The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 482: Neal Foard - Becoming More Persuasive, Telling Better Stories, & Changing Your Mind...

Episode Date: July 24, 2022

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." You, along with 10's of thousands of other Learning Leaders will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12  https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Neal Foard has spent more than 20 years creating award-winning ad campaigns for clients on four continents. From the experience of thousands of presentations to clients all over the world, Neal has created The Passionate Logic Project™ to help business leaders sell their agendas more persuasively. He has been a featured speaker at TED and is recently known for his TikTok videos which have been viewed millions of times over the past few months. "There's nothing wrong with us that can't be fixed by what's right with us." The EQ of the gym bro – When someone is new on your team, ask them to help you out. Find a way to include them. Get them an early win. Make them feel part of the team as soon as possible. The element of mystery – Have an aha moment. Don't spoil the punchline. Save the reveal for the end… Remember the Whitney Houston story? Your first words of a presentation or a meeting are the most valuable real estate you have. Don't waste them. Be thoughtful. Practice. Don't tell them "I'm so excited to be here…" Launch with intrigue, with movement, with a story… How To Use Power – "The thing that gave him more joy than anything was using power to make life more amazing for his team, make you feel like you mattered to him." – "All business is personal. The best business is very personal." - Rick Lenz Data is a tool - Our first use of it should be to make people smile. – Your family trip to Disney World… What happened? The Physics of a Bright Smile – The most important decision you can make is to be in a good mood. - Voltaire What Motivates people: Lillian Moore shares a quick story that reveals what really motivates people: "A few months after my husband and I moved to a small Massachusetts town I grumbled to a resident about the poor service at the library, hoping she would repeat my complaints to the librarian. The next time I went to the library, the librarian had set aside two bestsellers for me and a new biography for my husband. What's more, she appeared to be genuinely glad to see me. Later I reported the miraculous change to my friend. "I suppose you told her how poor we thought the service was?" I asked. "No," she confessed. "In fact—I hope you don't mind—I told her your husband was amazed at the way she had built up this small-town library, and that you thought she showed unusually good taste in the new books she ordered." Source: Reader's Digest (Similar to Neal's coffee story. "Puuuurfect") Begin each story with a vague suggestion that there's a lesson to be learned by the end... Steve Martin - Do NOT begin a talk with, "Hey, how's everybody doing?" A leader's job is to facilitate their people's best work. Presentations: Do not read bullet points. If you do that, you're just passing along information. You need to attach emotion to it. How to be more persuasive? Be willing to listen and open to changing your mind. Send the signal to them that we can do it. We're not there to win. The power of listening is underrated. Learn what does and doesn't matter to them. "People don't change their minds unless they want to."

Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, Hawk, to 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help. you start your week all right. You'll also receive details about how my book,

The Pursuit of Excellence, will help you become a more effective leader. Text, Hawk to 66866. Now on to tonight's featured leader. One of my favorite storytellers, Neil Ford, has spent more than 20 years of creating award-winning ad campaigns for clients on four continents. From the experience of thousands of presentations to clients all over the world, Neil has created the passionate logic project to help business leaders sell their agendas more persuasively.

He's been a featured speaker at TED and has recently known for his TikTok videos, which have been viewed millions of times over the past few months. During this conversation, we discuss how to be more percussed. persuasive, a better way to start a meeting, the art and science of effective storytelling, and then how to use your power for good. Ladies and gentlemen, this one is awesome. It's Neil Ford. All right, Neil.

It's so great to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. As I told you, my daughters are fans of TikTok. I'm on TikTok, and all of a sudden this guy pops up with a black, sheet behind him looking directly into my eyes there it is directly into my eyes telling these amazing stories and so my first thought was i got to talk to that guy so welcome it's great to have you here on the learning leader show thanks ryan it's very nice to you to have me i really really love what you do i think the skill of telling compelling concise stories is near the top of the list of importance for leaders. And I also think this is an area where a lot of us

struggle. So the purpose of our time today is to help instruct leaders how to become better storytellers, how to think of the ideas, how to weave them in naturally, how to make it a part of your regular routine, to think of stories, to craft them, to create them, and then to share them with their team. So that's what I hope we can do today by way of having you share some stories and then deconstruct the process for how you do it. Is that cool? Yeah, absolutely. Let's start with a story. Are you okay if I pick one? By all means, yeah. Okay. How about a fun one? The EQ of the gym bro. The reason I'm picking this one, I'll give you a second to think about. The reason I'm picking this one is I go to the gym every

day. And you made me rethink how I treat others in the gym, especially the people who you can tell it might be their first time in a while or their first time ever. And it made me think of being a kinder, more inclusive person, but doing it in a way that maybe people don't think. So can you tell the story of the EQ of the gym bro? Yeah. So that's true story. Most of my stories are are very much based in truth. So I'm an early riser. I love to get to the gym nice and merely. I'm very partial to the people that are there

because you know if you go to the gym regularly, especially if you're there at like 5, 5.30 in the morning, it's the same people. It's the same crew. Yep. And everybody's, what's nice about that is everybody's super respectful of each other. And, you know, everybody knows what everybody

other sort of routine is, right? And so there's a kind of a, it's kind of a sweetness, if you will, to the people that are there. Even the guys that are just yoked. You know, they're sort of really good-natured. And not at all the way that the reputation is out there in the world, right? I mean, it's, they're more gentle than you might think, even as they're throwing the steel plates around.

So anyway, one day, around about six o'clock, in comes to this gal, and she's a little heavy set. And you can tell from the way that she's looking around, she hasn't been there in a while. Now, when I say a while, I mean, she probably hadn't spent much time in the gym, maybe in a couple of years. And what then happened was this, as she's sort of confused and not quite sure what to do, one of these guys that was really, you know, just jacked, gets her attention, and he waves are over, and he asks her to spot him while he's doing bench presses.

And he's got a chunk of weight on there, you know. he's got some 45s on either sides. And so she's like, okay, so she gets under the bar and he starts banging out reps. And then he gets to failure. And I mean, this is the part, this is the part of this time I love best, which is he trusted her enough to go right to the edge, right? And he's at failure, and he starts to strain.

And he goes, you know, I can use your help. And so she's a big gal, right? So she just gas, gah! And she bangs this thing back onto the rack. And you can see, he was like, He was like impressed. You know, it wasn't like she was like, yeah. No, she jacked.

