Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

If you’ve ever felt lost after a setback or unsure how to pivot into your next big chapter, this one’s for you. I’m sitting down with Steve Herz—talent agent, career coach, author, and a master at reinvention—to talk about how getting rejected from a dream job led him to build one of the most successful careers in media and personal development. From taking the calls no one else wanted, to turning soft skills into leadership superpowers, Steve breaks down the communication tools that actually move the needle (hint: it’s not your résumé). This episode is a masterclass in turning “no” into your greatest opportunity—and creating a life and career on your terms. In This Episode You Will Learn Rejection can redirect you toward your most aligned success path. Soft skills matter more than technical skills for advancement. Build influence through authority, warmth, and energy (AWE). Confidence grows when you take uncomfortable but strategic action. Culture transformation starts with effective private communication. Don’t wait—reinvent, reach out, and create new opportunities. Resources + Links Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/monahan Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at NetSuite.com/MONAHAN. Want to do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic? Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com/MONAHAN. Get 10% off your first Mitopure order at timeline.com/CONFIDENCE. Get 15% off your first order when you use code CONFIDENCE15 at checkout at jennikayne.com. Call my digital clone at 201-897-2553!  Visit heathermonahan.com Sign up for my mailing list: heathermonahan.com/mailing-list/  Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Follow Heather on Instagram & LinkedIn

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skills and abilities are great, but what need are you filling in another company or another person's life? And if you're not fulfilling a need, then there's no value to it. Come on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals,

overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. That's a no-see. I'm ready for my close-up. Tell me, have you been enjoying these new bonus confidence classics episodes we've been dropping on you every week? We've literally hundreds of episodes for you to listen to. So these bonuses are a great way to help you find the ones

you may have already missed. I hope you love this one as much as I do. Today, I'm excited for you to meet Steve Hers. He's the president and founding partner of IF Management. He believes that anything is possible. And I love Steve's story because it's so much about the pivot and reinvention and not knowing what's going to happen, but going anyways.

So Steve's the president of the Montage Group, a sports and entertainment talent and marketing consultancy. He's also a career advisor to CEOs, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and young professionals. Prior to joining TMG, Steve was the president and founding partner of IF Management, an industry leader whose broadcasting division became one of the largest in the space, representing over 200 television and radio personalities. The agency represents some of the biggest names in sports and news, including NBC Sports,

Mike Tirico, I don't even know who that is. I'm sure it's someone big, but I have no idea. ESPN's Scott Van Pelt and Dan Schulman and CNM Chief International Correspondent, Clivis Award, that's impressive. So Steve's got this massive background in talent, talent agency management, broadcasting, and to hear how he has pivoted, first to hear how he pivoted getting into it

and then how he pivoted out of it, just reminds me we all need to be constantly reinventing ourselves. Staying in one spot and doing one thing is death by a thousand cuts. So get moving, get pivoting, get growing and stepping into fear and I can't wait to hear what you think of Steve and what he has to say.

Hang tight. We meet a different guest each week. What do you know about the change? think of Steve and what he has to say. Hang tight. Hi and welcome back. And I'm so excited to be here today with Steve Hearst. Steve, thank you for being with me. Thanks, Heather. Happy to be here. So Steve, as you know, my people are always interested in the struggle. And while many people may look at you and see the massive success that you've built across your career I really like starting and hearing about some of the challenges that you had early on and and one of

your challenges or pivotal moments or opportunities however you choose to see it reminds me of the day I got fired and the reason why is I've heard you on other shows and you describe it as a punch in the gut. And I was hoping you could share that story with us when you got punched in the gut while you were still in law school. Sure. So when I was in my second year in law school

at Vanderbilt in 1990, I worked for a law firm called Curtis-Mallet-Privo, Park Avenue law firm in New York. The way the law works is that you get to find out if you get a job coming back at the end of law school after your second summer. It's a big deal. Most of the good jobs are taken in that wave of job offers. At the very end of the summer at Curtis Malay-Priveaux, there were 29 or 30 summer associates. And I was the last one to be called into the managing partner of the program's office.

