Insight with Chris Van Vliet - 5 Billion Views on Social Media with Magician Xavier Mortimer

Episode Date: August 2, 2021

Xavier Mortimer is a magician who has racked up more than 5 billion views on social media and is headlining his own show called "The Dream Maker" at The Strat Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. He joins Chris Van Vliet for this in-person interview to talk about how he became a magician, the thought process that goes into creating a new trick, moving from France to Las Vegas to make his dreams come true, how he used social media over the last year and a half to go viral with his tricks and illusions, the art of storytelling and much more! For more information on Xavier Mortimer visit: https://www.xaviermortimer.com/ If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests.  For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, here we are, my friends. Welcome back to another audio adventure here on Insight. I'm Chris Van Vle. Thanks for being with us on a magical episode. That's right. A magical episode with one of the most mind-blowingly talented performers that I've ever seen. Xavier Mortimer is the headline at the Strat Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, which is where we did this interview. In person, by the way. We did it before one of Xavier's shows, which is called The Dreammaker. chances are you've seen one of his videos online. I mean, he's racked up over five billion views. Yeah, billion with a B with some of his tricks and illusions.

And when you see them, you're just like, how? How did he do that? In fact, you might have seen the trick that he did with me that I posted on my Instagram with the necktie. Unbelievable. I still have no clue. No clue how he did this. Speaking of Instagram, you can follow Xavier

and see his incredible work. He's at Xavier Mortimer. He also has 3.3 million followers on TikTok if you're into the TikToking. He's at Xavier underscore Mortimer on there. And I know you didn't ask, but I'm at Chris Van Fleet on the instant gram. I'm also at Chris Van Fleet on the Twitters.

And I'm at chris dot VanVleet on TikTok. And while we're talking about all this stuff, I'm guessing you already subscribed to my YouTube channel, which is why you're here right now. But I also have a Clips channel on YouTube, where I've been posting short clips, like some of my favorite clips from some of my favorite interviews. It's called CVV Clips, very original name, I know. But it'd be so great if you could toss us a subscribe on there as well. Joe Farrow left this review for the podcast that says, best podcast on the planet. Chris, your work is absolutely amazing. My favorite podcast to listen to daily,

your kindness to your guests and your positivity is so inspiring. Keep up the great work. Well, thank you so much, Joe. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to leave those kind words on Apple Podcasts. I'm going to keep reading one review out on every single episode. So if you have some free time today,

or maybe this week or this weekend, it'd be so great I'd love to read yours on the show. All right, my guest today is so incredibly talented. And I was so inspired hearing his story. of a guy who was born in France and was obsessed with magic. And look at him now. He's now the headliner of his own show in Las Vegas. And he's gone viral many, many, many times on every single social media platform.

What a conversation this is. Please welcome Xavier Mortimer. Thank you so much for inviting us here. No, thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. Of course, I've been such a fan of your work for so long. So now to be here in the Stratt, chatting with you, about to see your show. This is so amazing.

This is great. I mean, I'm glad you're here, man. What's so cool about what you do is you blow people's mind every single night with your show. Yeah, this is what we're intending to do. And usually it works. We make magic happen every night. It's a challenge because you have to make sure that every trick is going to work every day. Yeah.

And we just opened. We have a bunch of new illusions that come from what we've been doing on social media. So it's really fresh and exciting. So we're very happy with the show now. You know, you're impressing people every single night. And I'm so curious to know what impresses you now? I mean, there's so many things that impress me every day. You mean, magically?

Both. I mean, I feel like when you've done some of the things that you've done, regular life might just seem kind of boring. No, I enjoy little things too and travel and adventures, you know. So there's many things that I really enjoy. I'm just, this is my project being in Vegas and having that show every night. It's a big project, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned social media and you've blown up over this last year.

Was it five billion views across all the platforms? Yes, yes, yes. That might be the real magic right there. Yeah, I had no idea that would happen. we got stuck at home. One day I just received a notice from the theater that said, hey, we're not going to perform anymore because of COVID. So this is right at the start of this last March.

