Oz Pearlman: How To "Read" Minds, Influence Anyone, and Never Fear Rejection

how to convince people on how to win them over is the most important thing in life how did you do that there's skills that have nothing to do with my trick that allow me to walk into a room be remembered engage with people and create deeper bonds those three things are a cheat code in life but i was say ninety percent of people don't have that so how do you develop that how do you explain what you do everyone knows what a magician think of this as a magician of the mind there are no props rather than tell you hear pick a card you put it back and i find it so intimidated you are a horrible hearing are there any cool that you could commit so if i was using this to steal your financial information and then use it to potentially steal from you could i do that absolutely could i absolutely i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a roll watch let's try something really fun bag time for money this is the perfect example let's say what what is life about right is it having more zeros in your bank account my first million i like the two commas but where do you spend that money how do you use it effectively here's what you do you're having a birthday party we're gonna hypothetically play this out right now milestone birthday sam make this up right now i like sp eighty how many guests are in the room at your birthday party be very specific how many guests do you see being there can you tell yeah make it up right now small ten oh so is ten people ten people that's and did everyone that you invited a attend no oh okay lot ouch okay so you're in the room and now this is where i wanna envision this we're gonna play this scenario out because you've had birthday parties before and obviously you've seen you walk in the room you're saying hi it's ten people and this is close your eyes if is it a surprise not a surprise is it yes but okay so you've walked around the room you've said hi to people and open your eyes and this way i tell you i say one person you walk up to to give you a big old hug and you it means a lot that you're here right now and you look this person in the face can you picture that person's face yes could i have known that you're gonna tell me there were ten people at the birthday party i don't know but did i tell you to set this is there any way i could known how many people you'd have at this party or who they would be of course how right how and then the person that would hug you right how could we know this if they had a birthday party a mile would you attend their party for a really big one i think now you thought for a really big i wanna daily far and in your mind you're thinking have i been to their party before watch this let's let let's switch it somebody just came up they hugged you at your birthday party could've have been anyone you looked them in the eye you were thinking in your head when i go to their birthday party and i saw i know you know this person's birthday instantly i could tell of trying to react january february march april may june july august september october november december close your eyes okay i'm gonna just show the camera open your eyes there is absolutely no away i can know who you would have thought of are we an agreement yeah or anything about them personal details what month is that person born in july july july july has thirty one days i'm born in july that's my birthday month think beginning middle end beginning middle end close your eyes one more time so nobody okay i'm gonna go with this i'm gonna go with this i'm gonna commit i think it's a guy open your eyes in fact when you looked at them you looked up directly at them similar height are they older than you they're all those men tell it was is a differential thing what's their birthday july tenth july tenth and then you give them out you looked them right now you go it really means a lot that you're here john is it john yes that's crazy i hate that my brother's name is john that's that's absolutely it's say that's crazy it makes me emotional a little bit my brother i was telling my this we had a nanny at our house this morning i was like i'm talking to this guy i was like he's a mental and she's like yeah what is there oh what do you explain or how do you explain what you do so everyone knows a magician is so think of this as a magician of the mind there are no props rather than tell you here pick a card you put it back and i find it i can just have you think of a card and see if i can d diminish where your mind wet it's how to influence people it's how to pick up on what they're thinking and how to make it seem as if i can read people's minds right which we all know is impossible but i say it all time i can't remind i don't possess supernatural powers i am not psychic and don't talk to the dead i don't know the future i've just found ways to influence you and get information out of you that you can't explain through a variety of different methods it's kind of an elevated form of magic it truly is it's it's i find the purest form of entertainment is stand up comedy it's you a microphone and potentially thousands of tens of thousands or millions of people just the spoken word magic involves prop and i don't i i don't dislike magic i love magic i started a magician but as i evolved i got rid of the props rid of the props rid of the props and if you saw me last night to show for twelve hundred people in a few days show for four thousand people i will show up with virtually nothing if you lost my luggage i could do the show with literally a marker and a flip chart because that's not the show i am the show so to to describe it it's a magician of the mind well what's interesting about what you do so i've known who you are for a while because i studied like magic and i was kid and like a it i mean was was a very stereotypical kinda nerdy introverted kid wanting to be like be loved by people and i studied this stuff join the club yes which i wanna talk to you all about that that club so i've known about you for a little bit and then i was reading your book i thought i was gonna learn more about like how to read people's minds or how to like do magic or something like that you're basically like a modern version of how to win friends and influence people that's the hook if i could dis instill all of the skills i've learned in the last three years doing what i do which is really interacting with people that's truly what do i've learned that what my product is and i want to know what their product is if people always think you're there to fool them if fear magician that's that's not hit at all i create very memorable moments and for a lot of the companies i work for what i mean by memorable moments when i leave selling people talk about and the skills that i use within my profession that are not the magic and not the mental but if i quit this business today started a new business tomorrow what could i use from these thirty years that would make me successful at any business i believe these are the core skills so it's it's a reinvent of that book alright so a lot of people watch and listen to the show because they hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business now a lot of people message sean and i and they say alright i wanna start something on the side is this a good idea is that a good idea and again what they're really just say is just give me the ideas well my friends here in luck so my old company the hustle they put together a hundred different side hustle ideas and they have appropriately called it the side hustle idea database it's a list of a hundred pretty good ideas frankly i went through them they're awesome and it gives you