Building confidence with mentalist Oz Pearlman

Summary

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Podcast Summary: ReThinking with Adam Grant

Episode: Building Confidence with Mentalist Oz Pearlman

Release Date: December 2, 2025
Host: Adam Grant
Guest: Oz Pearlman

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Episode Overview

In this lively episode, Adam Grant sits down with renowned mentalist and performer Oz Pearlman to unpack the psychology behind confidence, risk-taking, and creating memorable moments. Recorded during an Authors at Wharton series event, the conversation blends live mentalism demonstrations, personal anecdotes, and practical advice on conquering fear and making genuine connections. Pearlman peels back the curtain on his journey from Wall Street to the finals of America’s Got Talent, emphasizing the transferable tricks and mental frameworks that foster resilience far beyond the stage.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Can Mentalists Really Read Minds?

• Oz addresses the myth: “I cannot read people's minds.”
  [02:45]
• The desire to believe in something beyond the visible motivates audiences to seek 'real magic,' even when science is powerful.
  — “People want to believe in something more than what they see. ... Even the most scientific person...has some level of wanting to know what is possible.”
  [02:48]

From Wall Street to Showman

• Oz left a finance career for magic and mentalism, eventually performing for celebrity audiences and presidents.
  [03:19]

Memorable Moment: Live Mentalism Demonstration

• [03:58–05:08]: Pearlman has Adam throw a frisbee into the audience to select a volunteer. He deduces the name of a trusted person the volunteer is thinking of with precision, showcasing his skill at reading subtle cues, not minds.
• “It doesn't say world's greatest mentalist on the book for no reason.”
  — Oz Pearlman [04:42]

Mentalism: More Than Tricks

• Intentional skills:
  Pearlman emphasizes that while he won’t reveal the “how,” his craft rests on a developed set of people skills and intuition, not supernatural powers.
  — “What you're seeing is a skill that I've learned and developed, as opposed to a prop that is helping me.”
  [07:52]
• He distinguishes between magic and mentalism, stating that memorable moments—not just tricks—are the aim.
  — “I want to create a moment that for both of them, they will talk about later, they will tell other people about.”
  [10:16]

Taking Risks and Planning for Failure

• Oz attributes his career success to “taking bigger swings than almost anyone else in my field,” and always having backup plans—though sometimes “countless.”
  [08:40], [09:53]
• He likens trick-performing to movie directing: if the audience doesn’t know the destination, failure is unseen.
  — “If we start driving and you don't know where I'm going to end up, that's...the beautiful part about what I do.”
  [09:29]

The Power of Empathy and Audience Focus

• Key insight: Focus entirely on the audience, not yourself, to be memorable and successful.
  — “The more you make the focus on the other person in life, the more success you will attain. … The person who I find the most appealing and most interesting is the person who's the most interested.”
  [12:50], [14:20]
• Relationships, from pitching TV segments to personal interactions, all thrive on tuning into others’ needs, interests, and mindset.

Building Connections: Practical Strategies

• Oz’s early restaurant magic gigs honed his ability to quickly reduce resistance and connect, such as by making quick introductions, setting time limits, and using curiosity-driven language.
  [16:40–20:19]
• He explains the importance of “eliminating every point of resistance” in any interaction, refining his approach with each rejection.
  — “I ask yourself, what does someone think about you when they meet you? ... How quickly can I do it?”
  [19:53]
• Adam and Oz discuss how honest vulnerability—and even calling out the awkwardness—disarms others and facilitates connection.
  [23:29–24:55]

Overcoming Fear of Rejection & Building Resilience

• Cognitive reappraisal: Oz details how he reframed audience rejection while young, depersonalizing negative reactions by attributing them to external factors, not his own value.
  — “I started making it not about me. ... If they didn’t like me, I said, they don’t know Oz Perlman. ... They didn’t like Oz the Magician’s tricks.”
  [25:43–27:34]
• Adam marks this as a classic self-distancing technique from psychology, calling it a “masterclass” in emotion regulation.
• Procrastination hack:
  Oz shares a personal system for overcoming anxiety-driven avoidance—setting a 24-hour alarm asking, “How do you feel about X?”—which reveals how quickly dread dissipates after action.
  — “If you could find a way to fast forward your feelings and feel the way you’re going to in 24 hours now you don’t dread it anymore.”
  [28:21–29:35]

Applying Mentalist Principles to Everyday Life

• Tactics like anticipating others’ hesitations (e.g., in job interviews) and surfacing vulnerabilities help disarm autopilot social responses and foster authentic connections.
• Oz: “Ask yourself, what can you do to make the elevator get stuck when you’re with someone else?”
  — prompting memorable, non-routine moments. [24:04]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I can’t read minds. I can read people. I can influence people, and that’s what I’m doing. It is not supernatural.”
  — Oz Pearlman [11:21]
• “The person who I find the most appealing and most interesting is the person who’s the most interested.”
  — Oz Pearlman [14:20]
• “Once you start doing that [negative self-talk] on repeat, you stop looking for the paths for where it can be done.”
  — Oz Pearlman [25:40]
• “The anxiety and the dread is not real. … That in the last two years, ever since I started doing it, has changed my life.”
  — Oz Pearlman [29:35]
• “Find some way to help them that no one else has offered. … Find what can you do to be memorable?”
  — Oz Pearlman [35:57]

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Lightning Round (Rapid-Fire and Audience Q&A)

[32:25 onward]

• Oz’s ultra-marathon experience (153 miles, slept five mins) toughens his mental stamina, making other risks feel trivial.
• Worst career advice? “Listening to haters.”
• Best reason to leave Wall Street? “You only live once. If you have a passion, go for it.”
• Most influential magician: David Blaine
• Favorite mentalist: Derren Brown
• Hardest part of his craft? “Being okay with tremendous risk.”