So he gets up and he gives her a high five. I can't hear what they're saying. But I could tell that he was like, he had engaged with her and so forth. And then he starts like pointing out stuff. So I knew what was happening was that he was showing her where everything was. And here a minute ago when she came in, she was uncomfortable and unsure about where to go. And now here she was, she has this guide. And the thing was, if you really,

break it down. What was so great about the way this guy did it was, he didn't creep on her, it didn't go up to her like you might, you know, in a bar and say, hey, come here often. He didn't do that. He didn't say, hey, do you need some help? Which would have been made possibly kind of descending. What he did instead was he

asked her to help him. And so she's got a very clear idea of what to do and she feels good that I'm being helpful. And so her first exposure to the gym is it's an excessive welcoming place where people ask each other for help, right?

So what it does is it gives her permission to ask somebody else for help because that's, that's what they do here, right? Now, I didn't miss any of that because I'm kind of in the, I'm in the persuasion business. And I knew what he was doing. So in the lockers, I said to him, hey, you know, I saw what you did. That was pretty clever. And his remark to me, he's honest to God, he's remarked, is, well, I guess I'm more than a pretty face.

And his remark did something else to me, which is, because he was so yoked, he often gets mistaken for being superficial or one-dimensional. So for somebody else to acknowledge, like, I see how sophisticated you are about this whole thing. You know how smart Arnold Schwarzenegger is? You know, he's quite a brilliant guy. And he's down to earth, but he's super smart. And I've noticed that a lot of guys in the gym are like that.

You know, don't, you can't judge a book by. It's covered. So the whole thing, the whole story was kind of about this, you know, how you can't, that the gym is the kind of strange place for being open and a good place to go to, not just to get worked out, but it's a community. And I just, I just love that. It makes you rethink of ways to making people feel welcome or a part of the team. So I think of like, let's say the corporate world and somebody's brand new.

It's their first couple of days and they're nervous or they're, at their first ever conference where most people know each other, oh hey, they're hugging, they're laughing, right? And this person's brand new and they don't know. Think of ways, creative ways to make them feel a part of it without patronizing them, without being condescending, right? He could have went up to him, be like, oh, it looks like you don't know what you're doing.

So over there's the elliptic goals. And the girl feels even worse about herself. And instead, he brought her in. He trusted her, he led with trust. Maybe more so than he should have, but he did it. And now all of a sudden, within five minutes, This person who's brand new, who's uncomfortable, who maybe might leave and never come back, which would be a shame.

And because of him, now she feels probably at home. She probably got a great workout, feels good, goes home, and who knows? Oh, she's coming back. Yeah. For 100% she's coming back. And you know this probably from your experience, which is when somebody shows up at the gym and they're heavy or it's clear that they haven't worked out for a while, they might be thinking, gee, I feel very self-conscious. But most of the gym rats are going, good for you, right on.

You know, it takes some doing to get in here. You know, the first step is the tough one. You made that. So they have respect for that. I know that's my reaction. It's like, hey, man, you're here. They ain't. So you're one of us.

And what you were saying a second ago about there is a very, there's a great way to get somebody who's uncomfortable or new oriented to the system. and that is to ask them for help, get them involved in helping you. And it's paradoxical, but that to me is it makes them feel useful and it automatically makes them part of the team. And yeah, I guarantee them. Help them get a win now that I mentioned. I've seen her.

I've seen that gal back at the gym. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, when you have a new person, help them get an easy win, get a quick win. Get one on the board. It could really change the arc of that person's experience. And so while you learn this as from from the EQ of the gym bro and this and I I open with a story for a reason because one, this is what you do. You tell stories to a camera right in front of your face. But but but there's there's a lot of learnings from every single story. I encourage people whether it's on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok wherever you go listen to or watch these things. There's so many life lessons. I start immediately deconstructing your storytelling process thinking how could leaders use this.

But I want to keep oscillating back and forth between the actual stories and having you tell them and then the deconstruction of the process so that we can become better communicators. So thinking about that, let's say somebody is a mid-level manager within a company and they have Monday morning meetings, whether they're on Zoom or in person, regardless of that. And most people dread those things. But every once in a while, you find one of those managers who has awesome meetings. And usually, and I think I'm thinking of one of my favorite. named Brian Miller. He would open these town halls or the meetings with an amazing story and sometimes it seemed like it would have nothing to do with all of us in the crowd or all of us in the meeting room and then he would find a way to tie it

back to our life or our business and there's a reason that I remember Brian Miller's name and I talk about him all the time and I think one of the big part one he was a very caring and loving person but also he told amazing stories. I have had a lot of bosses I don't remember all of them or at least not fondly like I do him. And so I love for you, if you could, Neil, to talk about just your overall philosophy and thought process when it comes to telling stories and maybe a few tips here as far as how others who maybe think they're not good at this, or maybe they're just not at all, could get better at this really important skill of telling good stories.

I had, I lived in Los Angeles for a long time. And the comedy and magicly Loven or Mosa Beach, used to have this thing where you could go there. They used to have a bar where people would wait before the doors open so they could go get their seats. And they would run two shows a night, weekdays. And they also had this great deal where you could go in there and get a baked potato and a steak and a beer, I think there was something like about five bucks. This was a long time ago. But I was such a regular for that meal that the bartender got to know me. and he would let me stay in the bar and watch the closed circuit

when they'd let everybody else into the seats. And so I would watch two shows a night, generally three nights a week. And what happened was you would watch the way that some comedians that was exactly the same routine, exactly the same way every time. And then some comedians,

you could watch them tuning it up. You could see the first show and you could see the second show and you could see the difference. And the bartender, who was a wannabe stand up, he would tell me like what they had done differently. And he could tell when the jokes had landed and so forth like that.

And so that was a kind of masterclass for me. It wasn't unintended, but it was to me a really good example of, look, if you really want to get good at storytelling, just find some standups you like and just watch them on YouTube or pull them out on TikTok. And you're going to find out how incredibly sophisticated they are at creating a kind of three-act structure. right and I saw van Nystad the other day he's a terrific YouTuber and then just he literally gave a kind of a little tutorial on how to tell a great story and his first point was every story needs the kind of element of mystery like a reveal it needs to have something at the end where people go oh and and the

example that he provided was he'd had a his son had been quite ill and had gone to the hospital And naturally he was very tense. And he was so on edge that he was visibly disturbed in the hospital waiting room. And this very nice woman says to him, I guess it's tough being a father. And he looks up and it's Whitney Houston. And he says, now, true story. But he goes, let me tell you that story the way my wife would have told it, which would have been, I was in the hospital and Whitney Houston was there.

