music is not a part of my life. You're not a musician. It is people that live here.

An interesting question is, if I say, go back in time, rewind. I said this would be part of your past, your present, and your future. Let's do your present right now. We go in your past and I have you hear a song. Let's imagine you've heard this. Certain things bring you back. Sometimes a smell makes you think of your grandma's cookies. I smell grass. I think I'm mowing my lawn when I was a kid, suffering. If you hear a song, come up right now, and you hear this song and you go, Oh, man, this brings me back, maybe to an age, maybe to a place, maybe to a setting. I don't know what, but I want you to close your eyes. Close your eyes. I want you, not visually, but auditorially, to hear this song playing in your head that you go back in time and you can define either an era or a specific part of your life based on this song. Almost as if it was playing right now on the radio, could you hear the song starting? Mm-hmm. Okay, open your eyes. Is there any way in the world that I could have, before I got here today, before I got here, looked up, listened to a podcast, and heard you say, There's this one song.

Is there any way that could have found this out in advance? No. Get really nitty-gritty, no chance?

No.

Okay. Imagine the song is playing, and it's maybe we get to the bridge, maybe we get to the chorus, and Sweet Home, Alabama. I mentioned that song, too, when I got here, and I know how you think that put something in your head, but nothing to do with your song. Imagine right at a certain point, it stops and you sing along, as if we take the lyrics and we highlight a couple of the words and you sing along to that one moment. Boom, right there in your head, sing those words. Can you sing them in your head? Mm-hmm. Okay. You decide. I said a couple, which is leading the way as couples, too. Sometimes people do more. You were thinking of two words. Is that right? Which one in your mind did you get more forceful on? I don't want to know the word, but was it the first word or the second word? Which one it just came out stronger in your mind? First one or the second?

These are the two words.

Yeah, tell us. What two words? The first one. The first one is like these two. Okay, they're not the name of the song, are they? No. Okay. Now, this is just critically Really important. I walked in here, I gave you this before I had said a word to you. I put this on the table. You have not shared this online somewhere. You've not told anybody. This is not something that could have gleaned from your crew. We don't know each other. You're thinking of two words from a Basically, any song that connected to your past. Is that true? Mm-hmm. Think of the first word. Count how many letters are in that word to yourself. Just count it to yourself. Okay. That was quick, but it wasn't instant. Five letters, wasn't Was, right? It was five letters. See, if it was longer. See all five letters. And I always like to say this. I go, Stop. It's like sing-songy. Stop on any one of the letters in the five. Just grab a letter and you're doing hangman. And you have dashes. Imagine that one of your kids guesses a letter, and so you fill in that letter.

Can you see yourself writing one of the letters down right the second, like in midair? Yeah. You didn't do the first letter, did you?

No.

And then bookends. Bookends are always quirky because bookends give it away. You didn't do the last letter either, did you? Because hang, man, you always do the ones in the middle. N. Were you thinking of the letter N?

No.

You did the N before you jumped and you did the Vowel. I know it now. I wrote it. I'm done. Tell us all what is the word that popped up in your head as you were singing a song. What word are you thinking right now? Going. Going.

What the fuck, dude?

One is luck, two is skill. Think of the next word. Pick any letter in that word. Something interesting. You got a letter in your head this time?

Yes.

Now, last time when I said N, I know you thought of it, but then you switched over to the vowel, to the O. This time you said yourself, Should I do the vowel? I think what's funny is the first time you thought of the letter O, and this time, muscle memory, you thought of the O again. There's an O in this word, but then you switched and you did a different letter. You're thinking of a W, aren't you? Tell me, sing it for Not the whole song. What are the two words you're singing in your head? Say them. Going down. Going down. What the fuck, dude?

Oh, my God. What the fuck? Wow.

How many different songs do you think have the words going down in them?

Probably a ton.

A million is my guess. A million, right? Going down is not nearly enough to figure out what the song is. You know what? Let's put a pin in the song. You just keep it in the back of your head for now. Anyone who says that now that I got this, I could figure out what the song is, go to Google or Spotify. There's so many. You did a hard one for me. All right, we'll keep this on tap. We'll come back. More performance to come. I'll keep a dangling carrot for you.

What the fuck? Oh, man. What do you think of Psychics? What do you think of all this stuff? I've had a handful of them on here.

Have any of them convinced They can be pretty convincing. But have they convinced you?

They've convinced me enough to look into it.

I think that's fair. What do I think of them? I have never had an experience, personally, that's convinced me yet. I'm agnostic. It'd be ridiculously egomaniacal for me to say it doesn't exist. When people say that, I just don't understand how they can know that. You can't know everything. You don't know the infinite universe. I have seen firsthand. A lot of the time, What happens with psychic is what I do. Really good psychics are like me. They know how to hit emotional centers. They know how to create memorable moments that people talk about. They also know how to do this thing where they highlight the wins and erase the misses. So when I get something wrong, like again, here, some people say, Oh, you nailed that. Well, you got one letter wrong, but did I or didn't I? What you really need to do when you're a psychic is you get certain things right, but you probably get a lot of stuff wrong. You're in the room with somebody who wants you to talk to a dead relative. They want you to tell them something about them. But a really good cold reader can get so much information from you just based on your watch, your clothes, what you're wearing, your mannerism, how you talk to the people you're here with.

