Modern Wisdom - #019 - Warren Cass - How To Raise Your Profile, Manage Your Reputation and Get Noticed

Episode Date: June 28, 2018

Warren Cass is a public speaker, business leader, entrepreneur and author of the book Influence - How To Raise Your Profile, Manage Your Reputation and Get Noticed. If you want to improve your ability to build networks, communicate online and offline, and increase your influence personally and professionally, look no further. Warren takes us through a step by step breakdown of this crucial field, from personal brand development to communication strategy, Neurolinguistic Programming and body language to conflict management. A must listen for anyone who wants to get ahead Links: Influence the book: https://amzn.to/2Kx3QjG Free Partner Resources: http://www.warrencass.com/index.php/influencethebook/ Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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

Susanna Hallenon will be dropping in to talk about happiness and her new book, but first, on to this week's guest, Warren Cass is an author, public speaker, businessman, entrepreneur, and a specialist in influence and personal brand development. I've wanted to get him on the podcast for well over a year now from before I even started. I knew that I wanted to get him on. I picked up his book, Influence, which will be linked in the show notes below, along with all of the partner companion stuff that he gives away for free on his website. I think to one degree or another, everybody requires influence in their lives.

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

say about you when you're not around, what is the kind of influence that you are having on your circles? Now Warren takes us through a step by step personal brand and influence M.O.T. If you are someone who wants to improve their ability to communicate online or in person, their access to networks, their ability to influence others in a positive way. If you've always wanted to understand how new rule linguistic programming works, even if you've always wanted to know what people's eyes looking in different directions during a conversation means, we go through it all. So get your pen and paper out, make sure that you're ready. Here we go. Warren Cass on Influence.

Just a Warren Cass. Welcome to Modern Wisdom. Thank you for having me Chris. Great to be here. How are you today? Bloody marvellous. You know I've had a really busy month. I've got a couple of days in the office which just you know catching up time. So yeah, really good. Thank you. Fantastic. A little bit of time to reset. Yeah, you need it every now and then, don't you? Yeah, for sure. For sure, it's been a difficulty in getting hold of you, but I think that's a testament to how much you're in demand at the moment, speaking about the topics that you do. Yeah, it's very flattering, but obviously we're here to talk about influence today, and as somebody like yourself who builds a personal brand, the bigger the brand gets the more

in demand you get, and it's all good. Yeah, it becomes a bit circular, doesn't it? So you've touched on the word of the day there. Can you define what influence means to you? Yeah, in very, very simple terms, it's a broad topic, but in very simple terms, for me, it's about affecting an outcome without having to force it. Without having to force it also means, course without having to manipulate. You know we live in a well-willed bombarding every single day with so many messages and some of it is misinformation and some

of it's manipulation. But come back to my definition of influence. Impleance is really when you can afford an idea or gender without having to force it where people come along because they want to, they've been inspired to. That's how I like to define influence. I understand. So I picked up influence the book around about a year ago and was on a flight out to America, wanted to get something that I could read on the way out and it immediately stood out to me exactly as you said, we increasingly now in the modern world, almost everybody to one degree or another

is building a personal brand. The advent of social media means that everyone treats their Instagram or Twitter account to varying degrees of professionality like a traditional advertising medium. It's advertising for themselves. And whatever the goal is can change, but I do think that the hype,

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

some connection which was done by pure chance. The serendipity is not a strategy, can be should be written on the wall at some points, I think it reminds me that we need to be prepared and that we need to cover all of the potential avenues moving forward as we try to create a personal brand. So can you tell us why you wrote the book? Yeah, I'll start by apologising to your colleagues there with your co-occurring me all the time. The Warren Cass Ratarick gets pushed hard in the voodoo events office, I'm afraid. Do you know what, the seven difficulties have been really, really kind to me. It has, I can't complain at all, but I've always had the best results when I've done things

on purpose. On and with purpose, I might say, so I totally agree. Why did I write the book? Well, well, first of all, I've been speaking on the subject for a well-everage decade, and I wrote the book initially because I had two publishers come to me and say, would you write a book? And I thought, okay, I've always avoided this in the past because I've got a, you know, a big listener to podcast, I subscribe to yours amongst others, and knowledge is a really important thing, I think, every day is a school day. So it's important

to continuously learn. But I do think about most business books, is that they're typically written by academics who decide to give too many examples where one or two would have done. And I believe also, most business books can be summarized in, you know, a few pages, rather than necessarily needing to take everything on. And I was really trying to think hard about, what am I going to add value to this topic in a book format, bearing in mind, there are some classic books on this subject out there. And I mean, for example, you know, in our pre-chat, you were talking about Delkan Eagie, how to win friends and influence people, probably the oldest and biggest selling book on that topic. Yeah. But it was written in the 1930s. You know, you've got their psychology persuasion by Chaldeini, a brilliant book written in the 1980s.

And he has done some work since there, but there was a gap, you know, and what's happened is we've had this explosion of population, of technology since then, and it's fundamentally changed everything that we do. It's changed the way we communicate, it's the change way we access products and services, it's changed way we consume and so the world has changed and we You know for me it was a it was the thing. I've been evangelizing on stage about and I thought you know What this is the angle I'm gonna take this is this is the way I'm gonna write the book

So ring those ring those things up to speed so to speak? Absolutely take all this prove to try and test it concepts, but actually make them relatable to a whole new generation. A plinkable to the changed world as well. I think definitely when you, if you read David Allen's getting things done, it almost becomes laborious to convert, so he talks about like using filafaxes and pages and you know like

intras and outtrays and stuff like that and you think that I've actually got to do a fair bit of the work. This self-help book requires me to do quite a lot of self-help to get the book to work for me because it's so behind the times with what it would be. It would be an app now. It would be a integration, like Evernote or something like that. It would be productivity tools and all that sort of stuff. And yeah, you're very right. I think as the rate of change speeds up in the world, the body of knowledge around core concepts needs to keep up. 100% or at least his application, yeah, absolutely. I agree. So can you talk about why influence is important? Does

everybody have it? Knowingly or knowingly, yeah, vast majority of us have it and should be aware of it. If we, if we want things to happen in our lives, you know, that's the simple fact of it. I often start my talks with defining the fact that we're all influenced every single day from the moment we get up in the morning. Our partners' expression on the mood they're in can dictate our day. The micro expression of somebody on your commute to work, whether it's a tube, train or car, can dictate your mood for the day. It's been absolutely proven that because

we're such empathetic creatures, if we witness an act of kindness for the two hours that follow, we are more kind. So we are sponges and we absorb, and that's just the human interactions. When you start factoring, marketing, messaging, and media, you've got a whole different layer of influence there too. So the bit I maintain is that if you understand how you're received, when you talk, when you communicate, if you understand how that comes across to others, you've got a better chance of being more effective in that communication. If you understand how you receive information and how other people influence you, you've

got a better chance of having better responses to that influence. So ultimately, if you're an ambitious person, you want to evolve your career, or even if you just want to improve your relationship with your wife, husband, children, colleagues, friends, understanding influence is in your best interest. So it's giving you some perspective of what you're receiving and what you're sending to a degree. Yeah, and all communication really should start with an awareness of how it's being said, what's being said, because we communicate on so many different levels, don't we? So just increasing your awareness will make you more effective straight away. Where do you tend to start with people?

If you were to do an influence overhaul, if you were to take me in for an influence MOT, where would you start? Well, having seen your profile case, you're not doing too bad, my friend. Yeah, it really starts with finding out objectives. I wouldn't dream to think that everybody wants the same thing. So, the very first thing I'd do is try and understand their what and their why. You know, what is it they want to do? What does it want to be known for? And why is that important to them?

