Noob School - Episode 43: 8 Surefire Ways To Be More Interesting

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

The old adage is true: birds of the same feather do flock together. If you want to be around more interesting people, then you will want to be more interesting yourself. In this episode of the Noob School podcast, our host John gives us eight things anybody can do out of the gate to be more interesting. Spoiler alert: it’s all about doing something you’ve never done before!  HIGHLIGHTSNo need to be 'the greatest', just be 'pretty good'Learn a second languagePlay an instrument See more places Get in shape Volunteer for a nonprofit Take a courseRead (or listen to) a book Learn to cook different cuisines  QUOTESJohn on why you want to be more interesting: "The more life experience [and] skill stack you have, the more interesting you're gonna be, the more people want to be around you. You're gonna attract more interesting people in your life."John on exercise and living healthier: "Just get in great shape. And I don't mean Olympic shape. I'm not gonna get in Olympic shape either. But just, wherever your body is supposed to be, get in that shape. Take the time to do it and it will make all parts of your life more interesting. You'll be more able to make some of these things happen."John on why you want to read more: "What is the one common characteristic of the world's most successful people, as measured by financial success? You know, Jeff Bezos, Gates, Buffet, those kinds of people. They read all the time." Connect with Noob School and John by visiting the following links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsterling1/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnsterlingsalesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnsterling_/Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnsterling_TikTok: https://twitter.com/johnsterling_Website: http://salestrainingfornoobs.com/

Welcome back to Noob School. This is where we interview sales pros that can help you get off to a great start in sales. Storytime. One of the questions we got through our question and answer portal for the Noob School is kind of how to be more interesting, right? If I'm more interesting, it'll be easier to sell. People will be want to talk to me more, want to be around me more. I have a richer life if I'm more interesting. I think all that's true, right?

I think the more of a kind of a life experience, skill stack you have, the more interesting you're going to be, the more people want to be around you can attract more interesting people in your life. So how do you do that, right? So I just wrote down a few things that I'd noticed in my life and in lives of interesting friends of mine that they've done on purpose. And they've become more interesting. Okay?

These are things that you can do and you can be more interesting. Now, before I get started, don't get carried away with the all or nothing rule, okay? Like you said, I want to play an instrument only if I can be as good as John Coltrane, right? Or Miles Davis, or one of the great musicians. No, we're not going to be that good. But you can be pretty darn good. You can get pretty good in all this stuff. And pretty good is all you need to be in terms of the interesting scale, right?

When someone says, hey, he speaks Spanish, they don't say, well, he speaks a level four Spanish or a level eight Spanish or a level 10 Spanish. He speaks Spanish or he doesn't speak Spanish. So don't get carried away with all or nothing. Just get pretty good at it and just keep getting a little bit better every week. So the first thing I will suggest. if you want to be more interesting, is to learn a second language, at least a second language,

maybe a third. I have yet to meet an American who spoke another language who wasn't interesting and also who wasn't successful, not one. So if they just decided on their own to learn a second language,

every single one of them is a successful person and they're kind of interesting. And usually it may be. means they've spent some time in that country. It does some traveling over there. And that, of course, makes them interesting also. So, you know, learn another language. And I think it does something to your brain. You know, you think a little bit differently. You see the world as a, you know, smaller place when you start to visit some of these other countries where you're going to learn the language. You get to open up your world to who you're going to meet. So if you speak French,

and you go to France or you go to parts of Canada, maybe a few other places in the world, you can converse and get to know and meet and meet new friends that just speak that language, or primarily speak that language. So speaking of the language, and it's never been easier. There's apps on your phone. Some of them are almost free or darn near free.

All kind of ways you can do it. It used to be very difficult. You had to take courses and sit in class and, ugh. Now you can do it at your own pace. And I think the best one that I've heard of is called Duolingo. Duolingo. So check that one out, but there's several. So learn a second language.