His name was Turner Smith. And all of the 29 previous kids that had gone in before me were all given offers. And it was kind of a very euphoric feeling in the office in that, like the last weekend of the program, that August of 1990. And I walked in and he looked at me and he said, you know, we take it very seriously when we don't give someone an offer. We really know that it's putting kind of a black mark on your record. It's going to make it very hard for you to get a job in law.

And in your case, we didn't really stress about it. We're not giving you an offer and we don't think you should practice law. In your case, we did not really stress about it. We are not giving you an offer. We do not think you should practice law. He said, I do not even think you should. Maybe you should not even consider finishing law school. I think you would be much better suited coming back here as a client, as a business owner or a businessman rather than continuing the law. That was the gut punch And I kind of reeled out of his office with a whole new focus of what the rest of my life would look like, because up until then,

those first 25 years were directly in that one singular manner of I'm going to become a lawyer. So you were really clear on what you were going to do. It felt like there was never any plan B that you were getting ready for, right? No, no plan B. I, as I said, you know, I mentioned this in the book. My dad is now retired, but he was a successful attorney.

I have two older brothers that were, and are successful lawyers, cousins, aunts, uncles. I mean, it's just like, it's the family business basically. And, you know, I grew up, our family, you our family kind of pastime is argument and dating. This was it. This was my whole life and then it was gone in an instant in a sense. Where do you go from there? I know for me when I was fired, it took me, first of all, I cried for days.

I felt completely lost and it took me a good month before I truly got back on my feet again and tried to start even figuring out where to go. What did that time look like for you? It's interesting. I mean, we're going back 30 years now, so I'm committing this to memory that I think I was just lost for a while.

Look, the good news is that I agreed with Turner Smith. I think the worst part about getting fired from a job, I would think, this luckily has never happened to me, is that you get fired from a job and they tell you you're no good at the entire field and you actually don't believe them, you do believe you're good at it. I knew I wasn't cut out for it.

So that was kind of, in a weird way, it was comforting and discomforting at the same time. It was kind of a double whammy in the sense that I now had to go figure out what else could I do with my life after not having thought about it. So I was kind of lost for a while. I had this last year of law school to finish, and it didn't make sense not to finish. And also, you know, take the bar. So my dad and mom were like, hey, just take the bar. If you don't want to go practice law, at least you'll say you could have done it.

I knew there was another year of all that. I did all that, luckily, passed the bar, et cetera. I just didn't really know what I wanted to do. Nothing really came to me. I did end up practicing law briefly from my dad's law firm on Long Island. That's when I just had this weird thing happen. I was reading the newspaper one day, the New York Times sports section, and there was an article about this goalie for the New York Rangers named John Van Beesbroek.

And it was a story about how he was going to be traded, likely to be traded. And there was a quote in the article from his agent, Lloyd Friedland, of Garden City, Long Island, where I was working at the time. And I couldn't believe it. Somebody was working in a field that I was interested in, in the same little place I was. And I went into the law firm, Little Law Firm Library, and took out the white pages and looked up the name Lloyd Friedland, found his law firm and business, and cold called

him. And he picked up the phone, who the hell are you? I tell him I'm this guy who went to University of Michigan, worked in the athletic department, knows a lot about sports and I'm giving this entire crazy sales pitch not knowing that everything I was saying was really irrelevant to his business and I didn't have what I thought I had but I was too ignorant to know that I didn't have anything to offer this guy. He was luckily either not smart enough about the business or just didn't care and like

what he was hearing. He said, all right, let's have lunch. We had lunch the next week and he hired me. He decided he wanted to start a small sports agency. He was going to try to grow this practice beyond this one or two clients he had. It was Valentine's Day of 1992. That was when I guess kind of my life changed. I was in the field that I thought I might be good at. What's interesting to me is that you said you were lost

for a little while, which I totally identify with when you have been so clear on a goal or where you're going or where you think you're going. And suddenly you find out that's not the option any longer. It's fine to be lost and normal to be lost. However, you still keep taking steps forward. I think is a critical piece there when you saw this person's name and you say, oh, this is interesting.

