Greetings, SuperFriends!

This week, we have something a bit different for you.

My guest today has a ton of impressive credentials. He’s met presidents. He’s set multiple Guinness world records. He’s spoken on stage at TED 6 times. He’s worked with Robin Williams for years. He’s an entrepreneur.

So far, he sounds like just another in a long line of high-caliber folks we invite on this show.

So what’s different?

My guest today, Dan Holzman, has attained all of this incredible success by building a career around – get this – comedy juggling.

Now I know what you’re thinking. What the hell does juggling have to do with being SuperHuman?

Well, as my guest explained to me when we spoke, juggling is actually a pretty amazing activity that has been proven to promote brain fitness, dexterity, concentration, and do a whole lot of other incredible things.

For this reason, I invited today’s guest on the show not so much to talk about juggling per se, but rather to talk about the learning process behind mastering such an incredibly complex yet rewarding skill.

In the episode, you’re going to learn a LOT. And be inspired. A LOT. Of course, we’re going to talk about juggling – and learn why it’s such a surprisingly powerful tool for self improvement. But beyond that, we’re going to talk about accelerated learning. We’re going to talk about what it takes to become a renaissance man or woman. We’re going to talk about passion, success, and finding your life’s calling. And so, so much more. This episode really runs the gamut, and has something for everyone, so I just know you’re going to enjoy it.

By the way, it’s worth noting that there is a longer, uncut version of this episode where Dan and I discuss some of the finer points of applying accelerated learning techniques towards learning physical skills. That longer, uncut version of the episode, along with many other interviews with world experts in learning, and a comprehensive 8-hour course on speed reading and memory, are available exclusively in the Become a SuperLearner Masterclass, which you can get a special discount on by visiting the link below.

As always, please share your thoughts with me on Twitter @gosuperhuman, and if you haven’t already, please remember to leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher.

This episode is brought to you by SuperLearner Academy – home of my exclusive masterclasses. Check out a free trial using the link above today!

In this episode, we discuss:

• Dan Holzman's unusual morning routine – which starts at 3:30am!
• What are the many, many benefits that juggling can help you achieve, and why?
• How transferrable are the improvements gained in juggling to other things in life?
• The idea of becoming a “renaissance” man or woman, and how to achieve it
• How did Dan Holzman come to devote his life and his career to juggling at a very young age
• How does Dan learn so effectively, and what are some things he's used his methodology to learn?
• How The SuperHuman Academy Podcast helped Dan Holzman learn more effectively
• How Dan Holzman uses memory techniques, and which ones he uses
• What aspects of accelerated learning and skill development do Dan and I completely agree on?
• The different ways that passion versus money motivate people differently
• What core values has Dan Holzman learned from Bruce Lee and Jeet Koon Do?
• What creative lessons did Dan learn from the lead singer of Jefferson Airplane?
• What is the role of creativity and creative thought in Dan Holzman’s life
• What are the secrets to Dan’s tremendous success?
• Humility, perspective, and self awareness
• What are Dan's words of wisdom to anyone who wants to make a living doing what they want?
• What are the 3 things Dan believes you need to realize your dreams?
• How does Dan use cleverness and ingenuity to make his work more entertaining?
• How can you learn to juggle, and accelerate the learning process?
• What is the #1 lesson that Dan Holzman would like you to take away from this episode?
• What is the power of the subconscious mind in our lives?

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Ido Portal, a popular movement coach from Israel
• The Juggling Book by Carlo
• The Raspyni Brothers, an act Dan started his career with
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
• Harry Lorayne, a past guest on our show
• Anything You Want by Derek Sivers
• Our previous episode with Derek Sivers
• Michael Davis (Juggler)
• The Karamazov Brothers (Jugglers)
• Our previous episode with Yuriy Balancer
• The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind, by Joseph Murphy
• Dan’s Podcast, Drop Everything
• Dan’s Website, DanHolzman.com
• Dan’s website, BrainDrizzles.com
• Dan’s TED talks

Favorite Quotes from Dan Holzman:

Enjoy this video of Dan Holzman at TED!

Transcript:

Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host, Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: Greetings, SuperFriends. And welcome welcome welcome to this week show. You guys before we get started I want to read you a fantastic review that came in from Brandon of Canada. Brandon says, excellent podcast. The title says it all. If you're looking to increase the overall ability of your mind, this podcast will have many hidden gems for you. 

Can't wait to listen to them all. Thanks Jonathan. PS and I love this part. Check out his speed reading course. I have it. And it's great. Brandon, you are a legend and I really, really do appreciate that review for everyone else in the audience. Listening, please make sure to leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher.

Because for one, it helps us get the podcast out to more people. It helps boost our rankings and that helps us get the absolute best guests in the world. But for two, it just really brightens my day. It makes me feel happy. So please do leave those reviews. On to this week's episode, you guys, this week, we have something a little bit different for you.

See, my guest today has a ton of impressive credentials. He's met presidents, he's set multiple Guinness world records. He's spoken at Ted six times. He's worked with Robin Williams for years. He's an entrepreneur, you know, so far, it all sounds like just another, in a long line of super high caliber, super humans that we have on this show.

So what's different about this guest? Well, my guest today has attained all of this incredible success by building a career around juggling. Comedy juggling of all things. Now I know what you're thinking. What the hell does this have to do with being superhuman? Well, as my guests explained to me when we spoke, juggling is actually a pretty amazing activity that has been proven clinically to promote brain fitness, improve dexterity, improve concentration, and a whole bunch of other incredible things.

You know, I had no idea that juggling could be such a powerful tool for literally becoming superhuman. And in this episode, We're going to go into a ton of detail about that. We're going to talk not just about the juggling, but also we're going to talk about the learning process behind mastering such an incredibly complex, but rewarding skill.