And then she would follow with a bunch of details. She'd blown the story because she hadn't left the most peculiar or most interesting part to the end. Instead, she'd blown the punchline. And then all details that follow after are of no consequence. They don't mean anything. They're not tethered to a structure nor an arc. And you'll notice, Ryan, that in my own videos, they always end on some kind of moral. so that even if the story doesn't really have a hard charging ending,

it resolves. It resolves with what I want you to take away with. I intend for every one of those videos. In fact, in every presentation I give, I intend for it to be a gift. I want to give you a gift. Now let's go back to your guy that you love doing these meetings and he would start with a story.

What he was doing, Ryan, every time, was he was giving people a gift. And they would take it that way. They would look forward to the beginnings of the meanings. Well, why is that powerful? Well, nobody's late. They don't want to miss the story, right? And the story might be on theme, right?

It might wind up being important to the, and you know, great stand-up community. You know the really great ones. Their act usually ends where it began. Like, they'll usually reference some crazy thing from the beginning, and then you'll go, oh, got us, good, that's a great close. That was a strong end. And so somebody like you or me, done it for a while. You know, we've got our 10,000 hours. We're trying to do that.

We're trying to bring that meeting in on the same note that it started on so that everybody feels like, wow, they have, you know, they have a sense of completeness. It made a circle. And a circle is going to be the most perfect of all the story endings. You'll sometimes notice in movies, the opening shot is really key to understanding the ending. And like in the movie's sexy beast. The whole movie starts with a guy poolside in Spain, just baking in the sun. He's done this little monologue. And out of absolutely nowhere comes a 14-ton rock, rocketing down a hillside, apparently going to squash him like a bug, misses him by microns, and lands in his swimming pool. Well, at the very end of the movie, after this tremendous drama at the very end of the movie,

he has killed and buried his nemesis under the swimming pool. So in other words, the very first shot, the opening sequence, was a preview symbolically of the very end. And when anybody does that, and you, like in a meeting or in a presentation, you go, there's a pro. That's a pro. Does your mind now naturally think of to tell the story where you save the punchline and the person,

was Whitney, you know, do you, does that, like, how do you, how do you, because I think most people would tell it the way his wife was, as he said, right? They, oh my God, we went to the hospital. Yeah, because they wanted to get it out. Right, right, right. So what is, what are maybe some thoughts or ideas or mindsets for people to think about so that they don't blow the punchline? They actually, almost subconsciously learn how to better tell the story because I think, Maybe it's reps. I'm not sure. I'm just curious.

What do you think? And for you, do you find yourself not blowing punchlines because you're a pro? I'm talking everyday life, random stuff with family friends, things like that. I'm curious how you think about this. Well, what's happened is, and it's partly because of the whole TikTok thing on the YouTube videos that I do, is that I'm wandering through life now with my radar up. Always noticing things, the Seth Godin, like professional noticeer? There you go.

And it's something I've been doing lately. And I find, Ryan, that gives me a lot more joy to, my father said something years ago to me. He was he was trying to say to me, you know, pay more attention. And the way that he put it was he said, life doesn't come with theme music, Neil. You're never going to know when you've met the love of your life. You're not going to, nobody's going to signal you with music that the guy standing behind you in the ATM lawn is about to, you know, boost your pocket. it's not like that. Life, you have to pay attention to see these moments when they happen.

And so what, in response to your question about like, how do I instinctively tell stories this way? I don't think that there's a story. I don't think it's worth telling a story or citing an anecdote or describing something that happened to you without some kind of important conclusion at the end. like, you know, hey, we went to the market today and we picked up salad, you know, and lettuce and me know, okay, great. But maybe there ought to be something relevant about why you're even beginning this sentence. They're generally speaking, the way I tend to tell stories now is to begin with a kind of vague suggestion that there's a message here. by the time I get to the end. I'll give you an example.

I just shot a video last night. I wanted to make the point, Ryan, that people need to shut up about their opinions when they don't really know what they're talking about. And I came across this great quote from Mark Twain and it said, never miss an opportunity to shut up. And the way I start the video is by saying, if I was the commissioner of the NFL and I could make one rule

that you couldn't change, it would be that every kickoff of every NFL game, somebody, some random person from the stands has to come down and play on the kicking team. And if you make the tackle, you get a million dollars. But if you don't, whatever happens happens. If you lose a body part, that's on you, no lawyers and no crying.

And that what would happen is when after every kickoff, some suburban dad who's overestimated himself gets carted off on a stretcher, America might learn something. Okay. And then the rest of the story happens. But what happens is when you start with that beginning, they're like, what the hell?

You know, what they will then do is they're using the rest of the story to try to figure the puzzle out. Right. And then when you get to the very end, they go, ah, okay, got it. And so I'm trying at the beginning of these things usually to create some sense of anticipation and discomfort. Like, what the fuck was that for? Sorry for swearing. Oh, but. Oh, you're the guest.

I never would censor. One of the things about your stories, too, that I noticed you don't do that, I think, is a pro aspect of it is, you have those friends who come up to you who do this. They go, Neil, this is the funniest thing that ever happened. Just wait. And you set this expectation. Right. You set this expectation that is not reachable. and then they tell the story

it's not really that funny and then it was a dud and you're kind of like what are we doing here? So like don't ruin the stories, don't ruin the moments by doing that yet it's still you'll notice it happens all the time because I think they want you to pay attention to them

I guess as opposed to just launching into the story. You know what I mean? Right. It is a rookie move. And Steve Martin makes this great point that he says that he cannot stand stand-up comedians and get up in front of a room and say, how's everybody doing?

He says, what a waste of a smashing beginning. You know, you can get out there and Howie Mandel has one of the most legendary first lines in all of stand-up comedy, which was he came out in front of the audience. He didn't say anything for like 30 seconds. He's staring at the audience, but it wasn't staring at the audience with the air of somebody nervous. It was staring at the audience out of a kind of weird preparation.

Like he was looking for the perfect moment. And then he said, what happened was somebody laughed. And he goes, well, wait, don't laugh. That throws me off. I'm thinking, oh, my God. That's so great that he would have built the first line to be off of the nervous response of the audience. So in other words, the whole minute was a bit right from the very beginning. By the way, I committed the very sin.

I said I wouldn't commit, which was, I started that story by saying, oh, Hallie Mandel had the most awesome beginning. Oh, Jesus, it better be good. The one thing I noticed, Brian, you're teaching me. I was watching your TED Talk, I believe it was from 2010. Oh, yeah. Okay, so this is, we're 12 years ago.