There's so much stuff they could get before you even walk in the room that they've got a whole script ready to use to their advantage to move you in the direction they want, to get the right thing out of you, and to have you remember when, How could he have known that my uncle, who passed away from lung cancer, gave me this thing when I was 12? You're like, Holy shit. How could you? I could do that same trick better than most of them I've ever met, everyone I've ever met, everyone. But that's not to say that I'm not a psychic, but I'm not saying that that person didn't do the same thing by being a psychic. I just know that I know the tricks to do that same thing they did in a different way or Occam's razor, the same way, and I'm not portraying myself as a psychic. So my answer is very simple. I am not debunking psychics. They might exist, but every psychic I've ever met, I've done better than they do. Got you. But I don't pretend to talk to dead people. I'm not trying to get money from you in exchange for doing something supernatural.

I'm so honest about what I do. How I do it, I'm a little dishonest about. I like to muddy the waters. It's counterintelligence. If I told you how I did it, what's the fun in that? I give you lots of different ways you think I did it. Is it just body language? No. Is it just the fact that I looked this way or looked that way, or that I pretended to write this or did that? All of those things are going to make it so in your mind, you don't really know how it was done. It's a developed tact.

How long did it take you to... We covered this a little bit ago, but when I was asking, how long do you prepare for a trick?

Some have been years in the making, some I come up with on the spot.

Yeah, and you said that you don't practice them.

I practice them in my mind.

You practice them in your mind.

In my mind. Unfortunately, that's the tough part is That's why when I told you when I did Jimmy Fallon, it still annoys me. I didn't realize that something I did would have been so much better if I did it just slightly different, just the littlest thing, just iteration. Change one ingredient. How's the recipe? Add a little more salt, add more garlic. Do one thing at a time, you realize what's different. For me, I try to play out all of the different scenarios that can go wrong. But sometimes something I didn't think about happens. And so how am I prepared in that moment? But it's exactly like a stand-up comedian. You can't know if a joke is funny until the audience reacts. By definition, you can't know because what's funny is only in the eye of the beholder. For me, if I'm trying to read your mind, I can't do it without an audience. I can practice magic without an audience. In essence, that's why there's so many more magicians than mentalists, because magic can be practiced at home in front of a mirror for years. There's some magicians that almost never perform for anyone, and they're the best in the world.

Literally, I've met people who you never see perform. You never heard their name before. This guy is the best at this car trick in the entire world, and no one has seen it except for his family and friends. He's not a performer, but he's so good at this move that it's invisible. He can literally, you shuffle the deck, you take it back. He deals you four aces. You're like, Where do those aces come from, man? He's fooling me, and I've been doing this for years, because he can practice that ad nauseam. A mentalist can't do that. You can't actually do that. You need to go out in front of an audience, try, fail, figure it out, go back to the drawing board, and get better and better and better. That's what makes a steep learning curve. And that's why when you ask yourself, How many other mentalists can you name? You'll be like, There's not that many.

I would think a failure in front of a large audience would be detrimental for your career.

Yeah. Well, it's funny because it's both. It depends how bad the failure is. So catastrophic failure, Yes, that's not good. Minor failure humanizes you. So some of my most viral clips have had some component of failure where people think they know how you did it, and that's actually helpful for a couple of reasons. One, it makes the rest of the stuff real. I like to always liken it. The metaphor is when you see somebody do a tight rope, you ever see a tight rope walker? They have that stick. If they just walk across like nothing, you watch, you're like, I could probably do that. That didn't look that hard. Just walked across it. How tough is that? But if they're walking and All of a sudden, wind hits and you see them go like this and one foot's up, your palms get sweaty. A part of you, your fight or flight, actually goes off in your animal brain and you go, Did you feel it in your stomach? Just like looking over, you feel death's door right there. That could It doesn't just fall. The best tightrope walkers, even if it's easy, they try to make it look hard, or they really make it hard, and it's even more believable.

For me, getting a couple of things wrong in my show, my live show, is actually me reaching. I try to reach for new stuff. That's how I get better. It's how you push, rip the muscle to bring it back stronger when you work out. On TV, I hope to not fail completely because that is pretty embarrassing, but I've had some pretty near misses. I've also moved the goalposts. I've learned how to move the goalposts effectively because you keep assuming that you know when I get things wrong. The only way you know if I get things wrong is if you know what's right. De facto, in that trick with Tom braided, what if my whole goal was to guess his pin code? What if when we did the thing with the... I guessed all three of the players, and it was amazing, we were done. What if you never knew that their jersey numbers were going to make his pin code? You never saw that clip. Never happened. So it looks like I nailed How did he know the football players he would think of? You didn't know that there was an act two, a director's cut, where there was going to be one more layer pealed out of this even crazier finale.

