No. 1 Communication Expert: This Speaking Mistake Makes People Dislike You!

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 something called a siren technique in three two and one Nas are crazier than usual fantastic that's fantastic you did a great job right and then this next one is volume so critical because if I just increase my volume and I talk like this I sound a little bit aggressive don't I but with volume to highlight something 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 talks let's go through all five Vin J is the award-winning speaker and communication expert who helps people harness the power of their voice and body language in all areas of their life just so overwhelming of how many people 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 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 the awkward kid I couldn't communicate with anyone I moved school so many times because I was bullied then I broke them all and then I just learned all these new behaviors has completely changed and anyone can do this in 3 to 6 months and 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 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 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 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 severe social anxiety what you say to those people the first thing I would do is [Music] is this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of

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guests that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so [Music] much Finn if you had to summarize what it is you do fundamentally and why you do it how would you summarize it I help people learn that they have access to one of the most beautiful instruments in the world that can help them negotiate whatever reality they desire and I learned this through my first ever vocal teacher Miss Stanley and I'll I'll never foret get this experience there's a dingy music Corner 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 except the words sit down young man so I sit it feels super awkward it feels super weird and then she plays one key non-stop on the piano for 2 minutes it's 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 what and then she goes good turns around plays this

beautiful song called marage 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 still but I feel wow that song had love there was lust there was romance there was excitement the and she goes good honey most people most people go through life speaking like this I'm going to teach you how to speak like this 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 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 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 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 she started to teach me that I have this instrument that depending on how I play

it it changes and shift how others feel 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 was invisible my entire childhood I was invisible I wasn't the cool kid I wasn't 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 this skill I've been able to negotiate an incredible reality and that's why I love Tim Ferris is quite so much reality is negotiable cool well

what skill do we use to negotiate the reality we desire it's our ability to communicate teaching that to others has been one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done and I I genuinely believe that makes the world a better place and I almost sometimes feel like I'm just here to tune pianos I'm here to help people tune and fix and learn how to play and and and I get so much fulfillment from that my parents have this fundamental belief it's so beautiful they believe every child is born with a diamond with a gift with

a with something in them so I found one of my diamonds early on it was magic right so I was really good at Magic they hoped it was medicine accounting you know the Asian prophecy so when I found that diamond being magic I thought that all I 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 technically proficient as an accountant you'll become an amazing accountant you you'll be successful you get the BMW you get everything get partner so

I thought okay magic same thing get really good technically spent thousands of hours in my bedroom by myself in front of a mirror practicing magic got nowhere because I was missing an ingredient magicians call it Showmanship fancy word for communication 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 Brown impeccable Showmanship impeccable technical skills so when you pair technical skills with great communication skills that's when you thrive I believe because let's say for example you're 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 of 10 or three out of 10 and you know this hearing so many different pictures some of the greatest ideas have flown under your radar Without You noticing because the founder didn't do it justice it's an interesting idea to think that we might rise or fall to the level not of our technical ability but our communication skills as it relates to how the world perceives us and it's both the importance there is

both whereas I 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 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 doing slot of hand I suck that's not going to work either the people that I've been able to help the 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 the back office as a technician and then bloody Brad always gets the promotion 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 it's because Brad talks better he's more visible in the work environment you really think it often comes down to just how we speak and communicate our value yes because if you can't communicate your value in a way that is clear and concise people it's it's not their responsibility to see the Brilliance that

exists within you it's I believe your responsibility to learn how to shine your light brightly it's it's super sad because I lived a massive part of my life like that English is my third language uh the first language I learned is a Chinese 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 of second language I then had to learn fluently is 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 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 went to school I was completely invisible I couldn't communicate with any other kid 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 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 no idea what

they were saying so I spent so much of my childhood especially in those single digit years around 5 six 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 shame of being seen by myself so I just hid I just found a corner somewhere and no one and then gradually I started to learn English but even when I learned English I sounded funny because I had an accent so then they called me fob fob fresh off the boat yeah and

they just 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 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 invisible I know what it's like to be ignored and that was a long time ago and 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 would take from The Experience you've had with teaching people to to make a radical change in your communication 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 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 instead of just thinking about I'm trying to learn a new habit it's what James Clear says you you adopt a new 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 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 right now has any preconceived idea of who you are break the mold break it and then you see grown adults do things they wouldn't normally do break out of the play with their voice be a little silly reconnect with their inner child and then in that moment they fall so deeply in love with that

version of them because of the reactions they've been able to get from all these strangers around them that they commit to it it's 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 mistake and the biggest mistake they make is they'll go home to their partner and who has no context of the experience 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

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 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 who they have always been their entire life what areas of one's life have you seen in those examples change when someone learned communication skills because we we often the examples we've given so far are just like work yeah yeah yeah with their children this has been the coolest part because I'm

a dad I I get I I I teach a concept called vocal foundations which we can dive into later and there's these beautiful five core vocal foundations that people can learn and I love it when parents go through it because I always see these comments where they said oh my goodness just read to the kids they've 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 way they go Dad don't read like that do it the fun

way and and what they're asking for is they're asking for that vocal variety they're asking for that inner child for that playfulness and I think that's one of the greatest I think that's one of my greatest superpowers is the ability to be playful and the willingness to be playful so you're going to help me in work you're going to help me be a more entertaining engaging parent are there any other areas of one's life that improve when they crack communication yes there is an area and the area is improv learn improvisation people all 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 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 and you say something so even though I know you've never done improv before you are amazing at improv because that's a skill you had to have developed to become the incredible podcaster that you are right now right so that

to me is 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 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 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 what are you using you're using your ability to communicate and how many people

have you taught in person and or online oh over 70,000 now wow yeah you have millions and millions and millions of followers online as well that tune to learn communication skills from you from all around the world and if and if I was to zoom in on the DMS that you get the things that people are struggling with when they message you the reason why they watch your videos what is it the most common message that we get when people type a comment and leave it on our videos is is it possible for me to

change the sound of my voice really well because you think about it right nobody likes the sound of their own voice the 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 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 when they first become problem aware with their communication skills is oh is

it possible for me to change the sound of my voice is it possible is it possible and and and when you reflect upon this even when you reflect reflect upon this most people in their entire life will never change the way they 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 change all these things about themselves but the way they communicate and the way they sound stays consistent generally M it's because there are a lot of psychological blocks that

keep us sounding the same we keep ourselves sounding the same you know there's I'll share with you a few of these okay 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 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 go red because I'd go oh that feels so weird oh now I'm becoming so deep with my voice this

feels so fake and it feels phony I immediately came up with those objections as I'm sure you would feel 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 and then now just like my vocal teacher she would always challenge me she goes well if you could make the sound and you 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 is you that is your instrument that is just you playing with keys you're unfamiliar with that's it you've gone 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 this key and you're unfamiliar with the others that alone helped me understand that oh wow it's not fake because for the longest time I thought it was fake and 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 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 playing the other Keys comes at a cost a perceived cost well it goes deeper than that it goes even deeper than that because where did you get your voice from who did you learn it from there's an idea that people have in their minds 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 will tell you this the voice you have right now is not your natural voice you lost access to your natural voice when you were two or three question if I asked you to scream at the top of your lungs right now for about 10 minutes yeah would what would happen to your voice oh I'd lose it yeah my daughter 12 months old can scream for 3 hours stevenh and she does not lose her voice because they have this beautiful access to their instrument they can naturally access that in

instrument whereas as we grow older at the age of three or four we start to be inspired by certain people in our circles as a result of being inspired by people what do kids do they emulate they copy so the voice that you've developed you've copied that based on the people you were inspired by when you were young it's just a series 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 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 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 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 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 podcast yeah why now

you're fake yeah right we'll get to that in the moment 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 when you're first imitating dad I had one of my students his name is tanzia beautiful beautiful guy he had a very soft way of speaking beautiful soft way of speaking and what he didn't realize 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 think

