Episode 180: Learn the “Magic Moment Mindset” to Elevate Your Life with Jeff Kaylor

[INTERVIEW]

 

Jon: Here we go. Achieve Your Goals Podcast listeners, Jon Berghoff here. This is an episode that I know about 300 to 400 of you are going to be especially interested in either because you met Jeff Kaylor. He was a world-renowned magician. I was about to say musician. That might be true also. Jeff, do you play any musical instruments?

 

Jeff: I do. I play the piano. I couldn’t about a year ago and now I can. I can explain it later though.

 

Jon: All right. We might have to ask you about that. Well, what I want to say, Jeff, is first of all, thank you for being here and thank you for delivering not only an incredible magic at our Best Year Ever Blueprint Event last year, you’re going to be coming back this year, but you also brought with it a message about how we approach life and I am so pumped for this community to get to hear from you today because you’re on fire. Everything I hear and just now chatting with you, you’ve got so much going on. You’ve got a documentary series that is being filmed and they just finished filming at your Magic Estate and we’re going to ask all about that. And then you, I think, you’ve done magic in 20 some countries. You teach magicians. You have different courses that you brought in to corporations, to students and so there’s a ton of wisdom that I know you could bring to us from your journeys. But before anything, I just want to say, again, thank you because what you delivered at our Best Year Ever Blueprint Live experience last year was amazing and I can’t wait to have you back this year. It’s going to be awesome, man.

 

Jeff: Thank you.

 

Jon: Yeah. Hey, so let’s start here. Let’s start with how did magic start for you. How did magic show up? Were you a kid? Where you older? Where did this all start?

 

Jeff: Yeah. So, I was in about elementary school and I got some books and things like that but so I was really interested in it but I kept it to myself and then I had a teacher when I was in high school and you could do anything for extra credit as long as you stood up in front of the class and presented it.

 

Jon: Nice.

 

Jeff: So, for me, I was pretty shy at the time but I needed extra credit so I got up and I presented it. It went really well, helped my grade and then I ended up going to – I had another class and so the teacher, Mr. Eastman, he found out about it and he loved magic so every time I’d walked by, he would be there and he would pull me into class and have me get up and do it and do a trick or two.

 

Jon: That’s how it all started?

 

Jeff: That’s how it all started. And then I went to college and I went to college to play lacrosse, to play sports and instead of going out and drinking all the time, I just got a lot better at magic.

 

Jon: Nice.

 

Jeff: Yeah. So, I actually don’t drink and so instead I just – because I’ve always been a leader and things like that. So, instead, I just started to pursue magic and I didn’t think it would turn into what it has today but yeah.

 

Jon: That’s really cool. Magic is one of those things I feel like every kid at some point in their childhood gets really interested in magic. For me, I think my parents took me to see David Copperfield.

 

Jeff: Your member what age that was?

 

Jon: I think it may have been in the late 80s and I remember he had a TV special where he walked through the Great Wall of China.

 

Jeff: Yes. So, I saw him. He was actually another part of the reason I love magic, Copperfield and David Blaine. So, I saw Copperfield when I was in – it was sixth grade. I went to see him in Boston and it was just I remember like they’re in intermission walking out of there and be like, “What the?” Yeah. Everything was – I was so blown away.

 

Jon: Yeah. That’s really cool. Okay. So, it started there for you and now you’re training magicians. You’re delivering at events like ours at The Best Year Ever Blueprint Event. You know what would be cool to hear? What are some of the lessons that you love to share through your magic? And what I mean by that question is last year at our Best Year Ever Blueprint Event in San Diego, you not only entertained us and we had a great time but you also taught us about the power of creating great moments for others in our lives and for our listeners regardless of the type of goals that we have. That’s the kind of capability that we all could benefit from and there might be lessons that go way beyond or outside of that but what are some of your favorite lessons or experiences to teach or bring to people when you’re out there doing your magic?

 

Jeff: Yeah. So, I created the Creating Magic Moments Experience so to speak that you guys saw. You saw about half of it at Best Year Ever Live but when I created it, I had to actually create it for Disney. I’ve gone in front of Disney doing magic and then a couple of their departments were doing these town hall meetings and they asked me to come speak and I agreed to do an hour and a half speech without having done a speech before that. So, I walked out of the room and I was like, “What did I just get myself into?” And so, I had to think about like what I’ve learned throughout the years through magic and through creating products for magicians and I ended up creating this process that allows you to create magic moments to make people feel the same way you feel when you see a magic trick and this can be applied to your relationships, to your customer experience.

 

But what I teach is a four-step process. The first part is called the Magic Moment Mindset and it’s all about really being focused on the people in front of you more than you are on yourself and I have a handful of techniques within that. The next part is breaking people’s patterns and routines because we all have patterns, we all have routines and when you break people’s patterns, it makes them feel alive and valued and brings them back into that present moment and it makes them remember you. And then the next part is I call it conspiracy theory. It’s about two things. It’s about involving people especially in surprises for other people because people love to be involved in things especially secrets, especially if they do something really awesome for someone else. And conspiracy theory is also about becoming involved in other people in their passions, their dreams and things like that. All of those things bond you closer together.

