Well, one you're building a relationship to, you're showing them things that they typically can't see elsewhere. I do pickpocketing, and I do iPhone effects or smartphone effects that happen on their phone. So in Porter's Five Forces, you learn about
threats of substitutions. And quite frankly, there's not a lot of threats of substitution syndrome, a lot of people doing what I do, specifically the pickpocketing, the iPhone effects, and even the personality because they're not getting a cheesy comedy magician. I see. So many magicians do this cheap laughing and I just said, I'm going to lean into being a little bit more serious and being like a mind reader character, which is something refreshing when you've seen so many bad hokey acts to
me, I've seen a lot of it. And that's great. If you're like young and you see it, you'll laugh at it. But for someone who's seen a lot of magic that gets old and a lot of guys I know, they actually see a lot of magic, so they want to see something different. There are super fans of magic out there. There's guys who love Penn and Teller fullest. They're CEOs. And those are the guys that I want to fool.
This is The MindShift Podcast where we share real stories, real strategies that will help you find real success. This is the place to hear from people just like you who have taken their ideas, goals and dreams from a point of inspiration to realization or when life knock them down from a point of breakdown to breakthrough. I'm your host Darrell Evans. Let's get started with today's episode.
Daniel Chan is an internationally renowned award winning magician and mind reader. He's a pre IPO PayPal and magician who's pivoted to zoom and who has performed over 380 virtual shows since last year. Before the pandemic, no one would even think of hiring a magician over zoom. Honestly, magicians didn't even think performing over zoom would work. At the same time corporations were out of necessity needing to spice things up on their zoom meetings during the pandemic.
Daniel became one of the few magicians to realize the advantages of a virtual performance outweigh the disadvantages. Now he's doing up to 52 shows in a week. And even 12 in a day, that would have been impossible in person before the pandemic. Daniel Jan, welcome to the MindShift Podcast. How you doing, sir?
I'm doing great. Thanks, Darrell. Awesome.
Where are you joining us from?
Fremont, California.
Fremont, California. Man, you've got an interesting story, man, this is extremely exciting. And when your folks reached out to us, I just was like, he's a what? He was pre IPO at PayPal. And he's a magician and a mind reader. What? Introduce yourself to our audience, my friend.
Yeah, I have been doing magic for the last 20 years, over 20 years, probably 5000 Plus shows 250 to 350 shows a year, since March of last year, we did over 400 virtual shows. Google has hired me over 40 times LinkedIn, Salesforce, Uber, Lyft. Those people all have hired me over six times.
Wow, that's amazing. Well, you know, I got to just jump in with the first question that begs to be asked, and that is, how does a guy go from pre IPO and a startup called PayPal, which everyone knows the story there? If you don't know, PayPal? Just Google it, you'll figure it out. First of all, what were you doing at PayPal,
I was a financial operations rookie. Okay, I was also in customer service before that. So whenever we verified a bank account, we would, some people would send in these amounts like 14 cents in one sense. And they would send it back to us, but we really gifted it to them. And they did not have to pay it back. It was just one way of verifying your bank account. And I would credit it to their accounts manually, then I would have to make a spreadsheet and then drive the check or the coins over to
Silicon Valley Bank. And by the end of the day, I was just sitting around by one or 2pm I was completely bored. And I'd have to wait till 5pm before I'd leave. So I was completely like, and I wasn't seeking to do more work. I was just like, Oh, I got stock options. I invested 13 months in my stock options. And because we had a burn rate, and we were losing money, like most startups, which I didn't realize was the norm. I was like, let me get off the Titanic. Wow. And we
found out it wasn't a 10. Yeah, again, for those young people who don't know what PayPal is they own Venmo. So if you use Venmo, yes, you have PayPal, and they used to also work with eBay.
Yeah, one of the leading payment providers, one of the early states earliest age, I can't think of another company that was doing what they were doing before they were doing it. Of course now digital payments are becoming happening pretty much that is the culture today. interesting stories. Did you go through school? Did you go through college to get to that type of position?
I joined us customer service, but what I ended up doing on my interview As I just showed the magic, and you would not believe magic open sub so many doors. That's hilarious. Once they found out I was a magician, like they didn't ask any other questions. They're like you're hired. And they actually asked everyone from like the other room to come in and say, we hired a magician. And they literally said that, and I was like,
That's hilarious. So how long you've been doing magic professionally now for 20 years? But when did magic start?