about all these little behaviors all these nuances to copy dad's sound and then after you repeat those behaviors for one year two years you no longer have to consciously think about it cuz you've mastered it so now those 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 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 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 in the present you don't give the future version of you a chance and the moment these things happen it's incredible seeing these changes because all my students will do is they'll change three things more volume more Melody bigger hand gestures people completely change the way they perceive them it three simple things that they do creates a profound change in how others perceive them volume Melody and hand gestures 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 executive presence and it was because she became she she labeled herself as being 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 you're really good at being shy is because you've been repeating the Shai behaviors for the last 25 years so you're really good at it and that's all right it's because you've been practicing Shai for 25 years being more 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 multiple podcasts now just try a larger gesture try a stronger volume try being more melodic with your voice and then 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 the moment she makes that reset she goes oh I'll continue continue to explore them whereas if she thinks it's fake 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 good answer another one is I'm introverted does that mean that I'm doomed okay yeah and another really common one is I don't have much Connection in my life I wish I felt more connected to the people that I'm around why is it that I can't get past the the 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 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 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 Google for people trying to figure out um or trying to provide answers to how to communicate successfully so let's get into it so I youed this term vocal image yeah what does vocal image mean it came 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 our body language the way we dress mhm but very rarely do people spend time on their vocal image now oh make it make sense when people see you and you Reveal Your visual image they make assumptions about you pretty quickly so they form 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 a sudden when you open your mouth and you speak they now turn these assumptions into beliefs so what may be assumptions

before now they go oh you are friendly you are confident right or they might think oh no bit of a wanker right and and and you've had these experiences before I've had them before where you assume you see someone you oh that person go meet them ah not really nice that's weird so it's another layer that 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 to ever change this so let's let's talk about how one can

improve their vocal image so that they're effective across context sure you mentioned Melody volume hand gestures if we start with Melody what the hell is Melody the different notes you can hit with your voice okay so is that variety yeah variety yeah pitch variety pitch and Melody okay well because there's a Melody that lives underneath your voice all right let's do 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 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] song okay yeah um all right sadness right so so and then if if listeners at home could could could have a voice here too that maybe say they would say somber nostalgic yeah right all these words 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 like uh this um inspirational motivational good 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 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 shift gears again and what about this one uh like a horror movie scary about to die something bad's about to happen omnus a little a little three-year-old stood on the the landing of the staircase at night yes with long black hair yes correct so that that that again all of a sudden paints all these

different vivid pictures in your head the reason I did that experiment is there were no words in any of those tracks yet think about all of the words that rushed to your mind as you were experiencing the melody mhm the different notes what people failed to realize is that you have a melody in your voice yeah this is why when some people walk into our lives it it could drain the energy from our lives and when they walk in you feel the 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 great what is that it's the melody in which they come in with can you have a pretty limited range limited Melody but still hit people with scary and sad and inspiring I believe you can yeah again 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 can create so many different songs with our voice if we learn to treat it as an 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 fun this is a fun one there's something called a siren technique okay okay so aarin technique is when you you read 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 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 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 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 one night he goes off crazier than usual Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself he doesn't like that not one bit so me watching

he takes the knife to her laughing while he does it turns to me 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 smile on that face and why so serious beautiful what movie is that from no idea I don't want are you serious Dark Knight The Joker okay so heat ledger so amazing okay cool great so again you read that in your neutral voice now what 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 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 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 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

these scars my father was a drink and a f good and more na he goes are crazier than usual Mommy gets the kitchen knives to defend herself good okay wow it hurts now try to go in a way 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 going he doesn't like that not one bit good so me watching he takes the knife to her yes laughing while he does it good turns to me

and he says why so serious son fantastic that's fantastic you did a great job right but you feel that 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 but it's more just helping you realize this instrument that you have is capable of so much more yeah there is so much more that it can do as opposed to what we normally do with it right because for the longest time in my life 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 quickly Stephen is because I practice these behaviors for about 25 years what's even more interesting is they they've done studies where they had five or six people talking at the same same time and the person who the person heard was the person who had more melody in their voice oh really the person who is more melodic what they say becomes more memorable whereas if all of us were speaking like this me yourself Jack everyone all of a sudden you wouldn't 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 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 then getting feedback right and people are so afraid of that though and they don't realize that they they don't go too far they underplay the risk is not going too far the risk is not going far enough again at this point when people heard me of course of course

squeaking like Mickey Mouse they're going to say me like 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 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 America's Got Talent Australia's Got Talent where Simon Cal will say right right very good but I don't feel it what are they talking about it's the emotion

in their voice there is emotion in your voice too 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 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 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 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 particular set of skills skills I have acquired over a very long career skills that make me a nightmare for people like 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 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 this that is the movie called where he his daughter gets kidnapped what's it called yes it start with L his name Lion King I'm joking no what is it right from Taken but here's the thing so the next Foundation is rate of speech okay 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 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 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 rate of speech we fall victim to a default rate of speech when you think about rate of speech there's a way to use it and the way you use rate of speech is if you really want to highlight a point creating an auditory highlight slow down that creates an auditory highlight it's like a highlighter with your words and if you 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 variety with your rate of speech that's simple rule and what does changing my rate of speech then do to the message I'm communicating it makes it more memorable clear okay there's more clarity in it right so for example if I 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 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 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 foundations all of a sudden you now have a point of focus and the big thing that people want with their communication is Clarity well if you are going to be more clear the delivery needs to be clear so that

the receiver gets what you intend okay it's not just about the exchange of information because how I say something impacts how you receive it so I want to slow down where I want to hit emphasis yes and this script has multiple places where you want to slow down when people are nervous yes what what happens they speed up they speed up they speed up considerably considerably and have they ever measured that oh does anybody know 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 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 speech to be at whereas if you're slower than that then again it just gets a little bit monotonous at times for people but again here's what's fascinating if I if all of a sudden now I stick to a default Melody and then stick to a default rate of speech notice what's happening in your brain right all 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 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 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 way down and be playful it's not about okay I'm going to start from on here sure if you're looking for a ransom I can tell you that I don't have

money but what I do have oh are a particular SE skills skills I've acquired over a very long career let's skip to the end if you let my daughter go that will be the end of it I will not look for you I will not pursue you but if you don't I will look for you I will find you and I will kill you yes give him a big round of applause that was amazing so much but again you feel so strange when you do it yeah I do yeah it's so fun to listen to

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 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 when you read it the first time it didn't sound scary at all now I feel scared there's something I I noticed 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 hurry along and there is a certain someone said to me the other day that people that have the most confidence in 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 PR versus Predator I remember listening to the episode was fantastic yeah there is it's people who are confident take 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 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 take the hits and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you want to be because of him or her or anybody cowards 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 critical okay for many different reasons MH volume is the lifeblood of your voice mhm volume carries all the other foundations you're about to learn volume carries the melody volume carries the rate

of speech it carries everything 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 around at three or four M and they stay around there when you use volume there's two ways to auditorily highlight something with volume volume is fascinating because with we of speech you slow down but with volume volume to highlight something you could go very quiet okay so if all of a sudden I wanted to say something scary I could lower my volume and say

it but then all of a sudden notice what happens if I just stay here now what's started as a great verbal highlight now just kind of seems doesn't seem effective anymore because if you make something default it becomes non-functional and what signals I'm not a confident person what side of the scale the lower scale okay on volume okay because that's one of the default shy behaviors that a lot of people exhibit and what about leaders where do 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 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 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 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 some point give me a whisper too now if you know what you're

worth go out and get it go out and get what you're worth but you have to be willing to take the hits and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you want to be because of him or her or anybody cowards do that and that ain't you yeah you're better than that oh it's amazing yeah what you just did made me feel why did I feel is what is a voice a voice is a series of vibrations so you just sent vibrations my way that made me feel mhm that's why we say people have Good

