Oz Perlman: 3 Keys to Becoming a World-Class Performer | E180

17:24Oz Perlman:People look at me, what do you mean? I'm not going to pay for a meeting. I said, sure you are. How much is your time worth? You spent a year driving around doing nothing. I mean, getting nothing. So I said, how much would you pay for a meeting with someone who owns a commercial building that you want to lease? And he looked at me like I was nuts. I said, no. Is it$50? Is it$100? I said, he said, 50. I said, that's easy. You go to Starbucks, you get a bag of coffee, you get two mugs, you write a nice note on stationary, thick stationary. If it's thin, you're thin. If it's thick, you're strong, right?

17:54Oz Perlman:It's confident. You say, dear Os, I'd love to drink this with you in person. Luke. So Luke Inc. in the middle of COVID got something like 15 % of meetings. Now, these are people who own buildings. They're usually 70 years old. They have previous relationships with people and they're not risking death during COVID to come in, but he gets two meetings and they go nowhere in terms of no leases that day. But these guys like Luke enough, and Luke had done the homework, extreme preparation, that they referred him to people who the next year, Luke did$215 ,000 in sales in income. He made$215 ,000 the next year.

18:39Oz Perlman:He made$700 ,000 the next year. And he made $1.5 million the third year, just doing this over and over again, replicating this trick, sending something that's thoughtful, creative, something of value. More people have to do it. Yeah. I mean, it's very inspiring. So one of the interesting things about you also, there's a guy named Bruce Wright who had this Maxim 19... Wow.

19:01Randy Kaplan:Shout out to Bruce Wright. Yeah. Bruce Wright. Yeah. Hey, Bruce. He's going to hear this.

19:04Oz Perlman:I'm going to text him. Let him know. And he had a 1966 Maxim truck and he drove around the neighborhood with you in the truck. What?

19:12Randy Kaplan:It's a vintage fire truck, so everybody understands. It's super cool.

19:15Oz Perlman:Okay. And so he's just driving around the neighborhood. he's honking at people and hey come come look at this no no no no sorry he he would rent out a

19:22Randy Kaplan:vintage fire truck okay in metro detroit for birthday parties so it's super cool where he has it's amazing so what do the kids do they play with the hoses they go on the thing problem with it is it's not enough entertainment for a birthday party you can then you know touch all the stuff do the stuff go for a ride but now you you have nothing going on so i can't remember where he saw me this is actually very curious to see but he saw me somewhere and he said let's do business I don't know how much he's charging, but he says, what do you make? And I said this, and he goes, I'll pay 150 bucks a kid's party.

19:53Randy Kaplan:You do your, what is it? Like a 40 minute show, 40 minute show. We add that to my 40 minutes. And now we can charge enough whereby when we're doing this, we can have like a nice big party where a family can't have 40 minutes because it doesn't feel enough time to have the kids over the cake. You need enough time to feel like you got the value. Same way watching a movie for 40 minutes isn't a date night. A movie's an hour and a half, two hours. So I did these kids shows and we would stack them one after another after another. And I could make so much money in a Saturday for a 15 year old kid making six, seven,$800 cash.

20:26Randy Kaplan:It's huge. And so, and I was very frugal. I was very much a saver at the time and I was saving this money and it was setting me up. Actually, if you look into the future, when I quit my job on Wall Street, this set me up for success later because I had the runway to quit my job, to have money saved up. So all of those choices I made earlier, Those choices to not buy a fancy car. I didn't have money. I bought like a used car from 1990, Ford Tempo. Like I just did all of these different things where I would do, I would kind of, how would I go about this? Where I saved in scrimp so that when the time came, I wanted to have the money and do it.

21:02Oz Perlman:Same thing for me. I mean, I always want to have my own company and this is something I advise people as well. If you want to start a company, live below your means, save up, do the math and say, okay, this is how much I need to save where I'm not making any money. I'd say$400 ,000 when I left Sun America, big corporate job, golden handcuffs. I could have stayed. I left 2 million of non-vested stock options on the table that ultimately were worth$2.5 million three months later when my boss sold the company. But at$400 ,000, my nut was$40 ,000 a year. I had 10 years to make something of myself.

