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Speaker 2You're only as good as you can communicate. The reason why people interrupt you is because you're easy to interrupt. Maybe there's too much placater. Maybe there's too much, oh, no, it's okay. Anything's fine. You know, I'm okay with that. That's why people don't take you seriously, because you don't sound serious. Learn how to play it with more conviction.
Speaker 3My guest is Vin Jang, the Internet's most influential communication coach, who's here today to break down the world's greatest communicators, how to signal confidence and intelligence so that you can copy them, and how to speak, gesture, and listen so no matter what you're saying, people are tuned in.
Speaker 2If you think messy, you'll communicate messy. Often the people who ramble are smart. They have so much information, but they've never practiced prioritization. You need to practice thinking through what you want to say and go through the process of that. So you've got to clean up the thinking first. The clearer you can think, the clearer you can speak. Can you teach your self-confidence? This might change the way you think about it. The reason you're so good at being shy is because.
Speaker 3You spent years performing magic, now you are a communication expert.
Speaker 2What can a magician teach you about controlling a realm? Well, the most powerful thing about the world of magic, first of all, there's multiple layers. The first layer is that as a magician, you learn that when you see a piece of magic, it looks impossible, but then when you work at how it's done, it's disappointing. Because why? It's so easy. That's why there's this quote in the world of magic. They say a magician guards an empty treasure box because there's nothing in there besides disappointment. So the first layer that it taught me is that no matter how amazing something is, whether it's in business, in communication, anything, the solution is actually easy. It's actually not complicated. So we tend to use complexity as an excuse not to do something. So that's first of all, the most inspiring thing about magic that I learned. And then in the world of magic, I learned that just being technically great at something doesn't mean that you are great at it because you might be a 10 out of 10 with your technical skill as a magician. You're only a 3 out of 10 with your communication. They don't see you as a 10 out of 10. They see you as a 3 out of 10. So I learned that even as a magician, I need to be able to communicate my value. And we call it showmanship. So magicians call it showmanship. So a magician with no showmanship, unfortunately, is invisible. Not the cool magic kind. The more people don't see the gifts I have, the talents I have. So I had to learn how to be technically great and then learn how to shine the technical ability.
Speaker 3Do you think that that's true? Is it true in almost any profession that you are only as good as your ability to communicate?
Speaker 2Yeah, because I almost became an accountant. Yeah, I did. I almost fulfilled the Asian prophecy because I quit university six months before I graduated and I was doing commerce and law. And I did that to become a magician. But even when I was thinking I was going to become an accountant, I was taught the same thing. Is that it's the accountants who could communicate their value the best that became the partners. And technically brilliant ones get stuck in the back room as bookkeepers at times, right? So it again is that same thing you experience in every industry where it's like, ah, damn it, Barry got the promotion. Shit, Barry's not even as good as me, right? But again, it's because you're competing technically. Whereas Barry might be a five with his technical skill. Man, he's a nine with his communication. So you don't want to be in that situation either, because then then your partners or the boss will look at you and be like, ah, that person's all sizzle, no steak. It's both. You've got to be good at both.
Speaker 3So how do you do that? If you want to be a ten out of ten at communicating, do you have a strategy that you give people who want to get better communication but feel like they aren't great at it?
Speaker 2The first thing you got to do is self-awareness. So you have to know where you are. The biggest problem I see in a lot of my students, Cody, is that they don't know where they are. They don't know what their nonfunctional behaviors are. So what I mean by nonfunctional at the most basic level, you've got visual nonfunctional behaviors. You've got auditory, vocal, nonfunctional behaviors. Those are behaviors that add no value to your communication. So the auditory ones, the examples of that are the umming and ah-ing, using filler words, words that add no value. Like, so do you know what I mean? Those used to be mine. You've got to become aware of all of those. Then you've got to become aware of what are your visual nonfunctional behaviors. But the only way to be aware of that is with a really simple three step process. You have to record a video of yourself. It's so basic. But you have to record a video of yourself. Speak for at least five minutes on anything you'd like. Your favorite person, your favorite place, your favorite food has to be impromptu. Then once you get that video, review it in three different ways. The first one, tease out the auditory components by only listening to the audio. Turn the sound on max, put your phone down, listen. And when you isolate the audio as you listen to yourself. Well, what do you like about your voice? What don't you like about your voice? And when you've got five minutes of that, you'll hear things in your voice you've never heard before. You go, oh, so I used to do a lip smack. So I used to. I do that a lot because when I got nervous, my mouth is dry. Then I kept smacking my lips and I could hear that through that process. Write down everything you like and everything you don't like. Second form of review. Now turn it on mute, put it on mute and then just look at yourself. Now, as you're looking at yourself, what do you see that you don't like? Oh, when I speak, I don't use my hands at all. I just keep my hands by my lap the entire time. Right. I'm not moving my face when I speak. I keep adjusting my glasses. That's one of mine. So then take notes. What do you like? What don't you like? And then the final one, get it transcribed. And once you get it transcribed, put it into AI. What are my non words? What are my filler words? How is the structure of what I'm saying? Am I rambling? Give me the top five things I can work on when it comes to structure. One iteration of this. Then you just pick one thing you work on vocally, one thing you work on visually, and then one thing you work on with verbal, what you say.
Speaker 3This is so good. I'm going to have all of my teams do this. We have all these events we do. Oh, that's awesome. Well, yeah, we just had one for business owners. And so they come in and we help them, you know, grow their business. We focus on profits and decreased owner dependency. But what I've realized is, you know, some of my best advisors who I know, like if I give them to you, Vin, and you're like, I want to grow my profits and I want to decrease doing this in my business and you work with them for six months, it'll work, but maybe when they communicate on a stage, not as strong. And so a lot of times the charismatic people aren't always the really technical good people.
