Welcome to Hal leaders lead where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Well, everybody buckle up because today I'm talking with the country's top mentalist, Rose Perlman. He entertains NFL teams and big corporations with astounding tricks that makes it seem like he's actually reading minds. And believe me, he is. And you know what? He even does one of his tricks with me during this episode and it's honestly going to blow your mind. It's certainly blue mine. Most of all, though, in what he does on stage, he makes sure that every performance is about his audience, not about him. He wants to give every person in his audience a memorable moment. And that's why he's one of the most in demand performers around. Oh, is going to inspire you to create more memorable moments for your customers . Plus, he's going to make you think about who you are, what your brand is, and how you can be an even better communicator and leader. So without further ado, here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Rose Perlman. And I know you do a lot of running. We're going to be talking about this. But you know, we met at a dinner party that was hosted by our mutual friends, Doug and Holly Hersh, and Doug told me something about you. He said that you can actually recite the alphabet as fast as people do forwards . You can do it backwards. Is that true? Absolutely. Let's hear it. ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJHGFEDCBA. We have never had anybody like you on this show. I can tell you that right now. And the night we met two days earlier, you'd run, I believe, for 21 straight hours from Montauk, Long Island, very corner of Long Island, all the way into Manhattan. How many miles was it? 21 straight hours. Just under 130 miles. You've got to check the date of a 129-ish. 129-ish. Now, how in the world? I know it's two days later, but how in the world are you even standing at that point? I'm not kidding, David. That doesn't even, like, the fact that I was at a dinner party two days later is almost a joke because I've done some crazier things and the same day, flown and done gigs. So that's just kind of par for the course of me. I would say I don't dip my toes in. I jump right in the deep end. You know, I don't think you're crazy, Oz. I think you're a whack job. There's no question about that. But when you're running that long and for that far, was there a point where you think you couldn't get it done? Did that ever even enter into your mind? So, honestly, you know what, it's the kind of that old adage if you fail to plan, then plan to fail. So we went in with a plan. And when I say we have a team, they're not running with me, but they're giving me water. And if you want to make the story even better, it was the hottest day of the summer. And I say that not figuratively. I mean, literally. Bloomberg put out a thing that goes, "Don't do anything on Thursdays. It's gonna be the hottest day of the summer." It was brutal. It was in the 90s with the heat index. And long story short, I started running way too fast in the second half. The plan was when you get to my aid station with my buddies, get some water, do a bit of walking for a minute or two, get your heart rate down. And I didn't do that for about 50 miles. I just kept running like, "Boys, we're gonna crush this record because we were trying to break the record for the fastest crossing of Long Island on foot ever." And so I didn't listen to my own advice. You know, I got ahead of myself and I paid the price, my friend. When I was 10 miles to go, I was a train wreck. You know, I had my arms over two guys walk in and to answer your question, I thought, "Yes, in the depth of my soul, I'm gonna get this done. I'm gonna crawl if I need to, David. I'm gonna finish." But the suffering was huge and it was self-inflicted because I should have stuck to the plan that I made at the start. You know, look long term. You know, when you say, "It's not a sprint, it's a marathon." Well, this is five marathons. So, but then I saw the New York City lights and some deep part of me. One of my good buddies, David Goggins, has this 40% rule, which is when you're all out, you're only 40% deep into what you got in your reserves. So I dug deep my fastest two miles of those 129, David, were the last two. How fast was that? I think my last one was just under six minutes because I was on adrenaline, my friend. I saw, you know, I'm in New York City and I crossed the Queensborough Bridge and I could see Times Square in the periphery and I'm getting it done. You did get it done. And when you're training for a big run like that, you know, I hear it's as much a challenge to really train your mind as it is to train your body. I think so. How does being a professional mentalist help you tactically when you run marath ons and ultra marathons like that? Well, there's kind of two different facets. One is when I'm running a marathon or a race. Kind of, this was a solo challenge. It was me against the clock. But when I line up at the start line of marathons, I like to get there and look at everybody and thinking, "Man, I'm going to win this thing." And so, and I have many times, which is very, very fun and very rewarding. But when it's my own solo adventure, it's kind of like one of those things where you have to decide before you start, "I'm going to finish this no matter what." And you decide in your mind there is no speech you're going to give later where you said, "Oh, I gave it my best." There is no my best. You get it done. And you have to decide that before because I've had one or two races where I was at the start line and I wasn't sure. I was questioning my sanity and myself. And when you do that, think about it as you're putting a crack in the door, just a little crack. And when push comes to shove and you're suffering and you're sleep deprived and everything's fallen apart, that door opens to quitting. And you've got to keep that door slammed shut, firm and shut, and you need to tell yourself before you even start that I will not give up. And I think that's kind of an entrepreneurial spirit. A lot of the people you've spoken to here have seen it, which is they're relentless. They have a relentless drive and it's something that you get experience with and you build over time. I didn't have this overnight. I took a lot of failures to get to the point where now I believe in myself, I have confidence, I've done things and I know what I can and can't do. And I try to keep going to the edge of what I can't do. That's the fun of these things. Can I pull it off? Did you set that record? I sure did. Yeah, I've got the record. You're amazing. That is amazing. Now, for those who've never seen you in action, what is a professional mental ist? So it's a very weird job. This is not something I envisioned or dreamt of as a kid. Obviously, it's surreal to this day. A mentalist is kind of like a magician, but not a magician in the normal way that you think about it. When you think of David Copperfield, he's making a car disappear, he's doing a car trick, you're deceiving somebody's eyes and you're doing that with either fast hands, slight illusions. My job is no fast hands. I could tie my hands behind my back. I've learned how people behave. I've learned how people think and I've learned how to influence their thoughts and know where they will go and hopefully do an entertaining fashion. So it's magic of the mind. I can show up and do a show for 10,000 people with no props. I'm the show. Think of a car trick. Every car trick you've seen usually is the classic. I spread the cards out. I say, "David, pick one and you take it out and somehow I'm going to find it." But you know there's a trick, David. You know that somehow I did something with my hands. You didn't see it. It was amazing, but I did a trick. Now, this isn't supernatural. I want to make sure you understand that. But here the trick happens inside of your brain because I don't even need you to take a card out. I can look at you and know what card you're going to pick before you even do it . So that's kind of what involves. Magic of the mind. I've heard you say that you don't necessarily read minds, but you read people. Right. You know, every leader has to do that. I mean, how do you learn how to read people? I think you iterate. I think you learn from experience. It's kind of like comedians. Comedians will self admit that they were terrible for 10 years before they became funny. So think about this. If you're telling jokes or if you're leading, you know, you can kind of get lucky. You can build up there. There's a lot of success you can have early on with mentalism. You need very thick skin because most of the tricks, they don't work when you do them the first time. There's some don't work the first 10 or 20 times. So