Justin Flom: Audience Engagement Magician

Our interview of Justin Flom for “The Creative Influencer” podcast is available today for download on iTunes, Spotify, and premier platforms everywhere.

Justin is a popular magician and social media influencer with over 13.2 million subscribers on YouTube and over one billion views across all platforms. Justin explains how his social media success came during the pandemic when he had the freedom to focus on creating content full-time.

Justin emphasizes the importance of understanding the algorithms and data behind social media platforms in order to create content that will engage viewers and keep them watching. He calls this the “Barrier to Exit,” which refers to how easy it is for someone to leave a social media video. On platforms like TikTok or YouTube Shorts, the barrier to exit is very low, as viewers can simply swipe away with just one inch of movement. Therefore, content creators need to capture the viewer’s attention within the first few seconds and deliver on their promises quickly, as viewers are quick to move on if they feel the content is not engaging or fulfilling their expectations.

Justin also discusses his favorite magicians, his creative process, and his upcoming projects, including a video game and a new magic book.

A full transcript of this episode is available at Jon’s entertainment law blog at www.pfeifferlaw.com/entertainment-law-blog/

______________________________________________________________________________

A transcript of the episode follows:

Jon Pfeiffer:
I'm joined today by Justin Flom. Welcome to the podcast.

Justin Flom:
Thank you so much. We're going to have some fun.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Now, just by way of background, you have over 13 million YouTube subscribers. Last night when I was checking, it went from 13.1 to 13.2 in front of me. I've never had that happen. Over 700 videos and on YouTube alone over 11 and a half billion views. That's a lot of views.

Justin Flom:
And that's just on YouTube and that's only in the last year. Really most of my success in social media came from Facebook where I got a little over 30 or 40 billion views from 2020 to today, and it's been an insane ride because All of this is since pandemic. I've been doing social media for 15 years, but nothing like what is happening today with the algorithms and the news feeds that we have. It all changed, for me, it changed in 2020 and I think for a lot of people, pandemic gave the freedom with jobs and other things changing, especially for me as an entertainer, pandemic gave me the freedom with nothing on my calendar to suddenly, hey, let's try social media thing, full-time, full job. And it worked.

Jon Pfeiffer:
I have several clients that started a TikTok channel during the pandemic, and that's their job now. It just-

Justin Flom:
That's right. Well, the market told me what I was worth as a magician, and it was good. I was a successful magician. I created a commercial campaign for Coca-Cola that ran internationally for a couple of years. I worked with Walmart and Heineken and Benefit Cosmetics. I did all the corporate stuff as well as touring around different churches and I would put on evening shows for that. I was successful there. But then the market told me, you know, if you do silly TikTok videos, we'll pay you five times what you were being paid before and I am one to listen to the market.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And we'll get to those. We'll get to those. But I want to start at the beginning. You are originally from Minnesota, is that correct?

Justin Flom:
That's right. Born and raised in Minnesota, about a mile away from where Prince had his Paisley Park studio and home. I'm a big fan of Minnesota Vikings, Prince and everything else Minnesota. Yes.

Jon Pfeiffer:
My wife was born in Minnesota.

Justin Flom:
Great.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Familiar with Bemidji.

Justin Flom:
Yep, that's right.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So when did you start doing magic?

Justin Flom:
So my dad was a magician and my uncle was a magician. I grew up in a whole family of amateur magicians, but they were amateurs, but they took it very seriously. We actually had magic props built in our garage that were a professional caliber really, and we would do county fairs and local little clubs. There was these local magician clubs like the International Brotherhood of Magicians or the Fellowship of Christian Magicians, which was made up, that was all Sunday school teachers who wanted to use magic tricks to share an object lesson. And I grew up performing every month for these clubs and then once a year doing these big giant conventions where I got to put on big shows and eventually start traveling internationally when I was just 12 years old doing shows for thousands of people in Peru, Kenya, Egypt. It was an incredible way to be trained up as a magician, and I loved it. I was obsessed.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Well one of the questions I had, but you just answered it, is how do you learn? But if you come from a magician family, then that answers that question.

