How to Speak Like the Top 1% (and Blow Up your Personal Brand)

If you ever watch someone else who doesn't know as much as you get an opportunity or get more attention than you, but you feel like you actually know more than that person, this is why. In 2026, we are in a trust recession. The winner isn't the smartest in the room. It's whoever gets people to trust them first. For today, I brought in a former magician with a TEDex talk at 3 and 1/2 million views who's trained hundreds of people across six continents on this exact topic. And by the way, what he taught me helped me make millions of dollars last year. This is 20 years of knowledge in the next 60 minutes. So Brian, thank you for being here today, bro. Uh, this is awesome. Just to connect, we got to we had you at our forward event in July.

>> What I mean, killer event, man.

>> Yes. And so, uh, let's get into the problem right now. Why are we in a trust recession and like, what is, why is trust at an all-time low right now?

>> I mean, trust is at an all-time low across so many different industries right now, in in education and of course in politics. Uh, but right now, it's something like only, I think, only a third of Americans say that they deeply trust each other, that like most people can be trusted. It's just something that's been going on for decades that the pandemic really put the final nail in the coffin. And so people just, we don't trust anything anyone at all. And so, why are our like, our clients, like people you work with, people I work with, why are they losing to these other people who like, just, I don't have a better way of saying it, but are dumber than them, you know? Like, it's like, it's not necessarily the best person who wins anymore.

>> No, I mean, I, I say this all the time. It's, it's, it's not the best ideas that win, it's the clearest ideas that win. And, and so what happens with clarity is trust. And so if you can get your message across clearly, people view that as confidence. And when people see confidence, they see trust, and then they will follow you down the journey.

>> Yeah. I think about this a lot, man. I'm like, uh, I have this thing written down. It says, "When you confuse, you lose."

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> And, uh, anytime I've ever had confusion in what I'm teaching or even what you're selling, people don't stick around to figure it out, they just move on.

>> Like, you just literally get like scrolled past or they move on. And I've just been shocked at like, how easy it is to confuse people.

>> You know what I mean? Not, not saying people are dumb, but I'm just saying like, they have so much noise in their head. I think of it like a snow globe. There's just all this stuff coming down in your brain.

>> Yeah.

>> And how are you going to cut through that with clarity?

>> It's, it's so funny you say how easy it is to confuse people. It's actually, it's, it's not because people are dumb that that we confuse people. It's because of the curse of knowledge. The curse of knowledge is this blanket term to describe that the more you know about something, the harder it is to imagine what it's like to not know what you know. That's the curse of knowledge. And so what happens is if you're an expert, and, and whenever I use the word expert and I see people flinch, I'm like, that means you're an expert because if you flinch at that, that means you really are an expert. If you're an expert, you've got a level 10 knowledge relative to normal people. So forget the fact that there's people in the world who actually know more than you, right? You're a level 10 knowledge. And what most people do instinctively is they go, "Okay, I know I need to bring it down a little bit because they're not the same level as me." So they go from a 10 to an eight. And it's like, "No, no, no, man. They're at a one compared to you. They don't know anything. You need to come down to a two because if you come down to a two and they're at a one, you double their understanding. That's huge." But most of the time when we get an expert to bring their communication down to a level two from a 10, they feel like what they're saying isn't even worth saying anymore, 'cause it feels so obvious and so basic that they feel like they're dumbing it down. You're not dumbing it down. You're making it clear. And when it's clear, people can follow you. And then is there something true for in the audience? Let's just say somebody's a bit more intermediate or advanced, they're not a beginner, and they hear you say something that is at that level, two, and it's clear.

>> And it's confident. Um, I don't think you're offending that person. No. And I think you're actually making that person feel smarter. I think you're making the, like, when you can make people feel smarter, I think they love you even more.

>> Yeah. Because what happens is if you got somebody who's at a level five or six, or somebody who's a little ahead of, uh, ahead of the other people in the room, when you say something at a level two and they're at a five or six, they're like, "Oh, I knew that." And they feel smart 'cause like, "I knew that already." Right? The only time you'll get yourself into trouble is if the people in the room are actually at a level eight or nine.

>> Yeah. And then you too basic.

>> And, and so you're going too basic. But that is simply an audience analysis. That's just a thing that we do with all of our clients before you speak.

>> Yeah. You would want to ask, who's the room and all that. And then, and we'll get into all the things today. I just want to set the tone for why this is so important. I truly believe in 2026, if you are not focused on this skill, you're going to get lost in the sauce. Like, you're just going to get left behind because there's never been this amount of content published on a daily basis. There's never been this many TED talks, as you said. There's so much content being uploaded to the platforms and people vying for attention. And I feel like whether you're watching this and you're at a job and you want to level up and climb the corporate ladder and you want to be known and all the cool opportunities that come to you because of that, or whether you just want to be able to speak better at the next meeting, or whether you're someone like me who literally, communication, if I can't communicate my ideas to people clearly, I'm lost. Like, I, it will cost me my entire business, you know? So, it's, it's so important for all of us.

>> Yeah, it's, it's the, it's the whole game. And, and I want to, uh, mention one thing that I know that most of the folks in your audience are focused a lot on social media content, right? Producing videos and things for the internet. But because of the trust recession, what we are seeing across audiences and across attendees at events is there, there's this huge push back to live in person because that's the only thing you cannot fake. You can't fake a live in-person experience. And what happens is if you can get really good at doing this message clarity thing when you're doing edited content, but then if you have to get up in front of a real room of people in real time and speak, you don't get to be edited. You don't get second chances. And so you really do need to learn how to do this for the people that are in front of you at a dinner, at a meeting, when you stand up in front of a room. And if you can do that, I mean, do you know how bad most people, like I say this all the time, like, you know how low the bar is for, for real professional communication? People are phenomenally bad communicators. If you're even just a little bit better.

>> Well, I noticed that. I can attest to that 10,000% because I was horrible at this.

>> And I had a speaking coach and I was so nervous and all these kinds of things and, and nobody would listen when I would talk.

>> It was almost like they were writing me off right away, just from the first few lines.

>> Totally. And it sucks because you see people go on their phones, you see people kind of tune out, and even if they're paying attention, they're not really paying attention. And then if you are trying to get people to do something, they're not doing it. And you're like, "Is it me? Is it the offer? Is it the content? What is the problem?" And it is you. You know, unfortunately, you have to look in the mirror and be like, "Dude, it's me. It's my fault."

>> You know what? So, I'm going to push back on that just a little bit. I don't think it's you. I don't think it's the speaker. I think it's the speech.

>> And this is one of the very first things that we try to get people do because if they go, "It's me." It feels very personal. It feels like, like who I am is not good enough. And it's very hard for people to overcome that. That's such a mental barrier.

>> It's not the speaker, it's the speech. And that's why, like, we, we take people who are, you know, the, you know, real nerdy scientists and academics and the folks who have no charisma. Like, with due respect to some of my lovely clients, they're not naturally charismatic people. And, and for what it's worth, you're, you've been very public about your journey, you're not a naturally charismatic presenter. You know, you're not doing jump kicks up there on stage. What you've learned to do, and what we teach our people to do, is to focus on the speech, or focus on the message. Get the message right, and the speaking part will follow. You'll be fine. The nerves, nerves, people spend a lot of time in like therapy or traditional speaker coaching trying to work on their nerves. It's like, but most of the time where nerves come from is I actually am not confident in what I'm here to say. If you get the message right, the confidence will follow.

>> Yeah. And I've even had, um, we're going to get into specific frameworks, by the way, guys, but I've had this situation come up where the slides don't work. You know, like the, the AV broke. And because I knew the topic and what I'm talking about so well, I was able to quickly pivot. And like a few years ago, bro, I would have like folded like, like a cheap suit. I would have been like, my mouth would have, that was the classic thing for me is my mouth goes dead dry, like I can't even open it when I'm nervous. And so I always have a glass of ice water on stage or, you know, because I don't want to have to like fumble with opening a fee.

>> Okay. Yeah, I opened it before we started.

>> Yeah, there you go. You start. Um, you know, all the tricks, but like, yeah, I remember just, just, it's a lack of preparedness. It's a lack of confidence. And I've also found that just because you know something doesn't mean you can teach it, right? So you think about how you could package the ideas. And the best speakers aren't always the, the ones who have all the best information, but they're the best at putting it all together. So that gives a lot of, it gives a lot of confidence to me, who's someone who's like, I see these guys, I see like an Ed Milet, or I see like, uh, even Jesse Itzler was voted like one of the best speakers at our events.

>> He put together like a master, like a master speech, and it took us on this journey of highs and lows, and he's yelling one minute, and then he's, he's got people crying the next minute. I'm like, "How could I ever compete with that?" But you don't have to.

>> No, you don't. You don't have to. And that's, that's the key is that a lot of people when they're working on becoming better speakers are looking at great keynote speakers who are half performers. A keynote speech is half entertainment, half content.

>> That's not your normal talk.

