Charisma Teacher: Psychology Of Why People Don’t Like You! People Are Attracted To These Traits! The Secret To Being Instantly Likeable!

0:00:03 I want to go through these five habits that make people instantly dislike you.
0:00:08 Yes, yes. So these are tiny little things that a lot of people do without even realizing
0:00:13 that they’re doing this sort of stuff. First one is, oh my god, they’re so true.
0:00:18 Charlie Hooper is a leading expert in charisma and confidence. His insights and practical techniques
0:00:22 have helped millions of people master communication and body language to thrive in both personal
0:00:27 and professional relationships. How important is charisma and confidence? It’s perhaps the most
0:00:30 underrated piece of success and it’s your ability to speak with conviction, the ability to influence
0:00:34 someone, the ability to connect with people. I mean, look at Donald Trump. He talked his way
0:00:38 into the literal presidency of the United States of America. It’s so incredibly powerful.
0:00:42 And is it something that you couldn’t learn? Yeah, I’m attested into that because growing up I was
0:00:46 invisible. Not making new friends, not forming connections. I wasn’t dating because there was
0:00:50 this fear that I would get hurt. Where did that come from? Part of it is through the experiences
0:00:57 that I had. One of them was being sexually abused and I felt disgusted with myself.
0:01:05 I was struggling and frustrated with the compensations I’d made as a result of it. And so
0:01:10 I learned all the tips and tricks to develop confidence and became a completely different
0:01:14 person. We’re going to go through all of them. Amazing. So there’s Ray versus Predator movement,
0:01:17 which is tremendously valuable for first impressions. And then there’s the charismatic
0:01:22 traits which we were attracted to, the 60 second hack to establish trust and respect.
0:01:25 And then I have six charismatic mindsets for success. And there’s plenty more.
0:01:27 Hey, listen, I’ve got time. Okay, so let’s break it down.
0:01:35 I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple
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0:01:56 how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button. The show gets bigger, which means we can
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0:02:08 to this, that would mean the world to me. That is the only favor I will ever ask you.
0:02:09 Thank you so much for your time. Back to this episode.
0:02:18 Charlie, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of people have
0:02:24 benefited from your work and tens of thousands of people have been through your university
0:02:28 learning about something. If you had to explain in your own words what it is that you’re
0:02:32 doing for those people in a simple way, what would you, how would you say that?
0:02:36 Take all the situations where you’re interacting with another person, whether it’s at your work,
0:02:43 dating, friends and groups and take the times that you’re feeling that you’re not grounded in that
0:02:47 sense of confidence that you maybe have when you’re sitting at home on the couch with your friend or
0:02:52 your family and bring the best version of yourself to those situations. I think a lot of people also
0:02:56 want flowing conversations. They want to feel like themselves. They want to be the person that
0:03:02 is respected and is admired. When they walk into a room, they want other people to notice them.
0:03:06 That’s one of the big ones that we hear from guys is they want to be the person that anytime they
0:03:11 enter a room that women and men take notice of them. It usually is an acute thing. So a lot of
0:03:16 people show up because there’s a girl that they liked and it’s not going well or something like
0:03:20 that or they went out for a promotion and somebody that they felt was less qualified than them wound
0:03:26 up getting the job. So they come in with a very acute social situation that they would like to
0:03:28 change. They’d like to get the girl. They’d like to get the job. They’d like to be the leader in
0:03:33 their friend group. But when people have gone through the course, what I see is they speak more about
0:03:39 a sense of joy in life and confidence because I think that if you feel disconnected from people,
0:03:43 they’re actually read a thing this morning that some guys said, you know, I came here and I started
0:03:48 applying your ideas and I got more tips at my job as a waiter, which was really cool. But also,
0:03:53 I felt as if I’d fallen into nihilism, like I was just things didn’t matter anymore. And my
0:04:00 ability to connect with people is shifting that for me. I feel more connected, less nihilistic.
0:04:05 It’s interesting because when people hear words like phrases like body language and charisma and
0:04:10 confidence, they sound like tips and tricks and stuff. But when I think about the impact that
0:04:15 these things have had on my own life, when I think about even presidential elections and how our
0:04:21 society is designed and who rises to the top and who doesn’t, so much of it seems to depend on
0:04:26 whether you understand naturally or through learning the skills, how to be charismatic,
0:04:32 confident, how to sell, how to get someone else in some situation to believe you to buy into what
0:04:38 you have to say. So I guess my question to you is how important is it? Like in someone that has
0:04:44 the skills that you teach people versus someone that doesn’t, how much of a trajectory shift is
0:04:50 that going to be? Do you think on their life? To me, so there’s the external question of
0:04:54 what is it going to allow you to achieve in the world? And then there’s the internal question
0:04:58 of what is your subjective experience of your life? Starting with the internal, to me, it’s
0:05:04 almost everything. Like if you feel disconnected from the world, it is very, very hard to feel
0:05:08 good no matter how much money you have, no matter how much your six-pack abs are working for you.
0:05:13 Like even if you have adulation and you have fame, but you feel disconnected from the people in
0:05:19 your life, it is very hard to feel good. On the external side, I think it’s tremendously underrated
0:05:24 and I think this is why people didn’t see Donald Trump coming. Because does he have the best policies?
0:05:28 Does he have the best record? Does he have any of these things? He is clearly someone who has gotten
0:05:33 to where he has by talking. He talked his way into the literal presidency of the United States of
0:05:39 America. And if I look just at my own life at people who were advancing at work and then when
0:05:45 I started focusing on this stuff, it was not the best analyst. There was a guy who was a better
0:05:50 analyst than me and he did not get the off-track promotion that I got. And it was just because I
0:05:57 had made closer connections with the president of the company. And so I think it’s wildly underrated.
0:06:03 I think a huge myth that people get is that if you get good grades, do what is asked of you in
0:06:07 the job description, are generally kind and friendly and speak honestly that things are just
0:06:12 going to work out for you. But there is a missing piece, which is do other people connect with you
0:06:17 and like you and want you to succeed. And I think it’s perhaps the most underrated piece of success,
0:06:21 which is why I put all my attention there. This wasn’t like a play at making a lot of money or
0:06:26 having a big YouTube channel. It was the highest leverage point that I felt and experienced in
0:06:31 my own life. And is it something that you can learn? That is, yeah, I said there was a big myth.
0:06:35 This is probably the first or second biggest myth is that you can’t learn it. And I believe that for
0:06:42 what, 18 years of my life. So the first portion of my life was charisma is being able to throw a
0:06:47 football better than the other kids, right? Charisma is just the thing that you have at 13 that I
0:06:53 definitely didn’t have. And it was only around 18, 19, 20 that I realized that the way that I approached
0:07:00 people and conversations had a dramatic impact on the responses that I got. So it is most definitely
0:07:03 something you can learn. I feel like I’m a testament to that. And, you know, people have gone through
0:07:09 the course, also feel that. And if someone hasn’t seen your YouTube channel, what is it you’re
0:07:13 doing on that YouTube channel? So say that, you know, we’ve got someone listening now and they’ve
0:07:18 never heard of your channel before. Can you explain exactly what you’ve done on that channel?
0:07:22 How long you’ve done it for and how many situations you’ve looked at over the last decade?
0:07:28 Yeah. So basically what I would do is I would look at moments. It started with a Bill Clinton
0:07:32 debate. That was the first video that I ever did. And there’s this debate moment where Bill Clinton
0:07:37 and George Bush Sr. are having a town hall. So it’s them communicating directly with people.
0:07:41 And it’s known as the moment that Bill Clinton won the election. And it’s him going up to this woman
0:07:46 and just, she asked some question about politics or the thing and he goes up and he says,
0:07:49 “How does this impact you?” And he looks her dead in the eye and you could tell she’s just,
0:07:56 she’s feeling it. She’s connected with him and he gives his answer. So it’s us breaking down those
0:08:00 sorts of interactions. Some of them are in politics. Some of them are on talk shows and some of them
0:08:04 are scripted TV shows where I’m just saying, “Hey, this is obviously a script, but it would work
0:08:09 in real life if you did it like Jon Snow did in Game of Thrones or something.” So we use that
0:08:14 sort of as the hook because a lot of people weren’t looking. Charisma was not a topic that anyone
0:08:20 was interested in 10 years ago. So we would hook people with Game of Thrones or this famous person,
0:08:24 but the content of it would be how to handle a group interaction or how to
0:08:28 lead more effectively. And these were things that I wasn’t necessarily learning from these videos,
0:08:33 but I was learning elsewhere in my life and then commenting on what I saw in these videos and that
0:08:38 really connected with our audience and it’s helped us get, I think, 6.8 million subscribers at this
0:08:44 point. It’s incredible and it’s actually such an unbelievably powerful way to do it by showing
0:08:48 both real-world examples but also fictional examples. And I was even watching you break down
0:08:54 certain interviews that the famous Jordan Peterson interview with Cathy Newman. Cathy Newman,
0:08:59 that one’s great. And you break down exactly what’s going on on kind of both sides and how
0:09:05 Jordan ultimately ends up winning that argument by kind of holding his position and Cathy trying
0:09:08 to put words into his mouth, etc. All of those things, but you break it down, you break down
0:09:13 moments from history, moments that we all know from movies and tell us exactly what’s going on in
0:09:18 terms of like human connection, conversation, persuasion, leadership, influence in those situations.
0:09:23 Incredibly fascinating. So let’s talk about you. Yeah. Because people will look at you now,
0:09:26 sat here and they’ll think this is a guy that’s always had confidence. You’re a good looking guy.
0:09:31 You’re someone that is clearly a great conversationalist. You exude charisma.
0:09:36 But if we were to wind back, I know that that’s not always been the case. Yeah. Yeah.
0:09:42 So take me back. You did your research. So I grew up extremely shy and still am today
0:09:46 in introvert. I mean, you could probably see if you flashed 5 or 6 minutes back to the beginning
0:09:50 of this interview. Like I started off nervous. I feel very comfortable now, but my default state
0:09:56 is one of shyness, reserveness and nervousness. And so that was just how I was for the long
0:10:00 time. And when I came time to graduate high school, they had these superlatives that they
0:10:04 would give out. And I had a class of about 500 people. And my superlative was most likely to
0:10:12 break out of a shell in college. So I was well known, but I was well known for not saying a lot.
0:10:17 So people like didn’t know me and then voted for me as the person who one day would show up and
0:10:21 reveal themselves to the world, I suppose. That didn’t happen. I didn’t break out of my shell
0:10:25 in college at all. I continued to do the same. I had a small group of friends. I wasn’t like
0:10:33 dating or anything like that. And then it was only when I was about 19 years old that I studied
0:10:40 abroad and had gotten so sick of the experience for me at that time in my life of having a massive
0:10:46 crush for usually a year, forming an entire relationship in my head that we would one day
0:10:52 have. And then having that not materialize, because they weren’t interested or if they were
0:10:56 interested, I could quickly talk them out of being interested just by my general awkwardness.
0:11:01 That had happened so many times that I was done with it and frustrated. So when I went abroad,
0:11:06 I made it a mission to figure out what was going on and shift it. And it was actually very helpful.
0:11:11 And when people ask me, how do you begin to change these things in yourself? Shifting your
0:11:15 environment is so impactful, probably the one of the most impactful things because what you don’t
0:11:21 realize is that your friend and family who love you very much tend to not like shifts that you make
0:11:26 to your habits, particularly the way that you socialize with other people. But when I gave
0:11:31 myself the freedom of being abroad, I tried everything. I worked on my eye contact. I read
0:11:35 every book and would just run little personal experiments, some of which didn’t go well.
0:11:39 There was one period of time I remember where the experiment was big eyes. And so I’d like walk
0:11:44 around when I meet you and you immediately, you immediately recoil your head. I swear I did that
0:11:50 probably for a week until somebody said, dude, what are you doing with your eye? Stop. He was a
0:11:56 good friend. I appreciate him for that. But it was just many experiments. And I started them
0:11:59 while I was studying abroad and I continue when I came back. But by the time that I did come back,
0:12:05 six months or a year later, the word in the college campus was like, what happened to you?
0:12:10 You are a completely different person. You are outgoing and you seem capable of talking,
0:12:14 particularly to women at this case. And then friends were all of a sudden asking me,
0:12:21 what should I do? And so that started sort of a second phase of my life where this was
0:12:27 the primary focus day to day, you know, after like eating, drinking and maybe getting some
0:12:31 money in order to pay my bills, other people, how to influence them, how to interact with them,
0:12:36 how to get better friendships, how to talk my way into a job, you know, all of those sorts of
0:12:41 things became the primary focus for me. Just to spend a second going back to how what your
0:12:46 sort of internal monologue was like through the awkward years of your life. How did you,
0:12:51 how did you feel and what did you think of yourself? Like if I’d asked you what do you
0:12:54 think of yourself back then and you were to answer it honestly, what would you say?
0:13:01 Honestly, which I couldn’t have done, but I will tell you, ashamed would have been what I would
0:13:08 have said. And I didn’t like, I didn’t know this about myself, but like I didn’t have the right
0:13:12 to speak up like it, people wouldn’t have liked it. I had, I remember I had one guy and it didn’t
0:13:16 even bother me because I suppose it connected with how I felt, but he said, Charlie, you’re so
0:13:24 normal that you’re invisible. And I think that was by design at like blending in became a way to be
0:13:30 unseen and a way to be safe. And I wasn’t picked on, you know, like all of those things never
0:13:35 happened just because I was there, but not in a way that was noticeable. The problem with that is,
0:13:39 yeah, you’re safe, you don’t get picked on, nothing happens, but also nothing happens, right?
0:13:43 You’re not making new friends, you’re not forming connections. Other people were forming new groups
0:13:49 and expanding and I was not. So there was a huge disconnect between how I felt in a more public
0:13:53 setting and how I felt in more intimate private settings. And did you look at some other people
0:13:59 who didn’t seem to have those challenges as, I don’t know, biologically gifted? Yeah,
0:14:07 freeze of nature. Oh yeah, totally. There was clearly, the thought that something could shift
0:14:12 in me to get me to have a different response didn’t occur until I was 18 or 19 years old.
0:14:18 And I think that’s a really important shift for a lot of people is where you start recognizing that
0:14:23 it’s on you, it’s your responsibility. And the way that I put it at the time was,
0:14:31 it’s always my fault. So what I carried from 19 to say 28 or 29 was, if this interaction with you
0:14:35 and I or anyone doesn’t go well, there’s something that I could have done differently in order to
0:14:40 make it go well. And so that gave me this fuel to constantly adjust because I was going, okay,
0:14:45 that one didn’t go great. What could I have done? Where did it break down? It was three minutes
0:14:50 into conversation, but I felt they sort of dropped off when I started answering that question about
0:14:55 my boring job in a really boring way. So let me, in this next interaction, talk about my job in
0:15:01 a way that is a bit more exciting. And so I was really spending a lot of time obsessively reviewing
0:15:05 and talking with my co-founder and best friend at the time, like, what happened? Where did it
0:15:09 break down? What could we try differently? And then running these experiments, it was genuinely
0:15:15 an obsession and a thrilling one at that. What was the difference between the guy who went
0:15:21 on holiday that day on the plane versus the guy that came back in terms of skills or knowledge?
0:15:29 What was the actual difference in the person? A willingness to stick your neck out there
0:15:34 was the big thing. So one of the primary things that I did when I went abroad was
0:15:41 ask questions that I otherwise would have kept to myself. So I was in a town, a small town at
0:15:47 Costa Rica called Arabia, and I showed up. I don’t speak Spanish, right? So there’s even more reason
0:15:52 to, oh my gosh, I could make a mistake and it could go really bad and I could be bumbling.
0:15:57 But I made a rule that I was going to ask, if I didn’t know where my classroom was, I wasn’t
0:16:02 going to sit with my piece of paper and try to work it out on the map. I was going to ask a human.
