Transcription
We've all had conversations that feel forced, boring, or are filled with awkward silences. It can be almost painful, like this next clip.
"So, like, country music, or do you like country?"
"Yeah, cool."
So, in this video, we're going to go over five steps to make small talk with anyone. We'll do so by breaking down some tricks that Joe Rogan uses on his podcast to connect with everyone from academics to athletes to celebrities. Some will be mindsets, and some will be word-for-word questions you can steal. These habits are a big reason why so many of Joe's conversations end like this:
"Bob Sagan, I love you."
"I love you. Thank you, buddy. Thank you. It was a lot of fun."
"This was great. This was great. Thank you very much."
"Thank you. I really enjoyed this, man. I really enjoyed it. Tell people I always appreciate you, man. Really do. Thanks."
"And I really appreciate you too."
Most people have their guard up when they first meet you. They aren't sure if you're going to be competitive or try to put them down in some way. So, the first trick you can steal from Joe is to grease the wheels early with a compliment. This isn't something you have to do to make small talk go well, but it helps you start the conversation with a positive vibe.
There's a lot of potential compliments you could give someone. That said, there's three easy types you can focus on for small talk: their work, their energy, or a platonic physical compliment. With those three options, you should be able to compliment almost anyone you meet. Here's a quick example of each:
"Thank you very much for being here. I'm a really big fan, so this is an honor."
"I love being around people like you, my guy. People around you, you people like you. You're you're going for [ __ ] all the time and it's infectious. It's like you're you, you give off energy."
"Nice to meet you."
"Good to meet you too. By the way, congrats on the mustache. The mustache, lower piece combo, that's uh, the anarchist guy. With that guy, who's the mask? Oh, the Guy Fawkes. That's right. Yeah, perfect."
People make three common mistakes when giving compliments that you'll want to avoid. The first is making the compliment too sexual. Second is making a compliment you don't mean, which makes you seem manipulative. The third is dwelling on the compliment. A compliment is great, but especially with people of high status who hear compliments all the time, you'll want to transition off of it fairly quickly.
In general, transitioning off of an introduction and into an interesting conversation is one of the hardest parts of small talk. The best way to do this is by transitioning between topics using "reminds me of." Thinking, for example, with Josh Barnett, Joe starts the conversation in his standard way by complimenting his beard.
"How long have you been growing that [ __ ]?"
"That's a real one."
After Josh responds, Joe does what most people would do and starts talking about his own hair, but very quickly, he uses that to toss out a new potential topic.
"Probably 35. I started growing like, serious back hair. I'm not like, who's that Russian wrestler dude? Is this one? Oh, uh, well, there was this guy, uh, Victor Zangief, who, who actually did professional wrestling. That guy was just coated in it."
"Oh, yeah, right. There's another guy, Solomon Hashemica."
Most people make the mistake of thinking very linearly during small talk. So, they'd simply comment on their own hair and then stare over at you, hoping that you would take the conversation somewhere interesting. Just by tossing out that his back hair reminds him of a Russian wrestler, Joe and Josh are able to spend the next four minutes talking about various wrestlers and MMA fighters. It's a simple habit to build and makes a huge difference in the quality of your small talk.
Here's another quick example with Rob Lowe. Rob asks Joe a question about baseball, which Joe doesn't seem interested in talking about. Most people here would just say something like, "No, not really," and let the conversation stall. Instead, Joe uses lateral thinking to transition to something else.
"Are you a fan of the, of the baseball with the crowd noise and crowd noise?"
"No, I'm not a fan of fake noise. I, I hate that. Some cars do that, they put fake engine noise through the speakers."
"Oh, Jesus. Exactly."
Because he didn't just answer the question, but instead asked himself, "What fake sound in a baseball stadium reminds me of?" they were able to transition to cars, a topic it turns out they both love. So, next time you're in conversation and can't think of anything to say, it's as simple as asking yourself, "What does this remind me of?" and then branch off in whatever direction first comes to your mind.
In both those cases, you see another common habit of Joe's: he pings for topics of mutual interest. Joe is infamous for doing this by bringing up DMT in every conversation.
"Good DMT. DMT. DMT. DMT. DMT. DMT. DMT."
When a guest doesn't know what it is, it just goes by the wayside, but when they do, it's an immediate connection. This will keep you genuinely interested in the conversation.
Joe is a master at doing this in the other direction as well. He has two tricks to get other people excited about the conversation. They're both super easy to do, but most people don't do them, which is why small talk feels so painful at times.
