In Search Of Excellence - Oz Perlman: 3 Keys to Becoming a World-Class Performer | E180

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

In Part 2 of this incredible interview, Randy Kaplan sits down with world-renowned mentalist and America’s Got Talent finalist Oz Perlman. Oz reveals the psychological frameworks that allowed him to transition from a high-stakes career at Merrill Lynch to becoming the most sought-after mentalist in the world.This episode dives deep into the "Business of Mind Reading." Oz shares his proprietary "Silo Method" for processing rejection, his "Shampoo Model" for never forgetting a name, and why a simple bag of Starbucks coffee can be the key to landing a million-dollar meeting. Whether you are an entrepreneur looking to network with CEOs or someone trying to master the art of public speaking, Oz Perlman’s insights on authenticity, extreme preparation, and the power of "giving" will transform your professional life.Stick around until the end for a mind-bending demonstration where Oz reads Randy’s mind in real-time!Timestamps00:00 – The difference between Magic and Mentalism.01:00 – Cold calling: The most important skill you can have.05:00 – Tricking your brain to handle rejection (The Silo Method).10:39 – Is college still necessary? Building a social brand.15:00 – How to earn a mentorship and add true value.17:41 – The Starbucks Coffee Trick: How to get any meeting.21:30 – Quitting Wall Street: The James Gorman story.30:00 – How to never forget a name (Listen, Repeat, Reply).35:00 – Public speaking as a force multiplier for success.40:00 – Learning from failure vs. extreme preparation.44:14 – Rapid fire questions: Oz’s biggest regrets and goals.47:15 – LIVE MENTALISM: Oz reads Randy Kaplan's mind.Guest Bio & LinksOz Perlman is an Emmy-award-winning mentalist and one of the most famous performers in his field today. After rising to national fame as a finalist on America’s Got Talent in 2015, Oz has become a regular guest on major networks like CNBC, performing for elite CEOs and world leaders. He is a marathon runner, a math prodigy, and the author of the upcoming book “Read Your Mind”.Order Oz’s new book, "Read Your Mind" at this link.Follow Oz on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozthementalist/?hl=enVisit Oz Perlman’s Website: https://www.ozpearlman.com/Watch Oz's TED Talk on Memory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3M00JI8Iwo&t=433s About the HostRandy Kaplan is an entrepreneur, investor, and the co-founder of multiple multi-billion-dollar companies. As the host of *In Search of Excellence*, he interviews world-class performers to uncover the secrets to their success.Want to Work One-on-One with Me?I coach a small group of high achievers on how to elevate their careers, grow their businesses, and reach their full potential both professionally and personally.If you're ready to change your life and achieve your goals, apply here: https://www.randallkaplan.com/coaching Listen to my Extreme Preparation TEDx Talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIvlFpoLfgs Listen to this episode on the go!Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/23q0XIC... For more information about this episode, visit https://www.randallkaplan.com/ Follow Randall!Instagram: @randallkaplan LinkedIn:  @randallkaplan TikTok:  @randall_kaplan Twitter / X: https://x.com/RandallKaplanWebsite: https://www.randallkaplan.com/1-on-1 Coaching: https://www.randallkaplan.com/coachingCoaching and Staying Connected:1-on-1 Coaching | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | LinkedIn

Card tricks are all about fast hand. But this is going to be very different. So you don't, you're not a magician, you're a mentalist. What is the difference? Magician, you can kind of visualize card tricks. Mentalism is where there's really no props. There are no cards. It looks like mind reading.

But it is not supernatural. I don't have any psychic powers. I'm not talking to the dead. It's a learnable skill. Let me see your guesses. Turn them around, hold them high with pride. Never underestimate access. access is so huge in life.

The people you surround yourself with are the people that are going to open the doors for you. Give us the three most important qualities of a successful magician. I always thought that you don't need to know 100 different tricks. If you know eight tricks better than anyone in the world, you'll do better than knowing 100 tricks. There's just no question.

Welcome to In Search of Excellence, where my guest today is the most famous, sought-after mentalists in the entire world. O's Perlman. I've been wanting to have it on my show for a long time since watching him on age. G.T. Back in 2015, what he does is amazing. Super excited to have him. O's, thanks for being on my show. Randy, love it, man. Thanks for having me on. I think one of the most important skills that anyone in the world can have is the ability to cold call.

Yep. And you mentioned it's really amazing and a great experience for you to go up to random people who want nothing to do with you and say, here's a magic trick. Yep. I had a mentoring program, internship program where I told, well, I learned this from a guy named Tim Japer, very famous VC. where if you go to Draper University, I spoke there. For those people who want to watch it online, it's a very cool talk. I think it's motivational. Tim has a thing where he gives students a box of Draper University condoms, and people have to go out in the streets of San Francisco and sell these condoms to strangers and don't come back until you sell them.

Okay. So I have a company called Sandy with the largest beach resource in the world. We've cataloged over 100 categories of data for more than 100,000 beaches in 212 countries. One way to get our social media content up, I have this concept of creating TikTok videos, viral TikTok videos. So how would you do that? So one thing I thought about was I want students to go out to the beach one day and do their own crazy TikTok dance. You know, do all these crazy things, whatever it is, go up to strangers who are in the sun. They don't want to be bothered.

Excuse me. Excuse me. I work at Sandy. I'm creating, I have a crazy TikTok dance. wanted to go viral. Will you do your own dance? That's a very, very hard thing to do. Yeah. All the students hated it. Some said, okay, they had the outgoing personality. They said, okay, but most of them just hated it. Oh my gosh, how am I going to do that? It's my worst nightmare. Yeah. I said, well, everyone is going to do it. You can't make someone go do it, but I said it's going to be the best

thing you learn all summer. And at the end of the day, it was the best thing they've learned. I think it's probably the most important skill. Going up to strangers and eliminating your fear of rejection Yep. It's a life-changing opportunity for every single person. If you can call, anybody, it's critical to your success. At Michigan, I created T-shirts. I took $500 of my permits for money. I made Michigan T-shirts.

