S1E13: Simon Sinek, best-selling author and inspirational speaker

Hello and welcome to Pitch Masters. This week I interview the inspirational Simon Sinek and pick his brain on everything in the pitch process. Ideation, storytelling, relationships, pitch decks, nerves, making mistakes and much more. He also talks me through his pitch to get start with why I published and the genesis of the golden circle. And so without further ado, I'm Danny Fontaine and this is Pitch Masters. I hope everybody's listening and that you share this with the world. Simon Sinek, thank you so much for joining me. Now, I was going to introduce you, but I'm intrigued about how you introduce yourself, perhaps to an audience who have never even heard of you. There are multiple ways I do it. There's short form and long form. If I'm sitting next to someone on a plane and they say, "What do you do?" For example, I'll say, "I teach leaders and organizations how to inspire people." And if they believe what I believe, they hear the word inspire and they go, "Cool, how do you do that?" And if they don't believe what I believe, they say things like, "What kind of companies?" And that's a very quick conversation. Very often when I'm standing in front of a large audience and people ask me to introduce myself, I say, "I wake up every single day with a very clear sense of why I get out of bed in the morning. It's to inspire people to do the things that inspire them. And I have a very clear sense of the world I'm trying to build. I imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. I believe that the best way to build that world is through leaders. And so my career is devoted to finding, celebrating, supporting the leaders that I think are more likely to build that world. Another way I put it sometimes is there's an entire section in the bookshop called Self Help, what we need. But there's no section called Help Others. And what we need is the Help Others industry. And so I've devoted my career to building the help others industry and teaching people the human skills they need to help each other. So here's what I'm thinking. I want to get straight into it. So we're going to talk about pitching, pitching ideas and convincing an audience. Right. No matter what size. Yeah. Now doing this can involve a ton of different facets. And usually on the show, I have experts from specific fields. So body language coaches or behavioral scientists or storytellers. But I think that you probably have some insights into all of it. And so I'm thinking that you and I could go on a journey together through pitching from the seed of an idea through to presenting to an audience of thousands. How does that sound to you? That's good. Okay, cool. So first open question. Yeah. How do you come up with ideas and how do you know which ones to become obsessed with? First of all, I think everybody has ideas. The problem is people don't capture those ideas. So I walk around with a notebook in my back pocket. If you prefer to keep things on your phone, do that. People, you know, put a notebook by your bed. You know, people have ideas all the time. But they have them at times when they're not sitting at a desk. That's the problem when all the resources are there. You know, there's a there's an important sort of little bit of biology. You have to understand about the production of ideas, which is our conscious brains. The part of our brains that we access when we access our expertise or when we weigh the pros and cons or we sit in the brainstorming session to think about a solution. That part of our brain, the conscious brain, has access to the equivalent of about two feet of information around us. Our subconscious brains have access to the equivalent of about 11 acres of information around us. So all of the conversations and movies and books and everything gets stored somewhere. It's just not accessible when we want it. But when a question is raised or a problem shows up, we can think about it with our conscious brains, but our subconscious brains will continue to ruminate in the background. And that's why when you're in the shower or you go for a run or you're driving or you go for a walk, all of a sudden lightning strikes and it's like the idea just shows up. The solution just shows up. Now your your brain won't offer you solutions to problems that don't exist. You're not solving somebody. You're going to only solve real problems in your life or questions that have been raised. That's the value of the brainstorming session is to raise the problem, to go through the expertise and then walk away. And the someone will come up with the best solution a week later in an opportunity in time. That's usually why ideas show up that way. It's not mythical or magical. It's just the subconscious brain doing its work. I know that. And so I do two things. One, I create that space for my subconscious brain to do its thing. So for example, when I go to the gym or when I go for a walk, I don't bring my phone. I'm not having phone calls while I'm going for a walk. I'm allowing my brain to do nothing. When a friend of mine and I'm at dinner goes to the bathroom, I don't pull out my phone while they're at the in the toilet. I just sit there uncomfortably and look out at the room. And sometimes you notice thing that spurs an idea. I create blank space. I go wander through museums. I create blank spaces. I'm okay with boredom. You know, I don't have to be constantly engaged because when we're constantly engaged, we're turning off that subconscious brain and not allowing it to do its work. So number one is I allow for space for ideas to happen. And number two, I capture them. I write them down in one place. I know where to go to revive them. Some of them are stupid ideas. Some of their pointless ideas. And what ends up happening when I when you asked you asked one and an idea big enough to write a book, it's when I start to realize that that idea is recurring. And I find myself using it in conversations and somebody saying something and I realized the idea that I had actually contributes to that. And now the idea is building and I'm taking notes again. Like last night I went out for dinner, I shared an idea. Then they said something and I had another idea. I wrote it down in the same place. I wrote the original idea. So they're connected. And I'll theme those pages in my phone. So all my ideas about control, for example, they're all in one place. So it's number one is allowing space for ideas to happen. And number two is capturing them, capturing them, capturing them. Some of them suck. It's when you start to find connection and patterns and all those random little ideas, you know, a bigger idea. Have you ever ever tried to get further in touch with your subconscious? So Edison used to sleep apparently with bull bearings in his hands. So as soon as he went in just before he went into the deep sleep hit, dropped them and record his ideas and Dali used to do these things with whatever drugs to kind of again, getting in that kind of beta sleep stage where you're even more in tune with your subconscious. I don't think it's the same for everyone. And so it's really more of a challenge of finding out when it's like, for example, if you find, if you notice a pattern that you have all your best ideas when you go for a run, then make sure you always go for a run. Run more. If you find that it's when you go for a walk, go for a walk. Me, a lot of my ideas happen in conversations. So it's very important for me to meet new people and talk about new things because that's when I have my idea. So I have like, COVID was hard for me because I wasn't meeting new people. And so I wasn't having people like, so what do you, you have two years? What book did you write up a COVID? I'm like, nothing. I wrote nothing because I've had no ideas because I haven't talked anyone. So you have to know what your thing is, you know, for me, taking a long shower, you know, I have to be responsible with, I live in California, I can't take too long a shower. But I get lost in that in the monotony of the sound of the water. So by the way, I also know when I sit in a quiet room, I play white noise when I'm awake. So I'll play the noise of an airplane or rain when I'm just sitting in a room because I'm recreating that white noise of a shower that I know produces ideas. One of your most famous ideas is of course, start with why. Do you remember the moment when you first drew three circles and wrote why in the middle? Was it like divine intervention? Divine intervention is never a divine intervention. All of these things are evolutions. Occasionally, you know, there is a like, oh my god, and that's a leap in the idea. But the idea usually evolves. And the golden circle and the concept of why very much was an evolution. It started up as in my attempt simply to explain why some marketing works and some marketing didn't. And I looked at the patterns of good marketing and realized there was a pattern. And the original model was why, what how? And then I went to a dinner party and somebody's dad was a neuroscientist and they started telling me about basic neuroscience and I thought