Yeah, it was on and off, I would see things like David Copperfield when I was a lot younger on his specials, for television, and then I go to theme parks, the magic bug really bit when I went to the magic shop, and I saw everything around. It was like, What is this? What's that? And you'd
look all around. And in a good magic shop, you just like, if it's like a candy store, you're just looking around wondering what is this and there's so many gadgets, I felt like James Bond, sometimes when I went into events, when I started early on, when I was using lots of gimmicks and gadgets. Now I just can walk in with a deck of playing cards and not be like this James Bond person, but just do the pure sleight of hand.
Wow. You know, interesting, I've sat through a number of magic, shows, tricks, different things like that. But I don't know if I've ever really come across someone with your specific background. And now that you're here on the show, you know, I've got you cornered. So I'm asking some tough questions. First of all, when you perform the magic, how do you get so confident that it's going to go right,
you realize that it can go wrong, and you create out some precautions. And when something goes wrong, you want to practice it in front of a small group, when I teaching someone I say, do something for someone that you'll never see again, because you're not going to feel self conscious. Because if I'm not going to see you again, you're not going to say oh, he messed it up. So I would go up to like, my waitress, or the person checking me in, and believe it or not, they would be
like, Wow, he's a magician. And you would just open up doors like, I fly and when I'm flying, and I fly commercial, and I fly in, in the economy. But when I show the stewardess something, I've gotten ice cream from first class, you don't get ice cream normally, but I get a lot of really cool stuff. And it's just by showing random people this delightful moment that they
typically never get to see. And then as you get better and better start showing your things that you've shown to other people, I start on the streets. If I do a new effect, I'll practice as much as possible, then I'll just beta test it on the streets. And that's what I did with my son. My son is 13 years old now. But by age five, he was juggling three bonds. By age eight, he was juggling five balls by age 10. He was juggling three flaming torches and
picking pockets. By 12. He already had two national television appearances.
Dang. So your son, how old is he?
He is now 13 years old. And he started at pretty much five years old was when he started performing on stage with actually doing stuff besides handing the props.
Did he get interested in magic? Because he saw you doing it? Or did you just figure like, it'd be a cool thing to teach.
I am a little bit of an Asian Tiger dad. So I just forced him to do it. And he did not want to do any of it. And he hated it. And we fought for like about a year. And then when he st performed for the first time, people are giving him money. And like when he realizes what money is he made $120 within two hours street performing.
Wow. Wow. My first thought comes to the is it promenade up there? Where are you familiar with what I'm talking about?
Yeah.
Okay.
Santa Monica. Yeah. The promenade. I've seen performers there. But I St. Performed at first in San Francisco's Union Square. And now I typically go to Palo Alto because there's actually more money influencers and tech people and venture capitalists there. So it's just a more high end. Yeah.
Hey, I like your data. You're smart, you like to let me get to where the money's at. Interesting stuff. So what pushes your buttons when you're at PayPal? That gets you to leave PayPal and say, I'm going to do magic full time? Or was that the transition?
I was bored. Like literally, I was just like itching to get out of there. They had video games that kept me there, the vending machine, ping pong tables and other things. But every spare moment, I was just trying to like, go play and go goof off. I mean, when you're a magician, you literally get paid to crash parties and full people. So I love playing pranks on people, and things like that. So even with the stock options, it couldn't keep me there. I totally knew what my purpose
was. And I totally knew that I would have to take some sacrifices and just kind of bite the bullet.
You know, it's a great point that you just made right. You said your board. And I think when you're listening to this, a lot of people listen to the show or wanting to be an entrepreneur. They've been in corporate America for 510 1520 years. They've been experts and they really are just done with it. Right but they don't know how to make the leap. A couple questions that come to mind is obviously you've got a master
skill set in magic. My first question is, what are you doing to refine and continue to master the craft,
there's a lot of new things that I'm working on. But as you become more established your product cycle or your service cycle becomes longer. So I'm not adding a lot more in, it's actually finding new audiences. And I believe with Zoom, I will be able to do shows for 100 to 500, plus people, ticketed shows. Wow, wow. So that is something that I'm trying to push toward. And that's why I'm going for this global reach, because people don't realize that Zoom shows are actually very powerful.
Talk to us about that a little bit. Because you know, the pandemic and obviously, I read your background and bio, you got started with the virtual obviously, as everybody did, a lot of people had to go to zoom to do anything. What is it about virtual presentations and or performances for you that you feel are as effective as being live in front of someone?