Vibes right we kind of we understand it's happening but we don't understand that kind of frequency level at the vibration level but it's happening at a physical level MH where depending on how you use your voice you're genuinely moving people quite physically we did rate of speech we did volume we did the yeah and then there's there's two left right there's two left yeah right so 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 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 possible what we're moving into now is the emotion that exists within your voice tonality this is the emotion that exists right so the way to add more emotion into your voice is to move your face because as I eloquently put it at times your face is the remote control that allows you to add emotion into your 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 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 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 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 because you're lonely yeah and it's not because it's New Year's Eve surprised really surprised

I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life angry give me 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 of your life to start as soon as possible that's so beautiful you know this already in our brains there's miror neurons right and when I see you go through these different facial expressions I feel what you feel even though I know this is a a situation we've created here for us to experiment

it's a safe environment but every time you went through any of those emotions I felt it because I didn't just see it are men 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 keep my emotions on the inside right I always taught that it's a sign of weakness to show you being sad you being happy you should just be composed composed at all times and then that's what I thought and that that led me to the behavior of speaking whereas

I just always speak like this because I'm a man 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 is a really exciting concert and and and and she goes well okay you obviously hate it and I'm like 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 was stuck like that for years and that

that damaged a lot of my relationships because here's a thing 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 because otherwise you'll be seen as interrupting the other person right you can react with facial expressions and 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 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 audience they're looking at you for most of the conversation so 95% of the conversations on you yes what they don't 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 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 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 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 I've learned from both speaking on stage but also doing this is you can also it up you can also communicate the wrong thing yes accidentally one of them that people communicate quite often that accidentally is they start talking while you're speaking do you ever know that like when someone's um listening to speak they start they start going like

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 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 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 if I go oh I've learned something that's curiosity tell me more versus yeah with

yeah yeah and wave my hand yeah yeah yeah okay so tonality so emotion and that was so beautiful to see you do that because it just again we just have such great range and then imagine you start to vary your rate of speech now you vary volume you've got different Melody you've also got different facial expressions this is such a rich song that you're playing now do you think much of about the actual words you're saying as well of course I can see that you think about the structure of what you're saying like you're thinking

about cuz when you start speaking I notice that you often go into 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 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 storytelling formula I think the way most people tell stories is is they report stories so I'll share a story 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 story of how I met my wife so I still remember this because

this happened in 2009 I crashed a girl's graduation party named Vivien it was at a bar called distill this beautiful bar called distill and there was two levels to this 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 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 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 hearts into the Queen of Hearts like yourself disgusted I know you're making 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 she goes I'd be more impressed if you transformed into a real man had a conversation with me 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 left tail

between my legs the boys all teased me and everything but I was so drawn her confidence just oh there was 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 time and I said Hey listen what if I transformed into a real man andon I took you out for a coffee and we fell in love you know and that that's that's the story of how I met my wife whereas the 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 was so much life so much zest in that story I noticed you added so much almost irrelevant detail but you talked about the bar having two floors and stuff make it visual okay so I could picture it in my 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 just give the

who what where and when that's the basics people need but what turns up from reporting to reliving because that's what you want to get to you want to get to reliving a story is the ingredients that you just called out so intuitive if you to call him out vax v a s which stands for visual auditory kinesthetic and smell so I'm just describing those few things for you right and it doesn't always have to 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 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 reporting to reliving so if I if I told that story and let's say that now the connection ability is again it's to do with improv as well is instead of just going out and saying here's three ways to show up authentically when you're trying to pick up someone yeah instead of doing that I share the story first I get you to engage

I build rapport I build chemistry now you've heard the story now you have rapport with me you feel more relaxed you feel more creative right then I link that story to so the very next time you 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 the three ways you can show up more authentically as a man I believe that is a much more powerful way to then go into the three tips whereas I I feel that

because of the world now with social media we just we we've lost art form of Storytelling 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 struggle the break through and the application which is kind of what you just displayed there well the the importance of application I think is something that I really focus on with my students the and by application you mean 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 okay because I can I can share a story but if I one of our viers went viral and 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 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 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 what people love

is when you give them a really simple pragmatic takeaway that they can go and actually do like go do it now where whereas we we don't apply knowledge we just keep consuming and go through knowledge acquisition there's there's a cycle of Doom that we go through there's just just cycle of I mean this is the cycle my students go through oh drob promotion oh crap I need to work on my 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

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 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 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 you do nothing with it but it's just this cycle we all fall victim to over and over

and over again we just keep consuming knowledge and nothing actually changes because we're not applying it so the the key is to get out there and start running some of these techniques in the real world and just pick one pick one and just try it it's like we're going through all these different things right after this 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 kids borrow a niece or a nephew and just watch the impact on the

other human being as you play with your instrument watch them smile watch them giggle watch them react to the way you play your instrument because then it wakes you up to the fact that you've got access to this and that I can change the way someone feels what 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 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 with the

last one okay yeah okay my name is Maximus Decimus Meridius correct commander of the armies of the north general of the Felix Legions loyal servant to the true Emperor Marcus aelius father to a murderer son husband to a murdered wife and I will have my Vengeance in the life or the next perfect now we're going to read it again except the final Foundation here with the voice is pause whatever emotion comes before the pause once you pause it intensifies that emotion so if you got the feeling of anger and you pause oh that is a

pause of anger but if all of a sudden I'm sad and and then I pause you 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 orchestral music and when you think about it what happens right after a crescendo it's a pause silence the most important note that they play during that peace yet we barely use it and what 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 pause my name is Maximus Decimus Meridius commander of the armies of the north general of the Felix Legions loyal servant to the true Emperor Marcus aelius father to the mer murdered son husband to a murdered wife and I will have my vengance in this life or the next oh beautiful when you paused you gave me time to process the weight of what you're saying the first time you read it 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 for a marketing campaign but because you rushed through it I didn't feel the weight of how profound the strategy is there's something when you pause you almost you tell the person don't you act almost inexplicitly that they should really give a about the thing you just said yeah like it really mattered it's important yeah because you're like giving it space to breathe and do you see what all these foundations do what do they give you ultimately like what does It ultimately lead to Clarity do you think there's a certain

set of those tools that when applied or a certain sort of style of speaking that makes people 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 speaking the there's sounds that people don't like for example have you ever 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 real estate and when you hear that sequence of Melody no worries

I'll put you on to the next person and you hear 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 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 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 James how can I

help mate you said the same thing you just switched up the melody that sounds a little more sincere because it was a bit more varied or exactly right and it's not what everybody uses because once everybody uses the same thing all of a sudden it now sounds like a script that's why people are so afraid when they're creating content online they go I I don't want to sound scripted there's a sound to it and it generally follows up that's why newscasters they there's a sound to it yeah last night at 9:00 p.m. there's 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 and am I right in thinking if I wanted to be really boring I should just kill all variety kill all the foundations nothing give me nothing and and it's what happens when people again the people that I serve it's what happens is because they go I'll let my work speak for itself and and I say that's great that 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 the other yeah it's a shame not to do your work Justice you know because you can do it at disservice just by delivering it without the foundations as you've said yeah and and then other people as you said they could have a half the idea but double the double the Showmanship yeah and that happens too that happens too right so to me it's about helping those who they' they've got something amazing you've got a story you need to share

you've got an idea you need to pitch you've got incredible technical skills that you've worked on 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 great work and let's let's allow ourselves to build the ability and grow the ability to shine how does one increase their self-awareness as it relates to their communication skills is there is there a practice I can do to understand if I'm good bad at this if you are problem unaware to communication and right now you just go oh

this is 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 going to dramatically change the way you talk it's going to dramatically change the way you show up I call it record and review and I learned this as a magician and it's so practical when it comes to Magic and communication skills First Step record a video of yourself speaking for 5 minutes a full 5 minutes and always immedately say oh what do I say though Google or chat GPT great conversational starters