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Finale: Another Live Trick

[36:36–39:37]

• Oz demonstrates an uncanny ability to deduce details—like the name “Sahar” and that she’s the volunteer’s fiancée—using audience cues and psychological tactics, while breaking down his own method in real time for listeners.

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Takeaways & Actionable Lessons

• Confidence and memorable moments are not built on supernatural gifts but on practiced empathy, resilience in the face of rejection, and meticulous planning for failure.
• The most memorable people are those who make others feel seen and heard.
• Small psychological tools—like reframing rejection or using honesty to break social “autopilot”—can help anyone build genuine connections and take bigger swings in life.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Myth-busting Mentalism: [02:42–03:43]
• Live Demonstration (Frisbee Name Guess): [03:58–05:08]
• Performance Philosophy & Risk: [07:55–10:16]
• Audience Empathy & Memorable Moments: [10:04–15:41]
• Handling Rejection & Building Resilience: [25:28–28:06]
• Procrastination & Anxiety Hack: [28:06–30:03]
• Lightning Round + Audience Q&A: [32:25–36:36]
• Final Trick (Fiancée’s Name): [36:36–39:37]

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Tone & Style:
The episode sparkles with Oz Perlman’s humor and openness, Adam Grant’s thoughtful curiosity, and a sense of playful challenge. Oz’s advice is direct, practical, and layered with his performer’s charisma, making psychological concepts relatable and actionable.

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This summary captures the essential insights, best moments, and actionable advice from a truly engaging conversation on confidence, human connection, and mastering the psychology of risk.

Transcript

[Adam Grant]

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[Ted]

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[Ted]

Let'S just get the record straight can you read people's minds?

[Oze Perlman]

I cannot read people's minds.

[Ted]

Why do people want to believe this?

[Oze Perlman]

Because people want to believe in something more than what they see. Right? Science is amazing, but everybody you, even the most scientific person there is, has some level of wanting to know what is possible.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Hey, everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking my Podcast with Ted on the science of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

[Adam Grant]

When Oze Perlman left a career on Wall street to become a magician and mentalist, he couldn't have known where that path would lead. But since making the finals of America's Got Talent, he's performed for the likes of Steven Spielberg, Katy Perry, Tom Brady, and Barack Obama. I invited Oze to join me on stage in the Authors at Wharton series to talk about his work and to see him work his magic up close and personal.

[Ted]

So given that there are fans in the audience, I know you wanted to stay performing until the very end, but I'm not that patient.

[Oze Perlman]

He said, we gotta tee something up. We gotta see if you're any good. How about this? Who wants in? Who wants in on this right now? All right, let's give this a shot. You know what? Let's hit everybody.

[Adam Grant]

To pick someone for his trick. He asked me to throw a frisbee into the crowd.

[Oze Perlman]

Everyone put your hands up in defensive posture. Adam, let her rip. Toss. Who's got it?

[Adam Grant]

Then Oze asks them to think of someone who they trust.

[Oze Perlman]

I think I'm inside your head.

[Adam Grant]

And he gets to work guessing that person's name.

[Oze Perlman]

Think of the third letter of the name. Fourth letter, fifth letter, sixth letter, seventh letter, eighth letter, ninth letter, tenth letter, eleventh letter. All you were looking at, you're like, how long is this name? You panicked. You ran out of letters at a certain point. The eighth letter is when you panicked because there is no eighth letter. The name is seven letters long, isn't it?

[Vanta Announcer]

Yeah.

[Oze Perlman]

Yeah. It doesn't say world's greatest mentalist on the book for no reason.

[Adam Grant]

Oze is my favorite mentalist. He's also a very good showman and a master of building suspense.

[Oze Perlman]

This is a struggle.

[Adam Grant]

He writes a name on a small whiteboard in his lap and holds it up.

[Oze Perlman]

If everyone can see what I wrote down, say, upenn, tell us all, who did you think of? What's this person's first name that you trust?

[Ted]

Kinship.

[Adam Grant]

Kinship and the world's Greatest mentalist does it again. If you're a longtime listener, you might know that I grew up doing magic in the same Detroit suburb as O's. We bought supplies at the same magic shop, Our swim teams competed against each other, and we had mutual friends, but.

[Ted]

We didn't meet until a few years ago.

[Adam Grant]

Since then, we've been at a bunch of events together, and it's clear there's a lot to learn from him about taking risks, making memorable moments, and tuning into people.

[Ted]

You have been described as the world's greatest mentalist. What am I gonna say next?

[Oze Perlman]

Even I don't know what Adam Grant is gonna say next.

