There is a statement attributed to Penn and Teller’s creative process that I keep coming back to, a distinction so clean that it cuts through years of confused thinking about originality and creative identity. I encountered it through Pete McCabe’s writing on how they develop material, and it landed with the force of something I had been trying to articulate for years without finding the right words.
They do not turn ideas into Penn and Teller. They ARE Penn and Teller.
Read that again, because the difference is everything. The first version implies a process: here is a raw idea, and now we will apply our style to it, like a filter or a coat of paint. The second version implies identity: whatever we touch becomes Penn and Teller material because we are the ones touching it. The style is not applied. The style is inherent.
This distinction solved a problem that had been nagging at me since I started developing original material for my performances. The problem of voice. The problem of identity. The problem of wondering, with increasing anxiety, whether I had a “style” and how to develop one.
The Style Anxiety
When you come to magic as an adult — when you did not grow up watching your uncle do card tricks, did not spend your teenage years at magic clubs, did not absorb the culture and traditions of the art form through years of immersion — you face a particular kind of creative anxiety. You feel like a tourist. You have studied the maps, learned the language, and can navigate the streets, but you are acutely aware that you did not grow up here.
This anxiety manifests most acutely when you try to develop your own material. You watch other performers and see people who have fully integrated their personalities with their magic. Their style feels natural, inevitable, like the performance could not exist without that specific person delivering it. And you wonder: how did they get there? What process did they use to develop that voice?
The answer, which took me embarrassingly long to understand, is that they did not develop it. They discovered it. Or more precisely, they stopped trying to develop it and simply performed, and the voice emerged on its own.
This is exactly what Austin Kleon writes about in Steal Like an Artist when he discusses the genealogy of ideas. You are a remix of your influences. Your creative identity is not something you build from scratch — it is the unique combination of everything you have absorbed, studied, loved, rejected, and internalized over the course of your life.
You do not develop a voice. You have one. The work is in learning to hear it.
The Remix of Felix
Let me trace my own creative genealogy, because the exercise is as illuminating as Kleon promises.
I am an Austrian strategy consultant who spent years traveling, sleeping in hotels, analyzing business problems. That is influence number one — an analytical mindset that wants to understand systems, identify patterns, and build frameworks.
I discovered magic as an adult through card magic videos purchased from ellusionist.com. That is influence number two — a visual learner’s approach to a manual skill, combined with the specific aesthetic of modern card magic.
I had a negative childhood experience with a clown performer in Austria that made me see magic as “just for kids.” That is influence number three — a deep desire to prove that magic can be sophisticated, intelligent, and worthy of adult attention.
I went down the rabbit hole of magic history, tracing the art back thousands of years. That is influence number four — a historical consciousness that sees modern magic as the latest chapter in a very long story.
I co-founded Vulpine Creations with Adam Wilber. That is influence number five — a collaborative creative relationship with someone whose strengths complement my weaknesses.
I use magic within keynote speeches for corporate audiences. That is influence number six — a performance context that demands clarity, professionalism, and relevance to a business-minded audience.
I studied Pete McCabe’s scripting methodology, Darwin Ortiz’s systematic approach to showmanship, Kleon’s creative philosophy, and dozens of other sources. Those are influences seven through infinity — the collected wisdom of thinkers and practitioners across multiple disciplines.
Now: combine all of those influences. The analytical consultant. The adult learner. The person who wanted magic to be more than children’s entertainment. The history enthusiast. The collaborator. The corporate performer. The voracious reader.
That combination is unique. Nobody else has exactly those influences in exactly that proportion. Nobody else brings exactly that perspective to exactly that context. The combination IS my style, whether I consciously designed it or not.
I do not need to “develop” a voice. The voice is already there, embedded in the specific combination of experiences, influences, and perspectives that make me who I am. My job is not to create it. My job is to stop trying to suppress it in favor of someone else’s voice.
The Imitation Trap
Before I understood this, I fell into the imitation trap repeatedly. I would watch a performer I admired — someone whose style resonated with me — and I would try to perform like them. Not their specific material, but their energy, their tone, their approach.
This never worked. It always felt false. The audience could sense the inauthenticity, and so could I. I was wearing someone else’s clothes, and they did not fit.
Kleon addresses this directly. Start by copying your heroes, he says, not to pass their work off as yours, but to learn how they work. Through the act of copying, you discover what you cannot copy — and that gap is where your own voice lives.
The gap between me and the performers I admired was precisely the territory of my own voice. I could not copy their stage presence because I am not a lifelong performer — I am a consultant who learned to perform. I could not copy their ease with comedy because my humor is dry and analytical, not broad and physical. I could not copy their relationship with the audience because my relationship is that of a peer sharing a discovery, not a maestro demonstrating mastery.
Every failed imitation was actually useful information. It was telling me where my authentic voice was not. And by process of elimination, it was pointing me toward where my authentic voice was.
The Permission to Be the Combination
McCabe’s observation about Penn and Teller gave me permission to stop searching and start accepting. They do not turn ideas into Penn and Teller. They ARE Penn and Teller. Which means: I do not need to turn my material into “my style.” My material already IS my style, because I am the one creating and performing it.
This might sound like semantic games, but the practical implications are enormous.
