♪ [anthem with slow steady rhythm and brass stings]
♪ ♪
>> Heads up rogues,
first before you guys are posting the comments,
yes there's a reason for this.
Yes you will find it out eventually,
don't worry about it.
What I want to focus on,
is we got a new gizmo at the store,
but more importantly I want to share with you guys
a story of what I truly believe
is the closest thing that exists
to real magic in this world.
Some of you guys know
that I started off in the tech industry.
I had a pretty good corporate job,
and in May of 1999 I had the nutty idea,
at the height of the dot-com boom,
that I was going to quit my day job
and become a magician.
Now keep in mind, as far as jobs working for the man go
it was a pretty good gig.
We got lots of free swag, some computer stuff,
I liked it good enough.
I had to work on a phone cube,
and there was this fleeting thought of like,
"What If I could make it as a stage magician?"
And then I got a raise, and it was a big raise.
It was big enough that suddenly I realized,
this is how it happens.
This is how you end up doing something you hate
for the rest of your life.
The money just gets too good,
and I didn't want to be one of those people
who would spend his life wondering what might have been.
So I quit, I quit my day job.
All of a sudden I had no income.
My wife said, "You get one year,
"you got one year I'll keep the lights on,
"and if after one year you can't make this work
"then it's back to work you go."
And at least then I would know.
Now it was terrifying quitting a good day job
to try to become a magician.
I had no idea what I was doing.
It's also the first time I ever did
any kind of extended goal writing session.
Now, people have different opinions
about how you should go about that.
I wrote down what my perfect day would look like,
the things I wanted to achieve for people that I loved,
the standards of success that I would measure myself by,
and I tell you what man
what looked like a 10 year goal, a 20 year goal,
in five years I found those notes
and it was like real magic.
Somehow writing them down caused them to become true.
Great things happen when you write them down,
and the crazy part is it keeps on working.
By the time we get to like 2010, 2011,
I was a fairly successful touring guy.
I was having a good time on the road,
but then we started spitting out babies all over the place
and I realized that what I wanted had changed.
So I sat down and I drew a map.
This isn't even a goal setting exercise,
it was just me describing,
what do I have in here that belongs out there?
How do we scale it?
What new shows do we launch?
Do I do TV, do we do another YouTube channel?
Again, writing it down somehow seems
to have caused it to happen.
We are now recording this on seven and a half acres
of a former cult compound, a former nudist colony.
We're watching the team come together bit by bit
as we take on bigger and bigger challenges.
All of this is because of you
and I cannot thank you enough.
Every single view matters.
Every promo code you use matters.
Those of you guys who are buying stuff
from the online store, it matters.
You exist here from your participation,
and we want to make it a little bit of a two-way street.
So here's what I'm thinking,
there's going to be some great moment in your life
that involves a pen.
Maybe it's the last bit of student debt that you pay off,
maybe it's your list of goals,
maybe it's the first draft of your great novel,
maybe it's the biggest contract of your career,
but when you sign that document,
when you write those words
I don't want you to use some piece of garbage 99 cent BIC.
I want it to be our pen,
what we are calling The Modern Rogue, Pen of Greatness.
All right so here's the pitch,
this is where everything becomes an ad.
We want to be there for your greatest moments.
So we needed to find a pen that we genuinely love,
that's not going to be some two dollar piece of crap,
but also not some ripoff $400 fountain pen or whatever.
Pretty sure we found it.
The Pen of Greatness is beautifully machined
and it's got four different types
of writing instruments in it.
You get blue, black, red and a mechanical pencil,
and get this it's gravity activated.
Whatever colors on top, when you click that button
that's what comes out.
It's like magic.
If it ever runs out of ink, we will replace it for free.
If it ever breaks, we will replace it for free,
and that's why the Pen of Greatness
is meant to be with you forever and ever and ever.
The Pen of Greatness is available right now at scamstuff.com
or shop.themodernrogue.com.
Thank you so much team rogue
for everything you guys are making possible.
This feels like a fantasy or a dream to me.
It feels like real magic,
and do me a favor this will be fun,
In the comments that stuff I'm talking about
about goal setting feeling like magic.
Have you ever experienced that?
If you have write it up,
because I'd like to know I'm not just a dog barking
in the night here. [laughs]
I hope that I'm not like a K-Mart budget guru or something,
but it's like it feels like magic.
You know what I'm talking about, eh write something.
[static crinkling]