Justin Flom:
Well, yeah, the old days you had to be an apprentice to a magician. You had to get in. There were actually genuine secrets back in the day. Today with YouTube, everything is more open source, so that's why the evolution of magic has actually sped up quite a lot, because for me, I had to wait for a magician from Las Vegas to come through town and lecture in my town, and then I'd be able to learn that and put it into my thing. But that was only once a month. Now kids can ingest from YouTube everything that I learned all year, in a day. It's going a lot faster. It's really, really crazy. Crazy.

Jon Pfeiffer:
We talked before with the interview about you started as a magician, but how would you describe what you do now?

Justin Flom:
So started as a magician, and then I became obsessed with data in what social media was. I created my main piece of artistic magic right before pandemic, was called Magic Mixtape. It was like the pinnacle of everything that I've done magically, and I produced the music for it, and it was a short film and all of this. And I started looking into the data of it, and I saw that even though it was critically acclaimed by some of my favorite magicians, no one watched it. The data said the watch time on it was less than 5% watched. It was really bad. Then when pandemic hit and I started doing TikToks and stuff like that, I just started looking at the data and instead of doing magic on the internet, because I saw the data was people don't want to see magic on the internet.

We could talk more about that because that seems contrary to popular belief, but the truth is no. The watch times were bad on magic and very high on just anything educational or fun or an interesting build, building something into my home. The data told me what to create, and for the last three years, I do not create the things that I want to, I create the things that the data tells me to, which is I think a very different thing than most social media influencers who they want to find an audience and they want to get a community of fans or followers. I have no fans, I have no followers. What I have is an ability to create what people are watching at any particular time. And because people watch that for longer, I can get to the top of an algorithm.

Jon Pfeiffer:
How did you figure that out?

Justin Flom:
Well, these platforms are built similar to casinos. So Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, they're like a casino. And here in Las Vegas where I am, we don't have any clocks on the walls, we don't have any windows, and we have crazy looking carpets to keep you focused on the game. Everything is, how do we keep your butt in the seat so you continue spending money? That's the whole name of the game for the casino. Well, same thing for the platform. How can we keep them on the platform longer? Now, when Zuckerberg was in front of the Senate, they really demonize that. They're like, I can't believe that you're trying to encourage people to ingest more video. Well, that's his business.

And so that means that we're going to put videos at the top of the feed that will keep people on the platform for longer. It sounds like it should be basic and natural instinct, but actually it's not. People don't think of it that way. So the way to get to the top of feed is watch time. And all the data I'm looking at is what are people watching for the longest? And I just had a piece of content, a video, a YouTube Short, reach a billion views. And the wild thing about this thing is the watch percentage on it is 130%. That means that not only did everybody watch it once, a large percentage watched it more than once. So that's why it ended up being a banger hit.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Which video was that?

Justin Flom:
It was a piece of magic exposure, which has me in a lot of trouble from the magic community, but it was a behind the scenes look at how a dress can change three times. So it goes from, I think it starts out as a silver dress and goes to a blue dress and then turns into a yellow dress. I might have one of those mixed up. And so it's a really cool thing, because A, very quickly into this thing, we see something we've never seen before, we only see in some fashion shows, which is a dress transformed by unfolding into a brand new dress. And then it happens again. It's short piece of content, visual. You are learning something because you're learning the secret to that magic trick of how the dress changes so quickly. And all of those things contributed to a high watch time or a high percentage watched, and then you get a billion views.

Conversely, I have pieces of content that don't do anything because it was only watched 20% of the way through. So when people come to me and they ask me, hey, how do I get my social media going? If they only have 4,000 views on a video, I go look at 4,000 views, even your mom didn't watch this video. I hate to tell you that, because the way to get people to watch your videos is to get people to watch your videos. It's just this difficult thing. So you just have to get to the point where people have to finish that video. So you have to find things that people care about. And that's why I stopped doing magic tricks because the data told me that magic, no one's life has ever been changed after watching a magic trick. And certainly not with a digital interference between us just watching someone else watch a magic trick. It's much easier to swipe away from that.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Now, do you draw a distinction between magic tricks and illusions?

