The Illusion Of Reality With Mentalist David Gerard

2 Oct , 2025 podcasts

 

The mind is one extraordinary organ. The power of perception is not only limited to our ability to think and comprehend. At its deepest level, it also shapes our very own reality. Katherine Twells takes a deep dive into this topic with magician and mentalist David Gerard. He discusses how magic and mentalism intersect to unleash the power of the human spirit, which leads to deeper human connection and unlocks personal creativity. David also emphasizes how he keeps his audience focused and engaged in his performances by being fully present and mastering the art of directing attention. This episode reveals how magic, mind, and reality can come together to give birth to a purposeful life and a courageous version of yourself.

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The Illusion Of Reality With Mentalist David Gerard

The Power Of Perception And How It Drives Our Experience

In this episode, we are talking about magic and the power of the mind. My guest, David Gerard, has been in the mystery ever since he was first amazed by magic when he was six years old. As a magician and mentalist, David has brought his mastery to so many places, from the Magic Castle in Hollywood to Fortune 500 corporate events to a myriad of private venues around the world.

He has performed at hundreds of companies, including Google, Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, and at Coca-Cola, where I had the privilege of seeing him in action. His background is what sets him apart. Having spent ten years working in the tech marketing space, he understands both the world of startup ventures and the world of performance. He has also toured with the Broadway show, The Illusionists, and consulted on three seasons of America’s Got Talent.

After I saw David at an event that we hosted, I knew I needed to have a conversation with him to understand how his experiences in the tech world and in magic have informed his view of life. He shares how magic can inform us on all the ways that our mind perceives the world every day. Things are not always what they seem, and it is truly fascinating. Please enjoy the conversation with the amazing David Gerard.

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David, it is so lovely to see you again. We were together at our CEO summit here with Coca-Cola, and you absolutely killed it for that event. I am so grateful. We were chatting, and I thought we needed to have more conversations, so here we are on the show.

I’m stoked to dive in here.

People might say, “Why a mentalist or a magician in a show that talks about compassion, strength, resiliency, love, and all the things in business leadership that we need to be thinking about with consciousness?” People will find out as we talk that magic and mentalism are all about the power of the human spirit, the power of how we think, and the power of the mind. We’re going to get into some juicy stuff as we talk.

We’re on the same team, maybe slightly different positions on the field, but we’re all trying to raise the same score, which is to connect with our audiences, whether it’s on stage or in the boardroom.

Magician And Mentalist David Gerard

Before we dig into all the ways that magic and mentalism make a difference in our world, let’s talk about you and how you got to this place in your life. What was it about your childhood, your upbringing, what happened to you, and your experiences that created who you are now?

I’ll go at 30,000 feet, and we can drop into what’s interesting for your crew here. It starts six years old, FAO Schwartz in Manhattan, basically seeing magic for the first time. The real difference between me and others is that I saw great magic the first time I saw magic. Sometimes people see Uncle Bob at the party trying to find your card, but I saw real miracles that day. The layer of the story is that my dad reacted even more than I did. I had this moment where I was like, “This guy knows everything,” or I thought he did. “We’re both experiencing this wonder and mystery.”

I like to say we were the same age in that moment. I was like, “There’s something very special here.” I got my first magic set at six years old. It turns out magic is pretty hard. It turns out you have to face all of your social anxieties. Now, not only are we trying to connect with people, but we’re trying to pull one over on them to entertain them. I never realized how every magic trick is a risk because it can go wrong. If someone is not amazed, you’re not doing magic. You’re just juggling objects. From 6 to 18, we get the magic set out once a year, and we try to do stuff for neighbors. I tell young kids, that’s natural, as we try to find ourselves.

I got into a lot of other different hobbies, but when I was eighteen, I went to university, and there was a magic club, and this was the real first time that I saw amazing stuff like I saw before in real life, not on the internet, not on DVDs or in books. That exploded. From 18 to 22, going out on the street, going to frat parties, going to the student union, and working on tricks. That’s an interesting layer because I was hyper-focused on entertaining audiences right off the jump.

My mentor, a guy named Nathan Kepner, a professional magician out of New Orleans, was like, “We’re going to go and show people this. This was a real R&D. If you have the move, let’s go show it.” I was always biased towards action and was always biased towards performing, which is different than some magicians who are into maybe the technical aspects or they’re building props.

That’s 22. I did not think you could live off magic. I was very blessed to get a job at Google in marketing and sales. I spent five years there. Meanwhile, at night, I was doing a bunch of shows, renting small theaters, black boxes, private parties, etc. The two-job life was real, moonlighting as a magician. I went through those years getting better, getting the stage time, collecting the 10,000 hours, as Malcolm Gladwell would say.

 

Eventually, after twelve years of that, it got to a point where I was getting calls from Kansas, Atlanta, or Florida saying, “Can you do this gig on a Wednesday night?” I was like, “I’m VP of Marketing at this Sequoia-backed startup and they need me tomorrow.” Eventually, I hit a point where I said to that six-year-old version of myself, “Let’s do this full-time and let’s see what’s here.” Tech marketing was incredible from Google with all these startups. I consulted with some amazing companies, but we’re doing this, and it’s solid. There’s the 30,000 feet, one chapter.

I love that. I have this image of you at six with your dad, being in awe. I am in awe of the experiences that transcend the day-to-day that make you realize that there is something special and magical out there, even if it’s a trick. It’s still the way it made you feel. The way it made your dad feel.