>> But that's not, but that's not what most people who need to speak need. What most people who are experts in their area or an industry leader in their area and they need to give talks to move people to action. They don't need to become charismatic performers or theatrical presenters. They don't need to move the audience to tears. They need to move them to action.

>> Yeah.

>> And you move people to action by putting the right ideas in the right order, respecting who the audience is, and taking them on a journey from exactly where they are to where you want them to go. Okay, quick break. I hope you're enjoying today's video, but I need your help on something. I notice many of you are watching these videos, but you're not subscribed to the channel. And so, do me a quick favor and hit that subscribe button. This is going to help us reach our goal and reach even more people this year. We're putting a ton of effort into these videos so we can help you reach your goals, and so I would really appreciate if you helped us reach ours. Hit that subscribe button. And now let's get back to the video.

Okay, so this is going to work for you guys no matter if you're trying to talk in front of people, like speeching, uh, speeches and, and giving presentations, things, but also webinars, also content. Like when I got this skill, this, the confidence bleeds through everything you do. You even just walking in a room, you're like, you hold your head up a little higher because you know that at any point in time, if they need a volunteer, if I just need to throw someone a mic, you're going to be able to pick that up and people will listen. And the opportunities that come your way because the bar is so low are incredible. You know, it's the promotion, it's the partnership that you never thought was possible. And so that's why I love this skill. U, but let's get into it. Okay, so the, I just want to know really quick from you. There is so much content right now out here about improving communication. Um, millions of views on this video, that video, about just little tweaks you can make. But why do you believe for the common person that most of this advice fails them? Because I, I see people watching this, but then they don't get any better.

>> Why is most communication advice fail? Okay, so that's a great question. So I think that one, most communication advice is about this incredible misnomer about, you, you hear this thing all the time, which is like, 93% of communication is non-verbal. You hear this all the time. This, this has been cited for decades. First of all, it is a misreading of the research, and the guy who did the research has corrected it over and over and over again.

>> I hear that all the time on social media.

>> It, first of all, you know, it's not true. It's patently ridiculous that in spoken word communication, that 93% of it would not be about the words that you're saying. Nonsense.

>> Well, it could be like, if you rolled in like a bum, people would judge you. But that's not, that's not.

>> You can, it's easier for you to damage the trustworthiness of your content by just having terrible nonverbals. But focusing on non-verbals, I think, is one of the reasons that a lot of communication training fails people because it focuses on either what to do with your hands or what to do with your voice.

>> Yeah. Like, one of the, my friends who's a coach, his most viral content is what to do with your hands.

>> Yeah. So this, what to do with your hands thing.

>> I put my hand in my pocket. He's like, "Don't ever do that." I'm like,

>> It doesn't matter.

>> Didn't matter.

>> I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So this stuff like this. Don't put your hand in your pocket. I put my hand in my pocket. The, you, Scott Galloway puts his hand in his pocket. He just got 8 million views on his new TED talk. It doesn't matter. Like, that stuff is, is, is not like, what to do with your hands, what to do with your voice. You should be focused on what to do with your ideas.

>> Yes.

>> What do you do with your message? Because most of your spoken word communication is about the words that you say.

>> And so, what are the words you're saying? And then the second reason that I think that a lot of communication advice f, uh, fails people is it doesn't take into account the order of the ideas.

>> You can have all the right ideas. If you present them in the wrong order, you completely lose people. Either they don't buy in, or they can't track how you moved from here to there, or they've got an silent question that you haven't answered yet, and so they're stuck and they can't go forward with you.

>> And so it's not just the right ideas. Like, I, I say this a lot, like, the right ideas in the wrong order are the wrong ideas.

>> You have to put the right ideas in the right order. And so I think those two things.

>> Okay, so we're going to get into the right order that everybody can use for their talks and also, uh, why this gets people to trust you, psychology of all that stuff. But before we do that, really quick, I said something in the, in the intro and I just realized we just glossed over it. Uh, so really quick, what did you learn as a magician that's led to this expertise? Because that's the unique take, and that's why I wanted to have you on today.

>> Yeah, so I mean, I, I was a full-time magician for 10 years. I built my way up from backyard barbecues to traveling the world. And one of the things, I was a slight of hand magician, so I mostly did, even though I did stage shows, most of my work was close up. I would be three, four hours at a corporate event going group to group, table to table, competing with the DJ and all this other stuff. So your job as a magician is to walk up to a group of people who, mid-conversation, they've got a drink, they like each other, they're already having a good time. You have to interrupt them, and a few minutes later, when you leave their group, they should be thanking you for interrupting them. In other words, the job of a magician is to instantly make a meaningful connection with strangers and get them to trust you, even though they know that you're lying and deceiving them along the way.

>> So trust, connection, these are the skills of being a professional magician. And that's why magicians are some of the best communicators on the planet.

>> Because you have to be. And for what it's worth, I knew so many magicians. I, I was an above average magician. I was good enough. I am by no means a world class. We're in Vegas. The amount of world-class magicians. My buddy Matt Franco's at the Link, killing it. Just amazing.

>> Chris Angel. All these.

>> Chris Angel is here. Pen and Teller. I was a very good magician, but by no means world class. And yet I was so much more successful than so many of the magicians I knew who were far superior slight of hand artists than I was. It's because those guys were so focused on the tactics, the slight of hand, that they forgot that most of the game is about the communication. And they were terrible communicators. And those guys are still just doing magic tricks for each other at 2 a.m. after a magic convention at a Holiday Inn Express.

>> Yeah. And then the magicians who realize, "Oh, the game is communication. How can I get people to pay attention? How can I engage them? How can I tell a story that invites them into a world and move them to action at the end? Get them to talk about this when I leave." Those are the people who are financially successful as magicians, big time.

>> Okay. So, what we're about to learn essentially, or what we're getting into in this video right now, is like the difference between the Holiday Inn Express and the Coliseum at Caesar's Palace, right? That's the difference here, guys. Just.

>> Negotiate to the Holiday Inn Express.

>> No problem. Yeah. But I, but this is the middle muck. And I think that's when I talked about with the stake.

>> I'm not trying to alarm anybody, but I am trying to alarm you a little bit because I do believe that if you don't invest in this skill, like, you're just going to continue to struggle. And I see it year after year. I saw it in my own business. I was stuck for over a decade in this middle muck in the Holiday. And we'll just call, I might start calling the middle muck the Holiday Inn Express, you know, because it's a perfect analogy. And there's nothing wrong with that. Like, I was making good enough money to pay our bills. I was fine, but I just knew I was meant to do something more. I didn't feel fulfilled.

>> I had this like nagging thing of like, "I'm not living up to my potential." You know, "Why is this person getting this deal? Why is this person getting that development or that opportunity? And I'm not. I'm actually better. I know more than that person." I was getting upset.

>> And here's, here's just a real quick way for people to think about, like, you can quickly figure out if this is actually the problem that you're having. And it's not an obvious way to think about it. Is if you are not getting referrals on a consistent basis, if you cannot consistently like track and count on the amount of referrals that you're getting.

>> You have a messaging problem. And people usually don't connect those two things, like referrals with messaging. They think it's about some, some sales thing or a marketing thing or, "I need to follow up more often with these people." It's like, "No, it's people, even after you've done a great job for them, they don't know how to talk about what you do when you're not in the room." That is a messaging problem. And the example.

>> They don't know how to explain it.

>> They don't know how to explain it, right? And so this is where, where magicians would get stuck at the Holiday Inn Express level or like the, you know, glorified backyard barbecue. Like, they might be able to pull in 45k a year doing magic tricks. And that's like, just, I mean, 10 years ago, that was barely enough. Today, it's really not. But like, they're pulling in 45 or 50k a year. And like, you know, most magicians can't make any money. So that's not bad. But how are magicians going to 200k a year doing magic tricks? It's because the pe, the magicians that were at 50k a year, the show was good, but there was nothing that people knew to talk about their show after the show was over. So people, they would say, "How was the show?" And they'd go, "It was great. What did he do?" "He did some card stuff. He did some what?" There was, there was nothing for them to specifically say to other people. And once you can, once I was able to create shows that after I was done, people knew exactly how to tell people about what the show was about and why it mattered to them. That's where the referrals come in.

>> Okay. So, this is explaining why people are getting way more referrals than others because, uh, in my industry, especially, referrals are the biggest piece, piece of people's business.

>> Totally. Now, some people are doing paid ads and cold campaigns, but we prefer referrals because it's the client that already.

>> Trusts you. They're much easier to work with. I love working with warm referrals, and so do you. Like, it's just the best when somebody connects you. There's no sales pitch when it's a referral. Someone comes in, they're pre-sold because you get the trust that their friend, that you get automatic trust because their friend gave you the report.

>> Okay. So, how does somebody in any industry get the other person to easily describe what they did?

