The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Neil Gordon, Speaker Coach Talks About How To Be A Better Leader, Seller and Speaker

Episode Date: July 18, 2020

Neil Gordon, Speaker Coach Talks About How To Be A Better Leader, Seller and Speaker

you're listening to the chris voss show podcast we interview the smartest people in the room the ceos authors thought leaders visionaries and motivators to fill up your brain and make you better looking here's your host chris voss all right right, let's do this. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to give us a like, subscribe to us on YouTube. If you're listening to this on the iTunes channels, iHeartRadio, all those different places, Spotify, we love Spotify,

you can watch the video version it's technology it's 2020 people uh you can see the video version of these interviews so be sure to go there and support the show give them like give them comment hit that bell notification see it all notifications of everything we do refer your friends neighbors relatives dogs cats go knock on doors on a saturday morning at 8 am. and say, have you heard of the Gospel of the Chris Voss Show? You should subscribe at thecvpn.com or chrisvosspodcastnetwork.com and make them really angry because they're hungover. Not that anyone does that.

Anyway, guys, we have a really brilliant mind on the show today. We always have the most brilliant of minds, one of which is not me. Neil Gordon. Neil Gordon is on here. He helps experts become the face of a movement. He works with executives, influencers, and thought leaders and has helped them get six-figure book advances and get them to be seen on shows like Ellen and Dr. Oz

and double their speaking fees. Who doesn't want that? Prior to becoming a communications expert, he worked on the editorial staff of Penguin Random House, where he worked with New York Times bestselling authors. And he's been featured on NBC, Palm Springs, Forbes, Fortune, and Inc.com. Welcome to the show, Neil. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing great, Chris. How are you? Awesome sauce. You know, I'm looking at your picture on your website and looking at your beard. I think you need to stick with the beard.

You like the beard? You're rocking the beard, buddy. I appreciate that. Awesome. It was originally a quarantine beard, but now it's just become my beard. Yeah, that's why I have to wear the hat because I've got the quarantine hair. So give me the dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs you can find me at neil can help dot com and that's pretty much going to lead you to every other rabbit hole you want to

go down with me so i'd say start with that and just just have at it that's why i should start asking people instead of links i should just be where are your rabbit holes yeah exactly well that's what the internet has taught us to find, right? There you go. So give us an overview about who you are and what you're about. And then let's get into some of your origin story. Who I am and what I'm about. Well, generally speaking, I like to say that what I'm about is helping people to be more persuasive without everyone needing a shower afterwards. And so when I think about persuasion in the classic sense, it's often this kind of snake oil salesman kind of thing and manipulating people and wowing them with dazzle and everything. And I honestly

feel that people don't really just want to be dazzled. They want to be empowered. And there are ways that we can do that. And a subset of that is that I really want to eradicate demagoguery from the way that people get power and the way that people influence others in general, not to manipulate them with fear, but rather to inspire them with hope. And so my life's work is about ensuring that as much as possible. I love that message, inspiring people with hope. People so my life's work is about ensuring that as much as possible. I love that message, inspiring people with hope. People that have to inspire with fear or terrorize people with fear are not cool. So I think that's the technical term. You're not cool. You know, and we can get into this later, but you know, I mean, I remember learning with sales,

you know, you can teach people you can sell to people either based on fear or based on you know getting something and uh i'm like boy that fear thing really sucks because you know reverse psychology and stuff but uh so let's get into a little just a little bit your orange story where did you grow up how did you get to the point you're at now yeah i I always appreciate this question because when even just looking at my bio, that I was on the editorial staff of a major publisher and do writing and communication services and whatnot, you might form this idea that I was a bookworm growing up and super studious and got 800 verbal on my SATs and went to some fancy school and all of that.

And it's completely the opposite of how I actually grew up. While I did have an affinity for reading as a small child, and I was in the 99th percentile the first time they tested us when I was in first grade, my reading capacity just tanked as I got older, and I hated reading more and more. My dad would joke that as soon as I hit the second grade and got my first book report that I hated reading thereafter, because it suddenly became work. And so I just really went down this weird, dark path of never having anything to do with the written word, at least unless I was assigned to do so by school. And even then I didn't read. And by the time I was a sophomore in high

school, I took the SATs for the first time. And rather than that 800 verbal, I actually got a 330, which put me in the fifth percentile. So I went from the 99th percentile as high as you could get all the way down to the fifth. And basically, I avoided reading as much as I could through college as well. I still got a 3.5 GPA. But it was just this weird thing that, thank goodness, I was good at school, because I really didn't have any meat on the bones of my education there. So I faked my way through it. And then I got to New York City and New York overwhelmed me and it was dirty and crowded and busy. And then I found reading while I was on the subways. And I read one book in particular, it was A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. And it was fiction, but it just had such a profound impact on my worldview and what

I thought was possible in my belief system and even my religious sensibilities that I just went into this agnostic, atheistic, existentialist type crisis. And very, very angsty, very 20-something. That's exactly what we're supposed to do at that age. But rather than succumb to vice and just numb myself out with this sudden despair that I felt about my own existence, I immersed myself in reading. Tried to figure out how the written word could have such a profound impact on me. And on the other side of that, I had marketable skills. And I'm skipping over a lot, obviously, but I got my first job at Penguin when I was 27. I was older than the other editorial assistants, but I brought a certain perspective, not from a person who loved reading their whole lives,

but understood what it took to get someone like me to like reading, so that gave me editorial taste. You know what I used to do when I was in high school? My book reports. I'd read the first chapter, the middle chapter, the last chapter, and then I'd mostly skim the BS that was on the back of the book for recommendations. And then I always get a D-, but I'm like, hey, I passed. You got through the system. My thought is based on the way school is,

the way it was when we were going through school and even how it is still today. If you just figure out a way to get through it and not screw up the rest of your life thereafter, then you've done it. You've done what you needed to do. I guess. I guess. It may be so. It got me where I am today.

