Why Trying to “Sound Smart” is Losing You the Room with Strategic Story Producer Rob Willis

Have you ever sat through a presentation and felt your attention just start to…drift? Chances are, it wasn't the content. It was the delivery. A year ago, Rob Willis was a corporate trainer with years of experience and a sharp eye for what makes people listen. He wondered if what he taught in workshops would resonate with a larger audience. So he started making short videos that break down what makes great speakers great: from their word choice, to structure, to the energy they brought to any room or conversation. Rob even made a video breaking down my method of public speaking. In his video, Rob dissects my signature opening line, and my friends couldn't stop sending it to me. One hundred videos in one hundred days later, Rob's videos are going viral on a regular basis, and a whole new audience is eager to learn from him. But what I find most interesting about Rob is where he actually learned all of this. Not in a classroom. He learned it by giving free walking tours in Berlin, where nobody pays up front and anyone can leave at any moment. If you're boring, people simply walk away — no tip, no small talk, just people voting with their feet. Rob and I discuss what that taught him about holding a room, why the smartest person in the room is rarely the most persuasive one, and the handful of simple, almost mechanical shifts that separate a forgettable pitch from one people actually remember. In this episode you'll learn: ➡️ Why "if I just explain it better" is the most common, and most inaccurate, assumption speakers make ➡️ Rob's trick for holding anyone's attention, whether it's a boardroom or a crowd on a street corner ➡️ What real charisma is made of (hint: it's not confidence, it's belief) ➡️ Why so many people suddenly sound fake the moment they step on stage ➡️ 5 things you can do in your next meeting to immediately present better You don't need a TED Talk on your calendar to get something out of this one. Any of us who wants to be understood — in a meeting, a pitch, a hard conversation — will find something worth stealing. This… is A Bit of Optimism. + + + This episode is brought to you by SAP. Bring it with SAP GROW. The AI Cloud ERP for any size business. Learn more at https://SAP.com/GROW + + + Want to keep up with Rob and his video breakdowns? Check out: https://robdwillis.carrd.co/ + + + Chapters Chapters 00:00:00 The Former Tour Guide Who Cracked the Code 00:03:12 Why Trying to Sound Smart is Losing You the Room 00:03:48 100 Videos in 100 Days 00:06:16 Breaking Down the Patterns: What Makes Simon Sinek Work 00:07:33 Learning to Speak Without a Plan 00:11:41 The Knowledge Deficit Trap: Why More Information Doesn't Always Work 00:12:33 The Tour Guide Philosophy and Tracking What Actually Works 00:16:20 Simon's Book Writing Journey 00:23:10 The Art of the Distilled Message 00:25:53 The Bolt of Lightning Myth: How Great Ideas Really Happen 00:26:55 Let Them Get There First: The Power of the Aha Moment 00:29:10 Hans Rosling and What is True Charisma 00:31:47 Speaking With Conviction, Not Questions 00:34:30 The Speaking Voice Trap: Why You Sound Weird on Stage 00:36:42 Five Things You Can Do Tomorrow to Become a Better Speaker 00:44:14 The Five-Minute Rule: Why Less is Always More + + + Simon is an unshakable optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together. Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon has devoted his professional life to help advance a vision of the world that does not yet exist; a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. Simon is the author of multiple best-selling books including Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together is Better, and The Infinite Game. + + + Website: http://simonsinek.com/ Leaderful: https://simonsinek.com/leaderful Podcast: http://apple.co/simonsinek Instagram: https://instagram.com/simonsinek/ Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/simonsinek/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsinek Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonsinek + + +

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Simon Sinek?

  The way I define charisma is believing in the thing that you're talking about.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:04Simon Sinek?

  It's not about jumping off the walls and energy. There's some very quiet speakers who have unbelievable charisma. And the charisma is you can tell they really believe in the things they're telling you.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. I heard a great definition of charisma. It's charisma is empathy and authority. Someone who cares about you and someone who can look after you. Because you wouldn't want, you know, someone who's just very, very capable, but doesn't care about you. Equally, someone who cares about you, but can't do anything.

• 0:34Simon Sinek?

  That's true. We all want to be credible when we speak. We want people to think we're smart, that we know what we're talking about. So what do we do? We do more. We provide more data, more slides, more proof that we're the expert in whatever we're talking about. But it doesn't work. Because then we see the speaker who comes right after us with few, if any, slides. And they can't remember the exact dates of things and they get things wrong. And yet they hold the room and everyone talks about their talk after the meeting. That's why I invited Rob Willis on the podcast. Rob calls himself a strategic story producer.

• 1:15Simon Sinek?

  And I first discovered him on Instagram, where he breaks down how great speakers actually speak. And he actually did one on me. But it's how Rob learned what it takes to be a great speaker that I find fascinating. He was a tour guide in Berlin and not a very good one, it turns out, at least not at first. He started doing what most of us would do. He loaded up on dates and facts. And the more impressive his knowledge, the less money he made. And so he studied the guides who made the most money. Those guides actually gave less information. But the information they gave, they communicated those points through a few brilliantly told human stories.

• 1:59Simon Sinek?

  Whether we're pitching an idea or leading a meeting, our job isn't to prove how much we know. It's to give our audience something they can relate to, something they'll remember. And Rob is so good at explaining how we can do that, unsurprisingly. If you like this episode, please do remember to subscribe. This is a bit of optimism.

• 2:27Simon Sinek?

