AI Can't Replace This (And Neither Can Anyone Else) | Joshua Seth

What do Digimon, mind reading, voice acting, magic, and AI-proof careers all have in common? Joshua Seth.

In this fascinating episode, Anne sits down with award-winning mentalist, keynote speaker, corporate emcee, and legendary voice actor Joshua Seth (https://www.joshuaseth.com/) for a conversation that explores the surprising connection between voice, influence, focus, and the uniquely human skills that technology can't replace. 

Best known as the voice of Tai in Digimon and the villain Tetsuo in Akira, Joshua shares how a childhood spent listening to old radio shows launched a career that eventually took him from Hollywood voice actor to Magic Olympics champion and creator of the theatrical show Mind Magic Live that is currently selling out everywhere it goes.  (and I've seen it, and it's that good!) 

But beneath the magic lies a powerful message about connection, communication, and adaptability.

In This Episode, We Talk About:

•  Why your voice and presence create emotional connection 
•  How Joshua accidentally discovered his dream career while escaping a broken air conditioner 
•  Breathwork techniques to improve confidence, resonance, and vocal presence 
•  Why human skills like empathy, listening, and influence are becoming more valuable in the age of AI 

Want more from Joshua?

• https://www.joshuaseth.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuaseth/

Joshua Seth is an award-winning mentalist, keynote speaker, and corporate event emcee. He's the winner of the Magic Olympics and the star of the theatrical touring show Mind Magic LIVE. But he's best known as a celebrity voice actor who can be heard in over 100 TV shows and movies, including his starring roles as Tai in Digimon and Tetsuo in Akira. But his greatest role is as the father of his two teenage children.

Anne Bonney is a keynote speaker and emcee who helps organizations lead through change by building resilience, emotional intelligence, and courageous communication.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Dancing in Discomfort Zone. This is Anne Bonnie, your host, and I'm super excited to be here in Voice Month. I got the idea that's a couple weeks ago, as I was doing the interview for our first July podcast. And all of a sudden I realized I was like, I know a lot of people who do interesting things with their voice or can help us do that too. And today's guest is no exception. Joshua Smith is an award-winning mentalist. He's a keynote speaker, he's a corporate event MC, but he's the winner of the Magic Olympics. If you haven't heard of Hollywood's famed magic castle, look it up. The Magic Olympics means it's like the sports Olympics, but for magic magicians, and it's a very big deal. And he is the star of the theatrical touring show, Mind Magic Live. I've seen it twice. It is mind-blowing. And a couple of times I had to like remind myself to close my mouth. Like it's jaw-dropping. So if you give it a chance, Mind Magic Live, go see it. But that's not all. He's actually best known for as a celebrity voice actor who can be heard in over 100 TV shows and movies, including his starring role that made him the most famous, as Ty in Digimon. And he was also Tatsubo in the number one animated movie, according to pretty much every single critic. The movie is called Akira. But despite all the fame and fortune he has achieved with all of these different things, he says that his greatest role is as a father of his two teenage children, and his videos on uh social media with his daughter in the back seat always crack me up. Joshua, thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

What an intro. I mean, we're almost at time now. And we're done. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Well, you know, that's a safe way to make sure it's gonna be a good episode, is I don't let my guest talk. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

I'm all for that. Right. I love hearing about myself. Yes. It's the benefit of having lived a long time and having stayed very young.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

You're only 29, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

No. Yes, right. Time is many times over. Yes. Well, there you go.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

All right. Well, tell me about voice acting. This is something that I've always been fascinated by. So let's just start there. Um, how did you end up getting into doing voices?