And even though, actually, what's that? I think it aged well, actually. I do, but here's a thing that I noticed that I want to bring up to you that is evident, a trait that I want us to think. about how we can earn, okay? When you pull out the duct tape, the crowd kind of gives you this response is like, what? And you responded with, I think, just a strong sense of comfort in your own skin,

which comes across as being very confident. So the word I want to focus on now is confidence. I think a lot of people struggle with us, especially when they're getting ready to go up in front of a group of people. where does your sense of confidence come from? So I'm sort of, I'm in the middle of an evolution on that. So I don't know that confidence. Confidence is an extremely attractive trait and it will win people over because they,

confidence gives them reassurance and confidence that everything's going to be okay. And that's a great thing. However, where I'm at now is that authenticity, genuineness, is the more important quality. And what I mean by that is a sense that you're not trying to sell anybody anything and you're not trying to get over on anybody and you're merely there to try to help. Or, more simply, you are there to share the human experience with people. and I don't intend to get up here and flash my Rolex and flex on you about how great I am. I am driven a little bit crazy

by the number of people on YouTube or TikTok while telling you how to do this or how to do that and they brag about how much money they make, which I find repulsive for a variety of reasons. Our role in life is, let's think of it from your context. You know, you're trying to do you're trying to help people out to be better leaders. And in our short exchanges in conversation,

I've already got the vibe of where you're coming from, which is a leader isn't a leader in order to get money or amass power. A leader is to facilitate people's best work experience. A leader's role is to help people do the best job they can do, to find the greatest level of satisfaction. For us to go through this human experience and come out the other end, loving each other, earning our self-respect, and a series of other dividends that comes from trying to share a good experience.

Okay. So when you're standing up in front of a room, I don't know that you ever have to consider your level of confidence. Think only of this. How can I help these people? What could I do that would benefit them? So that when I stand up in front of them, I'm not worried about looking nervous or sounding nervous.

I'm not worried about anybody thinking of me as a big shot. I'm only worried about them taking away something that might help them. If I do that, I won't have to worry about confidence. Hey, let me give you a hypothetical. I want to pretend that you've got this person who has just won $10 million from some contest that they entered. And your job is to go up to them and give them the check for $10 million. Now, it really doesn't matter whether they're a beautiful woman or a powerful man or, you know, a homeless person.

It doesn't matter. You're going to be equally not nervous because you have to deliver that such good news, right? You're not going to fumble for words. You're not going to worry if you do fumble for words. You don't care. You're just there to deliver the good news. So what happens is if you legitimately. think you're bringing value, and I'm going to assume that you've done all the work you need to

in order to get up in the room and try to deliver value. You have nothing to apologize for. You have nothing to be nervous about. I mean, if you're nervous, it's okay. It's forgivable. You're helping them out. If they can't deal with a little bit of your nerves, then that's too bad. You may have experienced yourself, Brian, where every once in a while you'll be telling a story or you're delivering some liar or something, and you get emotion. And you feel compelled to apologize for having gotten emotion. But all that is is, is it's evidence of how real you are. It's just evidence that you were for real and you were here. And so we've all done it.

And I've stopped apologizing for do that. I'll sometimes when I'm talking about my father and my daughter, my dad never met my daughter and vice versa. And that's one of the great things I wish hadn't happened. I wish he'd met her. And I will get emotional talking about that. And I used to feel very self-conscious about it. But now it's just that's what happens because it was meaningful to me. And this feeling no compulsion to apologize anymore means I'm sort of evolving away from

trying to project confidence towards just trying to add value. Your tagline is there's nothing wrong with us that can't be fixed by what's right with us. Where does that come from? Well, that's from Bill Clinton. I thought, when I tell people that they sometimes, you know, they split into two heads. of the audience, I'm sad to say. You know, some that despise him and some love him. But the sentiment for me was really heartfelt for this reason that people reckon that,

you know, the way that we're being divided as a culture is professionals and algorithms and news that sensationalizes disaster because they know that that will keep you watching. it's having a bad effect on us. It's having the effect of making us all feel like it's hopeless and that the only lifeline is to watch more of the news or to wander into the world and be just as negative as what we got back. Just to reflect that negativity and feel victimized, perpetually victimized.

You know, like, oh, everybody's against me. I'm surrounded by idiots. I'm surrounded by people that are trying to change my world. Well, that's not been my experience. My experience is pretty good. Like that people opened doors for me and I opened doors for other people, and people return the phone that I dropped,

and people open, and that guy in the gym, like great example. You know, just the everyday sweetnesses of people, they are all around you. They are abundant. The number of good things that happened

versus the number of bad things is in the hundreds of thousands to one. And yet people fixate on the one. And there was this sort of borrowing library I saw, and it was a sort of thing where people had just put books out in a neighborhood, and they put it in a little tree trunk and it was very charming.

It was wonderful. And you could pull a book out, you can put a book in and a little community thing. And then somebody had taken a picture of it because somebody had like thrown cat food in it to wreck it. Okay, here's the problem.

You think that people are terrible because some douche canoe came along and threw cat food on it. What you're ignoring is that thing was up for months and thousands of people came by and nobody did that. Of course somebody's going to. going to do that. Okay, you clean it up and you move on because it's so rare. Don't stress.

It's all you don't, you know, you're not taking them account all the times that it was just out there being used by regular cool people. So there's nothing wrong with this. It can't be fixed by what's right with us. To me is just reframe. Just reframe. Look, we're going to get through this. Be sweet to people. You know, because you're getting, you're getting treated with respect. A hundred times a day. We're just not conscious of it. it's so common. Yeah. Speaking of a sweet person, you, I believe this is earlier in your career, we're going to Storytime.

You worked for someone and I don't think you had any nice suits, but you needed to have a nice suit or two. And this gentleman, I'm going to have you tell it, but I'll introduce it to let you get your mind ready. This gentleman told you to go get some nice suits, then he would pay for it and expense it. Take it, take it from there. I'd love to hear this story. This is about power.

This is about how to use power for good. Yeah, well, there you go. And this is very much on theme. And I have to say, Ryan, that most of my philosophy about leadership emanates from this guy, this guy, Scott Gilbert. So he used to be my boss at Satchi and Satchi. And when I first went to work there,

I didn't have any money. Because when you're in advertising, when you first started out, I mean, you get paid. And I've never been a credit person. I've never had a credit card balance my whole life. I just am not like that. So everybody else is walking around with fancy clothes, and I was not.

I looked pretty bad. And he, God bless him, I didn't work for him at the time. And he pulls me aside and he says, you look, you look terrible. So do yourself a favor. I want you to go out. I want you to buy a couple of suits. And don't go to some garbage place. I want you to go to a nice place.

Go to Nordstrom. Get a couple of good suits. Okay. And I will help you pay for him. We're going to expense him as client meals. okay. Expensive is client meals. I remember that part of the story is like, wait, what?