  This episode is proudly brought to you by SAP. Change used to take years, then months. Now it seems to happen in weeks. And in a world moving that fast, the winners are the companies that have figured out how to adapt at the speed of change. That's why I wanted to talk to David Robinson. As the North American president of customer success at SAP, he spent more than two decades helping companies keep up with the pace of change. And he has a surprisingly simple idea about what it actually takes. You can learn more in the middle of this episode. To learn more about SAP, the AI cloud ERP for businesses of all size, head to sap.com/grow.

• 3:12Simon Sinek?

  Rob Willis, thanks for coming on a bit of optimism.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 3:16Simon Sinek?

  So I learned about you when my friends all started sending me your video about me.

• 3:23Simon Sinek?

  Telling people my rhetorical device for how I start my talks. And we thought, wouldn't it be fun if we just invited you on the show to talk about how to talk? Give people advice on how best to present.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I noticed you liked it and for me it was a very meta moment. My video about Simon Sinek liked by Simon Sinek.

• 3:40Simon Sinek?

  I thought it was good. I thought it was good. So you've only been doing this a very short period of time, about a year, right?

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:49Simon Sinek?

  Making videos. And you're a thing, like my friends all know you and many of them follow you. And your videos, they sort of go viral quite frequently. How did, like, when, how, what? A year is really quick to sort of to pop like that.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, now I've been, I'm also quite surprised by all of this. And I got into it because I have a friend who's also does Instagram videos. He's one of the big creators of our Berlin history. And I saw him doing it and he was like having a good time, he was getting lots of work out of it. And he said, Rob, you've got to do it. And I was a corporate trainer and I thought, no, we've got to do LinkedIn. LinkedIn's the place to be. But then eventually I thought, okay, I'll give it a go. And I thought I'll do 100 videos in 100 days. Because I saw a video from another personal brand expert and they said like, just resign yourself. Three months, see what happens. And I gave it 100 days and then it began to get that momentum.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  And you know, that momentum's the kind of thing that keeps you going, isn't it? Like, as long as you can see momentum there, then you keep going with the thing and then one thing leads to another. And now I'm here in Los Angeles.

• 4:57Simon Sinek?

  So 100 videos, 100 days, that's a hell of a commitment. And you literally made one a day, or did you make like four in one day?

• 5:04Speaker 01

  It depends on like time, like if you have a workshop or, you know, a family event or something, or it's the weekend. My wife would not let me work on a Sunday.

• 5:12Simon Sinek?

  Smart.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:13Simon Sinek?

  And when did you realize, okay, this is a thing? Like I'm now, I'm a, I'm an influencer, I'm a content producer, I'm a thing.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  I think the first video that really took off was I broke down a scene from a film called Margin Call, which has this amazing scene where Jeremy Irons guides an analyst, a junior analyst, through the questions that you need to answer in a kind of executive presentation. And I made a video about that. And it just kind of popped off and then people started like writing and comments and then writing messages to me and so on. And saying that they were getting value out of it. And it's kind of bizarre the first time it happens. I'm sure the same was probably true for you when you first begin to get the breakthrough and people read your books. And they're like, I've got so much value out of this. I don't know if it's imposter syndrome, but it's certainly weird when it starts.

• 6:10Simon Sinek?

  Where did your interest come from evaluating and sort of breaking down how people speak?

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Well, I love seeing patterns and things. So I've got, I, one of my job titles, as I like to call myself, is I say strategic story producer. Because I used to work in music and work as a music producer. And the work I do now is very, very similar to what I did back then. Which is a songwriter would come to me, they'd have a song that would be eight minutes long, have no hook. There would be nothing to latch on to. So my job was to identify what's working in this and make it shorter usually. And make it connect with their audience. And I thought, you know, I see this in films happening. I see it in people's speeches, you know, speakers like you. How do they do what they do?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  So I just applied that natural pattern recognition that I kind of do. I don't, I'm not really following a framework, I'm just seeing what feels right. What do I think they're trying to do here? And I, I'm very sure that probably a lot of the speakers are not even doing it consciously. They just have a way that they like to, to speak. It's just how they communicate. Steve Jobs is a great example. I don't think that he went to some amazing speech coach and learned to do it. I think he just, that was him, that was how he got ideas across. When you were studying your own speaking,

• 7:37Speaker 01

  I imagine it feels very you, the way you communicate. Is that something you arrived at quite quickly or did you, did it? Or was it something you had to work on or was it something just through trial and error? And you never really knew what made it work, but somehow it seemed to work and you kept doing more of the thing that worked?

• 7:53Simon Sinek?

  So I get a kick out of when people make videos telling people the things that I'm doing. Because I, they make, some of the videos that I've seen, they make as if like I studied this and structured it that way, which is not what happens. I learned a few things on purpose and some by accident. So I'm very good on my feet, like extemporaneously. Like I can show up without a plan. I've given entire speeches before. There's, there's a few speeches that are online. Where literally somebody said to me, as before I went on stage, what are you going to talk about? And five minutes before I'm like, I haven't decided yet. And they giggle thinking I'm joking, but I'm being deadly serious, I haven't decided yet. The funny story is, I don't really talk about this publicly, so it's fun.

• 8:38Simon Sinek?

  I learned a skill by accident. So I used to pay to go see my favorite speakers years and years ago when I was a young marketer. You know, folks like Seth Godin and Jim Collins. And I'd go see them in these big events. And I was always struck by how brilliant they were off the cuff. And how spontaneous they were and relaxed they were. And I thought to myself, I want to be able to do that, you know? And not because I wanted to be a speaker, I just wanted that skill, you know, even just presenting for work. And I practiced. And basically what I did is I would get presentations for work all the time, you know? Pretty traditional, here's my PowerPoint, I'm going to walk you through my PowerPoint. Like many people, I'm going to read most of the slides, you know? And I got better at, I put fewer words on the slides, so I had to kind of know my stuff.