Well, a small trick can play a really big, right, I can do something really small, and people will be intrigued with it. And I can bring it close
to be able to perform that many times over and over again and keep refining your production and keep refining the product. How many tricks is that the right phrase? Is that a trick? Or what do you call it?
I look at it as nail routines because they work together.
So Daniel, the question that I wanted to know was literally about your practice routine, and how many hours it takes to go in and practice all of these different routines and become the master skills that you have today.
Yeah, you will have to practice between four to eight hours a day. And that's at a conservative estimate for many of the high level things that I do. But there's also the presentation part where you have to get in front of a real audience. So right now I have a product I can do for the rest of my life, which is just honing the little beats, there's certain parts when I'm waiting so that I don't talk over the audience. Or when you say the punchline of a joke, you don't
go over them. And that takes just live experience. If I'm not changing my show, I really don't have to practice that much. It's more about memorizing the script and seeing what I do wrong in a show and reviewing the footage. So the sound bites come out a lot better, because a lot of what I'm doing, the technical thing has been mastered, you know, 1020 years ago.
Wow. So at the beginning 4 to 8 hours a day. So for you listening on the other side of this, you know, we talked a little bit about the idea here on this show, I use the phrase, do the reps, like at some point, you're gonna have to do the reps and the reps don't come. They're not just overnight, you're going to put the time in, it doesn't matter what you're good at. It's going to take the time. Let me ask you this. Why do you think Google and these companies have you
back over and over? What's that unique thing that they take away from your performances, that's like, man, Daniel has to come back?
Well, one you're building a relationship to, you're showing them things that they typically can't see elsewhere. I do pickpocketing and I do iPhone effects or smartphone effects that happen on their phone. So in Porter's Five Forces, you learn about
threats of substitutions. And quite frankly, there's not a lot of threats of substitution syndrome, a lot of people doing what I do, specifically the pickpocketing, the iPhone effects, and even the personality because they're not getting a cheesy comedy magician. I see. So many magicians do this cheap laughing and I just said I'm going to lean into being a little bit more serious and being like a mind reader character, which is something refreshing when you've seen so many bad hokey acts to
me, I've seen a lot of it. And that's great. If you're like young and you see it, you'll laugh at it. But for someone who's seen a lot of magic that gets old and a lot of guys I know, they actually see a lot of magic. So they want to see something different. They're super fans of magic out there. There's guys who love Penn and Teller fullest. They're CEOs. And those are the guys that I want to fool.
This is an interesting thing about entrepreneurship, right? The tactical, the skill, but then the performance, right? There's a skill, which is tactical and behavioral and repetitious and building on practicing that skill in that craft. And then there's the performance side, which is a bit more creative, a bit more of an art, compare and contrast what it takes to learn from the technical into this more artful performance. Like how did you develop the skill to
do that? You said some things that were interesting, like, you know, when you deliver the punch line, not to go over top of the audience, but how did you go about learning that transition from the tactical to the creative?
Yeah, I think the creative can be broken down, because there's structure so I learned 10 versions of a similar effect, like there's an effect called triumph in magic. And I actually know 10 versions of it, but lots of people think it's luck or they copy a master but if you really analyze it, there are reoccurring themes, like within storytelling, beginning, middle and end. There are also tools in a toolbox that magicians can approach some of Don't even consciously know that
they're doing it. But when I break it down for them, they're like, Wow, that is why you are a master. Because you can break it down so that anyone can learn it. A lot of people don't realize the steps, and they don't even understand consciously what they're doing. And teaching is different than doing. And teaching takes a
higher level. A lot of people say, those who can't do teach, I think those who teach effectively can pass it on, and they can dig down deeper, so that they themselves can take the art form to the next level.
Yeah, I love the way you broke that down. You know, there's a thought that comes to mind as I think about your entrepreneurial journey, because so you're working for pre IPO, you leave you started as a magician, so you've got the skill set. And now you've got to earn the money. Take us back to getting your first performance
for pay. Because I think a lot of people listening to this show, they may be just getting started a business or they're maybe thinking about changing careers following their passion. They're bored like you are. And I know I've been in many passwords for me, it's sometimes hard to figure out how to get that first sale, how'd you get that first paid performance?
