How To Raise Your Profile, Manage Your Reputation and Get Noticed | Warren Cass

Warren Cass is a public speaker, business leader, entrepreneur and author of the book Influence - How To Raise Your Profile, Manage Your Reputation and Get Noticed. If you want to improve your ability to build networks, communicate online and offline, and increase your influence personally and professionally, look no further. Warren takes us through a step by step breakdown of this crucial field, from personal brand development to communication strategy, Neurolinguistic Programming and body language to conflict management. A must listen for anyone who wants to get ahead Influence the book: https://amzn.to/2Kx3QjG Free Partner Resources: http://www.warrencass.com/index.php/influencethebook/ - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/modern-wisdom/id1347973549 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0XrOqvxlqQI6bmdYHuIVnr?si=iUpczE97SJqe1kNdYBipnw Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Aloha from Waikiki. I am currently recording on a makeshift standing desk attached to the top of a fridge and a microwave on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Now, there's an active volcano, not very far away, and the world's loudest bin men outside as well. So if you hear some explosions, do not fret. It will just be the end of the world, or the bins being collected. Now, before I forget, the Modern Wisdom YouTube channel is live. Very happy to say that we've nearly hit 1 million watch minutes within the space of the first month. It's absolutely crazy. The response to the Love Island podcast

• 0:44Chris Williamson?

  has been insane. Shout out to the British press for both promoting and misrepresenting what I said, but all exposure is good exposure as far as I'm concerned. The Love Island podcast is still not available on audio only. So if you want to check that out, you're going to have to head to the YouTube channel. Please hit subscribe as it would make me very happy. Coming up soon, I have the long awaited sequel to Jordan Wallace, Paul Warrior and Tim Briggs from Rebot CrossFit Tyneside, We Dominate Nutrition and Warrior Programming, plus the world's only happyologist, positive psychology expert, Susanna Hallinan, will be

• 1:23Chris Williamson?

  dropping in to talk about happiness and her new book. But first, on to this week's guest. Warren Cass is an author, public speaker, businessman, entrepreneur, and a specialist in influence and personal brand development. I've wanted to get him on the podcast for well over a year now. From before I even started, I knew that I wanted to get him on. I picked up his book, Influence, which will be linked in the show notes below, along with all of the Partner Companion stuff that he gives away for free on his website.

• 1:58Chris Williamson?

  I think to one degree or another, everybody requires influence in their lives.

• 2:06Chris Williamson?

  They need to be able to control how their personal brand comes across and they need to be able to communicate effectively. Now, this isn't just about being a go getter, chasing after the next big job or whatever it might be. This could just be being a better partner, being a better parent, being a better whatever. You need to be able to communicate effectively. You need to be able to control how your personal brand is projected out into the world. What is the sort of example that you are setting? What are the sort of things that other people professionally, personally say about you when you're not around?

• 2:48Chris Williamson?

  What is the kind of influence that you are having on your circles? Now, Warren takes us through a step by step personal brand and influence MOT. If you are someone who wants to improve their ability to communicate online or in person, their access to networks, their ability to influence others in a positive way. If you've always wanted to understand how neuro linguistic programming works, even if you've always wanted to know what people's eyes looking in different directions during a conversation means. We go through it all. So get your pen and paper out, make sure that you're ready. Here we go. Warren Cass on influence.

• 3:46Chris Williamson?

  Mr. Warren Cass, welcome to Modern Wisdom.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me, Chris. Great to be here.

• 3:51Chris Williamson?

  How are you today?

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Bloody marvelous, you know, I've had a really, really busy month. I've got a couple of days in the office, which just, you know, catching up time. So yeah, really good. Thank you.

• 4:00Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. A little bit of time to reset.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, you need it every now and then, don't you?

• 4:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for sure. For sure. It's been a, it's been a difficulty in getting hold of you, but I think that's, that's a test, testament to how much you're in demand at the moment, speaking about the topics that you do.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very flattering, but you know, obviously, we're here to talk about influence today. And as somebody like yourself who builds a personal brand, you know, the bigger the brand gets, the more demand you get and it's all good.

• 4:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it becomes a bit circular, doesn't it? So you've you've touched on the word of the day there. Can you can you define what influence means to you?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, in very, very simple terms, it's a broad topic, but in very simple terms, for me, it's about affecting an outcome without having to force it. Without having to force it also means, of course, without having to manipulate. You know, we we live in a world where we're bombarded every single day with so many messages. And some of it is misinformation and some of it's manipulation. But coming back to my definition of influence, influence is really when you can you can forward an idea or agenda without having to force it with people coming along because they want to, they've been inspired to. That's that's how I like to define influence.

• 5:10Chris Williamson?

  I understand. So I I picked up Influence, the book, round about a year ago and was on a flight out to America, wanted to get something that I could read on the way out and it immediately stood out to me. Exactly as you said, we increasingly now in the modern world, almost everybody to one degree or another is building a personal brand. You know, the advent of social media means that everyone treats their Instagram or Twitter account to varying degrees of professionalism like a traditional advertising medium. It's advertising for themselves. Whatever the goal is can change, but I do think that the the hype to a degree about

• 5:53Chris Williamson?

  someone's own life gets proliferated by them. And upon reading it, there was a few bits which the event managers who work for my company will hate hearing over over the airways, as I won't show up about it in the office sometimes. But serendipity is not a strategy for me. Just sit it completely chopped at the knees. So many of the fortunate situations that you get into and you can sometimes kid yourself have come about due to. Some preparedness that you deep down know that you didn't do, or some connection which

• 6:36Chris Williamson?

  was done by pure chance. The serendipity is not a strategy can be, should be written on the wall at some points. I think it reminds me that we need to be prepared and that we we need to cover all of the the potential avenues moving forward as we try to create a personal brand. So can you can you tell us why you wrote the book?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll start by apologizing to your colleagues, though, if you're quoting me all the time.

• 7:06Chris Williamson?

  The Warren Cass rhetoric gets pushed hard in the Voodoo Events Office, I'm afraid.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  And do you know what? The serendipity has been really, really kind to me. It has. I can't complain at all. But I've always had the best results when I've done things on purpose, on and with purpose, I might say. So, yeah, I totally, I totally agree. Why did I write the book? Well, well, first of all, I've been speaking on the subject for well over a decade. And I wrote the book initially because I had two publishers come to me and say, would you write a book? And I thought, okay, I've always avoided this in the past because I've got a, you know, a big listener to podcasts, I subscribe to yours amongst others. And a knowledge, you know, is a really important thing. I think every day is a school day. So it's important to continuously learn. But I do think about

• 7:55Speaker 01

  most business books is that they're typically written by academics who decide to give too many examples where one or two would have done. And I believe also, most business books can be summarized in, you know, a few pages, rather than necessarily needing to take everything on. And I was really trying to think hard about what am I going to add value to this topic in a book format, bearing in mind, there are some classic books on this subject out there. And I mean, for example, you know, in our pre-chat, you were talking about Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, probably the oldest and biggest selling book on that topic.

• 8:35Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  But it was written in nineteen, in the nineteen thirties. Um, you know, you've got the Psychology of Persuasion by Cialdini, a brilliant book, written in the nineteen eighties, and he has done some work since that, but there was a gap. You know, and what's happened is we've had this explosion of population, of technology since then, and it's fundamentally changed everything that we do. Um, it's changed the way we communicate, it's the change way we access products and services, it's changed the way we consume. And so the, the world has changed and we, you know, for me, it was a, it was the thing I've been evangelizing on stage about, and I thought, you know what, this is the angle I'm going to take. This is, this is the way I'm going to write the book.

• 9:19Chris Williamson?

  To bring, bring those, bring those things up to speed, so to speak.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Take all of those proved to tried and tested concepts, but actually make them relatable to a whole new generation of people.

• 9:31Chris Williamson?

  Applicable to the, the changed world as well. I think definitely when you, if you read David Allen's Getting Things Done, it, it almost becomes laborious to convert. So he talks about like using phyla faxes and pages and, you know, like in trays and out trays and stuff like that, and you think that I've actually got to do a fair bit of the work. This self-help book requires me to do quite a lot of self-help to get the book to work for me, because it's so behind the times with what it would be. It would be an app now, it would be a, it would be a, a integration like Evernote or something like that, it would be productivity tools and all that sort of stuff. And yeah, you, you, you're very right.

• 10:13Chris Williamson?

  I think as the rate of change speeds up in the world, the body of knowledge around core concepts needs to keep up.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Hundred percent, or at least its application, yeah, absolutely.

• 10:27Chris Williamson?

  I agree. So can you talk about why influence is important? Does, does everybody have it?

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Uh, knowingly or unknowingly, uh, yeah, vast majority of us have it and should be aware of it. If we, if we want things to happen in our lives, you know, that's the, the simple fact of it. Um, I often start my talks with, with, uh, you know, defining the fact that.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  We're all influenced every single day from the moment we get up in the morning. Our partner's expression or the mood they're in can dictate our day. The micro expression of somebody on your commute to work, whether it's a tube, train or car, can dictate your mood for the day. It's been absolutely proven that because we're such empathetic creatures, if we witness an act of kindness for the two hours that follow, we are more kind. You know, so we are sponges and we absorb and that's just the human interactions. When you start factoring in marketing messaging and media, you've got a whole different layer of influence there too.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  So the bit I maintain is that if you understand how you're received, when you talk, when you communicate, if you understand how that comes across to others, you've got a better chance of being more effective in that communication. If you understand how you you receive information and how other people influence you, you've got a better chance of having better responses to that influence. You know, so ultimately, if you're an ambitious person, you want to evolve your career or even if you just want to improve your relationship with your wife, husband, children, colleagues, friends, understanding influence is in your best interests.

• 12:14Chris Williamson?

  So it's giving you some perspective of what you're receiving and what you're sending to a degree.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, all communication really should start with an awareness of of how it's being said, what's being said, because we communicate on so many different levels, don't we? So just increasing your awareness will make you more effective straight away.

• 12:37Chris Williamson?

  Where do you tend to start with people if you were to do a an influence overhaul, if you were to take me in for an influence MOT?

• 12:48Chris Williamson?

  Where would you start?