Justin Flom:
No, it is all just different vernacular. David Copperfield used to say, "The difference between a magician and an illusionist is an illusionist gets paid more." I don't even know if that's the truth anymore. But illusions are in the inside baseball talk, illusions are the big pieces of furniture that you'd see on stage at Criss Angel or David Copperfield, Siegfried and Roy, where the girl gets in the box and disappears and turns into a tiger or whatever. Magic is an all encompassing thing. And I've been lucky enough to do both where I had a big illusion show at one point with giant props built out here in Vegas with girls getting in and spikes going through. It was a blast.

And then also more of my career has been spent now doing magic for celebrities or up close or on talk shows where it's more slight of hand based, and that was because I could see that the trend was moving towards people wanting to watch people amazed, and that meant not doing stuff on stage in big boxes, but putting the magic in their hands. So that's how I ended up on the Ellen DeGeneres show and all of my other favorite TV appearances. I think my favorite being James Corden, who was just a-

Jon Pfeiffer:
Actually that was a question I was going to ask you. So let me jump ahead and I'll get to that. You have had a lot of TV appearances. There was the James Corden, Seth Meyers, Today show, Ellen. Why was the James Corden appearance most memorable for you?

Justin Flom:
Rebel Wilson was on it, and also I think her name is, I'm going to mispronounce her name, Nick Jonas's wife, Priyanka, I believe her name is. They were really fun. Rebel Wilson was so much fun to have on the couch next to me. And James plays ball. Look, we're in show business and we're all trying to create entertainment. I did a bit with James separately on a different television show and my thing messed up. I messed up the trick. And James could see that I messed up the trick. So he played along even though he saw how the trick worked, and then as soon as the camera went cut, he goes, great. Hey, let's do a pickup shot so we don't see that thing and all this. Great job Justin. And I'm like, yeah, buddy, that's how you do it. We're all just creating entertainment.

Whereas not to throw him under the bus, but Chad Michael Murray, that actor, he did a bit, we were filming something in Nashville and he was not kind. He figured out whatever was happening with the trick, fine, don't care. And then he was a jerk about it on camera, and I just said to him, I was like, yeah, buddy, all right, we're not going to use this clip now. What do you want? Whereas immediately following Chad Michael Murray was Fifth Harmony when they were all together and they were so great on camera, they reacted incredibly to the magic. And I found out just a day later that they had already seen that exact trick from a buddy of mine just a week earlier. And I was like, oh my gosh. They faked it. They faked it. Oh wow, I don't know how I feel about this.

And they did so good. I believed them, that they were impressed and they were screaming. And I go, you know what? Great. Whatever is for the entertainment, because it's all for the viewer at home. That's what it's for.

Jon Pfeiffer:
I'm going to keep jumping ahead. You had talked about creating tricks for different people, different groups. I saw that one of them was for Pete Carroll, coach of the Seattle Seahawks and the Seahawks team. What did you do-

Justin Flom:
Yes. It was crazy. I performed for coach and the Seahawks. It was their first time getting back together after the very terrible Super Bowl loss. This is the first time the team's getting together and they're trying to up the morale by having a magician-

Jon Pfeiffer:
—The Patriots.