• 9:23Simon Sinek?

  I couldn't be too reliant on the slides. And then I went to just a couple of slides and then I went to no slides. And then I went to like very prepared to less prepared. And I would, I would sort of practice being less prepared so that I could, I knew my thing. It's like people are amazed, how do you talk about your thing without preparing? I was like, could you just start talking about your kids and tell me about, you know, about your kids? And like people are, of course, I'm like, yes, because you know. I don't have to prepare to tell you something I know. This is my life's work, I know this, you know? People just freak themselves out, which is why they memorize and over study. And, and so I got really good at just walking up and being able to share what they're asking me to share,

• 10:07Simon Sinek?

  what I know extemporaneously. And then years later, I met some of my heroes who I used to go pay to see on the stage. And I learned that they rehearse and study and practice and memorize. And I completely got it wrong because they were so good. I, I thought they had a skill that actually they didn't. And so I practiced something by accident and got good at something by accident.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  But it is a process.

• 10:31Simon Sinek?

  That's what happened.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  But it's also a process, like, I mean, if you see, remember that film Eight Mile with Eminem?

• 10:37Simon Sinek?

  I never saw it, but yes.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  You never saw it, okay. Well, there's a bit, it's about freestyle rap. And there's a bit where he's writing down lines on the bus. And these are lines that he always will use. And a lot of freestyle rap, they're putting together material that they've already got. So it's like modules in their heads. And it seems like complete magic in the moment, but it's just putting together what you know.

• 11:01Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  As you say. And I think that people can also compare themselves unfavorably to people like you, people like Seth Godin. You know, amazing speaker.

• 11:12Simon Sinek?

  Amazing speaker, yeah.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  He's given that speech a million times.

• 11:16Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  And to expect that your average person in their Tuesday morning presentation is going to deliver something with that kind of ease and fluency. It's just not gonna happen, but you can get better for sure.

• 11:31Simon Sinek?

  I think that's a hundred percent true. What is the most common mistake people make when they're trying to be better speakers or presenters? Some of the most common mistakes.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Well, I think the core challenge, which I think people often have, is what scientists would call the knowledge deficit model. Like just people just lack the information. If you gave them the information, then they would think like you. And I was the same, actually. So the other reason I got into doing communication was I was working as a free tour, walking tour guide.

• 12:06Simon Sinek?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  And you've heard about the free tours. You go on a tour, there's no payment for a ticket, but you give a tip at the end.

• 12:13Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  And I started that and I really struggled at the beginning to make any money, not because of stage fright or anything like that. But because I thought it was all about knowledge, dates and facts. And I thought, if I know more, then people are going to be impressed. And they didn't, they weren't, they made no money. And I then started to, like you did, go on the tours of the guides who I knew were making good money. And I started trying to work out what are they doing? And I would copy them. And so I started this process of tracking what I was doing and mapping it out on a big spreadsheet. Worked out what made more money, what made less money. And the thing that worked was actually less information, not more information.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  And just distilling things down to a few human stories that people can actually latch on to. And I think the challenge, to go back to your question, that people have is they think it's about the big abstract content. It's about the data, whereas really it's about connecting with one person.

• 13:12Simon Sinek?

  What a great analogy, the tour guide, right? Because if you're giving any kind of presentation, whereas the sales pitch or a presentation internally to your own company, you know, it's a bit of a tour. You're taking them, you are the guy taking them through the information, through the history or the future or the ideas. And you're a hundred percent right, having been on many walking tours before, the people who just overwhelm us with data and facts, it's too much. We're bored, we're tired, we're exhausted by the, I interrupt and go, let's go to the next thing. You know, you're trying not to be rude, but you really want to move on.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:47Simon Sinek?

  You know, where the ones who are funny and charming and tell you a couple of brilliant stories, they make it, I don't want to, I don't want to, they make it entertaining. And I think people are very afraid of this word entertaining because they think entertaining means telling jokes. And sometimes it means that, but really entertaining just means I'm enjoying getting from point A to point B. You know?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  You're putting it beautifully, I'm getting them from point A to point B. It's another big mistake I think people make is they, they don't think about taking someone from one place to another. They think about, okay, this is what I've got to say.

• 14:19Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Not what they need to hear.

• 14:22Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  And so it's just a list of facts and information and it's not really a journey in any sense. And it's not a story, or a journey is kind of a story, I guess, you could say. So if people can work out, okay, I want to get people from point A to point B. Be that literally in terms of a tour or metaphorically in terms of a presentation. And then work out like, what are the, what are the bits that they need to hear to get from point A to point B?

• 14:49Simon Sinek?

  Yep.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  And you won't always be successful. Like, I think another thing I realized from my tours is that the people in front of you and what they're turning up to the tour with have as much of an impact as anything you can do. You know, you can be better. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this is all hopeless and you should never do it. But the conditions around the story that you tell are as powerful, in some cases more powerful than the words that are coming out of your mouth. I'm sure you've been in some presentations, in some speeches where people just turn up with crossed arms.

• 15:27Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  They're not into it, they're passive, they're not, they're thinking, entertain me, Simon. But then there are some people who are like, tell me more.

• 15:35Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  And they're leaning in and they, and they give you energy as well.

