00:00:00
you have this ability to become confident in every single area of your life it's about us just learning a new series of behaviors for example there's
00:00:06
something called a siren technique in three two and one Nas are crazier than
00:00:12
usual fantastic that's fantastic you did a great job right and then this next one is volume so critical because if I just
00:00:18
increase my volume and I talk like this I sound a little bit aggressive don't I but with volume to highlight something
00:00:24
you could go very quiet so it's about waking people up to the power of their voice and we all have access to these
00:00:29
talks let's go through all five Vin J is the award-winning speaker and communication expert who helps people
00:00:34
harness the power of their voice and body language in all areas of their life just so overwhelming of how many people
00:00:40
are suffering with not being able to communicate they're asking I'm introverted does that mean that I'm doomed how do I become more confident
00:00:45
how do I speak on the spot and we think there's no way for me to ever change in this it's super sad because I lived a massive part of my life like that I was
00:00:52
the awkward kid I couldn't communicate with anyone I moved school so many times because I was bullied then I broke them
00:00:57
all and then I just learned all these new behaviors has completely changed and anyone can do this in 3 to 6 months and
00:01:03
I'm going to teach you so the first thing that really matters is a three-step process I call it record and review it's going to dramatically change
00:01:08
the way you talk and the way you show up but how do we start a conversation with another human being I've got a simple game called high buff and it gives you
00:01:15
three opportunities for a conversation to spark and we'll play it in a second and then there's hand gestures to level up your physical presence and then a
00:01:21
simple framework that helps build connection there's so many other things we can talk about and we're going to go through them but some people do have
00:01:26
severe social anxiety what you say to those people the first thing I would do is [Music]
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is this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet
00:01:38
subscribed to the show so could I ask you for a favor before we start if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us the free
00:01:44
simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the Subscribe button and my commitment to you is if you do that then
00:01:50
I'll do everything in my power me and my team to make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll
00:01:55
listen to your feedback we'll find the guests that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank
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you so [Music] much Finn if you had to
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summarize what it is you do fundamentally and why you do it how would you summarize it I help people
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learn that they have access to one of the most beautiful instruments in the world that can help them negotiate
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whatever reality they desire and I learned this through my
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first ever vocal teacher Miss Stanley and I'll I'll never foret get this experience there's a dingy music Corner
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um in South Australia and I would go there for lessons and at the first time I met her I walked into the room she's old lady and she says nothing to me
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except the words sit down young man so I sit it feels super awkward it feels
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super weird and then she plays one key non-stop on the piano for 2 minutes it's
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literally I was like oh [ __ ] this is like something out of a horror movie and then she turns around she goes how do you feel I said nothing weird awkward
00:03:00
what and then she goes good turns around plays this beautiful song called marage
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diamore goes over for 2 minutes and then she turns away she goes how do you feel and I said ah weirded out from before
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still but I feel wow that song had love there was lust there was romance there
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was excitement the and she goes good honey most people most people go through
00:03:25
life speaking like this I'm going to teach you how to speak like this
00:03:30
and that's to me at the time I remember thinking to myself that is the greatest sales pitch I've ever heard in my life
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because I'm now going to sign up for 12 classes with you because you've just helped me realize something I've been struggling with my entire life I haven't
00:03:42
been thinking about my voice as an instrument I thought it was a tool what do you do with a hammer you use a hammer
00:03:47
what do you do with a screwdriver you use a screwdriver what do you do with the piano you play with it what do you do with the violin you play with it and
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she started to teach me that I have this instrument that depending on how I play it it changes and shift how others feel
00:04:01
how much do you think that will change the trajectory of someone's life like what is the impact if I get really good at communication why does it matter I
00:04:09
was invisible my entire childhood I was invisible I wasn't the cool kid I wasn't
00:04:16
the good-looking kid I wasn't the charismatic kid I wasn't the funny kid I wasn't the anything kid and by learning
00:04:24
this skill I've been able to negotiate an incredible reality and that's why I
00:04:29
love Tim Ferris is quite so much reality is negotiable cool well what skill do we use to negotiate the reality we desire
00:04:35
it's our ability to communicate teaching that to others has been one of the most fulfilling things
00:04:41
I've ever done and I I genuinely believe that makes the world a better place and I almost sometimes feel like
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I'm just here to tune pianos I'm here to help people tune and fix and learn how
00:04:53
to play and and and I get so much fulfillment from that my parents have this fundamental belief it's so
00:04:59
beautiful they believe every child is born with a diamond with a gift with a with something in them so I found one of
00:05:04
my diamonds early on it was magic right so I was really good at Magic they hoped it was medicine accounting you know the
00:05:10
Asian prophecy so when I found that diamond being magic I thought that all I
00:05:16
had to do was get really good technically as a magician because that's what I was Tau at University being an accountant oh if you become really
00:05:22
technically proficient as an accountant you'll become an amazing accountant you you'll be successful you get the BMW you
00:05:28
get everything get partner so I thought okay magic same thing get really good technically spent thousands of hours in
00:05:33
my bedroom by myself in front of a mirror practicing magic got nowhere
00:05:39
because I was missing an ingredient magicians call it Showmanship fancy word for communication
00:05:44
skills right one of we we both inspired by the same person I believe one one of the people we're inspired by is Darren
00:05:50
Brown impeccable Showmanship impeccable technical skills so when you pair
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technical skills with great communication skills that's when you thrive I believe because let's say for example you're
00:06:01
technically brilliant you're a 10 out of 10 technically but you're three out of 10 with your communication skills do you think people perceive you to be a 10 out
00:06:07
of 10 or three out of 10 and you know this hearing so many different pictures some of the greatest ideas have flown
00:06:14
under your radar Without You noticing because the founder didn't do it justice it's an interesting idea to think that
00:06:19
we might rise or fall to the level not of our technical ability but our communication skills as it relates to
00:06:24
how the world perceives us and it's both the importance there is both whereas I
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feel like we get stuck into this world where we think oh it's one or the other and I my students always ask me this which one should I focus on I said the
00:06:35
reality is both it's it's not as simple it's both because if I have great Showmanship and when it comes to do
00:06:42
doing slot of hand I suck that's not going to work either the people that I've been able to help the
00:06:47
most in my career so far are the people who are technically so amazing at what they do and they've been hidden away in
00:06:54
the back office as a technician and then bloody Brad always gets the promotion
00:06:59
right Brad always gets it ah damn it Brad got it again Brad's not smart as me Brad is not as good as me right and and
00:07:05
it's because Brad talks better he's more visible in the work environment you really think it often comes down to just
00:07:12
how we speak and communicate our value yes because if you can't communicate your value in a way that is clear and
00:07:18
concise people it's it's not their responsibility to see the Brilliance that exists within you it's I believe
00:07:25
your responsibility to learn how to shine your light brightly it's it's super sad because I lived a massive part
00:07:32
of my life like that English is my third language uh the first language I learned is a Chinese
00:07:38
dialect not that impressive my wife speaks five but thank you the first language I Learned was a Chinese dialect called diu right it's a bit
00:07:46
of second language I then had to learn fluently is
00:07:52
Vietnamese so I had to learn all these different languages growing up these were my first two core languages that if I wasn't proficient in it grammar would
00:07:58
be pissed off mom would pissed off so we had to study it and then I went to school and had to learn English so I
00:08:05
went to school I was completely invisible I couldn't communicate with any other kid
00:08:11
they couldn't communicate with me so what do kids do oh it's too hard oh just ignore you then they bully you oh yes I
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didn't even know it was bullying because I couldn't understand them right I could kind of read what they seemed mean but I
00:08:23
no idea what they were saying so I spent so much of my childhood especially in those single digit years around 5 six
00:08:28
and seven this is super sad but I I just spent a lot of time in the toilet because I didn't want to deal with the
00:08:33
shame of being seen by myself so I just hid I just found a corner somewhere and
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no one and then gradually I started to learn English but even when I learned English I sounded funny because I had an
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accent so then they called me fob fob fresh off the boat yeah and they just
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kept calling me oh there's the fob there's the fob oh he's so fobby so and then so then even though I learn the English language now I'm scared to speak
00:08:57
it because I don't want to sound like a fob and there were all these challenges and so I know what it's like to feel
00:09:03
invisible I know what it's like to be ignored and that was a long time ago and
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I guess the question that it leaves me with is how easy is it for someone to learn like what is the time span that it
00:09:14
would take from The Experience you've had with teaching people to to make a radical change in your communication
00:09:20
skills it depends on your level of desire and motivation if you really want it I'd say 3 to 6 months you think you
00:09:27
can change your communication skills in a IAL way in 3 to 6 months I've seen it I've seen students do it it's when
00:09:33
instead of just thinking about I'm trying to learn a new habit it's what James Clear says you you adopt a new
00:09:38
identity where they adopt that new identity because one of the things I do is I share that story about my schooling experience at the beginning of my
00:09:44
in-person classes and I say I want you all to imagine now you're at a new school no one here in this room with us
00:09:51
right now has any preconceived idea of who you are break the mold break it and
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then you see grown adults do things they wouldn't normally do break out of the play with their voice be a little silly
00:10:03
reconnect with their inner child and then in that moment they fall so deeply in love with that version of them
00:10:09
because of the reactions they've been able to get from all these strangers around them that they commit to it it's
00:10:14
when you experience that change in the moment it usually leads to a fairly profound desire after that oh I want to become this now but then they make a big
00:10:21
mistake and the biggest mistake they make is they'll go home to their partner and who has no context of the experience
00:10:27
they've been through and they've just went oh I've been quiet with my my voice my entire life and they'll go home they
00:10:32
like new me new year new me honey and then their partner goes oh why you doing that with your voice oh you learned that
00:10:38
from Vin what that's gross why are you doing that that's so fake it's so inauthentic and then they revert back to
00:10:43
who they have always been their entire life what areas of one's life have you
00:10:49
seen in those examples change when someone learned communication skills because we we often the examples we've
00:10:55
given so far are just like work yeah yeah yeah with their children this has been the coolest part because
00:11:01
I'm a dad I I get I I I teach a concept called vocal foundations which we can
00:11:07
dive into later and there's these beautiful five core vocal foundations that people can learn and I love it when
00:11:12
parents go through it because I always see these comments where they said oh my goodness just read to the kids they've
00:11:20
never reacted to me in that way before the moment the one night I go home and I read to my kids and I do it in a boring
00:11:27
way they go Dad don't read like that do it the fun way and and what they're
00:11:32
asking for is they're asking for that vocal variety they're asking for that inner child for that playfulness and I
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think that's one of the greatest I think that's one of my greatest superpowers is the ability to be playful and the
00:11:44
willingness to be playful so you're going to help me in work you're going to help me be a more entertaining engaging
00:11:49
parent are there any other areas of one's life that improve when they crack communication yes there is an area and
00:11:57
the area is improv learn improvisation people all
00:12:03
want to get better at communication often it's because they want to get better at conversations what is a gamma conversation what are we doing right now
00:12:09
what are we doing this is a gamer improv I don't know what you're going to say you don't know what I'm going to say and then based on what I say you improvise
00:12:14
and you say something so even though I know you've never done improv before you are amazing at improv because that's a
00:12:20
skill you had to have developed to become the incredible podcaster that you are right now right so that to me is
00:12:25
such a important skill when you're playing with your kids too it it helps you with all areas of life it's the tide that lifts all boats because kids love
00:12:32
to play they'll say something oh and then then the cow now is an astronaut and most parents like Ah that's cool honey that's cool no play now it's also
00:12:40
fighting zombies that exist on the moon and you didn't know about it m and you play with them and when you're playing
00:12:45
what are you using you're using your ability to communicate and how many people have you taught in person and or
00:12:51
online oh over 70,000 now wow yeah you have millions and millions and millions
00:12:57
of followers online as well that tune to learn communication skills from you from all around the world and if and if I was
00:13:03
to zoom in on the DMS that you get the things that people are struggling with
00:13:09
when they message you the reason why they watch your videos what is it the
00:13:14
most common message that we get when people type a comment and leave it on our videos is is it possible for me to
00:13:21
change the sound of my voice really well because you think about it right nobody likes the sound of their own voice the
00:13:28
first time you heard heard yourself on a podcast were you like oh no or did you say I love it look how sexy I sound when I was younger and I was little cassette
00:13:35
recorders and I heard my voice I thought [ __ ] hell who's that yeah me too right so that is the biggest inse one of the biggest insecurities for most people
00:13:41
when they first become problem aware with their communication skills is oh is it possible for me to change the sound
00:13:46
of my voice is it possible is it possible and and and when you reflect
00:13:52
upon this even when you reflect reflect upon this most people in their entire life will never change the way they
00:13:58
sound they will never change the way they communicate they'll change the way they dress they'll change their hair they'll change their glasses they change they'll
00:14:04
change all these things about themselves but the way they communicate and the way they sound stays consistent generally
00:14:10
M it's because there are a lot of psychological blocks that keep us sounding the same we keep ourselves
00:14:17
sounding the same you know there's I'll share with you a few of these okay
00:14:22
MH with my vocal teacher at the beginning of my journey when she got me to do things with my voice where she said all right let's do a really high
00:14:29
Voice haveit have a bit of a play Vin and you know go into false Seto and she wouldd make me do things like this I'd
00:14:34
go red because I'd go oh that feels so weird oh now I'm becoming so deep with
00:14:40
my voice this feels so fake and it feels phony I immediately came up with those objections as I'm sure you would feel
00:14:46
that too if I got you to do that right and when I dealt with my students that's the immediate thing that comes up they go it's fake it's phony that's not me
00:14:54
and then now just like my vocal teacher she would always challenge me she goes well if you could make the sound and you
00:15:00
play the key on your piano you describe to me then how is it fake how is it fake if you were able to make that sound that
00:15:07
is you that is your instrument that is just you playing with keys you're unfamiliar with that's it you've gone
00:15:14
through this entire life being so familiar with this key that anytime you press any other key you go oh it's not me no no no you're just familiar with
00:15:20
this key and you're unfamiliar with the others that alone helped me understand
00:15:26
that oh wow it's not fake because for the longest time I thought it was fake and
00:15:33
because I thought it was fake I never changed the way I T and and why is it that we don't want to play with those
00:15:38
other Keys is it because we've got so used to playing with a particular set of keys and you're so familiar with it
00:15:44
playing the other Keys comes at a cost a perceived cost well it goes deeper than that it goes even deeper than that
00:15:49
because where did you get your voice from who did you learn it from there's an idea that people have in their minds
00:15:55
about this thing called a natural voice okay this is another objection my students give me they go oh that's not my natural voice and speech pathologists
00:16:03
will tell you this the voice you have right now is not your natural voice you lost access to your natural voice when
00:16:08
you were two or three question if I asked you to scream at the top of your lungs right now for about 10 minutes
00:16:15
yeah would what would happen to your voice oh I'd lose it yeah my daughter 12 months old can scream for 3 hours
00:16:22
stevenh and she does not lose her voice because they have this beautiful access to their instrument they can naturally
00:16:28
access that in instrument whereas as we grow older at the age of three or four we start to be inspired by certain
00:16:33
people in our circles as a result of being inspired by people what do kids do they emulate they copy so the voice that
00:16:39
you've developed you've copied that based on the people you were inspired by when you were young it's just a series
00:16:44
of habits the way you speak the way you sound is just a series of behaviors it's how you manipulate your vocal cords how