how to start them how to grow them things like that gives you a little bit of inspiration so check it out it's called the side hustle idea database it's in the description below you'll see the link click it check it out let me know the comments what you think what are the one or two things that people are most transformed in their lives based off what they learned from your bulk from you i think one of the biggest ones is how to make your fear of rejection disappear so that one to me personally i could see it from a young age was my biggest hurdle i the the book starts out with me and my teenage years i got to magic i was thirteen i don't know what you were saying again do you remember george watching and soda of course because i was my i remember i got that trick and that was my trick and then the quarter trick yeah and yeah that was my my first lane you saw the dave blaine street buying everything i was really the trick decks yeah so i started doing the tricks and i got a restaurant gig when i was fourteen i walked in and i talk about in the book i don't know where i got the the the c to go in there you know my mom was with me and just i knew how to do a sales call at a young age of how to go in how to convince them how to use benefits oriented language and i got this gig and within two weeks in me doing it i realized that my biggest hurdle was when i went up to feel they would reject me and it hurt you know what mean like you go to three tables in a row we're like get out of your kid it's it's very bruising it's very difficult to approach the next table and not have a bad attitude yeah and so again i saw this vision if i wanna buy more tricks tricks are expensive my parents were divorced i don't know money so if i keep doing this i need this path to make money to buy more tricks right it was very like a linear a to b and so i realized i have to find a way to overcome this part where people have the ability to hurt my feelings and i have to so i just at that point and i described it really clearly i almost became my own agent if you're in show you have an agent who handles your negotiations who does all the ic stuff you don't wanna do you don't get a movie star on the phone i can't call michael b jordan right now and negotiate you negotiate with this person's agent i don't have an agent i'm a fourteen year old tour on four foot nothing i'm walking up to your table and telling restaurant so i created this separation in my mind where i no longer took it personally when i was rejected i said that's not me they don't know owes per that's owes the magician it was this cognitive dis association where i was able to take the negativity and put it on someone else that they don't know what was the tricks i gotta work on these tricks and i didn't take it personal and it was truly transformative and i believe that that ability to overcome rejection and and like that fear of it because not even rejection to the fear of it and failure so many people when they start a business or go after their goals they don't go full in because they keep one foot out you know it's like you don't jump in the flu keep one foot out to protect yourself if it goes wrong that's what i've learned and what sets me apart from my competitors i think greatly is that ability to focus on goals not care if there's hurdles i don't care if there's a nowhere or no or no it's a not yet and i have to this point achieved way more than i thought i would and i'm not even done i'm nowhere close when i was fourteen i remember i read this book called the game you read the game but worse neil oh my god it has a little bit of an factor but the way it discusses and quan and creates terminology for interactions with people is incredible so the game is a book basically i think i a artist i would think i was fourteen this this word called pickup artist i read it because it was like it's like a little bit james bond over where you're like it's like an venture book of hearing these guys who are nerds going to hook up at these girls yep but the reality is as i read it and many other people it is because i was fourteen and i was desperate to get a girl to like me and i and i wanted a relationship i didn't wanna like hook up with girls that wasn't even like a possibility it was like can i please convince a girl to like like me yeah and so i studied that book and then i was reading what your your work and watching your podcast and you do these things where you talk about approaching people and you're like i'll approach someone like because i think what you say is you've talked about the bunch you're like i have to walk into a room of five hundred people or ten people and i have to control the energy yep and so i'll i've learned that if i walk up to them and i'll say hey i gotta run in a second but first before i leave i've been told by the owner of the restaurant to do something special for you and that seems like you just made that phrase up but like every part of that sentence has a very particular and when you study like tata to meet girls it's like oh he just put a time could trait on them oh he's coming up at an angle i if he's going i call straight out of the game the i don't even i'm not even trying to window address it that's a hundred percent things that were learned in the game and that are from the world of pickup artists where it it's iterating it's just like any type of software platform changing little ingredients in a recipe and seeing how they do and the other part of the recipe is other people and what makes them feel comfortable and a big one that i analyze is when you leave an event who did you remember i'm just i'm obsessed with that term who did you remember who stood out to you and why and normally you don't think about it it's like in the game who are the natural the view of natural game who didn't learn it but how do they know that they walk up and they have this cool calm comp pose what's it like when you walk into a bar you smile you approach the first person you look at and you say hey how's it going had to come and say hi to you that confidence is contagious right that energy if someone who does that naturally but i would say ninety percent of people don't have that so how do you develop that and how do you not have the fear of oh what am gonna say to them or if they say this they're gonna think i'm stupid right all of the inner dialogue that kind of talks you out of what you could be in your full potential so the packaging was magic from me when i was a kid but underneath the magic and the skill that we bring to the table and especially as a mental having done this for so many years there's skills that have nothing to do with my tricks nothing that allow me to walk into a room be remembered you know engage with people and create deeper bonds those three things are a cheat code in life if you're able to do them you will succeed at anything you do i don't care what business you're in i don't care if it's interpersonal i don't care if you're a teacher who is selling attention to their students or a mom trying to get their kids to listen eat their vegetables and do their homework how to convince people and how to win them over is is it's the most important thing in life are there any cool that you could commit that mean i could commit tremendous financial crimes because my job is a con man it's exactly the same as a con man but it's an honest con of course right so a hundred years ago is when it's a little fuzzy when is when i don't call them comment but psychic who would take your money to talk to dead people or to tell you your future they would take your money and that was the transaction and whether you were getting the product you paid for i don't know that's up