815 The Power of Storytelling

This is episode number 815 on the power of Storytelling. Welcome to the school of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former Pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now, let the class begin. Khalil Gibran said, the appearance of things change according to the emotions, and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves. Today we've got a powerful episode. It's from some of my favorite people that I've ever interviewed. and it's the people that make us inspired, make us wonder, that make us believe in something greater than ourselves. It makes us believe in magic. And I've had some incredible magicians and illusionists on the show over the years, and they're always some of the most fascinating people for me because I want to understand what's inside their mind. How do they captivate an audience? How do they have the entire room, their attention on one thing, and make them see something else. How do they get people to believe in something that actually didn't happen, but creates such an amazing experience at the same time? We've got Darren Brown, one of my all-time favorites. He's a hypnotist, an illusionist, and a mentalist who began his career in UK, and he has done some incredible Netflix specials that just literally blow my mind. Every time I watch them, I'm always inspired. He's got best-selling books. unbelievable TV shows and a live performance as well. And you're gonna make sure to check him out, Darren Brown. We've got Lior Suchard. When I saw him perform live years ago, I was just there. I'm always able to figure out what some of the acts and what some of the things are that people do on stage. I couldn't figure out how he did any of it. It blew my mind. And he continued to blow my mind in this segment here. Julius Dein, who's one of the hottest up and coming street magicians and illusionists who has blown up on social media. He's one of the most recognized social media stars for his mind blowing magic and hilarious comedy with travel culture. We've got Ose Pearlman, world class entertainer and one of the busiest mentalists in the country whose clients are huge politicians, professional athletes and A-list celebrities. He's on the media and the press. I see him constantly on the Today Show and GMA and on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. He's done some incredible things. We've got Penn Jillette, who is the world renowned magician duo Penn and Teller. He's been over 40 years with Penn and Teller and he's redefined a genre in magic and inventing their own very distinct niche and comedy, the longest running act in Vegas as well. And in this interview in series, we talk about the power of storytelling and people's desire to be fooled, why we want to be fooled and tricked, how wonder is individual, but universal. We talk about quick tips on maximizing your social media impact and your audience impact, how giving away some secrets captivates your audience, but not all of them, and the importance of putting yourself in the audience shoes first. Very excited. Make sure to share this. Tag me. Tag the people that you're listening to as well when you're listening to them. lewishouse.com/815 Very excited about this one. Let me know what you think. Without further ado, let's dive into this episode with the The Magician Masters.

I've toured for like 20 years in the UK and each, I do a brand new show every two years. So this show, Miracle, was like one of the recent shows. And in that whole experience, that kind of career, nothing was as interesting as doing this every night. And see, because you basically, there's kind of two components to this idea of faith healing, at least as I see it, and certainly as I was doing it and I was learning from the faith healers and using their techniques. One is adrenaline. So you create, as you know, you.

Know with your own background, you're not really feeling pain.

Yeah, feeling like. Yeah. So if you get adrenaline going into painkillers, that's the first thing. So if you've got a, like, if you've got some back pain and, you know, and you're slouched in a bad. Yeah, a wild lion walks into the room. You're not worried about your back, right?

Right.

The pain goes. So you, you. Adrenaline kills, but that's the first part of it. The second part of it. which is where it gets really interesting, is the stories that we tell ourselves, which is a recurring theme in my interests in life and work, and how we get restricted by that. And what I didn't expect was how I thought it was gonna be people saying, oh, I had back pain and now it's gone. But within a week of doing the show, I remember a woman coming up in floods of tears. She was maybe in her 40s. She'd been paralyzed down one side of her body since being a kid. and for the first time, she's able.

To move her body.

No way. And this is how you can, of course, she can start to go mad as the healer and start to believe in it, right? Believe you're like a god. Starts to take an effort to think, yeah, exactly. This isn't something I'm doing. This is something you're doing. So that psychological component, so basically it's like the part of our, you know, not for everybody, of course. I'm only dealing with a percentage of the audience, right?

So I got maybe two, three thousand people in the audience, and here are 300, right?

So we're talking.

Most people aren't feeling it, or maybe they didn't have pain or whatever.

Exactly, yeah. And then the number that get invited up is smaller again, right?

It's like the most suggestible people or the more like.

The people, yeah, exactly. The people that certainly experience the most. But the fact that, you know, if you x-ray this woman before and afterwards, clearly nothing has changed, right? But her, somehow in the story she was telling herself about this condition, I can't move my arm, this is something I live with, it's a restriction that I have. maybe a bit of adrenaline at the start, and then the kind of the challenge of like, if you couldn't move something before, try it now. Notice what's different and come up and tell me. Just that sort of, okay, I'll think about it differently. Just snapped her out of it. She's not just feeling it different, she's actually kind of physically moving. And night after night, these things happen, and it varied from night to night, and some nights were more dramatic than others, but it was extraordinary. And then, and again, percentage is getting smaller, right? So now we're at the top, like, probably half a percent, which is always gonna be kind of extraordinary. But people then saying like a year later, this is, you know, this is a permanent thing. Again, I'm thinking it'll work for 10.