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Having seen your profile Chris, you're not doing too bad my friend.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really starts with finding out objectives. I wouldn't dream to think that everybody wants the same thing. So the very first thing I'd do is try and understand their what and their why. What is it they want to do? What is it they want to be known for? And why is that important to them? Why is that something that's going to inspire and motivate others? If that's the way they're going to come about it. So that would be absolutely the first step is just to understand people's objectives. Without that, you can't put any real strategy into place.

• 13:30Chris Williamson?

  If you don't have a target to aim at, you'll always miss, right?

• 13:33Speaker 01

  That's the point. If you're coming at this with an outcome in mind. But of course, some people just want to be nicer and more effective in their communication. There might not be an objective. You could be retired and want to communicate better. That's fine. But if the premise you gave me was an overhaul, so coming in and maybe working with somebody, I'd be first looking to understand what it is they're looking to do. And the reason, of course, for that is that once you understand your marketplace, who you're looking to get out there, and you then need to identify your audience, where they play, the type of information they consume, the type of people that are already influencing them. So who are the potential collaborators? And people that you might be able to take advantage of some of the principles

• 14:16Speaker 01

  I talk about in the book, like credibility by association. So there's a whole load of things that you might want to do once you're clear on why you want to do it.

• 14:26Chris Williamson?

  So we've established people's why. We've started to understand their objectives and what they want to do moving forward. I think that is a massive stumbling block, especially one of the biggest roots to procrastination is perfectionism. It sounds quite strange and quite circular, but it genuinely is that waiting until you have everything in place or everything feels perfect is a really good excuse for procrastinating on getting started on a project.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  And of course, that can have a negative impact on influence as well. And I'm talking from personal experience here.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  My reason for procrastination.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Is very, very aligned with what you've just said. It's mainly because I like to do the job myself because I know I'll do it the way I want it done.

• 15:14Chris Williamson?

  You'll get it done right. Yeah. If you want a job doing right.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Of course, but then what happens is work and life and everything else gets in the way. And you're suddenly overwhelmed with jobs and you don't get around to it. And of course, having somebody else do it 80% to the standard that you would have done it is better than not getting done at all. So there's, you know, there's a whole lot of things around that.

• 15:32Chris Williamson?

  Agreed. Yeah, you need to. I think, I think especially in business, doubling down on your strengths. I'd said this in episode eight with Michael Caju, who's the CEO of Brute Strength Training. And he said himself, his route to becoming one of the biggest CrossFit programming operations in the world was by doubling down on his strengths and employing people who could fill in where he's less capable or less passionate. And I think, I think being a jack of all trades is, is really no use to anybody in, in a business context. So you've got me in. We've, we've had a look at, at my objectives. We've got around the fact that I'm a perfectionist and that I just need to, I need to get moving. Where do you go next?

• 16:15Speaker 01

  So from an influence strategy point of view, the first thing I would do is sit down and based on what you've told me, identify, identify your audience. And a lot, a lot of people forget this, but yeah, I mean, that's, that's a bit more complex than, than we think because, you know, we're, we're living in times where there were five different generations in the workplace. All with this, and that's never, never been the case before. So we've got five different generations in the workplace, all with different, unique experiences. And so identifying your, your audience is important because we're, we're more multicultural than we've ever been before. We're generationally divided and we've never been before. And that, that affects all sorts

• 17:00Speaker 01

  of things like attitudes. I mean, let me give you some examples of why identifying your audience properly is important. And I'm going to make one point at the end of it, but, but I'm sure like me, you are tired of the term millennial.

• 17:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Well, I think everybody's sick to death of the term millennial, but, but I do think it's important for older generations to understand what makes millennials tick. I think it's equally important for millennials to try and understand why we have, we, and I'm, I'm not a millennial, why we have a different perspective too. And this. This comes down to our experiences. So a couple of quick stats to throw out at you.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  The average age for marriage, mortgage and kids in the seventies was twenty three years old. And today that's more like thirty six years old. So there's a load of changes.

• 17:54Chris Williamson?

  What you're saying is that I've actually still got time and that my business partner can stop applying pressure to me.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Of course, absolutely. That's exactly what I'm saying.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  And some of those reasons, by the way, will be financial and, you know, and because actually we have more, we're more experiential now. So we have, the world is our lobster, Rodney, you know, we can go anywhere, we can, we can do anything we want to do. So we tend to put off some of the other bigger decisions because while we're young, we want to have those experiences. That's one. Student debt is another. You know, there's a load of reasons why those things happen. And so that's, that's just marriage, mortgage and kids.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Beyond that, work. So in the US, only seven percent of millennials work for Fortune five hundred companies.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  And that's mainly because millennials who are of an age ready to work want to be inspired by what they do. So they either start their own businesses where they're connected to their why. Or they go and work for smaller organizations where they're working directly with the entrepreneur behind the business. So they can feel like they're making a difference. So that's, that's important to a generation. And then, you know, you look into things like politics. And we, we live in an age of great misinformation where, where, you know, we're as, as divided as we've ever been. And, you know, there's a whole load of reasons for that and we can go into that if you want to, or we can avoid it like the plague.

• 19:30Chris Williamson?

  I'm happy to just open up whatever, whatever Pandora's box we go into today is absolutely fine, Warren.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  No problem. So, you know, the thing about an age of misinformation is it makes actually all of us that little bit more skeptical. And so, you know, when we're told things, our first instincts now should be to not believe it until we've actually seen evidence or facts or something to support it. And, you know, social media absolutely dominates what we do. It's democratized, you know, conversations really, and it's and it's made every every opinion have its microphone, you know. And so we have to be careful of what we take in and believe. And consumerism has changed, you know, again, millennials. And in fact, just coming to this point, you know, the the term millennial is quite often

• 20:18Speaker 01

  accepted to anybody after nineteen eighty, so it's thirty eight years and younger at the time of recording this. And the other thing that's happened since nineteen eighty is the world population has doubled.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  So we're now over seven billion people on the planet, and that's doubled in the last thirty eight years, which actually should scare the shit out of anybody listening. It really, really should. But that means half the world population are in this.

• 20:46Chris Williamson?

  Millennials, yeah.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  For millennials, yeah. And so it's now the most dominant consumer group online, you know, from a consumer consumerism point of view, less brand loyal, you know, if a brand they were using every single day disappears tomorrow, that's fine, they'll move on to the next one, but it'd be largely based on things like social proof. So your reputation matters. And, you know, that's why we we we read the reviews on Google, on Amazon, on TripAdvisor, and profile testimonials on LinkedIn, et cetera. You know, we're interested in this stuff because we want social proof, we want to make the best decision based on what our peers recommend. It's, you know, it's it's the way it works. So we've got all of that going on.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  And then we've got diversity with multiculturalism, you know, even even faith is changing, you know, in the UK, we're becoming more and more atheist, in some European countries, it's almost totally atheist.

• 21:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  And even in the US now, I think I read somewhere earlier this year that you're it's less than fifty percent now that class themselves as white Christian in the US, which is, you know, it was it was it was never that. It was always such a dominant demographic.

• 21:53Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  But the big point I kind of want to make with this little talk around millennials and diversity is that if you're talking to multiple demographics, if you're marketing to multiple demographics, but only using one tone of voice with your communication. The harsh reality is you're not speaking to everyone.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  So if we want to be able to reach different audiences and talk to different demographics, we have to understand, personalize and, you know, and produce content and add value in, in the way that's meaningful to the people you're trying to talk to. And so many big brands are still talking with one tone of voice. I find it utterly surprising. You know, we, technology enables us to personalize. I've got one, one, um, uh, friend who I, who shall remain nameless, but, um, but he has a business operating from London. And he works in a particular niche, but he identified within his database recently that the database had grown quite large and that there were something like 400 Johns

• 23:02Speaker 01

  for, for argument's sake on a name.

• 23:04Chris Williamson?

  Oh, wow.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  So he, he took a whiteboard and he wrote on, on, on video and he wrote, hi John. And then he said, hi John, just wanted to tell you about, and then went on to speak uh, to that particular audience. Now, every single John who received that believed that was written just for them. Uh, I tried to figure out, uh, but they watched the video and maybe bought the product.

• 23:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Uh, he then moved on to the next biggest name on his list, which was, you know, whatever it was, and then, and, and produced something for them. So he, what he identified was, you know, by just re-recording that one video a number of times, he still had quite a, quite a big reach, but a much bigger, um, a much bigger conversion rate.

• 23:43Chris Williamson?

  Sense of affi-, the sense of affinity was, was, uh, through the roof, right?

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely, it was personalized.

• 23:50Chris Williamson?

  So you need to gear the message to the market, I think.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  So, so understand your audience is the, is, you're asking the step. We're in this consultative stage. We've come in, we've found out your what and your why. Understand your audience or your audiences. It could be plural. It could be, you know, more than one niche you're looking to operate in. So understanding that is the first thing. And then absolutely understanding where they play.

• 24:14Chris Williamson?

  So does that mean in terms of, uh, media?

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Media consumption, events they might attend.

• 24:23Chris Williamson?

  Avenue, avenues of access.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Absolute, yeah, point, points to, to connect.

• 24:30Chris Williamson?

  Yep, okay.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  So that would, that would be the, that would be the next step. The next step after that, I would then be looking at all of the people who already have influence over that audience. And I'd been very simply making friends, maybe asking them to guest post on a blog, maybe interviewing them for a podcast. You know, reaching out to, to other influencers. First of all, it's flattering. They're going to get some profile. It's a win-win there. They're going to let their audience listen to or read your content. So you get the credibility by association thing that comes. And then what, what you're doing is you're slowly building your audience and building your influence towards that audience. Because the, the key, the only real thing I think nowadays is of

• 25:14Speaker 01

  long-term strategy when it comes to building influence is to actually genuinely try and add value.

• 25:21Chris Williamson?

  I couldn't agree more.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Serve. And that could be from great content, but you really genuinely have to try and add value to the audience you serve.