00:16:51
you move air through your body how you shape your lips where you place your teeth how you maneuver your tongue how you maneuver your soft pallet depending
00:16:57
on how you do all of that you create a certain sound but if I change now as you said people are going to think I'm weird
00:17:03
that's right well that's right but that's the thing you have to have a process to go about that change okay CU if you immediately just talk tonight
00:17:09
with your partner with no context they'll go she like what the hell why did you why did you talk to VIN on the
00:17:14
podcast yeah why now you're fake yeah right we'll get to that in the moment
00:17:20
what I'm saying is that the reason why you don't move from that is because you genuinely feel stuck I'll give you the reason behind it
00:17:27
when you're first imitating dad I had one of my students his name is tanzia beautiful beautiful guy he had a very
00:17:33
soft way of speaking beautiful soft way of speaking and what he didn't realize
00:17:38
is that in the beginning of his life he saw Dad do it really inspired by dad so he copied dad so he had to consciously
00:17:44
think about all these little behaviors all these nuances to copy dad's sound and then after you repeat those
00:17:49
behaviors for one year two years you no longer have to consciously think about it cuz you've mastered it so now those
00:17:55
behaviors move from your conscious mind it moves into your subconscious mind and then when behavior is move into your subconscious mind now it feels automatic
00:18:01
M so now you feel like it's you so now you don't doubt it you go no no that's me it's like no no it's still just a
00:18:07
series of behaviors yeah and I often tell my students I say all the time I say don't be so attached to who you are
00:18:13
in the present you don't give the future version of you a chance and the moment these things happen it's incredible
00:18:19
seeing these changes because all my students will do is they'll change three things more volume more Melody bigger
00:18:25
hand gestures people completely change the way they perceive them it three simple things that they do
00:18:32
creates a profound change in how others perceive them volume Melody and hand gestures
00:18:39
yeah I was thinking to one example of one of my students who a female Rachel who who felt like she didn't have great
00:18:44
executive presence and it was because she became she she labeled herself as being
00:18:50
shy and I I like to break these things down for my students too I'm like the the reason you're shy and the reason
00:18:56
you're really good at being shy is because you've been repeating the Shai behaviors for the last 25 years so
00:19:02
you're really good at it and that's all right it's because you've been practicing Shai for 25 years being more
00:19:08
confident it's about us just learning a new series of behaviors let's let's try a larger gesture I've seen this on
00:19:14
multiple podcasts now just try a larger gesture try a stronger volume try being more melodic with your voice and then
00:19:21
she was practicing that immediately the feelings of oh it feels fake it feels pH but I go oh no it's just unfamiliar and
00:19:26
the moment she makes that reset she goes oh I'll continue continue to explore them whereas if she thinks it's fake
00:19:31
she'll revert back to being who she was before so how do I speak impromptu how do I be in the moment and come up with a
00:19:39
good answer another one is I'm
00:19:45
introverted does that mean that I'm doomed okay yeah and another really
00:19:51
common one is I don't have much Connection in my life I wish I felt more
00:19:58
connected to the people that I'm around why is it that I can't get past the the
00:20:03
the good day mate how are you yeah I'm good how are you yeah I'm good all right cheers mate have a good one oh the small talk yeah yeah this is a big topic right
00:20:09
so again is just how do we how do we get to these conversations like that you get to have on so many of these wonderful
00:20:15
podcasts that you do so I reckon you would have insights here too there's like I was looking earlier there's almost like a billion search results on
00:20:21
Google for people trying to figure out um or trying to provide answers to how to communicate successfully so let's get
00:20:27
into it so I youed this term vocal image yeah what does vocal image mean it came
00:20:32
about when I realized I spend and I think most of us spend a lot of time on our visual image right how how we look
00:20:38
our body language the way we dress mhm but very rarely do people spend time on their vocal image now oh make it make
00:20:45
sense when people see you and you Reveal Your visual image they make assumptions about you pretty quickly so they form
00:20:51
assumptions oh this person seems friendly maybe they're confident because they got good posture maybe they're smiling they're friendly and then all of
00:20:56
a sudden when you open your mouth and you speak they now turn these assumptions into beliefs so what may be assumptions
00:21:04
before now they go oh you are friendly you are confident right or they might
00:21:09
think oh no bit of a wanker right and and and you've had these experiences before I've had them before where you
00:21:15
assume you see someone you oh that person go meet them ah not really nice that's weird so it's another layer that
00:21:22
we don't think about though because we again think we're stuck with our voice we think we're stuck with the way we communicate we think there's no way for
00:21:28
to ever change this so let's let's talk about how one can improve their vocal image so that they're effective across
00:21:34
context sure you mentioned Melody volume hand gestures if we start with Melody
00:21:39
what the hell is Melody the different notes you can hit with your voice okay so is that variety yeah variety yeah
00:21:45
pitch variety pitch and Melody okay well because there's a Melody that lives underneath your voice all right let's do
00:21:50
an experiment I'm going to play you a a piano song and I want you to listen to this and then you're at home right now I
00:21:56
want you to listen to to the track can see what words come to mind so we'll just play we'll play the [Music]
00:22:06
song okay yeah um all right sadness right so so and then if if listeners at
00:22:11
home could could could have a voice here too that maybe say they would say somber nostalgic yeah right all these words
00:22:17
would come up and and again if we sat with this for all we would get plenty of words let's try another one right let's change the mood let's shift to something
00:22:23
like uh this um inspirational motivational good
00:22:31
see all of a sudden now and and I'm thinking running towards something yeah right and and again there's a part of me
00:22:36
that think oh cheesy commercial right there's that there's that part of it too so you can hear all these different things let's try one more this one will
00:22:43
shift gears again and what about this
00:22:48
one uh like a horror movie scary about to die something bad's about to happen
00:22:54
omnus a little a little three-year-old stood on the the landing of the staircase at night yes with long black
00:22:59
hair yes correct so that that that again all of a sudden paints all these different vivid pictures in your head
00:23:07
the reason I did that experiment is there were no words in any of those
00:23:13
tracks yet think about all of the words that rushed to your mind as you were experiencing the melody mhm the
00:23:20
different notes what people failed to realize is that you have a melody in your voice yeah this is why when some
00:23:26
people walk into our lives it it could drain the energy from our lives and when they walk in you feel the
00:23:33
impact of them walking in right in the negative way or a positive way some walk in and you go oh I feel good I feel
00:23:38
great what is that it's the melody in which they come in with can you have a pretty limited range limited Melody but
00:23:46
still hit people with scary and sad and inspiring I believe you can yeah again
00:23:52
because we we genuinely don't have Ada keys right so again it's one of the it's a it's a metaphor but I believe that we
00:23:59
can create so many different songs with our voice if we learn to treat it as an
00:24:04
instrument and we we can we can play with the technique to help you increase your vocal range if you want sure there's something called a uh this is
00:24:11
fun this is a fun one there's something called a siren technique okay okay so aarin technique is when you you read
00:24:16
something with a low voice and then you go towards a high voice and you go back down to a low voice so now I don't want you to do to start with I just want you
00:24:23
to read this as you would and then we'll try the siren technique so just read it as you would neutrally first so just read that as would okay so for those
00:24:29
that can't see Vin has passed me a card yeah Q cards and on the card it has a bunch of words which I'm just going to read and and and as you're listening at
00:24:35
home have a guess of what movie this is from want to know how I got these scars my father was a drinker and a fiend and
00:24:42
one night he goes off crazier than usual Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself he doesn't like that not one bit
00:24:48
so me watching he takes the knife to her laughing while he does it turns to me
00:24:53
and he says why so serious son comes at me with the knife why so serious he sticks the blade in my mouth let's put a
00:25:01
smile on that face and why so serious beautiful what movie is that from no idea I don't want are you serious Dark
00:25:07
Knight The Joker okay so heat ledger so amazing okay cool great so again you read that in your neutral voice now what
00:25:12
we're going to do is we're going to play with the instrument okay so the siren technique is when you read with a really low voice and then gradually go to a
00:25:18
high voice and I'm going to challenge you to not be afraid to go into the faleto not be afraid to play so just play and and and it's not about going
00:25:24
low at the start and then high at the bottom within each sentence I want you to go up and down up and down I really
00:25:31
want you to play with your voice otherwise I'm going to push you okay in three two go want to know how I got
00:25:37
these scars my father was a drink and a f good
00:25:43
and more na he goes are crazier than usual Mommy gets the kitchen knives to
00:25:50
defend herself good okay wow it hurts now try to go in a way
00:25:55
where it is a little more even just give it a go but normally you won't be able to because you won't have all of the range fully expanded try again keep
00:26:02
going he doesn't like that not one bit good so me watching he takes the knife
00:26:10
to her yes laughing while he does it good turns to me and he says why so
00:26:18
serious son fantastic that's fantastic you did a great job right but you feel that
00:26:25
feeling you feel right now yeah weird it yes and it's not so much about getting you to speak like that on the podcast
00:26:30
but it's more just helping you realize this instrument that you have is capable of so much more yeah there is so
00:26:38
much more that it can do as opposed to what we normally do with it right because for the longest time in my life
00:26:44
I didn't have any Melody because I I just thought this was how you talk and the reason I can switch to this very
00:26:50
quickly Stephen is because I practice these behaviors for about 25 years what's even more interesting is they
00:26:55
they've done studies where they had five or six people talking at the same same time and the person who the person heard
00:27:01
was the person who had more melody in their voice oh really the person who is more melodic what they say becomes more
00:27:07
memorable whereas if all of us were speaking like this me yourself Jack everyone all of a sudden you wouldn't
00:27:12
hear you wouldn't be able to hear the difference mhm was all of a sudden if you just start to play with your voice a
00:27:17
little more how do you know you've not played with it too far do you know what I'm saying by playing with the to far and
00:27:23
then getting feedback right and people are so afraid of that though and they don't realize that they they don't go
00:27:29
too far they underplay the risk is not going too far the risk is not going far enough again
00:27:36
at this point when people heard me of course of course squeaking like Mickey Mouse they're going to say [ __ ] me like
00:27:41
I you're going to have to remind me again Vin why this is worth it you'll be able to make people feel more connected to you they will feel what you're saying
00:27:47
not just hear what you're saying I mean do you notice this in some people of course they will say things but you don't feel it yeah it happens in
00:27:54
America's Got Talent Australia's Got Talent where Simon Cal will say right right very good but I don't feel it what
00:28:00
are they talking about it's the emotion in their voice there is emotion in your voice too
00:28:05
do you want to go to the next one please I didn't know there was more there's more yeah there's five [ __ ] let's go through all five no the next one I'm
00:28:11
just going to get you to read this one as you would and then I'll tell you what it is okay just so you don't get ahead of yourself okay okay cool and and see
00:28:17
tell me if please tell me you know this movie far out Stephen I don't know who you are I don't know what you want if
00:28:24
you are looking for ransom I can tell you that I don't have money but I I do have but what I do have are a very
00:28:31
particular set of skills skills I have acquired over a very long career skills that make me a nightmare for people like
00:28:37
you if you let my daughter go now that'll be the end of it I will not look for you I will not pursue you but if you
00:28:43
don't I will look for you I will find you and I will kill you yes very dark movies I love these movies what movie is
00:28:49
this that is the movie called where he his daughter gets kidnapped what's it
00:28:55
called yes it start with L his name Lion King I'm joking no what is it right
00:29:01
from Taken but here's the thing so the next Foundation is rate of speech okay
00:29:07
so if you reading that and I was kind of just giving you some coaching again as you reading that think of rate of speech
00:29:12
of having a scale from 0 to 10 yeah all right so one being painfully slow and 10 being as quickly as you possibly can
00:29:18
right so you were around playing around of five very comfortable that's your default rate of speech most of us when we're nervous we just have a default
00:29:25
rate of speech we fall victim to a default rate of speech when you think about rate of speech there's a way to
00:29:30
use it and the way you use rate of speech is if you really want to highlight a point creating an auditory
00:29:37
highlight slow down that creates an auditory highlight it's like a highlighter with your words and if you
00:29:43
want to be able to show Charisma energy you speed up and if it's not as important you can speed up and that's fine this simple rule gives you vocal
00:29:50
variety with your rate of speech that's simple rule and what does changing my rate of speech then do to the message
00:29:56
I'm communicating it makes it more memorable clear okay there's more clarity in it right so for example if I
00:30:01
if I was speaking and I said right now I'm going to go through the five core vocal foundations and I'm going to take you first one through is rate of speech
00:30:07
then after that I'm going to talk to you about pitch and Melody and then after that I'll talk to you about the importance of the other three right now you have no idea what is important and
00:30:12
what is not important okay right whereas all of a sudden now if I said I'm going to take you through the core five vocal
00:30:20
foundations all of a sudden you now have a point of focus and the big thing that people want with their communication is
00:30:26
Clarity well if you are going to be more clear the delivery needs to be clear so
00:30:31
that the receiver gets what you intend okay it's not just about the exchange of information because how I say something
00:30:37
impacts how you receive it so I want to slow down where I want to hit emphasis yes and this script has multiple places
00:30:43
where you want to slow down when people are nervous yes what what happens they speed up they speed up they speed up
00:30:49
considerably considerably and have they ever measured that oh does anybody know
00:30:54
if you get above 210 words per minute you be a little bit too far and what's the average person speaking at in terms
00:31:00
of words per minute around 150 you want to get to around 150 180 that's very good that's a good kind of rate of
00:31:05
speech to be at whereas if you're slower than that then again it just gets a little bit monotonous at times for
00:31:10
people but again here's what's fascinating if I if all of a sudden now
00:31:18
I stick to a default Melody and then stick to a default rate of speech notice what's happening in your brain right all
00:31:23
of a sudden you start again you start to switch off right whereas all of a sudden if I start to vary my radi speech the transition from slow to fast is what's
00:31:30
hooking people so if you were to try to read that again now but I want you to slow and some bits painfully slow down
00:31:36
and play with your voice and then some bits go quicker and then the last bit I'm going to kill you slow it all the
00:31:41
way down and be playful it's not about okay I'm going to start from on
00:31:46
here sure if you're looking for a ransom I can tell you that I don't have
00:31:53
money but what I do have oh are a particular SE skills skills I've
00:32:01
acquired over a very long career let's
00:32:06
skip to the end if you let my daughter go that will be the end of it I will not
00:32:16
look for you I will not pursue you but if you don't I will look for you I will find
00:32:25
you and I will
00:32:31
kill you yes give him a big round of applause that was amazing so much but
00:32:36
again you feel so strange when you do it yeah I do yeah it's so fun to listen to
00:32:42
and and and again this is us practicing this is a safe environment I'm not don't do your next podcast like that but again
00:32:48
it just goes to show the range that we have access to and how it changes the message in such a profound way it's the same words yeah it's the same words but
00:32:54
when you read it the first time it didn't sound scary at all now I feel scared there's something I I noticed
00:33:01
this in like board meetings and stuff especially with like younger team members or people that would class themselves as being shy that they do
00:33:07
hurry along and there is a certain someone said to me the other day that people that have the most confidence in
00:33:13
Charisma they like move and talk as if a li if they were a lion yeah yeah you know they're slow and they're composed
00:33:21
PR versus Predator I remember listening to the episode was fantastic yeah there is it's people who are confident take
00:33:27
their time what's that third one okay just read part of it read read part of it you're more than happy to Freestyle
00:33:34
read part of it now if you know what you are worth then go out and get what you are worth but you have to be willing to
00:33:39
take the hits and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you want to be because of him or her or anybody cowards
00:33:46
do that and that ain't you you're better than that now the thing is this next one is volume oh [ __ ] yeah volume so
00:33:55
critical okay for many different reasons MH volume is the lifeblood of your voice mhm volume carries all the other
00:34:02
foundations you're about to learn volume carries the melody volume carries the rate of speech it carries everything
00:34:07
right and again I think of it as having a scale from 1 to 10 and a lot of the times like what you just did people are
00:34:14
around at three or four M and they stay around there when you use volume there's
00:34:21
two ways to auditorily highlight something with volume volume is fascinating because with we of speech you slow down but with volume volume to
00:34:28
highlight something you could go very quiet okay so if all of a sudden I
00:34:34
wanted to say something scary I could lower my volume and say it but then all of a sudden notice what happens if I
00:34:40
just stay here now what's started as a great verbal highlight now just kind of seems doesn't seem effective anymore
00:34:47
because if you make something default it becomes non-functional and what signals
00:34:53
I'm not a confident person what side of the scale the lower scale okay on volume
00:34:59
okay because that's one of the default shy behaviors that a lot of people exhibit and what about leaders where do
00:35:04
they land on the scale depends if they're self-aware right sometimes if they're not self-aware they can be on the higher end
00:35:11
and that's you know you have someone come across as a little arrogant sometimes it's just too much volume because too much volume without the