Yeah. It gets better. So, which is playing fast and rules with the last and lose with the rules, right? Because, you know, that's a tax deduction. So if you're, if that's BS, that's a, you're breaking the tax laws. Yeah, that's bad. It's bad. Right.

So I go out and I get these really nice. You got a Glenn plaid, Ralph Lauren suit. And I got this beautiful black suit, which, you know, I met my wife and I was wearing one of those suits and it was, look, snappy. Well, I found out that, yeah, he, in fact, hadn't expensed them through meals. He had just paid for him out of his own pocket. And I didn't work for him. And I felt like a million bucks in those things.

When I found out that he paid for those things, I said to myself, I got to go to work for this guy. And so I'm lining up all the pawns to see if I can get hired. And he hired me to work for him. And over the course of the time that I worked for him, I noticed that all around him, he was helping people along with their skill sets and trying to improve them. And what happened with me was I eventually earned a promotion. So he gave me a promotion and he gave me a big raise. But he didn't tell me. He knew my wife because I met her at work.

So he knew who she was. So he called my house and he told her so she could tell me about the promotion and about the raise. and you know I got home and it was that was a great night that's like winning an Olympic gold medal and so so I got back to work and he was like well you know anything special happened last night how'd that go you know so he knows perfectly well but it was the fact that he took such joy

in my my pleasure that I go oh my God that's his superpower he is his whole world revolves around him trying to make his people's job awesome. Like that was the way he looked at power was, if you're going to have it, you use it to make your employees have a good career. And so he would coach people where they would get promoted right out into other bosses

and promote, and they would leave and go to other companies. And it didn't matter because all of us, all of us as we went out to the four wins, we all, everybody, you ask them, you know, who's best boss? And they would all say him. And we frequently will go back and reminisce with him. And he was teaching at a community college in Aspen, Colorado. And we would just go back up. He would have this murderer's row of people that would come in to teach classes for him,

you know, to come in and do a consult. And I mean, I'll tell you, these are hitters, like big hitters, all from the ad world coming in teaching at a small community college in Colorado. It's funny. It's like, you know, it's like a small bowling alley. and every day people from the best of the world come in there and favor respects. I just love it. Power gets a bad rap and it shouldn't because I think the way that we view it and the way that we use it should change

or the way that you should think about it should change and that is if you're able to acquire some power through hard work and effort and performance, let's use that power for good, One of the lines from that video is the thing that gave him more joy than anything was using power to make life more amazing for his team, make you feel like you mattered to him. And there's a quote from Rick Lentz that you also put up, which I love how you end the videos. All business is personal. The best business is very personal. And to me, the best bosses, the best coaches, the best teachers, the best leaders that I've ever worked for and been lucky to be around. everything was personal.

They never said, just business, man, sorry, just business. That's not a thing. It is a thing usually with bad bosses. Great bosses, it's not how it works. All business is personal

because you're a person. I'm a person. We work together. We're people. I don't like that phrase, just businessman. And I know people still say it and they'll say it forever.

That is not something that I could ever fathom saying to somebody else. If there's bad news, I got to give them, I'll give them the bad news, right? I'm not going to say,

sorry, man, it's just business. right? Because all business is personal and the best business is very personal. Yeah, we're human beings. Yeah. We're human beings. We are complicated cocktails of competing interests and impulses that sometimes contradict each other.

And we're all wandering through life without an owner's manual. And I have never understood the instinct to treat people as though they are nothing more than a tool to be used. But you know, that's, I can't count myself as a grand success in the world. I'm not, I'm nothing, I'm nobody important. And I've known some people that were, that were very successful, that had this attitude of, you know, friendship is not for work. We're not friends here, you know. I just don't understand that impulse, but, you know, some people really are on the spectrum of sociopathy. Some people really are sociopaths.

They just don't give a shit about other people. Yeah. So let's go to tactical stuff again. So for that person who self-identifies as this is a not a strength, okay, and they have a meeting coming up next Monday. What are some, the first, I don't know, a few bullet points of things for them to think about, to put into motion. I don't expect them to become experts after listing this, but I want them to have some action, some thoughts. some things, whether it's a thought process or exercises, whatever it may be, so that once put into play, they do start the process of becoming better. I love the Whitney Houston story, right? The punchline one

is something for all of us. I know I messed this up. So thinking about how to fix that, what are some other things people could implement to get better at this right now? Yeah, so I think that one of the first things that people need to recognize is that if they intend to make a presentation using a deck and they're putting bullet points on the screen. They have to be very, very mindful not to put too many bullets. And what's more, I don't often recommend bullets at all. Because what happens is that you start to think of the presentation, you start to think of it this way,

that your obligation is to dump data on people. You think that because you said everything you came to say, that they took away everything that they were intended to take away, but that's just not how things work. People are no more capable of walking away with all your bullet points than they are of having memorized a memo after having read it once. So you can't think of your information that your obligation is to pass along information. What you have to start with is how much can I expect them to absorb today? And what are the three most important things that they must remember when they leave here?

And I will tell you that in order for them to remember anything, it should be attached to an emotion. There are two parts of the brain when it comes to memories. There's the hippocampus and there's the amygdala. The hippocampus, which is where we take in things like logical facts and bullet points, the hippocampus is staggeringly good at sorting and discarding information. It cannot take in everything, so it decides on what are the priority points and it rejects the rest. But again, it's very short term. You get people bullet points, they might remember.

for a minute and then it's gone forever into the sands of the time, as opposed to a story about this. So my Fred Werner was, he was this Swiss art director, fantastic, and he had this, you know, this accent. He was like, you know, German Bergmacht officer. And one day, one of the clients at a big meeting, big meeting for Toyota, we got up and one of the clients was showing off a newspaper ad that had been done for a car that was being leased for $1.99 a month. And this person who was presenting the ad, they had nothing to do with its creation and they don't know anything about it except that they're just informing the audience that this will be

among the pieces of media. Well, one of these very, very wealthy car dealers, not at all shy, says, I don't understand why you guys make that $1.99 a month headlines a damn small. Boy, that is a great price. And it ought to be as big as the width of the paper will stand. I just don't understand what the hell. Why do you feel like you got to whisper that number? And now the person who's showing off the work,

he doesn't know the first thing about why it is. So he hams and haws a little bit, you know, and he just wants to get out of there. Well, but before he sits down, the art director who had directed at this guy, Werner, he goes, if I may be permitted, I can explain precisely why the headline is the size of it is. Okay, so the clients are like, oh, no, no, no.