it was interesting. Went home and started googling and reading more about it and realized, oh my goodness, my little idea that I have over here about why marketing works and how the brain works perfectly overlap. Oh my goodness, it's not why marketing works. It's how people work. And then I went to see a neuroscientist because I don't know, I'm not a neuroscientist. And I said, can you double check the biology before I start going around saying this is biologically accurate. And he said, and he sort of I spent two days with him unloading all of my ideas. And he came in sheepishly on the on the second day and said, there's a mistake. I said, go ahead. He goes, if you want it to match the brain, it has to be why, how what? I said, done, done. The explanations were all the same, but now the order was biologically accurate. And it made more sense to me now also. Like now I think about like duh. Of course it makes more sense. You know, the idea at my point is the ideas refined because I tested them, I reevaluated them, I shared them with people, I allowed people to throw spears at them. And I think where ideas die is when somebody becomes pig headed that they've figured it all out and any input from the outside is stupid. Now that doesn't mean I listened to all of the input but I evaluated it all of it and if it could make the idea better, I of course took it. So it was an evolution, it was absolutely an evolution and it and it made more and more sense to me and it got to the point where it felt like divine intervention. It got to the point where like, oh my god, now I've created something that has actually has value but it took me a little time to get there. Did you have a dream it was going to turn into what it has done? Nothing about my life was in any plan or existed in my imagination. No, zero. My I was a marketer who thought I was going to start a marketing firm and have some moderate to good success building my little marketing firm and having a bunch of good clients and maybe having a few employees. That was the vision. Nothing about my life was expected or anticipated in any way. What about now? Do you have a plan now? No, I don't have a plan. I do have vision though. You know, and I think the problem with plans is plans are only as good as far as you can see. Right? So I'm in New York and I want to get to California. I can develop a plan of which roads I want to take and maybe build in some metrics for how fast I want to get there and average speeds I need to go in a average distances I need to travel and if I fall short I can try and make it up the next day but you know, and I have to watch how much sleep I'm going to get and consider, you know, road works and things like that. That's a plan. Right? I don't have those because my problem with those is they can never consider all of the factors. So for example, the weather or the fact that road doesn't exist anymore even though it's on your map when you plan it. And so what ends up happening is you end up stuck because the plan didn't go according to plan. Right? I like I think of vision. Right? So I imagine a world you heard me. I imagine a world in which the vast majority of people inspired safe and fulfilled. You heard it. I don't know how to get there. And so I'm more opportunistic. So I'm you can keep the same analogy. I'm traveling across the country and I know the direction I'm going in and if somebody comes to me and says I have an airplane that can fly thousands of miles, you know, hundreds of miles an hour. Do you want to go with me? I go, oh my god. Yes. The problem is it's flying in the wrong direction. Whereas I'm much more directionally oriented. I'm realizing that I've screwed up my analogy because I put the destination. When most people put a plan, they put the speed and distance they want to go without destination. You know, I want to make a million dollars. I want to make a million dollars a year. I want to make it by the end of the year. I want to make this many sales. I want to get this many customers. It's all metrics driven. And so you create plans to hit a metric, but you're not actually considering, okay, why does that metric matter? And that's really important. Think of it like a retail organization. We're going to only open 20 new shops this year. Why? Because that's our growth plan. So we have our plan. We're going to build our plan according to our plan. And here's what we're going to do. And by the real estate. No, no, no, no, no, but the problem is your opening shop so quickly, you're hiring too quickly. You're not training them properly and you're hiring the wrong people. They're all going to be a disaster. Right? Where if you realize that growth is a dial, you say, you know what, we're screwing it up. Let's just open three shops. And the question is, why are we opening three shops? Because we want to offer people the best retail experience they could possibly have. 20 was our ambition, but it's we're going to, but it doesn't meet the vision. So I think we become too obsessed with making plans to hit a metric rather than figuring out a vector to get to a destination. Does that make sense? It does. It makes a lot of sense. It's also important for us to talk about why as it goes to pitching because what makes a great pitch is starting with why and I'm living proof of it. So what about in a so why work for IBM, right? Huge corporation as smaller cogs in a huge machine responsible for going off and selling different parts of products and services. Yeah. Should we all have our individual vision within our part of a business, do you think in that sense? It can go both ways that the only requirement is you have to believe what you're selling. Like if you're only there for the cash, then you're as good as your salesmanship, but but you probably won't find joy in what you're doing. You're probably not building close relationships with your colleagues and co-workers. You're probably too preoccupied with who stole your leads and stealing other people's leads and you know, because you're not driven because you believe in the cause or the company and you don't see the call or or you don't see the company's products as helping you fulfill your cause or the company's culture helping you fulfill your cause. You're just there for the cash and so you're going to be a very finite minded driven human being which has short term success, but it has some it had some costs, you know, some serious cost associated with it. I think it's very important. One of two things either you love the company, you love their vision and you can sit down in the pitch and go, I'm here not because I necessarily have an affiliation to the, like we sell a widget that like, like if you're a toilet salesman, like I don't have a visceral love of toilets, you know, but what I tell you what I do love is I love the company I work for and this company is built on, I mean, I'll give you a real life example actually, I don't even have to have a hypothetical, the company WD40, they make lubricant, I mean, that's based, they're one, basically one product company. Nobody is living their childhood dream, selling industrial lubricant, right? No one, right? When I grew up one day, all hinges were never squeaky, like no one zero, right? Yeah. But it is such a magical company that believes in people and create such an environment of love and that when you show up with, you know, a WD40 salesperson say, "Listen, I love this company. I love this company more." You've never met a company in my life that cares more about its people, that teaches us how to take care of each other, that operates with high integrity, that operates with, with high ethics. I, like, if I got offered a higher paying job somewhere else, I wouldn't go because I want to be here. It's a lot to me to be in the environment like this. And I can tell you for that same reason that when I show you a product, you tell me it does the same thing as a competitive product that might be slightly lower price. The question is, how do you know the ingredients that they're using? How do you know their manufacturing process? Do you know that they're hurting their people along the way of building it? And I can tell you because it is the reason I love working here, that this product is literally the highest quality ingredients that exist on the marketplace because integrity is actually the thing that we live and die by. So look, if you're trying to save just a buck or two and that's all you care about, go use the competitors product. It is absolutely cheaper. And don't worry, when it runs out and it sucks and things start to break because they're shitty ingredients, I will be here and I will be excited to see. But it's your choice. Yeah. That's a pitch when you can find visceral connection with the organization. Right? When you can start with, I love my job. You're already ahead of the game. And that's what starting with why is, you know, I'll give you a real life pitch of the difference between starting with why and not starting with why. Okay? Being on a business pitch is exactly the same as going on a date. Right? Okay. You're sitting across the table from someone. You're