Why is that something that's going to inspire and motivate others? If that's the way they're going to go about it. So that would be absolutely the first step is just to understand people's objectives without that. You can't put any real strategy into place. If you don't have a target to where you might you'll always miss, right? That's the point. If you're coming at this with an outcome in mind, but of course some people just want to be nicer and more effective in their communication. There might not be an objective. You could be retired and want to communicate better. That's fine. But if the premise you gave me was an overhaul, so coming in and maybe working

with somebody, I'd be first looking to understand what it is there. They're looking to, and the reason, of course, for that is that once you understand your marketplace, who you're looking to get out there and you then need identify your audience, where they play the type of information they consume, the type of people that are already influencing them, so who are the potential collaborators and people that you might be able to take advantage of some of the principles I talk about in the book, like credibility by association. So there's a whole load of things that you might want to do. Once you're clear on why you want to do it. So if established people's why, we've started to understand their objectives and what they want to do moving forward. I think that is a massive stumbling block, especially one of the biggest routes to procrastination is perfectionism.

It sounds, it sounds quite strange and quite circular, but it genuinely is that waiting until you have everything in place or everything feels perfect is a really good excuse for procrastinating on getting started on a project. It's kind of like a negative impact on influence as well, and I'm talking from personal experience here. My reason for procrastination is very aligned with what you've just said. It's mainly because I like to do the job myself because I know I'll do it the way I want it. You'll get it done right. If you want the job doing right. Of course, but then what happens is work and life and everything else gets in the way and you're suddenly overwhelmed with jobs and

you don't get around to it. And of course, having somebody else do it 80% to the standard that you would have done it is better than not getting done at all. So there's, you know, there's a whole lot of things around that. Agreed. Yeah. You need to. I think, I think especially in business, doubling down on your strengths. I've said this in episode eight with Michael Casu, who's the CEO of Brute Strength Training, and he'd said himself his route to becoming one of the biggest crossfit programming operations in the world was by doubling down on his strengths and employing people who could fill in where he's less capable or less passionate and I think being a jack of all trades

is really no use to anybody in a business context. So you've got me in. We've had a look at my objectives. We've got around the fact that I'm a perfectionist and that I just need to get moving. Where do you go next? So, from an Influent Strategy point of view, the first thing I would do is sit down and based on what you've told me, identify your audience. A lot of people forget this, but that's a bit more complex than we think, because we're living in times where there are five different generations in the workplace. This has never been the case before, so we've got five different generations in the workplace workplace all with different unique experiences. And so identifying your audience is important

because we're more multicultural than we've ever been before. We're generationally divided and we've never been before. That affects all sorts of things like attitudes. I mean, let me give you some examples of why identifying your audience properly is important. And I'm gonna make one point at the end of it, but I'm sure like me, you are tired of the term millennial. Yeah, well, I think everybody's sick to death of the term millennial, but I do think it's important for all the generations to understand

what makes millennials tick. I think it it's important for older generations to understand what makes millennials tick. I think it's equal important for millennials to try and understand why we have, and I'm not a millennial, why we have a different perspective too. And this comes down to our experiences. So a couple of quick stats to throw out at you. The average age for marriage, mortgage and kids in the 70s was 23 years old and today that's more like 36 years old. So there's a load of changes. What are you saying is that I've actually still got time and that my business partner can stop

applying pressure to me? Of course, absolutely, that's exactly what I'm saying. And some of those reasons, by the way, will be financial and, you know, and because actually we have more, we're more experiential now. And so we have the world is our lobster Rodney, you know, we can go anywhere, we can do it. Anything we want to do, so we tend to put off some of the other bigger decisions, because while we're young, we want to have those experiences, that's one. Student debt is another. You know, there's a load of reasons why those things happen. So that's just marriage,

mortgage, and kids. Beyond that, work. So in the US, only 7% of millennials work for fortune 500 companies. And that's mainly because millennials who are of an age ready to work want to be inspired by what they do. So they either start their own businesses where they're connected to their Y, or they go and work for smaller organizations where they're working directly with the entrepreneur behind the business,

so they can feel like they're making a difference. So that's important to a generation. And then you look into things like politics and we live in an age of great misinformation where as divided as we've ever been, and there's a whole load of reasons for that, and we can go into that if you want to, or we can avoid it like the plague.

I'm a huff of a slob. I'm a huff of a slob. Whatever Pandora's box we go into today is absolutely fine, weren't. No problem. So the thing about an age of misinformation is it makes actually all of us that little bit more skeptical.

So when we're told things, our first instincts now should be to not believe it until we've actually seen evidence or facts or something to support it. You know, social media absolutely dominates what we do. It's democratized, you know, conversations really and it's made every opinion, have its microphone. So we have to be careful of what we take in and believe. And consumerism has changed, again, millennials. And in fact, just come into this point, the term millennial is quite often accepted

to anybody after 1980. So it's 38 years and younger at the time of recording this. And the other things happened since 1980s, the world population has doubled. So we are now over 7 billion people on the planet and that's doubled in the last 38 years, which actually should scare the shit out of anybody. That really, really should.

But that means half the world population are in the middle of it. Millennial, yeah. Bob Millennial, yeah. And so it's now the most dominant consumer group online, from a consumerism point of view, less brand loyal. If a brand they were using every single day disappears tomorrow, that's fine. They'll move on to the next one, but it'll be largely based

on things like social proof. So your reputation matters. That's why we read the reviews on Google, on Amazon, on TripAdvisor, I'm profile testimonials on LinkedIn, etc. We're interested in this stuff, because we want social proof, we want to make the best decision based on what our peers recommend. It's the way it works. So we've got all of that going on. And then we've got diversity with multiculturalism, even faith is changing. When the UK would be coming more and more atheists in some European countries, it's almost totally atheist. And even in the US now, I think I read somewhere earlier this year that it's less than 50% now that class

themselves is quite Christian in the US which is, you know, it was never that, it's such a dominant demographic. Absolutely. So the big point I kind of want to make with this little talker millennials and diversity is that if you're talking to multiple demographics, if you're marketing to multiple demographics, but only using one tone of voice with your communication, the harsh realities you're not speaking to everyone. So if we want to be able to reach different audiences and talk to different demographics,

we have to understand, personalize and produce content and add value in the way that's meaningful to the people you're trying to talk to. And so many big brands are still talking with one tone of voice. I find it utterly surprising. We, technology enables us to, personal, I've got one friend who I, who shall remain nameless, but he has a business operating from London and he works in a particular niche, but he identified within his database recently that the database had grown quite large and that there were something like 400 Johns for argument's sake on a name. So he took a whiteboard and he wrote on video and he wrote, hi John and then he said hi John, just wanted to tell

you about and then went on to speak to that particular audience. Now every single John who received that believed that was written just for them. I tried to figure out but they watched the video and maybe bought the product. He then moved on to the next biggest name on his list, which was, you know, whatever it was, and then produced something for them. So what he identified was, you know, by just re-recording that one video a number of times, he's still like quite a big reach, but a much bigger conversion rate. The sense of affinity was through the roof, right? Absolutely. Personalized. So you need to gear the message to the market, I think.

So understand your audience. You're asking this step. We're in this consultative stage. We've come in with Fender, you're what and you're why? Understand your audience. All your audiences, it could be plural. It could be more than one niche you're looking and you're why? Understand your audience or your audience is it could be plural? It could be you know more than one niche you're looking to operate in so understanding that is the first thing and then absolutely understanding where they play. So does that mean in terms of media? Media consumption events they might attend avenues avenues of access. Absolutely. Yeah, points to connect.

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

Because the key, the only real thing I think nowadays is of long term strategy when it comes to building influence is to actually genuinely try and add value. I can take a moment to get to serve. And that could be from great content, but you really genuinely have to try and add value to the against you serve. And that could be from great content, but you really genuinely have to try and add value to the audience you serve. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

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

particular scale or a particular attribute, which is a travesty to not use when it's called upon. If you have a platform, and if you are looked up to and if you are held in a position of credibility, which is increasingly being bestowed on people who probably don't deserve it, and you're not using it to add value and to make people's lives better. As far as I'm concerned, it's a bit of a catastrophe and it's a real wasted resource and it shows just how little you do care for the audience that you've got. And that's not for me to say like I'm, you know, with my small following,

a best-doing words of wisdom or something like that. But I'm trying to do my best to speak for something, a value, something that the people that follow me and that follow my friends and you know, introduce them to interesting people like yourself that will enrich their lives and help them make good lives better and bad lives less bad. That seems great, but the prospect of having a platform and not using it to me is sacrilege, I think. So, I'm often asked, how do I define a good speaker? And let's just assume the given is that they know what they're talking about.