Second one, this is another one where people will give you a lot of credit for being interesting. But many people will not do it because they kind of go all or nothing. And it's playing an instrument. I can't, I mean, I play an instrument. I love playing the saxophone. I've worked out at a long time, and I enjoy what I do with it. I'm never going to be as good as John Coltrane, but I'm doing what I'm doing. And people will say, man, I wish I could play the saxophone, or I wish I had kept up with my piano,

or I wish I had kept up with my guitar, or I'd love to play the guitar. And normally, I'll just let it go. But sometimes I'll say, well, well, dog. I mean, if you really want to do it, why don't you do it? They'll say, well, you know, I don't have time or it's been too long and you'll start making excuses for why they're not going to do it. But I'm telling you right now, if you've never played a lick of anything, you could pick up a ukulele for a hundred bucks or less and go online, a teacher would be better, but you can go

online and get lessons and you can learn how to play that yuk well enough in a matter of weeks that you can play 50, 60, 100 songs. You just learn a few chords, a few, you know, placements with your fingers, and you're just playing, you can let these only four strings, a very simple instrument to play. So you can pull that thing out in an airport lobby or in front of a fire and just, you know, learn 10 or 15 songs, you know how to do. and believe me, you'd be more interesting than not playing an instrument. So I want excuses.

Pick up a yuk. The next one is travel. And I'm not going to pretend like, you know, that everyone can just pick up and just go around the world, okay? But some of you can and some of you can plan a trip for next year, you know, where you might be gone two or three weeks or even a month or who, Who knows? I don't know your schedule of your life, but most people have more chances to travel than they think. And there's not much that will make you more interesting than being that person, you know, that just spent six months in Greece or, you know, three months in France or two months in Australia. You know, these days, a lot of jobs you can work remote. and, you know, so we're just talking about a plane ticket and an Airbnb or someplace to stay, particularly if you're going for a longer period of time, maybe you don't have to pay for anything back here.

But it will make you more interesting. You'll learn more about the world. You'll make new friends. So I highly recommend, particularly since many of you can work remote, pick some spots in the world. Maybe it's the place where you're learning the language too. And just move. Go somewhere else for a while, you know. No big deal.

Go to France. Another one that will make you more interesting, and I've got some other videos on this that go into more detail, but just to get into great shape. And I don't mean, you know, Olympic shape, okay? I'm not going to get an Olympic shape either, but just whatever your body is supposed to be, get in that shape.

Take the time to do it, and it will make you, it'll make all parts of your life more interesting, be more able to make some of these things happen. So trust me, you know, I would get in the great shape first before doing anything else. It'll make you more interesting. Another way to get more interesting is to adopt a nonprofit.

So pick something that's near and dear to your heart and, you know, just give it some time. You know, volunteer to work. for this nonprofit to help them raise money or put on races or whatever it is they do. I do, my son was in the service, and so I do some nonprofits related to service folks and special forces folks, and we do a big event here once a year and do some, have the seals kind of come in and do some shooting and teach all these us businessmen how to shoot stuff and machine guns.

It's really cool. I mean, I really like it. It probably makes me more interesting, but I don't do it for that really. and I just enjoy, you know, what we're trying to do for these nonprofit people, or excuse me, for these Special Forces people. But that's another thing you can do is just pick one. And you will meet new people that are involved with the nonprofit, and it'll be another kind of feather in your cap that makes you different

than just somebody who just, you know, let's just say does the bare basics of life. You've got a job, you know, go to church on. Sunday pull for a football team. You know, I mean, I'm talking bare bones basics. We got to improve on that. One thing you can do to be more interesting is take courses. And, you know, some of the smartest people I know are taking a course all the time. So that doesn't mean they're taking two courses. It just means they're taking one course all the time. And it could be a course on whatever. It could be a course on language. It could be a course on music. It could be a course on a geography they're going to move to.

