0:00 I want to go through these five habits that make people instantly dislike you yes yes so these are tiny little things that a lot of people do without even realizing that they're doing this sort of stuff first one is oh my God so true Charlie hoopert is a leading expert in Charisma and confidence his insights and practical techniques have helped millions of people Master communication and body language to thrive in both personal and professional relationships how important is charisma and confidence it's perhaps the most underrated piece of success and it's the ability to speak with conviction the ability to influence someone ability to connect with people I mean look at Donald Trump he talked his way into the literal presidency of the United States of America it's so incredibly powerful and is it something that you can learn yeah and I'm a testament to that because growing up I was invisible not making new friends not forming connections I wasn't dating
0:45 because there was this fear that I would get hurt where did that come from part of it to the experiences that I had one of them was being sexually abused and I felt disgusted with myself um I was struggling and frustrated with the compensations I'd made as a result of it and so I learned all the tips and tricks to develop confidence and became a completely different person and we're going to go through all of them amazing so there's prey versus Predator movement which is tremendously valuable for First Impressions and then there's the charismatic traits which women are attracted to the 60c ACT to establish trust and respect and then I have six charismatic mindsets for success and there's plenty more listen I've got time okay so let's break it down
1:31 I have been forced into a bet with my team we're about to hit 10 million subscribers on YouTube which is our biggest Milestone ever thanks to all of you and we want to have a massive party for the people that have worked on this show for years behind the scenes so they said to me Steve for every new subscriber we get in the next 30 days can $1 be given to our celebration fund for the entire team and I've agreed to the bet so if you want to say thank you to the team behind the scenes at di of here all you've got to do is hit the Subscribe button so actually this is the first time I'm going to tell you not to subscribe because it might end up costing me an [Applause] [Music]
2:17 awful Charlie hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of people have benefited from your work and tens of thousands of people have been through your University learning about something if you had to explain in your own words what it is that you're doing for those people in a simple way what would you how would you say that take all the situations where you're interacting with another person whether it's at your work dating friends and groups and take the times that you're feeling that you're not grounded in that sense of confidence that you maybe have when you're sitting at home on the couch with your friend or your family and bring the best version of yourself to those situations I think a lot of people also want flowing conversations they want to feel like themselves they want to be the person that is respected and
3:03 is admired when they walk into a room they want other people to notice them that's one of the big ones that we hear from guys is they want to be the person that anytime they enter a room that women and men take notice of them it usually is an acute thing so a lot of people show up because there's a girl that they liked and it's not going well or something like that or they went out for a promotion and somebody that they felt was less qualified that them wound up getting the job so they come in with a very acute social situation that they would like to change they'd like to get the girl they' like to get the job theyd like to be the leader in their friend group but when people have gone through the course what I see is they speak more about a a sense of joy in life and confidence because I think that if you feel disconnected from people there actually read a thing this morning that some guy said you know I came here and I started applying your ideas and I got
3:49 more tips at my job as a waiter which is really cool but also I felt as if I'd fallen into nihilism like I was just things didn't matter anymore and my ability to connect with people is Shifting that for me I feel more connected less nihilistic it's interesting because when people hear words like phrases like body language and Charisma and confidence they sound like tips and tricks and stuff but when I think about the impact that these things have had on my own life when I think about even presidential elections and how our society is is designed and who Rises to the top and who doesn't so much of it seems to depend on whether you understand naturally or through learning the skills how to be charismatic confident how to sell how to get someone else in some situation to
4:35 believe you to buy into what you have to say um so I guess my question to you is how important is it like and someone that has the skills that you you teach people versus someone that doesn't how much of a trajectory shift is that going to be do you think on their on their life to me so there's the external question of what is it going to allow you to achieve in the world and then there there's the internal question of what is your subjective experience of your life starting with the internal to me it's almost everything like you're if you feel disconnected from the world it is very very hard to feel good no matter how much money you have no matter how much your six-pack abs are working for you like even if you have agulation and you have Fame but you feel disconnected from the people in your life it is very hard to feel good on the external side I