21:34Oz Perlman:So I tell people all the time, save, live below your means. I was a lawyer. I didn't go out and buy a BMW like a lot of my friends did. Acura, Integra, it was eight years old. I kept the car. And that's what you got to do to take a, to bet on yourself, save up and then let it rip. Yeah. Agreed. Summer before your senior year, you meet these guys, Max and a car. A jar. And, and these guys change your life.

21:59Randy Kaplan:Big time. So they created a company called Penguin Magic, which still exists. It's one of, if not the top magic online retailer in the world. And magic evolved where streaming started to happen. Not, not really like Netflix streaming, but you can actually download videos. And so that whole magic shop experience changed from going into a store, somebody demos you a trick and then you buy it and then they give you the thing to now, you can just watch the video online and then you can buy the trick. They mail it to you and you can even watch it. No, no, the delayed gratification is gone. It's now you can watch a video of me teaching you how to do that trick before it even arrives in your mailbox.

22:35Randy Kaplan:And so this changed the game. It was a complete shift. It was like a full disruptor the way Uber was with taxis like this. Nobody went to magic stores anymore, which was bad for business for magic stores. I feel bad for brick and mortars, but you have to, you know, evolve or die. That's business, right? You have to innovate. I started doing all their videos and that allowed me, I had a huge video called born to perform card magic. You should buy it. If you're into card magic, it's one of the highest selling DVDs of all time. $30 I think, right? I think that sounds about right. It's not even a DVD anymore.

23:04Randy Kaplan:You just buy it as an instant download. But it taught you how to go from beginner to pro in a matter of hours. By the end of this video, you have to practice, right? This is no magic pill. But I'm going to show you all of the best stuff to learn that I'm not going to give you eight books to read this, this, this. I'm just going to take it and give you the TLDR, right? Too long. Didn't read. Here's the best stuff to use. Here's the stuff. This best of this move, best of this move, best of this move, two of these. And now you're ready to go perform for people at a moment's note.

23:34Oz Perlman:Max said when he met you, he thought you had star power. What did he see in you that made him think that?

23:46Oz Perlman:I hope you're enjoying this video so far. But before we jump back in, I want to know if you've ever thought about what you need to do to reach another level of success in your life. Over the last 25 years, I've been an advisor to more than 50 companies. I've invested nearly 100, including Google, Lyft and Seagate. And I also co-founded a company that today is worth more than$15 billion. I've been incredibly blessed in my journey. And at this stage of my life, I want to give back. I want to share the lessons I've learned so you can reach incredible success way faster than I did. In my own journey, I've learned that having the right mentor is a massive advantage to achieving our goals.

24:18Oz Perlman:I'm hugely passionate about mentoring others. I'm looking for a few hungry entrepreneurs who are excited to take action on their journey to incredible future success. So if that's you, I've got an opportunity. In the description of this video, there's a link where you can apply to work with me. All you need to do is answer a few simple questions. And if you're a good fit, my team will reach out so we can build a game plan together. All right, now let's get back to the video.

24:41I don't know.

24:42Randy Kaplan:That's you'd have to ask him. I think that I have an authenticity and genuineness on camera. I think that from a young age, I've had a very strong ability to be aware of consumer perception. In my career, in my profession, most people are very internal driven. It's very ego driven. It's very much like, look what I can do. Look at how amazing I am. I, I, I. Wrong, wrong language. To be successful, I realized early on I'm a salesperson. I'm in the service industry. So it's all about you, you, you, you, you. It's all about what can I do for you. From a young age, I went into a restaurant and I didn't, my tricks spoke for themselves.

25:18Randy Kaplan:That goes without saying. I better have a good act. but my language was designed to impart what are the benefits to you? Knowing that the person who runs this restaurant wants to turn over tables quick. He doesn't want to have you sitting there for two extra hours watching some magician. I can't get more butts in seats and make more money, right? He doesn't want me stealing tip money from his wait staff who are going to dislike me. I need to speak in his language, which is, oh, you have to send a dish back. That person's furious. I go over there and I break the tension. I win them over so that when they come back with the dish, they go, oh my God, this guy's amazing.