And I already had started a little on TikTok, you know, here and there, little short videos that was working. And the friend of mine called me and said, you should work on a longer video. He's an influencer. And he's like, yeah, just longer videos. try that. And I was like, yeah, I've got all the time in the world now. We all do.

I started producing them and it was, I mean, I had a month where I was like kind of looking for things, you know, and trying to find my marks. And after that, video started to blow up one after another. And I was like, whoa, 300 million views, 200 million. Whoa! Yeah. I've never seen that. To me, a hit on YouTube was one million views, you know.

And I was like, you got 300 million views on that one. Yeah. And that was unexpected. And that was amazing. And also keep doing what you love while everyone's shut down, you know. It was a blessing, yeah. Well, I mean, everybody had their phone in their hand. Yeah.

Pretty much permanently over the last year because you couldn't go out for a long time. Yeah, yeah. What was the one video that really started to springboard things for you and really took off? So I, there's many steps, I would say. But the one that really blew up was the one where I was against the wall and they smashed boxes under me. Yeah, you were levitating. Yeah. And it was, it went everywhere.

Everywhere. Everyone called me. Everyone saw it. I went to the dentist. They saw it. I went to the pharmacy. They saw it. Oh, you're the guy.

And everyone saw that video. And it had like, I'd say all combined like probably 400 million views or something. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And starting that point. I didn't know what to expect when I created that video. For me, it was just a video like every other video. It was just me trying to have views on social media

and create something interesting. And when you pose that, you have no idea what's going to happen. And suddenly that video blows up and you're like, oh, I might have found something. And I figured out that I was doing basically producing a grand illusion for a short, three-minute videos. which no one would have ever done because it's too expensive, it's too much risk.

And, you know, so I called my friend Joaquina Yala with who I work and builds a lot of things for me, said, Joaquin, we need to build more grand illusions for social media. It seemed that people won't see that on social media. Yeah. And we might have found something.

So the next day we did the jump rope and then we did other things. And every video was averaging 100 million viewers. That was crazy. So it was just a trip, you know, and we discover it. It's like you have something, you hang on to it and you keep. And even now we've reopened the show, so I've been pretty busy, but I'm still producing. We have a video in the desert that's going to come up where I'm levitating on water jets.

And it's still now I'm keeping that wave, riding that wave where you produce a, a grand illusion and for social media and because no one has done that before people are like oh, what's that? I've never seen that here. Great.

And now you have something, you know? Do you find that you'll have a video that does okay on TikTok but blows up on Facebook or Instagram? And you're surprised at like, why isn't this taking off on all platforms? Yeah.

Yeah, it's definitely a different audience depending on the platforms. I'd say Facebook has a more an older audience than TikTok, for example, and YouTube. So you have to kind of make things different. I kind of,

sometimes I refilmed twice my illusions, twice my things to just put it on TikTok. Like we say, okay, let's do a one minute version of that trick or a three minute or a five minutes because you want to get it or if I have the vision of it, I'm like,

oh yeah, yeah, but I can cut here and here and it's going to work on TikTok. Yeah. So you don't want to like the nature of the illusion has to still work because the way you build an illusion is what makes the spectator. believe in the magic.

So you can't just cut, you know, you have to, you have to like re-format your illusion. And if it means like filming twice, you have to do it. And it's really hard. Trick or illusion? Is it just semantics? Are they the same thing to you? Because some people get really, you know, like they are not tricks. They're illusions.

It's same to you? No, an illusion, it's something that you believe is something. And it's not. Yeah. which is the basic of an optical illusion. And a trick is more like me telling you like, hey, look. Oh, so you're saying there are two different things. Yeah, it's basically the same ending.

It's to produce magic. But I think the trick is more like something that is talked and I bring your mind somewhere where the illusion is more about optical and you see something and it's not what you see that you see. If we take this way back, what was the first trick that you learned? And how old were you? Yeah. It's funny because I, yeah, that's a funny story, actually.

I was fascinated by magic, but I couldn't find anything. I come from the south of France and there was no books, no, we didn't have internet. It was in the 90s. So I wanted to do magic. I wanted to do magic so bad that I would invent anything to do magic. So I would take a card and basically say, hey, look over here and up the car. And you know what? It's funny because I invented my own way of doing magic without knowing anything.

