Storytime with MrBallen | Oz Pearlman

24:35Yeah. There's always a person who stands out if it's a good party. Otherwise it sucks for the evil. Everyone's boring. But what made that person interesting? Now, I think in a lot of instances, it's the fact that the person who's very interesting isn't a big talker, but they're very interested and they bring out the best in you. And you feel like, man, they were so interested in me and they give good stories. They ask me questions I'd never been asked before and that kind of elevates a certain level in you where you get excited to be around them some people have a natural charisma and you analyze what is a natural charisma what is it that they do when they walk in the room they approach with confidence they typically approach not a direct thing so another thing that is very important body posture body positioning and how you walk up to somebody you don't know instantly puts you at ease or makes you feel ill at ease and like they're intruding your space if somebody walks up to you too close whoa bro you know what are you doing chill out if somebody approached you quickly and they're talking and they're not slowing down and you don't know when they're going to leave then you start getting this feeling of oh god am i stuck in this conversation for a while versus and i learned this doing restaurants when i was a kid if i walk up to you at an angle and it looks like i'm one foot in one foot out and you're seeing one of my eyes which is again the way animals react instead of head-on which scares them but at a sideways and if i give you a time constraint which is oh great to meet you and for me performing magic people might not want me there they don't know who i am especially at a restaurant where you're having dinner and you're like who is this kid and i was 14 and do i have to tip him oh my god do i have any cash on me all of these things go through your mind so i have to take away those layers of resistance and i learned early on what i could do in those moments that applies to everything in life it's not just about the performance it's life skills.

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29:05Like you're picking up cues that maybe to you seem like they could be picked up by a lot of people, but your ability, at least the way you're describing it, to read people really, really quickly is astounding. And I'll say on a much smaller level, I actually did when I was in the SEAL teams, I did a lot of the speaking with locals. Basically, we'd be on target. And then at the end of whatever conflict we were in, there'd be an opportunity to speak to people that were in whatever village we were in in Afghanistan. And truthfully, you're basically talking to the men and you're trying to discern if they were just shooting at you or they weren't.

29:42And it's really hard to tell. Right. And a lot of times, even with the interpreter, a conversation's not gonna get you there. No. You're really just trying to gauge how they view me. Intuition and instinct go a long way, right? If you have a gut feeling, you have to trust it. then try to verify it but if you get that gut feeling and you ignore it like you know that like tickling of like this doesn't feel right i'm sure in your situation that's life or death yeah i mean this was like relatively safe you know we're safe at this point but a lot of times i would pick up very quickly if someone was just positioning themselves in a sort of adversarial way like i'm sure i'm speaking to the guy who knows this stuff but there's a way you stand if you're almost sort of seeking a level of conflict with the person you're with.

30:30If you're deferential, you're sort of positioning yourself in such a way. But I'm coming into the room, I'm decked out in like special operations gear. We've just secured the target and I'm talking to you. And if you're going to stand toe to toe with me and like look me square in the eyes, pretty much immediately, I'm like, well, this is a combatant. Whereas other people, they're like, maybe they're scared or whatever, but it usually comes off very quickly. And then the conversation, to be honest, it wound up being like irrelevant. It's the first like three seconds that I'm with somebody. And so for you, I mean, I have no idea if that relates, but are you like reading people and that's basically your tell or are you constantly evaluating people, whether it's during a performance or not, like in your life, are you constantly evaluating?

31:13Like, how does that, how does that work for you? So thankfully the stakes are much lower for me. So I don't ever want to put myself on the category of a Navy SEAL defending our country. It's like what I'm doing is entertaining people and the skills don't generalize. So the next part is people just say, well, if you're this good, why aren't you just winning millions of dollars playing poker? Why aren't you like catching, you know, killers? So it's because again, this is under the guise of entertainment and the skills don't generalize. Very clear cut. Guessing, let's, I'll give a great example. I'm gonna do this in a moment.