Just do it. I copied Nike slogan, statute of limitations. It's now expired. So I'm okay, but I went through every dorm, every hall, got kicked out of every single one. I knocked on the door, hey, you want to buy a shirt. 99% of people, 97% of people, said, no, it was a great experience for me to do that. You learned it at a very young age. Yeah. Why are people so afraid to do it? How do they overcome the ability to go up to anyone and say, hey,

nice to meet you, or hey, I've got something to show you. Well, I think because it's an innate fear that we cultivate as we're kids and as you grow up is that you don't want to be the odd man out, right? You don't want to be rejected. Everyone, it's in our DNA not to want to be rejected. And most of us take it very personally. So if you're going to do that, imagine doing that thing with the t-shirts. You don't have to do it. No one had a gun to your head. Right. No one had a gun to their head to sell a connoisse for Draper University. You have to overcome it. And either that happens over and over and over, but most people, the pain gets internalized. And at certain point, you don't want to feel that pain anymore. So you stop doing it. How do you get past it? For me, I had to separate internally

myself when I'm performing from myself as a person. If I had an eight, agent right now. And I want to get on a podcast or I want to get on TV show. And they called my agent said, hey, he didn't fit. Then the agent absorbs the blow. I didn't get that call. So the agent just lets me know, didn't get it. Okay. But it doesn't hit me. Having an agent is a very useful thing because that representative gets to do all the crap jobs you don't want. They have to take the calls you don't want. Most of us don't have an agent in real life. So what I did is I create a silo in my mind when I walked up to a group internally, I tricked my brain. I'm all about tricking people's brains. that's my living, to think they didn't dislike me.

They didn't like owes the magician at the time. They didn't like my tricks. They didn't like that. All that means is that I need to work on that better. But me as a person, I didn't absorb that internal hurt. And that hurt is what breaks people down and what makes people stop is that that rejection and that failure. So at a young age, I realized I would take and diffuse, kind of like I would take the

excuse and say, what if they had a bad day? What if they had a bad day at work today? or what if their kids are sick at home? What if there's all these excuses that I don't know as to why they didn't treat me, right? And I would give people the benefit of the doubt and I would never let it hurt me. The best metaphor for it is if you take right now a bowl of water

and I give you salt, you pour the salt in the water, all the water's salty now, right? There's no separation. I took a very small piece of plexiglass and I put it right down the center of that bowl. And that bowl was my psyche. And I would pour the salt in only one side. So that side would get very salty,

but it would not affect the other part. And so now that feeling of what you just said, that rejection when I'd walk up to each table, it's gone. I'm done with this table. I go to the next table. I go to the next table. And I was able to just process it like numbers. And I reframed failure, which is I noticed that I needed to do about two nights at a restaurant, give out 50 or 60 business cards to convert to one sales lead in the next few months, where every night I would probably get two to three calls from that night. 60 business cards led to two calls in the next 18 months because people don't always have a party then

they stick you in the wallet and then all my kids having a birthday next June. Oh, we saw that guy at Zia's, right? So I started noticing in my mind, well, I have to do 58 tables that don't go great to get to the two that get me paid. So every failure is actually just one step closer to success. So in my mind, rather than it being, oh, that dingle, those led to me getting my wins. And so in your mind, if you can refurb, frame things and how you view them, that's a huge ticket to success. I hope you're enjoying this video so far, but before we jump back in, I want to know if you've ever thought about what you need to do to reach a nice level of success in your life. Over the last 25 years, I've been an advisor to more than 50 companies. I've invested nearly

100, including Google Lift and Seagate. And I also co-founded a company that today is worth more than $15 billion. I've been incredibly blessed in my journey. And at this stage of my life, I want to give back. I want to share the lessons I've learned so you can reach incredible success way faster than I did. In my own journey, I've learned that having the right mentor is a massive advantage to achieving our goals. I'm hugely passionate about mentoring others. I'm looking for a few hungry entrepreneurs or excited to take action on their journey to incredible future success. So if that's you, I've got an opportunity. In the description of this video, there's a link where you can apply to work with me. All you need to do is answer a few simple questions,

and if you're a good fit, my team will reach out so we can build a game plan together. All right, now let's get back to the video. You graduate at high school. You were 16 years old. Then you went to Michigan and your parents moved back to Israel. My dad stayed. My mom moved. Yeah, they moved to different times. Divorced. Yep.

And so it's kind of weird for a 16-year-old to be on campus. Yep. Turn 17 that summer. And so what was that like just that experience being so young and... I was so used to it. So I was the youngest kid in my school. I was the youngest kid in every grade. I started young because I have a summer birthday.

So I'm already, I didn't get held back. You know, some kids get held back to be the same age. I was already young to start. I was like the kid who didn't turn. turned six until the end of the school year for first grade. So I was already the youngest, smallest kid. And then you dial me back by one extra year. When I went to fifth grade, I was nine years old.

So I was like, it didn't even, I looked like someone's kid brother. So it was very, very strange. And then when you take that to the next level, when I started getting into older grades, I did when I was in ninth grade. I did all AP, I did AP calculus, AP. So I was 13 years old and small for my age with all 18-year-olds with like adults. And funny because the homecoming queen, saw me in her class in AP physics when I was nothing.

It was like, Dewey Houser. She's like, who is this kid? And she was like, the prettiest girl in the school was like, I want him as my partner. So I was, I'll do all your homework for you. It was very funny at the time. Nothing came of it, but I just to be in her presence was amazing. You know, Lee Nelson, I'll remember that.

So what was funny is that I was so used to being around older kids and older in case adults that this was nothing to me. That meant nothing. My friend group, I needed a way to shine. and I learned early how to brand myself because I was at a certain point called like the child genius, mostly the math genius.

And in high school, I went from being the math, who's the math kid who's in all the classes to I became the magician. So that's how I was known. And then that moniker has probably followed me around the longest in my life.