Justin Flom:
Yes, that's right. I forget what year that was, was that 2017 maybe? I think. Whatever it was, bad loss. And with that just crazy last play and all this. So they're demoralized. Coach Pete Carroll brings me in to talk about how you can use magic techniques in football, misdirection and things like that. And it was a lot of fun. I had a trick for Marshawn Lynch all set up, and that's one of the things about magic is you can do some crazy preparation to make one impossible moment for just one person with a crazy amount of preparation. That's the method behind it. The best one I did was for 50 cent, we'll tell that story in a second. But for Marshawn Lynch, I had this whole thing set up and I was like, where's Marshawn? And he was being fined that day for not showing up to practice. I didn't get to show him the trick,

But it was, we got to talk a little bit about trick plays and different ways of just misdirecting an audience, which is a misnomer. It's actually directing an audience. Misdirection is directing your attention over here so the girl can get out of the stage or out of the box over here. It's not misdirection, it's direction. I want to direct your attention. And magicians, if they're good, they're masters of knowing how to direct your attention. And I think that's why some of the top social media creators started as magicians. I'm not unique in that I'm a social media creator who used to be a magician. There's Kyle and Misty Knight and there's Adam Trent and there's Julius Dean. And Ricky Lacks is the main one who left Magic and became a social media creator who now owns a company of social media creators for Facebook.

We argue about it all the time, but I go, no, magic is specifically skilled, a specific skill that is perfect for social media, even if you're not doing magic tricks on social media, because-

Jon Pfeiffer:
There's that YouTube video of you're supposed to count the number of times they pass a ball and in the background somebody gorilla walks across.

Justin Flom:
Right. This was an experiment that they did and it's been done many times and they found, and this is just when you give the brain something to pay attention to, it ignores all other data. So they tell the people watching this experiment, they say, count the amount of times that the team in the Red Jersey passes the ball. And if you do that, your eyes are moving linearly. We also know now when your eyes move that way, it misses all of the information in between those two points. So while counting and while moving the eyes in a linear fashion, a gorilla literally walks onto camera, pounds his chest and then walks off. It was a great thing, and I've actually done it live as well as a couple other magicians who they show that video and then after the clip you say, how many people saw the gorilla? And they do not believe that there was one, and that is exactly what it is. That's a great example of misdirection.

Jon Pfeiffer:
I was in an audience where they did that. I didn't see the gorilla. They had to replay it, and I got the number of passes wrong. I missed it both times. The Seahawks. I also read where you partnered with the NHL to do Hockey is Magic.

Justin Flom:
This was right before the Pandemic. We got to do magic with all NHL stars. We were in Chicago, it was a blast. It was right before the season started. And we created original effects around hockey props. So this was something where I just had to sit down alone in a room. NHL was very kind, and they sent me tons of hockey stuff, goalie pads and helmets and sticks and tape and pucks and everything. And I just went, all right, what magical things can I do with these? And that was when I was strictly in my magic thinking. I don't think these are the best pieces of social media video. In fact, even as NHL did a campaign with it, I don't think it was a failure. I think they got what they wanted out of it, and I certainly had a lot of fun.

But the views on all of these things were not very high, because the problem with magic for social media is magic starts ordinary. Here I have an ordinary deck of cards, or here I have an ordinary hockey puck. Hold onto it. In a moment something magical will happen. And that's hard for social media because we have to really buy that there's going to be something amazing at the end of it for us to wait for the end of that video. Whereas the best social media videos that you see start extraordinary, they don't end extraordinary, they start extraordinary. And that's why I found that magic secret exposure has been such an incredible thing for video content. I love it for a lot of different reasons. I am in trouble with the magic community and I've been kicked out of a couple magic groups for that reason.

But that's because they want to keep the secret. But I've found by opening the secret up for the viewer at the top of a video, really draws them in. And magicians should understand it because it's what made us love magic in the first place, learning a secret. And we go, wow, does that work? And then the viewer stays tuned to see if that secret they just learn works to fool the punter on the other side of the camera, the unsuspecting person who's about to be tricked by the secret that we just learned. Magic secrets is a really fun way to utilize magic in social media.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Using that concept of tell the secret upfront, what advice would you give for just a health and beauty creator, somebody that's not doing magic?

