Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Everybody is missing something in life. I felt prisoner to my own success. Change is hard. Change is hard. I get it. Change or die.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: I'm gonna change things.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: So what the hell can we change? If we can see things differently, we can have some different results. Only on NOW Media Television networks.
Welcome to Be the Giraffe. I'm your host and guide, Chris Jarvis. And if you are looking for ways to stand out and reach higher in business, with money and in life, then you're in the right place. On Be the Giraffe, we meet the innovators who dare to be different and stick their necks out. We learn how they broke free from the herd and used their long necks to discover better paths. Today we have a magical show. My guest is a man who wears so many hats and he can pull a rabbit out of most of them. Jim Monroe. Jim is a magician and illusionist who's performed over 1000 times in 10 countries.
If you prefer quality over quantity, I'm right there with you. Jim Monroe is all about substance. He has a powerful way of levitating above the challenges life has thrown at him. When injuries derailed a professional baseball career, he turned to magic. When his tour was canceled because he had cancer, Jim didn't fold. He found his faith and then found a bone marrow donor to save his life.
This was no sleight of hand or allusion to Jim. He revamped his show to incorporate his story and and use the powerful message to sign up more bone marrow registry signups than any other person in any five year period ever. If you feel like life has dealt you a bad hand or you've thought about disappearing yourself, you've got to stick around to see what magic we have in store for you. It's time for you to elevate your perspective and see your better path. Jim Monroe, welcome to Be the Giraffe.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Thank you. Excited to be here, man.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: Glad to have you. So I've known you now for 10 years. I think there's a lot of people who have big goals. Most kids, most people in our town, the kids think about being a professional, used to be a professional athlete, entertainer.
They want to do something in front of a lot of people. You've done all of that?
[00:02:13] Speaker B: That's correct, yeah.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: So you grew up in California and born to perform. Born to perform, yeah. So we're going to have you dance and do some magic. You're not ready for, but you start. But start this off, the whole baseball thing. Every kid, I wanted to be a baseball player. My dad was a Professional baseball player. So I assumed it was my birthright.
Tell us a little bit about that. So you did that. Go ahead, share with people.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Born and raised, Orange County, California, was a big, hard thrower.
Was throwing 90 miles an hour my freshman year of high school.
All the scouts that come to your games, their logos change from college, like the college logos, to professional logos. Early on, radar guns to see every pitch and yeah, ended up becoming a top 50 baseball American prospect.
Got drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays out of high school.
Back then they were the Devil Rays.
And then my mom was going to kill me if I didn't go to college. So at 18, you can decide if you want to stay amateur or go pro. So I took a scholarship to the University of Texas. I was Augie Garrido's first recruiting class back in 1997 and played in all the big games.
My favorite game still is pitching at lsu, which was quite the experience.
And then my rotator cuff slowly started to unwind on me. And so I think it's a pretty common tale. So sophomore season was, you know, needed to hang up the cleats, which is a huge transition. You know, I think your identity, who you are, I mean, I guess it's a common tale for athletes, period, to have to kind of figure out what else they're good at or what it is they're going to do.
And for me, in college, I started asking a lot of big questions and stumbled upon a group at the University of Texas that I got involved with. And one of the individuals there was a really, really good friend of mine. His name was Tennyson and he was a magician as well. So I'm already changing here. But growing up, my mom encouraged me to get into the arts. I'm a pretty good piano player. And then also I remember just being fascinated with magic. I don't know if it's because I grew up going to Disneyland or, or whatever, but yeah, every birthday, every Christmas was asking for new magic tricks. I got my first magic set when I was 6 years old and I never put it down.
So in college, meeting this magician and having done different effects, and around that time, this guy named David Blaine, who everyone knows became pretty popular in television. And so we began to see that the close up magic era was in effect because just of how he did it. And so I'd take a deck of cards with me on the University of Texas campus or 6th street, and then began to realize, wow, there's real power in this and connecting with people.
And so, yeah, so I'M already onto magic. But baseball career was short lived.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: We've had business owners on the show, business owners who've built companies and sold them and they talk about identity.
We had Sean Swanner on the show who talked about climbing Everest and doing the seven Summits and the Explorers Grand Slam and then slipping into a depression because again, it was now what you spend all this time. I know my father who played baseball and then he tore his rotator cuff and he was playing in the majors at the time. And then it's. I spent my whole life chasing this thing which that's part of be the giraffe. One of the lessons is you really have, you know, balance is bs. You can have everything you want, just not at once.
You have got to put everything into something if you want to accomplish something great.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: And everybody who does, the ones who don't make it feel bad, but the ones who do make it also feel bad. And either way, when there's a change or a transformation, there's an identity shift.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: Right.
I'm a big believer in the fact that your identity is not something that you can create.
I don't know if that's in line with everything, but I think it happens. I think part of it happens to you and I think it happens when you have nothing.
