The Public Speaking Expert: This Speaking Mistake Makes People Ignore You! These Small Mistakes Make You Unlikeable!

Speaking with confidence isn’t a gift, it’s a skill - Vinh Giang reveals the blueprint to mastering the art of communication Vinh Giang is an award-winning entrepreneur, part-magician, and full time communication coach. He runs masterclasses and has helped thousands of people improve their communication and vocal skills. In this conversation, Vinh and Steven discuss topics such as, the top speaking mistake that makes people ignore you, small mistakes that make you unlikeable, how to effortlessly speak with power and confidence, and the number one word to avoid to be taken seriously. 00:00 Intro 02:15 Why Do You Do What You Do? 04:12 How Much Will This Information Change Your Life? 06:28 The Importance of Communication in Your Life and Career 09:17 How Easy Is It to Make a Radical Change in Your Communication Skills? 10:57 What's the Biggest Change People Experience? 11:56 How Cracking Your Communication Will Change Your Life 12:59 Why Should People Listen to You? 18:47 Three Ways to Change How You're Perceived by Others 20:28 What Is Vocal Image and How Does It Help Us? 23:00 How Melody Evokes Emotions 27:31 How to Know If You're Overdoing It 30:55 The Importance of Pauses in Your Speech 35:03 What Volume of Voice Signals Confidence? 36:46 Create Emotion With Your Voice 37:25 Gesticulating With Your Face 41:31 The Storytelling Formula 43:56 VAKS: Relive a Story, Don't Report It! 47:22 Run These Techniques in the Real World 50:30 Is There a Voice Tone That Makes People Dislike You? 52:59 Practical Steps to Know If You're Good at Speaking 57:34 Remove the Clutter Words From Your Speaking 1:02:37 Ads 1:03:33 What to Do Before You Go on Stage 1:05:20 Warm Up Your Mouth and Tongue 1:06:20 The Power of Body Language 1:13:34 If You Want to Be Influential, You Need to Do This 1:14:32 How to Interact Online 1:19:45 Our Identity Stops Us From Growing 1:21:37 Accents and How to Correct Them 1:25:06 There Are No Limits to What You Can Do 1:29:21 How to Deal With Bullies 1:33:27 How to Start a Powerful Conversation With Someone 1:37:53 Ads 1:39:57 Small Talk 1:42:18 What to Do If People Interrupt You at Work? 1:44:58 Why You Should Mimic People's Body Language 1:46:20 What Is F-O-R-D? Holding Conversations for Longer 1:52:15 Are There Real Introverts and Extroverts? 1:53:13 Social Anxiety 1:55:19 Contextual Confidence 2:01:39 I Do It All for My Son 2:04:57 My Parents Gave Up Their Money to Become Monks 2:11:37 The Endless Pursuit of More 2:20:23 What Is One Thing You Know Is True Even If You Can't Prove It? Follow Vinh: Instagram - https://g2ul0.app.link/gTz0zXL4xRb YouTube - https://g2ul0.app.link/gTL4XuN4xRb Website - https://g2ul0.app.link/owpA9uP4xRb Vinh’s Free Communication Resources - https://gifts.vinhgiang.com/doac Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACEpisodes My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACBook Get your hands on the Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards here: https://bit.ly/conversationcards-mp Follow me: https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Sponsors: Shopify - https://shopify.com/bartlett PerfectTed - https://www.perfectted.com with code DIARY40 for 40% off WHOOP - https://JOIN. WHOOP. COM/CEO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You have this ability to become confident in every single area of your life. It's about us just learning a new series of behaviours. For example, there's something called a siren technique. In three, two... And one naheed. I'm 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 tools. Let's go through all five.

• 0:31Steven Bartlett?

  Vinh Giang 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.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  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 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 schools so many times because I was a bully. But then I broke the mold and then I just learnt all these new behaviours, which has completely changed me. And anyone can do this in three to six months. And I'm going to teach you. So the first thing that really matters is a three-step process I call a 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 Hi-Low Buffer. And it gives you three opportunities for a conversation to spark. It will 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.

• 1:23Speaker 00

  There's so many other things we could talk about and we're going to go through them. But some people do have severe social anxiety. What do you say to those people? The first thing I would do is...

• 1:32Steven Bartlett?

  I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven't yet hit the follow button or the subscribe button, wherever you're listening to this. I would like to make a deal with you. If you could do me a huge favour and hit that subscribe button, I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better. I can't tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button. The show gets bigger, which means we can expand the production, bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to doing this thing we love. If you could do me that small favour and hit the follow button, wherever you're listening to this, that would mean the world to me. That is the only favour I will ever ask you. Thank you so much for your time. Back to this episode.

• 2:15Steven Bartlett?

  Then, if you had to summarize what it is you do fundamentally and why you do it, how would you summarize it?

• 2:24Speaker 00

  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 never forget this experience. There's a dingy music corner in South Australia and I would go there for lessons. And the first time I met her, I walked into the room, she's an 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 two minutes. Literally, I was like, "Oh shit, this is like something out of a horror movie." And then she turns around, she goes, "How do you feel?"

• 3:08Speaker 00

  I said, "Nothing, weird, awkward, what?" And then she goes, "Good," turns around, plays this beautiful song called Mariage d'Amour.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  Goes on for two minutes. And then she turns around, 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." And she goes, "Good. Honey, 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 a piano? You play with it. What do you do with a violin?

• 4:03Speaker 00

  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 shifts how others feel.

• 4:12Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 4:19Speaker 00

  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 Ferriss 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 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.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  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 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 taught at university, being an accountant. Oh, if you become really technically proficient as an accountant, you'll become an amazing accountant. You'll be successful. You get the BMW, you get everything, get partner. So I thought, OK, 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.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  Magicians call it showmanship. Fancy word for communication skills, right? One of, we're both inspired by the same person, I believe. 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 3 out of 10 with your communication skills. Do you think people perceive you to be a 10 out of 10 or a 3 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.

• 6:28Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  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 all my students always ask me this, which one should I focus on? And I said, well, the reality is both. It's not as simple. It's both. Because if I have great showmanship and then when it comes to doing sleight of hand, I suck. That's not gonna 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 it's because Brad talks better. He's more visible in the work environment.

• 7:20Steven Bartlett?

  You really think it often comes down to just how we speak and communicate?

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Our value, yes. Because if you can't communicate your value in a way that is clear and concise, people, 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 super sad because I lived a massive part of my life like that. English is my third language. The first language I learnt is a Chinese dialect. Not that impressive, my wife speaks five, but thank you. The first language I learnt was a Chinese dialect called "tichiu", right? It's a bit of tichiu for you. 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, grandma would

• 8:09Speaker 00

  be pissed off, mum would be pissed off. So we had to study it. And then I went to school and had to learn English. So I went to school.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  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. I'll just ignore you then.

• 8:26Steven Bartlett?

  They bully you.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Well, 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 had no idea what they were saying. So I spent so much of my childhood, especially in those single-digit years around five, six and seven. It is super sad, but 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. F O B, 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. And then, so then even though I learned 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.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  And so I know what it's like to feel invisible. I know what it's like to be ignored and.

• 9:18Steven Bartlett?

  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 make a radical change in your communication skills?

• 9:32Speaker 00

  It depends on your level of desire and motivation.

• 9:34Steven Bartlett?

  If you really want it?

• 9:36Speaker 00

  I'd say three to six months.

• 9:37Steven Bartlett?

  You think you can change your communication skills in a radical way in three to six months?

• 9:41Speaker 00

  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 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 their, 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 those strangers around them, that they commit to it.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  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're like, new me, new year, new me, honey. And then their, their, their partner goes, oh, why are you doing that with your voice? Oh, you learned that from Vin? What? That's gross. Why are you doing that? It's so fake. It's so inauthentic. And then they revert back to who they have always been their entire life.

• 10:57Steven Bartlett?

  What areas of one's life have you seen in those examples change? When someone learnt communication skills? Cause we, we have to, the examples we've given so far are just like work.

• 11:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. With their children. This has been the coolest part, cause 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, cause 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'll go, dad, don't read it 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 in a child, for that playfulness.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  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.

• 11:56Steven Bartlett?

  So you're gonna help me in work. You're gonna help me be a more entertaining, engaging parent. Are there any other areas of one's life that improve when they crack communication?

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Yes, there is an area. And the area is improv. Learn improvisation. People all wanna get better at communication. Often it's because they wanna get better at conversations. What is a game of conversation? What are we doing right now? What are we doing? This is a game of improv. I don't know what you're gonna say. You don't know what I'm gonna 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 an important skill when you're playing with your kids too. 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 like, oh, and then the coward now is an astronaut. And most parents will be like, ah, that's cool, honey, that's cool. No, play.

• 12:50Speaker 00

  Now it's also fighting zombies that exist on the moon and you didn't know about it. And you play with them. And when you're playing, what are you using? You're using your ability to communicate.

• 12:59Steven Bartlett?

  And how many people have you talked in person and or online?

• 13:03Speaker 00

  Oh, over seventy thousand now.

• 13:05Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:06Steven Bartlett?

  You have millions and millions and millions of followers online as well that tune in to learn communication skills from you from all around the world. 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?

• 13:24Speaker 00

  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?

• 13:34Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 13:35Speaker 00

  Well, because you think about it, right? Nobody likes the sound of their own voice. The first time you heard yourself on a podcast, were you like, ah, no? Or did you say, I love it, look how sexy I sound?

• 13:43Steven Bartlett?

  When I was younger and I was like cassette recorders and I had my voice, I thought, fuck it, I'll use that.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, me too, right? So that is the biggest, 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 upon this, most people in their entire life will never change the way they sound. They'll never change the way they communicate. They'll change the way they dress, they'll change their hair, they'll change their glasses, they'll change their, they'll change all these things about themselves. But the way they communicate and the way they sound stays consistent generally.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  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?

• 14:34Speaker 00

  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, have a bit of a play, Vin, and, you know, go into falsetto." And she would 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 do it 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 played the key on your piano, you'd describe to me then, how is it fake? How is it fake? If you are able

• 15:16Speaker 00

  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 any time you pressed 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 told. 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

• 16:00Speaker 00

  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, what would happen to your voice? Oh, I'd lose it. Yeah. My daughter, 12 months old, can scream for three hours, Stephen, and she does not lose her voice. Because they have this beautiful access to their instrument. They can naturally access that instrument. Whereas as we grow older, at the age of three or four, we start to be inspired by certain people in our circles.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  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 behaviours. 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 manoeuvre your tongue, how you manoeuvre your soft palate. Depending on how you do all of that, you create a certain sound. But if I change now, as you said, people are gonna think I'm weird. Well, that's right. Well, that's right, but that's the thing. You have to have a process to go about that change. Okay. Because if you immediately just do it tonight with your partner with no context, they'll go, ew. She'll be like, what the hell? Why did you, why did you talk to Finn? You've had Finn on the podcast. Yeah, why? Ew, now you're fake. Yeah. Right? We'll get to that in a moment.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  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's Tanzia. Beautiful, beautiful guy. He had a very soft way of speaking. Beautiful soft way of speaking. And what he didn't realise 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 behaviours, all these nuances to copy dad's sound. And then after you repeat those behaviours for one year, two years, you no longer have to consciously think about it because you've mastered it. So now those behaviours move from your conscious mind and moves into your subconscious mind. And then when behaviours move into your subconscious mind, now it feels automatic. So now you feel like it's you.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  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 behaviours. 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.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  Three simple things that they do creates a profound change in how others perceive them.