She's probably not a very good given. Well, let's just for the point I'm going to make, make it given. So there were two things which in my experience, the best speakers I've ever met have. And the first thing is an ego. And I know that's going to sound negative. And it is to a certain extent.

But if you're the type of person, I mean, Chris, I've seen your Instagram account, you clearly care about what you're doing. There's clearly an ego in there as well, right? So having an ego isn't a bad thing as long as our desire to add value and server audience is higher and bigger than our ego. It's a very interesting point.

So the best speakers I know stand up, get a real thrill from standing up on stage. Absolutely, they do. But their desire to affect change in others is bigger than their ego. I think of think of some world politicians right now, I mentioned no names. Wouldn't it be amazing if they leveraged the platform that's come from their notoriety and everything that they do, because their desire to affect change in others and add value was bigger than their eager? What a difference that would make.

Well, the point that you've missed there is that you're presuming that they know what they're talking about. That's a very good point to shame my friend. Yes, we've talked about the avenues of access to the audience that we've defined. We've looked at our why. Where are we going to next? The next stage I would go to, we've had an ad-advaliant with collaborating with other influencers. We're starting to really build our reach. So, the next stage I would go to, we've had a value collaborating with other influencers, so we're starting to really build our reach.

Sorry to interject the credibility by association thing, which you touched on earlier on. I really enjoyed in the book. I think you're totally correct when you see someone who you follow, how many times do you go out and listen to a Joe Rogan podcast, Matthew Walker, who wrote why we sleep. I'd seen why we sleep advertised an Amazon, it'd been pinged to me off my Kindle on my email, but I listened to him on Joe Rogan for three hours. Obviously, in and of himself, he was very charming and added a lot of value, but also the platform that Joe Rogan gave him allowed me to be exposed to him,

landed more credence, more credibility to what he was saying. And I bought the book while I was listening to him. So there's a whole lot of cliches on when known by the company we keep or we are the kind of net product of the five people we hang around most with, you know, is all of those ones which people know. Do they ring true for you?

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

interests and we build communities within our pockets of interest and hopefully we're multi-layered human beings with lots of interest. You try and take the best from everyone, right? Yeah, do you know what? I mean, I love everything. I mean, I'm a mid-40s guy, right? So, 45 years old and 46 this year. And the speaking is one of the things I'm passionate about this, this last month, I managed to speak up for a client in Glasgow. And what was really lovely is that my, my dirty little secret is for the last 14 years, I've been an Xbox fanatic. I managed to avoid it while I was building a technology business in the 90s. And my wife and kids bought me an Xbox for my birthday, which was a really fatal thing to do.

Call of duty being my game of choice. Of course, what happens is you start to make friends and build a clan, and that happened anyway. I got up to Glasgow for this speaking event and really brilliantly I managed to meet up with some of my clan and go out for a few beers and have a bit of fun. Now some of these people I've known really well over 12 years but have never met face to face. AFK is it's known away from keyboard. Absolutely, yeah. So you know, as I say you know, it doesn't really matter how we connect with others, it just matters that we do connect with others. I think there's

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

mean that you have to be completely transparent, but it does mean that you have to allow people to see a very true, true side of you. And I think that can probably be quite daunting for a lot of people who are concerned that their audience might not like what they hear. Well, it's also daunting, because it's not the way we're being socially conditioned right now. If you think about it,

social media is people's highlights show real. It's not real life. But actually, you think about the biggest connections you've ever had with somebody. It's where you've actually been vulnerable, actually, you think about the biggest connections you've ever had with somebody, it's where you've actually been vulnerable or, you know, actually honest and human. That's where we connect. So incredibly endearing trait. Well, you know, even as a speaker, one of the biggest weapons I'll use on stage is self-deprecation. I'm quite happy to take them account myself. It really doesn't bother me at all, but it

does relax an audience because suddenly they're not thinking that listening to some know it all on stage. It's a human being just sharing the story and that's the way it should be. Very bread and characteristic as well. Coming back to the Credibility by Association, though, because you mentioned one of the stories in the book and actually just so this lands your your audience. There's a couple of quick stories I'll tell one from the book and one is one that isn't but for me it comes back to this term about understanding the power that somebody who already has profile either endorsing you or taking you into the ring or being seen with

you the power that can have. So the story I talk about in the book is a personal development speaker author and actually to a certain extent mentor to me when I was when I was younger as a guy called Jack Black. Not the Jack, not the Jack Black. Not the Hollywood Jack Black. And then as we joined Jack Black, he built a brand called Mindstore. So it's region, Jack Black, he built a brand called Mindstore. So it's all about kind of personality and personal development. He was a social worker in the 80s and he was fascinated by personal development himself. So he started developing his own content. And when he was ready to launch his own business, he saw the concept of credibility by association. He may not have called it that, but he barge 10,,000 and he put Sir John Harvey Jones on stage next to him in front of 2,000 Glasgow each and business owners at a conference or an event he was running because he understood

that Sir John over Jones would be the draw, but then the moment he's on stage and he's on stage with him, he gets the credibility that comes with that. And overnight, he was the business guru that works with Sir John Harvey Jones. As a result, built a really good, powerful business. You may have heard the name Judy Nake, who sold her business for $17, $75 million. It was the, she didn't even develop the product, but she had the distribution rights to the Sandra Payne, Tanning. Tannning stuff. How did that? And yeah, so for her, I mean, quite an inspirational business woman anyway, because of the way she dealt with people.

But she attributes a lot of her success to having somebody like Victoria Beckham walking out of the store with a clear cat plastic bag and her product in the bag. And when I heard her story, it was within the months that followed, she did about two million in sales just because of that one media appearance. So that whole credibility by association, I think, can be really, really powerful, but can be used. It doesn't, you know, we're talking about big things here, like a 75 million and sale. How does

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

Understand I think what we're obviously skirting around here to a degree is the very overused term now of influencers, mostly used for social media. The number of product endorsements that you get now is leveraging this exact credibility by association, isn't it? You look at for most of the listeners, boohoo.com and ASOS and top man and even Jackamo and people like that are trying to rebrand themselves by attaching themselves to people like Freddie Flintoff. Do you know what I mean? They are this credibility by association has become a major industry in and of itself. It has. But it's not necessarily new. I know influencer marketing is a more recent term, but I remember over a decade ago when BlackBree were one of the dominant brands in mobile phones

and they called it their ambassador scheme. But it was just influencer marketing. They identified people who were prominent in loads of different issues. I was one of them in the small business sector because at the time I was running a large business network. And you know, it meant every month I got them the next new shiny phone to, you know, as long as I shared it, wrote about it, etc, etc. So I was one of the ambassadors amongst other people. But you know, that was that for me was when I started to really notice that this was a principle that could be leveraged by anybody really. So by trying to get some credibility by association here, how can we access these people? Obviously by virtue of them being in a position of existing influence or potentially

obviously by virtue of them being in a position of existing influence or potentially a different or a higher level of access to network than we have. What are the effective ways that someone can go about enticing somebody in in terms of contact or if they're meeting them face to face, what can they do to make them have more confidence in the pitch so so to speak, to become associated? Yes, so this is a good question. It's one I'm often asked, because of course nobody wants to go reach out to somebody who's got sway and influence and immediately be asking for something. That's the surest far way to turn them off and get them to ignore everything that you do. So most people want to understand what makes you tick your values, your intentions, before they're going to invest any time into you. So that's the first thing.

I used to sell sponsorship. So with our business network brand, we managed to attract really nice sponsorship figures from brands like Santander, BlackBrio 2, Microsoft, etc. And you don't attract those brands unless there's something in it for them. So you always lead with what's in it for them. And I think this is the principle as well when you're approaching people within your network, it's seeking to add value first. So, you know, for example, if I'd already started to build an audience and I wanted to attract the attention of an influencer, I've probably invite them to be interviewed.

