This issue features all quotes from famous composers because of my new mini musical made this month and featured at the bottom of the newsletter. It is funny. You will like it.
(Photo of Paul and Jerry Springer)
Just a few days ago: Jerry Springer and I after the The Price Is Right Live – Stage Show at the Ho-Chunk Casino in the Wisconsin Dells! It is a great joy to open for this experience! He is quite polite in person, not what his television show would lead you to believe.
I have been very lucky in my career to be able to work with and interview a lot of celebrities on TV and in shows like Comic Con and Anime Expo. Earlier this month I performed at a private event and the Band Big Bad Voodoo Daddies, who I have seen in concert, were my opening act!
Currently I’m working on a new video to showcase some of my best moments with celebrities. Working with celebrities like this seems to make it easier for clients who have never met me before to value and differentiate my work from local amateurs. It is currently an 8-minute rough cut. It will be cut down to about 3 minutes. But here are some clips you might enjoy with Micky Dolenz, Danny Glover, Robbie Amell, Paris Themmen, Ronda Rousey, Sean Astin, Tim Kang, Cristina Ferreira, Mark Steines and more.
Now for a bit of advice I shared on Facebook that was quite popular among my friends so I thought you might like to read it as well. To friends who call me and say “I’m thinking of becoming a freelancer (Magician, Musician, Consultant, Actor etc.)”
Remember that time you lost your job and had to write a resume, get references, schedule lots of interviews, fill out tons of paperwork, and face constant rejection… If you really love that experience, become a freelance artist. You will be doing that 30 hours a week.
Except for those few shining and beautiful moments when friends step up and give you references, referrals, and inside info to help you land gigs with their contacts and companies.
Lesson: Being an Entrepreneur is hard. Make lots of friends, and be a good friend to them.
Friends make all the difference. Please let me know how I can be a better friend to you. I am so very grateful for your friendship.
Let me know if I can help facilitate fun at your trade shows, parties, or brighten your meetings this year, lets create days your guests will remember for years to come.
Amazing Show
LAS VEGAS: Come and see two amazing shows at The Orleans Hotel and Casino – Las Vegas August 26th & 28th that I am producing along with HypnoThoughts Live! Amazing variety acts that you have seen on TV and around the world. Tickets only $30. Two completely different line ups! HypnoThoughts Live The Orleans Hotel and Casino
“Tender” – The Musical
48hr Film Fest Salt Lake City, Utah June 3rd – 5th
Musical Theater fans!!! Watch this great mini musical about online dating. Completely written, shot, edited, and turned in within 48 hours. (I was writer, director, producer, lyricist)Watch Here
“There are no happy endings. Endings are the saddest part, So just give me a happy middle And a very happy start.“ – Shel Silverstein
I was having a discussion with my uncle about life and he pointed out that he has found that for him, beginnings are happy and endings are sad.
I took this idea and rolled it around in my head for a while, thinking about theatrical structure, leadership, and life. Some have said that a tragedy is a story where the character’s end in a predestined way due to their own inability to change. They end poorly, no matter how good of a beginning or middle they experience. In many of the Tragedies of Shakespeare, everyone we care about dies in the end. A Drama has a sad conclusion when the primary character ends with revenge, fails at their mission, dies, or gives in.
But a happy ending is often a door closing that opens a window. A happy ending is a beginning. We end with a marriage, with a birth, a new job, a new opportunity, or simply the phrase “and they lived happily ever after”. Magically transforming an ending into new beginning that is filled with possibilities. In modern movie culture these new beginnings are often inserted to create the desire for a sequel.
I have often been told by peer to dress like I am “going somewhere better later”. In essence, dress as if there is a new beginning about to happen. In my corporate workshops I teach that a leader should always have a vision for the future of how things will be. And that vision is most powerful when we are included in that better tomorrow. A vision of a new and brighter beginning. Every day is a new opportunity, and spring in particular gives us all of the messages of a fresh start and a new life springing from the cold death of winter.
This is our time to change our future, avoid the tragedy and find happiness in the optimism of a new beginning. Start today. The best place to start is where you are, with what you have.
Let me know if I can help facilitate fun at your trade shows, parties, or brighten your meetings this year, lets create days your guests will remember for years to come.