and then use those for yourself and just talk but it has to be impromptu because I'm trying 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 tease out some non-functional behaviors so once you've recorded that video of yourself for 5 minutes leave it for a Day video or just audio video you want video you want to be standing while you're doing this okay once you've got 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 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 when you watch it back you review it in three different ways the first time so you record on your phone you turn the sound all the way up press play turn your phone over just listen here you're doing an auditory review and just listen to your voice and now because

you've listened to this podcast you also have five vocal foundations can think about so now auditorily think about how's my rate of speech how's my volume oh my 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 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 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

filming themselves because I hate the way I look and I hate the way I sound right so to 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 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 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 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 watch yourself back without the auditory feedack back all of a sudden now you'll see things you don't normally see oh wow 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 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 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 never seen before because you've avoided it and also because you have this idea in your head that you're stuck you're not it's just a series of behavior yes right and then afterwards the final form of review don't listen to it and don't watch it get it transcribed because now you'll see the way you communicate from a different perspective and you go oh my goodness I 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 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 I ramble because when you get a transcribed leave in all of the nonwords and the filler words nonwords being the 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 mean this transcription is immediately going to

reveal to you all of your auditory clutter the things that you say again nonwords and filler words auditory clutter that's the again the ano like do 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 okay okay I taught online during CO as a result of that because I didn't get the inperson feedback from my students I would always say okay at the end of my sentences because I wasn't getting any feedback so I say that's the vocal foundations okay

all right now that's 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 didn't know that I was able to remove that because it didn't serve why does it matter to remove the clutch to words you know the like as um why does it matter I'll give you an example of it you know like um if I you know was uh taking you through like the um core uh you know vocal foundations you know like uh it decreases the 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 have your speech littered with it is it easy to overcome that yeah it is because 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 feel like saying um we're not lagging we're just pausing right you pause and that's why as part of the vocal foundations you have to learn to be comfortable with what we're doing right now just

pausing and it's okay so I've got my three sheets of paper there there I've I've done the auditory assessment I've done the visual assessment I've looked at the transcript and I've seen the words and again is it repetitions from there on after to like step before that okay because nor normally what happens after you do that and I know because my students have done it and then what happens is overwhelm because they go oh my goodness there's like 26 things I have to improve that's which one do I pick and 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 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 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 do of that week record and review again did it change no guess what you're doing next week rate to speech and it's that commitment and I love

this Japanese word called Kaizen Relentless Improvement and you all do this here amazingly that's what you got to commit to and you focus on rate of 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 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 improve their communication skills and they get pissed off because they go I I'm just doing rate of speech I'm like yeah because your

default is so slow you're putting everyone to sleep 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 speech alone they became so much more Dynamic took a month we all know people that overt talk and overe explain 100% 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 amazing now so all of a sudden now if you want

Awareness on that record yourself and and the beauty of recording yourself on something like Zoom is all of a sudden now you can you can watch yourself and you see the other person too do you recommend someone like me if if we're trying to improve the communication skills of everybody in the company to record our meetings and to send it after 100% and review it and and 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 feedback

anybody will ever give you on your communication I felt like you talked a bit too fast they'll never say 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 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 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 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 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 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 said that I took too long I lost them you can see it I do that with

my 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 to duct tape two GoPros together and I'll duct tape the little red recording button so the audience doesn't know like that I'm I'm recording myself and I'm also recording the audience only for my purpose right as I review my speeches and I would watch backto back the audience faces and my Keynote and I could you you can see where you lose people because at a conference their faces light up

with their phone you can literally see when you're losing 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 thought it was a fun tangent it wasn't and then I kept that tangent in for bloody six months because I thought it 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 can record yourself do you mind if I pause this conversation for a moment I want

to talk about our show sponsor today which is Shopify I've always believed that the biggest cost in business isn't failure it's the time you waste trying to make decisions time spent hesitating overthinking or waiting for the right moment when I started my first company at 20 years old I had no experience and no money what I did have was an idea and the willingness to move fast and that made all the difference if you've been thinking about starting your own business Shopify makes this entire process so much much easier with thousands of customizable templates you

don't need coding or design skills you just need a willingness to start Shopify connects all your sales channels from your website to social media and it handles the backend payments shipping and taxes too so that you can stay focused on moving forward and growing your business if you're ready to start visit shopify.com Bartlet and sign up for A1 per month trial period That's shopify.com Bartlet and when you went up on stage as a keynote speaker was there anything 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 pretty full on yes have a way to calm your mind calm your body and get really focused and the way I do it is the first thing I would do is whm Hof the guided bubble breathing 30 times and then hold your breath and then a deep breath in hold for 15 and then release three cycles of that oh stepen I'm my mind is relaxed my body is relaxed and then the next thing I do is I just do a little bit of

brisk walking do maybe 10 20 push-ups why 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 start pacing the stage and I've seen speakers do this where they Pace there's no reason for their movement but they're moving because there's so much adrenaline In Me Right non-functional Movement nonfunctional so get rid of the adrenaline so a little bit of brisk exercise gets rid of that adrenaline that you don't need so do those two things and depending on

how nervous I am I may have to do a mindset shift and the mindset shift is the only way you can become self-conscious and nervous is if you're thinking about yourself so if you're not thinking about yourself and you have no cognitive capacity to think about yourself then how can you be nervous so think of the 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 possible in this

podcast as we and the moment I thought about you and your audience I I don't have any cognitive capacity left to think about me MH so when you kind of think about this act of service it it shifts where you are you're not in your own body anymore you're not self-conscious your audience conscious helps and is there anything you do with your mouth and your tongue CU sometimes especially if I've woken up early in the morning and I'm 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 also it feels like my brain's not connected to my mouth so first thing is lip trills have you ever done lip trills 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 your two index fingers push your cheeks together and you can go do your favorite song so you think of your favorite song and you you know Final Countdown one of my favorites 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 3 minutes now all of a sudden your articulators have woken up you've also woken up your vocal cords and your lips now being the main articulators we use to shape the words that we say it's awake the siren technique is another the 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 then go high the other thing that I learned from studying your work is this idea of

the Power Sphere when you're on 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 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 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 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 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 because they're playing small okay scared to take up space right so and again I get a lot of my female students 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 thing called executive presence it's simple it's two things it's vocal presence

and physical presence and how you use your hand gestures allows you to level up your physical presence so if you've got better physical presence because you're using your hand gestures within the PO sphere all of a sudden you've got that executive presence that they're talking about so you need to get your elbows off your sides 100% yeah yeah you again I think of myself as 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 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 have your arms nice out and big don't be afraid to take up the space and and then there are foundational gestures you should learn paired with this the first one which you're doing already this is uh Virginia Satia came up with these and she was a family therapist and she came up with the foundation to hand gestures this is plator try so you've got your 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 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 palms wonderful way to greet people as they come in hey in like this instead of surrendering just kind of hands up hey great to see you okay beautiful great however it's closely related to its 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

what's the second one called leveler leveler is hands facing down so hands p face down yes right feels a bit we're doing sitting down but this is leveler right it's there a element of control yeah well the hands face down well try 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 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 you down in three two melody stop doing that perfect

okay you're going to do the same thing now in levela okay so in and give me more volume in three two melody 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 face changed as well and what what changed with your your body um I what had changed with your your vocal quality sorry it went the pitch went okay the pitch went down yes correct and I didn't 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 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 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 body the body's connected to the voice and the biggest mistake you see here within this realm here is you do imagine 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 questions right versus are there any questions I was going to say with the level of one where you start putting 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 blamer have a guess at what blamer is pointing yes correct this is blamer a very strong Gest 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 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 something yeah oh because they'll say they'll say something like um you know entrepreneurs they can be they can be quite sad because they they don't have balance and as they're saying it they'll like accidentally point at 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 know they're doing it but they're like subtly gesturing in my direction um yeah yeah I know what you mean it's like yeah some people have you put on a bit of weight oh what am I I didn't know that oh my a do it all the time yeah again it's just different ways to vary the way 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 sensitivity is when you sense heightened emotion so if they start to get a bit frustrated you get you can show