There's someone here. You picked up the phone and cold called. You went to the lunch. And I think that's where a lot of people get stuck. So I love hearing that because I went to so many lunches and I picked up a quote called So Many People during that time because I didn't know where I was gonna go just like you didn't. So where did that job and position take you? Well that job wasn't what I hoped it would turn out to be but it led me to

something I guess the right place. You know Lloyd was a very good guy and he had all the right intentions but he was primarily and is primarily still to this day, a successful matrimonial lawyer. He was trying to build off these few clients. He didn't really have the time or the energy or frankly the industry context to build out a business like this. I certainly didn't know anything. It was kind of the blind leading the blind in a way. After about six months, I think he realized he was

throwing money down a rat hole with me. I was completely useless to him, at least in this incarnation of his business at that point. And I realized I wasn't going to help build a business for him. And around the same time, this girl I dated in law school, who lived in New York, it was a long distance thing. She had a friend, we've broken up at this point, but she had a friend who worked for this agency called athletes and artists. And I stayed in touch with this woman and she called me one day and said, Hey, you know, our company needs a director of marketing. This guy, Maury Gosfran is leaving and he's going to law school at the University of Miami and we need to replace him. And I said, Oh, I would love that. And she said,

why don't you come meet the owner of my company, Art Kaminsky. And I met him. And this woman's name is Jackie Harris, still friends with her. And she got me in and they hired me. And that was in July of 92. And so that was great because now I was actually working for an established agency. And I had a job. I was in New York City.

It felt like I made it. By the way, this job paid I was in New York City. It felt like I made it. You know, I was, I, by the way, this job paid at Athletes and Artists, the base salary was, I think, $35,000. Which even in 1992 was not a heck of a lot of money considering my law school classmates starting were making 80,000. But I was thrilled.

I had a job and I, for the first, you know, month or so I lived on my friend's couch and I was happy as could be. Because you actually liked the work you were doing or you were taking a chance on yourself and just going all in on something new? I think I didn't even know what the work I was doing at the time when I got into it. It was more of the idea that I had this goal of getting a job at an agency and I think it was just doing something new.

I mean, I knew nothing about first, I knew nothing about what I was doing for Lloyd Friedland, and then I knew nothing about being a director of marketing for a sports TV management company, which was to get these guys voiceovers and commercials and speaking engagements and all kinds of ancillary income. I knew literally nothing about it. I had no relationships in it, but I figured what the hell, I'll learn. I didn't care. I was too ignorant to know any better. Ignorance can be bliss in certain situations, so it sounds like in this one it actually

was. So you just really applied yourself and fumbled and made mistakes and worked hard and started moving your way up. Exactly. I just felt like maybe it was something that was intrinsic in me. This is my first real job in the world. I just realized that if you built relationships with people and you cultivated them, that somehow good things would happen. I think one of the hardest things I ever did

in my career there was I went to the front desk in this office, athletes notice, and I went to the receptionist, her name was Gail Lockhart, and I said, Gail, do me a favor. If anybody calls the office and you do not know who to give the phone call to, just commit to me, I will deal with it for you.

And I don't care how bad it is, I don't care if it's like the electrician calling or the tax collector, and the owner, Art Kaminsky, he had some very strange hours. He wasn't there all that much, but I would take all these calls. Early on, I got a phone call that no one else wanted from this guy named Bob Rice, and he was a lawyer for a big law firm downtown, one of the big law firms. He said that he was trying to produce the world's first chess championship, speed

chess championship. And was I interested in helping him produce it? And I knew nothing about any of this either. But I said, sure, I'd love to. And we'll get you the talent. We'll figure it out. And then I went back and told the people in the agency. And we ended up getting a client who, believe it or not, is still a client of our agency,

Bruce Beck, who is the major local sportscaster in New York WNBC. And he became the host of the show called the American Chess Challenge. And then through that I met and represented Gary Kasparov, the world chess champion, all because I told Gail Lockhart, I'll take any phone call. And that was the very beginning of my career.