imagine doing something and God help me my wife who's seen it all and you met her. She's not impressed by anything. So if I can do something and my wife goes, wow, oh my God, that's Mount Everest for me. If you can fool a mentalist wife, you are on a different level. So I had years where I would tell you I wasn't that good. And so what happened during those years is I fell back on doing magic tricks, which is a crutch. If it didn't work, I'd go back to doing my sleight of hand stuff, which trust me is still amazing. I'm not saying anything bad about magic, but to get to the point where I just did mentalism and I could rely on that for my act and my living, it was many years in the making and you had to build up the confidence to get there. So to answer your question, you learn based on books, videos and just going out there and doing it. You have to perform. You have to put in those reps in those 10,000 hours. Those for our listeners at the end of the show, I'm going to see if you can read my mind. There may not be anything in it, but if that is, I'm sure you may be able to find out what it is. Stay tuned for this. Now, Oz, I got to tell you, my friends who were at the Hearst Dinner Party, we 're still talking about what we saw with you and how in the world you quickly learned all about us and what we were thinking and which begs the question, how do you learn to be a mentalist and you talk about takes iterations or whatever, but I would imagine other mentalists, they don't really want to share their secrets, do they? So it's funny, within our community, we are a very small subset. So if you were to even think of like a magician's as a, you know, the size of a basketball, if I had to sense it, I bet it would be a penny or a dime in that basketball is how many are mentalists in the world because it's just something that draws in a certain mindset. And most of us are quite good friends and it's one of those things where I feel like it's the same way with CEOs, a lot of strong leaders that I've met, they have something in common which is a natural curiosity, like a zest. Like they're able to kind of glean and really listen to others and with mental ists, we're experts at listening. So we share a lot of things with each other because our ideas build. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And most of us are not as secretive, I would say, because the market is so large and there's such a small supply of people that do what I do that we're rarely competing with one another. Well, that makes sense, you know, and I saw you wow the judges on America's Got Talent. I mean, week after week, six episodes, they got better and better and you don't miss a trick. But I'd have to imagine those that things sometimes they don't go as you'd planted in a performance and, you know, will you tell me about one of your big fails, you know, and how you adjusted in real time? Oh my God, if I don't have any failure stories, that means that I haven't been trying hard enough because I like to keep pushing the boundaries. So the best failure stories generally are not on live TV because I plan to the nth degree. On live TV, you literally have plan A, plan B, plan C, all the way to plan double Z because you try to think in advance of everything that could go wrong. My background from schooling, I went to University of Michigan, was in engineering. So my whole job is reverse engineering the human mind. Think about it that way. Think about reverse engineering something. So one of my biggest fails, I can tell you this, as I did a big show, it was one of the first times I did show for several thousand people. I did it in Charlotte. I'll never forget this. And I'm on stage and the things that usually create issues are things that are outside of your own control that you acquiesce to. So in this case, I was on stage and they had a genie's lamp. The CEO and somebody with them was dressed as a laddon and a life-sized genie and the lamp started spewing out smoke. And I'm doing a mind reading show where I have to look at people's faces because I'm a human lie detector. I literally, I'm telling you in front of 3,000 people, I can't see my own hand in front of my face much less the faces of the people I'm working with. And I'm trying to tell them, cut the smoke, cut the smoke. Oh man, David, and so I'm still trying to perform. You gotta roll with the punches. It's showbiz, but I whiff it so hard. Everything goes wrong. I full circle, I think I managed to somehow escape, but I'm flop sweating. You know where you're pouring sweat? Like I left that place, it was like I took a shower. The client was happy. I don't know how, I thought they wouldn't even speak to me again, but you learn your lessons, which is try to create a situation that works for you. So you gotta kind of set yourself up for success. So each one of these things is a great lesson. When I kill it and have a great show standing ovation, that's fun and good for the ego, but the big failures are the ones that you learn the most from. I love your comment that you're a human lie detector. That's a hell of a skill to have. You end up coaching CEOs and other people on how to read body language and how to detect people who might not be that forthcoming or sniff out conflict in a meeting. So honestly, I think that's going to be my next iteration because right now the facet of my life, which is entertaining, which is both TV and at live events, it just keeps me so busy and on the road. I haven't branched out into that sector yet as to honestly things like that. Like how do you read people effectively? How can you use this for sales? Think about that. What is the number on rule in sales? Is reading what a person is actually thinking inside? Are they going to do business with me? What are they giving me resistance with right now? And how do you diffuse that resistance? That's the most important thing in sales is learning how to build rapport and break down those barriers. And that's when the cash register starts opening up. So I think down the line I might do that, but I'd want to do it very effectively and in a genuine manner because some of the things I do are built on entertainment. I can't just get into a room if lawyers are interviewing jurors and tell you, hey, that one's going to do this and that one's going to do this and be very effective for civil trials. But it works within the confines of my performance. Some of the skills transferred to what I call everyday life, but not all of them. And you've said you've failed many times and that's really how you grew and became the best at what you do in the world. When you fail like that, you've got to recover. What are some of the things you've learned about recovering from failure that could be helpful to any leader? I think one of the big ones is there's a huge fear of failure. And it's something that I think, especially with kids nowadays, especially given, I don't know, I have three young children, is that I want them to learn that failure is okay. And like we said, learning from failure. And that in a lot of my shows, if I mess up something, I think it humanizes me. I actually think that my show, if you were to do an objective survey at the end of a show that was everything went perfect and a show where one or two things went minor ly wrong. You know, not cataclysmic failures, but a few things where they just didn't go right. People actually prefer the second show because in their mind, it makes the rest of it more impressive because in your mind, and this could be within any industry, they go , hey, this guy's not just faking it. He didn't get it wrong on purpose, which makes everything else seem more impressive. And I've learned that over time. That's why there's certain things I do in my show where I don't honestly know if they're going to go right. And I'm telling you, David, 100%, I like to kind of give myself challenges. And I have a joke in my shows, I'm not very good at that. I just impressed myself and people always laugh and they don't realize I'm telling the truth because I'm trying things that don't always work and the only way to get better . It's kind of the way I always talk about standard comedians because that's my passion. I wish I was a stand-up comic. I'm a mentalist who wishes you as a stand-up comic is that they tell jokes and build new material and you just don't know how that joke's going to do until you get in front of an audience. The same applies to mentalism. And you got to take risks. You really do in life. And I think you called it like I don't really lead a team. I lead the audience on a unique experience, but you can't be afraid to lead. And if you always keep doing the same thing and staying in your comfort zone, you're just kind of stagnating. You need to push the boundaries a