No Vanishing Act: This MBA & Magician Has Written A New Book About His Tech Journey

“Everybody’s journey is important and they find what works for them.” – Jared Molton, UNC Kenan- Flagler MBA

Nearly 10 years have passed since Poets&Quants spoke with Jared Molton, a UNC Kenan-Flagler MBA with a unique background: Before his MBA journey, he was a manager of a New York City magic shop — and a practicing magician. 

After graduating in 2015, Molton moved to Seattle to work for Amazon. Now living in Seattle, he’s made quite the transformation: He just released his book For My Next Trick: A Magician Transforms into a Tech Exec!  that holds many valuable lessons for MBAs. 

THE GREATEST JOY FOR A MAGICIAN

“Right now I’m enjoying the heck out of my life and my work,” shares Molton. “Right now, I’m exactly where I want to be.” 

Entering business school, Molton didn’t have a solid direction, and he wasn’t the image of your traditional business school student. He came from an unlikely background as a professional magician in NYC, running Tannen’s, the city’s oldest magic shop. 

“I started learning the motions of running a business, and I really liked it,” he says. He was able to help Tannen’s grow, and helped the shop double its business by the time he left, using growth strategies based on intuition. “Seeing the growth and scale that we were able to achieve there was really the motivating factor in going to business school,” he says. 

He didn’t have much of a quant background, but with the help of a tutor pulled from his magic network, GMAT score, and his entrepreneurial background, he earned a place at Kenan-Flagler.

IMPACTING MILLIONS

In his first year of business school, Molton didn’t have a clear direction. After an internship at Dell, he decided to commit to tech. 

Much like magic, he enjoyed the impact that he had on others, only now he was looking to scale the effects. 

“The greatest joy I get as a magician is making people happy and watching them light up after I do a trick is amazing to me,” Molton says. “I believe tech is a mechanism to scale that reaction. Now instead of impacting a small group, I can have an impact on millions of people.”

Towards the end of his degree, Molton interviewed with Amazon and had what he says was one of the best interview experiences. “For the first time in a long time I felt like I could be myself.” 

With no illusions involved, he connected in a very authentic and natural conversation — which was refreshing, because as many can attest, that isn’t always the case in interview settings. 

Over the next six years he moved across different departments – from Amazon Locker to Amazon Kids to Amazon Halo, learning the ropes of product management. He was part of a huge moment for the company – the integration of in-app purchasing with Apple. 

A NEW ROLE AT CHEWY

While he was happy at Amazon, in reflecting, Molton had been there for six years and thought “What’s next for my career?”

For his next trick, Molton welcomed a dog, and for pet needs he discovered Chewy, an online pet product retailer. “A recruiter had also reached out to me about a job at Chewy, so I took the call and we had a great conversation.” He was offered the job of Chief of Staff to the Chief Product Officer, and accepted. “I wanted to explore some other options and learn new skills to diversify my professional experience,” says Molton. 

Chewy had hired a lot of folks who had previously worked at Amazon, so he felt comfortable with the culture it was building.

His next realization happened shortly after his daughter was born in April 2023. “While on parental leave, I had this realization that every second that I don’t spend with her I want to be doing something I’m passionate about and interested in.”

“What was important to me was working in a space where I felt like I was making a real impact on humanity.” For four months now, Molton has worked as the VP of Consumer at Udacity, an online course platform that helps students build skills in technology. “Every day is different, it depends on the ebbs and flows of the business and the cycle,” he says. 

KENAN-FLAGLER SUPPORT

For Molton, his time at Kenan-Flagler was “The pinnacle of my journey – I wouldn’t be where I am today without that experience,” he says. 

He still remembers many from the career advisory team by name, and says they were instrumental, to his success. He has reconnected with many of the faculty that still teach at the school. Even a decade later, Kenan-Flagler is still supporting him, looking at ways to help him promote his book. Also, because the program is relatively small, the network is strong. 

A few of them started at Amazon when he did. “Many of my best friends are former classmates,” he shares. “We are a strong group that is always there to support each other, from mock interviews, to looking at resumes, or even discussing a career change – we are always here to talk about it.” 

THE JACK MERLIN TO ACES

The lessons learned as a magician are quite synonymous with the lessons learned as a business student, and can be compared to a trick that Molton’s been practicing for years – The Jack Merlin to Aces, also known as Merlins Lost Ace Trick. 

Much like learning, the beauty of the Merlin to aces is it’s never perfected, and feedback is key. “Just like from a business perspective, you’re never going to reach the end,” says Molton. “That’s the difference between business and the arts. Art does not have an objective ending point, whereas business does have an end point. You have to recognize when you hit diminishing returns.”

This is no magic act – the impact is in the feedback. Every day, Molton spends the first 30 minutes of his day looking at the metrics and customer feedback, and getting reacquainted with the business and seeing how they are doing that day. This is part of his process of how he gauges impact. 

LESSONS — NOT PULLED OUT OF A HAT, BUT FROM EXPERIENCE

Molton offered a few lessons for future MBAs.

“It’s totally OK to not know what you want to do when you get to school,” he says. “MBA programs are designed to give you the space you need to figure that out. Once you do figure that out, run at it. If you can focus, your likelihood of landing a role will go up quite a bit. 

And: “Use the time there to do the things that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do normally.” For Molton, it was exploring South America for three months, which really shaped a new perspective. “You have a two-year break in your career. You might not have that time to do it again in your life.”

The next lesson? Be authentically yourself. From a cultural perspective, moving to North Carolina was a hard shift for him.

“There’s a strong cultural push to mold you into a very specific version of an MBA student. It was hard on me,” he says. 

While Molton doesnt think he will go back to doing magic full-time, he still enjoys performing on the side. He even has a show coming up in August.

“I can turn on that part of my life at any given time, and I do it because it makes me happy, so that isn’t going anywhere,” he says. 

DON’T MISS THE MAGICIAN WHO BECAME AN MBA