Speaker 2So the way I think about it, Cody, is I go, well, voice embodies the instrument. Learn how to use the instrument because it's like you said, the technical people on your team, they've got really good music, really good information. But if you play the music poorly, will the audience perceive it to be great music? Will they perceive it to be profound and insightful and valuable? They won't. They wouldn't even remember it if they don't play it well. So then voice and body instrument storytelling is the music you write to make people emotional. So they attach the data to strong stories. The data becomes more impactful. And then listening is learning how to appreciate other people's music so that the music you play is relevant and adds value, as opposed to someone asked the question, you just negated it and said something that you wanted to say.
Speaker 3I love that. We have a saying, which is if you want to get good at something that you're not good at right now, you start with imitation, iteration, then innovation.
Speaker 2Oh, I love that. That's so cool.
Speaker 3Yeah, because you don't really know good. So you can't innovate quite yet because you don't even have a baseline. If if you wanted to talk to somebody today to say, how do you know if your speech or talk or communication is good versus others? Yeah. Do you have do you tell people to do something?
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, just what you said there, the first step was imitation, right? Find three speakers and communicators that you really like because you already know who you like and you already know who you don't like. So what you do is so find three people that you really like and identify the three people that you don't like and just identify with the people you do like. What behaviors do you really enjoy? What makes them really magnetic? So as you read the book, we break down voice into five components, body language into five components. We break it all down. So once you're aware of all of that, you go, oh, I love the way that Cody communicates. There's this authority in her voice, but there's still warmth in there. Identify it. It's the melody, right? And the control and the control and the authority comes from the slow cadence. So as you start to recognize what they are, imitate. And then but you're going to feel gross when you do it because people are immediately going to feel, oh, now I'm trying too hard to be like Cody or Mel or Lynn or whoever your favorite communicator is. If you think like that, you immediately stop the journey of exploration. So part of imitation is explore. Try speaking like me. Try speaking like your favorite podcaster. And as you try it, you start to learn, oh, I like this, but I don't like this. Take what you like, leave what you don't. When I did this, I had three people I mimicked. They're not related. This is so ridiculous. It was Darren Brown. a magician from the UK, Les Brown, which is a motivational speaker here in the States, and Brene Brown. Not related, but I loved these three. So I mimicked them. I took bits and pieces from them and then I added my own ingredients. So if you break down my communication style, it's a mixture of those three plus me. So good. But that's what you should do. And then the ones you don't like, identify what it is about them that you don't like and check your own communication for some of that. Because sometimes the people that polarize us or throw us off, sometimes we have some of it in us too. So check that. So that's how you can immediately have a list of things I want to make sure I don't have. And then now you have a list of things to aspire to.
Speaker 3You've talked about the five components of voice and it's in your new book. What are the five components of the voice and the way that we speak that allow us to be better communicators? It comes
Speaker 2from the world of music. So I learned how to use my voice more through a vocabularies. I learned how to use my voice more through a vocabularies. I learned how to use my vocal coach. So Miss Stanley is my vocal coach. And when she first worked me up to the idea of this, there was this beautiful moment. I walked into the music room and then she was just playing one key on the piano nonstop. Super frightening. And then she just said to me, how do you feel? And I said, well, nothing because what the hell are you doing? And she goes, good. And then she turns around and she goes, how do you feel? And I said, oh, that, that felt sad. That felt, yeah, it was just like a love song. And she goes, good. And then she explained to me, most people go through their entire lives speaking just with one key. And she goes, I'm going to teach you to speak like this. That lesson was about melody. First component. So the first component of voice is, well, there are so many keys on your voice. However, we get stuck in a default way of speaking because we learn it from our parents growing up. If we didn't have good people to model, you know, and they just spoke with one note, then we also adopt that because we don't know any better. Right? So, so melody, you've got so many keys in your voice. Explore that. Second one is tempo, rate of speech. Again, if you default with melody and you default with rate of speech, now you become very monotone. So if I just spoke at this rate of speech and I'd really didn't vary it. And I kept this monotone, I'm, probably have people spoken to you like this before you've already tuned out. So you got melody, rate of speech. You can vary that. When you speak faster, it shows passion, enthusiasm. And then when you slow down, it shows control and composure. Which one's better? Neither. You want both. You want all of it full range. Okay. Melody, rate of speech, volume. This is vitality, communicates confidence. So you want to be able to vary that too, because with volume, for example, think of a scale from zero to 10. When you go really loud with volume, that's a verbal highlight. So if you really, you're sharing some important numbers. If there's one thing you focus on, this is critical, right? So that's a verbal highlight. Or you can use a quiet volume. If there's one thing you grasp, make sure you remember this. Now what's wild about these vocal foundations is that if you use a louder volume to highlight something and then you stay there, it becomes non-functional. So I could go from now, say for example, five to low to highlight. So I can say, and listen, if there's one thing you get from this podcast, make sure you understand this. But then if I just stay here now, what started as an auditory highlight is now non-functional. So as you learn melody, as you learn rate of speech, as you learn volume, it's not about which one is best to stay at. It's learning variety is critical to hold people in place. Okay. Next, tonality. That's the emotion that exists underneath your voice. And that emotion is unlocked through you using your face. So if you don't emote with your face, then there's no emotion in it. Because when you shape your face differently, and Vanessa, our mutual friend of ours, is amazing at this because she teaches micro-expressions. The more you emote, the more you change the shape of your face, your face is the instrument that as you change the shape, the sound comes out different. That's why people say, oh, my God, I'm not good at this. I'm not good at this. They can hear a smile. It's because the person's smiling. So as they smile, it changes the shape of the mouth, which changes the way the sound comes out. And then the final one is pause, which is a critical one. Because when you don't pause, you don't give people time to process what you're saying. And when you don't pause, sometimes your mind goes blank because you're racing through what you're saying. And your mouth has outrun your mind. And then when you also pause, become very comfortable with the pause, you start to minimize the ums and the ahs. The ums and the ahs happen because we are afraid of the pause. So we use the ums and the ahs to fill the pause. These five foundations, you can play them an infinite number of ways. And that's what I focus on the first part of the book. So when you learn how to play it, oh, my gosh, it's like music. You can take five chords and play a thousand different songs. And there are so many problems can be solved so easily if people learn how to use this. I'll give you an example, Cody. Some people come to me and they say, Vin, people don't take me seriously. And I'm like, well, that's because you don't look serious and you don't sound serious. Because if I always sound like this and I'm always bubbly and I'm why people don't take you seriously, because you don't sound serious. The opposite is true. I don't know why, people take me so seriously. I can't get people to open up around me. Because you sound really serious. You know, so it's so much of it is to do with sound.