 

And the last part of it is called the kicker ending and that’s all about exceeding people’s expectations. So, with magic, there’s a principle known as a kicker ending and it’s the moment around the climax of an effect that heightens the experience of that final trick so there are ways to do that in your daily interactions that do the same thing. And I teach people, again, how to apply these principles to their relationships, to their customer experience or whatever their daily experience is but we all have relationships in some way or another so it relates to everyone.

 

Jon: Wow. That’s awesome. So, thanks for sharing that framework. And as you shared it, I was reflecting on pieces of that that I think you shared with us last year. In one of the things I want to comment on because I know I’ve never told you this, you’ve probably seen it on social media after the event but I noticed your message created a ripple where after your message people were so excited to I like the conspiracy theory thing but to work together, you’ll create fun moments, harmless fun moments for others and like there was the shrimp thing and we can talk about that so that has some context. But I never told you this but after the event, we had a suite in the hotel that was designed where there was a cabinet that somebody could fit inside of and as people showed up to these after parties, it’s part of our Quantum Leap Mastermind group, we invited them up to this suite and as every person showed up, we did the same exact routine where somebody hid in the cabinet and somebody else sitting on the couch and said, “Hey, could you hand me something out of that cabinet?” and we would jump out and scare the crap out of people. And what was cool…

 

Jeff: But then they get to become part of that process.

 

Jon: But then they’re in on it. That’s nice.

 

Jeff: Yes. They get to become part of that experience and that’s so powerful. And again, it creates this conspiracy within the whole group. I love that.

 

Jon: Yeah. And we got some great video. We got to find a way to post it somewhere along with this because you inspired that and I just want to point out something that could be overlooked and it’s that when you came and just shared with us some great magic and some wisdom about this whole idea of creating magic moments, it was contagious. Everybody wanted to go do it and I appreciated that.

 

Jeff: And that was actually perfect timing because right after I talked, everyone went out. We had 400 or 500 people going out all around San Diego to what you have, everyone like went out and did something.

 

Jon: Random acts of kindness.

 

Jeff: Acts of kindness. There you go.

 

Jon: Yeah.

 

Jeff: So, it’s kind of a perfect moment for that talk to happen.

 

Jon: It was so perfect. Hey, I want to ask you one question about that framework because I really appreciate those four steps.

 

Jeff: Sure.

 

Jon: What can you share with us? I love the first point that you made because it sounds like that one has got to be so important that the others don’t even work if we don’t have the right mindset.

 

Jeff: That’s exactly it. That’s where there’s a lot of ways to create magic moments but they all start in that place of being others focused and we’re in a world where it’s so easy to focus on yourself but when you do focus on others, you get so much more back to you too. It’s like the more selfless you are, the more selfish you actually are because it all comes back. Does that make sense?

 

Jon: Yeah. Some people call that enlightened self-interest I guess.

 

Jeff: There you go. Yeah.

 

Jon: Yeah.

 

Jeff: And that’s not why you do things. You don’t do things for other people to get things out of it. You do it to make that person’s day and that comes back or it can go, you know, it creates that ripple away from you to other people and creates a positive wave.

 

Jon: Yeah. There’s an interesting debate about that topic of is there such thing as altruism where we’re always doing it and knowing it comes back. And I think in Adam Grant’s book, Give and Take, I believe that’s the book. I could be referencing the wrong book. He talks about how Robert Cialdini who is like the Godfather of Influence and this other well-known psychologist had that debate. At the end of it, I think somebody decided it’s an irrelevant debate. Because if we’re making the world a better place, if I know it’s coming back to me or not, what’s the difference, right?

 

Jeff: Yes. I’d rather do it that way.

 

Jon: Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, tell us about where are you right now as we speak because I think you are – are you at the Magic Estate? Is that right?

 

Jeff: I am. Yes. So, when I…

 

Jon: How did this happen? Yeah.

 

Jeff: So, for me, I’ve always been part of teams growing up. I’ve always been part of sports teams. I went to college to play lacrosse so, again, I was part of a team and so when I got out of college I wanted to create a team of people that worked together, that push each other, that we’re working on different things but also kind of helping each other out. So, I ended up moving down to Orlando, Florida where one of my main mentors lives and with one of my best friends, Anton James, and we just found this house and we got a bunch of likeminded people to move in together. And so, right now we live in this big compound and we have a dolphin trainer living with us, three magicians, a speaker, an actress. Who else? We have an entrepreneur and a lawyer/hypnotist. So, we got quite the crew here.

 

And again, we have open mic night. It’s actually tonight in about five hours, six hours. A bunch of people starts showing up at my house and we have a stage downstairs and we just open our house up to whoever wants to come. I’ll make a bunch of food for everyone coming and people just come and connect, get up on the stage. They can sing, dance, whatever they want to do. We’ve had improv comedy here, tap dancers, rappers, just literally everything comes through here. And they’re on random nights. It’s not a set thing. I’ll just be like two days before I’m like, hey, who wants to come? And then like 50 people or 60 people show up at the house.