0:16:05 And when it came time to figure out where there was a good restaurant or a good place to go out
0:16:10 at night, I was always going to ask someone. And thanks to that habit, as well as the
0:16:17 friendliness of Latin people, that extended my comfort zone and gave me a number of experiences
0:16:23 of you put yourself out there, something magical happens. So that is the easiest tip
0:16:27 that I can give is one more sentence. So when people ask me what is something that I can do
0:16:33 to work a micro-risma, I would say you have dozens of interaction in today if you’re in any sort of
0:16:36 populated era. You have an interaction with the Uber driver, you have an interaction with the
0:16:40 person behind the counter, you have an interaction with the person who you get into an elevator with.
0:16:43 And there’s usually a prescribed amount of social interaction that you have. Maybe it’s
0:16:48 hey, maybe it’s even less than hey. The advice that I give to people is if you want to get started,
0:16:53 one more sentence. One more sentence than usual. So as you get into the elevator and the normal
0:16:59 sentence is what floor, anything in addition to that. What floor are you in? Oh, have you lived
0:17:04 in this building for a long time? And all of a sudden, you get to know your neighbors because
0:17:08 the person that is just the elevator person who you’re putting them on floor three now has a name.
0:17:13 And every time it sort of compounds and expands and you get to have a wider social circle.
0:17:17 So that’s just one piece of the things that I would work on, which is one more sentence with
0:17:22 people. But there’s plenty more and I’m happy to dive into first impressions and all that kind of
0:17:29 stuff. Okay, so first impressions? Yeah. The big thing that I got wrong and I see almost everybody
0:17:34 get wrong and it’s bad common advice about first impressions is that just the best way to get people
0:17:40 interested in you is to be interested in them. And what I found is that that is generally true,
0:17:46 but it ignores the realities of status, which is I’m sure you experienced this with a lot of people
0:17:49 come up to you, they’re very interested in you, but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to make a
0:17:53 good first impression on you. It means that you might have compassion for them. It might even
0:17:56 mean that you might feel love for them, but it does not mean that you’re going to want to follow
0:18:00 up and spend time with them. Probably you’ve experienced, I don’t want to follow up with this
0:18:06 person to spend time with them, even though I see their sincerity of their interest. And I’ve been
0:18:12 on both sides of this, right? I’ve been the person who is just so interested in you. There’s a few
0:18:16 things that if you just do this before expressing your interest in somebody, it changes the whole
0:18:24 game. So fun, trust, respect. If you, and this can take 60 seconds or less, can communicate that you
0:18:29 are fun, that the person can trust you, and that there is something to respect about you, and then
0:18:35 you express your interest in that person, it will completely flip the dynamic on its head. So we can
0:18:40 break it down. Please. Fun. There’s a ton of ways to handle this, right? You can crack jokes, you can
0:18:44 do all sorts of things, but the easiest way to add fun to an interaction is you take the first
0:18:49 question that almost everybody asks you, which is how are you, right? These are the gimmies that
0:18:54 we just say, fine, good, how are you? Oh, there’s a fire or whatever, and be more enthusiastic than
0:18:58 fine. I would always say be better than good. So if somebody comes up to you and they say, how are
0:19:06 you doing? You can be fantastic or wonderful or great or ecstatic or electric. And there’s a whole
0:19:10 separate conversation about how to make this real inside of yourself, because I’m not asking you to
0:19:15 paper over anything. I think that was a mistake that I made early in my charisma career of just
0:19:20 too much fake it till you make it. But if you can genuinely cultivate those feelings and share
0:19:26 them, that level of enthusiasm is fun. Crack a joke, you’ve got fun. Trust. This is a lot of
0:19:32 nonverbal stuff, eye contact, body language, the way that you shake someone’s hand. But it also
0:19:37 comes down to if the person feels like you are trying to get something from them. And there’s
0:19:43 a number of things that tip us off to this. But one of these is when you overqualify yourself,
0:19:51 which is in direct competition with this need to establish yourself. So we want to establish that
0:19:54 we’re interesting people, we have things going on that you might want to connect with, but if we
0:19:59 drift over into name dropping and selling, we’re going to alienate the trust. So the place that
0:20:06 I focus most on with people is in most inert places that I’ve been, how are you, where are you from,
0:20:11 what do you do are like three of the most basic questions. Go to a college campus, it’s what’s
0:20:14 your major. We all have these and you can think of them now if you’re in the audience. We have
0:20:18 these things that we hear all the time and we probably have habitual answers to them. And these
0:20:25 habitual answers are usually not great. Yes, mine are so bad. I just remembered mine actually.
0:20:29 People come up to me and they say, “God, you’ve been so busy.” And then I’ll say something like,
0:20:34 “Yeah, always.” And then the conversation’s over. Yeah, they’ve got nothing to hook you to or hook
0:20:38 on to there. So you’re able to get away with that. And one of the things that people do is they
0:20:43 build a tremendous amount of confidence and power. And then all of a sudden you can drop this to a
0:20:47 degree because people are still interested because they know you from Dragonstan or some other things.
0:20:51 But if you’re out there and you don’t have that yet, like I did when I was 19 and 20,
0:20:55 or you just want to have more engaging conversations and you want to bring in people
0:21:00 that you genuinely connect with, reverse engineer the conversation that you would like to have.
0:21:06 So I have six charismatic mindsets that I think about. One of them is go there first and humanizing
0:21:11 the interaction. And so this can mean if you’re in a group of people that are all really stiff
0:21:15 and nervous because they don’t know if it’s okay, crack the first joke, be vulnerable first,
0:21:19 give the first compliment, like lead the interaction in the way you want to go because
0:21:23 that’s what everybody wants. Like we don’t want to be suits. We don’t want to be
0:21:28 roles in a company. We want to be humans. And that stuff is everybody wants that and whoever
0:21:35 goes first becomes the leader. Okay, okay. So in your interactions, you’re getting asked,
0:21:41 are you busy? So if you could go there first and do the thing that you’re wanting them to do and
0:21:47 work that into the answer of how you’re busy or are you busy? That is going to lead the
0:21:49 conversation the direction you want. So as a for instance, I don’t know if this is,
0:21:54 are you busy? You know, I have been, but one of the things that I’ve really been struggling with
0:21:58 that I haven’t figured out yet at this point is, you know, I’m having some relationship issues.
0:22:02 I’m having this or that and the other thing, but like sharing the real thing, a level down
0:22:07 beneath the surface level stuff that you’re tempted to share with people is going there first
0:22:14 and making it okay for them to do it. And then you say, what about you versus they say, hey,
0:22:18 how’s it going? You’re so busy. You’re saying, oh yeah, man, been busy. How about you?
0:22:23 They’re just going to match you, especially given your, you know, your power as the leader of the
0:22:28 company, they will just match what you do. But if you go there first, you give people permission
0:22:33 to go deeper. So a lot of people, for instance, what they might want is they want the thing that
0:22:38 they care about is they care about their job. They love what they do and they’re really interested,
0:22:41 or maybe they hate their job and they care more about their free time and their hobbies and the
0:22:47 extreme sports that they do. So in these questions of how have you been? What do you do? Where are you
0:22:53 from? I have a worksheet in our course that helps people walk through what a good answer could be
0:22:58 that would leave hooks for the person that is an extreme sports enthusiast or does, you know,
0:23:02 have an interest in that particular niche that they’re interested in to hook into.
0:23:05 But if you were to ask me where I’m from and let’s say that I want to connect with you
0:23:08 in a number of different ways, but the thing that I really want you to know
0:23:13 is that I have an interesting business. I could say I’m from Philadelphia and we’re done.
0:23:18 Oh, cool. I’ve been to Philadelphia or not. My friend’s brother went there. Is it cold in
0:23:21 Philadelphia? Like these, this is where we’re going to go. Now we’re on weather and sports,
0:23:26 which is where most conversations go. But if I say, you know, I grew up in Philadelphia,
0:23:31 but I never really fit in there. Like a lot of the people in that area wind up spending their whole
0:23:35 lives within 20 minutes of where they were born. And so I traveled throughout my 20s and lived
0:23:39 a bunch of places, but I now live in LA just because it’s the right place for my business.
0:23:46 And I end there. The next question that is coming from you is probably, oh, what’s your business?
0:23:51 Or where did you travel? So if I give you a number of different options to hook into here,
0:23:55 you’re going to take the one that you’re most interested in. And so what I would try to do
0:23:59 in these answers with myself and what I advise people to do is to take the three topics that
0:24:02 you know you’d love to talk about. Like you’d love to talk about your travels, you’d love to
0:24:07 talk about your business, and you’d love to talk about philosophy or whatever it is. And find a
0:24:15 way to just leave little crumbs in these common answers that give the right person the invitation
0:24:20 to talk to you about that thing. And this is something that I found really like small talk
0:24:24 can suck. It’s very draining to sit here and like, how much more can I say about the weather or local
0:24:30 sports team? I can’t keep doing it. But when you do these sorts of things, man, it opens up the
0:24:35 opportunity for connection so much more quickly in interaction. I hate small talk. I really hate it.
0:24:39 I find it really draining. I find it so fake. And I kind of want to get on to the real stuff.
0:24:47 So you’re saying that’s how to do it, to leave sort of crumbs in my response that will send us
0:24:52 down a more interesting pathway in conversation. To really think through how do I and what do I
0:24:56 want to connect with people over, right? It’s not the weather and it’s not the local sports team.
0:25:02 It is in my case, I want to interact with people that are interested in the same sort of like
0:25:06 YouTube space that I’m interested in. That’s one of the things beforehand, I thought that I knew
0:25:10 about people. It’s like, I could tell who that guy is. I know, I know what kind of life he has.
0:25:16 But when you start leaving these clues, people surprise you that like the types of connections
0:25:22 that come from people that you wouldn’t expect are, I don’t know another word other than like
0:25:28 magical. It’s very special to see that the world is full of opportunities where once you saw it
0:25:32 as, I already know it’s coming from this person, it’s just going to be a boring small talk conversation
0:25:37 and to find that that person could be someone that you do business with or become very close to or
0:25:43 winds up being the brother of someone that you date is very exciting to me.
0:25:47 There’s a real mindset shift in that, like seeing the world differently as a set of
0:25:52 opportunities versus this sort of like fixed thing that you just have to navigate.
0:25:58 Yes. And also there’s a playfulness that can be brought to it as well. So one of the other
0:26:03 things that I talk about is flirting with the world. So what I mean by this is that when you
0:26:10 go out and you’re flirting, you tend not to be literal in your answers. There’s a playfulness
0:26:14 that is engaged. You’re going to joke with that person. And what a lot of people do,
0:26:18 and I’m guilty of this all the time, is when you’re checking out at the store,
0:26:22 you’re doing anything, you are very literal in your answers. Can I help you with anything today?
0:26:26 Can I get one other thing? What floor are you on as you get in the elevator? And if instead of
0:26:30 on the floor three, you say, “Auto, live here. I’m just casing the joint for robbery.” It’s just
0:26:36 like that little stuff that is playful, that’s what people are dying for. So many people are on
0:26:41 autopilot. And when you bring that playfulness, that little flirtatious energy to men, women alike,
0:26:45 things open up in a very fun and exciting way.
0:26:50 Does that come from confidence? Because I’ve noticed that I’d certainly flirt with the world
0:26:56 more now that I feel like I have a greater sense of confidence that I didn’t have when I was 18 to
0:27:02 25. Yeah, I think it’s a circle. I think it absolutely comes from confidence. When you feel
0:27:09 good, you bring that playful energy to the world. And I learned to develop confidence by,
0:27:12 there was a time of faking it till I made it, where I wasn’t comfortable, but I had this
0:27:17 role in my head. I’m in the elevator. I have to say the thing right now. That’s what I did. And
0:27:22 then the interaction went well. And now I’m building these reps of good experiences where
0:27:26 I’m seeing that my belief about the world is this place that I just had to make it through is not
0:27:30 true. There’s fun opportunities everywhere. I really want to make sure I’ve got everything
0:27:34 on this first impressions point as well. Is there anything else that I need to be aware of?
0:27:39 You talked about nonverbal cues. And I mean, there’s so much information out there that says
0:27:44 nonverbal cues are everything that then maybe nothing. Do you think they matter? And what
0:27:48 are the most important nonverbal cues when it comes to making a good first impression?
0:27:57 One of the ones that I see is prey versus predator. Prey versus predator movement and
0:28:01 prey versus predator gesticulation. So if you think of an animal that is a prey animal,
0:28:07 like a little bird or a little rabbit, they’re very like herky jerky and they dart. And you
0:28:13 think of a predator, you think of a lion or like this like sort of languid slow movement.
0:28:18 Now you don’t have to dial it up to sleepy lion level. But one of the things that you see with
0:28:24 people that feel very afraid is that they dart. Their eyes are very darty. The hand comes in,
0:28:30 the hand goes out, goes back into the pockets very quickly. A bit of slowness to your movements,
0:28:34 a bit of calm, especially if you’re an anxious person can help a lot. That doesn’t mean you
0:28:39 need to lower the energy, but it just means you can slow things down a bit. The other thing that
0:28:45 I find is this is almost pre first impression. If you’re out at a social event, right, you’re
0:28:52 at a networking event, you’re at a bar, I think a lot of people do not realize the intuitive sense
0:28:58 that others have for what is going on around them and interactions they’re not directly in.
0:29:02 And so what will happen, and this is connected to the prey thing, but not identical, is that
0:29:05 people go out to a networking event and they feel very uncomfortable in their own shoes.
0:29:09 And so they’re looking at their phone or they’re standing by the bar and they’re sort of looking
0:29:16 around for something or someone to rescue them from their loneliness. And when you can shift that
0:29:22 to I am going to be comfortable where I am, I’m going to find one person, my friend and I would
0:29:27 go out to the bar and the rule that we had was the most interesting place in this entire bar
0:29:31 is the space between our noses. It doesn’t matter. You can say whatever you want. You can be like,
0:29:35 I’m terrified here. I’m so scared. I wish I could go home right now, but we have to engage with one
0:29:41 another. It was remarkable how much easier it was to start conversation when it was started from a
0:29:46 place of we’re enjoying one another’s company and being playful and having a good time here versus
0:29:52 two of us just sort of like standing at the bar going like this, looking around for attention or
0:29:57 fun. So yeah, so those are two things. One, pray versus predator movements. And two, are you exuding
0:30:04 this vibe of I don’t have it somebody else does that that people have a unconscious sense
0:30:11 that that is happening around them. And so making it a conscious point to I’m going to be cool in
0:30:15 my own space when I interact with someone, I’m not going to make them a stepping stone to another
0:30:20 person that I’m more secretly attracted to or has the job that I want. I’m with this person now.
0:30:25 And then I can move on that had a huge, huge impact on the ability like first impressions
0:30:32 became easier because of the pre first impression. I mean, there’s so much I wanted to dig into there
0:30:37 on the pray versus predator thing. What is it about slow movements that make someone appear to be
0:30:42 higher status? Because as you said, I immediately thought of the line and then you were talking
0:30:46 about some little like rodent that’s kind of like darting around as anxious that he’s about to be
0:30:51 eaten. And then I thought of the line, which is kind of just slowly moving. And then I thought
0:30:57 of business contexts where you’ve got the leader in the room who is kind of sat back in their chair.
0:31:01 They’re doing things in a more considered way and maybe the intern who’s like dropping the paper
0:31:06 and like hitting the glass accidentally. It’s so interesting because it’s so true.
0:31:13 Yeah, it’s safety. Safety. It’s safety. I mean, pray animals are hunted. And that’s what you have
0:31:17 to be head on a swivel. If you’re a prey animal, you want to move slow, you’re dead. It’s over.
0:31:23 We’re animals that are highly attuned to social status. And so when we feel low on the totem
0:31:29 pole, we feel less safe. And so one of the things that the ways that we exhibit that is we move more
0:31:33 quickly. We have our head on a swivel. We have to be aware of everything that is going on. We
0:31:40 can’t take our time because we don’t at some level that mammalian or reptilian brain is telling us
0:31:45 that we are unsafe in this environment, or at least less safe than the leader who feels very
0:31:51 slow. Another thing that you’ll see in terms of status and people who feel art is the ability
0:31:57 to be seen looking at others. And so one of the things that happens, and this is, I don’t mean,
0:32:01 I can explain how this doesn’t contradict the point about focusing on someone else, but
0:32:05 when you do turn your attention to someone else, what you’ll see the guy at the bar who feels
0:32:09 uncomfortable or the intern do is often look with their eyes, but not with the rest of their body.