>> Yeah. So, uh, I mean, let's talk about the same framework that we talked about when I was at Forward last year, which is some version of, you need to figure out how to state what you do, who it's for, and why it matters in one sentence. If you cannot state what you do, who it's for, and why it matters in one sentence, you are losing opportunities. And this sentence, the framework I use, we call this a filter statement because once you have this, it filters all of your own communication, and it also gives other people a way to filter through how to think about you and which conversations. So the filter framework is some version of for audience to achieve impact by action. For audience to achieve impact by action. So we can break those down one by one, if you'd like to.

>> Yeah, go ahead.

>> All right. So audience, this sounds obvious, but it's like, who is this message intended for? Now, a lot of people will get too vague here. This is the problem. Like, you see these positioning statements on LinkedIn, that's kind of what this feels like, but it's not. Because if you go look at these positioning statements on LinkedIn, they're too vague, right? It's, first of all, most people don't identify an audience at all. It's the number one mistake because they're, you know, this, people in branding, they do this. They're trying to reach everybody. Well, who, who's your content for? It's, well, it could benefit anybody. Nonsense.

>> Yeah. Like, pick somebody, right?

>> And pick somebody specific. So, if I were to say, like, let's, let's do an example. Talk me through.

>> Okay. So, talk about real estate, um, professional, um, who is.

>> Maybe they want to serve everybody because they want to get all the deals, but I've already told them, hey, you got to pick your niche. And I say like, "What do you mainly work with?" And then this guy, this is a perfect example. He just told me this. He goes, "Hey, I want to help business owners, self-employed individuals buy homes because their situations are a bit more complex." Great. Okay. So, business owners. So, already that's more specific, right? I serve business owners. Okay. Can we make it even more specific by adding a modifier? So, modifier would be like anxious or overwhelmed or passionate or mission-driven. It could be positive or negative. Yes, he could describe the person, or could he describe their, uh, paperwork situation, which is people don't have their, they don't report enough income on the tax, or they don't have all their, they don't have all their paperwork in order.

>> They could, that's going to start getting very long in a sentence that's already got a couple of things. If we could find a one-word modifier, uh, that would be, you know, it could be, um, you know, overwhelmed. Like, like, it, so overwhelmed business owners. Now, the key to the modifier is.

>> Because I know that they are very, I'm an entrepreneur, you are one, and many days it feels like, dude, I can't fit any more stuff on my plate.

>> Right. Okay. So, the key to the modifier is, it's got to be something that, that somebody, if they were in the room and you said out loud in a room of 100 people, "Hey, I'm looking for overwhelmed business owners," would they be willing to raise their hand in public? So you can't use something that, you know, if you said, um, you know, I don't know, uh, self-conscious business owners, or something, something that would make people nervous to, or, or, um, you know, whiny business owners, like something that nobody would, like, raise their hand to in public. Don't do that 'cause this is a message people need to be able to spread. They won't spread it if.

>> That's a good litmus test of like saying, if I was in a room of a hundred of these people and I said, "How many of you feel a certain way?" Would like 90 of them raise their hand?

>> Right. Not because they're too embarrassed.

>> Don't say depressed, because people aren't going to raise their hand, right?

>> But overwhelmed might be.

>> Anxious is probably fine. Overwhelmed is easy to go, "Yeah, I'm overwhelmed," right? Um, so, yeah, so we say, okay, for overwhelmed business owners, great.

>> To achieve impact or result or outcome. I use the word impact as most of folks in our space, they're trying to make an impact. It feels more empowering to say, so what's the, if they work with you, they do what you tell them, and they get the ideal result or outcome or impact, what is it?

>> So for this individual, it might be, buy a home.

>> Okay, so.

>> Become homeowners.

>> Right? So, I help overwhelmed business owners become homeowners. Fine. Uh, of course, I don't love that business owners and homeowners have both have the word owner in them.

>> So maybe, uh, own a home.

>> Right? So, I help.

>> Overwhelmed.

>> Overwhelmed business owners own a home or buy a home.

>> Buy a home. Yeah.

>> Right. Uh, it could be, you know, uh, uh, what would you say? Uh, start, you know, um, uh, find their first family home. Like, if you get really, buy their first home, right? This now, what we're doing right there is you're going, if this is brand-level messaging, you got to come out and get a, you know, buy a home might be brand-level messaging. But if you work in one or two very specific niches, then you can get your message down to that level and just state that message in those environments.

>> And I think it's important, you know, for people to understand two things as we, as we finish this little part up is number one is don't be afraid to niche down. The riches are in the niches. But honestly, if you are trying to attract everybody, you get nothing.

>> Yeah.

>> So by saying you help this group of people, it becomes very specific for them. So that way they find that. And what happens is you get more than just the niche. So I'll give you an example. There's a guy who specializes in just helping people with the homes that need to be rehabbed.

>> Cool.

>> So he talks about just rehabilitation. Like he helps people get the financing, the money, the plans to fix up a fixer-upper, basically.

>> And so I don't want to buy a fixer-upper, but I followed him and share his stuff just in case. I want to share it with people because I know what he stands for. If he was just the general real estate guy, I would have been scrolled past.

>> Exactly. And here's what hap, here's a great litmus test for that, too. You know that you've got your message as clear as it can be when people come to you and they say, "Hey, I don't know if you actually do this, but I wanted to ask and find out."

>> Yeah.

>> That's people go, "I, I don't, you don't seem like you work with the type of stuff that I do, but just out of curiosity, I'm." That's when they know that you are so specific about what you do that you must be an expert. And then they go, "Well, can you do this thing?" I go, "Oh, well, yeah, we, we can totally do that." You get more than just the niche.

>> Totally.

>> And by the way, this works regard, I'm using real estate as an example, but you guys can apply this to whatever your industry is, no matter what you do. Uh, because it's the same concept. You know, these are success. That's why I work in frameworks.

>> Yeah. Success leaves clues. And these are frameworks that will apply to any entrepreneur. So, okay. So, um, how would we wrap up that statement? So, the people who want to buy a home.

>> Right? So, so let's go, the, the niche route because it's really specific. So, uh, I, so I think something like, I help overwhelmed business owners buy their first home, right? Purchase their first home.

>> Could this be like the unique way they do it?

>> And then it's by action. So, now it's what do you actually do? And this is where if you have a differentiator, this is the place to get it in. Anything that makes you a little bit different, you get it in. It's not, you're not going to go like, "I help them buy their first home by taking them to lots of open houses," right? Because it's like that's like, yeah. Okay.

>> So it'd be like your proven system, your framework, if you have a, and this is called a unique mechanism. And somebody might out there might be like, "Well, what I do is not that unique. I don't know if I can do this." And so, um, what would we say to that person? And then also, I have this hack, and I'd love to hear your opinion on this, is like, why don't you type into AI, whichever your, uh, whichever your preferred LLM is. We were just working with Claude, so you could use that. But I would type in, "Hey, I have this kind of process I take people through that gets them this result. Here's what I do." And just give it all the context, like overdue the context, and say, "Help me come up with a name for this system or a, uh, something." And what happens is, I think when it's named, people give it more credibility, they give it more importance.

>> Right? So, like, we've got a client who works in the space of helping high achievers kind of balance stress and success. Uh, and this is a well-worn market. Uh, but she, part of her differentiator, she's got a, uh, master's in organizational psychology from Harvard. She's got real data behind this. She's very data-driven, which is unusual in that, in that space where it's a very fluffy space. Um, but what she, we ended up doing is helping her coin a term that's now a trademarked term, which is even achieving, with a hyphen. So it's not high achieving, it's not low achieving, it's even achieving. And so her action part of her filter statement is, uh, by learning the art of even achieving. Now, if you don't have that, so yes, you can go to ChatGPT or do this stuff. Sometimes you're putting the cart before the horse, though, here. So, let's take a step back and go, if you don't have a special unique acronym. And sometimes that can actually confuse people right off the bat because, like, "I never heard of that before." You're looking for some version of a, "Not this, instead that," any kind of what we would call a paradigm shift, which.

>> Counterintuitive, maybe.

>> Yeah. If it's a little counterintuitive, it's a little contrarian, or simply, "Stop doing this, start doing that," "Focus less by by focusing less on this and more on that," right? Like, I could say something like, "By focusing less on your hand gestures and more on the words you say."

>> Yeah. So, in this case, the guy told me the way he does this is he qualifies them not using their tax returns.

>> Perfect. Okay.

>> He uses their cash flows, their bank statements.

>> Let's do it all out loud. And usually I'm writing as I'm doing this. I'm doing it in my head right now, keeping it all on track. Right. So, uh, I help.

>> Overwhelmed.

>> Overwhelmed business owners.

>> Purchase. I'm going to go purchase their first home.

>> By focusing less on their tax returns.

>> Is that what we say?

>> And more on their cash flow.

>> And more on their cash flow.

>> Now, take that sentence, put it in the header of your website, put it on the back of your business card.

>> On your Instagram bio.

>> Put it in your Instagram bio. And people miss this one. Put it in your email signature.

