Tricky Business

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For the final project in his Foundations of Marketing class, Jacob Baum (BBA ’26) wanted to add some razzle dazzle to make his team’s presentation stand out. What good is marketing if it doesn’t make a vivid impression? As an accomplished magician, he knew just the trick. His team chose Tropicana, a maker of orange juice, and proposed a new product line of mimosas — a mix of orange juice and champagne. A student on the team started the presentation by acting hung-over. Enter Baum onto the stage (the front of the classroom), holding a milk carton. Baum pours the milk into a glass and offers it to his friend. The stricken friend declines. Baum pours out some chocolate milk — out of the exact same carton. This repeats with water, wine and beer. (No, this isn’t a religious joke.) “Finally, my friend says, ‘I just want something with a little alcohol, but that’s really refreshing,’” Baum said. “My response: ‘Oh, I got you. Introducing Tropicana Mimosa!’” 

He pours orange juice from the same carton, then, for his finale, rips open the carton to reveal it’s actually empty. Now that’s how you kick off a memorable presentation. Marketing professor Mitchell Olsen says even the best ideas must break through the daily noise of competing advertising messages to grab people’s attention and make them care about your product. “In a few moments, his team successfully grabbed everyone’s attention, highlighted the need for their new product idea, and had people say, ‘Wow!’” Olsen said. “As I watched with a smile, it struck me how much marketing proposals can benefit from a dash of magic.” It’s also a good example of how Baum, a junior majoring in management consulting with a minor in real estate in the Mendoza College of Business, has performed his greatest illusion — a seamless intermingling of his interests in business entrepreneurship and magic. He’s also incorporated magic tricks into job interviews and client sales meetings for summer internships. (Visit his website to learn more.) His stage presence and sleight-of-hand talent have even caught the attention of Notre Dame’s storied football program. He’s performed several times for the team, been filmed doing his act on a Peacock documentary about this season and was elated to have a private conversation with Coach Marcus Freeman. “Coach Freeman said we would love to have you out again for more shows during our fall camp, and then we need you next year,” Baum said. “I was like, ‘I’m there, coach.’ They’ve offered to give me money, but I would never charge them because it’s such a privilege to be one-on-one with the team.” A native of southern California, Baum is the youngest of four siblings to attend Notre Dame, which he says is funny because his mother went to USC. But the oldest brother, Ricky DuPont, blazed a path and “now we’re a big Notre Dame family.” Baum’s father, David, enjoyed magic as a hobby and occasionally purchased simple tricks that his son could learn for fun. His father — ignoring the package warning saying it was meant for 21 and older — bought the 8-year-old Baum a trick where the magician appears to put a needle through his own arm. Baum thought it would be a neat trick to do for his school’s talent show, but he might have performed it too well. “I freaked out one kindergarten class so badly that after the talent show, the principal made me go to that classroom to show that my arm was okay,” he said. “After that, I did the talent show every year.” 

His father was also a member of the Magic Castle, a nonprofit clubhouse in Hollywood with about 5,000 members dedicated to the advancement of magical arts. Like any Harry Potter fan would, Baum fell in love with the Magic Castle and tried out before he turned 13, the youngest age allowed. He officially became the youngest person ever admitted when he became old enough. The Castle’s junior program allows members to meet famous magicians, such as the Las Vegas act Penn & Teller. It also allows junior members full access to the largest known library of magic books, assigns them a mentor and lets them practice or workshop new tricks to get constructive feedback. Baum will become a senior member when he finishes college. He says many magicians focus on “close-up” tricks involving cards, coins, rings or other simple props where you interact with another person. He does those as well as parlor and stage magic, tricks that are bigger in scale and use bigger props or assistants, such as sawing someone in half. Almost immediately, he realized the crucial role of the business of magic. “When I was young, I remember doing kids’ birthday shows, negotiating rates with people 20-30 years older than me,” he said. “I started a business doing instructional videos on YouTube. I ran a yoga company for a year and I’m developing my own supplement company to launch soon. I’ve always just loved being an entrepreneur and magic has a huge business aspect to it.” Baum considered skipping college to go into magic but his family and mentors convinced him a college degree would help his career and provide more options. He started at Notre Dame through the Gateway Program, where selected students enroll at Holy Cross College for their first year with a guaranteed transfer agreement as sophomores. Baum said the program creates strong friendship bonds: “I would do it again because I had a great experience.” At Notre Dame, he chose management consulting as his major because he likes problem solving. He’s done several internships in his minor of real estate, working at Fieldtrip, a vacation rental company, and Clayco, a large construction company. He did a magic trick in his Fieldtrip interview. He also did one during a sales meeting with a Clayco client. “I’ve incorporated magic in business,” he said. “Meeting with someone face-to-face, and having that likeability, being able to talk to a group of people — magic definitely can help me in business.” On campus, his skills were apparent quickly. Lacking the workshop at the Magic Castle, Baum developed a reputation by showing his tricks to roommates and friends. He admitted that some reactions at tailgates and parties may have been augmented by the participants’ consumption of alcohol. That reputation got him invited to perform several times for the annual Notre Dame Day broadcast. In spring 2023, he performed close-up dice and card tricks with a host, and then he somehow made wine bottles and glasses switch places and appear out of tubes. 

 

A potential break came last year when Baum decided to do a campus talent show. The judges included football quarterbacks Riley Leonard and C.J. Carr. Some of the acts were serious, but many of them were just joking around. “Then I come out of nowhere, and I do the wine bottle trick, and I do these two other signature tricks of mine,” Baum said. “And it just blew everyone away.” He spoke with Leonard and Carr after the show, who said that they would try to get Coach Freeman to invite him to perform for the football team. About a month before school ended, he got a text from Leonard scheduling the show. Though nervous, Baum says he did seven tricks and didn’t mess up once. “The whole team was going nuts,” he said. “I got to talk with Coach Freeman for 15 minutes. I have a bunch of photos with the team.” He’s even taught Carr a few tricks. Just before exams, he gave another performance in front of the Peacock crew doing a documentary on this football season. Baum hopes the relationship can levitate his magic career to new heights. He’d like to do a halftime show at a basketball game, and he hopes to audition for America’s Got Talent. Even if those plans don’t work out, Baum enjoys practicing his art. Over the summer, he took a three-week finance class in London. Though he only brought three normal decks of cards, classmates encouraged him to perform his tricks. 

“We were bored one night and my buddy told everyone that I’m a magician,” he said. “So I did my shtick and I made everyone freak out. I learned a lot of new tricks because it became a weekly ritual that brought the group closer together.” The reactions Baum gets to his magic motivate him to keep practicing both his sleight-of-hand skills and his stage presence. He said success depends on the combination of both: your preparation and the ability to go back and forth with spectators and include some comedy. He said anyone can be a magician: “The No. 1 thing is maybe not really your talent.” He’s not against sharing some secrets in his YouTube instructional videos. But he said explaining a trick right after it’s performed can ruin the effect. He has a stock answer ready just in case. “Sometimes people say, ‘How did you do that?’” he said. “I just go: ‘I did it very well.’”