• 15:39Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. Well, that's one of the things that when people ask me for advice, I always tell them, which is, you know, people focus in on the people crossing their arms who are disinterested or angry or don't want to be there or whatever it is. And they focus on them, which is demoralizing, because you think it's personal, which it may or may not be. And then they make it their job to try and convince those people and get them to change their attitude. And I find the opposite to be much more helpful, which is focus on the people who are leaning in and smiling and enjoying themselves. A, it makes you feel good and you're not trying to convince anybody, you're just sort of going along, you're in the flow, just you're with them as opposed to at them.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:14Simon Sinek?

  And turns out that's the best way to inspire other people to change their minds about how you're presenting anyway.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're building energy.

• 16:21Simon Sinek?

  Have you ever advised people who are trying to become better presenters, better speakers to go on walking tours?

• 16:27Speaker 01

  No, but I think I might.

• 16:28Simon Sinek?

  I think it's, because I think it's whether they go well or whether they go badly. I think this is, I'm, this is a huge take away, which is the, what you accidentally learned, like it's sort of opened up your career, right? Doing the stuff that you're doing now, I mean, that's the origin story. It came from you being a guide. And I think being a guide, being a tour guide is so perfect to learn how to present. Because literally your job is to hold people's attention. And especially on a free tour, they can just walk away.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:56Simon Sinek?

  Because they haven't paid any money and they're not trying to get their money's worth. They're just saying, if this is interesting, I'll keep doing it.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:01Simon Sinek?

  You know? Many times have I, you know, in a museum, just sort of sidle up to a tour that was happening and I either stayed for one picture or I left. And it wasn't about how smart they were, it's about how good they were telling me, telling me stories and keeping me engaged. Writing is the same, though the techniques might be different. Writing is like, my goal is, if I'm in chapter one or section one, my goal is to take you to chapter two. And I have to give you, I have to make it interesting enough in what I'm saying and how I'm saying it. So that when you get to chapter two, not only do you want to be there, you really want to get to chapter three. And so it's, it's, it's the exact same thing in presenting.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  How did you start a first book? Because if it's your, how many books have you written now?

• 17:44Simon Sinek?

  Five.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Five.

• 17:45Simon Sinek?

  So three, really. Because one's a workbook and one's based on a children's book.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:49Simon Sinek?

  Which has a sentence per page, you know, which I highly recommend if you want to write a book, write a sentence per page. It's way more fun. But actually three, I've written three books.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  But it's a bit like learning a language. Once you've learned one, you kind of have a way of navigating, learning another one, and it's a little bit easier. But what did you find helped you get good at that, making people simply want to turn to the next page?

• 18:15Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. Well, every single one of my books is quite different. They're different and I got more mature, both in my thinking, more mature as a writer. Like, start with Why is a Beautiful Elegant Simple Book?

• 18:31Simon Sinek?

  But the writing is simple. By the time you get to Infinite Game, it's a, it's a, it's a much more complex concept with much more in-depth, complex writing. And I would say more mature and I'm really proud of it because it's a harder book to write, you know? So there's that, you know, but I, I, I think I got very lucky in that I'm not a reader. And I've talked about this before, I have really bad ADHD and so I actually struggle to read. And so I got to write a book that I had to keep my interest. And so if things, as I was reading it, if I found my own mind wandering from my own things that I like to talk about, then I would cut it.

• 19:14Simon Sinek?

  And so I, it's relatively short sections, relatively simple sentences, you know, because it was, there's a lot of jokes. And every time I read one of the jokes, to this day, I still giggle, you know? And so I was writing it to hold my own attention. And so I think that was a big part of it. And I enjoy, I enjoy ideas. And I enjoy making ideas clear. I just think it's fun. And so when I understood something or I discovered a new way to say it, I smiled. And so I was listening to, I was watching my own reactions. And it's, it's very similar to what you said about, about expertise and like how smart you are. I didn't read things going, good, I've got all my points. Did I smile? Did it give me goosebumps? Did it make me well up with tears sometimes?

• 20:00Simon Sinek?

  Did I enjoy getting from A to B or was I boring myself? Regardless of technically accurate it was. So I was reading it very much as a consumer.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:09Simon Sinek?

  Not as a, not as a scientist.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  And a consumer wants different things from a book. They don't necessarily want the how, they want the motivation to go and do the thing, which I think your books are very good at doing. Is, it's not, it's not a manual.

• 20:24Simon Sinek?

  No.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  It's not like tick the box, then you got your why by page 27.

• 20:34Simon Sinek?

  Instead of doing a straight ad read, we're pioneering something called an ad with authenticity. We want our ads to have valuable content for you, the listener. And this ad with authenticity is brought to you by SAP. The pace of change has compressed. What used to take years now happens in months or even weeks. SAP's David Robinson has spent more than 20 years helping organizations prepare for what's next. Sometimes moving forward begins with knowing how to let go.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  We're going through our own transformation as an industry. In order to get our teams internally to learn what's new, they've had to unlearn.

• 21:15Simon Sinek?

  How do you teach unlearning?

• 21:16Speaker 02

  It's really hard because unlearning is basically saying something that was successful is not what you're going to use going forward.

• 21:24Simon Sinek?

  So the mantra becomes what got us here won't get us there.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  100%. Your ability to kind of safely let go of the things that you know so well, because you need to move into a new world. You can't hold on to the past while you're trying to reshape something new in the future. And that's the only way that you can, you can do that is to let go.

• 21:41Simon Sinek?