[Ted]

I didn't think it would get us anywhere, but I felt like I had to try.

[Oze Perlman]

You had to.

[Ted]

So. So I have to start by asking you if you've been avoiding me.

[Oze Perlman]

I have not been avoiding you.

[Ted]

Well, I beg to differ, because I have a very vivid memory of being 15 years old and being at diving practice, and my teammate Joe said, hey, I have a swimmer on my team at school who is also a magician. You guys would really hit it off. You should hang out. And it took us 26, 27 years after that to meet.

[Oze Perlman]

I remember Joe Lubovic. I'm calling him out. He did not tell me this. Certain nerd levels. Magician in high school is the top of the top, folks, and if you want to take it to the next level. In a chapter of my book, I recount the fact that I had waterproof cards because I thought I was wasting time in the shower, not practicing. So take that.

[Ted]

Wow.

[Oze Perlman]

And I raise you Dungeons and Dragons level right there.

[Ted]

That is a whole new level of joy.

[Oze Perlman]

That is a whole new level.

[Ted]

At least you weren't a mime, though.

[Oze Perlman]

I've never done miming. I was a clown once. I needed the money desperately, and those are dark times.

[Ted]

So you're not gonna reveal any secrets tonight, are you?

[Oze Perlman]

Lots of secrets, but not on how to be a mentalist. So guessing random things from strangers, while very entertaining in my niche, isn't going to serve you in your life. But there's a lot of skills surrounding what I do that I've distilled from about three decades of doing this that work in every facet of life, because interacting with people is what defines your success. I'm not trying to create a puzzle that that's trying to be figured out. I'm rather trying to show a skill that can be displayed and that a lot of people give me the highest compliment ever. They'll say, I don't like magic, but man, I love what you do. And that's, you don't realize, kind of a backhanded compliment because mentalism is a subset of magic. But when you see a magician and there's tricks, right? There's card tricks or there's a box and somebody puts swords in it, the question in the back of your head is always, if I had that box or if I had the deck of cards, could I do that trick too? And so where that separates with what I do is there is no thing to point at. I am the performance. So what you're seeing is a skill that I've learned and developed as opposed to a prop that is helping me.

[Ted]

I do think there's one distinction that people often miss, which is I think that mentalism and stage illusions are similar in that once you know the secret, it's kind of a bummer. Whereas with some close up magic, it gets even more impressive when it's revealed.

[Oze Perlman]

I would argue that's partially true. Some of this stuff, when you figure out mentalism, how it works, you can't believe that somebody would actually have the audacity to try to do that. So it flips towards either ridiculously easy or ridiculously crazy. Where people go, there's no way you're gonna do that on live national tv. What if it goes wrong? And I go, let's go. And that's truly been a secret to my success is the fact that I'm willing to take bigger swings than almost anybody else in my field. And so you get bigger rewards.

[Ted]

How did you build the courage to take those risks?

[Oze Perlman]

I think over time I've just realized that if I plan very effectively and learn how to plan for failure, exactly what you would think. Troubleshoots. When I go into something now, I've tried to map out and model what happens if this goes wrong. What happens if this goes wrong? What happens if this goes wrong? And also a big part of it is realizing over time that I am in control of where the camera's pointed. Think of this like a movie and a director in a movie, you only get to see the final cut. You don't get to see the other three or four endings that the director could have made. So when you see the movie, you only get one portrayal of it. Now, how does that apply to what I do? You think that you know exactly how that happened. And that was amazing. What if I told you that trick went completely wrong, but I moved you to the path I wanted, so you never knew where I was going with Something that's my advantage. Therefore, you never knew if it failed. If I set up a challenge is I'm going from point A to point B, then you know I made a mistake. But if we start driving and you don't know where I'm going to end up, that's kind of the beautiful part about what I do that's taken years and years to learn, that I don't telegraph in advance where I'm going.

[Ted]

How many backup plans do you have for a typical trick?

[Oze Perlman]

Countless.

[Ted]

Okay. Most people would look at you and say, like, being a mentalist is part of a genre of entertainment, but you don't see entertaining as your primary goal.

[Oze Perlman]

I don't see entertaining as my primary goal at all. Because pure entertainment is like watching a movie at a theater. Where you leave the movie theater and 10 minutes later, someone's like, so what happened in the movie? And you're like, I don't. How many have had that experience the next day? You cannot tell people more than the plot line on the synopsis on Rotten Tomatoes. Just. It was in and out one ear. It was entertaining, but it's not memorable. And so what I do is I create memorable moments. What are memorable moments? Now, being amazed is one thing, but I want to create a moment that for both of them, they will talk about later, they will talk about later, and they will tell other people about. And the more you recount a memory, know this, the more it gets defined in your mind. The stories you've told the most in your life are the ones that are most vivid in your mind because you've told them over and over. That's how memory works. It's kind of like, do you remember a story when you were a kid? We have a video of it, and you've seen the video so many times that you remember it so vividly. So the same thing applies to what I do. And I think that I wouldn't have a career if everybody wanted to figure it out. Because the people that really go down the rabbit and want to figure it out, a lot of them start to become mentalists. That's what I did. I'm like, I need to know how you just did that. And I am like a pit bull who's not gonna let go of your leg until I figure it out. So I kept studying and learning, and that's how it became a thing for me. But the truth is, I can't read minds. I can read people. I can influence people, and that's what I'm doing. It is not supernatural. There is nothing psychic about what I do. I have a very strong intuition. I would describe that as very different than being psychic because I've honed it. Because if you had been in front of people tens of thousands of times and had them pick a number, 1 to 100, you have such a data set that I can tell what people will do in many instances before they even know. And that's because I've done it so much.

