Impropod Podcast
Ep37 Magic and Mentalism - Daniel Chan
Luke 00:00:07 Welcome to another episode of the Improv Pod podcast. My guest today is Daniel Chan from San Francisco. Tell us a bit about what you do. So you are a magician and mentalist, you said. What is a mentalist?
Daniel 00:00:20 Your thoughts determine your actions. Your actions determine your habits and your habits determine your destiny. I'd like you to think of a person, a place or thing that evokes a positive thought or emotion.
Luke 00:00:33 So Daniel performed an amazing magic trick here, which is impossible to convey on an audio only podcast. If you'd like to see a video of the trick, check out the Impro Pod Instagram page.
Daniel 00:00:48 I'm going to talk about my journey to zoom and how it was just an absolute adventure and my life's journey as a magician, and how I reinvented myself on the virtual stage for our audiences today. I grew up in San Francisco and I went to University of California, Riverside. At Riverside, I learned how to juggle, and my friend who was a juggler, let me borrow some magic DVDs.
Daniel 00:01:15 And when I came back to the Bay area, I decided to get some juggling equipment, and the closest place to get the juggling equipment was the magic store. And I went into Misdirection Magic Shop on ninth and Irving, and my whole life changed because I realized that these tricks were also the secrets on sale. So I dove deep into it, started doing kids birthday parties, moved up my way to corporate events. In 2016, BuzzFeed featured me. I had a viral video in BuzzFeed. I was hacking into iPhones, I would unlock people's passcodes, and I went from a children's entertainer to one of the top corporate entertainers in the world. When the pandemic hit, I lost $8,000 in about one week. I had to refund all my customers and I went with a lot of press. CNBC featured me. Then I went into Business Insider, ended up doing Business Insider five times and then got featured in CNBC again. I was talked about going to these huge parties for billionaires. They would have Tigers. And I remember one party with one £400 tiger, three camels, five penguins, a leopard on a leash.
Daniel 00:02:39 There were so many different animals. The gentlemen, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, had an entire zoo come out to his house from there, I just started performing for a lot more billionaires, so I traveled to Shanghai, Germany, Las Vegas many times to perform. Currently, I'm working on a magic and dinner show where I partner with Michelin rated restaurants around the world.
Luke 00:03:05 And so what interested you about this podcast?
Daniel 00:03:09 I just thought that it would be interesting to tell my story to audio. And I love piano. It's something I'm not able to do, and I love music, and I love retelling my story in different ways.
Luke 00:03:28 So I'd like you to tell me a story and I'll improvise a soundtrack to it.
Daniel 00:03:33 When I first walked into Misdirection Magic Shop, he told me that there were lectures and I was like, what are lectures? You have all these tricks that you can buy, but lectures are like masterclasses where the world's best magicians are teaching. You live and they have this magician lecture circuit.
Daniel 00:03:49 I would listen to these masters tell me the best way to learn is just to get in front of people. So I went into restaurants and I would beg these restaurant owners and tell them, hey, would you like to see a free sample? They would give me a meal and I would just hustle for tips. And when I became good enough, I would book private events based on my performance. And I got so good I had to quit my restaurant job in order to gig full time and go from party to party. And when we first started, the biggest thing was calculating how I would be able to make this work. At the same time, my mom was a little bit hesitant about me doing magic full time because she didn't know of a secure or if there would be seasonal if it was a one time job. So she encouraged me to get a job at PayPal.
Luke 00:04:42 I'm gonna play some music for, you know, I'm going to go for this first time you that you experience magic.
Daniel 00:04:48 The Magic shop guy was open and just looking around, like seeing all these toys and wonder and wondering what each of these props did.
Daniel 00:04:56 And he wouldn't show you everything at once. He would just show you 1 or 2 tricks, you'd practice it and you would come back.
Luke 00:05:02 I think that's enough for the first story. So I was going to play some music now. and I'm going to go for the sense of wonderment. Right. and when you walk into this magic shop. Do you have another story you could tell?
Daniel 00:06:18 I pride myself on being a business person and I want to change and improve. But one thing that I realized was I'm very spontaneous and sometimes I say what's right on my mind, which doesn't work in all situations. So I'm at this party and a gentleman says to me, wow, you're better than this big name magician, which I'm not going to mention his name, but people have told me that this big name magician charges $100,000 for his appearance fee. Interesting. How can I eventually charge $100,000? He comes back with this guy and I'm like, is it true that this magician charges 100,000? Immediately he shuts down.