• 25:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. I was, I've got a, an upcoming live stream that I'm going to do on Instagram, maybe tomorrow when I'm driving, I'm going down to Shropshire tomorrow. And it's talking about people who have a massive platform online and are choosing to use it for reasons which add absolutely zero value as far as I can see. And the analogy that I'm going to draw is that in the same way as a strong person needs to protect the weak because it's a duty, they have a particular skill or a particular

• 26:03Chris Williamson?

  they have a particular attribute, which is a travesty to not use when it's called upon. If you have a platform and if you are looked up to and if you are held in a position of credibility, which is increasingly being bestowed on people who probably don't deserve it.

• 26:20Chris Williamson?

  And you're not using it to add value and to make people's lives better. As far as I'm concerned, it's a, it's a bit of a catastrophe and it's a real wasted resource. And it shows just how little you do care for the audience that you've got. And that's not for me to say like, I'm, you know, with my small following, bestowing words of wisdom or something like that, but I am, I'm trying to do my best to speak for something of value, something that the people that follow me and that follow my friends and, you know, introduce them to interesting people like yourself that will enrich their lives and, and, and help them make good lives better and bad lives less, less bad.

• 27:04Chris Williamson?

  You know, that, that seems great, but yeah, the, the prospect of having a platform and not using it to me is sacrilege, I think.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  So I'm often asked what, um, how do I define a good speaker? And let's just assume the given is that they know what they're talking about.

• 27:23Chris Williamson?

  And, you know. She's probably not a very good given sometimes.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Well, let's, let's just for the, for the point I'm going to make, make it given. So there, there were two things which in my experience, the best speakers I've ever met have. And the first thing is an ego. And I know that's going to sound negative and it, and it is to a certain extent. But if you're the type of person, I mean, Chris, you know, I've seen your, your Instagram account. You clearly care about what you're doing, but there's clearly an ego in there as well. Right? Um, so having an ego isn't a bad thing as long as our desire to add value and serve our audience is higher and bigger than our ego.

• 28:05Chris Williamson?

  It's a very interesting point.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  So the best speakers I know stand up get a real thrill from standing up on stage. Absolutely they do, but their desire to affect change in others is bigger than their ego.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  I think of, think of some world politicians right now, I mentioned no names.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Wouldn't it be amazing if they had, if they leveraged the platform that's come from, you know, their notoriety and everything that they do because their desire to affect change in others and add value was bigger than their ego? What, what a difference that would make.

• 28:37Chris Williamson?

  Well, the, the, the point that you've missed there is that you're presuming that they know what they're talking about.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  That's a very good point. Touche, my friend.

• 28:47Chris Williamson?

  So, yes, we've talked about the avenues of access to the audience that we've defined. We've looked at our why. Where are we going to next?

• 29:00Speaker 01

  So then the next stage I would go to, we've, we've added value with collaborating with other influencers. So we're starting to really build our reach.

• 29:07Chris Williamson?

  Oh, the, sorry to, to interject the credibility by association thing, which you touched on earlier on, I really enjoyed in the book. I think you're totally correct. When you see someone who you follow, how many times do you go out and listen to a Joe Rogan podcast? Matthew Walker, who wrote Why We Sleep, I'd seen Why We Sleep advertised on Amazon. It'd been pinged to me off my Kindle on my email. But I listened to him on Joe Rogan for three hours. Obviously, in and of himself, he was very charming and added a lot of value, but also the platform that Joe Rogan gave him allowed me to be exposed to him, lended more credence, more credibility to what he was saying. And I, I bought the book while I was listening to him.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  So there's a whole, there's a whole load of kind of cliches on we're known by the company we keep, or we are the, the kind of net product of the five people we hang around the most with, you know, it's all, all of those ones which people know.

• 30:02Chris Williamson?

  Do they ring, do they ring true for you?

• 30:05Speaker 01

  They, not, if I'm going to be really strict, yes, we are known by the company we keep, absolutely, positively and negatively. But the whole five, five people that we hang around the most with, I think is nonsense. And of course, you know, the networks aren't restricted to five people. We know lots and lots and lots of people and in different contexts, we'll hang around with different people, you know, if I'm, if I'm like the comedy course I went on to the other week, you know, there's a WhatsApp group now of a whole load of budding comedians having fun. That's got nothing to do with my work. It's got very little to do with my home life or my friends, actually. So we, we live in pockets of interests.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  And and we build communities within our pockets of interest and hopefully, you know, we're multi-layered human beings with lots of interests.

• 30:54Chris Williamson?

  You try and take the best from everyone, right?

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, do you know what, even a lovely thing, I mean, I'm a mid forty's guy, right? So I'm forty five years old, I'm forty six this year and, you know, speaking is one of the things I'm passionate about. This this last month, I managed to speak up for a client in Glasgow. And what was really lovely is that my my dirty little secret is for the last fourteen years, I've been an Xbox fanatic. I managed to avoid it while I was building a technology business in the in the nineties. And my wife and kids bought me an Xbox for my birthday, which was a really fatal thing to do. Call of Duty being my game of choice. And of course, what happens, you start to make friends and build a clan and that that

• 31:41Speaker 01

  happened anyway. I got up to Glasgow for for this speaking event and really brilliantly, I managed to meet up with some of my clan and go out for a few beers and have a bit of fun. Now, some of these people I've known really well for over twelve years, but have never met face to face.

• 31:57Chris Williamson?

  A A F K, as it's known, away from keyboard.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah. And so, you know, so, you know, it's not, it's, it doesn't really matter how we connect with others, it just matters that we do connect with others and.

• 32:11Chris Williamson?

  I think there's definitely, um, there's a lot to be said about, we did it recently, do a podcast on confidence and one of the things that I tried to take away from that was talking about being truthful and being vulnerable to a degree. And I think that making a making a genuine connection or committing to making a genuine connection, even if it's only mostly going to be one way, the majority of social media is one is you speaking and then some responses. There's more of you speaking than there are responses for most, most people online. But for you to add value. Personally, I think that there has to be a level of vulnerability because presuming that you genuinely care about what it is that you're talking about, you have to be very honest and very open and very truthful with it. That doesn't mean that you have

• 32:56Chris Williamson?

  to be completely transparent, but it does mean that you have to allow people to see a very true, true side of you. And I think that can probably be quite daunting for a lot of people who are concerned that their audience might not like what they hear.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Well, it's also daunting because it's not the way we're being socially conditioned right now. If you think about it, social media is people's highlight showreel. It's not, it's not real life. But actually, when you think about the biggest connections you've ever had with somebody, it's where you've actually been vulnerable or, you know, utterly honest and human. That's, that's where we connect.

• 33:31Chris Williamson?

  It's incredibly endearing trait.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Well, you know, even as a speaker, one of the biggest weapons I'll use on stage is self-deprecation. I'm quite happy to take them account myself. It really, it really doesn't, doesn't bother me at all. But it, but it does relax an audience because suddenly they're not thinking that listening to some know-it-all on stage. It's a, it's a human being just sharing, sharing the story. And that's, that's the way it should be.

• 33:55Chris Williamson?

  Very brilliant characteristic as well.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Coming, coming back to the credibility by association though, because you mentioned one of the stories in the book. And, and actually, just so this, this lands with your, your, your audience, there's a couple of quick stories I'll tell, one from the book and one is, one that isn't. But for me, it comes back to this term about understanding the power that somebody who already has profile, either endorsing you or taking you under the wing or being seen with you, the power that can have. So the story I talk about in the book is a personal development speaker, author, and actually, to a certain extent, mentor to me when I was, when I was younger, is a guy called Jack Black.

• 34:35Chris Williamson?

  Not the Jack, not the Jack Black.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Not, not the Hollywood Jack Black. Glaswegian Jack Black, he built a brand called Mindstore. So it's, it's, it's all about kind of personality and, sorry, personal development. He was a social worker in the eighties and he was fascinated by personal development himself. So he started developing his own content. And when he was ready to launch his own business, he saw the concept of credibility by association. He may not have called it that, but he, he borrowed ten thousand pounds and he put Sir John Harvey Jones on stage next to him in front of two thousand Glaswegian business owners at a conference or an event he was running. Cause he understood that Sir John Over Jones would be the draw. But then the moment he's on stage and he's on stage with him, he gets the credibility that comes with that.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  And overnight, he was the business guru that works with Sir John Harvey Jones. As a result, built a really good, powerful business.

• 35:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  And you may have heard the name Judy Nake, who, um.

• 35:33Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Who, who sold her business for seventy, seventy-five million. Uh, it was the, she didn't even develop the product, but she had the distribution rights to the sand trap aim, um, tanning.

• 35:43Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Tanning stuff.

• 35:44Chris Williamson?

  Heard of that.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  And yeah, so for her, I mean, she's quite an inspirational businesswoman anyway, because of the way she dealt with people. But, uh, she attributes, uh, a lot of her success to having somebody like Victoria Beckham walking out of the store with a clear plastic bag and her product in the bag. And, uh, when, when I heard her story, it was within the months that followed, she did about two million in sales just because of that one media appearance. You know, so that whole credibility by association thing can be really, really powerful, but can be used. Uh, it doesn't, you know, we're talking about big things here, like a seventy-five million, um, sale. How does that, how does that apply to a florist, you know, working in a town centre?

• 36:27Speaker 01

  How, or, you know, or somebody who just want, has an aspiration for a local business and doesn't necessarily want to take it any bigger. For, for them, it's really about identifying the influencers locally. If you want more people to know you locally, try and find the people who have sway, who, who make recommendations day in, day out. Who are the networkers? Who are the people that you can build relationships with over a coffee, just locally, because they're approachable? Um, you know, these are, these are simple principles or concepts and they can be applied at whatever level or, um, or whatever level of aspiration you have for your business.

• 37:02Chris Williamson?

  I understand. I think what we're obviously skirting around here to a degree is the very overused term now of influencers, mostly used for social media. You know, the number of product endorsements that you get now is leveraging this exact credibility by association, isn't it? You look at, for most of the listeners, boohoo.com and ASOS and Topman and even Jackamo and people like that are trying to rebrand themselves by attaching themselves to people like Freddie Flintoff. And do you know what I mean? Like they are, this credibility by association has become a major industry in and of itself.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  It has. And but, you know, it's not necessarily new. I know influencer marketing is a more recent term, but you know, I remember over a decade ago when BlackBerry were one of the dominant brands in mobile phones and they had a, they called it their ambassador scheme, but it was just influencer marketing. They identified people who were prominent in loads of different niches. I was one of them in the small business sector because at the time I was running a large business network. And, you know, it meant every month I got them the next new shiny phone to, you know, as long as I shared it, wrote about it, etc., etc. So I was one of the ambassadors amongst other people. But it, you know, that was,

• 38:26Speaker 01

  that for me was when I started to really notice that, you know, this was a principle that could be leveraged by anybody, really.