Speaker 3Quick pause. Something I love about getting to do the show is talking to our guests. And almost everyone I talked to from investors and founders and authors started with one thing they were good at. Every one of them then had to make this thing a real business. That's where a lot of people stall out. It's the annoying part, the paperwork, the filings, the deadlines kind of feels like a second job. And that's when I think, oh, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. Busy handles the whole back office from formation to filings. So your time goes into the part you're actually great at and where all the fun is. Formation starts at $0 plus state fees with Busy. And when next year's annual report shows up, they handle that for you too. Busy and I put together something for you at busy.com slash Cody. So do you get set up right? Or you can hit the link in the show notes. It's so fascinating because, you know, I've gotten to know some of the great speakers, Tony Robbins. And one of the things I think is fascinating about Tony, for instance, is that he's a great speaker. He's a great speaker. He's one of the few speakers I've ever seen that actually uses the full range, especially on like volume. There's very few speakers who will scream on stage or yell. And if you think about how often you yell or really emote at the high end as an adult, incredibly rare. And yet when you do it, it can be so impactful. And so I think this is really useful because you're not going to go around yelling in your meetings, but having the range, even an example and a story to be able to then have a shock is so powerful. And I think a lot of people just think, I love how you explained it as, you know, they have beautiful music, but they don't actually play it well. You know, so you may have, you know, the, the, you know, key to the theory of relativity, but if you don't explain it very well, then we're going to be in trouble.
Speaker 2You'll be able to reach that volume soon once you enter parenthood. You're going to experience that volume from your little human. And then you're going to be using it on your little human time.
Speaker 3I know. Well, you know what the other thing is, even just in, um, I'm learning, this is way outside of our scope, but I'm learning about giving birth. Never done that before. Sort of a weird thing. Me neither. I'm done that either. Yeah. You know what? I envy you that. Yeah. They talk about how, uh, the tonality and even the way that you do your voice when you are emoting pain or something during birth will actually change the contractions of your body. And so if you, yeah, it's actually crazy. So if, if you've ever heard, um, movies, when they talk about somebody giving birth, it's often like, you know, it's really high pitched. Well, actually you don't want to be high pinched because that leads to clenching. So that's like, ah, you know, you have to kind of clench when you go high pitch. What you actually want to do is a really low sound, almost like a cow mooing. It's like, uh, because in order to do that, you actually breathe out that's opening. And so the other thing that's interesting about tone, yeah, is that it actually, it doesn't just affect the tone. It affects the tone. It affects the tone. It affects the tone. It doesn't just affect your audience. It affects you. And so if, you know, if you're on stage and you're high pitched, that is, that's messing with, you're actually how you feel now you're clenched, you're tight. And if you really want to open up and down regulate and, you know, calm down, you would speak at a lower tone. Now, what about, I love these five concepts of voice. I want to talk about the five of body language. What are the five different tonalities in your body language that can change the way people perceive you? Well, it's five core areas.
Speaker 2Uh, you've got your posture, right? And, and, and posture is such a critical thing. And I just love it. The camera team just fixed their posture. I said the word posture. I love that. Posture is critical. Why? Because your posture introduces you before you introduce yourself. And for the longest time, I wasn't ever paying attention to that. Right? I didn't think much of posture at all. I just, because when you don't think of it, you don't, activate it. So posture is number one. the second one is hand gestures when you don't know what to do with your hands this is the big one that people struggle with when you don't know what to do with your hands a lot of people fall victim then to non-functional hand gestures which are what men classic hands in the pocket right so always hands in the pocket or men and women folded arms right or sometimes playing with a hair right and then we've also got the classic prayer position rubbing of the hands now so the hands behind the back and then sometimes they pair hands behind the back with them rocking back and forth and swaying from side to side these are all non-functional unless you're describing in a story specifically you're saying oh you know when i was about to get on stage i just felt really nervous now you're visually using that gesture to demonstrate how you're feeling functional but if you're just stuck to this the whole time then that's not effective so i think you've got to learn how to use your hands and the most foundational forms on how to use your hand gestures simple three simple ones to get you started you've got to know placator so placator is when your hands are palm open up facing up this is a beautiful gesture make sure your elbows are away from your body this is very open and inviting so if your team members were opening a presentation is oh great to see you everyone beautiful gesture and then if you want authority up the opposite hands palm face down right that gives you more authority visually and it actually shifts the sound of your voice because your body is connected to your voice and your voice is connected to your body and then the third one when you really want authority point with all your fingers very strong right and then there's a variation of this which vanessa disagrees with which i love because we have things we disagree about but it's the pointing pointing is a very strong gesture now we wouldn't do it one-on-one because it's very strong but if you're one too many you absolutely can you can point when you you've got to make sure we nail this next campaign use it right at least have the foundational three and then what you want to do next if you want to increase your gesture vocabulary just like how you can increase your verbal vocabulary is now start to play charades when you're speaking like you want to expand your gesture vocabulary well then what does expansion look like right if there's something we need to focus on how can you show that so then start to expand your own gesture vocabulary so that when you're speaking your hand gestures now they support the hand gestures now they support the hand gestures now they support the hand gestures now they support the things you say otherwise if you watch me now i can go when you use your hand gestures more it helps support the things that you say as you expand your gesture vocabulary which one's better oh
Speaker 3the first one yeah that's almost painful now that i've seen your full
Speaker 2range yeah if you feel constrained because it's people want to be engaging but if you want to be engaging you've got to engage in your instrument and you've got voice and body so most people don't play the instrument at all with their voice so default volume default rate default pitch default everything is default then also non-functional behavior is all default so now if i'm sharing with you the meaning of life like this you probably won't listen to me right so you've got to learn how to use your hand gestures movement particularly important when you're doing presentations and again people fall victim to non-functional movement and i see this in speakers in myself when i first started we just move from side to side on stage for no reason so the biggest rule in movement is only move with purpose so you only move when there's a reason to move and there are multiple reasons we can use movement for movement to give us more stage presence you can move to show time again i'm sitting right now but if i was moving with my body imagine my hands if i move from my right to my left so think about this in your own mind my right is the past my left is the future most people do it the wrong way around so what most people do i mean it just as you're listening to this think about this for a second in your own head say my right is the past my left is the future now if you do that you're going to get that feels wrong because you want to say my left is the past and my right is the future but that's then you're communicating for you but where is where are the people you're often communicating to they're often opposite you so communicate for them these are all the little one percenters and if you keep getting the one little percent is wrong you become more difficult to sit with and be engaged with because the audience is like wait wait