25:47Randy Kaplan:they forgot that they got the wrong salad with the wrong dressing, right? I'm winning them over. I'm turning tables. I'm working with your wait staff hand in hand. And I only approach tables in that lull between when they ordered and when we're waiting the food, when they're a little bit hangry, right? And I win them over. I'm thinking like the manager of the restaurant, not like the magician working there. That's my secret to success. CNBC. Have you been on CNBC? No. I've been on CNBC dozens of times. There's no other mentalist or magician that's ever been on the network. I just want to just, you have to understand that phrase.

26:23Randy Kaplan:Why would CNBC, a major serious network, have a mentalist on over and over and over? I've been on every single show from 6 a.m. hour to the 5 p.m. closed bell. Every single slot I've been on. Why is that? Because I take my material and I create it based on the person watching. I do things that have to do with markets, with stocks, with bonds, with interest rates, with high-frequency training. I create the content so that the consumer watching it is invested and interested. I don't just do a card trick that's about me. So that's the secret. The secret is make it about them.

26:57Oz Perlman:Another seminal moment in your career. So you went to Michigan, engineering degree, started off in computer science. Your sister wanted you to do it. They said, no, I really don't do that. You graduate. I just wasn't good at it. I know your weaknesses. You graduate, and then you work at Merrill Lynch. For those people who don't know, Merrill Lynch is no longer around. Right. Part of B of A. Part of B of A today. And you're at a birthday party, not because you're working at Merrill Lynch, for the CFO named James Gorman.

27:25Randy Kaplan:Not a birthday party. A corporate event.

27:27Oz Perlman:A corporate event. Yep. So he's the CFO. He went on to become the CEO of Morgan Stanley. Huge influence on Wall Street. Tell us what happened. There's a seminal moment where he said, hey, man, what am I doing? Oh yeah, huge moment, huge moment.

27:40Randy Kaplan:For him, a throwaway comment, which is something that is very interesting to learn. Sometimes your throwaway comments to people, you forgot two minutes later, change their life, right? The smiles, the respect you give people. Like when you talk about mentees, when I see people that have some of me in them from when I was a kid, I always take the time. I always take the time to try to see them, hear them, like have them feel heard and understood. Because I had moments when I was 14 where somebody treated me like an adult and I've met them who I was at magic lectures and they treated me like an adult.

28:10Randy Kaplan:And they don't understand that that few minutes we spent together, the fact that you didn't treat me like a kid, but that you were so nice and you showed me things. And like you were acting to me like I was a professional, even though I was not. It really taught me that lesson of never take for granted because those little gestures and moments are remembered for a long time. So to bring this back, I was doing a performance. James Gorman was there. He's my boss's boss's boss's boss. Like, you know, like 20 levels because I'm some analyst. And I was hired internally by the event planners within the company because I became somewhat of a unique anomaly of there's a guy at the IT department who's a great magician.

28:47Randy Kaplan:So then I did a different thing and they started hiring me internally. But I worked at Merrill Lynch full time at the time. Do you understand? I had a day job, but they would bring me to these events. So I performed for him. I did a trick where I turned$1 bills into hundreds. It's a sleight of hand trick. And Wall Street guys love that trick because they go, oh, my God, we got to get you working here. That's exactly what everybody says. It's been said to me a thousand times. And so when he said that, I go, sir, I do work here. And he thinks I'm joking. And I go, no, but seriously, I work here.

29:14Randy Kaplan:Like I was letting him know. And he goes, what do you mean? I go, I work 95 green a year, global technology services department, contentious recovery. And I threw so many acronyms and corporate lingo in there that it hits him that like, he thought it was all a gag. He's like, he understood, wait, this guy actually works at Merrill Lynch. And he just looks at me and goes, what the hell are you doing working here? You know, like, cause it was just, you're so amazing. like how we, and it was just a moment where I'd been thinking about potentially quitting. A few things had come into play where I decided to think to myself, I'm so busy.