 

Jon: Wow.

 

Jeff: And that’s why a company, Fanfest.com, came to us recently because they found out about all the stuff that’s been going on here for eight or nine years and they want to film a documentary series on the house so that happened last month. They came and filmed an eight-part documentary series. That will be coming out in the next handful of months.

 

Jon: Wow. What kinds of things are we going to see? Like what are they capturing? Is it you waking up? Is it you working on your tricks in solitude?

 

Jeff: Some of that. So, there’ll be some magic within it. There’ll be some jamming. Each episode is focused on a different person here because not only are we magicians. We all have other pieces going on. So, I actually play a little piano during my set and talk a bit about that and then we have a couple of events. We had an open mic night and one of our roommates does his wine glass painting event so all that’s captured. And then a lot of people are interviewed here that come through our doors.

 

Jon: Wow. I’m going to ask you more about this Magic Estate. We had to talk more about this. Actually, I want to divert into the piano because you just took this up over the last year. Was there a reason or an inspiration for that?

 

Jeff: Yeah. I’ve always been interested in piano and, honest, I tried to take lessons since a kid but I’m a really visual learner and the way they were teaching me, it just never clicked but I always wanted to learn and then I went to New Zealand about four years ago. I got a group of friends. There were five of us. We just all got together and I’m like, “All right. We’re going to New Zealand.” We go there and we got a van for a month and we just drove around New Zealand but when we got to the South Island there’s a town called Queenstown. It’s one of my favorite place in the world now and we get there. It’s this little town nestled in these mountains on a beautiful lake and we go down. As the sun is setting on the lake and right in the harbor, there’s this guy playing the piano. His name is Mathias The Piano Man. And we just sat down for a couple of hours and listen to him and then I bought his CDs and then ever since, I bought all of his other CDs. And so, we end up listening to his music the whole rest of the trip.

 

And literally just about every day for the past four or five years since then, I’ve listened to his music because it’s like super relaxing. I listen to it when I travel and so I was like I went to a friend of mine who can listen to any piano song and he can play it. And I was like, “Hey, man, can you,” this was literally four years later. This was last year because I made a goal. I’m like I’m going to learn 10 piano songs. I don’t know how but I’m going to learn them. I don’t want to learn the easy ones. I want to learn like the songs that I actually want to learn how to play. So, I played in the song and he just starts playing it like right away. And I’m like I need to learn this. So, what I do is I filmed his hands playing and I just slowly mimic what he does and eventually I get it. So, it takes a lot of practice but I’m a magician. That’s what we do. So, I know how to practice and I’m willing to put in the work to do it. So, now I had a goal to learn 10 songs last year. I learned 13. Probably I’ll learn another 10 or 15 this year.

 

Jon: Any favorite songs or favorite musicians that inspire you with the piano?

 

Jeff: Really, his has been my main thing. Most of the songs I learned were from him. And again, it’s Mathias The Piano Man. If you look him up, he actually has a TED talk that he did, a TEDx talk that he did out of Queenstown. It’s so good and it tells you about his life and how he landed there. He’s literally traveling with a piano and he landed in Queenstown and that was just – he became a staple on Queenstown for many years but he just moved away. But that’s a thing. I was like I was inspired by him. He created a magic moment for myself and everyone that was there and ever since he’s created magic moments because I’ve been able to listen to his music and now it’s so meaningful for me to be able to play it. It’s not just like a random song I’m playing. It’s something that brings back memories of New Zealand.

 

Jon: That’s awesome. I didn’t know that story and I love that. My wife and I had been to Queenstown and it’s such a beautiful city. That hike where you can hike up on the hill right behind it and look down on the town in the water.

 

Jeff: Yeah.

 

Jon: We have a huge photograph of that in one of our bathrooms and every time I see it, it brings me right there. It’s so good. Hey, I love the point you made, Jeff, about and this is a great lesson I think for any of us who are listening is understanding your own learning style. My guess is many who are listening to this podcast or watch us on the live stream we’re the type of people who have skills that we know we need and want to develop to further ourselves towards our goals and what you just point out there, I just don’t want that to get overlooked when you said, “Hey, I learned one way and I was being taught another way.” And when you say that, I pause and I think to myself how many people out there are not optimizing their potential only because they just haven’t been matching up with the right learning style. Because interestingly, I played the piano. I grew up playing the piano and I’m more of an auditory person so I learned by just listening to a teacher that I had whereas if I tried what you did, it might not work.

 

Jeff: Yeah.

 

Jon: I love that. It’s a great point.

 

Jeff: Yeah. So, the first teachers I had, they were teaching me the music that they liked. It wasn’t the music that I wanted to learn. So, now I’m learning the music I want to learn so I actually cared to learn it so that was it too. And then the other part of it is creating that conspiracy with someone like the guy that taught me, I decided to teach him magic. So, he would teach me piano and I would teach him magic so we were both benefiting from it and then I got to hang out with him in the process.

