Rowan On Ep. 1 - Magic and Marketing

Our podcast is called Rowan On. Each time we have a guest, it will be a specific topic. And obviously I discovered magic. And I discovered this incredible thing. The irony of it is that I was really quiet and kind of shy. I'm fascinated by the idea of what can I do? What can I say? Hi, welcome to Rowan On Marketing and Magic. I'm your host Karen Holloway. And I'm here today with David Coursero. David, thanks so much for coming out. Thanks for having me. This is great. Awesome. Okay, so you are a Rowan alum. Yes. Class of 1998. But first I want to ask you a couple things about how magic got started for you. So take us back to your childhood. How did the magic start? Wow, this is like a therapy session all of a sudden. Like a back to my childhood and tell you what my parents were like. I got started in magic when I was in high school. My father was a science teacher. And he used to do like little tiny like sciencey magic tricks for his students once in a while. But he didn't do it often. He just kind of had this small little suitcase in our basement with these few little tricks in that he would do. And then one day I was in our basement going through going under a table. And I found this weird little briefcase that I didn't know what was in it. I opened it up and it was like the light shined out of it like in pulp fiction. I think it was just what is this. And all of a sudden I discovered magic. And I discovered this incredible thing that I could do to entertain and fool people. And I just started growing and growing, growing from there. That's great. And so you've been doing magic ever since. Ever since. Ever since. And you even incorporated into your career, right? Before we get into career, let's talk a little bit about your after high school. You became a Rowan university student. I did. And you sort of started out with, you wouldn't say your typical showman, right? You weren't, uh. No. I mean, the irony of it is that I was really quiet and kind of shy and I didn't have a lot of self confidence on myself. But magic started to bring that out a little bit. You know, when you give some 15, 16 year old kid the power to do something that nobody else can do, that everybody else is really interested in and finds fascinating, it really helps to build confidence. It's why it's such a perfect hobby for anybody who's shy or trying to sort of build up that level of confidence or enthusiasm in themselves. So I, what, I didn't have that sort of excited center of attention, spotlight personality, but magic started giving me a lot of confidence. So then I came to Rowan. And I was a student and I remember our resident director at Mimosa came up to me one day and saw me doing a few tricks and said, "You know what? Why don't you do a show in the basement for everybody? Do a show in this activity center?" So I did. And a ton of people showed up for it. It was incredible. I started to make a ton of new friends that way and it just kept building and building and building from there. And you studied marketing? I was a marketing major, yes. And how did studying marketing, how did that shape you into what you do? So I always sounded like, being involved in marketing has been one of the best assets to being a magician, to understanding business, understanding how to promote yourself in a cool way. And the irony is that being a magician has been one of the best assets to help me in marketing. Because being a magician has taught me how to stand up in front of a group of people, how to take charge, how to make people perceive trust in you. And doing that when you're standing up in front of a board room with a CEO of a major Fortune 500 company and presenting findings or research methodology in that way really brings about a certain level of trust that helped my career immensely over the years. Give us some examples about how you use magic. You talked about general, but can you give us an example of maybe how it landed a client or you were able to accomplish something in your career? So one of the cool things is that when you have this interesting little hobby like magic that a lot of people really love or really wanted to see a part of, you can almost use that as a little teaser. So for example, I would often have to every quarter go into a client's office and deliver a report based off of the work that we had done in the past quarter. All of my clients knew I did magic and they all knew that I would start my presentation instead of having like a typical networking icebreaker that's really cheesy and corny, I would open up with a magic trick. Well because of that, clients would show up to my meeting immediately like right on time if not a few minutes early. So all of my clients would love the fact that all of the colleagues would show up early, they would show up enthusiastically, and they'd be really interested in hearing what I had to say because they knew it was going to start off with something kind of fun and to kind of break the ice a little bit. So just having that as an initial icebreaker really enabled me to stand at a little bit. The other flip side is very often I'm going and in pitching my work to prospective clients and very often those clients would have five, six meetings set up during the course of a day where they're hearing