• 18:46Steven Bartlett?

  Volume, melody and hand gestures.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  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.

• 19:02Speaker 00

  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 shy 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 shy 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 methodic with your voice. And then she was practicing that immediately the feelings of, oh, it feels fake. It feels phoned up. I go, oh, no, it's just unfamiliar. And the moment she makes that reset, she goes, oh, I'll 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?

• 19:47Speaker 00

  How do I be in the moment and come up with a good answer? Another one is.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  I'm introverted.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  Does that mean that I'm doomed?

• 19:58Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  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, g'day, mate, how are you? Yeah, I'm good. How are you? Yeah, I'm good. All right. Cheers, mate. Have a good one.

• 20:17Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, the small talk.

• 20:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, this is a big topic, right? So again, it's 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.

• 20:28Steven Bartlett?

  There's like, I was looking earlier, there's almost like a billion search results on Google for people trying to figure out or trying to provide answers to how to communicate successfully. So let's get into it. So I use this term vocal image.

• 20:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:41Steven Bartlett?

  What does vocal image mean?

• 20:43Speaker 00

  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.

• 20:52Speaker 00

  But very rarely do people spend time on their vocal image. Now, I'll 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've 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 you've had these experiences before. I've had them before where you assume you see someone, you're, oh, that person's really good. Go meet them, you're, 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.

• 21:36Speaker 00

  We think we're stuck with the way we communicate. We think there's no way for me to ever change this.

• 21:40Steven Bartlett?

  So let's, let's talk about how one can improve their vocal image so that they're effective across context.

• 21:45Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 21:46Steven Bartlett?

  You mentioned melody, volume, hand gestures. If we start with melody, what the hell is melody?

• 21:52Speaker 00

  The different notes you can hit with your voice?

• 21:53Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so is that variety?

• 21:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, variety, yeah, pitch variety, pitch and melody.

• 21:57Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 21:57Speaker 00

  Well, because there's a melody that lives underneath your voice. All right, let's do an experiment. I'm gonna play you a piano song. And I want you to listen to this. And then you at home right now, I want you to listen to, to the track and see what words come to mind. So we'll just play, we'll play this song.

• 22:17Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, yeah, um, all right. Sadness.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  Right, so, so, and then if listeners at home could, could, could have a voice here too, that's maybe say, they'll say somber, nostalgic.

• 22:26Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  Right? All these words would come up. And then again, if we sat with this for all, we'd get plenty of words. Let's try another one. Right, so let's change the mood. Let's shift to something like this.

• 22:38Steven Bartlett?

  Um, inspirational, motivational.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  Good. See, all of a sudden now, and, and I'm thinking, running towards something.

• 22:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 22:45Speaker 00

  Right? And, and again, there's a part of me that thinks, oh, cheesy commercial, right? There's, there's that part of it too. So you can hear all these different things. Let's try one more. This one, we'll shift gears again. And what about this one?

• 23:00Speaker 00

  Like a horror movie.

• 23:01Steven Bartlett?

  It's scary.

• 23:02Speaker 00

  About to die.

• 23:03Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 23:04Speaker 00

  Something bad's about to happen, ominous.

• 23:05Steven Bartlett?

  A little three-year-old stood on the landing of the staircase at night time.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  Yes, with long, black hair.

• 23:10Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  Yes, correct. So 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, the different notes. What people fail to realise is that you have a melody in your voice.

• 23:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 23:36Speaker 00

  This is why when some people walk into our lives, 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.

• 23:52Steven Bartlett?

  Can you have a pretty limited range, a limited melody, but still hit people with scary and sad and inspiring?

• 24:01Speaker 00

  I believe you can.

• 24:02Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  Again, because we genuinely don't have 88 keys, right? So again, it's one of those, 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 can, we can play with the technique to help you increase your vocal range if you want.

• 24:19Steven Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  There's something called a, this is fun, this is a fun one. There's something called a siren technique.

• 24:24Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 24:25Speaker 00

  Okay, so a siren 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 it 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 you would.

• 24:39Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so for those that can't see, Vin has passed me a card.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, cue card.

• 24:42Steven Bartlett?

  And on the card, it has a bunch of words, which I'm just gonna read.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  And then, as you're listening at home, have a guess of what movie this is from.

• 24:48Steven Bartlett?

  Wanna know how I got these scars? My father was a drinker and a fiend. And one night, he goes off crazier than usual. Mummy 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?

• 25:14Speaker 00

  Beautiful. What movie is that from?

• 25:16Steven Bartlett?

  No idea, I don't want to.

• 25:16Speaker 00

  Are you serious? Dark Knight, The Joker.

• 25:18Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  So Heath Ledger, so amazing. Okay, cool, great. So again, you read that in your neutral voice. Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna play with the instrument.

• 25:25Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 25:25Speaker 00

  So the siren technique is when you read with a really low voice and then gradually you go to a high voice. And I'm gonna challenge you to not be afraid to go into the falsetto. Not be afraid to play.

• 25:32Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 25:33Speaker 00

  Just play. 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 gonna push you.

• 25:44Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 25:44Speaker 00

  Okay. In three, two.

• 25:46Steven Bartlett?

  Go for it.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  Wanna know how I got these scars? My father was a drinker and a fiend.

• 25:53Steven Bartlett?

  Good.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  And one night he does a.

• 25:55Steven Bartlett?

  How crazier than usual.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  Mummy gets the kitchen knives.

• 26:00Steven Bartlett?

  To defend herself.

• 26:02Speaker 00

  Good.

• 26:02Steven Bartlett?

  Wow. It hurts.

• 26:05Speaker 00

  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.

• 26:16Steven Bartlett?

  Good.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  So me watching.

• 26:19Steven Bartlett?

  He takes the knife to her.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 26:22Steven Bartlett?

  Laughing while he does it.

• 26:23Speaker 00

  Good. Turns to me and he says.

• 26:28Steven Bartlett?

  Why so serious, son?

• 26:33Speaker 00

  Fantastic, that's fantastic. You did a great job, right?

• 26:35Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  But you feel that feeling you feel right now.

• 26:36Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, weird.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  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 realise this instrument that you have is capable of so much more.

• 26:47Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  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 just thought this was how you talk. And the reason I can switch to this very quickly, Stephen, is because I practised these behaviours for about 25 years. What's even more interesting is they've done studies where they had five or six people talking at the same time. And the person who the person heard was the person who had more melody in their voice.

• 27:14Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, really?

• 27:15Speaker 00

  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.

• 27:25Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 27:26Speaker 00

  Whereas all of a sudden, if you just start to play with your voice a little more.

• 27:30Steven Bartlett?

  How do you know you've not played with it too far? Do you know what I'm saying?

• 27:33Speaker 00

  By playing with it too far and then getting feedback.

• 27:35Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  And people are so afraid of that, though. And they don't realise that they don't go too far. They underplay. The risk is not going too far. The risk is not going far enough.

• 27:46Steven Bartlett?

  Again, at this point, when people heard me

• 27:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course, of course.

• 27:49Steven Bartlett?

  squeaking like Mickey Mouse.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:51Steven Bartlett?

  They're gonna say, fuck me. Like, you're gonna have to remind me again, Vin, why this is worth it.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  You'll be able to make people feel more connected to you. They'll feel what you're saying, not just hear what you're saying. I mean, do you notice this in some people?

• 28:01Steven Bartlett?

  Of course.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  They will say things, but you don't feel it. It happens in America's Got Talent, Australia's Got Talent, where Simon Cowell will say, right, right, very good, but I don't feel it. What are they talking about? It's the emotion in their voice.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  There is emotion in your voice, too. Do you want to go to the next one?

• 28:17Steven Bartlett?

  Please. I didn't know there was more.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  There's more, yeah, there's five. Let's go through all five. Now, the next one, I'm just gonna get you to read this one as you would, and then I'll tell you what it is.

• 28:25Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 28:25Speaker 00

  Just so you don't get ahead of yourself.

• 28:26Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 28:27Speaker 00

  Okay, cool. And see, tell me, please tell me you know this movie. Fire out, Stephen.

• 28:31Steven Bartlett?

  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 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.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  Yes, very dark movies. I love these movies. What movie is this?

• 29:00Steven Bartlett?

  That is the movie called, where he, his daughter gets kidnapped. What's it called?

• 29:06Speaker 00

  Yes. Yes, it's that with an L, his name.

• 29:09Steven Bartlett?

  Lion King, I'm joking. No, what is it?

• 29:11Speaker 00

  Right, from Taken. But here's the thing. So the next foundation is rate of speech.

• 29:17Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  So if you were reading that, and I was kind of just giving you some coaching, again, as you were reading that, think of rate of speech of having a scale from zero to 10.

• 29:24Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  All right, so one being painfully slow and 10 being as quickly as you possibly can, right? So you were around playing around a 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 wanna 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 simple rule.

• 30:03Steven Bartlett?

  And what does changing my rate of speech then do to the message I'm communicating? It makes it more memorable, clear, okay?

• 30:10Speaker 00

  There's more clarity in it, right? So for example, if I was speaking and I said, "Right now, I'm gonna go through the five core vocal foundations, and I'm gonna take your first one through is rate of speech. Then after that, I'm gonna 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."

• 30:24Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, right.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  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.

• 30:44Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  It's not just about the exchange of information, because how I say something impacts how you receive it.

• 30:49Steven Bartlett?

  So I wanna slow down where I wanna hit emphasis?

• 30:51Speaker 00

  Yes, and this script has multiple places where you wanna slow down.

• 30:55Steven Bartlett?

  When people are nervous.

• 30:56Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 30:57Steven Bartlett?

  What happens?

• 30:57Speaker 00

  They speed up.

• 30:58Steven Bartlett?

  They speed up?

• 30:59Speaker 00

  They speed up.

• 30:59Steven Bartlett?

  Considerably?

• 31:00Speaker 00

  Considerably.

• 31:01Steven Bartlett?

  And have they ever measured that? Does anybody know?

• 31:05Speaker 00

  If you get above 210 words per minute, you're a little bit too fast.

• 31:08Steven Bartlett?

  And what's the average person speaking at in terms of words per minute?

• 31:11Speaker 00

  Around 150. You wanna 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 rate of 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 gonna kill you, slow it all the way down and be playful. It's not about...