that's the past though so to do it right so you can use movement to get you can move from your right of the stage and say hey we started the business when we're in 2010 and as we moved look at where we are now in 2026 and as you move across the stage to show that beautiful display of movement for time growth is the same thing growth grows from your right to your left you can use it to show sequence so you can stand on one part of the stage and go hey the first thing we're going to talk about is the importance of seo marketing the second most important thing is we need to talk about organic marketing and then the third thing we're going to look at is doing collapse and then you move to each part of the stage to talk about each thing which gives what gives visual clarity right so you've got visual clarity now these are simple ways you can use movement as opposed to just moving for no reason the next one for example is facial expressions most people don't move their face i had an rbf which is we'll call it a resting blank face but men can also be bitches too just so you know but that's when when you don't move your face there's no emotion and and the problem with that is when you show nothing people will now assume how you're feeling they'll make assumptions they'll go oh yeah vin's pissed no no i'm not i'm not pissed i'm just like i'm just not emoting you know how you feel but people don't so they make the assumption so you've got to learn to show more emotion on your face because where are people looking the most when you're talking your face so if you're not showing anything you're missing out on a whole medium and context and then the final one is eye contact yeah and when you pair all of these things together that's how you can play
Speaker 3so do you think that actually confidence becomes a set of learned behaviors like can you teach yourself confidence yeah yeah
Speaker 2i believe you can because i had to do it like cody english is my third language so i i struggled with english for so long and because i struggled with english for so long it impacted my confidence right i had to go i had to go to a vocal coach i had to go speech pathologist i had to learn all these skills that i have right now so i definitely was not confident growing up i was super shy super timid you know i think that's part of the reason why now thinking about it i was probably drawn to magic i was probably drawn to speaking and being on stages because i i i want to be seen because i was so invisible because i had low self-esteem and no confidence think about shyness shyness is a series of behaviors it is so we could i could i could be shy now i remember what it was like you play a lot smaller their shoulders in hands in feet very close together very low volume no eye contact and you know this is this is shy behaviors right and i can be shy and and if you think about it if you are shy right now this might change the way you think about it the reason you're so good at being shy is because you've practiced shy behaviors for the last 20 years of your life that's why you crush shy and it's you're so good at it no one needs to tell you what to do you know how to be shy now apply that thinking to confidence so all you've got to do is replace those shy behaviors with confident behaviors and what we spoke about so far which is so cool because i haven't been able to lay out all of it on a podcast before think of voice right shy is smallness volume very low and often no pitch variety and then you know a lot of filler words and um so what's the opposite all of that stronger levels of volume and then you know a lot of filler words and um so what's the opposite all of that you've mastered the quiet volumes give me stronger levels of volume give me way more melody throw some melody in and play and don't be afraid of the pauses three things you can do vocally immediately will help you sound more confident visually posture shoulders down and back again i i love shouting out vanessa in this but again she's done so much research that the distance between your your shoulders and your ears communicates confidence so shoulders down and back right so one thing you can do smile have a smile on your face physically as well larger gestures don't play so small gesture larger take up space so now you've got vocal presence physical presence these two things you can practice and the wildest thing about these two things as you practice vocal presence and as you practice physical presence that gradually impacts how you feel right it's so good because
Speaker 3i was even thinking so it's it's coming to the holiday season right we gotta all go to these parties right i'm actually kind of an introverted person i have to go to one tonight vin and i i have so many stories about introverted oh yeah i actually don't especially i'm introverted in in groups okay okay i get in my head i worry about you know just so do i want to talk to them i got am i going to interrupt are they going to think i'm interested or i'm interested or interesting one-on-one i'm not so introverted i'm very curious and i can feel more comfortable but if it's networking in a group event nightmare i don't like it we'll do it but i don't really like it but i often think um i think this is normal i think a lot of people feel like that going into a room of strangers feels scary oh i still feel that too yeah and so i'm wondering is there a way like you walk into a party or an event coming into the holiday season is there a way to be like insanely fun to talk to like what would be a way if you're like you know what i'm trying a new behavior tonight yeah which is i'm gonna be really fun to talk to oh i love that what would you do okay
Speaker 2you've already heard about the first two parts yeah be fun to listen to be fun to look at too because now you're communicating with your hands sound so those two things yeah the third one your husband chris crushes this one i got to meet him this morning and my whole team got to meet him my whole team didn't want to sit in here right because they're all with chris in his office right now your husband's amazing i know i like him but what have you do yeah i think i like him too the the amazing thing about chris that i experienced this morning was that and what made him so fun to talk to he had five stories in his back pocket ready to go right and then the moment we sat down and the moment we asked the question boom we heard about this he was gift someone gifted him a bear right during his when he was serving in the military so i was like what they gave you a bear what did you do with the bear right so i i know that wasn't the first time he shared that if you want to be fun to talk to you've got to be prepared and the mistake that people make with this is when they meet people like like chris and i i honestly i'm so excited to spend time with him is all after but it's like he he has a pocket full of stories and and so cody tonight when you go and i know you've got so many stories to have a pocket of these stories ready to go so that you don't expect yourself to come up with those stories in the moment but then there's etiquette here too because you don't want to just get into a group and be like guess what someone gifted me a bear right because it's like what who are you dude
Speaker 3i'm gonna try it tonight yeah just just take
Speaker 2chris's story yeah they gifted me a bear because he told me he met a warlord i was like what and then i was like did you marry the warlord is that cody that would
Speaker 3be a good story greatest twist way cooler than me yeah so have
Speaker 2those stories ready but what and i don't mean to bring chris so much into this but what he did so beautifully was when he met us first he made it all about us first so i'm gonna i'm gonna steal what he did as a tactic but this is a tactic and i'm gonna steal what he did as a tactic but this is a tactic and i'm gonna steal what I would recommend to my students too. When you join a conversation, don't make it about you first. You be interested in them first. So if they're currently having a massive chat, they're talking about, oh, they can't wait to go to the Formula One or whatever it is, join the conversation. Oh, which team do you go for? Hey, you go for McLaren, you go for Ferrari. Like, well, what are you doing? So be a part of their conversation, be interested in their world first, ask multiple questions. And then when you're a great conversationalist in that way, they're inevitably going to go, hey, Cody, tell us a little bit about you. And the moment those words come out, you're no longer panicked, but rather you're excited because you've got a bear story, you've got a warlord story, you've got so many in your back pocket, right? So I think it's preparation. And then when you've got the preparation, play the instrument. Don't go there and be like, oh yeah, I did that and they gave me a tiger and that was a really cool experience in my life. Don't do that. Don't do that. Play the instrument. Because now you've got fun music. Now you've got the music being played in a fun way. Oh, and that's how I think of it.