[Ted]

Talk to me a little bit about how you go about planning a trick and creating memorable moments, because I think that's one of the real generalizable lessons is mentalism has been around for many decades. I think our parents remember Uri geller in the 70s, tricking people into believing that he could read minds.

[Oze Perlman]

Right.

[Ted]

Your performance art is completely different than what we're used to seeing from mentalists. So how did you build it? What are the key ingredients in a memorable moment?

[Oze Perlman]

My whole mindset is who cares about me, right? If you buy this book, I don't need you to be my fan. I don't want you to know anything about me. I want to know what this does for me. So that ethos of how I think about things is always value oriented and benefits oriented. The language I've used to sell since I was 14 years old and I walked up to a restaurant chapter in the book and somehow sweet talked into being a restaurant magician was never about, look how cool my tricks are. Okay? That's wrong. It's figuring out what's going on in the other person's head. Anybody here? Maybe some of you are gonna go into corporate America. Some of you are gonna startups, right? All of you should think in your mind about what the other person is. Your consumer, your boss, your colleague. The more you can empathize and realize what's going on in their mind, the stronger your advantage in life will be. Now let me give you a great example. For me as a mentalist, what do I think of when I'm pitching a TV idea? Nothing about me. I'm pitching the viewer at home and why they should care about me. So I'm gonna give you a great example. CNBC is the financial network. Fox Business is another one. How many of you ever watched CNBC or Fox Business? How many mentalists or magicians have ever been on those two networks? Do you know one, and it's me. And last year I was on this Isn't a Brag. I want you to really think about this because this does not make sense. These are serious networks. Their time on Air is sold for a lot of money to people buying stocks and bonds, trading trillions of dollars. Why are they putting me on their platform? And last year. This is a crazy statistic. Look it up. I had more airtime on cnbc than any CEO in the country. Fortune 500. Did you hear what I just said? Any CEO in the country in 2024. This guy had more time on that network than them. That is preposterous. It's not because of this pretty face. It's because everything I designed was hyper focused on the person watching the content. I didn't think about me. I thought about them. It was about stocks, it was about bonds, it was about CEOs, it was about what's the market gonna do? So somebody who turns this on and goes, who's this guy? Is captured. The more you make the focus on the other person in life, the more success you will attain. I don't mean just in your business career. I mean in your personal life. Think to yourself, how many times have you been at a party or a networking event and you walked out of the room and one person stood out to you and you go, God, that person was so awesome. What was so awesome about them? Try to define it. Try to quantify. What did they do that made you feel so special or that you liked them so much? And I've been in rooms with some of the most powerful people in the world, with Adam as well. And you've seen it and what made people stick out. I've analyzed it. And time and time again, the person who I find the most appealing and most interesting is the person who's the most interested. They've looked at me, they've seen me. They haven't been on their phone, they haven't been looking around. They're locked in on me. They ask me questions that I haven't heard before. Oh, what are you majoring in? Where are you going next year? Boring. I've heard those questions a million times. So have you. How do you stand out from others? Now? I'm not saying to be. Again, this isn't a manipulative approach. This isn't like I need to plan in advance what I'm do. This is starting to think like the other person and realizing that if that person feels seen, heard that you're interested in them, then they leave feeling great about you because you showcase the most important person in the world to them themselves. The more you can realize that every person is the lead actor or actress or in their movie and make them shine, the better you will do. That is what's allowed me over the last 20 years, since I quit my job on Wall street, to get to where I am.

[Ted]

So I have a couple reactions to that. The first one is, I was noticing your language. You're very careful about how you speak. And you said, I've been in rooms with some of the most powerful people in the world, as well as Adam.

[Oze Perlman]

Yes, Adam was with me.

[Ted]

Thank you for marking that distinction.

[Oze Perlman]

Adam was with me in the room is what I meant.

[Ted]

I really appreciated you separating me from that group of people. Thank you, Owen. Secondly, I'm thinking about some work psychologists have done to underscore your point. There's a classic Jamie Pennebaker experiment where people have to come into a group and talk to a bunch of strangers. And then afterward they're asked, how much did you like the group?

[Adam Grant]

And the more they talked, the more.

[Ted]

They liked the other people in the group.

[Oze Perlman]

Right.

[Ted]

Jamie calls it the joy of talking. And he says that most of us find that communicating our thoughts is a supremely enjoyable learning experience. Right. People, sure enough, they actually believe not only they like other people more in the group, but the more you talk.

[Adam Grant]

The more you think you learned about everyone else.

[Oze Perlman]

Right?

[Ted]

No, I think that really just probably illustrates your point nicely.