>> Yeah. Put this one sentence in your email signature. Anybody who ever gets an email from you for any reason or forwards your email to anybody else always sees this filter statement, this perfect one-line description of what you do, who it's for, and why it matters. This is, this will like, this will like 10x people's reach just because the people they're already in communication with now always know how to talk about you. And.

>> You can say it too. Like, you can verbally say it. Like, who? Introduce yourself, Brian.

>> 100%.

>> What do you do for a living? What's your elevator pitch? And how many times like, "Well, I'm in real estate."

>> Yeah. Yeah. I'm in real estate. Yeah, I'm an accountant. Yan, who cares? I don't care that you're an accountant. You're an.

>> Accountant. Okay. So, help me, uh, while we're on this topic. I think this would be a cool use case. I've had a couple of times running through this. Help me do this for what we do with Forward.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. So, what, what we do with Forward is I help these people in my, and I'll just tell you all the context, and then you tell me what you think. Uh, I help people in the, uh, in my industry, real estate, mortgage, and, and connected industries, like, you know, anybody in the client service business, essentially. But I help people, um, with personal branding. I help the people specific people I help are people who don't fit in a box, like they feel like.

>> Less corporate, more connected, like just that type of person I've noticed is the people we attract. And I kind of did this by accident. I've been doing these.

>> Industry outsiders.

>> Yeah. Industry outsiders. Uh, industry misfits is what I call them. But.

>> I love it. Yeah.

>> That's perfect. I help, I help industry misfits. Perfect. That's beautiful. People can self-select.

>> Yeah. They don't fit in the box. And, um, and I help them dominate through personal brand, uh, through building a powerful personal brand.

>> Great. Okay. So, I think, so dominate is great. Uh, I think it's a great feeling kind of a word that works when you're already in a conversation with someone. But we got to remember, and this, this happens all the time. Words like that, you have to remember if somebody heard this without you in the room, with no context, would that word land with them without you, the person? So, a lot of times you want to actually make your filter statement less sexy. We think we think a lot as copywriters in this space because marketers, um, this is not marketing. It's just clear communication. And so you actually want it to be a little boring because would somebody else be willing to say the word he, uh, yeah, Neil helps helps industry misfits dominate? Like, imagine like your aunt trying to tell somebody that, or whatever.

>> So, you could have a wrong connotation.

>> Right? So, if they wouldn't use that word, then they wouldn't know what to replace it with. So it's like, let's, let's just think.

>> So optimize for clarity.

>> Yeah. So, if I, like, industry misfits, I don't think that's, that's something that somebody else couldn't. And that's a real differentiator. So I help industry misfits. So dominate. What do you mean by dominate? What's the tangible outcome for people? What do they actually want?

>> Make more money. So, like, it feels boring to say that because that's in so many people's positioning statements, but if that's actually what people want, just say that.

>> Yeah, that's how I feel. And honestly, it's make more money and have more fun because you're not having to do as much sales because your brand speaks for you. Your name does the selling for you. Your marketing does the selling for you.

>> Great. So, I help industry misfits make more money and have more fun by doing what?

>> Powerful personal brand. But I feel like people don't even know what a powerful personal brand is. Okay. So, talk, talk to an 8-year-old or a 10-year-old. How would you explain what a powerful personal brand is?

>> It's content that gets results. It's what people say about you when you're not in the room. It's your digital reputation.

>> Okay. So, maybe something like, by, uh, by developing a strong digital reputation, by developing a strong digital presence, by developing, like, what are the words that someone who doesn't know what personal brand means would still get it by.

>> Yeah.

>> Make it even more simple. Uh, what does it mean to have, talk to me about what it means to have a, a strong digital presence?

>> It means like, I can come to your Instagram, and that is the most powerful business card I've ever seen. Meaning, like, I know what you do, how you can help people. I could watch 30, I could watch a few of your 30, 45-second videos, and my trust level with you goes from zero to 40 on a, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, and then maybe to 50. By the time I speak to you, I could be at an 80% trust level, and I haven't even talked to you yet.

>> Right. By, by being consistently trustworthy everywhere on the internet.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. Something like that. Because, because I know what that means. I know what consistent means. It means all the time. It's the same. I know what trustworthy means, or something like that. Uh, by being consistently clear about what you do everywhere on the internet. These are normal words. Like, use normal words that I don't have to guess at their meaning. When you're doing this level of communication, you get increasingly, you can get more fun and sexy with your language once people are in your world. Like, we, we use a lot, all that kind of stuff.

>> Yeah, we use the term a lot like, you know, like, "Hey, let's go make a dent in the universe." But like, that can't, I can't tell people I help people make a dent in the universe because it's just, it's too, it's too vague.

>> Yeah, that makes sense. And I know, you know, it's funny you say this, Brian, is because I remember testing headlines on our event website last year.

>> And the one that performed the best, and maybe I should have told you the line and you could have picked which one and see if you got it right, but the one that did best was, um, "The event your competition hopes you miss."

>> Yeah. Yeah. Normal words. Normal words. I know what they all mean.

>> Yes. Super simple. Um, okay, cool. So, I like this. And then in terms of, well, real quick, before we move on, what is your, um, one-liner, your elevator pitch for your business?

>> For, okay, so for which business? So for, you want to do it for me as a human connection speaker? Because like, I have my own personal brand where I speak on human.

>> Connection. So we'll do your personal brand, and then also for the business where you help people with their TED talks and all that.

>> All right. So for the personal brand, uh, for, I'm a human connection speaker. So, I, if somebody says, "What do you do?" First, I don't actually immediately go into this sentence. Somebody says, "What do you do?" Uh, this is something that we taught at Forward when I was there last year. Uh, the first thing I do is I qualify the problem. I immediately state the problem that I solve, and that's because the problem is the thing that people identify with first. So, if you actually said in a real conversation, "What do you do?" I wouldn't say, "I help mission-driven organizations," 'cause that's just a little awkward. Uh, the first thing I would say is, "You know how these days it kind of feels like everyone's talking and nobody's listening? Like, we're all shouting past each other all day, every day." So, that's me going, "So, you know how." And then I state the problem that my work I'm about to talk about serves to solve. So, once I do that, people are like, "It does feel like that. Everything feels divisive." Sometimes people just immediately start talking to you when you do that. You don't even have to give them your one-liner. The problem's enough.

>> But so, you know how it feels like everyone's talking, everyone, you know, nobody's listening, and they go, "Yeah." I go, "So I'm a human connection specialist." So then I state my title, right? You don't, you never give your title up front because there's no context. "I'm a realtor." "I'm a real estate professional." I don't care.

>> But if you state the problem first, and after that, then I can say, "I'm a human connection specialist. I help." Now I go into my one-liner. "I help mission-driven organizations build connected cultures by teaching people to take on perspectives."

that are different from their own or some version of. But after you've done the framing, but after I've done the framing, because otherwise that land, that line just comes out of nowhere. Right now, if it's on my website, it can just state that in my, you know, in my, in my email signature can just say, you know, Brian works with mission-driven organizations to build connected cultures where everyone feels understood. Yeah. Something like that, or when everyone feels valued for their contributions. I, you know, I have different outcomes depending on what I'm what I'm doing. But essentially, it's that.

Okay. And then as far as like, how about for your um TED talk? Like if I wanted to consult with you on getting, I know I'll give you guys an example. A couple people in my community have reached out to you. Um, I believe Britney and Brian, and they, they raved about the help.

Oh yeah. I, I was just with Brian. He, he flew all the way to to Virginia Beach two two weeks ago. We had a blast.

So this is awesome. Um, and I know you don't normally do that. So I appreciate you like taking on people on a onetoone basis more than you have done in the past. But um, when they are like, hey, how can you help me? What do you do for me? Like, how do you explain that to somebody?

Yeah. So it's funny.

As a service provider.

Right. So, of course, we're in the business of message design. So, when I have to do my own messaging about message design, it's actually the hardest messaging you ever do. It's like, I've never had more trouble than when I have to like, once a year, I rebuild the messaging on my own website about message design. You're just like, "God, this is such a meta conversation I'm having." Uh, but it's usually some version of this. Uh, if somebody asked me in real time, uh, you know, what do you do? I would say, well, you know how really smart people often struggle to explain what they do to outsiders, to people who don't know their industry, and they go, "Yeah, that happens all the time. That happens to me. I always struggle to explain." Okay. Right. So, I'm a message design consultant. I teach smart people how to explain their ideas to the rest of us so that they can make a contribution to the world.

Bro, this, I, I feel like if you guys didn't catch this part, it's, it like this alone is worth the entire episode and maybe your whole year of just saying, you know how and just define the problem first. Don't go straight into your jargon, your secret sauce because they don't care.

They don't care. They care. And even on the dumb, like my super super simple, not dumb, but super simple example of like the guy who helps people, business owners. Well, people may not know that it's hard to get a home loan or buy a house as a business owner, but they do know, a lot of people know that it's a pain in the butt to buy a house.