• 31:55Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, I'm gonna start from here.

• 31:57Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 31:58Steven Bartlett?

  If you're looking for a ransom.

• 32:01Steven Bartlett?

  I can tell you that I don't have money. But what I do have are a particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career.

• 32:20Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  Yes, give him a big round of applause. That was amazing, right? But again, you feel so strange when you do it.

• 32:49Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I do.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  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.

• 33:01Steven Bartlett?

  And how it changes the message in such a profound way. It's the same words.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  It's the same words, but when you read it the first time, it didn't sound scary at all. Now I feel scared.

• 33:10Steven Bartlett?

  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 and charisma, they like move and talk as if a lot, if they were a lion. You know, they're slow and they're composed.

• 33:31Speaker 00

  Predator versus predator. I remember listening to the episode. It was fantastic.

• 33:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  There is, it's people who are confident take their time.

• 33:39Steven Bartlett?

  What's that third one?

• 33:40Speaker 00

  Okay. Just re-part of it.

• 33:42Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, re-part.

• 33:43Speaker 00

  You, you're more than happy to freestyle. Re-part of it.

• 33:46Steven Bartlett?

  Now, if you know what you're worth, then 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. You're better than that.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  Now, the thing is, this next one is volume.

• 34:03Steven Bartlett?

  Oh shit.

• 34:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. Volume so critical.

• 34:06Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  For many different reasons. Volume is the lifeblood of your voice. Volume carries all the other foundations you're about to learn. Volume carries the melody. Volume carries the rate of speech. It carries everything. And again, I think of it as having a scale of from one to 10. And a lot of the times, like what you just did, people are around a three, a four. And they stay around there. When you use volume, there's two ways to auditorily highlight something with volume. Volume's fascinating because with way to speech, you slow down. But with volume, to highlight something, you could go very quiet.

• 34:43Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  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 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.

• 35:02Steven Bartlett?

  And what signals I'm not a confident person? What side of the scale?

• 35:07Speaker 00

  The lower scale.

• 35:08Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  On volume.

• 35:09Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  Because that's one of the default shy behaviours that a lot of people exhibit.

• 35:14Steven Bartlett?

  And what about leaders? Where do they land on the scale?

• 35:18Speaker 00

  Depends if they're self-aware. Sometimes if they're not self-aware, they can be on the higher end. And that's, you know, you just have someone come across as a little arrogant. Sometimes there'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 want you to go loud. I want people to hear outside of the studio what we're doing.

• 35:37Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, fuck.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  So just have a go and just, and give me, and give me a whisper too. At some point, give me a whisper too.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  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.

• 36:03Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  You're better than that. Oh, it's amazing.

• 36:07Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 36:08Speaker 00

  What you just did made me feel, why did I feel? What is a voice? A voice is a series of vibrations. So you just sent vibrations my way that made me feel. That's why we say people have good vibes, right? We kind of, we, we understand it's happening, but we don't understand at that kind of frequency level, at the vibration level. But it's happening at a physical level. Where depending on how you use your voice, you're genuinely moving people quite physically.

• 36:35Steven Bartlett?

  We did rate of speech, we did volume, we did the melody.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  Pitch and melody, yeah.

• 36:40Steven Bartlett?

  And then there's two left, right?

• 36:41Speaker 00

  There's two left, yeah.

• 36:42Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  So this one, read it as you would, parts of it.

• 36:45Steven Bartlett?

  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 realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

• 36:56Speaker 00

  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 different faces to make, and you make those different faces and allow those emotions to come through your voice.

• 37:22Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  So if it's happy, then I want you to sound really happy. If it's sad, I want you to sound really sad. So we'll start with, and try your best to play with this. I want you to make disgust, like just, ugh, disgust, and let that come through, and give me a more volume. Give me disgust in three, two.

• 37:36Steven Bartlett?

  And it's not because you're lonely.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:38Steven Bartlett?

  And it's not because it's New Year's Eve.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  Surprised, really surprised.

• 37:43Steven Bartlett?

  I came here tonight because when you realise you want to spend the rest of your life.

• 37:47Speaker 00

  Angry, give me angry.

• 37:49Steven Bartlett?

  You want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  Happy, best of your life, Stephen.

• 37:54Steven Bartlett?

  You want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

• 37:56Speaker 00

  That's so beautiful. You know this already, in our brains, there's mirror neurons, all right? And when I see you go through these different facial expressions, I feel what you feel. Even though I know this is a situation we've created here for us to experiment in, 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.

• 38:15Steven Bartlett?

  Are men worse at this stuff?

• 38:17Speaker 00

  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.

• 38:23Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  I was taught that it's a sign of weakness to show you being sad, you being happy, you should just be.

• 38:29Steven Bartlett?

  Composed.

• 38:30Speaker 00

  Composed at all times. And then that's what I thought, and that led me to the behaviour of speaking, whereas I would 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 wife turns up, she goes, "How do you feel?" I'm like, "This is a really exciting concert."

• 38:48Speaker 00

  And she goes, "Well, okay, you obviously hate it." And I'm like, "No, no, 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 damaged a lot of my relationships. Because here's the 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? Because if someone's saying something really bad and you're like.

• 39:22Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 39:23Speaker 00

  It shows them you're locked in.

• 39:24Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, you learn it as a podcaster.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, you do.

• 39:26Steven Bartlett?

  Because the audience, they're looking at you for most of the conversation. So 95% of the conversation is on you.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:32Steven Bartlett?

  What they don't know is that throughout that time, I'm basically talking to you with my face.

• 39:38Speaker 00

  You are, and you're really good at it.

• 39:39Steven Bartlett?

  So if I turn my head like this, it means tell me more. So I'll be, you'll be talking and go like this.

• 39:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:44Steven Bartlett?

  And it means tell me more.

• 39:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:45Steven Bartlett?

  And then it's, it's interesting.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  And you can expand that range.

• 39:48Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  It doesn't just have to be curious.

• 39:50Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  And because I see you do it.

• 39:52Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 39:52Speaker 00

  I see you consistently do the different faces to give me the cue to almost go, oh, he wants to elaborate. Oh, he's in, he's locked in.

• 39:57Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know, you can, the thing I've learned from both speaking on stage but also doing this is you can also fuck it up. You can also communicate the wrong thing.

• 40:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 40:04Steven Bartlett?

  Accidentally, one of them that people communicate quite often with accidentally is they start talking while you're speaking. Do you ever know that, like when someone's listening to speak? They start, they start going like this, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it means shut the fuck up, I need to, I have something to say. So yeah. Not 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 fuck up. So if you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you do the slow nod, it means, oh, I love this. So if I go.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  Oh, I learned something. That's curiosity, tell me more.

• 40:43Steven Bartlett?

  Versus, yeah.

• 40:47Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, and wave my hand, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so tonality, so emotion.

• 40:51Speaker 00

  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.

• 41:07Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think much about the actual words you're saying as well?

• 41:09Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 41:10Steven Bartlett?

  I can see that you think about the structure of what you're saying.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  I do.

• 41:13Steven Bartlett?

  Like you're thinking about, because 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?

• 41:26Speaker 00

  It is, because I believe stories are more sticky than me just throwing you a bunch of tips and hacks and tricks.

• 41:31Steven Bartlett?

  Do you have a storytelling formula?

• 41:33Speaker 00

  I do.

• 41:34Steven Bartlett?

  What is the storytelling formula?

• 41:35Speaker 00

  I think the way most people tell stories 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, 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 woo her in the end, but I met her at a bar. That's me, that's me reporting the story. Right, it kind of sounds like a news reporter.

• 42:03Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 42:03Speaker 00

  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 nine P M. Vinh Giang went to a bar called Distill and tried to pick up a girl, 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 kind of very reportery, whereas.

• 42:22Steven Bartlett?

  Matter of fact.

• 42:23Speaker 00

  Matter of fact. Whereas this is the story of how I met my wife. So I still remember this because this happened in two thousand and nine. I crashed a girl's graduation party named Vivian. It was at a bar called Distill, this beautiful bar called Distill. And there was two levels to this bar, and the bottom was for everybody, and on top was the high rollers. And 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 because I'm a magician. So I walk up to her, I walk up to her and I say, would you be impressed if I transformed this king of hearts into the queen of hearts like yourself?

• 43:01Speaker 00

  Disgusted. I know, you're making the disgusted face. And that's how she reacted. She looked at me as if she smelled 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 her the second time and I said, "Hey, listen, what if I transformed into a real man tonight, took you out for a coffee?" And we fell in love.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  You know, and 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 fine."

• 43:52Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  But all of a sudden, there was so much life, so much zest in that story.

• 43:55Steven Bartlett?

  I noticed you added so much, almost irrelevant detail. But you talked about the bar having two floors and stuff.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  To make it visual.

• 44:02Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so I could picture it in my mind.

• 44:04Speaker 00

  Yes, I wanted to make it visual. Well, it's, well, okay, so here's the thing. 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 it 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 of you to call them out. VAKS, V-A-K-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 described 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 the story to life. Now it goes from reporting to reliving.

• 44:48Speaker 00

  So 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." 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.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  Whereas I I feel that because of the world now with social media, we just we we we've lost the art form of storytelling. It's just give me the three tips now.

• 45:40Steven Bartlett?

  I've heard you talk about these four elements to a great story, which is the hook, the struggle, the breakthrough, and the application, which is kind of what you just displayed there.

• 45:49Speaker 00

  Well, the the importance of application, I think, is something that I really focus on with my students.

• 45:53Steven Bartlett?

  The and by application, you mean the lesson or the big takeaway from the story? Because sometimes people tell stories and they go nowhere.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  Well, it's also what you do after.

• 46:00Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 46:02Speaker 00

  Because I can I can share a story, but if I one of our viewers went viral, and and I don't claim 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. 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.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  Go do it now. 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 this cycle of, I mean, this is the cycle my students go through. Oh, job promotion. Oh, crap, 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 ten point six million results. They go, ah, this is too crazy. Surely someone's created a YouTube video. Then they go to YouTube, they're typing how to improve communications skills. They get three million videos, right? And they go, oh, this is too. Chat G P T. I'll go to Chat G P T 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.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  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.

• 47:22Steven Bartlett?

  So the key is to get out there and start running some of these techniques in the real world.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  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.

• 48:04Steven Bartlett?

  I've just realised that there's one more left.

• 48:05Speaker 00

  There is one more left, yeah.

• 48:06Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, I know what this is.

• 48:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course. If you didn't, I'd be quite deeply offended. I'll get you to read this, and we'll play with the last one.

• 48:14Steven Bartlett?

  My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 48:18Steven Bartlett?

  Commander of the armies of the north, general of the Felix legions, loyal servant to the true emperor. Marcus Aurelius, father to a murderer's son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance in the life or the next.

• 48:31Speaker 00

  Perfect. Now we're gonna 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've 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 then I pause.

• 48:51Steven Bartlett?