0:32:15 They’re doing this sort of stuff because they’re afraid to be seen looking. But when you take the
0:32:20 person who is more comfortable, they will turn their head and sometimes their chest and their
0:32:26 whole body towards others. And they can be caught looking because they’re not threatening that other
0:32:31 person. They’re not harming them. They’re comfortable versus there’s a fear of if they see me looking,
0:32:37 I’m in trouble. And so these are little, I wouldn’t say that you need to spend all your time focusing
0:32:43 on these hacks, but they work both ways. So it’s one thing to notice that, but if you actually
0:32:47 consciously go to the body, I think this is one of the fastest ways to influence how you feel,
0:32:53 like state in the moment. Instead of doing this and the prey darting and the sitting with the
0:32:59 hands in the pockets, right? That creates a loop of feeling uncomfortable. So one of the first
0:33:02 things that I would do when I was going out to a networking event or a bar anywhere where I felt
0:33:09 uncomfortable was dance floor. Because on the dance floor, I can go and open up and feel more
0:33:15 comfortable through my body because I’m signaling to my body as I expand my arms and dance and wave
0:33:21 them that I’m safe, right? And so it’s a, it’s a two way loop. So if you notice yourself at a
0:33:25 networking event or a bar anywhere, we’re feeling uncomfortable and you notice that you’re doing
0:33:29 this and you can say, okay, I can’t go to my brain and make these anxiety go away up here,
0:33:34 but I can choose how I hold myself. This is the Jordan Peterson stand up straight, right? It’s,
0:33:39 there’s, there’s this body loop feedback that we get. And if you do it by opening up your body
0:33:43 language, revealing your vulnerable spots, which are the parts that you have veins, it’s your neck,
0:33:48 it’s your inner elbow, it’s your hands, right? Standing like this, a little bit more open.
0:33:52 That tends, and I can feel it now. I don’t know why I didn’t do it at the beginning. I’m a little
0:33:59 bit rusty. Geez. I feel immediately more grounded, right? I feel immediately more safe, comfortable,
0:34:04 and like, I can take my time in this interaction rather than having to get the answer right for
0:34:08 you, right for the audience. Like I might have when I was going like this.
0:34:14 It’s, I was going to say before you pointed that out that it’s really self-fulfilling. Like the
0:34:20 intern who’s on edge, who’s dropping the paper is then going to make certain behaviors, which are
0:34:24 going to kind of reinforce their insecurity and low status, which is then might be pointed out,
0:34:28 they might notice it themselves, which makes them feel shit again, which makes them more on edge
0:34:31 and twitchy, which is going to increase the probability that they conduct some kind of behavior,
0:34:35 which is, and it’s this downward spiral where you’re like, you feel stuck at the bottom of
0:34:40 that. And you’re saying that by influencing the things you’ve described, you know, moving a bit
0:34:46 slower, being expansive with your body, you can start to trigger the loop from the other way. You
0:34:51 can start to make yourself feel safe. If you feel safe, you’re more likely to do the higher value
0:34:57 things, which make you feel safe and you spiral upwards potentially. Yes. Yeah. This is not an
0:35:00 insight unique to me. Tony Robbins, when at his events, I don’t know if you’ve gone, they talk
0:35:05 about incantations or one of the things that he does is prior to going on stage and he advises
0:35:10 people to do this before they have a big moment is he will like bang his chest and go, “Who, who,
0:35:16 who?” in his Tony Robbins way. And he’ll have oftentimes a phrase that is like, “I’m here to
0:35:22 inspire,” or like, “I love myself. I feel wonderful.” And I would do this before I went out, right? I
0:35:26 would, before I got in the taxi, before I went anywhere, I would go, “I love myself. I love myself.
0:35:34 I love myself.” And I would just build this physical body energy connection and it’s real.
0:35:40 It happens. It makes a dramatic impact on how you show up, because oftentimes you only get
0:35:45 30 seconds, right? It’s not a lot of time when you’re sitting down in that interview before
0:35:50 the person starts to form an opinion about you. So going in with that, that energy that is like,
0:35:55 “Look, I approve of me and I’m going to have the body language communication that tells you that
0:36:01 that’s how I feel.” People often pick up on that. You can think of interactions as two people who
0:36:07 are storms of beliefs encountering one another. And if my storm of belief is, “I’m not really sure
0:36:11 about this. I don’t really think I deserve this job and you probably shouldn’t talk to me.” And
0:36:15 your storm of belief is, “I don’t know a lot about this guy, but let’s find out. I’m going to win.”
0:36:20 You’re going to pick that up and you’re going to, “You know, I don’t think this guy deserves the job,
0:36:26 whatever.” But if the belief is, “I deserve to be here. I love myself. I can be comfortable. I can
0:36:32 be human and I’ll be okay if this doesn’t go the way that I’d like,” that’s what wins out on these.
0:36:38 It is the higher conviction belief that often bleeds through in interaction and becomes the one
0:36:43 that defines that relationship, at least for that limited time in that context.
0:36:49 It’s funny because I think about my nonverbal cues all the time. I meet so many people in
0:36:56 so many different contexts and a lot of the time I’m tired and my head has a million tabs open.
0:37:01 So I try and influence how I’m showing up with my body language and eye contact and
0:37:06 outside of the things we’ve discussed, is there anything else that you think I can do to try and
0:37:11 leave? I don’t want to be rude. That’s what I don’t want to be. I was going to say I want to
0:37:17 be warm, but there’s something, I want to be myself and I don’t want to be rude, accidentally rude.
0:37:25 So you worry that you might come across? Sometimes, yeah. Because I don’t know, you meet people,
0:37:32 like my assistant Sophie, she walked in here now, “Hiya!” She’s just got 24/7 energy and I ain’t
0:37:38 got that. I’m not that guy and I’m not going to fake it. I’ve never been good at faking it,
0:37:42 but is there anything else that I could accidentally be making people dislike me just with small things?
0:37:48 No, I can say the areas where I felt most connected to you, which is I think the opposite
0:37:53 of rude. Rude is like, I’m not interested in you as a person. The areas where I felt most connected
0:38:00 to you is where one of us, again, went there first and said the thing that was real. It’s the moments
0:38:07 where neither of us is trying to perform at all for the camera and there’s still a sense of the
0:38:14 audience is there, but yeah, that’s where I feel any rudeness is. No, gone. Interesting. And when you
0:38:20 say that, I think about everyday interactions and is there ever a situation where going there
0:38:26 first is a little bit too strong? Try it, that’s what I would say. The thought is the one that you
0:38:31 have, everyone has. No, I can’t because if they didn’t have that thought, they would have already
0:38:36 done it. I will tell you a brief story that my brother reminded me of today as we were driving
0:38:39 in. I was like, “I need my charisma stories,” and he said, “You can tell the one about me.”
0:38:45 Your brother, he’s in the green room. Yeah, yeah. We went to a networking event and
0:38:51 for whatever reason that day, I was just in this zone of I’m going to be a professional because
0:38:56 this is a networking event and the channel wasn’t established at this point and he came with me.
0:39:00 And so I’m going in there and I’m going through the line, I’m filling out my card,
0:39:05 what’s your name? Charlie, you know what do you do? Okay, I’m getting my information,
0:39:09 I put my badge on, I walk through and he goes behind me and they say, “What’s your name?” He says,
0:39:14 “Dragon.” And she says, “Excuse me?” I said, “No, no, write Dragon on the card. It’s going to be
0:39:20 great.” And so he then starts a conversation with her and they’re just being playful and he puts
0:39:26 Dragon on his chest and I’m going in trying to impress people with my professionalism and
0:39:31 people are like, “What’s up?” He’s like, “Dragon here.” And he was a hit. He didn’t have anything
0:39:36 to do with the networking event. He didn’t have anything to do with the context of why people
0:39:41 were there. But the interest that he got was so much immediately more than I was getting,
0:39:45 being the one that actually had the business that was somewhat related to the thing. And so
0:39:53 even I believe that these rules on how we should engage are set in stone. And what I think few
0:39:59 people have done, if you think of your entire life, you’re either hitting it perfect, undershooting
0:40:04 or overshooting. Everyone’s fears of overshooting, but they spend almost all of their lives
0:40:10 undershooting. Overshooting is coming on too strong. Yeah, and it’s okay. But there’s type
0:40:15 one and type two errors, right? And if there’s a perfect middle ground of like, “Wow, I didn’t,
0:40:19 that was a trauma dump on that person would be an overshare,” or like, “Ooh, I maybe shouldn’t
0:40:25 crack that joke at a funeral,” would be going their first type of a thing. We have less than a
0:40:32 dozen of those usually in our life and we have hundreds and thousands of undershooting. So what
0:40:37 I’m encouraging people to do is take the risk of the overshoot because you’re already missing.
0:40:42 Like, you’re under what is available to you in terms of the potential to create connections. And
0:40:47 the question here is, which I think informs all of this, is, “Is your goal to blend in, get through,
0:40:52 and not make a splash?” Or, “Is your goal, what is your goal?” And for me, it’s like,
0:40:56 “I want to connect. I want to connect with the people that would most connect with me.” And in
0:41:00 order to do that, I have to be willing to be seen. Okay, so on the other end of this, what are the
0:41:06 mistakes people make that cause disconnection? Talking about yourself, is that… Is that…
0:41:11 I don’t think so. In what sense? So like, if you walk into a room and you immediately start talking
0:41:18 about yourself, is that going to be, if you’re over talking? Good question. It’s about, do people
0:41:25 have opt-in points? So are you stopping and giving the person a chance to reopt into that line of
0:41:28 communication? So this is, again, one of the things we work on on those initial questions is,
0:41:33 “Okay, you want to share your values early in the interaction, but am I just going to
0:41:36 give you my life story right now? I’m not giving someone a chance to opt-in.” But if I make it
0:41:42 three to five sentences, and I say, “You know, I grew up on the West Coast, and it was perfect,
0:41:48 because there was surf everywhere, and then I met my wife, but she’s super close to her family,
0:41:53 and I just wanted to be a family man, so now I live in the middle of the country.” And whatever,
0:41:57 you give like three hooks that people can hook into, and then you’re done, that’s fine. But
0:42:02 some people don’t give a chance for anyone to step in and get aware of it as was. So that’s
0:42:05 another piece that I think. And I could also ask them right if they surf or something.
0:42:13 Yes, exactly. But also, you will see that sometimes early in an interaction, if you indicate
0:42:19 these points of, people will often comment on what you have to say. You don’t need to
0:42:23 ask them necessarily. If you give that thing that they like, you often don’t have to,
0:42:26 they will jump in with the thing that connects to it.
0:42:30 So interesting, you know, throughout this conversation, you’ve repeatedly made reference
0:42:36 to the fact that connection happens at a deeper level, but also the paradox is that
0:42:42 we don’t walk around offering the deeper level. Which is what I’ve always figured out, and like
0:42:45 found out on this podcast, is the deeper the conversation, the more I feel like connected
0:42:50 to the person. And yeah, it’s really interesting. I was just thinking about interactions that I’ve
0:42:55 even had today, and you know, like the person that I spoke to in the gym, what I’ve rolled up to them,
0:43:00 and what could I have said to them that would have been, God has passed the fluffy small talk,
0:43:05 because I bet it’s one in the gym that I’ve known for a loosely known, and it was one of those
0:43:08 interactions where they’re going, “Hey, how are you? You’re in LA now? Hey, yeah. Where are you
0:43:13 going to live?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” And then like, “So, yeah, fires. Did you, are you okay? Yeah,
0:43:19 yeah.” And I just- So let’s do this. How, where are you going to live? I think I even probably
0:43:21 asked you, or- Everyone’s asking because I’ve posted where you’re going to live. Yeah.
0:43:27 Take a person in the gym. You don’t know anything about them. And I know context, it’s going to be
0:43:31 dependent on what you want to learn about them. What, what types of things do you wish you could
0:43:34 connect over more? And I know there’s this sense of like, whatever they want, but like,
0:43:37 you clearly care about business. You clearly care, like, what
0:43:41 opportunities do you want to open up for yourself? Do you want to find a surf buddy? Do you want to
0:43:47 find out what is it? Yeah. So in that particular conversation, I think, because I’m kind of new
0:43:52 here, maybe what I would have been interested in is I actually really wanted to know something
0:43:55 about their professional life that I, that they’d told me about previously. But also,
0:43:58 I’m like looking for friends here. Yeah. Cool things to do, people to see. Yeah.
0:44:04 New networks. Amazing. You got it. So, so it’s, you know, where are you going to live? You’re
0:44:08 like, honestly, I’m not sure. I’m looking for cool places to live, cool places to go,
0:44:11 new networks of people. Oh, I shouldn’t fucking said that. Yeah. And it’s, and it’s, so I think
0:44:16 it’s what we mentioned earlier, but the thing that happens is that people try to get through
0:44:19 rather than connect. Interesting. And I think that informs a lot of the questions that people
0:44:23 have. They say, yeah, but couldn’t it go wrong? It’s like, yes, it could, but you have to consider
0:44:28 that not connecting is also it going wrong. Like the number of chances that you meet to connect
0:44:34 with your potential spouse, potential incredible friend, I don’t want to be nightmarish or scary
0:44:38 for people, but like the amount of incredible people that have walked in and out of all of our
0:44:44 lives is saddening, right? Because we didn’t say the thing. And it’s like, oh my gosh,
0:44:48 you guys would have connected so well if just one of you could have like put it out there,
0:44:52 the thing that you were interested in, but it just doesn’t happen 99% of the time.
0:44:58 There’s a certain individual listening right now who really wants to connect. In fact,
0:45:03 they feel so disconnected and so lonely in their life and they’re hearing everything you say,
0:45:09 but there’s a barrier that has always stopped them adding one more sentence, going deeper
0:45:14 with the stranger. And no matter how much they listen to this kind of advice, they still go
0:45:19 through their life in this state of kind of getting through life, not connecting. Do you
0:45:24 have any idea, A, is that true? Like does that person exist and have you met them in your audience?
0:45:30 And B, like what is step one to starting to break down that barrier? Because I think I even
0:45:33 feel a little bit as you were speaking, I was thinking, yeah, like why didn’t I say that in
0:45:38 the gym today? Like what is it about me that meant that I just tried to get through and get back to
0:45:45 the weights? It’s like a bad habit? I think there’s a number of things. In your case, and I’ve
0:45:51 experienced this, I don’t know if you have this, but when you get into a position that is a lovely
0:45:56 one to be in of relative power, right? Like people want to come on the show, they want to know what
0:46:02 you’re up to, they maybe want to go to the parties that you’re going to. One of the ways to avoid
0:46:08 having to constantly set and enforce boundaries is to shine less bright. And so I don’t know
0:46:14 if you feel this, but I notice myself not following some of my own advice these days. And when I
0:46:18 reflect on why, it’s because if I say that I have a YouTube channel and they say how many
0:46:22 subscribers, and I say how many subscribers, then they want my phone number, then they want my
0:46:29 this. And in order just to circumvent all of that, you know, yeah, I like work from home, you know,
0:46:35 like I will shine less bright. And I realized this years ago, when I was doing breakdowns,
0:46:38 and I was doing all of these famous people, I’m like, I’m going to do one of Justin Bieber,
0:46:43 because he was such a bright, excited young kid. And then I looked at him at the time he was 16 to
0:46:49 18, he was on Jimmy Fallon, and he was so flat. And I was like, why is he so flat? And then he
0:46:57 cracked a joke and the audience, it wasn’t even funny. And so if you get to a position where
0:47:04 any sort of output from you calls in this just wave of attention and energy, people often shut
0:47:08 that down, which is a sad thing. And I want to stop doing that. And people shut themselves down.
0:47:12 Yes, they shut themselves down. Because then you have to have boundaries. And you have to tell
0:47:17 that person, hey, I don’t give out my Instagram, or I don’t want to trade numbers, or you have to
0:47:23 find a way to navigate disappointing other people that are interested in going, having a deeper
0:47:28 connection that you don’t feel it with them. Does that happen with like, beautiful people as well?