Minutes when they're on stage.

Right, 'cause they get the adrenaline and they're- yeah, but they'll go back and they're gonna be as they were, which is where those healers, where it starts to get nasty. 'Cause then they're saying if this healing doesn't last, it's your fault. You didn't have enough faith and so on. So that's where it gets nasty. So I'm being open and saying, look.

You'Re gonna go back, it's probably gonna be the same. Don't throw those pills away, regardless of what I said earlier on. Some people it works for them.

It continues to work.

Well here's the thing, my girlfriend Jen, she's a doctor of physical therapy and she works on people who are in chronic pain, who are broke, who pulled muscles, who have bad neck pain, back pain, knee pain, all these things, joints. And she'll get them on her table and literally have them start changing the story around. It's an emotional thing that they're holding onto. They're just really tight. When you get people to relax, they can usually move better and the pain goes away. And so the way you were doing it, I was just watching, I was like, wow, you're just getting people to really relax. You have them take deep breaths.

You have them, like, I think close.

Their eyes at one point.

It was a constant-- It was a constant-- yeah. But it wasn't really even relaxing. It wasn't like a-- 'cause you can't stand on stage and have people just relax for 20 minutes.

Right.

You know, it was-- it was-- it was just amazing. It was just like-- It was crazy. It was-- it was-- it was crazy. And then I started to think, well, maybe I could-- Maybe I could present this as a thing, 'cause you could pack out Stadia if you said, this is a secular healing show. You know, I'm not making any claims, but that's what that is when you start to go mad, 'cause we never advertise it as a healing show.

But you heal people there.

Or people are.

Yeah, but you don't want people coming to the show wanting healing, 'cause then.

You'Re into kind of a dark area. So anyway, yeah. But what you do, which is even cooler, is you start to guess where people's, or not guess, I shouldn't say.

That, but you start to call out.

Where people's pain is. Where the pain is, and you're just.

By looking at them, it's like your.

Left knee, and they're like, Quiet.

Yeah, my left knee can't, you know, whatever. And that isn't someone going, oh, it's obvious for you. Yeah, exactly. But it's amazing.

Yeah, but again, I'm using the techniques.

That the healers use. Really, what are those? Are you allowed to share? I always find if I say, oh, this is how they do it, people then go, oh, okay, well that wasn't how the healer I saw, or the psych, you know, I do a lot of stuff debunking like psychics and mediums. Mediums, yeah. I never say exactly how I'm doing it, 'cause then people go, all right, well that's not how my guy did it. I did this one in one of the stage shows I did, I had people up on stage and I did mediumship, right? But I'm debunking it as I'm doing it. So I'm saying, Really? I've got your grandmother here, her name is Alice, is that right?

They're like, yeah.

And she's saying, How do you know the name? And she's saying, that's my secret. And she's saying, and she's not saying anything, I'm lying to you, you understand this, but she's saying she had a little dog called Jasper, is that correct? Yep. And she's, I'm making this up, and.

I'm making it up.

So I'm debunking it as I'm doing, I'm saying I am lying to you. And you're making it up or you had other, I'm not making, well, I'm telling them correct information, but at the same time I'm saying, I am lying to you. Yes, yes, yes. So it's kind of an interesting, I felt theatrically kind of an interesting sort of weird play. Anyway, so after the show, there was a girl at stage door who said to me, could you put me in touch with my grandmother? And I said, well, I hope it was clear from the show that I can't really do it. I'm kind of debunking it. Oh, no, no, I know it's fake and everything, but would you be able to put me in touch with my grandmother? And it was just a really interesting moment of our capacity for that kind of dissonance to hold those twin ideas in your head that are completely conflicting is extraordinary. So our capacity to essentially kind of fool ourselves, I think, is to want to believe.

To want to believe that this person can or that this person's connecting through someone somehow to me.

Yeah, exactly. And I think there's a lot of that you've got to get through before you reach the possibility of anyone doing it for real.

What do you think is your greatest superpower? Because I think you can do a lot of things extremely well, and I feel like you're a master, you're a student of life and understanding people, and you've been doing this for a long time. But what do you think is your greatest skill set?

You're very kind. I'm happy if my breath smells okay in the afternoon.

You have a weak handshake, I understand.

If I have a, Toolkit, like, a magician has got his deck of cards, whatever. I think my toolkit is people's stories that they tell themselves. I think that's what interests me.