 

Jon: All right. So, let’s go back to this Magic Estate here because I heard you got a hypnotist, a dolphin trainer and an attorney, a dog walker, I don’t know.

 

Jeff: A dog walker.

 

Jon: I mean, what’s it like there? Do you wake up and just entertain each other? You don’t need TV, right? What goes on? What’s a typical day at the Magic Estate?

 

Jeff: Why don’t you fly in right now and you’ll find out because we’re doing that literally. We have an open mic night tonight. It’s different every day. Sometimes it’s relaxed like we’re in and out of town. I’m traveling more than half a year right now so in and out but every time I come back I’ll host events and things like that. And we have one of the guys who does cruise ships so he’ll fly out to cruise ships. We have another guy that speaks so he’ll fly out. One of the guys left yesterday and his name is Anton James. He’s my cofounder here and he this past year became the official magician of Salem, Massachusetts so he literally just flew out to Salem today because he’s doing our run of shows in Salem, Massachusetts. We have, my assistant showed up a little while ago. I saw him walking by and then I go. And so, we’ll just be working on stuff together throughout the day. There’s a guy right across the way. He will be doing podcast for companies. He owns a company called Sweet Fish Media and so he’ll do a lot of podcast out of here.

 

Jon: Awesome.

 

Jeff: So, it’s always different. You never know what’s going to be happening here.

 

Jon: So, what’s either the coolest thing about living at the Magic Estate and/or is there something that would be most surprising to those of us who are not there every day in terms of what goes on either the coolest or most surprising or both or neither or whatever else you want to tell me about?

 

Jeff: The coolest is just when people come here, it’s a really, we’ve created a really comfortable place for people to just come and hang and don’t feel like they have to get wasted to connect with people. Again, I went to college and everything revolves around drinking and partying and stuff like that. We have parties here but it’s – you’ll look around, there’ll be a couple of people drinking and everyone else just connecting on a deeper level about things that they’re passionate about. So that’s cool. We have 11 doves here too. That’s just a random fact.

 

Jon: Why not?

 

Jeff: Yes. So, one of the guys is a cruise ship magician so he’d make doves appear during his act and things like that. But, yeah, and literally every week like last night, for example, we had a bunch of magicians here and they were helping another magician who’s doing a lecture tour and one of the guys that was here last night he was literally on Penn & Teller: Fool Us two nights ago. So, we got 40 magicians together at a place right by here and we got to watch our friend live on Penn & Teller: Fool Us. Just like just constant things happening.

 

Jon: Tell me about what kind of learning environment that creates for you, being around creative people. Some of you are magicians but not all of you. You said some of you have totally different crafts that you’ve mastered. What’s that like? Is there a lot of collaboration? Is there a lot of – do you learn a lot from each other even those who don’t…

 

Jeff: Absolutely.

 

Jon: Tell us about that.

 

Jeff: Yeah. And we all have different strengths and the funny thing is a lot of us are – I’m an introvert. A lot of us are actually introvert so a lot of us do our own thing but we’ll come together at different times and help each other or the nice thing is if I have a question about something I want to run something by someone else, I’ll walk down the hall and knock on one of their doors and we just jam for half hour to an hour.

 

Jon: That’s awesome.

 

Jeff: It’s a very open place. We’re very open with our ideas and a lot of magicians, a lot of people can be really protective with their ideas but we’re super open and it’s worked out well so far.

 

Jon: Wow. That’s so cool. One day I want to make it down to the Magic Estate and…

 

Jeff: We’ll see you tonight.

 

Jon: I’ll be there in spirit. You can count on that. Man, that is so cool. You train magicians like you’re going to Australia coming up soon to train magicians, right?

 

Jeff: Yes. So, right when I got out of college I linked up with this magician. His name is Michael Ammar. He is my mentor, one of my mentors and one of the best teachers ever in magic and he’s the reason we moved down to Orlando specifically because that’s where he lives. So, when I got out of college, he saw a magic trick that I was trying to promote and he liked it so he flew me down here to work with him on it and then I realized that with the skills I had, with the video production and a few different things, I was able to help him with a few things he wanted to do and then he asked me to tour the world with him. So, right when I got out of college we did about 250-city, 13-country tour in two years.

 

Jon: Wow.

 

Jeff: So, that threw me right into like met a lot of magicians through him. I kind of got in his brain for – because a lot of people would pay to do that. He was actually paying me to do that which is a crazy thing for me and through that process, I started developing magic tricks and those magic tricks we would do like a couple of our lectures and so we’d do like a 25-city tour of Europe was one of the first ones I did. And we just go from city to city every day and we meet with groups of anywhere from 10 to 200 magicians, sometimes even more and we just go over tricks that we came up with in theory and ideas and sell ideas. So, this whole underground society of magicians that create ideas and we share them with each other and we’re a part of that.

 

Jon: Yeah. Is sharing ideas as a magician, to me this is so interesting because as an audience member, you always want to know what’s going on but in my mind, I don’t deserve to know. I’m there just to be entertained and it’s magic, right?

 

Jeff: Yep.