to you i'm not gonna say whether it's psychic surreal real or not i'm gonna let people believe what they want but whether or not you can prove that ad it's a matter of kind of faith i am not selling a product that's false or fake i i'm telling you from the start it's fake like i couldn't be more honest this is built on magic i have no supernatural psychic powers it's a learn repeatable skill well then why why is this not being taught like because it's it's i'm crafting a narrative that doesn't generalize so again the beauty of it is that you believe these skills could generalize to every part of your life they're hyper focus yeah but i was joking with someone and i was like this guy so powerful and he's using it to guess a bunch of losers people's atm pin number like what i waste seth meyers was recently on tv with with kate hudson and and she was talking about me because i did some for hugh and huge jackman is great clip and and and seth meyers at the funniest joke goes you know i think he might be an aliens but why did the aliens send the mental here and then go you know don't be great for this part mit was and parties it's like what don't waste such a good joke seth meyers man very funny he's a great comedian and and that was it it just it had me laughing so hard i posted it but it was so funny but it's because it it's funny but you don't realize how true that is so if you were to use this in a different sense so if i was using this just to steal your financial information and then use it to potentially steal from you could i do that absolutely could i absolutely it's not that different of a subset of of what i'm doing guiding you to giving me the information really what scammers do were you have you so we've been in here i don't know how long we been in here but you came in earlier we talked for ten minutes were you did you have you clocked to me for the second the like were you making are you was like robo cop making calculations the second yeah i mean there's a bunch of calculations that i normally come into these things with a little more info yeah i felt like you know i like that story of like someone goes to prison and they they gotta like in the first day they gotta like kick someone's ass yeah yeah that's it day one but yeah so came in and i like if you wanna read the book the last chapter is me going to jail i know i and i read that and i spent time in jail too how many days months five days wow for what dui and fighting i in college i'm fourteen years sober but i i i went through i was basically in intoxicated for like tears every twenty four hours was a and you'd be like a like a raging drunk like into fights yeah i was just like a risk taker i was like i was just reckless and i only care about myself and so i just did a lot of dumb shit just just lucky made through it yelling my god changed in the lesson getting arrested in going in jail it changed my life because i was there and i was like what am i doing yeah this is it it i then i read that you were in jail for kind of like a siri it could've potentially but but because ruined my life but i i used to shop lift i would shop lift things i didn't even need or want were you good amazing yeah but think about i was a slight of hand expert so i used to be at a seven eleven i could i could shop with it was like it was like mission impossible tom cruise because when we had the cd and like this and it was gone that was me okay that was literally little what were you so candy i used to steal cigars and i didn't smoke cigars so how stupid is that can we discuss that for a moment i would steal them for my friends and i would take them and there's aren't cigars behind the counter so i could do behind the character could do it anywhere what oh man i'm like expert well you understand again so i could do they're i'm not gonna give way magic secrets but i could literally take something in my hands and just click this and it's gone and you'd be like what the fuck like so and i would do that but also i'd mis direct i'd i'd say on i'm putting it back and it was gone bad like you thought i put it back it's like a it's kinda like the way you could pick pocket somebody i could take your phone say little a bit and you don't know that it's already gone again because a pick pocket touches you here does this mis direction right when you look that you look there that's training that's mis direction one zero one beginner i didn't tell you to looked of you instantly look there that's the same tactic i used to steal stuff and so i peer pressured my friends i won't tell the whole i don't wanna ruin if anyone does buy the book but it was it was in college it was drunken stupidity we stole a bunch of stuff from a papa john's and then at night we went back to house party we were wearing papa john's t shirts that we stolen from dirty ones and a papa john's phone going around the party house like twenty five people you on papa john's who wants pepperoni like just one like you stole someone's cell phone at the papa john's this is too early for a cell and this is two thousand and two this is like a a landline broken like unplugged it and took the it was broken you got it because you know it's it's a college one they like twenty phone on because all are doing is answering phone so one of them had been cracked so down the middle was a crack so it was broken so it wasn't a tap but had the logo on it at everything so i just swiped it put it i'd like a poof fake north face i i'm from familiar from face in my jacket right here like instantly gone and i stole that one and i made my friends go steal something so they went in it was bathroom slash lock room so one of the lockers wasn't closed all the way so they had it like opened by a corner and they reached it in and took a bunch of t shirts they were dirty they they turned up being like grease stains it's good get good cape yes great cape and so i got woken up at about i don't even know two or three in the morning and i was i was like wearing like tidy white and i'm wearing the papa of john's shirt which was way too big for me because i'm like small and i got woken up by a dude being like heal the cops are here and i thought it was a noise violation because i'm like so drunk past i like yeah i don't live here dude with fuck what you on for me and he's like no the cops are here for you like for me and then like one minute later i think this guy they they come in and the cops and know like you're under arrest and i'm like under arrest for what and they're like felony la first was out of their mouth which i'm like felony i'm true you know and they i go stealing what and they go from a papa john's and enough and they they let me put pants on it and this was in big rapids it's michigan mc acosta tony negative pants it's like yeah it's like negative ten fahrenheit and i'm literally per walked out i thank god they let me get i got i got my i my contacts or my glass i can't remember i they let me get my context those near legal blind before i got las and man in these like tiny tight tie they brought my pants with me it was like so unnecessary the whole thing arrested us brought us in and we were in jail for three and half days yeah i mean you stole something that works changed my life never stole sense that same instance different person wrong thing can't get a job and finance the path which just is so different but i was very very smart and i don't say that i'm not trying to be cocky but school came very easily to me and math came incredibly easy and so it it allowed me if if and i just it's so lucky that i was able to get great grades while completely messing up in other sectors of my life where normally those things are there's a linear correlation like if