Justin Flom:
What it is is you have to stand out from, this is a great way to put it. We all know the barrier to entry. Barrier to entry. This is a common phrase. Well, when I started doing social media videos, I coined a term called barrier to exit. Barrier to exit is something that would refer to how high is the barrier for somebody to leave what you're doing. Now on a movie in a movie theater or a live show, barrier to exit's pretty high. For a live magic show, barrier to exit is, well, the person got a babysitter, they parked their car, they paid a ticket, they're sitting in a large group of people. For them to stand up and leave and forego their investment in this show and the social anxiety of getting up in a large group of people, man, the show would have to suck very bad for them to get up and leave in that scenario.

Same thing for a movie theater, you've already bought a ticket, you've parked the car, all of that. But the barrier to exit for a TikTok video is one inch. That's it. There's no consequence. Just one inch and they're gone. So very low barrier to exit on a TikTok video or a YouTube Short or a Facebook video. That means that for a social media influencer creating something, you have to keep in mind that this person is just itching to go the next video, just one inch and they're gone. So you only have five seconds, really, truthfully you have one second, but you have one second to make them at least go, what is this? And give you five seconds. And then you got five seconds to communicate, here is what you'll receive at the end of this video. Here's what I'm providing to you.

And if it's a makeup tutorial, this is the secret that Jennifer Lopez is using every day and you don't know it. And then I'm like, well, I don't know what makeup secret that is. I would like to know. And then you have to deliver on that promise, but you also have to make the viewer believe that you're going to deliver on that promise quickly. Because, look, I've got the whole internet at my disposal just one inch away, so as soon as I see that you're not going to deliver what you've promised me, I'm out. And that's why it's all databased for me on what the viewer wants, because the viewer is going to decide the successful pieces of content that are at the top of the algorithm. Which brings me to the main point for social media influencers to think about, is there's destination content and there's algorithm content.

So Joe Rogan would be destination content. I know Joe and I want to see his show, so I'm going to go to the YouTube page and I'm going to click his video and I'm going to watch his latest interview with Matt Rife, and I'm want to see that. That's destination content. Dude Perfect, same thing. I want to see that video, so I search it out and I find it. But algorithm content is anywhere that there's a newsfeed. So that's TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram and Facebook. So with those algorithm feeds, news feeds, the only way you're going to see content is by swiping up and the algorithm will feed you what it hopes that you want to see. And the way to do that kind of content, there's no fan base then, you don't need people to like you, you don't even need people to know who you are. In fact, better if they don't.

I like remaining anonymous in a lot of my content because it gives me the freedom to one day do magic. The next day, cook steak. The next day, show you how to modify your car. And people don't, there's no whiplash like, wait a second, I thought you were a decorator influencer and now you're doing painting or whatever. And that's what happened to me as I transitioned from a magician to now I'm primarily a spray paint artist where most of the views are coming from. But the algorithm content is all based off of watch time and the cream goes to the top. It's inspiring for new creators because you don't need an audience the size of Dude Perfect or Joe Rogans to go viral. And that's what most TikTokers have discovered, is they've discovered, wow, three videos in and all of a sudden I had a million views and I don't know what I did. Well, you created a good piece of content.

Jon Pfeiffer:
It's very hard to do that on YouTube, but it's a lot easier on TikTok. The algorithm is just better. It's just better.

Justin Flom:
Well, it depends, on the YouTube Short side, you can do that with that news feed. It's similar to TikTok. It's cooked a little differently. Something takes a couple of weeks to go viral on YouTube Shorts currently, but YouTube long form, don't even ask me a question about it. I know nothing about it. I can't do it. I've got very nice people who tell me, you should do YouTube long form. People want to know stuff about you. And I go, I don't think people give two shits. I just can't imagine that because the data tells me they're not watching anything from me where I'm giving them anything about my life. They want to get in and out in a YouTube Short or in a three-minute Facebook video where I just go, today we're going to learn how to cook bacon on the tailpipe of a motorcycle.

And that's my skill, is coming up with an interesting idea. Can you cook bacon on a tailpipe of a motorcycle? The answer is yes, you can. Just takes a little bit of time.