Oh, crap. Anyway. i'm not the living embodiment of scholarly education people so don't use me as your as your poster boy uh to all the kids out there um so let's get into uh more about who you are so uh after you left the uh book business uh or i don't know if you've left the book you left or did leave the book business but when you moved on from Penguin what what what's the next steps that you know I'm looking at your website seeing all the speaker stuff you do and everything else I started off actually when I left I really left well for a number of reasons but the main reason was that my boss said the

value of an editor isn't based on how good you are with content it's how good you are at getting amazing deals and so I didn't want to make amazing deals I wanted to work on books so I left and I thought I would try to freelance edit and this is before there was so much self-publishing and before websites like readz.com and stuff like that where you could just find editors for your project and all of that. And so I found that the thing that people were paying others for was writing, like ghostwriting, nonfiction books and things like that. And so I gave it a go. And that's when I found my home. I had this natural affinity for writing. And I found a way to get my brain to settle down enough to

pump out a lot of content in a short amount of time. And that was a huge breakthrough for me. And that happened just a few months after I left Penguin. And that was it that I was just, I was all about the ghostwriting for a few years there and helping people like, like my bio, helping people to get book deals and stuff by writing proposals and things like that, book proposals. And so I was in the book business more in the sense that I was helping those who are getting published. I just wasn't working at a publisher. And fast forward a number of years, I'll be quite transparent, Chris, that I really struggled as a freelancer. No matter how great my credits were and how good my success

stories were. It was really hard for me to get work. And I never, I just didn't have any sort of marketing plan. I didn't have a way for people to know about me. And I was actually driving for Lyft by the mid 2010s and just trying to make ends meet. And I'm living in Los Angeles County, which is an expensive place to be. And it wasn't until 2017 that I finally solved my marketing problem. And I did so because I realized that my skills that had helped authors as they had were almost a carbon copy of what could help speakers to be far more impactful. And I'd worked with a couple of people who had come to me for book stuff, and they asked for a little help with their speaking. And they had amazing results.

So I decided to market myself in that way. And right away, people started implementing my stuff, and they just had night and day transformations on stage. So it's one thing to say I work with books. It's another thing I work with speakers, but actually I just work with visionaries and I find that the process helps them to attract others to their work no matter the medium. Is it much like a book where a book tells a story and it has a layout of how it tells that story? Much like a speaker would do that on stage where they lay out their vision or the story to audience? Yeah, there is a lot of similarity there, Chris. If we're looking at like a keynote speech or a TEDx talk or a TED talk that you might have 20 or 45 minutes to connect with your audience, I liken that more to what you might do in the introduction of a book in that the mistake that a lot of speakers make when they get up on stage is they, if they, let's say they have a book and it's like a seven step process or something like that they will cram their entire

seven steps into their 45 minutes and they will do this real show up and throw up drinking through the fire hose right yeah i mean this is what they do though and there's just there's so many different ways you could go about filling out that 45 minutes, but I find the most impactful and powerful way is to strip away all of the dense stuff that you would need a whole book to explain and just set them up with the big idea. Give them that one aha moment. So if they saw you as one of like half a dozen speakers at a conference that day they'll remember you for that one aha moment not for all seven steps you cram down their throat so it's more like so the structure that i am i suggest people have for their speech is similar to the structure that i suggest they have for the introduction of their book and you do a lot of helping of this on your

website i can see here you can take a speaker quiz now and that doesn't test your Harman Kardon JBL speakers. That's actually for your speakers on stage. Right, right, right, right, exactly. Which we have those as well. We love Harman Kardon. And you've got a lot of different things that you do here. There's the silver bullet on your website where you talk to people, you help them through some of the different issues that they have with

speaking, et cetera, et cetera. I imagine people have a lot of a hard time with speaking in front of people. I just imagine everyone naked. Yeah. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. That's a classic go-to, isn't it? Yeah.

Unless you got somebody really awful looking in the front row like me then you're just like oh my god wow dude see a surgeon no uh i don't know what that means but uh but uh so you work a lot of speakers i guess yeah yeah in the last few years since i decided to put myself out there in that way most Most of the work I've done, breathing more consciously and deliberately, doing meditation, whatever that is. I find that I'm able to most help people overcome their fears by helping them to cure themselves of imposter syndrome. Because a lot of public speaking fear as I've experienced it is more, who am I to be talking to all of these people? And by helping them, what you saw on my website

is the silver bullet. And that's really codifying the act of that aha moment, helping people to suddenly get something that they didn't understand before. And the silver bullet is this technique that we've seen throughout history for thousands of years is wonderfully persuasive. Again, without that, everyone needing the shower afterwards. And by helping people to have that aha moment, people are really cured of their imposter syndrome. They really just don't see themselves as a fraud anymore because they see how many people go, Oh yeah, right. And they get that feedback because of just how powerful that kind of technique is. I just accept the fact that I'm a freaking fraud.