not just my pitch, but the pitch of several of my competitors. So having magic in there, not standing up and doing anything cheesy, but incorporating magic in a really unique way made my presentation always stand out a little bit. So at the end of the day when that client is thinking back to the five, six presentations they saw, one of them hopefully if I did my job right is not just going to stand out in terms of the content of the marketing that I'm pitching, but it's going to stand out as just a fun presentation that was really engaging that they can remember. So when you're doing things like that both on the ability to pitch yourself side and the ability to deliver the results side, it just gives everybody more confidence and trust in what you're saying. Right, and it humanizes you. You're not just another presentation, you're someone that they connected with on some level. And so often I would have somebody come up to me and say, I did magic when I was younger or right now my kids are really interested in it. And maybe I would teach them a trick or maybe I would give them a reference of a book that they can show or buy for their kids. And again, it humanizes it. It reminds everybody that we're all just on this little pebble together trying to get through it. And if they can make a connection with me in a way outside of the business world, but that influences what their business decisions are going to be, that's beneficial for everybody. Right, so while you were a student here, you talked a little bit about how you got started doing things. Talk about what really got you out of your shell, how did you develop and what activities and things like that. So the crazy thing is that again, because that was a little bit shy and a little bit quieter in high school, the idea of me coming to Rowan and joining a fraternity was the last thing on my mind. If you ask people to describe me zero, I guarantee you would have said, I see Dave in Greek life. However, that first show that I described to you that I did at Mimosa, I can remember we had, I'll say 50, 60, 70 people are so showed up, including about seven or eight guys from Theta Kye fraternity. And they showed up all wearing their Greek letters. They watched the show, they loved it, they had a great time. So I went up to me afterwards and said, you seem like a lot of fun, we would love for you to come out, meet everybody else. And that really blew me away at the time. Like the idea that these people sought me out versus the other way around. So I said, look, I don't see myself as a fraternity person, but let me go, let me check it out. And I just found in a culture and an environment that fed into what I was looking for. So I was not somebody that partied a lot, I didn't drink a lot, I didn't do any of the so-called stereotypical Greek life things. But I saw an element where I could take on a leadership role. Yeah. That was really different and really unique. And as I started taking on more and more leadership roles within the fraternity, I started getting asked to do more leadership things around campus. I was a student government, other clubs and organizations. So all of a sudden I found this other lane that I had never anticipated my life taking, which is taking on, which is a role where people asked me to take on a leadership position. People respected the thoughts and ideas that I brought to different things, which went completely the opposite of everything that I had sort of felt up to until that point. And it was one of the things that Rowan really, really helped me to do. I saw teachers asking me to take on certain roles that they thought I could handle, pushing me a little bit further each time. And it really sort of took my life in an incredible direction. And I truly owe it all to the culture and the environment that Rowan brought to me and brought out of me. That's really great. Really great to hear that. I think a lot of students would connect with that. I hear a lot from students that if you get involved and you get out there and put yourself out there, you really skyse a limit, you can do anything and you can grow and make connections that you need to make for your career. And it's really helpful. I think it's also about taking chances at Rowan, like taking a shot at a club and organization that you might think, well, that doesn't feel like me. This is the perfect place to try it and then determine, okay, it's not for me. Because you never know, you're going to all of a sudden find something and you're going to say, you know what? I have thoughts. I have ideas. I can see myself contributing to this. And it will, I guarantee you, it will open up a realm of possibilities for you later on in life by taking that, I don't even want to call it a risk. It's not a risk. That's the beautiful part about here, right? It's just an opportunity that you're trying to take advantage of. Right. Right. Let's talk a little bit about, since we're talking about marketing and magic. How would you describe your work? personal brand. I've always liked the idea that I don't look like potentially what you think a magician's your stereotypically look like. I always liked the idea that I could just be the guy sitting next to you at a restaurant that all of a sudden would be doing something that would blow your mind. One