Speaker 3One other thing that I really like from your work is it seems sometimes that if we don't know what to say, someone might say too many things. Do you have a process to stop people from rambling? Like if you ramble too much, what are the one or two or three things you should do?
Speaker 2Well, the first thing is you need to, practice thinking through what you want to say and go through the process of that. I'll give you an example. If someone asks me the question, I get this asked all the time when I see them in public, they're like, hey, Vin, what's one thing I should do to improve my communication? I have written a book about this. I've been teaching this for the last 15 years. I'm thinking of 29 different things that you could do to help you improve the way you communicate. So why do I ramble? Because often the people who ramble are smart. They have so much information, so much value they want to give, but they've never practiced prioritization. They've never practiced being able to prioritize in the moment. So how can I now give really fast advice to people who meet me on the streets is because I've prepared for it, right? And I use a simple practice method, which is so easy. Just grab your phone. So you've got pressure. Don't just practice without the phone. No, record yourself. Record yourself practicing. And when you record yourself practicing the first time, you're going to ramble. You're going to say the 29 things that you've learned. And then you record and review and you go, oh man, that's so bad. You can plug it into AI. And then you go, oh, wow, definitely rambled. But then when you listen to it back, you go, huh, out of the 29 things I said, there's one really important thing. It's self-awareness. So when the person in the moment asks, hey, what's the one thing I should do? Work on self-awareness first. Do record and review. Record yourself. Now it's clear, concise, and coherent. Why? Because I've distilled it. So the clearer you can think, the clearer you can speak. And I think there's a mind and mouth connection that people have to practice in private. So if you're an engineer, if you're a pharmacist, if you're an accountant, if you're a carpenter, if you're an set engineer already, but regardless of what you do, think about the 20 most common things you talk about. So if you're an engineer, if you're a pharmacist, if you're an engineer, if you're an engineer, think through it. Gain a deep understanding of it. Because when you understand it better, you speak more clearly. That's number one. You've got to do the hard yards, right? Number two, you have to learn how to think in frameworks. You have to think about a simple one I've learned that I use all the time in all the podcasts that I've done. I've been using it. It's three, two, one, which is three steps, two types, the one thing. So when someone asks you something, and I'm using three steps right now, because I'm going to give you three things, right? So you ask me a question, I'm like, oh, I'm going to frame it into three parts. This is the second part. So when someone asks you a question on, hey Vin, how can I improve my social media? Hey, the one thing you should do is focus on consistency, because that's going to give you the reps to help you get better. Done. And if they want more, they'll ask. That's three, two, one. Or they might say, hey Vin, do you think reading is important? Do you think reading is important? Hey, I think reading is exercise for the mind. That's just me going straight into that, right? Or Vin, what do you think about food? Oh, hey, you know, I think there's two types of food. There's food for your body and there's food for your mind.
Speaker 3I'm going to use this too. It's really interesting. That point that you made about if you ramble, it's probably because you're quite smart, especially on this subject matter. And all of that knowledge almost gets accumulated to the point that you feel a disservice if you somebody, you know, how do you make your first million dollars? Like there's a lot that goes there. And if I give you something that's not full, am I, is that a disservice?
Speaker 2I'm not giving enough value. Right.
Speaker 3And so getting to that deep why is actually really useful. I think I need to work on the same thing. There's also, there's a loveliness about the way you speak and the ability to talk in soundbites, you know, reading is exercise for the mind. Sort of, do you, do you keep a few key ideas and one-liners in your back pocket, like a comedian, might keep a joke?
Speaker 2Yeah, absolutely. I think whatever your area of expertise is, you've got to have your best hits. And when you have, because again, I think the illusion is when you see a great communicator, you're like, how did they come up with that answer on the spot? They didn't. They've been asked that question 5,000 times and they're prepared for it before that. So they not only have written the song, have they written the song? They've sung it 5,000 times. It's why when you think about someone like a, why does she get paid millions of dollars to sing a three minute song? Is it because of a song she wrote yesterday? No, no. It's because it's a song she sung for the last 10, 20 years of her life. But people are afraid of, oh, but it needs to be spontaneous. No, the people who are the best at what they do, they have this ability to make it seem like planned spontaneity. It's planned. It's a part of it, but they can make, still make it seem spontaneous because they're playing the instrument. Otherwise, often people say the same thing, more than 10 times. Again, it will sound like reading is like exercise for the mind because they've stopped playing the music. Whereas the beautiful thing about great musicians is even if they've played that concert 10,000 times, when you go to it, Taylor Swift, right? You listen to it. Wow. It's like, it's the first time you've ever done it. The love of what you're doing is still there. So you've got to keep playing the instrument, but the prep work is.