hoping to impress them so that they will go out with you again so that they will buy you. So just, right? You're pitching yourself. Right? So let's take our hypothetical data. Let's call them Dan, just hypothetically. Right? And Dan sits across from this pretty girl that his friends introduced him to, right? And this is how the date starts. I'm extremely rich. I know a lot of famous people. I go on TV all the time, which is really good because I'm really good looking. And yeah, I'm done pretty good for myself. The question is, does Dan get a second date? Now it's so obviously a bad date that we laugh at it, right? Now think about how most business pitches go. Our company is the biggest in the marketplace. We're a very successful company. You should come visit our offices sometime. They're absolutely beautiful. You may have seen our advertising with the celebrity endorsements. Now if we know instinctively, that was a shitty first date. Why on earth do we think that's a good sales pitch? Right? Now the irony is, the irony is the girl's friends said to her, you got to go out with this guy, Dan. He's really good looking. He's really rich. He's really successful. And she went, okay, right? So it might be like this, you should take this pitch meeting. It's a really big company that's got really big products. It gets you in the door, isn't what makes the sale necessary. We don't know what gets people in the door. That's hocus, pocus. It might just be timing. It might be bored. It might be because they're trying not to go to another meeting. Who knows what it is. Maybe they're just curious and like to keep their eyes on the market. Maybe they're trying to use you as leverage to squeeze the vendor they actually want. You never know. So don't assume that you're ahead of the game just because you got the meeting. Yes, it's great that you got the meeting. It's great that you got the date. So now let's go back to Dan, right? And let's let him start with why this time. Same scenario. He sits down and says, um, I I love my job. I love my life. I love my job. I get to wake up every single morning and work for an organization that is singularly devoted to a vision of creating a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. And here's the best part. I've actually made a lot of money doing all of this. And I got to, like, go get to go and reveal the time, which is kind of fun because I'm really good looking and everything. And I just like, I like unexpectedly did really well for myself. Does he get a second date? And the answer is yes, right? And he said all the same things. All of the product, all the product stuff is still in there. All the rational stuff is still in there. But it came second, not first. He wasn't trying to convince or sell. He was simply trying to say who he is and what he stands for and what he loves. And then all of the other stuff was proof that it's working. And a good sales pitch works exactly the same way. It's a human relationship. And I think we forget that. We forget that it's about two human beings looking for common ground. There are some business relationships that are simply transactional, you know, which I need a product. You have that product. I just, I don't care. I just want it the cheapest and the fastest. And if you give it to me cheap and fast, I'll buy it from you. If somebody else gives it to me cheaper or faster, I'll buy it from them. I just don't care. That's called commodity, right? And the problem is sometimes we act like commodities, which is we sell on price and timing. And we turn ourselves into commodities as opposed to building relationships, right? And there's nothing wrong with commodity transactions. There's nothing wrong with simply buying and selling baseless settled criteria, but don't trick yourself and think that there's going to be any long term relationship there. Because the only way you can maintain a long term relationship is keep making your price lower and lower and lower, which means your margins get smaller and smaller. And eventually you can't sustain your business and you got a business and then they give it to the next person. So it's just a stupid race to zero is what it is. But it works in the short term and don't confuse that with success. Success is when you aren't the cheapest and you aren't the fastest and you screwed up and they still do business with you. Right. Because they believe in you. Correct. They trust you. They trust you. You know, people pick up if you work for a large company like IBM, they may or may not trust IBM, but at the end of the day, they're going to pick up the phone and call their sales revenue. You said that. Well, the company blah blah. You said that. I trusted you. And trust can break. And so a good trusting relationship isn't that everything's going to go perfect. It's that you treat it like a real friendship, like a real relationship, which is you pick up the phone first. The sales are picks up the phone and says, something's going horribly wrong. Right. Right. I told you we can have another Thursday and that was true, but we have supply chain issues that we didn't expect. And I just want to give you the heads up. We're probably going to be three days late. And I'm doing everything I can to shorten that timeframe. I just want to let you know what's happening. It still went wrong, but the point is you're treating it like a relationship. So coming back to the pitch, let's assume, you know, we've just you wind me up and I just go, sorry. No, I love it. Let's say we're in a company we love and we have a product that we love and we have a vision as well. And, you know, we've got that first bit that we've just talked about almost that little ball of energy that will that will expel itself on our audience. If we're just honest about our own passion and our own vision. Yeah. But when we pitch, especially in business, we got a lot more time to fill. Yep. And a lot more things and a lot more detail and all that kind of stuff. Do you have any kind of structure you use or or process that you go through to kind of come up with a long form pitch? So I think one of the things we do is we don't read the room well, right? So I've seen this where because you have an hour, you've got every detail about every product and every nuance in the deck. And some people want that level of detail, but don't assume that everybody wants that level of detail, right? So you have to have it, but it doesn't have to be there. So when somebody says, do you have the numbers for what are the what the tensions of it are like? Yes, here it is. Click, click, click. So let we can go through that and I can take you through that, you know? But I think that a structured pitch when there's a deck, there needs to be homework that comes before it, right? Which is hopefully you've had the chance to interact with the potential client or customer and you've asked a lot of questions and you know this better than I do. The average bad sales pitch, the salesperson asks seven questions, the average good sales pitch, the salesperson asks 32 questions. You know, you've had your time to investigate. So when you come in, you can say, we've been in touch with your colleagues or we've been to or we know from dealing with your competitors, like there has to be education. You can't just come in blindly, right? And you can talk about the problems that you know you're trying to solve. And basically you're going on a story and it's getting more and more detailed as you go, constantly stopping if there's any questions, obviously. But if it's more, but I always find that when we, when we force people to read our slide, first of all, don't give the slides out in advance because they just read ahead because you want them to listen to you. And what I find the most big mistake is we make it about the deck. The deck is there to simply support our us. I know everything. I'm the sales guy. I know the product inside and out. I don't need a deck. So the deck is going to have very, very few words on it except for the pages that require a lot of detail that you asked for. So for example, the most important page that everybody screws up is the cover page, the front page, right? Usually it says, you know, it says a potential client's name, you know, company X, you know, a presentation on this date by this company, right? Well, what a waste of opportunity because the one slide that's up the longest is usually that cover slide while everybody's filing into the meeting and it's up on the screen or it's up on the zoom and everybody's waiting and everybody's reading that and it means nothing, right? Perhaps you put your vision up there creating a world in which a world is inspired, safer field or building the help others industry, how our company and your company can work together to advance a greater cause. So immediately before a word is spoken, you're setting a tone for why you're there and what you believe and the way I start my pitches, I very often ask the question, why did you take this meeting? And they look at me like, what? I'm like, you took time out of your day, you've got busy or things to do. You may or may not be