So I just don't. You know, I got to tell you. You got the self-deprecation. I just own it. You know, the funniest time where I almost walked off stage, I almost threw down the mic and just said, you know, total imposter syndrome kicked in. I'd gone to a speaking engagement engagement and they hadn't told me i don't know why i didn't i i was so focused on

my speech i hadn't noticed the the the person doing the hand saying signs on the far she was way on the far right of the stage um so i was in uh uh, where was I somewhere? Cause there was great barbecue, I think St. Louis or, or, uh, or, uh, somewhere back there, but just, I've been eating barbecue for like three days. And, um, so I got up on stage and I had these barbecue jokes and, you know, jokes about the city I'd, I'd put together to warm the crowd up. And so I get up and I start delivering these jokes and they're funny. And one of them was that I'd been eating so much of their st louis barbecue over three days that i was

literally sweating barbecue i was like if the people in the front row you smell barbecue coming off me it's coming out of my pores uh and i dropped a bunch of jokes and they were dying like like they were just like and i was watching the front row and i couldn't get the front row to laugh and they're like looking at me like i was a idiot like and they're just staring at me like what the hell is this problem and like nothing man and so i started pulling jokes you know you know how a comedian when you can't get that one guy to laugh for me it was like the three tables up front yeah yeah there's a lot more than just one guy too so i started pulling out you know material and i'm like i can't get anywhere and so finally i

just had to ditch it and go like just do the talk i don't but the whole front row was screwing me man like they were just yeah i was dying and that's when the imposter system kicked in it's like you just need to quit man you just need to like this is not you're you're not supposed to be you just need you're done and uh dude like literally i was ready to throw the mic on the floor and just say keep the rest of the money for the other part of my retainer and uh and i got through it and i i ended up blasting through it and then we had to go to question answer because i just it just threw me the frick off yeah and i got off the stage and went back and i was just trying to figure out i'm like am i quitting this business forever and i go what the hell is going on with the front rows and they had these giant round tables so they were kind of more than rows and they go they go oh those that's the deaf uh committee group that's

here and i'm like what oh a front on the whole and they weren't like rows they were giant tables and so all the giant tables were up front were uh people. And the sign language gal on the right side that I hadn't really paid much attention to was doing, I just thought, well, they were putting on a video. So I'm like, Oh, they're probably doing that for video for, you know, people are sure. Sure, sure, sure. And that's what it was. That was the whole reason I died. Wow. And they were, were they not constantly looking at, if they're all, she was all the way over on the side, were they not constantly looking if they're all she was all the way over on the

side were they not just constantly looking i don't i don't think my jokes were translating oh yeah signals or something because they were just looking at me like what the hell is this fat idiot doing and then they would talk amongst themselves which that that was really screwing with me because i'm like hey man i'm up here doing my thing can you i mean like serious it was just oh it wrecked me but that imposter syndrome like that went full freaking yeah like it just i had to fake it till i made it through that and normally i don't have a problem because i got a big mouth i'm most people think i'm funny if not i can throw myself on the cell phone. But yeah, yeah, I know. I know what that's like. Yeah, look, and what your story reminds us of Chris is that being in the room, and experiencing

a lot of eyeballs on you all at once is very different than every other experience we have in life. If we're having a conversation or even now with COVID that we're doing virtual presentations, I have clients who are struggling with just looking at a camera instead of looking out into the crowd and whatnot. And it is ultimately different. There is a unique opportunity and experience around being in a room with all eyeballs on you yeah and you don't you don't get that feedback you don't get that feedback right away so you don't know if you're killing or dying and uh it's harder like a couple times when i go on zoom it's always that one guy in one of those zoom boxes that i'm after and i've actually called

him out a couple times i'm like i don't know what i gotta do to brian brian what i gotta do to get you off the phone and laugh like look at me buddy look at me and they have they have too many distractions at home where when they're at a conference they're you know they're facing you and well i gotta put with this idiot's stuff for an hour um and so i think that makes it even more challenging maybe. Yeah. Well, you know, even just like when we look at how popular an app like TikTok has become with its billion users or whatever it is now, and you really have only seconds to draw people in on that little screen and the kind of things that people are doing to get onto that for you page and whatnot. And I will admit 15 seconds, you can, there's a quite a lot of creativity on some people's in some people's feeds and whatnot and i will admit 15 seconds you can there's a quite a lot of creativity

on some people's in some people's feeds and whatnot and it it maybe there's a way to carry that over to our zoom culture and that we could find various ways to screw around on camera just to keep people engaged it's a brand new idea because i i look at this kind of content this kind of uh situation we're in is one that's going to continually evolve to be different things and why not until we get some semblance of normalcy back in whatever the time frame that happens yeah i've had a bad habit where i've been going to bed and i'm like i'll just watch a couple tiktoks and falling asleep yeah three hours later um but yeah it's amazing the stories you can tell in in a short amount of time 15 seconds although my girlfriend says that's not

quite enough um but that's another story um the uh so uh so you work with these speakers you help them uh you tell a good story get from the beginning to end, help them tell their story. I'm sure. You know, a lot of people have a lot of material and it's overwhelming. Like I, like I, like I say, I've, I've sometimes sped through it. And in the end, you're just like, well, I guess we're going to have a question answer here because there's still 45 minutes of this hour left. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, wow, I really your life, right? Yeah. Yeah.