 

Jon: But if you are a magician, you said a second ago that there are some magicians that they don’t necessarily want to share their…

 

Jeff: Yeah. That’s true. And as magicians, magicians which is in a way what I am, magicians to magicians that I teach magicians but at some point, you have to learn it. So, if someone wants to learn magic for example, if someone asked me, hey, can you teach me some magic? I’ll test them to see if they’re actually interested because a lot of people say they are interested and then they’re not. So, you’ll give them a couple of things to learn and if they actually apply it and do it then you let them in further and deeper and deeper. So, that’s kind of how it works within magic.

 

Jon: Yeah. Has anybody run camps for kids?

 

Jeff: Oh yeah. There are all kinds of camps. My mentor created a whole thing called Discover Magic so it helps magicians around the world. Basically, he gives them the curriculum to be able to run different camps.

 

Jon: That’s cool.

 

Jeff: There’s a lot of them. There’s Tannen’s Magic Camp up in New York and there’s a whole bunch of them all over the place. Some up in Canada. There’s even a College of Magic that I’ve been to in South Africa in Cape Town so and that’s – yeah. There are kids through adults there.

 

Jon: Training other magicians, what are one or two of the biggest life lessons that have taught you or just learnings that you’ve taken away from being a magician’s magician as you call it?

 

Jeff: Yeah. Oh man, some of the life lessons from that. It’s a tricky one. But I would say it takes a long time to learn some of these things and one of the messages I say in my talk is work hard when people aren’t watching so that you’re the best at whatever you do when they are watching. So, a lot of times when you first teach someone a magic trick, the first thing they want to do is run out and show it to someone really quick even before they practice, before. They just get so excited about it. But in magic, you learn to like hold that in and wait for the right moment and actually get good at that thing before you go out and perform it and that translates to anything we do. I’m learning piano so I wait until I’m really good at it to actually go out and do it to people. So, I think that’s a huge lesson. And I’m going to kind of go back to what I speak on because a lot of people do ask me if I can teach some magic trick.

 

But what I’ve realized over the years is they don’t actually want to learn the magic trick. A lot of times they just want to learn how to make the people in their lives feel the way that I just made them feel, give them that same childlike sense of wonder and amazement that they haven’t had since they were kids. So, and that’s what I try to teach them in my speech, how do you bring that same childlike sense of wonder into your experience, into your relationships and your customer experience, whatever that is and that’s what I teach.

 

Jon: Wow. Hey, a couple of things and I want to come back to that in a second here. I’d love to go back to how to develop that wonder and how to bring those magic moments to people in our lives. I know you shared those four steps earlier. I love for you to give us a couple things to think about even when we’re done listening to this like the next person I run into, how could I go create a magic moment but before you share that, I just wanted to capture that quote, “Work hard when people aren’t watching so you’re the best at what you do when they are watching.” I really appreciate that, Jeff. I think that’s – it’s so great for us to get that reminder especially from somebody who I know when we watch you, you know how to make things look easier than they are.

 

Jeff: Yeah. Well, it takes a lot of work to get to that point.  

 

Jon: Yeah.

 

Jeff: Honestly, even for me up to be on the stage like that for – I’m an introvert. I’m the one that would like to be in the audience or behind the camera, not in front of the camera so that’s even – that’s a learned skill for me. It was really refreshing. One of my mentors, Michael Ammar, was one of the guys like when I started working with him I would – he was just so good at everything he did and we would start filming and he would be like a one take wonder and I was just like, “How do you?” like, I guess, he was just like born with that. And then I got to see some of his first videos that he ever put out and I saw him like not be that good. He was still really good but he wasn’t that good and I was like, “Oh man, this is maybe something I can learn,” and then that’s when we start developing it and working hard.

 

Jon: That’s awesome. That’s really cool. Hey, you’ve mentioned several times in this conversation the role of mentorship. I mean it seems like that’s been a big deal for you and a lot of our listeners has heard me talk about this in other episodes where I feel like I’ve had an unfair advantage in life because I’ve had not one but many great mentors. I’d love to hear about your experience of and any wisdom that you could share with us in attracting, finding, working with, how to be a great mentee because I think it’s not just a one-way thing. Anything you can share on that.

 

Jeff: Maybe I could start with that is a lot of people going to mentorship as if they want to like learn something from this person. They just want to get things out of this person. The way I view it is like how can I provide so much value to that person that they want that I become like invaluable to them and work with them and that’s what I tried to do in every case. In every case like I end up learning from them but I want to like can I give them more value than they’re giving me? So, again, it’s like a selfless way to look at mentorship, whereas I think a lot of people might think of it the other way, “Okay. What can I learn from this person? I just want to learn, learn, learn,” but no, what can I give to that person? That’s a big thing.