And this guy goes, yeah, okay. And he says, I notice on your wrist, there was a Rolex yacht master watch. And at the time, this thing must have cost about like $40,000. It's approximately $40,000. For $19, you could just as easily have bought a swatch. It would tell you when your next teen time was, probably with more accuracy. And yet, you didn't buy a swatch, did you? No, nor did you have a big clock around your neck, like flavor flamed,

Broadcasting to the world, what time it is. No, which chose a very expensive, very tasteful device designed by people who have spent entire lives studying how to do it. They are broadcasting on your behalf, a sense of potency, taste, power, restraint. All of these things are vastly more important than the $1.99 a month. They can easily find that information off of Google in approximately 34 seconds. I don't need to tell you what the price is. What I need to do is broadcast your potency, your power, your restraint, your desirability.

And this is because there are two parts of the mind where the information is taken in. The hippocampus, it takes in data like 199 a month. It discards it immediately as not important. But on the other hand, when you show all of these proper things with art direction and restraint in aesthetics, it is absorbed to the amygdala, the emotional center. I'll give you an example. tomorrow will be walking down the street. You'll see me coming.

You won't remember what I said, but you will remember that I'm a no-at-all asshole. And that is why the headline is the size of the teeth. Okay, so this guy blinks, and then he goes, that's all I wanted to know. Now, there's an epilogue. All right, you ready for this? I was at a meeting where that dealer was there,

and they presented the same ad to a different group of dealers and somebody else said a very similar remark to his like, I don't get why that. You should make that headline bigger. And he goes, hang on a minute. He says, look, Darrell, it's the hippocampus and the amygdala. And I don't have time to explain it to you. But just know this. In the time it takes me to finish my sentence, I will have sold more cars than you sell all month. So do me a favor, just get out of the sandbox and let the kids play. So what I love about that is the acknowledgement that, yeah, it's kind of not the bullet points.

That's not what's important. What's important are what are the symbols and the signals that you're sending? What are the stories that you can tell in order to impart a sense of emotion, a sense of meaning attached to this? And as long as we're on this theme and we're going to try and give people, trying to equip people with a couple of tips so that they can go into their meetings a new way. I'd like to, I'd like to suggest that it's really, really important. The first words out of your mouth should not be taken lightly. Don't do any, you know, that throat clearing that people do, which is like,

well, we're so excited to be here. Or, you know, thank you, Don, for that introduction. No, the first words out of your mouth need to be riveting. It has to be a story of some form or an interesting fact that they did not know that will influence the rest of what they see. And I'll give you an idea about why. Here's another reason why they should never say, we're so excited to be here. They don't realize what that does is that that seeds power. That gives up the power position because you have said essentially, oh, thank you for allowing us into your presence.

No, if you're there to actually help them to really deliver something that's useful to them, the first words out of your mouth should be along the lines of, if you knew this, you could do a lot with it and get them to think, I want to hear the rest of this. Like the number one way I want to hear the rest of this is, this is going to help you. I can help you make more money, make more friends. Like, suppose, Brian, okay, so we're in a bar. And one of our friends come in, without even saying hello, he says, I just found out a secret that will guarantee that when you leave this part tonight, you will have a beautiful woman following you home.

Like, okay, Ryan, you want to like, tell me more. Please, continue. Whatever we were talking about, whatever piece of NFL, BS or NBA, I don't care about that anymore. I'm interested in what you've got to say. Well, because, you know, it's like, apparently he's got some hot information. Well, that's kind of the way that all business meetings are meant. You're supposed to show up and help people out. You're supposed to give them something useful.

And if you don't have something useful, you're living, what the hell are you doing there? It is the most precious real estate, and it's wasted all the time. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. And I watch that and think, you just wasted it. And I've done this, trust me. I've done this a lot where usually extends from nerves or I haven't prepared enough versus the times when I am prepared, I know exactly how I'm going to open and I'm not going slow.

When I, so I host these, I do these, Neil, these leadership circle meetings, which essentially is 12 leaders from a variety of different industries. We meet on Zoom once a month and we have exercises and I host these things. I lead them. It's a paid service that I offer. And whenever somebody wanders in when it's their time to talk, I have to stop them. Nope. Nope. We're getting a rep.

This is a live repetition, okay? You just messed up. Start over. Because we can practice together. That's what this leadership circles for. But when you go to your meeting and you're an SVP in charge of $850 million business, none of that. We're not wasting reps. We're not wandering.

We're starting with substance. So everybody else knows now when it's your turn and everybody goes. When it's your turn, we're not wandering. We're not thanking you. Oh, man, that was a great. Thanks, Ryan. This is great. No, no, no, no.

That's not how it starts. Boom, we're going straight to it because it also separates you because almost nobody does that. So even if it's just that little aspect of storytelling and a meeting, this is something that you could change right. now and it will make a big difference in how you start. Like, actually practice it. Think of it. Say the words, right?

Go ahead. If you left, Ryan, if you left your group, whoever's listening to this, listen to what Ryan's saying right now, he is dead right. The real estate at the beginning, it's the most priceless real estate in the meeting. You can make it off of that. That will give you permission for the next 60 seconds. You've got them. Don't blow it.

rehearsed that opening. I heard this terrific opening. I can't remember the name of the movie, but Guy Pearce played this guy who was, he had created this company that made these cybernetic people. And the very first words out of his mouth at a TED conference in 2035 was he starts with this and he says, you know, no words except he comes in and he says,

T.E. Lawrence, eponymously of Arabia, but very much an Englishman. favored pinching a burning match between his fingers to put it out. When asked by his friend William Potter, secret to this trick, how he managed to extinguish the flame so thoroughly, and yet not hurt himself whatsoever, T.E. Lawrence just smiled and said, Potter, the trick is not minding it hurts. Okay, and then he goes on, but here's what's so great about that. he hit the ground running in such a way that you can picture the man pinching the match, you can sense the curiosity of his friend William Potter.

That's your curiosity. How do you do that without hurting yourself? And the answer is so deliciously paradoxical. The trick is not minding it hurts. We could go any number of ways right now. I could go into a thing about the discipline of accepting the price. in order to achieve something, or I could go out into stamina. I could go in a number of ways, but I've got you for the next 60 seconds.

You want to know why I told you that story. Where does this figure in? And so, yeah, everybody should really give some thought to opening with some kind of, and if you can create an environment, which is a friend of mine and I were walking along the Seattle Waterfront. and Seattle is not a sunny city. It was raining. It was awful. It was dank.