29:42Randy Kaplan:I'm working every night after work. I'm working every weekend. I'm just working around the clock. I had somebody in my life that kind of brought me to the forefront of what if you quit, right? It wasn't my goal. I wasn't, I came from a first generation immigrant background where you go to school, you get a job, you work your way up. Like this is the path of life. This is what's taught to you. One plus one equals two, two plus two equals four. You can't cheat and get to eight by itself. So I needed to have that framework, that belief system of like, could I actually do this? And he set that wheel in motion.

30:15Randy Kaplan:I was already thinking about it. And that was the straw that broke the camel's back where I said to myself, what am I doing working here? And it was, it was, I don't even know if it was three weeks, four weeks later, but I put in my notice and I said, I'm going to go for it. You had a off-Broadway show called Watch Magic. Off, off, off. There's so many levels of off you can. Yoga studio. Yeah, at a yoga studio by day. We manually put all the chairs up to create a tiered system where luckily they had like a little riser. But saying it was an off-Broadway is just like such a compliment you wouldn't believe.

30:47Randy Kaplan:But yes.

30:48Oz Perlman:When you are talking to someone, it's so important, by the way. So one of the things that I teach is very, very important. and a lot of people get this wrong as well. If you want to be successful, you got to get this one right. You got 10 to 15 seconds to impress somebody and get their attention. They're going to form an impression of you right out of the gate. Three things people should do in the first 10 to 15 seconds.

31:08Randy Kaplan:Smile. That's a definite one. It depends how you're meeting somebody. Is somebody introducing you to them or are you coming up to them cold? If you have the ability to be introduced, always be introduced, right? Because you get that person's shine. So if somebody says, oh, you've got to meet, then you are now getting all of their social currency. Do you see what I'm saying? Yes. So if that person knows that person, they've already qualified. You're a qualified lead. I know you. If Randy, if you right now bring me to meet somebody outside, then I know you're legit, right? I know who you are. You've got all of this presence.

31:39Randy Kaplan:You go, oh, you got to meet this person. Right away, that's stronger than them walking up to me. So if you can have the ability to have somebody introduce you, have the introduction. When you walk up, smile, smile. There's something about smiling that conveys more than anything else. Again, this depends on who you are as to whether a firm handshake is the way to go. Take their name in. When somebody introduces themselves, don't you dare forget their name. And I have a TED Talk coming out in a week where the whole thing is I teach you how to never forget someone's name for the rest of your life and how you can learn that in the next five minutes, five, 10 minutes top.

32:13Randy Kaplan:And you will be doing this 10 minutes from now and 10 years from now, you'll still do this every day of your life. I call it the shampoo model. It goes from lather, rinse, repeat. I'm not going to give you the whole thing. It's in the book and it's in the TED Talk, but it's called listen, repeat, reply. And it's how to never forget someone's name ever again. I don't care how good your memory is. I don't care if you have the worst memory in the world. Bullshit. You know why? Because your memory is not the issue. It's your listening. If you can remember your wife's name or your daughter's name or your brother's name, then you can remember a stranger's name if they told it to you.

32:44Randy Kaplan:You can easily remember it. The fact is you didn't hear it. So when somebody approaches you, look them in the eye, listen, I always repeat their name. I make sure I know their name because showing that they're important to you makes them feel good. So right away, those three things set you so much above anyone. It's such simple tools, but this is classic Dale Carnegie, how to win friends and influence people. Those three things are right away a secret to success.

33:08Oz Perlman:You have 10 to 15 seconds to impress someone and something that everyone must do is they must be able to express themselves and communicate what they want to communicate in a clear, concise fashion. And it's a learned skill. And a lot of people don't do that. Right. For my podcast, people say, you know, how do you get these incredible guests? Well, this was a cold email and I appreciate responding. And over 70 % of my guests, I'm just cold emailing. But if you want to meet a large number of influential people, if you want to go hunt moose, go where the moose are. Sure. So I'll go to conferences sometimes and I'll go up.

33:41Oz Perlman:David Rubenstein, nice to meet you.