Like it's being brought down to the bare minimum is where you find out who you really are.
Right.
And it's not made up. I don't think that what you do is actually what identifies you, it's who you are. And I think the doing comes out of figuring that out first.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: So the first thing I want to pick up is the.
I heard Jimmy Carr, the comedian talk about character and someone, he takes questions at the end of a show and someone asked him a question about character, about life. And he said no one with character had an easy life.
Like you develop character because you work through difficult things.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Right. So to that point, yeah, character is an interesting word.
I think it comes from a word like to be chiseled out. Like there's a grinding that takes place when you kind of. When you, when you find that out. Right. And so I think my story or my message really is it's hard times are tough, hard times are hard.
But.
But there is great seed that's being sown into that. Call it death.
It's a strong word, but it's really kind of what it is. Like humility is a powerful thing I think in life, in business, especially humility.
I've come to know the root word for Humility is this word hummus, which actually means of the earth.
So of the earth means dirt.
Like, you really are dirt. You become dirt.
And then.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I want to pick up something that you put down, which I think it's really important.
You talked about the character being the chiseling away.
And for a lot of people, they think they have to build themselves up, and there's a whole putting things together or putting things out front for other people to see.
But the true character of a person doesn't come from. From what you're saying, it doesn't come from stacking things. It comes from removing things. And there's a removal of whether it's ego or in your case, it could even have been. You were extraordinarily gifted and talented athletically, but by removing that, it brought other things out in you.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah, I've heard. I like this phrase. Charisma opens the door, but character keeps it open. Right. And so when we put it on to try to impress, like, people, people know the difference between what is real and what is fake. And we can talk about that all day long. That's all. That's. That's what a magician spends their entire life doing. It's why even today, like, with all the CGI effects that happen in all these movies now, like, people are getting back to the fact that an audience can recognize the difference between what is real and what is fake, even on screen. And so, again, it doesn't take long for somebody to kind of figure you out.
And transparency, I think, is probably.
Transparency is a very tough thing. But the quicker you can get to transparency because you have great character, the better off you're going to be in any situation that. That involves people.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: So you had.
I have an idea where this is going to go, because I know you, and I want to take the audience through this slowly not to miss anything. You had baseball, you lost. That was taken away from you, which then allowed you to become this entertainer.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Right?
So pretty much the same thing. Like being a pitcher.
Pitchers work hard on.
They own the show. Like, I think a pitcher is probably the only person in sports next to, like, maybe a golfer and like a bowler who, like, really kind of owns the game. Like, everything happens there. So you're in control.
Being on stage as a performer or as a magician in particularly, it's pretty much the exact same thing, but you still kind of run into the same trap, which is that you're only as good as your ability to perform.
Right. Like, nobody cares about you after you're done winning or losing a game, nobody cares about you after you get off the stage.
It's a completely transactional relationship. And I think in business, in particularly, people are tired of the transactions, especially in this day and age where everything's flying at us a million miles, people are sold. I don't know, you know the stat better than me, but how many times are we sold? Every single day, whether it be ads on our phone or whatever. And so it stops being about the what and it starts being about the who. And I think, especially in an AI world that we live in, I think that the who becomes so much important, much more important than what you do.
Right.
You have to provide a service, obviously, but there's, I don't know many people out there who can provide, who aren't in direct competition with everybody else. I think the thing that changes the game is when people can recognize the who, like who they're dealing with, the person that they're dealing with.
And I think that it's on behalf of, it's the responsibility of the salesperson or the business advocate or whoever it is to get to transparency as quickly as possible.
So.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: With that, I think that's really important. And I want to get to, in the next segment, I want to get to some of the really interesting life lessons around magic. Because you had your career and the illusions and I've had you speak at my events and I know what a great performer you are, but I know that you get the, there's more to it than that. And there was something in your life. You were a very successful performer, but then there was something that happened in your life that was a really big deal, a major setback that completely changed how you performed, who you performed for, what story you told, and the impact you had on the people in the audience and on people in their lives. So when we come back after the break, Jim's going to talk about becoming a world famous magician, doing great things, and then having an even greater hurdle to overcome and how he took that and turned that abracadabra into something magic. So we'll catch you after the break.
Hey, Chris Jarvis on Be the Giraffe TV this week we have magician and illusionist Jim Monroe, a man who has overcome all kinds of odds, obstacles, lived when he shouldn't have, and now he is living with purpose and passion. Learn how he overcame adversity, how he turned it into a super purposeful, passionate life that has saved the lives of hundreds of people. And learn how you can use his lessons in your business and in your life and with your kids. And this week be the giraffe Jim Monroe. He's going to make all your worries disappear.
Today's guest is magician, illusionist and dear friend of mine, Jim Monroe. Welcome back.