And people were still like, I didn't have the technique or anything, but there was something that was magical. They were like, oh, how did you do that? You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I can't believe I created that moment, that magical moment without knowing anything. And then, yeah, I learned in the books and everything. So, yeah. So how old are you when you discover?

that you loved magic and you were passionate about. 13. Okay. 12, 13, yeah, yeah. And then did you realize at that moment, like, this is what I'm going to do. I want to be a magician. I didn't know I could be a magician. Huh.

Yeah, I had no idea until I was like 20 or something that it could be something you could live. I come from the countryside and you have to have a regular job and stuff. And I was like, when I was 20, I got my degree and I was like, okay, magic seems to work for me because people were offering me money and contracts. And I was like, oh, that's great. Let's do it for a couple years and then I get a real job. And here I am. What kind of jobs did you have before you were a magician?

I was, so I studied, I was a guide in mountains. I studied environments. So I was bringing people and showing them nature and stuff. Yeah, that was my thing. What? Yeah. That's amazing. That's so cool.

It seems so different from what you're doing now. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I was doing trick with the flowers and leaves when I was bringing the people. Yeah. What is it about magic? I feel like it brings people together. Yeah, it's like every art, you know.

It's fascinating. It's different. And people are, it touches people so they want to see something. And, you know, that's what I'm saying. Like, I remember I was in that cabin in the mountains in one of the excursions one day. And no one knew I was a magician. And I did a trick with my arms where arm rotate like 360

Without saying I'm a magician I say, oh, I've got something And everyone's so fascinated And everyone looked at me And everyone suddenly gathers Because there's something unusual, extraordinary And that's the magic of the magic You know

And I never told them that I was a magician I think that obviously people can learn How to do a trick But I think it takes something to learn How to be a showman So how do you like start to learn like the showmanship around it. Yeah, you just do it.

Really? Go for it. Yeah, I was super shy and I just went on stage. I just did my thing and I had like shaking and stuff. And the more you go, the more you do it, it's just do it. You have to be likable. You have to like drive people. You have to get their attention.

Yeah. You have to be passionate for that. But it's just you being on stage. should be just like just go and give everything you have. And I've, I started being on stage when I was 20 and I've never stopped. I don't know why. It's just my thing.

I love being on stage. I love putting smiles on people's face, you know. Do you get nervous before going out every night? Not anymore. It's a different kind of like, I've got the energy of like, I'm super focused before a show. Like three minutes before a show, you don't talk to me. But I used to be to have that bad energy of like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

And it affected my career because I messed up big events because of that. I mean, you learn. We've all messed up. But today I harness this energy and I'm like super focused in my thing. And there's no stress anymore. It's just me like giving it all. I change. It is it is not the Xavier that you're talking.

anymore. Yeah. It is the guy who's on stage. So what's your daily routine look like? Do you meditate? Is that part of your daily routine? Something like that? Yeah, I float when I meditate.

I feel like you could float all the time. Yeah, right? No, yeah, meditation is really cool. I've done that more and more in the past years because it resets everything, but I work a lot. I wake up super early and writes my videos and stuff. And then I work on the show and then I do the show. And it's just not ending, but it's so fun, you know. It's really a good job.

So where do you find your inspiration now? Yes, that's a good question. I'm always looking for. And sometimes you know you're like, damn, I put all my ideas out there. What can I do? Hey, you call people, hey, I'm looking for ideas. If you have something, any illusion, I'm going to try to, I can help you. We can work together.

And, but in the end, you know, you see, it always comes back. Yeah, you take a week off and you just, and your brain comes back like, oh, I could do this and that and this and that. So you have to reset and also change. Like I was talking to my associate who's working with me a lot, I allow who's building things. He, I talked to him and said, you should do, you've been flying so much. You should stop flying, said. But he said, try to do.

do escapes now. And I was in the theater school in Paris and I had always this like because I have this like little kid's face and I always always played the the guy who is like so like how to say like

Pierro, you know, like the guy who's always amazed by everything in life. Yeah, like childlike wonderment. Chaplin, you know. Oh, okay. Yeah. This kind of character. I was always playing that kind of character.