And if you do like the learning component of this episode, and you want to hear a uncut exclusive version of the episode, then I do encourage you to check out the Become a SuperLearner Masterclass, where we have tons of incredible interviews like this with world champions and other leaders in their field about how they learn.

And all of that is on top of an eight-hour course on learning, memory and speed reading. It all comes with a 30 day money back guarantee and it's pretty much guaranteed to change your life. So if you want to check that out and support this show, please visit jle.vi/learn or check out the show notes either way

you'll get a pretty awesome discount. In this episode, you guys are going to learn a lot and you're going to be inspired a lot. We don't just talk about juggling, but we actually learn why it's so powerful. We're going to talk about learning. It's going to be great. And for that reason, I just want to get right into it.

So please let me introduce to you, my new friend, Dan Holzman.

Mr. Dan Holzman. Welcome to the show today my friend. How are you doing? 

Dan Holzman: What a pleasure to be on your podcast is definitely one of my favorites. 

Jonathan Levi: Well, I thank you so much. Thank you so much. So before we hit record, you were just about to start telling me how you woke up at 3:30 in the morning and did your balancing routine let's start there?

Dan Holzman: Well, what I do is a bouncing, uh, you have a, a rebounder it's one of those fancy mini trampolines. And like, just start with that with some light hand weights, I'll do that for about half an hour, just to sort of get my blood flowing and then I'll move into my yoga. And I did about a 36 minutes of yoga. 

Well, 36 minutes exactly. Cause I time my activities for a part of my journaling. And then I moved to the bicycle. I like to do about 30 to 35 minutes on the bicycle while reading educational material. 

Jonathan Levi: Wow. So why 3:30 in the morning? 

Dan Holzman: It just seems that's the way I get up. I'm 54. And if I go to bed around nine o'clock, it seems like five hours, five and a half hours is what my body sort of naturally needs.

So I don't set an alarm, anything. It just, when I wake up and feel the need to get out of bed. I just get up and go. 

Jonathan Levi: Wow. All right. So let me, uh, start with the original question that I wanted to ask you first, before we get into the 3:30 in the morning, which is, you know, I have to admit that when we first started talking about doing an episode on juggling, I was a little bit skeptical.

And I think in my mind, juggling was kind of a neat hobby and I had a hard time connecting it to this idea of meaningful self-improvement. You went ahead and corrected my kind of opinion on that. So right out of the gate, I'd love if you'd share with our audience, what you shared with me about how juggling can be an avenue to improve oneself.

Dan Holzman: Well, I have some questions for you. So I know you're into CrossFit. I am. I just came from there to tell you to increase your strength. What activities do you do? 

Jonathan Levi: Weightlifting predominantly. Yeah, mostly weight lifting. 

Dan Holzman: And now what about to increase your endurance? 

Jonathan Levi: Run, sprints, jump rope, burpees. And weightlifting also.

Dan Holzman: And how about your flexibility? 

Jonathan Levi: That's just plain old, slow, boring, painful mobility work. 

Dan Holzman: So, okay. So what do you do to increase your coordination and reflexes? 

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. So that's a tough one. I would say, you know, sometimes you do rope ladder or stuff like that on the ground and agility exercises, but for the most part, it's kind of, you hope that it's built into some of the Olympic weightlifting and things like that.

Dan Holzman: Yeah. So for, to me, if you're looking for the most effective way to learn something, to increase your reflexes, your hand eyes speed, your hand spite speed in general, your peripheral vision. Your coordination, as far as balance between the mind and body, nothing goes as quickly as juggling. It goes right to those things.

Like, you'll see a boxer bounce a ball, or throw a ball off a wall or chase a chicken or whatever. But to me, if you want to increase your coordination, your reflexes, your hand speed go right to juggling. Because if you look at any activity, whether it's auto racing or any kind of sport, I don't think anybody has better coordination or reflexes than a professional juggler.

Jonathan Levi: Interesting. That's a bold claim to make given, you know, a lot of the hand balancers out there, a lot of the gymnast, but I'm kind of into it. 

Dan Holzman: Well, you know, cause a gymnast having great kinetic awareness, great body awareness. But if you look at like hand-eye coordination, how important that is and other activities, even art or music rely a lot on hand-eye coordination and juggling that's all it is.

And juggling also is one of the few activities. It's a perfect balance between the right and left sides of the body. So it's very ambidextrous. Where a lot of activities, golf, basketball, baseball, you might throw it with one hand catch with one hand, always hit from a certain side, but juggling really relies on perfect coordination between the two sides of the body.

And it's very important that both sides are balanced. Like if my right hand is stronger than my left hand, it's going to cause a lot of problems. It's also a very good between the mind and body because it's constant problem solving. It's constant creative growth. As far as making corrections based on where the ball is thrown, how you have to move your hands, how you have to react instantaneously to sort of the things that are happening in that moment.

Jonathan Levi: Interesting. So I guess my main question would be what transferability have you seen into other skills? And if so, which skills? I mean, someone learns with you how to juggle, what things in their life besides say video games or acquiring hand-eye coordination that they can expect to see an improvement, if they're training and juggling. 

Dan Holzman: Well, one of my activities, I like piano playing. I like to play different forms of music. I play about four or five different instruments. And if you look at piano playing, it's very much the same thing. Both hands have to work independently, but also together. They might be doing different things at the same time.

And also, if you look at drawing, drawing is a lot of hand-eye coordination. So I also do art and painting. Where if you look at an object, then you try to answer that object to a piece of paper. Your eye and hand have to work together. And so to increase your hand-eye coordination is very important for other activities you might want to learn in your quest to become a superhuman or Renaissance man.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. And I think that's what it's about recently. Someone asked me to kind of a marketing person asked me to record a video about what superhuman means. And it doesn't mean, you know, one specific skill. It means being a Renaissance man, which clearly I can tell from your hobbies that you sir are. 