SPEAKER_01 2:21

This is this could be the whole episode. It's a long stuff. I've been doing it a long time. So my parents were both psychologists and they were kind of hippies and didn't allow TV in the house. So I listened as my form of entertainment was listening to old radio shows on cassette tape, like stuff that I'm I'm not uh there's no way I should know who Fibber McGee and Molly are or what their voices sound like, but I do. Or the Ovaltine Hour or The Shadow or The Lone Ranger. All these like golden age of radio was long before I was born, but it's what I grew up listening to. So I had all of these old iconic voices in my head, and I would do voices and annoy uh my family on road trips when I was a kid. Then when I was uh eight years old, my mom took me along to the Carousel Dinner Theater, which became the the biggest professional equity dinner theater in the country. It was located in Akron, Ohio, about a half hour from where I grew up. And I was only there because my younger brother had red hair, blue eyes and freckles, and they were casting for a show called Brigadoon. This is this is at the time where they took Broadway shows to work them out for their touring productions nationwide. Like we were we were Peoria, essentially. As and so uh they they weren't uh casting me. I don't have red hair, blue eyes, and freckles, but uh according as legend would have it, according to uh my mom's memory anyway, uh, as soon as I walked in the theater, my eyes lit up. It was like I immediately knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Walked past everybody waiting to audition right up to the table where the the producer and the director were seated, and said, I want to do this. You can dye my hair, you can paint freckles on my face with makeup, and I'll wear blue contacts, but I want to be a part of this production.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

And then Shut about my brother, I'm in. Yeah, right, yeah, right. Forget about that kid.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

And after I was escorted from the premises, they they told my mom, Yeah, of course we want to work with him. Like usually it's it's the the theater moms, you know, wanting to forcing their kids to do this, and he actually wants to, but this is not the production. Well, the very next production was Yule Brenner's touring cast of The King and I, and I got cast as the child lead in that. And that kicked off 10 years of this gets back to the voice, because they're all musical theater shows, ten years of eight shows a week, eight week productions, one after another, straight through from the time I was eight to eighteen. And by the time I left, it started as a 550-seat theater, it ended up as a 2,500-seat theater. So I had a lot of stage experience and and vocal training. I also had a a choir instructor that helped me to unlock all the notes in my voice and make it more vocally flexible, and then I had all these other sounds and voices in my head from growing up listening to audio shows instead of TV shows. Also, my dad was a radio psychologist, sort of like Frazier, but before Frazier. Yeah, and that's how he built his practice was on the radio. So I was also familiar with radio. And when I went to college, I went to NYU, New York City, and it was all very big and unfamiliar for a kid from small town in Ohio, except for the radio station. So I got my broadcast certification and I had a show. W NYU New York City. 50,000 watts going out to three states. And that's how I started.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

And so were you doing voices and stuff on radio, or was it just a radio show playing music, or was it a specific kind of theatrical radio show?

SPEAKER_01 6:09

I was supposed to just be introducing the records. But that movie that you mentioned in my very long, elaborate intro, Akira, it's not the number one animated movie of all time. It is the number one rated anime movie. Sorry. Yeah, anime movie. I don't know what the number one animated is, but that's a much bigger field. Anyway, I went to see I went to see this movie, Akira, at an arts house theater in Greenwich Village. And because my you know what's funny, talk about discomfort, talk about dancing in the discomfort zone. I was uncomfortable because my the only reason I saw it changed my life. Only re I didn't even realize how this tied into the theme of your show until this very moment. My AC broke in the summer. I was I was I was taking summer courses at at NYU, you know, to because I I be because I'm cheap and I didn't want to graduate with a lot of debt, so I did a four-year program in two years and just took double classload and summers. So I was in the summer program at the time, and my air conditioning broke. And the only reason I went to this movie was to get out of the heat and get some air conditioning. And the poster looked kinda cool. This is the poster for the viewers at home of the podcast that is audio. It's the red motorcycle that is quite iconic and has been referenced in in many movies and everything from inspired everything from The Matrix to episodes of uh South Park and the they recreated it in Nope. Um anyway, I saw this movie. I'd never seen animation for adults like that. I came out of the theater having decided that this was what I was going to pursue, was voice acting in anime. And so I went back and I started using the radio show as a way to make a demo. There was there used to be a comedian, another one of these old voices named Jonathan Winters. Ever hear of him?