At some point I became the marathon runner and people knew me for different things, but I realized that if I wanted to stand out and be special, people needed to know me for something. You're listening to part two of my incredible interview with Ose Perlman, the most famous sought-after mentalists in the world. If you haven't yet,

listen to Part 1, be sure to check that one out first. Now, without further ado, here's part two of my awesome interview with O's. There's a huge debate now about whether college is as necessary as it used to be back when we were growing up. I mean, I'm 56, you're younger than I am. Yep. But it was basically, you're going to college if you can afford it, and it's the best thing you can do for your future today. The average student graduates with $47,000 of student debt, it takes it more than 20 years to pay it off. And today, you can go get a job even for $70,000, $100,000, $150,000 if you know how to code. And no one really, it's in certain, in many professions, it doesn't really matter where you went to school or what your great point is.

It's really about you as a person. But I think college is a great experience because of the classmates that you meet and what they can have and the impact on your future and your social development. Tell us about Ryan Hertz, your freshman year, and the impact he had. So he was in high school with me. He was in high school with him. Yeah. So he was with the high school where he, we got a different, he was right when I was starting. So he was a guy who was a magician.

He was the only magician at my high school. But we went to different middle schools. So when we went to different middle schools, he shed his persona as the magician and got into music, if that makes sense. Like he wanted to get rid of being the magician. He found something new he was into. But he was an awesome magician. I was just coming into my own as being a magician. So I was stalking this kid.

He's a great guy, but I would drive him crazy because magicians don't tell other magicians how tricks or other people, right? That's the secret. So how do you find out the tricks to catch 22? So you have to prove to a magician that you are worthy of knowing. And typically, that's like a Mr. Miyagi of you need to show me that you made it through this, this, that you really are into this. And you're not just to fly by the seat of your pants hot minute magic.

So I proved to him over time that I would. was a magician and he started showing me a little bit more of how to do things. And he was somebody who, again, I would have called him a mentor, but more of he guided my direction a little bit. It was really cool to see somebody who did what I did. In college, I kept doing magic, but I need to do magic to pay my bills because I was self-sufficient. I didn't really have any money from my parents. I wasn't being supported. So when I graduate high school, I need to find a way. So I actually, if you can go back in time, I actually didn't like doing magic as much because it was no longer a hobby. It would now become a profession that was,

I don't want to say forced upon me because that's silly. I enjoyed what I did. But I needed to do it not for fun, but to earn money. So I was hustling. I was trying to get gigs. I was out there. I was working very frequently. And I had multiple jobs while I was in college to pay my rent and to pay for books and to pay my tuition. I think another huge secret to our success is having a mentor and finding a mentor. And I think 99% of people get that wrong. They send an email on LinkedIn. I love to have coffee with you, et cetera, et cetera. Mentors have been huge for me in my career, but you have to earn the mentorship. You've got to do the work. You've got to do the research. You got to make a connection. You've got to add value to them, not just ask, ask, ask, ask, ask. And that's something that 99% of

people get wrong. Yep. You had mentors throughout your life. How does someone today, who's a magician, reach out to you and say, I want O'S Perlman to be my mentor. What do they have to do to earn that from you? So people have done it, and they find a way to work their way in. And some of them have been very, very, so there's a difference between being persistent and being annoying. And you hit the nail on the head, which is find a way to add value to that person. So I've had people that said to me, oh, by the way, I found this, this, this on your website that you could fix. And also, your Wikipedia's not as accurate.

Could I help you? I have somebody who's a performer who's helped me so much with my online presence where he's done the work for me. He's done the research and he does this for me and he doesn't ask much in return. But the best relationships are one where you give, give, give so much that when the moment comes to take, people are happy to give back to you. They even ask you, is there something I can do to help you back? And I think that's a really, really good note is find a way to help others. If in doubt, and let's say money, you don't have money. If you're trying to get a mentor or somebody who's done very, very well. You can't buy them a gift. They can buy anything they want. I'm not going to buy

you something, Randy. So what can I find that you don't have enough of time? How do you get your time back? Or how do you give somebody a gift that's thoughtful that they didn't even think to get themselves? And gifts are very funny because gifts are great, because unless somebody's a jerk, you know what they're going to say to you? Thank you. Thank you is a door that opened, just a crack where you get your toe in. And then just like you said, was it Sufo? Was it Sufo? Was that the name? Sunfo. Sunfo got the toe in. then he got the foot in, then he got the whole thing, and next thing you know, he's the one wearing the suit and he's the boss.

You need the toe in the door. You need that toe in the door initially. Get the toe in the door and then prove that you're worthy. And I've had people that do exactly that. I had an intern who came to me, a Michigan guy, and said to me, I'll work for free. And it was exactly what you said. And I go, I don't know, but at the end of the summer, I paid them. Because you feel beholden, you, you were worth something and you did a great job for me.

And I'm going to pay you. And even if that doesn't go a certain direction, You earn knowledge. You earn connections. Never underestimate access. Access is so huge in life. I just heard Tony Robbins give a speech about the fact that you are who you your proximity.

The people you surround yourself with are the people that are going to open the doors for you. And don't call it nepotism. I don't want to call it nepotism. People that get to a certain level, once they do that, they carry people with them up. And if you're with other successful people, that success becomes contagious. And they open doors for you. It's the same way that if you know the CEO of a company and you keep doing great for them, they're at some point going to jump to another place.

And that person you helped on the way up that intern in 20 years, fast forward, they might be the CEO of another company. Hence, treat people with respect, never know who they're going to be. Kindness, politeness, like those are virtues that go with you forever. One way to make contact with people is to send a gift. Yep. And there's always, people ask me all the time, well, is it a bribery? I mean, you're sending somebody something.

Obviously, we went to Michigan, and I've had Michigan football. sent to me. I've had things signed by Michigan grads. I love to wake surf. People have sent me things relating to wake surf. They know the interest. They know the hobbies. But at some point, there's a dividing line. If someone's spending something like $500 on a gift, it's a little too much. But people send me books all the time. And every single time I get a gift, that's thoughtful, that's well thought out, it's well research, especially people who are listening to my podcast, they'll pull one little factoid, they'll pull on that thread. I call it, I call it, every single person there.