them with your body too beautiful pose then the the final one is distractor which is a pattern break it's an auditory and visual pattern break for 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 you realize the audience they're all on their phones instead of continuing you can execute distractor and do distractor to get their attention back oh I'm sorry oh I I've gone down that tangent let me bring you back let me use a different analogy so auditory in that there's

a clap involved MH visual in that I'm 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 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 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 building personal Brands and trying

to make content but we we make boring unengaging videos yes because you come 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 people get stuck again they go but that's not me yeah do do you think right 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 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 have three Choice he doesn't talk like that but he understands that in that context for that Medium the message I'm trying to communicate I have to play my instrument differently to achieve the outcome that I desire and you're gonna 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 be a certain cohort of people listening that just go oh God this is so I know 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 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 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 this if you want this then this is how you this is how you get it yeah the world has really changed especially in the

last couple years post pandemic and much of our communication now takes place on video calls Zoom Google 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 when I'm doing my zoom meetings yeah it's even more important online because the moment you sit in front of a camera and you're not a Creator what happens the moment it's 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 everything drops all of your vocal foundations disappear so what do I need to be thinking about to be effective I 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 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 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 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 somewhere so I'd rather be effective on Zoom nothing will replace this it's why I flew here from Australia is nothing 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 more of yourself if you want them to feel valued you have to adopt a mindset of generosity I'll explain we often think of generosity as the first form of generosity

which is which is money right 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 and then you think about it for more often people don't think about the third form of generosity which is energy 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 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 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 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 being generous with it and online you have to be so conscious of that you have to be so much more generous with your energy because naturally when you're sitting in front of a camera you feel weird and then all of a sudden it's like 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 too much and I am because when I'm when I'm teaching my classes onine four 500 people I bring a much bigger version of myself to that class I'm bring a much bigger version than this and then my poor wife sitting this you get oh he overdoing it he overdoing it but to every single student on that class with me virtually oh Vin this is so engaging it's so beautiful to see how much zest you have for

what you do and afterwards I'm exhausted but it's a choice I'm willing to make to be masterful with what I do in that moment now make sure your camera placement is well placed a lot of people when they appear on Zoom all you see is their head now that makes you less visually Dynamic whereas this is why you need the external mic push the laptop back external camera wider lens let them see your whole torso yeah I love this this is so important and I I learned this from Vanessa van Edwards where you you brought

her on oh yeah such a powerful such a powerful concept where it's the idea of proxemics where there's the study of distances most people when they appear on Zoom they appear in the 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 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 sudden now learn to appear in the personal and social space which means

they can see your full torso that people feel more comfortable but now you also have access to your hand gestures light yourself well okay and 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 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 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 side here yes and there's one in the front is that what you mean yes three key lights ESS again they they they 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 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 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 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 get a nicer webcam minimum 1080p so you look sharper you look clearer and you're well lit okay now you look better done perfect get an external mic okay because if you spend all of your time working on all of these wonderful vocal

foundations and you've got a shitty microphone and then you talk a you you've lost there again and get good Wi-Fi while 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 visual looks good auditor is looked after and and don't be afraid to bring a bigger version of yourself so much of 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 we think we are do you know

what one of the really remarkable things that always reminds me how like BS our communication style and and our identity by way of this is is just different accents yes the fact that someone can live in an area and they can be scous or they can you know live in another area and they sound completely different like they're from New York or something and MH it just goes to show that we're just like it's so contagious and easy to blend in yes with one's environment I remember experiencing a negative experience with accent when I started

to improve my articulation and I wanted to improve my pronunciation everybody around me was saying you're trying to be British oh really you're trying so hard to be 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 words all the time being an Aussie we use so much slanging yeah I was G up I 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 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 te's instead of saying three I would say free can I have free of those and that's 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 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 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 are you doing why are you trying to be this British Australian and I just said to them because when I speak like that it creates the wrong perception in people's minds and then they now look down on me as a result of that there are some accents that experience more discrimination than other other accents they did a study in 2006 it was a survey of the chartered Institute of personal and development found that 76% of employers admitted to discriminating against candidates based solely on their

accent we judge a book byes cover don't we we have we have that I I have a thought though my thought is and this is what I believe is that I don't believe accents are a problem I believe articulation and pronunciation 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 that where you're sophisticated James Bond it's because you articulate extremely 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

that level of sophistic ation and intelligence and you can radiate that intelligence with any accent I have I have students from India who the moment they improve their articulation it's beautiful there's nothing wrong with 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 and here here's where we go deep your whole life you've learned the mouth movements to speak the Indian language then when you go speak the English language you're Now using Indian mouth movements to speak the English

language 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 speak the English language therefore accent and lack of clarity so what did I have to do learn the set of English mouth movements completely changed me and how how' you do that speech pathologist oh really I had to go see a speech pathologist yeah I struggled with this Stephen my whole life that's why 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 gaess yeah and I I I share that because it is 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 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 a behavior yeah I mean when you told me that your English was your third language I couldn't believe that yeah because there's no remnants

there's usually a remnant of the language you spoke before yeah there's like no evidence of it because this has become the primary 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 Nigerian so she spoke Nigerian MH for her childhood moved to the UK when she was I think late years so maybe early 20s but there's always been the remnants 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 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 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 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 employment opportunities I I would love that study to be done in a way where the

people who are speaking with accents have incredible articulation or pronunciation as opposed to them speaking with poor articulation and pronunciation there's a big difference Research indicates that individuals who use non-standard speech patterns such as African-American vernacular English often face negative perceptions regarding their intelligence competence they have worse housing opportunities and they have worse legal outcomes right 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 injustice isn't it it is it is it's it's like when I was and and it's one of

those things where this is it's super weird I remember when I was becoming a professional speaker some of my peers uh who who were also Asian I remember them saying to me they said hey it's going to be really hard man right because that's for the Caucasian man with white hair the game you were about to play and at the time I had blonde hair right as an Asian guy and they're like you there's this thing called a bamboo ceiling Vin and I was like what the hell 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 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 believed it to be real I didn't try I didn't try to go for those Geeks with 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 quote from Steve Martin that

truly inspired me where it's be so good they can't ignore you and then there was a 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 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 bloody GoPros together and learn this game minute by minute and I was able to soar in my career to a place where I never

could go and I had those limitations placed on me all my life all these different labels place on me all my life Steven and when I choose to believe in them they had so much power over me and when I chose not to at times some of them weren't even real and I was creating Myself by speaking about 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 these companies I was able to work I this is this even real

do they know I'm from the northern suburbs of South Australia Adelaide that's wild that you went from not speaking the language to being paid Millions to speak to speak 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 goes it's the most hilarious thing in the world and I hope that becomes a point of inspiration that 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

this is what you want actually it's even more extreme because you were bullied for not being able to speak the language so much so that you had to move to five different schools and now yeah you earn Millions from speaking the language and teaching others how to speak it probably 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 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 worked for months about to buy me that bike it was $280 Australian dollars which was huge during the '90s it was an incredible BMX bike with stunt pegs and everything and I bully found out where I lived and stole it and reached out 25 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 was crazy was it was so beautiful because because of the Good Vibes I've 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 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 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 you've just resolved you've just resolved some of that for me when you apologized and said sorry because my mom 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 that he he apologized you it was it was really beautiful when dealing with people like bullies workplace bullies people that are insulting you or patronizing you what is the best technique conversationally to disarm them or to you know to stop to stop them from doing or to come out on top per se whatever that might mean the simplest version of that for me is to use improvisation yes and and instead of disagreeing with you I will humorously 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 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 idiot like yeah I'm I'm I'm a bit clumsy at times I know that and they don't know 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 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 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 you're right sometimes I can be a bit bit of an idiot it requires you to remove your ego though because again and you have to be okay with that because we're all flawed human beings aren't you letting them win though in that

