Mom was taking my seven-year-old sister, Kelly, to the dentist. I was almost three years old, and I had a cold, so she dropped me off with her mother, telling her, “I’m leaving my boy with you.” Prophetic words. Mom and Kelly never came home. While driving home in a Northern Michigan April snow shower,… Read more about Practical Magic
For the first 20 years of my adult working life, I was driven by what I wanted to have.An impressive job in an impressive companyAn impressive carAn impressive house in an impressive neighborhoodImpressive clothesThat’s what it was all about for me—trying to impress upon the world that I was successful. I wrote a personal vision statement… Read more about BE-DO-HAVE
When Ross Perot hired me to be his personal assistant in 1984, he didn’t know I was a magician, but he found out at the office Christmas party when I did a little show for everyone. Afterward, he came up to me and said, “Andy, that’s pretty good how you do those magic tricks. From… Read more about The Most Important Thing I Needed to Know About Leadership I Learned From Ross Perot
You’re Making Us Look Bad In the summer of 1982, between my junior and senior year of college, I worked on the assembly line at GM’s Lansing Car Assembly, putting parts on Oldsmobiles. A few days into the job, one of my co-workers, the shop steward for the union, approached me. “Hey, Andy, you need… Read more about A Leader’s Guide to Culture
We All Make Mistakes My first job out of college was managing a Joann Fabrics store in a suburb of Detroit. It was a humbling experience because it turns out that most people who sew are women and they don’t want to take advice from a dude – even though I know how to sew.… Read more about Revitalizing the Human Spirit at Work
Everywhere I go around the world, the word Abracadabra is recognized as the universal magical incantation (except in Asia, and I don’t know why), but most people have no idea what Abracadabra means, including probably 99% of magicians. Abracadabra’s history is ancient. It is believed to be an Aramaic word – an ancient sacred language… Read more about ABRACADABRA: What I Speak Is What I Create
Take a good look at this poster of legendary British magician David Devant. Compare this to Devant’s colleagues… Most magicians shined the spotlight on themselves. Thurston called himself, “World’s Famous Magician,” Blackstone, “World’s Master Magician,” and Kellar “The Great Magician.” They were focused on invoking power and posturing to elevate their own stature. David Devant’s… Read more about It’s Not All About You