It could be on their business structure, accounting. It could be anything. But they're always taking an online course and getting smarter. So that's something that you can do to make yourself more interesting. And then the last thing on my list, there's plenty more. Let's to read. Okay. Read or listen, I should say.

It's never been easier to read, particularly with audible.com. You know, pretty inexpensively, you can get a subscription. to Audible. And I would say if you listen to one book a month, and I don't even care what it is. If you listen to one book a month, you know, you're going to be more interesting. You're going to have exposure to more ideas,

more people, more kind of how-to stuff. And, you know, when other people are going to be talking about, you know, what's happening on, you know, Game of Thrones, you're going to be talking to some other people about, you know, what's going on in these, you know, more advanced books that you're listening to. So I would say if you want to be more interesting, you know, read more interesting stuff. And that is the one thing.

And I've heard this over and over again. If you say, what is the one common characteristic of the world's most successful people as measured by, let's just say, financial success? You know, the Jeff Bezos, Gates, Buffett, those kinds of people. They read all the time. And to hear them talk, they say, well, they think everyone else is like crazy. And why wouldn't you be reading? You know, all these super smart people, the greatest philosophers in the world, the greatest business people, greatest bankers, they've written down all their findings and ideas from a lifetime into a book that's just this thick.

So they're like, I can just get this information in my brain and I can't get it in fast enough. So two more things. One, this is kind of an easy one, and maybe this can apply to you, maybe not. But, you know, I tell you another thing that makes you more interesting is being a chef, right? Like, let's see you start taking classes. You start taking classes to learn how to cook, you know, Spanish food or to cook French food or American food. It doesn't matter. But you're taking these classes, you're learning how to cook.

And so you can have friends over, you know, you can have. partners over, whatever. You can have business people over, say, hey, you know, Jacob's cooking a big fish tonight, or, you know, whatever it is. So when you're saying, you know, the baseline is job, likes a football team, goes to church on Sunday,

and all of a sudden we're adding, and he's studied to be a chef, and he speaks Spanish, and he just got back from Italy for six weeks, and he's going to play the guitar for us tonight. Okay? This is the baseline. This is where you're headed.

You know, you can be a lot more interesting, and you're going to be able to attract more interesting people in your life if you're like that. And then last thing, and this one again, it's easy and it's not easy, right? But the most successful people in the world, the Jeff Bezos, the Buffets, the Gates, Elon Musk, all those people, the one thing that's consistent across all of them is they'll read. They read voraciously. They're always reading a book.

It could be a nonfiction book, or it could be a fiction book. It could be whatever is interesting to them at the time. But when I've heard them interviewed about it, they're like, well, of course we read. Like the smartest people in the world, the greatest philosophers, the greatest business people, the greatest politicians, they've all written everything they've learned in books. And we can read them for, you know, for 20 bucks. Now, if we were, if we were, you know, we were starting over and saying, how much would it cost to have, you know, Gates write down everything he knows in a book

and we get to read it? How much would that be? It would be a lot more than 20 bucks, right? People would pay thousands of dollars to kind of read what's in Gates' brain. But it's 20 bucks you can read it, and most people don't. Most people don't read. I think his first book was The Road Ahead, which he predicted a lot of things that were going to happen this century.

But it's much easier to scroll through YouTube or Netflix or TikTok or whatever it is. I mean, I do some of that myself. But if you want to be successful and you want to be more interesting, Spend more time reading books or listening to books. And again, take you back to the example, baseline, got a job, go to church, likes the football team. Baseline, not so interesting. And we're adding in, speaks another language, just got back from Italy, become a study to be a chef, plays an instrument, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. a voracious reader, you know, whatever.

So that's, I think it's a pretty simple answer. If you want to be more interesting, do more interesting things. Add kind of skills to your life resume. And you can make it happen. And all those things are possible for you. I would say in the next year or two, every single thing I said you could do in two years. So go do it.

And then check back in. Tell me how it goes. We'll have an interesting conversation. Thank you.