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And when you place your order, check out the creating confidence and let them know we sent you and that we are looking out for you. You are welcome. Why is mightur important to you? Let me give you a few examples. I feel so much stronger in my workouts. I'm recovering quicker. I have more energy. I want to proactively preserve my health, mobility, and strength.

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operation. And I said, listen, get to the woman who's answering the phones and have her direct the best opportunities to you. You know, it's such an interesting, that gatekeeper position holds tremendous power. And if you can align yourself, support yourself and help them, which is essentially what you were offering to do,

I'll take the calls you don't know what to do with, I'll save you time. You've offered a solution and then you found opportunity. I don't think at that point, Heather, I thought about it in any kind of way that you're describing it so smartly. I just said, Gail, I'll take the calls and I just figured nothing bad could come of it and I would build some relationships. Yep.

One of the things that I like that you're explaining is that you didn't know what you were going to do, but you still want to put yourself out there and get in the mix. And so often people are afraid to interject themselves, to ask for those calls because I don't know what I'm doing. And it's great to see that you took that chance on you. That's how you actually figured it out. Right. And now it's easy to figure a lot of things out

that weren't as easy to figure out back then because of the internet. The internet does help quite a bit these days, thank goodness for the internet. Most days that is. So okay, so now you've make it to the top of the agency, you're working with hundreds of different high profile clients, then you get involved in coaching and starting to coach CEOs. Yeah, that was kind of a fluke too.

I guess my whole life is one good fluke after another. What happened was is I'll be 54 on July 7th of this year, but four years ago when I was about to turn 50 in January of 2016, my wife was going to throw a party for me and it was just kind of a time of reflection at that point. Wow, I'm turning 50. I can't believe it. And what am I going to do with the second half of my life? How is that gonna be different? And I thought, I feel like professionally, I'd done not everything, but I've done a lot of what I wanted to accomplish

as an agent. And what else could I do? What other skills that I have? What other things could I do to offer the world? And I thought that the coaching that I had done for on-air broadcasters and helping them get those jobs at the ESPNs and the CBSs and some of the interview coaching I had done for them.

I thought that was transferable. That kind of advice could be applicable to a CEO, but also a dentist or a doctor or a lawyer or whoever. And I came up with this idea that a lot of people were talking about public speaking and media training, but that wasn't really where the important communication is happening in the world or in your career and where it's really Important is what I call private speaking, you know

We're doing right now having a dialogue as opposed to what public speaking is which is a monologue And so I thought I really want to teach this this is what I want to do I want to teach it and I ended up writing I had all these notes obviously from my Career and all the things I had done and I thought I'm gonna transfer this to this other medium and I wrote this presentation out and I Daughter at the time was in the school choir and I went to hear a performance and while there I ran to a mom from our school and I just said to her I really have this idea

I think it's great. What do you think of it? Her name is Tali Potter, this woman. She's the general counsel of Bank Liumi. And she's like, I love this idea. I think it's a great idea. I think you should come to our bank and work with us. And I want to introduce you to the HR director of our bank. And I said, well, I don't really have a business yet. I don't know what to charge. She said, don't worry. It's fine. So she had this woman, Kate Edinger came to my office four years ago. And Kate said, I love it. It's a great idea. Why don't you come work with us at the bank? I have a perfect guy for you, very, very senior executive that you could coach. What do you charge? And I said, Kate, I don't know what I charge because I don't have any clients, which is probably

not the thing you want to say to somebody. But I just said, I was honest with her and I told her a price and she said, that seems fair. And I got hired and it really kind of morphed into a nice little business where I was working for that bank and then I got hired by a pretty big law firm. And then I got hired by a medical company. And then one day, about a year later, this woman got up at an event I'd been doing for Bank of Lyumi and said, I love your ideas. I really want to buy two copies of your book for my children. They should read it. They're 18 and 20.