So in the first segment we talked, we went very quickly over the fact that, oh ho hum, I was drafted into major league baseball twice actually.
And you did that and then you got hurt and ended that career. You picked up something else. You went and became a magician and you had some success with that.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: So for people who want. Right now, everybody wants to be seen.
Right. They're out on social media, they're trying to do something to get likes to get views, to be front of people. You were seen by a lot of people like you were the thing on college campuses.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
So magic is, I mean it's, I think it's. How about I say this? I think it's more, I think it hits harder than like music. Like there's not a person on the planet who, if you pull out a deck of cards and start messing around with them, that they don't pull their attention away and kind of say, what's that? And I think that's every magician will tell you when they were a kid.
That's the enchantment of it is you get the attention. Right.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: Which is way better than having your kids try and sing for you, which is every young family has the kids who want to do their own band and they're terrible. So if you can make something disappear, it is more entertaining.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. No, magic's a good friend. Yeah, I think it chose me. You know, it's one of those things.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: So you did this. You were speaking around the world, you had figured out your craft, you turned the, you went from baseball to performing and you were able to perform in audiences, people paid you and all of that was going fine. So here you had the great, it could have been a great letdown from sports, but you found something else to replace it.
And then that was going great.
And then what happened?
[00:16:15] Speaker B: Yeah, So a couple things actually. The first thing that happened was my partner committed suicide.
My closest friend, like the brother, the only brother that I feel like I've ever had, which was massive. And then shortly after that, I think in part because of the stress of that, I got diagnosed with leukemia.
And I was 20, 29, 28 when it got started, 29 when I got fully diagnosed, but a real gnarly one.
It was called Philadelphia Positive All.
Yeah. So what was required with the Philadelphia Mutation is a bone Marrow transplant.
And so it stops being about, hey, we need to put you into remission with all these drugs. It turns into, hey, we have to find someone in the world whose DNA matches yours close enough.
And if we can find somebody, we're going to substitute their perfect blood on your behalf so you can live again.
So you don't just.
It's not just, you know, a normal. It's not just a normal chemo process. You have to. Actually, the reason why is because the cancer would come back. Because my body couldn't recognize cancer cells that was killing me. So we had to reboot my immune system.
Yeah.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: So now it's not just you. You have something that might kill you, you have something that might kill you. And now we have to go find somebody. What's the natural thing? Go. Family members.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: They test family members first. But then there's this international registry. There's a few international registries, but the big one in the US Is called the National Marrow Donor Program. Back then, I think it was called Be the Match. I don't know if they still have that name anymore.
And so there's this international registry. At that time, there were 7 million people in the registry.
And out of 7 million people, there was just one perfect match for me. Just one.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: I remember being in college, and somebody came to our campus and.
No, it was a friend.
One of my fraternity brothers had a friend from high school who had a younger sister or someone who needed a bone marrow. So we all went and got tested and did whatever we did. We all got on the registry. And I can remember the conversations was, yeah, but it's a really painful thing.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: And, yeah, it's not pain. It's not. It's the way they do it now. It's not painful.
It's not fun.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: What I'm saying is, someone said to us, but it's like, isn't that a bad procedure? And I say, but if you can save someone's life, if you're the one, how do you not do that? And we had something like 110 out of the 120 guys go do that. Because it was, hey, let's make this work. But also, we heard the odds were so big, and so the odds are stacked against you.
How do you find the matches? And are they even on the registry? And how do you do this? So it must have been.
Must have been scary.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it was terrifying to know that my own sister wasn't a close enough match. I mean, we have the same chromosomes, right?
So, yeah, it's pretty intense.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: What happens in that period of time from you get diagnosed? They tell you you have to find somebody. Needle in a haystack. What's that look like?
[00:19:21] Speaker B: You're just. You're in hope.
You kind of make your peace with life.
You never stop hoping. Right. You fight till the end.
But, yeah, you're at the mercy of finding someone on the planet who is willing to do this for you, which is really bizarre when you think about it.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: Did you go through the feelings of, why me? And there is no God and I'm gonna die?
[00:19:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So for me, one thing that probably mentioned is that part of the show that I was doing included me. If people wanted to hear, I would share my faith. Like, I'd basically do 90 minutes and then give them a break and say, hey, if you want to stick around and listen to what I think might be true, college campuses are obviously built that way, right? You're supposed to be talking about things that are bigger than ourselves.
So for me, I thought I was doing everything right, you know, so the whole. The whole rationale of cause and effect, like, if you do good, then good things should happen to you, was kind of completely thrown out the window. So for me, yeah, it was a crisis of faith. It was a crisis of everything until, you know, some of the details started to come out about what the transplant really was and how it actually matched up perfectly with what I believed to be true, which is so. So I'm a Christian.
Yeah. So bone marrow transplant is a substitution of blood on your behalf by the only person on the planet who can save you of your disease.