You're like, wow, I really blew my mind on this one. Um, but, uh, uh, what are some of the other things you do?

Well, you know, it's interesting. Something has come up a bit more recently in response to the civil unrest and the polarization and the really high flying emotions that are pervasive throughout our country right now, in that going back to the beginning of June, shortly after the murder of George Floyd,

what I found was that just the George Floyd murder happened, and I guess a little over two months after we all started quarantine. We started quarantining toward the end of March and that happened at the end of May, I believe. And so by that point, things seemed to look like they were gearing up again in that people were getting back into the swing of things and this new way of doing everything like you could you could do more Facebook advertising without everything needing to be about COVID and stuff like that. And then all of a sudden, the murder happened. And that's obviously what was on everybody's mind prior to that all happening i had planned on releasing a new quiz to my email list on elevator pitches and i had it scheduled and it was ready to go it was in the can and then everything went down and by the weekend following the murder that i believe i think i have my timeline right that was when because I live in LA and

there were helicopters flying overhead. That was when all the looting happened and all the broken glass all over the streets and everything like that. And my quiz email was supposed to go out to my list right after that weekend. It was like the monday after that weekend and obviously by sunday i was like well this is completely tone deaf i don't want to send out an email about an elevator pitch quiz in the midst of all of this stuff but i still wanted to connect with my following and i just didn't know what to say and i feel that especially among those who are white and are in a leadership type position, I've sensed there's a big trend that there was a big trend and it seems to have settled down by now. But even big corporate giants like Amazon, everyone was plastering everywhere they could what they stand for.

And they were making these declarations about supporting Black Lives Matter. And the larger message there is that people need to know where you stand on all of this. And this is really a matter of to each person, they're going to have their own response and whatnot. But I didn't feel encouraged or enriched or nourished by all these people coming out and saying that. It just seemed very much about, it just seemed very fear-based. It just seemed like people were afraid of being called a racist if they didn't say that or something like that. And again, this was just my experience of it and each person will have their own reaction.

But so I didn't feel called to send an email like that because I wasn't feeling encouraged by everyone else doing it. But I also wanted to connect with my people and I didn't really know what was going to help them the most. And then I finally on Sunday night had the aha moment. And I, I just wrote them the next day and said, look, what is it that you need help with the most right now? Or what can I do for you right now? And the email told a story about an experience I had in response to the protests happening down the street from where I live and whatnot. And then it segued into I felt like I wasn't really able to do anything about the way things are,

but I don't want to feel like that. I want to help in whatever way I can. And I gave a couple of options. And one was going on a Facebook Live with me to talk about things. Another one was, I mentioned the quiz. I was like, if you still want the quiz, then of course I'm happy to share it with you.

And then there were a couple of other options I gave as well. And I didn't ask them to fill out a survey. I didn't automate this. What I actually asked, and I have a decent sized list, I asked them to write me back directly and that I would write them back directly. And I responded to about 170 emails over the next 36 hours. And what I came to understand, because some people asked for the quiz, some people asked to do the Facebook Live, which we did a couple of days later, and other people asked for other things. But more often than not, what people did, Chris, was that they just wrote what they felt we needed right now. They provided their prescription for change or they just expressed how much they're struggling, how angry they are, how sad they are, how confused they are. And there are all these different responses that when I looked at everything cumulatively, I realized that the thing that people want more than anything right now is to feel seen and heard. And so in that way, I led with curiosity.

I was like, I don't actually know what to say to all of you, but I want to help. What would help you the most? And without even directly answering the question, they showed me. They wanted to feel seen and heard. And what I realized and what I wrote about on my column with entrepreneur and have spoken about in other contexts is that the single most powerful thing a leader can bring in that one-to-many kind of format, even one-to-one in a different way, which we could of course talk about too. But if you're leading a lot of people and you're unsure of what to do, the most significant and important thing you can do is just show curiosity, ask them what they feel they need, maybe give them a couple of choices

and respond and connect with them in that way, because more than likely they're just going to want to feel seen and heard. And you had a great piece in it for Entrepreneur Magazine. After responding to 170 emails following george floyd's death here's what i found and uh and it was pretty successful um and and that's a real true hallmark of a leader uh being able to listen i mean a leader a lot of people this misperception the leader just barks out orders and everyone does them but as a leader you've got to listen to your community and go um what do they want because they want me to take them to wherever that place is yeah yeah for sure and it's it's a pretty classic thing now

i've actually worked with a number of speakers and author type people who look to teach others how important it is to engage others in their own critical thinking their own viewpoint and perspective as a great way to help them to buy into the organization as a great way to help them to remain engaged and performing optimally because and especially if what they say has some sort of bearing on how things unfold. So just getting up there and like you said, barking orders might get some kind of result, but I found that in my own experience and many of the expert experiences of my clients that listening and meeting them where they're at and drawing out their strengths and gifts

in the process of solving problems is a really nice way to, to help your organization to work at an optimal level. Most definitely. And then even on customer service or sales, you know, one of the things I learned, I can't remember who taught this to me, but I picked it up somewhere over the years, but with my organizations, uh, I would teach my salespeople when they call a client, and usually they'd have some qualifications forms from our teleworking department, and they'd know different things about the client. When you call them, I would teach them the first question that you have to ask. This is the have-to-ask question for chris voss is what are you