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Sort of the inspiration for Robin Williams. And he used to do a bit where he would heckle himself on stage. So that's what I did. I started calling into my own radio show as doing other voices as though I was other people. Young man, can you play some klezma music? Uh man, this is a college radio station. We don't play klezma, but the young people should be introduced to all kinds of music. And then I would cut all those together, got an agent in Hollywood from that, and next thing you knew, I moved to uh Los Angeles.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

Nice! To do my first yeah you saw the movie Akira. How were you then in the movie Akira?

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Great question, Ann.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

I was like, wait, there's an idiot, there's a yeah, go.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Because about seven years later, Paramount got the rights to do an English dub of this Japanese movie with like they had a this is in terms of real movies, this is not a big budget. In terms of anime, it's huge. Um Paramount got a million dollars, one million dollars, to do, yes, a wide release of Akira on thousands of screens with the whole new voice cast and music and effects and writing that made sense and our language and everything. And and then they called me. There's the only thing I never even auditioned for. The the director called me up, and I was I was anime famous at that time from voicing Ty on Digimon. And he said that the the only way that uh Paramount was able to secure the rights to this new American dub release was if they cast me as the villain, Tetsuo, and uh very fine voice actor, Johnny Young Bosch, as the hero, Kaneda. And of course I did it because my whole voiceover career came full circle by having done that. It's the thing I'm most proud of. Yeah. In my career, actually. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

That's super cool. Now, and it's funny because you and I do top golf together. You live here in St. Pete where I live, and every once in a while we meet up with with Kate Telanium, we all go to Top Golf, and you guys absolutely demolish me because I'm terrible at it, but we have a great time. She's she's she demolished me. She's she's consistent. Yeah, it's true. But you're still demolishing me. But anyway, it was funny because one time we were checking in at the the desk at Top Golf, and the guy recognized your voice as Ty. Yeah, that's right. That's true. I was like, is this actually happening right now?

SPEAKER_01 10:25

If you're a millennial, especially if you're a guy and a millennial, then uh you probably grew up as my voice as the voice of your childhood. Which is, you know, is it's mind-blowing and a bit humbling, especially at Comic-Cons, you know, people lining up to get autographs for a thing where they've never seen my face, they've only heard my voice. But having grown up with voices as entertainment myself, I I totally get that because this is this is how we connect emotionally with other people, and everybody pays so much attention to their visual profile, how they look, what they wear, how they move. If they even consider it at all, that's what they consider. Whereas your vocal profile is what really makes an emotional impact and a connection with other people. That's how you feel. The spirit, the soul, however you want to define that, the essence of the other is through our voice, I believe.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

Yeah. And John D. Domenico, a few weeks ago, who you also know on his episode two weeks ago, was saying the similar thing where it's like we pay so much attention to the visual, but we don't pay so much attention to the auditory and what the sounds we're making. And to your point, the Muppets are a phenomenal example of this. I can't watch the modern Muppets because the voices are not right. That is not Kermit the Frog, and I am angry with you now for trying to pull one over on me.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Like that's what they recast me as Ty and Digimon. We've done 10 movies and they're still casting me because they tried it once and the fans, you know, they didn't like it. Like this isn't what we are accustomed to hearing. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's uh it's I'll give you my insight though. I uh uh my my conjecture as to why people don't pay attention to that. I think people believe erroneously that the voice is set in stone. Your voice is your voice. You could change how you look, you can you can get a haircut, a nose job, you could get a new, you know, fancy wardrobe. But we don't think we could do the same thing with our voice. We absolutely can, because the voice is a muscle. So you can exercise it, you can train it. I didn't always sound like this. I I my the voices that I got famous for doing that basically sound like this, that was what I sounded like in my 20s when I was doing them. And it annoyed me. I remember one day I got a call from a telemarketer who asked if my parents were home. And I'm, I am I'm the owner of the house, Deg Neb it. I'm the I own this joint, hung up, and and and I got more vocal training. Yeah, you can do that. You can sound though there are limitations. You can't sound any way you want, you're limited by the the constraints of your physicality. But generally speaking, unless you're Bob Dylan, you do have more notes.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

He only has four.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

So, yeah, and they and he and yet it works for him.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

He's on wonders with them, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:19

Yeah, right. So, did you start with impressions? How did you train the instrument? How how did you impressions?