There’s an author I love, Nate Staniforth, who says, “Good magic makes you forget to be cool.” I think we can talk spiritual jargon here a little bit, but for a second or two, your ego and your identity take a back seat. You’re in this moment of like, “Maybe I don’t know everything.” In the world of Google and AI and all of these abilities to find information, a moment of the impossible is even more rare.

I think it opens up people to this real feeling of wonder. Whether it’s the Grand Canyon or finding the four of clubs, we’re playing in the same vector here, and I’ve been blessed to watch tens of thousands of people forget to be cool, especially in corporate settings where people can break out. It’s the same thing good comedy does, good theater, good art, that moment of, “Ugh.” That’s what I was shown at six, and that’s what I’m trying to spread.

We were thinking about it for days to come. We were talking about it. “How did he do that?” Your mind is trying to figure it out, and you can’t, and then you’re amazed again because you think, “Maybe after I think about it, I can figure out how he did it.” To your point, we had a room full of very accomplished leaders who were just delighted. We spent so much time trying to be cool, like it’s a lot of work trying to be cool. To be able to be like a child again and to be in wonder, what a beautiful gift you give people, David.

I appreciate that. In this world, where we need to be creative thinkers, we need to think outside the box, and we need innovation at every step to compete. What better than opening up to new solutions, new ways of thinking, and going back to the childlike wonder versus I’m in my McKinsey and Bain spreadsheet, and maybe I’ll find this where maybe we need some insight that feels a bit more magical.

Running parallel to that, one of my former clients put it beautifully. He was like, “David, I bring you in so my team can get comfortable with not knowing.” They were in the insurance industry. They’re always dealing with uncertainty. They’re always dealing with risk. If you’re in a position of fear, then we’re constrained. I don’t have the research offhand, but we could find it. If you’re in a state of fear and fight or flight, you probably aren’t available to solutions that are abundant. Whereas if we’re like, “We got fooled real badly,” but we’re open to it and we’re enjoying it, and how do we meet that with a spirit of openness? I think this is pretty real.

I think we give ourselves permission in a show environment. I love the idea that your friend brings you in to translate that into life. Maybe because this is fresh on my mind, because my last podcast interview was with this amazing person who does dream work and works on how dreaming can connect with creativity. We had a whole conversation about the crisis of creativity.

It’s happening younger and younger, and the world comes in, and we want certainty. It becomes a spreadsheet, and it becomes black and white. That’s a problem. We need the people. We need you, we need Bonnie, who works in dreams. We need the people who are saying, “No, there’s so much more to you than what meets the eye.” This human experience has so many dimensions to it. If we forget that, we’re living in black and white.

The layer there that I’ve found as I get into more of these conversations is that Western culture has put us in a black and white, where it’s scary to be wrong. You could lose your job if you’re wrong. I was at Google for five years, an incredible place, but a lot about data at the end of the day, and a lot about not trusting your gut. I think it’s not one or the other, but it’s this idea of like, “Before we get to the P value, can we open to more opportunities and more ideas?”

I see a lot of people who are uncomfortable not knowing, but we need to not know for at least a few minutes before we run to an answer, because it could be the narrow one, or it could be the easy one that competitors will get to as well, versus how often do we hear about people who go on a four-hour walk and they have the next breakthrough that was not run through a 27-minute meeting filter?

Definitely not. Can you imagine sitting through a movie where you had this certainty and you knew exactly what was going to happen? There’s a part of us that craves surprise. We live in this strange paradox of we want to be surprised and we want to be certain. We get there. “I want to know, but yet I don’t want to know.” It’s such a strange place to be.

What I love about that is that professional magician Joshua Jay ran a bunch of academic research on what people liked about magic. Surprise came in as number one over and over again, versus these linear things where “I’m going to put this in this or whatever, I’m going to read your mind directly.” I try to build surprise into everything I do inside of a container that feels safe, where there’s a leadership layer where it’s like, “He knows where we’re going. It’s going to be okay. This doesn’t feel like the thirteen-year-old practicing.” You’re building on a foundation of craft with surprise, with audience empathy and compassion. The stew is so varied as we’re talking about this.

If you are in a state of fear, you probably are not available to abundant solutions. Share on X

Gaining A High Level Of Mastery Of Your Craft

We’re going to get into some of the parallels you can draw from mentalism into human nature. Your craft, there are a lot of people that do this work, and obviously, like anything, different levels of mastery. However, the way you’ve engaged everyone in the room when I saw you, the way you would respond so quickly to something that someone said was amazing.

The experience was so total in how present you were to the audience, how you were responding to every action, and you engaged all of them in a true shared experience. As we talk about this element of surprise, we want the shared experience. I talk a lot to my team about this concept of collective effervescence, and I went to a lot of summer concerts. You feel that sense of joy, fun, and beauty. I think that’s what you’re creating when you’re able to do that with mastery in the room.

Maybe I can offer some tools to the audience here about, “How do I take this magician and apply it?” I go back to being 24 at Google, doing presentations for CEOs. I would go into the room three hours earlier, and I would rehearse like it was a show. I would decide where I was going to sit and the layout, and I would have the extra batteries. I would have the little gift bag with that little Android toy, because I knew that he had a seven-year-old daughter who liked stuffed animals. What I tell people is we have to bring things that are in our conscious mind that are going to distract us into the subconscious, so we have more resources available, and we can raise our capacity.