31:42But if I were to ask at the table and we're playing poker, just look at why don't you know the cards are right? Because I have a series of things that I do procedures to narrow the options down and figure out what you thought of that involve me being in charge. Interesting. Watch this. Let's just play a fun game. Okay. Picture a card trick. Right now if I had a deck of cards and I don't even have one, I could probably get one out of a bag and you don't have a deck of cards. You've never seen a deck of cards today. Have you? No. No. So when I was a magician, we'd have to have a deck of cards right now and I would do the old pick one card and you'd put it back and I'd find it, but I don't have a deck of cards.

32:18So let's just pantomime this because mentalism is about thoughts. I give you an invisible deck. Okay. Got it. You mix them up, John, shuffle them up. Let's see those skills. Okay. And now you take those cards and I want you to do this. I want you to spread them out in front of you. And it's spreading them out in front of you means you can see all 52 and you can make a conscious decision, which some people would say later, well, he somehow influenced you. He used certain words, maybe you use certain hand gestures. Something was already planted in your mind so that you would do my bidding. So I want to make this even more impossible.

32:51Take the cards and close them up again. Give one more shuffle just to be safe. I love it. And now you're going to spread them face down, which means you can't see them. Which means that right now, if I told you to reach down and pick any card, there's no way that you could be influenced because you don't even know which one is. Now, I want you to slowly reach down and maybe go to grab one and go, nah, it doesn't feel right and you maybe jump to another one next to it or this one just grab one card at random now before you turn over you grab it out okay in a real agreement it's absolutely impossible that i could know what you just picked because it's not real it's an invisible card that you haven't even turned over yet you don't even know what it is yeah right yep so you drop the rest of the cards away gone and now something happens that's interesting you turn the card over you look at it Okay.

33:39Okay. Okay. Hold it up. And I want you to picture that card right there. Can you see it? Yep. Now watch. I didn't influence this in any way, did I? This is your own choice. 100%. 100%. And I say to you, hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades, there's all the four suits. There's the high cards, the low cards, all of these different cards. And you had said earlier, blackjack, poker, look at that card. Imagine what it looks like. Imagine the jack queen and king have more ink because they're very full they've painted them versus for example a two only has the two hearts and they go all the way through and you know what you did you decided because poker on the back of the box ace of spades is the card in your hand isn't it yeah what the hell dude that's crazy yeah it's the ace of spades yeah invisible deck of cards didn't exist so that i know it seems that's crazy thank you i changed my mind like four times i could tell you did i saw that the shifting and the changing you're like i might go with a different you were thinking of a different spade b said i'm gonna go back that has to do dude that's crazy that's crazy i was actively trying to like subvert you so i can't do that at a poker tail because i can't just tell the guy in front of me look at your two cars before you get the river look at me do this do that they're gonna be like screw you dude i'm not doing any of this get out of my face put on the sunglasses rock and roll so in my performance i'm the director I get to call the shots.

35:05Wow. So it doesn't unfortunately work with everything. If it did, it'd be amazing. But to answer your question, I'm not living my life in like, brrrt mode of like, whoop, that guy, I always think of it as in the Bourne identity. Oh, yeah. When he loses his memory and he's in that diner and he doesn't know who he is yet. And he's like, and he tells the guy next to him, why do I know that guy's 255 in a fight? Why do I know this? Why do I know that right now I know the four license plates of the cars when I walked in. Why do I know all this stuff? And he's starting to dawn on him that he's like a secret spy agent.

35:31Yeah. badass so i think it's like into that where when i turn it on i'm hyper focused on what i do and my mission at hand and the analyzing people very quickly is very very similar to what you did except it's done for under the context of entertainment which is when i'm in a crowd i'm looking around to see who i think will be great for my next trick when i'm performing this person right now and if you ask me why was he so good people will come up to me at the end the show and go, why didn't you pick me? And I go, no offense to you. I just, for whatever reason, and it's the intangible, it's the 30 years of training.