Dan Holzman: Well, I think it's all about learning. I mean, as far as how to learn more effectively, and if you look at the other benefits, I wrote down some here on this piece of paper, so we can start with the hand-eye coordination. The quicker reflexes, greater peripheral vision, ambidexterity, core strength, raise emotion in your arms and shoulders. It reduces stress, hides your sense of balance and kind of awareness, sharpens focus and concentration, and have been used as a form of moving meditation.

So they're all pretty positive benefits of, uh, one activity. 

Jonathan Levi: That's interesting. And it's interesting you say that because I brought up hand balancing before and people often ask me, you know, I'll be waiting in an airport terminal and I'll just pop up on my hands and start standing there. And it's for the exact same reasons.

It calms me down. It forces me to focus and be meditative. And it's the exact same reason that I try to spend at least five minutes a day on my hands. 

Dan Holzman: Well, that's all about building your base. That's where the kind of in the process I'm in now, where by building your base, a very strong base, every activity that you put on top of that base can be improved.

Like if you want to get a good at sports, you might think, well, if I increase my physical fitness in general, then I'll be better at learning new sports. Like if you look at a decathlete and say, why are they able to be so good in 10 different sports will, their base of athletic ability is very strong to begin with.

So if your base of athletic ability and your body awareness is good to begin with, and if you want to learn something like dancing or fencing or any other sport, It really helps to have a good, strong base of athletic ability and something like hand balancing to be aware of your body and space, like all the work that Ido Portal does with movement.

Yeah. There's uses with martial artists. So I think we both realize that it's important to have balance between the physical and mental that to be superhuman mentally, but to be sort of a waste physically is not the exact ideal that you're trying to promote. So to build a base of strong physical fitness, It really helps when you want to learn so many other activities and to increase your coordination and reflexes and you're approaching any sport, even things like archery or target shooting, it really helps to have this base.

And I think juggling can be a really strong part of a, an activity that can really help to increase your base abilities. So you can learn quicker with another activities. 

Jonathan Levi: It certainly sounds like it. I want to dive a little bit in, because I'm really interested Dan, in your journey and how juggling became your life's work.

I mean, you've had tremendous success doing what you do. At what point did you decide that this is going to be what you devote your life to? 

Dan Holzman: Well, I took a juggling funnily enough, because I thought I had poor coordination. So it wasn't like, I like people like, Oh, you must be so coordinated. I kind of took it out because I thought I was a bit of a spazz, you know, as a kid.

And I was interested in the show business, magic and comedy. And then I saw a book in 1974 called The Juggling Book by Carlo. So I immediately took to it. I had some orange trees in the backyard and I grabbed some oranges and go in the backyard and learn to juggle. And then it was just became, my hobby became my identity pretty quickly.

Like, Oh, he's the juggler. But I really didn't think about it professionally because I really didn't even know what a professional juggler did. I just thought it was a fun hobby. And I had all the regular teenage jobs. I left home at 17 and I became a grill cook and worked in a grocery store and a medical center.

And then I teamed up with another gentleman. His name is Barry Friedman, and we formed an act called The Raspyni Brothers. And we started working at Renaissance fairs. And then my last day at the medical center, I was making $5 an hour. Or $25 a day. And we went to this festival and I made $800 on the weekend.

And I thought, this is the answer I've been looking for. So I wanted to be in show business, but I didn't think I could make it as an actor, even though I had gone to acting school and I wanted to be a comedian, but I didn't really feel that stand up comedy was the right fit. So I found this activity record blend this hobby that I had this juggling with my interest in comedy and show business.

And it really became a great fit. And after three years at the Renaissance fairs where we put in our 10,000 hours, like Malcolm Gladwell would say an outliers, we got an opportunity to be on the tonight show. And this was actually our first TV show ever. And we were on a pretty early, I was 24 years old and we were seen by Billy Crystal's manager, David Steinberg, who also managed Robin Williams.

And we started being calmed down as a really good opening act for celebrities. And I got to work with dozens of celebrities and that was such a great learning experience. I learned something from every celebrity I worked with and really was able to apply it to my life and my career. Wow. 

Jonathan Levi: How cool. Dan, I know you've actually done some work in mnemonics and memory.

Tell us a little bit about that. I mean, given my background in accelerated learning and so many of our students are coming from the class in accelerated learning. So tell us a bit about that background. 

Dan Holzman: Well, this goes back to this really idea. I have a building my base, like I always would want to do a lot of things, but at the time I was 55.

And when I was 50, I had this idea to try to become a Renaissance man and learn all these different activities to learn eight different instruments, three different languages to paint, to tap dance, all these different things I wanted to learn. And every time I would start, I get kind of burnt out. I tried to learn these things through brute force, just to repetition.

Jonathan Levi: So interesting you say that because I have a methodology that I call brute force learning, but I think it's something different. My brute force learning is attacking it from up to five different angles. 

Dan Holzman: And I think that's very important because like, if you learn instruments, like I was learning piano, but I was also doing bass and bass is just the bass club.

I was running learning recorder, which is just the trouble club. I was learning drums, which is just the rhythm. I was wondering the piano that puts it all together, you know, the harmonica. So all these things were interrelated and interconnected. So I think it's important to have sort of a diverse approach as a diverse attack, which is the same thing with juggling, because juggling is not just one thing.

Like I'm pretty good at it. Probably 10 to 15 different props, and they all have the same base of juggling. But if you're doing the cigar boxes or the devil sticks or the plates or the hats or the clubs. They all have their different techniques. So it's important to sort of approach things from different directions.