Where can I buy those copies? I said, you can't. And I think she thought I was joking because I guess anybody who speaks now pretty much has a book. And I said, I don't have a book. And she said, well, that's really too bad because you should write a book and that night it was March 8th 2017 I went home told my wife and she said well go write a book and that's how it all happened kind of crazy it is crazy and one of the things that you said that I really liked

is that you looked at yourself you looked at your career and said what do I have here from a skillset and talent standpoint that's transferable to another arena or new opportunity? And I love that you did that. I was forced into doing that when I got fired and it was scary because it was under pressure, but I think it's really self-aware that you did that. What additional value can I bring in?

And I hope that everyone listening thinks about what skills and talents they have and how it can be transferred outside of their current industry outside the small bubble that they're living in and applied in so many different ways because everybody has that opportunity and I just love hearing how you've been able to do that not only from pivoting from the talent business to the coaching business but now to becoming an author and speaking business. You know you continue to transfer your talents to different arenas and areas. I think the best skill that I

have is I do think I'm a pretty good communicator and I'm able to connect with people and so that gives me a lot of opportunity to speak to people and influence them and maybe they feel like, well one thing I have also noticed now that I've been in this, you know, kind of having almost dual things I've been doing for the past few years is this, I think there's never going to be a shortage for companies to improve their culture. And ultimately, one of the hopeful side products of my book and my message will be to improve culture in organizations. And so that's, you know, a real, a real desire

here. And I think it's a need ultimately, you know, like you said earlier, skills and abilities are great, but what need are you filling in another company or another person's life? And if you're not fulfilling a need, then there's no value to it. Absolutely. And that business you just described around culture and companies is evergreen. There, there, there will constantly be new adversities and challenges businesses are going to be confronted with. And no business will ever reach their potential without great culture. And if you're working for a company right now with bad culture, get out. I have tried to be... Unless you're at the highest level

of a company, it is impossible to completely change and eradicate toxic culture. So get out of negative situations unless you're in situational, like you're describing Steve where they are working on changing and about and evaluating that culture. All right, let's get to the book. Don't take yes for an answer. And I'm really interested to hear the takeaways and that framework around the three pillars that you discuss in the book to help set people up for better communication and success. What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 answers. Bull market, bear market, rates will rise or fall, inflation's up or down.

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First is kind of what I call the foundation for change, right? And the foundation for change is this idea of don't take yes for an answer. And my thesis is that there's been, I would say, a pretty significant change in American society in the past 30 years. And I don't say this politically at all and I don't intended that and I Don't think it's a millennial thing. I think it's just what's happened. Some of it is just people meant Well, whatever but there's always a you know another unintended consequence of things So those three things are one you've had great inflation to you've had this, what I would call, participation trophy culture morphing into MVP culture.

And then the third is HR departments in many, if not most, American companies really acting as an adjunct to the legal department and not wanting to get sued and not in talent development as it might be thought of. And so they don't fire people. They don't really want to tell you what you're doing wrong. They just want to get you out and go quietly. And so what I say in the book in terms of setting up the foundation is that if you get, you know, the artificial A that should be a B that was 30 years ago, you get the participation trophy

culture and you seem like you think you're an MVP and you've had the job and you never, you never even got fired. You were lucky you got fired you think you're an MVP and you've had the job and you never even got fired. You were lucky you got fired because now you would have gotten downsized or reorg and they would have told you, it's not you, it's me, you were great, blah, blah, blah. So what ends up happening is that you, the individual, was on the wrong end of this equation and you mean well, you work hard, but no one's ever told you what you could do better. You get caught up in the vortex of mediocrity. And how do you get out of that?

You can't get out of it if you're not reading the signals of somebody saying to you, Heather, you can do better. Heather, you're fired. Heather, do something else. Or Steve, get out of the law. You stink at it. Okay, fine. You can do something with that.