of my favorite stories was that I was on an airplane. I was flying home from Denver one time and I had a guy sitting next to me who didn't have an iPad. He had like one little book that he was barely flipping through. He was just bored and I was sitting there and I'm on my iPad and I'm watching a movie and you're the end of the flight. Ten minutes left. I take out a deck of cards and I just start practicing. Well just just something I do when I'm watching TV or on a plane and he's watching me for a minute and all of a sudden he goes excuse me. Are you a magician? And I said yeah and I remember he went I've been bored the entire trip and I'm sitting next to a magician. This is amazing and we just started talking and I did a few tricks for him and we chatted it up. So I've always just liked this idea that my personal brand is the every guy that once you kind of get it out of them can do some really cool stuff. And in reverse a lot of times during my show I'm engaging with people in the audience and I'm asking them what they do and what their interests are. I kind of think like everybody's interesting you just have to find out what it is. Yeah. So I kind of like the idea that I'm just the guy sitting next to you on the train but can do some really cool stuff. Yeah. You also incorporate comedy. What drew you to bring that into your performance? Again it's kind of just who you are as a person like I've always been really heavily involved in stand-up comedy comedy movies comedy going to comedy shows. So being funny is just important to me. My core group of friends we all try to make it to the laugh as much as possible. So who I am as a natural person is somebody who I think is trying to be a little funny or to break that ice it's so to speak earlier on. So during the course of my show I'm trying to be humorous. I'm trying to make people kind of bring their edge down a little bit. Very often in magic they'll always be a section of people who want to figure out how the trick is done. Yeah. And you can see them like as I was performing before I could see a few people in the audience kind of just straight-faced locked eyes like their brain is trying to figure out a puzzle. Yeah. But if I can make them laugh a little bit it takes the edge off a little bit and that actually enables me to be able to fool them a little better because I know I have that edge taken off and they're not as serious as they were two minutes ago. So any chance that I can get to incorporate comedy into what I'm doing I try to. That's great. Let's pivot to mentalism. What does it mean to be a mentalist? I think that's different for every single person. For some people mentalism can be like really creepy and occult and really sort of mysterious. And for other people it's more of body language. It's more of you know if you watch somebody playing poker and they know when you're bluffing that is an element of mentalism right. It's an element of them looking at your body language and understanding what you're thinking based on the way you're acting. It's a lot of what the reason why I went into marketing right. Marketing can be a lot of understanding why people make certain decisions. When somebody goes to 7/11 and they want a nice tea and they look at the cat and they look at the freezer refrigerator and there's a snapple and a pure leaf. Why are they buying one versus the other? Right. And getting into somebody's head and understanding why they're making the choices that they're making can influence marketing and it's a lot of what fascinates me about mentalism. So when I started getting more and more into mentalism it really is all about understanding why people make the decisions that they make. I did something on stage earlier on where I had people writing down fake names. And I think the names that they choose are really fascinating insights into the way their brains think. So incorporating all that together magic, mentalism, marketing and all kind of intertwines in a way that I think is really interesting. Yeah. You sort of answered my next question because I was going to ask, you know, why not psychology or behavioral science? You chose marketing. So you pretty much answered it. But did you at all study performing arts or theater or anything like that? That's the crazy part. I did. You know, I studied a lot of public relations when I was here. I did study psychology. I studied a lot of market research. I studied marketing itself. All of it really kind of comes together if you think about it. It really is ultimately boiling down to why do people make the decisions that they make? So for me, that's really interesting. There's some a lot of people have asked me like, why am I still in the business world? Why have I not just become a magician for full time? Because I'm still fascinated with the marketing side of things. Yeah. When somebody comes to me with a brand new with a new brand, here's something we're getting ready to launch. We're going to launch this cookie. This is a healthy cookie. It's got A, B, and C benefits to it. What can I say? What can I communicate to make the average consumer look at this and want to spend their money on it? I still think that's really interesting and I think it ties into mentalism, right? It ties into why do people think what they're thinking. If I was to