trying to accomplish and then i want you to shut up and listen and uh and that really worked well because they would listen to what the client was trying to accomplish and you want to talk about such an easy sales process if you get people to tell you that they trust you because they're like well i just told them my life story and uh but then also you know how to uh model your product to what you're doing it's not manipulated because you're doing what there is in their best interest and as a great sales people um you should talk about that and you know what's funny about all the, uh, you know, we had a huge mortgage company for a long time. And so it takes, you know, a lot of time to process and go through the whole process and then they go to close and then that's when you close the deal. Um,

and every time that we would have problems at closing and the customer would be pissed and the customer would be upset, it was always because, uh, you uh you know they'd end up calling me the ceo and i'm like you know the guy did this and he didn't do what we told him and blah blah we told him yeah you do that it was always because that salesman didn't ask that question and we recorded calls because we'd monitor we had a huge monitoring you know phone dialer system so we recorded calls we'd monitor calls so we would always be able to go back and go hey you didn't ask the question did you you didn't stop you didn't listen and now the guy's pissed because you didn't give him what he wanted because you didn't care to listen

um and so yeah listening is a is a huge thing i was kind of interested um was was people talking about their feelings or was it talking about their concern for others it was it was i think it covered all i would say looking back covered all the bases i feel that a lot of people really went to either their feelings or what they believe needs to be done. And so on, in either case, it really was a matter of thinking about things from their own perspective. And I find that that winds up being my larger, the larger message that I look to teach people in terms of if as a communication expert, I teach people that effective communication values the recipient over the sender. And generally I find that that rings true in most situations because people

really do love that feeling of being seen or heard. And if somebody makes the conscious decision to show up in the world in a way that your job isn't to be the one who's seen or heard, but rather hears and sees others, then you'll find that just people most often eat that up. Like they, they really, I've had so many conversations over the years, Chris, where I know so I've been talking to a person for an hour and a half or whatever, and I know so much about their world. And then we walk away, and either they don't even know anything about me, or they just ask me in the final couple of minutes about something. Like, what is it you do for a living or something like that? And it's not that they're not interested.

It's just they've really been quite taken with that level of curiosity and whatnot. And so I actually look at those conversations as a win because it's like, Oh, another one. There's no idea who I am or what I do, but that they feel seen and heard right now. And that was a success. Do you think you, do you think it was amplified because of, because of COVID-19 because we're all locked down? Cause a lot of people were dealing with their insecurities and anxieties? Or was it the, you know, we had the fire is upon us, Nicholas Bacolon,

and he says, you know, basically we watched with George Floyd, sadly, a modern-day lynching. We watched what was, in fact, a lynching and the horror of what that was. Do you think – it's kind of occurred to me that the reason that was so watched and less ignored than some of the other people that we've seen. Unfortunately, many, yeah. Yeah, was because we were kind of stuck inside, and we all had to watch it,

which is probably a sad way to force us to come to grips with our racial issues. But the fact we all had to watch it, that we had to experience it, and we're all kind of already in this insecure moment of COVID and, oh, what the hell is the future? And am I going to die? And, you know, I mean, if you, you're probably like me, you know, everyone was having these weird dreams. I had the weirdest dreams during those two months. Um, and you know, you'd wake up and you'd be like, Hey, let's go out and run around.

And you're just like, Oh crap, man. That wasn't a dream. That was for real. This is a nightmare. So do you think that was amplified because of that? I've always made the assumption that we did have, going into the George Floyd murder, we did have a different baseline. I mean, we've had, regrettably, many instances of this kind of thing, whether it was that specific kind of police brutality or other things that went on because of the inequity of the racial situation in our country.

And yeah, the fact that we had the reaction we did to that to me has everything to do with how we were already quite raw and our, our lives had already and the things that we craved and wanted were already quite compromised. Not to mention that human connect, we were, we evolved to have human connection to have tribes and all of that for many thousands of years. And while we have since industrializing, we've become more insular than in the past. We still went out to eat.

We still congregated in ways. We still had that. And most of us didn't have that by the end of may and so that's going to make us way more vulnerable to such a horror and wake us up in a way that other things did not and it certainly is giving people time to be on the streets with all the employment that we have and uh probably continue to be so considering how many uh poor uh people we have unemployed right now. This is crazy what we're going through. So basically you learned a lot of lessons from that and a lot of experience from what people are saying and stuff.

Yeah, yeah. We always have to remember, Chris, that any given group of people whom we might poll for some kind of thing are going to be a specific aspect of the population. I don't know the racial profile, for example, of my audience necessarily. I know, obviously, it comes with mix. I mean, I work with people and have customers who are of different racial backgrounds and different nationalities and all of the things and whatnot. But it might be an above average college educated group of people. There might be a higher percentage of college educated people on my list than in the populace as a whole. They might be a higher percentage of white people perhaps than minorities. I don't know that either way, but we, so we don't ultimately know. And so my sample

of data of experiences with my following is going to be one perspective and one experience. Another person could write their email list of a similar size and get a different response for sure. What's interesting to me too, you know, I think about it is, you know, a lot of these things have blown by us, like school shootings. Like they just happen regularly and we just kind of go, oh, yawn, it seems, you know, thoughts and prayers. A lot of these killings that went on with African-American people, you know thoughts and prayers um a lot of these killings that went on with african-american people uh you know there's the moments and stuff like that black lives matter rose its head in

in um well it's for you know a lot of times but in at the end of uh obama's administration and we've been talking about that in previous episodes of the show um and but this moment seemed really hit and maybe it's because instead of us all having our bellies full and we're busy and we're just like i can't deal with that right now we were all just really uh open to it and like you say raw and insecure and and we also had to look at the moment you know know, we had to say, holy crap, this is really awful, and we need to change. And so hopefully it's something that will lead us down a better pathway. I know that everyone's having a lot of discussions.