And my teacher was like, now you're going to play the bad guy. I want to see the bad. I want to just scratch, put everything you have into the trash, and I want to put yourself in danger. And that's why I think you have to do when you are a creator. You have to change completely. And I remember I did a thing with darts where I was throwing darts on a spectator's hands, blindfolded. And that's totally not me. I'm the guy who flies.

And some people, friends. of mine say, oh, that's funny. You do danger magic now. It's interesting. I've never seen you do that. But to me, it was such a good exercise to be like push myself to do something totally different and do like, yeah, I can do it. How do I stay true to myself doing something that I totally have never done? Because, you know, you can fly once, twice, three times and then people, they get bored and it's like, yeah, that's the guy who flies. I guess. So for you, when you're learning a new illusion, a new trick, what is it from start to finish in the timeline? How long does it take from the conception of the idea until you're ready to do it in front of an audience? It depends.

Some take like a week and some like, we've spent months. Really? Yeah, even I would say years, yeah. Years? Yeah, there's tricks in the show that you will see tonight. I'm still talking to the people. I talk to them in the morning, say, we need to change that and this because we want to have 100%. We want to have that working every night.

This button cannot be here because there's a possibility that this, you see what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. And today, just now, I just was fixing a thing on an illusion that I saw was a little hitch. There's an act that I've been doing for 20 years. Yeah, 20, yeah. Wow. And there's an act, it's not a magic act, it's a juggling act, which is going to be one of the highlights of the show tonight.

I've done it since I was like 15 maybe. Oh my gosh. And it's really old. That's my oldest act. Yeah. And three months ago or two months ago, after making that trick happen for 20 years and more, I decided to change the whole thing. And it's amazing. You'll see tonight

You'll see the act But I changed the whole The whole concept of the act Why? Because you always has to push yourself Because You want to be pushing yourself forward Getting better

I've seen performers like going on stage And like kind of muscle memory And stuff like this And I pushed myself to improve that act And right now You'll see tonight if I succeed in that act Because of course there's a lot of risks Every night involved

But if I do it, it right. This is probably the biggest applause of the show, the show because I pushed and pushed and pushed and I did that act probably I would say, and I'm not lying probably 7 or 8,000

times, minimum. Wow. Yes, I've done it. This is my act that I have every time like I'm doing something. This is really strong. It was strong, but now it's very strong because my director, Alex Good, who was producing the show,

he said, ah, you should change, you should have some lights and do that. Like, ah, and you know what?

My first reaction was like, nah, it's working, you know? And I kind of put it in the corner of my head. And I did, okay,

I make some phone calls. Do you have that problem? Do you have that thing? Can we have something here? And the guys, yeah, you could. Okay,

send me that. And I work on it. And it works. It's improving my act. And by saying, okay, to my, director.

Yeah. And it put me in danger. It put me at risk because I was like so easy. That's my trick. Sure. Don't touch it because if you touch one finger is going to mess up the trick. And I take that risk. I took that risk and it's pain off.

So I'm trying to, for every trick, every magic trick or every act that I do, always remember that nothing is granted. There's always you can add a joke. You can add a visual effect. You can make the magic cleaner. that's always what I'm looking for. Is there a chance that when you go on stage that a trick might not work?

Oh, yeah. Has this happened to you? Many times. No. But you can pull it off and the crowd probably doesn't even know. So, I mean, I hope they won't know, but some tricks can be messed up in a big way

where people will obviously see and know. And I'm not the only one. I believe if a magician tells you that he succeeds in his tricks every day, he's a liar. But the goal is the people, the audience do not to know. So first, the goal is not to miss.

So you have backups and plans and contingencies and stuff. But if it messes up, you just go for it. Wow. Yeah. Not a trick, but what would you say

has been your biggest setback in your career? I think my biggest setback was it was to say no actually I it was so when I was

starting my career I'm a live performer and to me TV at the time was kind of like I don't know you know it's dangerous

I'm what I'm going to like I was in France got talent this is where I met Alex good and he became my manager after that

because he was hosting the show I said no to that show. You said no to Francis Gotown. Yes, for like three or four years. Wow. Because I had something in my head. I was like, no, this is the way I should perform my magic.