  You prolong the sadness.

• 48:52Speaker 00

  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?

• 49:03Speaker 00

  It's a pause.

• 49:03Steven Bartlett?

  Silence.

• 49:04Speaker 00

  The most important note that they play during that piece. 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.

• 49:18Steven Bartlett?

  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 Aurelius. Father to the murdered son. Husband to a murdered wife.

• 49:43Steven Bartlett?

  And I will have my vengeance in this life or the next.

• 49:49Speaker 00

  Oh, beautiful.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  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 rushed 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.

• 50:12Steven Bartlett?

  It's something when you pause, you almost, you tell the person, don't you, almost inexplicably that they should really give a fuck about the thing you just said.

• 50:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:20Steven Bartlett?

  Like, it really mattered.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  It's important.

• 50:22Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, because you're like giving it space to breathe.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  And you see what all of these foundations do. What do they give you ultimately? Like, what does it ultimately lead to?

• 50:30Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 50:46Speaker 00

  There, 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 X Y Real Estate. And when you hear that sequence of melody, no worries, I'll put you on to the next person. And you hit, you switch off. You just go, oh, this person just, just 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.

• 51:28Steven Bartlett?

  Because it was a bit more varied.

• 51:29Speaker 00

  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 don't want to sound scripted.

• 51:44Speaker 00

  There's a sound to it and it generally follows that. That's why newscasters, there's a sound to it.

• 51:48Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 51:49Speaker 00

  Last night at nine P M. There's that, there's a rhythm 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.

• 51:56Steven Bartlett?

  And am I right in thinking if I wanted to be really boring, I should just kill all variety?

• 52:01Speaker 00

  Kill all the foundations, nothing, give me nothing. 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 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? Why does it have to be one or the other?

• 52:20Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's a shame not to do your work justice, you know, because you can do it a disservice just by delivering it without the foundations, as you've said.

• 52:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:28Steven Bartlett?

  And then other people, as you said, they can have the half the idea, but double the.

• 52:33Speaker 00

  Double the showmanship.

• 52:34Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 52:35Speaker 00

  And that happens too. That happens too, right? So to me, it's about helping those who 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 fifteen 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.

• 52:59Steven Bartlett?

  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 or ugly at this?

• 53:08Speaker 00

  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 learnt 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 five minutes, a full five minutes. And people always immediately say, oh, what do I say though? Google or Chat G P T, 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 behaviours. I don't want you to give me a pitch that you've delivered twenty times already. I want you to just, in the moment, speak.

• 53:53Speaker 00

  I'm trying to tease out some non-functional behaviours. So once you've recorded that video of yourself for five 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 you can think about.

• 54:38Speaker 00

  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 right. 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'll 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,

• 55:21Speaker 00

  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 on a podcast, because you watch yourself back. So now as you just watch yourself back without the auditory feedback, 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 gestures, oh, I put my hands behind my back. Oh, this is my big tick. I keep touching my gla-, 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 behaviours 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.

• 56:04Speaker 00

  You're not, it's just a series of behaviours. And then afterwards, the final form of review, don't listen to it and don't watch it. Get it transcribed.

• 56:17Speaker 00

  Because now you'll see the way you communicate from a different perspective. And you go, oh, my goodness, I ramble. I talked about the same thing over, 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 go, oh, not only do I ramble? Because when you get it transcribed, leave in all of the non-words and the filler words. Non-words 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, non-words and filler words, auditory clutter. That's the, again, the and so like, do you know what I mean?

• 57:01Speaker 00

  Highlight it with the red highlighter because it might not just be those. One of my big ones was, okay. I taught online during COVID. As a result of that, because I didn't get the in-person 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 language. 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.

• 57:34Steven Bartlett?

  Why does it matter to remove the clutter words? You know, the like as, um, why does it matter?

• 57:40Speaker 00

  I'll give you an example of it. You know, like, um, if I, you know, was taking you through like the core, 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.

• 58:04Steven Bartlett?

  Is it easy to overcome that?

• 58:07Speaker 00

  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,

• 58:17Speaker 00

  we're not lagging, we're just pausing, right? You pause.

• 58:22Speaker 00

  And that's why, as part of the vocal foundations, you have to learn to be comfortable with.

• 58:30Speaker 00

  What we're doing right now, just pausing. And it's okay.

• 58:34Steven Bartlett?

  So I've got my three sheets of paper there. 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?

• 58:47Speaker 00

  To like- Step before that.

• 58:48Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 58:49Speaker 00

  Because normally what happens after you do that, and I know because my students have done it, and then what happens is overwhelm.

• 58:55Speaker 00

  Because they go, oh my goodness, there's like 26 things I have to improve.

• 59:02Speaker 00

  That's, which one do I pick? And then they'll have to DM me on social media, which one do I pick? And then analysis paralysis. And to me is, it doesn't matter. Pick one. So what you do is, you create yourself a little 12 week 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 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 of speech.

• 59:31Speaker 00

  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've 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'd get pissed off. Because they go,

• 59:57Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:00:09Speaker 00

  And just by increasing rate of speech alone, they became so much more dynamic. Took a month.

• 1:00:13Steven Bartlett?

  We all know people that overtalk and over explain.

• 1:00:17Speaker 00

  A hundred percent.

• 1:00:18Steven Bartlett?

  Like, how does one know if they're doing that and how to change it?

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  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 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.

• 1:00:38Steven Bartlett?

  Do you recommend someone like me, if we're trying to improve the communication skills of everybody in the company, to record our meetings and to send it after?

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

  Hundred percent, review it. 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 community, 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 gonna give you feedback, right? So all of a sudden now, 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

• 1:01:30Speaker 00

  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 these things if you start to reflect and review. And you go, ah, 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 speaker. And 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 recording myself and I'm also recording the audience, only for my purpose, right? As I review my speeches. And I would watch back to back the audience's faces and my keynote. And I could, 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

• 1:02:15Speaker 00

  in the talk. And when you watch those back to back, 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.

• 1:02:37Steven Bartlett?

  Do you mind if I pause this conversation for a moment? I want to talk about our show sponsored 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 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.

• 1:03:19Steven Bartlett?

  So that you can stay focused on moving forward and growing your business. If you're ready to start, visit Shopify.com/Bartlett and sign up for a one pound per month trial period. That's Shopify.com/Bartlett.

• 1:03:33Steven Bartlett?

  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? Because you were speaking 80 times a year or something.

• 1:03:41Speaker 00

  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 Wim Hof, the guided bubble breathing.

• 1:03:58Speaker 00

  30 times and then hold your breath and then a deep breath in, hold for 15 and then release. Three cycles of that, oh, Stephen, 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 pushups. 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'll go on stage and you'll 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. Non-functional. So get rid of the adrenaline. So a little bit of brisk exercise gets rid of that adrenaline that you don't need. So I do those two things. And depending on how nervous I am, I may have to do a mindset shift.

• 1:04:43Speaker 00

  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 by self, 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 gonna think about Stephen and I'm gonna think about his audience. How can I add the most value possible in this podcast as we talk? And the moment I thought about you and your audience, I don't have any cognitive capacity left to think about me. So when you kind of think about this act of service, it shifts where you are. You're not in your own body anymore. You're not self-conscious, your audience conscious helps.

• 1:05:20Steven Bartlett?

  And is there anything you do with your mouth and your tongue? Cause 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.

• 1:05:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:05:30Steven Bartlett?

  It feels like my mouth isn't quite like there yet. And also it feels like my brain's not connected to my mouth.

• 1:05:35Speaker 00

  So first thing is lip trills. Have you ever done lip trills before?

• 1:05:38Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  Okay, lip trills are this.

• 1:05:42Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:05:49Speaker 00

  Do your favorite song. So you think of your favorite song and you, you know.

• 1:05:55Speaker 00

  Funnel 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 two to three 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 great way to wake up your voice. And you've done the siren technique, which is read low and then go high. Read low and then go high.

• 1:06:19Steven Bartlett?

  The other thing that I learned from studying your work is this idea of the power sphere when you're on stage.

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 1:06:25Steven Bartlett?

  This power sphere, I've got a picture here.

• 1:06:27Speaker 00

  You've got a picture that 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.

• 1:06:38Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:39Speaker 00

  And that's the power sphere. So when you're gesturing to people, a lot of people who are shy, they gesture below the power sphere.

• 1:06:45Steven Bartlett?

  Well, just like the hands to the side.

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  So again, they're doing all these different things, but they're doing this. I'm like, oh, hey, great to see you. Oh, I'm so excited to be here. It's great, right?

• 1:06:52Steven Bartlett?

  And why are they doing that? Because they're.

• 1:06:53Speaker 00

  Because they're playing small.

• 1:06:54Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:06:54Speaker 00

  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 power 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. Hundred percent, yeah, yeah. 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? They T-Rex it, right?

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  Don't T-Rex it, just have your arms nice out and big. Don't be afraid to take up the space. And then there are foundational gestures you should learn paired with this. The first one, which you're doing already, this is, Virginia Satia came up with these, and she was a family therapist, and she came up with the foundation to hand gestures. This is placata. Try. So you've got your hands, for people that can't see, you've got your hands. Palm face up. Palm face up and out. Placata. Beautiful gesture to show that, hey, I have no weapons, I have nothing to attack you with, right? So this is placata. So you're showing your palms. Wonderful way to greet people as they come in. Hey! Instead of 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.

• 1:08:21Speaker 00

  So again, it does lack authority. So if you want more authority, you use what's the second one called leveller. Leveller is hands facing down. So hands palm face down, yes, right? Feels a bit weird doing a sitting down, but this is leveller, right? There's an 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 it's in placata, 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 leveller. 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 changed? My face changed as well.

• 1:09:06Speaker 00

  And what happened, 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.

• 1:09:17Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:17Speaker 00

  Right, so all of a sudden.

• 1:09:18Steven Bartlett?

  Cause I was doing, I was doing anger, but frustration.

• 1:09:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And, 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 realise 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.

• 1:09:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:35Speaker 00

  Is the voice is 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 did this. At the end of the keynote, imagine I did this. Right, are there any questions? Right, versus, are there any questions?

• 1:09:51Steven Bartlett?

  I was gonna say, with the level of one where you start pointing your hands down, I thought you wanted to get off stage.

• 1:09:54Speaker 00

  And I don't want any. And I don't, I don't want any questions.

• 1:09:57Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:57Speaker 00

  The next one is called blamer. Have a guess at what blamer is.

• 1:10:02Steven Bartlett?

  Pointing?

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  Yes, correct. This is blamer, a very strong gesture. And then a softer version of that is the full finger point. Point with all your fingers. Politicians get taught this. They soften it, soften it a bit and then they soften it with their full finger point.

• 1:10:14Steven Bartlett?

  I notice this on the podcast sometimes and it's the people accidentally do it when they say something.

• 1:10:18Speaker 00

  To you?