bit. I've always found that when you make a mistake as a leader it humanizes yourself. If you acknowledge it and have a little self-deprecating humor. Totally. Call it out. You can't do this thing of sweeping it under the rug. Everyone there is a person. They know you're a person and it bonds them to you more. If you play this character on stage that seems very aloof. When I do my profession, it can go down this path of I would call it a little bit creepy because think about it. If somebody really believes, "How does he know what I'm thinking?" And every little thing I do with my body is telling him something that can make you feel very ill at ease, if you will. So, I kind of take the sting out of it by making it fun and throughout my show, I kind of drop bread crumbs. I explain how I'm doing some of the things. And people go, "Oh my God, I kind of get it." And then I take it to the next level and then you go, "I don't know how he just did that." But I capture your attention and bring you with me on kind of a unique ride where you learn a little bit about the human psyche and your own behaviors that you don't notice. But that once you notice them, it's hard to not see it that way. It's like at that dinner party, I showed you how to do the alphabet backwards. And you go, "Oh my God, I get it. It's not that hard." Now, I'm sure you'd agree. You can't get better as the leader without a plan to help you develop. It's why I send out a weekly leadership plan. This weekly plan gives you practical steps you can take to develop leadership skills that will help you grow. Each week focuses on a different leadership topic, topics like culture, control , innovation, and handling conflict. Now, you might know a lot about these things, but how often are you taking time to actually get better at them? This free weekly leadership plan will help you do just that. It will improve your leadership skills and give you simple ways to navigate any leadership challenge you'll face. Sign up for the plan today at howleaderslead.com/plan. Now, I'm sure you have some fun stories of where people don't appreciate you being able to read their minds. Do you have one of those stories for us? So, I have a great story. I mean, like a little bit of a name drop, but I didn't event on Nectar Island for Richard Branson. And this was just one of those incredible events where we're out on the beach. This is his island. There's about 40 guests there. And you know in a circle forms, when you see kind of something going on, you're at a cocktail hour and you hear some sort of noise, but what is that? And it's human nature to gravitate over. So it started with me with three people, became 10 people, became 20. And then at a certain moment, it became everybody attending this dinner. And then, you know, Sir Richard kind of walks on over barefoot like a white linen shirt, like classic what you would expect of Richard Branson and everyone parts. Like the Red Sea parts and Richard comes over and I had just done a trick and it's something I do. It's something we might do here today where I like to have people think of open -ended questions. And Richard imagine that, I don't know, tomorrow you're having dinner with somebody famous. You know, anybody in the world, think of anybody in the world that you would like. And I kind of made out somebody dead or alive, whoever you'd like, Richard. And Richard goes, "Okay, okay." And then I have this thing I did on America's Got Talent. It's one of my signatures. I take out one of my business cards and I start cutting, like cutting out a silhouette. And I cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. And I finally say to him, "Sir Richard, who were you thinking of?" And he says, "Barack." And it's funny because he's so close with Barack Obama. He didn't even say his last name. He just goes, "Barack." And I go, "Obama?" He goes, "Yeah." And I open up the silhouette and it's a perfectly cut picture of Barack Obama. And everyone goes ballistic. And then he leans in close and he says to me, he goes, "Don't tell anybody he's coming over for dinner tomorrow." And I said, "Give him this cutout for me, Richard." And it was just one of the great moments where it couldn't have been any more perfect. You know, it's like it's just a great story and a great moment. And I'll never forget it. And I like also when there's a challenge where somebody hears the story, he walked over, I've just done something similar to somebody, he goes, "You can't do that for me, I bet." And I go, "Yes, I can. Let's do it." And that's the most satisfying. When somebody else kind of calls you out and you're able to deliver. Do people ever think you're invading their privacy? So, no, I mean, some do, but it's one of those things where you can't do this against someone's will. It's a little similar to hypnosis. I have a show that's very wholesome and it's very fun and very quickly and in short order. I give you a sense of my personality, what I'm doing and the fact this is not nefarious. You're not going to be clucking like a chicken or anything of that sort. You're not going to reveal anything you don't want to reveal, if that makes sense. Because I'm not a psychic. I don't know the future. I don't talk to dead people. It's like you said, I read people. And what they want to give you, they don't realize, but I can lead you kind of down a path where I can figure certain things out. And generally speaking, they're not going to be deep dark secrets. There are much more things on the surface that you'll enjoy and have fun with. But some people in a show feel like, "Why didn't you pick me?" And I go, "I didn't pick you because I didn't think I could read you." And they go, "Oh, you can't do it." Everybody, I go, "Of course not." It just doesn't work with everybody. I like to pick the people that it works best with. That's my whole skill, is knowing who will deliver the best reaction with the best routine or trick. When you listen to the show and I usually interview CEOs or sports stars who lead incredible teams or thousands of people, and you're a different kind of leader, as I've really done my homework on you. You basically started your own business. You created your own product. You had to promote your own product. You had to go out and get your customers. You really have kind of, you're a self-made leader. And I really want to get into how you've done that. But first, tell me a story from your childhood that shaped the kind of leader that you are today. Childhood, I was always very savvy at math. I had a perfect math score on the SAT when I was 12. I was always very mathematical. I went to school for engineering and then worked on Wall Street. So the numbers thing has remained strong at the forefront. I've just always been very good at math. And it's not like I'm not showing off. It just came easy to me. At a very young age, I was doing calculus, I was doing algebra. And I wish I had as good of skills with it now. I don't use it as much and as effectively because my career doesn't involve math quite as much. But I think that I was always very analytical and I would always challenge myself. When we would go, for example, to a store, before they'd even ring it up, I would know the tax, the amount, and the change before the cash register would do it. And I think that learning how to think very quickly and testing myself on it. It's light OCD when I would climb stairs. I would always take the stairs everywhere. I would always count the stairs. I would know how many stairs were everywhere I went. And I think that knowing how to count things and think about things very quickly has been very instrumental in what I do for a living. Because when I'm reading people, it's happening at a split second rate. For those who play ping pong, ping pong is a game of instinct where you don't think you just do. And I act the same way now. When I'm doing my show, if you were to say to me, "What did you just do?" It could be the simplest trick where I just guessed a number. The trick took 10 seconds. I could write for you. I'm not even joking. A five page thesis about everything that went into it. How could it be that much stuff? I go, "Because every little thing you did, when you opened your mouth, when you turned to the side, like every little thing you did is part of a formula for me to assess where you're going to go." And it's kind of like somebody playing jazz. I just have seen it so many thousands of times that I've learned what it means. I don't know how to explain it. It's kind of like Google Translate, but my Google Translate is your thoughts. How old were you when you got into magic? 