And one day, you know, I'm listening to people around me. And one day there's this guy, he's an older guy. He said, if you go to France Got Talent, you're going to kill it. I was like, oh, it's not for me. They want a two-minute thing. They were this, you know, that was like 10, 15 years. ago and I got to the finals. So that's amazing. You have to like, like I said, you have to, of course, you're putting yourself in danger, but only if you put yourself in danger, you can win. And I have

failed a lot. But in the end, I win because I have this room here in Las Vegas because I've been on TV more than many magicians because I have more followers on many people. And this is it. And same thing for social media. I learned how to not to say no, because when I started social media, people were like, no, you know, you can't present magic in a good way on social media. You cannot do this way. You can't do this way. You can't because magic has to be presented that way. But making people believe in magic is not about like the trick that you do is about who you are and not you make them feel. So I was like, the more I grew up, the more I was like, yeah, let's just try it.

And you know what? I might fail miserably. And a lot of people are going to laugh at me. but in the end, I might be the best hour I do. I love that so much. Is your goal to be the best magician in Las Vegas? Is it to be the best performer, the best show in Las Vegas? What is it?

Well, my goal is to sell tickets first. Okay, that's a good goal. Whether I'm the best or not, I just want to bring people in that room. And if it goes by, we want that best award, or I'm the most followed magician, that's part of the game of the market. Which you are both. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And this is how we market the show.

But in the end, it's how I touch people every night, how make them smile, how they're going to respond and how I'm going to bring them into my world every night. So, yeah, being the best is part of the game. I really hope people think that I'm the best. But it's to everyone's appreciation. I mean, that's the great thing about magic. Magic's about like the feeling behind it. I'm really curious how you were able to connect with Jason DeRulo. Because the videos you guys have done, blew up.

Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. Jason is, first, is a great artist. Yeah. He's very creative and extremely talented. He reached out to me by Instagram after my wall video on the boxes. Okay. So that's the one that got me all the gigs and everything. And he's like, oh, wow, that's really cool what you do.

I was like, really? You're saying that to me? Who's that? Me? Like the me? Okay. Okay. Great.

Thank you. Like, we should collab. I was like, okay. Well, great. And I'm going to Los Angeles two weeks later. And I'm telling him, like, every step was like, should I write to him? I'm going to Los Angeles. Yeah.

Okay, sure. That's right. And then I go to Los Angeles for something else. And I say, hey, I'm going to be in an area. Hey, come to my place. We're going to do something. What do you have? Okay, so I've got this and this and that.

Oh, sure, sure, let's do it. Let's do it. And then we just filmed like three, four hours at his place. And he had people edit and put the videos together. Amazing. And he did some tricks too. Yeah, I taught him some little things and he was really fast to learn. Oh, my gosh. And he was, I mean, he's crushing it on TikTok.

Yeah, yeah. So obviously, you know, that was able to help you get a lot more eyeballs on your stuff too. Yeah, of course. And it's such a great honor for me to be. associated to artists like that, you know. He's amazing. And I wish I want, I mean, now I'm stuck with the show, but I want to go back

to L.A. more and do more collabs. We were planning actually on doing more collabs, but with this, the world stopped when we came into that room. It was 16 hours a day, non-stop. No way. Yeah. And you're performing like every night.

Every night, yeah. When do you get time off? I'm trying to doing the day. Usually when you do that, you perform at night and you have everything ready and during the day you kind of relax. But right now because it's just so new. I'm here. You see I'm here early. I was fixing little things. Every day there's a little thing

that I need to fix and you know the show takes time to produce but what takes more time is everything that goes wrong because like doing my magic it's an easy thing. For you? Yeah.

But it's like reviewing every little thing that can go wrong and how what do I do when it goes wrong I have literally like 25 escape plans if something goes wrong we have three recorded videos we have a trick that I can do which I'm still setting up I'm going to set up tomorrow we have spares we have yeah this so you try you try to you try to make it tight you know because everything can happen but other than that it's just me coming into the show and do that so I want to focus my attention, my, my, my, my attention onto producing more video and more content on social media.