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Okay, okay. John John G. Domenico is the master impressionist. But I always felt like why would they hire me to do why not just hire the original? And if not the original, there are people who make their living as impressionists, and that's not me. I just want to be the best version of me. So I wanted to find the limitations of my own voice and capabilities and lean into that because for me, for you, for anyone listening or watching out there in podcast land, no one could be a better you than you. Right. Right?

unknown 13:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

So there's something to do. As the case may be. Yeah.

unknown 14:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

So how do you the question I've always had about people who voice Kermitha Front, people who voice, you know, I mean Seth uh Seth Seth McFarlane.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

McFarlane goes in and out of the family guy and does like so many interacts, and the South Park guys and all this stuff. How do you maintain the consistency? I mean, you've done 10 movies as Thai. People know the dude at top golf in St. Petersburg in 2026 knows your voice as Thai. How do you keep that consistent?

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Okay. So when I began, it was it was long before smartphones and computers in your pocket, and I used index cards. I used index cards. And I would have uh a line that would get me into the voice, and I would also have some sort of a vocal tick. There's always something that you can connect to the voice that makes it unique. A raspiness if it's high, if it's low, if it's loud, if it's soft, if the person if the person's a bit nasally or stepped up or something like this. So that there was always uh a line that would get me into it, and some sort of vocal feature that I could connect to that line. Eventually you would internalize it, and you don't need that anymore. Some people are more visual and perhaps have uh a different approach to it, like seeing and hearing a scene from a movie or or something that you're using. Uh maybe it's a real person that you're using as a as a reference, but there has to be some sort of a vocal reference. Like you could hear a song in your mind, like if I say don't stop believing and you take half a second, you can hear the pitch, right? I hear it all. Yep. You you hear the tempo, you know the the tune, you know the key. You might not be able to define what that key is if you're not musically trained, but you can hear it in your mind. So you could do that that you could do that exact same thing with a voice of a person, not just a song.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Yeah. Interesting. It's fascinating stuff. So let's meld into how did you end up as a mentalist?

SPEAKER_01 16:06

I mean it feels like there's like any money as a voice actor at first. Really? Really? It took yeah, it it took it took seven years. Seven years, and I I I grew up with a framed picture of a quote at the bottom of the stairs, right next to the front door that I looked at every morning when I went to school. And now I should remember the quote, but I don't, but I remember the I remember the essence of the quote. Great story, Joshua! And the punchline is the essence of the quote is that uh there's m lots of people are educated, lots of people are talented, lots of people have big dreams, but the thing that separates those that achieve from those who do not is tenacity. And the tenacity alone is omnipotent. And when you decide that you're gonna go for something, the the real key to success is just not giving up. I would amend that now, the wisdom of age, and say that that there's a secondary aspect to that, which is deciding that you're going to do a little bit better each time. Each time you're out there. As we know, perfectionism kills creativity and productivity. But I do believe in perfectingism, the idea that each each time that you endeavor to do something well, you do it a little bit better than the last time because creativity is iterative. So very few people are ever born with those abilities just flowing into and through them like Amadeus or something, Mozart. But but most of us get a little bit better over time, and I was convinced that that if I just kept at it, eventually I would get better. And I did, and I did. But it it it was seven years of I would do one commercial, my first one was For d for Disney. Mom, Dad, can we go to Disneyland? And then I'd you know, I'd get a check for that, and it'd pay the rent for the month, and then what? Right? And then maybe the next month I'd do one episode of Rugrats or one episode of Hey Arnold or one I did all this Nickelodeon stuff, one episode here and there. But in the meantime, how am I gonna make a living? I refuse to get a job, I refuse to be a waiter, because the way I'm wired and the way that I think, as I just explained, I want to always do my best and get better every time I do a thing. So if I get a job in a little while, I'm gonna get promoted, and then I'm gonna get benefits, and then I'm gonna have a pair of golden handcuffs. So I've actually I've never had a job, I've never worked for anybody, I've never gotten a paycheck. Because I I I needed for myself to stay fully committed and engaged to the creative endeavor that I was pursuing. So I always enjoyed magic and realized I c could do that to make money on the side because it was very flexible and most of the shows were on the weekends. But again, I wasn't very good at it at the beginning. What I was good at is selling the gigs. I got so good that I ended up opening an agency and I booked a thousand shows a year. This was in the nineties, just based on yellow page ads. There were 12 yellow pages in Los Angeles. I took out double quarter column display ads, put them all on credit cards, went $70,000 in debt the first year. And the second year, by the end of the second year, I bought a house in Burbank and I was employing about 20 of my friends from the Magic Castle to cover all the the extra gigs. And in the meantime, because of repetition and doing so many shows, I I got better. I started taking the sweet gigs for myself, doing the celebrity parties and doing the corporate events and flying to Vegas on the weekends. And and and after about six years of doing both successfully, because what happened was right around the same so throughout the 90s I lived on salads and ramen and macaroni and cheese, and I drove a 1976 Super Beetle where the air wouldn't go off. I put all the money in the house and the business. Any money I made, I put in the house and the business, the house and the business, because I figured time is on my side in relation to those two things. And nothing into myself, which I don't I don't know that I would recommend that, honestly. There used to be a little bit of balance, personal and professional. And in retrospect, perhaps that cost me my first marriage. But that's another episode, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:27