They're probably going to want to at some level share their message. They're going to be flattered by the invitation. It's no different from you inviting me onto this podcast, Chris. You know, it's nice to reach a different audience. That works with the whole principle of credibility by socians at play here, by the way, because I'm sure you'll enjoy it when I share the podcast with my audience, because that broadens yours. And you've already got an audience which might be a different demographic

than I normally talk to. So, you know, we both win from it. We're both getting the credibility by association from the conversation. As long as, of course, we're both not coming across as more on this. Which I choose to believe we're not. Yeah. So, you know, approaching somebody, I would seek to add value first. I would avoid asking for anything. I would seek to add value. I would avoid asking for anything. I would seek to add value. I would avoid asking for anything that's not in their interests. If you know what I mean. Yeah, that's a good starting point. So, and then of course, you know, once you've started that, there's two things I would add to this journey of influence that we started on

because we've got, as you may know, your know, your one why, understand who your audience is, identify the influences in the marketplace, add value and collaborate. And I would then say there's only really two more steps to this from an influence strategy point of view. Of course, we can go into lots more detail of any of those things, but as a broad strategy, one is then to continue to build your reach and preferably on your own platform. So we rely so heavily on the platforms that are readily available to us like YouTube and Facebook and why have you. But I think it's quite turbulent, they are changing and because some of the personal brands out there have become a little bit more controversial. They're being de-platformed. So my lawyer, Nopolis, is now off Twitter and

yeah well he's been off Twitter for some time but actually yeah he was de-platformed not just from from Twitter but things like bright bar too you know. So you know it's it the crowd can have that impact so it's important for you to own your own platform and to own your reach, own your relationship with your audience, rather than relying somebody else would be my advice. Interesting interjection here. I don't know whether you follow much of what Tim Ferrist does.

Yes. He is number one advocate of email lists that he pushes everybody, he maximizes, and he sings this, the exact same hymn sheet that you are about the algorithm on Facebook can change, and there's nothing that you can do about it, the reach on YouTube, so on and so forth, everything is mediated by this third party. And I think that's one of the reasons why he's such a big advocate of getting maximizing email subscription and email sign up because it is a direct line of communication from him to his audience. 100%. And actually, it's not just restricted to things like that. I read somewhere recently that Google's about to change their algorithms yet again.

So it's not, you know, you can have done as much as you wanted to with SEO in the past, but it's not necessarily going to help you move and forward. And, you know, it's going to be weighted in different ways. So it's a, you know, these are things that you constantly have to keep on top of, but owning your relationship with your audience is massively important. How else can someone ensure that they own the relationship with their audience or own their platform as you put it? So specifically, to answer that question, I would be wherever possible, taking them away from the places that you met them in the first place and building that subscription. So Tim, what Tim does is he'll go and play on

to social media. He has lots of referral schemes in place who relies on his audience to help him build his audience too. But he will give you something of value, but in order to get that something of value, you're subscribing, so it could be a 10 top tips on how to whatever, but you part with your email address. And then he makes it very clear, I'm going to send you something of value on a regular basis. If you don't want that thing of value, then you know, add your snow problem. But if you do, then know why you're doing this. It's not me spamming. I'm sending you something of value. So, you know, it's being really clear with intentions. And you know, the point is that all of the hard work should have been done before that stage, you know, the people that you're talking to should understand your values, they should understand the value you bring to them,

therefore, when they subscribe, it's a consensual act. They've got a feeling of certainty and safety that they're buying into something that they value. Absolutely. Absolutely. Then the last step I would take beyond building, you know, continuing to build your region on your platform would be to, you know, productize, take advantage of what you've built, productize, then rinse and repeat. You know, all of those steps you can continuously go through them and, you know, you should be on a regular basis, as the world changes around you, revisiting your what and your why,

and how your audience is changing. And therefore, where are they playing now? What's the change in technology or social media that they've moved on to? Who are the new influences? Who can you give a helping hand to, who might be bringing a new audience with them? And add value, collaborate,

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

almost becomes, it emerges organically out of all of the steps that you've built upon, that you've got this level of credibility that you have good access to market, that you understand the audience that you're speaking to. the audience that you're speaking to. Yeah, and so whilst product-tizes the end in that simple model, actually the reality is you do all of those things all at the same time. It's nice and easy to sort of spell out in steps, but of course if you've got a product and service to sell, you're going to sell it to the audience that you've got at the time you start really. But you're right. The considerations

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

brands that have come from nowhere, which we've all heard of and know of like the Ubers and the Airbnb's, who have come from nowhere worth absolute fortunes. But don't necessarily go into the product service. They own the access to the product service. So they have the influence over the audience. It is the biggest fleet of cars in the world, they don't own a car. Yeah.

Airbnb is the biggest portfolio property in the world. They don't own a property. I think I think Ali Barbar is the same but for retail. Yeah, sure, sure. And, you know, and Amazon the same for retail as well. You know, it's the people who own the relationship with the customer, with the audience. And of course, they're their own platforms. They've built their own platforms. They own the own platform, yeah. And they own the relationship. So, you know, that's absolutely telling. And, you know, the opposite is true. I mean, think of brands that should have done it. I mean, YELL.COM, or YELLO Pages. Y Yellow.com are actually doing some really

quite good stuff now around small business marketing websites, SEO and all of that type of thing. They are doing some good things. But actually, considering they started in 1956, in a little bit ahead of everyone else. Well, in Brighton, they started with the yellow pages, they suddenly grew, they eventually grew onto four continents and they dominated search. The internet came along and there was nobody saying, how's this internet thing that affect our business?

They should have been Google. But they weren't. Blockbuster, the same. Blockbuster, very similar, codec, very similar. Codec actually invented the digital camera, the thing that we all walk around within our pockets and just call a phone, but it's an Oracle multi-purpose device. They invented the digital camera, they even brought futurists into their business in the 80s and said, what's the future of digital, what's the future of photography? Of course they said the future's

digital and they said, that's not what we wanted to hear. You're fine. You're fine. You're not doing one that, yeah. You know, so there was a lot of people that I really closed minded to the change that's happening all around them, but it's not just technology that's changes. In fact, one of the examples I use on stage, I'll give you it now. There's a barometer for how long it takes

a product or service to reach 50 million users. Okay, so for the telephone, it was 75 years. For the radio, it was 38 years. For the TV, it was 13 years. The iPod did it in four, the internet did it in three, Facebook did it in two, the iPhone did it in three months. Now, if you think about it, every single one of those is an innovation in communication.

It's an innovation in communication. It's an innovation in the way that we communicate in influence. It's a different broadcast medium. And just to evidence, the three months it took the iPhone, it took Angry Birds 30 days. That's the speed of change as it happens. Yeah, I think it's terrifying, isn't it? And I suppose that it almost becomes each of those levels of communication and how open global communication is now, permit this to catalyze itself further.

It'll only mean that this gets further expedited and that these timeframes are going to become even more shortened because you can find out about something so much more quickly than you ever could before. Or not, you can find out the falsehood. The disinformation comes on the other side. Absolutely. Yeah.

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

does. It seems to be a much rarer skill set. It's a much rarer skill set, but it's going to be the one which I believe will be utterly in demand in the next couple of decades. The line I use on stage is in the age of automation, artificial intelligence and robotization, stay human. Ah, yes, so the point which I want people to understand is that we are becoming more disconnected from each other, you know, counterintuitively because we're more connected via technology,

but we're actually more disconnected on a human level because it's, as we said, only one. It's highlight reels that have been shared. It's, it's, see, for official stories, it's summaries rather than in depth conversations, you know, people are projecting them, their best selves rather than their vulnerable selves, if you know what I mean. So they're not doing the human thing. And so I believe one of the core competencies, one of the core skills that you can go and develop no matter what industry you're in and what level you want to achieve within the industry. If you want to be more effective with all of your relationships, then you need to become a student of people. And that includes yourself, understand who you are, and then be authentic to that.