But we were determined to get a picture of the Pike Market, Pike Street market thing because that's what all tourists do. They take a picture of that. Along comes this homeless guy. We can tell he's homeless. He's doing his best to hide the fact that he's a little down at the heels. But he offers to take our picture instead of us having to do it. So that way we can both be in the picture.

So we say, okay, that son of the bitch, turned in 25 of the most beautiful shots you've ever seen. He was manipulating the cameras, putting filters on it, doing a panorama shot. He made Seattle look like Lord of the Rings. Okay. Now, as I'm telling that story, you've got a very vivid image in your mind

about what's happening. And those are the best tales, is that give me a setting. Start with some movement. you're literally moving starting with we are going where you know what I mean and I think those things are key earlier in the conversation you know you said yeah I'm in the business of persuasion and you have been I think for your whole career and your stories are they persuade me I think they bring people including me to tears at times because there's some really emotional ones you use

music really well which can persuade people it can really play on emotion what are some thoughts that you have to be, I know this is high level, but I think it's important because who doesn't want to be more persuasive? Yeah, sure. What are some ideas, mindsets, thought processes on how to be more persuasive? You ask all the best questions. I'm not kidding. I mean, I'm not blowing smoke. You ask the best questions. Okay, so let's dig into it. And this is a, yeah, 10,000 hours of work on this. You will have much better. luck persuading someone to accept your point of view if you are willing to change your mind. If you go into a conversation, willing to listen, being open to changing your mind,

that will send both overt and subconscious signals that the other person has permission to do the same. And I am telling you, that works wonders. and it changes your body language, it changes your attitude. And you know why? Because you're not there to win anymore. You're there to enjoy somebody else's company and have a legitimate conversation about,

you may find out that you don't have the solution to their problems. All right, well, in Thomas Edison's word, you know, well, if you would think of that as a failure, that's not a failure. That is a success at finding out what doesn't work. So that's my number one, is be willing to change your mind and you will open the possibility that they could change their mind. That's one thing. Second is the power of listening is so vastly underestimated. People, everybody's favorite subject is themselves.

And the more you give them the opportunity to tell you about them, the more you'll know about what does and doesn't. matter to them and in what ways you might or might not be able to help them. A sincere, a really good listener is a tremendously powerful thing. And true story, when I was working at TiVo as head of creative marketing, we shot some commercials with Tim Tebow. And whatever you think about Tim Tebow, either good or bad, I guarantee you you were not aware of just how charismatic he is in person. And it's not a matter of his physicality, although the guy's a beast.

I mean, he was an Adonis. I have some pretty funny stories about that, actually, because when we were shooting the commercials, it was with a bunch of kid actors whose parents came to the shoot. And let me tell you, Ryan, the women were the moms were lining up. But Tim had this wonderful quality

where in spite of all of the distractions and all of the demands on his time and all the people trying to get his attention. When you were talking to Tim Tebow, he was looking right into your eyes. He, I don't think it's exaggerating to say he was interested in what you had to say. And it wasn't just me.

It was everybody. He was very sweet with people. If you were talking to him, he was talking to you. He was a good listener, and he was intent on making sure you knew he was valuing what you had to say. Oh my God, Ryan, so powerful. So overwhelmingly.

You know, you walked away and you go, I don't, whether I agree with Tim Tebow on 100% or not is of no consequence to me now. All I know is I'm a fan. And the more time I spend with that guy, that better off I'm going to be. And it was because of that talent he had for making you feel listened to. It's fantastic. It's,

It's odd that that's rare, right? I think you mentioned, it is, but you mentioned Bill Clinton, and I know he has a knack for doing that as well. Yeah, he's good at that too. I've read stories about that, and I've actually met Tebow and have experienced his curiosity, which I'm not going to lie, I was a little surprised. I'm like, why would he care about what I'm doing?

But he did. He's legit, he's legit curious about people. Genuinely seem to. And I think curiosity, because I believe curiosity is on the other end of the spectrum from judgment. Not many people want to hang around judgmental people, but I know I love. And I mean, I love hanging around curious people. Yeah. Because they're open-minded.

They're striving to learn. They're asking good questions. They ask even better follow-up questions, which proves you're a good listener. And I think those are the, like, I think of, isn't this the type of people that we want to become, the type of people that we want to be? If we want to be leaders and we want people to want to follow in whatever direction we're going to try to help accomplish this hard thing that we may be doing as leaders, this is what we need to be. This is what we need to do, and we can work on it. These are skills you can work on. Now, you do have to genuinely care and it can't be fake.

As you mentioned before, this has to be genuine and authentic. And if it's not, then it's not going to work. But I think having this kind of fascination with people and their stories and caring about them and being a good listener, I mean, that's how you get people to commit to you and commit to whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish. Those are the qualities. And from a persuasion, I love that this is where you went from a persuasion question because you didn't talk about any tactics. they really were about being a good quality, curious, thoughtful human being who cares to listen. Right?

It's amazing how effective that is. Let me break it down almost from a mathematical standpoint about why it's so effective, which is people don't change their minds unless they want to change their minds. Why would they want to if you're just trying to sell them something or get over on them? They don't trust you. There's something a little too slick about you. And this is why I don't think people give themselves enough credit for their presentation skills if they don't think they're slick. They think that their job in getting to be a good presenter is to be slick or professional, right, to be flawless and so forth.

Nope, nope, nope, nope. Your job is not to make a presentation. Your job is to change somebody's mind. And in order for them to do that, they have to want to change them. Nobody changes their mind unless they want to. That's just, right? You can confront them with facts all day long. Doesn't mean a thing if they don't want to be persuaded. How do you persuade someone to want to change their mind? By being a human being and by caring what happens to them. If they, this is unfortunately too glib, but it is so true, people don't care what you think until they think you care. I wish it weren't that easily packaged. but that's it in a nutshell, is that the more you demonstrate to them, you care about them, you're interested in them, you know, you want to help them, the more likely they are to

give you their money to manage. Right? Right? So I find that is what, that's why I say to be a good listener is to be a persuasive person, to not worry about the bullet points, to give, and this is another thing about actually caring about people. If you really care about those people in the audience, then you will care what they take away. You will care that they walk out of there with something that will be useful to them.

You've got to give them every opportunity to grab hold of it and remember it. And don't be afraid to repeat stuff. If you really want them to leave, give them a little mnemonic. And I don't necessarily mean an acronym like it's aces and it means bleh and blah, no, I don't mean like that. I mean like stories really are. fundamentally in our genetics, stories are how we create a mental map of what happened and what it means.