ask you right now to literally think of any musician in the entire world and I'm able to tell you what that is, don't do it right now. We'll save that for later. But if I was to do that and I think whatever musician you think about is a fascinating insight to the type of person you are and it tells me a lot about the type of person you are. So being able to do that on stage, I think is fascinating. What if I would think to think of a musician that just to trick you something I would never like ever really listen to? Could you read that? By itself? Yes, I could. Maybe even do that in the second half. But it also tells me a lot about who you are as a person. So you mentioned comedy earlier on. I always start my show off by trying to do two or three minutes of just some gags and some jokes. The reality is that that's not just for comedy purposes. I'm watching the way everybody reacts to it. I'm looking for the people who are laughing, who are tapping their friends, who are making jokes on the side. And I'm looking for the people who aren't. And very often the people I choose to help me with different tricks are because of the way they're reacting in those first few minutes. So if I see you kind of staring me down a little bit or not even engaging if your friends are asking you a question, odds are you're one of those people who's trying to systematically break down what I'm doing. And maybe that means I'm not gonna ask you to help me later on because I'm looking for the people who are more relaxed and more engaged in having a good time. Gotcha. How do you prepare a new trick? What's take us through some of your process? So for me preparing a new trick is all about teamwork. I'm very lucky that I'm friends with a lot of super talented magicians in the New York, New Jersey area. And what we do is we try to get together as often as possible to brainstorm ideas. So somebody will all sit down at my house or we'll all meet at a diner somewhere and somebody will go, "Hey everyone, I have this idea." I'll give you an example. The last trick I did earlier on, which involved a bunch of playing cards and the colors of those cards and adding up numbers, that started in a very very different way. But it started with this little germ of an idea that I brought to my friends that everybody said, "Hey you know what, what if we add this?" And then six months later somebody said, "What if you add that?" And we tried it and it didn't work. And then we went back to the idea from two months ago. And it ultimately developed to what it was that you saw. It's funny a lot of times if we go to meet at a diner, the hysterical part is watching other tables looking over and eventually realizing that we are a group of magicians practicing. That's great. And then they'll start to like make eye contact with us and kind of because they want to see what it is that we're doing. And we'll go over and try a trick out on them and sometimes we'll conduct a little market research. We'll go up to them later and say, "I'm going to show you two tricks. Which one do you like more? Why do you like it more?" And getting all that feedback helps to make the magic better. So it all comes from a very collaborative process because I'm lucky enough to maybe friends with some great magicians in New York, New Jersey. That's great. How would you win over a skeptic? So there's two answers to that question. So I'll give you the the cop-out answer, which is I don't, which is if they're a skeptic, I just let them go. The second part of that is when they're a skeptic, I love not making them the center of attention. Meaning when I get somebody up here, somebody over there before was kind of acting this way, like really trying to dissect something. I will not try to engage them. I'll try to engage the person next to them. I'll make it so that they're not paying attention to what I'm doing, but somebody else is. Because when you give that person, when you engage them directly, their skepticism gets heightened. When you don't, and they can kind of be a little bit more reserved about their skepticism, that's the best chance you have of making them kind of give up on it. It's kind of like if you're challenging somebody, right? If you challenge somebody, they're going to push back. If you don't challenge them and engage the person next to them, all of a sudden it gives them a little bit more of an opportunity to go, you know what? I give up. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm wondering if you use that in marketing and sales. If you're pitching something or if someone isn't quite sure about a tactic or strategy, do you try to win them over and in that's in a similar way? When I'm engaging in the marketing side of things and somebody's a bit skeptical as to whether or not I can deliver what it is that I'm promising. I tend to break away from sort of the textbook solution to that in the marketing world, which is you know you ask them questions, you get them to say yes a lot. I, for me that's not the way it works. I like to put my reputation on the line. I'll stop and go you know what I'm not going to engage in a back and forth. I'm telling you that I know I can do this better than anybody else. Yeah. I'm telling you for A, B and C reasons I can and if you want to go with somebody else that's fine, but I'll