[Oze Perlman]

It's funny because a lot of the things that I learned were very body language, approach type things. So how do you know if somebody's interested? And I don't mean this romantically. It can be romantically, but you go into an interview, how do you know if that person, when you left, was really interested? Or they go, oh, yeah, we'll be in touch. Did they mean it? Did they not mean it? Right. What can you discern from their body language? And what can you do to influence them? That's a huge one. Like those tips and tricks of watching. How do you match somebody's energy at the right level, where you're not overwhelming them, but you're also not putting them to sleep? I learned so much of this, as I told you, at 14 years old. At 13, I started doing magic. There's a place on 12 Mile in Orchard Lake called Zia's. It was a Italian restaurant that every two years would close down, and every two years they'd give it a new spin, new coat of paint. It went from being Mexican to Italian. Like, somehow we'll figure out how to make this restaurant work. I needed to make money. My parents had gotten divorced. Won't give you the whole sob story. And so my mom is like, I don't have any money. You can't buy any more magic tricks. It's like 40 bucks for every trick. Deck of cards, you need to go work. So I walked up to this restaurant, ignorance is bliss. And somehow talked my way into being a restaurant magician once a week for three hours. Do you think that people seeing a 14 year old, 4 foot nothing kid walk up to you with a deck of cards, were waiting for their moment to watch you? And they had a babysitter. They're like, no, dude, get away. That was the school of hard knocks to learn what rejection feels like. It does not feel good. And so I learned all these little ways to iterate every time. Change a little variable, like a recipe, change this. Little more sugar, how's that taste? Little more salt. How's that taste? And I realized the secret sauce is. When I walked up to people, what are they thinking? When I walk up to them, I ask yourself, what does someone think about you when they meet you? And this is a tough thing to do because you're only used to being yourself. So I realized really early on that when I walk up to them, they don't know if I work there. They don't know if I'm any good. They don't know what I'm doing. And then when they figure out, oh my God, is this kid gonna stay here for a long time? We're in the middle of a conversation, do I have to tip him? Do I have money? All of these things went through their mind in the first three seconds, even sometimes before I even got to the table. And so my job became how do I eliminate every point of resistance in their mind by the time I get to the table, how quickly can I do it? I realize if I walk up to a table, watch just like this, at an angle, and just walk up like this with only one eye showing, People are less tense. It doesn't feel like you're approaching them as much as you're just stopping by. I create a very quick time limit. I go, I only have a minute, right? Right away. I set the tone. But did you hear what's going on tonight? It's your lucky night, right? When you say that, it's not a yes or no question. I learned early on, yes or no questions get me shut down. Guys want to see magic? No, but my mom says I'm really good, right? What are you going to do with that next? As soon as they go lucky night. I've piqued your curiosity. I realized that I want to establish social credibility so I would say the owner brought me in as a special treat for you tonight and I'm showing you the most amazing thing you've ever seen. Right away. The owner brought me in as a special treat. I'm here because somebody of a high level brought me in as a special treat. You're not worried about giving me money anymore? Now this is a hyper specific example to when I was in a restaurant, but you can approach the same methodology as what I just said with parts of your life. Where is it that you're gonna meet people? Where is it that you're gonna be with people you've already been with before? Not always for meeting somebody new. Some of us don't meet new people every day in life. But that's the kind of way to think about stuff where I analyze the pain points and I try to put myself in the other person's shoes.

[Ted]

Do you have trouble falling asleep at night?

[Oze Perlman]

I would say yes, but that's cause I have a six month old and my brain is racing. But I actually do have trouble falling asleep lately. Too much going on.

[Ted]

So one of the things I'm struck by is actually this is a form of mind reading, right? Because you're anticipating what other people are thinking and feeling and then you're disarming that.

[Oze Perlman]

It's called channel your inner mentalist. I'm not teaching you to be a mentalist, but the same skills really do apply.

[Adam Grant]

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[Capital One Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love, it helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

[Vanta Announcer]

In today's fast changing digital world, proving your company is trustworthy isn't just important for growth, it's essential. That's why Vanta is here. Vanta helps companies of all sizes get compliant fast and stay that way with industry leading AI, automation and continuous monitoring. So whether you're a startup tackling your first SoC2 or ISO 27001 or an enterprise managing vendor risk, Vanta's trust management platform makes it quicker, easier and more scalable. Vanta also helps you complete security questionnaires up to five times faster so you can win bigger deals sooner. The results According to a recent IDC study, Vanta customers slash over $500,000 a year in costs and are three times more productive. Establishing trust isn't optional. Vanta makes it automatic. 10,000 global companies trust Vanta, including Atlassian, Quora, Chili Piper and factory. Visit vanta.com tedaudio to sign up for a free demo today. That's V A N T A.com Tedaudio.

[Ted]

I really like your specific identifying the hesitation people have and then maybe even calling it out.

[Oze Perlman]

Right.

[Ted]

You go into a job interview and somebody asks, what's your greatest weakness? The easiest thing to do in that moment is say, you know, I bet you've had a lot of people give you fake weaknesses.

[Oze Perlman]

Yep.