0:47:31 Because almost certainly. Imagine they just get it all the time everywhere they’re going,
0:47:36 people are trying to connect. Yeah, well, and I think, you know, in terms of things to watch out
0:47:42 for, I didn’t realize this, because I do think it’s not necessarily a good thing. But young women,
0:47:46 I think realize this as they hit puberty, that there’s going to be people interested in you,
0:47:50 that don’t really want to get to know you, right? They’re interested in you because you’re beautiful,
0:47:53 they’re just in you for these other reasons. Same thing tends not to happen with young men.
0:48:04 And so, I got to 19, and I wasn’t wanted in any of the locations that I was at, right? And so,
0:48:09 there was a ladies night, but I couldn’t get in. And so, people were very honest with me. I got
0:48:13 direct, clear feedback about the type of people that wanted to connect with me. And if someone did,
0:48:18 it was only ever because they wanted the pleasure of my company. There was nothing to get from knowing
0:48:28 me. When things started to boom, I was not prepared for the ways that people adjust and manipulate
0:48:35 when they perceive that someone has power. And so, people entered my life that I thought
0:48:43 liked me, and I realized later, liked my ability to provide a paycheck or my ability to do this.
0:48:51 And it was very sad for me. It was really, really difficult to experience. But as I withdrew and
0:48:58 stopped making videos and said, “I’m not running this business, my co-founder is going to take,
0:49:03 he’s in charge of the paychecks from here on out,” the people that almost immediately withdrew from
0:49:11 me was, I’m very grateful to have seen it, but was unprepared for the transactional nature
0:49:17 that can happen when you start to accumulate power. And I say that because there’s a spec,
0:49:24 particularly young men, but it’s true of women as well, just be aware that as you grow and hopefully
0:49:32 become more powerful in the world, the level of deception and the level of, even just in the
0:49:36 lightest, like people trying to please you and make you happy is going to escalate. And you’re
0:49:43 going to need to develop a discernment that I just never needed when I was in my young twenties.
0:49:49 To understand who’s trying to manipulate you and get things from you and what’s real.
0:49:54 Yes, to understand this subtle difference between who likes me for me and who likes me
0:50:00 for these status things that I am connected to or can provide. And yeah.
0:50:06 I mean, is there any such advice you can give someone to figure out whether they’re
0:50:11 being used or the relationship is authentic and real?
0:50:17 Yeah. Well, I can give some not to do. That’s where I’m at today. This is niche. But if you’re a
0:50:25 business owner, be very careful about making a single, I made a single person my like point of
0:50:31 contact to the business. And that meant that any feedback that came from like the front lines of
0:50:36 the business was coming up, funneled through him and spoken to me. And any like thing that I said
0:50:41 to him was then distributed to the business. And I wasn’t doing enough direct connecting with people
0:50:46 on the ground. And what happened over a course of years is I learned, and I didn’t find this four
0:50:52 years, is that I was being a generous word would be like, there was some fudging of the truth. And
0:51:00 then there were outright lies. Be very, very careful about making one person your eyes and
0:51:06 ears in any aspect of your life. But I did that in the business and didn’t touch base and connect
0:51:10 directly with people and say, Hey, is this, how are you feeling? Is this true? And I lost those
0:51:15 direct connections. And it wasn’t required in a company of my size. It was just a foolish novice
0:51:20 entrepreneur mistake that I’d made. It happens so many times. It happens a lot in business. People
0:51:24 listening to this now, if you’ve got, if you’re working in a business and there’s a manager
0:51:29 in between you and maybe the top of the business, managers have a tremendous power to control
0:51:34 narratives. Yeah. Everyone wants power. I would say, I think that’s a fair statement. Pretty
0:51:38 much everyone wants power and we can define whatever power means. But I guess there’s
0:51:44 two paths to attaining power. There’s delivering value for people and being useful. And then
0:51:52 there’s what you described there, which is, is manipulating the situation so that you’re
0:52:01 perceived as being necessary. Yeah. And it’s, it’s making sure that your name is on the project,
0:52:05 right? There’s an intergroup project. There’s, there’s always people that are doing the majority
0:52:08 of the work. And there’s people that are making sure that they’re presenting the most important
0:52:13 piece or making sure that their name is on the project. Narcissists, sociopaths, some of the
0:52:18 videos you’ve made on your channel before speak to this type of behavior. Yes. What were the things
0:52:24 that you missed that are like characteristic of narcissists? Cause I, I know you’ve made videos
0:52:28 about this subject where you analyze other interactions with other people, but for someone
0:52:34 who might not be aware of some of those subtle cues, what kinds of things. My co-founder and I
0:52:39 had several conversations about this person where we said, man, and we had these dozens of times,
0:52:43 I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that he was lying on his job application. And we would
0:52:50 just say that to each other. And so if you find that there’s just a doubt that, that you don’t
0:52:54 believe that somebody says that they were very successful on a thing and just doesn’t look
0:52:58 like it, you know, there’s that phrase in, in business, which is, if there’s doubt, there’s no
0:53:03 doubt when it comes to hiring and firing, I didn’t follow that. So just pay attention to your doubts.
0:53:09 And if you need to write them down, but it’s the voicing of it in a weird way was a way of blowing
0:53:14 off steam and not addressing the core issue. So that was one thing. And then I think the last
0:53:22 thing is, it’s this, um, I felt guilty verifying. I felt guilty verifying his job application. I felt
0:53:27 guilty going to the guy that he said had offered him a job whose number I had and saying, Hey,
0:53:32 wanted to check on this, because that would have been an indication that I didn’t trust him.
0:53:37 And it was my way of saying, I trust you. I know you won’t hurt me. And maybe you can trust me
0:53:44 that I won’t hurt you too. Nevermind that they were not reciprocal relationships. But the reason
0:53:51 that I’m so interested in these sorts of things is because I had, by the time I was 28 or 29,
0:53:55 built the life that I dreamed of when I was 18. I had the girlfriend that I wanted. I had more
0:54:04 money than I dreamed of. I had the dream job and it fell apart because these core things hadn’t been
0:54:08 addressed. And when I say fell apart, it wasn’t like the world took it from me. It was like my own
0:54:14 eye fell apart in my ability to sustain them. Where it fell together. Thank you. That’s the
0:54:19 truth. No, that’s the truth, man, is, um, I’m so grateful for the ways in which it broke down.
0:54:25 And I think there’s many times in my life and when I’ve seen other people where they get fired,
0:54:29 or the thing doesn’t work out or the first business fails and you’re like, Oh, it fell apart.
0:54:33 And you’re right. It’s, uh, you get five years down the line. It’s like, no, man, that fell together.
0:54:38 Yeah. Cause if it wasn’t you being your true aligned, authentic self, whatever that means,
0:54:42 then it wasn’t real anyway. It was something you were holding together. And it sounded like
0:54:46 it was exhausting to hold that together. Yes. Unconsciously. Very much. Shouldn’t be exhausting
0:54:49 to hold together. So if you’re, if you’re exhausted holding your life together in the
0:54:54 relationships of people, then it’s not sustainable and it’s not real. Yeah. Well, I’m curious and
0:54:58 you’re taking business on this. Cause I’ve since found business mentors that there’s so many
0:55:02 mentors that are like, here’s how to build your business so that you can sell it. And the implicit
0:55:08 understanding there is that this thing is pain in the butt. You don’t want to have it and you’ll
0:55:12 be happier when you can get rid of it in exchange for a lot of money. And there’s a guy, Joe Hudson,
0:55:16 who I’ve mentioned before, who talks about, you know, what if a billion dollar business was not
0:55:20 a business that was valued at a billion dollars, but it’s a business that you wouldn’t sell for a
0:55:25 billion dollars. The things that you got to do, like if you had to sell it and you could never
0:55:31 do that thing again, you wouldn’t take that deal. And when you think, how would I run this business
0:55:34 if it had to be my billion dollar business today? What sort of things would I allow myself to do?
0:55:40 What sort of things would I cut out? It’s a total paradigm shift. It’s an amazing question to ask
0:55:46 yourself. What an amazing question to ask yourself. So the way that I heard that was,
0:55:51 if I wanted to run this business like a business that I would never be prepared to sell,
0:55:55 what are the decisions I would make today? Okay. So you’d get rid of the toxic people that are
0:56:01 just throwing your piece irrespective of how many clients you might lose or the short-term net loss
0:56:06 of that or how it might disgruntle people. You would probably set a pace that you could go
0:56:12 at for 50 years. And you’d probably disregard metrics and growth numbers and stuff like that.
0:56:16 Yeah. You’d focus on doing work that you truly love, not what the audience want,
0:56:23 not what the clients are paying you for, but what you truly love. And you’d work with stakeholders
0:56:32 and partners that treated you with the respect and the courtesy and the same energy, love,
0:56:39 curiosity, fun that you need to do this for 50 years. So you wouldn’t work with arseholes.
0:56:43 Yeah. Even if they were paying you a lot of money, you’d say no to a couple of million dollars.
0:56:48 I guess that’s my answer to that question. Yeah. That’s the answer to that question.
0:56:53 Oh, is it? Okay. Right? I mean, of course it is. It’s the opposite of what you would do
0:56:58 if you were building to sell, which is I’m going to get someone else to be the frontman because
0:57:00 I don’t want to do it. I’m going to have them do the boring thing that I don’t like. It’s,
0:57:04 yeah, instead of, no, no, no, like why are we doing these things that we don’t like?
0:57:07 You wouldn’t tolerate. Exactly. There would be zero tolerance.
0:57:11 Exactly. And you may or may not wind up with a billion dollars, but what I have found is,
0:57:16 as I lean into that, that’s where these leaps and breakthroughs are. It’s linear thinking to
0:57:20 figure out how to please the audience and please other people in most cases, but there’s these
0:57:24 exponential leaps that you make when you’re like, what do I want to see in the world? That’s
0:57:27 where you go from zero to one. That’s where you make the thing that has never been made because
0:57:33 you want it. Yeah. So. It’s a hard place to get to. You’ve got to have, I think, life failure a few
0:57:37 times before you kind of figure out what you’ve described there. And I can certainly relate in
0:57:41 my life to that. So even when I think about this podcast, I speak to Jack, I think I had this
0:57:46 conversation with Jack the other day. I was like, in order for me to do this for like 20 years,
0:57:51 what am I going to need to do today? What am I going to need to sacrifice today
0:57:54 in order to do it for 20 years? And I can kind of tell you, like just a top line thing is,
0:57:58 when a guest request comes on my list and it says they have, this has happened,
0:58:05 they have 70 million followers and their stories there, what they’ve done, etc. And it’s like this,
0:58:10 Steve, we know that this is going to get huge numbers, but I don’t want to sit there for two
0:58:14 and a half hours and speak to this person because I have no interest in fucking pop music in South
0:58:19 America. I know that the long term decision to do the show for 20 years means in that moment,
0:58:26 I have to say no. Because if there’s multiple days in a row where I show up to this set and I
0:58:30 sit down and I wasn’t looking forward to it, I’m going to end up where you said you ended up,
0:58:34 which is that feeling of like burnt out broken lack of meaning.
0:58:43 What gives you the strength to say no to the superficial win, especially when there’s like a
0:58:48 this would be great for you. Wisdom of fucking up so many times in my life when I did that.
0:58:53 Burn. And also being able to look forward at someone like Joe Rogan and watch his interviews
0:59:01 where he talks about this and realizing that this principle of if you want to go far, you have to
0:59:05 play like long-term games and make long-term decisions. And so now knowing what a short-term
0:59:09 decision is versus a long-term decision and actually being really aligned with Jack who’s
0:59:14 who runs the show. Because me and Jack are aligned on these things now quite intuitively
0:59:18 and we’ve kind of learned together. We’ve like made the short-term decision going,
0:59:25 fuck, that was a bad idea. So you kind of build this sort of collective wisdom that the right thing
0:59:30 to do for the long-term health of the show is having a set of principles. And I really wish
0:59:33 people understood that because especially when the show gets big, there’s so much pressure to
0:59:37 change. I’ve got a good example. I wasn’t going to say this, but I think I should probably share
0:59:40 it because this is the diaries here and that’s what I’m going to be showing my diaries here.
0:59:44 On the last episode we uploaded was a debate format with four guys on it and we’re talking
0:59:50 about the world and stuff. It’s the first time we’ve ever done that. And I had a meeting with
0:59:55 some people and the day after that episode came out and someone in the room was saying,
1:00:02 “Oh, we should add a woman to the panel because the optics are bad.” And I remember what I said
1:00:06 in that room. I said, “We should never ever do something purely for optics. The reason why we
1:00:10 should add a woman to the panel that we just did and this is something we will do in future
1:00:14 is because we genuinely believe it will make the conversation better.” And I said to them,
1:00:17 and there was 12 of my teammates who work on this team in the room, I said,
1:00:22 “If we ever do stuff for optics, we slowly slip away from our integrity.” And there’s a paradox
1:00:30 there because you think the high integrity thing to do is to cater to optics, what things look like,
1:00:35 but actually the high integrity thing to do is to ignore virtue signalling and to do what’s
1:00:40 best for the conversation. And I just reiterated in that room that the reason why in the future
1:00:45 we’re going to make these panels more diverse is because we believe that it’s better for the
1:00:48 audience. It’s better for the conversation. That’s the only reason we’ll ever do it.
1:00:55 And that’s the prime example of learning over time that you’ve got to ignore virtue signalling,
1:00:58 you’ve got to ignore because these things come and go. What’s virtuous today will be
1:01:02 cancelable tomorrow. And you’ve got to stay anchored to a set of principles.
1:01:07 Yeah, we digress. No, we do not at all. That is the second,
1:01:11 six charismatic mindsets that I talk about. That is the second, which is I care more about
1:01:15 my character than my reputation. Let’s do that then. What are these six charismatic mindsets?
1:01:20 So we talked a little bit about the body language and the stuff,
1:01:24 and really I land much more in the mindsets and the ways of being. And this is,
1:01:28 this is to me closer to the core. First one is no matter what, I will be okay.
1:01:33 And I’m feeling nervous on the way to this conversation that we’re going to have them in
1:01:37 the car, get over here. I’m thinking, do I need to prepare? No matter what, I’ll be okay.
1:01:44 Right. I go in here and this is true in any social scenario. We can often bring life or death
1:01:49 stakes to the interview to asking the girl out to whatever it is, literally just saying the
1:01:53 phrase in your head yourself, no matter what, I will be okay. Has this calming clarifying thing
1:01:58 that helps you focus on what you actually want to do and get out of this circumstance and helps
1:02:03 you stop focusing on how do I be safe? Because how do I be safe is how do I do less? How do I
1:02:08 say less and just kill any chance of connection? Right. So that’s the first one. Second, I care
1:02:13 more about my character than my reputation. It’s very easy for, it would have been like,
1:02:17 for you in that moment to, oh shoot, what are people going to think? The optics of this are not
1:02:24 good. The leadership that you demonstrated by not just disagreeing, but by revealing your character
1:02:29 will pay dividends, not just in how you guys handle optics. It teaches everyone on the team
1:02:37 what matters, which is fundamentally the character, what is the case, not what looks like it is the
1:02:40 case. And you also were able to bring it back. And I think this is the thing where we’re talking
1:02:44 about listening to criticism is like, you didn’t just hear it and reject it. No, we’re not going
1:02:49 to have a woman on the podcast. It was, if we do that, we do it for the right reasons, right?
1:02:53 So I care more about my character and also the optics of, oh, I screwed up, now I have to fix it,
1:02:57 or I screwed up, I have to dig my heels in. I think a lot of this is going on right now with
1:03:04 Elon Musk. And the salute that he did is, I can’t, I can’t say, hey, I made a mistake. I can’t say,
1:03:08 I didn’t mean that by it. I can’t do any of that. I have to dig in because I don’t want to be seen
1:03:12 to be weak or I don’t want to be seen to be like this. This salute thing though, I,
1:03:21 let’s do it. I’m writing this video. Yeah. So, so Elon Musk, if you’ve ever seen him on stage,
1:03:27 he is a very eccentric, totally a little bit awkward sometimes individual who goes up on stage
1:03:32 and it’s like, right. And I’ve literally seen videos where he’s like, and you know, you,
1:03:36 on the red carpet, I don’t know if you saw that, it’s like that red carpet walk that he did,
1:03:41 where he starts being going like, yeah, yeah, yeah, he’s making weird faces. This is, this is him.