What I mean by this is that the room where I did that event, at lunch, I’m walking the stage, I’m walking the aisles, I’m testing the microphone, and I’m checking the mic stand. All those things that would’ve been in my prefrontal cortex are now in the back. That’s on autopilot. I can see that the CEO of XYZ opened his phone and may not be engaged, or I can see in the back that someone is leaving with a creaky door.

I didn’t realize ten years ago that I needed these resources. Literally, people would be like, “You’re rehearsing for three hours for this presentation?” I was like, “Yeah, because then in the room, I’m noticing everything because the slides take care of themselves.” That’s something people could do. Run your stuff more than you think, and you’ll be so much more available to the moment.

I love that because if you are thinking too much, we do this when we are doing sales training, so people will be maybe in a role play situation, and you can tell when they’re trying to come up with the answer to the customer, and they’re not very present to the customer. They’re not listening. Ideally, you get to a point where you know your value proposition, you know what you’re doing so much that you are fully in what I call the dance of that moment in time. You’re not rehearsing something because you can feel that when you talk to people who are in their heads.

You said it way better than I did. That feeling is so refreshing for people because it’s getting rarer. In the world of the watch buzz and the notification and the meeting that needs to end with a hard stop, once when we’re deeply present with people, I have found that it’s so rare and special.

When you’re with someone and they don’t have something to run to where they’re not preparing the answer live in their head, it’s startling sometimes. That is what I have found. I rehearse my material alone. I rehearse it in the room. I’m not doing things that are too hard technically, so that I am available. Many magicians and, honestly, a lot of people in tech were like, “If this slide is hard to talk to, maybe we’ve got to change the slide.” If this trick is going to make you sweat and shake, maybe don’t do the trick. You can’t be nervous there. You’ve got to size that up correctly. It’s so refreshing in the world of the Apple Watch for us to be right here, right now.

How To Be Fully Present

It’s at the heart of human connection. We are made to connect at the deepest level, yet you can be with someone and they’re completely not there. We’re going to get to this later, but we’re here now, so I want to spend more time on it in the conversation because it’s so important. We talk about this in the lab, this power of presence, and what you’re talking about, what you’re doing.

You’re caring, David. You care enough to show up to that audience and in the business world to show up to that meeting fully engaged. What that says to them is, “I care about what experience I’m creating for you.” When people feel seen, heard, and cared for, what a different experience versus someone who is just going through the motions. I see that in booking speakers. I see the speakers who come in and invest, and I see the ones that I can tell they’ve had a script that they’ve done a million times over. Can you share more about this? What does it mean to be fully present, and what are the implications of not being?

The implication of not being fully present is that you won’t reach a high enough level of engagement to break out of the average because people will feel like you pressed play. There are a ton of keynote speakers, entertainers, salespeople, and marketers who just press play all the time. We need to get into 10X value land to be even remembered.

The quickest way I have found is through presence and having a high-quality product, but so many people now can have a high-quality product. You and I can do summaries from AI. We can find the engineer, we can find the team. That’s becoming more and more available. How do we differentiate? I think about my friend, “What do I teach my kids in the world of AI?” It’s going to be human relating, storytelling, creativity, and using the tools, not maybe doing the export of the spreadsheet.

Back to the point. Yes, you will lose the engagement, and you won’t be remembered. For me, the thing that comes up here with presence is like, “Why are you there? What is your intent?” The thing that changed in my life was that my intent in magic used to be just about me looking cool, fooling people, and cashing a check.

You need to get into 10X value land to be remembered. The quickest way to do this is through presence and having a high-quality product. Share on X

My presence was run through a prism of just me. It was about David being cool. Over the last several years, it started to shift. One of the key things was one of my mentors getting arthritis and realizing that the things I’ve been taught, I will be the only one who can do, as other magic mentors started to pass on. I can’t watch Johnny Thompson anymore. I can’t watch Eugene Burger anymore. Their tricks are in these books, and it’s my job to show them to an audience.

As my intent became more diversified and wider, I wasn’t just showing up as David. I’m now showing up with a team behind me in a lineage of people who have dedicated themselves to an art form. You might think magic is silly, but it doesn’t matter. We’re dedicating ourselves to something, and we’re bigger than ourselves.

That means I need to be present on stage to honor all the people who gave me the secrets that allow me to live off magic and mind-reading. That’s incredible. I’m in awe of that. That changed my presence because my intent was purified. I’m playing wider. I remember meeting these people at Google who worked on Google.org.

They were the biggest Google supporters ever because they were playing for everyone, customers and nonprofits. It was wider. My ask to the audience here is, what is your intent? Is it pure? Are you playing for a team or just yourself? If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go further, go with someone else. You can almost put that in this intent bucket. Those are the things that come to mind off the bat.

You said that so beautifully. You were like channeling it. It was said so exquisitely because the heart of it is your why. There has been a lot out in the sphere about your why, but you could be doing the exact same thing or action with different energetic intentions. One is of service and one is of care or lineage, as you talked about, or gratitude for the form. The other is, “I’m doing this for a paycheck. I’m doing this to be powerful,” or whatever. You could do the same thing, but your audience, your teammates, your children, or your friends are going to feel the difference in that intention.

