When Tom Pesce was a kid, he saw a street magician doing close-up, sleight-of-hand magic in Boston. He was hooked. “It directly connected to me. I locked in. I thought, ‘This is what I want to do’,” he says.
Pesce has been locking in with audiences ever since. Even an earlier career as a fourth grade teacher saw him perfect how he builds a rapport, interacts and “transmits and translates” ideas with people, whether in the classroom or, later, on stage.
For Pesce to fully connect with an audience he first makes it his business to understand their business. “I need to understand where they’re coming from. So, when we talk about the foodservice industry, I will really focus on the service part – where values are based on a belief system, regardless of position and titles, and how the impact we can make is going to stem from acting because of who we are, not because of what we do,” he says.
“People will forget what you said or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel. That feeling is really the first step in building a brand. And the brand that we represent is our reputation. It’s who we are, not what we do.”
Pesce believes that audiences feel many common “pain points”, no matter what sector they work in. “They are reciprocal in a lot of different industries. People sometimes feel, undervalued, but they also are searching for purpose and to accelerate their impact,” he says. Pesce will show attendees how they can take some of the tools he will demonstrate at the Symposium and apply them to their own experience.
Incredible moments
Magic, though, will “infuse throughout” Pesce’s keynote, entirely in keeping with the carnival theme, he says. Attendees should expect a surprise, too. “They’re going to expect the unexpected. Without giving too much away, there are going to be moments where we engage the audience as a whole, and also when we have individuals up on stage with me. Not to make anybody feel uncomfortable or embarrassed, but just to make these incredible moments happen. And to give them a road map on how to implement that in their work.”
Pesce loves to combine close-up magic (he will also perform ‘strolling magic’ during the closing reception) with a sense of big stage spectacle. “My whole approach to the keynote is to bring that intimate feeling to a larger scale. So, everybody leaves saying, ‘This happened to me. It felt like I was the only one that was connecting’. Again, it really speaks to that personal connection. That was how I fell in love with magic.”
Pesce’s influences are a diverse range, from comic actors Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, and the magicians Jorge Blass, Juan Tamariz and Derren Brown, to professional speakers such as Clint Pulver and Diana Kander. All performers, he says, “who have been able to, not just take the audience on a ride with them through an experience, but also be so masterful in their own business that they really walk the walk. An audience can understand and feel authenticity when somebody has just created a talk that’s engaging and exciting.”
Engaging. Exciting. Magical. The stage awaits.
Michael Jones