Yeah.

A first time.

So, do you know, you know how people, you know, how a lot of people complain about like all the paperwork and all the hassle of getting a home loan and buying a house?

Yeah.

They're going to be like, "Yeah, anybody who's known it or they know someone who's done it, they, every, like, there's literally a public survey out there that says people would rather go to the dentist than get a home loan or buy a house again." It was so painful. And so

people will know that and then you go, well, it's even worse for business owners. So I help business owners.

Too. So you could literally just go, so you know how it's incredibly, like, you know how buying a house is just an incredibly difficult situation? You know, you know how painful it is to buy a house and people go, "Yeah." You know what I mean?

And I know there's a people out there uh right now who like they help people who have a home and they want to buy another home.

Yeah.

Cuz they have the two home tango going on. They got to sell one, buy another one.

Yeah.

And so you could specialize that. You know how it's like this is the problem or you know how it's really hard to buy a home right now? Well, it's even worse if you have a home to sell because now you have two transactions. I help people manage that whole two home tango.

Yes. And so what the, I'm so glad that you focused in on like, that was actually like the most like valuable part of that whole conversation is the framing around the problem because

framing is the most important thing ever.

It's what it's what answers the first question. There are, I, I have this thing I call it the eight questions. There are eight questions. We teach our speakers this. There are eight questions that people in the seats, the audience runs through their heads when you're up on stage. It's the same eight questions every time. No matter who you are, what your industry is, what the topic is, it doesn't matter. They ask themselves the same questions in the same order every time. And so our whole theory on speech writing is a speech is not a series of interesting points. It's a sequence of interesting answers to questions the audience is already asking. So if you just answer them in this order and it will always work. Is this relevant to me? Should I pay attention? It's some version of the relevance question. Should I pay attention to this?

And are people doing this when you're speaking in any setting?

In any setting, in any communication, spoken, video, doesn't matter. It's it's when you when when you work on the the opening of a video, the first thing that you're trying to do when you're working on the opening of video is how quickly can I make it clear to the viewer that this will be worth their time? That's what they're asking. Is this worth my time? And so if you ask me, what do I do? What do you do? And I go, I'm a human connection specialist. Immediately I have not answered the question, is it worth my time to talk to this person? I don't know what that means.

So what are the other questions? The first one is, is this relevant?

Right. Right. So it's like, is this relevant? And the second one is, does this really matter? It's the stakes question. Okay, this is relevant to me, but do I have to deal with this? Because people will do anything to avoid dealing with something new. They just, the, the, what you're not fighting, a lot of communicators think that what they're fighting against in any form of communication, especially on stage as a speaker, they think they're fighting against disagreement, that the audience is going to not agree with them or not like them. Mostly you're not fighting against that. You're fighting against nothing. The easiest thing for the audience to do is listen to you. Maybe they find it interesting and then just do absolutely nothing.

Right? It's apathy, right? And so the second question people ask is, even if I think this is relevant to me, is it actually worth trying to solve? Because people don't solve problems that they have all the time.

I got too many problems, bro.

Got too many problems. My problems aren't, I could be aware of a problem. I can have a problem, be aware of it, and still not solve it. Most people would rather continue doing something that doesn't work because they already know how to do it, even though it's not working, than figure out how to do it right because it's a lot of work.

Right? And so, I mean, my silly example for this is uh the previous house that we owned. When we bought the house, we knew that the the water line to the fridge in that house was broken. We knew it at the time we bought the house and I said, "I should get a new fridge." But getting a new fridge costs money and it's expensive. And so we moved in and we didn't deal with that. And so we never were able to do the water thing because the water line was broken. And I kept thinking, I should do deal with this at some point. But I didn't. It was broken. We kept bitching about it. We kept complaining about it. And then we never fixed it until one day I came home from a speaking engagement and I'd been on the road for for a week or two and my kitchen was flooded because the broken water line leaked. And that is when I called a plumber and I called a cleanup crew and I called a fridge, you know, person to come fix it. And it was only after I had the actual consequences of the problem that I finally decided to solve it. And at that point, it cost me way more. If only the first time I had called somebody to look at it, if they had just said to me, "Listen, this doesn't seem like it's a big problem, but at some point this will leak, and if it happens when you're out of the house, it will destroy your kitchen."

Dang.

I probably would have replaced the fridge for a,000 bucks right there instead of it costing me everything it did years later. So, the next time we bought a house, which also happened to have a fridge with the water line broken, literally before we moved in, I bought a new fridge. It was just like I learned my lesson PTSD.

But the person, the first time somebody looked at the fridge and told us the water line was broken, I thought it just meant

I can't use it for water and I just, I'll stick a brittle filter inside the fridge. It'll be fine.

Yeah.

Because they didn't bother explaining the stakes or making me understand the stakes. So the second question people ask after, is this relevant to me, should I pay attention? Is is this really worth it? Right? Like, do I need to pay attention to this? Do I need to?

And so these are, and just for clarity here everybody, like these don't all have to be covered in your opening line. Now we're getting into like, these are the questions people ask they're listening to you speak.

These are the questions people ask as they're watching your YouTube video.

So this is what's going to get them to trust you, move forward, do all the things. And we're going through that and then we'll get into the four things, you know, the the structure of your talk which we'll wrap with. But I want to make sure you go through these eight questions. And by the way, if you're watching right now on YouTube, please drop a comment and let me know. Is this helping you guys? What other questions do you have? And honestly, should we bring Brian back on? Because I get ideas for our future content from you guys in the comments. I read every single one of these, especially right after the episode. So, drop a comment right now if you're watching still. Okay, so let's get on to the next question. What's the third one?

Yeah. So, okay. So, it's should I, and I always do them. I always recap them because it's important you hear the order as they're happening, right? It's should I pay attention to this?

And then, is this really worth it? Right? Or some version of that. Or it's, you could frame that question as, uh, do I really need to deal with this?

Yeah.

And then after that, it's, but why should I listen to you?

Dang.

Why should I listen to you? And what I mean is you specifically because what happens, and this is actually, this is a huge problem for communicators. They either put who they are right up front. That's the first words out of their mouth. They tell you all about themselves, which does not answer the relevance question. Or they forget to tell you anything about themselves because they think it'll be braggy to do that. But now you never answer the question, which is why you specifically? Because just because we've established the problem and they realize that this problem is worth dealing with doesn't mean you're the right person necessarily to solve that problem. They could just hit AI or Google or YouTube and just go find the world's most foremost expert on that problem and go listen to them instead. So why you specifically? This is where you introduce your, we call it the story hook. This is where you want to give, depending on the length of the content, it'll be short or it could be longer. In a, in a 60-minute speech, you can spend three or four minutes here. Uh, in a one-minute reel, it should probably be a sentence at most. Yep. Right. Uh, in a YouTube video, it might be

this many people. I've done this thing. Or I made this much money from this or whatever.

But we need to know why you specifically, which is by the way, you know, you, you mentioned up at the front, you know, that I'm a magician. That was just one way for you to say this is going, like what Brian's going to be here to talk about is coming from an angle that you haven't heard before. So, he's going to have a perspective that is different from the hundred other communication experts you've already heard. That's just why me specifically. It doesn't mean I'm the best in the world at this. It just means I have a perspective that you can't get somewhere else.

Yeah.

So, that's the question. Why?

Why are you? Okay. Why you specifically? So, we got, uh, the, like, it's the, it's, uh, why now, essentially, or why should I listen?

Yeah. Why should I listen to this?

Yeah. And then now it's why you?

Yeah. And why should I listen to you about this?

Okay.

And then after that, this is the one that nobody thinks to answer. It's the secret sauce in our entire strategy because it's one nobody thinks about. It's why can't I keep doing what I'm already doing? This is the status quo question. This is what actually helps you fight against that apathy that you talk about and this is what I learned from magic. So here's my example. Now you've heard me give this example because I've taught it once in one of your workshops, but I, I'll do it again for the for the folks listening. So when I was a magician, uh, you can imagine you're watching a magic trick and and if I say, "Hey, pick a card." And you take a card out and let's say it's a seven of diamonds or whatever. And then I say, "Uh, put it back in the deck." And then I pull the seven of diamonds out of my pocket. You might go, "Ah." But then immediately what does your brain do?

Uh, like you wonder how.

How did he do it? Your brain will try to solve the problem right away. Our brains do that. You will try to figure it out. And you might think, I wonder if he knew I was going to take that card and he just had a duplicate seven of diamonds, a second seven of diamonds in his pocket. Now whether or not that's true doesn't matter. If you think it might be true, that might be a way to solve this magic trick. You don't feel the experience of magic. You don't have the experience of wonder.