5:21 think it's tremendously underrated and I think this is why people didn't see Donald Trump coming because does he have the best policies does he have the best record is he of any of these things he is clearly someone who has gotten to where he has by talking he talked his way into the literal presidency of the United States of America and if I look just at my own life at people who were advancing at work and then when I started focusing on this stuff it was not the best analyst there was a guy who was a better analyst than me and he did not get the off trck promotion that I got and it was just because I'd made closer connections with the president of of the company than he had and so I think it's wildly underrated I think a huge myth that people get is that if you get good grades do what is asked of you
6:08 in the job description are generally kind and friendly and speak honestly that things are just going to work out for you but there is a missing piece which is do other people connect with you and like you and want you to succeed and I think it's perhaps the most underrated piece of success which is why I put all my attention there this wasn't like a play at making a lot of money or having a big YouTube channel it was the highest leverage point that I felt and experienced in my own life and is it something that you can learn that is yeah I said I said there was a big myth this is probably the first or second biggest myth is that you can't learn it and that I believe that for what 18 years of my life so the the first portion of my life was Charisma is being able to throw a football better than the other kids right Charisma is just the thing that you have at 13 that I definitely didn't have and it was only
6:54 around 18 1920 that I realized that the way that I approached people in conversations had a dramatic impact on the responses that I got so it is most definitely something you can learn I feel like I'm a testament to that and you know people have gone through the course uh also feel that and if someone hasn't seen your YouTube channel what is it you're doing on that YouTube channel so say that you know we've got someone listening now and they've never heard of your your channel before can you explain exactly what you've done on that channel how long you've done it for and how many situations you've looked at over the last decade yeah so basically what I would do is I would look at moments it started with a Bill Clinton debate that was the first video that I ever did and there's this debate moment where Bill Clinton and George Bush Senior are having a town hall so it's them
7:40 communicating directly with people and it's known as the moment that Bill Clinton won the election and it's him going up to this woman and just she asks some question about politics or the thing and he goes up and he says how does this impact you and he looks her dead in the eye and you could tell she just she's feeling it she's connected with him and he gives his answer so it's us breaking down those sorts of interactions some of them are in politics some of them are on talk shows and some of them are scripted TV shows where I'm just saying hey this is obviously a script but it would work in real life if you did it like Jon Snow did in Game of Thrones or something so we use that sort of as the hook because you know a lot of people weren't looking Charisma was not a topic that anyone was interested in 10 years ago so we would hook people with Game of Thrones or this famous person but the content of it
8:25 would be how to handle a group interaction or how to lead more effectively and these were things that I wasn't necessarily learning from these videos but I was learning elsewhere in my life and then commenting on what I saw in these videos and that really connected with our audience and it's helped us get I think 6.8 million subscribers at this point it's incredible and it's actually such an unbelievably powerful way to do it by showing both real world examples but also fictional examples and I was even watch watching you break down certain interviews that the famous um Jordan Peterson interview with Kath Kathy Newman Kathy Newman that one's great and you break down exactly what's going on on kind of both sides and how Jordan ultimately ends up winning that argument by um kind of holding his position and Kathy trying to put words into his mouth
9:10 Etc all of those things but you break it down you break down moments from history moments that we all know from movies and tell us exactly what's going on in terms of like human connection conversation persuasion leadership influence in those situations incredibly fascinating so let's talk about you yeah because people will look at you now sat here and they'll think this is a guy that's always had confident you're a good looking guy you're someone that is clearly a great conversationalist you exude Charisma but if we were to wind back I know that that's not always been the case yeah yeah so take me back you did your research uh so I grew up extremely shy and still am today in introvert I mean you could probably see if you flash five or six minutes back to the beginning of this interview like I started off nervous I feel very comfortable now but my default state is one of shyness reservedness and
9:57 nervousness and so that was just how I was for the long time and when it came time to graduate high school they have these superlatives that they would give out and I had a class of about 500 people and my superlative was most likely to break out of a shell in college so I was well known but I was well known for not saying a lot so people like didn't know me and then voted for me as the person who one day would show up and reveal themselves to the world I suppose that didn't happen I didn't break out of my shell in college at all uh I continued to do the same I had a small small group of friends I wasn't like uh dating or anything like that and then it was only when I was about 19 years old that I studied abroad and had gotten so sick of the experience for me at that time in my life of having