Different month.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

So so for those seven years I was progressively getting better at both careers. And then one day I came home after doing about no, it wasn't about, it was ten live shows that week. And I was recording about two sessions, two recording sessions every day in studio. And these are different studios all around LA. So it it if if if you're not familiar with LA, it's pretty spread out. Yeah, there's a bit of traffic. So it was it was quite a lot of running around. And it was a Sunday night, and I just took off my shirt and I lied down on my back on the cold hard wood floor of my living room in my home in Burbank, and I felt like there was a weight, like a pressure on my chest, and I could not get up until I made a decision as to which career path I was going to take. No exaggeration. It wasn't like I was having some sort of a medical emergency, it was emotional, and I just hit a wall and I realized I cannot keep doing this, and I'm not going to achieve my potential in either career unless I choose one path.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

Being good at something, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Yeah, yeah. Because once once I got cast in the lead role in Digimon, and that was the number one animated show on Saturday morning television. Remember Saturday morning TV kids? I I worked non stop after that as a voice actor. And right around the same time, maybe the next year, I won the Magic Olympics at the Magic Castle as a mentalist. And I was working nonstop. And after working for years to get in a position where I was bookable in either career, to suddenly be so bookable in both careers, I was just taking every opportunity that came to me. And then six years later, I just hit that wall. I realized I had to make a decision. I went with my heart. I knew I could make more money as a voice actor. And in retrospect, I would have, because the Comic-Con circuit has exploded since then the people that were at my level and started with me and maintained that they've done extremely well for themselves. But I ended up living the life that I always dreamed of having, that I really wanted to do. Traveling the world, I've seen 40 different countries. I've had TV specials in Japan, South Korea, and Australia, or no, New Zealand, and and and been able to pursue my creative passion, which has now blossomed into this show, this Mind Magic Live production that you've seen that I do at theaters on the weekend and corporate events during the week. And my background and training in the voice has helped tremendously because there's something called stage deportment. You know, when you're on you went to Interlock, and I'm sure you studied this, as did I. How to move with confidence and personal magnetism and personal power and get all eyes on you even before you say a word and when you do say that first word to be believable, to get people to know, like, and trust you, regardless of the content, just based on your manner of personal expression. This all comes from my background in theater and in singing and in voice acting. And I'm I'm just using it through the vehicle of the show now.