Can you give an example?

Even just like a magic trick, right? When you watch a card trick and you go, he had me pick a card and then he put the card back in the deck and it disappeared and then it was in my pocket. That's impossible. Now that is a story you're telling yourself and you're going from point A to point B to point C, but of course, It's like also 8.1, 8.2, you know, but you, what the magician's doing is just encouraging you to edit the story in such a way that normally all the sleight of hand happens right in front of you, but you don't pay attention because it doesn't seem important. And then the bits that do seem important are the bits that later are going to join up to form the story, right? And they're a little, like there's, when I used to do a lot of this kind of magic, and like a thing I'd always say is, so let's say you got like a deck of cards at the beginning that is in a special order, So you can't shuffle them, but there's a point halfway through the trick where they can shuffle them. I would normally say at that point, okay, let's shuffle the cards again, but this time do it under the table. Right, so they follow that instruction, but it sounds like they've shuffled the cards before. To them, does that make sense? Shuffle the cards again. Because I say, Shovel the cards again, but this time do it under the table. Now they haven't shuffled the cards before.

Because they were in a special order.

But then later, when they're reconstructing the trick in their head, let alone when they're then telling someone else about the trick. Shovel the card a bunch of times. I shove it at the beginning, you know, and it's like a false memory that you start to implant. So, yeah, you're just working with stories. And so what I do, 'cause I'm like, the sort of magic I do isn't really like prop-y, it's kind of like more based around suggestion. So it really is, there's also conjuring in it as well. I mean, I'm using magic techniques too, but largely, like the bit that interests me and the stories of it is just, yeah, it's people's ongoing perception.

If you think about it, Again, I go back to magic. A magician can do four things. Any magician, he can make something appear from nowhere or disappear or transpose or levitate. That's it.

That's like- In lots of different ways.

Exactly. So like that's like four pillars. Now with what I do, same four pillars. I can read something, I can influence something or guess. It's more like a reading. I can predict something. Or I can make things move like the spoon bending or telekinesis stuff, brain power. On that, you build a story, different, different story. It's like, you know, you talk about motivational speaking, okay? Thinking positive, it's a fact. People need to think more positive, but every person takes it to how they see it and how they look at it at the end. It's all about mindfulness and, you know, getting yourself into the, Right position. But same thing here. There's four elements and I build the story, the crazy story around and I give you, in the middle of the story, I give you traps and I give you ideas and I give you, oh, I think I know how it did that and then something coming to that block. So it's a show, it's a live show. It's to entertain people and when I see, and this is the truth, when I see people wondering and here's an interesting thing that I don't think nobody talked about it. What is the sense of wonder? What is it? What do you think is a wonder?

When someone is wondering, they're curious.

But you left, you went like, oh my God, oh my God. Some people will cry. Some people will go like this. And some people will just, and there's a lot, I mean, we know. Laughter, you know, it's universal. This is laughter. Sadness, you know, it's the opposite. Angry, you know, it's like this. Wonder, it's very individual. If you think of Wonder, not everybody will go like this. Not everyone. Some people will go like this. Some people would be shocked once I had a show and nobody clapped their hands at the end. And I felt so embarrassed. I said, no, you understand, they were too shocked. So I had to reprogram the show to get applause. So it's very interesting when you think about it. And when I see the audience wondering, becoming children again, that's amazing. That's why I do what I do.

Do you feel like you had a good childhood?

Define a good childhood.

Well, you say you want people to be like children again. That means...

I believe, you know, I have two children of my own. And, you know, the children, did you see that there's an amazing scene from the movie the Prestige? You see a magician, he's taking a little bird, and you go like this, and the bird disappears, and the audience goes, oh my God. And the bird appears like in another place. So everybody's like clapping their hand, and the little boy, is asking, what happened.

To the first bird?

And really, the magician had like a mechanic, something that he makes her, so he kills the first bird.

Oh, no.

Something like that. But children has a sense of wonder. They touch the iron because they're curious, and then they get the burn, and they, you know, I see my kid is doing something from Lego, and he's like, oh, look what I've done, look what I've done. It's amazing. They have this. When we grow up, we start to lose this. You go into the box, you have your work, and everything in the news, and we start to lose this amazing feeling.

Of wonder.

Of wonder. And I'm here to get back. And, you know, I don't want to name dropping, but you know some of the people that I perform for.

Absolutely.

It doesn't matter who you are. You can be known, rich, poor, everybody's leveled. And they have this sense of wonder, which is amazing. It's a wonderful feeling.

How old are your kids?

Four and two.

And do you perform mentalism on them?

It's hard because mentalism is very... Sometimes it's not visual. It's not like magic visual. Sometimes it's very intellectual, you know?