I never did that one because it actually went really wrong for me. But you didn't know it went wrong.

Wow. Man, you really... Holy shit.

So maybe it's either that makes me smarter or more psychotic. But I hope for a lot of people, they realize the art involved in this craft and that it's something that I hope keeps getting higher levels because it It should be appreciated because even though people will say, Well, it's just a trick, I go, I like that it's a trick, but there's a craft. There's certain really great actresses or actors. The ones that are at the top of their game, you really believe that they're that person. In the same way that they meticulously craft a character, I try to meticulously craft an experience that's inexplicable.

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Com and use code SRS for 20% off site right at checkout. That's roka. Com. Want more from the Sean Ryan Show? Join our Patreon today for more clips and exclusive content. You'll get an exclusive look behind the scenes where you can watch the guests interact with the team and explore the studio before every episode. Plus, unlock bonus content like our extra Intel segments where we ask our guests additional questions. Our new SRS on-site specials and access to an entire tactical training library you will not find anywhere else. In the best part, Patreon members can ask our guests questions directly. Your insights can help shape the show. Join us on Patreon now. Support the mission, and become part of the Sean Ryan Show's story. Where do you get this stuff? Where do you start? Did I come up with it? Yeah. I'm just curious. How long was it before you quit learning? From mentors?

Mentors? I consider a lot of people... Mentors, that term to me is always somebody older than you or more experienced.

When you started looking for... When you started going to the magic store and you're like, I'm going to pay for this stuff, how long was How's that going on? Do you still have any mentors today, or are you crafting everything in your mind?

I have people that are more like, not really... Again, a mentor seems to be like somebody who's, I don't want to call above you, but I can be mentored by anyone. I can learn from anyone. I can learn from somebody who's 16 years old who just started doing this because they have a fresh take. It's the same way that if you're a music producer or music executive, if you think I know everything, you're going to fall. The people that make it longevity, they're talking to 15-year-old kids, and that's their A&R. That's the person who tells you what kids It's like, because I didn't know what TikTok dances were. I don't know all this crap. I'm like an old man compared to this stuff. So I need to know what's going on now. That's the zeitgeist. And so to answer your question, I'm constantly learning. I'm also not naturally a sports aficionado, which people will be like, You're so into sports. I'm not that into sports, but I've had to learn sports because I've hitched my wagon to sports in a big way. I also do a lot of stuff within the financial markets. I used to work on Wall Street, but I do CNBC and Fox business very, very regularly.

I'm on those networks. And that's because that leads to a tremendous amount of business for me, where most of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies, if you did a survey right now, the majority, if you said my name, know who I am. That did not happen by accident. That was premeditated over the last decade of constantly being exposed at very large conferences, being on CNBC, meticulously crafting what they see and how I'm branded. And I know their markets. I know the terminology. I know that if they bring me in, I can speak to their firm and their company and their clients in such a way that they understand that I understand their business, which makes it very comfortable to bring in a speaker or performer who's not only going to kill it, but gives that added touch of knowing what they do for a living. It personalizes the experience. Got you.

How does this affect your relationships with your friends, your wife, your kids, your family?

Mentalism?

Yeah, man. I'm sitting here wondering, what am I giving you having this conversation? How far inside of my head are you?

No, they know me too well. My friends will tell you, they'll be like, Dude, this guy, not even a great poker player. World's best mentalist. I beat him at poker before. And it'll bring up the immediate question of, how can that be? You should be able to do everything. It's like a superhero power. But the thing is, it is an illusion to a degree. Some of it is real, some of it is not, but it doesn't generalize. Let me explain to you exactly what that means. Truly, if I can do what I'm doing for you right now, why can't I just go to Las Vegas, sit down at a poker table, clean up, win a few million bucks, do it again, do it again until they kick me out, let's get 100 million bucks, Sean, sail off into my private island and be done. Why wouldn't I just do that?

Why worry about doing that when you could just get everybody's ATM pin code?

That's a little more illegal, though. But let's stick within the confines of what's legal within our world. I would tell you that the reason I can't do that is because when you see me, and I can 100%, if you go get a deck of cards and you deal a card right now and you look at a card and your deck card is your anything, I can guess that card, 100% certainty. Why can't you just win at poker? Because there's a procedure that I have to do to get your card. Because I'm telling you the truth, I'm not psychic. It's not supernatural. If I was, then this whole thing would be BS. You'd be like, Well, just do it. I don't. I have a certain way that I'm doing it. There's a series of steps. You don't know all the steps. You usually know one of them. Most people, when they figure them out, they figure out one out of seven or eight steps. Then the other two, they think, I got It was where I looked with my eyes this, and I did that, and it's not. But I made you think that. So I make you go through a procedure that people in real life don't do.