00:35:17
other foundations now you come across arrogant so again if I give this back to you and again just for fun like I I want
00:35:23
you to go loud I want people to hear outside of this studio what we're doing [ __ ] so just just have a go and just and give me and give me a whisper too at
00:35:30
some point give me a whisper too now if you know what you're
00:35:36
worth go out and get it go out and get what you're worth but you have to be
00:35:41
willing to take the hits and not pointing fingers saying you
00:35:46
ain't where you want to be because of him or her or anybody cowards do that
00:35:51
and that ain't you yeah you're better than that oh it's amazing yeah what you
00:35:58
just did made me feel why did I feel is what is a voice a voice is a series of vibrations so you just
00:36:04
sent vibrations my way that made me feel mhm that's why we say people have Good
00:36:09
Vibes right we kind of we understand it's happening but we don't understand that kind of frequency level at the
00:36:14
vibration level but it's happening at a physical level MH where depending on how you use your voice you're
00:36:21
genuinely moving people quite physically we did rate of speech we did
00:36:26
volume we did the yeah and then there's there's two left right there's two left yeah right so
00:36:32
this one read it as you would parts of it and it's not because I'm lonely and it's not because it's New Year's Eve I
00:36:38
came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody you want the rest of your life to start as soon as
00:36:44
possible what we're moving into now is the emotion that exists within your voice tonality this is the emotion that
00:36:51
exists right so the way to add more emotion into your voice is to move your
00:36:56
face because as I eloquently put it at times your face is the remote control that allows you to add emotion into your
00:37:02
voice so let's play right so now I'll give you different faces to make I'll tell you a different faces to make and
00:37:08
you make those different faces and allow those emotions to come through your voice okay so if it's happy then I want you to sound really happy if I don't
00:37:13
want you to sound really sad so we'll start with and and try your best to play with this I want you to make disgust
00:37:19
like just uh disgust and let that come through and give me a more volume give me disgust in three two and it's not
00:37:26
because you're lonely yeah and it's not because it's New Year's Eve surprised really
00:37:31
surprised I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life angry give me
00:37:38
angry you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible happy best day of your life Stephen you want the rest
00:37:44
of your life to start as soon as possible that's so beautiful you know this already in our brains there's miror
00:37:49
neurons right and when I see you go through these different facial expressions I feel what you feel even
00:37:54
though I know this is a a situation we've created here for us to experiment it's a safe environment but every time
00:38:00
you went through any of those emotions I felt it because I didn't just see it are men
00:38:05
worse at this stuff yes they are yes because I feel well for me I can only speak personally for me I was taught to
00:38:11
keep my emotions on the inside right I always taught that it's a sign of weakness to show you being sad you being
00:38:17
happy you should just be composed composed at all times and then that's what I thought and that that led me to
00:38:23
the behavior of speaking whereas I just always speak like this because I'm a man
00:38:28
and I should always speak like this and I still remember going to one of the concerts and my my my life turns over she goes how do you feel I'm like this
00:38:34
is a really exciting concert and and and and she goes well okay you obviously hate it and I'm like
00:38:40
no no I I love it I love it and I just I didn't know how to emote and again I thought I was stuck like that because I
00:38:46
was stuck like that for years and that that damaged a lot of my relationships because here's a thing
00:38:52
that I think and it might be helpful for you too when you're listening to someone talk you don't have to react with sound
00:38:59
because otherwise you'll be seen as interrupting the other person right you can react with facial expressions and
00:39:05
that is one of the most powerful ways to show them you're listening and that you're following along how cool is that cuz if someone's saying something really
00:39:10
bad and you're like yeah it shows them you're locked in yeah you learn it as a podcaster yeah you do because the
00:39:16
audience they're looking at you for most of the conversation so 95% of the conversations on you yes what they don't
00:39:22
know is that throughout that time I'm basically talking to you with my face you are and you're really good at it so
00:39:29
if I turn my head like this it means tell me more so I'll be you'll be talking a go like this yes and it means tell me more yes and then it's it's
00:39:36
interesting and you can expand that range yeah it doesn't just have to be curious yeah and cuz I see you do it I
00:39:41
see you consistently do the different faces to give me the queue to almost go oh he wants to elaborate oh he's in he's locked in do you know you can the thing
00:39:48
I've learned from both speaking on stage but also doing this is you can also [ __ ] it up you can also communicate the wrong
00:39:53
thing yes accidentally one of them that people communicate quite often that accidentally is they start talking while
00:40:02
you're speaking do you ever know that like when someone's um listening to speak they start they start going like
00:40:07
this yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and it means shut the [ __ ] up I need to I have something to say I just did it like that but it's
00:40:14
that kind of no but it's that kind of thing it's like you know I think who was on my podcast it was Vanessa she said if
00:40:20
you do the fast nod it means shut the [ __ ] up so if you go yeah but if you do the slow nod it means oh I love this so
00:40:27
if I go oh I've learned something that's curiosity tell me more versus
00:40:35
yeah with yeah yeah and wave my hand yeah yeah yeah okay so tonality so emotion and that was so beautiful to see
00:40:41
you do that because it just again we just have such great range and then imagine you start to vary your rate of
00:40:47
speech now you vary volume you've got different Melody you've also got different facial expressions this is
00:40:52
such a rich song that you're playing now do you think much of about the actual words
00:40:58
you're saying as well of course I can see that you think about the structure of what you're saying like you're
00:41:04
thinking about cuz when you start speaking I notice that you often go into
00:41:09
a story straight away something interesting you'll say this is one of the greatest things I've learned from my teacher is that intentional it is
00:41:16
because I believe stories are more sticky than me just throwing you a bunch of tips and hacks and tricks do you have a storytelling formula I do what is the
00:41:23
storytelling formula I think the way most people tell stories is is they report stories so I'll share a story
00:41:30
with you okay and reporting a story is let's say you ask me the question I this is one of my favorite stories it's let's
00:41:36
say you ask me how I met my wife reporting a story is just me saying oh I met my wife at a bar and I did some
00:41:42
magic to her she didn't like it and that was cool and then I gradually was able to wo her in the end but I met her at a bar that's me that's me reporting the
00:41:50
story right it's kind of sounds like a news reporter yeah right so if you think about it again let me just anchor it with a news reporter it's like a news
00:41:55
reporter saying last night at a bar at 9:00 p.m. Vin Jang went to AAR called distill and tried to pick up a Gil did a
00:42:01
Cheesy magic trick it didn't work therefore he failed he came back four times again and then he saw her and then he succeeded and now they're married
00:42:07
onto the next news right so it's it's kind of very reporter whereas matter of fact matter of fact whereas this is the
00:42:14
story of how I met my wife so I still remember this because this happened in 2009 I crashed a girl's graduation party
00:42:22
named Vivien it was at a bar called distill this beautiful bar called distill and there was two levels to this
00:42:28
bar on the bottom was for everybody and on top was the high rollers you had to buy expensive drinks to get to the top
00:42:34
and I got to the top and I saw this beautiful Malaysian girl sitting by the bar so I said to my friends I said watch this and I take a packet of cards out of
00:42:40
my pants cuz I'm magician so I walk up to her walk up to and I say would you be impressed if I transformed this king of
00:42:47
hearts into the Queen of Hearts like yourself disgusted I know you're making
00:42:52
the disgusted face and and that's how she reacted she she looked at me as if she smelt a bloody fart she looks at me
00:42:58
she goes I'd be more impressed if you transformed into a real man had a conversation with me
00:43:04
boom and I've never had that reaction before normally people say wow you're amazing so I said to her no thanks and I
00:43:10
left tail between my legs the boys all teased me and everything but I was so drawn her confidence just oh there was
00:43:17
something there I went back to the bar four times in a row she wasn't there she wasn't there she wasn't there then she was there and I walked up to the second
00:43:24
time and I said Hey listen what if I transformed into a real man andon I took you out for a
00:43:30
coffee and we fell in love you know and that that's that's the story of how I met my wife whereas the
00:43:36
way I would normally tell that story is just oh I met her at a bar did some tricks she didn't like it and then that was fun yeah but all of a sudden there
00:43:43
was so much life so much zest in that story I noticed you added so much almost irrelevant
00:43:48
detail but you talked about the bar having two floors and stuff make it visual okay so I could picture it in my
00:43:53
mind want to make it visual well it's it's it's well okay so here's a when you think of the storytelling formula if you
00:43:59
just give the who what where and when that's the basics people need but what turns up from reporting to
00:44:06
reliving because that's what you want to get to you want to get to reliving a story is the ingredients that you just
00:44:11
called out so intuitive if you to call him out vax v a s which stands for
00:44:16
visual auditory kinesthetic and smell so I'm just describing those few things for you right and it doesn't always have to
00:44:22
have all the ingredients but you want to add some of those ingredients right so the visual I describe to you the visual the auditory what I said I did my voice
00:44:29
I did her voice I gave you dialogue right so all of a sudden you bring those the story to life now it goes from
00:44:35
reporting to reliving so if I if I told that story and let's say that now the connection
00:44:42
ability is again it's to do with improv as well is instead of just going out and
00:44:47
saying here's three ways to show up authentically when you're trying to pick up someone yeah instead of doing that I
00:44:52
share the story first I get you to engage I build rapport I build chemistry now you've heard the story now you have
00:44:58
rapport with me you feel more relaxed you feel more creative right then I link that story to so the very next time you
00:45:05
walk up to a girl if she does say no she may not be saying no to you she may just be saying no to your approach here are
00:45:11
the three ways you can show up more authentically as a man I believe that is a much more
00:45:16
powerful way to then go into the three tips whereas I I feel that because of
00:45:22
the world now with social media we just we we've lost art form of Storytelling
00:45:28
is just give me the three tips now I've heard you talk about these four elements to a great story which is the hook the
00:45:33
struggle the break through and the application which is kind of what you just displayed there well the the
00:45:39
importance of application I think is something that I really focus on with my students the and by application you mean
00:45:44
the lesson or the big takeaway from the story cuz sometimes people tell stories and they go nowhere well it's also what you do after
00:45:50
okay because I can I can share a story but if I one of our viers went viral and
00:45:56
and I don't to be an expert on social media okay so I don't I still don't understand how some of these things work
00:46:01
even though we've been able to grow all of our social channels quite quickly I I don't understand how it works it to me
00:46:06
I'm like oh wow I can't believe that worked last time oh it doesn't work anymore huh that's weird so to me it's
00:46:13
what people love is when you give them a really simple pragmatic takeaway that they can go and actually
00:46:18
do like go do it now where whereas we we don't apply knowledge we just keep
00:46:26
consuming and go through knowledge acquisition there's there's a cycle of Doom that we go through there's just
00:46:31
just cycle of I mean this is the cycle my students go through oh drob promotion oh crap I need to work on my
00:46:36
communication skills what's the first thing they do they go to Google and then they Google how do I improve my interview skills my communication skills
00:46:42
then they get back 10.6 Million results they go ah this is too crazy surely someone's created a YouTube video then they go to YouTube they type in how to
00:46:47
improve communication skills they get 3 million videos right and they go oh this is too chat GPT I'll go to chat GPT now
00:46:54
how to improve communication skills and it gives you these generic answers from blogs that have no relevance to you and then after that you feel so overwhelmed
00:47:00
you do nothing with it but it's just this cycle we all fall victim to over
00:47:05
and over and over again we just keep consuming knowledge and nothing actually changes because we're not applying
00:47:10
it so the the key is to get out there and start running some of these techniques in the real world and just
00:47:17
pick one pick one and just try it it's like we're going through all these different things right after this
00:47:23
episode go out and just try tonality with your kids and read them a children's book because those books are naturally emotive and if you don't have
00:47:30
kids borrow a niece or a nephew and just watch the impact on the other human being as you play with your instrument
00:47:36
watch them smile watch them giggle watch them react to the way you play your instrument because then it wakes you up
00:47:44
to the fact that you've got access to this and that I can change the way someone feels what
00:47:50
power yet we don't use it I've just realized that there's one more left there is one more left here okay I know
00:47:56
I know what this yeah of course if you didn't I'd be quite deeply offended yeah I'll get you to read this and we'll play
00:48:01
with the last one okay yeah okay my name is Maximus Decimus Meridius correct
00:48:08
commander of the armies of the north general of the Felix Legions loyal servant to the true Emperor Marcus
00:48:14
aelius father to a murderer son husband to a murdered wife and I will have my Vengeance in the life or the next
00:48:21
perfect now we're going to read it again except the final Foundation here with the voice is pause whatever emotion
00:48:28
comes before the pause once you pause it intensifies that emotion so if you got the feeling of anger and you pause oh
00:48:35
that is a pause of anger but if all of a sudden I'm sad and and then I pause you
00:48:40
prolong the sadness it's a pause of sadness and think about how important the pause is in music and I love the world of music I love listening to
00:48:46
orchestral music and when you think about it what happens right after a crescendo it's a pause silence the most
00:48:54
important note that they play during that peace yet we barely use it and what
00:49:00
else does the pause do when you pause you give me time to process what you're saying yet we are so afraid of the
00:49:06
pause my name is Maximus Decimus Meridius commander of the armies of the
00:49:13
north general of the Felix Legions loyal servant to the true
00:49:22
Emperor Marcus aelius father to the mer murdered
00:49:27
son husband to a murdered wife and I will have my
00:49:35
vengance in this life or the next oh
00:49:42
beautiful when you paused you gave me time to process the weight of what you're saying the first time you read it
00:49:48
you rushed through it just like that nervous employee in front of their leaders who just rush through it you may have just shared the most brilliant plan
00:49:55
for a marketing campaign but because you rushed through it I didn't feel the weight of how profound the strategy is
00:50:01
there's something when you pause you almost you tell the person don't you act almost inexplicitly that they should
00:50:07
really give a [ __ ] about the thing you just said yeah like it really mattered it's important yeah because you're like
00:50:12
giving it space to breathe and do you see what all these foundations do what do they give you
00:50:18
ultimately like what does It ultimately lead to Clarity do you think there's a certain
00:50:23
set of those tools that when applied or a certain sort of style of speaking that makes people
00:50:29
dislike you is there a certain one that just doesn't make them warm to you is it the low pitches is it the fast
00:50:35
speaking the there's sounds that people don't like for example have you ever
00:50:41
called I don't mean to pick on real estate agents but it happens a lot to me in Australia when you call a real estate agent it's hello this is James from XY
00:50:49
real estate and when you hear that sequence of Melody no worries I'll put you on to the next person and you hear
00:50:55
you switch off you just go ah this person just just I'm not really connected to that person and all you have to do is you just tell them to
00:51:00
switch the melody and just don't use that sing song voice and they call that a sing song voice in the world of vocal
00:51:06
training right you've got a sing song voice and if you keep following the same Rhythm you have a sing song voice so instead of doing that just go hey it's
00:51:11
James how can I help mate you said the same thing you just switched up the melody that sounds a little more sincere
00:51:17
because it was a bit more varied or exactly right and it's not what everybody uses because once everybody
00:51:23
uses the same thing all of a sudden it now sounds like a script that's why people are so afraid when they're
00:51:28
creating content online they go I I don't want to sound scripted there's a sound to it and it
00:51:34
generally follows up that's why newscasters they there's a sound to it yeah last night at 9:00 p.m. there's
00:51:40
that there's a and then they keep using the same Rhythm over and over and over and over again the same Melody sequence over and over and over and over again
00:51:46
and am I right in thinking if I wanted to be really boring I should just kill all variety kill all the foundations
00:51:51
nothing give me nothing and and it's what happens when people again the people that I serve it's what happens is
00:51:57
because they go I'll let my work speak for itself and and I say that's great that
00:52:03
means you do great work but why not speak for your work too why can't we do both MH why does it have to be one or
00:52:09
the other yeah it's a shame not to do your work Justice you know because you can do it at disservice just by
00:52:15
delivering it without the foundations as you've said yeah and and then other people as you said they could have a
00:52:20
half the idea but double the double the Showmanship yeah and that happens too
00:52:25
that happens too right so to me it's about helping those who they' they've got something amazing you've got a story
00:52:31
you need to share you've got an idea you need to pitch you've got incredible technical skills that you've worked on
00:52:37
for the last 15 years and you're thinking why am I still stuck in this position it's well hey let's let's do
00:52:43
great work and let's let's allow ourselves to build the ability and grow the ability to shine how does one
00:52:49
increase their self-awareness as it relates to their communication skills is there is there a practice I can do to
00:52:55
understand if I'm good bad at this if you are problem unaware to communication and right now you just go oh this is
00:53:01
something I need to work on then this is the three-step process you have to commit to and just by doing this it's
00:53:08
going to dramatically change the way you talk it's going to dramatically change the way you show up I call it record and
00:53:14
review and I learned this as a magician and it's so practical when it comes to Magic and communication skills First