And a lot of my mentees today have come from people who sent me something but did the work to find out what I'm interested in. It's a little token of appreciation. And it also works critically if you want to get a meeting with someone. You're cold calling somebody. One of my mentees clients wanted to sell, wanted to lease commercial buildings during COVID. So he's driving around for a year. He's making phone calls, a thousand of calls, not one return phone call.

So I said, all right. create a personal Luke Inc. marketing budget. And I said to him, how much you're willing to pay for these meetings? People look at me, what do you mean? I'm not going to pay for a meeting. I said, sure you are. How much is your time worth? You spent a year driving around doing nothing.

I mean, getting nothing. So I said, how much would you pay for a meeting with someone who owns a commercial building that you want a lease? And he looked at me like I was nuts. I said, no. Is it $50? Is $100? I said, he said, $50.

I said, that's easy. Go to Starbucks. You get a bag of coffee. You get two mugs. You write a nice note on stationary. It's thick stationary. If it's thin, you're thin. If it's thick, you're strong.

Right? It's confident. You say, dear oaths, I'd love to drink this with you in person. Yep. Luke. So Luke, Inc. In the middle of COVID, got something like 15% of meetings. Now, these are people who own buildings.

They're usually 70 years old. They have previous relationships with people, and they're not risking death during COVID. to come in, but he gets two meetings. And they go nowhere in terms of no leases that day, but these guys like Luke enough, and Luke had done the homework, extreme preparation, that they referred him to people who the next year, Luke did $215,000 in sales. In income, he made $215,000 the next year. He made $700,000 in the next year, and he made $1.5 million in the third year, just doing this over and over again, replicating this trick, sending something that's thoughtful, creative,

something of value. More people have to do it. Yeah, I mean, it's very inspiring. So one of the interesting things about you also, there's a guy named Bruce Wright who had this Maxim 19- Wow, shout to Bruce Wright, yeah. Bruce Wright. Yeah.

Hey, Bruce. He's going to hear this. I'm going to text him, let him know. And he had a 1966 maximum truck, and he drove around the neighborhood with you in the truck. It's a vintage fire. truck so everybody understands it's super cool okay and so he just driving around the neighborhood he's honking to people and hey come come look at this no no no no sorry he he would rent out a vintage fire truck

okay in metro detroit for birthday parties so it's super cool where he has it's amazing so what do the kids do they play with the hoses they go on the thing problem with it is it's not enough entertainment for a birthday party you can then you know touch all the stuff do the stuff go for a ride but now you you have nothing going on so i can't remember where he saw me this is actually a very curious to see, but he saw me somewhere and he said, let's do business. I don't know how much he's charging, but he says, what do you make? And I said this. And he goes, I'll pay 150 bucks a kids party. You do your, what is it, like a 40 minute show, 40 minute show. We had that to my 40 minutes. And now we can charge enough whereby when we're doing this, we can have like a nice big party

where a family can't have 40 minutes because it doesn't feel enough time to have the kids over the cake. You need enough time to feel like you got the value. The same way watching a movie for 40 minutes is in a date night. A movie's an hour and a half, two hours. So I did these kids shows and we would stack them one after another after another. And I could make so much money in a Saturday for a 15 year old kid making six, seven, $800 cash. It's huge. And so, and I was very frugal. I was very much a saver at the time. And I was saving this money. And it was setting me up. Actually, if you look into the future when I quit my job on Wall Street, this set me up for success later because I had the runway to quit my job, to have money saved up. So all of those

choices I made earlier, those choices to not buy a fancy car. I didn't have money. I bought like a used car from 1990 for tempo. Like I just did all of these different things where I would do, I would kind of how to go about this where I saved in scrimp so that when the time came, I wanted to have the money and do it. Same thing for me. I mean, I always want to have my own company and this is something I advise people as well. If you want to start a company, live below your mean, save up, do the math, and say, okay, this is how much I need to save where I'm not making any money. I'd save $400,000 when I left Sun America, a big corporate job, golden handcuffs. I could have stayed. I left $2 million of non-invested stock options on the table that ultimately

were worth $2.5 million three months later when my boss sold the company. But at $400,000, my nut was $40,000 a year. I had 10 years to make something of myself. So I tell people all the time, save, live below your means. I was a lawyer. I didn't go out and buy it. of BMW, like a lot of my friends did. Accura and Tegra. It was eight years old. I kept the car. And that's what you got to do. To bet on yourself, save up, and then let it rip. Yeah, agreed. Summer before your senior year, you meet these guys Max and a car.

Ajar. And these guys change your life. Big time. So they created a company called Penguin Magic, which still exists. It's one of, if not the top Magic online retailer in the world. And Magic evolved where streaming started to happen, Not really like Netflix streaming, but you can actually download videos. And so that whole magic shop experience changed from going into a store. Somebody demos you a trick and then you buy it and then they give you the thing to now, you can just watch the video online.

And then you can buy the trick. They mail it to you. And you can even watch it. No, the delayed gratification is gone. It's now. You can watch a video of me teaching you how to do that trick before it even arrives in your mailbox. And so this changed the game. It was a complete shift.

It was like full disruptor the way Uber was with taxis. Like this, nobody went to magic stores anymore, which was bad for business for magic stores. I feel bad for brick and mortars. But you have to, you know, evolve or die. That's business, right? You have to innovate. I started doing all their videos. And that allowed me.

I had a huge video called Born to Perform Card Magic. You should buy it if you're into Card Magic. It's one of the highest selling DVDs of all time. $30, I think, right? I think that sounds about right. It's not even a DVD anymore. You just buy as an instant download. But it taught you how.

how to go from beginner to pro in a matter of hours. By the end of this video, you have to practice, right? This is a magic pill. But I'm going to show you all of the best stuff to learn that I'm not going to give you eight books to read this, this, this, and look. I'm just going to take it and give you the TLDR, right? Too long, didn't read. Here's the best stuff to use.