I've tried to make the Chris Voss Show a forum to talk about how we can all be better, which is usually what this whole forum is about, but specifically in the Black Lives Matter movement. You know, I was talking to, just earlier today, with Dr. Lawrence Chatters, who was on the show, and we're talking about, you know, people that scream out, all lives matter, which is kind of half racist 50% of the time, I think, if not all the time.

But it's like, I use the analogy that i've been playing with where like if you were drowning and you yelled it to me hey chris you're on the shore can you help me i'm drowning uh drowning lives matter eh i'm drowning right now and i'd be like hey man i'm on the shore but all all lives matter eh yeah know, it's not just about you, dude, like calm down. You're, you're whatever. Um, so,

you know, when people are struggling, you know, when you lift them up, when people are calling out for help, we need to lift them up. We need to say, okay,

well, how can we do better? Um, and so, um, you know, not just, not just screaming at people who are drowning going,

ah, I'm doing fine. So hopefully we learn from this. We grow and become better people and stuff like that. And hopefully it'll get us to listen more. That's what more people need to do is they need to listen. But it's interesting you have that experience when you mail that out, the different replies you got back and the variety of them and what their conversations were.

And then, of course, it gave you some of the narrative of what you focus on, on expressing your feelings, how to listen, doing constructive things. Has that conversation been ongoing with your people, or what came of it from that point it's interesting that i wound up having an ongoing conversation with several people specific from from the 170 emails that i responded to and whatnot. And at a certain point, it seemed to me that it was more important to give a little space to the conversation. And, and what I guess,

what I guess Chris, the main outcome in the bigger picture was that I believe they saw me as less of just a name in their inbox at that point. And the, the nature of the connections I now have with people is some people more likely are more likely to respond to emails that I send out when I send them out to everyone. Not, not all the time. And certainly not a hundred. I'm not responding to 170 people each time I email anything. I mean, I, it's just not sustainable quite frankly, but I feel like it's sort of like what happened years ago when I was eating out of this diner on Sunday mornings, I would just go get myself an omelet at this diner. And I just liked the way they put tomatillo sauce on the omelet. So I just went there a lot.

And I would just go there and eat and I would read my Kindle and I would just do my thing. And the staff was pleasant and polite, just serving me my food and left me alone. And then one day I was sitting there and this woman with a son who looked to be about eight or nine years old, but there was something about his presence that suggested that he had some kind of special needs going on. I don't presume to know what it was, but there was a certain social filter that he didn't have. And he just found my Kindle absolutely fascinating. And he wanted to hear, he wanted to learn about

what I was doing. And I certainly not going to not engage with him. He seemed quite interested. And the mom, I could imagine what she goes through in general, because he does very quickly break down social barriers and she doesn't want people to feel like they're being bothered. But I certainly wasn't in any way opposed to chatting with him for a bit. And we talked for a little bit and I showed him the Kindle and he got to play with it a little bit and we talked for a bit. And then they eventually left. But it was a nice friendly conversation. And after that, the staff at the diner started talking to me more. Like they just started chatting with me and I actually had a nice rapport with a number of them and asked them about

their work and they asked me about mine. And, and it was just this, this rapport, this ongoing thing that in the time that the months that followed when I would continue to go back there, they just wanted, it became a relationship of sorts. And it's not to me a coincidence that it happened right after I talked with that young boy and his mother, because they suddenly saw me as a person where I was just a customer before that. And not to the, to no fault of their own. I must've had a vibe about me that's just like, you know, just let me read face or whatever. And so I sensed that emailing my list in that other way had a similar impact that suddenly I wasn't just a person in the inbox. I wasn't an online marketer. I wasn't an information products guy.

I was a person. And I am there to talk and there to help and do whatever I can. And I'd say that it moved the needle toward a digital automated type business being a bit more humanizing. Do you, so do you put this forward in your, in your schooling and teaching and coaching of speakers and stuff? I had made it a point after I wrote that article for entrepreneur to let my list know about it and to say, you inspired this article and to connect the dots between how they showed

up and how we connected and whatnot with how they could actually make that actionable for themselves. And what talking to you right now, Chris, makes me wonder is maybe it would be good just to do another check-in and find out how people are doing. We're now approaching almost two months since, well, a month and a half, I guess, since that all happened. And I would say that it would probably be a good idea just to check in and see how they're doing. And it's not teaching them about TED Talks, which I often do in my emails, and it's not sending them a survey, and it's not, anything that's more markety or anything.

It's just, Hey, just wanted to check in and find out how you're doing and, and do that. I think I'll just need to set up a day or two of not having anything else on my plate for when they actually write back. I think that's the beauty of true leaders, which is what you're teaching um in in being authentic and uh having empathy uh i think that appeals a lot of people the human experience appeals a lot of people um you know for a lot of years i've always tried to always be authentic i've always hung it out there uh that's just kind of my style uh that or i'm just sloppy and lazy to format it up, right? But even then, there were some things I didn't talk about.

