THE S WORD

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Introduction

THE POINT OF THE SWORD

Yes, I Swallow Swords. Here Is the Point.

The audience is seated, the stage lights up, everyone is prepared and yet not entirely sure what to expect.

There I am, standing on the stage, wearing a sport coat over an unusually colorful shirt, poised and focused, a sword in my hand.

I position my body, raising the hilt high, and bring the sword to my lips.

It is at this point an audience member might exclaim, "Don't do it!"

There is very real tension in these moments. Tension that I soon break when I look into the audience and say, "I had a desperate need for attention as a child."

It usually is not until much later in my presentations that I actually swallow a sword. It is not until after content is relayed and all present have gotten to know one another a bit better that we arrive at that grand crescendo.

My talks and performances are not designed to gross the audience out. Rather, I aim to amaze, inspire, and most of all, connect with the audience.

When I swallow a sword, my goal is to create a captivating blend of danger and humor, embodying a metaphor for the struggles we all face and the connection we seek.

Out of over seven billion people on this planet, I am one of only about a hundred who perform this ancient, unique, and fascinating art form professionally. I have taken this act to platforms worldwide, including Ripley's Believe It or Not!, the Smithsonian, and stages across the country.

Sword swallowing dates back to India 4,000 years ago, making it one of the most enduring forms of performance art on earth.

And yes, because people always ask: it is real.

No trick. No illusion. A solid steel blade, 18 to 24 inches long, sliding down my throat, past my heart, nudging essential organs aside.

Not every body is built for this. Mine is. But even more than the physical capacity, what makes sword swallowing possible is mental. To swallow a sword, you must master a game of mind over matter, gaining control over involuntary bodily functions. It takes patience, training, and an iron will to suppress the natural urge to gag, to breathe, to panic.

This act, one of simultaneous surrender and control, serves as a unique metaphor for our shared human experience. We all encounter moments in life where we must push past our fears, swallowing down our trepidation, to face the challenges ahead.

But here is the thing most people do not realize about sword swallowing: the sword is not the point.

The connection is.

When the audience watches me swallow a sword, they cannot help but feel the pulse of connection, the shared gasp of wonder, the collective empathetic response. It is more than a performance. It is a vivid depiction of our shared humanity.

That is what I have spent my entire life learning how to create. Not the gasp. Not the shock. The connection.

What Performing Has Taught Me

I have been a professional performer for over three decades. I started out working in the carnival as a teen, and except for a year fighting forest fires, the entertainment world has been my life.

Somehow along the way I have ended up being a fire eater, a fortune teller, an acrobat, a living statue, a magician, a hypnotist, a mime, and a clown.

I have been featured in circuses, ballets, and Shakespeare productions. I have worked backyard birthday parties and bar mitzvahs and insanely glitzy events for Silicon Valley billionaires. I have performed at venues I only dreamed about as a kid. Once, I shook hands with a sitting president. I am still not entirely sure how I got into that room.

Now I run a company called Circus Kaput with my wife Ginger, and in a typical year our team does more than 900 events and shows.

None of that is why I wrote this book. This is not my chance to flex my accomplishments. This is about my failures and the lessons I learned from them.

I wrote this book because of what I learned connecting with audiences, onstage and off. What I have learned through performing, over thousands of shows, and making countless mistakes, is that connecting with others is a skill.

It is not something you either have or you do not. It is not charisma or personality or luck. It is a set of practices that can be learned, refined, and mastered.

The best performers I know, the ones who truly move audiences, the ones who build careers that last, they all share certain habits. They know themselves deeply. They pay fierce attention to the people in front of them. They stay open to what is happening in the moment. They repair quickly when things go wrong. And they reflect constantly on what they are learning.

These are not just performance skills. They are life skills. They are the skills that make any relationship work, whether you are standing on a stage, sitting in a meeting, leading a team, pitching a client or having dinner with your family.

We all exist in a world that requires us to perform in one way or another. My lawyer is also a part time magician. In court, he does not pull coins from behind the judge's ear, but he still reads the room, stays present under pressure, and knows how to recover when an argument lands wrong. The skills transfer. The costume changes.

I have spent years teaching these skills to the entertainers on my roster. I have watched people transform from nervous, self-conscious newcomers into artists who can hold a room in the palm of their hand. And I have realized that the principles behind that transformation apply far beyond the stage.