1:03:50 So I’m not defending him at all, but if you have a lens of empathy and you look at the bigger picture
1:03:56 and you also say, listen, this guy has no track record of not saying what he thinks.
1:04:02 So if he tells me that that wasn’t what he was doing in that moment, he has no track record of
1:04:10 like holding his tongue. Yeah. And it’s funny because I consider myself to be apolitical,
1:04:12 but one of the things that really turned me off when I saw the commentary around that was
1:04:19 the left side of politics didn’t seem to exert any, what’s the word?
1:04:26 It was just all, the reaction was so predictable. I watched the video and thought, I know he’s just
1:04:30 being Elon Musk, that’s what he does on stage, just a bit wacky. And then the whole like, oh no,
1:04:35 he’s a Nazi. This is a Nazi salute. I just thought I find it to be disingenuous. Yeah. Well,
1:04:40 there’s a ton here. Politically, I think this is why the left loses elections. Because
1:04:47 there’s so much winning, there’s so much happening that you could critique today. Trump
1:04:52 launched a meme coin. You know what I mean? Like there’s like, you could speak on so many things.
1:04:56 And to put the focus on this is why they continue to lose elections in the United States of America,
1:05:01 because I agree with you. I don’t see any reason to believe that this is a hidden
1:05:09 reveal of Elon’s politics as regards the Third Reich. Yeah, yeah. It’s like the guy’s a weird
1:05:14 dude who moves weird and he literally afterwards said, my heart goes out to you. And his response to
1:05:18 it on Twitter, which is complicated by the mass media, right? Because there’s, I’m going to make
1:05:26 this video too. The ability to say sorry in personal relationships is fundamental and critical.
1:05:31 And if you can’t own your mistakes and apologize to someone, you will erode every relationship
1:05:34 that you ever have because you will make mistakes. And if you can’t repair them,
1:05:37 they just, it’s like a bridge that never gets any maintenance. It doesn’t work.
1:05:41 Do you think he should have said sorry? This is the question when we’re talking about a couple
1:05:49 of things, a mass media. And then I think there’s a space between sorry and that wasn’t my intention.
1:05:53 And instead what he did was, because I think what he should have said was that wasn’t my intention.
1:05:58 What he said instead was he made a bunch of puns about like different Nazi stuff,
1:06:03 like random things. But do I think you should say sorry? No, I don’t think you should say sorry.
1:06:08 He said sorry. Can you imagine the mainstream media? Exactly. Oh my gosh. Exactly. So this is
1:06:11 the problem. I’m going to make this video, which is if you look at the most, this is tragic.
1:06:20 The way that we have culturally ruined saying sorry, like with our media, because if you look
1:06:25 at the most powerful men, Andrew Tate, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, they all got the memo. Never
1:06:31 apologize. Never, ever, ever. It doesn’t matter what you did. Never apologize. And what do you get
1:06:38 as a result? More power, right? It like, because when you do say sorry, even if it’s appropriate,
1:06:43 and even if it would have been appropriate in a private circumstance to do that, the outcome
1:06:48 in the media loop, if you look at, you could take someone going back to like Aziz Ansari,
1:06:53 who had a Me Too situation, where the girl was unhappy with how the date went. But it was all
1:06:59 consensual, but she felt pressured by him. And he went on a like very deep heartfelt apology,
1:07:05 destroyed, you know, end of his show, completely over for him. Years later, people look back at
1:07:12 that story with a different cultural lens and go, that, okay, yes, you’re sorry for that, of course,
1:07:15 that makes sense. Because that’s, that’s the appropriate responses. I’m really sorry. I didn’t,
1:07:18 that wasn’t what I wanted. That wasn’t my intent. I didn’t want it to go that way.
1:07:26 Or I didn’t want you to feel that way as well. And that human response, translated to the mass media,
1:07:30 is so destructive to your career, which is, it’s really tragic, because
1:07:35 that’s the type of thing that you would want to have two people hash out and find resolution to
1:07:42 themselves, but doesn’t appear to be possible in, in global media today.
1:07:47 It happens on both sides. It’s the right mischaracterizing the left, the left mischaracterizing
1:07:51 the right. And I especially through this election cycle, I just saw that over and over again,
1:07:56 because as someone who genuinely believes when I’m at home alone, and I’m watching these videos,
1:08:02 genuinely believes that I’m apolitical. I find, I find good things on both sides. I find things
1:08:06 that on the left that I think that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s correct. And I find things on the
1:08:09 right, especially as it relates to some things around business that I think, okay, that’s,
1:08:13 I think that’s the best thing. And I look at both sides, I think objectively,
1:08:17 and I’m saying I think because I never really know my own biases. And I think you’re both
1:08:20 lying about each other. And this is the kind of world we’ve gotten into now where,
1:08:26 as you say, it’s like, there’s no, there’s no hope for truth anymore, it seems.
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1:09:29 Is Trump charismatic? The most charismatic. Yeah. So
1:09:37 if we interpret charisma as the ability to succeed based on force of personality, right,
1:09:42 if that’s one view of it, the ability to influence and succeed, you have to give it to people that
1:09:47 you might not agree with. And Donald Trump absolutely gets that. So does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
1:09:52 for the record, right? These people that are not there for their technical prowess, but are there
1:09:58 for their ability to speak, definitely. I think what I’ve heard is that he’s likable in person,
1:10:02 like a lot of people that meet him like him. And he has this thing that I haven’t totally identified
1:10:08 that drives the left crazy, but it needs to be, rather than being demonized, I think it needs,
1:10:14 I want to explore it. I want to understand what it is, is he’s like very tough to stay mad at
1:10:22 in the sense that what he did, he’s repeatedly in his base forgiven for things that would have
1:10:26 been upsetting to them and would be upsetting if any other Republican said or did the things that
1:10:32 he does. There is a relationship, I think, that he has with Shane. And so if you look, it’s like
1:10:38 the first debate that he ever did. Boom, here comes the question. You call women fat pigs,
1:10:42 you know, this is career ender right here. What are you going to say? You’ve called women, you
1:10:51 don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals. Your Twitter account. Only Rosie O’Donnell.
1:10:56 Well, the audience erupts and Megyn Kelly can’t get a word and it was an entire campaign of that,
1:11:04 like Teflon, nothing sticks to him. And so you don’t have to like it for there to be something
1:11:07 meaningful there. And I actually want to go back because I think the most impressive thing that
1:11:12 he’s done is not when the presidency. I think the Democrats fielded some less than excellent
1:11:18 candidates, but my God, the way he took over the Republican primaries was insane. Because if you
1:11:22 go back and watch those debates, which I currently am. The first time. The first time. Oh yeah.
1:11:26 I watched it all. Entirely against him. He doesn’t have an audience on his side. There is no one
1:11:32 that is on his side. And to watch him go down the line, take out Jeb, take out Ted, take out Marco,
1:11:39 and win the entire audience blow by blow is fascinating to me. You’re someone that analyzes
1:11:45 this. Yeah. So what did you, because I’ve watched all of those debates. In fact, I’ve watched them
1:11:48 so many times. Those Republican debates with Jeb and his weak energy. And
1:11:53 I can’t remember what he was calling Ted Cruz. It’s like Lion Cruz or something.
1:11:59 Lion Ted. I’ve watched all of those, but you watch it and you go, this is atypical behavior.
1:12:02 This is not how to be a president. What is he doing right there?
1:12:09 I think that is the thing. He is like, he is him through and through. Like there’s not a crack
1:12:15 in him. And so many times this is a, when people criticize you or criticize anybody,
1:12:19 one of the things you’ll see is, let’s say that there’s a comedian and they’re on stage
1:12:25 and somebody’s heckling and say, you can’t tell that joke. That’s bad. If you crack in that moment,
1:12:30 more of the audience says, ooh, I don’t know if you should have said that. But when you double
1:12:34 down and triple down and triple down and endlessly down, you actually take more people with you.
1:12:41 And this guy doesn’t crack. Anytime he’s attacked, I don’t think he has defense
1:12:45 in his repertoire. Like every time it’s offense. So whenever somebody comes at him,
1:12:49 he doesn’t respond, he barely responds. That’s not true. He goes, you should see what he’s doing.
1:12:54 It’s always, always offense. He’s willing to brawl in those situations. And I think
1:13:00 we are animals. There is a, especially in that Republican primary with people like Jeb,
1:13:06 there’s a simple thing of like, oh, this guy just owned that, right? He just completely made him seem
1:13:12 like a child who was interacting with an adult. Like as he whimpered away or trailed off, this is
1:13:18 something that I teach people is when you’re speaking, just as a matter of habit, and you can,
1:13:22 you can break this rule once you’ve established it. But if you’re a shy person, finish your sentence
1:13:28 before you let someone cut you off. Find a period. And then the other person can jump in. But if you’re,
1:13:34 but if we’re talking and you jump in that, and I just switch trail away, it’s, has this sense of
1:13:39 fragility, weakness, and it encourages people to speak over you. If you look especially at the
1:13:44 first debate, the people that he was arguing against got run off constantly. And they, they
1:13:49 hoped that the moderator would bring them back into the debate. And it’s not ideal that politics
1:13:54 works like that, but it was, it was a bludgeoning game. It was just like, he makes these people look
1:14:01 weak in front of them as he, as he dictates the pace and what’s going to happen. And he’s not
1:14:06 listening to anybody and the audience starts lining up behind him. It was, yeah, I have to
1:14:10 go back and the video will have much more precise moments of this, but that is what I’ve seen is
1:14:16 just, I’ve started to compile things. So that was the second. That’s the second of the charisma.
1:14:21 We’re going to do this. Number three. Well, so I’m glad that we’re doing into disorder because
1:14:26 it gets the caveats out of the way, which is the third one is I have impeccable honesty and integrity.
1:14:31 And you can see how exactly what we were talking about is like, well, not really,
1:14:36 there’s, there’s ways in which power moves, not always following honesty and integrity.
1:14:40 But when I think of that deeper form of charisma, the kind where like
1:14:45 Socrates, Jesus, you know, like the, the, the people that are not just charismatic for time,
1:14:50 but are charismatic forever. And we look to his paragons of who we want to be and have this
1:14:56 leadership quality that is not just transactional, but moves people to become better versions
1:14:59 of themselves, which is ultimately what I aspire to. And I suppose I’ve used charisma in two
1:15:04 different terms. One is, can you influence? And the other is, do you awaken the best in people?
1:15:10 If we’re using that second term, I am honest and I have high integrity is fundamental to that
1:15:17 because what I found is that even if you tell small lies, for instance, you’re running late,
1:15:21 you text your friend, I’m on the way, you’re not on the way, you got to brush your teeth,
1:15:28 you got to get ready. You train this learning in yourself that is sometimes I lie. Sometimes
1:15:32 I’m not to be trusted. And when you lie, sometimes you hurt your ability to speak with conviction
1:15:37 all the time. Cause there’s some part of your brain that is going, am I telling the truth?
1:15:43 Am I saying the, the real thing? Cause sometimes I don’t. And so it influences your capacity to
1:15:46 influence with conviction and for people to know that you stand by your belief.
1:15:52 What’s really interesting is something, exactly what you’ve said, I noticed in a friend of mine,
1:15:59 and I had to say, we’re really great friends and we’ve been friends for a long, long time. But
1:16:05 I can’t trust you because I see you telling small lies to other people.
1:16:10 That’s so brave of you. Which makes me think that you tell, when you speak to me, I have to
1:16:15 figure out what the truth is. And this is, this is a, this is something which I think ties into
1:16:20 point three here, which is if you observe someone willing to tell tiny lies to other people,
1:16:26 even exaggerating stories, knowingly, when you know the truth, you know that X didn’t happen,
1:16:30 you go, oh my God, maybe the things they tell me as well aren’t true.
1:16:34 Yeah. So it arose, it arose it in all different places. One of the things that I didn’t catch
1:16:40 early on that you just brought up was I sometimes had like, there were things that I wouldn’t say,
1:16:44 but I wouldn’t have that conversation with a friend. I wouldn’t bring that to them.
1:16:50 And that is a lapse in integrity because that’s, look, I have this opinion, I have this feeling,
1:16:53 I hear someone I care about, but I’m not going to say it to you because I don’t want to create
1:16:57 friction or I don’t want to do this. I’m not going to lie to you about it. I’m not going to tell you,
1:16:59 I trust you implicitly, but I’m just not going to bring it up.
1:17:01 It took me nine years to get to that point with this person.
1:17:08 It’s hard. It’s very hard. But when you do that, God, the, it is such a deep form of love. It is
1:17:15 such a deep form of respect and it respects the deepest part of that person, which is, I know
1:17:21 that these, these are your behaviors, but there’s a you in there that is deeper than these habits
1:17:25 that you have. And I want to speak to that person because I want you to know that I would like
1:17:28 to connect with you and I would like to trust you, but I can’t because of this. I think that is
1:17:32 an aspect of friendship that is often overlooked, which is you’ve got your friends that you have
1:17:37 fun with, you’ve got your friends that celebrate you, you know, which friends do you have that will
1:17:42 lovingly pull you aside and tell you these sorts of things. There are usually vanishingly few
1:17:48 and when, when you get them, if you’re someone who watches this show, probably it’s deeply
1:17:51 appreciated, especially when it’s done in a loving and respectful way. So when you can be that for
1:17:56 someone else, it’s like, it’s yeah, so it’s a relationship maker. But you’re right. And what
1:18:00 you said earlier, I have to be the one that leads with it. What’s that phrase you used?
1:18:02 Well, that’s the six one. Yeah.
1:18:08 It’s a number four. It’s a number four. I don’t need to convince anyone of anything.
1:18:16 Interesting. Yeah. So a lot of times we think, I need this girl to like me. I need to make the
1:18:21 sale. If this employee joins the company, it’s going to be great. You know, I need, I need this
1:18:27 particular individual to like me. All the tips and tricks and mindsets and whatever it is that
1:18:33 we’re talking about today, I hope you take broadly to your life to increase the percentage, to increase
1:18:38 the odds that are something good. But with any particular individual, you do not want to drop
1:18:43 into convincing them. You want to live invitationally to people. There’s an invitation to connect.
1:18:47 There’s an invitation to sell. I’m willing to go there and tell you more about the product.
1:18:51 I’m willing to share more about the things that I care about. But when you get stuck on convincing
1:18:59 people, they feel that there’s something missing in you that needs something from them, right?
1:19:04 And when you do that, particularly with loose connections, it’s very alienating.
1:19:09 Now, there are times when it’s, this isn’t about convincing where it’s appropriate in a relationship
1:19:12 with like a husband and a wife to communicate clearly your needs. This doesn’t mean you
1:19:17 convince them, but it means you do state what you’re wanting and needing in the relationship.
1:19:20 But there is like convincing is when you won’t drop it, when you won’t put it down, that you
1:19:26 won’t accept someone’s answer as it is. And much more important than convincing is filtering.
1:19:29 And this is, you know, you could have tried to convince everyone in your initial friend group
1:19:32 that they should all be entrepreneurs. They should all do this and you’d still be there
1:19:37 today working on getting the next person to agree you have no businesses and no podcast.
1:19:43 But when you stop trying to convince and you reveal yourself, make invitations, I’m going
1:19:47 this way who would like to come with me. I’m selling this product who would like to buy it.
1:19:50 Yes, I’m going to learn how to talk about it in a compelling and interesting way that speaks
1:19:54 directly to your problems, but I’m not going to convince you. So much more powerful.
1:19:59 This is like a pretty incredible sales tip. I was thinking about even on marketing copy,
1:20:02 when you’re trying to sell something, if you’re trying to force it down someone’s throat versus
1:20:07 inviting them, if they’re the right type of person for it, to give it a try.