situation it it depends on how you define win to me I'm just not going to be hooked into this whereas before I 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 love this quote from ber Brown where she says if it's I think from Theodore Roosevelt if you're not in the arena 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 100 pictures a year they come into the

den five of us dragons here we're interrog ating them we're asking them difficult questions based on what you know about communication how should they handle our critiques and our challenges is it that yes and thing because what's the opposite of yes and the opposite of yes and is yes but right and and the classic scenario is if you said something to them simple as and I remember sharing this with one of my clients where I saw in their calls when people were arguing with them about their prices they would say yes but the reason we're

expensive 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 you're taking your conversation to a negative Direction but means whatever you say I'm going to negate that and I'm going to give you my version of reality whereas when you say yes and the same thing can you you could critique them and say oh I think your services are too expensive yes and Stephen the reason for that is because we invest heavily in 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 negative Direction one we're going to build upon this and we'll work through this one I'm negating what you're saying 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 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 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 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 put two people in these like brain scanners and they got them to agree and agree and agree and scan their brains 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 in these brain scanners

their brains basically shut down because they'd gone into shut down they the almost like you could when I say shut down it's like the lights went out um and so she taught me this law that I wrote about which is called Never disagree when you say that people go never disagree doesn't make sense 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 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 there's no fire now because we're not creating the friction to create a fire and I I I again take that path because I'm just not interested in just arguing for blatant argu I'm just not interested in that the other thing that people struggle with a lot and we talked about it a tiny little bit earlier on is starting conversations and small talk yeah it's difficult I think it's becoming increasingly more difficult as we become more sort of digitalized in our lives it requires so much courage I feel that starting a meaningful conversation requires

a lot of Courage how do this sounds like a crazy thing to say on a podcast in 2025 how do 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 you have been warned it requires courage and it's a game simple game called Halo Buffalo Halo Buffalo I love this game oh 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

that's not so great for you Buffalo something interesting about you now there's a reason why this game is so 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 we're doing is we're creating something called conversational threads let's play first so do you want 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 pretty awesome so I love that about

this like this is amazing for me this is a big high for me low I'm really struggling with what is enough in this chapter of my life and 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 about me is I have three alpackers and I live on on acreage gosh that's crazy I gotta beat alpacas now don't beat alpacas whatever you like got a dog called Pablo yeah there you go you're overthinking it don't overthink it give it a go hi

I'm really enjoying this conversation and I'm learning a lot which is amazing low I haven't been 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 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 interesting thing uh I'm training for a marathon that I haven't signed up to yet 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 alpaca however that's great okay when you have the courage to do do this with someone now I have given you three 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 courageous enough to play this game say you've been with working with Susan for 12 months and you always see each other 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 named VIN on coo he said if you want to connect with someone and you care about the connection play

a game called H 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 excited to be here also struggling with enough and then I also Shar with the got three Packers I live in an acreage there 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 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 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 then no worries because you've taken your shot in the dark and you've given one thread and it just didn't hit 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 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 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 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 what's stopping you no matter where I am in the world it seems like everyone is drinking matcha and there's a good chance that that matcha you're drinking is made by a company that I've invested more

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even started the workout a few years ago we ran a study called project PR and it found that Runners who adjusted their training based on their recovery scores improved their 5K times by an average of 2 minutes and 40 seconds while reducing injury Risk by over 30% and they did it while training less so if you're looking for this type of guidance when it comes to your training head over to join. woop.com CEO and get a 30-day trial with zero commitment that's join. woop.com CEO let me know how you get on small talk is so

critical I was reading this study that said 55% of relationships both professional and personal are formed through small talk and Casual interactions a study done by the University of Oxford and it says that 80% of conversations in the workplace involve some form of small talk that's Harvard Business Review if I 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 tell my students 321 which is three steps two types or the one thing so just have that in the back your

head there are three steps to something there are two types of something or the one thing 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 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 X right so you go the one thing about personal branding if I could share with you now is the importance of being consistent hey so

good to meet you let's take a quick selfy and then you go so 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 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 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 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 what they're saying or the one thing about what they're saying is this and do you think I should have some nuggets nuggets some questions in my back pocket that I roll out for frequently some pre-prepared small talk things that aren't have you seen the weather yeah yeah yeah yeah you should and and these are important and and you can create 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 doors to so many interesting things that people do as opposed to them telling me what they do for a job because we've 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 what are you doing your free time I I genuinely love that question and have a list of three to four questions just have them in your back pocket that framework of 321 though that

allows you to get out of that small talk 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 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 a difficult conversation so say someone has been always interrupts me at work and and know I do you know why it happens though why because of low levels of physical and low levels

of vocal presence if you know if I talk to you 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 have to you have to fix that at a foundational level you have to increase your vocal presence you have to increase your physical presence because it's infinitely harder to interrupt this version of Vin as opposed to the version 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 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 harder to interrupt this yeah I couldn't interrupt this guy it's harder yeah yeah 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 indicated that you are you're taking the floor right now this is why I say to people who get interrupted all the time all right here's a simple another simple straty if

everyone's sitting around a team meeting stand when you're about to deliver your point because when you stand you now have more physical presence so all of a sudden people won't interrupt you as long as you're standing because I'm still talking the biggest objection people have to the pause is 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 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 conversation if you know know there's a seral interruptor sorry I do this sometimes if there's a seral interruptor in your environment and I was just pointing at myself there I don't interrupt because I want 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 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

respect you they don't respect you yeah I want that floor that very difficult you have to have a private conversation with outside but to the 99% of people who are interrupting because they want to add value you just 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 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 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 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 to mirror someone's you know you talked about these five foundations am I meant to mirror yours to relate and resonate 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 meet us but you know when we fart it still smells hey thank you so much for coming up and connecting with me the 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 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 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 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 happens like magic where you will see them slowly come out

of their show a little more you've got to meet them 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 family occupation Recreation and dreams and what's the context there well it's these are the points of conversation 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 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 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 about family Recreation occupation and your dreams and why does having a a broader set of things to talk about cause more resonance and connection because that interaction feels different to every other one okay otherwise it always feels like occupation it's always about occupation I I I just love having extra things

to about to go to like the dreams again I I love asking people that question I love watching there's a gentleman named Simon squip who who who's being able to own the brand of what is your dream right it's such a powerful question and it causes people to pause and think and what is my dream 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 it hits people yeah it hits people especially with the vulnerable things when you started saying

that you were struggling with too much yeah there's something that changed in me I was like oh yeah he is human that's why Halo Buffalo is so powerful is because and that's why I say it requires courage because I know that the moment people heard me say that they they they clench their butt cheeks they're like oh 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 struggle shows I've got things that aren't going that well you know when we um had the

conversation on the podcast with Vanessa about body language one of the things that I saw in the comment section was people pointing out that in different cultures yes different rules apply yes it's kind of what I was saying earlier about being British we're a bit more conserved yeah do you need to sort of overlay all this advice with cultural Nuance 100% a motivational speaker from America coming to Australia doesn't work well because if they they come to Australia they're like oh get on your 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 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 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 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 expose yourself to the I've made mistakes before right I I I've done the ultimate mistake 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 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 then I went to I went to Asia and I did the same accent no one laughed and I went right no sensitivity there I I I didn't realize it