Because when I'm entertaining you, I'm in charge. If I just bumped in you at the airport right now, I need you that little slip, said, Look at me. Think of a song. You'd be like, Dude, who are you? Get out of my face. We couldn't have done all the preliminary. I couldn't have worked through, sat with you, talked to you a little bit in a certain way. It wouldn't have worked. I'm being honest. So at a poker table, people People won't do the stuff I need them to do for me to guess the card correctly. I don't have time on my side. Sometimes I can. I've actually played poker, and if I've started doing mentalism, but then people are onto it. I go, Look at me, think right. I'm not going to do that. And then I can't do my thing.

Got you. But even without that, you know that, but I don't fucking know that. Well, that's right. Let's say we go to dinner after the interview. I'm constantly going to be like, What the fuck does this guy know about what I'm thinking? There's some dark shit going on, Kairos.

I don't want everybody to know how dark it is. If we went to three more dinners, and then you'd be like, All right, he's a good dude. He's a good dude. All right, he's a little crazy with the mentalism, but I think I can overlook the fact that he's not just studying me at every moment. I think that's just a comfort where people get to know you beyond the exterior. But yeah, that's true. Now that I've become more known for what I do, it is a little bit of a hurdle at first to overcome because like you said, people are like, What do I do with my hands right now? I touch my face. What does that mean?

I mean, it's got to be a hurdle. I just went in the editing room a little bit ago, and I'm like, I don't know about it. I feel like I'm way off my game. I'm just waiting for this guy to fucking pull a bunch of stunts over here. But I mean, so what about with your kids? I mean, are you teaching them this stuff?

I haven't taught anybody yet, even though my oldest son, who's nine, has wanted to learn magic. But I'm very much like Mr. Miyagi, wax on, wax off. I'm like, You got to do the grunt work before you get to the good stuff. So I've told I've got to see that you practice because there's a lot of immediate gratification that they want, where if I... I've taught him a few magic tricks, and then he just goes and does it for his brother. And I go, That's not what we're going to do here. We're going to practice it until we do it really, really well, not until we just can do it. Because the instinct is, Oh, I just learned this trick, and I know how to do it now. I'm going to go to him, and I'm not going to do it that good. Maybe he might figure it out, but it's so exciting. I get that because it's a shiny toy. When you're a kid, you want to just unwrap the gifts from Christmas before it's time. I'm just going to rip them I want him to get better at the trick and show me that he has that level of awareness of practice, practice, practice, then do a really great job, and then I'll show you the next level, and I'll open the next door.

But I would be shocked if any of my kids became magicians or mentalists, but you never know.

Why would you be shocked?

I don't think they have the same mindset that I did. Got you. Which is they just don't need... There's a neediness involved to being a magician or mentalist. There's an emotional neediness that's the same as almost a comedian. Anyone in showbiz, you need something from someone else. You need the reaction. You need the laughs. You need the wow. It's just the truth. That's what you do if you're in this business. You need an audience. I think that I needed that as a kid because I was trying to take away some of my mom's problems, and I was trying to avoid being who I was in a certain way. This was a nice little Superman. Clark Kent is the nerd. He He rips off. He's the cape. He's Superman. I have this way of pretending to be Superman around people around me with these tricks that I learned, and they don't really get to know the real me. They got to know this version of me, which is a slightly bit exaggerated, more entertaining, more fun. Over time, I was able to meld those people and become pretty much I am who I am when I perform.

When I'm not performing, I might just be a slightly less exaggerated version, the same way anybody in show is. But this is me. You're not seeing a facsimile. Do you know when you see some performers, like a musical theater, and you see, that's not who that person is. Oh, yeah. How many people have you met in here who the lights go on, the cameras go on, they go off? It's not the same person. Do you know what I mean? I'm certain you have. Literally every politician. I don't know if that's the right answer, but I think that...

You had mentioned basically-I'll teach Teach them, though.

If they want to learn, I'm happy to teach them, but I want to teach them right, which is I'm very much a purist where if it's done, if it's done wrong, it ruins it for everybody. If it's done right, it helps everybody. With Magic Tricks, if you see one really bad magician, they'll never hire another magician again in a company. They'll be like, Same as comedians. I've done so many events where a comedian the year before swore, said something racist or bigoted or something anti-religious, and they're like, We can't hire you again, man. You offended everybody. Now that ruined it for comedians for gears until they feel like they've... We'll give it one more shot. They've scorched Earth. So the same thing happens for me. I want to do right for everyone who's in my world because it makes all of us look better. It actually helps my entire industry for me to be doing... Most people in my industry aren't jealous of me. There's not as many. They're happy for me, and I'm happy for them because I'm giving them more business. They'll call, they can't get me, they will call them, or they'll be aware of something as a category they weren't aware of before.

This didn't exist. Years Years ago, they knew about it, but it's become much bigger because of the virality of my videos.