X Files stars Mitch Pileggi (Skinner) and William B. Davis (CSM) talk with Paul Draper about “The Masked Magician”, “Skepticism”, “Moon Landing Denial”, “The Magic Castle” and more in front of an audience of 5,000 fans at Salt Lake Comic Con FanX. Watch Mitch squirm.
Trade show crowd gathering and performing at the “ISC West” Security Conference at the Sands Convention Center at The Venetian, Las Vegas. Bending a spoon for a Russian engineer in the Dahua Technology booth. Watch Here
Lions roar at sanctuary near Las Vegas, but visitors are few. Make sure to stop in on your next trip. Read More
I missed sending out a newsletter in February. Did you miss me? I spent my time in 8 different states in 4 weeks and lost track of time. It made me think of the great Douglas Adams quote above.
Maryland, Montana, Nevada, Utah, California, Oregon, Idaho, & Colorado. We have such a beautiful and diverse country.
As anyone who has seen my show knows, one of my favorite subjects is lie detection, deceptive communication, and body language associated with truthfulness.
Scientific American Mind put out a fun experiment that you can try at home:
Pinocchio’s Arm: A Lie Detector Test
In short, the brain works harder when it is telling a lie than when it is telling the truth. And you can use this to you advantage to tell if and when others are fibbing!Read Here
In other news, this month I am featured in the British Magazine “Magic Seen” that is distributed in the UK and throughout Europe.
Let me know if I can help facilitate fun at your trade shows, parties, or brighten your meetings this year, lets create days your guests will remember for years to come.
March 31st the Charity that I sit on the Board of Directors for will be having their annual fundraising event. And I’ve brought up an Elvis from Vegas to perform. Please donate if you can.
A producer who recently hired me for a show in San Francisco started a Yelp Page for me. It would be nice to toss a few more up there so YELP knows that I am real. If you have a second, pop up and say something nice.
My favorite question in the interview was #6. What Piece of Advice Would You Give to Others?
1) Continuous improvement. Always look at where you can be better. Never stop developing and growing.
2) Be in the need fulfillment business. Fulfill the needs of others as a path to your success. If you can show me a need, I can show you how you can be successful if you are passionate and enthusiastic about your journey.
3) Do things that improve the world around you and make life easier, happier, and more beautiful for others.
4) Decide on a targeted clientele who you want to create for. Choose one that is successful and has money. Find out what their needs are. Write a very targeted website, postcards, letters etc. that associate your name with their need. Show that you are an expert who is absolutely focused on their industry. Then spend 8 hours per day, 5 days per week contacting these companies and offering your services. If you do that for 3 years, you will be a success.
Android: Fingerprints
I was involved in this commercial. My first paid job as a professional hand model.
I know that Christmas is over, but I didn’t send out a December newsletter and yet still wanted to share these two fun videos. So if you haven’t taken down the decorations yet, you will enjoy these.
Holiday Magic on Hallmark. Paul Draper Chanukah & Christmas Miracles
Space Archeology: The winner of the 2016 TED One Million Dollar Prize!
This changes so much of the journey of Archeology. When I was in University, it was all about reading the oral histories, interviewing the local people, walking the terrain to find any signs of habitation, waiting for a wind or rainstorm to reveal things and then digging in tiny one foot by one foot squares until you find something. Now we can find lost civilizations from space . Wow.
Driving on a moonless night from San Fransisco to the capitol of Nevada in Carson City, I found myself sliding through a heavy snowstorm, surrounded by fog, down an icy hill in a thick forrest outside of the small town of South Lake Tahoe at 7,000 ft. elevation. My headlights went off, as did the lights on the dash. I was sliding in snowy darkness unsure if I would hit into a tree, a stone wall, or fly off the edge of a cliff.
Eventually, the car came to a stop without incident in the darkness and I used my cell phone flashlight to help guide me as I pushed it off the side of the road. Fortunately there were no other cars on the pass. And I was so grateful that my grandmother had insisted I go home and grab a coat before I begin this journey. It helped as I pushed the car in the snow and then waited 4 hours for a tow truck to arrive.
Sitting in the cold car, in the darkness, I had time to think about the major events of my life the last few months since the last edition of this newsletter.
Most of them have to do with Life, Death, and Meaning.