33:46Oz Perlman:I'm I have a podcast. I've had these people on. I'd love you to be on my show. I'd love to be on your show. Kevin O 'Leary, same conference. Kevin, hi, I'm Randy Kaplan. I have a podcast. It's 15 seconds. It's seven seconds. And you have to be able to express yourself very, very, very clearly.

34:04Randy Kaplan:So you get - Yeah, if I was giving you one more thing, because it'd be number four, those are very easy. Ask this person something they haven't been asked before. Now, don't be outlandish. Don't be silly, but they're an autopilot. Most people are an autopilot. They've been asked the same questions by most people hundreds of times. How'd you get into this? Kevin O 'Leary. Oh my God, Mr. Wonderful. All of those things are going to be things they've already heard. They're ready for you. Ask them something they're not ready for. Ask them something that makes them think, huh, no one's ever asked me that before.

34:32Randy Kaplan:Now, first off, they have to think about it, which makes them not give you a road answer. But it also shows that you took the time to think, right? It's the same as that Sunfo walking in and offering to work for free. I don't think he'd heard that recently. because by the fourth time somebody does that, the novelty's worn off. We already got three guys working here for free and two girls. So I think that again, there's something to be said for novelty, but extreme preparation. And think, what could I ask this person that they haven't been asked before?

34:58Oz Perlman:I think about extreme preparation and starting out my show with a question. That's a boom, extreme preparation, torpedo, EPT. It's critical. If you want to get ahead, start every meeting, showing the research, showing the question. and as you said, ask people something they've never been asked before. And that's one of the secrets to the success of my show. I'll do a lot of research, tons of research. I'll read podcasts, transcripts, and I don't wanna ask the same question time and time again, right? You said it a million times. I want different takes on different events in your life and I want unique answers and insights.

35:33Oz Perlman:And it starts the meeting off on a completely different level and it continues on that level for the length of your meeting. It's one that's critical to your success as a professional and even as a person in personal relationships, too. It shows you care. You have respect. It's very, very important in our lives. Agreed. Critical. One of the critical elements of success that I advise people is having public speaking skills. And as a magician, you learn that as a very young age. My son, Charlie, is great with people. He's 21 years old, articulate. it. And I think it's because, I know it's because he was a magician and like you, he'd go up to people and it's 99 % of magic is a presentation and 1 % is the skill level.

36:16Oz Perlman:Should everybody in the workforce today take a public speaking class and get over the fear of public speaking?

36:23Randy Kaplan:I mean, that'd be great. Absolutely. It's kind of like typing class. I think that the best ROI I ever had in my entire schooling, shout out to Mrs. Dubb. She'll love this, my public speaking teacher. It's weird. I don't remember my typing teacher's name. I feel bad about that. I can picture her face vividly, but somehow her name didn't sink through because we kind of interacted on a screen, which shows you how screens kind of make it so you don't really realize people. But learning how to type and learning how to public speak were truly, along with LASIK on my eyes, like things where the return on investment, mind you, it wasn't money for those classes, but the time that I spent on them versus the skill I got out of it is just so amplified.

37:00Randy Kaplan:It's such a force multiplier of efficiency in life. But yeah, absolutely. Learning how to public speak and learning how to get over that fear and how to speak in an effective manner where people are interested. You're pinging them. You're watching their faces. You're seeing their expressions. Great. Yeah, it's absolutely.

37:16Oz Perlman:Magic goes back 3 ,675 years ago. Ancient Egypt. Mentalism, a couple hundred years max. Yep. What's the difference between magic and mentalism?

37:28Randy Kaplan:A mentalism is a subset of magic. So it's kind of a world within magic where most mentalists started as magicians. It's kind of the foundation. But mentalism is magic of the mind. Give us the three most important qualities of a successful magician. Of a magician or a mentalist? I was going to go through both.

37:46Oz Perlman:So if they're separate, separate. And if they're...

37:48Randy Kaplan:I don't know. I think having a good character. So as a magician, you have to really decide who you are because that informs all of your decision making. So if you have... Who's your character? Who are you? Are you funny? Are you likable? Are you a little more mysterious? Decide who you are and that will inform your decisions as to what material and how you structure your act. I think that's very important in life. A lot of people, they design in the wrong order. You always build a foundation of a house before you build on top of it. If you didn't build the foundation or dig in, the house will fall over in a moment.