00:53:21
Step record a video of yourself speaking for 5 minutes a full 5 minutes and
00:53:26
always immedately say oh what do I say though Google or chat GPT great
00:53:32
conversational starters and then use those for yourself and just talk but it has to be impromptu because I'm trying
00:53:37
to tease out core behaviors I don't want you to give me a pitch that you've delivered 20 times already I want you to just in the moment speak I'm trying to
00:53:43
tease out some non-functional behaviors so once you've recorded that video of yourself for 5 minutes leave it for a
00:53:48
Day video or just audio video you want video you want to be standing while you're doing this okay once you've got
00:53:54
that video recorded leave it for a day because when you watch it straight away I'm fat I'm ugly I don't like myself I
00:54:00
hate the way I sound you leave it for a day you're thinner you're better looking you love yourself more time and space it's amazing so leave it for a day then
00:54:07
when you watch it back you review it in three different ways the first time so you record on your phone you turn the
00:54:14
sound all the way up press play turn your phone over just listen here you're
00:54:19
doing an auditory review and just listen to your voice and now because you've listened to this podcast you also have
00:54:25
five vocal foundations can think about so now auditorily think about how's my rate of speech how's my volume oh my
00:54:32
default rate is around a three oh I speak really and I stick to that oh my default volume is oh my goodness it's
00:54:38
one oh wow there's no tonality there's no emotion in my voice there's no pitch for oh I am not pausing you'll be able
00:54:44
to take so many notes and you'll be able to hear things you've never been able to hear before because most people avoid
00:54:50
filming themselves because I hate the way I look and I hate the way I sound right so to
00:54:57
me once you do that you have you'll have a page of notes and a whole new level of awareness on your auditory communication
00:55:04
skills so the next step is now you turn your phone back around you turn the sound and put it on mute you press play
00:55:11
and you just look at yourself and then as you're watching yourself because most people don't do this unless they're creators you don't do this that's why
00:55:17
creators are such great communicators is because they do this that's why you're a great listener in a podcast because you watch yourself back so now as you just
00:55:24
watch yourself back without the auditory feedack back all of a sudden now you'll see things you don't normally see oh wow
00:55:30
I'm swiveling a lot on my chair oh wow I don't use my hand gesture oh W I'll put my hands behind my back oh this is my
00:55:36
big tick I keep touching my glass I can't help it oh I need to work on that but you keep touching your glasses right
00:55:42
I keep touching my face I keep touching my mouth I keep fiddling with things you'll see a whole bunch of non-functional behaviors that you've
00:55:48
never seen before because you've avoided it and also because you have this idea in your head that you're stuck you're
00:55:54
not it's just a series of behavior yes right and then afterwards the final form
00:56:00
of review don't listen to it and don't watch it get it
00:56:05
transcribed because now you'll see the way you communicate from a different perspective and you go oh my goodness I
00:56:12
ramble I I talked about the same thing over you because you see it from a different perspective sometimes you don't hear that it's easier to see it
00:56:19
and then you see it and I can see you reacting right but that's that's what people do is they they go oh not only do
00:56:24
I ramble because when you get a transcribed leave in all of the nonwords and the filler words nonwords being the
00:56:29
sounds we make to fill the silence filler words being the words we use to fill the silence and so like do you know what I
00:56:35
mean this transcription is immediately going to reveal to you all of your
00:56:41
auditory clutter the things that you say again nonwords and filler words auditory clutter that's the again the ano like do
00:56:48
you know what I mean um uh highlight it with a red highlighter because it might not just be those one of my big ones was
00:56:55
okay okay I taught online during CO as a
00:57:01
result of that because I didn't get the inperson feedback from my students I would always say okay at the end of my
00:57:07
sentences because I wasn't getting any feedback so I say that's the vocal foundations okay all right now that's
00:57:12
body L okay okay okay and I didn't even notice I was doing it but that process revealed to me immediately oh wow I
00:57:19
didn't know that I was able to remove that because it didn't serve why does it matter to remove the
00:57:25
clutch to words you know the like as um why does it matter I'll give you an
00:57:31
example of it you know like um if I you know was uh taking you through like the
00:57:36
um core uh you know vocal foundations you know like uh it decreases the
00:57:43
clarity of the message it's okay to have some be human I get it it's not about none but it's about having some and not
00:57:51
have your speech littered with it is it easy to overcome that yeah it is because
00:57:58
to get rid of that bad habit you just need to learn a new habit and the new habit is pause so the very moment you
00:58:04
feel like saying um we're not lagging we're just pausing
00:58:09
right you pause and that's why as part of the vocal foundations you have to learn to
00:58:15
be comfortable with what we're doing right now just
00:58:21
pausing and it's okay so I've got my three sheets of paper there there I've
00:58:26
I've done the auditory assessment I've done the visual assessment I've looked at the transcript and I've seen the
00:58:33
words and again is it repetitions from there on after to like step before that okay because nor normally what happens
00:58:39
after you do that and I know because my students have done it and then what happens is overwhelm because they
00:58:45
go oh my goodness there's like 26 things I have to improve that's which one do I pick and
00:58:54
then they'll have to DM me on social which one do I pigment and then analysis paralysis and to me is it doesn't matter
00:59:01
pick one so what you do is you crate yourself a little 12we plan and you plan it one week at a time so first week rate
00:59:07
of speech great so you the whole week you you you you just look at rate of speech okay okay at the end what do you
00:59:12
do of that week record and review again did it change no guess what you're
00:59:18
doing next week rate to speech and it's that commitment and I love this Japanese word called Kaizen
00:59:24
Relentless Improvement and you all do this here amazingly that's what you got to commit to and you focus on rate of
00:59:30
speech until you see change and I used to do coaching I don't do it anymore because I've got two kids and I you know
00:59:35
they're the most important people to me right now but I used to coach CEOs and they would see my plan to help them
00:59:41
improve their communication skills and they get pissed off because they go I I'm just doing rate of speech I'm
00:59:48
like yeah because your default is so slow you're putting everyone to sleep
00:59:53
and if you don't change it after week one or week two I'm still going to get you to do the same thing and just by increasing rate of
01:00:00
speech alone they became so much more Dynamic took a month we all know people that overt talk and overe explain 100%
01:00:07
like how does one know if they're doing that and how to change it by being able to record yourself while you're in conversation with someone and zoom is
01:00:14
amazing now so all of a sudden now if you want Awareness on that record yourself and and the beauty of recording
01:00:21
yourself on something like Zoom is all of a sudden now you can you can watch yourself and you see the other person
01:00:27
too do you recommend someone like me if if we're trying to improve the communication skills of everybody in the
01:00:33
company to record our meetings and to send it after 100% and review it and and
01:00:38
and you you may not get reactions when people say things because most people the only thing they'll give you feedback on with your commun this is the only
01:00:45
feedback anybody will ever give you on your communication I felt like you talked a bit too fast they'll never say
01:00:52
anything else because anything else is an attack on your personality right so people are very afraid to give you feedback right especially you being the
01:00:58
big boss no one's going to give you feedback right so all of a sudden or maybe they do I feel like your team
01:01:03
do what I'm trying to get at is all of a sudden now when you watch yourself back on those videos you now will see their
01:01:10
facial reactions people are very honest with their body language you've had body language experts on here people might be able to lie with what they say but all
01:01:16
of a sudden they tell the truth with their body language you will see people do the silent yawn right you'll see people they just do the silent yawn
01:01:23
right they keep their mouth closed but they're yawning you will see the these things if you start to reflect and review and you go a I shouldn't have
01:01:30
said that I took too long I lost them you can see it I do that with my
01:01:35
classes when I record when I used to do my Keynotes I had a whole career as a keynote speakers when I did that I used
01:01:41
to duct tape two GoPros together and I'll duct tape the little red recording button so the audience doesn't know like
01:01:46
that I'm I'm recording myself and I'm also recording the audience only for my purpose right as I review my speeches
01:01:52
and I would watch backto back the audience faces and my Keynote and I could you you can see where you
01:01:58
lose people because at a conference their faces light up with their phone you can literally see when you're losing
01:02:04
them in the talk and when you watch those back toback it is so humbling because you go wow did I go on for why I
01:02:13
thought it was a fun tangent it wasn't and then I kept that tangent in for bloody six months because I thought it
01:02:19
added so much value it did not add value so the only way to get that awareness is you have to find Opportunities where you
01:02:25
can record yourself do you mind if I pause this conversation for a moment I want to talk about our show sponsor
01:02:31
today which is Shopify I've always believed that the biggest cost in business isn't failure it's the time you
01:02:36
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shopify.com Bartlet and when you went up on stage as a keynote speaker was there anything
01:03:25
that you did before you went on stage to make sure that you performed optimally cuz you were speaking what 80 times a year or something yeah yeah yeah it got
01:03:31
pretty full on yes have a way to calm your mind calm your body and get really
01:03:36
focused and the way I do it is the first thing I would do is whm Hof the guided
01:03:44
bubble breathing 30 times and then hold your
01:03:49
breath and then a deep breath in hold for 15 and then release three cycles of
01:03:54
that oh stepen I'm my mind is relaxed my body is relaxed and then the next thing
01:04:00
I do is I just do a little bit of brisk walking do maybe 10 20 push-ups why
01:04:05
because I'm getting rid of the adrenaline that's building up in my body because if you don't get rid of the adrenaline you will go on stage and you
01:04:11
start pacing the stage and I've seen speakers do this where they Pace there's no reason for their movement but they're
01:04:16
moving because there's so much adrenaline In Me Right non-functional Movement nonfunctional so get rid of the
01:04:22
adrenaline so a little bit of brisk exercise gets rid of that adrenaline that you don't need so do those two
01:04:28
things and depending on how nervous I am I may have to do a mindset shift and the mindset shift
01:04:34
is the only way you can become self-conscious and nervous is if you're thinking about yourself so if you're not
01:04:40
thinking about yourself and you have no cognitive capacity to think about yourself then how can you be nervous so think of the
01:04:47
audience right before coming to this I felt a bit nervous I thought you know what I'm just going to think about Steven and I'm going to think about his audience how can I add the most value
01:04:53
possible in this podcast as we and the moment I thought about you and your audience I I don't have any
01:04:58
cognitive capacity left to think about me MH so when you kind of think about this act of service it it shifts where
01:05:04
you are you're not in your own body anymore you're not self-conscious your audience conscious helps and is there
01:05:10
anything you do with your mouth and your tongue CU sometimes especially if I've woken up early in the morning and I'm
01:05:16
like jumping on a zoom call with some foreign time zone yes like it feels like my mouth isn't quite like there yet and
01:05:22
also it feels like my brain's not connected to my mouth so first thing is lip trills have you ever done lip trills
01:05:28
before no okay lip trills are this perfect and a lot of people won't be able to do that so all you do is get
01:05:34
your two index fingers push your cheeks together and you can go do your favorite song so you think of
01:05:40
your favorite song and you you know Final Countdown one of my favorites
01:05:45
right now do that for an entire song so do that for your favorite song and once you've done that if you do that for 2 to
01:05:50
3 minutes now all of a sudden your articulators have woken up you've also woken up your vocal cords and your lips
01:05:56
now being the main articulators we use to shape the words that we say it's awake the siren technique is another the
01:06:02
great way to wake up your voice and you've done the the S technique which is read low and then go high read low and
01:06:08
then go high the other thing that I learned from studying your work is this idea of the Power Sphere when you're on
01:06:13
stage ah this Power Sphere I've got a picture here you got a picture that I I learned this from Mark Bowden Mark Bowden is an incredible body language
01:06:20
expert and I was lucky to do some coaching with him when I lived in the US and he taught me this concept of the
01:06:25
area between your belly button and your eyes yeah and that's the P sphere so when you're gesturing to people a lot of
01:06:31
people who are shy they gesture below the P sphere well just like hands to so so again they're doing all these different things but they're doing this
01:06:37
like oh hey great to see you oh I'm so excited to be here it's great right and why are they doing that because they're
01:06:42
because they're playing small okay scared to take up space right so and again I get a lot of my female students
01:06:48
ask me this question they say oh Vin I feel like I don't have enough presence and I get the feedback I don't get executive presence what is this elusive
01:06:54
thing called executive presence it's simple it's two things it's vocal presence and physical presence and how
01:07:00
you use your hand gestures allows you to level up your physical presence so if you've got better physical presence
01:07:06
because you're using your hand gestures within the PO sphere all of a sudden you've got that executive presence that
01:07:11
they're talking about so you need to get your elbows off your sides 100% yeah yeah you again I think of myself as
01:07:16
having this sphere around me the way that I remember Mark sharing this with me and not be afraid to go to the edges of the sphere don't be afraid to go to
01:07:22
the edges of the sphere otherwise we tend to a lot of people T-Rex it right the T-Rex it right don't T-Rex it just
01:07:27
have your arms nice out and big don't be afraid to take up the space and and then there are foundational gestures you
01:07:33
should learn paired with this the first one which you're doing already this is uh Virginia Satia came up with these and
01:07:39
she was a family therapist and she came up with the foundation to hand gestures this is plator try so you've got your
01:07:45
hand for people that can't see you've got your hands Palm face up Palm face up and out plator okay beautiful gesture to
01:07:51
show that hey I have no weapons I have nothing to attack you with right so this is play so you're showing your your
01:07:56
palms wonderful way to greet people as they come in hey in like this instead of surrendering just kind of hands up hey
01:08:03
great to see you okay beautiful great however it's closely related to its
01:08:08
cousin I don't know right I don't know is this so again it does lack Authority so if you want more Authority you use
01:08:14
what's the second one called leveler leveler is hands facing down so hands p face down yes right feels a bit we're
01:08:21
doing sitting down but this is leveler right it's there a element of control yeah well the hands face down well try
01:08:26
this try this give this a go right I'm saying this a lot to my daughter at the moment she's very one-year-old very
01:08:33
sweet very naughty so again say Melody don't do say inator say melody stop doing that so just try it so we'll count
01:08:39
you down in three two melody stop doing that perfect okay you're going to do the
01:08:44
same thing now in levela okay so in and give me more volume in three two melody
01:08:49
stop doing that I didn't tell you what to really even do did you notice how your voice changed yeah what what CH my
01:08:55
face changed as well and what what changed with your your body um I what had changed with your your vocal quality
01:09:00
sorry it went the pitch went okay the pitch went down yes correct and I didn't
01:09:05
tell you to do that yeah right so all of a sudden cuz I was doing I was doing anger but frustration yeah yeah yeah exact and no one told you to do that
01:09:12
that's a universal thing what's fascinating about what just happened there is people are afraid of a monotone voice and they don't realize that a
01:09:19
monotone voice comes from a monotone body so you just moved your body from this to this and you created a different sound yeah is the voes connected to the
01:09:25
body the body's connected to the voice and the biggest mistake you see here within this realm here is you do imagine
01:09:32
you did a great keynote and at the end imagine I do this at the end of the KE imagine I do this right are there any
01:09:37
questions right versus are there any questions I was going to say with the level of one where you start putting
01:09:42
your hands down I thought you wanted to get off stage and I don't want any and I I don't want any questions yeah the next one is called
01:09:49
blamer have a guess at what blamer is pointing yes correct this is blamer a very strong Gest
01:09:56
and then a softer version of that is the full finger point you point with all your fingers politicians get taught this they they soften it soften it a bit and
01:10:02
then they soften it with their full finger point I noticed this on the podcast sometimes I noticed the people accidentally do it when they say
01:10:07
something yeah oh because they'll say they'll say something like um you know entrepreneurs they can be they can be
01:10:13
quite sad because they they don't have balance and as they're saying it they'll like accidentally point at
01:10:19
me than me but it it does make contextual sense so they'll go your entrepreneur sometimes they don't have work life and they're like they don't
01:10:26
know they're doing it but they're like subtly gesturing in my direction um yeah yeah I know what you
01:10:32
mean it's like yeah some people have you put on a bit of weight oh what am I I didn't know that
01:10:38
oh my a do it all the time yeah again it's just different ways to vary the way
01:10:43
you look visually that's blamer you got a softer version and then you've also got this wonderful one they call the computer and
01:10:49
computer is a wonderful an extra thing you can do when you're on a podcast and someone's you you you experience or you
01:10:56
hear heightened emotion you can also respond with your face but you can respond with your body too you can kind of go into computer and computer is just
01:11:04
one arm under the armpit and the other one at your chin you go H one arm across and one and some people call this the
01:11:11
think of POS right but you can go in this you go combine with a head tilt soften it right straight up is a little
01:11:16
bit straight soften it is that is that what head tilt does it softens it just softens it's like okay I I I feel what
01:11:23
you're going through and the reason they call it computer is I'm processing what you're saying I'm leaning in I'm showing you that I'm processing as opposed to
01:11:30
sometimes we're unaware we don't move our face and we just sit there and they're talking and we're like this yeah and they don't know if you're there the
01:11:35
sensitivity is when you sense heightened emotion so if they start to get a bit frustrated you