13 years old. When I got into this, my parents had gotten divorced. And it was something for me to lose myself into. Kind of like a bit of a trauma in my life. And it was something that took on that trauma. And instead of me kind of doing things that are destructive or acting out, it was I just got so into magic. I went to the library. I checked out every book. I read it covered a cover twice. I went to Borders, which is a bit of a throwback because it doesn't exist anymore. But I bought all the books, every single book. And my mom was supportive up until I started spending all my, I didn't even have an allowance. Like, oh, how much? You need to start working. So at 14, talking about entrepreneurial, I went out and got a job at a restaurant, half a mile from my home. I walked in there and nobody told me you can't do this. And I walked in and started doing tricks and talked myself into a restaurant gig. And I started working at that restaurant every week. And that's how I learned because there's nothing like restaurants in terms of getting a thick skin. And you said it. I'm not a business where I am the product. And it's very important, no matter what industry you're in, to realize and separate between yourself and your product. And I learned that at a young age because there's a lot of rejection you deal with. You walk up to a table. You're some shrimpy 14 year old kid. They don't know who you are. They're having dinner. Why are you disturbing my piece? You know, I'm out for a fun night. I got a babysitter with the kids. So you need to quickly get through and answer a lot of questions fast. Am I any good? Am I crazy? Am I trying to get money out of you? The restaurant even know you're doing this? Is he going to leave soon? I know all these questions that are in your head and I need to diffuse that tension in a matter of seconds for you to start enjoying my show and in the power dynamics , in a group setting, in a social setting. I want you to want me more than I want you very quickly because that's the best way in sales. No matter what product you're selling, if it becomes where your customer wants you, then you have the upper hand. I don't say this in a bad way, but I like to approach a table where I'm not asking them, "Please watch me." I'm almost leaving and they say, "Please don't leave." That's the dynamic you want. Here you are. You're doing this magic. You're a young kid. You're working in restaurants doing this. Okay, it's nice little hobby, you know, but hey, go get a real job. So then you go to the University of Michigan, you get this engineering degree and you end up at Merrill Lynch on Wall Street. How do you go from Wall Street to the world of mentalism? So I think you've got to find a silver lining in everything in life. And so mine was when my parents broke up. It was a pretty nasty split and I was self-sufficient. So I finished high school at 16. When I went off to college, I needed to find a way to pay for college. There was nobody paying my tuition, my rent, my food. All of those bills were coming from my own pocket and from whatever financial aid I could get. So I think that was both good and bad because it made me very resourceful. I started two businesses in college, both which were very profitable and I did magic on the side. So I did it more as a way of survival than when you call it a hobby. It was a hobby, but I actually lost some of my interest in magic because I had to do it. It's very different when you do something for fun and when you do something because you have to. And so I was doing it because I had to pay for college. So I had this default setting where David, I was always networking. I was always in situations where I was assessing where can I meet people that will either, I don't want to say further in my career, but that I can give them some sort of value. And this would be if I'm at a restaurant and I met somebody and they mentioned, "Oh, wow, man, this guy's great. I wonder if we could have him at my company." As soon as they say that, I don't wait for that lead to come back to me. I proactively say, "Oh my goodness, I do corporate events all the time." Even if I've never done one in my whole life and I say, "Let me get your info and I'm going to follow up with you and I'd love to get back to you soon on this." And you listen, you always keep your ears open because opportunities present themselves. And I learned more often than not where my target market was. I started realizing, "Oh, you know what? A lot of people that come to my restaurant, they play golf. Well, why don't I go to that country club, meet the manager and don't wait for things to happen, make things happen. If you don't try, you miss every shot you don't take. I'm giving you a lot of cliches, but they're so true. And I think that when I went to Merrill Lynch, I did that because I did not know you could be a professional magician. I thought that's only David Copperfield or people on TV. I didn't have a mentor or somebody that was doing that already. So I didn't have somebody that I could mirror. And then once I started working my day job, I couldn't stop doing my night job because David, I still networked. If I went to a restaurant out just with friends, I'm going to start doing magic . And next thing you know, I'm going to meet the manager. Next thing you know, I'm going to have a show there on Wednesday. And so I would go to parties, then I'd meet the event planner and I was always, always, always performing. I was always getting my name and card out there. And what pretty soon happened is within a few years of working on Wall Street, I was working every single night of the week doing shows. So at some point, you got to take a leap of faith and go after your dream and you can't do it while you're tethered to a day job. So I needed that kick in the butt. I needed to wake up one morning, sit on my couch, twiddling my thumbs and go, " Oh my God. I don't have a paycheck coming in anymore." And that's what you need to do. You got to get out of your comfort zone. What advice can you get people on how to muster up the courage? I mean, how do you muster up the courage? What process did you go through to make that big leap? Because you did have the comfort of a, let's call it a real job at Merrill Lynch. You're working on the side. You have side hustles as people say these days. You know, what was it? I think that there's a few things. When I look back at it and you really try to stack your advantages, one is I've been smart from years before and I've been saving money. So what that did was gave me flexibility to say, "If I quit this job and I don 't get any gigs and I screw this up, I had a runway." Kind of like if you're a VC, give me a year. Let me see how I do with this. And I had a bit of runway. Also timing is so big in life. I left my job in '05. Had this happened in '08 or '09 during the Great Recession, I might not have done it. I might have been too scared and said, "You know what? What's the worst case there? You go get another job on Wall Street. But if the world is ending and I've either got a family or big bills to pay, I kept my overhead really low and I was younger and didn't have any kids yet or any real dependence. So a lot of those things is you've got to create your own luck. I mean, you've got to be lucky, but you've got to plan ahead. So if you have that dream, start to get your chips in place. Think about it. And next up, find people that have done what you want to do. Find who you want to be five years from now, a mentor. And I found magicians who I looked up to and I admired. And it's amazing what two things will do. Persistence and honestly listening. I would go to them instead of with a give and take or give, give, give. I would say, "Let me take you to lunch and just kind of give them the accolades and tell them how incredible they are and everything about them, pace and compliments. Look into their work. Don't just do the surface. Dig a little deeper." And I found that people were willing to give when they saw that I was honestly very genuine and that I had a true interest, that I wasn't trying to steal from them. All I wanted was to glean any insight so that I don't have to learn the mistakes that they made. I want to learn from their mistakes ahead of time. You start this business basically as a side hustle. You know, a second job or a third job, maybe even a fourth job of the way out of sounds. You had a lot of things happen, a lot of balls in the air. Describe your business today. You know, obviously you started out small, but tell us about what your business is today. They always say it's 10 years to become an overnight success and that literally is the case for me because 10 years after I quit my job is when I was on America's Got Talent and that show just was kind of like jet fuel for my career because it exposed me to a wide audience on a national, international scale and it also gave me a level of confidence in my own