You’re throwing up so many great things here to touch on, and I don’t get a chance to go this deep on this, so I appreciate the opportunity. Some of what we’re talking about here is embodied versus knowledge. The reason why it feels channeled is because I know what it’s like to go out there on stage for the paycheck, and so people think you’re cool. That was embodied for a long time, and it leaked in weird ways. Now, I’ve tried. We’re not speaking from a blog post here. We’re speaking from real, authentic, like, I’ve cried for magicians who have died. That wasn’t a concept. That was reality.

That’s piece one. I also want to honor that. I still have a mortgage. I still get on stage, and the money is important. It’s not just pure intent Mother Teresa style. What is your buffet of reasons you’re there? It’s not just. It’s so many facets, and that makes me feel like I have a lot of wind in my wings. The audience can feel it, like we’re talking about here. I’m not in the place yet where all the shows can be pro bono, but one day.

I was hoping to ask you. Just kidding. I don’t think it’s all about villainizing the other pragmatic parts of why we do what we do. Those reality checks are what sometimes bring us into arenas where we need to sometimes step in to push us into bigger ones, but that’s not the only reason. It’s multifaceted on why we do what we do. What you’re saying is you don’t have to stop there, like, “I need to do this, but I also love to do this.” What a beautiful thing that I get to do something I love and I’m good at. By the way, I get paid, and I get to pay my mortgage. It’s a win-win for everybody.

Sometimes I would get consulting clients in the startup world that on first hit I didn’t love, and my intent was that I was a headhunter. What I found was that in the focus groups with their users that I would conduct, I could find the love. I could find, “I had no idea you could use the product in this way. I personify Jamie, who is getting huge value out of the X platform.” I remember, sometimes at Google, I got clients and projects I didn’t care about. It’s how you find that glimmer and magnify it because it took fifteen years to be living off the art, and along the way, we still had to get up every morning, and we still had to get stoked.

How To Keep Your Audience Away From Distractions

I love the crossover there, David. You were performing and doing the magic, but you’re consulting and you’re in the tech, and you’re bringing all the craft into this other arena because the skills crossover into different domains. That’s some of what I wanted to talk about with this, too. I want to throw out a couple of concepts. I want you to choose where you want to dive in because I do think this is very interesting.

For people who are tuning in, no matter what you do, you could be a leader, an individual contributor, you could be in business, you could be not in business, it doesn’t matter. There are some human nature things that you get into. There are concepts like distraction, which is the other side of presence, which we’ve talked about. There are the assumptions we make about reality. That’s a strong conversation about what we think we know versus what’s going on. There’s this whole cognitive overload and this illusion of free will and choice. I don’t know which of those you want to dive into, but I think they’re all fascinating.

I got energetic hits on all of them. Distraction is pretty interesting in magic. We talk about directing attention. It’s in the same family, but I think what comes up around distraction is that humans are easily distracted with an eight-second attention span. We’ve got less than a goldfish. You hear that. We can meet that with, “Bummer, humans are falling apart,” or we can meet it with, “How do we create content presentations and communication that plays to that?”

As I try to give tools to the audience here, one of the best things that I have ever heard in my world that translates to this world is from a director named Andy Nyman. He directed Derren Brown, who is one of the biggest magicians in Europe. He talked about how you should think that someone in your audience is always reaching for their hat, and they’re always ready to go. You need to give them moments across the spectrum of things like humor, intrigue, rapt attention, or a question at the right moment, where they drop the hat and they say, “I’ll hang out.”

 

If anyone has seen Hamilton, you can’t just leave the theater because before you know it, the king is coming out and singing, and now it’s like a ballad, and then it’s a big action piece. We have this texture of engagement. Back to those initial meetings when I helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital. We were trying to think through how this presentation would surprise you, how it has moments of intrigue, and then an emotional story from a user, and then it’s data, which makes us feel numerical and logical. That’s what I’m talking about here with distraction. When I’m in that room building my show for CEOs who could easily check their watches, they can’t guess where it’s going. They can’t reach for the hat.

We have been trying to hone our skills in the company around storytelling. In sales and marketing, you’ve probably seen this at Google. You can have the person who walks into a customer with a giant PowerPoint deck and reads it, and it’s this very soulless experience. You then have the salesperson who can come in like a performer and find out how to engage, how to surprise, and how to make them want to see how they matter in this story. It’s a story that’s unfolding between the two of them versus this one-sided thing. There’s so much power in that.

That’s so beautiful. It reminds me that there are a lot of magicians who just do tricks at the audience. They’re performing at the audience, not with them. An early mentor of mine, I would say, “John, can I show you something?” He’d be like, “No, but you can share something with me.” At 23, what a pivot. “We can do this together, but I’m not just going to watch you.” Think about the viral rise of the stand-up comedy crowd, where we’re seeing all of this.

One of the reasons is that you know it’s for them, the cusp of the moment. We’re watching someone dance live. It’s not pressing play. In a world where we want something that is made for us, that marketer who rolls in with 100 pre-baked slides is probably not going to land as much as the real consultative selling approach, understanding where they’re at, and then building an engaging presentation accordingly.

I resonate with all that and try to use that in my show. What I was thinking was, at the Coke summit, the first effect, four people from the audience are coming up. Most magicians would say, “Wait a second, you have to establish credibility and you have to do something in front of the audience so they know you’re good. You’ve got to be alone for 5 to 10 minutes and build that rapport.” I questioned that because it was like, “No, they care more about themselves and the audience than me, and how can I look like the guy who is facilitating a four-person party instead of, ‘Look at how clever I am?’” Again, it goes back to how you open your sales presentation with questions instead of a data dump, like caring about them.