you're doing entire drugs is you're probably failing out of school i wasn't somehow i still getting straight a's and doing well in covering my tracks and so there's differences of and then i i stopped drinking a couple years ago i didn't really have a problem but i just was a change that i decided to make and i think it was it was a healthier path today's episode is brought to you by hubspot did you know that most businesses only use twenty percent of their data that's like reading a book but then tearing out four fifth of the pages point is you miss a lot and unless you're using hub spot the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business the insights that are trapped emails call logs transcripts all that unstructured data makes all the difference because when you know more you grow more and so if you wanna read the whole book instead of just reading part of it visit hubspot dot com when i was a kid i was a competitive runner i went to college like i said i don't a running scholarship and i thought that i was like if i achieved my potential i could at least make the olympic trials and i never did because i party too much in college but the hard thing about running is dealing with the pressure before you run because you know that even if you win the race and succeed you're gonna be in pain and regardless you're gonna be nervous it's the most it's a very fear driven sport and i developed this alter ego called the machine nice where i was like i am a racing horse and in a in the aisle getting ready to go and racing horses they're not nervous they don't they don't think about any of this they're just theirs and so i would think i was like i'm just a machine and i would like look down on myself i mean like well there's the machine i am nervous but it doesn't matter the machine not nervous and he's about to race right i'm so happy the machine exists and that was like an alter ego and it was the exact same thing of like dis associating in order to perform and it's the same thing actually with starting a business i i've started and sold the company and by maybe some traditional measures that i've been a success but i still am like incredibly fearful about starting any new project or before this podcast and like what is interesting about starting new things as you hit realize that like the repetitions you you say i must accept that this fear is going to happen but i have practiced so often that like doing getting past the fear and i just accept that this is part of the journey not why am i fearful right so i i think that most everything someone can improve on but whether you're gonna be in the mb or not it's likely due to where you born seven feet tall or not yeah i would agree like you can i like you know a five foot five guy can like maximize potential for basketball but like lebron james was born and he worked hard and he worked hard yeah it's a skill and a talent where does this rank on skill versus talent like how much can you teach me in order to be better and do things like you do i would like to think that it's mostly skill based if you were willing to put in the work you'd probably get very very good there's no question where's the ceiling that like you hit that i have gone over or that other people that are at the top of the game would have gone over i am i think that the core skill for me is is one of relentless drive so i'm willing to overcome failure consistently like oh fail and i don't mind it a lot of other people would fail enough times and be like oh but like is failure for you you're in a group of seven people trying to do a trick and it just bombed yeah exactly bombs yes when was the last time you bond i i it again define what bombing is because as you get better and better you get to move the goal post you get to change the rules yeah so you you you're defining something that i define very differently got it so it's not binary it's not binary at all because you only know if something's right if you knew what was wrong but listen to because that's really po you only know if it's wrong if i've set the terms as you think this i guess this i didn't get it it's wrong what if you're watching a movie and there's three director's cuts and you never saw the other director's cuts a good example as i did something with josh allen for quarterback for the bills where josh allen was told hey if i talked to do we know each other no no i if i set this up josh no i give them ball i say look around the room and throw the ball to anybody i wrote down to show me he throws it to the first guy it's him i go throw it to another guy i wrote it down to him it's like how are you doing this i guess the two players you throw the ball i go i know who you're gonna throw the ball too right now i'm not gonna write it i can prove a hundred percent i know exactly you're gonna throw the ball too i put the marker put this go throw somebody i go i knew you would do that and he's like yeah how do i know that i go think of your atm pin code and and i go did your wife even though he goes no and everyone started to was pretty funny it's was like a little little bit rude but and so i then guess this guy's atm pin code freaks out and then i had the two other guys stand up and i what's your jersey number his jersey number eighty eight next guy what's of fifty their jersey numbers where the third guy's atm pin go to his bank amazing trick no one's ever done that before what would have happened if i got it miserably wrong which i have before i never did the last part all i did was guess two of these people and then i guess you didn't blown away and you would have never seen that the whole thing to me went wrong but you didn't know that do you understand what i'm saying so you don't know what's next so in in a lot of the tricks you've had like they're called multiple out i have different ways that this can end i have yeah you know it's like when i did a t shirt reveal on the today's show and a ro goes what underwear are you wearing i'm like you don't even know the half of it brother like this underwear no it's but that's a funny point because you just don't know where i would to gone with it because i don't tell you and i have the element of surprise to my advantage so as i've gotten better at my craft i've realized that i get to call the shots and know where it's gonna go so a lot of times you don't know if i got it wrong or if i get it wrong i will then overcome that hurdle and get it right and it's actually stronger because it looks like you got it wrong and then oh my god he got it after all it builds drama are there people above you where you're like man i would love to be good as this person or are you that what i do yeah you're are you at the top again i'm not gonna answer that for you just do a google search and you can kinda figure that for yourself but at this point right now it's it's ind it it's not even it's like when you describe lebron at the moment but again you've gotta understand there's waves there's peaks and valleys it's silly never think that everything's gonna stay the same you've gotta stay at the top of your game and keep reinventing but i'm not gonna define that for you i'm gonna let you look at objective metrics subjective there's tremendous amounts of people that i admire pi there could be kids there's a nineteen year old person do does was i'm like watching i'm like wow this is the cutting edge this is new stuff it's silly not to learn from everyone as soon as you do that you start dying when you are learning a a new trick or a new skill yep can you walk me through like your routine on how you focus so i'm the weird part about me is that i do so many like tv and media appearances that think of a comedian a comedian has