10:44 a massive Crush for usually a year forming a entire relationship in my head that we would one day have and then having that not materialize because they weren't interested or if they were interested I could quickly talk them out of being interested just by my general awkwardness that had happened so many times that I was done with it and frustrated so when I went abroad I made it a mission to figure out what was going on and shift it and it was actually very helpful and when people ask me how do you begin to change these things in yourself shifting your environment is so impactful probably the one of the most impactful things because what you don't realize is that your friend and family who love you very much tend to not like shifts that you make to your habits particularly the way that you socialize with other people but when
11:30 I gave myself the freedom of being abroad I tried everything you know I worked on my eye contact I read every book and we just run little personal experiments some of which didn't go well there was one period of time I remember where the experiment was big eyes and so I'd like walk around so nice to meet you and you immediately you immediately recoil your head I swear I did that probably for a week until somebody said dude what are you doing with your eyes stop really yeah he was a good friend um I appreciate him for that but it was just many experiments and I started them while I was studying abroad and I continue when I came back but by the time that I did come back six months or a year later uh the word in the college campus was like what happened to you you are a completely different person you are outgoing and you seem capable of talking particularly to women at this
12:17 case and then friends were all of a sudden asking me what should I do and so that started sort of a second phase of my life where this was the primary focus day-to-day you know after like eating drinking and maybe getting some money in order to pay my bills other people how to influence them how to interact with them how to get better friendships how to talk my way into a job you know all of those sorts of things became the primary focus for me just to spend a second going back to how what your sort of internal monologue was like through the awkward years of your life how did you how did you feel and what did you think of yourself like if IID asked you what do you think of yourself back then and you were to answer it honestly what would you say honestly which I couldn't have done
13:02 but I will tell you um ashamed would have been what I would have said and I didn't like I didn't know this about myself but like I didn't have the right to speak up like it people wouldn't have liked it I had I remember I had one guy and it didn't even bother me because I I suppose it connected with how I felt but he said Charlie you're so normal that you're invisible and I think that was by Design like blending in became a way to be unseen and a way to be safe and I wasn't picked on you know like all of those things never happen just because I was there but not in a way that was noticeable the problem with that is yeah you're safe you don't get picked on nothing happens but also nothing happens right you're not making new friends you're not forming connections other people were forming new groups and
13:48 expanding and I I was not so there was a huge disconnect between how I felt in a more public setting and how I felt in more intimate private settings and did you look at some other people who didn't seem to have those challenges as I don't know biologically gifted yeah freaks of nature is that what you thought oh yeah totally there was there was clearly it didn't the thought that something could shift in me to get me to have a different response didn't occur until I was 18 or 19 years old and I think that's a a really important shift for a lot of people is where you start recognizing that it's on you it's your responsibility and the way that I put it at the time was it's always my fault so what I carried from 19 to say 28 or 29
14:34 was if this interaction with you and I or anyone doesn't go well there's something that I could have done differently in order to make it go well and so that gave me this fuel to constantly adjust because I was going okay that one didn't go great what could I have done where did it break down it was three minutes into conversation but I felt they sort of dropped off when I started answering that question about my boring job in a really boring way so let me in this next interaction talk about my job in a way that is a bit more exciting and so I was really spending a lot of time obsessively reviewing and talking with my co-founder and best friend at the time like what happened where did it break down what could we try differently and then running these experiments it was genuinely an obsession and a thrilling one at at that what was the difference between the the
15:19 guy who went on holiday that day on the plane versus the guy that came back in terms of skills or knowledge what was the actual difference in the person a willingness to stick your neck out there was the big thing so one of one of the primary things that I did when I went abroad was ask questions that I otherwise would have kept to myself so I was in a town a small town of Costa Rica called Aradia and I showed up I don't speak Spanish right so there's even more reason to to oh my gosh I could make a mistake and it could go really bad and I could be bumbling but I made a rule that I was going to ask if I didn't know where my classroom was I wasn't going to like sit with my piece of paper and then