Everything we’re talking about right now is the perfect example of the crossover of these different domains. You could walk in and do a sales training tomorrow by using these concepts. It’s fundamental human nature of what we were talking about a moment ago, with connection. Can you connect and break through the clutter? In today’s world, there is a massive amount of noise inside people, outside of people. We’re craving meaningful interactions, ones that change us. Don’t just check a box, but evolve us into something better, which is what you’re speaking to.

The thing that comes up in that is the vulnerability piece as well. I don’t think we relate as much to these perfect characters anymore. The person who says, “I don’t know, let me follow up,” is so much better than the person who either lies or avoids. That’s scary. It’s scary to say we don’t know, but whether it’s on stage or in a meeting, it is such an easy tool. We have to lean into the fear of, “I don’t have that off the top of my head.” We’re trying to think about what the audience could take away here.

How Our Assumptions Affect Our Reality

David, what about this idea of assumption and even about reality? I was in a business training course years ago, and they introduced the concept of background listening. It means when you’re speaking to me, I am telling myself what you are saying to me through every filter I have, my beliefs, my experiences, all these things. I remember sitting in that class thinking, “We’re all living in our own reality. How do we even communicate?”

I might say something to you, but once it goes through your filter, it is completely different. I’m sure anyone in a marriage or relationship has experienced this, where you’re like, “Wait a minute, I did not say that.” In the world of magic and mentalism, how do you think about the assumptions we make, the realities that we create that can be very different?

This is great. This is a deep pool. By the way, it’s helpful to contextualize here. There’s magic and mentalism. As my mentor, Eric Mead, says, “Mentalism is tricks with information. Whereas magic is maybe tricks with objects. They are more visual.” Mentalism is purely a psychological illusion. That can use any magical technique, psychological techniques, or purely basic influence techniques, etc. That becomes a soup that the audience has fun figuring out, “What’s a trick here? What could be real?” Adults get on board because mentalism is the last bastion of perhaps something that could be real. It could be around us.

We all have those moments where we say something at the same time, and it almost seems like it couldn’t be a coincidence. That being said, the assumptions that we make about the world lead us to being fooled because we assume that when the coin goes from the right hand to the left hand, it always will. A magician knows that. A magician can make the left hand look like it’s holding an object. You assume that, of course, there’s a coin there.

You assume that the thing is in the envelope or whatever, because if you walked around every day questioning every time someone puts something in their hand, it would be pretty draining. If you assumed that cars don’t always go straight, it would be tough to drive. We build these houses of assumptions to make things happen.

It’s the same way when someone walks in who looks like your ex-manager. You might not even be able to help, but say, “I assume that he, too, might not be that nice,” or what have you. Magic is based on assumptions that are commonplace, like gravity, object permanence, and the things that we believe. I think where it gets sticky is in more day-to-day relational stuff, like you’re saying, where the assumptions are wild.

I assume that no one likes this particular drink, and you assume everyone loves it because you have it at Thanksgiving every year. We love sparkling apple cider. What I’m saying is I have the benefit that on stage, I think it’s pretty easy because the assumptions are more ubiquitous around things like how objects work, and how information is held in people’s heads. We agree on what’s impossible for the most part.

One of the startups I worked at was in real estate. The assumptions that people have about real estate agents, about mortgage rates, about what will happen in the market, and about different neighborhoods, if you’re on NextDoor or Citizen, your assumptions about a neighborhood are very different than someone whose car got broken into, versus someone who never walks at night.

The invitation here in my field is for me to talk with people to understand their assumptions, and then, after the show, ask them, “What did you figure out? What didn’t you figure out? What do you assume?” To quote a mentor from afar, Simon Aronson, it’s something to the effect of “Even if they don’t know the right answer, if they think they do, it’s as good as them having figured it out.”

People assume, “I will have that confirmation bias in my own head, and I know what he did.” We have to close all the doors so that people are left with a mystery. You only realize those doors by asking. I remember there was a great engineer I used to work with at a startup, and he saw my show. The next day on Slack, I got all the explanations. Most of them were off, but he was certain.

What I did was I went back to my show and I closed the doors that I didn’t think were even open. He was assuming a level of skill that I don’t know that any magician has. What I’m saying is it’s the same thing with our customers, our teammates, and our clients. In the meeting, when we have that bio break and we’re on the way to the restroom, to steal from Brené Brown, the story I’m telling myself is that you guys don’t think Q4 is going to be a big year. “Am I wrong here? Bring me back to center.” That’s a scary question to ask, but way better than living in a different assumptive reality.

It’s so true. I love all the connections that you made with this. It comes back to, “Am I curious or am I certain, and am I judging a situation?” If you stay curious and you stay in inquiry, you’re like, “Maybe the way I see it and the reality that I’m creating is absolutely wrong.” Of course, that’s in the middle of so much conflict. It could be customers and businesses. It could be friendships, where you’re living in very different interpretations of the same event.

In magic, my interpretation is very different because I know how it all works, but I want to make sure that everyone out in the audience is having a similar interpretation that this is impossible. I’ve been fascinated over the years, the little sentences that help people realize how fair things are, even visibility-wise. “Did you see that he took that out of his wallet, and I never touched it?” “No, I didn’t see that.” “Let’s bring him up on the stage.”