to work out new material and then they tell the joke and a comedy and like at comedy seller or some club and they keep refining refining refining and and then it's very funny and then they've got their material for a special right that's their i i like the apparel because comedy is the close thing to what i do i have to create new material for when i go tv because if you keep doing the same thing it's very tired so i constantly when you see me on these things i'm doing that trick for the first time ever so when you see like like the thing with josh allen i'd never done that before before i did in the room for them i had never done that before that was the first time which is like kind of the craziest thing to realize because i can't burn my material that i do in my normal sets like in my corporate show and in my place where i'm performing for audience members if i do that all on tv it would lose its lust when i do it in paid performances so what i'm constantly doing is thinking of what's the ending and rewind backwards and it's it's just like reverse engineering which i think is really my skill set i went to school for engineering i know my solution and i'm just trying to figure out a way to get to it do you understand what i mean i do math well i do that with business so when i was twenty four my first company i said i i was i grew up poor and i was like i i remember this distinctly having this feeling of like i'm afraid my my mom's car is gonna run out of gas wow yeah like created trauma i believe yeah like i don't wanna feel that anymore i wanna be rich you knew you want to be rich yes at what age nineteen night that's pretty interesting maybe even before that but i was like at nineteen i was like when went to college i worked for people and they were rich and i was like rich people are real people right oh my god this is like a thing i could touch this is like a tv thing and then i asked a rich person i said like what's rich right and they were like well i spend fifty thousand dollars a month and i was like you're the richest person i know right and then i looked at this have you heard of a safety withdrawal rate dell so the safety withdrawal rate is if you have a a liquid of money you can work with can withdraw three percent of the money i didn't know that's you what you're calling it but yeah yeah how can you have a perpetual motion machine where you just live off the yeah weird like free you will never run out of money as long as you stay within the rules that you've have created right and some rich guy was like well fifty thousand and how much i spend i was like that's an astronomical amount of money at the time i was spending fifteen hundred a month thing calendar i don't know and so i was like did the math i'm like think i was like okay i need twenty million dollars so i was like right it was like six hundred yeah yeah so i was like how do i get to twenty million dollars by the age of thirty like okay well i think i i did this thing called guy here e guy no what you're good at what the world wants what the world wants to pay for what you're passionate about the goal is to find something in the middle smart that's like how you getting like flow a little bit i was like i like to write i it so i settled on creating a newsletter a newsletter company so was like okay so in order to get twenty million my thirty i have to build a company that i could probably sell for thirty of forty million dollars which means if it's gonna be media i probably have to be doing eighteen million dollars in revenue with this eb the way i would get there is i create a newsletter that gets to this many subscribers and if i do that by year four that means by year three i gotta be here year two i be here and then it was like okay every month this is where i need to be at each month wow that's intense and so i was like well if i could just set this up to where all i have to do is worry about what i have to achieve next month and next month and next quarter then i can allow myself not to worry so it's just like execution mode wow and so the idea was like i'll do that and so i even i sold my company in when i was thirty one so it worked that's the ultra runner mentality right there you don't think to yourself like i've done erase those a hundred and fifty three miles and i felt a crap very early on and you just go to next mile if you just have to get to the next thing that you're going to do whether it's a mile whether for me it's the next gel which is gonna be in twenty minutes and that's all i'm thinking about is just get to that gel do not extend beyond that the first time i did this race called the spark half line it's in greece hundred fifty three miles in thirty six hours there's a lot of these races you hear that are longer this one is arguably the hardest because the cutoff is very tight like a lot of these other ones are you could walk like this two hundred fifty mile you can walk the whole you could you're gonna get pissed but you can sc and walk five days right they do it literally that two fifty i see like you're like calculate the hours i'm like how many hours this it's so this is you have to run this whole thing or you're out you're most people are cut by fifty miles into this race it's it's that challenging so at that race there's a video of me buddy of mind it's on youtube we're at mile fifty four he goes oh my we have ninety nine miles to go and i literally say shut them mouth like i just i was i d f that year i didn't finish and i was crushed because that thought of right now i still a hundred miles to run it broke me it broke my spear it just couldn't i couldn't i couldn't feel that it's exactly what you just stick i'm gonna make twenty million dollars by at the time of thirty i'm already twenty seven i'm nowhere you like you just crumble it's like a diet it's instead of just saying stay focused on the next step we're getting to ten thousand subscribers don't worry about getting to a million we're that close let's focus on now and i think that's the best way to do it because me and my partner sean call a b z so z is the long term vision that that inspires you but that's not helpful but it's rather it's good for inspiration it's not good for daily action for what you're at a you don't worry about c d or anything else you just learn about you're a i worry about b yeah that i when get to b i worry about c smart and so that's kinda like the idea and so anyway i read this about you reverse engineering your trick and i was like okay here's one of these metaphors for life because that's like works perfectly for like anything honestly and and it's it's weird how that happens where things are going i also have a bad problem where when i at my peak when things are hit their best i have this fatal pursuit of like oh man things are too good right now it can't continue to go better and so i'm like i'm not enjoying the present moment of things being incredible and everyone's like dude you're doing this is something what's next and so that's a mindset i have to kind of overcome a lot of the time which is always just you know being stuck in like fifth gear and saying what am i gonna do next what's gonna be even bigger about next all the time i should be driving joy because i'm doing things that if you had told me ten years ago i'd be doing they'd be impossible it's like oh i'm at the golden globes all the winners i'm now hosting the white correspondent dinner like i'm good like there are things that i would not have dreamed of occurring that had you rebound and said to me you're gonna do this in this i'd be like there's just no way that's true and now when you're in it you don't really enjoy it in the same way because it's a it's a means to an