You've mentioned some of your failures. You've mentioned a lot of your successes. Do you think you've learned more from your failures or from your successes? Well, both, eh? Both. Well, yeah, yeah. The failure is gonna, I mean, it's really hard to take. You know, I remember one of the biggest, like, crush. It was, um, I was on that French TV show. The Most Grand Cabaret de Monde, which is a very popular TV show. It was the biggest variety show in France. Wow. And the guy is amazing.

He called me like four or five times on his show for me to perform my act. One day I messed up. One day my act was not good. And I come to the room and my name disappeared from the dressing room the next day. Oh. And I saw that and my heart like, stop. Sure. And to me, I would remember that moment all my life because I was like, but I was not prepared.

I did something that was not right. I tried my best, but I was not right in my choice of what to perform. The guy, the host called me back three months later to do another act, so he was not upset. But that day, I was like, yeah, make better choices and make sure you're good. And that's fine. The thing is I don't stop with that. I just move on. You see, I was back on the show three months later.

So I took a risk. I just took her. And look, there was a fight two days ago in Vegas and the guy broke his ankle. Yeah, Connor McGregor. And everyone can fail. And it's okay to fail. It's not a life or death matter.

It's just that if you don't fail, you will not succeed. That's so good. I think so many people get comfortable, right? I think they go, I am so used to doing this thing at this time. I don't want to step outside of this because I know the results here. I love that you're willing to go. I want to go beyond that. I want to push myself.

I want to just constantly be getting better and better and better. Yeah, that's the idea. I learned that throughout my life. It was not granted. You know, when you're trendy, you're like, what can I do with my life? Yeah, yeah. But I was lucky enough to pass that thing that says you're comfortable enough in your life. I had the gigs. I had people liking me and calling me and saying, you can't do that. And

little by little, you grow up. And instead of staying here, like, a big, a big moment in my career was Cirque de Soleil. I was part of Cirque de Soleil for three years. I was hired as an act for Cirque the St. The Michael Jackson Show. Michael Jackson Show. They called me. I was touring with my show in France. I was making good money. I had my own crew. We had like two sets of shows touring all over the France. I just was on France, got talent. Everything was booming for me in France. So it calls me, you have to go to Vegas for six months.

You forget about France. It was one year, actually. It took me a month and a half to decide what to do. Wow. Because I was comfortable. I was good with my life. I had my friends and I didn't want to hurt anybody, you know. And I talked to a lot of people until I talked to my producer.

and everyone wanted me to stay. I mean, a lot of people said, oh, really are you going to go to in America? And I didn't want to go because my heart was here with my friends. We had a good time. It was great. We were successful. And my producer, he passed me on the shoulder and said,

I'll see you when you're back. And I was like, wow. And I knew that guy was about to open a show for me three months later. And he had to review his whole. plants and find another artist. And he's the one who was losing his little horse, you know. Yeah. And he said, just go because this is good for you.

And I will see you when you get back. And I will never forget that. And of course, I stayed much more than a year and I'm still in contact with them. But I promise you that when I go back to France, those people are going to work with me, we're going to do something together because I owe them that I owe them the fact that I grew up Because who knows if I stayed in France, I would never have had my own show in Vegas, blew up on social media, all these opportunities that I had here. Yeah, if you had stayed in France, none of this would have happened.

None of this. And that's the thing that always blows me away with anybody who's a high achiever, like you're a high performer where it's like it's the little decisions that you make in your life. Yes. You can look back at an hindsight and go, that changed my life. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. You have to go for it and take a risk. To be honest, even being with Strzegg de Soleil, I sometimes I was like, oh my God, what am I doing here?

Why did I, you know, and... Is it because you wanted to be the star of the show? I mean, I had a good position. Have you seen the show? Yeah. MJ1. I mean, you're a big part of the show. It was a big one.