It’s so simple, but a lot of magicians are scared to talk to their audiences because it’s like we got into this so we could be superheroes. It’s scary to know that your uniform has dirt on it. You have to address that fear. One of the things that helped me was from a book called Turning Pro. It was like, think about yourself as David Gerard Inc. or Katherine Twells Inc. The feedback is not for you. The feedback is for this entity. It becomes a lot easier not to take it so personally and be so shattered when the client says, “That didn’t land with us.”

How Predictable Humans Really Are

I can tell you, at least from all the conversations I got into after, we couldn’t figure out anything. I didn’t even have a hypothesis. You closed every door, David. I did not have any idea. We were like, “Crazy.” The next question I wanted to ask you is, how predictable are humans? I know we all want to believe that we are unique and special, and we are. In one sense, there is no other human who is built exactly as you are. I don’t want to take away from that, but in your craft, how predictable are we?

You almost need to determine a spectrum. Are we talking about something as simple as getting a bunch of people to name a number from 1 to 1,000? Are we so predictable that I know that normally it’s XXX? I have not found that predictability level to be high enough to rely on. What I mean by that is I am paid to hit. I am paid that the things work, and that at the end, it’s not awkward because it’s totally off. We rely on magic principles and techniques. If the psychology or the predictability doesn’t go according to plan, we can get out of it. The same way a comedian doesn’t just do crowd work, he’s got his bits about TSA and food poisoning. It’s going to be okay.

We need that too. Predictability-wise, in that way, “I wish those techniques were more reliable.” My colleagues specialize in that work deeply, and they will still say, “Have a backup.” This is 85%. They are not always going to make this choice. I like to be honest about those methods because I think that if people walk away thinking everyone says 37, that’s creating more illusion.

I want to be very clear that I’m in illusion territory, not adding to the confusion. Whereas how people are predictable, I have found that if you set up an environment based on what we’ve talked about here, presence, intent, confidence, empathy, compassion, and leadership, people are quite predictable in regards to how they’ll react. You can set up containers of safety pretty reliably.

I can feel this in my gut. This is the deepest truth so far for me, which is if you walk in and you are like an embodiment of love and presence, if you walk in and you’re assuming the benefit of the doubt that everybody has their stuff going on. They’re all six years old at the end of the day. They all played Jacks in the backyard, and they all love watching a movie and feeling the emotion.

That’s the predictability that excites me. I can get to 37 with trickery. I can’t get to 70 people on the same team without using real techniques, which are what we’ve talked about. There’s no glossy secret. It is simply showing up with this level of intent and care. Most of the time, people will predictably get on board.

Difference Between Guest And Host Energies

It comes back to the craft, the mastery, and the preparation. You have to be ready for the predictable and the unpredictable. Maybe that goes back to the element of surprise that we were talking about. If it was that predictable, we would lose that element of the unexpected happening. That is where that wonder and joy come in. Related to that, not quite the same, but related, if you think about all your years in learning magic and mentalism, including all the years in tech and leading teams and consulting with startups, what have you learned about human nature, about people? How has it shaped you?

The person who says, “I don't know, let me follow up,” is so much better than the person who either lies or avoids. Share on X

This is ongoing. When you do 100 shows a year, you learn fast. Every three days, there’s a software upgrade. That’s why this is such a beautiful invitation with you to log in this moment. What do I think I know about human behavior? The thing that’s most resonant right now is it’s this idea that if we are in a position of influence and leadership and being on stage, or even having a small group of people who are turning to you for an answer at 4:30 on a Monday. This human behavior piece of going first is up and awake for me right now, which is like, how do I go first with vulnerability and love and care, which will change the room?

We’ve talked a lot about human behavior, the way that humans assume things, the way that humans react, etc. This is a new space for us as we get here. This guy wrote this book. His name is Robert Ellis, and he said, “You can be a host or you can be a guest.” This is valuable because a lot of people have guest energy where they show up and they say, “What are you doing for me? Where are the answers? I have questions. Walk me through this. Are my towels clean?” Guest energy.

A lot of that is not them trying to be difficult. It’s because their systems are so overloaded with how hard reality is that they are like, “Where are the answers,” and guest energy. Whereas what I know about human behavior is that if you can show up with host energy, which is already available, because we have awareness in this conversation. People listening are aware.

They all know that at the coffee shop you go to, you can say “Good morning” first, or they can. Host energy, guest energy. If you lead with host energy, the whole environment starts to shift. It does. Call me a magician, a marketer. I facilitate men’s groups. I meditate a lot. Everything that starts with M, I’m up for. It is all coming into those environments with host energy, so people can collapse into the environment and say, “I feel held, safe, understood, and cared for,” which makes them more likely to start to play host. Maybe not in that meeting, but maybe downstream, because they’ll be like, “Katherine made me feel seen, heard, and understood. She questioned her assumptions. She seemed like she wanted to be there. Maybe I could do that at 4:30.” I’ve seen that host piece change my whole game.

Thank you for sharing that. That resonates so deeply with me. One of the things that I love doing, and you experienced it, is curating experiences for people. There’s joy in creating spaces for people to breathe, unwind, and maybe be their six-year-old self. There are aspects of being six-year-olds that we want and others that we don’t. We can pick and choose, but I appreciate what you shared.