in the market for my, my product in this exact moment. Why did you take the meeting? And they may talk about curiosity or something or they heard about me or something like that. And I go, okay, and now, and sometimes I switch it, sometimes I start, you know, but I want to always do both of those. I say, let me tell you why I took this meeting, right? Why it was important for me to come here today to get on a plane and fly across the country to have this meeting with you that I could have done over Zoom, but I wanted to be here. Let me tell you why this mattered to me. It's because I believe in creating a world in which blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I know the kind of company you are and I've done my research and I see the kind of culture that you that I've read about and I wanted to come and see, is that real or is it just marketing? Because if it's real, the potential that we could do things together and that would benefit both of us and the world is huge. Now at the very minimum, we might just sell each other a product and it's fine and it's good and it's a transaction. But the reason I came here is because I'm hoping that our vision is really actually aligned and there's something that we can build a foundation and build upon. Okay, now let me show you what I brought. So if you can see I'm creating goodwill and I'm setting a tone of curiosity and interest and humanity rather than product product, product price, price, price, timing, timing, and then and then I can go in any direction. I can go in as deep into the details as I want because the tone is set. Do you ever go down the route of the more negative emotions, fear, uncertainty, doubt, even if you're using them as a mechanism to contrast with excitement in the future? They work extremely well. They are manipulative by nature. Fear is a manipulator whereas optimism is an inspireer. I'm inviting people to join me. I'm not scaring people into doing the opposite. Right? So if I use fear, it's only as or if I use negativity, it's only in contrast to why I'm here. For example, say, look, I know where the marketplace is going. I mean, it is a scary time. Like resources are scarce. We don't even know what ingredients they're putting in these products. Like I am fully aware how scary and dangerous and I know you're in the receiving. You don't even know how to judge a company anymore. Like I kind of imagine being in your shoes where you don't even know what you're buying half the time. I get that. So I can talk about those things as a contrast, but I will not use fear as a mechanism to get what I want because it does work once or twice, but it also has a time limit. And like I said, if you want to not be a commodity, then you have to sell on something. You have to create invitations. So fear is a byproduct of honesty rather than as a tool itself for manipulation. They're coming to get you. It's like, you see this on the news all the time. You know, when they tease the news, at least in America, they'll say, you know, your kids can die from drinking tap water, tune it into the lamp. Right. You know, well, that's That's fears a manipulator. You can do business with the other company, but then your company will break and you will kill people if you use their product. If you remember, I made the comparison with WD40. It's like, "Look, I'm just telling you what I stand for. I'm going to be like, 'Go try somebody else if you want to try it.' If it works out great, but my prediction is we'll probably see you real soon." Now I'm not saying that that product is going to break things and kill things and I'm not using it to manipulate." The best salespeople, the best deal makers can walk away from any negotiation. The best salespeople have patience. Right? Because I know that this is the problem with what we talked about, which is metrics. Right? So I'll tell you a true story. There is a company years ago that I did some work for and the company shall remain nameless. I'll just tell you that the first initial of their name was G and the second initial was E. They wanted to understand loyalty of customers for this product. It was a silicone. They sold industrial grade silicone. It was a commodity. It actually was a commodity. Right? The only way you really could sell it was price and quality and service and features and that kind of stuff. They wanted to understand loyalty of customers. I went and did a bunch of research for them. I interviewed a lot of their customers, both good ones and bad ones and all of this. Here's what I discovered. The way they created the hierarchy where they considered loyal customers were people who spent the most money. So if you spent the most money, they considered you loyal. And because you were loyal, they gave you special phone numbers and they gave you access to scientists and they gave you technical counsel. Like you got way more bells and whistles if you were considered a loyal customer than if you were an unlawful customer, you got nothing. So I went out and I interviewed a whole bunch of their customers, big small, loyal unlawful and here's what I discovered. Which is they had customers who were buying strictly on commodity price. If GE was the cheapest, they bought GE. If GE wasn't the cheapest, they didn't buy GE. The problem is some of those customers bought big quantities and so they were considered loyal even though they literally didn't care at all about the company and didn't care about the phone numbers and didn't care about the technical advice and didn't care about anything. And then I found these other customers that were spending 10 grand a month consistently and when GE screwed up the delivery and it was like six weeks late, they still continued to do business with GE. And so I went back to GE and I said, you guys are idiots. You've got the whole thing wrong. We need to create a new hierarchy for what loyal is because if you give, you're going to A, you're going to get these, the commodity people anyway. If you gave them nothing, you're still going to get their business if you're the cheapest one. So you don't have to give them anything while you're wasting money where you have these super, super, super loyal customers at various ranges. And if you gave them some additional treatment, that $10,000 may go to $15,000 and you're actually going to extract more business from the loyal ones than the actual loyal ones than the actual non-loyal ones. And the director of the division at the time took me side and he said, your work is fantastic. You're 100% right. Your recommendations are absolutely spot on and I just want you to know we will be implementing none of it. He said, because if I follow your advice, you're right. We will absolutely build our business over the course of time, but you're not going to help me get my bonus at the end of the year. I'm not doing it. That's the problem, which is business is usually measured in quarters or years and we have to make the numbers work within a three or 12 month span and that is not a way to build loyalty. That's a way to drive short-termism and now GE, a company that was once great, is a shout of its former self and may not even survive. And I think that division GE silicone was sold off. My point is that's the problem with so much sales, which is we're not actually driven to build relationship. When I'm actually driven to create real loyalty, we're driven to hit a number. And so we're going to adjust our tactics and our strategies to meet the incentive structure not to actually build a long-term business. Where about in the business could GE have fixed that? Because you go, oh, this individual was just after his bonus. But then that's what individuals do and it wasn't him who chose what the incentive model was. How did you even start to move a tanker like GE in that sense? So you're right. First of all, it wasn't him. It was the culture of the organization. I mean, that was sort of everybody. He wasn't shy about it or a coy about it. He would say it in meetings and everybody just nodded their heads because they were all incentivized the same way. Now, you know, it's in a big large public company. It's problematic. You could go to his superiors and say, listen, you've incentivized my entire group for short termism, which we can do. We will do and we do do, right? But can we do an experiment where we change the incentive structure where you'll incentivize me over time, over a longer period of time, but you'll give me more of an incentive. So I'm taking the risk, but you got to give me the reward if I take that risk, right? So you'll, I'll either continue to make baseline. Don't worry about that. I'll lose money because I know how to sell my stuff, but I'm only to take a risk to help you build your build a stronger business. Now, the problems in public company, they don't care because their incentive is the stock price on the outside, pressures from Wall Street, you know, 27-year-old idiot analysts who are forcing companies to help them make their bonuses. Right. But he could have done an experiment with a product line or one or two salespeople or a group who are forward thinking. And then he