Amaze & Delight: Secrets to Creating Magic in Business

My Role: Editor

Skills Utilized: Editing, collaborating, writing, researching, copy editing.

Problem: Co-authors Robert Strong and David Martinez wanted to connect their experience as magicians to help executives and other workers be more effective in their business environments. However, the body of knowledge possessed by magicians initially seems far less than optimally relevant to business people, and this disconnect posed a major problem.

Action: I encouraged the authors to reframe that tenuous relevancy instead as a deceptively valuable perspective that would set executives ahead of competitors who sought conventional knowledge from more expected and mundane sources. I hypothesized that this contextualization would create a fascinating hook, inspiring readers to look for uniquely useful perspectives and insights that they were unlikely to receive elsewhere. To this end, I helped organize the book so that each chapter and lesson reinforced magicians as subject matter experts in various areas of business, including: preparation, grabbing attention, creating magical moments, humor, collaboration, psychological safety, and connecting distributed teams. Further, I helped improve humor, research, cohesion, and insights that were published in the final product.

Results: Amaze & Delight was extremely well received, garnering an astounding 60+ perfect 5/5 scores on Amazon, with an average score that is also 5/5. This book was a number 1 Amazon Best Seller about which Emile Litvak, Vice President at Meta said, “If you, as a leader, need to build cohesive and motivated teams, read this book.” Mirit Cohen, Senior Manager of Global Workplace Experience at Adobe said, “Brilliant! A must-read for anyone who is passionate about building a strong workplace culture. The wisdom shared is strategic, practical, and powerful.” Nawal Fakhoury, Director of Employee Experience at LinkedIn said, “All of us are capable of creating magical experiences that energize work—this book demystifies the process and shows you how.” The book also features me as a subject matter expert in the area of psychological safety (excerpted below). You can find Amaze & Delight here.