To tie this to the event we did together, sometimes CEOs are hosted by Coca-Cola. Incredible job over three days in Napa, everything was thought through. They’re certainly not the host when they’re in front of their board. Everyone has a boss, and they’re not. It’s not easy. These are hard jobs. The day that you facilitated was like, “You guys are here to learn from experts, be entertained by experts,” and then they can feel like guests, so they get re-energized and they go back and they’re hosts as they think about thousands and thousands of people who report up to them.

What I’m trying to create here is the takeaway of sometimes you’re a host and sometimes you need to be a guest and get restored so you can go and be a host. This isn’t about being a martyr. I find environments where people host me, and it feels incredible. I go to magic conventions where I’m just an attendee, and that reenergizes me so I can give it back. It’s this beautiful infinity loop where both sides of the circle need to be the same size, or else you become burned out, or you’re not being in service to anyone. Back to the other point, then your intent is just about you. You’re probably not going to get the results you want because, as you said, it’s all about human connection, not just beyond yourself.

Answering Rapid-Fire Questions

Another great add, David, because there is a dance between giving and receiving the masculine and the feminine, creating and allowing. That’s what you’re speaking to. Sometimes I’m the host and sometimes I am the guest. You do need both of those things. I love it if more of us can step into this host energy, because to me, that has a resonance of the we versus me, and the greater good of everyone involved. The more you do that, it’s going to naturally come back to you in that give and receive type of energy. I’m watching our time to be respectful of your time. I would love to ask you a couple of rapid-fire questions. Are you game? It’s completely unrelated to everything else. I didn’t warn you about this. You said you like surprises. Speaking of surprise, what would surprise people about you?

I know this because I have had a lot of people go, “What?” Before I got deep into magic, I had a soccer coach when I was thirteen. He said to us, “You guys should all buy hacky sacks.” These are like bean bags, hippie style. He said, “You should all buy hacky sacks, and this will help with ball control when you’re at the bus stop. You guys can kick it after school in the cafeteria or wherever.” I got one of these and I became absolutely addicted.

I found a club in Philadelphia near where I lived, a hacky sack club, believe it or not. I got super into it. I realized there were tournaments and competitions. It’s a different episode, but I traveled around competing. This is the surprise. In 2010, I was ranked the number one hacky sack player in the world.

There were only three people who competed, so it’s not that big deal. No, there were a lot. It took me all around the world and showed me different cultures. It had a whole underground network online, and a lot of people are showing up for this beautiful game. That’s a surprise. The insight here is that I used to be embarrassed about this. I thought it was silly. People didn’t understand, unless you see good competitive hacky sack, it’s like yo-yo. Have you ever seen a great yo-yo?

I have seen great yo-yo, yes.

Yo-yo can be on unreal.

Yeah. Yo-yo is crazy.

We are given talents and gifts that are like diamonds to be polished. Share on X

Hacky sack is even smaller than yo-yo. We talked about host energy. Lead first, be vulnerable, be open, and put something out there that gives you a little shutter. I’m practicing. This is a huge part of my life. It was the first time I got on stage and started to communicate with an audience, but through a sports container. I was like, “I want to talk to the audience.” I tried hacky sack and juggling and all these things and skateboarding, but it was like, “No, I want to connect,” and then magic rose up, but my magic career is on top of this very funny game. There’s the surprise for you.

I am so glad I asked you that question. I love that. I am not surprised that you kicked butt in it, because your way is to put your heart and soul into anything you do. That’s not surprising. I expect a video to be sent to me so that I can see this. Next question. What do you do to find peace? Where is your happy place, your relaxed place?

A few years ago, I learned mantra-based meditation, which is called TM, Transcendental Meditation. That was maybe one of the first times I ever found deep rest. I remember even the first time. I know you’re a fellow meditator, and I’ve been in those waters. That is the recharge. It’s 10 to 20 to 30 minutes a day. We do that. A variety of techniques now. For anyone tuning in, starting with TM. That is a great place to start. There’s also a beautiful app from a Zen teacher I love called The Way, which is good for a newbie.

I know The Way.

Henry Shukman is a legend.

Henry has been on the show. He’s amazing. You have to check it out.

I needed to. Talk about a guy with host energy. That’s where we find the rest. Maybe this is the extra layer for your audience. I am breathing on stage in every moment. At this lecture to magicians, I said, “When people walk up to a stage, it’s about 10 to 15 seconds as people come to help me.” I use those 10 to 15 seconds to reground, be in the moment, breathe, and say, “How is this going? How are we doing?

Many times, in the tech world, I would watch people present, and then afterwards they would be like, “I blacked out there.” We got in the slides, I was moving and grooving. Breath can be that rest in the middle. Something happens in our nervous systems that relaxes us. Meditation, morning and evening, but just trying to breathe all day, seriously, has been the respite. Do you resonate with that?

I could not agree more. What I’ve noticed in my meditation practice, when you live somewhat of an intense life, there’s a lot going on, and you have multiple roles. I would be in this state of relaxation and then head into my day and forget to breathe. Be it in a meeting. The great thing about that practice is that I would notice it.

I would notice that I am not breathing, or I’m breathing very shallow. I might stop and take a breath, and change the energy. I think what that stillness, whatever it is for you, a slow walk, a climb, a meditation, or whatever that might be, brings you into being the observer of what’s happening. You’re not always going to be all Zenned out because life comes at you. You can see it a little bit more clearly.