But understand other people and adapt how you communicate with them to their preferences. So there's a number of tools for that, which we can unpack if you want to. Yes please. But that's the, I think it's going to be the most important skill. And even on a big brand kind of corporate level, it's going to be about demonstrating values and telling stories because that's how it's going to be about demonstrating values and telling stories because that's how we're going to be connecting with people more and more. So to unpack the original bit where communication starts, I'll tell you a couple of things.

First of all, let's talk about what the communication model is, how the process of communication. So we have a very, very easily, we have external stimuli that comes in, there can be in a number of different formats and we'll receive that and process it through our kind of visual, auditory, kinesthetic, even through things like taste. We'll interpret the world around us in a number of different ways. But let's say mainly for our eyes is and what we sense and what we feel. And then what happens is we apply our normal filters. So our filters will generalize, distort and delete.

They will map that information against our own values, our social conditioning, the beliefs that we hold, and the memories that we have, you know, we are a product of our environment. It's the whole kind of conversation around nature and nurture. I think it's in most cases nurture will win every single time. So we are a product of our environment. But anyway, all of those things, they basically constitute our map of reality This was once Highlighted to me quite recently actually where somebody had come into a friend of mine who was he was coaching and She was coaching this particular client and they said don't I want to be a

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

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

what I'm saying? If it's feelings, you know, you know, I get the feeling that and you can use those language, you know, how does that feel to you, for example? So the key is how you identify people's representational. I was going to say, how do you determine that? There's a number of tools. And before I tell you, before I give you the answer to that, because it's, you know, there's another level of complexity, I don't know if you've ever done psychometrics, Chris. I haven't done a disc profile, something like that.

I've done big five, which is a personal assessment. I'm not sure if that counts. You know, I encourage everybody to go off and do these things, because there's always going to be a slight improvement in self awareness. That comes from it. What would you recommend? So disk is the one that's best known. But there's mice, bricks, there's bell bin, they're all good for different contexts. Disk is the one that's really known and quite often

used by other tools too. They adapt, they take the standard core of it and they apply different learnings. The thing about these things is they'll put you into a box for the sake of overview analytics, but actually we all have adaptive behaviors too, and we all float in between different. For example, I'm a high-eye in disk, which is energetic, big picture, enthusiastic, outgoing, all of those things. But actually, if I come across somebody who's very dominant and task-focused and strong-willed and forceful, I'll adapt my behaviour to ultra-dominate them if you know what I mean, because I don't like being dominant. I know that it's a bit of a quite adaptive behaviour. behavior will be to match theirs. But it will always be, our adaptive behaviors are also always very true to our values, they anchored to our values.

But again, it's a thing to understand. So for example, in the sales context, if I was going into a sales meeting and I meet somebody like me, we're going to have a bit of a laugh, we're going to have banter, we're going to be telling stories, you know, it's talking big, big picture, it's going to be enthusiastic and positive. And if I go in and speak to somebody who's highly analytical with a strong preference for detail, I immediately will adapt the way I'm communicating and I'll get to the point first, I'll do the numbers and you know otherwise if I'm doing my usual thing, they'll just be thinking just get on with it. What numbers? Give me the details. They'll be distracted by that. So you have to adapt the way that you speak to others to match their communication preferences.

Okay, so how are we going to determine who these people are? So I'm going to give you two obvious methods. Well, one obvious method and one which isn't so obvious. There's something called iAccessIncuse, which I find quite useful. I use it quite a lot in my just day-to-day rapport with other people. And this is the, have you seen the TV series Lightomy with Tim Roth? Yes. Yep.

So of course, he uses a whole load of tools which have psychological tools, understanding thought processes, body language, etc. I access and tools is one of them. And basically if you're speaking to somebody and they where their eyes get gives you a bit of an indication into their communication preference. So imagine you're looking at somebody and their eyes go top right hand corner. So they're top left, top right to you. That's visual recall. So they're accessing memories.

If it goes to the other side, it's visual construct. That's imagination. Often misused by police forces, I think people are constructing alibis if they spend a lot of time there. Remember, it's not on exact science. It's just a good way of understanding a preference. So if they stayed dead even, but go to the left, so I go to the right as facing, that's auditory recall.

So remembering what somebody said, to the left is auditory construct, imagining what somebody might say. If they go to the bottom right hand side, that's internal dialogue, that's probably something very strong, logical thinker who's actually asking themselves the question and trying to figure out what their answer is. If it's the opposite side, bottom left, that's kinesthetic touch-taste smell etc. So they're somebody very connected to their

feelings and typically somebody who's a strong kinesthetic thinker will be a slower in their communication because they're feeling it. So that's one example. But do you know the really simple way of understanding somebody's preference with all of these things is to listen? Honestly, it's not more complex than that, asking really good questions and listening. You see, on top of communication and representational systems the thing we try really go off about is context. Everybody has a context. Everybody has a set of circumstances that are really unique to them and the only way we get to understand people's communication preferences, personality types and their context is to ask them really good questions.

They did a study when they took a chap who was flying transaglandically from New York to the UK. And this could be just an urban myth by the way, but I've been telling the story because I heard it years ago and thought I thought it was cool. But this person was flying transaglandically from New York to the UK seven hours on the flight And they gave him the task that you've got to keep the guy next to you talking for the whole seven hours without revealing a single piece of information about yourself. Wow. So when they landed, they interviewed the guy, the other passenger, and they said, how

was your flight? It was amazing. It was really good. What was that guy who was talking to? Oh, what a fellow. Really cool guy. What was his name? talking to? Oh, what a fellow, really cool guy. What was his name? Couldn't tell you, didn't have a scoop you do.

Hadn't given them any information at all. He'd just own such genuine interest that this person had been made to feel like a million dollars. So you have two byproducts of asking good questions and being interested in people. One is you get to learn their personality preferences, representational systems, and context. The second is they really like you because you've shown interest in them. They feel special. And so it has a double-edged sword. It works really, really well.

You know, in a networking context, I meet people who are nervous about networking all the time. And, you know, networking all the time. And networking can be daunting, and there's no two ways around it. But actually, if you just get good at asking people questions and showing genuine interest in people, and it's no different from dating Chris, is it? If I knew these tools when I was 16, 17 years old. You've had a much different teenage years. Just show interest in people. Make them feel special by showing genuine interest. It's the key to all things.

I think you're very right. Everyone knows, everyone's got that friend who just want shut up about what they've got going on. And no one really wants to be around them, or they tolerate them to varying degrees. But yeah, when I think about the people who I have the most connection with, it's the ones who ask questions who ask me, how I think about the people who I have the most connection with, it's the ones who ask questions, who ask me, how I'm doing, or how my day's going to follow up

something, they don't just ask a question to be polite, they take a genuine interest, and then they ask again, and then they ask again. So I'll quote Buddha, if your mouth is open, you're not learning. Very fair point. Very fair point. So we've had a look at how we can interpret what category someone else would fall into so that they can you can gear your use of language towards that. What are the things that you can do yourself after asking questions in terms of body language, in terms of dress, in terms of eye contact, word usage, what are the things that you can do to give the best impression of yourself face to face?

So, we talk about getting into rapport with somebody, and there's a number of different ways of getting into rapport, but let And there's a number of different ways of getting into rapport. But let's start with the physiology. So rapport is that kind of that time of connection with somebody, where you're starting to build trust. So from a physiology point of view, simple things like blinking and breathing at the same pace. On a subconscious level. Is that easy to do? Well, the key with all of these things is if you force it and you're obvious with it, it feels like manipulation and it will have the opposite effect, it will be able to earn somebody off. Yeah, breaks down the fourth wall.