38:20Randy Kaplan:Notice. So the foundation is the thing that should inform all your decisions. Magic is just an entertainer, right? There's no difference. Like a comedian. Most comedians start out very hacky and they get better as they decide who they really are. What am I going to make jokes about? Am I going to do TSA jokes like every other comedian? Or am I going to start leaning into who I am as a person and storytelling that connects or punchlines? I think there's an element there. I think decide what your act is. Again, this is hyper-specific to magic, but I always thought that you don't need to know a hundred different tricks.

38:51Randy Kaplan:That's great to know. If you know eight tricks better than anyone in the world, you'll do better than knowing a hundred tricks. There's just no question. because your act is going to be something that you need to hone and get better and better and better at. So have your greatest hits, right? Most bands, if you're lucky, you have one or two greatest hits. The best bands in the world have 10 to 15 greatest hits. And you know, Paul McCartney, call it 20 and you're the greatest of all time. So know that some people do just scatter. They try to do everything at once. What would be a third one? A third one is, is have a better assessment of what people think of you.

39:22Randy Kaplan:Most people are too busy being themselves to know what other people think of them. Honestly, in life, you're only you. You've never been able to take yourself out of your body and put yourself into his body. We're only ourself. We have such a one-sided view where empathy you can attempt to do. But when somebody sees you, what do they think? What do they think? What do I think of your shoes? What do I think of your outfit? What do I think of your manners? What do I think of everything? It's very difficult to take that in because your ego is there. So changing things that other people don't like about you, sometimes it's like, but I like that.

39:54Randy Kaplan:But if everyone else hates it, then it's up to you what you want to do with that. Do you understand what I mean? In performing, it's brutal because I spent an entire summer, it's in my book, learning how to do a rope trick. That's like this famous, this guy won this World Olympics of Magic. It's called FISM. He won the Olympics of Magic. I'm like, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I spent hours, hours, every single day in front of a mirror, like a ballerina who just twirls, doing every little move, watching myself over and over. And then I started doing it for audiences for a year.

40:23Randy Kaplan:And do you know what happened? No one liked it. No one liked it. No one liked it as much as I did. And you want to make them think, this is so good. This is so good. But it's just like Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank where he goes, your business hasn't worked in five years. Change. Learn from your mistake. At a certain point, being stubborn is not a business solution. So I had to realize, oh my God, all this investment I put into it, nobody likes this trick. Maybe when that guy does, but nobody likes it the much I do. I had to change it and I stopped doing it. And could I have maybe done another year and it got better?

40:53Randy Kaplan:No, it just wasn't right for me and my personality. And there's so much of that where you over time need to learn to change and evolve and improve. And for magic more than anything, magic's changing by the minute, but that's every profession. Every profession is changing.

41:07Oz Perlman:Let's talk about what it takes to make people successful. Extreme preparation has been the most important quality of my career. It's what got me to where I am today, work ethic. But I prepare more than anyone for my podcast, for meetings. how important has extreme preparation been to your success?

41:23Randy Kaplan:I think I love to prepare. I like to, in my mind, think consistently. I'll do preparation research. So I'm pretty similar to you in the fact that I'll research very intensively. But at the same time, I like things to feel fresh. So when I'm performing, I want every performance to be genuine and authentic. And if you over-prepare, you can get stiff. So that is something to be careful of where, yes, you can prepare. But at a certain point, you got to go do the thing. and it's not going to be structured the way you want it to. And you got to roll with the punches. And so I think preparation has been very important.

41:56Randy Kaplan:I think that learning from mistakes is even more important than preparation because all the preparation in the world, Mike Tyson style, right? Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. What do you do when you get punched in the face and all of your preparation goes out the window? That is experience. That's instincts. That's intuition. Those are the intangibles that all the preparation in the world can't do for you. And that's also learning. Again, people that I've seen that achieve a level of success and they stop, they care more about their wins than their losses. They learn they just enjoy being on top and they don't want to stomach losing, right?

