How to Master Any Conversation, Communicate with Confidence, and Deal With Difficult People

Open your eyes. I've written down one word. I can't change it. What was the word out of your entire book, The Let Them Theory? You go to any page, circle any word. What was that word?

Want is what I wrote down.

That's the word.

I'm creating the illusion of reading your mind. And I've spent 30 years learning how to do that. But I will tell you the skills that you will want to use, which is how do you walk into a room and immediately command attention. I want this to be something that 10 minutes after this episode, you will start using, and 10 years from now, you will still be doing on a daily basis.

I hope so, but I don't know if that's going to happen. So, what I'm told is that I'm performing later in the night, he's going to be doing an opening session, and so he's going on before me and he's not staying. I never believe that when somebody says it's not happening or no, I think not yet. I didn't know if I'd have any time with him. So, if I am, I want to make it count. What do I do? Here's what I did. I believed in myself that 100% this was the perfect line. He turns to me right when we shake hands. I lock eyes with the president and I say right away, 'Thank you so much for the gift, sir.' Right away, I see in his eyes — you don't have to be a mentalist — confusion.

And I said to pick a page with some sort of meaning to you. Not random.

The page has three digits, doesn't it?

You went to page 217. Jody. Is it Jodie?

Thank you for having me on. What an honor.

Timing is everything in life. Am I right? It was serendipitous. We are much more comfortably dressed this time around, and yeah, I'm excited to be here.

I think all of us are going after the same things, right? Happiness, health, living a successful and fulfilling life. And none of that occurs in a vacuum. It all has to do with your interactions with the people around you, your family, your friends, within your work and professional life, your clients, your colleagues. I spent 30 years learning the way people think and how to interact with them. As an entertainer, my job is to get inside your head and create memorable moments of wow and awe. What I want to do is give you that ability in your life. How do you become the most memorable person in every room you walk into? How do you gain that confidence quickly? How do you overcome the fear of rejection that I think holds us back both in our personal and professional lives? I've experienced it. What can you do to fast-track that? And lastly, how do we have more stimulating conversations and connections with the people around us?

So, a mentalist is a form of a magician. I want to tell you what I'm not. I am not psychic. I do not have supernatural powers. I cannot talk to the dead. When people ask me, 'What is it that you're performing?' They are tricks. That is the truth. It appears to be mind reading, but that's the illusion I'm trying to create in my audience. All of it with the goal of creating these memorable moments that you leave amazed and telling everyone else around you what you experienced. I have figured out the way people think. I've studied it for decades, and I know how to influence them and guide them in certain directions. And I know how to get information from you that you simply don't know how I'm getting. And here's the really important part for you listening to this: is that magic is such a focused discipline of 'look how great I am. Shine this spotlight on me. Look at me.' Somebody told me this once and they said to me, 'Everybody is living a movie and you're the star of your movie. Everyone else is supporting characters. Some people are extras.' The more that you can find a way to make other people you interact with feel like they're also the star of your movie, the more that they will help you in your life. It sounds selfless, but it's a selfish approach that ends up being so selfless because when I meet people, I want to create a memorable moment for them that they will talk about to others. And it took me so many years to understand that that's what I do for a living. I create memorable moments.

That's that famous Maya Angelou quote. I have a question for you. So if the person listening or watching has never had the experience of either seeing or being in the presence of a mentalist...

I have one better. That's like explaining a song instead of singing a song.

Let Them, right? Tens of millions of people can't stop talking about it. Your book is piled up out there. I'm going to turn my back. You're going to be flipping through this book. You're going to be stopping. Boom. On one page. And when you go there, this is a conscious choice. There's a reason for this page. And when you go there, I want you to stop on that page. I want you to bring it close to your body. And I'm going to turn and make sure there is no way. No mirrors. I'm covering my eyes. Go to that page right now.

Has a meaning to you of some sort. Something hard, something I couldn't have looked up, something there is just no feasible way. But to you, it has a meaning to you. You're going there for a reason.

Okay. I tell you this. Your listener, your viewer, they know you. You're their friend. Mel, you have not told me what page you are going to. There is no conceivable way that I could know what page or what meaning this has or any of it. I want you to take your finger, drag it up and down on the page. You're going past all the words you wrote and it's as if you stop on one word. You're drawn to it. It's like magnetized and you circle it with your finger. Your finger starts making swirls around it and you feel compelled and you just keep circling that word and then you stop and you close the book tightly and you put it back down.