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

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

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

And at the end of the talk, facial expression hadn't changed. At the end of the talk, he came up to me and he said, that was one of the best presentations I've ever heard. I thought you have forgotten to tell your face, my friend. He can be utterly confused me with that response. And you know, we're in control of our expressions. So if you want to make friends with people and build rapport, then of course, you know, just relax into it. One of the people who didn't do this authentically though was at previous PM Gordon Brown. So Gordon Brown, one of the elections, was basically advised by somebody

within his team to go and practice his smile. And before the cameras were turned up at one of the BBC election debates in Bristol, he stood at the lectern for about 15 minutes practicing his smile which just didn't look natural at all. So this is where you've got turned up at one of the BBC election debates in Bristol. He stood at the lectern for about 15 minutes practicing his smile, which just didn't look natural at all. So this is where you've got to get the balance right with who you authentically are. Yeah. But anyway, moving on, then you've got things like

the nonverbal, our gestures. So, you know, our reptilian brains, if you've approached somebody with your hands behind your back, their immediate subconscious thought is, what are you hiding? What weapon are you gonna pull out and cook me up the head with exactly? So open body language, positive body language, you know.

But then being mindful about what different gestures mean in different countries, a quick funny, a friend of mine, Steve Clark, was speaking in Tehran. And in Tehran, it gives one of the things Steve puts his thumbs up all the time. You know, he's, is that all right? Yeah, yeah, as a speaker. And he'd made a point and then put his thumbs up. Now in Iran, if you put your thumb up at somebody, you're flipping the bird.

You're doing the equivalent. See, it's 400 people in all that to an entire auditorium. Well, 400 people in an audience who had just flipped consistently carried on doing it and their whole facial expressions changed. And they were saved by his translator who said, he doesn't know what he's just done in their ears. And then they started laughing and it was rescued. But just be mindful.

But open body language, show your hands. And I'm often asked actually in an age of video conference calls and Skype calls where people aren't traveling as much but still wanting to connect. How can you do the same thing? So, you know, the same thing applies. If you're going to take the, where I talk about image in the book, it's not just about brand, it's not just about profiles and pictures or the way that you're dressed.

It's also the way you set the room you're speaking in. What's the impression? The reason I asked you for this particular thing is it an audio or is it a video? Because if it was video I'd have done it somewhere else. Because I'd have been mindful of the scene that we set as well. So, and the thing about a Skype call is you can still show your hands, you can still make eye contact by looking directly into the camera. The moment you start getting distracted and reading emails and not giving your attention to the person you're

talking to, then you know, you're you're going to lose some of that ability to influence. Interesting that the the principles of face-to-face communication occur even when the other face is coming through a screen. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I always minimise the picture of the other person and put it right up by the camera. So, hey, I'm watching their face, but you know, my eyes are looking into their eyes. That's a really good, that's a really good little tip, isn't it? Again, I think it's important.

You know, we've got, we've got to, if we're going to use the adapt to the way that we, we behave and communicate to technology, then we still have to use it and apply the oil principle. That's the point, point of the book, really. So the nonverbal enclosed posture, you'll have heard people doing power poses and closed body language, arms folded, etc. But don't read too much into these things all the time. Unlike Eucharist, I've seen your pictures. I know you were, uh, mind-body, soul, fitness, fantastic. I'm a, I'm a overweight mid-forties guy. So sometimes I'm Xbox though. Good on Xbox. But sometimes I felt my arms because it's comfortable. I've got a little belly, I can rest my arms on, you know, so it's,

it's different horses for different courses. And you may have even seen recently where a load of the Tory MPs have been stood in parapages with their legs far too far apart. They look like aging power arrangers. So again to be avoided. And I contact common sense, little and often, if you intensely stare into somebody's eyes constantly, you're going to freak them out. So use it when you're being sincere. When I'm talking to somebody I look into their eyes, when I'm listening to somebody I'm watching their mouth. Is that a fairly good rule of thumb to see users?

It's just the way I do it. And by, you know, I know that if there's, certainly if there's background noise and things, if I'm reading some, watching somebody's mouth, I'm really taking in what they're saying, I'm concentrated on the words, and I'm receiving the words in more than one way. But if I'm talking to them, I'm looking into their eyes, I'm showing I'm not hiding behind anything. The moment you start looking away when you're actually talking, that could breed a lack of trust. I do find it sometimes very difficult. I work, I work quite hard on maintaining eye contact, especially having read the book, but hitting that Goldilocks zone of not too much to look like you want to fight, but

enough to show that you're engaged. There's still a question mark, I guess, that hangs over with regards to that sometime. Well, the easy thing is, if you're in control of all the other assets you have, I, you're smiling, very rare to people look for a smile on the face. So it's just combining the lot. But enough for them to know that you're actually involved

in that conversation with them and not distracted about what's going on over their shoulders is the thing. And then from nonverbal add come on to voice. So with voice is a whole load of things that we can do, our pacing, our volume, the language that we use, the tone that we use, the different intonations that we use. So, you know, if I go, if I go and meet somebody, for example, particularly for the first time and they're all frantic and stressed, I might match that intensity initially, but then I'll slow myself down and slow them down with me. So by the time we finish, they're nice and relaxed and we're in rapport and we're having a conversation and everybody's been

calm down. But if I go in and start trying to be too calm initially, I might not get into rapport with them as quickly because I'm, you know, subconscious subconsciously I'm not just like them equally. If I'm stressed and manic because I'm late for a meeting and I come in and somebody's on calm and relaxed, you know, the first thing I'm doing is giving myself a sanity check and taking a breath and slowing down my communication. So, you know, little things like that are nice and easy, and language is easy. Language is around the words that we use. Compliments are free, but just make them genuine,

because if you just start saying nice things with a sake of it, it comes across as insincere. So, if you're in a job, that's in somebody's, you find yourself in people's homes, or if you're going to somebody's office and they've got a picture of their family, ask questions, but so I said, lovely family, you've got their own, it's lovely home, you have whatever the compliment is, just mean it. It's a little things like that help, but language can get more complex. So with NLP, language patterns are an important

part of it and embedded commands are an important part of that. A very skilled politician who used to do that in my opinion was Tony Blair. Regardless of whether we agree with his politics, he was very skilled at using language. He would say something like, you like me believe it's important for us to have a robust economy.

Well, the embedded command there is you like me. Whatever he said, whatever he said beyond, he was basically saying, you like me, believe. And that you like me was with enough pause and for the command to actually sink in on a subconscious. I'd never even noticed that, but I can literally picture that. I can picture him saying that and pointing at the screen. He was clearly trained in things like NLP, the way his body language, the way he sometimes you could see through it, but actually most of the time he did it very naturally. So he's clearly been trained. Or he was just a very natural at it.

Remember, you know, NLP and itself its origins come from modeling the behavior of people who are good at what they do. Yeah, it's trying to recreate someone who naturally has that good rapport building, I suppose. Are there any other NLP tricks or solutions that people can implement? Obviously, hopefully, not ones that are going to be too conceited or asperious, but yeah, ones that people could use to assist them when they're trying to build rapport.

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

Ham United, skiing, family, you know, kids, father, guitar, whatever, the words which are which, which floated my boat. And what would happen is people typically with a few exchange of business card in a Me Too, a networking event, they'll turn the card over. And immediately the conversation will be people orientated on one of those subjects rather than actually just trying to be formal and business-like. And it made the rest of the meetings so much easier because we've got to relate on a human level rather than actually trying to talk business straight away. So that whole connection thing with other people can come from a number of different ways. It can come because you've shown interest.

It can come because you've been able to wear your heart and your sleeve, your values on your sleeve. I'll give you an example of this, actually. I was coming, this is a few years back, but when my kids were younger, we were coming back from Euro Disney on the train. And my wife's an introvert, so she just wanted to put her head into a book and read and relax and re-energise by having her alone time, which is how introverts we energise and extroverts

like me. We re-energise by throwing ourselves into groups of people. So in this particular case, she will want to read a book. I was entertaining the kids. And before you knew it, I started to attract other people's children. I know that sounds wrong, but from the point of view, card games, drawing, you know, entertainment, whatever. So I suddenly had a little audience and I looked after these these kids on the way and coming into London. And about 20 minutes outside of a London train station,

one of the other dad said, I'm intrigued, what does it you do? And we had a conversation which resulted in business a couple of weeks later. Oh, right. He told my values. He could see how I was coming across. He could see what I was like with my own children. He could see I was generous enough to give time and attention

to other people's kids. The values were plain and simple and clear. And that just made the rest were plain and simple and clear and you know, that just made the rest of the conversation nice and easy. And you know, when we talk about things like serendipity not being a strategy, serendipity is effective if there's still not a strategy, but it's still effective if you can make the most of opportunities because you come across in the right way. And actually, if you've got things front of mind, one of my favourite sayings is opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.