So, you've seen magicians. We say, "Take a card." You take out a card, seven of diamonds, whatever. I don't see it. I hand you a Sharpie marker. I say, "Write your name across it." So, now you write it. You write your name on it. It goes into the deck. When I pull it out of my pocket, you might go, and then you go, "Uh, maybe he has a second seven of diamonds." And you go, "Wait, no, he can't because I wrote my name on it." But then you might go, "Uh, maybe he snuck it and hid it in his hand somehow and shoved it into his pocket." So, still no wonder. So, what do magicians actually do? Take a card. Seven of diamonds. Write your name on it. I hand you the card. Say you put it back in the deck. Hand it to somebody else. Shuffle the deck. Give it back to me. And then I pull it out of my pocket. Go. And then you go, "Well, maybe it's a second card." No, it can't be a duplicate because I wrote my name on it. Oh, well, maybe he snuck in his pocket. No, it couldn't have been because I had the cards and I put it back in. So, what magicians do is we learn that you have to actually address and eliminate all of the possible ways the trick could have been done before you get to the climax. When you do that, people rattle through all the ways they think it might have worked. They run out of ideas and that is when magic happens. That's when they're left with no other option. They have to believe essentially.

In magic. Yeah. So how does this work for communication? Most people skip from the problem straight to the solution and this is actually, you asked me earlier in the conversation, what do people get wrong with typical communication training? Well, a lot of communication training tells you to do this. They say, right, as soon as you've identified the problem, it's a sales framework. Identify the problem, they agree to it, immediately give them the solution. Problem, solution. Pair those two.

But they're thinking, this isn't going to work for me.

But they're thinking, there's all these other ways that I could do it, that I've heard of doing it, that sound easier, that sound less complicated, that sound cheaper, that sound, there's all these other things. And so you have to do a section of your communication that we call the status quo, a tour through the status quo. You have to go, okay, so now in an attempt to solve this problem, a lot of people think that X will work and it feels like a good idea because X, Y, and Z, but actually there's this research that shows us that that doesn't work, blah, blah, blah. Or you go, you go, and then you might think, well, this is another thing that might work and maybe you've even tried that and that feels like a good idea, too, because of blah, blah, blah, but actually that doesn't work and here's why. And you take people on a tour to understand the existing solutions that either they've tried or they've thought of trying or they might ever hear about and why each of them doesn't work. And the key to this section though is that you can't be doing it waving the blame finger and going, "You're an idiot for trying this." This is a tactical empathy section. This is saying, it totally makes sense why you might try this.

It's not my fault.

It either, and then it's one of three things. It either doesn't work, it doesn't work as well as you'd think, or it does work, but it leads to unintended or unforeseen negative consequences.

Okay?

Right? And so, one by one, you take down the status quo, and that answers the question, why can't I just keep doing what I'm already doing?

Is this also the part where you're dealing with preconceived objections?

This is, this is where salespeople would say this is basically dealing with objections. But I, in my experience, when people are told, deal with objections, they go at it one, very blunt, and they go at it in a way that feels very blamy.

Yeah.

Uh, and they also only deal with the ones that the person might be at the forefront, the conscious ones. They don't deal with the ones they might look up later or hear about or come to them when a, when they talk to a friend after this conversation. You have to deal with all of them. All of them that could conceivably come up. And so in a 60-minute keynote speech, this might be 15 minutes of stage time and people speak, our speakers, they're like, "You're kidding. How, why would, like, doesn't that isn't that like just wouldn't the audience get bored listening to all the things they shouldn't do?" I'm like, "No, people find it fascinating because people, people will watch three-hour documentaries on topics they'd never heard of until they were on Netflix that day. People are curious about things, and people also love finding out why things do or don't work." But also, if you just jumped into your solution, they're going to be not even open to hearing it.

They're not even open to hearing it. That's exactly right. The likelihood that they're open to it is very, very low.

I mean, it would, you would catch the people who are, but there's a lot of people you're missing.

Most people are not. And here's, and so, here's kind of the.

And this is probably why someone's like, "Hey, I did the thing." And people weren't into it.

Yes. And.

They weren't into it all, like from the beginning. You didn't break out of, you didn't break them out of that shell.

Right. And and this is essentially where you and I had talked about um kind of beliefs. People have, you know, limiting beliefs, but essentially what that means is everybody has beliefs. Some beliefs are positive, some are negative. Um, some are neutral. Uh, some of these beliefs work in your favor, some of them work against whatever it is that you're saying. The key is, a lot of people when they're dealing with beliefs, when they're overcoming objections, they attack the belief. This is not on purpose, but this is how they go about it. They try to, uh, dismiss the belief. They try to go, "No, that, that's just wrong and show them, prove why it's wrong." That doesn't work. There's a mountain of research that tells us this doesn't work. What you can do is replace a belief with a stronger belief. So beliefs that people have, and we do this in this deep audience analysis that we do before going into writing any piece of communication. Uh, but if you work through people's beliefs and you figure out which are the ones that are going to prevent them from following you on this journey, then what you want to do is make a case during the status quo section for why they should have not reject the belief they have, just here's a stronger belief and make a good compelling case for it. And if you can do that, so a practical way would be like, now most people think or most people tried this. Now most people have done this. And what you're doing is you're coming from a place of empathy. Meaning like, you're not dumb for thinking this.

That totally makes sense. Totally. Yeah, dude. Like I get it. I was thinking the same thing. But the bonus, you yourself have done this thing and and right, and you do this very, very well.

Like, I've actually, I was right there with you. I think I thought the same thing until I learned this, until I tried this, or until I found this. And then it's like, "Oh, wow. Okay, he's not talking down to me." Because I've noticed a lot of people are condescending and they're like,

They're lecturing you. And that works to some degree because somebody might think, "Oh, he's the expert. It lands with me." But I think it turns a lot more people off.

Yeah. It really, it really, people don't want to be lectured. People don't even want to attend lectures. Like, people, it's just such a.

Okay. So then, okay. So now we, the status quo. What's next?

Right. So after you've addressed fully the why can't I keep doing what I'm already doing. Now finally, they are ready to hear what you have to offer because what you've done is very evil. You've you've actually dug them into a hole where they started listening to you. They had a problem that mattered to them that they thought, this is worth dealing with, and you seem like the right person to listen to about this, right? They're working through these questions in their head. But now you've removed all of the options that they'd even considered, tried, heard about. They're in worse shape than they were when you started talking. You are their only hope. You get to throw them a lifeline and go, but actually, there is a way out of this. So now they're asking the question, well, then what's the solution?

What do I do instead? And now they're ready to listen to listen. Now that was a little Sean Connery moment. Uh, now they're ready to listen to your special sauce, your unique thing, your framework. But the key is.

Framework is the right word. You don't want to go into the tactics here. The mistake in this section is people start to talk about the audience is asking for your solution at this point. This is the only time you do not actually want to directly give them what they want. They want the solution, which means they want the tactic. They want the hack. What they actually need is the paradigm shift. People have, you have to change their thinking. They have to think differently before they will act differently.

So this is the next step in the process. And by the way, as you're doing this.

This is the, this is actually the order in which you're doing talk. Okay. So this is the.

You are answering the questions.

So when you're talking about these eight questions.

You're just answering them.

This is also the framework that you talked about earlier, which is the the order in which you deliver the. Okay, cool. Just making sure because I thought it was like two different things, but now I understand it's all.

Yeah. Basically, like, like you could look at these side by side on a on a piece of paper, like, you know, you can look at these eight questions and then you can look at our our speech design framework. The framework answers these eight questions. So we're in the same, we're on the same page. Okay, cool. So now we're getting into our way of solving the problem and I, I have made this mistake, you know, before where I go straight into the tactics. Here's the website I go to. I type this in. I do this. And that is more of a workshop vibe. That's cool. But what happens is people get lost in the sauce. I haven't actually changed the way they think about anything yet.

Right.

And so I noticed when I shifted to the way you taught me, people came up to me afterwards and they told me something and I, I never forget this when people say this and I know I'm doing the right thing. I never thought of it that way.

Yes. Yes. There's your lit.

I didn't think of it that way. You simplified this. You made it sound like, now I get it. Because honestly, what I'm teaching, Brian, is not something that's like, oh, earth-shattering. I'm, you know, some crazy. I'm teaching them something that they may have already heard like 20 times, but the way in which I taught it finally sticks. The way I explained it actually makes a difference and now they can take action on it. Or I'm teaching it in a way that actually works and somebody else just gave them some BS thing that doesn't work, you know, whatever. But in any case, I'm looking for that now anywhere I go. Like, dude, I never thought of it that way. Yes. So, I'm going to, I, I give myself permission to drop one name in in every conversation. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to drop, uh, Seth Goden's name here. So, in, uh, kind of, you know, father of modern marketing, uh, he went from being a hero to a mentor to something of a friend over the years through a series of lucky circumstances. And I was, uh, uh, complaining one time to Seth Goden, of all people, uh, years ago, probably almost 10 years ago now or something like, I don't know, seven, eight years ago, was complaining about, uh, uh, some clients that we had had that were just pain in the ass clients. They were just really difficult clients. And he stopped me and he said, "But Brian, you're self-employed. You get to choose your clients. Why would you choose clients that are difficult to work with?"