16:04 try to work it out on the map I was going to ask a human and when it came time to figure out where there was a good restaurant or a good place to go out at night I was always going to ask someone and thanks to that habit as well as the friendliness of Latin people that extended my comfort zone and gave me a number of experiences of you put yourself out there something magical happens so that that is the easiest tip that I can give is one more sentence so when people ask me like what what is something that I can do to work on my Charisma I would say you have dozens of interaction in today if you're in any sort of populated era you have an interaction with the Uber driver you have an interaction with the person behind the counter you have an interaction with the person who you get into an elevator with and there's usually a prescribed amount of social interaction that you have maybe it's hey maybe it's even less than hey the advice
16:51 that I give to people is if you want to get started one more sentence one more sentence than usual so as you get into the elevator and the normal sentence is what floor anything in addition to that what floor are you in oh have you lived in this building for a long time you know and all a sudden you get to know your neighbors because the person that is just the elevator person who you're putting them on floor three now has a name and every time it sort of uh compounds and expands and you get to have a wider Social Circle so that's just one piece of the things that I would work on which is one more sentence with people uh but there's there's plenty more and I'm happy to dive into First Impressions and all that kind of stuff okay so first impr yeah the big thing that I got wrong and I see almost everybody get wrong and it's bad Common advice about First
17:36 Impressions is that just the best way to get people interested in you is to be interested in them and what I found is that that is generally true but it ignores the the realities of status which is I'm sure you experienced this with a lot of people come up to you they're very interested in you but that doesn't mean that they're going to make a good first impression on you it means that you might have compassion for them it might even means that you might feel love for them but it does not mean that you're going to want to follow up and spend time with them probably you've experienced I don't want to follow up with this person and spend time with them even though I see their sincerity of their interest and I've and I've been on both sides of this right I've been the person who is so just so interested in you there's a few things that if you just do this before expressing your interest in somebody changes the whole game so fun
18:22 trust respect if you and this can take 60 seconds or less can communicate that you are fun that the person can trust you and that there is something to respect about you and then you express your interest in that person it will completely flip the dynamic on its head so we can break it down please fun there's a ton of ways to handle this right you can crack jokes you can do all sorts of things but the easiest way to add fun to an interaction is you take the first question that almost everybody asks you which is how are you right these are the gimmies that we just say fine good how are you oh there's a fire whatever and be more enthusiastic than fine I would always say be better than good so if somebody comes up to you and they say how are you doing you can be fantastic or wonderful or great or
19:08 ecstatic or electric and there's a whole separate conversation about how to make this real inside of yourself because I'm not asking you to paper over anything I think that was a mistake that I made early in my Charisma career of just too much fake it till you make it but if you can genuinely cultivate those feelings and share them that level of enthusiasm is fun crack a joke you got fun okay trust this is a lot of non-verbal stuff you know eye contact body language the way that you shake someone's hand but it also comes down to if the person feels like you are trying to get something from them and there's a number of things that tip us off to this but one of these is when you over qualify yourself which is in direct competition with this need to establish yourself right so there's
19:54 these we we want to establish that we're interesting people we have things going on that you might want to connect with but if we drift over into name dropping and selling we're going to alienate the trust so the place that I focus most on with people is in most inter places that I've been how are you where are you from what do you do are like three of the most basic questions go to a college campus it's what's your major we all have these and you can think of them now if you're in the audience we have these things that we hear all the time and we probably have habitual answers to them yes and these habitual answers are usually not great yes M are so bad yeah I just remembered mine actually people come up to me and they say God you've been so busy and then I'll say something like yeah always and then the conversation's over yeah yeah they've got they've got nothing to hook into or hook onto there
20:40 so you're able to get away with that and one of the things that people do is they build a tremendous amount of confidence and power and then all of a sudden you don't you can drop this to a degree because people are still interested because they know you from Dragon Den or some other things but if you're out there and you don't have that yet like I didn't when I was 19 and 20 or you just want to have more engaging convers ation and you want to bring in people that you genuinely connect with reverse engineer the conversation that you would like to have so you could one of I have six charismatic mindsets that I think about one of them is go there first in humanizing the interaction and so this can mean if you're in a group of people that are all really stiff and nervous because they don't know if it's okay crack the first joke be vulnerable first give the first compliment like lead the interaction in the way you want to go because that's what everybody wants like