That's pretty messianic. My doctor was Jewish. I remember him explaining this to me, and I was like, you mean I need a savior?
He's like, yeah, by their blood. He's like, yeah. I was like, that's pretty messianic, Doc. He's like, yeah, I guess it is.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: You know, and messianic for the audience.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Messianic is the fact that Judeo Christians believe that there is a savior and he loves you and he has a plan for your life. Yep, yep.
And Christians believe he did it with his blood.
So, yeah.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: So then you find a donor.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: Find a donor.
And then the tune totally changes, right?
And you get excited, but the medicine gets worse. Cause they have to destroy your immune system. They have to wipe out the old person, essentially, so they can let the new one become sheriff. Because they don't want there to be a battle between old and new. It's called gvhd. And so they wipe you out essentially making you like, I mean, like an AIDS patient. Right.
You destroy your immune system.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: Can't go near anybody. Completely isolated.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Everybody that talks to you is bubble. Like you're bubble boy. Yeah. Completely isolated. If anything jumps on you, you have a chance of dying. I was in the hospital for 45 days at one point to regrow an immune system from scratch.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: And you had children then?
[00:22:08] Speaker B: I did, yep. They were three and two at the time.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: And dad's in a bubble and they can't touch him and can't talk to him.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: Couldn't talk to him, couldn't see him.
It was rough. But little did I know that in the darkest moment of my life to that point, I believe that there was an incredible story that was being written that will then get later on talk about, like, all that it produced. But going back to kind of what we chatted about before, about character, like, it's these.
I really believe that hardship is part of the process. Like, you can't have what you want until you go through the hard stuff. Like, you can't. You don't have anything to share. You don't have anything to.
Nothing distinguishes you or makes you unique until you've gone through some stuff. So for anybody watching today, it's, you know, if you're going through something difficult, it's part of the plan, it's part of the bigger process.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: There was a moment I got into business when I was in my.
Started my first company, my own company, when I was 26 and 26. I'm trying to work with 40 year olds and 50 year olds and 60 year olds. And so I'm writing books and doing things to try to convince people I'm smart enough that I'm not the dopey child.
But it wasn't until well into my 40s that the transition from being the smartest, trying to be the smartest person in the room to being the most vulnerable person in the room is where the deepest connections were made. And it was actually when my sister was in the hospital and in hospice that my parents, who.
My parents were divorced and the two people who would die for me wouldn't be in the same room. And that never set well for me. But it was in the hospital and in hospice when my younger sister was dying that I found my parents were so lovely to each other that it became clear to me that vulnerability is what brings people together, not accomplishments.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: Yeah, People don't want to transact.
They don't. They want to be known.
Right. And to know somebody. You have to.
It's a two way street. Yeah. To know you have to be known and vice versa. So I just think that there's a way to do business and there's a way to transact where the people part of it becomes the priority.
I think people is the currency, so to speak. Right. Not that you use people or anything like that, but people is the currency. Like if you want to do great business, you have to do great people, you know, if that makes sense. You have to have great people. You have to be a good person.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: Well, it's called be the giraffe, not be the lion. Because it's not about devouring everything on the way. It is literally about sticking your neck out.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: And being vulnerable and what you do.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: I mean, I've watched you and all, we've actually done some things together and watching you do your thing is. I mean, people get to know you as a television host, but I actually get to see you transaction. And that's what separates you.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Well, it's a lesson that I was also.
I didn't create that lesson, I was given the lesson. So this is about to your point. As you said, magic chose you and the things that you believe.
I want to get into the next segment. The faith and how all these setbacks and things that you did, when you change the way you look at things and you see them as a gift is you see it as an opportunity, not as a setback, not as bad luck, not as a bad deal. That there's something else, Right?
[00:25:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Again, it sounds crazy, but I'm thankful that I went through cancer. I mean, and some people think that that's small or it's mean spirited. Gosh, I'm going through these really hard things. How can you say that? But for me, getting through that process has changed everything.
The lens is so much clearer now.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: So if you're going through something and that thing is it's you, it's somebody in your family, someone close to you, and you're feeling a little bit stuck, you're feeling a little bit unlucky, you're feeling a little bit cursed, whatever it might be, then you definitely want to come back. For the next segment, Jim's going to talk about how he was able to take what was seemingly a horrible situation and actually change hundreds, if, if not thousands of lives. Don't miss it.
Hey, Chris Jarvis on Be the Giraffe tv. This week we have magician and illusionist Jim Monroe. A man who has overcome all kinds of odds, obstacles, lived when he shouldn't have and now he is living with purpose and passion. Learn how he overcame adversity, how he turned it into a super purposeful, passionate life that has saved the lives of hundreds of people. And learn how you can use his lessons in your business and in your life and with your kids. This week, be the giraffe Jim Monroe. He's going to make all your worries disappear.