Count in your mind how many letters are in that word, but just to yourself, not out loud. Now, I'm going to tell you right away, just by saying 'okay' so quickly, it was fast. It was an easy word to count. If you had taken longer, if you had struggled, if the word was 'especially' — I got to count that word now. And then the two L's, double letters, always throw people off. You said 'okay.' Not because you were trying to give it away, because you were done counting. Which means to me that the same way I have a 5-year-old who's in kindergarten going into first grade, sight words, you don't count them.

The word you picked was either three, four, or five letters. Four letters. It was a four-letter word, wasn't it?

It was four letters. Think of all the letters. Now, while the page had a meaning, I'm trying to manage my face so I'm not showing you any signals. Think of all the different letters as if they're Scrabble tiles. As if we're playing Wheel of Fortune.

And suddenly any one of those four letters, maybe it's interesting to you. You just decide that letter, it blinks and lights up and you see one of the letters. Can you see it right now as if it's in front of you?

So, I know that we read from left to right. So, I know that your brain would have processed looking from left and going to the right and then you would have stopped and most people go back to the start of the word. You didn't, which is interesting.

Well, I watched you. I watched you.

You weren't thinking of the last letter of the word, were you?

I don't think so. Because you jumped back. It starts with a W. You're thinking of the letter W, aren't you?

And that's — I think I'm done. I just want everyone that's listening and can't see to know that I've written a word. I've written down one word. I can't change it. What was the word out of your entire book, The Let Them Theory? Did you go to any page, circle any word, what was that word?

Want is what I wrote down.

That's the word.

That's what I do.

So, I will tell you the truth is that this will not be useful to you in your life. You think it will.

This trick is a trick at the end of the day. You guessing a word, you guessing a number, you guessing somebody's ATM pin code, unless you have nefarious purposes, will be excellent for entertaining. But I will tell you the skills that you will want to use, which is how do you walk into a room and immediately command attention? How do you walk into that room and become the most memorable person in it so that when you leave, everyone is talking about you? What's at the core is how you make people feel. There's other people that can do these tricks, I assure you. But it's how do people leave my show? How do people leave an interaction with you and feel? And think about how many times you've been to a party and you've left and you've said, 'Did you meet that one person?' You go, 'Chris, did you meet them? I love them.' Why did you love them? Why did you connect with them in such a meaningful way when you maybe met 20 or 30 other people? How do you analyze what made them so interesting?

They went beyond the surface and they made you feel like you were the most interesting person. Almost every time you realize it, it's not just somebody who's constantly talking about themselves. It's them finding a way to bring things out of you that you haven't before. So, one of the big ones is I mentioned autopilot. I think so many of us when we meet new people, we're right away scared. What am I going to ask them? What am I going to talk about? And you start second-guessing yourself.

I think the most important thing is the first three questions you want to ask that person, don't, because that's what everyone else asks.

So, the dreadful ones. Where are you from? You know, what do you do for a living? All of the questions they've been asked a thousand times before. Their brain goes into autopilot. There's a heuristic in their brain that says, 'I'm going to answer these questions.' I would do a little more, something below the surface, which is something where you notice something about them. People love a compliment. 'Those glasses are so unique. I'm so curious. Where did you get them? And what made you get those instead of another one?' And so now we get to tell you something about a choice we made that most people haven't thought to ask us. Also, you've complimented us, which is a nice feeling right from the jump. So, it should be genuine, but have a question that branches out and that hopefully somebody else hasn't asked before.

Yep.

That's a great question, right? Because now we branch and I go, 'You wouldn't believe it. My son got me these last year for Father's Day.' And now what's happening? Percolating dopamine. I'm feeling good. Wow, what an interesting person. And they ask me this question. And now where do you go from there? You've opened up new branches of a conversation that instantly would have been shut down otherwise. If you have to go to one of those dreadful first three of what does somebody do for a living, put a different spin on it. Again, my tricks have different packaging. I could do this trick and I could have just asked you to pick a playing card. You put it back. I find it. Eight of diamonds would have had the same appeal as a word from your book and a page that has meaning, which I'm going to get to later. It wouldn't, because the story differs.