21:25 we don't want to be suits we don't want to be roles in a company we want to be humans and that stuff is everybody wants that and whoever goes first becomes the leader okay okay so in your interactions you're getting asked are you busy so if you could go there first and do the thing that you're wanting them to do and work that into the answer of how you're busy or are you busy that is going to lead the conversation the direction you want so as a for instance I don't know if this is are you busy you know I have been but one of the things that I've really been struggling with that I haven't figured out yet at this point is you know I'm having some relationship isses I'm having this or that the other thing but like sharing the real thing a level down beneath the surface level stuff that you're tempted to share with people is going there first and making
22:12 it okay for them to do it and then you say what about you versus they say hey uh how's it going you're so busy you're say oh yeah man been busy how about you they're just going to match you especially given your you know your power as the the leader of the company they they will just match what you do but if you go there first you give people permission to go deeper so a lot of people for instance what they might want is they want the thing that they care about is they care about their job they love what they do and they're really interested or maybe they hate their job and they care more about their free time and their hobbies and the extreme sports that they do so in these questions of how have you been what do you do where are you from I have a worksheet in our course that helps people walk through what a good answer
22:58 could be that would leave hooks for the person that is an extreme sports Enthusiast or does you know have an interest in that particular Niche that they're interested in to hook into but if you were to ask me where I'm from and let's say that I want to connect with you in a number of different ways but the thing that I really want you to know is that I have an interesting business I could say I'm from Philadelphia and we're done oh cool I've been to Philadelphia or no my friend's brother went there is it cold in Philadelphia like these this is where we're going to go now we're on weather and sports which is where most conversations go but if I say you know I grew up in Philadelphia but I never really fit in there like a lot of the people in that area wind up spending their whole lives within 20 minutes of where they were born and so I traveled throughout my 20s and lived a bunch of places but I now live in LA just because it's the right place for my business and I end there
23:46 the next question that is coming from you is probably oh what's your business or where did you travel so if I give you a number of different options to hook into here you're going to take the one that you're most interested in M and so what I would try to do in these answers with myself and what I advise people to do is take the three topics that you know you'd love to talk about like you'd love to talk about your travels you'd love to talk about your business and you'd love to talk about philosophy or whatever it is and find a way to just leave little crumbs in these common answers that give the right person the invitation to talk to you about that thing and this is something that I found really like small talk can suck it's very draining to sit here and like how much more can I say about the WEA or local sports team I can't keep doing it yeah but when you do these sorts of
24:32 things it uh man it opens up the opportunity for connection so much more quickly in interaction and I hate small talk yeah I really hate it I find it really draining I find it so fake and I I kind of want to get on to the real stuff um so you're saying that's how to do it to leave sort of crumbs in my response that will send us down a more interesting pathway and conversation to really think through how do I and what do I want to connect with people over right it's not the weather and it's not the local sports team it is in my case I want to interact with people that uh are interested in the same sort of like YouTube space that I'm interested in that's one of the things beforehand I thought that I knew about people I like I could tell who that guy is I know I know what kind of life he has but when you start leaving these Clues people
25:17 surprise you the like the the types of connections that come from people that you wouldn't expect are I don't know another word other than like magical it's it's very special to see that the world is full of opportunities where once you saw it as I already know what's coming from this person it's just going to be a boring Small Talk conversation and to find that that person could be someone that you do business with or become very close to or winds up being the brother of someone that you date is is very exciting to me there there's a real mindset shift in that like seeing the world differently as a set of opportunities versus this sort of like fixed thing that you just have to navigate yes and also there's a a playfulness that can be brought to it as well so one of the other things that
26:03 I talk about is flirting with the world right so what I mean by this is that when you go out and you're flirting you tend not to be literal in your answers right there's there's a playfulness that is engaged you're going to joke with that person and what what a lot of people do and I'm guilty of this all the time is when you're checking out at the store you're doing anything you are very literal in your answers can I help you with anything today can I get one other thing what floor are you on as you get in the elevator and if instead ofo floor three you say I don't live here I'm just casing the joint for rubber you know it's just like like that little stuff that is playful that is what people are dying for we're just so many people are on autopilot and when you bring that playfulness that little flirtatious energy to men women alike things open up in in a very fun and exciting way does