Yeah. Which I think is about translated as just about having your wants, needs, desires, front of mind. If you remind yourself on a regular basis what you're looking for, you're more likely to spot it. Does it look equals preparedness plus opportunity? Yes, absolutely. Is it really so, Indepthty? But then, you know, the very last thing which I'll give you, and just on this influencing

face to face, is rather than approaching conversations in the transactional way. You know, you tell me something, I'm going to tell you something, you tell me something, I'm going to tell you something, and it's going to serve a purpose. It becomes like a game of tennis, right? Absolutely. Start telling stories. I believe one of the core competencies of big brands,

small brands, personal brands are like for the next decade or so, is going to be your ability to tell your stories, which demonstrate your values, which connect on a human level. So get great at storytelling. I tell you what a really good example of that is, how successful John Lewis have been with their Christmas commercials. Amazingly so, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they're drawing people in on a subject rather than just saying, you know, this is what we've got on the shelves and this is the price we're selling out. It's about

storytelling. It's no different in face-to-face conversations. And if you think about this conversation, we've had so far. We've told stories of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, we've told stories of Euro Disney, we've told stories of Jack Black, Judy Nale, you know, we've told stories of business cards, of people with different psychometric profiles, of millennials, you know, it's all about storytelling. I understand completely. So I think we've got a good understanding of what people can do face to face there. What are the other principles of influence that you think that we haven't covered so far, What are the other principles of influence that you think that we haven't covered so far, which are pertinent for people to understand? So in the book, I break everything down into an acronym called PICCY,

and that's mainly because it's in the rule book for speakers or writers that you've got to have an acronym. You don't allow to do it otherwise. So I'll just quickly run through the acronym and it'll just give an idea of the bigger picture. So peers around people and so this we've touched on it with how we connect with influences but it's not necessarily just influences that bring us opportunities, knowledge wisdom, critical feedback, etc. It's our networks and you know I'd encourage anybody who it's listening to this to start taking their networking a little bit more seriously. That doesn't necessarily mean going to breadth of networking events. It means just being a bit more focused on building your sphere of influence, the relationships that you have, the people that you would know and who would know you. It's not who you know It's what's what is it that you say in the book, it's it's not who you know or what you know,

it's who knows, it's also who knows you. 100%. So I take this quite seriously on, I run a skiing trip every year called NetSki. In fact, we're about 13 years old now. So we take a bunch of business people, I think the biggest group we've done was nearly 70, a bunch of business people to a result typically in Europe. And of course, they're bonding over shared experience. They're not sales pitching to each other. Nobody's immediately bringing business cards to dinner on an evening. They're having a glass of one, working hard in the day, laughing at the mistakes, high-fiving over the triumphs, and it's a shared experience that connecting on a human level, and let me tell you, more business gets done

on that trip and afterwards than any other networking event I've ever seen. Yeah, I bet it does. I think just briefly jumping back to what you said previously about the storytelling that it's strange, isn't it, that really effective outcomes from a commercial perspective in quotation marks are elicited by not focusing on that at all, by focusing on the values and focusing on the values and focusing on the story and yeah, I definitely can see some parallels in my business life with that. And I would say I don't know where your audience is geographically, but if you've just heard that and thought, hey, I want to be a part of it, I'm going to shamelessly plug it. It's nethyphen-schede.co.uk. We'll do. We've got two trips next year. We're doing team in January and we're doing Aspen in March.

So we have, there's not many places left for team, but that we do have the option of taking the Chalenex door. But it's my point is it's a really good trip because people, you know, all of that travel time, all of that time on chair left, sort of the sneaky beers or van show, you have between runs, it's those experiences, that's the bits where people bond. And then take that to another level, I'm a huge fan of masterminding. Are you part of a mastermind, Chris? No. Have you heard of it as a concept? I would like it elaborated I have but I wouldn't be able to recite it to you. Okay so I first was introduced to masterminds when I was probably about 18, 19 years old and I was Christmas Eve, I was in a pub in Wilshire and I was just stood

with one of my best mates and his dad and his dad's, millionaire business owner. And, you know, we were doing all of our kind of young spouting, spouting shit as young people do, as I did anyway. And he said, well, if you're really ambitious, Warren, he said, you know, it's a book I recommend. And it was, I think, and grow rich by Napoleon Hill. And he said, I could lend you my copy, but if you're hungry enough, you're going by your own. And of course, you know, wanting to be seen as hungry, I think I had it by boxing day. But there was a chapter in there around masterminding, which I thought, this is really really powerful, impressive. And it's the simple concept of bringing some really good people together concept of bringing some really good people together on a fairly regular basis that could be monthly or every two months and actually being that kind of sounding board for each

other, being the, you know, like the board of directors for each other. So, you know, it's the, if you've got an idea where you're incubator, if you've got an issue you're dealing with a colleague at work, a fellow director, a member of staff, whatever, or even at home, there you're critical feedback. They listen and you know, we'll come in with a different perspective. If you're creating commercial opportunities, they may be JV partners potentially, or they may have the context to make it happen. But is that sitting down for a period of time with a bunch of people you respect and value their opinion and being open and honest enough and vulnerable enough to share? And there's two rules to it. One is, um, chame house rules. So whatever's said in that environment,

stays in that environment, you don't go talking behind each other's back. Trust is absolutely important for it to work. But the second thing that really happens is accountability. So if you're with a bunch of people and you say, well, I'm going to go and do this by next month, you don't want to turn up next month having not done it. So that accountability means that you get things done. Now there are organizations out there you can go and spend lots of money on on masterminding, you know, Vistage is one of the bigger ones as the Academy Chief execs and loads of others. But you know, Vistage is one of the bigger ones, there's the Academy Chief execs and loads of others, but you know, it can cost anything up to a thousand pound a month to be part of these groups, and I have paid that much in the past. But actually,

you can equally go and invite a bunch of people you like to the pub once a month and just have dinner together and have that same conversation. It doesn't have to cost. I've currently got a really nice mastermind group. We've kept it to five for now, but for me, it's an essential part of running a business or building a personal brand, collaborations and all sorts of things come out of it, but it's a group of people that you really trust

to get dynamite advice. So that's taking networking to a big level. Don't just see it as a kind of transactional business breakfast type thing. See it about building them, let the human relationships. And then if you can find that kind of core group of people that you really value the opinion of, start meeting them on a more intimate setting and bring your issues to the table. Yeah, when you find someone who can add a little bit of value, don't let them go. Yeah, absolutely.

Get a hold of them and try and meet them as regularly as possible. So we've got P, people, what's I? P, for people. I, as a random image, we've touched on it before, but it's the way we present ourselves. It's the way, the clothes we wear, it's the way that we dress our profile pages on social media. It's down to me that I still see people who've got profile pictures from 20, 30 years ago and they've lost all their hair since then. Whatever the thing is, again, it's got to be authentic. If I turn up on a, my wife won't let me go on dating sites, but if I was to turn up on a dating site and somebody turns up

and their pictures 20 years out of date, what does that tell me from a trust point of view? It means that they hide, and the same is true in business. If you try and portray an image that's not you, it actually immediately makes people more skeptical of you anyway. So, images about all of those things, it's consideration to the language that we use, the words that we use on our copy on our websites, on our business cards, on our sales literature, on our email marketing, our newsletters, etc. images around the kind of values that we want to portray.

Communication is the sea and that's around how we have conversations again, both written and our language face to face. And for me, a big key part of that is being consistent. I see people on social media, for example, safely behind a monitor and a keyboard in another county say things that they wouldn't dream of saying if they were staring into the whites of somebody's eyes. Agreed. And again, I think it's really important to be consistent and just have that filter that says, would I say this if I was staring into their eyes right now, if I wouldn't, then don't write it. You know, little things like that. That's a lovely, a lovely rule of thumb that I wish most of the internet would listen to.