36:07You just weren't as good as them right now. I thought they would deliver the best reaction and they would mesh with what I wanted. Now in certain rooms, I can't pick the person. You're on TV with three hosts. You got to use those three hosts. You make the best of a situation. But when I have people to choose from, then if you see me at like a live show, that's very exciting. And the fact that you like throw frisbees. We pick people randomly. If we're in like an arena, we shoot t-shirts like the eighth row. Who's got it? Stand up, please. And how could I know who'd catch the t-shirt? How could I know who'd catch a frisbee?

36:37How could you know any of this stuff? Then I work with those people. And that's what really makes it real because, yo, that's anyone. This is some drunk jerk who's like eight rows in, who's, you know, barely conscious. How in the world did you guess the name of his first crush? I've always found it pretty mind-boggling how quickly a supplement routine can grow out of control. What starts as just one product can turn into several, and then before long, you are spending way too much time just keeping track of everything. Well, IM8 is the way to simplify your supplement routine once and for all. IM8's Daily Ultimate Essentials has 16 supplements in one drink for just$2.61 a day.

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39:16I just, I'm still sort of in shock that you just did. So I'm like thinking through how, how are you doing this? I don't, I realize that there's more to it than like, oh, here's how you, I was pretty good at, the reason I was the guy that did a lot of the questioning of the people on site is because I had decent perception. I was pretty good at figuring out who likely had more information and it would like lead to weapons, caches and whatever. So it was just like basically I was successful enough that I kept doing it. So I was pretty perceptive. But I think you still are. Well, thank you. But it's like to be able to break down beyond a gut feeling to like specifics is just where we've talked about this thing that you do when you're making it out.

40:03You're very humble about it. Yeah, you can learn how to do it and whatever it is. But like, no, you can. I had to like again I wasn't I wasn't spider-man you know bitten by a spider and radioactive and like I changed it's it's been trial and error it's been iteration and the same thing that has allowed me to go run 153 miles that like how you have children we were talking about right when I walked in we had a couple minutes I came here from the airport talking about our kids and you want to instill a work ethic in your kids it's very interesting because being a parent I think is my most important job and i'm assuming that's like that's my immortality it's like who are they going to be because as soon as you have kids you start to feel like i'm going to die one day and this is my future and their future and it's like it really no greater joy in life but how do i instill a work ethic in them because my kids aren't going to grow up the same as me and i'm feeling i don't know what your beginnings were mine were very humble where same i had to work really hard and i was like age 16 i was supporting myself which i don't wish upon my kids they'll never know what that means but i lived on my own and i had to pay for college and i had to find an apartment and like nobody paid for this stuff so i had to figure life out early yeah which at the time i felt kind of pissed because i'm like all these other kids are going on vacation they have a car their parents i don't have any of that yeah but now in hindsight that set me up for success in a huge way and it made it so i didn't have a safety net so i had to become the safety net and i think that there's a level of that toughness you have to either create in yourself if it's not, and a lot of people are going to have it because a lot of people listening to this are, you know, hustling and they might not have any of these things.

41:37So I think that deciding on a goal and not giving up is so, it's so much more important than almost natural talent, skill, anything is persistence. And you saying like, oh, I can't do this. There shouldn't be that word in your vocabulary. The, uh, you actually, you said something going back to your Spartathlon experience that actually really struck a chord with me. And I'll give you a quick story that, that I think relates and I think that it plays into what you just said so when you did not finish your Spartathlon race yep you came back and you obviously did it and you successfully completed this it ate me alive killed me it killed me but you said something to the effect of when I went into that second attempt I was prepared to basically die yeah in order to complete this race so for me I've had exactly that experience one time and it changed my life afterwards when I was in SEAL training, everyone thinks the hard part is at the beginning of training.