be willing to bet anything that three runs from now. You're going to stop and go I wonder what Dave would have done differently. And you know what when that happens call me and I'll tell you what I would have done differently at that time. Right. Kind of like putting my reputation on the line, challenging them to go I'm telling you this is going to be there. Nobody else does that. And you know what there's times where it won't work. There's times where they're going to go I went with somebody else and I'm really happy with their work. And that's great. But to me putting that idea in their head, they're always going to kind of go even though this was great, I wonder what Dave would have done differently. Right. And that could help for the next time. I could absolutely help for the next time. What magicians have inspired you? So the magicians that have inspired me, I mean, there's a few of like the top tier, right? There's the David Copperfield of the world, who is the greatest magician of all time, has put, you know, has changed the way magic was perceived in the public domain. There is Penn and Teller, who I was super lucky enough to meet after I performed on their show and even got in a hangout with Teller a little bit here and there. And the idea of not only meeting some of your idols, but even being come friendly with them has been insane. There's also a bunch of other magicians that are not necessarily household names, but I've had a massive influence on me. There's a guy named Derek Tagadillo who had a show off brought in New York that was called In and of itself, which was amazing. There are magicians from other countries, Danny Diortees from Spain, Juan Tomerys from Spain, who have been really influential for me. And then there's like magicians that have never been big names, but they are just the out, the guys who are out there working 365 days a year, who have really influenced me. People like Will Fern and Dennis McSweeney and Mark Calibri's, guys who have just been really powerfully impactful to me over the years. So you're very passionate about magic and marketing, but part of your passion is also some of your service work. I know you've done a lot of volunteer, you donate magic to a lot of different organizations. Can you talk a little bit about that, how that came to be, when that started, what really drives you in that? I mean, it's, I've always been somebody who's very big into philanthropy. My parents, when I was growing up, were very highly involved in the Lions Clubs of America, which helped splined and visually impaired people. So as I was really getting started in magic, like I would volunteer and do magic and do fun razors for them to be able to donate what I'm doing on stage to help somebody else. And then that kind of kept growing. I started doing stuff with wounded warriors, habitat for humanity. But then in 2011, I had twin boys who were born in 2010. And in 2011, my once on Matthew was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. So I have become very heavily involved in the JDRF, juvenile diabetes research foundation, which is now called Breakthrough T1D. So every year we've done a ton of fund razors and event organizations and events for them to help raise money and help spread awareness of type 1 diabetes. So that's like the number one primary organization that I work with right now. But to me, any chance that I have to be able to take what I do for fun and turn it into money to help service organizations, I mean, I look at that as a win-win for everybody. Yeah. Speaking of win-win, as an alum, I feel like another thing that you, I'm learning about you that you're passionate about is helping students, rowing students specifically. We've talked about your desire to be a mentor and bring them into the professional side of things. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. So again, when I left Rowan in 1998, I got my first sort of quote unquote real job in the marketing world in November, November 98. And then after a few months, they started saying, "Hey, we're looking for other interns. We're looking for other junior level, entry level roles here." So what did I do? I reached out to the people at Rowan. I reached out to people who graduated with me, people who graduated one or two years after me, people in Greek organizations, people in student government that I worked with. I started reaching out to people that I knew were quality people. And my company started hiring them. So I started getting jobs for a lot of other people who went to Rowan. And that's always been a real huge passion of mine is if there's any opportunity that I have, whether it's to give a little bit of recommendations, insights, or to straight up introduce somebody who went to Rowan to a prospective employee, I want to take advantage of that. I even started putting together in the corporate world, I started doing a seminar called Problem Solving Like a Magician, which is something that I've done at different marketing conferences and for major brands, where I help teach them creativity and problem solving skills using magic. And I started getting requests to do it at other colleges. So to talk to their marketing departments, to talk to their students, to teach them these skills and to give them insights into the marketing world. But