ends but i don't know what the ends are it's a hamster that never stops you know it's kind of like we've now entered this cycle of a content game where all of us are vying for eyeballs and it never ends it's like it's like i have friends who are partners at law firms i remember my sister where have two sisters that are older than me at when i first moved to new york i was seventeen an internship over where the from michigan denver from missouri so good midwest midwestern guys right google very friendly and i was here it's just like you're thing where i met i met this gay couple and these guys were both a pop partners in a law firm no kids each of them made over a million dollars a year okay i'm like what do you do you understand like it it's i don't even i can't even comprehend that number it's it's an unfathomable and this is in this isn't in like nineteen this in two thousand and i just don't even understand and they go to restaurants every night like you won't eat restaurants every day night i haven't be able to dessert more than once a year on my birthday like i just don't ass if you can order a coke everything about this is insane and i can't get over it it it's exactly what you just said and so when you're viewing this from an outside perspective it's i just can't explain how you get once you start attaining those levels you no longer see it the way you did before what do you do with the money once you've already made it this is a question sean and i ask our successful guests all the time and the reason we ask it is because if you are successful if you do have a little bit of money information on how to spend or invest your money it's actually really hard to come by and i know this because inside of hampton which is my media founders people ask this question all the time people have made ten or fifty million dollars how do you spend it how do you invest it and so to help solve this problem and answer this question i actually interviewed eighty plus founders guys like scott gallo alex extra mo brian johnson people who are worth fifty a hundred even billions of dollars and we got them to reveal everything so their net worth how much they pay themselves their monthly expenses their portfolio things like that and we turn these eighty interviews into one document and i don't think you can find this type of information literally anywhere on the internet and it's completely free so if you wanna see behind the net worth of people who are worth billions of dollars and their portfolios or expenses everything you go to join hampton dot com slash reveal again join hampton dot com slash reveal check it out what can i do to improve my odds that i can guess that someone's lying to me so i've gone into a bit of like lie detection but the the thing is i'm not a body language expert so like i'm not there's people that that's what they study and even then it's wishy washy as to like how effective is this it's like looking at you know it's also going at vitamins what's the efficacy how much can you really figure it out to know if people are lying to you i think that the the key way that i do it within the construct of my show i set up very strict parameters of questions that i can potentially get the answer to easier it's not a daily life thing this skill doesn't generalize does that make sense yeah so you don't think that you are well if i'm in a show and i ask you a very certain question like think if the card is read red think if it's black think of it's this and i'm i'm trying to get to a limited subset there's fifty two cards in a deck and i'm getting down to one i have a series of very pointed questions and ways that i can influence you to get there but to ask you what do you think of my business how much is it worth and seeing the answer you give me that's a much broader span of answers like have you been able to use this for example giving feedback to like your your wife or your coworker i would say that i've had very good luck with things that are very simplistic and numerical base like real estate negotiations where it's a very clear cut we're trying to get to a number and i'm trying to see where i think their number stops and where my number stops and trying to figure that out and introduce like are we gonna go back and forth how do you do that i mean how did you do that well i use a lot of emotion so it's the same thing as what i use in my show which is ex ability which is the con tools so when i've sold every property i've sold at a profit every single one i wanna feeding frenzy so whereas other people will say well emotionally based i've owned this thing they're all worth this much i'm gonna price at this and i hope i would rather price something ten percent less get a hundred people in the door for an open house have this person's spouse saying we gotta get this honey there hasn't been anything on the market for four ninety nine and it's it went right under the five hundred of street easy that your searches and we gotta get in this place and see it on day one and then have emotions come into play because once you're emotionally invested that's when things start to happen that's when people start getting reckless it's the same as behavioral economics when everyone's selling you should be buying warren buffett one zero one but when everyone's selling you're calling your financial advisory means tanking it's tanking oil is about to be two hundred what do we do right now stay the course baby come on look at the long term by right now and people are panicking so i use that to my advantage in my show i do the same thing so when i've sold properties i've always under priced them considerably and then taking the momentum and then utilize the fact that when people think they're competing with others they're gonna work against themselves you can literally have no other offers how many properties have you sold think four five and they've all been at a profit and done very well and i think that that's that's been because i understand not just the way people lie but i can observe the way people behave in situations when you were how old are you when you met your wife twenty six so i presumably you're you're good already not really so you still you weren't good yet i was a pretty good magician but i was like a pretty not lackluster i didn't do as much then what age did you get good i mean i'm still getting good but i i that's a that's a difficult question probably over the next five years i started improving i this the early thirties where you're like okay i got some something's going on so well i it was it's been eleven years ago that i became a mental as like i i literally branded as os instead of kind of being a bit of both and i just decided this one i'm gonna do and not really do magic it's again this is like nuance but i don't do almost any magic in my show anymore who's the most successful magician like david financial have oh yeah you see a billionaire there billionaire a workhorse i mean he's no one has his ethic he's he's on a different level i think i read that he does was it five hundred shows a year well until april thirty he's wrapping up but so what how many shows did he do in his life no a year obscene them i think five hundred to six hundred which if you understand what that maps out to if you look in vegas they have their shows dialed in with teams that really know what they're doing and again it's you're the performer i'm not seeing that anyone's taking the heat off of you but anything that can be outsourced that can be you know taken off your hands like ruthless efficiency it's amazing what some of the people do have like a show in their own theater when you were getting to the business where you like this is the person