SPEAKER_02 23:36

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and it's interesting as you as you figure out how to use these things, you're not only, you know, being a good performer and being engaging, but you're building trust, which as a magician, as a mentalist specifically, because they are a little bit different, you have to, you have to have their trust. They have to be with you. And you also now do keynote speaking. And so you're using all of these skills from mentalist to voice, you know, to all the things, to educate almost corporate audiences, which even more so you need to build their trust. Because all we think of when we think of motivational speaker is, you know, who's the guy? Jack Chris Farley from Saturday Night Live, and it's this jeezy, right? Jeezy, terrible, like man down the river. Caricature. Yeah, exactly. So what are the things? You know, is is people listening right now going, how do I use my voice to build that trust, to build that connection, to build that engagement from people to get them to listen, to lean in, because you know, that's what it does.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

I have a very easy answer for you. Dramatic pause. The breath. Everything starts and ends with the breath. It's breath, it's it really all comes down to breath work. So the voice is a muscle, and that muscle needs to be strengthened through use and then relaxed, right? The tension and release. People use their voices when they speak, when they sing all the time, but I don't think that they very often work on being able to relax them. And that is done through the breath. So if you've ever taken a yoga class at the end when you lie down, you're in that quiet after the moving meditation, you're rolling your eyes. What do you have again?

SPEAKER_02 25:35

I wasn't. I was taking a deep. It's the best part. Oh, I was I was I was having a moment of yank Shivasana's my favorite, where you get to lay down and take a yoga nap. Yeah, no, that wasn't great. Well, instead of that wasn't an eye roll. Yeah, it's the best part.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

That's really what it's all about. In fact, I can give your listeners uh some quick breath work tips right now. Should we do that? Please, Mr.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Seth, please.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

All right, so here so here's what we do. Uji breath. It's I do this before every keynote, every performance, every MC gig. I'm backstage. The last thing I do is physical. I jump up and down, oxygenate and energy energize my body. The first thing I do is relax your body, top of the head, tips of the toes, roll your shoulders back, relax your posture, everything should be loosey-goosey, and then in through the nose, out through the breath in a whispered ah, thusly. Let the audience note that Joshua Seth is breathing in through his nose and making a quiet whispered ah sound on the exhale. Yes, that's right, in her monologue, because what people do that actually harms more than it helps, is to push it or force it. This is not about pushing or forcing anything. And I would say the same thing when you're giving any sort of a presentation. Don't push or force or try too hard to be or do anything. Be that leaf flowing down the stream, be at one with your audience, be at one with the universe, and when and with the breath, right? Not forcing that exhale, but making it sound like like a conch shell that you hold up to your ear and you sound the you hear the sound of the ocean. And it's very important that your posture be elevated and expanded and aligned and relaxed. So uncross your arms and cross your legs. Exactly. Just like that. It we it can lower the the pitch of your voice when you do that, right? Because you're relaxed resonance. Another reason that that is important is Americans in particular will speak from the neck up. Now speak from the neck up. It's all very constrained and tight. And the placement should be in the chest and then forward from the mask, like this. Does that make sense what I'm saying? Well, it makes sense to me because I have vocal training. Vocal training, yes. Yeah. It has to do with your placement. Then, once you've done that, then you can incorporate tone with things like lip flutters. But always with a descending siren sound. You can even do like be careful of that one. That can actually be. Because it'll put you to sleep you tired, yes. Well, so I prefer. Yeah, and you can you can you can do all of these vocal exercises and breath work and postural awareness with the objective being uh that you want to find the the best version of yourself, not to change yourself into someone else, which that's a fool's errand, but instead to be the highest and best version of yourself and and unlock that vocal potential that is within you. And again, to close this topic, if you can do it in a gym to your body and change your physique and build muscles and do strength training, you can do the same thing with your voice, because it's just isolating a different muscle.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

And for those of you watching this on YouTube, you might notice that after all these breath work exercises, Josh was glowing a little bit green. Is that a side effect of all of this incredible breath and and vocal control?