Speaker 3It's really important for so many aspects. Even I think about it in sales. So the best sales teams we've ever run. They did one thing and that was everything that they were going to try to sell. They scripted first. Everything was scripted. And then we would have them practice the script for every single word that was on the script. So if it's a thousand words, that would mean a thousand practices of that script. And what was interesting about it is the first time, the fifth time, the 10th time, the 100th time they practiced, it sounded bad and it sounded robotic. It wasn't very good. By the or a thousandth time, they had found this melody in all of your fives that you talk about. And so I think even if you don't think about wanting to be a better communicator, it's like, Well, do you want to sell more things? Do you want people to listen to you? Do you want to be taken seriously? All of communication and speaking is really just, can I get other people to do the things that I want them to do in many ways or perceive me in the way I want to be
Speaker 2perceived? And especially with sales, sometimes, I mean, I know you probably know way more about this than me, but I've experienced salespeople, right? And sometimes when you're with the salesperson and they're selling you, there's a sound to it, right? As someone who's not an expert at it, you can hear it, right? And the most basic form of that is like, I'm selling a house right now in Australia. And I remember calling up the real estate firm and they're like, hi, this is Jenny from XYZ Real Estate. And it's like, gosh, that melody is like automatic. And I'm like, oh, that's not real. It doesn't sound real. And same thing in a sales conversation. You can hear when someone's not playing the instrument because they're masters.
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Speaker 2U.S. only. I believe a master salesperson, the script is invisible, not because they're not using the exact words. They're using the exact words, but it's invisible because of the way they're playing. Right. Whereas I can hear it when someone shifts from being friends with me to build rapport to now selling me. And when that shift isn't made elegantly with your voice and your body language, and I now see the formula and feel sold to, I'm now out. The magic is gone. Whereas the salesperson, I believe a master salesperson, the script is invisible, not because they're so good is from the moment of meeting and building rapport and caring about me, asking for my problems. So you're able to use that to be able to build it. Like the person, the person can do that invisibly. Oh, that like that elegance to me. I'm in awe of it when I experience it. And very few people have that because they switch gears too fast. Right. What does it sound like to be a bad salesperson? It sounds robotic because you haven't learned the lyrics off by heart. So then I can see you thinking, I can see you thinking, I can see you thinking, I can see you in your head going. Now I'm going to switch to scarcity right now. And I can see it and I can hear it. And that is a problem. Like you said, when they've done it a thousand times, it's like, look, look at someone who sings a song when the, sorry, I use a lot of music because I love music, but look at someone who's singing a karaoke song and you're singing in the car and your friends singing their favorite song. And then when it gets to the chorus, they're like, they don't know the words, but the person who knows the words singing confidently, the music, it sounds great. To me, that's an example of someone who's done the work, knows the lyrics, knows the movements, knows the gestures. And it looks so beautiful and natural versus someone who's still learning. It's clunky. They miss some words. They hum the tune wrong. They, so I think someone who's great at it has taken these songs out and played them hundreds and thousands of times. Yeah. And they can improv within it because you've got to improv within it. Because I think great sales is also jazz.
Speaker 3Yeah. It's a good one. It's a good way to explain it. Yeah. Because it feels unexpected. It doesn't, yes. It doesn't feel like, you know, what's coming next.
Speaker 2Yes. And then a great salesperson also adjusts to the genre of music that I like. They don't just like, they don't cause they don't just play rock when I'm not into it. I think that's also what's jarring for me. You know, when you meet somebody like, Hey, how can I help you, man? What's going on? What can I get for you today? Hey, let's make a deal happen. Let's make a deal happen. Right. And that works for some people. That would, I just, Oh, I can't do that.
Speaker 3I like this idea of thinking about what will actually undermine you when you communicate. And you've talked about this before, but if you really want to have no credibility, you want to be undermined at every turn. You've talked about using the tonality of uptalk. Can you explain what that is?
Speaker 2Australians have a massive problem with this. When I first came to America, I would pitch my communication services to the fortune 500 like this. I'd say, I've been teaching communication now for the last 10 years. I'm certain that I'll be able to help you solve all of the communication issues. You end your sentences on a high pitch. Now, Australians do it psychologically because of humility, because of tall poppy syndrome. Don't want to be arrogant. So as a result of that, you know, you know, it's all right, mate. Cause if you listen to Australians, they're naturally talked about that. Yeah. How you going, mate? Yeah. You're doing all right. Yeah. We're doing good. It's embedded in our culture. I had a client who then said, honey, you sounded like you've never taught communication a day in your life. I'm going to let, I'm going to, I'm going to let you pitch our team again, but you have to show us how good you are. Whereas I was trying to be humble because in Australia, we really value that, right? So then if I get rid of the uptalk and I ended on a lower pitch, it sounds completely different. It sounds like this. I've been teaching communication for the last 10 years. I'm certain I can help you solve all the communication issues. Just from doing that. If you just listen to that, one sounds like, I'm lying and questioning my own credibility. One sounds like I'm certain. And that's why when it comes to communication, it could be one simple thing you do in sales that completely transforms the way your customers and your clients perceive you. And that's why it's so scary that if you don't have self-awareness, that one uptalk, that little one thing you do could be the very thing that undermines you. Just one thing. And it's wild how one thing can transform how people perceive you completely.
Speaker 3How much does the average person prepare on what they're going to say, as opposed to how they're going to say it? And why is that a mistake if it's wrong?