01:11:41
get you can show them with your body too beautiful pose then the the final one is
01:11:47
distractor which is a pattern break it's an auditory and visual pattern break for
01:11:52
example if you're on stage and you're talking and you've got gone on a tangent I've done this maybe you've done it and
01:11:58
you realize the audience they're all on their phones instead of continuing you can execute distractor and do distractor
01:12:05
to get their attention back oh I'm sorry oh I I've gone down that tangent let me
01:12:10
bring you back let me use a different analogy so auditory in that there's a clap involved MH visual in that I'm
01:12:16
Shing bees imagine me Shing bees as I was doing that so clap and Sh bees there's an auditory and visual pattern break that now allows me to get your
01:12:23
attention back if you're doing this more than once in a presentation you need to work on your rehearsal process you need to work on you delivering the
01:12:29
presentation in a way that's more coherent I guess all of this stuff also applies to when you're making video clips for social media so many of us are
01:12:36
building personal Brands and trying to make content but we we make boring unengaging videos yes because you come
01:12:43
to life I'm coming to life visually yeah what we're seeing here is I'm coming to life vocally and Visually here's where
01:12:50
people get stuck again they go but that's not me yeah do do you think right
01:12:56
now I'm I'm watching Beast games and I'm loving it it's just I'm so addicted to it Jimmy's doing great and do you think
01:13:02
Jimmy talks like that his everyday life do you think he goes home and he says to his Pana and next we're going to go to dinner and for dinner you're going to
01:13:08
have three Choice he doesn't talk like that but he understands that in that context for that Medium the message I'm
01:13:13
trying to communicate I have to play my instrument differently to achieve the outcome that I desire and you're gonna
01:13:19
have to do the same thing in your life whereas people are addicted to this idea of there's only one me do you know what's interesting is I think there'll
01:13:24
be a certain cohort of people listening that just go oh God this is so I know
01:13:29
it's so much it's so it sounds so exhausting then and I I just I just can't be I can't be bothered V I can't
01:13:36
you must have heard this before I've heard it before and I share with him that the idea of influence you've got to
01:13:43
understand that takes work it's like saying I want to become the best basketballer in the world but but it's too much work so it's a deal if you want
01:13:50
this if you want this then this is how you this is how you get it yeah the world has really changed especially in
01:13:55
the last couple years post pandemic and much of our communication now takes place on video calls Zoom Google
01:14:01
Hangouts this kind of thing yeah how do the rules that you've said and you've talked about today apply or not apply to
01:14:07
when I'm doing my zoom meetings yeah it's even more important
01:14:13
online because the moment you sit in front of a camera and you're not a Creator what happens the moment it's
01:14:20
unnatural what happens to you because it's weird sitting in front of a webcam what happens to you do you think you lose yourself a little bit yes yeah
01:14:27
everything drops all of your vocal foundations disappear so what do I need to be thinking about to be effective I
01:14:32
want to be the most effective person on my zoom course because I do worry sometimes I do worry because I have big investment meetings and stuff with
01:14:38
startups or Founders that I'm in the process of trying to do a deal with and I think God if we do this on Zoom it
01:14:44
might not be so good I might come across worse I feel like I'll come across better in person so I often move the
01:14:50
meeting to in person and then sometimes it's not always convenient right it's never convenient cuz you got to drive somewhere and fly
01:14:56
somewhere so I'd rather be effective on Zoom nothing will replace this it's why I flew here from Australia is nothing
01:15:02
will replace this if we did this virtually it's not the same but when you have to do it virtually you have to give
01:15:07
more of yourself if you want them to feel valued you have to adopt a mindset of
01:15:13
generosity I'll explain we often think of generosity as the first form of generosity which is which is money right
01:15:19
easiest form of generosity to grasp and then you think about it for a bit more you go oh it's it's time oh okay cool
01:15:25
and then you think about it for more often people don't think about the third form of generosity which is energy
01:15:31
that's what the third form is because right now with you I'm being generous with my energy I'm choosing to do this
01:15:37
stepen I'm not I'm not just I'm choosing to do it because I want to connect with you because I want to be able to to to
01:15:43
to to share the knowledge and I want to be able to do this whereas there's a part of again there's a part of my brain
01:15:48
that's like oh man you're jet lagged you're tired just just back off a little bit who cares all good whereas I'm now
01:15:54
being generous with it and online you have to be so conscious of that you have to be so much more generous with your
01:16:00
energy because naturally when you're sitting in front of a camera you feel weird and then all of a sudden it's like
01:16:05
my wife when she watches me run my classes she goes I can't be in the same room because I feel like you're being
01:16:11
too much and I am because when I'm when I'm teaching my classes onine four 500
01:16:17
people I bring a much bigger version of myself to that class I'm bring a much
01:16:22
bigger version than this and then my poor wife sitting this you get oh he overdoing it he overdoing it but to
01:16:28
every single student on that class with me virtually oh Vin this is so engaging it's so beautiful to see how much zest
01:16:34
you have for what you do and afterwards I'm exhausted but it's a choice I'm willing
01:16:40
to make to be masterful with what I do in that moment now make sure your camera
01:16:45
placement is well placed a lot of people when they appear on Zoom all you see is their head now that makes you less
01:16:52
visually Dynamic whereas this is why you need the external mic push the laptop back external camera wider lens let them
01:16:58
see your whole torso yeah I love this this is so important and I I learned
01:17:03
this from Vanessa van Edwards where you you brought her on oh yeah such a powerful such a powerful concept where
01:17:09
it's the idea of proxemics where there's the study of distances most people when they appear on Zoom they appear in the
01:17:16
intimate space and the intimate space is when your head is right next to your partner at night where you're doing pillow talk and that's how you appear on
01:17:22
zoom and when you appear that close you feel self-conscious everybody else goes oh that's a bit right so if you all of a
01:17:29
sudden now learn to appear in the personal and social space which means they can see your full torso that people feel more comfortable
01:17:36
but now you also have access to your hand gestures light yourself well okay and
01:17:41
something very simple if you're doing Zoom meetings all the time and it's critical for you in your work then learn three-point lighting right three-point
01:17:48
lighting you've got that going on right here right and if you don't know what it is if you just searched it you'd find it which is essentially three point
01:17:54
lighting you've got a key light you've got a fuel light and you've got a hair light behind you right okay so there's a light behind you yes there's one on the
01:18:00
side here yes and there's one in the front is that what you mean yes three key lights ESS again they they they
01:18:06
technically call my videographers teach me all this where they say oh you need a you need a key light you got to have a fuel line then you're going to have a
01:18:11
back line and the moment I did that on my zoom calls I just look different to every single other person who appeared on that Zoom call interesting I'm just
01:18:18
clearer I'm crisper right and this is again if you want to take it to the next level I want to take it to the next
01:18:23
level all right then great then get a better quality camera too don't rely on the laptop camera okay right A lot of people do this who are creators you just
01:18:30
get a nicer webcam minimum 1080p so you look sharper you look clearer and you're
01:18:36
well lit okay now you look better done perfect get an external mic okay because
01:18:43
if you spend all of your time working on all of these wonderful vocal foundations and you've got a shitty microphone and
01:18:49
then you talk a you you've lost there again and get [ __ ] good Wi-Fi while
01:18:54
you're yes please oh Australia needs to listen to this as well fiber optic yeah 100% and then all of a sudden now so you
01:19:01
visual looks good auditor is looked after and and don't be afraid to bring a bigger version of yourself so much of
01:19:09
this is about identity isn't it it is we're like so many of us including me uh we're trapped in our identity like who
01:19:15
we think we are do you know what one of the really remarkable things that always reminds me how like BS our communication
01:19:20
style and and our identity by way of this is is just different accents yes the fact that someone can live in an
01:19:26
area and they can be scous or they can you know live in another area and they
01:19:31
sound completely different like they're from New York or something and MH it just goes to show that we're just like
01:19:38
it's so contagious and easy to blend in yes with one's environment I remember
01:19:44
experiencing a negative experience with accent when I started to improve my articulation and I wanted to improve my
01:19:52
pronunciation everybody around me was saying you're trying to be British oh really you're trying so hard to be
01:19:58
British how F I'm like no no I'm just I'm just trying to improve my articulation right I used to slur my
01:20:04
words all the time being an Aussie we use so much slanging yeah I was G up I
01:20:10
didn't want to right and I could I could get that to a point where you won't even understand what I'm saying yeah I was going I
01:20:15
didn't want to yeah no didn't want to do it right whereas I didn't pronounce my te's and then when I did pronounce my
01:20:22
te's instead of saying three I would say free can I have free of those and that's
01:20:28
how I used to talk and I didn't realize by talking about that people were making judgments about my intelligence and I was like what I
01:20:35
didn't even know this I didn't even know that this was happening and all I was doing and and again people try to keep
01:20:41
me the same because of identity that's not how you should sound Vin that the mold you are is you're a fob mate what
01:20:46
are you doing why are you trying to be this British Australian and I just said to them because when I speak like
01:20:53
that it creates the wrong perception in people's minds and then they now look down on me as a result of
01:20:59
that there are some accents that experience more discrimination than
01:21:04
other other accents they did a study in 2006 it was a survey of the chartered Institute of personal and development
01:21:12
found that 76% of employers admitted to discriminating against candidates based
01:21:18
solely on their accent we judge a book byes cover don't we we have we have that
01:21:25
I I have a thought though my thought is and this is what I believe is that I
01:21:30
don't believe accents are a problem I believe articulation and pronunciation
01:21:35
are why do you think people think people from the UK are smart there's this perception of it don't don't you get
01:21:41
that where you're sophisticated James Bond it's because you articulate extremely
01:21:48
well especially the ones that make it to the movies right the ones we see it's because of that and and you can have
01:21:53
that level of sophistic ation and intelligence and you can radiate that intelligence with any accent I have I
01:21:59
have students from India who the moment they improve their articulation it's beautiful there's nothing wrong with
01:22:05
your accent for the longest time they said my accent is a problem I said no no no no it's not a problem the problem is
01:22:11
and here here's where we go deep your whole life you've learned the mouth movements to speak the Indian language
01:22:17
then when you go speak the English language you're Now using Indian mouth movements to speak the English language
01:22:23
which are the wrong set of mouth movement ments to speak this particular language but no one teaches us this and I use the Vietnamese mouth movements to
01:22:29
speak the English language therefore accent and lack of clarity so what did I have to do learn the set of English
01:22:35
mouth movements completely changed me and how how' you do that speech
01:22:42
pathologist oh really I had to go see a speech pathologist yeah I struggled with this Stephen my whole life that's why
01:22:48
when people look at me now very easy to assume oh he born with the gift of the gab and the reality I was born quite
01:22:53
gaess yeah and I I I share that because it is
01:22:59
a skill that anybody can learn when when you say to me you can't do this you can't do that to me I hear oh then I
01:23:05
speak with my hands in my pockets and I'm stuck that way for the rest of my life take them out take it out it's just
01:23:10
a behavior yeah I mean when you told me that your English was your third
01:23:16
language I couldn't believe that yeah because there's no remnants there's usually a remnant of the language you
01:23:23
spoke before yeah there's like no evidence of it because this has become the primary
01:23:28
language that I speak the majority of the time now but even so yeah my mother she spoke in [ __ ] I guess she was she's
01:23:35
Nigerian so she spoke Nigerian MH for her childhood moved to the UK when she
01:23:41
was I think late years so maybe early 20s but there's always been the remnants
01:23:48
of Nigerian and she's almost 60 now so that's 40 years is that just because she hasn't tried to well I think it's linked
01:23:54
to Identity it's I don't want to lose that okay I don't want to lose that connection I want to lose that sound it's why again
01:23:59
most people don't change the way they sound throughout the entire course of their life I'm not saying she should because there is something about your
01:24:06
origin that gives you a little bit more that's right something a little bit more interesting but when I look at some of the research it shows that in terms of
01:24:13
employment opportunities I I would love that study to be done in a way where the people who
01:24:19
are speaking with accents have incredible articulation or pronunciation as opposed to them
01:24:24
speaking with poor articulation and pronunciation there's a big difference Research indicates that individuals who
01:24:30
use non-standard speech patterns such as African-American vernacular English often face negative perceptions
01:24:36
regarding their intelligence competence they have worse housing opportunities and they have worse legal outcomes right
01:24:42
that's a it's a profound it is adverse reaction just from how you speak it's a real it's a real unfairness like an
01:24:49
injustice isn't it it is it is it's it's like when I was
01:24:55
and and it's one of those things where this is it's super weird I remember when I was becoming a professional speaker
01:25:00
some of my peers uh who who were also Asian I remember them saying to me they said
01:25:06
hey it's going to be really hard man right because that's for the Caucasian man with white hair the game you were
01:25:12
about to play and at the time I had blonde hair right as an Asian guy and
01:25:18
they're like you there's this thing called a bamboo ceiling Vin and I was like what the hell
01:25:23
is a bamboo ceiling I've never heard heard of this before and he goes oh it's a ceiling specifically for Asians cuz it's a bamboo ceiling it's a ceiling we
01:25:28
can't get past so we call it a bamboo ceiling right and and and again it's it's real right for many and I believed it to be real and for as long as I
01:25:34
believed it to be real I didn't try I didn't try to go for those Geeks with
01:25:40
these big Fortune 500 Co I didn't because I was like ah there's a bamboo ceiling I can't and I remember this
01:25:45
quote from Steve Martin that truly inspired me where it's be so good they can't ignore you and then there was a
01:25:51
chapter while I was here I said you know what [ __ ] it there is no bamboo ceiling for me all right I I I refuse to
01:25:58
acknowledge that there is this damn thing I'm just going to get so good at my damn craft I'm going to get so good at being on stage I'm going to duct tape
01:26:04
bloody GoPros together and learn this game minute by minute and I was able to soar in my career to a place where I
01:26:10
never could go and I had those limitations placed on me
01:26:16
all my life all these different labels place on me all my life Steven and when
01:26:22
I choose to believe in them they had so much power over me and when I chose not
01:26:27
to at times some of them weren't even real and I was creating Myself by speaking about
01:26:33
them all the time and I couldn't believe where I was able to go with my speaking career the stages I was able to get on
01:26:40
these companies I was able to work I this is this even real do they know I'm from the northern suburbs of South
01:26:45
Australia Adelaide that's wild that you went from not speaking the language to being paid Millions to speak to speak
01:26:53
the language and and and to teach other people how to speak it yeah that's my best friend says that all the time he
01:26:58
goes it's the most hilarious thing in the world and I hope that becomes a point of inspiration that
01:27:06
it doesn't matter if English is your only language second third fourth or fifth these are just a series of behaviors that anybody can learn and if
01:27:12
this is what you want actually it's even more extreme because you were bullied for not being able to speak the language
01:27:18
so much so that you had to move to five different schools and now yeah you earn
01:27:23
Millions from speaking the language and teaching others how to speak it probably
01:27:28
some of the same people that would have bullied you yeah I I actually had some of them Reach Out which was crazy it was
01:27:35
crazy Redemption Arc yeah there was a there was a bully that stole a bike from me and broke my heart my mom and dad
01:27:42
worked for months about to buy me that bike it was $280 Australian dollars which was huge during the '90s it was an
01:27:47
incredible BMX bike with stunt pegs and everything and I bully found out where I lived and stole it and reached out 25
01:27:53
years later to apologize you have asked him for that [ __ ] I thought he was going to give me that [ __ ] bike back but he didn't and what
01:27:59
was crazy was it was so beautiful because because of the Good Vibes I've
01:28:05
been able to put out he saw who I had become and I thought it was so man of him I respected him so much for that and
01:28:12
I think a part of me needed it too where he reached on he said hey man he said I'm so sorry and I said hey I'm I I
01:28:18
can't thank you enough for this because there's been pain in my heart that I haven't been able to resolve and and and
01:28:24
you've just resolved you've just resolved some of that for me when you apologized and said sorry because my mom
01:28:30
like again it was just so meaningful to me that bike you know and it and again I just I was so happy I was so blown away
01:28:35
that he he apologized you it was it was really beautiful when dealing with people like
01:28:41
bullies workplace bullies people that are insulting you or patronizing you
01:28:47
what is the best technique conversationally to disarm them or to you know to stop to stop them from
01:28:53
doing or to come out on top per se whatever that might mean the simplest version of that for me is to
01:29:00
use improvisation yes and and instead of disagreeing with you I will humorously
01:29:06
agree with you and again I'm not sure if this is the best thing in the world people should do but I I diffuse this
01:29:11
very simply because I've had it happen to me all my life where they say to me and then it just doesn't give them a leg to stand on they're go oh you're an
01:29:17
idiot like yeah I'm I'm I'm a bit clumsy at times I know that and they don't know
01:29:22
where to go with that after that where they go oh yeah and and and you're stupid you go you know what I I I've done so many stupid things in my time as
01:29:29
an entrepreneur I I if you've seen some of it oh I hope you haven't seen all of it what's the yes and technique the yes
01:29:35
and is just when you acknowledge what they're saying and you're just building on top of it right it's like yes and
01:29:40
you're right sometimes I can be a bit bit of an idiot it requires you to remove your ego though because again and