There were some things I didn't open up about. A lot of my social media friends, speakers, and book writers do the same. You know, there was kind of this PR plate they'd always put out and everything else. And there were some things that happened in my life. Well, one of them was my dog dying, and I think some family died and a few other things. For a year and a half, I had a dog going through cancer, and I was doing a lot of hospice care and everything else. And at first, I really struggled with, like, do I even want to share this um does anybody care they're busy buying Chris Voss whatever products xyz um and and uh I opened up about it and just bled it out uh it was kind of something I had to do anyway yeah um and cheaper than a psychologist

I guess um but no I I bled it out online. And a lot of my audience had come with me on the journey. So, you know, they were sold a little bit on the Chris Voss. But those were the things that really gave me more depth as, quote, unquote, leader, as someone they followed or looked up to or listened to. And those were the real magic moments and the feedback i got was extraordinary because um what i found was it just wasn't about me and okay well i told you my my horrible story that happened to me uh my horrible story emulated

with a lot of people who either had gone through that experience or were experiencing it or whatever uh when i talked about losing my dog and my feelings about it i just let all that just bleed out on the page yeah um and um uh thanks to vodka um the uh i tend to write better than when i drink uh and so what was funny was i had people write me and they go, you know, my dog died or my father died 20 years ago and I never got closure. I just kind of sealed myself off. I never got closure and never dealt with it. And watching you go through your experience of witnessing it made me realize that I hadn't dealt with that. And you just cut me open and, and helped me get rid of the poison I've been carrying for all this time for not dealing with it. I was like, Holy crap. I didn't write that for that purpose, but wow. What an amazing outcome though. What amazing outcome. I've changed people's lives. And, uh, over the years I've,

I've gone through weight loss challenges where I've lost a lot of weight by becoming a vegan and go back again and talked about it. And it's just it's been a consistent theme where the human experience, the lessons that we learn and that we share with each other. I mean, this is what books, movies, TV, when you used to work with books, this is what we're looking for. We're looking for the stories that shape and change our lives that make a difference that we can learn from uh i wish i hadn't waited till i was like 40 something to figure that out late in my late 40s to figure out the life is really about stories yeah and i'm part of my niece and nephew uh this year when they both were graduating.

I said, life is about stories. Go through life and collect them. That's what movies and TVs and books and people listen to this podcast. That's what they're doing. They're trying to collect stories. But the human element of it, and, you know, it doesn't even have to really be on sales because that kind of takes care of itself on the other end,

especially if people believe in you and your product and trust you and being able to have that trust to go to the next level. And certainly I'm not trying to manipulate that because Jesus, I mean, that just would be ugly after a while and a horrible sort of thing. But I think people can sense that they can, they can go, he's really grieving. And he's really human and he's just like me. And people like that. That's one of the reasons I started the show out with Give Me Your Award story

because people can go, hey, this guy's just like me. He puts his pants on in the morning. He had struggles when he was raised. Things shaped him. And those are the interesting things that people like that give us, I think, give you dimension. Maybe you picked up more dimension, not to say that you were lacking dimension, but maybe you became more dimensional as a leader to the people on your list. Yeah, that's entirely possible. And no matter what, if we're looking at

this larger landscape of sharing ideas and persuading others and being a leader more consciously. If we remember fundamentally that we're all people at the end of the day, and we're all struggling on some level and all have goals on some level and all of that, if we continue to treat others like that, even if they're not necessarily doing so in response there's just tremendously right potential for for meaningful connection to evolve from all of that yeah i mean i've sold people the things and because the interaction i have with them for some reason i touched them remove them and they'll tell me about how the experience was more than just you know i thought i i was like okay okay, well, you

got your stuff. I've had people like, I remember one time I got, I've been yelled at, you know, I got the call of where the salesman didn't do the proper thing, you know, and I'll be like, okay, what do we got to do to make you happy? I just, I want you to be happy. I'll write a check for a couple thousand bucks, you know, whatever it takes to make you happy. And they're like, really, you're going to do that? I'm like, yeah, because I just want you to be happy. And I don't know, you'll probably never come use this again. I'm a jerk. I get it.

But I want you to leave happy, and I want to try and fix it. So what are we going to do to fix it? And I've written checks up to five grand to fix customer service problems. And what's funny is though they would come back a year later and they would tell me how i was the greatest human being they'd ever met and you know that sort of rap and they'd be like we had such a great experience with you and i'd be sitting there just going i actually remember your phone call and you really hated me and you really mean i even know i wanted to miss you but but um how we respond and how we interact and deal with people

makes all the difference in the world. And I think it's great for brands to do it, but the hard part is you can't be manipulative about it. You can't be fake. You've got to really be authentic. It's kind of like when you see Google go, don't be evil, that's's our motto and then they're evil and you're just like well that didn't work yeah you're gonna be curious like i said earlier

that curiosity is real valuable thing but you helps to actually want to hear the responses that you're curious about yeah authenticities it would be interesting for you to keep track of that for a while, whatever the map is that that goes to from those emails and what people do, because we're still in a moment. And it's interesting to me, a lot of things are going on at this moment. The scarcity or the perceived scarcity of it, well, what if we don't have jobs and we don't have money and what the economy is in? And so now it's got to be I fight you have money and what the economy is in and so now

it's going to be i fight you for mine and you fight me for yours and you know that sort of mentality um you know we've uh this covet 19 is just like really everything that we had that was a chasm in the society that we were just barely holding together with strips of asphalt has just opened up into these huge things and it's just just shown us so many different issues that we have that we kind of knew. We were kind of like, yeah, we know we're kind of screwed up, but we're kind of getting through that, and everyone's getting paid, so it's cool.