 

One of my mentors sat me down one time, Giovanni Livera, and he wanted to work with me and I was helping with video production and he’s like, “If you work with me, I’ll help you skip 10 years,” and that’s like I think the value of mentorships like all their mistakes and everything they’re going to be able to help you through. That’s why it’s important to have mentors. And that’s the other thing about giving value, I try to develop skills that will help the people in front of me so my mentor is like I developed video production skills, web design, graphic design, all of these skills are things that will help not only mentors but anyone. And then the last thing about it is with the way video is on YouTube and everything like you can have amazing mentors without actually knowing the person now. So, you can just like watch them online and you can follow them. The amount of content that people put out, I mean, one of the ones that I watched pretty regularly is Brendon Burchard like he has some like hundreds of videos that you can go in and watch and he in a way is a mentor to me because his thought process is engrained in me because I’ve watched the action.

 

Jon: I love that point that you just made, you’ve started with about creating value. I had someone I approached recently about mentoring me in an isolated project and she was very quickly to tell me how much – she didn’t even like the word mentor so I’m not going to use that because it creates images of inequality. This was her perspective and I really appreciated the spirit of what she was saying. I didn’t care a whole lot about the label myself but she said, “No.” She goes, “Look, I’m happy for you to view it that way but we’re here to learn from each other.” And I’ve done this on accident.

 

I wish I could say I’ve done it on purpose but one of the things I’ve done on accident is a guy named David Cooperrider who is my great mentor who created the method and, by the way, he gave it away to the world. Everyone told him to protect it and he gave it away which is a whole other story but he created a method that we now use. And what’s really cool is we found a way to help him further his mission, in his life, in his profession so there’s this reciprocity that is exactly what you just expressed. And I like that because so many people think about finding a coach or a mentor and assuming that it’s a one-way relationship and I think the point that you’re making and I’m attempting to magnify is that it’s actually easier to attract quality mentors and I think retain and strengthen those relationships when it’s viewed the way you just mentioned. It’s about what value am I creating with or for this person.

 

Jeff: That’s just with anything you do like what value am I creating?

 

Jon: That’s awesome. Hey, tell us about you’ve got a challenge, the 52/5 challenge and I heard a little bit about this but as soon as I heard a little bit about it, I thought, “This is exactly the kind of thing that this community would really enjoy.” So, tell us about it.

 

Jeff: Sure. So, I call it the 52/5 challenge. Basically, you get sent a challenge every week for a year and the challenges are about five minutes, less than five minutes and the challenges are meant to help you love the people in your life better to create magic moments, to reconnect you or connect you deeper with the people in your life. Again, they’re simple missions. They’re all based on what I talk about. So, when you see me speak, a lot of my speeches, the theory behind things, I give a few practical examples but this is literally like my speech but in practical examples. You’re going to do this thing right now. It’ll take you five minutes and it will make every relationship in your life better and that’s what it’s about like 52 weeks to make every single relationship in your life better.

 

Jon: Could you give us like a couple of examples of maybe someone could go do as soon as they’re done listening here?

 

Jeff: Yeah. You can do something literally right now. Think of – take out your phone, and think of someone you haven’t talked to in a while.

 

Jon: I’m going to do this.

 

Jeff: Okay. And now think of someone you haven’t talked to in a while. Think of a memory you had with that person that would make them laugh like maybe it’s an inside joke or something.

 

Jon: All right. I got it.

 

Jeff: Text them, literally text them whatever the inside joke is and/or if you have a photo, something like that. So, that would be a simple mission and now think of this, like we go through life and random memories pop into our minds. When that happens, share that with the person that you’re thinking about. Don’t just keep that in like when you share that with that person and it could be just like this, if a random inside joke pops into your mind about someone, sometimes the message is like that will I guarantee it will make their day. One little moment. And that’s not even five minutes. That’s literally the first challenge of the 52-week challenge right there.

 

Jon: Nice.

 

Jeff: And just go with that. And a lot of times when I speak to people like, “I don’t have time. How do you have time to create all these magic moments?” It’s really about little tiny things that make a big difference like it’s not – once in a while you should, yeah, once in a while you should do like some huge thing for someone but I think it’s really in those small moments and it’s something as simple as sending someone a quick text that reminds them of something awesome that happened in their life.

 

Jon: I just sent a text to somebody who I appreciated but not spoken with for a while.

 

Jeff: Yeah. Or it can be a mentor that you have or something you’ve seen in someone just like send them whatever that thing is that you saw in them like people will feel appreciated by doing that and we don’t do it enough.

 

Jon: Yeah. I love that. What a great reminder. Yeah. I did that the other day. I was in a car with the McCarthys, Mike and Lindsay McCarthy, and we either had just gone on a hike in the mountains in Colorado or we were about to and it actually triggered my memory of a buddy of mine, Adam, who I used to do a lot of hiking with 10, 15 years ago. So, we did that. I called him and I left a voicemail just telling him, “Hey, I’m thinking about you.” And it made me feel really good.

 

Jeff: And that’s what it does. It does make you feel good and it brings more of that memory into you and more joy. That’s why you do it. You just made their day but it always comes back in different ways.

 

Jon: Has your work brought you into or have you studied or been influenced by any of the teachers in the positive psychology field? Just curious if you’ve stumbled across any correlations. Because we spend a lot of time with some of those pioneers and there’s so much that you’re talking about that there’s now an undeniable empirical body of evidence that proves the things that you teach in a scientific way are transformational for people.