I think that I would say I would open with how you feel because you'd be shocked at how often other people feel the same way, which is 'I get so nervous at these. I don't know what to say, but you seem so friendly. Can you tell me one funny thing you did at one of these before?' Just again, open up a story. Never ask a yes or no question or a question that ends with a period because what you're doing then is you're allowing people to close doors. I want to open a door that leads to a room with more doors.

Sure. So, let's break this down into two channels, like two little options. Option one, you can prepare. You know someone you might be meeting, you get to do homework. It's not cheating. It's called being prepared. So if you can do that, and I want to give you an example from my life that was pivotal, which is I a few years ago performed a show where the president, President Barack Obama, was speaking.

I don't think I was that nervous because I like to convert nervousness into preparation. So in this situation, it's not that I'm flaunting or trying to be showy. I take what you would describe as nerves and say I'm going to prepare.

I'm nervous if I didn't prepare.

I hope so. But I don't know if that's going to happen. So what I'm told is that I'm performing later in the night, he's going to be doing an opening session and so he's going on before me and he's not staying, is what I was told.

I never believe that when somebody says it's not happening or no, I think not yet. So the same way you have Let Them, I have No, Not Yet. And I have another theory which I want to tell you, which I call it Make Them. So this is where instead of Let Them, I think that Make Them is what I'm all about. It's what my last 20 years of my life have been because I'm not waiting for gatekeepers to tell me that you're going to be big as a mentalist. This is a category that didn't really exist. And how do you make them remember you? How do you make them talk about you? So with the president, I didn't know if I'd have any time with him. So if I am, I want to make it count because it might be a handshake. It might be 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 2 minutes, who knows? But I've got to make it count. So what can I do in that moment? Everyone is going to walk up to him with one version of, 'It's an honor to meet you, president. Here's a story I have about you. Here's something that you won't remember, but I will.' I realized...

There's nothing wrong with that, though. But that's what 99% of people do. I want you to be the 1% who doesn't, okay?

What do I do? Here's what I did. I thought about this line for months. So, at the moment where there was a meet and greet, it was impromptu. The president was talking to different people. I wish I was taller. I'm 5'7" and three-quarters. I need that three-quarters, Mel. But all the taller guys are getting looked at. All the women — finally he turns to me right when we shake hands. I lock eyes with the president. And I say, 'Thank you so much for the gift, sir.' Right away, I see in his eyes — you don't have to be a mentalist — confusion, which is what I wanted to elicit. And in that moment, he said the same thing that I believe 99 out of 100 people would say if a stranger walked up to you and said, 'Thank you so much for the gift.' 'What gift?' He goes, 'What gift?' Which set me up perfectly for me to say, 'I'm going to be performing in 15 minutes, which means that technically I'm going on after you. So, I forever get to tell people that President Barack Obama opened for me.'

So he laughs and now I'm playing chess, not checkers, where I want him to say, 'What are you performing?' It goes exponentially better, Mel, because he goes, 'Oh.' And he looks at me and he goes, 'I know you. Oh my god, the thing you did with Aaron Rodgers was incredible.' I'm looking at my wife who's at the show being like, 'He knows who I am right now. He knows who I am.' So right at that moment, he's still locked in. And I knew that my moment was fleeting. And I said, 'Are you ready for the most amazing thing you've seen? Not today, not this week, but this month. Do you have 30 seconds, sir?' So, right away, notice that I've set up a lottery system of who's going to say no to this. Not 'Can I show you a trick.' That's not — I'm not showing you a trick. 'Can I show you the most amazing thing you've seen?' I've set up a tone of how good it's going to be. 'Do you have 30 seconds?' 30 seconds for most people. The minute he said back to me 30 seconds, I've got him. So, it doesn't matter what he said. He either says no or 30 seconds. Once he said 30 seconds, I'm already 10 seconds in and we're going to go much longer than 30 seconds. I handed him a business card in his hand and I said, 'Think of anyone you're going to talk to in the next week.' He goes, 'I got someone.' I go, 'Change your mind right now.' So when you tell this story later, you will always say, 'How could he have known?' I changed my mind in the middle. How could he have known? And then he said, 'I got it.' And I say, 'Turn it over.' And when he turned it over, it says, 'Say hello to Marty for me.' And he just flipped out. You can see the clip. So that was my moment with him. And that was something that I would say for years I'd been thinking, what's my elevator pitch if I had this moment with the president? Think about who you're going to meet. Think about the situation. Think about what you would do with that 30 seconds if you have the chance, which is not guaranteed to actually meet this person.