What you think about later.

You think about, so it's hard to express it.

But working on that... You're working out with them? A little bit. Because you're not like, voila, like there's something funny.

Exactly, exactly.

It's not an act.

Exactly. That's why when I do a big show... Even if I do a show for 3,000 people, the stage and the screens, the production will be modest because it's not going to be explosions and stuff like that. There's a little, of course, lighting and we have screens, we have cameras because it's all about the interaction, but it's not going to be like fireworks and stuff like that because it's all about what's happening there. It's not about about. It's not about how big it is. It's about how emotional it is.

How important is storytelling in mentalism? That's everything.

That's everything.

How did you learn how to tell better stories?

I didn't. I didn't. I'll tell you a little story. I think it was like 10 years ago, I did a show and the guy came to me and told me, I have a show for a company, for a Swatch group in Switzerland, Swatch brand. And I have all the retailers. Do you think it's amazing? You think you can do something connected to the watch? And then I was like, It's like, I think I have an idea. And then started infotainment.

Infotainment.

Infotainment, which is creating this stuff. I said, okay, so I know how to guess things for dice. What if it wasn't a dice? What if it was different messages of a company? And you look at something and say, oh, you're looking at how important is the connection with the workers. And then I find myself talking about the messages, conveying the messages, but in a way that people remembers it.

Right.

So for Swatch, I took 10 people on stage. I told them to one of the acts, hold your hand above your watch, count to three, and I actually stopped all their watches. Stopped completely.

You didn't touch their watches.

I told them I was going like this to them. The watches stopped.

You didn't touch the watches.

The audience goes wild. Never touch the watch. The audience goes wild.

Wow.

One lady From those 10 people said, my watch is still working. And I started to act like, no way, what's going on? What's going on? What's going on? No, no, no. It didn't stop. And I was, let me see, let me see. And I was going like, oh, you have this watch. And that was like a moment because then I said, what do you have?

What do you have?

And I talked about all the other brands.

Wow.

That I could stop, but I could not stop. The Swatch.

That's powerful.

And the message was, I can't do it.

That's brilliant.

And it was a metaphor. Of course, by the way, I could stop any of the watches. I just made it look like I acted as I did. And I saw the owner of Mr. Hayek, he's the owner of, he passed away, but back then he was like, because you had 700 people who sell his watches, and now we wanted to say, how good is the watch?

Wow.

So then I found myself flying for a Lots of corporations, Fortune 500 companies, cyber security. For IBM, I did a competition who is smarter, me or Watson? You know, the artificial intelligence. For Google, we did something who is faster in searching? Master Mentalist or Google? So I create this, and I think this works on a principle that if I ask you what were you wearing three weeks ago on Monday? Nobody knows. But if I ask you what did you do on the day of September 11 when the plane hits the twin... You remember exactly what you did.

Can you remember what I was doing?

I know, no, but I remember what I was doing. Why do you remember it? Because it was an emotional impact. Bad, negative one. You remember also the good things.

You do fail videos as well. We're like, oh, we messed up.

Right, right. That was initially, there was a, you know, a couple of tricks right where I liked, I didn't get it right. And then there was a situation, I can't remember which, what happened. Oh yeah, this is what it was. It was in, it was in my Rome video that went insane. It's on 135 million views on Facebook, over a million shares. And what it was, it was these three Asian ladies sitting by like the Colosseum. I saw this one of the videos. Exactly. I see you burst out laughing, you saw that in front of me.

Yeah.

And I went over to them and I plucked like sponge ball from behind their ear.

Right.

And I was expecting, you know, Applause, just some type of reaction. And they, and they just stared at me. Right. And I just kind of stared at them. And it was just this moment of nothingness. And, you know, I, I put that into the video. It was this kind of fast-paced viral, you know, like, crazy, like, high energy magic, like, boom, boom, boom. Everyone's, you know, just tagging their friends, sharing. But then the most, the most tags and shares, the most tags and, and seem to be from this clip. Yeah, exactly. The most comments where everyone's tagging their friends going, oh, this Yeah, so I.

Was like- From a fail, it's from a fail trip.

Right, right, right, exactly. And then I have the slow-mo with the sad music. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not for me, exactly. I wouldn't say that too much, you might get striked on YouTube.

Exactly, yeah, yeah.