• 1:10:19Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:19Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:10:19Steven Bartlett?

  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 work-life balance. And as they're saying it, they'll like accidentally point at me.

• 1:10:31Steven Bartlett?

  But it, it does make contextual sense. So they'll go, entrepreneurs, sometimes they don't have work-life balance. And they're like, they don't know they're doing it, but they're like subtly gesturing in my direction.

• 1:10:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:39Steven Bartlett?

  Um, yeah.

• 1:10:42Speaker 00

  I know what you mean. It's like, yeah, some people have, you know, put on a bit of white.

• 1:10:47Speaker 00

  Have I? I didn't know that. Oh, my aunties do it all the time.

• 1:10:50Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:51Speaker 00

  Again, i- i- it's just different ways to vary the way you look visually. Uh, that's blamer. You've 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, y- y- y- 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, huh.

• 1:11:17Steven Bartlett?

  One arm across and one arm.

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then, and then, it was, some people call this the thinker pose, right? But you can go in this, you go huh, combined with a head tilt, soften it, right? Uh, straight up is a little bit straight and soften it and you're, oh.

• 1:11:29Steven Bartlett?

  Is that, is that what head tilt does? It softens?

• 1:11:30Speaker 00

  It just softens it. It's like, ah. 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. We're like this.

• 1:11:44Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:44Speaker 00

  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 go. 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 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. Visual in that shoeing bees, imagine me shoeing bees as I was doing that.

• 1:12:29Speaker 00

  So clap and shoeing 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.

• 1:12:42Steven Bartlett?

  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 dynamic content, but we we make boring, unengaging videos.

• 1:12:52Speaker 00

  Yes, because you come to life. I'm coming to life visually. 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.

• 1:13:04Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:05Speaker 00

  Do you 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 in his everyday life? Do you think he goes home and he says to his partner, and next we're gonna go to dinner? And for dinner, you're gonna have three. 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.

• 1:13:29Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 1:13:34Speaker 00

  Do you know what's interesting? Because I think there'll be a certain cohort of people listening that just go, oh, God, this is so.

• 1:13:40Steven Bartlett?

  I know, I know.

• 1:13:40Speaker 00

  It's so much, it's so, it sounds so exhausting, Vin, and I just, I just can't be, I can't be bothered, Vin, I can't. You must have heard this before.

• 1:13:48Steven Bartlett?

  I've heard it before. And I share with them 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 that's too much work. So it's a deal. If you want this.

• 1:14:01Speaker 00

  If you want this.

• 1:14:02Steven Bartlett?

  Then this is how you.

• 1:14:02Speaker 00

  This is how you get it.

• 1:14:03Steven Bartlett?

  The world has really changed, especially in the last couple of years post pandemic. And much of our communication now takes place on video calls, Zoom.

• 1:14:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Steven Bartlett?

  Google Hangouts, this kind of thing.

• 1:14:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 1:14:19Speaker 00

  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?

• 1:14:35Steven Bartlett?

  You lose yourself a little bit.

• 1:14:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:14:36Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:37Speaker 00

  Everything drops. All of your vocal foundations disappear.

• 1:14:40Steven Bartlett?

  So what do I need to be thinking about to be effective? I want to be the most effective person on my Zoom calls. 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.

• 1:15:02Speaker 00

  And then sometimes it's not always convenient, right?

• 1:15:04Steven Bartlett?

  It's never convenient because you've got to drive somewhere and fly somewhere. So I'd rather be effective on Zoom.

• 1:15:09Speaker 00

  Nothing will replace this. It's why I flew here from Australia. It's 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 the mindset of generosity. I'll explain. We often think of generosity as the first form of generosity, 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. 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, Stephen. I'm not, I'm not just, I'm choosing to do it because I want to connect with you.

• 1:15:51Speaker 00

  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 online with four or 500 people, I bring a much bigger version of myself to that class. I'm bringing a much bigger version than this.

• 1:16:34Speaker 00

  And then my poor wife sitting there, she goes, oh, he's, he's overdoing it, he's overdoing it. But to every single student on that class with me virtually, oh man, 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.

• 1:17:16Speaker 00

  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. 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.

• 1:17:50Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:17:51Speaker 00

  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 that is, if you just searched it, you'd find it.

• 1:18:03Steven Bartlett?

  What is three-point lighting?

• 1:18:04Speaker 00

  You've got a key light, you've got a fill light, and you've got a hair light behind you. Right?

• 1:18:08Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so there's a light behind you.

• 1:18:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:18:09Steven Bartlett?

  There's one on the side here.

• 1:18:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:18:11Steven Bartlett?

  And there's one in the front. Is that what you mean?

• 1:18:13Speaker 00

  Yes. Three key lights.

• 1:18:14Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, fine.

• 1:18:15Speaker 00

  So again, they technically call, my videographers teach me all this where they say, oh, you need a, you need a key light, you've got to have a fill light, then you've got to have a backlight. At the moment I did that on my Zoom calls, I just looked different to every single other person who appeared on that Zoom call.

• 1:18:27Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 1:18:28Speaker 00

  I'm just clearer, I'm crisper. Right, and this is, again, if you want to take it to the next level.

• 1:18:32Steven Bartlett?

  I want to take it to the next level.

• 1:18:33Speaker 00

  All right, then great. Then get a better quality camera too. Don't rely on the laptop camera.

• 1:18:37Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:18:37Speaker 00

  Right, a lot of people do this who are creators. You just get a nicer webcam, minimum ten eighty P. So you look sharper, you look clearer, and you're well lit.

• 1:18:47Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:18:47Speaker 00

  Now you look better.

• 1:18:49Steven Bartlett?

  Done.

• 1:18:49Speaker 00

  Perfect. Get an external mic.

• 1:18:52Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:18:53Speaker 00

  Because if you spend all of your time working on all of these wonderful vocal foundations and if you've got a shitty microphone, and then you talk, oh, you've lost there again.

• 1:19:02Steven Bartlett?

  And get fucking good wifi while you're on it.

• 1:19:04Speaker 00

  Yes, please. Oh, Australia needs to listen to this as well.

• 1:19:08Steven Bartlett?

  Fiber optic.

• 1:19:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, a hundred percent. And then all of a sudden now, so your visual looks good, auditory is looked after. And don't be afraid to bring a bigger version of yourself.

• 1:19:18Steven Bartlett?

  So much of this is about identity, isn't it?

• 1:19:21Speaker 00

  It is.

• 1:19:21Steven Bartlett?

  We're like, so many of us, including me, 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.

• 1:19:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:19:35Steven Bartlett?

  The fact that someone can live in an area.

• 1:19:36Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:19:37Steven Bartlett?

  And they can be Scouse, or they can, you know, live in another area and they sound completely different, like they're from New York or something. It just goes to show that we're just, like, it's so contagious and easy to blend in.

• 1:19:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:19:52Steven Bartlett?

  With one's environment.

• 1:19:54Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:20:06Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, really?

• 1:20:07Speaker 00

  You're trying so hard to be British. How fa- 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 slang. Yeah, I was gonna, but I didn't wanna. Right, and I could, I could get that to a point where you won't even understand what I'm saying. Yeah, I was gonna, but I didn't wanna. Yeah, nah, didn't wanna do it. Right, whereas I didn't pronounce my Ts. And then when I did pronounce my Ts, instead of saying three, I would say free. Can I have free of votes? And that's how I used to talk. And I didn't realise by talking like that, people were making judgements 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 again, people tried to keep me the same because of identity.

• 1:20:52Speaker 00

  That's not how you should sound, Vin. That the mould 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.

• 1:21:10Steven Bartlett?

  There are some accents that experience more discrimination than other, other accents. They did a study in two thousand and six. It was a survey of the Charter Institute of Personal and Development, found that seventy-six percent of employers admitted to discriminating against candidates based solely on their accent.

• 1:21:30Speaker 00

  We judge a book by its 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, and, and you can have that level of sophistication 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.

• 1:22:15Speaker 00

  For the longest time, they said, my accent is a problem. I said, 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 movements 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.

• 1:22:49Steven Bartlett?

  And how do you do that?

• 1:22:52Speaker 00

  Speech pathologist.

• 1:22:53Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, really?

• 1:22:54Speaker 00

  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, I was born with the gift of the gab, and the reality, I was born quite gabless. Yeah. And I share that because it is a skill that anybody can learn. When you say to me, you can't do this, you can't do that, to me, I hear, oh, Ben, 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 behaviour.

• 1:23:21Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I mean, when you told me that your English was your third language, I couldn't believe that.

• 1:23:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:30Steven Bartlett?

  Because there's no remnants, there's usually a remnants of the language you spoke before. There's like no evidence of it.

• 1:23:35Speaker 00

  Because this has become the primary language that I speak the majority of the time now.

• 1:23:41Steven Bartlett?

  But even so. My mother, she spoke in, I guess, she's Nigerian, so she spoke Nigerian for her childhood, moved to the UK when she was, I think, late teen years, so maybe early twenties. But there's always been the remnants of Nigerian, and she's what, almost sixty now, so that's forty years. Is that just because she hasn't tried to?

• 1:24:03Speaker 00

  Well, I think it's linked to identity. It's I don't want to lose that.

• 1:24:06Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:24:07Speaker 00

  I don't want to lose that connection, I don't 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.

• 1:24:13Steven Bartlett?

  I'm not saying she should, because there is something about your origin that gives you a little bit more.

• 1:24:18Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:24:19Steven Bartlett?

  Something a little bit more interesting, but when I look at some of the research, it shows that in terms of employment opportunities.

• 1:24:24Speaker 00

  I would love that study to be done in a way where the people who are speaking with accents have incredible articulation and pronunciation.

• 1:24:33Speaker 00

  As opposed to them speaking with poor articulation and pronunciation. There's a big difference.

• 1:24:38Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 1:24:52Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:24:52Steven Bartlett?

  That's a, it's a profound.

• 1:24:54Speaker 00

  It is.

• 1:24:54Steven Bartlett?

  Adverse reaction just from how you speak. It's a real, it's a real unfairness, like an injustice, isn't it?

• 1:25:01Speaker 00

  It is, it is. It's like when I was.

• 1:25:05Speaker 00

  And then 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 who, who were also Asian. I remember them saying to me, they said, hey,

• 1:25:17Speaker 00

  it's gonna be really hard, man. Right? Because that's for the Caucasian man with white hair, the game you're 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 of this before. And he goes, oh, it's a ceiling specifically for Asians. Cause it's a bamboo ceiling. It's a ceiling we can't get past. So we call it a bamboo ceiling, right? 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 companies. I didn't try. Cause 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?

• 1:26:03Speaker 00

  Fuck it. There is no bamboo ceiling for me. All right? I, I refuse to acknowledge that there is this damn thing. I'm just gonna get so good at my damn craft. I'm gonna get so good at being on stage. I'm gonna 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 placed on me all my life, Stephen. 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.