  I think you may have just stumbled upon the single greatest. Competitive advantage that companies don't realize, which is the idea of letting go. Timeframes are becoming so compressed that letting go of old systems, old ways of doing things is the single greatest competitive advantage you can have in a marketplace.

• 22:04Simon Sinek?

  When I saw the video you said you made of me, you know, you said, I do this thing where I sort of, I tell people, I sort of, I'm sort of self-effacing, like, you know, I'm embarrassed that I have a career. And it was, I smiled when you made the video. And what I say is, I'm embarrassed I have a career because there should be no demand for my work. I talk about, you know, trust and cooperation and people shouldn't, I shouldn't have to, shouldn't have to have this career. It should be, it should exist. I smiled when you made the video because I only do that occasionally. And I don't know when I use it. I think it's sometimes when I don't have a lot of time because it's quick and easy.

• 22:48Simon Sinek?

  And, or sometimes I'm just sort of feeling a little punchy. But it's not something I do all the time. I actually do it now and then.

• 22:57Simon Sinek?

  I'm curious what else you, because you, you said in the video, you went down a rabbit hole and watched a lot of videos and you look for patterns. I'm so curious because I don't have, you know, I'm, I have no objectivity on myself. So curious what else you see.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  So there's actually, you are, you are featured in, in my, my workshops because of one thing that I think you have managed to do better than, than most people, which is distill things down to a message or an idea. It's very, very easy to kind of clip or turn into a short or anything like that. And the, the line that I love so much is people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

• 23:37Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  And I use that to explain what is the big message of your, of presentation. And I've got some tests that I run people through. Is it a statement of belief? Statement of belief. Could you argue against it? You could argue against that for sure. Is it self-explanatory? It's self-explanatory. And is it just one point that you're making? And it's, it's one point. So I use that as, as an example. I always wonder, how do you, how do you get to something like, so something so distilled? Was that, I mean, you didn't just come up with that in the day, did you?

• 24:12Simon Sinek?

  The first time I did it?

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:16Simon Sinek?

  I mean, almost everything I've come up with was spontaneous at some point. I, I don't have a process where I sit down and sort of like test things. So at some point, it probably was spontaneous and then I kept it. But I think when you're making the case that the why is the thing that has to come first. And if you look at the great brands, I think when you sort of, when you're distilling the idea down to its essence, it, I think those little clippable quotable bits become quite obvious. I don't, I, you know, which is, I'm explaining this thing called the why. And that's the thing that motivates, motivates the purchase behavior, the vote, the, the support, whatever it is, you know?

• 24:58Simon Sinek?

  And the what is the result, even though you think that's the reason they're buying it. You know, it's clear that people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Like, it is sort of a, anybody could have, if you go down the logic train, I think you get there.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:12Simon Sinek?

  I just went down the logic train, I guess. Such a good question. I don't know the answer.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  And, I mean, do you apply the same thing to your frameworks? I mean, did you just one day draw three circles on a bit of paper and think, that's it, that's what I'm trying to get to?

• 25:29Simon Sinek?

  I mean, I think visually. And so people think that I have that pad and pen out there as this sort of clever device. But I didn't do it for you, I did it for me. Because when I'm thinking, and especially if I'm doing something extemporaneously, I need that because like, if you sit down with me and have a meeting with me, invariably, I'm going to grab a piece of paper and a pen to explain my ideas because I think visually. And so that pad and pen is there for me to think. It's really funny, it happened a long time ago, so I don't, and I think we tend to sort of romanticize and rewrite history. But I think, you know, I think the thing that has to, that people have to remember is all ideas feel like a bolt of lightning, but they're not really. You know, there's, it's like anybody, it's like little bits, little bits, little bits. And then the final articulation is the bolt of lightning, but it didn't come out of nowhere.

• 26:14Simon Sinek?

  You know, it came out of lots of conversations and lots of thinking and lots of reading and lots of, you know, sort of trying to understand. And then you arrive at what seems to be a bolt of lightning, you know?

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. I heard therapy described as like a spiral. I think it's kind of the same. You're trying all of these different angles.

• 26:30Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  And then bit by bit, you're getting closer and closer and closer. And then one day, finally, you get it. It's not linear.

• 26:36Simon Sinek?

  No, everybody, everybody on the planet has had an aha. Wait a minute, it's this. That's all it is. Like, if you talk about something enough and study something enough, you too will come to some realization. Whether that realization is, you know, original or whether it's shared by others is irrelevant, but you will come to some sort of realization. There's a few rhetorical devices that are really important to me, which is, and it goes back to your idea, do you want to be the smartest person in the room? Look how smart I am, look at all the stuff I know. And when I write and when I speak, I, it's very, and I love, this is why I'm sort of glomming onto your example, your metaphor of the guide. It's very important to me that I'm not the smartest guy in the room. And I want my audience to come to my conclusion

• 27:18Simon Sinek?

  one slide, one paragraph, one sentence before I do. And so I'm feeding them my logic of how I got to my own conclusion. And then as soon as I get to, people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it, or any other sort of conclusion, everybody's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally saw that coming. As opposed to wait for it, wait for it. Look how smart I am. Like, and I think a lot of people do that. They try and be the smartest person in the room because they're on the stage. And I think the opposite is more fun, which is how do you guide people through an idea? How do you guide people through a, a story that they will come to your conclusion before you do?

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Seth Godin talked about this in terms of education. Too many of us rob our audience or our students of the aha moment. And the aha moment is so much more powerful than any rhetorical device.