What I would say is that when you're looking on your newsfeed, things are going viral from all walks of life, whether it's inspirational talks to, you know, asking for cancer research donations, to puppies, to magic tricks, to social experiments, to health awareness, everything in its different formats. Political stuff, everything. Exactly, right. So people that say, oh, you're a magician, you know, you know, it's not even true because most magicians don't go viral. I mean, I think I'm the only really, really, really viral magician. I've got a few friends that are doing social media really well, but I'm definitely the one that's consistently making viral videos. So I wouldn't, for magic, for magic. So I wouldn't say that, oh, you're a magician that makes much difference. Because a lot of magicians, like, can't get any views. Exactly, exactly. But, I mean, there are a few great guys, don't get me wrong. But what I would say is, you, there is a, there is a formula to going viral, okay? Particularly, particularly on Facebook, right? And the formula is to remember, okay, that, that, on Facebook, people are just scrolling. Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. So you've got to catch them. On YouTube, it's a different story. YouTube is about long-form content. It's about, fan base, right? Facebook is about virality, it's about sharing, it's about something exploding on the internet. So you've got to remember, YouTube and Facebook are very different. They're both powerful. So what I would say is that for my YouTube audience, you know, I've got a more, and my Instagram audience, I've got a more loyal fan base that understand what I'm up to in life. With Facebook, it's just about viral. You know, if you can smash 100 million views on a video, you can build a huge audience. And from that, you can target, you know, target ads, you can build a business, you get exposure, you can potentially start to get loads of emails from building your brand. But let me answer your question. So on Facebook, people are scrolling, you need to catch their attention. So forget about a long introduction, right? The first three seconds are crucial. So if I was in your position, let me say in my position, I've just released a video on Facebook called Miami Reacts to Magic. It's on about three and a half million views in three hours. And the first three seconds of that video, something really interesting is happening. It's like bang magic trick, someone freaks out, right? So it's catchy.

First three seconds. So you got that formula down, you.

Know, okay, here's the moment. Exactly. And to put that into your position, say you were going to do an inspirational talk on how to build a business. For me, if I was in your position, which is a similar thing to what Gary Vaynerchuk has done, some of his videos have had 20, 30, 50 million views on Facebook. He starts with something interesting. So he'll ask you a question, you know, so it might be, you know, the first three seconds might be, So what do you want in life? That could be an example, you know? Or it could be like, okay, when you die, what are you gonna regret? Just something that brings people in, right? So that's what I would say. Have a snappy introduction, have a question, the evoking question. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it doesn't necessarily have to be a question, but just think to yourself, are people gonna find this interesting? Because I've seen the difference between putting a boring introduction and an interesting introduction, and it can lead to the difference of millions of views.

Because if people click off straight away.

It's gonna have way less people who are gonna share that video.

It's gonna go way less viral.

Okay, so that's the first part. First part. So, okay, so forget these long introductions. It's not a YouTube video. People don't know who you are. You're talking to people that some of them may have no idea who you are. Right. Especially when it gets reshared on some random person's timeline in the Philippines. Yes. You know, they just wanna see something in action.

Yeah. Right.

Second thing, right? Make sure that what the content you're making is people want to tag their friends. So if you're doing something inspirational, you want to create the type of content that people want to tag their friends. So whether it's funny or emotion eliciting or it's cute, it's very important that you're creating format that people want to tag their friends because that's what Facebook is all about and Instagram as well. It's about people tagging their friends, making each other aware. The most viral videos in the world are the ones where people are tagging their friends. shareable videos, which is inherent to the video being viral.

Right, okay. So that's the next thing.

Is there another element? Oh, there's having, I think, clickbait, having a clickbait thumbnail. Having an image. Do you always have an image thumbnail.

On Facebook as well? Yeah, I actually take it separately.

Yeah, I take it separately. Separate image, yeah. You upload it with the video, you can make a thumbnail in Facebook videos.

Is that the deal?

Right, yeah, exactly. Exactly. I subtitle everything on Facebook. 70% of people Sometimes, well, I don't turn on the sound. Right, because they were at work, they're scrolling, you know, there's no sound. So I subtitle everything manually. I know Facebook have like an auto subtitle, but I don't even bother with that. I just subtitle it manually, make it crystal clear. You want to make your content crystal clear. Where some videos lack is there is a lack of clarity. So maybe, you know, 15 seconds to 19 seconds, there's, you know, something happens, it's not very... Exactly, exactly. And then, There's no easier place to exit than the internet.

You just carry on scrolling, then you click on. I'm lost, gone. Exactly. So it's got to be crystal clear throughout the entire thing.

What's the duration, the length that you found is the best length for something to be shared? Yeah, so if we're talking Facebook, I guess right now we're on the Facebook topic. I'd say between one and two minutes. Facebook are pushing longer form content. So if you can make a two, three minute video that's viral, that's a great video, then so be it. Six second videos don't really seem to do if you look at your feed now, there's not really many six second videos anymore are they? Because on the algorithm, Facebook are pushing long form content the same way they're introducing new TV shows and they're introducing monetization for videos over a minute and a half. They're introducing this 3 and a half.