When I stopped trying to develop a style and simply performed as myself — the consultant, the adult learner, the history enthusiast, the guy who practices in hotel rooms — something shifted. The material became more natural. The scripts became more honest. The audience connection deepened because there was no gap between the person on stage and the person behind the person on stage.
I had been standing between myself and the audience, trying to project someone more interesting, more polished, more “performer-like.” When I stepped aside and let the actual person through — with all the analytical tendencies, the Austrian perspective, the business metaphors, the genuine wonder at how this ancient art form works — the performances got better. Not slightly better. Substantially better.
The Corporate Advantage
Here is the part that surprised me most. The qualities I had been trying to suppress — the business mindset, the consultant’s vocabulary, the systematic thinking — turned out to be my greatest assets as a corporate performer.
When I perform for a company’s leadership team and frame a mentalism effect using the language of decision-making, risk assessment, and cognitive bias, the audience leans in. Not because the trick is better, but because the framing speaks their language. I am not a magician performing for business people. I am a business person performing magic. That distinction is my voice, and it connects with corporate audiences more powerfully than any traditional magic presentation could.
When I tell the story of how I studied magic the way I study any complex system — by reading the foundational texts, mapping the frameworks, identifying the principles — the audience of consultants, engineers, and executives nods with recognition. They understand that approach. They use it in their own work. And suddenly the magic is not something foreign and theatrical. It is something familiar, done by someone who thinks the way they think.
This is what Penn and Teller mean. They do not apply their personality to magic. Their personality IS the magic. And my personality — the consultant, the learner, the systematic thinker — is mine.
The Kleon Synthesis
Kleon’s “you are a remix of your influences” fits perfectly with Penn and Teller’s identity principle. If you are a remix, then everything you create is automatically a remix too. Your creative output cannot help but reflect your unique combination of inputs, because no one else has the same combination.
This means the anxiety about originality is misplaced. You are already original. Not because you have invented something no one has ever thought of, but because you are processing existing ideas through a combination of experiences and perspectives that is uniquely yours.
I studied McCabe’s scripting methodology. So have thousands of other magicians. But I am the only one who studied it as an Austrian strategy consultant who was also reading Ortiz and Kleon simultaneously while building a magic company with an American collaborator and performing mentalism in corporate keynote speeches. That specific combination of contexts makes my interpretation of McCabe’s ideas different from anyone else’s interpretation. Not better. Different. And different is the only kind of original that actually exists.
Practical Implications
This understanding has practical implications for how I develop material.
First, I stopped filtering my ideas through the question “Is this magic enough?” I used to reject ideas that felt too business-oriented, too analytical, too much like a keynote speech rather than a magic show. Now I embrace those ideas. They are not contamination of my magic — they are expressions of who I am. A mentalism piece built around a business concept is not a compromise. It is my voice.
Second, I stopped apologizing for my background. I used to hedge: “I’m not a real magician — I’m just a consultant who does tricks.” Now I own it: “I am a consultant who discovered that the principles of magic and the principles of strategy overlap in fascinating ways.” The framing is different. The confidence is different. The audience’s response is different.
Third, I started looking for material in the spaces between my influences rather than within any single influence. The best pieces in my repertoire are not pure magic, pure keynote speaking, or pure consulting. They are hybrid creations that combine elements from multiple domains. These hybrids are where my voice is strongest, because they exist in territory that only my specific combination of influences can access.
The Long Path to Self-Acceptance
I want to be honest about how long this took. I did not read a single quote about Penn and Teller and suddenly discover my creative identity. It took years of performing, failing, imitating, rejecting the imitation, trying again, and gradually accepting that the person I was trying to become was less interesting than the person I already was.
That sentence is easy to write and difficult to live. The temptation to be someone else — someone with more stage experience, more natural charisma, more years in the art — is constant and powerful. Every time I watch a world-class performer, I feel the pull toward imitation. Every time I read about a legendary routine, I wonder if I should try to develop something similar.
But the pull gets weaker over time, as the evidence accumulates that being myself produces better results than being a poor imitation of someone else. Each successful performance, each genuine audience connection, each piece of material that works because it is authentically mine — these are data points that reinforce the truth Penn and Teller articulated.
You do not turn ideas into yourself. You ARE yourself. And yourself is enough.
What This Means for Other Adult Learners
If you came to magic — or any creative pursuit — as an adult, with a career and a perspective and a set of experiences that have nothing to do with the art form, I want you to hear this clearly: those experiences are not baggage. They are your voice.
Your career is your voice. Your education is your voice. Your failures are your voice. Your weird hobbies, your niche obsessions, your professional vocabulary, your way of thinking about problems — all of it is your voice. The combination of everything you are is the combination that nobody else can replicate, and therefore it is the definition of originality.
You do not need to develop a style. You need to permit the one you already have.
That permission was the hardest thing I gave myself in my entire journey into magic. Harder than learning sleight of hand. Harder than writing my first script. Harder than performing for the first time.
But once I gave it, everything else got easier. The material flowed more naturally. The performances felt more honest. The audience connected more deeply. Because they were no longer connecting with a performance persona. They were connecting with a person.
We do not turn ideas into ourselves. We ARE ourselves. And whatever we touch becomes ours — not because we applied our style to it, but because our style is who we are.
That is not a technique. That is a truth.