could have gone to the company over two or three years and said, look at the differential of sales that I've been able to make by changing the incentive structure. I did the experiment myself, you know? He could have done it with a lower risk thing and then gone back up the chain of command. And he could still be squashed. Don't get me wrong. But at least he's got data on his side and he's got better sales on his side, right? I'm guessing a lot of the companies that you speak to do take on your ideas. Most of them, I hope, say, actually, yes, we'll try that. What is the greatest experiment that you've ever had permission to do? The one that came to mind quickly, they really kind of like, let go and freak out and let me just do my thing. Yeah. It was a fairly large company that called me up and said, we want your help to build a millennial training program, right? They wanted to teach leadership to their millennials, millennial employees, which is a few years ago. And I said, okay, here's how we're going to do it. And I understand the law of diffusion of innovations. It's my religion, the old bell curve, you know, which is if you have high performers, you're going to have a similar percentage of low performers and you have an average of a bell, right? And that's across any size population. And the law of diffusion tells us is that if you can achieve 15 to 18 percent market penetration, there's a tipping point and it goes mass market. But the problem is most of us aim all of our attention at the market, at the mass. And we ignore this tipping point, these early adopters that you're supposed to aim at first because they have higher risk tolerances, et cetera, et cetera. That's the very quick version. So I understand the law of diffusion. It's my religion. So they want me to develop a millennial training program for a company that's got offices around the world. And I'm supposed to build demand for this, right? So imagine what's going to happen. I know this is what's going to happen, which is here's how they traditionally do it. They traditionally do things. HQ develops some sort of program and then sends out an email and company-wide communication that says, this is the program and you will send all your millennials to this program. Your young employees will come to this training program and they can make all the pitches they want. It's really good for us. It's really good. It'll help us grow. Blah, blah, blah, blah. All this stuff, wonderful, wonderful pitch, pitch, pitch, sell, sell, sell, internal selling, right? And here's what's going to happen. All the phones are going to ring from all of the division leaders from all across the world and they go, are you absolutely nuts? I'm not letting my people leave for three days to come to your training program. We're too busy. Another time, no. That's normal, right? It's because they're ignoring the law of diffusion. So here's what I said. Number one, people have to apply, right? You don't just get given it because you've by virtue of your age. You have to apply to get into the program because with law of diffusion and early adopters, you want to create small barriers. We keep trying to remove all the barriers and you can just sign up online. And just click here, no, no, no, small barriers because you want to distinguish those who are willing to put in a little extra effort versus those who aren't. And they had to write an essay of why they thought they should be included in the program and we only had a hundred seats. And once we filled a hundred, we were done. So we had a little bit of scarcity and they had to do work. And we actually read all the essays. We could tell who was just phoning it in, right? And we read the ones that we thought were legitimate and we let them into the program. And some people never wrote the essay because they can't be bothered writing an essay. They would have signed up if it was just a click, right? So we had a hundred people who really wanted to be there and we allowed them to, we paid for them to fly in. They all had to come to New York for the, for the evening meeting, right? So it was after hours. Again, you see I'm putting little barriers, little bits of difficulty. Right. So I want people who really want to be there. And I put a simple rule that no one born before the year 1984 was allowed to be in the room. Which means leadership wasn't allowed to be there to watch. right? That freaked them out. I was the only person who was allowed to be there who was born before 84, right? Yeah. And the program was great and I gave them a seminar and it was absolutely fantastic. It was just a pilot, right? It was a fantastic class and I developed a whole class for leadership built for them. And at the end of the program, at the end of the seminar, I said, okay, this program doesn't exist anymore. You're the early adopters. I said, I want your help to build this program. So I'm looking for volunteers who are willing to help do this. And by the way, I can't guarantee that it's going to help your career. You're not going to be paid more and you still have to do your regular job back at work. This is going to be in addition. Who wants to sign up? I had 50 people sign up, like 50% sign up to help develop the program organically in their own regions. Okay? They all went back to work two weeks later. The sponsor of the program called me up furious with me. Simon, what did you do? I said, what? Why? What happened? He goes, all of the division heads from across the country are all calling me demanding that this program come to their region. Wow. I said, yes, that's called demand. You're welcome. You know? And that's, and so what people do is they, they, what most, what most organizations do is they force things out and they sell. But what I'm advocating here and for, see, I don't like the term pitch even, right? I like invitation. I'd like to create an invitation for us to, for you to join us in common cause. And we believe that we have a product or service that will, and I also believe, I also believe, and I say this out loud in meetings. I believe in not doing business with people who'd have to do business with you, right? Right. Right. Especially if you're young and you're starting up, like you're hungry, you need them more than they need you. That's an unhealthy balance. And that desperation, if that shows up in a pitch is very, very unappealing, right? And everything they say, you keep saying, yeah, I can do that. And you keep dropping the price. It's very unappealing. I like going into pitches with confidence. And I've been saying this even before I was like, when I had no money and I was like living hand to fist, and I would say things like, look, the reality is, if you don't, if we don't do business together, you'll be fine. Like your business will be absolutely fine. And if we don't do business together, I'll be fine. My business will be fine. But the reason for us to do business together is together we're actually both do better. Like we'll both be fine without each other, but we can do better with each other. That's my aspiration. You know, again, you hear me, I'm talking it constantly in terms of partnership and an invitation. I believe it's not about crafting a pitch was about push push push sell sell sell me me me. But by crafting an invitation like think about how you write an invitation for a birthday party or or or any kind of party, right? We're going to sunset crews. We're only taking the best people we know. We're going to have the best food. We're going to have the best music. We're going to look up at the stars. If you can come here are the dates. It's like we're creating we're creating it's we're creating something desirable. And it's the most important thing is it's about the it's about them, not about us. I have another story for you. Do you want this to me to keep going? I feel bad now that I've sort of hijacked your podcast. This is what all the best guests do. Trust me. Okay. But how do you come up with stories or find the right stories, the most powerful stories to tell at the right time stories can be true. They can be hypothetical or they can be metaphorical. And you just have to point out which one you're doing. Like when I made that told you the story about the dating clearly, I'm using an analogy. It's a metaphor, right? Like pitching is like dating. Here's an example, right? I told the story. I told the story. Not of a person who went into cellar product. I told the story who's of a person is on a date, but we can relate to it. And that's why metaphor is great. Metaphor is great because it allows people to understand the concept without getting hung up on the details of the fact that I'm of the industry. So but it allows you to step away. So if we're talking about a manufacturing process, I'm going to over here and talk about, you know, children making play dough, right? Where the point I'm trying to make is still true, but you're not going to get hung up on if I got a detail wrong about manufacturing process. Right. You can let go of all of that. So you allow people to get rid of that. So metaphors, I'm a huge lover of metaphors. Hypotheticals are