abilities. You know, when you go to Radio City Music Hall and you're doing a show live on stage for 6,000 people and 15 million people are watching live, you get this sense of even if you kind of thought you were pretty good, you get a lot of honest positive reinforcement from people at the top of the food chain and entertainment. You say, "Oh my God, I can do this." So what happened for me during that show is I made a committed effort on how I wanted to be branded and some people I think go on some of these shows or get big opportunities and don't realize you're creating your narrative, your story. And with businesses, it's so important and my idea was I'm going to be corporate in nature versus like I could have been a rock star or a Chris Angel or a B edgy. I wanted to be squeaky clean and I wanted to appeal to a corporate audience and there was a real reason for that because that's my backbone. I know how corporations work, I know the lingo, I know the terminology, I have a lot of industries that I feel very comfortable in even if I were to leave my current profession and go into those industries working within them, I think I would have a lot of value to offer and so I went in there with that vision of you watch me and if you're a corporate buyer or somebody in the corporate sector, you go, "This guy would be perfect at our blank event, XYZ sales kick off, holiday party product launch." And I kind of hit the ground running as soon as I was on there of becoming bigger and bigger in the corporate sector and doing these big conferences, these big events and also finding places to become relevant on TV and different channels and always delivering value based on my target audience. This is a huge thing. When most people go on TV, they always try to debut what's special about them. Let me show you this trick or what's great about me especially people in my industry. When I go there, I go in knowing exactly who's watching this TV show and telling the producer what I can add to their viewer. If I'm on ESPN, I'm going to know the ins and outs of who's watching it. Are they in NFL baseball? We're going to do something all about baseball or football. If I go on Rachel Ray, it's going to be all about housewives from this age to this age. They're raising their kids, they're thinking about whatever appeals to them is what I'm going to take and create a routine around. And people like that because you take the guesswork out of it for them. It's interesting to see you go on America's Got Talent. It's six episodes. You go all the way to the finals. I was just curious, like that first episode, were you planning to go to the six or you said, "Man, I got to knock it out of the park this first time." Because when you're as a leader and you got that one shot, you got to kind of go all in. Did you go all in with your best stuff the first time or how did you look at that? So I had tried out for that show once before. And the nitty gritty is that's one of those shows where they have this thing called the cattle call where you go with four or five thousand people, almost like in an arena. This happened in a pier in New York and you just wait all day. You walk in, you have 30 seconds, do your thing and see if it's any good. I had tried out once before that and got nowhere. So the timing wasn't right. You name it. So I went in there and did not care. I was so loosey, goosey and had such an attitude that was so relaxed because I honestly got didn't think I was going to get on and didn't care one way or the other. And when you're nervous about something, actors always talk about this during an audition. You never put your best foot forward. When you walk in there and don't care, there's this aura of relaxation and you just go in there and your body's not tense and you just do a great job and that's what happened to me during that audition. And so every single round, I was hyper-focused the same way when I'm running a race. I don't think about a hundred miles from now. That'll kill you. If you think I have another hundred miles to run, you're going to fall apart. I stay in this moment and every single round all I thought about was do the best I could possibly do right now. Worry about the rest later. People that I know that planned four rounds later, they don't even make it through the first round. So every single round was elation. I was on the top of the world. I'm like, "Oh my God, I can't believe I made it," followed by absolute panic because I had to plan the next round because I never planned the next rounds ahead of time. That's amazing. You parlayed that exposure into a business that is now booming and you're actually hard to get an event with you because you're so busy. You also had a show on NBC called "Oz Nosed." And you won an Emmy for it. Tell us about that show and how it came about. It's one of those funny things where I can go back in time to me sitting in a barbecue, a Fourth of July party with somebody that my wife got her business degree or masters at Columbia and somebody that she had studied with, her brother-in-law was a TV producer. And we're sitting there having a beer at a barbecue, watching our kids, not thinking anything of it. And somehow he says, "Oh yeah, I saw you in the makers' Got Talent. I didn't even know he was a TV producer." And long story short, a year later, just by this chance encounter, I had been invited to go to NBC and do something for them and pitch an idea. And it was kind of the seed that had been planted a year earlier that showed him go anywhere. We didn't even do the show. And then suddenly they had a slot because the crew was ready, but somebody on the show, I can't remember got sick or something happened. And so they had a couple of weeks where they had an empty schedule. And they said to me, "Hey, that show that you pitched us a year ago, can you make it happen in five days?" It was less than a week and I go, "Yes, always say yes," and then figure it out later. And so I said, "Yes." And I didn't believe it was going to happen. But somehow three days later, when they send me a call sheet and they say, " Well, going here, here and here," I go, "Oh my God." I tell my wife, "We're really shooting a TV show for NBC." So always be prepared and I love a deadline. If you tell me, "Hey, you're going to be on TV tomorrow and make up something new, I will do better with that." And having 24 hours of procrastination and insanity, then if you say, "Hey, we 're going to shoot something in six months." I do better under pressure. I love pressure and it forces me to elevate my game. We've got to force creativity with kind of a deadline. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Ose Perlman in just a moment. I love how Ose isn't afraid to push the boundaries and get outside of his comfort zone. It reminds me of the excellent conversation I got to have with Jenny Rometty, the former CEO of IBM. As she rose through the ranks of IBM from systems engineer to CEO, she had to get really comfortable doing things that were outside her comfort zone. But let me tell you, that is where you can grow and learn the most. You will only grow when you're uncomfortable. And I actually got to the point where I love to feel uncomfortable because then I'm like, "Yes, I'm learning. I'm learning." And so I would even look to put myself as a CEO, particularly in those positions, right? I'd be seeing a client that ran a railroad. I got to learn railroad business before I get there. It was like, if you start feeling like you're not, I would say to people. If you're feeling so comfortable in a role, you do need to change it because you are not learning. So growth and comfort never coexist. Catch my whole conversation with Jenny Rometty, episode 66 here on How Leaders Lead. You know, you talk quick, you move quick, you run quick, you do all this stuff quick. When do you slow down so that you can actually reflect and think about where you want to take your business or do you? I need two more. I've worked on being present and mindful. And I think in the last few years, especially having young kids, I've really taken a step back and realized you don't get this time back. That clock just keeps ticking for everybody. And you don't get it back, especially like I watched my kids be one, two, my oldest is six now. And just those years are so amazing. And you need to sit there, turn the phone off, and really revel in the moment and know that business will be there if you built a good base. And I've learned that from some people that I know that are far more successful than I am in all different industries. And just seeing how they multitask and how you take your life and make comp artments. And when it's family time, focus fully on family time and certain things like racing. I've really taken some time because