Unfortunately, they won't make me god of the internet. So I can't do anything about it. We can only hope, me God of the internet. So I can't do anything about it. We can only help. We can only help. God help the world. Cays are in knowledge, and that's a simple thing around demonstrating expertise. So if we were looking to breed trust with somebody,

they want to know that we know what we're talking about. So how do we demonstrate our expertise? How do we share our knowledge? How do we leverage all of the principles that we've talked about today? And again, there's multiple channels open to us, but I really encourage people to get out of their comfort zones and stand up and public speak.

If it's in you, if you think it's possibly in you, standing up and actually speaking to your peers is one of the most powerful ways to breed authority. And then lastly, we've touched on already is the why, which is around the values that we hold. And in the book, I explore a load of values which I identified in the people that have influenced me. And again, just in the interest of modeling, having identified them, I gave them great thought and thought, how can I start to adopt these values? How can I certainly demonstrate those values? So really simple. If you break down everything that we've said, there's nothing

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

online? I'm not really too sure. I don't know if you have a common stumbling box that people have fundamental to them not eliciting the best influence that they can. Well, I think you hit on a couple there. Certainly, they get in their own way. Well, it's what I would say. If you've come into a room in your mind, for example, a networking room and your mind's on other things, the three jobs that you should have done, your to-do list that didn't get done,

the fact you feel a million dollars. You have no chance to do your makeup or maybe you're not wearing what you wanted to wear, but you're nervous about how you're going to come across because of the baggage you carry around about how people portray you. If you come in with all of that baggage, and it will any of it, you're not making your best first impression, you really have to leave the world at the door when in any kind of relationship, leave the world at the door and just focus on the conversation, from conversations come opportunities. It's a lovely way to put it.

So, I think we've got through a really nice model of how people can improve their ability to influence, going from understanding their why, understanding their audience, understanding their audience, understanding the mediums and the medias that they can contact them through, the credibility through association, the face-to-face, the online approaches that people can use, and you've given us some really lovely examples. Are there any other points that you think people need to hear before we round this conversation off? So there's only a couple of maybe quotes which will just provoke a bit of thought and this good because ultimately actually you've summarized building personal brand, etc. Actually,

I think the kind of key messages, if I to summarise the conversation we just had Chris is first of all we we discussed the world has changed and so become that student of change. Second of all we talked about becoming a student of people. So that's understanding them and understand their context, their communication preferences, their personality traits, be that student of people and that includes being a student of yourself. We talked about listening as one of the most effective tools when it comes to influence and because it gives you context but it also makes you liked. Then connecting on a human level, it's not all about business, give a bit of yourself, that's what people, heart some minds are what people are connecting. Demonstrate your values, tell your stories. I think that's enough for anybody listening to this to be able to do something meaningful. If you stick to those, you won't go too far wrong, right?

I can't see how you can. But you know, all of this, as I said, is a number of quotes, but the key to successful leadership today is influence, not authorities can blanch our, that's one that's on my website. Your circle of influence dictates your path. Example is not the main thing when it comes to influencing others, it's the only thing. All of these are, hopefully, things that anybody listening to this will just understand that whatever their objectives in life, happy and marriage, a better relationship with Hopefully, things that anybody listening to this will just understand that

whatever their objectives in life, happy and marriage, a better relationship with the kids, stronger friendships, more cordial working environments with colleagues, more clients when it comes to sales and marketing, it's all about influencing and the better they are at these things, the more effective they'll be in all of those areas of their life. We are hugely empathetic creatures. You know, they've even done research where they've had people, two people in FMRI scans, one listening, one talking, they couldn't see each other, you know, and in an instant, their brain waves start to synchronize, you know, to the point where it's almost predictive from the listener. That's how empathetically we are. We want to connect with others.

So just use all of those things to build connection and be human. Remember what I said, early on, in an age of AI and automation and robotisation, it's important to stay human. Fantastic. I've absolutely loved today, Warren. I'm glad it's been a long time coming for me to get you on I'm really really glad that I have done so obviously The link to influence the book will be in the show notes are there a superstar are there any other

resources Either yours or anyone else's books or online blogs or Where do you go or where would you advise people who want to further their knowledge into this field? Where should they look? Well, of course, the modern wisdom podcast is a good starting point for anybody listening and like everything else, it's important to share it so you get the audience you deserve. Same is true for the book. If you like the book, if anybody reads it and likes it, give us a shout out. I'd love to hear what one nugget you took from it on social media. In fact, that's how

we connected Chris. Exactly. It's lovely when it happens. So if people do read it on my website, there's a strategy guide, which is basically a PDF. You see at the end of every chapter in the book, I ask a couple of questions to help people contextualize what I've just said and relate it to their own circumstances. Well, I've filled mine in. Mine is zero. Yeah, see perv. See perv. Well, do you know why that's music to my ears? Because, you know, what I said to you earlier on about Ego vs. is affecting change or inspiring change in others. When people actually write something down, that builds intention.

It means that they're going to go and implement something. If they implement something, they're only going to have some sort of positive effect that comes off the back of it. So I love the messages I get on social media from people that say, right, this particular point has resulted in this or, you know, a proof of relationship here. I couldn't agree more. I've just finished a podcast with Dr.

you and Lawson and during that we discussed gratitude journaling and exactly the same thing there. It's writing down in intention. It's one of the reasons that I love the podcasting platform because it forces me under duress of a very very skeptical audience sometimes to crystallize my thoughts into a way that has to be both truthful and make sense. A lot of the time when it's just thoughts floating around in your mind, these unhwn sort of globules of idea and then as soon as you have to verbalize it or write it down, it takes form in a very, very different way. And I think that you can start to be very rigorous at assessing your own stance on things that you might have previously taken

for granted or not really understood. And then when you when you do get to writing things down, so I couldn't agree more. So we've got influence, we've got the partner, um, uh, worksheet that you can download on your website, which will also be in the show notes. Is there anything else that people should be reading? So in terms of other books, is there's a load out there. Um, I'm a fan of Daniel Priestly, um, go and have a look at some of his work. Entrepreneur Revolution, there's a good one. Have a look at Chaldeen's follow-up book to to Psychology persuasion, which is called Prieswasion. Prieswasion seems to be pretty heavily touted at the moment. It's one that I haven't read, but it's a, if you, if you'd given it your, I'd said to myself, if you gave it your seal of approval

during this podcast that I would go and get it. So I think that's just locked in my next audible credit usage, I think. Oh, there you go. Now, that's, that's a good use for it. Childean is come, come from a very strong academic background with this, with his work background with this work, but now it's a good book. A lot of the books I've really valued over the years are unnecessarily mainstream now. I loved one called Riches Man in Babylon, which is a story around actually what building a business or what building wealth actually looks like, but it's told in an old tongue kind of story, very good. You know, Baronie Mines, the biggest thing that we talked about today was the beginning was around change, go and read who moved my cheese, you know,

a simple book that can be read in an hour, but just tells the story of a mison men and illustrates why it's actually important to be constantly moving and not wedded to your current situation, your current circumstances, everything's changing around you, you need to change with it. So there are a couple of books I absolutely recommend. Fantastic. Warren, where can the listeners find you online? At WarrenCast or WarrenCast.com. Where can the listeners find you online? At WarrenCas or WarrenCas.com. Fantastic.

Well, it's been an absolute pleasure. I'm very, very glad that we got to delve into the world of influence. The book is currently about two, about a quarter of the way through. I think my third read through now and it's definitely such an applicable subject field that, as you say, the applications of it go from professional to personal to absolutely

everything. And I think that being a student of people, as you've said, is something that we all probably can endeavor to try and do a little bit more and will reap some benefits from as we do. I'm thrilled you've got so much from it, Chris, and I really appreciate the invitation to come and speak on the podcast. And I look forward to the upcoming episode of the gratitude journal. That sounds fascinating. Thank you very much. Warren, thank you for your time. Take care, buddy. Thanks a lot. Bye.