Jon Pfeiffer:
That actually leads me into where I wanted to go, is take me through the creative process. How do you come up with the ideas?

Justin Flom:
The ideas come from everywhere. Today I was looking at balloon sculptures online. I grew up with a lot of balloonatics, they're called, and they're people who do balloon animals, but in crazy sculptures. And I was thinking, boy, that is so cool. What can I do with that? How can I show that being built? Or something like that. So the first thing is I start with just, what is cool shit? That's the main thing, because that's what I look at online. I find something cool or I think of what I think would be cool, and then that's not enough for a video. Then you have to figure out how am I going to do an opening shot? Everything is starting with an opening shot. I found very early success with painting videos, and I started painting with these layered stencils similar to how Banksy would do it.

I'm actually right now the most viewed spray paint artist online next to Banksy, which is just bonkers to me that I've done, I've got one piece right here. This thing got over 100 million views. I painted this laptop, it's got the witch from Snow White holding the apple. So that was a clever idea. It's not even original to me because they sell skins for laptops that do that. I thought, all right, that's cool. It's a cool thing. I will make it on camera. And that's the bit. But the thing about these paintings is very quickly people were bored of painting on a canvas. For a little bit there was originality in multi-layered stencils and putting the image together one at a time, but people didn't want to just see something on a canvas. So then I had to go into my house and go, all right, I have a cool painting I want to do of Bugs Bunny, but I have to start with putting a hole in the wall.

Or I have to start with drilling something and putting a pipe behind the wall, or I've got to drill into my table and hide a smoke machine under there. The idea first is, hey, here's a cool thing I'd like. I'd like I'd Bugs Bunny to be on my counter, my kitchen table. But then the idea immediately becomes, all right, well how do I tell the viewer that they want to see this thing? And that's where the brainstorming comes. I want in my house, I want a foam pit. So we've just installed a foam pit in my bedroom. It's a crazy thing that my job allows for this silliness. So that's something I wanted. Cool thing.

Jon Pfeiffer:
In your defense, you do have a small child in your house.

Justin Flom:
Yes. And I thought, wouldn't it be cool if my daughter could jump from her bedroom closet into a foam pit and then end up in my master bedroom? I thought that'd be really fun. And so I thought, that's a cool thing. I'll do that. But also I know that you can't just build that and then show it on YouTube and imagine it'll go viral. Sometimes it'll happen if the idea is out of this world enough. But more times than not, you just need to really craft out that opening shot. Find a cool thing, and then write the best opening shot and then don't deliver the end of that video until the end of the video. Well, this is all algorithm advice, by the way.

If you're going to do long form YouTube like Mr. Beast, then your payoff probably has to be hidden somewhere in the middle, around eight minutes, so people can't just skip to the end. So different advice for different platforms obviously, but for the most part, whatever will make people watch the longest.

Jon Pfeiffer:
It doesn't flow at all. But I had to tell you, my favorite video of yours was-

Justin Flom:
Please.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Sawing a baby in half.

Justin Flom:
Yes, that was-

Jon Pfeiffer:
And your daughter wakes up at the very end. I assume it was your daughter?

Justin Flom:
Yes, that's my little girl. That's Haven Grace. I found out I was going to be a dad, and little Haven Grace was on her way and she was going to be due in November. SI went to an illusion builder here in Las Vegas, a guy who has a company called Illusion Projects, and I said, I would like to saw my baby in half. And he's like, well, that's the weirdest project I've ever built. Let's do it. And he said, before we start the fabrication of this thing, let's pop the baby out and make sure that you still want to saw this baby in half, because maybe there's a chance that you're not going to feel that way. And I said, I think I'm going to. Baby comes out. I'm like, yeah, let's saw it in half. We got to do this.