42:32The famous sort of like hell week and you're running around on the beach and you're beat down and you're tired. That's bad. Not the hardest part. The hardest part comes about halfway through training. It's a six month long course. Halfway through you're in the underwater phase. And by this point, statistically, virtually everybody in your class is going to graduate despite the difficulty of this test. It's the moment you all are literally forced to have this moment. It's horrifying. there's this test called pool competency it's it's they tell you it's just this you just go in with your scuba tanks and you know the instructors are gonna come down there you're in the nine-foot section of the pool and you're like crawling around and they're gonna come down and just kind of screw with you and you're gonna follow procedures that you're taught to basically after they finish tumbling you around and turning your air off you go back on your knees and they're watching you the whole time and you follow these steps you reach back you turn on your air you check your J valve you check your straps make sure it's a three finger loop here, you check your weight belt, I can still do it now, but it's a procedure that no matter what happens to you underwater, you reset, you follow the procedure.

43:34But each problem that they give you, whether it's tying a knot in your hose or whatever it is, gets progressively harder to fix. All fixable problems for 20 minutes. And so each time someone's come down on you, first of all, as they're attacking you, you have to go into the fetal position and just wait. You're not getting air. They're tumbling you around. So you're going about 60 seconds to 90 seconds with no air and then you need to follow the procedure so you can see you become more and more hypercapnic right you're not you're not breathing and it's this test of staying calm and following the procedures despite literally being on the precipice of passing out right people call it simulated drowning this test and you get four attempts at it and so i want to and one of the things you got to do is you gotta stay calm and so i went in and i'm doing the test failed it miserably four times in a row wasn't even close it was not even close like i actually was the guy that they had to put a pink piece of tape around my ankle.

44:26And it wasn't even to humiliate me. It's I would get so panicked, I would push off the bottom of the pool and go to the surface, but we're breathing mixed gas. And if you do that, you can risk rupturing your lungs with air bubbles. And so you have to be kept, you have to go up at a certain speed. And so there's like standby divers there to keep me from panicking and rocketing to the surface. And so I failed four times in a row. And as a result, I actually got rolled out of the class I was in. The class I was with all my buddies, and they're like, Like, look, we're going to give you one more shot.

44:54You're going to leave this class, go to the next class, and you can try again with that class. And so I go to the next class. So that sets you back six months? It actually was just a couple months. They let me start in second phase. But so I go into the next class. And the thing is, is the students in this class, they've been through the hell week and everything, and they know I'm a rollback. And I sort of took on the role of, like, I'm going to be a mentor. Like, yeah, I obviously failed pool confidence. We're all going to take it here soon. But I really tried hard to be, like, a mentor. Like, here's what I experienced.

45:20I obviously failed it, but let me give you all the insights I can possibly give you. And everyone's looking at me like, oh, John's got it. Like, he failed, but he's going to be fine. And so we get to test day, and I failed the first two attempts. Not out of panic, out of procedural problems. And so I fail on Friday. There's two more attempts left, and it's on that Monday. And if I don't pass them, not only will it humiliate me, but I'm dropped from SEAL training. Yeah. That weekend was horrible because I'm thinking about this test. on monday morning i got to the pool deck and i was so nervous all weekend and i'm sitting on the pool deck they make you sit with your back to the pool and they made me go last that day and i'm hearing the instructors like ripping kids hoses you're like air bubbling up off the pool kids are like passing out like red line and medics running over it's chaos and you're just sitting there waiting for your turn and then when it was my turn i just had this mental shift occur where i was like holy shit i'm gonna fucking die in that pool before i fail this test yeah and i got in the water and And it was like, calm comes over me.

46:19And I begin this test and it didn't matter how long I went without air. It didn't matter what the problem was. I had fully committed to this concept of, I will literally die before I fail this test. And I passed and it was so easy. And it showed me that like, there is a, there's a point where you can convince yourself that your mind can sort of override all the discomfort and you can basically do whatever you want. And you described when you went and did the Spartathlon the second time, that feeling of, I will die before I don't finish this race. 100%. And sure enough, you did it. And so do you think that's something everybody can achieve, that level of I will go full send no matter what?

46:55Because I think for you, clearly, you put yourself in pressure situations and you just go for it. I feel like maybe that's something that we have that others don't. Or do you think that anyone can tap into that? That's such a tough question because it's so hard to speak for other people and where mental toughness comes from. And I think you build it up over time. I don't think you're born with it at all. and it's those failures that reinforce later. Had you gotten it on the first try, where would you be today? Isn't that a funny question to ask yourself? Would you still be this person? So when I came back the second time, I had this guy who I saw at mile, like I don't remember what mile it was.