01:29:47
you have to be okay with that because we're all flawed human beings aren't you letting them win though in that
01:29:52
situation it it depends on how you define win to me I'm just not going to be hooked into this whereas before I
01:29:58
would defend myself I like oh what have I done that made you think that but I'm not interested if you're not in the I
01:30:05
love this quote from ber Brown where she says if it's I think from Theodore Roosevelt if you're not in the arena
01:30:10
with me I'm not really that interested in your feedback what if you I'm on Dragon's Den I'm on Dragon's Den there's
01:30:19
100 pictures a year they come into the den five of us dragons here we're interrog ating them we're asking them
01:30:25
difficult questions based on what you know about communication how should they handle
01:30:31
our critiques and our challenges is it that yes and thing because what's the
01:30:37
opposite of yes and the opposite of yes and is yes but right and and the classic
01:30:42
scenario is if you said something to them simple as and I remember sharing this with one of my clients where I saw
01:30:47
in their calls when people were arguing with them about their prices they would say yes but the reason we're expensive
01:30:54
is because we spend a lot more on R&D and we update our software all the time so all of a sudden when you say yes but
01:30:59
you're taking your conversation to a negative Direction but means whatever you say I'm going to negate that and I'm
01:31:05
going to give you my version of reality whereas when you say yes and the same thing can you you could critique them
01:31:11
and say oh I think your services are too expensive yes and Stephen the reason for that is because we invest heavily in
01:31:16
research and development so all of a sudden when you say yes end you're taking it in a positive direction you say yes but you're taking it in a
01:31:22
negative Direction one we're going to build upon this and we'll work through this one I'm negating what you're saying
01:31:28
and I'm just going to share and force my version of My reality it's it's a simple technique in the world of it's so
01:31:35
effective though I see it in the Dead all the time I see when my fellow dragons will be like interrogating someone and I'm watching and I watch
01:31:41
some of them they go yeah but but but and they just get the person's backup like they just it's like it becomes this
01:31:47
real antagonistic exchange and it reminds me of T sharot who's a neuroscientist that was on my podcast who told me they did studies where they
01:31:53
put two people in these like brain scanners and they got them to agree and agree and agree and scan their brains
01:31:58
and when they agreed their brains were illuminated then in the next round they got them to disagree at a certain moment and when they disagreed with each other
01:32:04
in these brain scanners their brains basically shut down because they'd gone into shut down they the almost like you
01:32:10
could when I say shut down it's like the lights went out um and so she taught me this law
01:32:16
that I wrote about which is called Never disagree when you say that people go never disagree doesn't make sense
01:32:21
doesn't make sense that's what you're saying do so good for is even if you say something negative it's all right even
01:32:27
you say that your content sucks yes and I know sometimes we put our content that just misses the Mark I'm human and then
01:32:34
there's no fire now because we're not creating the friction to create a fire and I I I again take that path
01:32:43
because I'm just not interested in just arguing for blatant argu I'm just not
01:32:48
interested in that the other thing that people struggle with a lot and we talked about it a tiny little bit earlier on is
01:32:54
starting conversations and small talk yeah it's difficult I think it's becoming increasingly more difficult as
01:33:00
we become more sort of digitalized in our lives it requires so much courage I feel that starting a meaningful
01:33:07
conversation requires a lot of Courage how do this sounds like a crazy [ __ ] thing to say on a podcast in 2025 how do
01:33:13
we start a conversation with another human being is there like a I've got a favorite I've got a favorite technique that I use and it requires courage so
01:33:20
you have been warned it requires courage and it's a game simple game called Halo Buffalo Halo Buffalo I love this game oh
01:33:27
you're not aware of this again because you haven't played in the world of improv H Buffalo high is something that's going great for you low something
01:33:34
that's not so great for you Buffalo something interesting about you now there's a reason why this game is so
01:33:39
great it's great because if I play Hollow Buffalo and you play Hollow Buffalo and we'll play it in a second are you game to play yeah okay then what
01:33:46
we're doing is we're creating something called conversational threads let's play first so do you want
01:33:51
to go first or do you want me to go first you go first okay sure hi I'm doing the Diary of a CEO podcast this is
01:33:57
pretty awesome so I love that about this like this is amazing for me this is a big high for me
01:34:03
low I'm really struggling with what is enough in this chapter of my life and
01:34:08
how much I should pursue building my business how much I should grow it I'm really struggling with that enough component and something interesting
01:34:15
about me is I have three alpackers and I live on on acreage gosh that's crazy
01:34:24
I gotta beat alpacas now don't beat alpacas whatever you like got a dog
01:34:29
called Pablo yeah there you go you're overthinking it don't overthink it give it a go hi I'm really enjoying this
01:34:35
conversation and I'm learning a lot which is amazing low I haven't been
01:34:41
working out in the gym as much as I want and I'm concerned that my like balance is off because I'm recording a lot and
01:34:47
things are out of whack and I'm trying to work in the evenings and that's a struggle trying to squeeze my relationships in there as well um random
01:34:54
interesting thing uh I'm training for a marathon that I haven't signed up to yet
01:35:00
that's incredible I didn't know you're going to do that that's incredible that's not as good as alpaca and definitely wasn't as good as
01:35:06
alpaca however that's great okay when you have the courage to do do this with someone now I have given you three
01:35:12
conversational threads that you can pull on do you say it to them that we're going to do Hyo Buffalo I play this game
01:35:17
with people I meet that I want to connect with okay this is not if I'm on the bus and I'm talking to someone no because that's generally small talk and
01:35:23
if you don't want to connect with the person doesn't make sense but what if I'm in an elevator or I'm in a social setting I'm at a networking event well
01:35:29
the game I just gave you is different the game I gave you is a game that you play with a colleague you've been working with for the last four years but
01:35:35
you barely go beyond High okay right because and we'll stick to that and then I can share with you the other one but
01:35:40
to me what's powerful about that game we just played is we all have people the reason people hate their work so much is because they don't feel connected and
01:35:46
it's because they're not having conversations at work it's because they don't feel a sense of connection with their team members so to me when you are
01:35:53
courageous enough to play this game say you've been with working with Susan for 12 months and you always see each other
01:35:58
in the lunch room but you never you just just sit down with Susan and go Susan I know this is a bit crazy listen to a guy
01:36:04
named VIN on coo he said if you want to connect with someone and you care about the connection play a game called H
01:36:09
Buffalo are you game play and just do what we just did because all of a sudden now I've given you through threads right
01:36:16
excited to be here also struggling with enough and then I also Shar with the got three Packers I live in an acreage there
01:36:22
are three things that you could choose for what you're interested in asking me about you just gave me three things I'm also very conscious about health and I
01:36:28
haven't been that great with it too so all of a sudden we can I've got three threads to choose from what's the opposite of that did you watch the Mr
01:36:35
Beast oh I haven't who's Mr Beast oh that's cool all right I see I'll see you in the meeting at too I'll catch you
01:36:41
then no worries because you've taken your shot in the dark and you've given one thread and it just didn't hit
01:36:47
whereas I'm I'm giving myself three chances here I'm giving three opportunities for a conversation to spark but in actuality there is six
01:36:53
threads here because there's three from me there's three from you I'm going to roll around the office when I get back to London and I'm going to ask people
01:36:59
for some higho Buffalo and just and because all of a sudden that requires vulnerability that requires something you're excited about and it's also
01:37:06
something interesting you didn't even know I didn't know you were going for a marathon man that's awesome right you should sign off for it yeah I should
01:37:12
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01:37:18
and there's a good chance that that matcha you're drinking is made by a company that I've invested more than seven figures in who are a sponsor of
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with code Steven 40 quick one I want to talk to you about our sponsor whoop a business I'm also an
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CEO let me know how you get on small talk is so critical I was
01:39:23
reading this study that said 55% of relationships both professional and personal are formed through small talk
01:39:28
and Casual interactions a study done by the University of Oxford and it says
01:39:34
that 80% of conversations in the workplace involve some form of small talk that's Harvard Business Review if I
01:39:39
want to be a master at small talk is there anything else that I need to know I really struggle with small talk 321 I
01:39:46
tell my students 321 which is three steps two types or the one thing so just
01:39:52
have that in the back your head there are three steps to something there are two types of something or the one thing
01:39:58
is so when someone's talking to you you want to keep it fairly brief and you want to kind of minimize that small talk and you know you don't want to turn it
01:40:03
into Big Talk they'll talk to you about something and you go the one thing about building a personal brand is XYZ or just
01:40:09
X right so you go the one thing about personal branding if I could share with you now is the importance of being
01:40:14
consistent hey so good to meet you let's take a quick selfy and then you go so
01:40:19
again you have that framework in your head whereas before when people ask me heav what's what should I do with my communication skills I got stuck in the
01:40:25
Trap of oh man I've just heard you talk there are so many things that I can tell you I can tell you immediately now there
01:40:31
are eight things you probably should start focus on in this sequence but then now it turns into something I don't want it to be so now I have that framework I
01:40:38
just think all right so in response to this can I go down the three steps to what they're saying the two types of
01:40:44
what they're saying or the one thing about what they're saying is this and do you think I should have some nuggets
01:40:50
nuggets some questions in my back pocket that I roll out for frequently some pre-prepared small talk things that
01:40:55
aren't have you seen the weather yeah yeah yeah yeah you should and and these are important and and you can create
01:41:01
your own I mean I love the what do you do in your free time I really enjoy that question because it opens up so many
01:41:06
doors to so many interesting things that people do as opposed to them telling me what they do for a job because we've
01:41:12
heard this many times before when someone asks you what they do for a living I'm trying to understand where you are in the status hierarchy I love
01:41:19
what are you doing your free time I I genuinely love that question and have a list of three to four
01:41:24
questions just have them in your back pocket that framework of 321 though that allows you to get out of that small talk
01:41:30
in a brief manner they ask you a question about personal branding oh there's there's two types of personal branding oh hey the three steps to
01:41:35
personal branding are or hey the one thing about personal branding is hey good luck so good to see you let's take a quick selfie is there an art to having
01:41:43
a difficult conversation so say someone has been always interrupts me at
01:41:51
work and and know I do you know why it happens though why because of low levels
01:41:57
of physical and low levels of vocal presence if you know if I talk to you
01:42:02
like this and I'm going to share a really good idea with you and um it's so easy to interrupt this person so you
01:42:10
have to you have to fix that at a foundational level you have to increase your vocal presence you have to increase
01:42:16
your physical presence because it's infinitely harder to interrupt this version of Vin as opposed to the version
01:42:21
of Vin you just experienced before that's the first thing I would say at a foundational level that's what you want to fix and again that's to do with
01:42:28
volume that's to do with hand gestures pow feere all the things we've spoken about and by leveling that up it's much
01:42:34
harder to interrupt this yeah I couldn't interrupt this guy it's harder yeah yeah
01:42:39
whereas all of a sudden people aren't aware of that and they think oh people interrupt me just because people are rude no no it's because you haven't
01:42:45
indicated that you are you're taking the floor right now this is why I say to people who get interrupted all the time
01:42:51
all right here's a simple another simple straty if everyone's sitting around a team meeting stand when you're about to
01:42:57
deliver your point because when you stand you now have more physical presence so all of a sudden people won't
01:43:02
interrupt you as long as you're standing because I'm still talking the biggest objection people have to the pause is
01:43:08
they say oh but if I pause people interrupt me not if you're standing if you're standing and you pause it's clearly a pause for effect I'm still
01:43:15
taking the floor right so so there are so many other things you could do to prevent it from happening you can even prime the
01:43:21
conversation if you know know there's a seral interruptor sorry I do this sometimes if
01:43:28
there's a seral interruptor in your environment and I was just pointing at myself there I don't interrupt because I want
01:43:33
to be a jerk sometimes I feel like oh I want to add value and and that's I I want to give them the Ben upit of the doubt that's what most of them want to
01:43:39
do but then there's the 1% that are just Sero interrupted I just always I always I want to take the floor they don't
01:43:45
respect you they don't respect you yeah I want that floor that very difficult you have to have a
01:43:52
private conversation with outside but to the 99% of people who are interrupting because they want to add value you just
01:43:57
need to Prime the conversation you just need to say hey look to everyone in the team I want to share my idea if you give
01:44:03
me five minutes at the end of it I would love to ask for your input but i' would love to share my idea completely and holy is that okay and I just get them
01:44:10
all to agree and if they do but in after I've said that I can let them say the thing I go thanks Stephen I'm still
01:44:16
sharing the idea I'll come back to your question in a moment and you have to reclaim your land do you think you have
01:44:21
to mirror someone's you know you talked about these five foundations am I meant to mirror yours to relate and resonate
01:44:27
with you it's one of the fastest ways to build rapport with someone we we learn about it through body language I think a
01:44:33
lot of people understand the concept of matching and mirroring when it comes to body language right if you come up to someone and you want to build rapport
01:44:38
quickly and they've got big body language if you do the same then it will help them feel more connected to you right people rarely think about it with
01:44:44
their voice and that's the same thing the years of going on stage and speaking I've had so many people come up to me
01:44:50
where if imagine someone comes up to me they're like oh Haven that was an amazing keynote and I took that same energy VIN on stage to go oh thank you
01:44:56
so much for coming up hey thank you I appreciate it you'd freak the hell out of them right so instead of that I match
01:45:01
and mirror their vocal foundations I'm like oh hey thank you so much for coming up I know it's a bit scary to sometimes
01:45:06
meet us but you know when we fart it still smells hey thank you so much for coming up and connecting with me the
01:45:12
idea is you don't stay there though M you meet them where they are and then you take them to where you want to go so
01:45:18
I'm meeting them where they are so they're comfortable and we build rapport and connection I'm like oh hey so good to have you come up thank you so much
01:45:23
and and hey if you if you took a moment for a second what was your favorite part what did you really connect with when
01:45:29
you were talking to me so I met them where they are and then I slowly bring them to where I want to go and it
01:45:36
happens like magic where you will see them slowly come out of their show a little more you've got to meet them
01:45:42
where they are first to build that Rapport I've heard you talk about this thing called Ford yes f o r d we're talking about
01:45:49
family occupation Recreation and dreams and what's the context there well it's these are the points of conversation
01:45:55
that I could talk about if I wanted to engage with that person for a longer period of time instead of just thinking about what they do that's what I always
01:46:01
used to do I always us just think about career occupation oh what do you do I tended default to that when I was in the keynote speaking career but then Ford is
01:46:08
just a wonderful acronym to go well there's so many other things we could talk about there's so many other things we could talk about right I could talk
01:46:14
about family Recreation occupation and your dreams and why does having a a
01:46:19
broader set of things to talk about cause more resonance and connection because that interaction feels different
01:46:25
to every other one okay otherwise it always feels like occupation it's always about occupation I I I just love having extra
01:46:31
things to about to go to like the dreams again I I love asking people that question I love watching there's a
01:46:37
gentleman named Simon squip who who who's being able to own the brand of what is your dream right it's such a
01:46:42
powerful question and it causes people to pause and think and what is my dream
01:46:47
it sometimes can lead to pain sometimes lead to wonderful conversations there's something about the depth of the question I think as well that just like
01:46:54
it hits people yeah it hits people especially with the vulnerable things when you started saying that you were struggling with too much
01:47:00
yeah there's something that changed in me I was like oh yeah he is
01:47:06
human that's why Halo Buffalo is so powerful is because and that's why I say it requires
01:47:11
courage because I know that the moment people heard me say that they they they clench their butt cheeks they're like oh
01:47:17
no I don't really want to do that but the moment you do it it changes everything it shows I'm human shows I
01:47:24
struggle shows I've got things that aren't going that well you know when we um had the conversation on the podcast
01:47:29
with Vanessa about body language one of the things that I saw in the comment section was people pointing out that in
01:47:34
different cultures yes different rules apply yes it's kind of what I was saying earlier about being British we're a bit
01:47:40
more conserved yeah do you need to sort of overlay all this advice with cultural Nuance 100% a motivational speaker from
01:47:47
America coming to Australia doesn't work well because if they they come to Australia they're like oh get on your
01:47:52
feet let's start Australians are very skeptical like those in the UK and we kind of sit back we're like yeah no mate we just started we're not doing that
01:47:59
just yet and that's why when American speakers come to Australia they're like oh they're so it takes them a long time
01:48:04
to get into it because we're so skeptical in Australia too right I think we we kept that as we went to Australia from the UK and there's still that so
01:48:11
you've got to be sensitive to that and before you go and speak in a certain country I think it's very important to go right what are the cultural norms and