totally fine. You just say, so hypothetically speaking, then you can tell a hypothetical story or you can tell a real story. And every story has a different point like this one helps me communicate these three or four things. And if you go listen to all of my stuff, you will hear, I repeat my stories all the time, right? Sometimes I come up with new ones, but I repeat them, but it's kind of like the grateful dead. It's never the same place. It's never the same playlist, sad list, sad list. Thank you. It's never the same set list twice, right? And it's because I'm using them as I need them. I'm using them interchangeably. I know no this story is really good for I know my story about dating is really good for selling. I know it's really good to explain starting with why I know it's extremely good at creating emotional connections. I can use it for if I need to communicate that the story that I'm about to tell I know is really good at explaining how marketing works. It's really good at explaining about finding insights. And it's also really good at explaining human behavior. So I can use this one whenever I want. And so you have to have a small compendium of stories and where you get good is telling those stories as if you're telling them for the first time every time. And so what I find people do, which is they're so used to telling the story, they race through it. They speak too fast because it's so familiar to them that they leave out all the color and all the detail. And they're just racing through it. So the other people, the other, the listening party actually can't hear or grasp the story because you're going too fast, right? Where I slow down when I tell my stories. And I actually enjoy the telling of them. It's like watching I've seen Star Wars so many times and I enjoy it each time. I know the story. I know the dialogue. And it's the same thing. I enjoy the stories I tell. I slow down because I'm enjoying it. I think the stories are funny when you see me smile or giggle. It's because I'm actually finding it funny or enjoyable, right? So and if you have that gift that you can be spontaneous, then then leverage the heck out of that as well. But it's totally fine to and the way my story is usually developed is I'll do it spontaneously once. Like it'll I'll tell a story that that answers a question for someone. And I'd be like, oh, that worked. And that's going to get stored. And that now becomes part of the, oh, every story I tell was not written. It was always spontaneous at some point because somebody asked a question and that spontaneously showed up in my head to answer their question or help them understand. And it worked so well. I've used it again and again and again and again. And if it doesn't work, I retire it. So yeah, stories are invaluable, of course. And people want to listen to stories more than anything else. So social animals. Okay. So here's my story. My story is it's about pitching as well. It's about making it about the customer, not about the seller. That's what it's about. See, sometimes I set up the story. Here's the lesson about to teach you, right? Let me give you my example. I do that sometimes as well. There's nothing wrong with leading the witness. So I wanted to prove I, I wanted to prove that all marketing worked exactly the same way, right? Whether you're a high tech company or a commodity, whether it was B2B or B2C, all marketing worked exactly the same way. And so I picked an extreme example. I picked somebody who was homeless and begging. And if you think about it, what they're doing is they are selling goodwill, right? Right. Which is when you see them begging on the side of the street, if you give them money, you feel good. If you give them nothing, you either feel bad or you feel nothing. In other words, you paid for the feeling of goodwill. So they are selling goodwill. That's what they're doing. And to, and, and because there's competition in the market, there's lots of people selling goodwill on the, on the street. They advertise themselves. They have a little sign, it's a little billboard, a little outdoor advertising that makes the case for them. I'm homeless. I'm hungry. I've got six kids. I'm a veteran. Whatever it is, they're hoping we'll distinguish them from someone else, which is the exact same as a computer company taking a big billboard out saying, here's our new computer. It's got more memory, a bigger screen, more dynamic sound, right? It's exactly the same. They have a transaction and they're trying to distinguish themselves from all the others. So I found a homeless woman who was willing to help me with my experiment. And I discovered that she makes between 20 and $30 a day. She will sit there for eight to 10 hours. So it's a, it's a, it's a work day, right? For eight to 10 hours of selling goodwill, she will make between 20 and $30. $30 would be a good day, right? With her sign. And I traded out her sign. I gave her a different sign. And the sign that I gave her, she made $40 in two hours. The sign that I gave her said, if you only give once a month, please think of me next time. Because when I ask people on the street, why don't you give? They said, they said two things. One, how do I know they're legitimate? And I can't give to everyone. So I simply answered the question. If you only give once a month, I know you can't give to everyone. I'll be here next time. I'm legit. But the most important thing was the sign was about the buyer, not about the seller. And when a computer company says, "More RAM, more memory, more this, more that," they're talking about themselves. It's about them, not about us. Microsoft many, many years ago wanted to understand why Apple was like eating up their PC market share on college campuses. And so they did tons of research to ask kids, "What do you want?" And kids said, "We want a bigger screen. We want to do gaming. We want great sound. We want great graphics." So Microsoft set up a fake store where they had all the different computer figurations. This one had a really big screen. They did all the different configurations to see which ones the college kids would buy. Guess which one they were all drawn to? The red one. [laughs] Well, because they made it about themselves. They said, "Well, we have all these features. Which of our features do you want?" They never said, "What is important to you in college?" They never said, "So tell us about what it's like to be a college kid." They went and said, "What kind of computer do you need?" "Well, that's about me because I'm selling computers." They never express any curiosity about the kids in their life. So what do you like being about being in college? Oh my God, it's so fun. I'm independent. What are the stresses and strains? Oh my God, it's like, everybody's like, "I find myself spending more time getting dressed and everything's so fashionable and blah, blah, blah, blah." And I decorate my room and like, I want everything to look good. I want everything to match. All of a sudden you realize that they're way more way more about how things look than how things operate. Right, right. They did the wrong research because they were looking, "Will people like us as opposed to I'd like to get to know you?" It goes back to human relationships. I'm going to tell you everything about me because I hope you like me versus I'm going to be curious about you because I want to know who you are and discover if I can give you something that will make you happy. So we screwed up in marketing. We screwed up in selling because we make ourselves the subject of the sales pitch. We rarely make the customer, the client, the subject of our sales pitch. Do you ever get nervous before you go on stage in front of a bunch of people? Yes, I do. Less now than before, but it still happens. The same question is, "Do I get nervous if I go into a pitch?" The answer is, "Of course." There's a lot riding on it. I've got a lot of hope. If I land this deal, it leads to other things. Of course, I can build it up of why I need this, or why I want this. What that does is create nerves. I have a little system that I use to combat that, which is every single time before I go into a meeting and every single time before I walk on stage, I remind myself I'm here to give. I have something that I know has value. I want to share that value. I'm okay of people. I actually walk in not expecting to make a sale. I'm expecting to make a relationship. When I used to do cold calls, I used to do cold calls, and my goal was never to make a sale on a cold call. Never. My goal on a cold call was to create a dynamic that they would take my call the next time. It's just to create a rapport. Obviously you have to build business in there at some point, but there was no pressure. There was no selling. There was no pitching. My goal on a cold call was simply to create a dynamic, or a first meeting. Sometimes a first meeting that was an invitation meeting. My goal was simply to create a dynamic where they would, if I called and said, "Can I come over?" They'd say, "Yes." "Hey, can I book another call with you?" They'd say, "Yes." That was my only goal. There was a mindset shift, and