SPEAKER_01 29:45

Yes, Ann, actually, it is. That is what you're seeing, and I'm surprised that the camera is picking it up. That is energy. As Einstein proves, we are all walking-talking energy fields. So that is the the animal magnetism vibrating outside my body. You are seeing his aura. You're seeing my aura, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

It's the color of money. And alphabet. So um now you have a book called Finding Focus. Where does it changing world? Yeah, where does this all fit in? Because this was 11 years ago you wrote this book. So this was mid-magic and all the, you know, all the things.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

So This was me being a young dad and losing all productivity because I had two little toddlers crawling around demanding my attention. And in that moment I realized, hey, uh, this is sort of my superpower. It's not any individual skill that I developed over the years, it's my ability to really lock in. And I couldn't do it because they were so little. And so I started to write a book as a missive to them because uh I fly around to gigs a lot and just do the math. Like odds are I'll probably perish in a fiery plane crash someday.

SPEAKER_02 31:05

So, in anticipation, it's actually are that you'll die in the car on the way to the plane, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

Yeah, just a mile from home, statistically speaking. At any rate, I'm also an older dad because I had two careers before I decided to procreate. And so, like Superman's father, I wanted to pass on my collected wisdom to my children. And I I ended up writing for a hundred days. That wasn't planned, but just like the note cards that I used to lock into different voices early in my career, I just plotted out a hundred little ideas on note cards that I wanted to share with my kids when they got old enough to actually understand what I was telling them because they were two and four at the time. Now they're teenagers, so I could give them the book, and then they would hold it in their hands and say, What's this? Where's the screen? But that's that's neither here nor there. And and that's what I wrote My dad's book. Yeah. And I wrote the book to them as sort of like the secrets to my success and what I've what I've learned in life and and pushing the boundaries creatively and uh wanting to be successful on my own terms. And because I think that's the the only real true success in life. You could have all the trappings of success, right? You could have the money, the fame, the big house, the the whatever. Well, however you however society combines that. Yeah, but it if it doesn't make you happy, to what avail? Right. So I wanted to put all that between the two covers of that book, and that and that became actually that became my first keynote. So I did that for a while. And then, oh, everything. Do we have time to tell the the pandemic story?

SPEAKER_02 32:44

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

2020 hits and Yeah, so now now we hit 2000 to 2020, right? We hit 2020, and I was booked on the gig that I thought would really just launch my speaking career, which was I was booked to be one of the cornerstone keynote speakers at the Million Dollar Roundtable Global in Dubai, right? Yeah, it was me. Who's the the Shark Tank guy? Damon Damon Johns, I believe. Is that his name? Maybe you don't know either. And Esther Perell, luminary psychologist. Uh and I'm like, what am I doing on this lineup? But I knew I knew my content, I wrote the book, and then everything shut down, and everything went virtual. There and everything canceled except for million dollar roundtable, they went virtual too. But I pivoted because I didn't want to do that topic anymore because I realized everybody had a different need, which was how do we show up well in a virtual environment in all of these virtual meetings that we're having on camera and on mic. So I created a new topic around that. And I didn't I didn't want to do virtual shows because there's no energy coming back to you in a show. But I did have this idea to do that keynote virtually, and I did it until the pandemic ended, and that's what got through got me through the keynote, that, and I actually started MCing virtual conferences, which I had never done before. But suddenly my background in film TV and radio, my broadcast training from NYU for the first time was useful because I I built a studio, which I no longer have, and did that, but I but I am still doing keynoting. So that was very uncomfortable. It was very discomforting to me to do virtual initially because I was thinking in terms of the show. And when I pivoted to these other avenues of MCing and keynote speaking, really that that's what got me through that period of time.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Well, and that's a perfect example of where tenacity is not the right angle. That whole need to pivot and quit something and because the environment's changed completely and we need to shift. And I bring this up because last month we had a point-counterpoint on giving up versus tenacity. It was fascinating. But anyway, keep going.