in the past, I was so competitive that my fastest marathon I've ever run was a 223. And when I finished that marathon, David, I was miserable. I was mad at myself. I felt I should have gone faster. I was disappointed. And it kills me because most likely in my life, I will never run that fast again. I mean, I might, but it's unlikely. So the fact that I didn't enjoy that day, I realized it a year or two later, I said, every time you run, realize that tomorrow you can get hit by a bus. Tomorrow, I don't know what could happen. So enjoy this because it's a blessing. And I've kind of taken that mindset and I apply it to the shows. People always tell me, you get done with the show where you're having fun. I go, I'm living my dream. I get to have fun on stage and obtain people, give them memorable experiences. I won the lottery of life. Like I never ever for a moment forget that. You do have a great product and that's why you've been successful and you customize that product. You get in your customer's minds, it seems like, before you ever go on stage, walk me through the process that you use to create that customization for your act and use what you're doing recently with the NFL as an example. But by the way, I saw what you did with the Baltimore Ravens. I mean, I'm still laughing. I mean, it was so good. You blew those guys away. They're just hooting and hollering. They can't believe you did what you did. But how do you get ready for that? How do you customize your show? So I go in there and I want to appeal to the people in that room and I want to know the ins and outs of what makes them tick, right? If you're an NFL player, you've been competitive since you were a kid, you've been studying game footage, you know the ins and outs of your sport and I want to go to that person with that mindset. And so the things we did, for example, was I could do a prediction and I could do a prediction about, you know, here's a card you picked, here's a color, that stuff doesn't matter to them, right? What matters to them is what they live in sleep, which is football. And so I said, see yourself at the end of the season playing against any team. And I always like to have people change their mind because when you're watching on TV, I'm the biggest skeptic in the world, David. That's how I became a mentalist. So I go, what if he set this up or told him? So I go, change your mind, change your mind 10 times and then stumble on a team that you absolutely didn't even think about what team were you going to play with. And I'm making a prediction. They think of that team. And then I say, what's the score going to be in that hypothetical game? And I want them to live that moment because once your emotions are tied in and they're saying to themselves, we busted our butt all season, we made it to the Super Bowl, who are we playing, what are we going to achieve? So now you've got something that they're kind of attached to. And so I always do things like that. I have them think of something that will appeal to their day to day life. If I'm working for a pharmaceutical company, they just did a product launch, we 're going to take their brand, which took years to develop. Like, what do we want people to think of when we hear the name of this product and take that and tie that brand into a mind reading routine where we're going to do this big reveal. And at the end, you're not even going to see it coming and bam, that brand appears either in a number or in an envelope or somewhere there. And people love that because it's shown that you've gone the extra mile. It's not about me, it's about them. And so I try to structure my act in a way where you leave with a few tidbits because I know you're not going to leave no one in my show from beginning to end. You're going to leave with at most three takeaways. That's how much the human brain can fit in a busy day. And I want to make sure that I weave those in organically so that your audience member, whether that's a client, whether that's someone in-house, leaves with the information you want and it's sticky. It doesn't disappear because it's tied to something emotional or something memorable. And that's kind of an advertiser's or marketer's dream is how do you retain information? You know, you have to be good on stage and you've learned how to present. And every leader's got to have that big presentation at some point in their life. What advice can you give people on how to get ready to present? I think one of the big ones is you need to figure out who your character is. And there's something to be said for some people have a great sense of humor. And if you can take a little bit of, if it's a very serious content, let's say you're doing a speech in your leader and they're not always good talks. You could be going through rough times. It could be great times. But there's always problems when you're leading and if you're especially if you 're senior leadership at a company, if you can kind of parlay some jokes and learn how to make people laugh, always break the tension. And the best way I find to do that is a little bit of self-deprecations. What you just said, making fun of yourself. Everyone likes to see you kind of take a little bit out of somebody at the top. If they can humanize themselves and bring yourself to a level, the more you can appeal to somebody directly the better. I don't like going directly off a script. I never have. I like to know what I'm going to say, but I structure it in a way where I can be a little more loosey-goosey. I enjoy that personally. Some people need to stick to a script, but the more you can deviate a little bit and allow yourself to be comfortable and allow your true self to come out the better. I think that's a big one. And then also connect with people in the audience. So many people when they speak, I watch them just speak to the crowd. No, look some people in the eye and see that connection. See their face. And I think that brings you back down. That really does a great job for me when I'm performing and this could be for hundreds of people or thousands of people. I walk out in the audience and I have a show that's interactive. I don't just talk. I always gauge the audience. Throw in some questions. See where people stand. See their facial expressions. Kind of the give and take with the audience with my whole show is everything. If you're simply speaking and it's not a Q&A session, see the audience's reactions. Learn a little bit more from them and let that energy feed you. You really are. I don't know if you know this, but you're the consummate salesman. I mean, you are a salesman for the word go. I mean, there's no question about it. And by the way, everybody's got to sell something. I mean, Bob Dylan said that everybody sells something. And you have to be good as a leader. There's nobody I know that doesn't sell. I'd like to hear about your toughest sale and how you persevered in O's fashion to get it done. Well, for years before I was on America's Got Talent, I was a one stop shop, meaning I was a guy picking up the phone. If you wanted to call and book me, I was the booking manager. I was the guy doing the show. I was the travel agent. I was everything. It was one person. Thankfully, the one thing that America's got talent allowed me to do was get some representation, which in entertainment is great because you don't want to be the guy at the front of the store because then everybody can negotiate with you. They go, you're on the store. Everybody goes to Walmart and says, I'll give you five bucks for this thing. It's not my store. It's Walmart. So if you have somebody doing the negotiating for you, it's better. It's just always a better thing. It's kind of like why sports stars have agents. So when I was doing the bookings, the sales were always very difficult because I was the product, but I also loved what I did for a job. The fact that people were paying me to do this almost felt deceptive. Do you know that feeling when you're your own worst enemy because I could be doing this for free? You don't have to go to a job and punch in in the morning or take the train at 7 AM. I'm living my dream by performing and getting paid. So I found that I didn't know my fair market value and that I was willing to take a haircut and negotiate down all the time when I didn't need to until you're willing to hear the word no, you are not priced appropriately. And that's in any profession, unless you're selling a widget that you need to find that supply and demand curve, econ 101, to maximize your profits depending on what you want to do, but I was doing this thing where I never wanted to hear the word no. I just want to hear yes. Okay. Oh, then we'll go lower. Okay. Yes. Great. And I was doing hundreds of events a year, way too many when I should have