We have our little newborn on our bed and we're measuring it for how we're going to do this magic trick. And New York Times actually did an artistic rendering of it. Two years ago was the 100th anniversary of sawing a lady in half. And sawing a baby in half got over 200 million views when I posted it. It was absolutely astounding. And what I knew with that, that was a different kind of online content. It's a headline piece. I was influenced by Penn and Teller, great magicians and been here in Vegas forever. They've done more than anybody as far as stage content. They've done off Broadway and all of that. But they had a couple effects like the bullet catch or burning an American flag, but burning an American flag specifically Aaron Sorkin used it in the West Wing in one of the episodes because it's a headline piece.

Penn and Teller wrote that because they wanted to be able to say, Penn and Teller burn an American flag on stage. Well, what an incredible headline. Now when you watch the piece, it's actually one of the most patriotic things you'd ever see, because they end up celebrating the freedoms that allow us to burn that American flag in the first place. And did we burn it or did we vanish it in a magical flash of fire? And then the flag appears behind them as they're saying the Star-Spangled Banner, and it appears waving behind them. It's incredible. But it's a headline piece. And sawing a baby in half is just that. It's a headline. I could have had the trick be far less impressive and more shoddy in workmanship and have it still go pretty successful just because that title, I knew the title was going to be Sawing a Baby in Half.

And New York Times called me and they said, hey, we've been talking to all these magicians about sawing a lady in half and none of them will tell us the secret to the trick. And I was like, what do you want to know? So they asked the method to the trick, and I said, well, look, I'll tell you, in fact, it's been exposed on Reddit and all over the internet, so you can find the method yourself, but the table that the baby is on has grandma hidden inside of it. So my mom is hidden. You won't see her because she's covered by a mirror, which is reflecting a duplicate living room on the camera side of the living room. But she's under there cradling my daughter's little bum who's halfway in the table, halfway out. And then we took a baby CPR doll.

So what would be trained for CPR, we took a baby doll of that and marionetted it with strings. And that's how she's getting cut in half. It's this crazy optical thing because you don't realize the baby's actually tilted through the table because you can see under the table or so you think. And it took three days of shooting, because we had to make sure that my daughter was comfortable. If you're going to saw a baby in half, here's one thing I know you can saw a sleeping baby in half, but you cannot saw a crying, screaming baby in half. People would've been appalled. They would've been like, what are you doing? So we eased in Haven, my daughter, she was only four months old, and we very carefully, we let her take naps in there and really she's being held the whole time by grandma. So she was very comfortable as you see in the video.

And so we had two days of just hanging out with a baby halfway inside of a hiding place table before we ever even tried sawing her in half. And then we ended up with something pretty cool.

Jon Pfeiffer:
It worked. It worked. I have a couple of random questions. Other than yourself, who is your favorite magician?

Justin Flom:
These days David Blaine is just doing some incredible stuff. I love David Blaine for just, he's like the truest dude. He is so cool. And I like his taste in magic. I grew up, I love David Copperfield. He does not like me, but I love him. And he and I, we've had some fun conversations over the years, very few and a couple of them have not gone great, but nobody has done more for magic or in magic than David Copperfield. First of all, he's king of the 80s and the 90s. Nobody was bigger than him. No Magician has been on the cover of Esquire magazine except for David Copperfield. No magician has dated somebody who's as famous as Claudia Schiffer. Criss Angel has gotten close with a couple things, but David Copperfield was just a size that we don't have anymore. And what's better, he's grandfathered in.

Nobody's going to be able to make the Statue of Liberty disappear or be so synonymous with magic anymore, because fame is pretty specialized now. We have a lot more, we don't have as many Brad Pitts or Leo DiCaprio, a name that just everybody knows. We don't have a Madonna. It seems that what's coming up in pop culture is niche and a smaller market because we've spread out in so many different markets, you can make money in that way and you don't even need to be the most famous comedian or performer. So those are my favorites. David Copperfield is just killing it. But then on the underground side, there's a bunch of magicians who are underground, who are not super famous. Ryan Stock and AmberLynn, they're some of my best friends. And they were the couple that were on America's Got Talent and she accidentally shot him with a crossbow in the neck.