47:29Probably was, I finished, I DNF'd at 78. But it was this bald dude. I think he was like from Eastern Europe and he's wearing this thing and we're in the middle of the night and I'm a wreck. I'm a wreck, bro. Like just been puking maybe a hundred times and now I'm writing my DNF speech, which in the parlance of ultra marathoning did not finish they don't write a time next to your name they write dnf which is so embarrassing and just kills you and so i've already written my speech what i'm going to tell my wife when i went to greece and spent all this money and my friends were like dude how'd you do on that race and you got to like you got to eat it and tell everyone well you know you gotta have that story like i'm gonna learn from this experience i'm gonna come back stronger like all that bullshit that i you know no you should have finished and so i see this guy and I'm already talking all this stuff like oh man I don't have it today I don't we're at an aid station together middle of the night we haven't slept all night and this guy looks at me doesn't really understand English and his eyes he's these crazy eyes where they're open I'll never forget he looked at me and he goes he goes if you cannot run you walk if you cannot walk you crawl but you never you never stop like he like Greg like a psycho like a zombie apocalypse and in the moment I couldn't digest it right I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't take that and bottle it up and shoot it into my vein.

48:39But slowly after I left, I couldn't, it haunted me. Because this guy, like that's, that what he had in his eyes is what I need to have the next year. And so that like slowly worked into my DNA. And when I got there, I was you on that attempt. When I started, there was no doubt. There was, it was, there's no doubt. Yep. I am finishing this thing no matter what. And when the voice enters my head that says you aren't finishing, what are you talking about you don't exist gone we go right back to the mindset i'm hardened steel titanium where i'm finishing no matter what if that means i'm walking the next 24 hours puking with a splint on my leg i'm finishing this race because now this is life or death that's incredible yeah it's funny i rarely meet people that have had a comparable experience to what i described with pool comp but it's so clear like for you this is like a defining moment and so if people understand that in their own lives that if you had to if you had to if your thing is oh man I really want to start a business oh man I really want to run a Spartathlon or be a seal or whatever it is whatever someone's goal is however big or small if the stakes were as big as they could possibly be you could do it right or you could die trying that's the level of commitment that some people need to understand goes into success it's a compounding effect right as soon as I became a seal it showed me that I I now have the capacity to set big goals and achieve them, not be someone who claims to want to do things, but then write the DNF story of why I never actually did it.

50:11Right. And that knowledge, that that exactly you said, the knowledge that you did it now changes the way your mind is wired, because now you go, oh, my God, what else could I do? And now if I set my mind to it, you start to believe in yourself in a certain way. And that becomes self-fulfilling. So I think for whatever people do, again, if it's inspirational messaging, like my book is designed to be motivational, but it's designed to be action-oriented. Like I want to teach people. Actually, I'll hold it up while you're talking. How to take action. So like literally the words I use, and I thought about this a lot, was proven habits for success.

50:44Because a lot of people think you're going to get this book, is that I'm going to teach you magic tricks or mentalism tricks. And the real talk is you can find those elsewhere. So the book is not going to teach you tricks. I need everyone to know because they're going to buy it and be like, dude, where do you teach me what Joe Burrow, how the hell does he throw the ball? I go, I'm not going to teach you how I do the tricks. But knowing what somebody who might have control of your life, knowing when to approach your boss, what to say, and how to get the raise that you've been working for for the last two years, what if you could do that and up your chances by 10, 20, 30, 40 % of doing that and getting them to do what you want?

51:17That, to me, is worth a couple bucks. That's worth your time, which is even more valuable than the amount of money for the book to read it. And we got a lot of fun stories baked in there as well from My Crazy Life. This book really captures the essence of someone who has put themselves in highly stressful situations and persevered. And they've lived a life of basically pretending that everything is a must succeed. And how to basically, you know, harness your mind. And in some ways, you know, learn how to read other people and influence other people. But this is a very powerful, I'm going to call it a self-help book.