sometimes that's hard, especially for younger people who were going into a pitch, and you can say to them, "Don't worry. Just tell yourself to think a bit differently about it." They go, "I mean, yeah, I can try, but I hasn't helped my nerves. Do you have any more advice with people, especially maybe the overly nervous people about how they can start to really combat those?" Or how they can make that mindset shift more impactful and permanent. I was watching the Olympics a bunch of years ago, and I noticed a pattern, which is, "All of the journalists asked all of the athletes the same stupid question. Were you nervous or are you nervous?" And every athlete answered the exact same way. "No, I'm excited." And if you think about what the characteristics of nervousness are, it's your heart starts pounding, you start envisioning the future, you start getting clammy hands. If you think about what the characteristics of excitement are, is you envision the future, you get clammy hands and your heart starts pounding. And these elite athletes had learned to interpret those physical characteristics as excitement versus nerves. The reason the journalists are saying, "Were you nervous?" Is because they would be nervous. And so I realized that, and I did a little experiment on myself. I was sitting on a plane, and the turbulence was absolutely horrendous. I mean, like, seat grippy bad, right? And I realized I was getting nervous. I was tensing up, heart was pounding, envisioning the future, hands were getting clammy. And I said to myself, "Under my breath, this is exciting." And I realized it was instantaneous. It was instantaneous. And so what I would recommend to people whose default is nerves. Before you go in the meeting, say to yourself, "This is exciting." Like, this is so exciting. Like, I get to pitch. And like, think about it. Like, "Oh my God, I'm so nervous. This is the biggest client. This is the biggest company. If I don't make this, like, I can lose out on a promotion. Oh my God, I'm so nervous." Oh my God, this is so exciting. This is like the biggest customer out there, and they let me do it. And like, if I get this, like, I'll get a promotion. Like, this is really exciting. Like, the proof is the same. Yeah, the physical symptoms are the same. Physical symptoms are the same. You don't have to worry about the physical symptoms. They're all the same. But you do that. I'll do that. Like, I've had times where, like, I'm on a stage with some of the most wonderful public speakers in the world, and I feel like inadequate. And I'm like, "Oh my God, why the hell am I here?" Right? And then I go to myself, "This is so exciting." They let me be on the stage with these amazing people, and they're so much better than me, but they let me be here with them, like, "Wow." You know? So I think it's just reinterpreting the exact same data into excitement. And to literally say, "I'm here to give. I have something that I think is valuable, and I want to share with them." And this is really exciting. This is really exciting. And if it doesn't work out, then I'll move on to the next. And what about when something inevitably does go wrong? When you do this stuff a lot? Do you have any real nightmare stories about something that's happened to you during a picture, a speech, or a presentation? Yeah, if I say something that's untrue and somebody calls bullshit, is that happened? You know? Of course, it's happened to all of us. We said, "Well, this is actually, and somebody is actually, that's not how it is." Right. And you're like, "Well, well, well, when I check the data, you know, and we sort of back up." And I think having a sense of humor and being accountable is a very easy way to combat those things. You know? Which is like, you know what? You're right, and I'm an idiot. When I think you're 100% right, I apologize. I apologize. I apologize. You're absolutely right. So move on. Right? You've got to take accountability. You've got to have an, I'm sorry in there. You're absolutely right, I apologize. Because otherwise you're just shifting blame or blaming the circumstances or blaming, like the thing that drives me nuts, like an easy way to get thrown out of a meeting with me is when I find out errors of data, errors of something and somebody goes, "That was my assistant. That was my research analysis. That was the person who wrote the deck." I'm like, "I don't give a shit. You're the one sitting here presenting it. Either A, you didn't look at over first or B, you're going to throw one of your teammates under the bus. I do not want to do business with you." And when you're the front guy, you're on the hook, which means you're like, "I am so sorry. That is absolutely wrong. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for pointing to that. I'm sorry." So it's not about screaming and yelling at people. It's about taking accountability. But yes, when things go wrong for me, I tend to point them out even in the moment. Like you saw, like you've heard right at the beginning of this, of this. I was telling you a story and I made an analogy and I realized I actually screwed up the analogy a little bit and hurt myself and I went, "Oh, screwed up the analogy a little bit here. Let me back, let me backpell a little bit, correct the details to make it work. You'll see what I'm trying to get at." But it didn't just keep barreling and bulldozing through. I just called BS on myself. Do you remember the best pitch or presentation you've ever done? The one that everything fell in line and afterwards you just thought, "Oh boy, was that good?" I mean, I guess one of the biggest ones that was profoundly changed the course of my life was the first time I got to meet my publisher. I was a guy with an idea with no social media following. I hadn't built a big business. I hadn't written anything. I hadn't given a TED Talk. I hadn't done anything. And somebody else said you should meet this publisher and he was the God of Business Publishing. He was like the original publisher from Good to Great, like the God of Business Publishing and I got a meeting with him. And I'd say that pitch went pretty well. What did you do? Did you draw the golden circle? So I basically said, "Remember, I have an attitude, which is my attitude as I'm here to give." I know I have an idea that I think is really valuable and other people think it's valuable too, so much so that they wanted me to share it with a publisher. because I think I should write it down and share it with more people. So my desire to give something that I think is valuable has been validated, right? And I went in with the same attitude of anybody, if I was sitting at dinner with somebody and said, "Hey Simon, apparently somebody told me you have this new idea." I'm like, "Oh my god, let me show you, let me show you." Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Because I'm excited about it. I love it. And I treated it the same way. I believed I had something to do. I walked in. I was definitely nervous. He's a cramudge in. I literally sat down across the desk from him. He goes, "So what is it?" He says, "It literally, this is how my meeting started. It's only half an hour, so this better be good." That's how my meeting started. I only have half an hour, so this better be good. Right? And so again, turn nervousness to excitement. I go, "Okay, well, then let's jump right in. Let me get going because I don't want to waste any time. I got a sense of humor about it." Right? As opposed to going, "Oh my god, I can't do it in an hour, half an hour. I usually do this in an hour. How am I going to have an hour?" You're like, "That's not what happened." I'm like, "All right, well, let's get going. It usually takes me an hour, but we'll squeeze it into half and I will see what happens." Right? And I sat down and said, "And just sort of, I knew my stuff, and I gave it to him as if he was somebody in an audience. I gave it to him as if he was a friend. And after 20-something minutes, he started fidgeting. And I saw him and I'm like, "What are you okay?" He's like, "I have to go because I got to pick up my son, but this is really good." I said, "Your priorities in the right place. Don't worry about it. Go pick up your kid. We can follow up this another time or I can finish with one of your colleagues. Go. Very nice meeting you." He thanked me and he left. Three days later, I was offered a book deal. I never wrote a book proposal. And because, remember, I didn't show up to get something. I showed up to give something. I didn't show up to get a book deal. Of course, I knew what the stakes were. I'm not an idiot. But I also know that there were other publishers there. That if I screwed this one up, I'd hopefully get another deal somewhere else. Maybe it won't be as good a deal. Maybe not as good a publisher. But if I keep doing this enough, one of them will be stupid enough to say, "All right." So I know that. I know he's not the only publisher in the world, even if he's the best one. And so I went in with an attitude to give, not to get. And that's really important because coming up to the meeting gets take, take, take. I hope I get a book