• 1:26:45Speaker 00

  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 said, is this even real? Do they know I'm from the northern suburbs of South Australia, Adelaide?

• 1:26:57Steven Bartlett?

  That's wild that you went from not speaking the language to being paid millions.

• 1:27:01Speaker 00

  To speak.

• 1:27:02Steven Bartlett?

  To speak the language.

• 1:27:04Speaker 00

  And to teach the craft.

• 1:27:05Steven Bartlett?

  And to teach other people how to speak it.

• 1:27:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, 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 behaviours that anybody can learn. And if this is what you want.

• 1:27:23Steven Bartlett?

  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 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.

• 1:27:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, I actually had some of them reach out, which was crazy.

• 1:27:44Steven Bartlett?

  It was crazy. What a redemption arc.

• 1:27:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, there was a bully that stole a bike from me and broke my heart. My mum 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 peaks and everything. And a bully found out where I lived and stole it and reached out 25 years later to apologize.

• 1:28:05Steven Bartlett?

  Did you ask him for that fucking ticket?

• 1:28:06Speaker 00

  I thought he was gonna give me that fucking 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. When he reached out, I said, hey, man. He said, I'm so sorry. And I said, hey, 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 you've just resolved, you've just resolved some of that for me when you apologized and said sorry. Because my mum, like, again, it was just so meaningful to me, that bike. You know, and again, I was so happy, I was so blown away that he apologized.

• 1:28:48Speaker 00

  It was really beautiful.

• 1:28:49Steven Bartlett?

  When dealing with people like bullies, workplace bullies, people that are insulting you or are patronizing you, what is the best technique conversationally to disarm them or to, you know, to stop them from doing it or to come out on top per se, whatever that might mean?

• 1:29:07Speaker 00

  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 diffuse this very simply because I've had it happen to me all my life. Where they say to me, and it just doesn't give them a leg to stand on. They go, oh, you're an idiot. I'm like, yeah, 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 you're stupid. You go, you know what? I've done so many stupid things in my time as an entrepreneur. If you've seen some of it, oh, I hope you haven't seen all of it.

• 1:29:43Steven Bartlett?

  What's the yes and technique?

• 1:29:45Speaker 00

  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 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.

• 1:30:00Steven Bartlett?

  Aren't you letting them win though, in that situation?

• 1:30:03Speaker 00

  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'm 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 Brené Brown where she says, 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.

• 1:30:24Steven Bartlett?

  What if you, I'm in Dragon's Den. And in Dragon's Den, there's 100 pictures a year. They come into the den, five of us dragons here. We're interrogating 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 the yes and thing? Because what's the opposite of yes and?

• 1:30:48Speaker 00

  The opposite of yes and is yes but. Right? 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 more expensive is because we spend a lot more on R and 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, 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.

• 1:31:28Speaker 00

  So all of a sudden, when you say, yes, and 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. So it's a simple technique in the world of.

• 1:31:44Steven Bartlett?

  It's so effective, though. I see it in the den 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. But they just, it's like, it becomes this real antagonistic exchange. And it reminds me of Tali 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've gone into.

• 1:32:18Speaker 00

  Shut down?

• 1:32:19Steven Bartlett?

  It's almost like you could, when I say shut down, it's like the lights went out. 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.

• 1:32:32Speaker 00

  That's what yes, and is 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, again, take that path because.

• 1:32:54Speaker 00

  I'm just not interested in just arguing for blatant arguing. I'm just not interested in that.

• 1:33:00Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 1:33:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:33:08Steven Bartlett?

  It's difficult. I think it's becoming increasingly more difficult as we become more sort of digitalized in our lives.

• 1:33:13Speaker 00

  It requires so much courage. I feel that starting a meaningful conversation requires a lot of courage.

• 1:33:19Steven Bartlett?

  How do, this sounds like a crazy fucking thing to say on a podcast in 2025. How do we start a conversation with another human being? Is there like a?

• 1:33:26Speaker 00

  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, a simple game called Hi Low Buffalo. Hi Low Buffalo. I love this game. Oh, you're not aware of this. Again, because you haven't played in the world of improv. Hi Low Buffalo. Hi 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 Hi Low Buffalo and you play Hi Low Buffalo, and we'll play it in a second. Are you game to play?

• 1:33:55Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:55Speaker 00

  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?

• 1:34:03Steven Bartlett?

  You go first.

• 1:34:03Speaker 00

  Okay, sure. Hi, I'm doing the Diary of a CEO podcast. This is pretty awesome. So I love that about this. 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 alpacas. And I live on acreage.

• 1:34:31Steven Bartlett?

  Gosh, that's crazy. I've got to beat alpacas now.

• 1:34:36Speaker 00

  Don't beat alpacas. Whatever you like.

• 1:34:39Steven Bartlett?

  Dog called Pablo.

• 1:34:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, there you go. You're overthinking it. Don't overthink it. Give it a go.

• 1:34:44Steven Bartlett?

  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. Random interesting thing. I'm.

• 1:35:07Steven Bartlett?

  Training for a marathon that I haven't signed up to yet?

• 1:35:10Speaker 00

  That's incredible. I didn't know you were gonna do that. That's incredible.

• 1:35:13Steven Bartlett?

  That's not as good as alpacas.

• 1:35:14Speaker 00

  And definitely wasn't as good as alpacas. However, that's great. When you have the courage to do this with someone now, I've given you three conversational threads that you can pull on.

• 1:35:24Steven Bartlett?

  Do you say it to them that we're gonna do high-low buffalo?

• 1:35:26Speaker 00

  I play this game with people I meet that I wanna connect with.

• 1:35:29Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:35:29Speaker 00

  This is not if I'm on the bus and I'm talking to someone.

• 1:35:31Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:35:31Speaker 00

  No, because that's generally small talk. And if you don't wanna connect with the person, it doesn't make sense.

• 1:35:35Steven Bartlett?

  But what if I'm in an elevator, I'm in a social setting, I'm at a networking event?

• 1:35:39Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:35:46Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:35:47Speaker 00

  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 lunchroom, 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 Vinon Dharab CEO. He said, if you wanna connect with someone and you care about the connection, play a game called high-low buffalo. Are you game? Play. And just do what we just did. Because all of a sudden now, I've given you three threads, right? Excited to be here, also struggling with enough, and then also shared with you, I've got three alpacas, I live in an acreage.

• 1:36:31Speaker 00

  There are three things that you could choose from, 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.

• 1:36:42Steven Bartlett?

  What's the opposite of that?

• 1:36:43Speaker 00

  Did you watch the Mr. Beast? Oh, I haven't. Who's Mr. Beast? Oh, that's cool. All right, I'll see, I'll see you in the meeting at two. 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 are six threads here, because there's three from me, there's three from you. I'm gonna roll around the office when I get back to London, and I'm gonna ask people for some high-low buffalo. And just, 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, I didn't know you were going for a marathon, man. That's awesome. Right? You should sign off for it.

• 1:37:21Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. What's stopping you?

• 1:37:24Steven Bartlett?

  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 than seven figures in, who are a sponsor of this podcast called Perfect Ted, because they're the brand used globally by cafes like Blank Street Coffee and Joe and the Juice and many, many more. Not only can you get Perfect Ted Matcha in cafes, but you can now also make it at home, much cheaper, in seconds, using our flavoured matcha powders that I have here in front of me. Perfect Ted Matcha is ceremonial grade and sourced from Japan. It is smooth, it is naturally sweet, not like those bitter grassy matches that I tried before Perfect Ted. And if you are one of those people that have told yourself you don't like matcha, it's probably because you haven't tried our Perfect

• 1:38:08Steven Bartlett?

  Ted Matcha. And you can find Perfect Ted Matcha in the UK in Tesco, Sainsbury's, Holland and Barrett and in Waitrose, or Albert Heine if you're in the Netherlands, and on Amazon in the USA. You'll get the full range online at perfectted.com. You can get 40% off your first order using code DARI40.

• 1:38:27Steven Bartlett?

  Quick one, I want to talk to you about our sponsor, Whoop, a business I'm also an investor in. And if you follow me on Instagram, you've probably noticed that recently I've picked up running, which I'm very much enjoying. And it started out as a challenge, but it's now evolved into something I do almost daily. It is one of those things that's pushing me to be better every single day. But here's the thing, to me, progress isn't just about pushing harder, it's also about training in a smarter way, which is where my Whoop comes in. Whoop doesn't just track my workouts, it tells me how ready my body is to take them on before I've 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

• 1:39:12Steven Bartlett?

  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.whoop.com/CEO and get a 30-day trial with zero commitment. That's join.whoop.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.

• 1:39:54Speaker 00

  3-2-1, I tell my students, 3-2-1, which is three steps, two types, or the one thing. So just have that in the back of 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 selfie," and then you go. So again, you have that framework in your head. Whereas before, when people ask me, "Hevin, 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."

• 1:40:39Speaker 00

  I can tell you immediately now, there are eight things you probably should start focusing 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?"

• 1:40:56Steven Bartlett?

  And do you think I should have some...

• 1:40:58Speaker 00

  Nuggets.

• 1:40:59Steven Bartlett?

  Nuggets, some questions in my back pocket that I roll out frequently? Some pre-prepared small talk things that aren't, "Have you seen the weather?"

• 1:41:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You should. And these are important. 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 do you do in your free time?" I genuinely love that question. And have a list of three or four questions. Just have them in your back pocket. That framework of 3-2-1, 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 two types of personal branding." "Oh, hey, the three steps to personal branding," or "Hey, the one thing about personal branding is, hey, good luck. So good to see you. Let's take a quick selfie."

• 1:41:51Steven Bartlett?

  Is there an art to having a difficult conversation? So say someone has been...

• 1:41:57Steven Bartlett?

  Always interrupts me at work.

• 1:42:01Steven Bartlett?

  And I know I need to.

• 1:42:02Speaker 00

  Do you know why it happens though?

• 1:42:03Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 1:42:05Speaker 00

  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 gonna 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 wanna fix. And again, that's to do with volume, that's to do with hand gestures, power sphere, all the things we've spoken about. And by leveling that up, it's much harder to interrupt this person.

• 1:42:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I can interrupt this guy.

• 1:42:46Speaker 00

  It's harder.

• 1:42:47Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:47Speaker 00

  Yep. 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. Alright, here's a simple, another simple strategy. 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 pauses, 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 there are so many other things you could do to prevent it from happening. You can even prime the conversation.

• 1:43:31Speaker 00

  If you know there's a serial interrupter. Sorry, I do this sometimes. If there's a serial interrupter in your environment, and I was just pointing at myself there.

• 1:43:41Speaker 00

  I don't interrupt because I wanna be a jerk. Sometimes I feel like, oh, I wanna add value and, and that's, I, I wanna give them the benefit of the doubt. That's what most of them wanna do. But then there's the one percent that are just serial interrupters. I just always, I always, I wanna take the floor.