51:49Because to me, this is like practically a Bible of how to motivate and how to be the best version of yourself. So this is an amazing book. You've got to check it out. Thank you. Your fellow Navy SEAL, David Goggins, gave me the quote on the top, which says, learn to master the most powerful weapon, your mind. Which encapsulates what the entire book is all about, which is your mind controls your success. Whatever success is defined for you, which for everyone is different. Maybe it's monetary. Maybe it's romantic. Maybe it's want to have kids. Maybe it's like, I just want to do something. I'm not doing now.

52:19And how do you get from step A to B to C? And I know that sounds so silly, but in almost every instance, other people are involved in that journey. And my whole training has been how to win over people, how to know what they're thinking, how to influence them, right? How to get rid of a fear of rejection and failure, which is a huge part of my book, which is mostly what holds people back. That is such a huge factor. And I learned that at a young age doing like restaurant magic and all those little things I learned how to iterate and improve. I want to give you decades of the mistakes I made, but I want to distill out of them what you can do to fast track your success.

52:56That's amazing. This is awesome. Let me ask you a question, John. If I told you right now, okay, if I, the book is in your hand and I were to ask you to flip to any page you wanted, impulsive, spontaneous, in my book, any page you wanted and look at it and then pick any word. And then I try to guess the word on the surface. That seems crazy, right? That seemed amazing. Yeah. But I'm watching this like somebody at home and I want to go to the skeptic, not the normal person, but the outlier, the one out of 100 who goes, yo, but he wrote the book. I wrote the book. So what if I have a photographic memory?

53:29What if I know it's on every single page? And if I could see what page you're on, I could say, right, that could have happened. That's a plausible but very improbable solution. So what if instead of doing that, because this is my book, can we just see this room? This is not, this is, by the way, shout out to your team. Sick. The setup here is incredible. It is pretty good. For this interview. Amazing. I've been in a lot of interviews and this might take the cake. All right. Hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of books, probably thousands. Yeah. So if I were to instead ask you to walk up to any one of these books, now not physically, but mentally, if I would have said, walk up to any book in this room, grab it, walk up, and I want you to flip it open to any page, to look at that page and to go back and forth and my eyes are closed, to visit and stop at any word.

54:16Can you see this happening? Close your eyes and in your mind's eye, envision that occurring. Did you just play it out? Yep. Okay. Open your eyes. Be honest, right? These people trust you. They've seen you for years. This isn't staged. This isn't set up. There is no conceivable way I could know what you would have done. You didn't even know what you were going to do before I asked you to. Yeah, fair. When people flip, some people will find a specific page that has a meaning to them. Like maybe a kid's birthday. Maybe it's January 24th. You go to 124 to be fun about it. Or some people just flip to a random page.

54:50Now watch. I watched to see the reaction. I don't think you got nostalgic. Personal reference. The page you picked, it doesn't have a meaning to you, does it? No. I didn't think so. I didn't see it that way. I also see it as when you just flip, you go, stop. You were quick. You felt rushed. so you rushed. I could see it. You feel a little tense. So some people would, and they would have gone longer in the book. Again, you don't have to tell me this. Do we have a marker? Do we have something we could write with? I have a pen. A pen? Okay. I'm going to close. Is that your pen? It is my pen. Okay.

55:23I'm going to close my eyes and I want you to do this close to your body and on the palm of your hand and make sure there's no way I could see this and there's no camera behind you. Does it write? Does the pen write? Yep. Okay. I'm going to close my eyes on the palm of your hand with no camera nothing behind you write as big as you can what page number you went to in the book when you're done blow on it put it close to your chest nobody could have seen that correct correct okay can i open my eyes my gut says again i'm fishing did i get a bite yes i reel it in i think you went with an earlier page my gut says because I was seeing what you would do.