Here's the stuff, this best of this move, best of this move, best of this move, two of these. And now you're ready to go perform for people at a moment's notice. Max said when he met you, he thought you had started. power. What did he see in you that made him think that? I hope you're enjoying this video so far, but before we jump back in, I want to know if you've ever thought about what you need to do to reach a nice level of success in your life. Over the last 25 years, I've been an advisor to more than 50 companies. I've invested nearly

100, including Google Lift and Seagate, and I also co-founded a company that today is worth more than $15 billion. I've been incredibly blessed in my journey, and at this stage of my life, I want to give back. I want to share the lessons I've learned so you can reach incredible success way faster than I did. In my own journey, I've learned that having the right mentor is a massive advantage to achieving our goals. I'm hugely passionate about mentoring others. I'm looking for a few hungry entrepreneurs or excited to take action on their journey to incredible future success. So if that's you, I've got an opportunity. In the description of this video, there's a link where you can apply to work with me. All you need to do is answer a few simple questions. And if you're a good fit, my team will

reach out so we can build a game plan together. All right, now let's get back to the video. I don't know. You'd have to ask him. I think I think that I have an authenticity and genuineness on camera. I think that from a young age, I've had a very strong ability to be aware of consumer perception. In my career, in my profession, most people are very internal driven. It's very ego-driven. It's very much like, look what I can do.

Look at how amazing I am. I, I, I, I, I, wrong language. To be successful, I realized early on, I'm a salesperson. I'm in the service industry. So it's all about you, you, you, you, you. It's all about what can I do for you? From a young age, I went into a restaurant and I didn't, my tricks spoke for themselves. That goes without saying.

I better have a good act. But my language was designed to impart, what are the benefits to you? Knowing that the person who runs this restaurant wants to turn over tables quick, he doesn't want to have you sitting there for two extra hours watching some magician. I can't get more butts in seats and make more money, right? He doesn't want me stealing tip money from his weight staff who are going to dislike me. I need to speak in his language, which is, oh, you have to send a dish back, that person's furious, I go over there and I break the tension. I win them over so that when they come back with

the dish, they go, oh my God, this guy's amazing. They forgot that they got the wrong salad with the wrong dressing, right? I'm winning them over. I'm turning tables. I'm working with your wait staff hand in hand, and I only approach tables in that lull between when they ordered and when we're waiting the food, when they're a little bit hangary, right? And I win them over. I'm thinking like the manager of the restaurant, not like the magician working there. That's my secret to success. CNBC. Have you been on CNBC? No. I've been on CNBC dozens of times. There's no other mentalist or magician that's ever been on the network. I just want to just to you have to understand that's phrase. Why would CNBC a major serious network have a mentalist on over and over and over. I've been on every single show from six eight hour to the five p.m. closed bell. Every single slot I've been on. Why is that? Because I take my material and I create it based on the person watching. I do. things that have to do with markets, with stocks, with bonds, with with interest rates, with,

you know, high frequency training. I create the content so that the consumer watching it is invested and interested. I don't just do a card trick that's about me. So that's the secret. The secret is make it about them. Another seminal moment in your curve. So you went to Michigan engineering degree. You started off in computer science.

Your sister wanted you to do it. And he said, no, I really don't do that. You graduate. I just wasn't good at it. I know your weaknesses. You graduate. and then you work at Merrill Lynch. For those people who don't know,

Merrill Lynch is no longer around. Part of B of A today. And you're at a birthday party, not because you're working at Merrill Lynch for the CFO named James Gorman. Not a birthday party, a corporate event. A corporate event. So he's the CFO.

He went on to become the CEO of Morgan Stanley, huge influence on Wall Street. Tell us what happened. There's a seminal moment where he said, hey, man, what am I doing? Oh, yeah, huge moment. for him a throwaway comment, which is something that it's very interesting to learn. Sometimes your throwaway comments to be, you forgot two minutes later, change their life, right?

The smiles, the respect you give people. Like, when you talk about mentees, when I see people that have some of me in them from when I was a kid, I always take the time. I always take the time to try to see them, hear them, like have them feel heard and understood because I had moments when I was 14 where somebody treated me like an adult and I've met them who I was at magic lectures and they treated me like an adult. And they don't understand that that few minutes we spent together, the fact that you didn't treat me like a kid,

but that you were so nice and you showed me things. And like you were acting to me like I was a professional, even though I was not. It really taught me that lesson of never take for granted because those little gestures and moments are remembered for a long time. So to bring this back, I was doing a performance. James Gorman was there. He's my boss's boss's boss's boss's boss, like, you know, like 20 levels

because I'm some analyst. And I was hired internally by the event, within the company because I became somewhat of a unique anomaly of there's a guy at the IT department who's a great magician so then I did a different thing and they started hiring me internally but I worked at Merrill Lynch full time at the time do you understand I had a day job but they would bring me to these events so I performed for him I did a trick where I turned one dollar bills into hundreds to slight a hand trick and Wall Street guys love that trick because they go oh my God we got to get you working here that's exactly what everybody says it's been said to me a thousand times and so when he

said that, I go, sir, I do work here. And he thinks I'm joking. And I go, no, but seriously, I work here. Like, I was letting him know. And he goes, what do you mean? I go, I work 95 green at your global technology services department contingency recovery. And I threw so many acronyms and corporate lingo in there that it hits him that, like he thought he was all a gag. He's like, he understood, this guy actually works at Merrill Lynch. And he just looks at me and what the hell are you doing working here? You know, like, it was just, you're so amazing. like how we and it was just a moment where I'd been thinking about potentially quitting. A few things had come into play where I decided to think to myself.

I'm so busy. I'm working every night after work. I'm working every weekend. I'm just working around the clock. I had somebody in my life that kind of brought me to the forefront of what if you quit, right? It wasn't my goal. I wasn't, I came from a first generation immigrant background where you go to school, you get a job, you work your way up.

Like, this is the path of life. This is what's taught to you. One plus one equals two, two plus two equals four. You can't cheat and get to. to ate by itself. So I needed to have that framework, that belief system of like, could I actually do this? And he set that wheel in motion. I was already thinking about it.