who absolutely not who did you aspire to be so you never know this person but i i i stumbled into the corporate sector because i used to work on wall street so i i saw a corporate events as like the the the the kind of the top of the mountain because two things one i'm i'm i have the right look and the right lingo and terminology i come from the world of corporation so i'm a safe bet and i start to understand that when a corporate event when somebody wants to come in they wanna maybe it's internal like an sk right wanna a ra when getting pumped up use a little bit of messaging and leave there feeling inspired or maybe it's external it's client facing and we wanna win over clients make them feel appreciate and have that kind of night that's memorable that we talk about in both instances let's say you hire musician not everyone like same music where you could spend ten million dollars and get paul mccartney what if i'm not a beatles fan not everyone is then it it's it you you haven't really gotten the full roi if you get a comedian i love comedy but comedian can sometimes offend your sense of humor is in mine i this is very lucky have the one product that almost everyone in the universe loves wow the wow and amazement transcend and it's universal so do you understand what i'm if you do it effectively it applies to everyone and that transcend sense language barriers you could drop me in tokyo and i could make friends in one minute i would do more magic but i could instantly go oh that do you see that that feeling that feeling is very special it's like it's like the same way as certain things are cardinal desires like sex appeal food right there's certain things that are just like hardwired our dna for whatever reason wow is very strong emotion so i knew that i could do that second they don't spend their own money so when you go to it to see a concert or to show you worked really hard for that money sam you've gotta go your own money you've gotta get babysitter you gotta do all this stuff a corporate event you're spending the company's money much easier b to b than b to c if i ever open a business never consumer facing i don't want that drama i want b to b i wanna go enterprise i want big amounts of money being given to me and not a lot of oversight people say you're good boom ready to go it's just such a simpler pursuit than getting a million people to spend one dollar i'd rather get one person to sign a check for one million dollars what how big the team was just you team is very small who is it so i mean depends what you describe as a team but i have my manager there's i have an agency that helps as well i have a an video editor of somebody who helps with social media but all of them are kind of like contractor it's mostly me yeah and my manager and so do you have an of mind for your career god i wanna offload some of the stuff that i don't like i'd like the team to be bigger but really sharper and and i keep wanting to trade money for time because that's really i'm i'm just running into this issue of money in time where is your time spent right now that you think is a waste oh without a doubt on on like skills that i'm not good at just like an administrative oversight things that i need a very strong executive assistant to do that just takes it off my plate that i can outsource just day to day management of tasks that i d tasks that seems like a that's like the most straightforward thing ever so i know it is but i just had very bad luck with hiring in recent years where they it's and it's mostly my fault do people find you intimidating to work for because of what they see you do i don't maybe that could be true how does like your eldest kid on a hold there but like if they like are old enough to know like what you do yeah and like do does your eldest find you just as dad or or do they know that you're you have super pissed i they take a lot of pride which is really touching like when i see them talk about me or hear about me to other people in the day to day not really but what's very funny is that all my kids they know they get a laugh out of me so they obviously you know kids are so perceptive that if they know something's funny they'll keep doing it so all my kids if you ask them what my name is they'll say owes the mental which cracks me up every time even down to my two year old so it's just very funny that they'll call me that and then if if i'm in public like he mental like don't tell people so you read this i i i there's this book called thirteen mental is that right thirteen steps of yeah sorry thirteen steps of i think you said that that was like the book that got you ro asked me on the spies book yeah it's it's that's that's that's like the bible that's the initial one what was the one that impact what was the the source the the primary source for you to learn that was like the biggest impact on you so the biggest impact on me was a book but it's so inside you wouldn't find it it's it's even out of print that was it was the business of mental it was had no tricks in it and it was all about theory of i keep trying to dis it's the same way i would say there's an economy of words and you watch a really good stand of comic timing like how do you take a joke and tighten it i kept trying to figure out what am i doing i know this sounds so silly like what am i doing and why am i doing it there's such key things that sounds so simple that most of us we don't have guiding principles we just kind go through life we stumble into a profession we keep doing it and you kind of hit a certain level and i think the people that somehow jump and race to the height they look at themselves from an outside perspective of of like why the why so when i'm doing this i always assume why does anyone care like why does anyone care why do you care because this is about your brother yeah your most important thing in your life or the people you care about you know your wife your kids right family finances your future your faith like things that appeal i try to make this about you i try to give you a memory of feeling that you'll take and story you tell us i how do you guess my brother john's name in birthday think about it the exact same thing i could've have just guessed a date that had no meaning to you and it wouldn't have been the same story i think like the emotion that i feel talking to you i mean obviously that's insane how you do that but like i i my head like okay magic not real he's just mastered the skill that's in the and the feeling that i have is this person is so much better at his skill set than i am at my skill set i well are you comparing i don't know how you so apples and oranges no but what i'm saying is i am so inspired at the level of mastery that this person has that i want to become a master at whatever it is that i choose it's sort of like i don't need to be a fan of swimming but when i see phelps swim it's a it's a work of art yeah and that is what i feel like i feel like i'm in like the presence of just someone who's the best of the best of the best and i find that inspiring and i'm also like i wanna learn how to be the best i couldn't say it any clear that's exactly how i feel like i when i meet people that that have committed their life to something and are exceptional at it and if they are the best it's just so inspiring it's it's exactly that rather than say putting myself down i'm just like wow this gives me something it gives me fuel yeah we've done eight hundred of these episodes i've talked i know twenty billionaires probably i don't know a lot i know the billionaires we've talked to people that are just like inspiring their built businesses that have been like really just i like the people that are so driven