[Ted]

And say like Michael Scott. Yeah, I have weaknesses. I work too hard and I care too much. I'm not gonna do that. Let me tell you about a real weakness that I struggled a lot with and here's what I'm doing to overcome it. So easy. I mean, that's exactly the kind of thing that you did as a 14 year old. Right. Like, you probably hate magic.

[Oze Perlman]

Absolutely. Vulnerability, honesty, and also thinking of shifting people out of autopilot. What is autopilot? I'm going to give you just a great example. You get into an elevator. I live in New York City. And you get an elevator with two other people. You don't talk to each other, you're looking away, you're looking at your phone. Anything to not have eye contact for those 20 seconds. Right. But what if that elevator gets stuck and then everyone pushes the button and then you're stuck in the elevator, 45 seconds. Suddenly you will talk to those other people. You might become besties, right? Oh, man, we got through it together, right? There's somehow a change in the environment that creates this moment where all of you are no longer that person you were a moment ago, even though you're the same people. What creates that? Where suddenly you act differently. You're not your autopilot self. Ask yourself, what can you do to make the elevator get stuck when you're with someone else? How do you make them suddenly connect with you in a way that they don't normally? And for me, you're in an environment where you're feeling nervous. What do you do? Tell someone. Be like, I'm so nervous right now. Man, are you too? And you opening up to somebody with a smile and allowing them to see that you're a person just like they are. I've had environments like that where that's really just taken somebody and they've identified with me and it's just broken down their walls because you don't know what to say. That's great. You know what? Lean into that. I think that that is something you can do. Like you just said that right away. Shows that you're a real person and allows people to open up to you.

[Ted]

Did you know there are two people who came here together who met when an elevator got. No.

[Oze Perlman]

I see them right there. I see them right there.

[Ted]

Talk to us about overcoming your fear of rejection. That's something that holds a lot of people back from even making the first approach.

[Oze Perlman]

I think that's the number one thing that holds people back. I truly believe that. It's internal monologues that talk you out of going for things that over and over you will say to yourself all the reasons why something can't be done. And once you start doing that on repeat, do you know what happens? You stop looking for the paths for where it can be done. Just that constant telling yourself, I can't do it, starts to limit your options in your mind. I learned this early on at the restaurants because it hurts so bad if you went to 1, 2, 3, 4 tables in a row that turned you down or were rude to you, that it just hurt. What I did around the age of 14 or 15 is I created almost like a split personality, for lack of a better term. Have a psychiatrist explain this. But I started getting really mad at the next table. I would take my anger out at them because those guys are such dicks. Like, you know what? Screw you guys, too. Like, I was being nasty to other people because I felt so angry from before. And I realized I'm not gonna be able to do this and I'm not gonna be able to get more money to buy more magic tricks. So I was very, like, incentive driven. So I started to create this excuse in my mind where I blame shifted. And this is truly a rewiring of your brain where I started saying, if they were nasty, I'd go, I bet their kid was sick. Or I bet they had a fight. Right before I came to the table. I started making it not about me. And so I started to create this thing in my mind where I took the blame onto someone else. So if they didn't like me, I said, they don't know Oz Perlman. That's Oz the Magician. They didn't like Oz the Magician's tricks. Not my bad. So I didn't internalize the hit. I didn't feel the rejection the same way. Instead of thinking of it as a no because people are being like, eh, let go of it. I would think of it as a not yet, not yet, not yet. Keep taking strides. Maybe it's not meant to be. Now rewire the way you think about it.

[Ted]

Those examples are a masterclass in making situational as opposed to dispositional attributions in cognitive reappraisal, in self distancing. All the emotion regulation techniques that we teach in psychology, you applied them without having the names for it.

[Oze Perlman]

You used much better terminology than I did.

[Ted]

They're not rejecting all of you. They're rejecting. It's a snapshot of you.

[Oze Perlman]

That's right.

[Ted]

It's like, it's the equivalent of if you took a selfie and somebody thought you were ugly. Like, you don't internalize that. Right. Like, oh, bad angle, bad lighting. And then if they rejected four selfies, now you have a problem.

[Oze Perlman]

Yeah.

[Ted]

I think the way that you separated your identity, your self image from their reactions to just this little interaction or this little performance is such a critical skill for building resilience.

[Oze Perlman]

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you have to find a way to do it. Because for me, I didn't want this to end. And I was finding myself just so hurt that you have to find a way around it. So I'll give you just another example. I am a huge procrastinator. I will keep pushing off the things I hate doing. And that has led to my detriment because I'll focus more on my strengths than my weaknesses. So over time, I've realized that's holding me down. That's an anchor on me. So I figured I have to find a way around this. So here's what I do. I swear to God, this is exactly what I do. I don't do it as often now because I've learned to internalize it. I will put an alarm on my phone for 24 hours from now. Like, I'm serious. I go 24 hours from this moment. And in the alarm I write the question, how do you feel about X1 to 10? And I write that in the alarm and I put it on. And now I force myself to do what I wasn't gonna wanna do. Send the email, make the call. I take care of business. I do the thing I didn't like. And right before I do it, I ask myself, what was the number I felt? And it's usually like, oh God, seven, eight or nine. Dread, anxiety. The next day when the alarm goes off, 9 out of 10, I don't even remember that the alarm was set. Do you understand what I mean? That anxiety, that panic, everything I felt. And now when I look at it, I go, I'm a two. So what happened? Nothing. Time lapsed. Time lapsed. Your brain didn't change. Nothing changed. Your perception of time is all that occurred. So if you could find a way to fast forward your feelings and feel the way you're going to in 24 hours now you don't dread it anymore. And that is a trick. The same way I play tricks on your mind. That is a way you can trick your mind. And once you've done that two or three times with the alarm, you will realize it's not real. The anxiety and the dread is not real. And that in the last two years, ever since I started doing it, has changed my life. I handle things much quicker. I don't delay them. Try it. You're gonna be like, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. And I know that.