There's no agent. There's no manager. There's nobody in life that will ever be as vested in your success as yourself. So, you don't wait for people to say and invite you, 'Here's how you're going to be a star,' or 'Here's how you're going to be the number one salesperson in your organization,' or 'Here's how you're going to be the best mom or the best dad.' Sorry, that doesn't exist. Everybody's trying to figure out this game of life at the same time. I've met people that are literally one or two of the three wealthiest people in the world. I've met presidents. I've met royalty. And I came to the conclusion at a certain point, I had this pedestal. Everyone's figuring it out just like I am. And so I'm trying to say to myself when the moment happens, and if you can create that moment, because so much of what people will say is lucky is putting yourself in a situation where luck can happen, which is years and years of moving towards that moment. For me to have gotten to that, I could tell you five steps that even got me into the room with the president. That all of which occurred not because somebody opened the door for me, but that I kept putting a toe in and then another toe and then another toe and squeezing it and then opening it up and finding an opportunity. And when that opportunity came, exceeding the expectations of the person I was with and having a give and take relationship where I keep giving, giving, giving, giving so that at the moment when I want to take, it's not even a take. They want to give back to me. And I think that's so important is that you're constantly doing that with the people around you.

I implore you to find a way where if you're at the start of your career or if you're at the start even if you want help in anything, look to see that person who would be a mentor or help and guide you and see what do they need instead of you leading with what can I take from you. It might be information or time. What is it that they want back? And I'm going to give you just a great example of this where I've mentored a lot of other people that perform and do what I do and many of them will lead with 'How did you do this trick?' And I'm not going to answer that because it just doesn't show that you've put in the work. But I had one young guy who came to me and looked at my website, studied it, and said, 'I just wanted to let you know that you had typos on this page, this page, and this page. This link was broken, this link was broken, and that your Wikipedia had a bunch of errors. If you'd like, I'm happy to compile all this, fix your Wikipedia for you, and send an email with every page and where it is to your web designer to help you out.' He didn't ask a single thing. I go, 'Wow, thank you so much. Yeah, that'd be great.' And then after that, found another thing he could do and another thing. And so what happened after about three iterations of this, I said, 'What can I do to help you?' Right? I wanted to help that person. The same way that sending somebody a thank you card or a gift will almost always elicit at the very least a thank you back. And maybe that's not the door opening, but it's a toe in the door.

So, I think a lot of us have this dream, and I did because I didn't grow up thinking I'd be in showbiz. I am a first-generation immigrant.

So, I was on the path of, again, I don't call it first generation, but my parents said, 'You go to school, you get a degree, you get good grades, and then you get a job, and then you work for someone else.' That was the way I was conditioned and brought up. That was what I was defined as success. I started doing magic when I was 13 years old. I won't give you the whole life story. When I was 14, my folks had gotten divorced. We didn't really have a lot of money. It was very messy. And I wanted to keep performing and getting new magic tricks. And they're very expensive. And so, for me to do that, I had to start working. My mom's like, 'I can't. You got to go work.' So, I walked over to a restaurant, you know, half a mile from my house. I somehow sweet-talked myself into getting a job being a close-up strolling magician, printed my own business cards, hand-cut them, and started getting gigs doing children's birthday parties and corporate events. And so, when you ask me what did I view, I never viewed it as I could do this full-time professionally. I did this in order to get my degree to go work in a corporate job. And I worked on Wall Street for a few years. And at a certain moment there were all these light bulb moments as you call them of, wow, could I actually do this for my living? Could I do this? Make it from like something that's a dream into a reality. I think so many of us have that of is this what I'm currently doing what I was born to do? Is this what my calling is? And at a certain point, I couldn't keep going for it if I was always on the wall. I had to jump in the pool. I couldn't just dip my toes in the water. So in 2005, I quit my job. I went for it full-time. And it was not something everyone around me thought was a smart fiscal decision. It seemed pretty crazy to go from working on Wall Street with a very well-paying job to you are suddenly a magician/mentalist. And day one of me doing that, I realized no one is going to call me like in a 1920s vaudeville and say, 'I'm going to make you a star, kid.' That's not gonna happen. I had that moment sitting on the couch watching daytime TV and saying I don't have to do anything right now, Mel. I could just eat cereal and sit in my boxers watching TV. And I thought for about five minutes, this is the most glorious morning of my life. And then this feeling settled in and I go, 'Oh my god, I don't have a boss. I could just keep doing this, but no one is going to make this happen if I don't.' And I turned off the TV and I said, 'I got to start making moves.' And there is no playbook for being a movie star or a mentalist or a rock star or so many of these careers. So, I think you've got to start defining your goals and what success is and taking small incremental quantifiable steps towards achieving it.