Abracadabra. We have reappeared. I'm with magician, illusionist, and dear friend Jim Monroe.
In the first two segments, we talked about you becoming a very successful baseball player, getting hurt, losing that, becoming a world famous magician, traveling the world and then getting cancer and having to wait for a bone marrow transplant and needle in a haystack.
And you said that you feel like these things happened to you for a reason and that it was actually a gift and a blessing. And there's a lot of people out there who have things happening to them that they don't feel.
They feel stuck or they feel like they're a victim.
I remember doing a course with Michael Beckwith when he talked about, you're a victim where life happens to you. You're a manifester, where things happen by you. You're a channeler, where things are happening through you.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: And you went through that.
You went through that journey.
Tell us about that, because I think the audience is going to want to know.
[00:28:23] Speaker B: I love you. Exactly. So that was perfect. The through part is where you talk about. I've heard you talk about full. I think Rick. Yeah, Rick was awesome.
But people were. I believe that people are the most in their flow when they're able to give.
And you can't. You don't give anything until you've first received it. Right.
And so what happened to me through cancer, I assume this is where we're going, is I got through my process, I got through my bone marrow transplant, and immediately I was like, I want help.
Right. And I think that too, in business is probably as important as anything else, like deciding, I don't want to be a taker, I want to be a giver. And it's a fine line between, man, I got to make money, I got to figure out how to. It's like, listen, all that comes after the fact that. But if the point is to be a help, if the point is to let things channel through you, then amazing things are going to happen. And so after I got done with my transplant, I called the National Mare Registry and I was like, it seems like it's really difficult to get one of these matches.
How do I help?
And they said, well, we're looking. Our primary target for this registry are 18 to 25 year olds, preferably with a religious background.
And the reason why is because they're more. For one reason or another, they're more apt to give.
So you get on the registry and maybe in an emotional moment, you might decide to make a decision to sign up somewhere. But then when you actually get called, like, will you follow through?
And so when they said. When they told me 18 to 25 year olds, I was like, well, I'm in front of 18 to 25 year olds all the time now. I didn't know if I was ever going to get to do magic again. My doctor to tell me, it's probably not a good idea for you to travel. It's probably not a good idea for you to do any. And I was like, no, I've got to do this. And so I retooled my show to share my story through cancer. And that changed the dynamic of everything. Like, again, going back to. You don't really have anything until you have a story. It's just something you've gone through.
And so after I.
My show just became so much more poignant, so much more powerful. As an entertainer, you're trying to. As an artist. How about that? You're trying to do something that makes people feel something.
And so I could do a magic.
I could do a magic show. But magic is found left wanting, in my opinion, because it's more of like. It's more like a chess game rather than an emotional punch.
So having this now, I tooled the whole show so that I would share my cancer story and then I would talk about my faith because it's baked into what I went through. I mean, profoundly. I don't. If you get it, maybe they'll get a chance to go to another video or something like that to hear the whole story.
But then I would give people an opportunity with the National Marrow Donor program at my shows to sign up to go save someone else's life.
And I get choked up even thinking about it because they would spend, I don't know, however many tens of thousands of dollars to be on a campus for multiple days. And they would sign up, like three to five. Like, the numbers were really small.
But at my show, I'd throw a thousand people in a room, they're impacted, and we'd have close to half the student group sign up. So in one punch, they're getting 500 people to sign up to join the Mara registry.
What I also think is interesting Even if they didn't agree with my philosophy on life, they did agree on helping someone else.
I think people want that ability. Give them an opportunity to be help themselves and they'll do it.
So out of that, we had hundreds of people sign up. And then slowly but surely, I started getting some numbers on.
Well, they don't check the actual numbers of successful transplants, but I would hear. I started getting text messages and Facebook messages about, hey, man, I came to your show and you're not going to believe this, but I signed up the registry and now I get to go save, I get to go donate, you know, and so the story just was ever evolving. It had life. Right. There's something about it that was.
That was. It took on its own identity at that point, which is something so beautiful. You're.
You're tapped into something when it isn't about you, right?
Yeah.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: I think that's really interesting and powerful.
I can remember when I was 50, I had someone, Owen Samarone worked for me. He was 25. So literally, he was half my age. And said, when you were my age, what advice would you give yourself? If you could go back, what would you do differently?
And I had all kinds of interesting failures. Failed businesses, failed relationships, failed attempts at things, lots of challenges. And I can remember thinking back to all those things, but I played that before I gave them the advice. I played the handout. Well, if I didn't do that, then I wouldn't have had this opportunity. I wouldn't have had the learning experience. Right. So you could have a marriage, not work. But you still have the children from the marriage. So do you not do the marriage realizing that, then of course you don't have the children.
If you didn't try the business situation that didn't work, you wouldn't have learned the lesson. That wouldn't have then helped you made a better decision later.