 

Jeff: Yeah. I actually used to hate reading books and it was like with piano. Because I was given books that I didn’t really want to read, and then so when I got off to college, I realized that I actually love like motivational self-help kind of books and that’s something we never read younger. So, I started reading a lot of different books and listen to a lot of things. So, yeah, there are a handful of people, Tony Robbins and a handful of those awesome guys that I’ve learned a lot from over the years and just keeping in that positive mindset. So, yeah, I’m sure a lot of that. There’s a lot of overlap within that.

 

Jon: Yeah. There’s a great book that summarizes the latest research from the field of positive psychology and the name of the book is called Positivity. And Barbara Fredrickson who’s considered one of the three leading, if not pioneers, she’s really the leading thought leader in the positive psychology field which is a huge deal. She was at an event of ours about a month ago and she shared her latest research and one of the things that she shared is that, and it’s exactly what you’re talking about, she shared – and she uses a label. She calls them micro-moments of positive resonance. Micro-moments, that’s her technical scientific term, micro-moments of positive resonance. And, Jeff, one of the things she showed us was MRI imaging of people’s brains, actually, even of their whole bodies during these micro-moments of positivity which everything you’re talking about is all about that.

 

Jeff: Yes.

 

Jon: And it’s the first time we’ve ever understood this but one of the things that they are discovering is that these micro-moments, when I create a micro moment with another person and it’s all the things you would think can create a micro-moment, right, that put us in some sort of positive state even if just for a second. One of the things that they’re now realizing – they’ve known for a while that it changes us biochemically. It actually improves our health in real-time. We’ve known that but what we did not know that we now know more than ever before is that when we create these micro moments, positive feeling that you and I have towards each other will last well beyond just that micro-moment and they’re now noticing that in some cases, it’s permanent. It permanently changes how we feel about each other even if we had something that happened just for a second.

 

Jeff: I love that.

 

Jon: And they’re actually finding ways to measure this. They have mathematicians finding ways to measure these things and what we’ve also known for a long time is that when people are in a positive state of mind they’re more creative, they’re smarter, they’re more resilient, they’re better at building relationships. So, I’m only…

 

Jeff: And then the tough thing about that is like, yeah, for people like sometimes it’s hard for us to come up with what can I do in those moments and that’s why I’ve created the 52/5 challenge to give you applicable things you can do. So, I’ve taken a lot of that creativity out of it for you and it’ll still be customized to people in your life but that’s the hard part. And the more you do it, the more you get better at it. That’s the other thing like the more you create these little moments, the better you get at it and the more creative you get.

 

Jon: Yeah. That’s awesome. That is really, really cool. Where do people go to find out about these challenges? Is there a website or…?

 

Jeff: Yeah. That’s my website, JeffKaylor.com/525. So, J-E-F-F-K-A-Y-L-O-R.com/525.

 

Jon: Now tell us what is the 525? Is that a unique code for this conversation?

 

Jeff: Yes. So, 52 weeks, five minutes a week.

 

Jon: Okay. There you go.

 

Jeff: 52/5 really. Yeah.

 

Jon: All right. Sweet. That’s awesome. I’d encourage everyone to go check that out. Jeff, I have to know, absolute favorite trick to do and big trick that you’re working on. If you’re allowed to tell us. I don’t know. Maybe it’s protected by a code.

 

Jeff: A lot of times it depends on the situation which is my favorite to do but let me think. One of the ones I really love right now is just bending coins in people’s hands. You borrow a coin, people sign it, you put it in their hand and that just bends in their hands. So, that’s one of the ones I just I absolutely love.

 

Jon: Is there any way we can accomplish that virtually over the internet?

 

Jeff: Don’t break all the equipment in where you are. You got to be careful about these things.

 

Jon: Can you troubleshoot IT from a distance? So, the coin bends in their hands?

 

Jeff: Yes. And then I take it out of their hand and you can visibly see it just start to bend.

 

Jon: All right. Can we – am I allowed to request that for the Best Year Ever Event this year?

 

Jeff: I promise you I will do that when I come to Best Year Ever.

 

Jon: All right. I’ll bring all my coins. I’ll bring my whole collection.

 

Jeff: Love it.

 

Jon: How about big tricks that you’re working on?

 

Jeff: Big tricks? The main stuff I’m working on is the Create a Magic Moment stuff. It’s showing people that they can do this in their own lives and that’s where I think I knew at some point I was going to shift from magic to real life experiences and use that experience from magic in real life and that’s what it is. So, that is kind of the main thing for me right now that I’m concentrating on.

 

Jon: Yeah. That’s really cool and I’d love to have you also speak to this, Jeff, because you and I are talking about this earlier that you’re brought into corporations of all types, even it’s crazy about your story that you are brought into Disney to teach them about creating an experience. They’re like the – they’re the pinnacle benchmark about creating experiences. But for many of our listeners who are professionals or entrepreneurs, what could you say to us about how we can maybe rethink about either how important it is or how to really elevate that customer experience what you’re talking about here?