That is what I want to share with you.

Why Sincerity?

There is an old story about the origin of the word 'sincere', that it comes from the Latin sine cera, meaning 'without wax.' Whether or not the etymology holds up (scholars debate it), the image has stayed with me: no wax. No filler. No hidden cracks covered over with something that will melt under pressure.

That is what creates connection. Not perfection. Not polish. Sincerity.

A Note on Authenticity

This is not a buzzy book on the topic of authenticity.

Somewhere along the way, authenticity became a brand, a costume, a personal marketing strategy. It started saying 'Look at me' instead of 'Let me see you.'

Authenticity asks, 'Am I being true to myself?' Sincerity asks, 'Am I being true to you?'

That distinction matters, and I'll unpack it fully in Chapter 1.

Why "The S Word"?

So why did I call this book "The S Word"?

Because somewhere along the way, sincerity became the word nobody uses anymore.

Think about it. When was the last time you heard someone praised for being sincere? We call people authentic, genuine, real, transparent, vulnerable. We have TED talks and bestsellers and entire personal brands built around authenticity. But sincerity? Sincerity sounds like something stitched on a doily in your grandmother's living room, sitting under a bowl of Werther's Originals.

It is an old word. A dusty word. A word that got left behind while authenticity got all the attention, all the book deals, all the cultural cachet.

And that is exactly why I am bringing it back.

The SWORD Framework

I am a sword swallower, so you will forgive me for the acronym. But the framework I have developed for practicing sincerity spells out SWORD.

The SWORD framework is based on the practices I share with the performers I mentor, and use in my own life. The later chapters will flesh it out in a more general sense so that you can see how to apply it yourself.

S - Self-Awareness

This is where sincerity begins. You cannot be genuine with others if you are not first honest with yourself.

Self-awareness means knowing your values, your triggers, your patterns, your blind spots. It means understanding the gap between who you think you are and who you actually show up as.

Great performers know exactly how good they are, and they are honest about their limits. A juggler who can run seven balls in rehearsal will probably do five onstage. Why? Because five is the sure thing. That takes intense self-awareness. You have to know where your real skill level is.

But here is the deeper truth: after a certain point, audiences do not care about the technical difficulty. They care about how you make them feel. A good performer knows this. Self-awareness is not about ego. It is about creating a genuine shared experience.

W - Witness

Most people have no idea how much a great performer sees.

While doing some seemingly impossible feat, a sincere performer is also fully present, listening, watching, reaching out to connect. They are tracking where the audience is on the ride, moment by moment, so they can curate the experience.

That is why live performance can be so alive and moving. It is breathing and changing. It is never the same show twice.

The opposite is what we call "phoning it in" or "doing your taxes." You are onstage, but in your mind you are somewhere else entirely. I have done it. We all have. And it only ever produces a mediocre experience for everyone.

Witnessing means seeing the people in front of you. Not as an audience to be impressed, but as human beings to be connected with.

O - Openness

When a performer is open, they avoid the ego trap of trying to show off. Instead, they follow the audience.

You bring a volunteer onstage, and suddenly they take the moment in a direction you did not plan. A closed performer tries to wrestle the show back to their script. An open performer goes with it. They surf the wave instead of fighting it.

Some of the best bits in my shows were born this way. An audience member did something so surprising and delightful that we spent the next several performances reverse-engineering the moment so it could happen again.

Those little miracles are only possible when we set aside our own agenda and allow others to lead for a while. The leader becomes the follower, and becomes stronger for it. That is openness: not losing yourself, but loosening your grip.

R - Repair

No performer is perfect.

We say something that lands wrong. We make a choice onstage that does not work and suddenly we are "in the hole," trying to win the room back. Offstage, we double-book, we miss a gig, we drop the ball on a client.

If you are going to have a long and successful career, you learn early, hard, and fast: when you mess up, own it and change. The audience, the clients, the agents, your fellow performers, most people are surprisingly forgiving of someone who recognizes what they did, makes it right, and then gets back on the right path and stays there.

Repair is sincerity in motion. It is the courage to say, "I did that. I am sorry. Here is how I am going to do better," and then actually following through.

D - Debrief

Any great performer knows the power of debrief.