But my idea of brute force is not really having a strategy. Like you're trying to learn the language, but you really don't know how to remember. You really don't load the most effective way to learn. She just try to do it through repetition, through like, just sort of no real idea of how you're supposed to learn effectively.

Sure. So this year in January, I thought, okay, I need to build this base. I need to understand more about learning. Which is why your podcast became so important. And as soon as I discovered it, I'm like, Oh, this is the missing piece of my program. I need to learn how to learn. I need to learn how to remember.

So through this podcast, my interest in Harry Lorraine and different memory techniques. Cause I thought, Oh yeah when I'm trying to learn a language, what strategy am I doing using to sort of remember these foreign words and be like, you have a strategy. So as soon as I learned that the mind works best in pictures.

Like if you want to learn the word, like new hair, you know that, uh, this idea of a cow and the woman is combing the hair of the cow. And you can picture it in your mind, it makes it so much more memorable. And fortunately, I had the opportunity I do coaching and comedy because I'm what they call a comedy juggler.

Or there are three kinds of jugglers is their artistic juggler, the technical juggler and the comedy juggler. And I'm definitely a comedy juggler. And one of the things that I coach is comedy and sort of create of thought and in my approach to comedy. And so there was a fellow, his name is Brad Zupp and he's on the US memory team.

And he does presentations and he wanted to improve the quality of his comedy and his presentations. So I've been trading coaching and comedy for him, coaching me in memory. And so he's teaching me memory palaces and how to convert numbers into images and beautiful. I just love these things. There's so fascinating.

I really think they're the missing piece of what I've been trying to accomplish. 

Jonathan Levi: Now. I would actually be surprised if memory techniques bled over into the juggling. Tell me about that. I mean, I could imagine if it's like memorizing a specific, I'm going to go right out and say, I would be actually surprised if mnemonics helped you with the skill of juggling.

Dan Holzman: It really does as far as, because that the skill of juggling is a couple of different things. You can be a hobby juggler, where if someone says, let me see you juggle, and you just kind of run through a couple of tricks. In your mind you're thinking, what should I do next? And what trick comes next? They're just kind of making it up as you go.

But a professional juggler will put the filling into sequences. We'll have a set routine. And if you look at like your memory journeys, where you're sort of doing a traveling type of memory palace, I can do the same thing with my juggling routines. Because I have certain set tricks. They do one after each other and I might have 40 or 50 in a row.

Oh wow. I'm very aware of, and very, we have well memorized. And as long as they're sort of different enough, I can use them as part of my memory journeys. So they're very useful, uh, as far as, uh, vehicles towards memorization. So there's sort of a cross pollination between the juggling and the memory.

Jonathan Levi: That's so fascinating. So how did you do it before you knew about the memory palace technique? 

Dan Holzman: Well, like I said before, I knew about the memory palace and visualization. I just tried to brute force it. Like I would just really put in the time. See what I do is I have my own program, which I think is wonderful.

We all have our own way of approaching this self-development type of industry or field. And mine has always been called Renaissance Man training. And it was always based on a stopwatch. I'd have goals of a certain amount of time that I would put in every day and I'd work towards like 10 to 12 hours of a Renaissance man training time.

So for me, it was all about time. I thought, well, if I put enough time in, I'll eventually move forward. Like if I play the piano for an hour a day, I will get better. Not really thinking like, well, okay, is it better to spend an hour a day or to think 20 minutes a day in the most effective fashion. Because once I learned that the mind works best in 20 minute chunks, as far as the most effective way to learn, I thought, well, can I get the same effort and benefit out of 20 minutes that I'm getting out of an hour?

If I really know what I want to learn, and I really sort of build a technique of how to get that, what I want to learn in the most efficient and effective manner. So it's really helped to have these memory techniques. It's really helped us know why I'm doing these things. So it's becomes relevant to my life.

Like why am I learning all these different things? Nobody's forcing me to. Nobody's standing over my shoulder, coaching me to do these things. So I think it's important to everything to have a purpose in your life. So to make it relevant. Which is probably one of the most effective tools and efficient learning.

Jonathan Levi: Oh yeah, absolutely. We teach prereading in our course and we put so much emphasis on it and a lot of students, the first time they take a look at it, they're like, hey, I'm here to read faster, not to read everything twice. And it's like, no, no, no, exactly the opposite. You need to flip through that book. You know, at a very quick pace and say, what are the things that stand out at me?

Why am I reading this? What am I hoping to learn? You know, what are the things that I'm not seeing at 5,000 words a minute that I would expect to see generate that curiosity and that why exactly, as you said, because then once you do read through it, you have this burning intense and interest is so much easier to get into flow.

Dan Holzman: Once I got a friend I was talking to, he said I want to go to circus school to become a professional juggler. I'm like, well, why. I go, there's so much, you're going to be learning that's not really appropriate or going to be efficient for you as a professional juggler. They're gonna have you teach a lot of things that will bleed over into juggling.

But if you want to become a professional juggler focused on professional juggling, it's like our school system where it's very diverse and it's good to become a well-rounded person, but at a certain point, you have to go, why am I learning these things? How do they benefit me and my journey through life?

And what is my path with a heart? I mean, what do I really want to do? Because I believe that passion is probably the most powerful force in sort of becoming successful. If you want to do it, that's you're halfway through. Because I've done things before I thought, well, this would be a good idea for the money.

Like, Oh, I want to put this act together cause I think it would sell. And those things always seem to fall by the wayside. Now we seem to come back to the things I really want to do. And so I think discovering that path and understanding what's the most efficient way to walk that path is your best way to become a superhuman.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. And you just touched on a quote that has been guiding me for the last six months, which is anytime you catch yourself saying yeah, but the money's really good question not. 