The stunt went wrong because a stage hand backstage had bumped into the laser site and knocked it just a fraction off of its target. So he was supposed to swallow the arrow down his throat because he is a sword swallower as well as an incredible magic thinker. And it went wrong. And it ended up being, I think it's the most viral clip that America's Got Talent has had, because the news covered it, and it was this stunt gone wrong. It was a flaming arrow that he took to the neck. It was wild. But he comes over here to my house and they live here in Las Vegas when they're not living in South Carolina. And they just create magic tricks. So if you were to ask me my favorite magician for creating and the material, I'd choose him. I love sitting here.

I had a trick on James Corden where I had him swallow a piece of thread and then I took a razor blade to his arm and the thread came out of his arm. It was really cool effect. And that was something that I created with Ryan Stock and AmberLynn. They're an incredible dynamic duo and great thinkers in magic.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So do you have any secret projects you want to tell us about?

Justin Flom:
Yeah. We're working on a video game. Nothing interesting to talk about there yet, but we would love to give people the ability to do digital versions of what I do on video. That'd be fun. I'm writing another magic book. I've published two magic books, Adventures of a Kid Magician, and Everyday Magic. The Adventures of a Kid Magician was a really cool thing because we wanted to find a way to get kids how to read and get them excited about reading. So I hid magic secrets inside the story of this book. So me and my dad wrote it together. And you don't get the secret to the trick unless you read the whole chapter because the secret is unlocked by some detail in that chapter. And teachers have, I got an email from a teacher today from an inner city school and somebody who had a learning disability trouble reading, this is helping that person out tremendously. And that just makes me so happy to know that yeah, you can use magic secrets to motivate something like learning how to read. Pretty cool.

That's a cool secret project. Right now in the house, we've got a dozen secret projects that are all being ready for video. I already said the foam pit to the master bedroom. We've got this cool gag of multiple secret passageway doors that go, I had a several hundred million hit video building, a secret passage away from my daughters, and they loved it and they were still using it, but I took it away because I wanted to put something different there. And I thought, wouldn't it be cool if you opened up a door and immediately inside that door there was a wall with another slightly smaller door, and you open up that door and there's a wall with another slightly smaller door, and you Alice in Wonderland or get smart through all of these doors to the secret passageway.

It is almost done. We are painting one of the doors right outside this wall right now. It's going to be so cool. We put a fireman's pole in. We took out a laundry shoot and we put in a fireman pole, so you can go from upstairs to the kitchen in a flash. And that video's not done. So these are all projects that I'm working on and the video is in process, but they're all half done. So the videos aren't even edited yet. But those are the fun projects that I have right now. And I'm putting in a Muppet stage, so overlooking, I have a stage in my house where we put on shows. My daughters love doing little shows. The other day I was like, man, we need the old Muppets. I forget their names right now, but the two old men. I need a box seat with those guys heckling my daughters.

Because I can't tell them that they're trash at dancing, but the old man, they can. So that's what we'll do. So we're going to install that.

Jon Pfeiffer:
That's a fun concept.

Justin Flom:
And that's the thing, is I just get to go, what would be fun? What would be fun? And do it.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So last question for you, where can people find you on the internet?

Justin Flom:
Justinflom.com is where you find me if you want get in touch with me, but don't do that, just watch the videos. It's more fun that way. YouTube is YouTube, just Justin Flom. TikTok, Justin Flom. Same thing on Facebook. And YouTube is where something's going up every day. I'm putting something up every day. A lot of it is old content. It's very confusing to people because I have a former wife, I have an ex-wife, and I have a new wife. It's been a busy four years. But the old content will be intermixed with the new content. Confuses the heck out of people. I commiserate with them. I understand. They're like, wait a second. How many people is this person married to? I totally understand.

So there's new stuff going up all the time and old stuff on YouTube. And then TikTok and Facebook, I'm just putting the new stuff up there. So right now it's several days in between videos because these videos have gotten to be so silly and big in a big project sort of style. That's where to find me.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Thank you.