01:48:18
expose yourself to the I've made mistakes before right I I I've done the ultimate mistake
01:48:23
I went there's a bit in my keyote where I say I told my dad I wanted to leave accounting and become a magician and my
01:48:29
dad said what the hell you want to beat a Harry Potter right so I play right I play a little bit with the voice and
01:48:36
then I went to I went to Asia and I did the same accent no one laughed and I
01:48:41
went right no sensitivity there I I I didn't realize it that well I they
01:48:47
didn't find it funny cuz they're like oh yeah a was sweating bullets and then
01:48:55
they start to slowly realize oh he's taking the piss oh and then the audience turns against you I've done it wrong
01:49:01
many times before I've done it wrong as many and again that's how you learn but people don't want to learn that way anymore they don't want to pay the price
01:49:07
of failure that's the only way you learn and and so many people hate
01:49:13
hearing their own voice they do I remember the first time I heard my own voice I could believe it when I was recording those little cassettes back in
01:49:18
Plymouth when I was a kid do you know why no it's because when you hear your own voice you're
01:49:25
hearing the vibrations through bone and muscle muscle tissue you're hearing
01:49:30
those vibrations so they sound deeper more resonant to you so when you hear your voice you're like oo I sound like Barry wide so you think you have this
01:49:37
deep rich voice because you're hearing it through a different medium whereas when you open your mouth and you speak to another person the medium is not
01:49:44
muscle and bone it's through air so it's less dense so it sounds
01:49:49
higher pitched so one of the main reasons people hate it immediately is they go oh what why do I sound why do I sound like this whereas in actual
01:49:56
reality it's because it's going through a different medium one's going through bone and one's going through muscle the other one's going through the air so
01:50:02
this is why I thought I could sing and then when I recorded singing and I played it back I was Dreadful made the same error I couldn't believe it I
01:50:07
thought something was wrong with the recorder yes and that's what happens to everybody and it's also the same thing with why why people hate themselves on
01:50:14
camera it's because you see yourself in the mirror and you see yourself the way you see yourself in then you see
01:50:19
yourself in camera and it's flipped the other way and you go whoa why I don't look like that why does this part of my face look different well it's because
01:50:26
that's what everybody else sees but you've been looking at yourself in the mirror your entire life you've been listening to yourself through bone tissue and muscle your entire life so
01:50:32
how do I overcome that desensitization you have to listen to yourself do you still care about your
01:50:38
voice do you still listen to it yeah you don't care anymore you love the sound of your voice now don't you I wouldn't say I love it but I'm I'm so used to it it
01:50:45
doesn't make me cringe anymore because you've desensitized yeah because you're now hearing what other people hear and
01:50:50
you and again that's why you should record videos of yourself and I still think that record and review thing if
01:50:55
that's the one thing you do after this it's going of if you pick three things to change after you do that process it's
01:51:01
going to radically shift the way you come across when you speak you imagine you are only three
01:51:07
changes away from completely transforming that's all that it takes I've seen my students do this time and
01:51:13
time and time again and and I I I wish I was able to show you in these video examples when all of a sudden they just shift more Melody more volume larger
01:51:20
body language it's a different human being it's crazy and again I'm not saying be
01:51:26
that all the time it's now you having gears right it's like a car most people
01:51:31
just one gear and I'll bring that one gear that one communication style to every interaction why is it not effective do
01:51:39
you think this whole introvert extrovert thing is [ __ ] I asked my vocal teacher this
01:51:44
and I said like what's the what what's what's the difference and and she asked me this question in return where she said that
01:51:51
pianist you saw at the concert I took you to if they're an extrovert how would it be
01:51:56
different when they play the piano and if they're an introvert how would it be different I said I have no idea she goes
01:52:01
it's the same thing just you're playing your instrument the only difference between introvert and extrovert is an introvert they lose energy from social
01:52:08
interaction so you have to be highly digant you have to be highly diligent when you're expending that energy and
01:52:14
you're playing the music for people you have to be extremely diligent whereas those who are extroverts they can play it for a longer ex extended period of
01:52:21
time so again for an extrovert it's just about choosing when you do that choosing when you play beautifully as opposed to
01:52:28
oh I'm I'm an introvert I I should just talk like this then because I'm an introvert it's like what
01:52:35
really social anxiety some people do have like severe social anxiety um so
01:52:41
many of the think they might have clicked on this conversation because they're interested but they have no belief in themselves that they could
01:52:48
ever change because they literally their body goes through almost like a panic attack when they're in these social
01:52:53
situations what you say to those people it's the slow process of
01:52:59
desensitization it really is I I I I find it exposure therapy yes I find it
01:53:04
and I was that I mean the whole reason the only reason I learned magic in my life was because I felt like I had no
01:53:10
value and I had to go learn a whole craft to have value so that I could be
01:53:15
amazing because by myself I'm not amazing that's why I learned magic because I felt like I wasn't amazing and
01:53:21
then when I had this amazing thing then everyone thought I was amazing I was like oh I'm amazing now but then one day I forgot my cards at school and then all
01:53:27
of a sudden I went home and I had some social interactions I went oh I'm not amazing what I'm trying to say here is
01:53:34
instead of picking something like magic and then using that as a crutch because I did and then in every conversation
01:53:41
with you I would have to do magic with you first before I do anything else because if I didn't I I don't feel
01:53:47
confident now I feel like I'm I have nothing to give so to me this this is why I push communication
01:53:53
skills so much let me share with you a story let me let me give you a little bit of context when I was 13 I went to
01:54:00
year Camp freshman Camp I had a really good friend at the time named Kevin I
01:54:05
saw him playing ukulele around the fire camp and for the first time I saw Kevin talk to girls me and Kevin bonded over
01:54:12
the fact we would never talk to girls because I couldn't do it he couldn't do it and we bonded over that that night he broke that that trust cuz he was talking
01:54:19
to girls he was playing as ukulele and he was amazing and I felt so pissed offu at him I ran back to the cabin and the
01:54:24
next morning I went the only friend I have here is now talking to girls and and then the next morning I see him at
01:54:30
the breakfast table by himself I was like what this guy was the bee's knees last night and now he's by himself what
01:54:36
the freak and I didn't understand that for the life of me and then I experienced in
01:54:41
my life with cards when I have a packet of cards I could talk to anyone but then when I didn't have my cards I couldn't
01:54:46
talk to anyone I had crippling social anxiety and I went a this is what we
01:54:51
call contextual confidence oh interesting so in certain contexts I'm more confident even the
01:54:58
people you're talking about who are anxious there are certain contexts where they are contextually confident and they
01:55:04
light up there's a certain topic that if someone talks about it that they might think of themselves of being a bad communicator but because that topic
01:55:10
comes up they now are a great communicator right so then the idea of contextual confidence led me to really
01:55:15
working out that communication skills is such a critical skill set why because if I master the use of my voice if I master
01:55:22
the use of of my body language I master of the ability to story tell can I leave my voice at home can I leave my body
01:55:28
language up can I leave my ability to story tell and connect with other people at home you can't now you have this
01:55:35
ability that follows you everywhere you go meaning you become contextually confident in every single area of your
01:55:41
life do you get tired when you go home yes 100% I can imagine cuz you are high
01:55:48
energy because I choose to give yeah I I I'm I'm I'm conscious choosing to do
01:55:54
that and there are times when I choose not to so that in the times where I do give I can give you the best version of
01:55:59
me I didn't leave my our interview today was 4 p.m. right M I didn't leave the
01:56:05
hotel room at all all day why because I'm conserving that energy for you okay
01:56:10
thank you yeah you're welcome and to the point where my videographer was asking me he said hey dude are you all right
01:56:16
and then he goes look just just and he was I love him he so concerned about me he goes just just wave to me outside of
01:56:21
your windows I can see you I open the door oh this door opens and I waved I was like hey he's like oh cool cool cool
01:56:27
on your swe cuz I didn't I didn't leave my hotel room right because I was conscious of that crazy I was just conscious apprciate itk that's all right
01:56:33
that's all right I was already jet lagged I didn't want to I didn't want to be [ __ ] no but I can relate as well cuz I I I sometimes wonder if energy is
01:56:39
finite or if I do this podcast and then I you know I'll go in go into the real
01:56:44
world and I just I don't want to I'm so I'm depleted yeah and I I always wondered if that's something I could do
01:56:50
something about if I just need to Buck up and just you know try there's only so much of that you can do and it is a
01:56:56
limited it it is a limited Supply that's why it's so beautiful when someone is willing to sit and be present and play their instrument with you mhm because
01:57:03
it's it's it's a conscious thing whereas I used to approach every interaction with oh bring the bare
01:57:10
minimum and I I didn't Val I didn't understand that that exchange of energy
01:57:15
you get so much more out of life when you give more not just with money and time but with your energy yes there's a
01:57:21
transaction here that's happening that's invisible and and I treat like it's so
01:57:27
weird and it doesn't happen because I have a lot of followers lots of people don't know who I am on the way here I
01:57:34
got upgraded on my flight because I just built connection with the person and I thought you know what I'm just this
01:57:39
person's probably had a lot of boring conversations I'm just going to make him laugh so I just spoke make him laugh and they're like
01:57:45
oh and and it happens I feel like I just found this cheat code in life where I keep my energy when I need it and when
01:57:51
there are times I need to I'll I'll use the energy like a currency yeah it is and I'm I'm not I was I didn't think
01:57:56
they were going to give me an upgrade but I did they did which was so cool right and they felt good too you
01:58:02
probably hypnotize them or something yeah I don't know maybe magistry yeah it's it's it's an energy bribe I going
01:58:09
back to what you said earlier you said that you're at a phase in your life where you're struggling with
01:58:15
the thought that when is enough enough yeah it's been really hard yeah
01:58:23
I mean are you feeling this because as you build your personal brand as this podcast reaches more people as it is
01:58:28
already as it gets bigger and bigger and bigger more and more and more opportunities come along the momentum
01:58:34
gets faster and faster and faster it becomes harder now to steer what is that
01:58:41
struggle though so struggle implies that there's two forces pulling in two different direction so describe both
01:58:47
forces to me there's a part of me that is very
01:58:53
ambitious but my identity now has been upgraded I'm not just entrepreneur I'm dad and there's a pull between the
01:59:00
entrepreneur in me and the dad in me and it's mutually exclusive yes and they're both so strong and I've never felt it
01:59:06
this strong my daughter's about to turn one my son's seven turning eight and
01:59:11
these forces now Stephen are so strong because my father was so good in my life
01:59:17
such a pillar in my life that I used to be a away a 180 days a
01:59:23
year right I missed out on so much of my son's upbringing and I I don't want to make
01:59:29
that same mistake and again I didn't realize there was this I didn't see the correlation between success and
01:59:34
sacrifice I I I drank the Kool-Aid I thought you can have everything you can have everything and and I I haven't
01:59:41
found a way to do that because the more success I have there sacrifice that comes right behind it you know and and I've just am
01:59:49
learning what is the amount of sacrifice that I'm willing to to to have and it's it's so hard because
01:59:56
as as I value being like the more I value being a father the the bigger these opportunities that come along as
02:00:02
well and then you're like ah so it's this constant push and pull this and how
02:00:08
are you navigating that in terms of have you got a framework for the decision or
02:00:14
a framework to know what you should say yes to and what you shouldn't every 6 months I do a process called recalibrate
02:00:20
and recalibrate is a process I came up with with one of my best friends and myself Ali terai he's one of the founders of a company called future golf
02:00:25
in Australia and we go away for about half a week to a week and we get permission
02:00:32
from our families and we review and reflect on the last six months and how we've lived and the decisions we've made
02:00:37
and we go through memorable moments and we go through down moments and because we both Journal we can reflect back
02:00:43
quite accurately on oh what made us feel [ __ ] in the last six months and then we save ourselves from doing those same actions in the next six months and then
02:00:49
the things that made us feel good we go all right those go in more category so now how can we do more of those things that made us feel good so the way I
02:00:55
protect myself from that is by doing this process but even then the push and pull is it's always ever present that
02:01:02
struggle is always there what is your ambition I told you about my two kids
02:01:10
right I I had very selfish Ambitions early on in my career very ambitious uh
02:01:16
my own which was to make a lot of money um you know to to be able to do do all
02:01:22
these different things that I wanted to do in the material world and all of that and then my son was born and he was born
02:01:28
in 2017 and we were in America and we were firsttime parents and
02:01:35
we we didn't know what to expect we didn't have many friends while we were here and we were super isolated so we didn't we didn't have other kids around
02:01:41
my son and and I still remember this trip I went on to Japan with my cousin and her
02:01:46
husband they're both psychologists and we're one week into that trip
02:01:52
and I remember them saying hey we we have something really important we need to talk to you about and and I was like
02:01:58
what the hell guys why are you being all serious what's going on and and and they sat my wife and I down and they
02:02:05
said we we we we think Xander is autistic my
02:02:10
son and at that point because I I thought it was because of me being away I thought it was because oh because I'm
02:02:16
away so much that that you you didn't want to connect with me and
02:02:22
and they confirmed that they said all these things eye contact um maybe he won't be verbal
02:02:29
maybe it was one of the most difficult periods of my life and then my wife leaned over and
02:02:34
she said do you think it's by chance that one of the greatest things that
02:02:40
people who are on the Spectrum struggle with you're really great at do you think
02:02:45
it's by chance that he came to us and at that point I was not teaching
02:02:51
communication skills really yet
02:02:56
and it's almost a very selfish goal but the reason I teach it is because I think you know that one of the
02:03:02
main things that happens when you teach something Stephen is that you become better at it you deepen your knowledge
02:03:07
in that Arena you get better at teaching it you get better and better and better at teaching it a big part of my ambition
02:03:13
in this chapter of life is to get so good at teaching this that I can help my son you know now my
02:03:18
son talks my son gives me eye contact just last year my
02:03:25
son did the most amazing thing where I was teaching a class filled with hundreds of
02:03:30
people and he just walks up on stage grabs the mic and talks and asks me if I
02:03:37
God Can I have this book Dad I'm like yes of course you can he did something that scared every single person in that room and we didn't push him to do it and
02:03:44
how do we make that happen he came to that theater with me 30 40 times first times you stand outside the theater you
02:03:50
just listen to dad's voice then you step you stand you open the door you stand in there and you can kind
02:03:56
of see Dad from a f too much okay that's all right you got overwhelmed step back out and just step by step by step by
02:04:01
step my son was able to gradually walk on stage and do the thing he did and I just went wow this is so cool because me teaching this I've understood now wow I
02:04:08
can break it down to micro steps for you
02:04:14
and selfishly that's that's such a big part of my ambition right now is how can I get so good at teaching this that I I
02:04:21
can help my son overcome one of his most challenging difficulties we experienced in this
02:04:28
life incredibly beautiful your father as well yeah was and is an incredible
02:04:37
person you were telling me a little bit about him before but I also did some research on the life he lived and what
02:04:43
he went through and his brothers and his family and it was incredible and he is now a monk and my mom tell me about that
02:04:51
confers ation yeah Mom and Dad before I moved to the US
02:04:57
they yeah they we sat around a kitchen table like this and and they said hey we've got a big bombshell to drop on you
02:05:02
and and and we want to become monks right we've been we've been playing the money game we've been playing the status
02:05:08
game and and we we're suffering we're suffering and we've been following Buddhism for years and we find so much
02:05:15
peace in in this pathway he said we're suffering yeah how we would buy a new
02:05:21
car because one of my uncles bought a new car we'd buy a new house in a two-story house because one of my uncles
02:05:27
bought a two-story house and I watched my dad play this and I saw it and it got to the point where we got a jet ski and
02:05:33
we didn't have a boat license so what are we doing with the jet ski and it
02:05:38
became this weird moment where I was like oh dad like can we take it out oh no we can't because none of us have a boat license so dad had his own
02:05:46
suffering in his life he went from nothing in Australia to building incredible businesses with his brothers right they started South Australia one
02:05:52
of South Australia's first grocery stores and then they went to buy pharmacies and restaurants and takeaway
02:05:58
stores they did commercial property really residential property so they they built all this up and they'd fled from
02:06:03
they fled from war from war so they started from nothing in Australia and I watched them do that right the most
02:06:09
memorable thing that led me to this path of Entrepreneurship that I am in now is I saw
02:06:15
them we would have three bedrooms in the house one was for sleeping the other two were sewing rooms and then after you
02:06:21
sewing all day you go outside you peel onions and you get paid 50 cents per bag of 20 K bag of onion that you peel you
02:06:27
get 50 cents for that whole bag peeled and then after that every part of our garden was dug up to grow vegetables
02:06:32
that we will sell for 10 cents a bunch at the local grocery store and then after that as well they would also cook
02:06:37
these delicious things in vietnames got one and then we would cook them and sell them for 50 cents each inside the house
02:06:43
right that's what we all do so I watch them do that to then buying a farm to then realizing that oh the farmer sell
02:06:48