And a half way.

Exactly, that's being introduced.

Yes. So yeah, I think so. So a minute to two minutes and if you can extend it to three or four and still keep it interesting and good edits and subtitles, crystal clear. unique and, you know, or thought provoking, then you can kind of stretch to.

Three or four it sounds like. Right, I keep my videos, I try and keep them between two and three minutes because I know that that's gonna reach most of my audience because it's a, it's a longer form video so.

It'S gonna, you know, show better in the algorithm. And then what about the end of a video?

We talked about the beginning, the middle, what about the end? Yeah, well it's nice to have a twist. Alright, so if you look at the most viral videos on the planet, with the the Viners or, you know, there's, there's, or even with my video. So the video that got 135 for whatever it is, 133 million views from, from May, there was a funny twist at the end, which is where I steal the guy's girlfriend with a magic trick. It was more of a sketch than an actual trick, but people tagged the grandparents, right? Is that. Yeah, yeah, it was with.

Yeah, exactly. The older lady and the older guy.

Was, like, running after you in Rome. Yeah. The video, it was called how to impress girl with a magic trick. And the final clip was that I make a lollipop appear from fire. Yes. And then she, she'd give me a kiss on the cheek. And then the final, the very final clip is me walking off with her and her husband running after me, shouting, oh, that's my wife. Yes. Cuff. People, it's just funny.

Yeah.

People want to share. I mean, that video has over a million shares.

Crazy. Yeah.

Yeah. And right now it's getting shares probably.

About, you know, 50 to 100 shares a minute right in this very second.

Still.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, we reverse engineer. So my work as an engineer, I could barely screw in a light bulb. My wife makes fun of me. But the way that I think, the way that we, like the way that I dissect my routines is I first think of the effect. So I think, what do I want you to think happened? Here's what would be really cool to me. So it would be really cool to me if I could tell you to think of anyone. But I'm influencing where you're gonna go with that person before you even know it. And I'm gonna tell you that person's.

Name, and I'm gonna-- Don't make it an athlete. That's too obvious.

Don't make it exactly. Exactly. Oh, so, okay, narrow it down. Psychology 101. It's the same way that a salesperson, if they're very pushy, the used car salesman says, you, get this car, get this car, your guard is up. But if you walk into a place and they kind of talk to you long and go, you, know what, this might not be right for you. I think maybe your business is better elsewhere. You're intrigued. This guy doesn't want my money.

What do you mean?

That's how you hook people in. There's so many little facets. There's interesting thing, pickup artists.

Did you ever see that book by-- Neil Strauss.

Yeah, Neil Strauss, the game. He's a good friend of mine. So a lot of those guys start as magicians and a lot of what they talk about is very I'm not applicable to what I do literally, but not for picking up, you know, picking up like girls or anything. It's knowing how people think in their decision making, knowing how social dynamics work, how people think when they're one at a time or versus in a group dynamic. And I, you know, I work on.

That all the time.

That's so much of my show is knowing how I'm gonna affect and influence somebody when they're amongst others, when somebody is with their peers, colleagues, or whether they're with their boss, all of those things play in when I do a show.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

Huge.

So when you see someone, when you go into a room or a restaurant and you're thinking, like, when you see someone, do you think, like, what's the trick? Or, I mean, what's the, the thing I want to do?

Not the trick, but the, you know, Jason Bourne. You know Jason Bourne, the first movie? One of my favorite scenes ever is when they bring him into the restaurant and he tells you everything right now.

Boom.

I know what that guy's wearing. I know what that license plate is. I know that, that no BS is exactly what I've trained my mind to do.

In every room.

If I walk into most rooms, like I had a show last night for 85 people in San Antonio, Texas, I knew every single person's name in that room. Every single person's first name.

How?

That's memory work. So I've worked on memory.

So you met every person?

Well, during the cocktail hour, I walk.

Around, I say hello.

You met everyone. Even if I don't meet them, they have name tags. I'm going to know everything about them. I knew who worked for the host company. I know who didn't. I know who's superior to who. and I've got the social dynamics on this. This guy's got a wedding band. I can see that it's scuffed. I know this guy's been married probably 15-20 years.

Everything like that is fodder for the show. Sure.

Additional stuff, you're just like, wow, this guy's good. That is the show. So when you hear about cold reading and stuff that a lot of psychics and mediums do, I'm not here to tell you what's real and not real. I just know that so much of what I see a lot of psychics do, I could do exactly the same and I could do it with no supernatural abilities. I can do it based on the here, the now, my five senses, and.

What I'm able to deduce. Asking a couple questions and yeah, just.