That is one of my greatest regrets in running teams and meetings, probably nowhere close to you. At one point, I had twenty people reporting to me. I was not breathing at those meetings. What would my career have looked like if I started every meeting with three deep breaths? Not a hike, not a walk, not a twenty-minute sit, Zenned out. It’s just like, “Whoo.” I wish I had known that.

We talk about it all the time in the Compassion Lab about practices to help you navigate and regulate. Most people live in a dysregulated nervous system. They’re reacting, getting triggered, responding, and leading from a place of dysregulation. That’s where we have to learn how to regulate in whatever way we can. Definitely there.

Once you see the results that come from regulation versus dysregulation, it’s a pretty easy sell, but to feel it is hard. We’re three and a half decades deep over here, and it’s starting to come to center. It’s so real.

 

Last question for you, David, and I think you’ve told the story throughout our conversation, but how would you encapsulate your definition of a life well lived?

Here’s my current hypothesis. It’s so funny you asked that because it’s the one thing I still had in my back pocket, too. It’s this life well lived. You can go listen to podcasts from David Copperfield and Oprah. You can go listen to the top 0.00001% and so on and so forth. To find both of us and your other guests in these moments of evolution versus totally evolved is very special because it becomes much more relatable. Someone two years ahead of you is very different than someone 30 years ahead of you. My magic mentors were often a few steps forward in their careers, not the Copperfields who are thinking about their private jets. It’s the person who just did the Coke summit, and I want to do it in five years.

I put that out there as in the water because it’s like this idea of a life well lived. In America, we’re so often thinking we need to be Will Smith or Oprah, and it gets all busted. A more approachable and digestible story is that you were born into an environment. You were given programming and conditioning that you had no choice over. You were given talents and gifts that are like diamonds that you need to polish. The polish is like the trade with the universe we all have to do.

I almost threw up the first time I got on stage. This was not “natural,” but as I started to polish it, I said, “I do have gifts that can come out on stage.” We’ve got this equation of all of these things. I think the purpose of a life well lived is that with the stuff in your pantry, what are you going to cook? What’s going to come out? I give way more props to someone who had lima beans and some gluten-free tortillas and butter, and they made something incredible. You can’t compare this stuff.

I was a hacky sack player, then a marketer, then a startup guy, then a consultant, and now a magician. In three years, who knows? I think the life well lived is this real excitement about peeling the onion, embracing that. Maybe that’s the whole point. Instead of getting locked in, “I’m not Will Smith. I give up. I’m not David Copperfield. I give up,” or “I’m ten years into a marketing career, I got this magic thing. Should I do it?” My gut said, “Give it a whirl.” Here we are. I had no idea I’d be in the room with you a few weeks ago. That was not available to me until I started to say, “Maybe it’s part of the onion.” That’s what’s working right now.

Get In Touch With David

It’s layers of the onion. It’s full of surprises. You never know who you’re going to meet. You never know what you’re going to learn. It’s a beautiful symphony of experiences and becoming because we’re not there. We’re becoming. We’re emerging. We’re arriving all the time at someplace new. That’s super cool. Before we close out, where can people find you? If someone wants to book you, learn more about you, where would they find you?

If they have an audience who is up to be mystified and entertained, I would love it. It’s DavidGerard.com. I also work with the top speaking bureaus in the world. They know who I am, and they can help. What’s fun for people is, on social media, there’s David Gerard Magic. That’s super easy. There’s also a channel where I talk about this stuff, and it was made for magicians.

What’s strange is now I have normal people, muggles, who are like, “No, I can use this in my business meeting.” That’s @Gerard_Speaks on Instagram. If you thought any of this was interesting, it’s where I get to widen my aperture and use these magic tools on a wider purview. This was great, and I appreciate your time and giving this a voice. Normally, I walk off stage and it’s over. It’s cool to do round two with you.

I felt an immediate resonance with your energy. Everything that you talked about in the conversation came through. I felt like there was so much more that you had to share. Not that you didn’t already give us an incredible amount that day, but that there was more to be had in conversation, which is exactly what you brought in this episode. Thank you for being a host that is bringing so many of your gifts to all these domains in business, in performance, in magic, and I’m sure in your friendships. Thank you for taking the time. I enjoyed it.

You had the host energy. It was nice to be a guest. We nailed it together. Thank you, Katherine.

Thank you, David.

 

 

Important Links

• David Gerard
• Turning Pro
• A Path To Peace With Henry Shukman
• David Gerard on Facebook
• David Gerard on Instagram

 

About David Gerard

David Gerard is Silicon Valley’s premier mystery entertainer. His mix of mentalism and magic has taken him around the world, garnering standing ovations from the world’s most sophisticated audiences.

David’s background is what truly makes him unique. After a decade working in tech marketing (Google, Discord, and more) David understands the nuances of corporate life and the modern corporate audience. David also recognizes each unique and diverse corporate culture, which allows him to tailor his performance for each group. There is simply no other performer who has the corporate background and stage credentials of David Gerard.

David has performed for hundreds of companies across a variety of industries, and has entertained CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg, Brian Chesky (Airbnb) and Marc Benioff (Salesforce). He also toured with the Broadway show The Illusionists and has consulted on three seasons of America’s Got Talent.

 

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Childlike Wonder, Confirmation Bias, Host Energy, Human Experience, Sales Presentation, Tech Marketing

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