You had mentioned that you started this. Just a second ago, you mentioned that you started this to take the focus off who you are. Sure. That's why you did this.

That's where you started. I think that I can see that in hindsight.

What were you hiding?

I think insecurity. I think low self-esteem. I think that as a teenager, life is tough. If you get some leg up that makes you... Let's say you play sports, right? If you're really good at sports, that creates a lot of your self-esteem.

You have created damn near an alter ego because at the beginning, I had said, wow, the characteristics that you're mentioning usually come with All the things that I describe. Low confidence, introverted, stuff like that. So you created an alter ego.

I think the alter ego over time became one in the same.

And then you meshed them together.

Which is I faked the confidence that I didn't have. I walked in that restaurant like I owned it, even though I was super nervous. I would go up to those tables and find a way, even though internally I wasn't. And so over time, that's how you can fast track confidence. You might say to yourself that deep down inside you're not. I've met so many. I've met A-list movie stars that you would not believe that when you're in behind closed doors talking them, they still have imposter syndrome. How do you have imposter syndrome? If you have imposter syndrome, who the hell am I? Because you're like one of the biggest stars on the planet. You realize that everyone is still figuring out life as they go. I've never met one person who has it all figured out. But as you go along, that confidence just built on the fact that you stack little wins and that over time, you start to believe in yourself and what you can do more and more.

Makes sense. Why did you decide How did you go the mentalism route rather than mentalist route rather than magic?

A couple of reasons that are less sexy than you'd want. So one is I was doing mentalism on the side. But mentalism is, for lack of a better term, boring. Mentalism doesn't have the props. Magic is visual. It's fun. Cards, fire, birds. It's like, yes. When I was a teenager, I got one book on mentalism. I'm like, this sucks. There's nothing to do. You just sit there in a room and think. It's the most boring thing I could ever Can you imagine? Because a lot of it comes down to thinking how other people think. You call it psychology. When I was 15 years old, I don't want to read psychology books. I want to read how to do card tricks and have girls go, wow, that wasn't that cool to me at the time. It wasn't for years. As I When I started doing bigger shows for more people, magic is visual. You need bigger props for bigger crowds. I had to bring more stuff, and I didn't want to bring more stuff. More stuff costs more money. It's more annoying. You have to have more bags. I just didn't want to do it. I didn't go down that route.

I found that mentalism hit a certain niche where people were still amazed, but I didn't need that many props, and I could still do stuff for 100 people, 150 people, 200 people, and I don't need big props. I started doing more and more of it from a practical perspective, just literally pragmatic. Then the year I got on America's Got Talent, I was probably doing 50/50 magic and mentalism in my shows. But the year before me, a guy had one named Matt Franco. Good guy. Shout out to Matt. He looked like me. We're both white guys. He's in his 20s, late 20s. I'm in my early 30s. Just on the surface, we get mistaken for each other because they'd be like, Oh, I saw you in America's Got Talent. They weren't talking about me. They were talking about him. But people just don't know who you are right away when you're coming up. I wanted to create separation between me and the guy who won last year because otherwise, you're just going to compare me to him. I don't want to be compared. I want to be one of one. When I did that, I decided to brand myself as O's the Mentalist and become more pure.

I don't do magic anymore. So in my TV appearances, I was always wearing a suit and tie because I knew that I was doing corporate events, and I wanted to do more corporate events and less private parties because I was married, we were going to start a family. My wife and I did not want me to be working five a week, a weekend. Every Friday, every Saturday, every Sunday, every one I'd work. I need to start getting more into these corporates, and that was going to portray me in a different way. And then the mentalism is just more of a cerebral pursuit. It appeals to people that are a little more intelligent. It's more of a, I don't know, it's like scotch tasting. It's like drinking wine. There's some element of it that's a little more high brow because you just think to yourself, Well, I'm not being fooled by a card trick. That seems very low level. This This isn't sleight of hand. This is something crazy. This is something different. It's a premium product is how it's perceived. It's still magic. At the end of the day, it's a version of magic. But I've created a way to, the same way that there's vodka, but somehow you create Gray Goose, you create a vodka that's costing more money.

You create Casa Azul. They're both tequila. Why is this one 300 bucks and this one's 30 bucks? What's different about them? They both get you drunk. There's something more premium about the product. That's what it is. It's branding. And so I can still do magic like a champ. There's nothing about... You get card tricks, dude, I'll go to town. But I don't really do them anymore because lots of people can do card tricks and magic. Very few people, if any, can do what I do. So that's what it's, it's supply and demand.

How did the mentalist stuff pop up on your radar then? There's so many magicians out there. I mean, who were you paying attention to that got you on the mentalist track?