Speaker 2Most people spend the majority of their time writing out what they're going to say. And they already make a mistake the moment they go to write. Because when you're writing, you're using the written language to write. And the written language is naturally more formal. Then as a result, you see people at conferences. And the reason they're disengaged the moment they start their speech is because they say, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our 23rd conference. I'd like to first of all formally welcome the. And then everyone switched off completely. So you've got to be careful. If you're going to write the content first, which is people spending 80 to 90% of their time focusing on just writing the content, and then maybe they spend 5 to 10% practicing it, you're writing it in the written language. You've got to learn how to write in the spoken language. Whereas when someone greets you at a conference, hey, great to see all your beautiful faces. Can you believe we've done this for 23 years in a row? That people connect to that. Because there's a difference between the written language and spoken language. So you've got to make sure you learn how to write in the spoken language. And the problem there is, if you're spending 90% on the content, and then you wait until the night before or the week before, and then you're saying to yourself, shit, I need to practice this. And then how do you practice? Well, most people, when they practice, they grab their script, and they go, good morning, everyone. It's so good to be here. Can you believe we don't put the 23rd time? How you practice is how you deliver. So then if you're practicing in a monotonous way, you'll deliver in a monotonous way. Why do people use a let tone? It's because when they practice, they're sitting with their script in front of them. So they feel like they need that. Why do people pace when they speak? Because they were pacing in front of the mirror when they were rehearsing. So you've got to understand, right, first of all, get the music right. Get it in the spoken language. Then when you practice, read it as if you're there. So when you've got it, it's like, hey, it's so good to see all your beautiful faces. It's so crazy. We've done this for 23 years in a row. Do that 10 times vocally. So when you do that 10 times vocally, high levels of effort during rehearsal leads to high levels of retention. The more effort you put into something, the more likely you are to remember it. Where's the way I'm reading it like this? Low levels of effort leads to low levels of retention, right? So you do that for 10 times. You'll be shocked how much you remember just from doing that. And then once you do that now, now that you've got the content pretty much down, now have dot points, now practice delivering it, now practice body language. What do I want to be doing with my body, right? So when you say 23 years, can you believe we do 23 years? Cool. Now you're practicing the body language. Now you're practicing the instrument. Whereas often people don't practice that at all. And they wonder why they get on stage and they're just playing a beautiful song, but they're playing it poorly.
Speaker 3It's so true. Yeah. My big pet peeve is the reading of the slides.
Speaker 2Oh, so, and then you leave the words all on the slides.
Speaker 3Oh, it's yeah. You leave the words on the slide and you read them and you do it monotone. Uh, and you do it sort of, oh yeah, there we go. Those are like, that's the way to have nobody take you seriously. Even if you're a PhD physicist, I sometimes almost think about it. Like, um, do you, have you ever seen those videos where there's the man in the subway and he's playing a violin and it's a beautiful song and he gets like 50 cents and a couple of, of dollars. And then later you find out this, you know, violinist is headlining X, Y, Z, Madison, Square Garden. The ticket price is like $500. He was actually playing beautifully but didn't look the part wasn't in the right space and so was thought to be something else completely and so um environment matters yeah it does it's the power of place um
Speaker 2i had the same experience i have a pear tree at home and i've got a gardener and i had this picture and i hate i hated the pear tree but man this pear tree sucks my apple trees are so much better and he's like no no it's not the tree man you planted it in the wrong spot right it needs shade it needs protection from the image so we uprooted it and we put it somewhere else now beautiful pears right beautiful it's a beautiful tree so i think for a lot of people listening sometimes too environment is so critical like what a beautiful beautiful kind of video you just explained i think i think some people uh play their instrument beautifully maybe you're in the wrong environment yeah
Speaker 3it's a good point let's imagine the opposite so let's say you're sitting it's small scale you're in a meeting people keep interrupting you talking over you you can't be taken seriously yep what would you do
Speaker 2the can't be taken seriously part maybe you don't sound serious maybe you're focusing too much on being warm maybe there's too much of that and i love this is where my world and vanessa's collides where vanessa speaks about competence and warmth maybe you're playing your instrument with your body language too much in the warmth category maybe maybe there's too much placator maybe there's too much oh no it's okay anything's fine you know i'm okay with that maybe you need to play in stronger now here's the idea that i have right so maybe from an instrument standpoint learn how to play it with more confidence and then you can play it with more confidence and then you can play it with more confidence and then you can play it with more confidence and then you can play it with more so if you're in a boardroom meeting the reason why people interrupt you is because you're easy to interrupt you're so easy to interrupt and you're easy to interrupt when you have low vocal presence and low physical presence so what can you do if we're sitting around a boardroom when it's your turn to talk stand just say to the if you feel weird about it because no one's standing then just prime the conversation hey listen everyone i've been sitting all day do you mind if i stand for my part great now you've created a reason for me to stand for my part so if you're and everyone's going to say no one's going to say no shut up vin sit down and no one stands in this team no they'll let you stand so as you stand now you've got physical presence now people don't interrupt why because physically as long as i'm standing i'm still talking so you pair the standing now with vocal presence we've talked about and physical presence and and when you when you play it out you know if i was sharing an idea and i was sitting down like this this is so easy to interrupt anybody can interrupt this but if i'm standing and i said i'm not going to interrupt hey listen i've got a really cool campaign i want to share with you all for the book we're about to launch and you're standing and you're doing that volume gestures gosh you become so much more difficult to interrupt and you can also set context if you know that the team always interrupt you you can even set one more thing which i've done it's like hey everyone i know we're we're we're on a tight schedule i'm gonna give myself five minutes all right and then i'd love to take some questions from all of you at the end okay so i know you want to share some thoughts but i'm going to take the idea set the frame and then go into it and then take your five take your five
Speaker 3that's really good i also like those because they're not that complicated no it's so everybody can stand up and everyone could set a frame of minutes and
Speaker 2everyone can use more volume
Speaker 3yeah and you can layer the more complicated things on top of it but start with something that would be hard to fail with i think