• 1:43:53Steven Bartlett?

  They don't respect you.

• 1:43:54Speaker 00

  They don't respect you, yeah, I want that floor.

• 1:43:58Speaker 00

  That, very difficult. You have to have a private conversation with them 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'd love to share my idea completely and wholly. Is that okay? And I just get them all to agree. And if they do butt in after I've said that, I can let them say the thing. I'll 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.

• 1:44:42Speaker 00

  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 and they're like, oh, hey, Vin, that was an amazing keynote. And I took that same energy of 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. You meet them where they are and then you take them to where you want to go.

• 1:45:27Speaker 00

  So I'm meeting them where they are so they're comfortable and we build rapport and connections. 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 the show a little more. You've got to meet them where they are first.

• 1:45:52Steven Bartlett?

  To build that rapport, I've heard you talk about this thing called F O R D.

• 1:45:56Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:45:56Steven Bartlett?

  F O R D.

• 1:45:58Speaker 00

  We're talking about family, occupation, recreation and dreams.

• 1:46:01Steven Bartlett?

  And what's the context there?

• 1:46:02Speaker 00

  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 used to think about career, occupation, oh, what do you do? I tend to default to that when I was in the keynote speaking career. Then the F O R D is just a wonderful acronym to go, oh, 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.

• 1:46:26Steven Bartlett?

  And why does having a broader set of things to talk about cause more resonance and connection?

• 1:46:32Speaker 00

  Because that interaction feels different to every other one.

• 1:46:35Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:46:35Speaker 00

  Otherwise, it always feels like occupation. It's always about occupation. I, I, I just love having extra things to better go to, like the dreams. Again, I love asking people that question. I love watching, there's a gentleman named Simon Squibb, who, who, who's been 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 leads to wonderful conversations.

• 1:47:00Steven Bartlett?

  There's something about the depth of the question, I think, as well, that just like.

• 1:47:03Speaker 00

  It hits people.

• 1:47:04Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:04Speaker 00

  It hits people.

• 1:47:05Steven Bartlett?

  Especially the vulnerable thing, when you start saying that you were struggling with too much.

• 1:47:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:47:10Steven Bartlett?

  There's something that changed in me. I was like, oh.

• 1:47:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, he is human.

• 1:47:16Speaker 00

  That's why high low 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 clenched 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.

• 1:47:36Steven Bartlett?

  You know, when we 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.

• 1:47:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:47:45Steven Bartlett?

  Different rules apply.

• 1:47:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:47:47Steven Bartlett?

  And it's kind of what I was saying earlier about being British, we're a bit more conserved.

• 1:47:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:47:50Steven Bartlett?

  Do you need to sort of overlay all this advice with cultural nuance?

• 1:47:53Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. 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're going to 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. 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. And I I I've done the ultimate mistake. I went. There's a bit in my keynote where I say, I told my dad I wanted to leave accounting and become a magician.

• 1:48:38Speaker 00

  And my dad said, what the hell you want to be to Harry Potter. Right. So I 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.

• 1:48:53Speaker 00

  No sensitivity there. I I I didn't realize that that well, I didn't find it funny because I like.

• 1:49:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. Ah, I 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.

• 1:49:19Steven Bartlett?

  And and so many people hate hearing their own voice.

• 1:49:24Speaker 00

  They do.

• 1:49:24Steven Bartlett?

  I remember the first time I heard my own voice. I couldn't believe it when I was recording those little cassettes back in Plymouth when I was a kid.

• 1:49:29Speaker 00

  Do you know why?

• 1:49:30Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 1:49:31Speaker 00

  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, oh, I sound like Barry White. 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.

• 1:50:11Steven Bartlett?

  So this is why I thought I could sing. And then when I recorded singing and I played it back, I was dreadful.

• 1:50:15Speaker 00

  Made the same error.

• 1:50:16Steven Bartlett?

  I couldn't believe it. I thought something was wrong with the recorder.

• 1:50:18Speaker 00

  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 the mirror. 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 is 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.

• 1:51:02Speaker 00

  And I still think that record and review thing, if that's the one thing you do after this, it's gonna, if you pick three things to change after you do that process, it's gonna radically shift the way you come across when you speak. 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 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.

• 1:51:46Speaker 00

  Why is it not effective? Do you think this whole introvert extrovert thing is bullshit? I asked my vocal teacher this and I said, like, what's the, 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've 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 diligent, 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 extended period of time.

• 1:52:31Speaker 00

  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 an, I'm an introvert. I should, I should just talk like this then because I'm an introvert. It's like, well, really?

• 1:52:45Steven Bartlett?

  Social anxiety. Some people do have like severe social anxiety. So many of the things, 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 do you say to those people?

• 1:53:04Speaker 00

  It's the slow process of desensitization. It really is. 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.

• 1:53:49Speaker 00

  And then in every conversation with you, I would have to do magic with you first before I'd 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 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 eight 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. Cause he was talking to girls and he was playing his ukulele and he was amazing. And I felt so pissed off at him.

• 1:54:31Speaker 00

  I ran back to the cabin and the next morning I went, oh, the only friend I have here is now talking to girls. And then the next morning I see him at the breakfast table by himself. And I was like, what? This guy was the bee's knees last night and now he's by himself. What the frick?

• 1:54:47Speaker 00

  And I didn't understand that for the life of me. And then I experienced it 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, oh, 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 as 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,

• 1:55:30Speaker 00

  if I master the use of my body language, I master the ability to storytell. Can I leave my voice at home? Can I leave my body language? Can I leave my ability to storytell 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.

• 1:55:51Steven Bartlett?

  Do you get tired when you go home?

• 1:55:53Speaker 00

  Yes, hundred percent.

• 1:55:56Steven Bartlett?

  I can imagine because you are high energy.

• 1:55:57Speaker 00

  Because I choose to give.

• 1:55:59Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:00Speaker 00

  I, I, I'm consciously 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, our interview today was four P M, right? I didn't leave the hotel room at all, all day.

• 1:56:16Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 1:56:17Speaker 00

  Because I'm conserving that energy for you.

• 1:56:19Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, thank you.

• 1:56:20Speaker 00

  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 was so concerned about me. He goes, just, just wave to me outside of your window so I can see you. And I opened the door, I was like, oh, this door opens. And I waved, I was like, hey, Peter. And he's like, oh, cool, cool, cool. Because I didn't, I didn't leave my hotel room, right? Because I was conscious of that. I was just conscious of that.

• 1:56:42Steven Bartlett?

  I appreciate it, thank you.

• 1:56:42Speaker 00

  That's all right, that's all right. I was already jet lagged. I didn't want to, I didn't want to be shit.

• 1:56:45Steven Bartlett?

  No, but I can relate as well because I, I, I sometimes wonder if energy is finite or if.

• 1:56:49Speaker 00

  Well, it is.

• 1:56:50Steven Bartlett?

  Because 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 have, I'm so depleted.

• 1:56:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:58Steven Bartlett?

  And I wonder, I always wondered if that's something I could do something about. If I just need to buck up and just, you know, try and be.

• 1:57:03Speaker 00

  There's only so much of that you can do. And it is a limited, 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. Because it's, it's, it's a conscious thing.

• 1:57:15Speaker 00

  Whereas I used to approach every interaction with, oh, bring the bare minimum. And I didn't value, 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.

• 1:57:29Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 1:57:30Speaker 00

  There's a transaction here that's happening, that's invisible. And, and I treat like, I, I, I, 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 gonna make them laugh. So I just spoke, make them laugh and they're like, oh.

• 1:57:55Speaker 00

  And it, and it happens. I feel like I've just found this cheat code in life where I keep my energy when I need it. And when there are times I need it, I'll, I'll use the energy.

• 1:58:02Steven Bartlett?

  Like a currency.

• 1:58:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is. And I'm, I'm not, I wasn't, I didn't think they were gonna give me an upgrade, but they did, they did, which was so cool, right? And they felt good too.

• 1:58:11Steven Bartlett?

  You probably hypnotized them or something.

• 1:58:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 1:58:13Steven Bartlett?

  Magic's true.

• 1:58:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's, it's, it's an energy bribe.

• 1:58:17Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 1:58:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's been really hard. Yeah.

• 1:58:32Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:58:49Steven Bartlett?

  What is that struggle though? So struggle implies that there's two forces pulling in two different directions. So describe both forces to me.

• 1:58:58Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:59:11Steven Bartlett?

  And it's mutually exclusive.

• 1:59:12Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:59:30Speaker 00

  I used to be away one hundred and eighty days a year. Right, I missed out on so much of my son's upbringing. And 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 drank the Kool-Aid, I thought you can have everything. You can have everything. And I haven't found a way to do that because the more success I have, there's sacrifice that comes right behind it.

• 1:59:56Speaker 00

  You know, and I've just am learning what is the amount of sacrifice that I'm willing to have. And it's so hard because as I value being, the more I value being a father, the bigger these opportunities that come along as well. And then you're like, ah, so it's this constant push and pull this.

• 2:00:17Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 2:00:26Speaker 00

  Every six months I do a process called recalibrate. And recalibrate is a process I came up with one of my best friends and myself, Ali Tari. 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 shit 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 the more of 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.

• 2:01:07Speaker 00

  But even then, the push and pull is, it's always ever present, that struggle is always there.

• 2:01:12Steven Bartlett?

  What is your ambition?

• 2:01:15Speaker 00

  I told you about my two kids.

• 2:01:20Speaker 00

  I had very selfish ambitions early on in my career. Very ambitious, my own, which was to make a lot of money. You know, to be able to 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 two thousand seventeen. And we were in America and we were first time parents and we

• 2:01:45Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:01:52Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:02:01Speaker 00

  And I remember them saying, hey, we have something really important we need to talk to you about. And I was like, what the hell, guys? Why are you being all serious? What's going on? And they sat my wife and I down and they said,

• 2:02:15Speaker 00

  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 didn't want to connect with me and

• 2:02:31Speaker 00

  and they confirmed that they said all these things, eye contact, maybe he won't be verbal, maybe.

• 2:02:39Speaker 00

  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?

• 2:02:58Speaker 00

  And at that point, I was not teaching communication skills really yet. And

• 2:03:06Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:03:40Speaker 00

  And he just walks up on stage, grabs the mic and talks. And asks me if I can, 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 the door. And how do we make that happen? He came to that theatre with me thirty, forty times. First times, you stand outside the theatre, 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 afar. 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 you 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.

• 2:04:21Speaker 00

  And

• 2:04:24Speaker 00

  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 can help my son overcome one of his most challenging difficulties that we'll experience in this life.

• 2:04:38Steven Bartlett?

  Incredibly beautiful. Your father as well.

• 2:04:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:04:42Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 2:04:57Speaker 00

  And my mom.

• 2:04:59Steven Bartlett?

  Tell me about that conversation.