really, this is the place I want to do it more than any other spot because of my connection to Rowan. >>Crab, what do you think? Should he come and visit and do this for Rowan students? >>Yeah. >>They're all saying no. That doesn't say much for my skills. >>I think you should. And I think that would be a great opportunity for our Rowan students. >>Just look at this look. >>Yeah. >>Just look at what this school has been like. I was talking to somebody who graduated close to me before it. The way this college has, this university has grown and developed is insane to me. Like it's so incredible. Like what you guys are doing right here with Rowan on is amazing. We didn't have this stuff back in the day. And that's why I talked earlier on about the opportunities that the students have here to get involved. I cannot wait to see what happens when this episode airs because what you guys are doing here I think is incredible and I think it's opening up a slew of additional opportunities for the students here to capitalize on, to network and be a part of. And these kids are going to be so much further ahead of the game that when they graduate than I was. So if we can take the skills that I know they're graduating with and if I can help introduce them to an opportunity in the real world, again win win for everybody. >>I love it. All right I just have a couple of quick questions for you. >>I like quick questions. >>Okay good. Favorite film that incorporates magic or mentalism. >>Favorite film that incorporates magic or mentalism. So one of the, so there were two films that came out almost simultaneously. One was called The Prestige. It was a Christopher Nolan movie and one was called The Illusionist and that was starring Ed Norton. The Illusionist, I believe it or not, actually had more magician centric ideas in it. Prestige went a bit like science fiction at times where the illusionist was much more much more stuck to what a magician's life is like. Similarly there's a movie came out that called Now You See Me. Then there was Now You See Me 2 and there's about to be a third one called Now You See Me Now You Don't. A lot of those incorporate real magic techniques as well as a little supernatural. Then there was a movie called Shade which nobody saw but it was really cool and it had a lot of magic in that. So if anyone wants to see more movies about this, Shade, then Now You See Me franchise, The Illusionist and the Prestige. What's your favorite? My favorite was The Illusionist. Okay. All right. This is a, okay, you're looking at me in a way where like you're scared to ask this question. I'm not scared to ask it but I think it's funny. Okay. Do you have a hot take on the recent viral sensation of Sylvia Brown's predictions? Honey the land. Hot take on it. Sure. So wait, for anyone who doesn't know. You want to set it up or Sylvia Brown it was a famous, I think she claimed to be a medium, right? So a medium is somebody who claims they can speak to the dead. And I know there was sort of a viral thing going on right now if people putting together clips of all of her biggest misses. Yeah. Which is a lot of how those people work. Which is you have 10,000 people. You have a thousand people in a room and you say I'm thinking somebody's coming through from the other side. Their name begins with an L and 10 people say that's me and then they go it's a woman and five people say it's me and they say her name was Louise and one person says that's my grandmother. Oh my god. You met my grandmother. Well, no, not really. Now, am I saying that none of the people who do that is real? Kind of, but but the reality is that I don't know, right? I don't know. Maybe some people out there can really have special amazing skills. I can only tell you that everybody I've ever seen do that. I know magicians who can do it just as well if not better. Yeah. There's a gentleman in New York named Todd Robbins who used to do this incredible say on show where you would swear upside down left and right that he was speaking to the dead and communicating in ways that was unbelievable, but it was pure entertainment. Yeah. So could those people be real sure, but I've never seen anybody who can do something that the people I know can do. Okay. All right. So you have, you perform all over. You perform in New York a lot. You're doing some things in Philly coming up. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that and then also give us the future for David Coursera. If you're more in the North Jersey, New York area, I'm involved in multiple shows there. One is called Speakeasy Magic, which is this really cool immersive magic experience. I'm only there a few times a month, but if you check it out or contact me, go to DavidCrossaro.com. You can see where I'm going to be or follow me on Instagram @DavidCrossaro or I have a monthly residency show at City Winery. That's called Magic in a Bottle. So you can go to Magic in a Bottle NYC if you're going to be up in that area and see when I'm performing there. Or you can just highly encourage the decision makers at Rowan to bring me back here and we can do something bigger and more immersive here and have some fun. I like that idea. I like that idea. I like that idea. Thank you so much for being here today. Rowan on Marketing and Magic. We'll see you next time.