And that was the straw that broke the camel's back where I said to myself, what am I doing working here? And it was, I don't even know if it was three weeks, four weeks later, but I put in my notice and I said I'm going to go for it. You had a off-roadway show called Watch Magic. Off, off, off. There's so many levels of off-you- Yoga studio. At a yoga studio by day, we manually put all the chairs up to create a tiered system where luckily they had like a little riser. But saying it was an off-broadway is just like such a compliment you wouldn't believe.

But yes. When you are talking to someone, it's so important, by the way. So one of the things that I teach is very, very important. A lot of people get this wrong as well. If you want to be successful, you've got to get this one right. You've got 10 to 15 seconds to impress somebody and get their attention. they're going to form an impression of you right out of the gate. Three things people should do in the first 10 to 15 seconds.

Smile, that's a definite one. It depends how you're meeting somebody. Is somebody introducing you to them or are you coming up to them cold? If you have the ability to be introduced, always be introduced, right? Because you get that person's shine. So if somebody says, oh, you've got to meet, then you are now getting all of their social currency. Do you see what I'm saying? Yes.

So if that person knows that person, they've already qualified. your qualified lead. I know you. If Randy, if you right now bring me to meet somebody outside, then I know you're legit, right? I know who you are. You've got all of this presence. You go, O's, you got to meet this person. Right away, that's stronger than them walking up to me.

So if you can have the ability to have somebody introduce you, have the introduction. When you walk up, smile. Smile. There's something about smiling that conveys more than anything else. Again, this depends on who you are as to whether a firm handshake is the way to go. Take their name in. When somebody introduces themselves, don't you dare for it. forget their name. And I have a TED talk coming out in a week where the whole thing is,

is I teach you how to never forget someone's name for the rest of your life and how you can learn that in the next five minutes, five, 10 minutes top. And you will be doing this 10 minutes from now and 10 years from now. You'll still do this every day of your life. It's, I call it the shampoo model. It goes from lather, rinse, repeat. I'm not going to give you the whole thing. It's in the book and it's in the TED Talk, but it's called listen, repeat, reply. And it's how to to never forget someone's name ever again. I don't care how good your memory is. I don't care if used to have the worst memory in the world, bullshit. You know why? Because your memory is not the issue. It's your listening. If you can remember your wife's name or your daughter's name or your brother's

name, then you can remember a stranger's name if they told it to you. You can easily remember it. The fact is you didn't hear it. So when somebody approaches you, look them in the eye, listen, I always repeat their name. I make sure I know their name because showing that they're important to you makes them feel good. So right away, those three things set you so much above anyone. It's such simple tools, but this is classic Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Those three things are right away a secret to success. You have 10 to 15 seconds to impress someone, and something that everyone must do is they must be able to express themselves and communicate what they want to communicate in a clear, concise fashion. And it's a learn skill, and a lot of people don't do that.

Right. For my podcast, people say, you know, how do you get these incredible guests? Well, this was a cold email and I appreciate responding. And over 70% of my guests, I'm just cold. emailing. But if you want to meet a large number of influential people, if you want to go hunt moose, go where the moose are. Sure. So I'll go to conferences sometimes and I'll go up, David Rubenstein, nice to meet you. I'm Randy Kaplan. I have a podcast. Rubenstein, David Rubenstein. Nice to meet you. I have a podcast. I've had these people on. I love you, I'd love you to be on my show.

I love to be on your show. Kevin O'Leary, same conference. Kevin, hi, I'm Randy Kaplan. I have a podcast. It's 15 seconds. It's seven seconds. And you have to be able to express yourself very, very, very clearly. So you get... Yeah, if I was giving you one more thing because it would be number four, those are very easy. Ask this person something. They haven't been asked before. Now, don't be outlandish.

Don't be silly. But they're an autopilot. Most people are in autopilot. They've been asked the same questions by most people hundreds of times. How'd you get into this? Kevin O'Millier, oh my God, Mr. Wonderful. All of those things are going to be things they've already heard. They're ready for you.

Ask them something they're not ready for. Ask them something that makes them think, huh. no one's ever asked me that before. Now, first off, they have to think about it, which makes them not give you a road answer, but it also shows that you took the time to think, right? It's the same as that Sunfo walking in and offering to work for free.

I don't think he'd heard that recently. Because by the fourth time somebody does that, the novelties worn off. We already got three guys working here for free and two girls. So I think that, again, there's something to be said for novelty, but extreme preparation, and think, what could I ask this person

that they haven't been asked before? I think about extreme preparation and starting out my show with a question. That's a boom, extreme preparation, torpedo, E-P-T. It's critical. If you want to get ahead, start every meeting, showing the research, showing the question, and as you said, ask people something they've never been asked before, and that's one of the secrets to the success of my show. I'll do a lot of research, tons of research, I'll read podcasts, transcripts,

and I don't want to ask the same question time and time again, right? You said it a million times. I want different takes on different events in your life. And I want unique answers and insights. And it starts the meeting off on a completely different level. And it continues on that level for the length of your meeting. It's one that's critical to your success as a professional. And even as a person and personal relationships, too,

it shows you care, you have respect. It's very, very important in our lives. Agreed. Critical. One of the critical elements of success that I advise people is having public speaking skills. And as a magician, you learn that as a very young age. My son, Charlie, is great with people. He's 21 years old, articulate. And I think it's because, I know it's because he was a magician. And like you, he'd go up to people. And it's 99% of magic is a presentation. Yep. And 1% is the skill

level. Right. Should everybody in the workforce today take a public speaking class and get over the fear of public speaking? I mean, that'd be great. Absolutely. It's kind of like typing class. I I think that the best ROI I ever had in my entire schooling. Shout out to Mrs. Dubb. She'll love this, my public speaking teacher. It's weird. I don't remember my typing teacher's name. I feel bad about that.

I can picture her face vividly, but somehow her name didn't sink through because we kind of interacted on a screen, which shows you how screens kind of make it so you don't really realize people. But learning how to type and learning how to public speak were truly, along with LASIC on my eyes. Like things were the return on an investment,

mind you, it wasn't money for those classes. But the time that I spent, on them versus the skill I got out of it is just so amplified. It's such a force multiplier of efficiency in life. But yeah, absolutely. Learning how to public speak and learning how to get over that fear and how to speak in an effective manner where people are interested, you're pinging them, you're watching their faces, you're seeing their expressions.