Being aware of it. Leading questions, knowing where people's motivations are, I know that they want to hear a certain thing, so I'm gonna bring them in that direction. It's kind of like if I knew one thing about you. Let's say, Louis, I learned one thing about you. Let's say I knew exactly that you were gonna think about your brother who's a world known jazz violinist, number one in the world. What I might do is mention my siblings and go into that and then have a facet where I ask somebody else in here to think of their sibling. And then I wait that moment and I kind of put the hook in. And I know that I've just said it where you're gonna go, what does my brother do? And I know that information, everything I've done is craft a scenario that's gonna set in motion you asking me the question that I know the answer to.

Everything you do is setting up or what you already know.

Not always, but I try to do multiple different. So I have, that would be, if I did that more than once, you would instantly catch on. So what I do is I mix methods. In my show, I teach you how I did one thing slightly, and then I do the same thing in a totally different way and you go, what the F? So that's the fun of it. If I did a show and you didn't understand anything, you would get very bored and you'd get exasperated and annoyed with me. I like to spread breadcrumbs. The whole show, I teach you little.

Things, takeaways, and that's why you have fun. So you're teaching people what you're doing as you're doing it.

Absolutely, like elements of it. You're not trying to hide the magic of it. Oh, no, I will show people how to detect lies during the show. And so I'll do things body language reads, I'm not teaching you to be a mentalist, but I'm giving away a little bit of the craft while I go because that's what hooks you in.

You go, wow.

And so as it gets, every phase gets a little more impressive and then it do something even crazier. You go, well, if he did that.

How did he do that one? It just makes it more fun. You need to build. Sure, sure. Does mentalism have to do more with.

Emotional intelligence or observing people's behavior? So it has to do with both in the same way that a hypnotist, if you say to me, I don't want to be hypnotized, I don't want to be hypnotized, I'm not going to be hypnotized. then at the end of the day, you won't be hypnotized. Does that make sense? The power of suggestion. But a hypnotist, a very talented good one, can diffuse that person's underlying tension or why are they so nervous or what are they scared of or what's the problem? So in most scenarios, I try to get to the root of will this person be good to work with or not? And when I'm doing a big show, I can quickly avoid people that I just don't think are gonna be fun.

Right.

Because some people, if let's say I walk up to you and you just had a really rough day or you got really bad news, and I don't want that, I don't ever want to bring up, my show is not ever going to bring you bad news. It's a fun show, it's interactive. So I'll kind of shy away from that. But to answer the question, I think that it's more about observing people than the emotional intelligence, because certain people, I just can't read well. There's no way around it. Yeah, so I can do certain things with them, but we won't get to the next level with them. It's just that simple. There's no way around it. And then they'll come up to me on the show and be like, why didn't you do something more with me? And I'm like, I'm sorry, I couldn't. And then they're like, I can't read your mind.

Exactly right. Exactly right. It was a bit more opaque than others. So what's the perfect person to work with?

Or who do you see? What's the type of person you see? You're like, yes, that's going to be a good person to work with. It runs the gamut of the extreme. So the people that are most believing and most into it are always the most fun. and also the ones that are at the opposite end that are the most skeptical. Because nothing's better than having somebody who's arms crossed, body language like this, and I seek them out in the show. I have a lot of funny bits that are just literally finding that person that's gonna say, There's no way you're gonna know this. And that's the best moment ever when you get that right, because that's when you get the explosive reactions on stage, on TV, and the ones like the David Blaine things where you just know in today's day and age where everything can be faked, Everything can be reshot, but authenticity can't be faked. Like when you see someone's real reaction, you know it's not actors. You know it's, you just can't fake it. It's very difficult to fake surprise and being blown away. People can notice when it's off, you know? Yeah, of course.

They can. Is there ever a, what do you call it? You don't call it a trick, but do you call it something else?

Trick routine, effect, whatever you want. Is there ever, I don't mind trick. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm tricking you, but my goal isn't the trick. If you figure out how I did it, some of the time, it's more impressive than actually not knowing. There's certain things I do where when you know, if you actually figure it out, somebody will walk up to me, goes, you couldn't have possibly done this and this. I go, that's exactly what I did. He goes, there's no way. I go, that's insane. So it's some of the things are even more impressive once you figure them out because they seem so ballsy.

They go, you just did that in front of thousands of people? Like that could have gone wrong.

What if?

What if?

And I go, that's exactly, that's the rush. I've been working with Teller without a break. And that's important because you can talk about Mick and Keith Stones, and you can talk about how long they've been working, but they had three or four year breaks where they didn't talk to each other. Teller and I have been working continuously without a break. And really, without even 10 days of a break? Yeah, for 44 years.

44 years.