And so I can remember saying, I don't think I would change anything, despite all the pain and things that at the time I thought were horrible life things.
The benefit of hindsight in some ways is you can see things differently. But if you really think through and play the hand out, what seemed bad can be positive once you understand it.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: And I think that's why you do this show now. Well, a lot of people at home don't realize. I know Chris very well, but, like, the whole reason why he's doing this is because of his passion for helping other people. Like, he really has that passion.
Because everything shifted in your world too. Like, you were on Track to. You had all these opportunities in business, but it became more of a purpose.
You became purpose driven rather than transaction driven.
[00:34:36] Speaker A: Very much so, yeah. That was a big part of it is the. But once you realize that the negative stuff can lead to something else, you get to write, they say that the victor, history favors the victors, right? So if you win the battle, you get to write the story.
And you can choose to be the victim or the victor, the victor or the victim in the story. You get to write that in how you see it. And there's just something to. I know for you and for me, the idea that once you realize that negative things can lead to positive things or they teach you a lesson, it changes from oh, not this again to even in the worst of times, it's, I don't know what the hell the lesson's going to be from this, but it's going to be a doozy.
But at least you ask yourself jokingly, which is just a different thing that again, for a lot of the young people who are so afraid of making mistakes, they want to be perfect, right? The perfect post, the perfect comment, the fear of being canceled.
Like they're so focused on surviving, they're not thinking about thriving.
[00:35:38] Speaker B: Yeah, completely agree. I've got two. I got a 19 year old and a 20 year old.
And it's funny, what social media has done is actually it's philosophized. That's a word, this younger generation to do the exact opposite of what we're talking about, right. If you get to control how you look, if you can control what people think about you, then there's almost an expectation that you do. But in reality, what people want to see is you.
They want to know who you are. And I'm a big believer and we can talk about even this in magic. But again, I'll reiterate this. People, people know fake.
They may not be able to say exactly what it is, but their knower, their believer, knows what's not real.
And I think in particularly for business, the way to elevate yourself is to, is to be as transparent as possible as quickly as possible.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: What was the hardest part when you changed your show? Because when you start to be different, one of the challenges with transformation, like when you break free from the herd, you're disrupting the safety in numbers. The people who are in the numbers don't. They don't want to see you go, yeah. So that people who decide I want to find a better path, but I move on. Like when you made this journey that was internally, but it probably wasn't all met with success from everybody else.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So what became very interesting to me was I stopped getting booked because I was doing a magic show. I started getting booked because of the impact it was having in everywhere I went with people.
Right. So being an entertainer, there's 10 trillion magicians, and most of them are very good, but they're looking to fill that void in their calendar or their conference or whatever.
But it stopped being about the magic, and the magic was great. Like, I had. People came and they're like, man, this is incredible, Matt. We had guys with David Blaine and Criss angel helping write it and produce it and everything.
But it stopped being about the magic show, and it started being about the impact.
[00:37:52] Speaker A: That's a really important one, because if you ask somebody, hey, I'm gonna do a magic show, and I'm gonna layer into it my Christian beliefs and my life story about cancer. I'm going to talk about cancer, Christianity, and abracadabra and people saying, you're going to alienate an entire audience. People who aren't going to want that. And they'd give you the advice to try and go middle of the fairway and not play in the margins or in the rough. But the difference what you're saying, which this is for the audience, you can go to one side and really hit home with, I have an impactful show that has these elements, and then you get, may I just saw you. I just watched a video online at the Betterman conference, and you crushed it.
That's definitely not a middle of the fairway crowd, right?
[00:38:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Again, I think it goes back to, people want you.
They don't want a version of you that you think they want. They want you. And so couple things. Number one is give them what they want, number one. And two, the fear that you think you might have in being transparent is only because of everything else that we've discussed. It's the cultural emphasis on being somebody fitting what you think they want, the role of what you think they want versus who you really are. And this is something artists struggle with all the time.
I think, too, like, you've got to be brave enough to be yourself.
[00:39:18] Speaker A: All right, so be the giraffe. You want to stick your neck out, be yourself. Take a chance to be who you really are and be seen for who you are. And we're going to give you some tips after the break.
Hey, Chris Jarvis on Be the Giraffe tv. This week, we have magician and illusionist Jim Monroe, a man who has overcome all kinds of odds, obstacles, lived when he shouldn't have, and now he is living with purpose and passion. Learn how he overcame adversity, how he turned it into a super purposeful, passionate life that has saved the lives of hundreds of people. And learn how you can use his lessons in your business and in your life and with your kids. This week, be the giraffe Jim Monroe. He's going to make all your worries disappear.
My guest today is magician, illusionist and philosopher Jim Monroe.