Dan Holzman: Well, it's that book that Derrick Stever book, which is one of the books I was going to recommend where he talks about like, well, how much money do you need and is money just a way of keeping score.

And I think it's important to live well and have the money you need to sort of give you the creative abilities and sort of the opportunities that money allows you. But if you're looking to gather things or possessions, and that's not the path I'm on, I want to have enough money to eventually build up a nice recording studio or a gymnasium in my house, or get great coaching, but it's not to get a Lamborghini or a big fancy car.

It's sort of important to know what you want to do. Like I like to follow the Bruce Lee philosophy. I'm sure you know, Bruce Lee, the martial artists. Where I don't identify myself as a juggler, like a lot of jugglers like they identify themselves as jugglers. Like when Bruce Lee came along, he looked at martial arts and everything was broken into different factions.

You'd have your karate guy or your judo guy, your jujitsu guy. And they're always competing to see who was best. And they weren't sharing techniques. It was either, well, if I'm a karate guy, I'm not going to do grappling. If I'm a jujitsu player, I'm not going to do striking. And he thought this was ridiculous.

So I'm going to create the Jeet Kun Do, which translates the way of no way. Or anything that's useful to me on my journey I will incorporate. And so that's how I look at life is like what if the thing is full to me and my journey, whether it's looking at politics or religion or philosophy or diet.

If as long as I don't identify myself in one particular dogma, everything's available to me. If I understand the path I'm on and how these different things will help me to achieve it. It's true I think 

Jonathan Levi: there's so much success to be had. I mean, you mentioned Ido Portal, he's the first person to say I take from Capoeira.

I take from gymnastics. I take from basketball. I take from toddlers running on the playground and he's had tremendous success by being this cross-disciplinary synthesizer if you will. 

Dan Holzman: I think it's very important. I bet, uh, an interview with Grace Slick, she was a singer of Jefferson Airplane and she was no longer singing.

And the interviewer said, don't you miss singing? She said, well, no, because my job is to be creative. And now I'm into painting. As long as I can express myself creatively, I'm happy. Take away the painting, I'll do flower arranging. Take away the flower arranging, I'll do something else. As long as I can be creative.

I understood that for myself, juggling was a vehicle to express my creativity through. So as long as I can be creative and have talent, I think that talent could be expressed through many different directions, as long as they develop the skill base. So I think skill without creativity is sort of meaningless the same way that creativity without skill is kind of meaningless.

Like you might have a great idea for something, but you don't have the technique to express it. It's not going to be very worthwhile. And if you have the great creativity of this great idea, let's have an idea of a movie or a book. But I don't have the technique. I don't have the template to express it through, that also is going to be wasted.

So what I'm trying to do is develop this different techniques, these base level skills, so that I can express my creativity through it, which why I think it's also very important to discuss, you know, the power of creative thought, because sometimes I listen to a lot of these self-help tapes or read these books about how to be more successful, but successful in what, like, if you learn these different skills, how do you then use these skills to be creative?

Like, you know, you might have an idea for a website and you might be able to like to be a great programmer and how all these knowledge. But if you don't have a good idea to express, well, then everything you're learning, as far as it just becomes sort of a technical road exercise. And it doesn't really nothing to express through it.

So I think it's a combination of building the base of technical skill and understanding how to have creative thought. And when you combine those two together creative thought with good skill, I think that that's where true artistry lies. Wow. 

Jonathan Levi: Dan, tough question. What is the secret to your tremendous success?

Dan Holzman: Well, I think it's also goes back to outliers. A lot of it goes to timing in that, like when we were coming out, that was coming up in the, I learned to juggle on the '74 and by the time 1980 rolled around, I was already pretty accomplished. I had a three month gig at this amusement park where I worked like eight hours a day.

Like half an hour on half an hour off. Me and my partner did these Renaissance fairs that were pretty grueling. We would do up to a, our record is 21 shows in two days at a festival in Galveston, Texas. And so when the eighties came along, it was the comedy boom. And we were able to get on the tonight show because he was very much a fan of variety.

And there are other shows like Evening at the Improv, Caroline's Comedy Club, Comedy on the Road, Sunday Comics. So we got on about 60 to maybe 80 different TV shows. And then there was this opening act market, which no longer exists. So we got to tour with like David Brenner and Howie Mendell and Gary Shandling and Tom Jones, Roseanne Barr, Dean Martin, Paul Anka, all these great artists.

So I could watch them and sort of say, what do I learn from each person? Like from Robin Williams, you learned like spontaneity. You know from Billy crystal, you learn sort of the professionalism that he approached his set with. Like from Dennis Miller, I learned sort of like this idea of like his act never changed Dennis Miller.

So he had kind of compartmentalize what this was. I thought, well, we had so many writers, why isn't he freshen up his act? But for him, it sort of existed as its own thing. Like, this is what this is. So now I'm free to work on this. So that was a great experience. But then that market totally vanished when people started becoming like an evening with.

Or you go to Vegas, it used to be opening act headliner. Now it's more Cirque du Soleil or Phantom of the Opera or Grease. Um, but at this point, having the TV up here and the celebrity endorsements at the very same time that the corporate market was starting to boom, a lot of sense to move into the corporate market and get really the most, uh, financially benefit of what we were doing.

And we had a good 11 year run. From like 1990 to 2001, where we were just really cleaning up in the corporate market and being very successful financially. But then of course, 9/11 happened in 2001, which put a damper in, you know, our business, but also was a terrible event for the world. And then in 2008 with the economic downturn, the whole corporate market was just really diminished.

So that timing of being able to go through these different steps. And experienced these different high points in our industry. And now where I'm kind of feeling like semi-retirement or moving in different directions, I'm financially stable, I'm healthy, I have a wonderful relationship. I really feel it's a great time now to start this next chapter in my life.