Yeah, I just went on Craigslist. That was one of the tactics, but there's lots of tactics you can use, I street performed, and I knew I was good. And people said, Hey, if you go street perform, that's a good way to earn your chops, then I ended up working at restaurants, they would give me a meal plus $50 An hour or something like that. And I don't even remember, but I think it was something like Craigslist.
And then quickly, you're online, and you realize that Yelp is a driver, and you just always online figuring out where things lead, and you also talk to other people in your industry. And I recommend talking to people who are a lot older who are about to retire because they want to give back. Sometimes when you're at the same age, you're like, you feel like there's a little bit of competition. Yeah, so there's going to be a little bit more of
a tight lipped thing. So it's knowing who to ask, and knowing how to ask and knowing when to ask, if you're asking me and my peak, I probably wouldn't have shared the nuggets that I'm sharing now on this podcast, which is a lot of what's happens is you need the marketing behind it. There's so many great magicians who are technical and who are artists, but they are starving. Because show business has two words show business. The business part is twice as long as the show
And harder. I love that part. I love that part. And you know, that actually brings up the next question, because you talked about marketing and how to get out there. So I love the idea of the hustle, right starting on Craigslist pitching people their understanding the other mediums the street performance, and in moving into Yelp and other types of digital mechanisms. But here you get picked up by Business Insider and a lot of tech
magazines. So how does one go from street performing and, you know, restaurants and getting a meal and 50 By the way, I love eating so restaurants is a good place to go. But how do you get picked up with all this PR and end up in these big magazines,
LinkedIn and Twitter and engaging with journalists not just clicking like but when I first picked up a journalist in 2016. I just mentioned Hey, I worked at PayPal pre IPO and I'm a magician would you like to crash a party and I brought in the journalist to a party. And he was like, wow, this is so cool. Let's feature you. And then they said we'll make a video on you. So that that was my first big feature in Buzzfeed. I've been on television like on Bay Area Backroads on ABC SEVEN NEWS and
local things. But when that BuzzFeed article, it changed the trajectory of my career. And then last year, I got featured in CNBC. And then the hustle featured me which went out to 2 million inboxes. Wow. And from there, I booked about 20 or 30 events just on the virtual platform. So I had this Head Start by understood the
importance of scalability. Once I was on Zoom, I was like my clients are calling from all around the world Malaysia, US India weddings, I did congressmen, Salesforce, it was just a first mover advantage was a thing that I knew I needed to get. And I just needed that Head Start and I knew media was the way to get there. Wow. But learning to give, give, give, and then make an ask and talk to reporters in their terms. Instead of just saying I can do
this. It's I thought your readers might enjoy hearing my story, and then keeping it very concise in terms of sound bites. If you're on LinkedIn, they only give you certain amount of characters if you're not connected with them. So for me, I linked to one or two articles that said Business Insider BuzzFeed or related to what they were writing about and everyone now is writing about Elon Musk and you FPSO so I actually can say, Hey, would you like to hear when I met Jeff Bezos at this
place? Would you like to hear about how I performed 4 billion years in Sun Valley, Idaho at the Allen company's annual gathering. And that just happened two or three weeks ago. So all the reporters are covering this thing. I was there close to 10 years ago, yeah, performing. And there's Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, but they love they're like, Oh, what
happened at this conference. And I'm like, I can tell them some old news about how Phil Knight was their CEO of Nike, and they design your own Nike shoes, they had their own monopoly boards that were custom made. And reporters love this gossip.
Some people don't realize the power of trending news or trending individuals influencers. In my academy, we teach something called the draft technique. And that is when you're a nobody, you have to draft off of the influence or celebrity of the somebody who's speaking to your customer, or the somebody who has everyone's
attention. And so in the marketing sense, what I'm hearing you say is, okay, you found the journalist, but it wasn't enough to just say, Hey, I'm Dan, I'm the magician, and you should cover me, it's like, Hey, I see that you're writing about Elon, for example. And what you'd like to know about the time when I met Elon, I happen to be a magician, or whatever that may be. So that's a very, very cool tactic. And we call it the draft technique.
It's a low friction way to sort of get into the crosshairs of someone who can can push your message or bring you to the front says extremely smart strategy, extremely smart. And I know you've gone on to do a lot more, you know, I'm curious, in the few minutes we have left, what keeps you going today in magic,
just wanting to get to that legendary status. And also, you know, I want my wife and my kids to be proud of me. Because I realize that people are looking up to me, there's not a lot of Asian American magicians, even magicians to begin with. And being able to do it for a living full time shows that other people can do it as well. But you just have to be that leader and be willing to give back. So what motivates me is just wanting to see other
people succeed. If you make it to the top of the mountain, you have a responsibility to throw down a rope. And I'm just going to throw down a rope and let people know it's possible.