• 28:14Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  That you're, I mean, it is kind of a rhetorical device, but any way that you're saying the thing, the fact that you've made it inevitable, that's what's powerful, that's what gets people to, to see the world as you do. And I think that's maybe another mistake that people make is, to use your example, they would just go on stage and they would say, people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And then people would be, imagine the reaction for the audience, they'd be like, what? What are you talking about?

• 28:39Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  And would actually, in some cases, produce a kind of reactance. People would push back against it. It's like, actually, I don't think, I'm pretty sure they buy what they do.

• 28:49Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, exactly. And, and this is the other thing, which is there's no one way to speak. You know, and I think, you know, a lot, like, there are many great speakers. They all have slightly different or very different styles. And there's no one style that's right. Who are some of your favorite speakers that their techniques have actually made you better at what you do?

• 29:10Speaker 01

  So for me, one of the best speakers of all time, probably Hans Rosling. And if you do a workshop with me, you're going to see a lot of Hans Rosling.

• 29:17Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Like, just ram down their throat. Because also, he doesn't really look like what you imagine a speaker to be. When we imagine a speaker, we imagine this very clipped, perfect.

• 29:27Simon Sinek?

  Quaffed hair.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  The kind of 1980s style, you know? And that's not what people connect with. People connect with him because he just looks like a regular dude.

• 29:35Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  He's saying, ah, and um, the whole time. He's looking at his computer. He's, but then he's got this amazing energy, this enthusiasm that he brings to it. It's like watching, I don't know why I'm thinking of this. It's like watching like Carl Cox DJing, someone who's so into the moment, who gives off this vibe, this energy, that you just want, you know, you're not even sure what you're saying at first, but you know you want to hear it.

• 29:59Simon Sinek?

  So what did you learn from Hans that made you better? What did you, what did you add to your, the way you work, the way you speak?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  The, first of all, the energy. If you're enthusiastic, we can be enthusiastic. If you're bored, we're probably going to be a bit bored.

• 30:15Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  The way he uses vocal variety. If you look at his speeches, again, he, he didn't sit down and plan this. But he'll lay out the problem or the thesis in very slow. And then he'll go through the data relatively quickly.

• 30:31Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Like, look what's happening here, this is happening here.

• 30:33Simon Sinek?

  The boring stuff quick.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, the boring stuff quick, because it's like, it's like small print.

• 30:37Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  At the end of the day. And then he'll pause again and he'll make the next point that he wants to make.

• 30:42Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  And do it slowly. The way he takes data, because we all have to work with, with data.

• 30:49Simon Sinek?

  There's nothing wrong with data.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Nothing wrong with data. But as he says in one of his TED Talks, uh, numbers are boring, people are interesting.

• 30:56Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  So behind every single number, there's going to be a human story. And he's so good at finding that human story. And then just the, he's got amazing guts to stand up on stage to an event with probably serious people in the room. And he talks about population growth using toilet paper.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  How much, like, the, the way to give him the confidence to do that is extraordinary. I don't, I don't think I would have the confidence to do that myself. But, but it kind of inspired me to, to try new things and to try and find the person who, who I am. And I think if you look at my speaking style, you can see it kind of comes from the tour guiding period.

• 31:39Simon Sinek?

  Who else have you, have you, do you admire that has impacted your speaking style? And the advice that you give?

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Who I think was good. I mean, we've talked about Seth Godin, but for him, it's more, I prefer him in conversations than on stage. I don't know how he does it, but he's got this way of making everything he says in an interview sound like a book, kind of crystal, he crystallizes ideas in a way that you're like, wow, that is like that. You're right.

• 32:11Simon Sinek?

  I mean, this is who he is. He has very strong opinions loosely held. You know, he's very open minded. But he is very opinionated and he's, I think one of the things that gives him

• 32:23Simon Sinek?

  authority in when he speaks is he speaks very convinced by the thing that he's saying, which I like.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:30Simon Sinek?

  You know, and I've seen this where people come in and, you know, it's a strange thing where their voices go up at the end of all their sentences. And it's sometimes it's nerves. For some weird reason, I think women do it more than men.

• 32:46Simon Sinek?

  But, you know, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you. I have some really important things to talk about. And I hope you'll listen to me. And when you raise your voice at the end, that's a question. That's what you do rhetorically as a question, which means, are you asking us or are you telling us? And all it communicates is self doubt. Now, whether there is self doubt is irrelevant. The, the, the language, the tone of voice communicates to the audience, I'm not a hundred percent sure by my ideas, so you should be too, you know? And Seth does the opposite.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  And that's why I'm, I'm begging some of my participants in workshops to have a point of view, have an opinion here. People are paying you for that, for your perspective. And Seth, now you say it, it makes perfect sense to me why he's so powerful. He is so convinced of his ideas.

• 33:40Simon Sinek?

  Yes. And the others. Which is very, which is very attractive.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. It, it, I mean, it's, it's one of the parts of charisma, I guess. It's one element of it.

• 33:48Simon Sinek?

  I mean, the way I define charisma is believing in the thing that you're talking about, you know?

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:53Simon Sinek?

  It's not about jumping off the walls and energy. There's some very quiet speakers who have unbelievable charisma. And the charisma is, you can tell they really believe in the things they're telling you.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. I heard a great definition of charisma. It's charisma is empathy and authority. Someone who cares about you and someone who can look after you.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Because you wouldn't want.

• 34:15Simon Sinek?

  Need to think about that one.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause you wouldn't want, you know, someone who's just very, very capable, but doesn't care about you. Equally, someone who cares about you, but can't do anything.