DEATH
A few days ago I celebrated The Day of the Dead in the Mission District of San Fransisco. Before that on Halloween night I performed a Theatrical Seance in front of a sold out audience in a historic theater attempting to bring Houdini through the vail and back from the grave. He died at the age of 52 on Halloween night. 52 years later I was born. Coincidence? 😉
24 hours before that show I was the murderer in a Murder Mystery created for PBS and held at the Smithsonian approved Mob Museum in Las Vegas. That event took place the same day I had performed on stage at Sam’s Town Casino for a mostly retired crowd of over 800 Las Vegas Locals.
LIFE
However, the event where I learned and changed the most was a few days before that while in Florida working with one of the top 100 Hospitals in the nation. They have made it their goal to save more lives, extend life, and help their community have longer happier lives. And they have charged me with helping them in several small ways on that journey over the past 5 years.
Part of my job is to help identify the culture of the staff and help create a more compassionate workplace where we strive to take care of each other so we are better at caring for others. This includes work on communication skills, diversity training, managing change fatigue, and learning what respect for people really means from a leadership perspective.
I always start with asking the teams to build the rules for our days together. Rather than handing them a rule book, we choose what kind of community or tribe we want to create. This group created rules that resonated with me:
If you are speaking, be honest. Find ways to let others know that you respect them, that you are willing to help them, And that you will keep them safe. Participate to your full ability. Be honest about your full ability. pursue happiness. Create moments of fun for others. Start on time. Take breaks. Eat, drink, and take care of your body. And use your cell phones as little as possible.
I didn’t create these rules. They did. For at least 2 days they lived by them. Perhaps they still do, on their floor and in their department. It is amazing how wonderful and free people are when given the right tools, the right environment, and the right mindset.
MEANING
If we really learn how to live, and live well by caring for others, we don’t have to fear death.
Let me know if I can help facilitate fun at your holiday parties or brighten your meetings this December, lets create days your guests will remember for years to come.
“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” -Marcus Garvey
French botanist Jacque Barrow said: “A farmer grows a multitude of identical anonymous plants together in a field, and a gardener cherishes each plant individually.”
The above quote struck me in a profound way this month. I am in the final preparations to be the keynote speaker for a very large medical leadership conference in the Intermountain West for IHC. My topic is “Creating Culture: Extraordinary Engagement from our people”.
The reason this quote hit home is that no matter who we are working with, in any profession from students, to sales teams, to nurses and patients, we have to decide if we see people as our products for income – like a farmer. Or if we see them as individuals with unique needs and qualities that make them important as individuals as a gardener with a garden would treat them.
Last month I had the honor of stage managing a crew of theatrical professionals as they produced 6 shows in 3 days for an audience of over 1,500 people. Our cast included David Copperfield and many other great luminaries of magic and its allied arts. A week later I headlined on the very same Vegas stage with my own show. It is amazing how thinking like a gardener and treating each team member as an individual of value and honoring their expertise produced shows where the qualities of each team member shined and a superior product was produced.
The most valuable person to everyone you meet is themselves. The most magical name they have ever heard is their own. And the most important story is the one they are about to tell.
Want to have an exceptional life. Care about people individually, remember their names, and listen more than you speak. Treat each person like a spectacular part of your garden. And not a line of identical crops. They will bloom into incredible friends who will gladly share their extraordinary skills and talents.
I’m never too busy for your referrals, especially for Halloween events and Holiday parties.
Stay creative, innovative, and keep practicing whatever you are passionate about!
There is no frigate like a book To take us lands away, Nor any coursers like a page Of prancing poetry. — This traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of toll; — How frugal is the chariot That bears a human soul. -Emily Dickinson
On The Lighter Side
Adorable little girl on stage in my Las Vegas show at The Orleans Hotel and Casino.
And this is an article from Forbes Magazine that my friend Donal Chayce shared with me that really resonated. A good list to think about: 11 Secrets Of Irresistible People
It looks like I am the closing event for Utah’s largest Convention with over 120,000 attendees. This marks my 3rd appearance filling a 3,000 seat showroom to overflow each time, so get there early. My show is Saturday night September 26th at 8pm
I will also be the Emcee for the 3,000 seat room 355 for the entire run of the convention. The celebrities I am hosting include major stars of Film, TV, and Print including: Linda Blair from the Exorcist, Joel Hodgson the host of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Vic Mignogna from Dragonball Z, and Animaniacs Live!