been doing more quality events. And that's something that I learned over time. So honestly, I think my worst sales tactic, it sounds like I'm a good salesman now, but in the past, I would undersell myself. And in so many industries, I think you don't realize your own value. So a great thing in a negotiation, as soon as you're done speaking and you've quoted a price or you've laid out your value, done. No more words. Let that person speak because if you speak, you almost always reduce your power in that situation. So I learned over time that the best sales tactic is you say it and then you let it sit. You're also like an incredible body language reader. I mean, what are two or three tips maybe you could give us real quick on how do I read body language? I think a lot of them people know inherently, but they don't trust. Everyone's a little bit different, but you've got to learn a person and what they do. You can tell very clearly when somebody's leaning in and interested. If you speak a little more quietly and you take your time, which I finally did here, you notice people leaning in and you notice when their interest is there versus there's so much to be said for the fact when people start zoning out, I can see when the eyes glaze. We're seeing each other on video now, but you can tell the tone of their voice. You can see when somebody's on the edge of their seat and when they aren't. And you can also tell by their eyes when they're thinking of what they're going to say. And this is very important in my profession because when people start thinking about what they're going to say, they're no longer listening to you. And so much of what happens in an argument. I can tell you this with my spouse. I can tell you this in a non-confrontational way when I'm performing. And I want to make sure instructions come across effectively is I pause and I watch them because your eyes are the windows into your brain. Your eyes are almost like on a floppy drive, on a hard disk. When it goes to certain sectors to read the memory, your eyes are looking into your brain. It's like neuro-linguistic programming to think of what's happening in your brain. Your eyes are actually connected in certain ways to where you're going in the different lobes of your brain. So watch somebody. When they're really listening to you, they're staring you in the eyes and it's very clear their eyes don't flicker. But when they're about to say something, a lot of the time in their mouth, their tongue is moving, their eyes are starting to move around and they're trying to define their argument or what they're going to say next. And they are not hearing a word you're saying at that point. It's going into like a different sector of their memory. So it's very helpful when you're having a conversation to know when to pause and when to give them time to reply. Good advice and you know, oh, this has been so much fun and I want to have some more with our lightning round of questions here. Are you ready for this? Lightning baby, let's do it David. It's so much fun. Okay. What are three words others would use to describe you? Passionate, ambitious and I hope funny, fingers cross funny. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be and why? I thought I'd love to sit down and have a conversation with Obama because he's one person I've never met. But to be him for a day I think would be very exciting. I would enjoy that. Your biggest pet peeve. Loud gum chewing is a big one. What's something about Israel you'd only know if you were born there? I'll tell you something I knew when I was growing up is that there were a lot of jellyfish. And one summer I as a kid was given a spear and I was out there like skewering jellyfish because there were hundreds of them and I love that. That they gave me responsibility as like an eight year old kid and handed me a sharp spear and I always just admired the fact this random lifeguard found me. I'm like how do you trust me with this? So I like the fact that kids in Israel are very independent from a young age that might have been the times versus now I find and especially living in New York. Parents are very helicopter. I had so much autonomy as a kid when I was in Israel that I loved it. If I got in your car and turned on the radio, what would I hear? You would hear serious satellite comedy or you would hear kids stuff. A lot of kids French podcasts because my kids speak French and I don't get to listen what I want in the car usually the kids get what they want. What's a book that you've read that's made a big impact on your career? Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. A book that holds to this day a hundred years later. What's something about you that few people would know? I love science fiction. My favorite thing to read, I absolutely love to lose myself in a science fiction book. I think it's almost my favorite escape. Favorite stage you've ever been on? Radio City Musical. That's the end of the lightning round just a couple more questions and then I want you to test me. Well, I do something fun. I got some fun stuff in line for you. I love it. I know you've performed in pediatric cancer wings and I just can't thank you enough for doing that. Kids and parents, they have so much fun with you. It takes their minds off from what they're suffering from. Can you tell us a story about one of those experiences? I was in pediatric cancer. It's for the SON Conference Foundation and some of the kids were too sick to come in the room or their immune compromise. The show is partially for people in the room but also they have a TV that they air it almost like this would be a video in their TVs. You understand in their rooms, almost like a TV channel just for the hospitals and the kids call in. I had this one kid call in and he just loved the show and he called in four times in a row. I don't even know how they allowed it. The phone, he'd call in and he'd be like, "Guess my card." They'd be like, "Okay, guess another card in this kid. Just called in." It was so funny because I kept getting it right and I could tell that he kept getting more and more mad and I just loved the fact that these kids, you know, you want to feel, I don't want to say you feel bad but you have this sympathy. But meanwhile, this is their life. This is what they know and I love that positive energy that I got. I walked out of there on cloud nine. You know, David, it's one thing to do a corporate show or do some on TV but that kid gave me more than I gave them that day. Like it felt just so amazing to know that you could be going through all this. You're away from your friends, your family, you're in chemo. God knows how sick you feel every day and that positive uplifting energy that they had in the fact that this kid kept busting my balls. It was just so funny. You know, the fourth time you called him, like, "He's on the phone again." It was great. That's great. And I'm glad you do that and I know you do a lot of it. So thank you. And you know, I was, "What's a vision for your career that you have now that you're really excited about and chasing after?" I'm like, "More of the same or do you have something out there that you go, " Wow, this is where I'm really heading?" There's definitely things that are on my bucket list that I haven't done. One of them is a big residency in New York, which I think will eventually build to a Broadway show at some point. I think that's something that just kind of defines your legacy, is to be on the biggest stage, the biggest lights, and kind of deliver a show on that level. I want to be fully prepared. It's kind of like when I did America's Got Talent, the first audition I didn't make it. And that was the best thing that ever could have happened to me because those next few years, I got all those reps. I did hundreds of shows. I got better and the timing was right. And the same thing. I think when I'm at the pinnacle of my career and I'm really firing all cylinders is when I'm going to go for that type of goal, the TV show, O's, N O's, unfortunately, we got canceled and I loved doing it. I loved everything about it. We won that Emmy. And so I would love to have another TV show, whether that's on regular TV, which every year keeps being less and less or one of the streaming channels or even one of the big online networks, something that I can really sink my teeth into and do some fun, unique stuff that no one's ever done in mind reading and mentalism. That's what I want to do next. And what's one bit of advice you would give to aspiring leaders? I think the biggest one is to always kind of look to see the value you deliver to others. I have a profession where it's very focused on me and it's like, look at the cool things I can do and look at how I can fool you and look how people will think, oh, I'm