that all the obstacles put firm doesn't matter they're find way you go through brick walls this sounds messed up i don't find elon must be particularly inspiring because i don't wanna like trade spots with him right what i but what i love is people who carve their own path and i don't and and i think business and capitalism is the most practical way to carve your own path right but like i'm obsessed with people who are world class artists or someone who owns the bed down the street but they have every single protein bar that because they've found that that's their niche right they're just on top of it yeah like i'm obsessed with that like the the the just it's like the people who are just said i'm gonna let my freak flag fly and this is the path that i'm going have there been any like titans of industry or famous people who you've met and they've been very challenging to read and you're like that's why you're successful or you've knows other attributes where you're like you are more difficult than the average show and now i understand why you at the top of your game so i've it's funny you you mentioned jeff bezos and i met jeff bezos last year and had him in my show and it was awesome it was it's it's honestly like top ten moments of career what i need with him so i mean i'll tell the story i'll keep it short but it was a room probably knows most power room have ever been in it's it's it's a big event in aspen and just wow everybody in there is ceos peel at run companies like just name the people and save the list in hey bill gates is here you know ted we got we got jeff bezos like that's just everyone there's about two hundred people in the room three hundred and so my kids we have an alexa speaker and i just i i wanted a heartwarming story it's very true it human eyes me when off they're performing but i said there's one person in this room that i told my kids was here and they don't they don't care about any of the rest of you but this one person to them is created true magic and i go the alexa speaker in my house gets asked a hundred questions a day at least what's this what's this alexa this and i go i told them the person who invented alexa is gonna be in the room with me so mister bezos if please stand up was just a very funny moment very point and i you get to now ask me any question you want ask me any question and sit there marinade but thanks to yourself what if i had access to all the data in the world which you do aws and i could look up anything about you asking me a question nobody would know the answer to not your wife not your brother not your sister try to go back through your life like it's a movie and think of something so obscure so impossible so i don't care what it is but asking me a question and it goes who i get in a fight with a third grade you know like it it was just like and so and i'm not gonna go through the whole but how i got it yep and it was it i got it it was just a crazy moment it was just it it's one of those moments that i'll there never forget because it was just in this room right time right place a challenge there's nothing like a challenge where somebody challenges you and and it was was wild it was a wild moment and it's somebody where it's like it also every one of those is a little internal of like internal boost not of self esteem but like but it validates because these are some of the most intelligent people in the world by far and to be able to take my craft my craft is to reverse engineer the human mind to know how people think and to amaze them and also to some level deceive them and the fact they just pulled it off where they they just have no idea how you could have possibly done that that's a rare commodity yeah it's crazy hanging out with you because like i have this book up here pre punctuation you know who wrote the of course robert chen yeah his book influence like i read that when i was going through my period and i was like i was like i have this ability to convince people of certain things not like you but i was like i have a this ability commits to girl but like go out with me i have this ability to sell stuff let's get this shit right and i remember reading that book and like changed my life and i was gonna get my act right but then i'm like hanging out with you now and i'm like this is like robert how do you need times one hundred the rob sheldon dean's very sharp i mean what you're doing is like him times way more you know it's crazy i bet enjoy it but it's also done again through a certain lens where it's it's it's done for the sake of entertainment and is very specific do you wanna do one more trick and then do one more thing let's do one thing which is again i like this i like this idea my first million it's a very smart title for a podcast right it's like we make fun it we thought was a horrible name i think it's funny because it it leads at the right foot it's like this is what it is you take it or leave it you're gonna like it and it's a certain culture you decided in your mind i had a number once you had that number you've achieved exit velocity you have enough money you can make it in life you get to enjoy your life more i want you to imagine you spin a globe i always like to go back to a visual holding your hand and you point at one place and you go i would love to go there number one place in the world right i walked in here earlier and i said to you what would you do you all the money in the world think where i love to go and imagine you pointed at that one place right now can you see in your mind like try to point out it i've been there before interesting question hold on if you've been there before no you've never been there before i think the place you thought of normally people will travel over you've been to a bunch of places i think you don't need a passport it's in the us isn't it reverse psychology you decided like what if i'll do this that's really funny where everybody else would say maldives say chefs i'm gonna go crazy machu picchu you decided i'm gonna try and keep it local to throw him off and probably didn't get it probably didn't get it how did i think to mess where where was the where was it you where you never been there where did you think of say it jackson wyoming jackson wyoming airbnb didn't hire you had to pivot correct yeah you just in your minds pivoted just like any good entrepreneur does and you go do i have to be there do i have to have been there that question right then you thought of somewhere else look at me was paris wasn't it yeah that's awesome dude that's it my first million you're comfortable to be around i don't you are the horrible hearing thanks dude thank you we're gonna go run some time that's it that's the pod oh my god i feel like got rude work know why i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a go less travel never looking back if you made it this far then you're gonna love what i'm about to tell you so there's this amazing new james neil patel he's been on m mfa he's one of our favorite guests and he has a podcast is called marketing school and it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network marketing school brings you daily actionable digital marketing lessons learned from years and years of being in the trenches they have over a hundred million downloads in over twenty five hundred episodes marketing school gives you bite sized marketing wisdom that you can implement immediately whether you have a new website or you already have this huge established business you're gonna learn about the latest seo content marketing social media email marketing conversion optimization and general online marketing strategies that work today you can get marketing school wherever get your podcast