It's actionable. But that doesn't exist for a lot of people anymore. So there's not a mindset to think about change. So assuming you can get past the first third of the book that sets up the idea, then you'll be able to understand what the signals are that you need to read for change and not get caught up in this echo chamber of yes,

and then the vortex of mediocrity. And this isn't just for people on the lower end of the scale in terms of their career. It can be someone on the higher end who could be a superstar and is only a star because they're being told how great they are all the time. So I think it applies to everybody. So that's the first part. And then the second half of the book, which I think is probably the more important actionable message for the audience here, is that it's really fascinating research shows that there's a very unexpectedly small correlation and causal

relationship between how good you are at your job, the technical parts of it, and your success. And that there's only a 15% contributing factor, what we would call the hard skills, the technical skills, and there's 85% of what we would call the non-technical skills. I'll just call them the soft skills for the purposes of this conversation. My thought here is that we get drilled our entire lives from first grade on to graduate school and continuing ed, whatever, on the technical skills, how to become school and continuing ed, whatever, on the technical skills, how to become a better lawyer, better doctor, better surgeon, better technical, better writer, etc, etc. But no resources are dedicated towards these, quote unquote,

soft skills. And yet, so many people that we end up competing with in our lives, including us a lot of the times, we get good enough at the technical skills, we're all kind of commoditized, so to speak, in the technical parts of the job because we're all good enough at it. But that's not the defining factor and the distinguishing factor from those who just get a seat at the table and end up ascending to the place where they do have the influence and have the authority and have the leadership role and all the clients and customers. That comes from this 85%. The important thing about the 85% is what do you do with it?

What can you do if I told you, Heather, you know what? You've got a weakness in your soft skill. What the hell does that mean? There's nothing you can do with it unless I tell you something actionable. This is what I try to do is make it actionable. Let's just take that 85% and create an acronym around it that we can work on. It will have a report card, a metrics. That's called AWE, A-W-E. The subtitle of my book is called Using Authority, Warmth,

and Energy, AWE to Get Exceptional Results. I think that if you look at the people in your life that you believe, first of all, have those precursor technical skills and are thriving, most of them fit into this category of being able to communicate stylistically and have a sense of authority about themselves. We perceive them as you know, very competent. We perceive them as trustworthy because they have the warmth and connectability. We want to go along with their ideas because there's a certain energetic quality to them that energizes us. And those are the only things that really matter in our communication. And if we can do that, if we can make people understand that we're good at what we do, you can trust me,

I'm going to get the job done for you. And I make you feel good around me, you're going to have all the influence in the world you need. That's it. Wow. It's so interesting to hear that research that you cited that only, I believe you said 15% is the correlation between the skill set and technical abilities in a role. That is shocking to me how low that impact is.

I mean, it's really, and essentially what you're saying is it's really around this concept is shocking to me how low that impact is. I mean, it's really, and essentially what you're saying is it's really around this concept of communication and impact that you have on people, not on the technical parts of your job. Well, you're correct. You're analyzing that. I just want to repeat though for the audience and for you

that that is only because you are going to be competing and working alongside other people like yourself that have mastered the technical part of it. I use this dental example. If you needed a filling tomorrow for a tooth, you had a cavity, you could call up 10 dentists, probably 100 dentists, and they all know how to do a filling. Right? And that's not going to be the distinguishing factor of why you go to one dentist versus another. You probably wouldn't even know who's going to do a filling, right? And that's not going to be the distinguishing factor of why you go to one dentist versus another. You probably wouldn't even know who's going to do a better filling anyway.

And that's true of a lot of the services that we end up using in our lives. And so it's not that the technical part isn't important. It's just a necessary prerequisite to get you a seat at the table. And I think very little else. So how can we cultivate more authority, warmth, and energy in our communications? Do you mind if I say this? Read the book. No, no. Well, yeah, I mean, obviously, please read the book. But you know, what we do talk about is, first of all, I think it's understanding what your strengths and weaknesses are. And when you, we have an opportunity, it's fascinating in the last few months, one of the hopefully good byproducts of this pandemic has been this Zoom culture where we get to record ourselves if we want to, and we can go back and listen and look at ourselves and