After every show, good performers take notes. They think through what they experienced, what the audience experienced, and what they can do differently next time. Many great jokes and magical moments have been lost to the sands of time because a performer did not write them down after a show.

Debriefing is how you catch those moments, learn from the misses, and build something better. It is how you turn experience into wisdom instead of just accumulating years.

Wielding The Sword

These five practices, Self-Awareness, Witness, Openness, Repair, and Debrief, are the sword I carry into every performance, every project, and every relationship.It is not a theory I developed in a quiet room. It is a set of tools I have tested in the spotlight and in the mess behind the curtain. In my marriage, my business, my friendships, and my failures.

On their own, they are powerful skills. Together, they carve out a path to something deeper: a life and a culture built on sincerity.

What This Book Will Give You

Here is what I want you to walk away with.

I want you to understand yourself better. To see the patterns that drive your behavior, the blind spots that trip you up, the gap between who you want to be and who you actually show up as.

I want you to become better at seeing others. Not as functions, not as obstacles, not as audiences to impress, but as full human beings with their own stories, struggles, and hopes.

I want you to stay open to being changed. To hold your opinions loosely enough that new information can reach you. To follow when following is what the moment requires.

I want you to get good at repair. To stop avoiding the hard conversations, to own your mistakes quickly and completely, to build relationships that are stronger because of the cracks, not despite them.

And I want you to build a practice of reflection. To stop repeating the same patterns unconsciously. To turn every experience, good or bad, into a lesson that makes you better.

These skills will serve you everywhere. In your work. In your family. In your friendships. In your community. In the quiet relationship you have with yourself.

They are what make connection possible. And connection, real connection, is what we are all hungry for.

The Breakdown

Each chapter of this book has three layers.

First, the story. I learn best through stories, and I suspect you do too. Each chapter opens with something that happened to me: a failure, a lesson, a moment when sincerity showed up or did not. These are not illustrations of concepts. They are where the concepts came from.

Second, the mechanics. After the story, each chapter shifts into a more practical gear. These sections dig into the how and why, the research, the frameworks, the nuts and bolts of actually practicing each element of SWORD. If you want to understand not just what sincerity looks like, but how it works, this is where that happens.

Third, the journal prompts. At the end of each chapter, you will find a few questions and thoughts designed to inspire you to apply what you have read to your own life.

For those who hunger for more, I have included four appendices.

Appendix A: The SWORD Journey is an exploration path that could take you a month or a year. It is a series of questions, prompts and actions to integrate the framework fully into your life.

Appendix B: Leading with Sincerity is all about using the framework for leaders. If you guide others, whether you run a company, lead a team, manage a household, or simply find yourself in positions where people look to you, that chapter shows how to wield the SWORD when the stakes are higher and the ripples spread further. You do not have to be a CEO to need it. You just have to be someone others count on.

Appendix C: Further Reading is a list of summaries and suggestions for anyone who wants to keep expanding their knowledge after turning the last page.

Appendix D: Sincerity Through the Ages and Around The World traces sincerity through history and across cultures, because this is not a modern invention, and understanding where these ideas come from can deepen how you hold them.

As you travel through this book, you will find not just ideas to consider, but practices to embody. The framework only works if you use it.

Learn. Practice. Fail. Reflect. Try again

The Invitation

I have stood on thousands of stages. I have swallowed swords in front of audiences who came in skeptical and left amazed. I have built a company with my wife that brings joy to nearly a thousand events a year. I have earned credentials and accolades that younger me would not have believed possible.

And I am telling you: the most important thing I have learned is not how to swallow a sword.

It is how to connect.

How to be genuinely present with another human being. How to let them see me without the wax. How to create moments where we are truly in it together, not performer and audience, but human beings sharing something real.

That is the skill that has built my career, my marriage, my company, my life. And it is not a secret I want to keep. It is something I want to give away.

So consider this book my invitation. Come backstage with me. Let me show you what I have learned about connection, sincerity, and the art of being real in a world that makes it very hard.

I cannot promise it will be easy. The sword is still a sword. It requires courage to pick it up.

But I can promise it will be worth it.

Until I see you from the stage, I hope you live, as we sword swallowers say in greeting and in passing, "To the hilt!"

Let us begin.