Whenever people see you at a certain level, they don't see all the years that came to being here. So, they don't see me at 14 years old walking up to a table being rejected because they didn't want some 14-year-old shrimp coming over while they had a babysitter. 'And who are you? And you start doing card tricks. Get out of here, kid.' And then you don't care about my feelings. I'm not their kid. And that hurt. I can't lie to you and say that being rejected in that way doesn't hurt. And if it happens at one table and then another table and then another table, it crushes you. And so what I learned at that age, and I think that it's helped me throughout my whole life, it's a form of resilience, is I learned how to overcome not just rejection, the pain of rejection, but what happens over time is you have a fear of rejection. I would argue that most of those people that you're mentioning aren't even feeling rejection. They fear the rejection so much that it stops them dead in their tracks before trying. And so here's the cheat code.

I want to give you how to fast forward and cheat so you don't have that fear of rejection because this is what I knew when I was 14 years old. And I did it as a way, and it was selfish because I couldn't fail. I couldn't leave that restaurant and just be like, 'I'm not doing this,' because I wanted to keep getting magic tricks. I'm like, I got to buy more tricks now. So, I can't let these other people be in charge of my future because they're hurting my feelings. So, I can't explain to you how I fell upon this. But I realized that I need to separate myself. This part of your psyche that takes the hurt and feels it, and separate it from this other person. I had this paradigm shift where I go, they don't know me. That person does not know me. I'm Oz Pearlman. They don't know me. They know the guy who just came up to them and did tricks. And I called him Oz the magician. In my mind, I created this split personality where all of the anger, chaos, frustration, hurt got put on this other person where I could deflect that responsibility. Go, they don't know me. I'm not hurt when I leave that table. I said, 'Thank you very much, guys. I'll see if I can come back later. Appreciate you.' And I had none of that pain because I separated myself. And it's almost like having an agent where your agent gets to have the calls where they go, 'I don't want to do this negotiation' or 'I don't want to talk to that person about this thing.' You have an agent that handles it. I became my own agent and somehow I created a set in my mind where I said I no longer feel the pain of you rejecting me because you're not rejecting me. You're rejecting this part of me and you don't know the real me. I realize that if I give away 60 business cards in a night, in the next year, I quantified it, one or two of those people will call me for their kids' birthday party or for some other party. One or two of them will call me. So rather than focus on 58 nos, every no gets me closer to a yes. So I want you to start seeing it that way in your mind. Right now you're so scared to do it. You're so scared to do something. You're dreading it.

Yes.

Right before you do it, we're about to employ the 5-second rule. In my mind, I ask myself, how much am I dreading this on a scale of 1 to 10? It's a nine. I don't want to do this at all. I put an alarm for 24 hours from today and I write 'dread talking to landscaper' as my thing. Took me 3 seconds to do that. Right? Then 5-second rule. I make the call. I rip the band-aid. I do it. No matter what, I rip the band-aid, I do it. I get it over with. Force yourself to do it. Here's what's going to happen. The next day, the alarm's going to go off. If you even remember what this was a day later, ask yourself at that moment, what do I register the dread that it was talking to the landscaper? It's a two. It's a one if I even remember it. What happened? Learn from my job. My job is to deceive you in order to entertain you. I have studied the way people think for upwards of 29 years. The human mind is wired where right now all you did — nothing happened. You feel better. Why? Time elapsed. Nothing else. Time went by. What if you could fast forward those 24 hours and feel the one or two now? I call it fast-forward your feelings. I literally say to myself, I want to feel the way I do now 24 hours ago before I do it. And if you do this two or three times, you will realize all it is is perception. All that happened is perception. You are in charge of your mind. So right before I make that call, I go, I'm going to feel a two now because in a day I'm not even going to...