SPEAKER_01 35:04

Counterpoint. My counterpoint is I was still tenacious enough to continue making my living on a microphone, which was always the idea. But the the way to do that changes. I don't think tenacity requires that you be immovable. You ever read those Aesop fables as a kid? Yeah. There was one about like the oak tree and the willow, or something like the reed and the oak tree, and the oak tree was very strong. And he's like, the storm doesn't bother me. I'm a big, strong oak tree. I'm immovable. And the the willow tree was like, Well, I bend and I sway and I move, you know, with the changing of the seasons. And after the, long story short, after the storm, the oak tree was split in half, destroyed by the storm, and the willow snapped back because it was flexible. Hence, flexibility is strength. So in my mind, I was still tenacious enough not to get a job and to keep making my living on a microphone, but also flexible enough to change the way in which I did it.

SPEAKER_02 36:03

I love it. I love it. And then it's all in how you define that tenacity, which I agree with you completely. That's perfect. Perfect. And then you took all of it, and now your keynotes are basically your mentalist show. So you're doing things the rest of us keynoters can't do, thanks. And and then making it meaningful and with takeaways and all of that stuff. So, you know, you kind of continue to be tenacious and take in all of these skills you have and continue to make up. Because creativity is innovative.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

So you have to keep reinventing and exploring new ideas, and they could come from anywhere. The idea to do the show as a keynote came from my audience members. You've seen the show. After the show, audience members come up and they ask, How did you do that? And I tell them in the show, not a hundred percent, that would that would be no fun, right? I don't want to see how the sausage is made, but little things here and there because a lot of men, some of mentalism is a trick. I mean, I say in the beginning, like the show and the keynotes, I'm I'm going to use three techniques. I'm going to read people, read your body language, your tone of voice, and your microexpressions, which because of my background, I I have an edge in doing. And then I do it, and then I show people basically how to do it in the context of the show. The difference is in the keynote, I tie that into how it's beneficial in your professional life as well. And then the second technique is how to communicate with influence, because as a mentalist, I need to influence people's choices so that the outcomes will match the predictions that I made before the show. And the difference is in the keynote. I talk about how you can incorporate that into your negotiations and communications in a business setting. And then the third thing is I'm going to BS you because it's a show. And uh actually, all of life is a show. Shakespeare said that, right? All of life is a stage. And if we treat it that way, we don't need to get really too concerned about anything because this is just another scene in the show. And this too shall pass on to another one.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

Well, and and everything that you're talking about as far as influence is vital right now because we're in a time where everybody's kind of freaking out about what AI is gonna do. But if we hone in on those human skills and the the ability to connect and trust, I AI can't do that, right? I mean, this is and this is sort of one of the things you're playing with right now.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

Right. That's that's the title of my keynote is the psychology of connection, human skills, AI can't replace. So AI will replace a lot of people's jobs, but if you're in a high-touch profession, andor you can develop your own what have traditionally been called soft skills, as though they are less valuable than the hard skills. Well, guess what? The hard skills is mostly what the AI is gonna replace. But what are the soft skills, the human skills of being able to connect with one another, be fully present in the moment, listen well, read social cues, communicate with influence. That's what I do on stage in Mind Magic Live, and that's what I talk about in the keynote. And I truly believe that those are the skills that are going to be most valuable and most in demand in the years ahead as AI changes all of our professions in ways we can't even comprehend, but not those aspects.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

I love it. I love it, and this is you're such a great example. I mean, and your life is similar to mine in that it seems like it's a bunch of different things, but in reality, it's the evolution of you as a human and you and all of your skills. It's awesome to see. Joshuasteph.com is the website. Uh, anywhere else people should be looking for you or looking for things about you other than Digimon.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

Yeah, well, you Josh. We're gonna watch it tonight.com. And if you go to LinkedIn, that's the best way to connect with me personally, as opposed to all the other social media platforms that I do my best not to spend any time on. Those time vampires. But yeah, the LinkedIn is just my name as well.

SPEAKER_02 40:17

I love it. Well, thank you so much for your time, for your insights, for sharing, sharing all of this with us. It's fascinating. And I know probably everybody listening is going, this is an area I don't know about. So thank you so much for sharing it with us.

SPEAKER_01 40:29

Thanks for having me.