Mentalist · TEDx Speaker · Corporate Keynote
Johnny Wu opens by fooling everyone in your room at the same moment — then shows them exactly how it happened, and why the same sleight of mind is quietly running their focus, their goals, and their days. Google, Netflix, Amazon and Bvlgari have seen it live.
Johnny Wu · Mentalist, Magician & Keynote Speaker
Performed for
700 executives at Google HQ. The COO was in the room.
First, a demonstration
This is the principle that opens every keynote — straight from Chapter One of Play Your Own Hand. Fifteen seconds. Follow the instructions exactly. They matter.
You'll see five cards for a couple of seconds. Pick one. Hold it in your mind.
Pick one card. Any card.
Which card were you holding in your mind?
Your card is now gone.
Every card changed — not just yours. You were so focused on the one thing you were told to watch, you missed five things changing around you. Cognitive science calls it change blindness. I call it the reason most people are climbing a mountain they never chose.
Now imagine that happening to 700 people at once. That's the booking.
Why it works
By the third speaker of the day, the room is on its phones and the takeaways are gone by Monday. Johnny solves the one thing every agenda is fighting for: attention that sticks.
Johnny doesn't describe how minds get fooled. He fools the whole room live, then reveals the mechanism. A principle that happens to you is one you don't forget — that's the difference between a talk people applaud and a talk people quote a year later.
Every effect maps to a real business problem: attention, decision-making, inherited assumptions. Leaders get substance grounded in cognitive science. The room gets a show. Nobody gets a lecture.
Before he steps on stage, Johnny works your company's language, people, and theme into the talk. It lands as “that was about us” — not “that was a nice speaker.”
Built for high-stakes rooms
The Corporate Keynote
Forty minutes. Three live demonstrations. Each one runs a trick on the entire audience — then hands them the reveal, and a framework from Play Your Own Hand to catch the same trick running in their own work and life.
Act One · Change blindness, live
A card routine exposes the most expensive illusion in the room: that there's always a “later.” Johnny does the math on stage — 27,375 days in an average life — and the room runs the Days Calculator on what's actually left.
Act Two · Misdirection, decoded
A classic misdirection routine becomes the lens for the Approval Mountain, the Blueprint Mountain, and the Comparison Mountain. The Mountain Audit asks the uncomfortable question: whose definition of success has the room been chasing?
Act Three · The forced card
The finale proves the outcome was decided before anyone thought they were choosing. The Assumption Inventory teaches the room to spot installed beliefs — from parents, teachers, culture — still steering their decisions.
“Once you know how a trick works, you have a responsibility to stop letting it be run on you.”
Every attendee leaves with the frameworks — and the 30-day Play Your Own Hand Challenge to put them to work.
After the applause
A visceral understanding of how attention gets hijacked — and a practical method to take it back.
The Days Calculator, the Mountain Audit, the Assumption Inventory. Simple frameworks that turn insight into behavior.
People stop running on autopilot and start auditing the goals and assumptions steering their decisions.
A live experience the whole room goes through together — still being referenced at the next offsite.
The Origin
Twelve years old. New to the country. Bullied so badly he thought about quitting school — until a teacher played a video of David Copperfield, and for the first time the same kids who mocked him went silent. Wide-eyed. Not laughing at him. With him.
He locked himself in his room for two months with a deck of cards. One gig became two. Two became twenty. Twenty years later he's performing for the COO of Google in front of 700 executives, appearing on Netflix's Star Search, and teaching rooms the exact psychology of how attention, assumption, and misdirection quietly run our lives.
“If magic could make even them stop and wonder… maybe it could save me too.”
Phones down. Heads up. This is what “engaged” actually looks like.
Corporate keynote · Netflix
The TEDx Talk
A talk about the difference between applause and alignment. Not a pep talk — a mirror.
Premiering soon · TEDxBeverlyGrove
View Speaker Profile →Also seen on Netflix's Star Search · Season 1, Episode 5
The Book
The Magician's Method for Seeing Through the Tricks, Reclaiming Your Days, and Finally Living the Life You Actually Chose.
Before chapter one, Johnny performs a sixty-second trick on you. No stage. No assistant. Just you, this book, and a psychological principle that's been running quietly in the background of your life. This is not a book about hustling harder. It's the reveal.
Planner Questions
Every booking starts with a discovery call about your audience, your theme, and the outcome you want. Johnny then works your company's language and challenges into the talk, so the room hears their own situation reflected back — not a stock script.
Yes. During COVID he built a dedicated studio and performed 50+ virtual shows, including paid virtual keynotes for Fortune 500 companies. The demonstrations are designed to work through a camera, so remote attendees get fooled right along with the room.
A standard keynote setup. Johnny keeps requirements deliberately light and locks specifics with your production team during the run-of-show call, so there are no surprises on the day.
From leadership offsites to full general sessions — his largest corporate room to date was 700 executives at Google HQ. The demonstrations are built to read from the back row and on screen.
Often, yes. Many planners pair the keynote with copies of Play Your Own Hand for attendees, and a signing can usually be arranged. Ask about it on the discovery call and Johnny will find what fits your event and budget.
Johnny takes one keynote per date, so popular windows — fall kickoffs, January meetings — go first. Reach out as soon as your date is set. Shorter timelines are worth asking about too; if the date is open, it's yours.
How booking works
Send the form below or email hello@omnimagic.co with your date. You'll hear back within one business day — personally.
A short call about your audience, your goals, and the outcome you want the room to leave with.
Johnny weaves your company into the talk, then locks logistics with your team: A/V, timing, run-of-show.
He delivers on the day. Your team leaves with the frameworks, the book, and a moment they keep talking about.
Booking
Tell me about your event and I'll personally reply within one business day. If the date is available, I'll hold it while we talk.
Prefer email or a call? hello@omnimagic.co · 626-242-7710