There's a few. So there's... I mean, like, Darren Brown is a name. He's like what I'm doing now, but years ago in the UK, and he exploded. He is an A-list celebrity in the UK. He was a visionary. His appearances, and there's a few others all over the world where if you're smart, you can go to different countries and see who was that person in their country. You can learn things from people that aren't known here but are known elsewhere, which is very useful because then you're standing on the shoulders of giants. How would I describe certain things? We all are cover bands of each other in a certain way, like within the mentalism community. There's only so many tricks. There's so many different ways you can package a trick. Magic, there's so many different props. What I do, all I do, Sean, I reveal secret information or appear to guide your decisions. That's it. My whole career is I only do two things, but I'm able to dress them up in a certain way. I always call it Fiji water. A family made billions of dollars off putting water in a bottle. The bottle was a different shape.

It had a different picture on it, and it made you feel a different thing and give you a story. It's water. That is a master class in branding and knowing how to position things emotionally. The same thing I do with mentalism, I can do it for football teams. I can do it here for you and your audiences who are going to differ very greatly from The View, which I just did, or Jimmy Fallon, or CNBC, or a cooking show. I know what will appeal to those people. It's like being a chameleon.

Wow. You're a marathon runner.

And ultramarathons.

An ultramarathon runner. If you found ways through your studies of becoming a mentalist, find ways to mask or disguise pain or get rid of it, is that why you found so much success as an ultramarathoner?

I don't know if I can mask pain. I actually like the pain in a weird way. I've had some of the ultramarathons that have gone very well. I've had only a handful that have gone well where they were easy the whole way, and I felt like I was cheating. I'm going out there to find out who I am. I'm going out there to suffer and to overcome the suffering and still finish. That's when I feel like if I just puked 57 times, borderline crap in my pants, pardon my French, wanted to quit, laid on the floor, slept for five minutes in the middle of the night, got back, had a heat stroke, and made the finish, that's a war story I'm going to remember forever. If I ran it and just had a great marathon, it was easy. It's like, Where's the appeal in that? I didn't learn anything from that. While I'm doing it, I hate it. But afterwards, what it does to who you are is where the real growth is. The part where the volume, the volume of life. If I've done something that hard, anything that somebody else feels like a 10 of stress and volume and what are you going to do?

What are you going to do? To me, it's now a four because I've been through something like that. I've been through something much, much harder. Got you. Why does everyone ring that bell in Bud's? Because we want to see the There's probably people tougher than you that didn't make it because mentally, they weren't tougher. Mentally, they didn't want it as much as you did. How do you find out when you're going to break? You can't find out sitting on a couch pretending. You have to actually be there freezing, suffering, doing these things to see who you really are. Now, I was not in the military. I am so in awe of people that are, but I think the closest parallel in our current lives that are just soft, squishy, and so comfortable. I've got Uber Eats, man. Give me a break, is challenging ourselves in some physical pursuit and why these ultra marathons have become so big. And Gaugans has caught on so much because it's real in a world where everything is fake.

What are some of the tricks that you're most proud of?

Performances?

Yeah. Is there anybody that you thought would be a challenge to fool?

I did something recently, again, I don't know if this is off the record, but I did something with Jeff Bezos that was so fulfilling. It was We had an event and he challenged me. He asked me something that he said nobody would ever know. And up and down, we talked. There's just no way anybody could know this. And again, I broke it down, which is typically what I do. People always misremember the way I do things. So how did you just guess that? I didn't Can't even guess it. I figured out how many letters were in the word. I figured out two of the letters. It was like a game of hangman with your mind. And then bam, I figured out the whole thing. And so I figured out something that he challenged me with that he just flipped out. It was such a blast. And it's somebody that I have admired and looked up as a business person. I told him a funny story when I did it, which is I said, I'm at this event. It is as high profile of a room as you could ever have. Just literally as high profile as I've been in a room, I think there's maybe two or three rooms in the world each year that are with as many CEOs and major people.

I said, I told my kids, I have five kids, only one person in this room do they care about. I told them, I didn't even say Amazon. I go, If somebody could stand in this room, the founder of Alexa is in this room. You know the speaker? Because I told my kids, You've created real magic in my house. My kids ask Alexa 100 questions of the day. I have to unplug the damn thing because they drive us crazy, and they could ask it anything, and it answers your question. It's real magic. I go, Recently, they asked it, Who's the world's greatest mentalist? It said my name. Jeff, you made me a superstar in my own house. Before that, they didn't give a crap about their dad. But when Alexa said it, so I said to him, You challenge me right now, make up, think of a question. I'll give you a couple of minutes on it. That there is no way I could know. It is impossible that if I put your whole life, everything you've ever said through ChatGPT, every article about you, everything, we concide everything. There's no way in the world anybody would ever know this.

But you and you alone. He thought about it, thought, and he came up with a question, and he asked me, and I figured it out, and It was just like the room, pow, exploded. Because that story, I'm confident, he will talk about for the rest of his life. Wow. Yeah.

Man, that's wild. That is wild.

