The Fifth Strategy: Cheat Preemptively
THE FIFTH STRATEGY: CHEAT PREEMPTIVELY
“Losers react, leaders anticipate.”
—Tony Robbins
Scene: Recall the story of Max Malini, told in the introduction. It really happened. Back in the 1920s, Malini, a world-famous magician especially renowned for his “spontaneous” close-up magic, stunned a U.S. senator, who asked him, at a formal dinner party, to “do a trick.”
Protesting that he is completely unprepared, Malini at last gives in to the repeated entreaties of the senator and his entourage. He asks if anyone happens to have a deck of cards. No one does, of course, but—fortunately—the magician carries a deck. He withdraws it from his pocket, shuffles it, then “forces” a card on the senator’s wife. When Malini then asks her to return it to the deck, the card turns up missing. Visibly annoyed, Malini half apologizes. “This is very unusual,” he protests.