And so resources like yours and other podcasts that have been so helpful in saying, okay, I can move away from these things that have always been successful as not only is my interest diminishing. But the universe is telling me the opportunities are diminishing. And now if some of the fields are so full, like if you want to become a, a comedy juggler on cruise ships, it's just one of the sort of, um, best jobs available

now. The cruise ship basically says, oh, you're a comedy juggler. Or I'm sorry, we don't need any more of those. It's not if you're good or bad, or you have these TV credits, they're basically saying we're full, we're full up. So the opportunities in my field have become diminished also because of my age, entertainment is sort of a young person's game.

There's a window when you'll be most successful. I think it's important to understand the window, whether you're an athletics or business or whatever it is, there is an ageism in our country, but there's always activities that don't rely on age that you have a pure open playing field. Right. So if you segue into other things that

you're not limited by your appearance or by your age or by people's perceptions of you. Like when we were talking initially, and you were saying that juggling seemed to be a very frivolous activity. I totally agree. Because the public's perception of juggling is sort of based on what they know juggling, which is a very silly fringe activity.

And when you juggle and someone goes by and posts like did do to, you know, as if you're a circus clown. It's hard to sort of fight against what the universe and people's perceptions are. You can fight to change. I can understand them and, uh, sort of act appropriately. 

Jonathan Levi: You know, I want to reflect something back and make an observation for my audience, which is just how incredibly humble you are, because it's incredible.

Like you've had so much success in your career and, you know, you would expect the answer to be. And clearly you've worked very hard. Clearly. You're very much devoted to this idea of a Renaissance man. And you've worked very, very hard with discipline and habits and putting in the 10,000 hours and yet the question

what is the secret to your success is met with well circumstance being in the right place at the right time, the right opportunity. I think it's incredible. And it just reflects that perhaps humility is part of the secret to your success, because I don't think I'm at that level to give so much of my accomplishment, a way to circumstance and being in the right place and being there at the right time.

Dan Holzman: I've always thought of myself not as a juggler, but as a person in show business. So if I look at myself as a juggler, I have to think I'm in the top one or 2%. But if I think of myself as a person in show business, I think of myself in the bottom 5% or 10%, because I'm in the same business as Jim Carrey or Steve Martin or Julia Roberts or Tom Cruise, and compared to other people in show business, I should be humble.

It's the same in life. Just look at myself in relationship to the great people you have on the podcast. And so for me to be on the same podcast, as some of these people, I really admire. Who have achieved so much in their life and careers is very humbling. 

Jonathan Levi: To point out again, an incredible amount of humility and also perspective and self-awareness, which I think is also a key.

Dan, I want to ask you. You know, I imagine that you are often held up as kind of a poster boy for finding your calling and doing what you love even if it's unconventional. I imagine, you know, a lot of parents either hold you as a bad example or hold you as a very good example. So I want to know, what do you have to say to people in the audience who've maybe been told, you know, you can't make a living doing that?

Dan Holzman: Well, I think it's all about education. Like at first, I didn't think I could do that. But if you look at the world and say, well, okay, I need three things like education and then strategy, and then application. Where at first I educated myself like, well, what is a professional juggler? Where do they work?

And I thought, okay, now I know where they work, what they need to do. Like to do a cruise ship you need about 70 minutes of material. And to do like a circus show, you might need like six minutes of material to do a comedy club. You need this to do this kind of job you need this. And then who do I approach?

What do they need? Well, they need a promotional package. You need to have a videotape. All right. Once I have those things together, then I need to apply these knowledge and send my stuff in, go after these jobs, make the people aware of me. So once I educated myself to what a professional juggler was, and then developed a strategy of how I could fulfill those jobs and then apply it by then sending them the materials they needed to know.

I was capable of doing these jobs. But at first I had no idea what a professional juggler was. I remember the first time I saw a professional juggler on TV, there was a show called the Merv Griffin Show back in the seventies. And the TV guide came out and they had Kris Kremo juggler. And so I circled it.

It was on a Thursday and this was on Monday when I saw it. And I thought I was a good juggler because I was the only that I really had seen. And when I saw him at my mind was blown. I'm like, Oh my God that's what a professional juggler does. I'll never be able to do that. Never. Well, because his class, his precision, his style was impeccable and he looked great.

And here I was this kid, you know, bad skin, sort of a big, you know, Afro and not really the show business type, even though I thought I was clever and creatively intelligent, but I didn't really feel like I had the tools necessary to be successful in show business. I thought it'd be a writer or someone behind the scenes.

And then, uh, this juggler, Michael Davis came out and the Karamazov Brothers who were comedy jugglers, combined the juggling with comedy. And when I saw that, I thought, Oh my God, that's the perfect fit for me. Because I always loved comedy, Woody Allen and Robert Klein and Cheech and Chong. And I always liked writing comedy.

And I always loved juggling, but I didn't think I could be the slick Vegas style pro because at the time that's what I saw. Like I went to Vegas when I was 18. And there was seven or eight jugglers working up and down the strip, but there were all these, what they call flash jugglers, you know, working very fast to music, very high technique.

And I didn't think I could do that, but then I realize, okay, it's not the technique. It's how creatively you can apply the technique. I don't try to make it more impressive or more entertaining by increasing the difficulty. Increase the cleverness. Cause I thought I can't help juggle these people. I can't out outlook these people. I can't out young

these people. I cannot clever these people. So that's what I've tried to do. That's one of the secrets of my success. I'm gonna try to outclever you. So I'm going to take the same techniques and be more clever. Like I'll see a trick and if everybody is doing it the same way, I'll ask, why are they doing it that way?

How can I improve this trick without improving the difficulty. There was a trick where you'll take a, a ball and you'll spin it on your finger. And then maybe you'll put that on a volunteer's finger or a stick they're holding. I'm like, why is it always a ball? So I develop these clear bowls. Like there look like they're glass, but they're plastic.

