Stories, insights, and lessons from a consultant who picked up a deck of cards.
I spent months asking skilled magicians how they got good. They all said the same useless things. Then I discovered that the best performers literally cannot explain what makes them great -- and that changed everything.
Read MoreWhat started as a hotel room fidget became a full-blown obsession. I went from learning shuffles to studying magic history back to the 1500s. Here's how the rabbit hole swallowed me whole.
Read MoreAfter my disastrous first performance, I made a decision that reframed everything. Not a resolution, not a goal -- a structural commitment that forced me to treat this seriously.
Read MoreI finally showed someone what I'd been practicing. It was thirty minutes of everything going wrong -- and the most valuable lesson I'd had since picking up a deck of cards.
Read MoreEveryone told me you need to start young. That the great magicians began as children. That adult beginners will never catch up. Here's why I decided they were wrong -- and what I've learned about late starts.
Read MoreFor most of my adult life, I was certain that magic was a children's entertainment -- a trivial thing. Then I discovered the real world of magic and realized I'd been seeing the lowest floor of a skyscraper.
Read MoreI was a complete beginner watching experts perform flawless card magic on YouTube. The comparison nearly destroyed my motivation before I'd even started. Here's how I survived it.
Read MoreA single bad experience with a loud, obnoxious performer when I was a kid in Austria gave me a prejudice against magic that lasted decades. Here's how that bias almost cost me everything.
Read MoreThe specific kind of restlessness that comes from being a road warrior -- and how the emptiness of hotel evenings became the perfect incubator for an obsession.
Read MoreI was a strategy consultant spending two hundred nights a year in hotels. One night, bored out of my mind, I bought a deck of cards online. I had no idea what I was starting.
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