• 34:27Simon Sinek?

  That's true. Explain to me why this happens. That people who are giving talks, even if they're not nervous to be on the stage, any of those things that you can factor out. There is this weird thing that people do. They have speaking voice, right? Like, they, like, when you talk to them backstage, they're having a normal conversation like you and I are, this is their tone of voice. And the minute they go on stage, whether they're reading or whether it's memorized, or whether it's spontaneous, they have this weird tone of voice like, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here. I'm so glad you all came. Where the hell does that come from?

• 35:02Speaker 01

  It probably, and I have no research on this, but I think when you're not used to speaking to a large audience and you speak to a large audience for the first time, it feels unbelievably unnatural. And you need to speak differently. You need to speak in a conversational way, but differently to a room full of 10,000 people to a room of eight people.

• 35:24Simon Sinek?

  Is that true? I mean, go, look, look at our, everybody's favorite, which is Ken Robinson.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:29Simon Sinek?

  And when he speaks, it's, it's so conversational.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  It is. But is it the conversation that you would have with Ken Robinson? I've never met Ken Robinson and never will sadly. I just noticed this with the guiding, when I'd come of a day, um, doing tours. And I'd been talking to people for eight hours and I'd been like, you know, standing, doing my bit. And I'd come back and I would still be kind of talking like that to my wife and she'd be like, whoa, it's a chill. You're a bit loud right now.

• 35:59Simon Sinek?

  Oh, I get it. Okay. So the adrenaline is still there.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think.

• 36:03Simon Sinek?

  I get that.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  The adrenaline probably plays a part in it, but then also it may be someone has told them, you've got to stand up and do this. That's why I'm very against teaching gestures, teaching anything which will end up looking.

• 36:16Simon Sinek?

  Weird and staged.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. Cause of the, what's it called? The uncanny valley. Where they, I think it was originally made to describe robots. They kind of become too human to look like a robot, but not quite human enough. And I think the same thing happens with gestures and vocal variety. When you try and rehearse it, it just comes out rather strange unless you are a top actor.

• 36:42Simon Sinek?

  What are five simple things that people can do right now with very little practice that will make them better speakers, better presenters?

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Okay. First of all, have an objective for every presentation, every interaction that you're going to have. And what that does, thinking strategically, it makes you think, okay, what is actually

• 37:04Speaker 01

  possible right now?

• 37:05Simon Sinek?

  For example, for example.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  I'm going to go into a meeting and I want to have investment for my particular project. And I'm going to be speaking for five to 10 minutes. Is it likely that they're going to give me 50 million euros on the spot? Probably not, but maybe we could agree to workshop an idea next week. Maybe we could agree to trial in a particular market.

• 37:30Simon Sinek?

  Love this.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  So just having an objective.

• 37:33Simon Sinek?

  Realistic objective.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  A realistic.

• 37:35Simon Sinek?

  That's important. The word realistic has to be added there.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:37Simon Sinek?

  So what, what's a realistic objective that takes you one step towards the ultimate objective that you want? Love that.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Because people miss that. And that's why they go in, give it their, usually maybe a good presentation.

• 37:49Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  And then the decision maker says, oh, cool. Interesting. Next. And then nothing happens.

• 37:55Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Or they ask too much and people say, ah, let me align with my stakeholders.

• 38:00Simon Sinek?

  So funny, funny thing. It's reminding me of when I was a young entrepreneur, you know, where I just needed business. I'm not making any money, like, and I was a little too hungry. And I would go to meetings and I would come in and pitch and like at the end of the business, at the end of the meeting, even if it was a good meeting and they liked me, I'd be like, so, you know, thinking I could close the deal, because that was my goal, was to win a piece of business. And I wasn't. And they, even if they liked me and, and like, and so when I realized, because I kind of blew my chance, they wouldn't even take a second meeting. And so what I did was I changed all of my goals for first time meetings, that my goal of every meeting is simply to create the conditions that I can get a second meeting.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:39Simon Sinek?

  That was it. Every first meeting was to create the conditions that I could get a second meeting. And it changed everything for me. Okay. Second thing that people can do immediately that moves them forwards to being better speaker, better presenter.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Understand how your audience, which is your decision maker, whoever it is, how do they describe the problem that you are solving to their best mate in a pub or a cafe or ever? Because they're not going to say, I'm really worried that we're not living up to our company's vision right now, because that would just sound a bit strange. They would talk about it in very tangible terms. They would talk about the symptoms of what's going on. People are, just don't seem to be into it. They're taking sick days. They're not turning up. They're handing in work late. They're not engaged in meetings. They'd talk about that kind of thing. And once you understand that, once you can kind of speak the language of your audience,

• 39:33Speaker 01

  then you can get them engaged, because we're always looking for like, what's in it for me? Why should I be listening to this person? And if you're going in and you're saying like, look, I know what things can be like in this kind of market. People are not, don't seem to be engaged in meetings, et cetera, et cetera. So if you can just literally just have that down, how do they talk about the problem that you're solving? Then you're going to be able to speak their language. And you'll, and also it makes the solution much more, much easier.

• 40:01Simon Sinek?