I love that. What's your biggest challenge that you face today, as both an entrepreneur, a performer and a technician
doing too much, because I have so much opportunity, I'm talking to unscripted reality people, I'm looking at dinner show opportunities I'm looking to bring in investors. So sometimes when you do too much, you realize that some of what you're doing is watered down or you're just hitting these first spaces. And one or two times you're realizing I could have hit a home run or it could have done something a little bit different. What if I didn't do kid shows, maybe I could have
been the next David Blaine. Or maybe I could have done something else. You're just looking at, man, there's so much opportunity, the key to success is focus. And the key to focus is saying no, and I have trouble saying no to all these opportunities, because I'm just swamped in opportunity. I recently filmed a couple things I talked to you about was this farm to table experiment. And I'm questioning myself, I did a great job in it. But I'm like,
was that a home run? Or was that just the first space?
Man, so many great points that you made there? And there's just one more question that I definitely have to tie into that. You know, you're Asian American. You said it earlier when you taught your son to start with magic. And I think you would describe it as you said you forced him to do basically more or less. I'm curious, how did you overcome those naysayers? Who were like, Damn, what are you doing going down this path of magic? Because I know you had to have quite a few.
Yeah, one or two and family who said I would never pay you are duller to do what you're doing that made me play way too conservative with one of my uncle's who said that. And once I started listening to other people who believed in me, but wasn't just blowing smoke up my ass. That's when I started realizing, hey, I can do this, and I can swing for the fences. That's awesome. And if you're not going to swing for the fences, you're not going to make that home run, you got to
actually try to swing. If you don't believe you can do it, you're going to only try 50% or 25%. And when someone is trying 100% and 110% and you're trying 50 They're gonna outrun you and they're gonna outperform you. And that's the problem is, people say, I can't do it and they're only going to try halfway. Imagine that you can actually do it but grab that low
hanging fruit. Then bring that ladder out and climb up that ladder and go for the high hanging fruit but be able to grab that low hanging fruit.
Great advice. Daniel, where can the listeners find out more about you because a couple of things you also teach people how to do What you do if I'm not mistaken, right?
Yes, I do I on take lessons, yeah, as a magician, but that's only a side hustle because I love giving back that does not pay the bills make so much more doing corporate events, which you can find out more about Dan Chan, magic.com, and millionaires, mentalist.com, millionaires, plural. And that has all my Zoom shows.
Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, we're definitely gonna link that up. For those listening. We had an unconventional conversation, not something that you might find here, typically in the mind shift podcast. But what I love about Dan's story is number one, he was bored. He had a job, but he was bored. Sometimes that's all you need is I call it a triggering event. A lot of times, you're listening, and you have a triggering event, and you just don't act on it. He knew what his purpose was. We didn't
get into how he knew that. But he had an itch, he had an idea. He's like, I've got to follow that passion. He gave up money, he gave up all of this, he had to go through ridicule. And I love Dan story in the fact that he's not only been successful in becoming a master craftsman technician at what he does. But he's also mastered the art of performance. And then when the pandemic hit, right, the pandemic hit and said, everyone, the world on fire, right, he
figured out how to adjust. And so I love stories where entrepreneurs know how to pivot. And now he even sees a bigger opportunity there than probably he would have ever seen before the pandemic. Dan, I thank you for the time. Hopefully, we can have you back on the show in the future. Amazing, interesting, thoughtful, creative. I mean, I can go on and on and on to describe you. But listen, last question is, if for whatever reason, today was your last day on this beautiful place we call
earth? What would you want everyone to remember you for
being kind. And also, I want them to remember my kids that I was a good father, and that they saw that I left something for them, because I feel like you pave the steps for the next generation. So we stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before us and hopefully, you'll see some great things where my son goes way beyond what I've already done.
Well said, Dan, thank you for being on The MindShift Podcast. Really appreciate having you here.
Thank you, Darrell.
Hey, my friend Thanks again for listening to today's episode of the mind shift podcast. Listen, let's not have the conversation in here. Connect with me on social at Mr. Darrell Evans on almost all the platforms. Until next week, remember you're just one shift away from the breakthrough you're looking for.