It's great. Yeah, absolutely. Magic goes back 3,675 years ago. Ancient Egypt, mentalism, a couple hundred years max. Yep. What's the difference between math? And mentalism. A mentalism is a subset of magic. So it's kind of a world within magic where most mentalists started as magicians. It's kind of the foundation. But mentalism is magic of the mind.

Give us the three most important qualities of a successful magician. Of a magician or a mentalist? I was going to go through both. So if they're separate, separate and if they're... I don't know. I think having a good character. So as a magician, you have to really decide who you are because that informs all of your decision making. So if you have, who's your character? Who are you? Are you funny? Are you likable? Are you a little more mysterious? Like, decide who you are. And that will inform your decisions as to what material and how you structure your act. I think that's very important in life. A lot of people, they design in the wrong order. You always build a foundation of a house before you build on top of it. If you didn't build the foundation or dig in, the house will fall over at a

moment. Notice. So the foundation is the thing that shouldn't inform all your decisions. Magic is just an entertainer, right? There's no difference. Like a comedian. Most comedians start out very hacky and they get better as they decide who they really are. What am I going to make jokes about? Am I going to do TSA jokes like every other comedian? Or am I going to start leaning into who I am as a person and storytelling that connects or punchlines?

I think there's an element there. I think decide what your act is. Again, this is hyper-specific to magic. But I always thought that you don't need to know 100 different tricks. That's great to know. If you know eight tricks better than you. than anyone in the world, you'll do better than knowing 100 tricks. There's just no question because your act is going to be something that you need to hone

and get better and better and better at. So have your greatest hits, right? Most bands, if you're lucky, you have one or two greatest hits. The best bands in the world have 10 to 15 greatest hits. And, you know, Paul McCartney, call it 20 and you're the greatest of all time. So know that. Some people do you just scatter. They try to do everything at once.

What would be a third one? A third one is to have a better assessment of what people think of you. most people are too busy being themselves to know what other people think of them. Honestly, in life, you're only you. You've never been able to take yourself out of your body and port yourself into his body. We're only ourself.

We have such a one-sided view where empathy you can attempt to do. But when somebody sees you, what do they think? What do I think of your shoes? What do I think of your outfit? What do I think of your manners? What do I think of everything? It's very difficult to take that in

because your ego is there. So changing things that other people don't like about, you, sometimes it's like, but I like that. But if everyone else hates it, then it's up to you what you want to do with that. Do you understand what I mean? In performing, it's brutal because I spent an entire summer, it's in my book, learning how to do a rope trick. That's like this famous,

this guy won this World Olympics of Magic. It's called Phism. He won the Olympics of Maddo. I'm like, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I spent hours, hours, every single day in front of a mirror like a ballerina who just twirled, doing every little move, watching myself over and over. And then I started doing it for audiences for a year. And do you know what happened? No one liked it. No one liked it. No one liked it. No one liked it as much as I did. And you want to make them think, this is so good. This is so good. But it's just like Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank where he goes, your business hasn't worked in five years.

Change. Learn from your mistake. At a certain point, being stubborn is not a business solution. So I had to realize, oh my God, all this investment I put into it, nobody likes this trick. Maybe that guy does, but nobody likes it the much I do. I had to change it. And I stopped doing it. And could I have maybe done another year and it got better? No, it just wasn't right for me and my personality. And there's so much of that where you over time need to learn to change and evolve and improve. And for magic, more than anything, magic's changing by the minute. But that's every profession.

Every profession is changing. Let's talk about what it takes to make people successful. Extreme preparation has been the most important quality of my career. It's what got me to where I am today, work ethic. But I prepare more than anyone for my podcast, for meetings. how important has extreme preparation been to your success? I think I love to prepare. I like to, in my mind, think consistently.

I'll do preparation research. So I'm pretty similar to you in the fact that I'll research very intensively. But at the same time, I like things to feel fresh. So when I'm performing, I want every performance to be genuine and authentic. And if you overprepare, you can get stiff. So that is something to be careful of where, yes, you can prepare. But at a certain point, you got to go do the thing. and it's not going to be structured the way you want it to,

and you've got to roll with the punches. And so I think preparation has been very important. I think that learning for mistakes is even more important than preparation. Because all the preparation in the world, Mike Tyson-style, right? Everyone has a plan until I get punched in the face. What do you do when you get punched in the face? And all of your preparation goes out the window. That is experience.

That's instincts. That's intuition. Those are the intangibles that all the preparation in the world can't do for you. And that's also learning, again, people that I've seen that achieve a level of success and they stop, they care more about their wins than their losses. They learn they just enjoy being on top and they don't want a stomach losing, right? The people like Steve Jobs. Look at the people who reinvented companies from scratch where everyone said you're an idiot. There's no way this is going to work.

But they really believed in themselves. I learn more when I fail by far than when I succeed, by far. How important is innovating and constantly reinventing ourselves to our success? I think it's very important. I think lean into what you do great. So definitely don't take for granted. People that innovate are changing. The people that are serial entrepreneurs, franchise, didn't go.

New franchise. No, no, no. Focus on something. Execute effectively, whether it's in the business world. But also, you need to innovate whereby if you stay stuck in the status quo always people are going to leave you behind. I mean, there's just no way around it. I do that in my own business.

I know that I am in a few years. I'm not the shiny new toy. There's going to be somebody younger, hungrier, better than me. So what am I going to do that's going to be different at that point in time, right? That's the rule of showbiz. You're rumored to make $10 million a year. You perform lots and lots of shows. Has money changed your life?