take note of our communication. And I think most of us would find that we have these blind spots these weaknesses and the way that we're Communicating and unless you're walking around with someone who's telling you 24-7 hey Steve, hey Heather stop doing that stop doing that and you find a way to actually change it you're gonna continue to embed those bad habits in your behavior and We don't have people that tell us these things. That's why I say don't take yes for an answer. And so the immediate things like kind of the low hanging fruit, I would say, of actual

things you could do to have more authority is stand up straight, sit up straight, have some physicality to your body language, finish your sentences, Heather, finish your words. So many people just trail off at the end of their words or they have a sing-song delivery or a high-pitched voice that's artificially high. So go on the internet and you can have many different free resources to figure out if you have a properly placed pitch with your voice.

Annunciate, and if you have a good voice, if you don't have a sing-song delivery, if you finish your words, then you will seem and you will be more authoritative. And another like really simple thing is do not use filler words. End them from your vocabulary. Um's, ya knows, likes. They're easy to fix. I could teach it to you in probably an hour. And if you can get rid of just those filler words

and use a pregnant pause and have more inflection in your voice because you're not using those filler words, man, you're gonna be so much more captivating. It's so interesting because when you first say authority, the things that come to my mind are resume and achievements and accomplishments and titles and not getting rid of filler words or how you're standing or how you're, if you're enunciating or not.

Right, because this is a question of the substance versus the style. Substance is important. It gets you seated at the table. If you don't study dentistry, you're not getting a dental job. If you don't study engineering, you're not getting an engineering job.

But once you've done that and you have the resume, look, you're getting the interview. Whatever job you're applying for, who else is coming in for the interview? People with very similar resumes to you. So the substance is going to seem very similar, almost, if not completely indistinguishable to the person reading them. Now you've been on both sides of this equation, so have I. I mean, you tell me, I can't read 10 resumes if I'm recruiting somebody and tell you the difference

between those 10 resumes. And I've been doing this, I'm in this field for 30 years and I can't do it. Well, tell me how do you teach or develop warmth and energy because to me, that sounds more like an intangible. That sounds really ambiguous to me. It's a great question. And it's been, I would say the number one pushback I've gotten about this whole messaging in the book is, well, you can't teach warmth. Some people are warm, some people aren't. So I fight back by saying, I'm not going to teach you or convince you,

you're going to be the warmest person in the room, but what I will teach you to do is to be a little bit better every day than you were the day before. I'll also focus on these tiny little granular things you're doing, many of which you're just self-sabotaging, and that's going to hurt your warmth. I'll give you an example. I'll pick myself here. When I started writing this book,

I had two really bad communication habits that killed my warmth. And luckily, I'm married to a woman who never gives me yes for an answer, and I love her for that. And so she pointed out to me, hey, you know what? Big shot, you're teaching communication. Do you know that when you go to cocktail parties and you're around people, you stand there with your arms folded often when you talk to people? Well, what a terrible habit that is. And I said, wow,

that's great advice. And then I just found that I was having a hard time changing it. So what I did is I started going to these cocktail parties and really paying very careful attention for who else was in the room and who was folding their arms and standing there like that with this off-putting language. Once in a while, it's fine, but staying there for five minutes every single interaction. Once I started noticing that, it would be a signal to me to stop doing it. I eventually cured myself of that. That just gave me a little bit more warmth in my personality. I didn't change.

I wasn't even aware I was doing it. The other thing I do as part and parcel of that is when I talk to somebody, I position my hips directly parallel to theirs. If you're standing there like this, I don't turn away with my shoulders and hips. I try to focus in on you and with the feeling that, hey, you're important to me. You're the one I'm talking to right now and it was just another just slightly bad habit I had and easy to fix and and then the last one I'll give you is I talk about dentistry a lot because I had my front teeth knocked out as a kid and then knocked out again

And I've had my front teeth are all caps and fakes and everything else. So since I was two growing up I've always had a lot of sensitivity to my smile I was never very proud of it or just sensitive to it and Only in the last I would say ten years when I finally found an amazing dentist who fixed my gums Have I been really much more confident about smiling? But I had 43 plus years of this bad habit of not smiling. And when I learned to smile more, I became warmer. And so these are the little tricks you can learn in this book to really change the way people perceive you

in a very profound manner, I believe. Well, now more than ever, given the pandemic and wearing facial masks and just the tension that we have in the world currently, it's more important than ever to put yourself in the best communication light that you can to be warm and be considered warm and safe and honest and real right now.