56:02I think it was two digits. Now I ask myself, look at the smile on the left. You might as well have said yes. So I keep going. It's so unlikely that you would have done the first 30 or 40 pages because it's too, you can't even flip the page. You open a book and you go, it's already off your thumb before I've even got a page 50. So now what feels like a, what feels like a number that's got like some text, but not, and I think that you would have done right, the backward hat, couple buttons open, showing some chest hair. He's more of an odd type of guy than an even. You're not a by the book.

56:34I think you might have thought of the number, chuckled, and been like, inappropriate. So you wouldn't have done 69, even though that's so funny. You did 67, didn't you? Can we see your hand? Is the number 67? Yeah. Dude, that's insane. What, dude? How? Any book, any page, but any word is near infinite. I don't want you to write anything. People are going to say he's got a trick hand, he's got a trick pen this is your stuff don't write down a thing whatever word you saw in your mind in a book not a real book you imagine throw the pen away i want you to count without using your fingers without using your fingers okay to count the number of letters to yourself not out loud in the word you selected just to yourself count it to yourself don't say it out loud at end.

57:26Some people, right when they get it, they say it. All right. No? Maybe? I have to double check. Hold on. Oh, don't even say that. Now you gave so much away. The double check is always an indicator of a longer word. No one double checks a word. Open your eyes. No one double checks a word that's five letters or less. No one. So now we know it's longer. Also, you probably would have done a longer word. Nobody does and the he, she, if under this level of pressure. No way. we're balling baby i think he did a longer word i think this place it's got this ambiance of like gravity and and you know some of these books are probably hundreds of years old okay think of the word you counted twice i most people when they count the second time they realize they got it wrong and they and they realize oh crap i counted wrong the first time and you did that but they usually count longer and then shorter and that's what you did my gut says you were like no no it's not you thought it was nine but it's actually eight letters isn't it yeah that's what happened in your mind that's not even and imagine that you write down the word you're not gonna write a thing i want this to be all in your mind you write down eight letters like hangman yep you reach over and you just go back and forth and you don't know why but you stop on one letter and you circle that one letter you circle one letter somewhere in the word did you do it in the word is how i cue you when i say that almost nobody does the first letter the first letter would give away the rest of the word for a lot of people and then also in makes it feel like it should be in between you didn't do the first letter did you no see i was trying to guide you and then a lot of people will avoid the vowels because we know there's vowels you didn't do a vowel did you so again we're going down that path and now you jump back and forth you're like do i do this one and my gut said you're about to do a letter and you jumped over the letter you're thinking of no i don't it's not in the word more than once is it it is right it is because you jump between the two of them yeah yeah and what's weird is the first letter you're about to circle but you didn't you were gonna do a t and you didn't you're thinking of an s aren't you yes swear to them there's no setup here this is not stage literally we have a book a room with hundreds of books thousands of books you imagine your mind picking one up opening it up and going to any word close your eyes can you cover them with your hand please i want to show them at home because people will say later that i changed what i wrote somehow all right is that recovered can we see this from any camera or no have we seen one open your eyes what are you picturing in your mind you flipped an invisible look to page 67 you saw hundreds of words you stopped one of them jumped out at you what was that word chastise chastise dude that's such a random word that's crazy this is not staged this is crazy that's crazy i picked that because that's the most bizarre word i could think of that's crazy man i i don't even know what to say i'm like looking at other people look i don't even know what's supposed to do that is uh i gotta be honest i don't even know what to say i'm i'm shocked that's i knew you probably would be able to do this but this is this is not set up but he walked in and within two minutes we were filming.

1:00:53This is, I'm blown away. Create memorable moments that people take and the stories they tell. And you could chastise me, but you got a story that's going to live in your brain for a while. That's my goal is I just put a splinter in your brain that you're going to try to pick out for years and be like, how did he know? And I wasn't even going to do Page 67. I did that at the last minute. I changed. That is so wild. What was like your first time doing this? Your first big moment of big trick with a big audience and you nailed it. So I think certain things in life can't be bought but have to be earned.

