Mentalist Keynote Speaker · TEDx Speaker · Author

You've Been Watching the Wrong Card.

Johnny Wu is a mentalist and corporate keynote speaker who has performed for Google, Netflix, Amazon, Bvlgari & Fortune 500 companies — delivering “Sleight of Mind,” a keynote on attention, focus, and the invisible tricks quietly running our lives.

Book Johnny to Speak ▸ Watch the Reveal

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Johnny Wu · Mentalist, Magician & Keynote Speaker

As seen at

GoogleNetflixAmazonBvlgari PwCState FarmFarmersGEICO GoogleNetflixAmazonBvlgari PwCState FarmFarmersGEICO

The Signature Demonstration

Try the trick that opens every keynote.

This is the exact psychological principle from Chapter One of Play Your Own Hand. It takes 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.

Origin

Johnny Wonton Wu.

Twelve years old. New to the country. Bullied so badly he thought about quitting school entirely — 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 and a hope that maybe he could change his story. 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 (Season 1, Episode 5), and studying the exact psychological mechanics of how attention, assumption, and misdirection quietly run every one of our lives.

"If magic could make even them stop and wonder… maybe it could save me too."

Johnny Wu performing on stage at a Netflix keynote

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Keynote performance at Netflix · 2026

The Corporate Keynote

Sleight of Mind

A 40-minute mentalist keynote on attention and focus, built around three live magic demonstrations — each one revealing a different trick the world runs on your team's attention, goals, and assumptions.

The Clock Is Running

A card trick built on change blindness reveals the most expensive illusion in the room: that there's always a "later." Johnny does the math live — 27,375 days in an average life — and the room recalculates what's left.

Whose Mountain Are You Climbing?

A classic misdirection routine becomes the lens for the Approval Mountain, the Blueprint Mountain, and the Comparison Mountain — and the uncomfortable question of whose definition of success the room has actually been chasing.

The Stacked Deck

A forced-card finale proves the point: the outcome was decided before you thought you were choosing. The room learns to spot the installed assumptions — from parents, teachers, culture — still running quietly in the background of their decisions.

“Once you know how a trick works, you have a responsibility to stop letting it be run on you.”

TEDx Beverly Grove

TEDx Talk

“Is Your Success Just an Illusion?”

A narrative-driven talk exploring how audiences confuse applause with authentic alignment. Not a pep talk — a mirror.

Talk premiering soon · TEDxBeverlyGrove

View Speaker Profile →

0 Five-Star Reviews

0 Studying the Psychology of Attention

0 Executives in One Room · Google HQ

0 Netflix Star Search · S1 E5

Play Your Own Hand book cover by Johnny Wu

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The Book

Play Your Own Hand

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 — possibly for decades. This is not a book about hustling harder. It's the reveal.

Booking

Bring the experience to your team.

Tell me about your event and I'll personally follow up within one business day.