42:33Randy Kaplan:The people like Steve Jobs, look at the people who reinvented companies from scratch where everyone said, you're an idiot. There's no way this is going to work. But they really believed in themselves. I learn more when I fail by far than when I succeed by far.

42:47Oz Perlman:How important is innovating and constantly reinventing ourselves to our success?

42:52Randy Kaplan:I think it's very important. I think lean into what you do, great. So definitely don't take for granted where people that innovate are changing. The people that are serial entrepreneurs, franchise, didn't go, new franchise, new franchise. No, no, no. Focus on something, execute effectively, whether it's in the business world, but also you need to innovate whereby if you stay stuck in the status quo, always people are gonna leave you behind. I mean, there's just no way around it. I do that in my own business. I know that I am in a few years, I'm not the shiny new toy. There's going to be somebody younger, hungrier, better than me.

43:25Randy Kaplan:So what am I going to do that's going to be different at that point in time? Right? That's the rule of showbiz.

43:30Oz Perlman:You're rumored to make$10 million a year. You perform lots and lots of shows. Does money change your life? And do you think back to your first days we're doing card tricks for$25?

43:41Randy Kaplan:Yeah, 25 an hour. I mean, that was good money then. That's not, uh, to answer that question, I think money changes everything for everybody. It's like a business. Money is a tool and what you learn over time. And if you're blessed enough to get to a point, which is everyone, it's just, you can be rich, not based on the money you have, but based on if you have the ability to have anything you want to get, you're able to buy it. That isn't about money. That's about your wants and needs. So your lifestyle, the same way that you said you live below your means, Acura, Integra, eight years, not getting the BMW and all the other lawyers did, right?

44:16Randy Kaplan:Maybe eating ramen noodles and everybody else is going to fancy restaurants. That is an internal compass as to what money will do for you. Money for very few people will fill a void. If your goal is I'm going to make this amount of money. And when I have that dollars in the bank or my brokerage, I'm going to feel whole spoiler alert. You won't, you won't. It's just not like that. I've experienced that moment of thinking, I'll have this much money and I've achieved it. Things beyond my wildest dreams I've achieved. And money isn't what brings me satisfaction. It's what I do with my time. Because time is a resource you can't get any more of.

44:51Randy Kaplan:You can always make more money.

44:53Oz Perlman:We're at the end of our show. And I always conclude with a game I call Phil Noblank to Excellence. You ready to play? Yeah. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is... Stay humble. My number one professional goal is... To be a household name. My number one personal goal is... To have my children love me and my wife love me. My biggest regret is... My biggest regret is holding grudges.

45:18Randy Kaplan:The funniest thing that's ever happened to me in my career is... I mean, the fact that I have the career, just the whole thing together. If we're getting hyper-specific, backstage at America's Got Talent for the finals.

45:31Oz Perlman:The best advice I've ever received is... Focus more on other people than yourself. Ten years from now, I'm going to be...

45:38Randy Kaplan:synonymous with what I do for a living. When you hear the word mentalist, you think O's the mentalist.

45:43Oz Perlman:If you could pick one trait that makes anyone successful, it would be? Persistence. If you could go back and give your 21-year-old self one piece of advice, what would it be? Buy Bitcoin. The most important thing that's contributed to my success is? Shedding my fear of rejection and failure. If you could invent one thing in the world today would be? The ability to teleport. If you were the president of the United States today, the first thing you would do is? Attempt to slow down AI.

46:15Randy Kaplan:If you could be one person alive today, who would it be? This is a gut shot, but I said Mick Jagger, but I don't know if that's true because I don't want to be in my 80s, but I just would love to hear the story. So maybe more just hang with Mick Jagger for a night. If I wanted to be anyone, I'd want to be somebody in their 20s. I'd want to have an extra 20 years of life ahead of me at that young, I'd go back in time.

46:37Oz Perlman:If you were on your deathbed and you had 60 seconds to live and you're surrounded by your wife and five kids, what are three things that you would say to them?

46:46Randy Kaplan:I love you so much. Enjoy your life, have fun. And know that you don't make this the best life ever.