that well I they didn't find it funny cuz they're like oh yeah a was sweating bullets and then they start to slowly realize oh he's taking the piss oh and then the audience turns against you I've done it wrong 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 of failure that's the only way you learn and and so many people hate 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 Plymouth when I was a kid do you know why no it's because when you hear your own voice you're hearing the vibrations through bone and muscle muscle tissue you're hearing 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 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 muscle and bone it's through air so it's less dense so it sounds 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 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 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 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 camera it's because you see yourself in the mirror and you see yourself the way you see yourself in then you see 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 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 how do I overcome that desensitization you have to listen to yourself do you still care about your 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 doesn't make me cringe anymore because you've desensitized yeah because you're now hearing what other people hear and you and again that's why you should record videos of yourself and I still

think that record and review thing if 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 going to radically shift the way you come across when you speak you imagine you are only three changes away from completely transforming that's all that it takes I've seen my students do this time and 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

body language it's a different human being it's crazy and again I'm not saying be that all the time it's now you having gears right it's like a car most people just one gear and I'll bring that one gear that one communication style to every interaction why is it not effective do you think this whole introvert extrovert thing is I asked my vocal teacher this 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 pianist you saw at the concert I took you

to if they're an extrovert how would it be 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 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 interaction so you have to be highly digant you have to be highly diligent when you're expending that energy and 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 time so again for an extrovert it's just about choosing when you do that choosing when you play beautifully as opposed to oh I'm I'm an introvert I I should just talk like this then because I'm an introvert it's like what really social anxiety some people do have like severe social anxiety um so 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 ever change because they literally their body goes through almost like a panic attack when they're

in these social situations what you say to those people it's the slow process of desensitization it really is I I I I find it exposure therapy yes I find it 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 value and I had to go learn a whole craft to have value so that I could be amazing because by myself I'm not amazing that's why I learned magic because I felt like I wasn't amazing and 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 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 instead of picking something like magic and then using that as a crutch because I did and then in every conversation 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 confident now

I feel like I'm I have nothing to give so to me this this is why I push communication 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 year Camp freshman Camp I had a really good friend at the time named Kevin I saw him playing ukulele around the fire camp and for the first time I saw Kevin talk to girls me and Kevin bonded over 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 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 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 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 the freak and I didn't

understand that for the life of me and then I experienced in 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 talk to anyone I had crippling social anxiety and I went a this is what we call contextual confidence oh interesting so in certain contexts I'm more confident even the people you're talking about who are anxious there are certain contexts where they are contextually confident and they 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 comes up they now are a great communicator right so then the idea of contextual confidence led me to really working out that communication skills is such a critical skill set why because if I master the use of my voice if I master 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 language up can I leave my ability to story tell and connect with other people at

home you can't now you have this ability that follows you everywhere you go meaning you become contextually confident in every single area of your life do you get tired when you go home yes 100% I can imagine cuz you are high energy because I choose to give yeah I I I'm I'm I'm conscious choosing to do 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 me I didn't leave my our interview today was 4 p.m. right M I

didn't leave the hotel room at all all day why because I'm conserving that energy for you okay thank you yeah you're welcome and to the point where my videographer was asking me he said hey dude are you all right 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 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 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 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 finite or if I do this podcast and then I you know I'll go in go into the real 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

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 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 it's it's it's a conscious thing whereas I used to approach every interaction with oh bring the bare minimum and I I didn't Val I didn't understand that that exchange of energy 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 transaction here that's happening that's invisible and and I treat like it's so 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 got upgraded on my flight because I just built connection with the person and I thought you know what I'm just this 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 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 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 they were going to give me an upgrade but I did they did which was so cool right and they felt good too you probably hypnotize them or something yeah I don't know maybe magistry yeah it's it's it's an energy bribe I going back to what you said

earlier you said that you're at a phase in your life where you're struggling with the thought that when is enough enough yeah it's been really hard yeah I mean are you feeling this because as you build your personal brand as this podcast reaches more people as it is already as it gets bigger and bigger and bigger more and more and more opportunities come along the momentum gets faster and faster and faster it becomes harder now to steer what is that struggle though so struggle implies that there's two forces pulling in two different direction so describe

both forces to me there's a part of me that is very ambitious but my identity now has been upgraded I'm not just entrepreneur I'm dad and there's a pull between the 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 this strong my daughter's about to turn one my son's seven turning eight and these forces now Stephen are so strong because my father was so good in my life such a pillar in my life that I used to be a away a 180

days a year right I missed out on so much of my son's upbringing and I I don't want to make that same mistake and again I didn't realize there was this I didn't see the correlation between success and sacrifice I I I drank the Kool-Aid I thought you can have everything you can have everything and and I I haven't 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 learning what is the amount of sacrifice that I'm willing to to

to have and it's it's so hard because as as I value being like the more I value being a father the the bigger these opportunities that come along as well and then you're like ah so it's this constant push and pull this and how are you navigating that in terms of have you got a framework for the decision or a framework to know what you should say yes to and what you shouldn't every 6 months I do a process called recalibrate 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 in Australia and we go away for about half a week to a week and we get permission from our families and we review and reflect on the last six months and how we've lived and the decisions we've made and we go through memorable moments and we go through down moments and because we both Journal we can reflect back 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 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 protect myself from that is by doing this process but even then the push and pull is it's always ever present that struggle is always there what is your ambition I told you about my two kids right I I had very selfish Ambitions early on in my career very ambitious uh my own which was to make a

lot of money um you know to to be able to do do all 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 in 2017 and we were in America and we were firsttime parents and 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 my son and and I still remember this trip I went on to Japan with my cousin

and her husband they're both psychologists and we're one week into that trip and I remember them saying hey we we have something really important we need to talk to you about and and I was like 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 said we we we we think Xander is autistic my 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 away so much that

that you you didn't want to connect with me and and they confirmed that they said all these things eye contact um maybe he won't be verbal maybe it was one of the most difficult periods of my life and then my wife leaned over and she said do you think it's by chance that one of the greatest things that people who are on the Spectrum struggle with you're really great at do you think it's by chance that he came to us and at that point I was not teaching communication skills really yet and it's almost a

very selfish goal but the reason I teach it is because I think you know that one of the main things that happens when you teach something Stephen is that you become better at it you deepen your knowledge 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 in this chapter of life is to get so good at teaching this that I can help my son you know now my son talks my son gives me eye contact just last year my son

did the most amazing thing where I was teaching a class filled with hundreds of people and he just walks up on stage grabs the mic and talks and asks me if I 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 how do we make that happen he came to that theater with me 30 40 times first times you stand outside the theater you just listen to dad's voice then you step you

stand you open the door you stand in there and you can kind 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 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 can break it down to micro steps for you 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 can help my son overcome one of his most challenging difficulties we experienced in this life incredibly beautiful your father as well yeah was and is an incredible person you were telling me a little bit about him before but I also did some research on the life he lived and what 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 confers ation yeah Mom and Dad before I moved to the US 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 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 game and and we we're suffering we're suffering and we've been following Buddhism for years and we find so much peace in in this pathway he said we're suffering yeah how we would buy a new 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 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 we didn't have a boat license so what are we doing with the jet ski and it 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 suffering in his life he went from nothing in Australia to building incredible businesses with his brothers

right they started South Australia one of South Australia's first grocery stores and then they went to buy pharmacies and restaurants and takeaway stores they did commercial property really residential property so they they built all this up and they'd fled from they fled from war from war so they started from nothing in Australia and I watched them do that right the most memorable thing that led me to this path of Entrepreneurship that I am in now is I saw them we would have three bedrooms in the house one was for sleeping the other two were sewing

rooms and then after you 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 get 50 cents for that whole bag peeled and then after that every part of our garden was dug up to grow vegetables that we will sell for 10 cents a bunch at the local grocery store and then after that as well they would also cook these delicious things in vietnames got one and then we would cook them and sell them for 50 cents each inside

the house 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 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 we became the grocery store right and I just watched them do all of these different things and and there were years where Dad was really happy but then there were years that started to come where he find I saw him really