And do you think back to your first days we're doing card tricks for $25? Yeah, 25 an hour. I mean, that was good money then. That's not... To answer that question, I think money changes everything for everybody. It's like a business. Money is a tool. And what you learn over time, and if you're blessed enough to get to a point, which is everyone,

it's just you can be rich, not based on the money you have, but based on if you have the ability to have anything you want to get, you're able to buy it. That isn't about money. That's about your wants and needs. So your lifestyle, the same way that you said you live below your means, accurate, Integra, eight years, not getting the BMW and all the other lawyers did, right? Maybe eating ramen noodles and everybody else is going to fancy restaurants. That is an internal compass as to what money will do for you. Money for very few people will fill a void. If your goal is I'm going to make this

amount of money and when I have that dollars in the bank or my brokerage, I'm going to feel whole. Spoiler alert, you won't. You won't. It's just not like that. I've experienced that moment of thinking, I'll have this much money and I've achieved it. Things beyond my, wildest dreams I've achieved. And money isn't what brings me satisfaction. It's what I do with my time. Because time is a resource you can't get any more of. You can always make more money.

We're at the end of our show, and I always conclude with a game I call Phil and the Blake to Excellence. You ready to play? Yeah. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is... Stay humble. My number one professional goal is... To be a household name.

My number one personal goal is... To have my children love me and my wife love me. My biggest regret is... My biggest regret is holding grudges. The funniest thing that's ever happened to me in my career is... I mean, the fact that I have the career, just the whole thing together. If we're getting hyper-specific, backstage in America's got talent for the finals. The best advice I've ever received is...

Focus more on other people than yourself. Ten years from now, I'm going to be... synonymous with what I do for a living. When you hear the word mentalist, you think owes the mentalist. If you could pick one trait that makes anyone successful, it would be. Persistence. If you could go back and give your 21-year-old self one piece of advice, what would it be? Buy Bitcoin. The most important thing that's contributed to my success is shedding my fear of rejection and failure. If you could invent one thing in the world today, it would be.

The ability to teleport. If you were the president of the United States today, the first thing you would do is attempt to slow down AI. If you could be one person alive today, who would it be? This is a gut shot, but I said Mick Jagger, but I don't know if that's true because I don't want to be in my 80s, but I just would love to hear the story. So maybe more just hang with Mick Jagger for a night. If I wanted to be anyone, I'd want to be somebody in their 20s. I'd want to have an extra 20 years of life ahead of me at that young, you know, a good. go back in time. If you were on your deathbed and you had 60 seconds to live and you're surrounded by

your wife and five kids, what are three things that you would say to them? I love you so much. Enjoy your life, have fun. And, you know, know that I'm, know that you don't make this the best life ever. The one question you wish I'd ask you, but didn't, is? No, pretty good. No real questions. When does my book come out, October 28th? Are there any questions you want to ask me? Yeah, I want to ask you a question, which is when I walked in here, right, I pointed at the door, and I told you to imagine. I said, I'm going to see if we can get to this later. I don't know if we'll have a chance, but to imagine that two people walk through this door, okay, any two people. And I said, one person that you would love to interview, that if you could have them sit in this chair, they would sit right here and you would interview this person.

And I said, and then think over the course of an interview somebody that you have not talked to in years, decades. You've not even thought, you don't even know why they popped in your head, but somebody from your past that you don't know why you thought of. Have you got someone in mind? Both of them, I do. I'm going to guess one. I don't think two, but I think that throughout the course of this interview, I think that I figured out who the person is you want to interview is. And I think that somebody with extreme preparation will listen back to this and we'll see all of the clues that were laid along the way, the extreme preparation, the focus, us discuss. our background at the University of Michigan together,

followed by saying laser-focused Tom Brady is who you want to say. Is that right? Oh my God. It's sick. It is Tom Brady. And the other person you thought of was a kid you grew up with. Am I right? I think it was a boy.

Yes. And I want you to think of his first name. Yeah. Is there any way in the world that you, even before I walk through this door, know you'd think of what you think of when I walked in here? Did you even have any idea what would happen here? No. Before me asking you to think of this person,

When was the last time they popped in your head? Years or decades? I don't know. 10, 15 years ago. Think of their first name. Count the letters in the first name to yourself. Not out loud just to yourself. No, no, no, don't use your fingers.

Okay. I think I... Don't say. Okay. I think that you weren't sure, which indicates it wasn't a three-letter name because, of course, it was Dan or Bob or Bill. So it was longer, but it wasn't so long because you said five letters.

You thought it was five letters, didn't you? Yes, I did. Yeah. Kind of like a poker player, watching. your eyes, think of their first name. Now, every name has vowels. Right, Randy O's, every name every name has a vowel unless it's like a Polish name. Yeah. So if I asked you to think of a name in the name, right, A, E, IOU, do you know E is the most common letter in the English alphabet in words? Is there an E in this person's first name? No. So it's in odds. I'm just letting you know. Statistically,

we know there's vowels. So if I have you think of a letter, most people won't pick a vowel in the name. And now that you know it's not an E, now you're saying, oh, man. Well, you know there's only four vowels. So think of any letter in the name and focus on it. You looked back and forth and you stopped on the last letter, but you weren't sure, and then you jumped to the middle. You didn't think of the last letter, did you? I didn't think of the last letter of the first name.

I'm just asking, is that the letter when I said, think of a letter? Were you thinking of the last letter, or did you go somewhere else? I was thinking of the first letter of the first name. Okay. And the first letter of the last name. This is going to be on video because I'm writing down a name, and I just want to know that I can't change it.

So I've written down a name. you thought of anybody. This isn't written down. This hasn't been whispered. This is nowhere. This doesn't exist anywhere, but in your brain right now. I'm done writing and I can't change it.

What was the name of the kid that popped in your head when I asked you to think of someone walking through this door out of nowhere? Say it. What's his first name? I'm John. So I wrote Ahmad. I'm going to go. That's pretty close.

I'll take it. I'll take it. That's pretty close. Gosh. That's insane. That's it for me, Randy. That's amazing. Excellent.

That's what we want to achieve. That's incredible. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah. Huge fan. I hope everyone buys your book. I'm excited. Read your mind.

Excite to read it. And thank you for being here. I'm a huge fan. Huge fan as well. Thank you. Great to meet you. Great to meet you.