Speaker 2that's really smart and you need the reps you need the reps in low risk environments before you do in a high risk environment because in a boardroom meeting with your boss and all your senior leaders so you start playing with your instrument out in the wild so if you're normally someone who's very quiet instead of paying for your gas at the where you pump it here in america you have that that's freaking amazing in australia we still got to go in right so when you go in to pay use a really strong volume just go hey mate before i go in do you have any chocolates with nuts in them i'm not allergic love them love just want to check before i come in use a really strong volume i just boom comfortable you might go red in the face but that's you practicing vocal presence so find find low risk environments catch an uber that takes 45 minutes talk to the dude talk to the gal in there for 45 minutes volume gestures everything stories the five pocket the five stories you got in your pocket practice on an uber driver they have to listen if they want five stars right they have to listen and if they laugh you give them a tip so to create opportunities for you to practice in low risk environments don't just immediately go in and practice in a low risk environment go into that and step because it's like you you're an inch a musician who plays their instrument for the first time it's not going to sound good it might do more damage than good so i like to call them fun neutral ears people who have no preconceived ideas of who you are test on them low risk yeah now i want
Speaker 3to talk about one last thing maybe two um what you wear but how important is what you wear and how you dress if you want to be taken seriously or you want to communicate well i have a question i have a question i have a question i have a question i have a question
Speaker 2i have a simple answer to this i don't know and i say that to you because my wife dresses me so every podcast that i've been on on this book tour my wife has set out exactly 10 outfits for me i love this because the thing is if you left it to me trackies in a t right i don't even
Speaker 3know what a track is is that a track
Speaker 2suit track pants you know how trackies are oh you're gonna learn some of your australian style no no no no no it's more more more kind of yeah more kind of degenerate kind of gamer don't go out yeah got it like sweatpants yes the baggier the baggier the more comfortable my wife's laid them all out and she goes oh when you go on this one make sure you contrast the dark to the light make sure you do and i have pictures of me in my phone so i can remember what goes with what because if i'm traveling i can't remember so my wife does it so i have to say i don't know because i for the life of me cannot work it out i just can't work it out yeah and and i i say that for another reason too when you're listening to me do this with you you're maybe 30 minutes in 45 minutes in with us now me saying i don't know the answer to that question did that completely destroy my credibility for the listener and to you do you think that oh no i can't i can't kind of listen to any of the advice that i've shared on divorce and body language and more because the guy's he's an idiot doesn't know anything you don't do that i i hope you find it a little bit refreshing because this is the first time i got to say i don't know because i've never been asked that it's okay to not know right i think it's all right it doesn't whereas we have this this fear of what if they ask me something i don't know what if they ask me something i don't know the answer to it what's going to happen to my credibility it's all right i think it's so refreshing to be able to say those words and say it confidently i don't know but i will find out i don't know but now i'm more curious about asking my wife the question how do you know how to put these together i've just kind of leaned on her
Speaker 3for it i also think it's lovely because you're telling the people who are listening to you that don't know all these things you've just talked about you're telling them listen i don't know about this one so what do i do i go to somebody else yes i talk to another person i have her give me feedback and we implement the feedback and so you know whether they they listen to the advice and then they film themselves or they film themselves plus they go talk to their significant other to say how did that go yeah i think that's a really beautiful
Speaker 2mirror yeah that's right um i listened to exactly what she said so this is exactly what she told me to wear for this one yeah i'm a good student but do you have any thoughts on this because i think you dress beautifully i think you dress really well because it's it's it's it's beauty that can be taken seriously that also has power which i think is a cool mix yeah
Speaker 3it's surprisingly hard to do um i i'm a little bit like you and then i might i actually don't really care i'm not really into clothes or fashion really um but years ago when i wanted to build bigger businesses do bigger things is that the way that you look is just the fastest indication of how somebody can categorize you yeah and so if i didn't want to be right but i wanted to win i better dress for the part that i want and so there's lots of studies and data that show you know the more pulled together you are the more professionally dressed you are the more you actually make just like period writ large two humans exact same uh skill set exact same background and you know you're not going to be able to do the same thing you're not crowned if you are more pulled together yeah and you dress well as evident as evidenced by like personal grooming plus outfit aka professional attire you'll make more salary um pricing on whatever product you sell than the person uh just from just from they say the percentage difference yeah i believe for women we should check my homework on this but it was something like for women it's like a 37 increase 37 and for men it's 15 so it's less for men than women there's also a scale of attractiveness as measured by symmetry and so the more symmetrical you know your face is uh the the higher paid and i believe there's a book um about it that is um i can't remember the name but something about like the economics of beauty short book but um i think you have to ask yourself also like is it fair i don't know you know does that seem does that but again is any of this fair or can you just play the instrument or the tool you know i don't know i don't think a hammer or a nail is inherently good or bad it just is a tool do you want to use it you know and you just
Speaker 2got to choose what games you want to participate in 100 it's up to you you don't have to play the game that's right some people do wear trackies in a tee yeah right but then when my wife puts together the outfits for me i'm like oh i like that yeah that's cool i like that right and and i would say from the perspective of communication when i think about it like you said visual image right when people see you they make assumptions about who you are so they go oh this person seems well put together they seem professional they seem confident but then that's assumptions when you open your mouth and you speak speak and you reveal your vocal image now they will adjust those assumptions they'll go yeah but they're not nice seem really confident but the moment they spoke it's like yeah how you going what do you want they go oh yeah they're not nice they look they're smiling they seem so friendly but they're not or sometimes it's the other way don't look like a professional but then the moment they open their mouths you go oh wow that's somebody that's someone okay don't be fooled by what they were that's somebody right so i think they're both important and when you you can stack the odds in your favor depending on the game you play might as well give yourself
Speaker 3the advantage it's so good yeah before we forget how to connect i'm so excited i'm going to be handing out this book to my team this is so useful it's really hard writing a book especially a good one oh man it's so thank you for taking the time i'm so excited to get this out in the world so the book is now out everywhere your first book and i think there'll be a lot of people that are going to get more of what they want out of life from reading this bad boy thanks for adding it thanks where else uh do you like people to follow you i love your youtube and your instagram too
Speaker 2so my handle on youtube and instagram is askvin a-s-k-v-i-n-h thank you for that
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