And, you know, the Tim Tebow point that I was making earlier about him paying attention. People will remember that. They will remember that about Tim Tebow. They'll see a picture of him. They'll look into those eyes and go, yeah, I could see that. And I'll give you another example of how

you don't have to be a slick presenter. Okay, so imagine this, Ryan. True story. Twelve business women. These are all very successful business gals. They're in a room. They're about to hear a sales pitch. The salesman gets introduced, stands up in front of the room, clearly nervous.

I mean, really nervous, pulls his speech out of his pocket, reads it word for word from the paper, looking up only once. At the end of his speech, doesn't give him a call to action, doesn't say a price, just sits down. Now, from that description, it would be reasonable to expect that he sold zero units of whatever he came to say. Oh, no, but that's not what happened. Sold out his inventory. And on top of that, a few of the women went out of their way to tell him what a wonderful presentation it was. Now, the presenter, the salesman, was seven years old, and he was selling cookies that he and his sister had baked so that they could go to some. Cam. All right. Which is kind of my point about people have to want for you to succeed in order for them to buy from you. Now, those women don't need those cookies, right? In fact, probably, you know, half of them didn't even pick them up afterwards. What they're doing is it's, they've got another agenda. Yeah. Right. It's satisfying a different itch. And so for anybody that is worried about how slick their presentation is, if you think about that kid, if that presentation had been

slick, it would have been creepy. Yeah. It would have had the opposite opposite effect. But instead, they're responding emotionally to someone who they want to help. And when people feel like that their

presentation is a little rough around the edges, it's like fuck it, man, okay, that's not what's important here. Don't worry about that. If it's rough around the edges or you say, um, too many times, that is not a disaster. What's vastly more important is just follow a few of those really

important things like make sure you know what it is you want them to walk away with it and don't be afraid to hammer it and hammer it a couple of different ways and don't blow the most pricey real estate of the presentation which is those first few seconds nail that with something really fun and compelling you get a good run-up you get some momentum after that first 15 seconds you'll forget your stage friend speaking of that are you okay if I give you a bit of coaching right now lay it on me you have started a couple stories by saying true story True story. You do not need to ever do that. I trust you. I believe you. And sometimes saying true story actually creates doubt in the mind of the person. So I've done this. Obviously, I do this too. But I think given how good you are and how much trust and I know how genuine you are, you never need to say true story. I know it's a true story. And if it's not a true story, I don't care. It's a good story. It's a good story. I'm still going to learn from it.

Who cares? So, you know what I'm saying? I'm not, I think it's more selfish for me to be thinking this in my mind and not saying it to you. Because it's the harder thing to do that because it's at a risk of you saying like, who the hell do you think you are? No, no, no, I'm quite grateful. I'll tell you the background behind why I was. Please tell me. Yeah, please do.

Which is on TikTok. I get the most marvelous comments. But every once in a while, somebody will say, like that didn't happen. Oh, no, no, it did. I was there. And so that stung me a little bit. And so I got you.

I would say, but I take your point. Those, it's like saying, no, to be honest. Correct. The people who say that on TikTok, though, I mean, I think they're best left ignored. I believe you. I bet most of your followers, you have hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok who love your stuff. I'm sure they believe you. And by the way, if you made up some of the stories,

I honestly don't really care because I'm still learning. And there's a great point in them. So even if that is the case, but I'm not, I wasn't trying to sidetrack this thing. I just thought I would say that. I can edit this part out if you want me to. I appreciate the, I appreciate that. I'm just, I'm a massive fan, man. I really am.

And I appreciate this is, if you're cool with it, I don't normally do this, but if you're cool with it, I would love to, uh, maybe set regular times for us to talk, um, because I think it'll make me a lot better. and we can record them, whatever we want to do, because it would make me a lot better at a skill that I think is one of the most important aspects of being a leader, and that's effective communication and storytelling. So I love this, man.

Where would you send my listeners and viewers to learn more about you online? Well, at the moment, I'm actually rebuilding my website. It's called passionate logic.com, but it's going to take some doing to get it up, probably not the up until the end of this week. Oh, that's fine. We won't, we're not publishing this immediately. Okay, well, then yeah, passionate logic.com.

Okay. And, and, um, also they can find me, uh, on YouTube and TikTok. I'm easy because if you could just spell my name right, N-E-A-L-F-O-A-R-D, the beauty is that I'm the only one in the world who spells my name that way. So, you know, it's like, Neil Ford at Yahoo, Neil Ford at Gmail, you know, and they'll find me. You got it. And, um, so there you go. And I appreciate the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

The shout out there that helps. Of course. And I urge people if you're on TikTok to go check it out because it, this is, I mean, there's a lot of negativity around social media, but I think that's usually a user error. If you're finding too much of that, if you follow people like Neil and others, you can, you can really learn a lot and it can create emotion that can create change and it will make you better. And certainly your work does that, man.

That's why I reached out to you and asked you to do this. and I'd like to certainly continue our dialogue as we both progress, ma'am. I know. Thanks, man. It's my pleasure. Appreciate it. Cheers, Ryan. Take care.

I'm grateful to have this platform for the purpose of having conversations like this one. I've watched all of Neal's videos on TikTok. I've been moved because they're emotional. They're effective. They make me think. They make me feel. And that feeling is what can create behavior change. It's persuasive.

I urge you to watch them. YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, wherever. He posts them everywhere. But it's so cool to have the opportunity to dive deeper with him. And this will not be the last time. So a few takeaways from my notes. The EQ of the Jimbrough. When someone is new on your team, ask them to help you out.

Find a way to include them. Get them an early win. Make them feel part of the team. as soon as possible. And that's what the gym bro did with the woman who was obviously in the gym for the first time in a while. And it made her feel as she was part of the team, part of the community. She was included. I bet she continues coming back.

In fact, Neil even said that he's seen her back in there. And that's probably part of the reason why is because of the EQ of the gym bro. And then the element of mystery. And your stories have an aha moment. Don't spoil the punchline right away. save the reveal for the end. Remember the Whitney Houston story? Think of your stories like that. And then your first words of a presentation or meeting are the most valuable real estate you have. Do not waste them. Be thoughtful. Practice. Don't tell them, oh, I'm so excited to be here.

Launch with intrigue, with movement, with a story. This helps people get. get excited to be in your meetings. Like I mentioned, one of my favorite bosses, Brian Miller. I loved his meetings in his town halls because he always started immediately with a compelling story. It makes people want to be there. It makes people listen. It creates persuasion.

It creates people to follow. They're more compelled to it. So think about how you open your meetings. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leadership. with Neil Ford, I think he'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you continue to write reviews and rate the show, hopefully five stars on Apple Podcasts, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis.

And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can we?