1:20:10 And it’s the long game too. Like the short game is I need to make rent this month,
1:20:14 I need to make a sale. And we all have situations in our life where we feel that pressure.
1:20:19 But if you build your business or your relationships from this level of I’m not going
1:20:24 to convince anybody, the sustainability of them is so much better. Because now you don’t have
1:20:27 relationships that require you to be like, come on, come out tonight, you know, you want to,
1:20:30 you want to do that, you have people that opt in when they want to and can step aside when they
1:20:34 don’t. And your relationships flow much more organically when you drop the convincing.
1:20:37 With or without you energy. Yes.
1:20:39 People talk about that. Yes. Yes. Invitational.
1:20:41 Yeah. Invitational energy.
1:20:48 So the fifth is that I proactively share my purpose. And I think this podcast like
1:20:54 sets people up to do that in an excellent way. But this is where I talk about early in the
1:20:58 interaction. There’s so many times where we just don’t talk about what we care about. We talk
1:21:02 about the small talk, we talk about the weather or the baseball team, making sure that you are
1:21:08 sharing with people the things that you care most deeply about and that you’re here to do is so
1:21:13 powerful. So high charisma. I believe high charisma. If you think, I don’t know if you remember the
1:21:17 show, but it was very influential to me, there were these guys that buried life a long time ago
1:21:23 when MTV used to run TV shows. And they were guys who had this their own bucket list. And on every
1:21:27 episode, they would go scratch an item off of their bucket list. And at the end, they would help a
1:21:30 stranger in the street. They would say, what’s an item on your bucket list? And they would do that
1:21:35 with them. And in their second season, one of their bucket list items was play basketball with
1:21:41 Obama. And so they walked around Washington DC and just said, Hey, we have this thing where the
1:21:44 buried life, we want to play basketball with Obama, we’re trying to prove that you can live
1:21:48 your dream. Can you help? And they just went bang, bang, bang down the line. And within like three
1:21:54 days, they’re in a senator’s office, right? Just from sharing, this is what I’m doing. This is
1:21:58 what I care about. Can you help? They didn’t have anything to exchange. They didn’t have anything
1:22:03 other than the participation in a dream. And when you are connected to your dream,
1:22:07 like the real one, not the one that’s like, I want to make enough money. But the one that is,
1:22:12 Oh my God, that’s like, I want to prove to people that anything is possible and it’s real.
1:22:17 People like to participate in that. They like to give help in order to do that. So what wound up
1:22:25 happening is that the senator reached out, they set up a meeting and Barack flaked. He flaked.
1:22:30 He didn’t show yet something come up. So they aired the episode and they never got to play with him,
1:22:38 except episode airs, Barack’s in the White House with MTV on in the background. And he sees these
1:22:42 guys, the buried life, talking about how they want to play basketball with Obama. And he contacts
1:22:46 his aid. He says, why haven’t I played basketball with these guys yet? And the same aid who had
1:22:49 heard, he said, well, you had something come up that day, we couldn’t do it. He says, get them out
1:22:53 here. And so they went and they played basketball at the White House with Barack Obama. And it came
1:22:59 from just sharing their purpose with people. Is that what manifestation is? I think
1:23:04 if manifestation is just thinking happy thoughts and waiting for them to happen,
1:23:12 that to me is, is wishful thinking. But yeah, if it’s putting your energy and your intent
1:23:18 and your request for support behind the thing that is most important to you, like that’s,
1:23:23 that’s the reality of manifestation. And I think that’s why a lot of people like Conor McGregor,
1:23:27 you know, when they, when they hit these places, they talk about the power of manifestation,
1:23:31 I think are often misinterpreted because it’s not just seeing it or thinking about it. It’s
1:23:38 putting your full life force behind it, reaching out, asking for help, and contributing your part
1:23:45 of the pie as well. I love that. Yeah. I love that. It’s really, really important. Number six.
1:23:49 Number six, we’ve said this one before I go first in humanizing the interaction.
1:23:56 Humanizing the interaction? Yes, which is to say, whenever you’re with a group of people,
1:24:02 there is an expected social norm, right? And it is usually less than people wish that it was. It’s
1:24:07 the thing that you described earlier as I wish that my employees would get to what’s really going on.
1:24:13 And it’s the ability to be the first one, like I told the story about my brother to crack the joke
1:24:19 about the dragon name tag, right? And that made everybody in the event funnier. Now they don’t
1:24:22 want to crack jokes and they don’t want to be playful. It’s the ability to give a compliment
1:24:26 first. Sometimes people are afraid that it’ll disrupt their status if they’re too complimentary.
1:24:31 And we did talk about how at the beginning of an interaction, it’s useful to establish fun,
1:24:39 trust, and respect, but then feel free to pour it on, right? Compliments, and then vulnerability,
1:24:45 going first, sharing the vulnerable thing. There’s a fine line, of course, between trauma-dumpching
1:24:51 and just outpouring without checking if the other person is with you and wanting to go there with
1:24:56 you. But yeah, to dive into the thing that is unsettled in you or that hurts or that you’re
1:25:03 working on and you’re not sure about, man, we go there first. It’s like the room transforms
1:25:08 around that. It’s like everyone’s like, oh, me too. Yeah, I’m also struggling. Yeah, I also wish
1:25:12 we could laugh more. Yeah, I also am really, I love that person’s sense of style, but didn’t want to
1:25:17 be weird and say so. So when you go first and humanizing the interaction, it is the essence
1:25:24 of leadership. Sharing your imperfections. I saw this in one of your videos. That’s kind of what
1:25:28 you were talking about there, right? It’s been willing to show the chinks in your own armor.
1:25:30 Yes, it is.
1:25:39 I think a lot of people like me have an idea that charisma is looking like someone else that they
1:25:44 admire. It is, and they don’t know that person’s internal dialogue, right? They don’t know all
1:25:50 the internal question is going on side of them. And when instead you can start with where you are,
1:25:54 which some people will ask me, how do I deal with anxiety? And one of the things that I’ve
1:25:57 said, and I’ve done it a handful of times on this podcast, is speak to it. Like, I felt nervous
1:26:02 when I was coming in here. Like, if the thing comes up inside of you and it feels like you can’t
1:26:08 say it, give it a risk. Say it. It often creates a depth of connection that you wouldn’t be
1:26:14 anticipating. What about humor being funny? Being funny? So we haven’t talked about this, but there’s,
1:26:20 I think, about charismatic types of people. The five types that I think of are high conviction,
1:26:27 authentic, funny, empathetic, and energetic. And so basically, high conviction are people that
1:26:31 they’re that belief storm that when they encounter you, they just win. That’s Conor McGregor. Like,
1:26:36 he’s 19 years old, pimple-faced guy saying he’s going to be a champion of the world without a
1:26:42 waiver in his eye. Steve Jobs, the story of Mike Scully, who was one of his chief officers who
1:26:44 came and worked for him. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it. Do you know what he said to
1:26:49 him? What did he say? So they’re having a meeting and Scully is not going to join. And he says,
1:26:55 “Do you want to sell flavored sugar for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and
1:27:00 change the world?” And Scully was at Pepsi at the time? Yeah, he was at Pepsi. And so he says,
1:27:08 “And this belief that I’m going to change the world and this solidness behind it,
1:27:13 that’s high conviction.” Donald Trump is high conviction, right? When he loses electionism,
1:27:19 lose elections, right? It’s a level of certainty that he’s going to win that it’s just next level.
1:27:24 So that’s one type of charisma. It’s incredibly powerful. There’s downsides to it. It can be
1:27:28 difficult to integrate feedback. And I think you’ve seen that with like Conor McGregor.
1:27:34 When you develop high conviction, it’s also really important to have some areas of your life
1:27:39 where you’re able to listen and we’re able to integrate feedback. Anyway, there’s the authentic
1:27:44 type. I think Trump has a degree of this as well. This is number two, right? It’s number two.
1:27:49 But the way that I’m… It’s a different kind of authenticity, I suppose, than Trump, which is
1:27:55 I trust this person exactly to say what they think in front of me, whether I like it or I don’t.
1:28:01 And I think Joe Rogan got big off the back of this. If Joe disagrees with that guy,
1:28:08 he’s not going to be rude to him, but you’re going to know about it, right? He is going to have
1:28:13 his comedian friend on that he wants to have on because he wants to have him on. And when you
1:28:17 do authenticity over a period of time, it creates just unshakable trust. Like, I’ve seen this person
1:28:22 do things that could be damaging to our relationship and just continue to move forward. So I know
1:28:26 that they’re not trying to please me with their behavior. And I can trust the things that they
1:28:31 say and I can trust the things that they do and I can rely on them. I feel safe to rely on them.
1:28:36 That’s the authentic type. Third type is funny. These are your comedians. These people are just
1:28:41 fun to be around. Like, you hang out with them. They’re cracking jokes the whole time. They bring
1:28:44 a levity. Everyone else is talking literally and they’re going to bring in something that is just
1:28:49 non-literal. So any comedian is going to fit this. You’re Kevin Hartz. You’re whoever. Take your pick.
1:28:55 Empathetic to me, Oprah is the paragon, but I think you have, you have become the Oprah of the
1:29:02 podcasting world in many ways. That’s a massive compliment. But empathetic people are, they do
1:29:10 really, really well one-on-one. And they, they help other people to feel seen, right? To ask a
1:29:14 question with a sincerity that makes the other person share the thing that they might not have
1:29:20 shared in many other groups. And we all deeply want to feel safe to share ourselves, but we
1:29:24 don’t because we’re in louder groups or all different sorts of things. So when we get in
1:29:30 contact with an empathetic person, they might not talk very much, but man, do we leave liking
1:29:36 that person. Like, he had a great conversation. We need to do that again. And then the last
1:29:42 one is your energetic type. This is probably the easiest one to add. I think of early Will Smith.
1:29:47 I think of the way that people walk onto talk shows where they would come on to Jimmy Fallon
1:29:53 dancing onto the stage or something like that. This is an individual who may not be very witty
1:29:58 with their humor, but they make people smile because the energy that they bring to an interaction
1:30:03 is just like two degrees higher than you would expect. Right? So it’s, he doesn’t need to be
1:30:07 like funny. Ha ha can crack a joke, but the guy who’s first on the dance floor at the wedding is
1:30:14 you know, committed to the thing. That’s energetic. And I think Jack Black is someone who has a
1:30:18 comment. He is funny. Like he can crack a joke, but the energy that he brings to everything he
1:30:24 does is what sells it. So this comes from commitment to the bit, right? You don’t like start off
1:30:28 dancing like this and then look around and realize nobody likes it and stop. It’s if you’re,
1:30:32 if you’re able to sustain a level of energy, enthusiasm and positivity that is one or two
1:30:37 degrees higher than the people in the room. At first there’s like, I don’t know. And then they,
1:30:43 they join in because everybody wants to relax and dance and feel better or at least to witness
1:30:47 people doing that. And when it’s committed, that’s when it really, really works. So when I think about
1:30:52 these five charisma types that you talk about, you could be several of them and you could potentially
1:30:59 be all of them. Yeah. So someone could be high conviction, authentic, funny, energetic and empathetic.
1:31:04 Sure. And is that like the holy grail? That’s like the singularity where universe explodes.
1:31:09 No, you’re right. You could be, you could be all of these. I do find the conviction
1:31:14 and empathetic tend to move in opposites of one another. Like I wouldn’t expect Conor McGregor
1:31:20 to like hold space for me very well. So they’re, but that’s not required, right? You can have a
1:31:26 degree of conviction. Obama. He struck me as being high conviction at times. Yes, we can.
1:31:30 Yeah. And also empathetic when he cried on the stage after the Sandy Hook thing.
1:31:35 I think he’s a great example of, of those moving up together. He’s so authentic. He’s funny. Yeah.
1:31:42 Energetic. I guess, I mean, he was, he riled people up. He, I mean, he’s a generational talent as a
1:31:47 politician. He’s, yeah. So he’s, he’s definitely next level. That’s the other thing. I’ve started to
1:31:52 look back at some of the presidents that we’ve had and we’ve had some statesmen that have been,
1:31:56 you can have your opinion on them. But when I look at the people that have won, they’re the
1:32:01 charisma candidate in a lot of the cases. Isn’t it crazy? I don’t think it’s that crazy. That’s the
1:32:08 thing. We tend to overlook it and then pretend that we live in a world based on rubric merit,
1:32:12 as opposed to this is literally a popularity contest. How did this person make me feel?
1:32:16 Yeah. How do I feel when I’m around them? Or how do I feel when I witness them on stage?
1:32:20 Do I believe that I can trust them without ever having had a one-to-one conversation?
1:32:24 So Obama’s, he’s a charisma freak. He’s, he’s incredibly high charisma.
1:32:28 What you just said there just goes to highlight how important these skills are,
1:32:32 because if you can rise to the top of society and become the leader of the free world by mastering
1:32:39 charisma, like they, that his job or like me as a podcaster, it just goes to show that like talent
1:32:48 and merit and skills and maybe even my education are secondary to my ability to make people feel
1:32:54 a certain way. I think in most, I think, let me see if this is true. It’s certainly true in LA,
1:33:00 to a ridiculous level. But even in the industry that I was in, which was consulting,
1:33:10 I wound up getting off-cycle raises, preferential treatment, though even decades later I feel
1:33:14 strange saying it on camera. And it was, like I said, there were, there were better analysts
1:33:19 than me. There were guys that I liked that I went to to help me with my work. And it was not
1:33:24 because I was the best analyst. It was because I had established relationships with people that
1:33:29 liked me and wanted me to do well. And it’s obvious. What is nepotism other than familial
1:33:34 connection, right? And so if you just remove the family from it, that’s charisma. That’s this
1:33:39 person cares and wants me to do well and likes me, but it’s not nepotism. It’s something else.
1:33:42 It’s, it’s a charismatic connection that you have with that person.
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1:35:44 in the description below. How do I use this idea of charisma and body language and interpersonal
1:35:50 skills to improve my prospects in work, whether that’s in an interview setting for a new job,
1:35:55 or if I’m looking for a promotion? So the first thing that I always thought about with interviews
1:35:59 and trained people to think about was the interview does not start when you land in the room with
1:36:05 that person who has got the piece of paper in front of them with your resume. When you leave
1:36:10 your house, if you’re taking an Uber, you need to talk to the Uber driver, right? You need to get
1:36:14 warm. You need to get comfortable. You need to get those vocal cords moving. You need to
1:36:18 be dynamic. When you enter the building, if it’s a large building and it has a security guard,
1:36:22 one more sentence. Remember, “Hey, how’s it going? You see a lot of fresh faces in here, you know?”
1:36:26 Hopefully, this is not the last time you see me. That type of a thing, it just makes you feel a
1:36:31 little bit more comfortable. Instead of reviewing whatever technical stuff that you think you need
1:36:35 to know, that needs to be dropped before the interview. That’s either in there or it’s not,
1:36:41 like, 15, 30 minutes in advance. Then you go upstairs. There’s a secretary, same thing. There’s
1:36:45 other candidates, same thing. By the time you sit down across from that person, you’re warm.
1:36:50 You’re ready to go and you’re not starting from zero in order to be an engaging human,
1:36:53 because there are going to be those initial questions. “Did you get in all right? Did you do
1:36:58 this?” Just a little bit, a little bit extra, and it’s going to be attuned to the situation,
1:37:02 but it’ll come through. And you’ve opened a couple of tabs on the way here, right? Exactly,
1:37:06 like, “How’d you get in?” And be like, “Yeah, I met Rick at the door. He’s awesome.”
1:37:14 That’s going to help. So that’s the number one thing. And then in interviews, you don’t know
1:37:18 what questions you’re going to get asked, but if you can take what you’re going to get asked and
1:37:25 put it into a story format and have a beginning, middle, and an end that has an up, down, up sort
1:37:28 of curve to it. And what I mean is that they’re going to say, “Tell me about something that you
1:37:32 really struggled with in your career.” And if in advance, you have thought through your career
1:37:37 and you have the three big moments that happen to you, which is you took over this project,
1:37:40 you quit this job and left, moved to this one, and you did this other thing.