[Ted]

Anticipatory emotion regulation. Well played.

[Oze Perlman]

We need to go on the road together.

[Ted]

I'm just gonna make up random words for the things you say. That sounds like the. The shoelace effect.

[Oze Perlman]

There we go.

[Capital One Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called chat concierge. And it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

[Vanta Announcer]

In today's fast changing digital world, proving your company is trustworthy isn't just important for growth, it's essential. That's why Vanta is here. Vanta helps companies of all sizes get compliant fast and stay that way with industry leading AI, automation and continuous monitoring. So whether you're a startup tackling your first SoC2 or ISO 27001 or an enterprise managing vendor risk, Vanta's trust management platform makes it quicker, easier and more scalable. Vanta also helps you complete security questionnaires up to five times faster so you can win bigger deals sooner. The results According to a recent IDC study, Vanta customers slash over $500,000 a year in costs and are three times more productive. Establishing trust isn't optional. Vanta makes it automatic. 10,000 global companies trust Vanta, including ATL, Quora, Chili Piper and Factory. Visit vanta.com tedaudio to sign up for a free demo today. That's V a n t a.com tedaudio.

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[Ted]

Lightning Round Rapid Fire Questions Quick Answers okay, you're an ultra marathon runner?

[Oze Perlman]

Yes.

[Ted]

First of all, what's the longest you've ever run continuously?

[Oze Perlman]

153 miles without sleep? I slept for five minutes. So yeah.

[Ted]

Okay. And what's the biggest lesson from that? Insanity.

[Oze Perlman]

So the ultra marathoning, it makes everything else in life easier. So when you go through that and you have these difficult, awful, horrible feelings that you want to give up and you're like, oh, that sounds really fun. Why are you doing that? Once I get through it, it's incredible. So it's the getting through it and overcoming the adversity that can't be faked. I actually prefer for it to be miserable because then it sharpens my mind for later.

[Ted]

I think this is something that people often don't understand about doing high intensity sports. I had the same experience as a diver. How could I ever hesitate to send an email or make a call or get on a stage? It will never Hurt anywhere near as much as a belly flop going 30 miles an hour. I'm like, you do that. Every single social risk you take is easier.

[Oze Perlman]

And I will never laugh as hard as seeing a strong belly flop. But no offense, but yes.

[Ted]

What is the worst career advice you've ever gotten?

[Oze Perlman]

Listening to haters.

[Ted]

Okay. What's the best reason to leave a job on Wall Street?

[Oze Perlman]

You only live once. If you have a passion, go for it.

[Ted]

YOLO for the win. Who's your favorite magician?

[Oze Perlman]

Magician or mentalist?

[Ted]

Okay, give us both.

[Oze Perlman]

Oh, that's such a tough question because that's like now you're getting to, you know, it's like your favorite song. Like what genre? This is where we get super in the weeds.

[Ted]

Most memorable magician.

[Oze Perlman]

So the person who had, I would say the greatest impact on me as a teenager and growing up was David Blaine. Because David Blaine created spectacles that would capture the public imagination.

[Ted]

So are you gonna give us favorite mentalist too?

[Oze Perlman]

Favorite mentalist. Gotta be Darren Brown.

[Ted]

Yeah.

[Oze Perlman]

So Darren Brown is a UK based guy who's kind of the og.

[Ted]

Darren Brown was my favorite until you. Okay, there are a couple of audience questions.

[Oze Perlman]

Clipping that and sending it to Darren.

[Ted]

Feel free. Audience questions that we haven't covered yet. One person wants to know what's my ATM pin code?

[Oze Perlman]

Okay, where are you? Where are you?

[Ted]

Another wants to know what's the hardest part of your craft?

[Oze Perlman]

Being okay with tremendous risk.

[Ted]

What about when all your backup plans fail? What do you do then?

[Oze Perlman]

Get more time if possible.

[Ted]

So you'll do a follow up trick? Maybe.

[Oze Perlman]

If there's time. So it's like a plane landing on a Runway. As long as there's more Runway. Right. Burn rate on a startup. Give me some more of that money. Series B, baby, so I can try to get out of it. So time is what I try to buy more of.

[Ted]

Who is the hardest celebrity or CEO to fool?

[Oze Perlman]

I don't know who's the hardest? If they're the hardest, I don't remember them. Well, I tried to PTSD that away.

[Ted]

Question you have for me, other than.

[Oze Perlman]

Me, what was the most fascinating conversation you ever had?

[Adam Grant]

Ever.

[Oze Perlman]

Most fascinating person you've ever met.