• 38:32Chris Williamson?

  So by trying to get some credibility by association here, how can we access these people? Obviously by virtue of them being in a position of existing influence or potentially either a different or a higher level of access to network than we have. What are the, what are the effective ways that someone can go about enticing somebody in, in terms of contact? Or if they're meeting them face to face, what can they do to make them have more confidence in the, in the pitch, so to speak, to become associated?

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this is a good question. It's one I'm often asked because of course, nobody wants to go reach out to somebody who's got sway and influence and immediately be asking for something. That's the surest far way to to turn them off and get them to ignore everything that you do. So, you know, most people want to understand what makes you tick, your values, your intentions, before they're going to invest any time into you. So that's the first thing. I used to sell sponsorship. So, you know, with our with our business network brand, we managed to attract really nice sponsorship figures from brands like Santander, BlackBerry O2, Microsoft, etc. And you don't attract those brands unless unless there's

• 39:53Speaker 01

  something in it for them. And so you always lead with what's in it for them. And I think this is the this is the principle as well. When you're approaching people within your network, it's seeking to add value first. So, you know, for example, if I'd already started to build an audience and I and I wanted to attract the attention of of an influencer, I'd probably invite them to be interviewed. They're probably going to want to at some level share their message. They're going to be flattered by the invitation. It's no different from you inviting me onto this podcast, Chris. You know, it's nice to to reach a different audience. You know, that that works, the whole principle of credibility by association is at play here, by the way, you know, because I'm sure you'll enjoy it

• 40:36Speaker 01

  when I share the podcast with my audience, because that that broadens yours. And you've already got a an audience which might be a different demographic than I normally talk to. So, you know, we both win from it. We're both getting the credibility by association from the conversation, as long as, of course, we're both not coming across as morons, which I choose to believe we're not.

• 40:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  So, you know, approaching somebody, I would I would seek to add value first. I would I would avoid asking for anything. I would seek to add value. I would avoid asking for anything that's not in their interests.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. And actually, it's not just restricted to things like that. I read somewhere recently that Google's about to change their algorithms yet again. So it's not, you know, you can have done as much as you wanted to with SEO in the past, but it's not necessarily going to help you moving forward. And, you know, it's going to be weighted in different ways. So it's a, you know, these are things that you constantly have to keep on top of. But owning your relationship with your audience is massively important.

• 43:42Chris Williamson?

  How else can someone ensure that they own the relationship with their audience or own their platform, as you put it?

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Um, so specifically, uh, to answer that question, I would, I would be wherever possible, taking them away from the places that you met them in the first place and building that subscription. So Tim, what Tim does is he'll go and play on social media. Uh, he has lots of referral schemes in place. He relies on his audience to help him build his audience too. Um, but he will, he will give you something of value. But in order to get that something of value, you're subscribing. So it could be a, uh, 10 top tips on how to whatever. But you part, you part with your email address. And then he makes it very clear, I'm going to send you something of value on a regular basis. If you, if you don't want that thing of value, then you know, add it off, no problem. But, but if

• 44:30Speaker 01

  you do, then know why you're doing this. It's not me spamming. I'm sending you something of value.

• 44:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  So, you know, it's being really clear with intentions. Um, and you know, the point is that all of the hard work should have been done before that stage. You know, the people that you're talking to should understand your values. They should understand the value you bring to them. And therefore, you know, when they subscribe, um, it's, it's a consensual act.

• 44:55Chris Williamson?

  They've got a feeling of certainty and safety that they're, that they're buying into something that they value.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Absolutely.

• 45:04Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  And then then the last step I would take beyond, you know, continuing to build your reach and own your platform would be to, uh, you know, productize, take advantage of what you've built, productize, then rinse and repeat. You know, all of those steps, you can continuously go through them. And, you know, you should be on a regular basis, as the world changes around you, revisiting your what and your why, um, and how your audience is changing. And therefore, you know, where are they playing now? What's the change in technology or social media that they've moved on to? Um, you know, who are the new influencers? Who can you give a helping hand to? Who might be bringing a new audience with them? Um, add value, collaborate, continue to build your reach, productize, rinse and repeat.

• 45:45Chris Williamson?

  I think what I like about that particular layout is that the productize comes at the end and the operating a freemium model or over delivering on the front end as it's known in the online marketing world is a commonly a commonly used approach now and as you say exactly exactly right with Tim Ferriss, what you get, you get an awful lot of value for a very little investment, i.e. something that's free, you giving your email across, but the content that you get is very, very highly valued and that the productizing or the turning that into a financial or business in quotation marks plan almost becomes

• 46:29Chris Williamson?

  it emerges organically out of all of the steps that you've built upon, that you've got this level of credibility, that you have good access to market, that you understand the audience that you're speaking to.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so whilst productizes the end in that simple model, actually, the reality is you do all of those things all at the same time.

• 46:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  And, you know, it's nice and easy to sort of spell it out in steps, but of course, if you've got a product and service to sell, you're going to sell it to the audience that you've got at the time you start, really.

• 47:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  You know, but you're right, what, you know, the considerations up until the point of productizing and selling something is making sure that you've got something that's truly of value and it's a consensual act, you know, that your audience wants it. But no, that's a very simple philosophy on the whole thing. I mean, as I say, the world has changed, you know, influence has changed massively. What most people perceive to be the change might just be societal, but actually we've had changes in how technology's impacted business. You know, it's a nice little stat that over 40% of the companies at the top of the Fortune 500 in the year 2000 were no longer there in the year 2010.

• 47:42Chris Williamson?

  Is that true?

• 47:43Speaker 01

  That's true. And, you know, even on top of that, you've got brands that have come from nowhere, which, you know, we've all heard of and know of, like the Ubers and the Airbnbs, who have come from nowhere worth absolute fortunes. But. Don't necessarily own the product or service, they own the access to the product or service. So they they have the influence over the audience. You know, Uber is the biggest fleet of cars in the world, they don't own a car.

• 48:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Airbnb is the biggest portfolio of property in the world, they don't own a property.

• 48:11Chris Williamson?

  I think Alibaba is the same but for retail.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure, sure, and you know, and Amazon the same for for retail as well. You know, it's it's the people who own the relationship with the customer, with the audience. And of course, they're their own platforms, they have built their own platforms.

• 48:27Chris Williamson?

  They own their own platform, yeah.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  And they own the relationship. So you know, that's absolutely telling. And and you know, there's the opposite is true. I mean, think think of brands that that should have done it. I mean, yale.com or Yellow Pages. Yale.com are actually doing some really quite good stuff now around small business marketing, websites, SEO and all of that type of thing. They are doing some good things. But but actually, considering they started in nineteen fifty six.

• 48:56Chris Williamson?

  A little bit ahead of everyone else.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Well, in Brighton, they started with the Yellow Pages, they suddenly grew, they eventually grew on to four continents and they dominated search.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  The internet came along and there was nobody saying, how's this internet thing going to affect our business? They should have been Google.

• 49:15Chris Williamson?

  But they weren't. Blockbuster, the same.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Blockbuster, very similar. Kodak, very similar. Kodak actually invented the digital camera, the thing that we all walk around with in our pockets and just call a phone. But it's an oracle multipurpose device. They invented the digital camera and they even brought futurists into their business in the eighties and said, what's the future of digital, what's the future of photography? And of course, they said, the future is digital. And they said, that's not what we wanted to hear, you're fired.

• 49:42Chris Williamson?

  Didn't want that, yeah.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  You know, so there was a load of people that are really close minded to the change that's happening all around them. But it's but it's it's it's not just technology that's changes. In fact, one of the examples I use on stage, I'll give you it now, there's a a barometer for how long it takes a product or service to reach fifty million users. Okay, so for the telephone, it was seventy five years. For the radio, it was thirty eight years. For the TV, it was thirteen years. The iPod did it in four. The internet did it in three. Facebook did it in two. The iPhone did it in three months. Now, if you think about it, every single one of those is an innovation in communication. It's an innovation in the way that we communicate and influence.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  It's a different broadcast medium. And just to evidence, the three months it took the iPhone, it took Angry Birds thirty days.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  That's, that's the, that's the kind of, you know, the speed of change as it happens.

• 50:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I, I, I think it's terrifying, isn't it? And I suppose that it almost becomes each of those levels of communication and how open global communication is now permits this to catalyze itself further. It'll only mean that this gets further expedited and that these, these timeframes are going to become even more shortened because you can find out about something so much more quickly than you ever could before.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Or, or not, you can find out the falsehood, you know, that's the

• 51:15Chris Williamson?

  The disinformation comes on the other side.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 51:19Chris Williamson?

  So I wanted to talk about personal brands and how people, how people display themselves both, both online and in person. I know you, in the book, you touch on ways to dress, colors and how they elicit different emotions and different sort of ties and outfits, neurolinguistic programming, body language. Let's start with how you can make a good impression face to face. I know a lot of people, when we talk about influence, may be thinking about what happens online and that may be a high volume of the traffic that goes backwards and forwards. But certainly for me, when I meet,

• 52:01Chris Williamson?

  when I meet with other business people and people of influence who are good face to face, they leave a very marked impression on me in a different way to someone who's good online does. It seems to be a much, a much rarer skill set.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  It's a much rarer skill set, but it's gonna be the one which I believe will be utterly in demand in the next couple of decades.

• 52:22Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 52:23Speaker 01

  The line I use on stage is, "In an age of automation, artificial intelligence, and robotization, stay human."

• 52:29Chris Williamson?