1:01:31Sure. The same way when you're in SEALs training, there's no check you can write to get that. Right? So certain things in life you really have to earn. And so when I did that show, America's Got Talent, I never expected to go as far as I did. I was truly, this isn't like, oh, this false humility. every round I was in, I gave it my all and I didn't think what I'm going to do next. It's just like when I hear wide receivers at tight ends, when they say, what do you focus on when the ball gets thrown your way? Catching it. You do not think of what you're going to do after you catch the ball or you drop the ball.

1:02:02And so my mindset every single time was this, I'm going to just do everything I can in this round. Kill it. And that's it. I never saw it. And there was no and then, which I think is a powerful thing to do. because as soon as you start thinking, and then you start getting hung up and you drop the ball. So where do I go with this? Every round at the end of it, it was the highs and lows were insane because the highs were like, I just made it through. The lows were like, oh crap, I didn't plan what I'm going to do next round, which might be in a week or two. It's got to be better than this. So it was like these two mixed emotions.

1:02:32So when I got to the finale, the finale, this was like the heyday of the show in linear TV, which now people like TV. Where do I watch TV? Online? This is when like 15 million people would tune in live Radio City Muse called live. That means I am on a stage, Radio City Muse, there's 6 ,000 people in the audience and this is airing to everyone live, which means if you screw up, ain't no safety net. You don't get caught. You don't go to go, cut, cut, cut. It's not going right. So if chastise isn't the word, if you didn't think of the letter S, if none of those things happened, I can't get out of it.

1:03:04So my finale, that was one of those moments that was life changing. Yeah, I believe it. I believe it. So you've accomplished so much and you clearly are somebody that is taking big swings, like you've said, do you have any sort of like bucket list life items that still are like, I really want to accomplish that at some point? It's funny you think that because I think I'm just starting. So like in my mind, I'm so forward facing and it's something I tell myself on a regular basis to like live in the moment because it's always like, what's the next thing? What's the next thing? And that's a problem in life because when you do earn certain things or have like pinch me moments, I have pinch me moments where I'm like in the room with Steven Spielberg or LeBron And like, you just have this moment of like, dude, just think back to you 20 years ago.

1:03:46If you can go in a time machine, meet yourself, like Marty McFly and be like, you're not going to believe what you're going to do in 10 years or 20 years. But there's a lot of things. Having my own series. I'm so excited about that. That's been years and years and years in the making of having not just all these clips that you see, but a show that you get to see who I am, not just what I do. Right. So you get to get a feeling for like, what am I? Who am I? What makes me tick? And hopefully the book too, which is for years something I didn't feel confident to write a book because I'm like, what story do I have to tell, man?

1:04:18Like I do these cool tricks. That's awesome. But I started to really see that I think some of the things that I do in my life that are surrounding the mentalism are the actual hidden tricks and tips for success. This whole thing, mentalism, is very fresh and new. It's been around for 100 plus years. But I think people are just getting this awareness of it. And it's because of the sports team. It's because of these things, but they're starting to see like, this isn't magic. This is really cool and different. And it captivates people's imaginations. And I'm trying to elevate the field, not just for myself, but like the other people that do it.

1:04:50It's kind of like the rising tide lifts all ships. It's good for my industry. It's good for us. And it makes what I do like cool and innovative. And I like the fact that I'm being tied to it where I want to be the name brand for this art. When you ask somebody in five years, who's your favorite mentalist? If you ask them that today, the question is, what's a mentalist? In five years, if I've done my job right, the instant answer to that question, you mean like O's the mentalist? Like the Google, the Kleenex, that you create the moniker and the brand because you've aligned yourself so closely with what this is that people associate you with it.

1:05:27Dude, on that note, where's your book? That's amazing. We've got to make sure that if you want more insights from the world's greatest mentalists, check out Read Your Mind. It's his new book by Oz Perlman. This is incredible. It has all those tips, tricks, secrets, mental hacks, you name it. You got to go check it out. Thank you so much for being on here. It's been a pleasure. Thanks, man. Thank you. Seriously, mind blown. This is, I don't even know what this is. Chastise 67. Crazy. Thank you, Oz. You got it.

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