And we are the longest running headliners in the history of Las Vegas. Not just running now. We've been running in the same theater, the conveniently named Penn & Teller Theater, for 19 years. And we've been in Vegas now for 24, 25, something like that.

Wow.

But it's been 44 years. I started working with Teller actually a little before I turned 20.

Wow.

And it's all I've ever done. And my children have said to me, Now if you weren't doing a magic show with Teller, what would you be doing? And I said, well children, I would be in prison. This kept you focused. There's nothing else I know how to do. I have no other skills. Your dad has no other skills at all. This is what I know. Yeah, we are, I believe, I believe Tommy Smothers, when the Smothers Brothers retired, said, it's now Penn and Teller who've been working the longest. And that's the way that'll be for a while. The idea of a partnership started having words like co-dependence as pejorative words started sneaking in on partnerships. Partnerships can be very, very powerful. And the co-dependence becomes really interesting because there's stuff that I might have ended up being good at that I have no skills in at all because Teller's so good at them. You know, because when we started, when we were young, if one of us was a little better at something, they just did it.

You do that, I'll do this.

So there's all this time that I don't know how to do that because Teller's good at it. So you can almost look, We didn't start out, you know, people talk about how, boy, you two are amazing, 'cause your strengths and weaknesses fit together perfect. We didn't start out that way. You developed that, you know, it's like, oh, I can't do that anymore. Right, right. Well, with me and with Teller too, it's that we never could. When you're in your early 20s, you're learning what you're gonna do. And if they put you on a track where you're not, you know, and you see that, you see that in sports, right? I mean, guys who, Guys who were in high school, professional sports figures, are always the best at everything, single thing in their high school. And then 10 years later, they can't play those other sports. They become, you know, they become-- and you see that in theater too. You see people who are tremendous. When they were in high school, they are comedy and drama and writing and directing and producing and acting. They can do everything. And then 15 years later, They only direct soap operas.

Yeah.

Those are the skills they have. Everything else has fallen away. Teller is probably the best alive now among the best that's ever lived at being able to see the stage from the audience point of view and forget what he knows. It is a skill that is always important in art. If whether you're painting, whether you're doing music, you have to have the feeling of what is it like to be someone else hearing this. It has to be the opposite of solipsistic. You've got to see yourself outside. Really useful skill. But in magic, when you're doing a.

Performance or... Yeah, sure.

You have to know, you have to have a theory of mind. When you're talking to somebody, you have to be able to, in order to say a sentence to you, I have to be able to imagine what you're like hearing that and who you are. And if I were doing this interview with someone that English was a second language, it would change the entire interview.

Sure.

If I was doing this with somebody who was particularly, you know, one, it matters who you're talking to. And to get a general, what's it like for a person to walk into the Penn & Teller Theater? What is that person like? Well, that is what you need for comedy or music or anything. But in magic, you've got a whole different thing because you know things that they will never know. that if they did know would change their experience profoundly.

Sure, sure.

So teller's able to say, no one's gonna see your left hand go into your pocket there. And you go, how do you know? And teller's able to do that shift, that ego shift.

There you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you enjoyed this, please share it with your friends. to a friend, tag me, let me know what you thought about this. And the link for that is lewishouse.com/815. You can go back to that link and see all the show notes, check out who each individual is, the links to their specific episodes, so you can listen to those as well, the full interviews with them, because they're all very powerful. And if you don't follow me on YouTube yet, make sure to go to youtube.com/lewishouse. We've got almost a half a million subscribers over there. We put all of our videos out there. from our podcast as well. And we've got some amazing inspirational content that we don't have on the podcast that we release every single week. So go to youtube.com/lewis howes, subscribe, leave a comment, like a video, let me know what you think there. You can also find me on the Instagram as I hang out there a lot. We're constantly posting clips and videos and inspirational quotes. So if you want that daily feed of inspiration, then follow me @LewisHowes and let me know what you think over there. Spread the message of greatness. If you want to be a hero in someone's life, just text them a link to this episode or another episode. You can be a champion for someone. You can help someone by giving. It's very easy to give. You can give through a smile, a hug, a nice gesture, a text acknowledging someone. You can send them a link to this podcast or something else that you liked online. as well. But be a giver today and spread this message. And the more you do that, the more it helps us grow and bring more people into this community of conscious achievers. If we go back to the beginning, the quote Khalil Gibran said, the appearance of things change according to the emotions and thus we see magic and beauty in them while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves. You have the power to create magic in every moment of your life. You have the emotion and the imagination to connect an idea and bring it to life. You are the alchemist of your world. You can turn an idea of thought and bring it into reality. That is magic, my friend. You are a gift and you are born for a reason. It's time to bring your gifts to the world. Bring magic, real magic to the world by being your truest self and offering your gifts to others. I love you so very much and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.