  Ah, yes.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  So, you know, the point which I want people to understand is that, you know, we are becoming more disconnected from each other, you know, counter-intuitively, because we're more connected, you know, via technology, but we're actually more disconnected on a human level, because it's, as we said earlier on, it's highlight reels that are being shared, it's superficial stories, it's summaries rather than in-depth conversations, you know, people are projecting their best selves rather than their vulnerable selves, if you know what I mean, so they're not doing the human thing. And so I believe one of the core competencies, one of the core skills that you can go and develop, no matter what industry you're in and what level you want to achieve within that industry, if you want to be more effective with all of your relationships, then you

• 53:15Speaker 01

  need to become a student of people, and that includes yourself, understand who you are, and then be authentic to that, but understand other people and adapt how you communicate with them to their preferences. So there's a number of tools for that, which we can unpack if you want to.

• 53:33Chris Williamson?

  Yes, please.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  But that's the, I think it's gonna be the most important skill, and even on a big brand, kind of corporate level, it's gonna be about demonstrating values and telling stories, because that's how we're gonna be connecting with people more and more. So, to unpack the original bit, where communication starts, I'll tell you a couple of things. First of all, let's talk about what the communication model is, how the process of communication. So we have, very easily, we have external stimuli that comes in, it can be in a number of different formats, and we'll receive that and process it through our kind of visual,

• 54:14Speaker 01

  auditory, kinesthetic, even through, you know, things like taste, you know, we'll interpret the world around us in a number of different ways, but let's say mainly through our eyes, ears, and, you know, what we sense and what we feel.

• 54:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  And then what happens is we apply our normal filters. So our filters will generalize, distort and delete. You know, they will, they will map that information against our own values, our social conditioning, the beliefs that we hold and the, the memories that we have. You know, we are a product of our environment. It's that whole kind of conversation around nature and nurture. I think it's in most cases nurture will win every single time. And so we are a product of our environment. But anyway, all of those things, they basically constitute our map of reality. This was once highlighted to me quite recently, actually, where somebody had come into a friend of mine who was, who was coaching.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  And she was coaching this particular client and they said, I want to be a better communicator, a better speaker. And she said, okay, well, we need to work on your confidence. And she says, oh no, I don't want to work on my confidence. She said, so why don't you work on your confidence? Cause I don't want to come across as arrogant. So in her map of reality, the word confidence means arrogant. And the assumption that we always make is that everybody thinks the same way that we do. Or, or uses language in the same way that we do, or has interpreted the world around them in the same way that we have. And it's a kind of fatal mistake. So the communication model is it comes in external stimuli. We put it through our filters, map it against, you know, our map of reality. This affects our physical state and therefore our physiology.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  And therefore it impacts the way we behave. That's the simple process of communication. Okay.

• 56:03Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  The next thing is really around then how, how we internally process information. So if you can understand somebody's preference to things like visual, auditory, kinesthetic, or even, you know, those that are real logic thinkers. This is touching on some of the things that NLP will, will teach. You know, if you're, if you're dealing with somebody who has a strong visual preference and you can identify that, you can use language like, do you see what I mean? Or can you see, can you see the big picture? You know, you'd use visual language and you'd probably be a little bit more effective with them. Somebody's got an auditory preference for how they process information. It was, do you hear what I'm saying? If it's feelings, you know, you know, I get the feeling that and you can use those

• 56:49Speaker 01

  language, you know, how does that feel to you, for example. So the key is how you identify people's representational.

• 56:55Chris Williamson?

  I was gonna say, how do you, how do you determine that?

• 56:58Speaker 01

  There's a number of tools. And before I tell you, before I give you the answer to that, because it's, you know, there's, there's another level of complexity. I don't know if you've ever done psychometrics, Chris.

• 57:09Chris Williamson?

  I haven't.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  You have done a DISC profile, something like that?

• 57:11Chris Williamson?

  I've done a Big Five, which is a personality assessment. I'm not sure if that counts.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  You know, I encourage everybody to go off and do these things. Because there's a, there's a always going to be a slight improvement in self-awareness that comes from it.

• 57:28Chris Williamson?

  What would you recommend?

• 57:29Speaker 01

  So DISC is the, is the, the one that's best known. But, you know, there's Myers-Briggs, there's Bellbin, they're all good for different contexts. DISC is the one that's really known and quite often used by other tools too. They adapt, they take the standard core of it, and they apply different learnings. You know, the thing about these things is they'll put you into a, into a box for the sake of overview analytics. But actually, we all have adaptive behaviors too. And, and we all, you know, float in between different, for example, I'm a, I'm a high I in DISC, which is energetic, big picture, enthusiastic, outgoing, all of those things. But, but actually, if I come across somebody who's very dominant

• 58:10Speaker 01

  and, and task focused, and strong willed, and forceful, I'll adapt my behavior to, to ultra dominate them, if you know what I mean. Because I don't, I don't like being dominated.

• 58:20Chris Williamson?

  Ah, yes.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  My adaptive behavior will, will be to, to, to match theirs. But it will all, it will always be, our adaptive behaviors are also, also always very true to our values. They're anchored to our values. But again, it's a thing to understand. So for example, in the sales context, if I was going into a sales meeting and I meet somebody like me, we're going to have a bit of a laugh, we're going to have banter, we're going to be telling stories, you know, it's talking big picture, it's going to be enthusiastic and positive. If I go in and speak to somebody who's highly analytical with a strong preference for detail, I immediately will adapt the way I'm communicating and I'll get to the point first, I'll do the numbers and, you know, otherwise if I'm doing my usual thing, they'll

• 59:06Speaker 01

  just be thinking, just get on with it. What numbers? Give me the details. They'll be distracted by that. So you have to adapt the way that you speak to others to match their communication

• 59:18Chris Williamson?

  preferences. Okay, so how are we going to determine who these people are?

• 59:22Speaker 01

  So I'm going to give you two obvious methods. Well, one obvious method and one which isn't so obvious. There's something called I access in cues, which I find quite useful. I use it quite a lot in my just day-to-day rapport with other people. And this is the, have you seen the TV series Lie to Me with Tim Roth?

• 59:41Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Yep. So of course, he uses a whole load of tools, which are psychological tools, understanding thought processes, body language, et cetera. I access and tools is one of them. And basically, if you're speaking to somebody and they, where their eyes go gives you a bit of an indication into their communication preference. So imagine you're looking at somebody and their eyes go top right-hand corner. So they're top left, top right to you. That's visual recall. So they're accessing memories. If it goes to the other side, it's visual construct, that's imagination, often misused by police forces. You think people are constructing alibis if they spend a lot of time there. Remember, it's not an exact science. It's just a good way of understanding a preference.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  So if they stay dead even but go to the left, sorry, go to the right as facing, that's auditory recall. So remembering what somebody said. To the left, it's auditory construct, imagining what somebody might say. If it goes to the bottom right-hand side, that's internal dialogue. That's probably somebody very strong logical thinker who's actually asking themselves the question and trying to figure out what their answer is. If it's the opposite side, bottom left, that's kinesthetic touch, taste, smell, et cetera. So there's somebody very connected to their feelings. And typically, somebody who's a strong kinesthetic thinker will be slower in their communication.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  Uh, cause they're feeling it. So that's, that's one example. But do you know the really simple way of understanding

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  somebody's preference with all of these things is to listen? Honestly, it's not more complex than that, asking really good questions and listening. You see, um, on top of communication and representational systems, the thing which I really go off about is context.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  Everybody has a context. Everybody has a set of circumstances that are really unique to them. And the only way we get to understand people's communication preferences, personality types and their context is to ask them really good questions. They did um, a study where they took a chap who was flying transatlantically from New York to the UK. And this could be just an urban myth, by the way, but I've been telling the story because I heard it years ago and thought it was, I thought it was cool. But this person was flying transatlantically from New York to the UK, seven hours on the flight. And they gave him the task that you've got to keep the guy next to you talking for the whole seven hours without, without revealing a single piece of information about yourself. Wow.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  So when they landed, they interviewed the guy, the other passenger and they said, how was your flight? It was amazing. It was really good. What guy was that talking to? Oh, what a fella, really cool guy. What was his name? Couldn't tell you, didn't have a Scooby Doo. Hadn't given them any information at all. He'd just shown such, such genuine interest that this person had been made to feel like a million dollars. So, um, you have two byproducts of asking good questions and being interested in people. One is you get to learn their personality preferences, representational systems, um, and uh, context. The second is they really like you because you've shown interest in them. They feel special.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  And so it has, it's a double edged sword. It works really, really well. You know, in a networking context, I meet people who are nervous about networking all the time. And, you know, networking can be daunting and there's no two ways around it. But actually, if you just get good at asking people questions and showing genuine interest in people, and it's no different from dating, Chris, is it? You know, if I, if I knew these tools when I was some sixteen, seventeen.

• 1:03:20Chris Williamson?

  Much different teenage, teenage years.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Just show interest in people, you know, make them feel special by showing genuine interest. It's the key to all things.

• 1:03:28Chris Williamson?

  I think you're, you're very right. Everyone, everyone knows, everyone's got that friend who just won't shut up about what they've got going on. And no one really wants to be around them, or they tolerate them to varying degrees. But yeah, when I think about the people who I have the most connection with, it's the ones who ask questions, who ask me how I'm doing, or how my day's gone, or follow up something. They don't just ask a question to be polite, they take a genuine interest and then they ask again, and then they ask again.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  Yes, well, I'll quote Buddha. If your mouth is open, you're not learning.

• 1:04:03Chris Williamson?

  Very fair point. Very fair point. So we've had a look at how we can interpret what category someone else would fall into so that they can, you can gear your use of language towards that. What are the things that you can do yourself after asking questions in terms of body language, in terms of dress, in terms of eye, eye contact, word usage? What are the things that you can do to give the, the best impression of yourself face to face?

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  So, um, so we, we talk, talk about getting into rapport with somebody. And there's, um, there's a number of different ways of getting into rapport. But let's start with the physiology. So rapport is that kind of, that, that time of connection with somebody where, you know, you're starting to build trust. Um, so from a physiology point of view, uh, simple things like, um, blinking and breathing at the same pace.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  On a subconscious level.

• 1:05:03Chris Williamson?

  Is that easy to do?

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Well, you know, the key with all of these things is if you if you force it and you're obvious with it, it feels like manipulation and it will have the opposite effect. It will it will turn somebody off.

• 1:05:16Chris Williamson?