1:37:46 And then you backwards figure out the story of those. And so the story has this
1:37:50 agitating, you know, it’s got the, you established that I was working at this company,
1:37:54 and then there was a problem. And then you agitate the problem. It was really bad and no one could
1:38:00 solve it. No one could figure it out. And so I did X, Y, and Z. And as a result, it turned out
1:38:05 really well. And then this other thing happened. You get three to five of those things that you
1:38:08 know are your core stories. You have no idea what questions are coming, but I promise you,
1:38:13 you’re going to slot those five things into it. So you don’t need, you will not be surprised
1:38:17 in the moment if there’s a question that you haven’t prepared for or heard, because probably
1:38:21 there’s a story when it comes to, this is the fit portion of the interview, that you can just,
1:38:25 you have your story ready. And it demonstrates any of the values that you think this company
1:38:29 wants, which is I’m tenacious, I work hard, I know the industry and I can work well with people.
1:38:34 That’s built into your stories. And then one tip is that at the end of an interview,
1:38:39 there’s always that moment where they say, do you have any questions for us? And what I’ve seen
1:38:42 sitting on the other side of the table is people either ask a question they don’t really have,
1:38:46 because they feel like they’re supposed to, or they say, no, I don’t have any questions.
1:38:51 And it’s just a missed opportunity. And so this one, I have to give credit to my co-founder.
1:38:56 He came up with, and this is one of the things I did not anticipate. I got the most
1:39:01 positive responses, like I got the job because of this question type of a thing. And the question is,
1:39:08 okay, so let’s say that this interview went really well. And a year from now, I got the job and
1:39:13 you’re looking back, what would I have had to have done in order for you to feel like it was a good
1:39:18 decision? Like what things will I have had to have done in that role? And so typically the person
1:39:23 goes, I like that. That’s a really good question. And it does a handful of things. One, you’ve gotten
1:39:27 them to imagine the interview going really well and them hiring you, right? And then second,
1:39:34 they’re going to lay out for you exactly what you need to do in the role to excel. And that is
1:39:38 something that every boss wants. It’s like, I want you interested in knowing what I need from
1:39:43 you in order to do a good job. And you can take that same principle and you could bring it into
1:39:48 conversations if you want to get a raise sooner than you think you were going to. To go in and
1:39:52 say, hey, you know, I’d like to get a raise. You can make it clear. I’d like to do it faster than
1:39:57 usual. But I want to make sure that it’s totally worth it for you. So six months from now or eight
1:40:02 months from now, in order for me to get this raise, what would I have had to have done for it to be
1:40:08 a no-brainer obvious to you that this was valuable? And then they will go and tell you the things that
1:40:11 you could do. And if it’s a company that says, no, you can’t, maybe you don’t want to work there.
1:40:16 But they’ll just give you the playbook and then do those things, keep up with that person.
1:40:21 And you’re now off track for promotions, right? You’re not just doing whatever they say. And
1:40:25 the bummer is you might have done those things anyway, but if you don’t have the conversation in
1:40:28 advance, they’re not going to give you a raise in most cases. So interesting because this could be
1:40:34 applied to like anybody in any role that is selling anything. I’m thinking of a personal trainer who
1:40:38 meets their client on the first day and says, six months from now, what would I have done to have
1:40:43 made you happy? Or what I’m thinking of marketing industries, agencies, turning to their clients
1:40:46 at the start and saying, if we’re still working together in 12 months and you’re really happy,
1:40:50 what would I have done? And they’ll lay out exactly how they want to be treated and their
1:40:56 expectations. So you can meet and exceed them. Yes. And it shows that you care in that initial
1:41:02 moment. You mentioned something earlier on, which you said you were in South America and you thought
1:41:09 your life was going to be focused on figuring out how to pick up women. What are women attracted
1:41:14 to in your opinion? I know this is somewhat stereotyping and generalized, but are there
1:41:20 anything that as a man, I could do to make myself more attracted to a woman and vice versa?
1:41:26 When I see men approach women, particularly in the US, every culture is different. I’ve lived a
1:41:30 number of different places. There’s that moment where they’re just sussing out, does he feel
1:41:35 like he has a right to speak to me or not? And sometimes they’re not immediately warm. And by
1:41:39 immediately, I mean in the first five seconds. And there’s a difference between the guys that
1:41:43 I’ve seen get more comfortable and they just ride that five to 10 to 15 seconds out. And then the
1:41:48 women are laughing and the guys that take that first initial bit of sheeting, initially like love
1:41:54 everything that I said. And then they go, okay, and they walk away. So conviction is a huge, huge
1:42:00 piece of it. I think another big element is that a lot of guys come in with just men, they have
1:42:04 these boring habits. And I don’t think they can conceive of what it’s like to be a woman and get
1:42:10 asked the same boring thing 10 million times. And this is true on dating apps. And it’s true
1:42:16 in the bar. So on dating apps, it’s pay, right? Or something like that. In a bar, it’s, do you come
1:42:23 here often? It’s, what is your major or something like that? So having any sort of initial line
1:42:28 that is just not that, right? Make it true. You don’t need to tell a fake story. But the one
1:42:33 that I fell back on in so many different social circumstances was, Hey, I don’t think I’ve met
1:42:37 you yet. I’m Charlie. And the one, the reason I love this is one that’s portable, it can be a house
1:42:42 party, it can be a bar, it can be whatever. But unspoken in that is that I’m the type of person
1:42:48 who knows a lot of people here, which I didn’t say that. But it comes through in that. It’s like,
1:42:53 I’m the man that is, I’m the man about town. Like, I know different people here. So that was
1:42:58 always just an easy one to have. And I think to have that in your back pocket is very helpful.
1:43:02 But in terms of what they want, the first thing is just general human attraction. And this isn’t
1:43:07 like, I want to sleep with you. I want to marry you. It’s just, do I want to engage in conversation
1:43:11 with you? Do you have an interesting story? Do you, am I excusing myself at the first
1:43:17 minute to go to the bathroom? First chance I get, is she filling in gaps and conversation with her
1:43:21 own contributions? Or do you have to carry the entire load yourself? That’s how you know if
1:43:25 you have that basic human attraction. Doesn’t mean that she likes you or wants to be with you,
1:43:29 just means that she’s down to converse and interact with you. The second thing that
1:43:34 is probably the one that most guys miss is, do you authentically have and have you communicated
1:43:39 to her that you have standards beyond her being beautiful? And for most men, this is just a no.
1:43:45 This is, unfortunately, if they look back on their lives and they go, okay, has there ever
1:43:52 been a time where I was physically attracted to someone and she did something that made me go,
1:43:57 okay, I’m not interested anymore, whether it was be rude to a waiter or unkind or cold,
1:44:01 or just not have fun in the way that I would like to have fun, which doesn’t mean she’s a bad person,
1:44:06 just means she’s not a match for me. So many men, especially when they’re younger,
1:44:11 don’t have standards. They have that one standard. So the weird thing about that is,
1:44:16 it feels like, oh, well, if I have a standard, I have a smaller group of people that are
1:44:21 going to work with me. But actually, women want to be liked for more than their looks.
1:44:28 People want to be appreciated for their insight, for who they are as a person. And if you can’t
1:44:33 feel and communicate that, oh man, I often go out, I don’t meet people that I have as much
1:44:37 fun with as you. You’re so funny. Or like, I love how affectionate you are. Most people
1:44:40 wouldn’t come onto the dance floor with me and we’re the only ones out here or whatever it is.
1:44:46 If you can communicate to her that you have a standard that she is hitting and that is making
1:44:52 you aware that you’re a match for her, it shifts that power balance from she’s on a pedestal because
1:44:56 she’s beautiful and I’m going to pursue her the whole time, to genuinely you come in and you’re
1:45:01 actually filtering for these things. So you will be subconsciously wanting to find the person who’s
1:45:05 going to go cut up the dance floor with you, or trying to find the person that is affectionate
1:45:11 as opposed to the person who is a bit colder. Is there an element to this as well where people
1:45:17 will shit test you? Like they will test to see if you have standards. Yes. Yes. Because if men and
1:45:22 women, so I will subtly, because I heard about this thing called shit testing, where like someone
1:45:27 will subtly mistreat you to see how you react. Yeah. And if you react in that moment and you just
1:45:31 kind of accept it and tolerate it, they’ll therefore treat you in the future in the same way,
1:45:35 but also they will be less attracted to you and viewers lower status. Whereas some,
1:45:43 she might show up 45 minutes late and if you’re still sat there, then that in and of itself
1:45:48 is showing that you’ll kind of tolerate anything and that she’s, or he is higher standard, higher
1:45:53 status than you. Yeah. At the beginning of one of my relationships that wound up being a multi-year
1:46:00 relationship, but we were just sort of getting started. And I remember we had plans to meet on
1:46:05 a Sunday night and I had been very amenable up until this point. She canceled and I said,
1:46:10 no problem, you know, canceled, no problem. And I saw what was happening. I’m breaking my own rule.
1:46:15 I’m being, I’m moving plans in order to make space with her. And so we have a thing Sunday
1:46:21 night. It’s nine PM. We’re supposed to meet at 10. She calls me and says that, sorry, I can’t come.
1:46:26 I’m with my family and I’m gonna, you know, I just can’t make it. Also, unfortunately this week,
1:46:30 you know, I have this thing on Monday and this other thing Tuesday and then I have work Thursday,
1:46:34 Friday night. So the only way that I can see you this week is, is going to be Wednesday night.
1:46:39 And I had earlier that day made plans to go out with my friends on Wednesday night.
1:46:42 And though it was a challenge for me, I thought about this earlier and I said,
1:46:46 oh, that’s a bummer. Then I don’t think I’m going to be able to see you this week.
1:46:51 She said, what, what do you, what do you mean? I have plans on Wednesday.
1:46:56 Well, what, then we’re not going to be able to see each other. And she starts getting
1:47:00 upset and nervous. I don’t know what to tell you. I just am not free on Wednesday.
1:47:04 Okay. Let me call you back. And she goes, she calls me back in 15 minutes.
1:47:08 Okay. I’m going to come over. Oh my God. You just reminded me of so many investment conversations
1:47:11 I’ve had with founders who pitch me their business and an email me and go, Steve,
1:47:15 we’ve got a million pounds left in this round. You can put the million in, but we need to know
1:47:19 in three days time because we’ve got so much interest. And I remember one over the Christmas
1:47:23 break where I said, don’t worry about it. I can’t, I can’t give you an answer in three days.
1:47:28 I take two weeks to speak to my team, do some analysis, do diligence. I come back two weeks
1:47:33 later and I go, we’re not interested. Is there any way you might be interested, please? I’ve just,
1:47:37 hey, you told me there was three days for me to make a decision at first,
1:47:40 but I told you I didn’t want to do that. I took two weeks. I came back and said, no.
1:47:45 And now you’re chasing me. Yeah. And it’s so interesting how, but you can’t,
1:47:54 the problem with this as advice is it has to be true. Yes. This is don’t play, I mean games.
1:48:00 Okay. You can, at first I understand you’re 18. You’ve got nothing on your social calendar.
1:48:04 You technically are available every minute of the day to be with this girl that you would
1:48:08 really like to be with. The advice is often just say no that you can’t hang out when she does it,
1:48:14 which I think is very confusing. Instead, fill your calendar. You like start to build your life
1:48:20 outside of this thing. If you’re this business, get other options on the table, have other balls
1:48:25 in the air that are going for you. So it’s a hack, but starting to calendar your social life,
1:48:28 which is not something I like to be very flexible. But when you have that,
1:48:33 it actually makes you much more charismatic. And I see this all the time. So there is something to
1:48:38 this. Don’t play the game. You don’t need to fake it. But if you find that this is not working
1:48:42 in your life, start to take steps to fill your calendar. Even if one night is like on Tuesdays,
1:48:48 I watch this TV show and then take a luxurious bath after like, no, sorry, I can’t do it Tuesday.
1:48:51 And this can all get adjusted when you’re in a relationship and it’s ongoing. There’s a given
1:48:57 take that is of course going to occur. But man, yeah, there is, there’s these power games that
1:49:04 people play. There’s these, these who is more in demand. And like it or not, it has an impact.
1:49:10 I went through some of your best performing videos of all time on your channel. And it was
1:49:14 interesting that I could see kind of themes in them, right? I could see the several of the best
1:49:21 performing videos had similar themes. And one of the really prominent themes was five habits
1:49:26 that make people instantly dislike you. So that’s a video about Brie Larson. And around the time
1:49:30 of the Avengers Captain Marvel thing, she had a string of interviews that were pretty alienating
1:49:39 to people. Some of the things that she did, goodness, it was having to win every joke exchange.
1:49:44 They’re talking about, for instance, who’s the most powerful Avenger, right? And they’re sort of
1:49:49 being playful with each other. Like, well, Thor is the most powerful. And she adopts this attitude
1:49:53 of, well, actually, my character would kill yours. And there’s a well actually quality,
1:49:56 like, well, actually, I would win. Actually, I would win. Actually, your character is just a
1:50:03 mere mortal and I would win. And it is like cute once, but it becomes frustrating to have someone
1:50:09 have to win every banter exchange between friends. And so I think people saw that and they saw some
1:50:17 of the reactions of the cast. And so that’s one is like, to have to win every banter exchange and
1:50:24 have a burn that you come out on top of, not a good one. Another one that she did is to interpret
1:50:32 ambiguous communications negatively. So for instance, in this particular video that I did,
1:50:36 she’s on that wired autocomplete interview. And there’s one question that is, does Brie Larson
1:50:42 work out? And in a way that doesn’t to at least to Americans, like clearly communicate sarcasm,
1:50:47 maybe it’s different to Brits, I don’t know. You guys have a different cultural code. She says
1:50:52 something to the effect of like, is that a personal attack? Really? Yeah. And then she doesn’t laugh.
1:50:56 And she also, so there’s two options there. You could say, is that a personal attack?
1:51:02 And then you could laugh, right? Or you could say, is that a personal attack?
1:51:05 Everyone on the internet thinks that I’m so fat, just trying to jump on me. I’m trying to lose
1:51:09 weight. Like you can, you can double and triple down until it’s clear that you’re being absurd.
1:51:14 Yeah. But she said it once. And it came through as hyper defensive. And the thing that I talk about
1:51:19 is you want to interpret ambiguous communications charitably. This is a big one. This is one of
1:51:23 like, if you’ve watched the show, Ted Lasso, this is full of this, people will come up to him. And
1:51:27 I just did a video that had this clip where he’s on the airplane. If you know Ted Lasso,
1:51:32 he’s an American guy going to England and somebody says, you know, you’re, you’re going to coach the
1:51:37 football team, the soccer team for us in England, man, they’re so bad. This is going to go horribly.
1:51:42 You’re a legend. And then he responds, well, you know, I haven’t lost yet. And he’s just got this
1:51:48 general positive demeanor. He takes that ambiguous communication and responds with grace and charm
1:51:55 and doesn’t make it a fight. That works so well. That purposeful misinterpretation of
1:52:00 ambiguations early on that are maybe not the friendliest. This often will take people that are
1:52:03 trying to take digs at you and make them flip. And in the case that somebody was just a bit
1:52:08 socially miscalibrated, it gives them the opportunity to, you know, not be cast as the
1:52:11 bad guy in the interaction. So that was something else that she did wrong.
1:52:17 Interesting. Also, if others are watching the interaction and if you have a bias towards
1:52:22 interpreting the communication well, the person that’s was maybe taking a dig at you is going to
1:52:25 look pretty ridiculous and you’re going to probably come off looking pretty good.
1:52:34 Exactly. Exactly. And when we see people defend themselves against words,
1:52:38 with some exception, when somebody’s like saying that they’re going to hurt you,
1:52:44 it communicates an insecurity and a defensiveness, which is like, why do you need to defend yourself
1:52:49 against the opinions of another, right? Like the Trump thing where he said about only
1:52:53 Rosie O’Donnell. Yes. Yeah. It’s like, I don’t need to defend myself against this. And it
1:52:58 sub communicates that this is not a big deal. More than saying that’s not a big deal.