• 2:05:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, Mum and Dad, before I moved to the US, they

• 2:05:07Speaker 00

  yeah, we sat around a kitchen table like this and and they said, hey, we've got a big bombshell to drop on you 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're suffering, we're suffering and we've been following Buddhism for years and we find so much peace in, in this pathway.

• 2:05:25Steven Bartlett?

  He said we're suffering.

• 2:05:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:05:28Steven Bartlett?

  How?

• 2:05:29Speaker 00

  We would buy a new car because one of my uncles bought a new car. We'd buy a new house and 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 licence. 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 licence. So Dad had his own suffering in his life. He went from nothing in Australia to building incredible businesses with his brothers. 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, residential property. So they built all this up. And they'd fled from? They fled from war. From war.

• 2:06:13Speaker 00

  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 finished sewing all day, you go outside and you peel onions and you get paid fifty cents per bag of, twenty kilo bag of onion that you peel. You get fifty cents for that whole bag peeled. And then after that, every part of our garden was dug up to grow vegetables that we would sell for ten cents a bunch at the local grocery store. And then after that as well, they would also cook these delicious things in Vietnamese called "mang dek" and then we would cook them and sell them for fifty cents each inside the house, right? And that's what we would do. So I watched them do that, to then buying a farm, to then realizing that, oh,

• 2:06:56Speaker 00

  the farm is sold to an agent, the agent sells it to grocery stores. Oh, we should save up money, save 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, your uncle did it, so I guess I'll do it too. 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, because it got in my head.

• 2:07:41Speaker 00

  I was thinking, oh, you just want to get a divorce. But then 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'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.

• 2:08:05Speaker 00

  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 that, at the time, I wanted to negotiate that so bad. I was like, twenty percent, can we just, can we just split it a little bit? But one of the greatest things they did, because 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, but 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 them a block of land to help them build a meditation centre. And my dad was like, no, no, I just want the, like, just land. And then he had a shed there.

• 2:08:47Speaker 00

  And then he said, just whoever comes to help us put the shed together, that will be the meditation centre. It doesn't need to be anything more than that. And then he had all these people in the Vietnamese community come along and. Which he paid round 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've got a little block of land and, um, yeah, it's called Nang Mai. And then they, they just have people go there. Vietnamese, because my dad doesn't speak English that well.

• 2:09:30Speaker 00

  So he's got a bunch of people from the Vietnamese culture coming to them who are suffering from the war. And some of them have had children pass away and all this. And then I see my dad bring someone who's, the craziest situation was 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 happen in front of me, where then he took them gardening, they'd planted a few things, they picked some fruit, they went to the kitchen, they cooked. And they 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, you planted some beautiful fruit for someone to eat. You've done something really good today.

• 2:10:15Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:10:33Speaker 00

  Need some shade.

• 2:10:34Steven Bartlett?

  Is he, is he happy?

• 2:10:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, oh, I've never seen him happier. Well, and I was the biggest skeptic. Cause I thought surely there's gonna 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?

• 2:10:51Speaker 00

  Like, is it real? Or is this a phase? And as far as I can see, it's, it's real.

• 2:10:59Steven Bartlett?

  Good on him.

• 2:11:00Speaker 00

  And, and he's so free, though. It's cause he wakes up every morning.

• 2:11:05Speaker 00

  There's, he has this incredible, he has no attachments. He's, he's detached from everything.

• 2:11:10Steven Bartlett?

  What has he told you about the endless pursuit of more?

• 2:11:17Steven Bartlett?

  Has he given you any cautionary sort of warnings about?

• 2:11:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's what brought me back home from the US. It's what brought me back.

• 2:11:26Steven Bartlett?

  You told me a quote which I loved before we started recording. What was that quote?

• 2:11:29Speaker 00

  While I was 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 knee 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 couldn't get out of that world, but I was so lonely here in the US, or 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.

• 2:12:11Speaker 00

  And my dad called and he just said a sentence that brought me home. And the sentence was, and, and 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."

• 2:12:31Speaker 00

  And I'd lost track of my desires at that point.

• 2:12:35Steven Bartlett?

  What does he mean by that?

• 2:12:37Speaker 00

  You'll notice kings that want to continually conquer. I wanna conquer more, I wanna conquer more land. 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.

• 2:12:54Speaker 00

  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 to me, because I wanted to...

• 2:13:13Speaker 00

  The pendulum had swung so far one way that I reacted in that way and swung so back far the other way. And I learnt a lot going back. Because a lot of the beliefs that I had weren't real. I believed that I had to be here in Southern California to have this business that I wanted to build.

• 2:13:32Steven Bartlett?

  To become the person you thought...

• 2:13:33Speaker 00

  To become, I had that belief. And that belief wasn't real.

• 2:13:37Steven Bartlett?

  Is there a voice inside you that goes, "God, you could do it bigger"?

• 2:13:41Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 2:13:42Steven Bartlett?

  You could go to New York.

• 2:13:43Speaker 00

  A hundred percent, it's there. But 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 away so much. I was away so much. I don't wanna make the same mistake with him ongoing. I wanted to recalibrate. Because here's what would normally happen to me.

• 2:14:06Speaker 00

  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."

• 2:14:15Speaker 00

  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 go on 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.

• 2:14:32Speaker 00

  I've got a previous version of you here.

• 2:14:36Steven Bartlett?

  What was that kid like at that age?

• 2:14:40Speaker 00

  Starving for attention.

• 2:14:43Speaker 00

  Starving for attention. And desperate. Felt really lonely. Because I moved schools so many times. Most people go to university with a group of strong friends. I went to five schools.

• 2:14:57Steven Bartlett?

  What did he need to hear? If you could teleport back and you could have a whisper in his ear and just give him a couple of sentences at that moment in time, what would you say to him?

• 2:15:07Speaker 00

  I'd tell him not to be so attached to who you currently are.

• 2:15:13Speaker 00

  Stop being so attached to this identity that you've created.

• 2:15:20Speaker 00

  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. Listen, Vin, it's you.

• 2:15:35Speaker 00

  You're the one stopping you from becoming the future version of you.

• 2:15:43Speaker 00

  And the simple word would just be?

• 2:15:47Speaker 00

  Just let go.

• 2:15:49Speaker 00

  Let go of that present version of you. I hung on to it.

• 2:15:55Steven Bartlett?

  Why do we hang on to it?

• 2:16:01Speaker 00

  As much as my reality sucked in that moment, I felt safe.

• 2:16:05Steven Bartlett?

  Familiar.

• 2:16:06Speaker 00

  Familiar. And it felt like home. Because what is home? Home is just the familiar. And the coolest thing about travelling, Stephen, is that as I travelled more, before, home, I would tell you, "Oh, home to me is Salisbury Downs." And then as I started to travel around my own city, "Oh, no, home is Adelaide." Then I started to go camping. "Oh, home is South Australia." As I travelled, "Oh, home is Australia." Then I started to live in America. "Oh, home is America." And then home gradually becomes the world.

• 2:16:34Speaker 00

  There's this beautiful concept where, again, I just kind of, home to me is just the familiar. And at that point, my home was Salisbury Downs.

• 2:16:43Speaker 00

  My home was this such limited version of Vin. And I was too afraid to venture out of Salisbury.

• 2:16:54Steven Bartlett?

  Vin, 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?

• 2:17:17Speaker 00

  One big thing is,

• 2:17:20Speaker 00

  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're screaming out, "Yeah, but if I did that tonight with my partner," they're gonna freak out. They're gonna go, "What the hell is that? What are you doing?" 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 met you, well, you've watched 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,

• 2:18:04Speaker 00

  whether or not I'm aware of the power sphere or not. You could go out in those instances and try out these new behaviours.

• 2:18:10Steven Bartlett?

  Ah, run it on some neutral ears. I like that.

• 2:18:12Speaker 00

  Run it on some neutral ears and then you can play. So 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 gonna 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 mould. Whereas when you do it with neutral ears and when you try new behaviours with no negative judgement, you know what it does? It helps those behaviours stick a little bit more. 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...

• 2:18:49Speaker 00

  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 iron out the kinks. You'll do it, you'll feel wrong, that's okay, I'm gonna 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 neutrality is very important. Okay, so that's the 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 prime it by saying, "Look, honey, I've been very quiet with my voice my entire life.

• 2:19:32Speaker 00

  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 wanna be better."

• 2:19:44Steven Bartlett?

  "And do it with me?"

• 2:19:45Speaker 00

  "Yeah."

• 2:19:46Steven Bartlett?

  "Oh, that's beautiful, I love that, yes, and maybe we can do it together."

• 2:19:50Speaker 00

  All of a sudden now, this shifts the way they see the change. You can do this with your colleagues as well.

• 2:19:56Steven Bartlett?

  I love that. Neutrality is. 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.

• 2:20:11Steven Bartlett?

  What is one thing that you know to be true? Doing pauses, did you see that? Even though you can't prove it.

• 2:20:24Speaker 00

  That in the world we live right now, you can negotiate whatever reality you desire.

• 2:20:30Speaker 00

  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 gonna go, oh, you're wrong, you're wrong in telling people that you can negotiate whatever reality you desire. It's not true. And let's say that happens and I meet the creator and he says that to me. I'd still be glad I lived my life in that way.

• 2:20:59Speaker 00

  I'd still be glad I lived my life in that exact way.

• 2:21:04Speaker 00

  I mean, gosh, yeah, a much more productive, optimistic, effective way to live.

• 2:21:12Steven Bartlett?

  Even if you're wrong?

• 2:21:13Speaker 00

  Even if I'm wrong?

• 2:21:14Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:14Speaker 00

  Because I believe there are useful beliefs and then there are 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. So 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.

• 2:21:43Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:21:52Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:22:00Steven Bartlett?

  Finn, 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 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 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,

• 2:22:41Steven Bartlett?

  the job, the promotion, family communication, 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've 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 fucking boring after a while, doing the same thing, saying the same same stuff, being asked the same questions, getting the same DMs.

• 2:23:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:23:17Steven Bartlett?

  But it is. So important, it really is. You know, because as you experienced as a young man, the way that you can feel the isolation, the loneliness, the disconnect, 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.

• 2:23:44Speaker 00

  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 call all of my programs stage, right? Stage. And they go, why do you call it stage? And I go, oh, it's staged 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, I step onto is the stage of being a husband, right? My wife loves it when I make her the coffee, even though it's terrible, she likes it when I make it, right? And then there's something there. But then the next stage I walk into is I walk into the studio and I'm stepping onto the stage as a teacher. I'm teaching people now. And in this life,

• 2:24:29Speaker 00

  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, kindness and compassion.

• 2:25:09Steven Bartlett?

  Amen. 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 Diary of a CEO 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. Fifty-one questions split across three different levels. The warm-up level, the open-up level and the deep level. So you decide how deep the conversation goes.

• 2:25:51Steven Bartlett?

  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 thediary.com.