We talked about professional sports, magic, surviving cancer, inspiring college students all over the world to change people's lives. And then we started dabbling in the last session, talking a little bit about society and people's need for connection and the fact that people don't feel seen, or they may be seen, but not known.
So it's very superficial.
We've had a lot of philosophical conversations about business. We've worked together on a number of different business projects and it's really fascinating. This show is for business owners, want to be business owners and people who consider themselves to be innovators and entrepreneurs.
At the break, you were telling me about the magician's toolkit, so to speak, and it sounds so much like the entrepreneur's life. So a little bit like the duck that looks really calm on the surface, but the legs are moving like crazy. So tell us, like, make that connection for the audience about. Well, talk about the magician and the toolkit and the things that are going on the magician's head. And then for those people who are running businesses, they're going to quickly understand the similarities and then we can bring together how magic can actually be used to help them.
[00:41:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll just tell a quick story. So I spent four years of my life, not all like nine hours a day, but I spent four years thinking about how I was going to make someone's cell phone disappear from across the stage into a jelly bean jar that the audience had been looking at the entire time.
That is your typical entrepreneur.
It's like, how are we going to make this work? And then slowly but surely, things began to kind of reveal themselves. And I tried a thousand different methods until I stumbled upon something that just was gangbusters.
And to this day, like, nobody knows how it's done and we're not going to find out. We're not going to find out, but it's a really, really good effect. And so a magician's toolkit is, you know, we obviously work in deception, but what we do really, really well is we make things look like we make normal things look, how about this?
We are creating a ton of subterfuge in very, very, very simple, standard, regular psychological processes. And so what I mean, like, that is, like, when you see me pick up something, I'm not just picking something up. I'm doing something, but I have to make it look like I'm just picking it up. So I'll spend hours and hours and hours practicing how to make it look like I'm just picking something up off the table when in fact, I'm doing something completely different.
Right. I don't know if I'm communicating that very well, but.
[00:43:35] Speaker A: Well, I think it's not as simple as what you see as what you get.
One of the challenges in business.
Well, for anybody who may have done. Any couples did the love languages book, right? The different love languages, how do you communicate? The challenge is, I think you want gifts. So I work all the time.
And so I'm working so I can do things. So I can buy you a white tiger because you're a Siegfried and Roy fan. And so I'm working very hard to buy you the tiger. To buy you the white tiger. But you want quality time. And so the fact that I'm out working, so there's a disconnect on the things that I believe that you value, the things that I value.
And so we're missing things. And so I know in business, one of the challenges I had was I would bring my team in, and I'm a big strategic thinker and more of a visionary than I am an implementer. And so I would bring the team in and say, I found this great idea because I'm playing chess six steps down the game of, oh, and then when we get this done, we'll get that done. And what I found was that my staff is like, this guy's crazy and he can't stay focused when I'm just assuming the next three steps are going to get done because we've already talked about them, there's no reason to talk about any of them. But I made the mistake of assuming that people who were more into the implementation or who were happy just to have a job, they really didn't care about the future of the company 15 years down the road because they had something more important to them. It could have been their own family, their own health, their own faith, whatever it was. So my view of the company wasn't that important to them.
And so this whole idea in business or in magic is you're doing something, but you're giving a different Appearance like this is like the business owner, the entrepreneur is a magician.
They're trying to keep all the different people in their organization. The customers, the employees, the managers, the investors, the shareholders, the vendors, they all want something different.
And you have to somehow figure out how to keep them all happy. But there's only one of you, right?
[00:45:28] Speaker B: Yeah. A magician is thinking about 30 other things while he's talking.
And I think that there's definitely a parallel there, a similarity between the entrepreneur and trying to keep all the plates spinning at the same time, many of which the audience has no idea is actually going on behind the scenes. Right.
And so it's an art.
[00:45:49] Speaker A: You talked earlier about magic being the thing that you can just pull out cards. And I've watched you do it. I've watched you do it it with my kids, I watched it with my father in law, I watched you do it with my friends. I even you headlined in an event I had.
And people, it's funny, people asked me after you went and I asked everybody, what do you want to do next? They all said, we want more gym.
Like if you remember the event, I had a two day event and everybody's like, we want more gym. I was like, I want more gym because it's a lot more fun for me to watch you than it is for me to perform.
But then I had other people come up to me after, which was really interesting. You didn't hear this when. And they come up to me and said, I can't believe you brought a professional entertainer in to upstage you.
And I was like, well, why would I bring in, why am I going to bring in an entertainer who's less than? That doesn't make any sense. I mean, unless it's an ego thing for me. But what became clear when you were at the event, I didn't know that this would happen, was when you're teaching a group, you're trying to get people to open their minds.
[00:46:47] Speaker B: Yes, that's. That's a good point. Yeah.
[00:46:48] Speaker A: And when you went in there and you did the whole midday session for the 90 minutes or whatever it was with the people I had, like everybody was in awe.