deal. Oh my goodness, it'll be amazing. This will change my life. Oh my god. What if, you're like, that's right up until the meeting. But as soon as I walk in that meeting, I'm there to give. And it's not about me. It's not about what I want. It's not about any of that. It's, I'm here to give. That's my entire attitude. People can tell the difference. They can tell the desperation of taking. They can tell the selfishness of taking. And they can feel the generosity of giving. And the best salespeople, the best salespeople have the attitude of generosity of giving. I've seen this happen to me and I've done it myself where I'm in a sales meeting. Somebody will say, you know what? Now that we're talking, I actually don't think we're the best company for you. I hate to be honest. Like, don't tell my boss. I'm telling you this. But I honestly think that you should go with this other company because I just think they're better suited for what your needs are. I will remember that person for the rest of my life. And I will trust them. And if they called me any other day, I would buy immediately from them because they're honest. Right. And I've done it. I remember I would go into pitch meetings when I was in my marketing firm and the client would say, these are all of our needs. And I know I came from the ad world in advertising agencies think they're good at everything, which they're not. Right. And so I would walk in and the client would tell me all their needs and I would do my pitch and they go, Simon, you're great. We'd love to work with you. And I would say, great. I'm really good at this thing. I'm pretty good at this thing. I'm mediocre at that thing. But these things I'm terrible at. And I'd rather partner with another company that can do those things better. And it made them want to make work with me more because I was the only one who was honest about my strengths and weaknesses. And they said, we'd actually rather you do everything. I'm like, no, no, guys, I'm really good at this. I'm okay at this. I'm really bad at this. Like, we understand that what we want you to do it. And the reason was is because I was honest, not because I was good with the other companies claim that they were graded everything, which everybody knows is a lie. And so they were dishonest, even though they were better. And so being honest and having patience and showing up to give, I'm going to give you the best quality, whether I'm the one to give it to you or not. I'm going to solve your problem, whether I'm best qualified to solve your problem or not. And by the way, you may not make the sale this pitch, but you'll make it the next one. I guarantee it. And everybody moves careers. And so if you're an asshole, they'll remember that when they're in their next job, when they when you're charming and wonderful and friendly and honest, their company may not be in the right position to hire you at this moment, but that person leaves. And the first person they call is you because of the pitch you gave two and a half years ago. That has happened to me. Do you ever have off days? Do you ever think I just can't face it all today? Of course. Of course. If I'm a little bit tired, I'm a I can be a dick. Of course. Of course. I'm sarcastic and punchy. And sometimes rumored, there's no such thing as strengths and weaknesses. It's just characteristics and attributes. That's all it is. So Simon, you're a ball of energy. You've got all of this talking. It's fun and charming. That's because you're enjoying it. Right? But the exact same characteristics and attributes that I have, like a wind up toy, in the wrong environment, people like he doesn't stop talking. I couldn't get a word in. It's my freaking podcast. I think I asked one question. Like what the fuck? Right? Am I allowed to say that? Yeah. Yeah. So it's not it's a blessing and a curse. And so what anybody has to get good at, you have to get good at reading the room. Right? And if I sense that I'm in a room full of like engineers and people who need to think for 10 seconds before they respond, shut up and let them think 10 seconds before they respond. And there's a weird, if you're, if you're like me and a lot of salespeople, I think have that sort of gift of gab and there's sort of that's why they choose that, that, that, but there's a little trick. There's a weird physiological correlation between moving our hands while we speak and the space at which we speak. Right? So I've learned that if I'm in a room of people who speak slower than me, who need more time to process, I'm an, I'm a, I'm a verbal thinker. I think out loud. Right? So this is me thinking when you hear me talking, right? But when I'm with people who think to themselves, they couldn't quietly. And every time I speak, I'm interrupting their thoughts, I'm making it hard for them. I've learned to hold my hands still. And there's a weird thing is when I hold my hands still, I actually speak slower. I am not forcing myself to speak slower right now, but I can hear that I'm speaking slower right now because my hands aren't moving. And so I've learned to read a room and adjust my style to make the people in the room comfortable and more likely to listen to me. But if somebody's also a fast hawker and they're also an outside thinker, then I can let go of my hands. I can do whatever I want. I can speak if I want. Right? But I know I've learned to read the room. And I think great salespeople adjust. They don't, they're never not themselves. I'm always myself, but I, I've learned to at least temper my inclinations so that I'm making sure that I can create a better connection with the person I'm with. I'm adjusting for them. By the way, that's called any good relationship. If you have any kind of girlfriend, boyfriend, or marriage or friendship, you constantly learn to adjust and temper to create comfort for the other person or that they're like, when you talk to people who don't understand something, you adjust so they're more likely to to hear you. You know, you change your analogies, you speak slower. You know, we're constantly adjusting so that we can be better heard and better understood. So why would we think that that's not applicable in sales? If you were to recommend one single book in relation to some of the things we've been talking about, to the listeners, what book would it be? It's a little bit of an unfair question. Despite what people think, I actually don't read a lot of books. I carry, I've carried a lot of shame about this from my whole life because people assume that I'm a big reader, but I have pretty bad ADHD and I struggle to read. But I can tell you a book that I think is really valuable of which I've read some of it. I've read some of a lot of books, which is it's a it's a book called How to Talk to Kids So Kids Will Listen and Listen to Kids Will Talk. It is a parenting book, yes, but it is very, very good at helping people understand the basics of listening and communication and it is as applicable to adults as it is to children. And I think if sales people read How to Talk to Kids So Kids Will Listen and Listen to Kids Will Talk, I think there are a lot of pictures in it, which is why I like it. And I think that would be really helpful. And the reason I'm sharing with you that I'm not a big reader is I never want any of the people who are listening who also struggle to read to feel ashamed that I'm recommending a book that the reality is they're not going to read it. They have shame about that. But if somebody reads it, you can also talk to them about it and learn from the person who did read it. How can people find you if they want to if we're going to hear more of all of this brilliant stuff you've been talking? Where do you point people to these days? I mean, it's all the usual suspects, right? We have a website called SimonCenic.com. We've got a whole bunch of really great stuff in there. We teach human skills. That's as I said it right at the top, right? For anybody who wants to learn the human skills, I hate the term soft skills. Hard skills and skills you need to do your job and human skills and skills you need to be a better human and you need both of those things. We teach, we have all kinds of classes and coursework to teach human skills for people who are looking to develop these skillsets. Just go to SimonCenic.com and also the usual, you know, your Instagram, your LinkedIn, your TikToks, what else other there? The Twitter, Facebook, all the places. All the places, love it. Listen Simon, thank you so much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure. Any final words of wisdom before you leave. The greatest thing any salesperson can do to enhance their own skill set and is to help somebody else who's struggling with the same thing. If you choose to be the teacher, you will become a better student. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me take care of yourself to carry each other. This has been another episode of Pitch Masters. Go to pitchguide.co.uk for updates and information or search for "Pitch Guy" on social media for regular videos on sales, psychology, storytelling, creativity, and much more. [BLANK_AUDIO]