For example, here's a common small talk conversation:
"Where are you from originally?"
"I'm from Wilmington, Delaware."
"Wilmington, Delaware? I don't, I don't know many people from Delaware. Thank you. Yeah. What is Wilmington like?"
"Nice town. Yeah, it's great. Where are you from?"
"Is it nice there?"
These are boring questions that no one is going to be excited to answer unless they already like you. It's very similar, but watch what Joe asks instead:
"Why Utah, man? Why you live in Utah? What's that about?"
Joe peels the onion. He goes one level deeper by asking "why" questions that get someone talking about what they value. This may seem hard to work into a conversation, but it's actually quite simple. You just do it in two phases:
"Where do you live?"
"That's cool. Why do you live there?"
"What do you do for work?"
"Interesting. Why did you decide to do that?"
Even if the person doesn't love where they live, you'll get to hear what's important to them. Maybe it's their job, their family, a passion, whatever it is. Now you know what's important to them and can ask a question about that, which they're much more likely to want to talk about.
This ties directly into the second trick Joe uses: he asks questions that are fun to answer. For example, an issue you might run into with small talk is that some people don't have anything interesting going on in their lives to share about. One way to get them past that block is to ask a fun question that removes the constraint of having to be realistic. Here's a few examples:
"If you had a magic wand and someone said you could do whatever you want to fix this, what would you do?"
"You were the king of the world, said Ed. What are we going to do?"
"Let's say you become president."
Pulling both tricks together, a great decision tree of questions to get an interesting conversation going can be: "What do you do?" Then, as a follow-up, "Do you like it?" If they say yes, you can ask "why" and elicit their values. If they say no, you can ask, "Well, if you had $100 million, what would you do instead?"
Joe also has two habits for creating a connection with people while listening. The first is he laughs easily. This makes it more fun to talk to him because it makes you feel good for being funny, even when you aren't trying to be.
For instance, watch him react when Elon Musk talks about selling flamethrowers through The Boring Company.
"How many did you make?"
"Twenty thousand. And they're all gone."
Here's another example where Joe laughs at what Dan Bilzerian is saying, even though Dan isn't trying to make a joke.
"And I was single and I was just like, you know what, [ __ ] it. I'm just kind of, kind of like do bucket list [ __ ] like whatever, like whatever I wanted to do when I was a kid, I'm just gonna [ __ ] do it."
He's able to find humor in the absurd, and in both cases, you see the other person light up a bit as they get a laugh from Joe. For another example, watch David Blaine's big smile after he accidentally makes Joe laugh.
"Choked out. As euphoric, right?"
"Yeah, exactly. Except this one's even better."
"And then you have all these dreams."
"No, no. It makes it sound exciting."
The goal here is not to fake laugh. What you want to do is allow yourself to laugh every time you find something funny. Laughing is a habit that gets easier the more you do it. So, if you struggle to laugh when you're out with friends or in conversation with strangers, a good habit is to watch something you know will make you laugh right before going out. This will help you be in a better state to laugh in conversation.
The second habit Joe has when listening is mirroring. There are several ways to mirror, but Joe's is most similar to ex-FBI negotiator Chris Voss's method. The mirroring that I teach is much more simplistic and, interestingly enough, has a great impact on how the other person interacts with you. And it's just repeating the last one to three words that they've said, word for word.
"One to three words."
Or it's repeating a selected one to three words. Here's a quick example where he mirrors to make you feel heard.
"It's not like I wanna like take over the world. I just wanna like make a good living doing what I love. That's all I want, you know? And it's, it's [ __ ] hard. I know it's hard."
Here's a different example. This time, he mirrors to build rapport with Jordan Peterson before taking control of the conversation.
"Or king. What's it, what do you call him? Prime Minister Trudeau. That fella. The Castro lover. The Castro lover."
"I was just gonna say that."
"This [ __ ] guy."
Don't do this after every sentence, but if you find you want to make someone feel heard, or you want to interrupt without making the person feel ignored, mirror their last three words. Also, it's worth noting, while Joe does mirror people's words, he is not a chameleon. He stays true to himself and his style. For instance, Jordan Peterson is a polite guy who wears a suit and chooses his words carefully, but you just saw Joe chatting with him in a hoodie, dropping f-bombs in the first minute. So, you want to mirror someone's last few words as a quick hack to build a bit of rapport, but you don't want to copy everything about someone. Stay true to yourself and have confidence in who you are.
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Either way, I hope you enjoyed this video, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.