Yeah.

And it just changed my whole life in that moment. Now, here's, here's what's important about this, right? Here's what's important. It wasn't a tech or a tactic or a hack or or anything like that. He didn't say, "Oh, you have difficult clients." Well, here's how to change your LinkedIn posts so that the right clients show up. He, that's the tactic and that will change with the algorithm, with the culture, with the time, right? Tactics are very limited. They change constantly. When we teach people, when we focus on tactics, it's very limited and it, it's often people try to implement them in the wrong scenario and they don't realize it. What he did was he gave me a paradigm shift. Changed my thinking about client acquisition by simply saying, "No, no, no. You're self-employed. Your clients don't choose you. You choose your clients." And as soon as I went, "Oh, I choose my clients." Then it became very easy to go learn the tactics that would work on LinkedIn. I can look those up later.

Yeah. Because you made the decision first and then like all the things come your way. I always say like people think they need more information to decide. No, you just need to decide, right?

And then you'll find every tactic you need because now you may, the universe kind of like conspires to give it all to you. You start seeing things. It's the, uh, what is that, reticular activator system turns on in your brain and now you, you're looking for the solutions to the problem because you already decided I don't want to work with people like that.

Yes. You, you have to change how you see first. And so when people are asking this silent question, this, okay, then what's the solution? Then it is, like I said, the only question that we actually don't answer immediately because that's what people think they need at that moment. And what they actually need is a paradigm shift. So, at this moment, before you do your.

Acronym, before you do your five-step first-time home buyer process, you have to do some type of paradigm shift. And and and if you've been using Chat GPT for the last three years, uh, you will know what a paradigm shift looks like because Chat GPT abuses this. So, so don't.

Stop doing this. Start doing this.

Stop doing this. Start doing this. It's not X, it's Y. The real problem is not X. The real problem is Y.

So, if you're allergic to that because you've been watching Chat GPT, here's the key to just because I've been teaching this forever and now Chat GPT has made sentences like this feel overwhelm, you know, feel.

It ruined it for us.

It ruined it. But they still work. They work if you use it once. That's it. Once per communication and use it right here at the paradigm shift. The reason people are allergic to Chat GPT is because it uses it every other sentence. It's just exhausting. It's it's like making an argument when it doesn't need to be making an argument.

Okay, so this makes sense. Now, um, we are shifting the way they think about something. Now, I want to push back on something really quick here because I'd love to hear your opinion on this. And you told me something in, in last time I brought this up to you. And I said, "Hey, when I talk, when I've seen people give these talks and they don't give any tactics, they just do the paradigm shifting and do this and they do the things in a keynote." And what's happened at the end is people are left a little bit like disappointed because they're like, "Man, I wanted the next step and I didn't get it from him. I loved it, but I just wish they would have given me something more."

And you're like, "Well, I think that that's probably they're not good at doing this." Is what you told me. You said they're not really good at, uh, this at presenting this because when you're really good at this, you don't really need to get in the weeds because they'll, they'll be so moved. For example, like when Ed Milet talked that one year and he was the best speaker, he didn't tell us what tactic or website or social. But he's, people literally told me afterwards, he changed my life. Like my life was changed based on what he said. So I'm like, wow, well, Ed can do that, but maybe not me, Neil, because I'm not as gifted of a guy as him.

Okay, so, so this is, this is an, I don't know, an incomplete understanding of, of, uh, of the system. So one, if it's done well, you need not give tactics. I stand by that. However, uh, the very next question people ask after they get the solution, after they get the paradigm shift is, they ask, then how do I get started? What should I do?

Yeah. And that's where you are the person who.

Now you, now you must actually answer that question. So we do teach all of our speakers and all of our communicators to deliver. Here's the key though. One action step.

One. The reason I train people against the tactics and the hacks and all that stuff is because they go into workshop mode when they do that and people aren't ready yet. That's that's that's stuff that's it's hands-on. It takes time. Uh, or people, you know, you see speakers do this thing when they're trying to deliver so much value that they just fire off. Here's 25 things that you can do. It feels generous. It's not. It's selfish because people can't listen to all of that.

Yeah. So then what I do is I used to do that and it would overwhelm people and then they would not do anything and they wouldn't tell me that I changed their their business or anything. And I, I'll give you an example. I recently spoke at an event, uh, a national conference event, and there was a lot of people there and the guy taught AI tactics and he went into all the tools and all the different things and it was great. Honestly, I, I had, I took notes. I was like, dude, I'm going to try that. This is great. Then I gave a talk and I did more of what you're talking about, change the perspective, shift things, and then I did include a few things. I did more than one, but I did include a few things that they can do and showed examples, but I leaned more on shifting the way of thinking rather than how to do the X.

Yeah.

But afterwards, I got mobbed. And I noticed and dude, he's my friend. It's not, I'm not saying anything. I'm not talking crap at all. But he didn't.

Yep.

And so I realized like, that made more of an impact. Which if my goal was to get people to do something with this, that's what I wanted. So like, you have to think about the bigger picture. Yeah. There's a tactical guy in the audience who wants to take all the notes and go execute. But that's not the average person. The average person is going to get lost in the sauce. They're not wearing a pod device recording your AI talking, going to run it through the GPT afterwards. They're just going to hear it. They're going to think it was cool and then they're going to go home and do nothing and you're forgotten. You're just left in this. And the other part is if I w I wasn't selling anything that day. But if I were to sell my service,

I would have been like, "Dude, I need to learn this. I need to get into the how with you."

Yes. And this, this is why, uh, some of my colleagues, we, we think that, uh, folks who run events, folks like you should actually send out a, a, um, a six-month survey. Six months after an event or three months, maybe call it three. Three months after the event, send a survey and ask them a handful of the same questions you asked them in the moment. I guarantee you will get very different answers. What you will find out from that survey is that the people that they ranked the top at the moment, in the, in the heat of it, are like the best charismatic presenters. The people who they just loved. It was just fun and funny and exciting and they did jump kicks. Ask them three months later.

They will give you the answers of the people that they're still using what they learned. They've implemented it. It's worked and it will be some of the quieter speakers, but it will also be some of the speakers that never rank at the top. And those are speakers who have built.

Who have designed their message to move people to action, to get somebody to do something new as a result.

And so when you overachieve, it's going to cause a problem there. So, um, they want to do more. You can get them to do one thing, then you can get them to do more. So, it's like it's a step-by-step process rather than drowning someone in the deep end of the pool. Yeah, going into the shallow.

Water. I'll give you a real three, kind of three-step criteria for your action step. Uh, to make sure that you're, you're getting the action step right because we're kind of talking about it in a, in a very top level way right now.

And by the way, just to give context, if you are coming to do a workshop, which sometimes I am doing a workshop, they paid me to give the.

100% that's what put in the framework, you got a workbook, let's do the work together.

And so sometimes they're like, Neil, could you do a hybrid?

And then I know what I'm getting into. So it's like they're paying you to do a hybrid, not just entertain people and get them to take action. These are people who already agreed. These are people who already done some of the stuff you talked about in the beginning. Y they've made the decision to do things. And so if I were to come in there and do this talk to that group, they would probably be disappointed because they came here to actually do things. So it's, it's, it's important that you guys are applying what we're talking about to the right group. Like earlier Brian said, hey, if you got a group of of seven or eights on a scale of 1 to 10, don't go to level two because they'll be disappointed. Like you need to know who you're talking to and what your the goal of the talk is.

But this is like the high-level talk, which is the one that you would give as your, I call this your signature talk.

Yeah, this is a signature talk if you're a speaker. This is your brand-level communication. If if you're not like an onstage speaker, but you're, you know, running a company, whatever. This is the networking conversations that you have. This is how you get people to engage with you, get into your world where they might want to take another step. This is the sales conversation. Stay out of the weeds in the sales conversation. This is what one of your one of your folks, you know, Yeah. flew to me to to deal with is and and and um, you know.

He needed help, bro.

He, well, he, he did, but he knew that, which was beautiful because most people, most people's egos are too.

No, he told me he said, "I need help." He, he came to me and he said, he literally at one point when he and I were talking about how I might be able to help him, like if we were going to work together, he, he at one point he stopped talking in the Zoom call and he goes, "That, that look that you have on your face right now, that's the look people have when they sit across from me in a sales conversation. They look confused and overwhelmed, just like you do right now, and that's what I need to fix."

And so it was like, yeah, in the sales conversation, they need to know almost nothing.

In order to do business with you. It's so much less than you think.

Okay. So then, okay. So now let's move on. We have given them the, um, the sh perspective shift.

Yes.

And we're moving shift paradigm. And then we've given him an action step.

What do I actually do?

And then, uh, real quick, you were going to say, what is the lit-ness test or the three-step thing to, what is that action step?