1:53:03 You are sub communicating that’s not a big deal by not defending it. And that’s what we do when
1:53:07 we actually feel comfortable. Let’s say if somebody were to tease something that you’re not at all
1:53:11 insecure about, I don’t know what it would be. Maybe your business success or something.
1:53:14 They come in and like, yeah, well, you know, it’s even real struggling these days.
1:53:19 You’re going to laugh. You’re going to add on to it. And sometimes a way through this is to tag
1:53:22 the joke that’s made at your expense, which is to add a yes and on top of it.
1:53:26 So if somebody ambiguous interpretation to say, yeah, you know, Steven, these businesses
1:53:30 just aren’t working really well, you’d be like, Oh my God, dude, you have no idea. I’ve been pulling
1:53:33 my hair out with the last few weeks, just like things are falling apart around me.
1:53:39 You can do that because you I’m assuming feel very comfortable with your level of business success.
1:53:44 And when you can, again, there is a difference when you start to sense a pattern in somebody,
1:53:49 that is a different route that you want to take. But if it’s just one banter thing that is at your
1:53:53 expense to double down and make it a joke that you’re in on is often very, very powerful.
1:53:58 Fascinating. I’m going to ask you one last question on this.
1:54:07 One of your best performing videos is titled Speak Like a Leader, Make People Respect You.
1:54:11 In fact, there was two of your top performing videos that were about speaking like a leader,
1:54:17 speaking well, which is fascinating to me that people really want to learn how to speak well.
1:54:20 What advice would you give to someone who doesn’t feel like they’re a good
1:54:23 oral communicator on how to speak like a leader?
1:54:31 The ability to answer non-literally and bring in fun and jokes into the interaction.
1:54:37 The ability to get to values in a conversation, which is a lot of the stuff that we talked about,
1:54:43 to take people to the thing that they actually want to connect over versus
1:54:48 the weather and all that sort of stuff is part of it. You seem to take a pause as well when
1:54:53 you’re thinking. Some people fill in the gaps a little bit. Yeah, generally, and I’m sure I’ve
1:55:00 made this mistake, but if you can replace any filler word, any crutch word that you have,
1:55:06 with silence, silence is a vacuum. And the cool thing about vacuums is that they pull attention
1:55:11 to you. And I think people dramatically, dramatically underestimate the amount of
1:55:16 silence they’re afforded. If I look back actually at my early videos, I dramatically
1:55:20 underestimated the value of silence. I thought that I had to get it all out there and be super
1:55:26 interesting, really fast in order to keep that AVD really, really high. And I’ve since seen and learned
1:55:32 when you have a story and you learn the beats where you’ve set up the mystery. And so there’s
1:55:36 these lines that you’ll say in a story like the craziest thing happened the other day.
1:55:45 So there’s these hooks and you get an intuitive feel for where you’ve got the audience on the
1:55:50 edge of their seat. And especially then to just take a breath or have a pause. You don’t need to
1:55:55 think all of this out, but that becomes second nature. That’s very valuable. And it comes from
1:55:59 the way that I’ve seen people do is when you record yourself, tell a story and just watch
1:56:04 back how many ums and us you have in it. When I watched my own podcasts, I’m sure you’ve felt
1:56:10 this. Yeah, it’s horrifying. You begin to see your own little habits come through.
1:56:16 Does body language matter when I’m speaking? I think so. Yeah, yeah. There’s a couple things
1:56:21 that I tend to teach people, which is a lot of people form a tiny little box for themselves
1:56:26 where maybe they’ll move their hands like this and it’s they got this thing going on.
1:56:29 People that can’t see you’re just kind of waving it like that. I’m the kind of waving my hands
1:56:32 in a little circular thing and my elbows most importantly are pinned to my sides. If I lift
1:56:37 my elbows off my sides and I start talking a little bit like this and if I was to say,
1:56:40 you know, over here and my brother’s in the green room over there and I gesticulate,
1:56:44 there’s two ways to gesticulate. I could take my finger and I can point six inches from my face
1:56:51 the direction that my brother is, or I can lift my entire arm and point over there. The space that
1:56:57 you fill is one captivating. This is something that we talk about in a lot of our videos,
1:57:01 which is you don’t need to invade other people’s space. You need to fill your own completely.
1:57:06 When you fill your space completely, it is much more captivating. So when you’re on stage to
1:57:11 gesticulate with the full width of your wingspan, like, look, I know you guys on this side of the
1:57:16 room are feeling this, but over here, right, versus I know you guys on this side of the room
1:57:21 think that we have to do this, but over here, it just there’s a level of discomfort that is
1:57:25 comes through in it versus get those elbows off the sides. It makes a huge, huge difference.
1:57:27 Also helps you speak louder, makes you more dynamic.
1:57:31 What’s the most important thing we haven’t talked about that the audience are probably
1:57:34 screaming to know at this exact moment in time?
1:57:39 When it comes to confidence, one of the mindsets that I see really help people
1:57:45 is that there are no superiors, that you go into your workplace and you think that you’ve
1:57:48 got to treat your boss differently, or you go into a bar and you think you have to treat
1:57:52 the beautiful woman differently. And yes, there is status. And yes, we arrange ourselves in
1:58:00 sorts of hierarchies, but when you realize, and I, as I did in my job, and this is why I got
1:58:05 the raise off cycle, it’s why everything started working for me. You’re not dealing with roles,
1:58:10 you’re not dealing with investors, you’re not dealing with avatars of beauty, you are dealing
1:58:15 with people and the people that they love the most in their life that they would do the most for,
1:58:20 they connect with over the same things that you connect with your friends over.
1:58:26 There’s different interests, but the underlying themes of those things are the same, what they
1:58:33 love to do for fun, what fills them up, what brings them joy, not looking prim and proper
1:58:39 and perfect. And so like a willingness to make that mistake is often the essence of confidence.
1:58:42 And when I have dropped it and another friend has picked it up, I see it all the time.
1:58:46 It goes back to what you said about convincing versus invites. Don’t convince people,
1:58:51 give them invites to connect. That’s a really interesting point that I never had before and I
1:58:55 can immediately see how I can action that in my own life, because even I find myself
1:58:59 like convincing people all the time, trying to convince them, especially if they don’t know,
1:59:02 I’m like, “Oh, I do this, I do this, I do this.” Even like when I land into the US,
1:59:07 but like it’s a border force, I’m like, “What are you doing here? Like what do you do?” I’m like,
1:59:15 “I’m gonna podcast.” “I’m gonna podcast.” “I’m gonna start a business.” “I’m gonna get to say holiday,
1:59:20 I’m here for a fucking holiday.” “Let me through.” We have a closing tradition on this podcast where
1:59:23 the last guest leaves a question for the next guest without knowing who they’re leaving it for.
1:59:31 And the question that’s been left for you is, what is the most important thing you are doing
1:59:38 to increase your well-being? Well, we haven’t talked about this and
1:59:48 without opening a can of worms. I have done roughly quarterly psychedelic journeys for the last
1:59:54 couple of years and I was someone who had never done that before. When I was 30, I was the most
1:59:57 straightest person you ever met. I didn’t drink, I didn’t do any of that. Why are you doing it?
2:00:03 Why am I doing it? Honest answers only. To connect with my heart and have that be
2:00:10 the primary thing that I bring into every interaction. It has helped me
2:00:17 address the barriers to that, the shame, and we didn’t go super deep into it, but the things
2:00:25 that I’ve alluded to in my past that I thought made me broken or unworthy of showing up fully.
2:00:40 Where did that come from? The belief and the experiences that I had in
2:00:44 the Romanian, it feels like the podcast had to jump into them though.
2:00:52 We can jump into them if you want to. I’m open to it. One of them was being sexually abused
2:01:04 and one of the things that I got from psychedelics was the ability to go back into that experience
2:01:15 and realize what compensations I’d made as a result of it, because it was always something
2:01:18 that I remembered. I was old enough to remember, I was probably about 10-ish.
2:01:30 But the way that I took it was, this is my fault, I did this. I must have wanted this or else it
2:01:34 wouldn’t have happened. It’s that infinite responsibility even at a young age that I took,
2:01:41 which I can see is crazy. Therefore, this doesn’t bother me. I’m not affected by this.
2:01:54 In these experiences, to break, to just crack entirely and my heart to spill out of my chest
2:02:08 in pain and tears and grief for the loss of soul connection that was impacted by that experience.
2:02:24 I’m so blessed to have had the chance to reconnect with my soul and I want so deeply
2:02:31 to offer that to other people. Perhaps this adds some context to the shift and charisma from
2:02:41 something that you do to the essence of who you are. That’s how I want to teach it going forward.
2:02:47 That’s the core gift that I want to pass forward to others.
2:02:57 That emotion is still on the surface, because it costs you something. What are the mixture of
2:03:08 emotions you feel? Today, I feel so much love. I hear this voice in my head say, “I love you.”
2:03:20 I hear it so much. I feel it constantly. It’s such a gift and a blessing and so much
2:03:28 grief for the years that I didn’t feel that and that I had to be more than I was in order to
2:03:44 come approximate a fraction of that. It’s today ecstatic joy and gratitude and when I think back
2:03:57 on it, it’s compassion, which is not what I felt before. I felt revulsion for myself when I thought
2:04:16 of what had happened to me. I felt disgusted with me, with my body, with my center. I love being me
2:04:30 more and more. I’m glad you asked, because it’s what I want to give to other people, whatever
2:04:38 I can related to this. I think the only way I can give it is by speaking to what I lost
2:04:50 for a long time as well. I didn’t believe in souls for my whole life. There was none of that.
2:05:01 That word was empty to me. To have it come back and to first feel the ache of it coming back,
2:05:08 the excruciating pain of the separation from this. Then the reunion is just like
2:05:26 every day. I like pray and gratitude for that. That’s why I bought the business,
2:05:32 for this to spread that to as many people as I can.
2:05:46 Thank you. It’s really a beautiful thing that you just shared, because I just know that there’s
2:05:53 people out there that are at some stage in that journey. It’s a sexual abuse,
2:05:59 it’s something that I think from my very naive experience of speaking to people that I’ve been
2:06:06 through that, is a very unique complex range of feelings and emotions that someone who’s not
2:06:12 been through that might struggle to understand, because an objective observer says you felt
2:06:19 you’ve done something wrong. You carried the shame, you carried the guilt, you carried disgust.
2:06:25 It doesn’t appear to make sense. By way of you sharing it, you’re going to enable a lot of people
2:06:30 who are struggling in a similar way to make sense of what they’re experienced, but also to offer them
2:06:35 tremendous hope that at the end of that journey, however long that might take them, they’re going
2:06:43 to arrive at alignment. They’re going to come back to themselves. The shame was so underneath,
2:06:47 it was so pushed down. I wasn’t aware of it. You asked earlier, what were you feeling back then?
2:06:54 I said shame, but it came out sideways. It came way in perfectionism, or seeking approval,
2:06:58 or trying to rescue and save other people, all the things that we talked about today.
2:07:08 It was only through direct contact with that repressed feeling of self-disgust and responsibility
2:07:16 that I was able to move through it and heal it and to sit with the worst thoughts that I had
2:07:26 about myself, which is like you said, you did this, you wanted it, you deserve it. All of that stuff
2:07:32 that sounds so freaking strange even to me to say, but to know that that’s
2:07:44 the common response to something like that. It has helped me understand people so much more,
2:07:51 because I think I have my own history and my own shames, but when you see the way that people
2:07:59 internalize the things that have happened to them, as if they’re broken, as if
2:08:12 they deserved the misfortunes of particularly their early life and even late life, it’s so sad.
2:08:16 And I can see now how sad it is, but you couldn’t have convinced me before.
2:08:25 Is there anything that you wish this grown man in front of me could say to that boy?
2:08:40 I wish that someone could have, I just needed someone to sit with me, someone to
2:08:53 sit and wait without blame. There was not opportunity for an adult to just sit that I trusted and just
2:08:59 listen. So if I could send anything back to myself then it would just be
2:09:05 an adult to listen to me and today what I’ve had to send back internally is that I just listen
2:09:10 to myself. I listen to myself so much more and it’s only through listening to myself that I can get
2:09:15 through all the shame and then finally hear that voice of I love you, like I love you,
2:09:19 I love you, you couldn’t be loved more.
2:09:27 Thank you. Thank you.
2:09:32 There’s so many reasons why I feel so grateful to you. I mean,
2:09:40 your work over the years has helped so many people make sense of a world that appears to be
2:09:46 very confusing, especially as like a young man, but even also as a young woman, understanding why
2:09:52 we’re struggling in our lives can feel like a Rubik’s cube of a bunch of different factors that
2:09:58 we were either given across the dining room table from our parents or biologically or whatever and
2:10:02 you’ve helped us to understand the most important thing in the world which is humans,
2:10:07 what it is to be a human, how to be an effective human in whatever context, how to be an
2:10:11 unaffected human and to really turn the lights on to many of the things that we do and don’t do
2:10:16 without knowing it at all and all of this gives us a greater chance of becoming whoever we want to
2:10:22 be and I’m also grateful to you because your willingness to share your early experiences,
2:10:31 this early abuse that happened and to reflect on it and to talk to us so openly and honestly about
2:10:41 the complexities of it are going to help so many people who are at some stage in that process to
2:10:46 feel seen and heard and to also, maybe most importantly of all, offer them hope that
2:10:52 they can come to where you’ve arrived at today, where you love yourself.
2:10:52 Thank you, man.
2:10:53 And you have that love in yourself.
2:10:57 Thank you. What a gift. That’s a hell of a blessing.
2:11:04 Thank you. I highly recommend everybody, if they want to hear more from you,
2:11:06 they have to go and check out your channel.
2:11:09 I’m going to put it on the screen and link it everywhere because you’re on a journey and I
2:11:14 think people are more fascinated now than ever before to really follow that journey and understand
2:11:21 what truly charisma is, what loving yourself is, what we should be aiming at and I mean,
2:11:27 having spoken to you today, I’m so, I’m almost obsessed with your work and what’s going to pour
2:11:31 out of you in this season of your life and I’d highly recommend everybody go check out the
2:11:36 channel. It’s unbelievable. You’re back. You took a hiatus, but you’re back and there’s a new
2:11:42 essence to you, which I think is incredible. So please go check out Charlie’s work.
2:11:45 Please go check out his channel. Please go check out his university.
2:11:49 I’m going to link all of that below and is there anything else that if people want to reach out
2:11:51 to you, how do they do it? How do they get more from you?
2:11:56 Yeah, we have a course called Charisma University, which is, you asked me a lot about the tips and
2:12:01 quite frankly, they’re not top of mind, but they’re in there. You know, that’s a 30 day program for
2:12:05 people to go through and start to implement these things in a very actionable way. So if they’re
2:12:10 curious, they can check that out. Just Google Charisma University and I think that’s it. I’m
2:12:14 happy we finally got to the tears, Stephen. I was worried that your reputation would fail you.
2:12:21 Thank you. Thanks man. It’s been a pleasure. It really, really has been.
2:12:27 Isn’t this cool? Every single conversation I have here on the Diary of a CEO, at the very end of it,
2:12:34 you’ll know, I asked the guest to leave a question in the Diary of a CEO. And what we’ve done is we’ve
2:12:41 turned every single question written in the Diary of a CEO into these conversation cards that you
2:12:47 can play at home. So you’ve got every guest we’ve ever had their question. And on the back of it,
2:12:54 if you scan that QR code, you get to watch the person who answered that question. We’re finally
2:13:02 revealing all of the questions and the people that answered the question. The brand new version two
2:13:08 updated conversation cards are out right now at theconversationcards.com. They’ve sold out twice
2:13:13 instantaneously. So if you are interested in getting hold of some limited edition conversation cards,
2:13:18 I really, really recommend acting quickly. This has always blown my mind a little bit.
2:13:23 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven’t yet subscribed to the show. So could I
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2:13:35 And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I’ll do everything in my power, me and my team,
2:13:39 to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We’ll listen to your feedback,
2:13:44 we’ll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we’ll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much.
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