I feel like that is incredibly powerful. I've actually recently seen some research on trends right now that safety and trust is more important than it ever has been in this country in any type of communication or exchange. So I think it's really important for people to be self-aware and to want to look into how can we improve that.

And you brought something up, you know, it's not always about something additive that you need to do in addition to what you're doing. Sometimes it's taking something, removing something like dropping the crossed arms, which is a simple thing to do if we're self-aware about it. I agree. I mean, look, I feel that why I think this message hopefully will get some traction in the marketplace is that it's really not that hard. It's not that hard to figure out five or six things that you're doing that you could change

really easily. This is kind of like what I would call a communication diet, not a personality diet, just communication diet. I'm not asking you to never eat potato chips again. I'm asking you to not fold your arms at a cocktail party or to make eye contact when you're talking so you'll have more authority or to smile a little bit more or to face somebody when you're talking to them

or to work on your voice a little bit. This is not a very hard book to digest and to make some actionable change to. It's just things that I think people unfortunately ignore at their own peril. You know, you haven't brought it up, but one of the things that I had challenged myself to was going into networking events or cocktail parties or whatever they were. My tendency

was to hold my phone out of my purse and my hand and how much that took away from, you know, me glancing away from a conversation and looking at the phone and I finally made the decision I either leave it in the car or I put it inside of my purse and I do not take it out while I am in the event. And that's made a huge difference in allowing people to feel that I'm paying more attention to them. Right. Right.

So you've increased your warmth because under my rubric of AWE, warmth leads to greater connectivity, greater trust. Because look, you put your finger on a really important thing in that when you talk about earlier in this post-pandemic or current pandemic how much trust is important to people. I do believe that trust is the foundation of every relationship. Even your Uber driver, if you don't trust that person, that's the basis of all business. And once that trust is eroded,

and look, not to get political, but I think we're seeing a lot of this anger and this tremendous groundswell that we've had around the death of George Floyd, because I think if we really, besides the anger about the murder, it's just this idea that our trust has been eroded This is the you know, not to impugn all police at all But it seems like this one incident has really done a lot to affect people's trust and and that and that's a big thing

Well, it's really smart right now to lead knowing that people want to feel safe, they want to trust you, and it's on each one of us and it's our responsibility to make sure that we behave and communicate in a way so that we can connect. So I want to share some good news, Steve. I heard that you got an interesting phone call about the book and what is happening with it right now. Some recognition. Yeah, thank you. I found out two days ago that I was nominated for the Next Big Ideas Club, which is a group that is cultivated by Adam Grant, Susan Cain, Malcolm Gladwell, and Daniel Pink.

So to be in the nominees of that list, I think it was 15 books that were nominated in this summer. It's really quite humbling. I really, I thought I had a good idea. Luckily, HarperCollins agreed and they agreed to publish the book. And so it's really been humbling to think about some of the other people in that list are really established authors and huge names in the world. And so the fact that my idea is resonating

with people like Adam Grant, it means a lot to me. That's so exciting. So where can everybody find Don't Take Yes for an Answer? So you can find it in any of your local bookstores and any Barnes & Noble, obviously. You can buy it at Amazon or anywhere any book is really sold. And if you want information about the book,

you can buy an audible copy or just go to my website, which is www.steven, S-T-E-V-E-N, hers.com. And then you can follow me on all kinds of social media platforms, follow the blog, and there's a one-click button to buy off there as well, off any of these sites. And we'll include the links in the show notes. Steve, thank you so much for being here

and wishing you the best continued success with the book.