  Breaks down the fourth wall.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, but if you if you if you come in to a situation with somebody and you genuinely just want to try and be synchronized, that's that's that's a different thing altogether. In fact, the biggest way of, you know, I'm going to tell you a few things about rapport now, but actually, the biggest way of building rapport with somebody is when you're asking all of those great questions we just talked about, genuinely listen to their answer. You know, if you're really listening to somebody, you'll naturally fall into rapport with them anyway. In fact, I was at an exhibition in London called The Best You. Big shout out to Bernardo Moya, who runs that event in London every every year. And I was talking, I had a speaking there, but I had a stand as well. So I was on the stand talking to people.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  I was talking to this woman who's really, really skeptical about anything to do with things like rapport. And after about 10 minutes, she had kind of relaxed, she was showing more interest. And I just highlighted to her that we were stood in exactly the same pose, which was my hand was on my midsection, kind of holding the buckle of my belt. And she she'd come into that same pose. And she said, well, you've just put your hands there. I've been stood this way. She was skeptical. I said, actually, I've been stood like this for an hour. My belt broke an hour ago. I've been holding my trousers up. You've you've fallen into rapport with me. And, you know, it does happen. It's because on a subconscious level, we do actually want to connect with other people. So the the whole blinking and breathing thing is is a nice, gentle way of doing it.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  The expressions on our faces, you know,

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  being in control of our own expressions, having a smile on our face, you know, all of all of all of those things is is easy to do, yet people don't do it. But it's got to be an authentic smile as well. And so two quick things on this. I was once in an audience, speaking to an audience, and a guy in the audience had this grimace on his face the whole way through my talk. And as I speak, I'm I try and make eye contact with everybody. And I immediately thought, God, this guy hates what I'm saying.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  And at the end of the talk, you know, his facial expression hadn't changed. At the end of the talk, he came up to me and he said,

• 1:07:22Chris Williamson?

  That was one of the best presentations I've ever heard.

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  I thought, you have forgotten to tell your face, my friend. He utterly confused me with that response. And, you know, we're in control of our expressions. So if you want to make friends with people and build rapport, then of course, you know, just relax into it.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  One of the people who didn't do this authentically, though, was a previous PM Gordon Brown. So Gordon Brown, at one of the elections, was basically advised by somebody within his team to go and practise his smile. And before the cameras were turned up at one of the BBC election debates in Bristol, he stood at the lectern for about fifteen minutes practising his smile, which just didn't look natural at all. So this is where you've got to get the balance right with who you authentically are.

• 1:08:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  And, but anyway, moving on, then you've got things like the non-verbal, our gestures. And so, you know, our reptilian brains, if you've approached somebody with your hands behind your back, their immediate subconscious thought is, what are you hiding? What weapon are you going to pull out and cock me up the head with? Exactly. So open body language, positive body language, you know. But then being mindful about what different gestures mean in different countries. A quick funny, a friend of mine, Steve Clark, was speaking in Tehran. And in Tehran, it gives a one of the things Steve's puts his thumbs up all the time, you know, he's, is that all right? Yeah, yeah, as a speaker. And he'd made a point and then put his thumbs up.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Now, in Iran, if you put your thumb up at somebody, you're flipping the bird, you're doing the equivalent. So he had four hundred people in an audience.

• 1:09:02Chris Williamson?

  That's an entire auditorium.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Well, four hundred people in an audience who had just flipped, you know, consistently, carried on doing it, and their whole facial expressions changed. And he was saved by his translator, who said, he doesn't know what he's just done, in their ears. And then they started laughing and it was rescued. But, you know, just be mindful, but open body language, show your hands. And I'm often asked, actually, in an age of video conference calls and Skype calls, where people aren't travelling as much but still wanting to connect, how can you do the same thing? So, you know, the same thing applies. If you're going to take the eye, where I talk about image in the book, it's not just about brand, it's not just about profiles and pictures or the way that you're dressed, it's also the way you set the room you're speaking in.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  What's the impression? The reason I asked you for this particular thing, is it an audio or was it a video? Because if it was video, I'd have done it somewhere else. And, you know, because I'd have been mindful of the scene that we we we set as well. And so again, the thing about a Skype call is you can still show your hands. You can still make eye contact by looking directly into the camera. The moment you start getting distracted and reading emails and not giving your attention to the person you're talking to, then, you know, you're you're going to lose some of that ability to influence.

• 1:10:16Chris Williamson?

  Interesting that the the principles of face-to-face communication occur even when the other face is coming through a screen.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. So I always minimize the picture of the other person and put it right up by the camera. So A, I'm I'm watching their face, but, you know, my eyes are looking into their eyes.

• 1:10:34Chris Williamson?

  That's a really good, that's a really good little tip, isn't it?

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Again, I think it's important, you know, we've got, we've got to, if we're going to use, adapt the way that we we behave and communicate to technology, then we still have to use it and apply the old principles. That's the point, point of the book, really. And so the non-verbal includes posture. You'll have heard people doing power poses and closed body language, arms folded, etc., you know, but don't read too much into these things all the time, you know, unlike you, Chris. I've seen, I've seen your pictures. I know you're a mind-body-soul-fitness fanatic. I I'm a, I'm a overweight, mid-40s guy, so sometimes I-

• 1:11:10Chris Williamson?

  Good on Xbox, though.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  Good on Xbox. But sometimes I fold my arms because it's comfortable. I've got a little belly I can rest my arms on, you know, so it's, it's different horses for different courses. And you may have even seen recently where a lot of the Tory MPs have been stood in power poses with their legs, legs far too far apart. They look like aging power rangers, you know.

• 1:11:31Chris Williamson?

  I haven't seen that.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, you know, again, to be avoided. And, you know, eye contact, common sense. Little and often, you know, if you intensely stare into somebody's eyes constantly, you're going to freak them out. So use it when you're being sincere. When I'm talking to somebody, I look into their eyes. When I'm listening to somebody, I watch their mouth.

• 1:11:52Chris Williamson?

  Is that a fairly good rule of thumb to use?

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  It's just the way I do it. And by, you know, I know that if there's certainly if there's background noise and things, if I'm reading some, watching somebody's mouth, I'm really taking in what they're saying. I'm concentrated on the words and I'm receiving the words in more than one way. But if I'm talking to them, I'm looking into their eyes and showing I'm not hiding behind anything. The moment you start looking away when you're actually talking, you know, that that could breed a lack of trust.

• 1:12:21Chris Williamson?

  I do find it sometimes very difficult. I work, I work quite hard on maintaining eye contact, especially having read, having read the book. But the hitting that Goldilocks zone of not too much to look like you want to fight, but enough to show that you're engaged. There's still a question mark, I guess, that hangs over with regards to that sometimes.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  Well, the easy thing is, you know, if you're in control of all the other assets you have, i.e. you're smiling, very rare to people look for a fight with a smile on the face, you know. So it's just combining, combining the lot. But, you know, enough for them to know that you're actually involved in that conversation with them and not distracted about what's going on over their shoulders is the thing. And then, you know, from non-verbal, I'd come on to voice. So with, with voice is a whole load of things that we can do, our pacing, our volume, the language that we use, the tone that we use, the different intonations that we use. So, you know, if I'm, if I go and meet somebody, for example, particularly for the first time, and they're all frantic and stressed, I might match that

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  intensity initially. But then I'll slow myself down and slow them down with me. So by the time we've finished, they're nice and relaxed and we're in rapport and we're having a conversation and everybody's been calmed down. But if I go in and start trying to be too calm initially... I might not getting to rapport with them as quickly because I'm, you know, subconsciously, I'm not just like them. Equally, if I'm stressed and manic because I've I'm late for a meeting and I come in and somebody's on calm and calm and relaxed, you know, the the first thing I'm doing is giving myself a sanity check and by taking a taking a breath and slowing down my communication.

• 1:14:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  So that, you know, little things like that are nice and easy and language is easy. You know, language is around the words that we use. Compliments are free, but just make them genuine because if you just start saying nice things for the sake of it, it comes across as insincere. So, you know, if you're in a job that's in somebody's, you you find yourself in people's homes, or if you go into somebody's office and they've got a picture of their their family, ask questions, but it's a lovely family you got there. It's a lovely home you have, whatever the compliment is, just mean it.

• 1:14:31Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  So little things like that help. But language can get more complex. So with NLP, language patterns are an important part of it and embedded commands are an important part of that. A very skilled politician who used to do that, in my opinion, was Tony Blair.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  Regardless of whether we agree with his politics, he was very skilled at using language. He would, he would say something like, you like me believe it's important for us to have a robust economy. Well, the embedded command there is you like me. Whatever he said, whatever he said beyond that, he was basically saying, you like me believe. And the you like me is was with enough pause and for the command to actually sink in on a subconscious.

• 1:15:19Chris Williamson?

  I'd never, I'd never even noticed that, but I can, I can literally picture that. I can picture him saying that and pointing at the screen.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  He was, he was clearly trained in things like NLP, his, the way his body language, the way he, he, sometimes you could see through it, but actually, most of the time he did it very naturally. And so he's clearly been trained, or he was just a very natural at it. But remember, you know, NLP in itself, its origins come from modeling the behavior of people who are good at what they, what they do.

• 1:15:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's, it's trying to, it's trying to recreate someone who naturally has that good rapport building, I suppose. Are there any other NLP tricks or, or solutions that people can implement? Obviously, hopefully not ones that are going to be too conceited or, or spurious, but yeah, ones that, that people could use to, to assist them when they're trying to build rapport.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  And so, uh, well, think about what we've covered so far. So we've, we've covered rapport from a physiology point of view, from a non-verbal point of view, and from a voice point of view. One of, one of the things which I think people should, in fact, we've already said it today. I'm going to repeat it because I think it's important. It's around connection on a human level. So demonstrating your values. There's a reason why, you know, with my acronym in the book, the Y is around you and it's around values and the character traits that you display. And I believe it's important to wear those values on your sleeve. I used to have a business card, actually. On the back of the business card, it had all the words that defined me. So, you know, West Ham United, skiing, family, you know, kids, father, guitar, whatever, the, the words which, which, which floated my boat.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  And what would happen is people typically, if you exchange your business card in a, a meeting or networking event, they'll turn the card over. And immediately the conversation will be people orientated on one of those subjects. Rather than actually just trying to be formal and businesslike. And it made the rest of the meeting so much easier because we've got to relate on a human level. Rather than actually trying to talk business straight away.