  Oh, so good. What it does, it does so many things. First, it makes it visual, right? It's behavioral rather than some philosophical structural thing. It's relatable. So when you're saying these things, people are going, oh my God, yes, I feel so seen. You understand what I'm going through. Because when you come in and say, are people, are you not following your vision? Nobody goes, oh my God, I feel so seen, right? Says nobody. I love that. I love learning the language and the way you set it up, which is how are they describe when they're off the clock? How would they describe to their, to their friends, not even their colleagues, but their friends, what's going on at work and where the struggles are? Great advice. Number three.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Number three.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Simplify your points down to a simple framework. I don't care which framework it is. It could be just a three act structure, like beginning, middle, end, whatever it is. We all have an intuitive feeling of like what the beginning is, what the middle is, what the end is, and you can apply it to a quarterly report. At the beginning of Q1, we were hoping to achieve XYZ. This, this, and this happened, the middle, and then this is where we are right now. The end, the resolution. That's so much more engaging, so much easier to understand than 98 points on, you know, of data which have no clear argument.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Just simplify things down to a simple story, beginning, middle, end. There's other frameworks you can follow. McKinsey have SCR, which is pretty much the same thing. SCQA, I mean, there's, Google it, you'll find a framework that fits what you do. Just find something and fill it in high level before you start making slides. Yeah. And get that to a point where you could kind of talk it through in two to three minutes. Yeah. Again, before you made any slides. And then can I go to the next point already? The next, next thing that people can try is test it out on someone before you go and

• 42:02Speaker 01

  start building your slides and spending a ton of time building something which might not be right. Just go and talk through it with a colleague and say like, hey, you got 10 minutes? I just want to take you through an idea. Does it make any sense? And they can check like, does the problem make sense? Does it logical what you're saying? Is there a clear message? Do I know what to do next? The objective? And then you can actually go and refine it.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  And I think that puts you in a position where you understand the objective, you've understood how your audience is talking about it, you've got a story that kind of works, and you know it works because you've got input from someone else.

• 42:42Simon Sinek?

  This is so good because I think a lot of people start without an outline and they just, and this is one of the reasons why their thinking sounds disconnected is because it is. And my favorite thing there is, I, my favorite thing to do is I love to test things on people who are more junior or outside of this sphere because I realized too many people use jargon and everybody nods their heads, assuming that we, we assume they understand the acronyms of the jargon and very often they don't, but nobody wants to look dumb. So they nod their heads, yes. And I've seen it happen so many times. And this is one of the reasons why good ideas sometimes end up on a shelf. It's not because the idea is, there's anything wrong with the idea. It's because you made it inaccessible or you made people feel dumb and because they

• 43:26Simon Sinek?

  don't want to understand it, they're not going to say they understand it. So they're just going to say, thank you, and put the idea on a shelf and never use it.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  I heard a great, this exercise from a guy knows a strategic, a strategy coach or facilitator. And he, what he does is he gets everyone to write down, what are our key objectives for the next three months on a bit of paper? And then he gets them to read it out afterwards and you inevitably get nine different answers about what it is because it's unclear, because people are not good at articulating it. And I mean, that's kind of the root of the work that I'm doing is helping make it clear and make people all kind of understand it.

• 44:00Simon Sinek?

  And the final thing, the fifth thing that everybody can do tomorrow to make them better?

• 44:05Speaker 01

  A simple ratio, three to one. Three parts discussion to one part presentation. If you have a 30 minute meeting, it is a big mistake to go in and speak for 30 minutes because people want to be included in the decision. They want to be able to have, that's how decision gets made, you know? It's not like I go in and I deliver this micro moment and everyone cheers and the world changes. That's Hollywood. That doesn't happen. I mean, I say that sitting in Los Angeles.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Instead, work how much time you have. Let's say it's a half hour meeting. You're going to be five minutes late. You need five minutes at the end to check what's going to happen next. You've got 20 minutes. You speak for five minutes. You give the high level story and then it is up to your decision maker to draw the details out of you. And it's a part of your responsibility to keep that discussion going as well, to point things towards your objective.

• 44:58Simon Sinek?

  You just scared a lot of people. Like I've got half an hour and you're telling me to talk for five minutes.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. But if you can't get your idea across in five minutes, then I would suggest that you don't understand it well enough yet. And remember, you've already tested it out on a colleague in three minutes. So all you have to do now is have the data. And that doesn't mean you couldn't speak about it for half an hour. And it doesn't mean that you've not got a big deck full of stuff and an appendix with loads and loads of stuff. But your average executive, they, they want to have like a joystick which they can move around. They want to zoom in on a particular thing depending upon what's important to them in that particular moment. And if you've locked them into some structure which might not work, then

• 45:40Simon Sinek?

  You're done.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  You're done. And I think also, I was talking to a wonderful researcher called Paul Zach, who talks a lot about storytelling. He said that they've studied attention and we basically can't maintain attention beyond 18 minutes.

• 45:55Simon Sinek?

  Which is why TED Talks are 18 minutes. That's why they designed them that way.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  And if you think that, you know, you can go through your data set and dazzle people for an hour and a half, just going through that with no interaction, no pauses, no discussion, you're delusional. No one, no one can do that.

• 46:13Simon Sinek?

  Rob, you're a joy. I hope you make hundreds of more videos. People love your videos. You, more, more important, they are super valuable and you're making people more confident, you're making them more present, and you're making them better at sharing their good ideas with the people who could listen. Thanks so much for coming on. It's been such a joy. Thanks for flying all the way out here.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 46:40Simon Sinek?

  As always, thanks for listening. And if you liked this episode, please do remember to subscribe to A Bit of Optimism wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And remember, new episodes drop every Tuesday. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson. And if you want more cool stuff or just to find out what I'm up to, visit simonsinek.com. Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of each other.