Now we're like, yeah, this is a mess, and it's a hodgepodge. But I don't know you know i asked eddie eddie god jr was on uh with us uh a couple episodes ago and i asked him i'm like do we have to go through this to is this do we do we earn this do we have to go through this to get to the bottom to have to work our way back up again. And so maybe that's, maybe that's where we're at. Maybe that's what we do. Maybe we have to learn.

This is what we have to do to learn, to listen and be better people and everything else that you spouse and you're teaching. It's quite possible. And if we can emerge from everything that we're going through now in that way, then obviously I'd be very pleased for that growth. Open for it. I'd just like to emerge in this side with everybody else and we can be

better people and we can get back to normal whatever that is yeah anymore i'm not even sure i know what normal is anymore uh so we've had a great discussion here uh anything more we should know neil about you and what you do i would say chris, I, there's one story, I actually mentioned our stories in one and there's one story I really liked that happened not too long ago that really underlines what, if I were to leave people with one thought, that's the one I would want to leave them with. And it actually centers on when this past fall, fall of 2019, I actually, and unfortunately buried my father and he, he, uh, he was very dear to me. It was, yeah, he, he annoyed me too, obviously like no, no one relationship is absolutely perfect, but he was a very important part of my life. And we had a fairly traditional Jewish funeral for him.

And even though that wasn't really his jam, but he, we did it. And I went up to eulogize him. And when you have a communication guy and a public speaking person as your son, you're going to get a very deliberate and consciously constructed eulogy. It's like, I you're going to get a very deliberate and consciously constructed eulogy. It's like, I'm not going to like be accidental when I go up there. And so I go up there and I start telling the story of how, when I was a kid, we were at the supermarket, he and I, and there was this big vat of jelly beans in the produce section and it was you scoop them up and put them in a bag and pay by the pound and that's not what dad did dad just went over and said hey jelly beans and he started eating them out of the vat and we laughed about it a part of me was of

course mortified and i started telling this story at the beginning of my eulogy and his sister my aunt who's like it's a jewish family and they're both from brooklyn and i'm sure you're painting a picture of the the sensibilities the temperament and whatnot and so i start telling the the jellybean story and she blurts out from the front row that's the story you're gonna tell and i didn't really miss a beat. I just kind of looked at her briefly for a moment. It's like, oh my God, my aunt just totally, my aunt just totally said this thing in the middle of my eulogy of my recently deceased father, but I just moved on. And what the rest of the eulogy was about was how that was really my dad. My dad was a sixth grade teacher and he

would be given the problem kids by the principal. Like he would be given the kids who would otherwise be called delinquents. And he didn't believe they were delinquents. He believed he treated them like they were stars and he did all sorts of interesting, creative things with them. And the way I connected that back to the jelly bean story is no matter what, dad was a person who did what he wanted to do, not what he should do. He should have considered them delinquents, but he actually considered them, he wanted to consider them stars. And they had amazing experiences in this classroom. And I basically made the point to the people at the

funeral that this is a really nice reminder that our richest life is based not on doing what we should do but what rather what we want to do and my aunt wasn't incredulous over my jellybean story by the end she was a little teary warm smile and she called me a week later to talk about how she much she appreciated how she saw her own brother in a different light as a result of what I said. And it was really quite sweet and endearing. But if we took it at face value that she blurted something out in the beginning of the eulogy, then we would think that I was failing in what I was saying up on that podium. But the larger message I would like to leave everyone with is the value of our messaging is not based on what we say, but rather what our audience does once we're done saying it. That's actually about impact. And it was not about her incredulity over the jelly beans story in the moment.

It was actually about the call a week later and the way she felt empowered to appreciate her brother in a different way. And that's what I want people to remember in all of this. It's not what you say. It's what people do when you're done saying it. That's beautiful. That's a t-shirt right there. I'm just kidding. No, but that really is beautiful. Not to minimize that in any way. That really is. You should put that on a placard and sell it or something um or something i i really do love that um so it's been wonderful to spend some time with you neil and uh we've talked about a lot of business stuff and then i've talked about a lot of human stuff which is human and business it's all one thing really when it comes down to it um we're all on this uh crazy

spinning planet trying to uh i don't know, make sure it keeps spinning. The best that we can, Chris. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you got through your rant basically being a troller from the audience. She and I are good. We've talked about that. She listens to these podcasts too. Does she?

All right. She and my uncle listen and say, oh, my God, it's so great to hear you on there. I love my Jewish friends. They're the greatest. Oy vey. I say oy vey all the time. Anyway, it's been wonderful to have you on, Neil. It's been wonderful, my audience, for sharing with us your time and listening.

GiveAssure.com so people can look you up, Neil, on the website. NeilCanHelp.com Neil can help you neil on the website neil can help.com neil can help you or well it's just neil can help you can help you can help you if you go there so go to neil can help.com anyway guys we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in be sure give us a like or further show to your friends neighbors relatives grab them by the phone and just say subscribe to the cvpn.com or if you want to see the full video of this you can go to youtube.com fortunate chris foss thanks to be honest for tuning in and we'll see you guys next time