Daniel 00:07:03 And I guess that wasn't the thing to say. Right off the bat. I show him 1 or 2 tricks, then he leaves. I'm thinking this is my ideal client. So I decide to circle him like a shark following him. Later, he bites the hook and takes the bait. I do some of my best magic for 20 or 30 minutes. At the end of that, I asked this gentleman, is it true that this magician charges $100,000 for his performance? How can I do the same thing? And I realized he's a celebrity. So I decided from that point on that I would try to be as much of a celebrity and get on television and film as much video as possible. So from there, I decided my quest would be to become a better speaker and become a better storyteller. And that's how I ended up here today.
Luke 00:07:54 Tell me a bit about the atmosphere at this party.
Daniel 00:07:58 It was really elegant. A lot of these parties are very sophisticated, intelligent audiences. These people are in tech, they're venture capitalists, and they're dressed very nicely.
Daniel 00:08:10 So I have to walk up and I have to imagine myself as James Bond, trying to do a trick for them and figuring out the right opportune moment.
Luke 00:08:19 So I'm going to try and get some of this atmosphere at the party. The sophistication you're doing some tricks and this admiration that you have for this high earning magician.
Daniel 00:09:54 I like that, I actually thought that was motivational. Inspirational. It just resonated with me. Almost like a roller coaster of waves. It was like gentle rolling waves where I could resonate with the story.
Luke 00:10:10 When you remember that atmosphere and then being in this party, that music fitted with it?
Daniel 00:10:16 Yeah. That. Totally. As a magician, I get to perform for people from all walks of life, from the most humble to celebrities. And I've performed for people like Tim Ferriss, Draymond Green, John Madden, George Lucas, the founders of Google, Twitter, many of the tech companies. And it's interesting because one day I saw something on my Facebook feed where the gentleman was asking, who could you call that's the most important person? Or that would pick up.
Daniel 00:10:59 And I was thinking, boy, all these celebrities, I don't have their personal cell phone number, the Seals, I don't have their number. I've been booked through an agent, and I decided from that point on I would try to not only perform for them, but to create relationships with these powerful people. But the most important thing I found was to give value, give, and then make an ask. So to start a relationship with these people, I would have to change my entire framework with interacting and how I approached it so that I wasn't just an entertainer, how I could get in as a friend. So my goal from that day on was to perform for all these companies, from A to Z, for the founders of the company like Apple, Amazon, Airbnb and Adobe to Zillow and Zynga, and build relationships with the event planners and my clients and treat them like friends. So not only did I become a magician, I learned how to network and become a better business person.
Luke 00:12:09 So I'm going to play some music based around building these relationships.
Luke 00:12:14 The change in your mentality to go from someone who's hired from magic to someone who's really building the relationships and interacting. With that piece I just played. I was trying to channel like old magic performance, you know, the classics. And then I imagine this kind of networking, reimagining space, and then these things start connecting together and this ball appears and more and more connections happen.
Daniel 00:14:34 Yes. That worked. It totally hit the spot.
Luke 00:14:43 So what did you get out of this podcast?
Daniel 00:14:45 I feel that I need to rehearse more. I feel like I need to become a better storyteller.
Luke 00:14:51 So did you get anything out of my piano improvisation?
Daniel 00:14:54 So I'm super excited to listen to the audio recording of us doing this, and it's just so emotional listening to music. It's just part of the soul.
Luke 00:15:03 Thank you very much for being on the podcast. It's been really good. Join us next week for another episode of Improv Pod. Thanks for listening. The Improv Pod podcast is slowly becoming a global phenomena featuring guests from Barcelona to Lockhart, Texas, with stories and listeners from all over the planet, from Vanuatu to Chongqing.
Luke 00:15:24 That's why I've made this interactive map where you can listen to stories and explore their locations. Find out approximately where the guests were interviewed and the listeners are. It's a completely new way to experience the Info Pod podcast. You can explore the map at Impro Pod. Com and on the Instagram page. Would you like to be a guest on this podcast? If you're into telling stories that inspire improvised music and exploring our relationship to music, then please get in touch. Email guest at improper Comment or send a message via the Impro Pod Instagram page.