26:51 that come from confidence because i' I've noticed that i' I'd certainly flirt with the world more now that I feel like I have a greater sense of confidence that didn't have when I was 18 to 25 yeah I think it's Circle I think it absolutely comes from confidence when you feel good you bring that playful energy to the world and I learned to develop confidence by there was a time of Faking it till I made it where I wasn't comfortable but I had this rule in my head I'm in the elevator I have to say the thing right now that's what I did and then the interaction went well and now I'm building these reps of good experiences where I'm seeing that my belief about the world is this place that I just had to make it through is not true there's fun opportunities everywhere I really want to um make sure I've got everything on this first
27:36 impressions Point as well is there anything else that I need to be aware of you talked about non-verbal cues and I mean there's so much information out there that says non-verbal cues are everything that they maybe nothing do you think they matter and what are the most important non-verbal cues when it comes to making a good first impression one one of the ones that I see is prey versus Predator prey versus Predator movement and prey versus Predator gesticulation so if you think of an animal that is a prey animal like a a little bird or a little rabbit they're very like Herky jerky and they they Dart and you think of a predator you think of a lion or like this like sort of languid slow movement now you don't have to dial it up to Sleepy lion level but one of the things that you see
28:22 with people that feel very afraid is that they Dart their eyes are very dirty the hand goes in the hand goes out goes back into the pockets very quickly a bit of slowness to your movements a bit of calm especially if you're an anxious person can help a lot that doesn't mean you need to lower the energy but it just means you can slow things down a bit the other thing that I find is this is almost pre-ir impression if you're out at a social event right you're at a networking event you're at a bar I think a lot of people do not realize the intuitive sense that others have for what is going on around them in interactions they're not directly in and so what will happen and this is connected to the pray thing but not identical is that people go out to a
29:08 networking event and they feel very uncomfortable on their own shoes and so they're looking at their phone or they're standing by the bar and they're sort of looking around for something or someone to rescue them from their loneliness and when you can shift that to I am going to be comfortable where I am I'm going to find one person my friend and I would go out to the bar and the rule that we had was the most interesting place in this entire bar is the space between our noses right it doesn't matter you can say whatever you want you could be like I'm terrified here I'm so scared I wish I could go home right now but we have to engage with one another it was remarkable how much easier it was to start conversation when it was started from a place of we're enjoying one another's company and being playful and having a good time here versus two of us just sort of like
29:53 standing at the bar going like this looking around for around attention or for so yeah so those are two things one pray verse Predator movements and two are you exuding this Vibe of I don't have it somebody else does that that people have a unconscious sense that that is happening around them and so making it a conscious point to I'm going to be cool in my own space when I interact with someone I'm not going to make them a stepping stone to another person that I'm more secretly attracted to or has the job that I want I'm with this person now and then I can move on that had a huge huge impact on the abil like First Impressions became easier because of the pre first impression mhm I mean there's so much I wanted to to dig into there on the prey versus Predator thing what is it about slow
30:40 movements that make someone appear to be higher status cuz cuz as you said it I immediately thought of the line and then you were talking about some little like rodent that's kind of like farting around and it's anxious that it's about to be eaten and then I thought of the line which is kind of just slowly moving and then I thought of business contexts where you've got the leader in the room who is kind of sat back in their chair they're doing things in a more considered way and maybe the intern who's like dropping the paper and like yeah like hitting the glass accidentally and it's it's so interesting because it's so true yeah it's safety safety it's safety I mean prey animals are hunted and that's what you have to be head on a swivel if you're a prey animal you want to move slow you're dead it's over we're animals that are highly attuned to social status
31:26 and so when we feel low on on the totem pole we feel less safe and so one of the things that the ways that we exhibit that is we move more quickly we have our head on a swivel we have to be aware of everything that is going on we can't take our time because we don't at some level that mamalian or Reptilian Brain is telling us that we are unsafe in this environment or at least less safe than the leader who feels very slow another thing that you'll see in terms of status and people who feel are is the ability to be seen looking at others and so one of the things that happens and this is I don't mean uh I can explain how this doesn't contradict the point about focusing on someone else but when you do turn your attention to someone else what you'll see the guy at the bar who feels uncomfortable or the intern do is