46:59Oz Perlman:The one question you wish I'd asked you but didn't is?

47:01Randy Kaplan:No, pretty good. No real questions. When does my book come out? October 28th.

47:06Oz Perlman:Are there any questions you want to ask me?

47:09Randy Kaplan:Yeah, I want to ask you a question, which is when I walked in here, right? I pointed at the door and I told you to imagine. I said, I'm going to see if we can get to this later. I don't know if we'll have a chance, but to imagine that two people walk through this door, okay? Any two people. And I said, one person that you would love to interview, that if you could have them sit in this chair, they would sit right here and you would interview this person. and I said and then think over the course of somebody that you have not talked to in years decades you've not even thought you don't even know why they popped in your head but somebody from your past that you don't know why you thought of have you got someone in mind both of them I do I'm gonna guess one I don't think two but I think that throughout the course of this interview I think that I figured out who the person is you want to interview us and I think that somebody with extreme preparation will listen back to this and we'll see all of the clues that were laid along the way the extreme preparation the focus us discussing our background at the university of michigan together followed by saying laser focus tom brady is who you want to say is

48:13Oz Perlman:that right oh my god that's sick it is tom brady and the other person you thought of was a kid you grew up with am i right i think it was a boy yes and i want you to think of his first name yeah

48:24Randy Kaplan:Is there any way in the world that you, even before I walk through this door, know you'd think of what you think of when I walked in here? Did you even have any idea what would happen here? Before me asking you to think of this person, when was the last time they popped in your head? Years or decades? I don't know. 10, 15 years ago. Think of their first name. Count the letters in the first name to yourself. Not out loud, just to yourself. No, no, no. Don't use your fingers.

48:50Oz Perlman:I think I... Don't say. Okay.

48:53Randy Kaplan:I think that you weren't sure, which indicates it wasn't a three-letter name because, of course, it was Dan or Bob or Bill. So it was longer, but it wasn't so long because you were selling five letters. You thought it was five letters, didn't you? Yes, I did. Yeah. Kind of like a poker player watching your eyes. Think of their first name. Now, every name has vowels. Every name, right? Randy, O's. Every name has a vowel unless it's like a Polish name. Yeah. So if I asked you to think of a name in the name, right? A-E-I-O-U. E. Do you know E is the most common letter in the English alphabet? in words.

49:23Randy Kaplan:Is there an E in this person's first name? No. So it's an odds. I'm just letting you know. Statistically, we know there's vowels. So if I have you think of a letter, most people won't pick a vowel in the name. And now that you know, it's not an E, now you're saying, oh man, we know there's only four vowels. So think of any letter in the name and focus on it. You look back and forth and you stopped on the last letter, but you weren't sure. And then you jumped to the middle. You didn't think of the last letter, did you? I didn't think of the last letter to the first name. I'm just asking, is that the letter when I said, think of a letter, Were you thinking of the last letter or did you go somewhere else?

49:53Oz Perlman:I was thinking of the first letter of the first name. Okay. And the first letter of the last name.

50:02Randy Kaplan:This is going to be on video because I'm writing down a name. And I just want everyone to know that I can't change it. So I've written down a name. You thought of anybody. This isn't written down. This hasn't been whispered. This is nowhere. This doesn't exist anywhere but in your brain right now. I'm done writing and I can't change it. What was the name of the kid that popped in your head when I asked you to think of someone? walking through this door out of nowhere. Say it. What's his first name? Amjad. So I wrote Ahmad. I'm going to go with that's pretty close. That's close. I'll take it. I'll take it.

50:30Randy Kaplan:That's pretty close.

50:31Oz Perlman:Oh, gosh. That's insane. That's it for me, Randy. That's amazing. Excellence. That's what we want to achieve. That's incredible. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah. Huge fan. I hope everyone buys your book. It's coming out too. I'm excited. It's called Read Your Mind. Excited to read it. And thank you for being here. I'm a huge fan.

50:46Randy Kaplan:Huge fan as well. Thank you.

50:47Oz Perlman:Great to meet you. Great to meet you.