So I spin the bowl on my finger. Then I put balls inside the bowl. So you can see the balls moving inside the bowl and I'll put three of those volunteer. And it's actually easier than the balls. But it looks harder and it's more clever and it has more inherent danger, more inherent interest because they feel like they can, if one of these hits the ground, it's going to break, but I don't increase the difficulty.

I increase the entertainment value. I increase the inherent interest. Like for me, balancing a stick on my forehead is no more difficult than balancing three golf clubs. Like I have a trick ride balancing golf club. There's a ball on top of the golf club and there's a club on top of that ball. Then I'll reach up with a potter and spin that club.

Then it's resting on top of the ball. Now there's a bit of a gimmick to it. It shows no more difficult than balancing a stick on my head. 

Jonathan Levi: We're going to need a YouTube video for the blog post on that one. I got to see 

Dan Holzman: sure. It's all on my website danholzman.com. You can see on my YouTube channel, Dan Holzman, comedy juggler.

You can see me in action. Awesome. 

Jonathan Levi: And I'm going to find that video for sure. Yeah, 

Dan Holzman: because for me, I'm always looking for one thing. It's sort of like, I'm always trying to increase the comic potential or the inherent interest. So those are my two big things. I'm trying to increase the comic potential or the inherent interest.

Like when I teach about comedy, I'm like, well, if you start with a routine that's more inherently funny, it's easier to write funny jokes for. Or if you start with something that's more inherently interesting, it's usually to put a routine together. If David Coffeyville is going to make the statue of Liberty disappear, he can build an entire special around that.

If you're gonna make a car disappear, I'm like, well, you know, there's not that much inherent interest. Like if you're a juggler and I say like, okay, let's see, you have a skill like you can do a three ball cascade, which is the easiest of all juggling patterns. It's just the most basic pattern. Like go, how could we make a six-minute routine out of that without increasingly difficulty?

Well, first maybe you switched to eggs, which are no more difficult than three balls, maybe 1% because of the shape and catching them at the end it's a bit more difficult. Then okay. Then you get a person from the audience, you lay them down beneath you. Now you're gonna juggle the three eggs over someone laying down from the audience.

So if you drop them, it'll fall on this person. No more difficult, but a lot more humor potential. Now I'm going to wear a phony blindfold that I can see through once again, no more difficulty, but a lot more inherent interest. Yeah, that reminds me of the belt into something fantastic. 

Jonathan Levi: It reminds me of something Yuri Marmerstein said where, you know, the most difficult gymnastic tricks or techniques are actually the ones that look the easiest.

And so don't bother with doing the most difficult ones. Do the ones that look the most difficult or the things that look the most challenging. 

Dan Holzman: Well, if you're lucky enough to be successful, if you're looking to be an entertainer, if you're looking to sort of promote and to sort of have a awareness of what you're doing in the, in the broader scheme, you'll notice that it's not always the most talented people who are the most successful.

If that was the case, I don't think Kanye West would have gotten very far. Even though there are a lot of people who find them very ingenious. I don't see it. Especially when he was trying to sing that Queen song. Uh, you know. But it's the application of the skill, which one's going to goes back to why are you learning these things?

How are you going to apply them? If you can apply them using creative thought, it's more effective than being a better, whatever it is. If you have better ideas, because I think ideas are what are important ideas are going to give you the sort of the power of a God to have a great idea, then to bring it into reality, to be able to create something from nothing is true power.

Jonathan Levi: Wow. That's a fantastic quotable. Dan, you mentioned that we could actually go into how the audience can start learning to juggle. I think you mentioned you could even describe it on the episode without any video or anything. So I'll ask the question broadly. How can people learn to start juggling now that we kind of understand all the different benefits and meditative aspects of it?

Dan Holzman: I could lead you step by step through the process, but it would probably take a little bit of time and it wouldn't be as effective as simply Googling how to learn juggle and look it up on YouTube. I mean, I could certainly do it. No, one's going to, we're looking at effective learning techniques. It would be a bit suspect.

Sure. I would definitely say that there are certain things you could approach it with. You know, sort of approach it with sort of this understanding of relaxed awareness, you know, focus and concentration, creating a good space to learn in, to make sure you're using the proper equipment because it's easier to use something heavier.

Like, uh, I think the best ball that's sort of available is sort of as a lacrosse ball, like professional jugglers, I'll use either a professional juggling bean bag or a silicone ball. But like a silicone jumping ball would cost about $30. So don't try to learn with something light, like a tennis ball or rolled up socks, literally something with a bit of heft and about the size of a baseball and start with the three ball cascade.

Dan Holzman: Yeah. But you'd really break it down once again and just sort of learning how to correctly throw one ball. And then we'll just go through that. Like, how do you directly throw one ball, which is basically you start with your hands about waist high, your elbows are sort of tucked to the size of your body.

They're hands out a little bit of an angle. Like you're holding a tray. And then what you'll do is you'll reach your hand up as high as you can reach over your head. That's how high you're gonna try to throw the ball. Then reach your hand over. So it's over your opposite shoulders as high above your head, sort of over your opposite shoulder.

That's where you're trying to throw the ball to. Cause you don't smell the ball straight up. You throw it over on an angle. And then once you're gonna do is you're gonna take the ball and your hands gonna be a bit above waist height, your hands, dip down below your belt line and then come back up. So you're gonna throw with kind of a scooping motion, cause you're trying to be very efficient.

So when you catch the ball. You're going to catch the ball, your hands going to drop, and then scoot back up. A lot of people have like an extra hitch in their throw. Well, they'll go like upwards first and then they'll come back around. You're trying to make it as efficient as possible. So really focus on spreading one ball back and forth perfectly you letting the ball drop to your hand.