32:11 they'll often look with their eyes but not with the rest of their body they're they're doing this sort of stuff because they're afraid to be seen looking but when you take the person who is more comfortable they will turn their head and know sometimes their chest and their whole body towards others to and they can be caught looking because they're not threatening that other person they're not harming them they're not you know they're comfortable versus there's a fear of if they see me looking I'm in trouble right and so these are little I wouldn't say that you need to spend all your time focusing on these hacks but they work both ways so it's one thing to notice that but if you actually consciously go to the body I think this is one of the fastest ways to influence how you feel like state in the moment instead of doing this and the prey darting and the sitting with the hands
32:58 in the pockets right that that creates a loop of feeling uncomfortable so one of the first things that I would do when I was going out to a networking event or a bar or anywhere where I felt uncomfortable was dance floor because on the Dance Floor I can go and open up and feel more comfortable through my body because I'm signaling to my body as I expand my arms and dance and wave them that I'm safe right and so it's a it's a two-way Loop so if you notice yourself at a network event or a bar or anywhere where feeling uncomfortable and you notice that you're doing this and you can say okay I can't go to my brain and make these anxiety go away up here but I can choose how I hold myself this is the Jordan Peterson stand up straight right it's there's there's this body Loop feedback that we get and if you do it by opening up your body
33:44 language revealing your vulnerable spots which are the parts that your veins it's your neck it's your inner elbow it's your hands right standing like this a little bit more open that tends and I can feel it now I don't know why I didn't do it at the beginning I'm a little bit Rusty jeez I feel immediately more grounded right I feel immediately more safe comfortable and like I can take my time in this interaction rather than having to get the answer right for you right for the audience like I might have when I was going like this it's I was going to say before you pointed that out that it's really self-fulfilling like the intern who's on edge who's dropping the paper is then going to make certain behaviors which are going to kind of reinforce their insecurity and low status which is then might be pointed out they might
34:29 notice it themselves which makes them feel [ __ ] again which makes them more on edge and Twitchy which is going to increase the probability that they conduct some kind of behavior which is and it's this downward spiral where you're like you feel stuck at the bottom of that and you're saying that by influencing the things you've described you know moving a bit slower being expansive with your body you can start to trigger the loop from the other way you can start to make yourself feel safe if you feel safe you're more likely to do the higher value things which make you feel safe and you spiral upwards potentially yes yeah this is not an Insight unique to me Tony Robbins when at his events I don't know if you've gone they talk about incantations where one of the things that he does is prior to going on stage and he advises people to do this before they have a big moment is he will like bang his chest and
35:15 go and his Tony Robin's way and he'll have oftentimes a phrase that is like I'm here to inspire or like I love myself I feel wonderful and I would do this before I went out right I would before I got in the taxi before I went anywhere I would go I love myself I love myself I love myself and I would just build this physical body energy connection and it's real it happens it it makes a dramatic impact on how you show up because oftentimes you only get 30 seconds right it's not a lot of time when you're sitting down in that interview before the person starts to form an opinion about you so going in with that that energy that is like look I approve of me and I'm going to have the body language communication that tells you that that's how I feel people
36:01 often pick up on that you can think of interactions as two people who are storms of beliefs encountering one another and if my storm of belief is I'm not really sure about this I don't really think I deserve this job and you probably shouldn't talk to me and your storm of belief is I don't know a lot about this guy but let's find out I'm going to win yeah and you're going to pick that up and you're go you know I don't think this guy deserves the job whatever but if the belief is I deserve to be here I love myself I can be comfortable I can be human and I'll be okay if this doesn't go the way that I'd like that's that's what wins out in these it's it is the higher conviction belief that often bleeds through in interaction and becomes the the one that defines that relationship at least for that limited time in that context it's
36:48 funny because I think about my non-verbal cues all the time I meet so many people in so many different contexts and a lot of the time I'm like tired um um I'm my my head has a million tabs open so I try and influence like how I'm showing up with like my body language and eye contact and outside of the things we've discussed is there anything else that you think I can do to try and leave I don't want to be rude that's what I don't want to be I was going to say I want to be warm but there's something I want to be myself and I want I don't want to be rude accidentally rude mhm so you and you worry that you might come across rude yeah because I don't know you meet people like my my assistant Sophie she walked in here now hi she's just got like like 247 energy