 

Jeff: Sure. I mean, I think just the first point that I talk about is just the magic moment. Again, being others focused and realizing that our businesses, people want a personal experience. They want to know that you care about them and so in that if something maybe goes wrong like that is an opportunity. Like see opportunities in the patterns in your business and also see opportunities in the negative experiences because we can take a negative experience and just let it be that. It can be a negative experience or you can take that and turn on its head and turn that into the best part of an experience or turn that into something that the people talk about.

 

Recently, someone did not like one of our products that’s on our website. Personally, I love the product. It’s a friend of mine. We flew him in here to work on it. The person didn’t like it and they sent this nasty email that was like, “Hey, I love all your products. This one I don’t know why you guys put it out.” I was like and so I could’ve responded, “Hey, we love this product. You’re wrong.” But instead, I said, “You know what, we love this product. Here are the reasons why. This is why we did it but tell you what, pick anything on our website, doesn’t matter what it is and I’ll send it to you free of charge.” And he sent an email back saying, “Just because you sent that email, I will continue buying things from you. You don’t have to send me anything.”

 

Jon: How cool is that.

 

Jeff: And then I said, “Send me your address anyway because I’m going to send you something.” So, and that’s one way to live in the way that I teach I guess.

 

Jon: That’s awesome. That’s really, really cool. Great example. I appreciate that. Jeff, is there anything that we haven’t talked about? One of my favorite questions is, is there anything else that you’d love to share with our audience in inspiring them as they’re on their own journey to achieve their goals, to create their own magical moments, to be excellent in what they do? Anything that comes to mind to leave us with?

 

Jeff: Just have fun and be more focused on the people in front of you than you are in yourself.

 

Jon: That’s awesome.

 

Jeff: That’s what it comes down to.

 

Jon: That’s awesome. It’s interesting is I’m a parent of three kids and it’s really easy for things to feel complicated or challenging as a parent and yet what you just said, have fun and focus on others, that’s basically all the advice that I need to stick with as a parent.

 

Jeff: And play again. I’ll give you a little thing as a parent.

 

Jon: Please. Please do. Yeah.

 

Jeff: So, I was at a cookout and there are a lot of adults there and there were a lot of kids and the kids kind of knew each other but they hadn’t hung out in a while so you know how kids get. They have trouble like they need that to be broken in order to talk to each other. They need something to happen. So, I’m walking around and I see this happening. I’ve just focused again more on the people around me than I was on what I was doing and I knew that one of these girls wanted to hang out with these two sisters over here. So, I just like when they were really close to each other, I just ran over and I tagged one of the girls. I go, “You’re it,” and I just started running around and literally within 10 seconds every kid at that place was chasing me around and then we just started playing tag. And for the rest of the day, they were all playing together and all it took was that one little moment. And for me like, again, I’m an introvert. So, to do something like that is like it took a little like, “Ugh, I got to do this,” but it’s worth it for you to do that sometimes. And then you get to be the fun adult that’s run around with all the kids.

 

Jon: Yeah. That’s cool.

 

Jeff: So, again, just play like get in that kid’s head like what do they need like play with that kid.

 

Jon: Yeah. That’s so cool. That’s so cool. Do you do birthday parties, Jeff?

 

Jeff: Funny.

 

Jon: Hey, for a price, I’m sure we can get you to do a birthday party.

 

Jeff: Sure. Yeah.

 

Jon: We’ll get a hundred. Brother James, our musician friend, he came out to play for my oldest son. His name is Ace. When Ace turned six we rented this community room near our house and my wife is very social and anyone who knows my wife already knows where the story is going. She announced his birthday party about a week before. We had Brother James, the musician, coming to play and we had 125 people at this six-year-old birthday party. So, I’m only imagining how many people she could rope in when one day we hire Jeff Kaylor to come to…

 

Jeff: Actually, I was with Brother James at the Fambundance 1 Life and we might have been working on some magic together.

 

Jon: Yeah. I love – well, hey, maybe you guys do a little combo thing at the Best Year Ever Blueprint Event.

 

Jeff: Okay. Well, we were kind of talking about something like that so maybe we can get that going again. We’ll get him to the Magic Estate to start working on some stuff.

 

Jon: That’s so cool. It gets me so happy just imagining you and Brother James working together.

 

Jeff: Yeah.

 

Jon: Jeff, I just want to say this is awesome. It’s so fun to just chat with you and you crushed it at our Best Year Ever Blueprint Event last year. This year November 17, 18, 19, we’re at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in sunny San Diego, California. The event will sell out. I see tickets being bought every day right now. It sold out the last three years and anyone who’s listening, if you joined us, we love to have you back. If you’ve never been, you got to come hang out with us. You’ll be hanging out with Jeff and Hal will be there this year. It’s going to be awesome. Jeff, thank you, buddy.

 

Jeff: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on here.

 

Jon: Yeah. All right. Take care, buddy. Bye.

 

Jeff: Thank you. Bye.

[END]