Like there's no after lunch, they're tired. Like it was a whole. You woke them up and they were ready to go. But what was so interesting is all the conversation after you watch magic is how did he do that?
[00:47:10] Speaker B: Right. Which is what you want people asking in your company anyway. Right. Because it gets you out of the train of thought that you're already in.
I love the term you use, it opens their minds.
I think that my show in, particularly for corporate audiences, is just killer. I don't know how else to say it. I think it's as good as anything else because it's not just a piece of entertainment.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: It's.
[00:47:39] Speaker B: It's getting people involved, but it's also getting them to, like you said, think outside the box.
And I go into different things in my show where I sometimes reveal how something's done, right? And so they're able to see, wow, like, oh, my gosh, it was just this one little thing. And so the art itself is great for getting to people to think more about anything. It gets you out of the rut.
[00:48:02] Speaker A: So we have in our. In our financial firm, we're about to release our ultra high net worth report, which we analyze the 25 top reports. And it's basically, what do really rich people do? What do they do and think about differently than normal successful people? And the gap, the chasm is huge.
And one of the things that came out was it's something like 75, 73% of people are more likely to invest with a company that has a purpose. The number goes north of 90 if the people are under the age of 30.
And so this whole idea of purpose and having a purpose, which is a big part of your show and getting people to open their minds. Because right now, with AI and technology, people have to be creative. They have to be more.
More intentional and more creative. I think the stats were people think they come to work and they're going to get a 6% raise every year. But the truth is, the cost of doing business goes up by 25% every year. So you actually have to do 25% more work to get the same pay, not do the same work and get 6% more pay. So if you want to make more money, you got to be 40% more productive.
So the goal is, how can you be 40% more productive in the same amount of time so that I can pay you more?
[00:49:09] Speaker B: Yeah, you got to put cell phones in jelly bean jars.
[00:49:12] Speaker A: Cell phones.
Yeah, you've got to put cell phones in jelly bean jars. And that's what I'm saying is the magic. I've done a lot of strategic planning workshops, but I can't do the magic which. Which we've talked about that. That just opens people's minds to. Anything is possible. So if it's, how do we reach this audience, how do we create this product, how do we create this service, how do we create this outcome? I think Magic is the thing that just will open people's minds to. Anything is possible because I just watched David Copperfield make a car full of people disappear.
[00:49:41] Speaker B: Right, right, Totally.
[00:49:44] Speaker A: How does that happen?
[00:49:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Magic as an art is different than any other in that it forces you to.
It's very intellectual. Right. When you go to a concert and hear a song, there's movement that happens emotionally. But magic is the thing that tickles the mind.
And if done correctly, it also impacts the heart, which is what I think I do really, really well.
[00:50:08] Speaker A: And for people who want to do that, for people who want to find you, people who have corporate training stuff coming up, people who have events, people who are trying to fundraise and connect audiences or connect with the heart, how can people reach you?
[00:50:19] Speaker B: Yeah, right now a good place to reach me is on social media, so they can. Jim Monroe. Monroe with a U.
Jim Monroe.
[00:50:28] Speaker A: J, I, M, M, U, N, R.
[00:50:29] Speaker B: O, E. Yep, that's the best place to get me right now.
[00:50:32] Speaker A: Great. And then so what else for people here who are talking about the corporate stuff, what can people do? Like, what is something that's. So what was such a moving thing for you? That audience? Somebody now who's feeling a little stuck.
What do you have for, like, word of encouragement or something that you can offer to somebody in there who's just where you were, maybe post baseball, post diagnosis? What can you offer?
[00:50:58] Speaker B: I would say that I personally believe that we weren't created to toil.
Like hustle culture, I think, is killing people.
There's a purpose, there's a point to who we are and what we're all about.
And that point or purpose, you're no longer toiling, you're operating in your gift. Right.
And I think that if people step out of the matrix just for a second and find out who they are, like really get down into who they are and connect with, you know, you can call it whatever you want to, but that which is bigger, bigger and greater than ourselves, then I believe that you're instilled with something that not only invigorates you, fills up your gas tank, but when you start operating with purpose for purpose, and that purpose, more times than not, is always going to be about other people, then that's the honey hole. That's where you want to be. And it's available, it's there. And I know that for me, it was getting there took a lot of adversity.
So adversity is what you must go through to get to the purpose, the calling for which you're created. And it's in that that you're going to have the most fruit.
[00:52:22] Speaker A: Brilliant.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:24] Speaker A: Jim Monroe, overcoming adversity, making magic happen for yourself with the gifts you were given. You are a true gift to us and the audience. Make sure you watch the episode again. Follow Jim Monroe with a U and you can take.
Embrace your vulnerability so you can stick your neck out and elevate your perspective and be a giraffe. We'll see you next week.