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 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 there was an exhaustion to it when they when we had that conversation there was such exhaustion there and I remember feeling it which what made me think cuz because on my head I was thinking oh you just want to 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 wow there there's a game you're playing and you're so exhausted and you found freedom because you're so excited for this other thing and this other thing was becoming a monk becoming a monk renouncing they renounced everything renounced everything yeah and then I became the person that then had to give some of the things that they needed I think I think one of the greatest gifts that my parents have given me is not giving me an 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 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 Millions yeah and then I and then then I almost had then there's a part where and 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 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 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 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 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 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 them build this beautiful little spot where it was filled with Gardens with vegetables and self-sufficient now and 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 we got a little block of land and um yeah

it's called nmai and then they they just have people go there vietnames because my dad doesn't speak English that well so he's got a bunch of people from the Vietnamese culture coming to who are suffering from the war and some of them have had children pass away and all these and then I see my dad bring someone who the craziest situation when I saw him have someone lose a child one of the greatest pains I think a human could ever know and then walk in in tears dad speak to them hold their hand 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 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 some fruit for those who you may not be around for but when this tree grows you've planted some beautiful fruit for someone to eat you've done something really good today and I watched him

almost heal someone without saying much 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 into their hands to give them a moment of quiet people people know how to get out of their own troubles sometimes they just need a place to need some shade is is he happy I've never seen him happier where and I was the biggest skeptic cuz I thought surely 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 a period of my life I was like is this real like is it real or is this a phase and as far as I can see it's it's real get on him and and he's so free though is cu he wakes up every morning there's he has this incredible he's no attachments he's he's he's detached from everything what has he told you about the endless pursuit of Mo has he given you any cautionary sort of warnings about yeah yeah it's it's 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 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 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 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 days a

year and I was doing 80 speeches it was it was such a addictive career because so financially rewarding so 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 so lonely here in the US I was so miserable but again again because you get paid more you go oh you one more 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 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 this kind of movies and he said a king that knows the limits to his desires will rule a lifetime and I'd lost track of my desires at that point what does he mean by that you'll notice kings that want to continually conquer I want to conquer more I want to conquer more land and and gradually what happens to them is they die they get killed whereas the kings that know the limits to their desires they rule an entire lifetime

and that's what I really connected with and that's what brought me back and I walked away from a speaking career to go back to south Australia Adelaide I remember my agents in Australia said can't you at least come back to Melbourne and Sydney you're going to Adelaide and and to me because I wanted [Music] to the pendulum had swung so far one way that I reacted in that way and swung so back far the other way and I learned 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 Southern California to have this business that I wanted to build to become the person you thought to become I I had that belief and that belief wasn't real is there a voice inside you that goes God you could do it bigger 100% it's there go to New York 100% it's 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 the mistake with my son already Stephen I was a away so much I was away so much I

don't want to make the same mistake with him ongoing I wanted to recalibrate because here's what would normally happen to me I would always achieve the goals of a previous version of me and then go oh I'm unhappy oh it's because you achieved the goals of a previous version of you I wasn't aligning the things that I was doing with the present version of me because I never took the time to sit still that's why the recalibrate trips that I going with my best mate Ali are so vital to me because I'm learning how to

take action that's more aligned with the present version of me I've got a previous version of you here what was um what was what was that kid like at that age starving for attention starving for attention and desperate felt really lonely because I moved school so many times most people go to university with a group of strong friends I went to five schools what did 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 would you say to him I tell him not to be so attached to who you currently are stop being so attached to this identity that you've created not only are other people going to try to keep you inside this you're the one that's keeping you inside this you keep blaming other people saying that oh everyone's stopping me from becoming the person that I am no no no no lesson vin it's you you're the one stopping you from becoming the future version of you and the simple word would just be just let go let go

of that present version of you I hung on to it why do we hang on to it as much as my reality sucked in that moment I felt safe familiar familiar and and and and it felt like home because what is home home is just a familiar and the coolest thing about traveling Stephen is that as I traveled more before home I would tell you oh home to me is Salsbury downs and then as I started to travel 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 home is Australia then I started to live in America oh home is America and then home gradually becomes the world there's this beautiful concept where again I just kind of home to me is just a familiar and at that point my home was Salsbury Downs my home with this such limited version of Vin and I was too afraid to venture out of Salsbury then what's the most important thing that we haven't spoken about that we should have spoken about today as it relates to the work that you do

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 at the screen what it might be that we didn't cover what do you think it would be one big thing 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 screaming at home is they they're screaming out yeah but if I did that tonight with my partner they're going to 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 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 love this concept of neutral ears and a neutral ear is someone who has no preconceived idea of how you sound or how you communicate and there are neutral ears everywhere before I me well you watch my content but if I go out

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 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 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 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 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 right and just do it sometimes one look can put you back in your mold whereas 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 more yeah because it helps you feel normal doing it and then you have a chance now

to play and be vulnerable look for neutral ears I'd set people kpis every single day and every single day set yourself a kpi maybe go to a gas station a little further from your house and play with 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 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 start to finesse because the first time someone plays the

saxophone it sounds 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 a process then if you want your partner to be supportive then you have to Prime the conversation when you go home so don't immediately come home as this other version of you come home and and prime it by saying look honey I've been 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 see me play with my volume if you see me play with my melody could you please encourage me and support me on this journey because I want to be better and do it with me yeah oh that's beautiful I 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 this with your colleagues as well I love that neutral ears then we have a closing 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 for you what is one thing that you know to be true doing pauses did you see that even though you can't prove it that in the world we live right now you can negotiate whatever reality you desire right now in my own mind I just have that belief and that 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 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 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 way I'd still be glad I lived my life in that exact way I mean gosh yeah it's a much more productive optimistic effective way to live even if 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

beliefs Stephen so many and now I just choose to believe in beliefs that 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 life in this way because there's a part of my brain right now that genuinely believes this that there'll be a day when I will be bored with this chapter of life and no longer want to teach communication skills I just hope that I have the courage but I know that I'll be able to live a chapter where I

become a chef I love cooking and I know it to be true that if I wanted that and I'm ready for that chapter I can write a chapter where I become a great chef 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 you're so remarkably good at um making the complex simple and I think I really really deeply believe and this is why I wanted to speak to you I really really believe that there's so many people this is interesting

language I'm about to use that are basically being unfairly treated by the world because for whatever reason they didn't come across the skills the skills that you've spent many many many years giving to people 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 seen the feedback that you get who's had the trajectory of their life altered in relationships professions the job the promotion uh family communication where 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 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 have even one tool out of what you said today one place to start on that Journey towards a different tomorrow trajectory life thank you thank you for the work that you do I know it must get boring after a while doing the same thing saying the same same stuff being asked the same

questions getting the same DMS but it is so important it really is you know because as as you experienced as a Young Man the way that you can feel the the isolation the loneliness the disconnect the the feelings that you're different and that you're missing something can really drive you down a very miserable despairing path in life and Someone Like You helps people turn the lights on and shows them a better way so thank you on behalf of all those people thank you 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 playing play songs of Love kindness and compassion play songs that spread 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 onto your stage and the role that you're currently playing and play with your instrument

as a luminary to spread more love carness and compassion amen yeah thank you thank you the hardest conversations are often the ones we avoid but what if you had the right question to start them with every single guest on the DI of SE has left behind a question in this diary and it's a question designed to challenge to connect and to go deeper with the next guest and these are all the questions that I have here in my hand on one side you've got the question that was asked 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 answered it 51 questions split across three different levels the warm-up level the openup level and the Deep level so you decide how deep the conversation goes and people play these conversation cards in boardrooms at work in bedrooms alone at night and on first dates and everywhere in between I'll put a link to the conversation cards in the description below and you can get yours at the diary.com this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of

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want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so much [Music] [Music]