• 1:17:22Chris Williamson?

  I understand.

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  So that whole connection thing with, with other people can come from a number of different ways. It can come because you've shown interest. It can come because you've been able to wear your heart on your sleeve, your values on your sleeve. And I'll give you an example of this, actually. I was coming, this is a few years back, but when my kids were younger. We were coming back from Euro Disney on the train. And my wife's an introvert, so she just wanted to put her head into a book and read and relax and read, you know, re-energize by having her alone time, which is how introverts we energize and extroverts like me, we, we re-energize by throwing ourselves into groups of people, you know, so. In this particular case, she went to read a book, I was entertaining the kids and.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  Before you knew it, I started to attract other people's children. I know that sounds wrong, but from the point of view of card games, drawing, you know, entertainment, whatever. So I suddenly had a little audience and I looked after these these kids on the way and coming into London. And about twenty minutes outside of a London train station, one of the other dads said, I'm intrigued. What is it you do? And we had a conversation which resulted in business a couple of weeks later.

• 1:18:32Chris Williamson?

  No way.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  He saw my values. He could see how I was coming across. He could see what I was like with my own children. He could see I was generous enough to give time and attention to other people's kids. You know, the values were plain and simple and clear. And, you know, that that just made the rest of the conversation nice and easy. And, you know, when I when we talk about things like serendipity not being a strategy, serendipity is effective if if it's still not a strategy, but it's still effective if you if you can make the most of opportunities because you come across in the right way. And and actually, if you've got things front of mind, one of my favorite sayings is opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.

• 1:19:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  Which I which I think is about translated is just about having your wants, needs, desires front of mind. If you remind yourself on a regular basis what you're looking for, you're more likely to spot it.

• 1:19:25Chris Williamson?

  Is it luck equals preparedness plus opportunity?

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. Yes, it's really serendipity. But then, you know, the very last thing which I'll give you, and just just on this this influencing face to face is is rather than approaching conversations in the transactional way, you know, you tell me something, I'm going to tell you something, you tell me something, I'm going to tell you something, and it's going to serve a purpose.

• 1:19:49Chris Williamson?

  It becomes like a game of tennis, right?

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Start telling stories. I believe one of the the core competencies of big brands, small brands, personal brands alike, for the next decade or so, is going to be your ability to tell your stories, which demonstrate your values, which connect on a human level. So get great at storytelling.

• 1:20:12Chris Williamson?

  I'll tell you what's I'll tell you what's a really good example of that is how successful John Lewis have been with their Christmas commercials.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Amazingly so. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they're drawing people in on a on a subject rather than just saying, you know, this is what we've got on the shelves, and this is the price we're selling it. It's about storytelling. It's no different in face to face conversations. And if you think about this conversation we've had so far, we've told stories of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, we've told stories of Euro Disney, we've told stories of Jack Black, Judy Nail, you know, we've, we've told stories of business cards of people with different psychometric profiles of millennials, you know, it's all, it's all about storytelling.

• 1:20:54Chris Williamson?

  I understand completely. So I think we've got a good, a good understanding of what people can do face to face there. What are the other principles of influence that you think that we haven't covered so far, which are pertinent for people to understand?

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  So in the book, I, I break everything down into an acronym called P I C E. And that's mainly because it's, it's in the rulebook for speakers or writers that you've got to have an acronym. You're not allowed to do it otherwise. And so I'll just quickly run through the acronym and it'll just give an idea of the bigger picture. So P is around people. And so this, we, we've touched on it with how we connect with influencers, but it's not necessarily just influencers that bring us opportunities, knowledge, wisdom, critical feedback, et cetera. It's our, it's our networks. And, you know, I'd encourage anybody who is listening to this to start taking their networking a little bit more seriously. That doesn't necessarily mean going to breakfast networking

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  events. It means just being a bit more focused on, on building your, your sphere of influence, the relationships that you have, the people that you would know and who would know you.

• 1:22:01Chris Williamson?

  It's what's, what is it that you say in the book? It's, it's not who you know or what you know, it's who knows, it's also who knows you?

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. And so I take this quite seriously. I, I run a skiing trip every year called Net Ski. In fact, we're about 13 years old now. So we take a bunch of business people, I think the biggest group we've done was nearly 70, a bunch of business people to a resort typically in, in Europe. And of course, they're bonding over a shared experience and, you know, they're not.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  Not sales pitching to each other. Nobody's immediately bringing business cards to dinner on an evening. You know, they're having a glass of wine, working hard in the day, laughing at the mistakes, high-fiving over the triumphs. And it's a shared experience. They're connecting on a human level. And let me tell you, more business gets done on that trip and afterwards than any other networking event I've ever seen.

• 1:23:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I bet it does. I think just briefly jumping back to what you'd said previously about the storytelling, that it's strange, isn't it, that really effective outcomes from a commercial perspective, in quotation marks, are elicited by not focusing on that at all, by focusing on the values and focusing on the story. And yeah, I definitely, I definitely can see some parallels in my business life with that.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  And I would say, I don't know where your audience is geographically, but if you've just heard that and thought, hey, I want to be a part of it, I'm going to shamelessly plug it, it's net-ski.co.uk.

• 1:23:41Chris Williamson?

  When's the next one?

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  Well, we've got two trips next year. We're doing Team in January, and we're doing Aspen in March. And so we have, there's not many places left for Team, but we do have the option of taking the chalet next door. But it's, my point is, it's a really good trip, because people, you know, all of that travel time, all of that time on chairlifts, all of the sneaky beers, or van show, you have, you know, in-between runs, you know, it's those experiences, that's the bits where people bond. And then take that to another level. I'm a huge fan of masterminding. Are you part of a mastermind, Chris?

• 1:24:18Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  Have you heard of it as a concept?

• 1:24:21Chris Williamson?

  I would like it elaborated. I have, but I wouldn't be able to recite it to you.

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Okay, so I first was introduced to masterminds when I was probably about 18, 19 years old. And I was, it was Christmas, it was Christmas Eve, I was in a pub in Wiltshire. And I was just stood with one of my best mates and his dad. And his dad's a millionaire business owner. And, you know, we were doing all of our kind of young spouting, spouting shit as young people do, as I did anyway. And he said, well, if you're really ambitious, Warren, he said, you'll, you know, it's a book I recommend. And it was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And he said, I could lend you my copy, but if you're hungry enough, you're going to buy your own.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  And of course, you know, wanting to be seen as hungry, I had, I think I had it by Boxing Day. But there was a chapter in there around masterminding, which I thought, oh, this is really, really powerful, impressive. And it's the simple concept of bringing some really good people together on a fairly regular basis, that could be monthly or every two months. And actually being that kind of sounding board for each other, being the, you know, like the board of directors for each other. And so, you know, it's the, if you've got an idea, they're your incubator. If you've got an issue, you're dealing with a colleague at work, a fellow director, a member of staff, whatever, or even, even at home,

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  they're your critical feedback. They listen and, and you know, will come in with a different perspective.

• 1:25:53Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  And if you're creating, creating commercial opportunities, they may be JV partners potentially. Or they may have the context to make it happen. But it's that sitting down for a period of time with a bunch of people you respect and value their opinion. And being open and honest enough and vulnerable enough to share. And there's two rules to it. One is Chatham House rules. So whatever's said in that environment stays in that environment. You don't go talking behind each other's back. Trust is absolutely important for it to work. But the second thing that really happens is accountability. So if you're with a bunch of people and you, you say, well, I'm going to go and do this by next month. You don't want to turn up next month having not done it. So that accountability means that you get things done.

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  Now, there are organizations out there, you can go and spend lots of money on, on masterminding, you know. Vistage is one of the bigger ones, there's the Academy Chief Execs and loads of others. But, you know, it can cost anything up to a thousand pound a month to be part, part of these groups. And I have paid that much in the past.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  But actually, you can equally go and invite a bunch of people you like to the pub once a month and just have dinner together and have that same conversation. You know, it doesn't have to cost. I've, I've currently got a, a really nice mastermind group. It's, we've, we've kept it to five for now. But For me, it's an essential part of running a business or building a personal brand, you know. Collaborations and all sorts of things come out of it, but it's a group of people that you really trust to get dynamite advice. So that's taking networking to a bigger level is, you know, don't just see it as a kind of transactional business breakfast type thing. See it about building the human relationships, but then if you can find that kind of core group of people that you really value the opinion of,

• 1:27:39Speaker 01

  start meeting them on a more intimate setting and bring your issues to the table.

• 1:27:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, when you find, when you find someone who can add a little, a little bit of value, don't, don't let them go.

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:27:49Chris Williamson?

  Get a hold of them and try and, try and meet them as regularly as possible. So we've got P, people. What's I?

• 1:27:56Speaker 01

  For people, I is a random image. So we touched on it before, but it's, you know, the way we present ourselves. It's the way, the clothes we wear, it's the, it's the the way that we dress our profile pages on social media, you know, astounds me that I still see people who've got profile pictures from twenty, thirty years ago and they've lost all their hair since then, or whatever, whatever the thing is, you know. Again, it's got to be authentic. If I turn up on a, my wife won't let me go on dating sites, but if I was to turn up on a dating site and somebody turns up and their picture's twenty years out of, out of date, what does that tell me from a trust point of view?

• 1:28:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  You know, it means that they, they hide, you know, and the same is true in business, you know. If you, if you, if you try and portray an image that's not you, actually immediately makes people more skeptical of you anyway. So images about all of those things. It's consideration to the language that we use, the words that we use on our copy on our websites, on our business cards, on our sales literature, on our email marketing, our newsletters, et cetera. Images around the kind of values that we want to portray.

• 1:29:02Speaker 01

  Communication is the C and that's around how we, you know, how we have conversations, again, both, both written and our language face to face. And for me, a big key part of that is being consistent. You know, I see people on social media, for example, safely behind a monitor and a keyboard in another county, say things that they wouldn't dream of saying if they were staring into the whites of somebody's eyes.

• 1:29:24Chris Williamson?

  Agreed.

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  And again, I think it's really important to, to be consistent and just have that filter that says, would I say this if I was staring into their eyes right now? If I wouldn't, then don't write it, you know, little things like that.