[Ted]

Oh, that's a tough one. I think the most fascinating person I have ever met actually is Brian Little, my undergrad mentor.

[Oze Perlman]

Really?

[Ted]

I have never had a conversation with him where I didn't come out with 20 or 30 new questions and I could bring up any topic and he would have something riveting to share about it. And another question then to go and seed my curiosity for a year. And he's the reason I became a psychologist.

[Oze Perlman]

I think that's incredible. And if you can find the person who's maybe who you want to be in one year or three years or five years or 10 years and win them over. And people are so busy nowadays that it's hard to get access. Right. I'm busy on this. How do you find an interesting way to get them to, in essence, give you their time? And I found that the best way to do that is you want a relationship. What can you give them? They might not want money. They're very successful. So find things that are pain points for them and offer to do it for them. And a lot of the time it's not by doing the same thing everybody else does. I want internship. I want this. Find some way to help them that no one else has offered. Think to yourself, what's the difference between amazing and memorable? And everybody in here should try to find what can you do to be memorable? So when you leave a room, wherever you are, you're the person people talk about later.

[Ted]

All right, my most important question. Do you have another trick for us?

[Oze Perlman]

Let's go. Here's what I'm do. I'm going to kind of just go across.

[Ted]

Oze picks up his book and points.

[Adam Grant]

His finger at the COVID And I'm.

[Oze Perlman]

Not going to do a full word. I'm going to go, and I want you to stop me as I go.

[Adam Grant]

He runs his finger left to right across the book cover.

[Ted]

I'm going to close my eyes.

[Oze Perlman]

No, no, no. Look, you can make a concert as I go. Say stop.

[Ted]

Stop.

[Oze Perlman]

Okay, I'm looking. And I am either on the F or the U. Raise your hand if your first name starts with an F. Right over here. What is your first name? Faheem. Fahim. Stand up for me. Let's give this a shot. Now, if I guessed something amazing about you and you didn't tell anyone about it, I have failed utterly. So if I ask everybody in this room who you would call or who you would text after this and tell them, you're not going to believe what he did. Can you right now, did someone pop into your head? You know exactly who you would call or text. Is that correct? Imagine this person calls you right now and you get them on the phone. Can you picture it? Let's see how we do here. Can you see your person?

[Adam Grant]

Yes.

[Oze Perlman]

Watch this. Faheem. Count the number of letters in your person's first name. Just count the number of Letters. Now, notice how quick he counted. Did everyone see it? He didn't struggle. If the name was very long, it takes time to count. If the name is very, very short, you instantly know it. It's typically five or six letters, but you smiled at the beginning. Five letters, isn't it? Yep, yep. Also notice where his hands are.

[Adam Grant]

Faheem has his hands clasped in front of him below his waist.

[Oze Perlman]

It's a female, isn't it? Course it is, yeah. Hands here. Typically female hands here.

[Adam Grant]

Oze puts his hands in his pockets.

[Oze Perlman]

Guy, I don't know why mix up the letters in her first name. And you stop as if we're playing Scrabble and you reach up and you Scrabble one letter out. And you have this one letter just in your mind. Do you have it? Yes. He didn't want to do a vowel. He thought, oh, that's going to give it away. And then there's five letters to choose from. But you didn't do the first letter, did you? Because he thought that would give away. But also because of the way I phrased. I said, reach up and grab one in. In, In. Makes you feel like it's in the middle. You thought of the letter right in the middle, didn't you? And you did a strong exhale. H, isn't it?

[Adam Grant]

Fahim nods.

[Ted]

Yes.

[Adam Grant]

The middle letter is H. That's right, yeah.

[Oze Perlman]

Now, at first I would have thought mom, because I'm thinking he's very close to her, but he's. No, no, no, no. Close your eyes, please. Cover them up.

[Adam Grant]

Oze starts to write something on a small whiteboard he has in his hands. With Fahim's eyes closed, Oze shows it to the audience. At the top of the board, Oze wrote the name Sahar. Below it he wrote fiance.

[Oze Perlman]

Fahim, open your eyes. What is this person to you? How do you know them? What are they to you? She's my fiance. Congratulations. What's her name? Sahar.

[Ted]

Sahar. Ladies and gentlemen.

[Oze Perlman]

Thank you, Perlman.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is produced by Ted with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glaser. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson. Our technical director is Jacob Winick, and our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Hylash, Ban Chang, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivong and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hans Dale Su and Alison Layton Brown.

[Ted]

I think I crack about 75% of your tricks and I hate it when I don't and I hate it right now.

[Oze Perlman]

Good. Boost Mobile is now sending experts nationwide to deliver and set up customers new phones. Wait, we're going on tour? We're delivering and setting up customers phones? It's not a tour, not with that attitude. Introducing store to door switch and get.

[Capital One Announcer]

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[Adam Grant]

Delivery Delivery available for select if I.

[Capital One Announcer]

See [e-mail] this episode is brought to you by Capital One Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love, it helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

[Adam Grant]

Hey, it's Adam Grant from Ted's podcast Work Life and this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into. That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 companies use the ServiceNow AI platform. While other platforms duct tape tools together, ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data workflows and AI connecting every corner of your business. And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters Most. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work.

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