smarter than you because I can do a trick. Can't. And I always take that out of the equation and I want to walk into a room and I want to make it all about my customer or all about my audience and know what appeals to them. And my job is not for you to walk out of that room thinking how great I was. It's to create a memorable moment for you to take with you for your life that I hope you will continue to talk about and tell others about. And that's what I focus on is creating very memorable moments for other people. I'm just a piece of that memory, but that's what it's all about. And I want to do something right now. Let's make a memorable moment for you. I told you that I'm a numbers guy. I'm sending you before we do this. I don't want you to read it. You can, but I don't want people to say I influenced you. I'm going to send you right now. I'm texting you. I just wrote you the word hi. Did you get that? Yes. Okay. Don't look at the next one. I'm sending you something. It's actually a number and I don't know if it has a meaning, but we're going to see in a moment and it's going to be a four digit number, but I want you to craft something for me now because I said I talked all about memorable. I want you to think because your life is made up of memorable moments. On the month, day and year that you were born, those moments create your life. I want you to think about somebody in your family you care about deeply or a very good friend. And I want you to change your mind a few times, David. I want to listen to know how spontaneous and impulsive this is. In the moment, can you think of somebody right now that means something to you in your life? Yes, I do. What year was that person born? Please tell us what year or do you know the month and day of their birthday? Yes, May 25th. Okay, 525. That's fine. 525. I want you to remember that number. If you'd like to, you're welcome to write it down, but 525. Okay. And you just came up with that on the fly. Is that right? This is not set up. This is not staged in any way. I want to make sure our viewer knows that. Absolutely. Now, David, by the way, I make just right now, you know, I'm like everybody else. I don't want to make a fool of myself. No, there's no fool. There's no fool. You can't make a fool. Think of somebody else or you know what? Think of a year in your life that had a real impact. Now I don't want to tell you what this year is, but for some people, it's the year that they married their spouse. For other people, it's the year I founded a business. For other people, it's the year that my first child was born. Anything you want, I don't want you to feel like I am pushing you in a direction. So again, change your mind several times, but tell me a year that for whatever reason was pivotal in your life. Can you tell me what that year is, please? 1997. 1997. Now, I want to ask you a question. What was the meaning of 1997 to you? That's when young brands was spun off from PepsiCo. So it's a business one. Something as we've been talking about business and that was something in your life. So I want to make sure I got it. 1997 was a year that was pivotal in your life. Somebody that you care about deeply was born on 525. Is that right? Right. And I go full circle at the start of this podcast. I told you that the sum of the parts when you run an organization properly is greater than the whole. That's what our leaders want to do. Before you even mention any of these things, I sent you a number. Can you grab your phone, please, and check your text? Because I wrote high and then my next text message was a number. And I told you it was four digits. And I did it before you did a thing. Can you tell us what that number was, please? H742. What I'd like you to do is I'd like you to add up my number and your numbers. So if you could get your calculator and I want you to add up those numbers. H742 plus 525 plus 1997. And can you tell me what that added up to, please? I got 11,264. 1,1,264, 1,1264. Now I want to ask you a question because I told you, I want to bring it all back around. I told Richard Branson, you asked me about a good story. I told him to close his eyes and think of somebody he would sit down and have dinner with. And I said, it could be dead or alive, male or female. I want you to close your eyes, David. And that same question that I asked him, I've asked you, I want you to see you sitting down to an interview. Okay, you're on how leaders lead and somebody that you either find fascinating, interesting. And like I said, dead or alive, male or female, you're picturing the person you would love to sit down and have a great, scintillating podcast interview with. Is that right? Yes. As if you can see this person's face, open your eyes. I think that your instinct would have been to go with somebody alive. Am I correct? Is your person alive and well? Yes. And the next thing is, you got to be honest, you could have thought of anybody. There is no way I could know who you would have picked. Are we in agreement? There's no way you'd know who I picked. But I think you're fascinated by large organizations, even though you brought me in and I'm leading a team of one, you like to see how people grow their business, how people pivot in hard times. And I think your mind would have gone to all different brands and you went to a leader of our time and you said yourself, who has really shifted year after year and gone through and I'm seeing one person front and center and it's Amazon. Jeff Bezos is who you thought of, isn't it? Yes, it is. Be honest. I need you to be honest. We are not making up. It is Jeff Bezos. And by the way, I've tried to get him on this podcast and have not been able to do it yet. Is there any way that I could have known that? There's no way you would have known that. And David, here's the thing. All of the little pieces come together. You could have thought of anybody. You could have thought of any year in your life. I could have sent you any number before you started. But I know what you're going to do if you get Jeff Bezos on here, which I know you will one day, is you're going to first thing you're going to do is go to his Wikipedia and can you do me a favor right now? And I want you to search Jeff Bezos. Go to his Wikipedia if you don't mind. Because you're going to do a deep dive. You're going to do what you did for me. You're going to look up all the info about that, man. Okay, I got it. I told you, my job is to create memorable moments from the month, day and year that you were born. And all of that added up to the number 11264. Can you tell me what is Jeff Bezos' birth date? January 12, 1964. 11264. That's a memorable moment, my friend. I don't know how the hell you did it, but you did it. And Jeff Bezos, when you hear this, you're coming on the podcast. There it is. I'm paying it forward for you, David. He's going to be on here. I'm making my prediction right here and now. You got it right there. Great job. Great job. Yeah. Thank you so much for being on. I appreciate it. It was really, really fun. Thank you. Have a good one, buddy. Thanks so much. Well, I still can't get over that incredible reveal of 11264. I mean, how on the earth did O's pull that off? We didn't plan a thing. I swear he's just that good. But you know, even in that trick, O's wasn't putting the focus on his ability. He was creating a memorable moment for me. It was all about me. My podcast and my dream guests. And that's the big takeaway for us all as leaders. If we want to create memorable moments for our customers, we need to start by understanding their interest and what matters to them. Our sales pitch can't be just why our business is impressive. It has to show customers what's in it for them. So this week, I want you to ask your team what you could do to create a memorable moment for your customers. Just asking that question is going to help you get inside of your customers' heads and figure out what they really want. Show customers that it's all about them, not about your company, not about you, and you'll win so much more business. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders create memorable moments and lead themselves. Coming up next week on how leaders lead is Dan Rooney, founder and CEO of Foles of Honor. The greatest challenge was learning to go from a single seat fighter pilot, a doer to a leader. It's ironic, right? Because the military spent millions of dollars teaching you how to lead flights of men into combat. But leading in the military is a lot different than leading in the civilian world because it was do it because I say I do it as opposed to being influential and getting people to do it because of the why. We all hear about it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. a lot. Thank you. for watching. Thank you.