• 1:29:35Chris Williamson?

  That's a lovely, a lovely rule of thumb that I wish most of the internet would listen to.

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, they won't make me god of the internet, so I can't do anything about

• 1:29:44Chris Williamson?

  We can only hope, Warren.

• 1:29:47Speaker 01

  God help the world. Um, K is around knowledge, and that's a simple thing around demonstrating expertise. Um, you know, so if we were, if we were looking to breed trust with somebody, we want to, they want to know that we know what we're talking about. So how do we demonstrate our expertise? How do we, how do we share our knowledge? How do we leverage all of those, um, all of the principles that we've talked about today? Um, and again, there's multiple channels open to us, but I really encourage people to get out of their comfort zones and stand up and public speak. Uh, if, if it's, if it's in you, if you think it's possibly in you, you know, standing up and actually speaking to your peers is one of the most powerful ways to breed authority. And then, and then lastly, we've touched on it already,

• 1:30:30Speaker 01

  is the Y, which is around the values that we, we, we hold. And in the book, I explore a load of values which, um, which I, I identified in the people that have influenced me. Um, and again, just in the, in, in the interests of modeling, uh, having identified them, I gave them great thought and thought, you know, how can I start to adopt these values? Um, how can I, how can I certainly demonstrate those values? Um, so really simple, you know, if, if you break down everything that we've said, there's nothing that isn't common sense in there. Um, but unfortunately, common sense isn't common practice.

• 1:31:05Chris Williamson?

  No, it's not. It's, um, I don't know why, I don't know why people get flustered, I guess I want to say, especially face to face, um, but also online. People have a tendency to not put themselves across in the best way and the remembered self from the situation that, oh, I could have said that, oh, I should have said this. It's, it's not due to a lack of cognitive ability. It's not that they're not quick enough face to face or, or, or online to be able to get this information out. There just seems to be, is it nervousness? Is it, um, is it a lack of experience or a lack of, um, preparedness

• 1:31:46Chris Williamson?

  to be truthful or vulnerable online? I, I'm not really too sure. I don't know if, if you have a common stumbling blocks that people have that are, that are fundamental to them not eliciting the best influence that they can.

• 1:32:01Speaker 01

  Well, I think you you you've hit on a couple there. Certainly, they get in their own way. Is is what I would I would say. If you've come into a room and your mind, you know, for example, a networking room and your mind's on other things, you know, the three jobs that you should have done on your to do list that didn't get done, the the fact you've, you know, you don't feel a million dollars, you haven't a chance to do your makeup or, you know, maybe you're not wearing what you wanted to wear, but you're nervous about how you're going to come across because of the baggage you carry around about how people portray you. If you come in with all of that baggage, or any, well, any of it, you're not making your best first impression. You really have to leave

• 1:32:42Speaker 01

  the world at the door in when in any kind of relationship, leave the world at the door and and just focus on the conversation. From conversations come opportunities.

• 1:32:52Chris Williamson?

  It's a lovely way to put it. So I think we've got through a really nice model of how people can improve their ability to influence, going from understanding their why, understanding their audience, understanding the mediums and the medias that they can contact them through. The credibility through association, the face to face, the online approaches that people can use. And you've given us some really lovely examples. Are there any other points that you think people need to hear before we round this conversation off?

• 1:33:29Speaker 01

  So there's only a couple of maybe quotes which will just provoke a bit of thought and this could, because, you know, ultimately, actually, you've summarized building personal brand, etc. Actually, I think the kind of key messages, if I was to summarize the conversation we've just had, Chris, is first of all, we we discussed the world is changing. So become that student of change. Second of all, we talked about becoming a student of people. So that's understanding them, understand their context, their communication preferences, their personality traits, be their student of people, and that includes being a student of yourself. We talked about listening as one of the most effective tools when it comes

• 1:34:08Speaker 01

  to influencing, because it gives you context, but it also makes you liked. Then connecting on a human level, it's not all about business, you know, give a bit of yourself, that's what people, hearts and minds are what people connect to. Demonstrate your values, tell your stories. I think that's, I think that's enough for anybody listening to this to be able to do something meaningful.

• 1:34:30Chris Williamson?

  If you stick to those, you won't go too far wrong, right?

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  I can't, I can't see how you can. But, you know, all of this, as I said, there's a number of quotes, but the key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority. It's Ken Blanchard, that's one that's on my website. Your circle of influence dictates your path. Example is not the main thing when it comes to influencing others, it's the only thing. You know, all of these, all of these are, hopefully, things that anybody listening to this will just understand that whatever their objectives in life, a happier marriage, a better relationship with their kids, stronger friendships, more cordial

• 1:35:13Speaker 01

  working environments with colleagues, more clients when it comes to sales and marketing, it's all about influencing. And the better they are at these things, the more effective they'll be in all of those areas of their life. We are hugely empathetic creatures, you know, they've even done research where they've had people, two people in fMRI scans, one listening, one talking, they couldn't see each other, you know, and in an instant, their brainwaves start to synchronize, you know, to the point where it's almost predictive from the listener. And that's how empathetic we are. We want to connect with others. So just use that, use all of those things to build connection and be human. Remember what

• 1:35:53Speaker 01

  I said earlier on, in an age of AI and automation and robotization, it's important to stay human.

• 1:36:00Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. I've absolutely loved today, Warren. I'm glad it's been a, it's been a long time coming for me to get you on. I'm really, really glad that I have done. So obviously. The link to Influence the Book will be in the show notes.

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  You're a superstar.

• 1:36:14Chris Williamson?

  Are there any other resources, either yours or anyone else's, books or online blogs? Or where do you go or where would you advise people who want to further their knowledge into this field? Where should they look?

• 1:36:29Speaker 01

  Well, of course, the Modern Wisdom podcast is a good starting point for anybody listening. And like everything else, it's important to share it so you get the audience you deserve.

• 1:36:38Chris Williamson?

  Agreed.

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  Same is true for the book. If you like the book, if anybody reads it and likes it, give us a shout out. I'd love to hear what nuggets you took from it on social media. In fact, that's how we connected, Chris.

• 1:36:48Chris Williamson?

  Exactly.

• 1:36:49Speaker 01

  It's lovely when it happens. So if people do read it on my website, there's a strategy guide, which is basically a PDF. You see at the end of every chapter in the book, I ask a couple of questions to help people contextualize what I've just said and relate it to their own circumstances.

• 1:37:04Chris Williamson?

  Well, I've filled mine in. Mine is.

• 1:37:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, superb, superb. Well, do you know why that's music to my ears? Because, you know, what I said to you earlier on about ego versus affecting change or inspiring change in others, when people actually write something down, that builds intention. It means that they're going to go and implement something. If they implement something, they're only going to have some sort of positive effect that comes off the back of it. So I love the messages I get on social media from people that say, right, this particular point has resulted in this or, you know, a good relationship here.

• 1:37:40Chris Williamson?

  Couldn't agree more. I've just, I've just finished a podcast with Dr. Ewan Lawson. And during that, we discussed gratitude journaling and exactly the same thing there. It's writing down an intention. It's one of the reasons that I love the podcasting platform because it forces me under duress of a very, very skeptical audience sometimes to crystallize my thoughts into a way that.

• 1:38:09Chris Williamson?

  Has to be both truthful and make sense. A lot of the time when it's just thoughts floating around in your mind, they're these unhewn sort of globules of idea. And then as soon as you have to verbalize it or write it down, it takes form in a very, very different way. And I think that you can start to, you can start to be very rigorous at assessing your own stance on things that you might have previously taken for granted or not really understood. And then when you, when you do get to writing things down, so I couldn't agree more. So we've got Influence, we've got the Partner worksheet that you can download

• 1:38:52Chris Williamson?

  on your website, which will also be in the show notes. Is there anything else that people should be reading?

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  So in terms of other books, there's a load out there. I'm a fan of Daniel Priestley. Go and have a look at some of his work. Entrepreneur Revolution is a good one. Have a look at Cialdini's follow up book to Psychology of Persuasion, which is called Presuasion.

• 1:39:19Chris Williamson?

  Presuasion seems to be pretty heavily touted at the moment. It's one that I haven't read, but it's, if you, if you'd given it your, I'd said to myself, if you gave it your seal of approval during this podcast, that I would go and get it. So I think that's just locked in my next audible credit usage, I think.

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  Oh, there you go. That's, that's a good use for it. Cialdini comes from a very strong academic background with his, with his work, but, but no, it's a good book. And a lot of the books I've really valued over the years aren't necessarily sort of mainstream now. I loved one called Richest Man in Babylon, which is, which is, which is a story around actually what, what building a business or what building wealth actually. Actually looks like, but it's told in an old tongue kind of story. Very good. Um, you know, bearing in mind the biggest thing that we talked about today was, um, at the beginning was around change. Go and, go and read, um, Who Moved My Cheese? You know, a simple book that can be read in an hour.

• 1:40:21Speaker 01

  Uh, but just tells the, tells the story of, um, um, mice and men and illustrates why it's actually important to be constantly moving and, and not wedded to your current situation, your current circumstances. Everything's changing around you. You need to change with it. So there, there are a couple of books I absolutely recommend.

• 1:40:38Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. Uh, Warren, where can the listeners find you online?

• 1:40:42Speaker 01

  At Warren Cass or Warren Cass dot com.

• 1:40:45Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure. I'm, uh, I'm very, very glad that we got to delve into the world of influence. Um, the, the book is currently about two, about a quarter of the way through. I think my third read through now. And it's, um, it's definitely such an applicable subject field that, as you say, it, the, um, applications of it go from professional to personal to absolutely everything. And I, I, I think that being a student of people, as you've said, is, um, is something that we all probably can endeavour to, to try and do a little bit more and will reap some benefits from as we do.

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  I'm thrilled you've got so much on it, Chris, and I really appreciate the invitation to come and speak on the podcast. And I look forward to the, certainly look forward to the upcoming next, uh, episode of the gratitude journal. That sounds, that sounds fascinating.

• 1:41:43Chris Williamson?

  Thank you very much. Warren, thank you for your time.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  Take care, buddy. Thanks a lot.

• 1:41:47Chris Williamson?

  Cheers.