Action steps are simple, achievable, and time-bound. Simple means they actually understand what it is. That that sounds obvious, but we could talk for two hours about what that means, but like they actually understand what it is. Um, achievable, it's realistic that they could do it. There's basically no friction involved and time-bound. It can be done soon or in a very, very short period of time. Uh, and my example for this is, as a human connection speaker, I listen to a lot of other human connection speakers who are many wonderful people, friends, colleagues of mine, but a lot of them make the mistake at the action step. They give a great talk. It's beautiful. It's moving. And they get to the action step and they say, "I want you to go out there. I want you to go out there and make more meaningful connections with people." Like that is not simple, achievable, or time-bound. It's not simple because what does meaningful connections mean? It's vague. I don't know. Two, it's not achievable because you know what it takes to make a meaningful connection. I have to have the confidence to walk up to a stranger, know how to start that conversation. And it's not time-bound. And it's just forever and ever, right? What I do is if I'm going to give an action step like that, I say, today before you leave the event, meet one new person. It's simple. You know exactly what that means. Meet one new person. It's achievable. I already taught you earlier in the talk. I already taught them conversation starters that anyone can use and it's time-bound before you leave the event.

People can do it.

And people did it, by the way, when you did that. So this is cool. Um, and then let's get through these last ones. And then, by the way, guys, this is just, I'm just throwing this out there. Brian and I talked about this earlier this year. We're thinking about doing some workshop in some capacity. We don't know yet. We're just an idea in the sky right now. But if you are someone that thinks like, "Hey, I would love to go deep and actually do the work that Neil and Brian are talking about right now." Let me know. Like, let me know in the comments. Shoot me a DM on Instagram. That's the best way. I, I check all my DMs. So, shoot me a DM because if there's enough interest, Brian and I will do that. We'll put together something for you and and we'll figure it out. But I want to know if this is helping you guys first and if it is,

if you'd want to go deeper. So, let's move on to the next step. We've given them the action step. What do we do next?

There's two questions we need to answer, right? So, we've given them the action step and then they ask themselves a question. Is this really worth doing?

So, this is actually, you feel like we already answered that question because we answered at the stakes right up front. This is the other version of it. There's the stakes. There's stakes and there's sacrifices and they're on a scale. I call it the stake sacrifices scale because I'm not that clever. So the stake sacrifices scale is there's something at stake. What do I lose if I don't do this? And then there's a sacrifice. What do I lose if I do? Everything we do has a sacrifice. We're going to give something up.

It's a trade-off.

It's a trade-off. And so the, this is, I can simplify all of behavior change down to just this. If the stakes feel worse than the sacrifice, they will do it. If the sacrifice, if the sacrifice feels worse than the stakes, they won't. I can just simplify all of the history of behavior change science down to that.

And it's not that simple, but it really does come down to that for speakers. And so they're asking themselves the question, okay, I now think differently about this. I know exactly what I'm supposed to do, but they're going to have to.

Make a sacrifice to do that thing. And so, you have to now paint a picture of what success looks like if they do this thing you just did. You have to make the sacrifice feel smaller than what they lose if they don't.

So, this is where you would show long-term positive benefits. Talk about what's going to work out for them in the long run.

What now? Now is your time to do what you're actually used to doing in marketing.

Okay. And and really quick, I I've seen people. Is this a mistake or is this a tweak that you can make? I've seen people show some of these successful outcomes earlier in the talk to keep people bought in, to stick around to the end because I feel like the payoff's coming, but we've done a lot of work and now you're getting to the end. Would have bought the guy who tuned out at minute six be at the 40-minute talk because he was like, you know what, is this even worth it?

Yeah. So there's like, should I say something in the beginning like, by the way, I'm going to show you a specific example of how this led to millions of dollars for people just like or hundreds of thousands of dollars for people just like you. So stick around like or stick with me on this.

So should you can do this in the premise. The premise is the very opening of the talk. That's when you actually answer that first question. Is is this worth my time? Was relevant to me. So you should have already answered it.

You should have already answered that. We kind of skimmed past it because we were talking specifically about the problem. Typically what you're doing in the premise is identifying the want and the problem, the known want. What do people know that they want? If you identify, we know that you want this thing, like you know, we all want this, but unfortunately, and then you identify the problem, you've got people with relevance. The want should have people focused on the outcome. At this point of the talk, you're really doing what marketers might call a value stack. At this point, going and this and this. We've seen people do this and this and it's been, and now you're just giving them all these reasons to outweigh the sacrifice, the like for me, human connection, the time, the awkwardness of walking up to a stranger. It's just going, or it could be like, it's possible. Um, maybe the cost, yeah, the financial cost too, like whatever it is that you're educational things at stake. There's always a sacrifice.

Yes, looking like an idiot is one of the primary reasons people do not do things. They're worried about looking like an idiot. And the the key is you don't want to address the negative things at this point in the talk. Anything negative is early. We're moving from negative to positive. So, at the end of the talk, we're now just going and people, you know, we've worked. This is a great time for a case study. A lot of people put case studies at the very beginning of a talk.

This tells the audience they're going to be sold.

Yes. People immediately. And this is this is like this like like mid-2010s marketing funnel webinar hacky thing that worked for a little while until people wised up to it. What happens when you put that case study really early is for the most part, like you can do a quick like in your why should you listen to me? You can do the quick like I've trained these people. I've done these things. You don't want to go deep and do a case study early because people go, ah, a pitch is coming. Yeah, it just puts up there.

So now we've already got to the end and then I'm like, here's John, here's Susan, here's Sally. Now here's someone that you can identify with and look how great they're doing as a result of following everything that we've just talked about.

Okay, cool. And then the last step is closing out. How do you do the or what's the last question people are asking? So what was this all about again? They've been talking for a while. They've heard a lot of things. They've gone on a journey. Their minds are crazy. You must recap the core message before the end of the talk. I cannot tell you how many speakers I sit at the back of the room and everything was good, is really enjoyable, good action steps there that this people are ready and then they were just like, so yeah. So I'm going to be at the back of the room. I'm going to be doing things just like, oh no, remind people you were just talking for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour. Even if it was only five or 10 minutes, people got to remember. Give them the they're ready for it to be over. By the time you hit the success portion of the talk, the case study portion, what that they can feel this is winding down and you got to get off the stage as quickly from the moment they start to feel like, oh, I think the speech is coming to an end. You have to get off the stage as soon as possible after that. So, don't belabor this. People sometimes people talk for way too long after they can feel it's like a movie. I saw a thing that never ended. It was like ending never ended and like, dude, land the plane. There are some. Yeah. Yes. Land the plane. Exactly.

We've been circling the airport.

Yes. I literally use the same analogy. Land the plane. Um, so they're asking what was this all about again. And so give them the oneliner. Remind them of the core message. So if you're this kind of person and you're looking for this, do this thing. And then mic drop one final sentence which again, that's a whole workshop on how to.

Yeah. And then there's a you're out. And then more advanced version you could tell a story there to wrap it up. Emotional close. Story is a great way to wrap it up, right? There there's lots of advanced things that you can do, but the one thing you must do is deliver the core message of the talk as one of, if not the very last things you say.

And this is the thing that keeps it memorable for people.

Yeah. I mean, the the last words of my talk at at Forward were just say the thing. I cannot tell you how many people have since Forward have come to me, DM me thing, and they remember that. They remember it was a talk about clear communication because the very last thing I said was just say the thing. And so it's like that's it. That's it. That's all I needed. If I didn't say that though, it could get wrapped up in the magic tricks I did and the stories I told and all this other stuff.

That makes sense, man. So this is guys, this is the secret sauce that will have people listen to you, have people respect you. And honestly, it doesn't have to be like this whole framework that you're that you address all those things. That's for a talk. But if you're in a quick meeting, you can do a micro version of this. There's a 10-minute version. There's a 20 minute, a 40 minute, an hour minute version of it. There's a one minute version where you're addressing the most important parts of those eight questions that people have. But I just think there's nothing more powerful than putting yourself in the audience perspective, like putting yourself in their shoes and really think about it from their perspective. Like, are you meeting people where they're at?

Are you really like hearing out their concerns? Why would they be opposed to this? You know, it's like that whole eight mile thing where it's like Eminem called out all the reasons before the dude even had a chance to say it. like you can handle so many problems by just addressing it in your communication.

And uh, just watch the benefits. It's it's so crazy. So, um, if we had to tie a bow on this conversation, Brian, what would you say? Like, how would you wrap up what we just did? How would I wrap up what we just did?

Ideas don't speak for themselves. People do. So, speak up and speak clearly for your ideas.

Yes. Clarity over confusion. That's it.

Clarity over everything.

Yes. So guys, be clear. Um, if this helped you, please let us know in the comments. I'll also put Brian's uh Instagram so you can DM him DM him in uh on from on his IG. And then also um let us know if we should bring Brian back because I've had a few people come back and we can go deeper on any of the things that we talked about today. And then also let us know if you think we should do a workshop because I think that might be the next step for people who are really wanting to take this to the next level. But until then, thank you Brian and we will see all of you on the next show.