I teach card magic. And there's a simple reason why I love to do that. It's because I love to learn card magic. The thrill of seeing improvement, no matter how small is a thrill that never, ever fades for the serious performer.

But I discovered while I was still in high school that learning card magic can be a great deal more complex than it looks. Between the ages of 16 and 18, I met my first real card experts: Jack Birnman and Peter Galinskas. Jack taught me about creativity and its role in card magic — including the notion (unbelievable to me at the time!) that you were allowed to change, or alter, the moves you read in magic books. But you had to have good reasons for doing so. Peter taught me what those reasons were.

While I was in college at UNLV in Las Vegas, I was in the perfect laboratory to continue these lessons. I studied theater during the day and worked on close-up magic the rest of the time. While I lived there, in the city that's most synonymous with our art, I learned from several of the great names in card magic: Larry Jennings, Michael Skinner and, of course, Johnny Thompson, The Great Tomsoni. From these men I learned that true creativity comes only from a solid grounding in our craft; and so they impressed upon me the rigors of study, the importance of the classics, and the need to seek that ever-elusive concept of naturalness that makes sleight of hand so beautiful.