You're not reaching your hand forward, not reaching your hand backwards. Not upwards. You're letting the ball fall to your hand. It gives you the most time. You just want to create time where the ball is in the air. Cause you're gonna throw that in a second ball. When the first ball is at the top or the apex of its flight, and it's gonna be the exact identical throw, but then the other side.

So you're right, it hits the top left. So it goes, throw, throw, catch, catch, both throws identical, both of us the same hype hitting the same place above the opposite shoulder. So turning to learn to throw one ball efficiently, back and forth very well. And then once again, building up and sort of logical steps.

So you don't go like one, two, three drop, and you're like, oh, you always want to challenge yourself. Right. But to learn, because if you're just not taking, making any mistakes, then you're not growing. But if every time you're dropping, you're not kind of learning efficiently because you're spending so much time picking up the objects.

Jonathan Levi: Sure. And I love how we've come full circle on the learning aspect and the aspect of kind of accelerated learning. 

Dan Holzman: Well, that's important. I think, especially if you want to become a superhuman. You don't have that much time. Right? I mean, you only have so much time in the day. And unfortunately I consider myself semi retired, so I have a lot of free time, you know, I'm married, but I have a doxins I don't have kids.

So I have a lot of time, a lot of people I know, spend time with their kids. So if you only have 20 minutes a day for self-improvement. Then try to be as most efficient as possible. And that's why juggling comes back in. If you really want to improve your sports performance, or you want to improve your focus, you want to improve your visualization skills.

You want to become smarter because juggling has been scientifically proven to build gray matter to build white matter to actually increased the size of your brain. Well, juggle for five minutes today or juggle before you're going to do a presentation, or if you're feeling stress, you know, don't go out to have a cigarette.

You have a juggling break. You want to clear your mind in between activities you're working on a paper or you're studying very intently? Well, the brain can only absorb so much, so you need a break. You can stretch, do some deep breathing, five minutes of juggling reset your mind. Boom. You're back.

Jonathan Levi: Ready to go. That is a fantastic takeaway point for the audience. Dan, I want to make sure that we have enough time for you to tell the audience how they can reach out to you. I know you have a podcast, you have a YouTube channel. What are all the different properties that you have and feel free to, you know, let our audience know where they can reach you.

Dan Holzman: Well, I have a couple of different resources available. I do do a podcast on my own. It's called Drop Everything. It's on iTunes and it's mostly for jugglers. If you're interested in juggling and you want to hear, uh, the tales of professional jugglers, that's a great podcast for you. It also, I think I always like to read about different people and different types of activities.

I'll read books about professional wrestlers or race car drivers or entrepreneurs. So there are definitely lessons you can learn from anybody who's successful at anything. But that's sponsored by the International Juggling Association and it's very juggling oriented. Okay. I have a personal website, it's a braindrizzles.com and that's where I teach coaching and performance at braindrizzles.com.

So I teach many different kinds of variety performers, but anybody who makes presentations, if you're a speaker of any sort, and you're trying to increase the comedy awareness and understand how to add more comedy to your presentations. That's a very good resource. If you're looking to hire me for my comedy juggling performances, my website's danholzman.com.

That's D A N H O L Z M A N.com. And if you just want to see examples of my work, you can go to Dan Holzman, comedy juggler, or look up my partner and I's website, which is Raspyni Brothers. R A S P Y N I brothers. And if you've ever been to a Ted conference, you might've be aware of us from the Ted conferences because we performed at a six of them.

So for all you Ted attendees, yes, I am Dan Raspyni and maybe you've seen me on stage at Ted. 

Jonathan Levi: Fantastic. Dan, I want to close on one question, which is if people take away one life lesson from this podcast, what would you like that to be? 

Dan Holzman: Well, I think sort of the power of the subconscious mind. I think that's the, one of the most important things people can realize. That for me as a comedian and as a juggler performer, I'm always searching the world for comedy potential are interesting ideas I can use in my act. My radar is always open to that because I'm using the power of my subconscious mind to sort of always be open to see, Oh, this is funny.

Oh, I see something interesting here. Or I could use that as part of my act. So I think this idea, whatever you want to do engage the subconscious mind. Like if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, well then part of your mind should always be looking for these ideas that will help you be successful.

So it was a great book to recommend is the Power of your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy. When I read that, it really helped me and I think it brought a lot of things into my life. That I knew I was looking for from my relationship and now to the current job that I'll be starting in June, which for me is like the perfect juggling job.

I think I was able to manifest those, not in some secret way or some kind of, sort of metaphysical way, but just being aware of the opportunities that like was presenting me. And so be aware of the opportunities that life presents you. Have your mind open to them and then follow the path that gives you the most pleasure, follow the path that has heart.

Jonathan Levi: That is a beautiful, beautiful quote to end on Mr. Dan Holzman, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you and thank you so much for sharing some of your time and wisdom with us. 

Dan Holzman: My pleasure, and thank you so much for this podcast. I think it's a great resource. 

Jonathan Levi: Thank you so much. You take care and have a wonderful day.

All right Superfriends, that's it for this week's episode, we hope you really, really enjoyed it and learn a ton of applicable stuff that can help you go out there and overcome the impossible.

If so, please do us a favor and leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, or however you found this podcast. In addition to that, we are. Always looking for great guest posts on the blog or awesome guests right here on the podcast. So if you know somebody or you are somebody, or you have thought of somebody who would be a great fit for the show or for our blog, please reach out to us either on Twitter or by email our email is info@becomingasuperhuman.com. Thanks so much. 

Closing: Thanks for tuning in to the Becoming Superhuman Podcast. For more great skills and strategies, or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit www.becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast. We'll see you next time.