But this show has your name on it. This show has my name. It's not about that. I'm not looking for that especially. I'm looking for being better at who I am before being a big star. But it was more the creative process. You know, with Cirque to say it was really tough because from being that performer in the theaters in France

to being an act in Vegas on a 12, no, it was 200 seats room twice a night. 500 shows a year. It's a very big difference because now you have to get there. You have to go boom, boom, boom. You can't like be smiling at the people and say, hey guys. what's up. No, no, you have to have your three-minute act and it's perfect from A to Z, you know. I was really tough. They asked me to cut and put back and cut and put back and then I put ideas and I was great. The process was great, but so emotionally like intense. Sometimes they, sometimes they said,

oh, I went with that flying microphone and they said one morning I just put a string on something and make something fly. And they were like, that's amazing. Just putting in the show. And I was like, wow, I'm the king of the world today. But the next day, I had a joke in my act, a visual gag, and they say, oh, you know, that might be offensive for some people. We need to cut that.

And I was like, no, I can't. And I have to go back to France because I was so. But in the end, it was amazing. Yeah. Do you look back at everything you've accomplished now and go, can't believe this? Yeah, right? Yes. Yeah.

all the time. Yeah. And then you're, I mean, you're still obviously looking forward too, though. Yeah.

Do you think the show that we see here tonight would be the same show that we would see six months from now, a year from now? Totally nuts. So it's always evolving?

Yeah. It's mostly now. This is the beginning. Right now, the show is just at the early stages we're still tightening things. In six months, you will have a show

that goes like much faster and I'm not saying it's bad. It's a good show now. Yeah. But it's going to evolve in the next. I would say maybe month. Okay.

Yeah, big time, yeah. When you tell people what you do for a living, like if you're sitting next to someone on a plane and you tell them what you do for a living, do they immediately go, show me a trick? Exactly. And do you have one that's ready to go? Sometimes, yeah.

Really? Like, do you have a deck of cars on you at all times? Yeah, I've got better than that. Okay. You want to see a trick? No, no, we can do that after, but I'm just curious. Yeah, I've got my two or three little impromptu things that I can do.

That's amazing. Yeah. Oh, that's so, this has been, this has been amazing. And I love your mindset. I'm very inspired when I hear that type of conversation. So thank you for that. No, thanks for it. I end every conversation with the same question.

Because I start and end every day with gratitude. I say out loud three things that I'm grateful for. Okay. So I end every interview with that. So what are three things in your life that you're grateful for right now? Wow. Wow. Wow.

Grateful. I don't know. I'm just grateful in general. There's nothing in this. Everything is just a, what could I be grateful? I'm grateful. I'm healthy.

That's a good one. That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah, especially right now. I think this is the most important thing. You have like when I'm, when I feel down, it's really like you can't do anything.

is health is the most important. I'm grateful I'm healthy and I'm grateful I have people around me that are supporting what I do. And I'm grateful I have a show in Vegas. Yeah. And I'm grateful for you, my friend.

Thank you so much for your interview. This was so great. Thank you. Well, there we go. A magical conversation with a truly inspiring human being. Thanks to Xavier and also to the Strat for having us in Vegas. I can't recommend his show The Dreammaker enough.

There was at least a dozen times during the show, and the show's 75 minutes in length, there was at least a dozen times where my jaw was just wide open and I'm going, how? How? What? This is sorcery. Go find Xavier on social media and prepare to have your mind blown. Share this episode with someone who loves magic. Take a screenshot, tag us. He's at Xavier Mortimer. I'm at Chris Van Fleet. And I'll leave you with this quote from the great Harry Houdini, who says, and this applies to everything in life.

Never tell the audience how good you are. They will soon find out for themselves. Be great, be grateful. We'll see you on the next one for some more insight. Jim Rome takes on sports. Why? Because I have a job to do. With rapid fire takes.

So I don't want to hear from you lava pigs on this notion. today. No idea what you're talking about. You're complaining more than you like to breathe air. It's like you get up in the morning only to complain and cry and moan on social media about things that you don't even understand. He's the spitfire of sports smack. Take advantage of it, but get up in here. The Jim Rome Show podcast. What's your beef? Follow and listen on your favorite platform. You've been warned.