All right, let's have a fun one with you. You ready? Let's try to craft a similar memory. I said that that right there would be your past, present, and future. That note, that's been there. For those who have been missing us, I put that here. I took that out of my pocket. I put it down. When we walked into this room and I took it out, I made you swear to God above, so they all know that when this thing came out prior to that moment, we had not set anything up. I had not talked to you. I made a point of taking out timestamps. Is that correct? When this thing came out of my pocket. It's been here in full sight the whole time on your table, not mine. I made a point of that. The past was you thought about a song. We don't even know the song, but I got the words going down. Let's go to your future, which nobody knows the future. I don't know the future. Let's, hypothetically, let's go through this. Let's deja vu. You're having a birthday party. I'm sure you've had birthday parties before. Let's imagine that this is a milestone birthday, and You're going to tell me this number on the spot.

You're making this up right now in real-time. How many guests would you invite if you're having people that you grew up with, maybe some people within the world of media, now that you've formed this incredible business, people that you work with, people that maybe you served with, your brothers and arms, your sisters and arms, family. How many people would be at this party? Give me an estimate or be very specific. How many people are at the party? 150. 150 on the dot. Bam. Now, this is the part where I have you visualize this. This is the game. You walk in the room. It's not a surprise. You know who's in there. You're looking around and you walk around and say, Oh, my God, how are you doing, Sean? Then right at this moment, this is the part I wanted you to imagine. Somebody walks up to you, you hold out your hand, and this one person shakes your hand. Now, right before we do this, you do not know which person's name you are about to say. Is that correct? You do not know. I wanted to make sure that you know at this very moment, you have not decided who you are going to say.

Hold on, don't say a word. Stop. Yes. Anything you say is going to give something away right now. I'm saying to you, Only when you shake your hand do you make the decision of who it's going to be. Do you understand? Look at me. Right at that moment, you walk in, you shake their hand, and you know what? You look them in the eye, it's a family member. Blood is thicker than water. You go with a family member. You shake their hand and you look at them. Can you see any of that person's eyes right now? I think it's a guy. Is it a guy? How did I know? 50/50. But there's something to be said for when I do the shake and I look down, and I look down to see. If you look down, statistically, men are taller than women. Not always. It's not like I I don't want to do gender stereotype, but if you were to look down, you may have thought it was sister, daughter, mom, wife. When you looked directly at me, you were looking eye to eye. You thought it was a guy. The guy who you picked, family member.

Mix up the letters in his name. We'll try this again. Oh, shit.

Here we go.

Now that I've done this three times, I don't know if you notice, it's way harder for me this time. Okay. Because now I can't use reverse psychology against you. Pick any letter in his Any letter? In his first name.

Okay.

Change to a different letter.

Okay.

Change one last time.

Okay.

Now we try to feel it out. I know every name has a vowel. It just has to. It might have more than one vowel. I think at first you avoided the vowel. Your first choice was not a vowel, was it? No. No. But then later on, you eventually had to. You did hit a at one point, didn't you? No. Never? It's like a Polish name. Oh, my God. All right, let me see if I can get it. If the name was only three letters long, four letters long, it would have been very hard to change that many times. It would have been like, Which one do I do? It would have been... So now I know it's a longer name. Five, six, seven. If you saw this person, only clue, if you saw this person, would you refer to them by their first name?

Yes. Okay.

There was a hesitation, so I asked myself, because sometimes somebody picks a guy named William, but he calls him Bill or Billy. See what I'm saying? You didn't... First letter you thought of, then you switched to one further in the word. It's either the second or the one you're thinking of now. K is the second letter you thought of, isn't it?

What the fuck, dude?

On your life, Sean Ryan, before I walked in this room, we didn't know each other. I asked you to imagine how many guests you're going to have at a birthday party. You spontaneously said what number? 150 people. Is that right? Any one of those 150 people. Could have been a family member, a friend, anyone. One person walked up to you, shook your hand. In that moment, you looked in their eyes. Tell us all, what is that guy's first name? Frank. Frank.

Get the fuck out of here. What the fuck? Damn. You're good. Holy shit, dude. Wow.

Are you ready for the craziest part?

No.

You're not? Yeah, I'm ready. I don't know if you can handle it. I don't know if you can It. Around this room, you have so many parts. You are a man who loves to look back in time, but also look forward. But this is a temple. I mean, it's an amazing room. Look at this. I've never seen a room like this. When we go back in time and we're going down, that was the song. That was the song, I think you like to rock. I think this is classic rock. You did something with umph. Most people, I said, Sweet Home, Alabama. I said, Skinnerd. You started thinking classic rock. You said, Who Rocks? Who do I like? Who do I like? Led Zeppelin is the band, isn't it? Bitch. It is. Are you ready? That is right there in your hand. That is right there in your hand. Grab it. Right here? That came out of my pocket. Get the fuck out of here. That came out of my pocket the moment I walked in this room. Stop. Is that correct?

Yeah.