to an agent the agent sells it to grocery stores oh we should save up money saved up for years bought a grocery store so then we became the farm
02:06:54
we became the grocery store right and I just watched them do all of these different things and and there were
02:07:00
years where Dad was really happy but then there were years that started to come where he find I saw him really
02:07:08
empty and you're just going through the motions of doing things because I'm know Uncle did it so I guess I'll do it too
02:07:15
and I and that's what he meant by suffering is that they were playing that money game and they were playing that status game and they felt
02:07:22
there was an exhaustion to it when they when we had that conversation there was such exhaustion
02:07:27
there and I remember feeling it which what made me think cuz because on my head I was thinking oh you just want to
02:07:33
get a divorce but but when I when I felt the exhaustion of it I went oh are you exhausted of each other or I went wow oh
02:07:38
wow there there's a game you're playing and you're so exhausted and you found freedom because you're so excited for
02:07:43
this other thing and this other thing was becoming a monk becoming a monk renouncing they renounced everything
02:07:49
renounced everything yeah and then I became the person that then had to give some of the things that they
02:07:55
needed I think I think one of the greatest gifts that my parents have given me is not giving me an
02:08:01
inheritance it's one of the greatest things at the time I want to negotiate that so bad I was like 20% could we just
02:08:07
can we just split it a little bit but one of the greatest things they did cuz that didn't kill my drive was it a lot of stuff they had yeah they had money
02:08:14
Millions yeah and then I and then then I almost had then there's a part where and
02:08:20
again to be completely truthful with the journey then I was like oh well then now now I need to help you and I I had to
02:08:27
because they had a vision and I wanted to help them so I bought him a block of land to help them build a meditation
02:08:33
center and my dad was like no no no I just want the like just land and then he had a shed there and then he said just
02:08:40
whoever comes to help us put the shed together that will be the meditation center it doesn't need to be anything more than that and then he had all these
02:08:46
people in the Vietnamese Community come along and but you paid around the back no I didn't I didn't pay them I didn't pay them I didn't pay them I had to pay
02:08:52
some diggers to come in to actually you know move the land in certain places but I was happy to do that and then I saw
02:08:57
them build this beautiful little spot where it was filled with Gardens with vegetables and self-sufficient now and
02:09:04
people in the Vietnamese culture come to them because a lot of them are suffering from PTSD but they don't acknowledge it where is this place in South Australia
02:09:11
we got a little block of land and um yeah it's called nmai and then they they
02:09:16
just have people go there vietnames because my dad doesn't speak English that well so he's got a bunch of people
02:09:22
from the Vietnamese culture coming to who are suffering from the war and some of them have had children pass away and
02:09:28
all these and then I see my dad bring someone who the craziest situation when I saw him have someone lose a child one
02:09:37
of the greatest pains I think a human could ever know and then walk in in tears dad speak to them hold their hand
02:09:44
went for a walk and then just took their hands they started gardening and I watched this ridiculous thing happened in front of me where then he took them
02:09:50
gardening they plant did a few things they picked some fruit they went in the kitchen they cooked and then he just said to them at the end of the day you did something amazing today you planted
02:09:57
some fruit for those who you may not be around for but when this tree grows you've planted some beautiful fruit for
02:10:03
someone to eat you've done something really good today and I watched him almost heal someone without saying much
02:10:09
at all because and I said Dad how did you do that he goes because I just took them out of their head just for a moment
02:10:14
into their hands to give them a moment of quiet people people know how to get
02:10:20
out of their own troubles sometimes they just need a place to need some shade is is he happy I've
02:10:27
never seen him happier where and I was the biggest skeptic cuz I thought surely
02:10:32
there's going to be a crack and I was playing that skeptic I think I feel kind of bad playing that skeptic because for
02:10:38
a period of my life I was like is this real like is it real or is this a
02:10:45
phase and as far as I can see it's it's real get on him and and he's so free
02:10:52
though is cu he wakes up every morning there's he has this incredible
02:10:58
he's no attachments he's he's he's detached from everything what has he told you about the endless pursuit of
02:11:07
Mo has he given you any cautionary sort of warnings about yeah yeah it's it's
02:11:13
it's it's what brought me back home from the US it's what brought me back you told me a quote which I loved before we started
02:11:19
recording what was that quote while I was in in the US he he doesn't say much my dad right growing up he he he
02:11:27
supported through action a lot and I remember when my mom called me and said hey I your dad wants to talk to you and
02:11:34
this is when I was in the US and I was oh man I was so KN deep in the keynote speaking career I was on the road 200
02:11:40
days a year and I was doing 80 speeches it was it was such a addictive career because so financially rewarding so
02:11:46
fulfilling as well and I loved performing and it was so amazing and I I couldn't get out of that world but I was
02:11:52
so lonely here in the US I was so miserable but again again because you get paid more you go oh you one more
02:11:58
year one more year oh honey it's okay we'll just do one more year and my dad called and he just said a sentence that
02:12:05
brought me home and the sentence was and and I I'll preface this because he knows I love medieval movies I love I love
02:12:12
this kind of movies and he said a king that knows the limits to his desires will rule a lifetime
02:12:22
and I'd lost track of my desires at that point what does he mean by that you'll
02:12:28
notice kings that want to continually conquer I want to conquer more I want to conquer more land and and gradually what
02:12:34
happens to them is they die they get killed whereas the kings that know the limits to their desires they rule an
02:12:41
entire lifetime and that's what I really connected with and that's what brought
02:12:47
me back and I walked away from a speaking career to go back to south Australia Adelaide I remember my agents
02:12:55
in Australia said can't you at least come back to Melbourne and Sydney you're going to Adelaide and and to me because
02:13:01
I wanted [Music] to the pendulum had swung so far one
02:13:06
way that I reacted in that way and swung so back far the other way and I learned
02:13:13
a lot going back because a lot of the beliefs that I had weren't real I believe that I had to be here in
02:13:19
Southern California to have this business that I wanted to build to become the person you thought to become
02:13:25
I I had that belief and that belief wasn't real is there a voice inside you
02:13:30
that goes God you could do it bigger 100% it's there go to New York 100% it's
02:13:35
there but my my dad's voice is there though my dad's voice is also there which I'm grateful for because I made
02:13:41
the mistake with my son already Stephen I was a away so much I was away so much
02:13:47
I don't want to make the same mistake with him ongoing I wanted to
02:13:52
recalibrate because here's what would normally happen to me I would always achieve the goals of a
02:13:59
previous version of me and then go oh I'm unhappy oh it's because you achieved the goals of a previous version of
02:14:05
you I wasn't aligning the things that I was doing with the present version of me
02:14:10
because I never took the time to sit still that's why the recalibrate trips that I going with my best mate Ali are
02:14:16
so vital to me because I'm learning how to take action that's more aligned with the present version of
02:14:22
me I've got a previous version of you here what was um what was what was that
02:14:29
kid like at that age starving for attention starving for
02:14:36
attention and desperate felt really lonely because
02:14:42
I moved school so many times most people go to university with a group of strong friends I went to five schools what did
02:14:49
he need to hear if you could teleport back and you could have a a whisper in his ear and just give him a couple of sentences at that moment in time what
02:14:55
would you say to him I tell him not to be so attached to who you currently
02:15:03
are stop being so attached to this identity that you've
02:15:10
created not only are other people going to try to keep you inside this you're the one that's keeping you inside this
02:15:16
you keep blaming other people saying that oh everyone's stopping me from becoming the person that I am no no no
02:15:21
no lesson vin it's you you're the one stopping you from
02:15:27
becoming the future version of
02:15:33
you and the simple word would just be just let
02:15:39
go let go of that present version of you I hung on to
02:15:45
it why do we hang on to it
02:15:52
as much as my reality sucked in that moment I felt safe familiar familiar and and and and
02:15:58
it felt like home because what is home home is just a familiar and the coolest thing about traveling Stephen is that as
02:16:05
I traveled more before home I would tell you oh home to me is Salsbury downs and then as I started to travel
02:16:12
around my own City I oh no home is adelade then I started to go camping oh home is South Australia as I traveled oh
02:16:17
home is Australia then I started to live in America oh home is America and then home gradually becomes the
02:16:24
world there's this beautiful concept where again I just kind of home to me is just a familiar and at that point my
02:16:31
home was Salsbury Downs my home with this such limited version of
02:16:36
Vin and I was too afraid to venture out of
02:16:44
Salsbury then what's the most important thing that we haven't spoken about
02:16:51
that we should have spoken about today as it relates to the work that you do
02:16:57
and if you had to guess what the person at home that question that they have that I didn't ask that they're screaming
02:17:03
at the screen what it might be that we didn't cover what do you think it would be one big thing
02:17:10
is so I've taught you all these different things you can do with your voice all these different things you can play with your body language and the big thing they're
02:17:17
screaming at home is they they're screaming out yeah but if I did that tonight with my partner they're going to
02:17:22
freak out they're going to go what the hell is that what what are you what are you doing right so all of a sudden now there needs to be a process for that so
02:17:29
Vin what is the process for that thank you for asking and the process for that is you have to understand first of all I
02:17:36
love this concept of neutral ears and a neutral ear is someone who has no preconceived idea of how you sound or
02:17:42
how you communicate and there are neutral ears everywhere before I me well you watch my content but if I go out
02:17:47
today and I go to get some gas or I go to the grocery store there are neutral ears there they don't have any
02:17:53
preconceived ideas of how I sound how I talk with my hands whether or not I'm aware of the Power Sphere or not you
02:17:58
could go out in those instances and try out these new behaviors H run it on some neutral ears I like that run it on some
02:18:03
neutral ears and then you can play so if normally you speak very quietly tonight when you go to the gas station go in there with vibrant volume and go hey
02:18:10
quick question before I go in do you have any chocolates with the peanuts yeah yeah you do I'm going to come in I'm coming in for them play just do it
02:18:16
right and just do it sometimes one look can put you back in your mold whereas
02:18:22
when you do it neutral ears and when you try new behaviors with no negative judgment do you know what it does it helps those behaviors stick a little bit
02:18:28
more yeah because it helps you feel normal doing it and then you have a chance now to play and be vulnerable
02:18:34
look for neutral ears I'd set people kpis every single day
02:18:39
and every single day set yourself a kpi maybe go to a gas station a little further from your house and play with
02:18:45
your voice play with your body language be a bigger version of you and as you do this more and more and more you IR Out
02:18:51
The Kinks you'll do it you'll feel wrong you go that's okay I'm going to try it again oh that felt right and then you
02:18:58
start to finesse because the first time someone plays the saxophone it sounds
02:19:03
terrible but as they play it more and more and more and more oh they get better and better and better and better so new is very important okay so that's
02:19:09
a process then if you want your partner to be supportive then you have to Prime the conversation when you go home so
02:19:15
don't immediately come home as this other version of you come home and and prime it by saying look honey I've been
02:19:20
been very quiet with my voice my entire life and I just feel inspired to give you and the kids more of me so if you
02:19:26
see me play with my volume if you see me play with my melody could you please encourage me and support me on this
02:19:33
journey because I want to be better and do it with me yeah oh that's beautiful I
02:19:38
love that yes and maybe we can do it together all of a sudden now this shifts the way they see the change you can do
02:19:45
this with your colleagues as well I love that neutral ears then we have a closing
02:19:50
tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for and the question that's been left
02:19:58
for you what is one thing that you know to
02:20:05
be true doing pauses did you see that even though you can't prove
02:20:14
it that in the world we live right now you can negotiate whatever reality you desire
02:20:21
right now in my own mind I just have that belief and that
02:20:27
belief has served me my entire life and I have this voice in my head where it says oh when you die and there's a
02:20:33
greater being they're going to go oh you're wrong you're wrong in telling people that you can negotiate whatever reality you desire it's not true let's
02:20:39
say that happens and then I meet the Creator and he says that to me I'd still be glad I lived my life in that
02:20:49
way I'd still be glad I lived my life in that exact way I mean gosh yeah it's a much more
02:20:58
productive optimistic effective way to live even if
02:21:04
you're wrong even if I'm wrong yeah because I believe there are useful beliefs and then there were useless beliefs I used to carry so many useless
02:21:10
beliefs Stephen so many and now I just choose to believe in beliefs that
02:21:16
support me in being able to create the reality that I desire is that even if I'm wrong I still am glad I lived my
02:21:21
life in this way because there's a part of my brain right now that genuinely believes this that there'll be a day
02:21:28
when I will be bored with this chapter of life and no longer want to teach communication
02:21:33
skills I just hope that I have the courage but I know that I'll be able to
02:21:38
live a chapter where I become a chef I love cooking and I know it to be true that if
02:21:44
I wanted that and I'm ready for that chapter I can write a chapter where I become a great chef
02:21:51
vinn thank you thank you for coming all the way from Australia and thank you so much for the work that you do it's so
02:21:56
you're so remarkably good at um making the complex simple and I think I really really deeply believe and this is why I
02:22:02
wanted to speak to you I really really believe that there's so many people this is interesting language I'm about to use
02:22:08
that are basically being unfairly treated by the world because for
02:22:13
whatever reason they didn't come across the skills the skills that you've spent many many many years giving to people
02:22:20
and I just just really hope that there's someone listening now who has had that and I know there will be because there's so many people in your audience and I've
02:22:25
seen the feedback that you get who's had the trajectory of their life altered in
02:22:31
relationships professions the job the promotion uh family communication where
02:22:36
whatever it might be because of you and I know because I've seen the comments I know that there are many many many many
02:22:43
many many thousands and thousands and thousands of people who have said exactly that so on behalf of all of them but also on behalf of the people that
02:22:49
have even one tool out of what you said today one place to start on that Journey towards a different tomorrow trajectory
02:22:57
life thank you thank you for the work that you do I know it must get [ __ ] boring after a while doing the same
02:23:03
thing saying the same same stuff being asked the same questions getting the same DMS but it is so important it
02:23:11
really is you know because as as you experienced as a Young Man the way that you can feel the the isolation the
02:23:18
loneliness the disconnect the the feelings that you're different and that you're missing something can really
02:23:24
drive you down a very miserable despairing path in life and Someone Like
02:23:29
You helps people turn the lights on and shows them a better way so thank you on behalf of all those people thank you
02:23:35
Stephen and there's a word that I call my students maybe we can end on this and the word I call them is luminaries
02:23:43
because I I I I call all of my programs stage right stage and they go why do you call it stage and I go oh it's stage
02:23:48
because of Shakespeare's quote all of life is a stage all the world's a stage and to me it's true because when I wake
02:23:55
up in the morning the first stage I step on is the stage of fatherhood and how I show up on that stage matters and then
02:24:02
the second stage I work on step on to is the stage of being a husband right my wife loves it when I make her the coffee even though it's ter terrible she likes
02:24:09
it when I make it right and then there's something there but then then the next stage I walk into is I walk into the
02:24:15
studio and I'm stepping on the stage as a teacher I'm teaching people now and in this life you will step onto many
02:24:21
different stages playing many different roles and if you learn how to communicate and play your instrument you can show up as your best and then I call
02:24:26
them luminary why double meaning word part of it means actor or actress but it's not about that it's about you're a
02:24:32
source of light so when you learn how to use your instrument and you show up on stage on the with the role that you're
02:24:37
playing play songs of Love kindness and compassion play songs that spread
02:24:45
goodness right if you feel good while you're listening to this it's because of the way potentially I played my instrument and I hope that you'll step
02:24:52
onto your stage and the role that you're currently playing and play with your instrument as a luminary to spread more
02:24:58
love carness and compassion amen yeah thank you thank
02:25:03
you the hardest conversations are often the ones we avoid but what if you had the right question to start them with
02:25:10
every single guest on the DI of SE has left behind a question in this diary and
02:25:15
it's a question designed to challenge to connect and to go deeper with the next guest and these are all the questions
02:25:21
that I have here in my hand on one side you've got the question that was asked
02:25:26
the name of the person who wrote it and on the other side if you scan that you can watch the person who came after who
02:25:33
answered it 51 questions split across three different levels the warm-up level the openup level and the Deep level so
02:25:40
you decide how deep the conversation goes and people play these conversation cards in boardrooms at work in bedrooms
02:25:46
alone at night and on first dates and everywhere in between I'll put a link to the conversation cards in the
02:25:52
description below and you can get yours at the diary.com this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of you that
02:26:00
listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show so could I ask you for a favor if you like the show and
02:26:05
you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the Subscribe button and my commitment to
02:26:11
you is if you do that then I'll do everything in my power me and my team to make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll listen to
02:26:18
your feedback we'll find the guest that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so
02:26:23
much [Music]
02:26:37
[Music]