Before we had spoken a word to each other. Nothing was set up. Nothing was written. Nothing was in a phone. Nothing was talked to. There's no whispers. There's no thought that was in your mind when I walked in here and put that down. Is that true statement? That's true. On hand on the Bible. Hand on the Bible. Take out the note. Freeze right there. Take it out. It's in your hand, so I can't do it. It's a scroll. Pull off the rubber band and stop right there. What song was it? What was the name of the song?

When the Levy Breaks.

Oh, that's a good one. All right, When the Levy Breaks. Slow, just one line at a time, so you can read it. Read it slowly, one line at a time.

Sean, thank you for your service to our country and to all your listeners and viewers, nothing like a song to take you back in time to a memory in a place during our interview you'll hear When the levy breaks.

Pause right there. Pause right there. That was written before we said a word to each other. You could have thought of anything. You ready? When we went in to shake hands. Stop. Look this way at me. Don't open it up. Hold it against your chest. Don't read the whole thing. You haven't read it yet, have you? No. Right when we went in to shake hands. In that moment, this is the gold standard. This is when you ask me, How do you do something that breaks someone's mind? You went to shake hands with Frank, but right next to him, in your mind, you saw someone else, a good friend, and It was between those two. You were just about to shake hands. What was the name of the friend you saw in your mind? You were going to change your mind. I could tell. Right at the last moment, you said, Frank, who is the person you were thinking of?

Steve.

Read the rest of the note.

No way, dude. You'll hear when the levy breaks over and over in your mind. Also, I love when people change their mind because the other person you were thinking of was Steve.

Dude, what the fuck?

Holy shit. You have made a deal with the devil. Wow. What? Dude, what the fuck is going on? How the hell do you do this shit? Whoa. You are a scary motherfucker.

You heard it here, folks. Sean Ryan. I'll take that.

Wow.

I have to pull the mic off to drop it. You know what I'm saying?

That was awesome, man. Thanks, brother.

Thanks for having me.

Shit, that's crazy. Thank you. Thank you. Best of luck. Best of luck to you. Not that you need it.

You know what? Let me ask you a question. You got one of the team here that saw me earlier. Do they ever go on camera or no?

They can.

Get Jeremy in here.

Jeremy.

Jeremy has been watching. Am I right? Freaked out. Jeremy said to me, he goes, You got to do something insane for Sean. He's like, he's telling me, You got to do something crazy that he'll never get. And so, Jeremy, I'm giving you something crazy. You ready? How many interviews have you sat in on? What is in your hand? Now, put your phone away. I don't want anything in your hands. I want you to be free and limber. How many interviews have you watched from the other room while this has been done? How many? Guess. About 110. Wow, this guy is very specific. That was very specific. Imagine that you get to weigh in on the next interview, that you get to decide, and that somehow only one person has done it. We could rise someone from the dead. Anybody that's ever lived, if I told you dead or alive, passed away, it has to be someone famous. I ask people, who's the number one person you think of? Nod your head if you can see that person in your mind, clear as day. Number one person you want. That, to to me is, I told you this, this is a common choice.

If you tell somebody they're number one and you say later he did research, I agree, the number one could have been found. He brought me in for the podcast. He's one of your producers. I could have found his name. I could have looked up online. We could have somehow found this out. I believe that somehow people would say he researched you. But the gold standard, the Frank to Steve is when I say, change your mind, who's number two on your list? Now you see more of a struggle. Turn and look at him, Sean. Now it's a fascinating approach because now when he says to himself, who would I have done? Now he goes, who would we get in here? I think the person you're thinking of is alive. Am I right? Yes. I knew it. Even though I said dead or alive, he's like a cheerful guy. People think of somebody dead, they go like, I'm going to do Winston Churchill. It's a different vibe. It's very somber. I want you to think of the person's first name. I want you to think of the person's last name, okay? Is there any conceivable way that I could have found this out, looked this up, talked to somebody here?

Zero. We don't particularly They know each other. I arrived on set. We spoke for a moment. That's it. Why was he confused? Sean, think of the first name. Think of the last name. Those are pretty easy questions. Why was there a weird tension about it? Now, I could have told you that if you said to somebody, think of the first and last name, it was Madonna. I don't know Madonna's last name. She only got a first name. That's crazy. Are you behind me? Don't break the fourth wall. You see it? Sean, come on in here. Come on in here. Jeremy, I Spanish right now. Poof. Like a magician. Somebody else appears in my place. In this moment, you see this person, somebody famous, appears here and you go, I can't believe who Sean's interviewing right now. Tell us, who are you imagining this very moment appearing in this chair instead of me? Say, what's their name? Kim John.

Get the fuck out of here, dude. What? Holy shit. What the fuck, man? Oh, dude, I'm done. I'm done.

Holdholy shit. What the fuck is that? We'll kick him out. I love it. I love it. That's how we end. 60 seconds.

That's it. That's crazy. Dude, wild. Holy shit. No matter where you're watching, Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify podcasts.