37:36 and I ain't got that yeah I'm not that guy and I'm not going to fake it yeah and I've never been good at faking it but is there anything else that I could accidentally be making people dislike me just with small things no I can say the areas where I felt most connected to you which is I think the opposite of rude rude is like I'm not interested in you as a person the areas where I felt most connected to you is where one of us again went there first and like said the thing that was real it's the moments where you stop neither of us is trying to perform at all for the camera and there's still a sense of that the audience is there but yeah that's that's where I feel okay any rudess just no gone interesting and and when you say that I think about like everyday interactions and is there ever a
38:23 situation where like going there first is a little bit too strong is what I would say so the the thought is the one that you have everyone has right it's it's no I can't because other if they didn't have that thought they would have already done it right I will tell you a brief story that my brother reminded me of today as we were driving in I was like I need I need my Charisma stories and he said you can tell the one about me so your brother he's in the Green Room yeah yeah okay we went to a networking event and for whatever reason that day I was just in this zone of I'm going to be a professional because this is a networking event and the channel wasn't established at this point and he came with me and so I'm going in there and I'm going through the line I'm filling out my card what's your name Charlie you know what do you do okay I'm
39:08 getting my my information I put my badge on I walk through and he goes behind me and they say what's your name he says dragon and she says excuse me I said no no WR dragon on the card it's gonna be great and so he then starts a conversation with her and they're like just being playful and he puts dragon on his chest and I'm going in trying to you know impress people with my professionalism MH and people were like what's up he's like Dragon here and he was a hit right he didn't he didn't have anything to do with the networking event he didn't have anything to do with the uh the context of why people were there but the interest that he got was so much immediately more than I was getting being the one that actually had the business that was somewhat related to the thing and so even I believe that these rules on how we should engage are
39:55 um set in stone and what think few people have done if you think of your entire life you're either hitting it perfect unders shooting or overshooting everyone's fears of overshooting but they spend almost all of their lives undershooting overshooting is in being too coming on too strong yeah and and that it's okay but like there's there's type one and type two errors right and if there's a perfect Middle Ground of like wow like I didn't that was a trauma dump on that person would be in overshare or like oh I maybe shouldn't crack that joke at a funeral would be going there first type of a thing M we have less than a dozen of those usually in our life and we have hundreds and thousands of undershooting so what I'm encouraging people to do is take the risk of the overshoot because you're
40:41 already missing like you're you're under what is available to you in terms of the potential to create connections and the question here is which I think informs all of this is is your goal to blend in get through and not make a splash or is your goal what what is your goal and for me it's like I want to connect I want to connect with the people that would most connect with me and in order to do that I have to be willing to be seen okay so on the other end of this what are the mistakes people make that cause disconnection talking about yourself is that is that I don't think so what in what sense so like if you walk into a room and you immediately start talking about yourself is that going to be if you're over talking good question it's it's about do people have opt-in points so are you are you stopping giving the
41:27 person a chance to reopt into that line of communication so this is again one of the things we work on on those initial questions is um okay you want to you want to share your values early in the interaction but am I just going to give you my life story right I'm not giving someone a chance to opt in but if I make it three to five sentences and I say you know I grew up uh I grew up on the west coast and it was perfect because there was surf every there everywhere and then uh I met my wife but you know she's super close to her family and I just wanted to be a family man so now I live in the middle uh of the country and whatever you give like three hooks that people can hook into and you're done that's fine but some people don't give a chance for anyone to step in and get a word in edwise so that's another piece that I think and I could also ask them right if they surf or something yes exactly but also you will see that
42:13 sometimes early in an interaction if you indicate these points of like people people will often comment on what you have to say they won't you don't need to ask them necessarily like if you give that thing that they like you often don't have to like they will jump in with the thing that connects to it so interesting you know throughout this conversation you've repeatedly made reference to the fact that connection happens at a deeper level but also the Paradox is that we don't walk around offering the deeper level MH um which is what I've always figured out and like found out on this podcast is the deeper the conversation the more I feel like connected to the person yeah and yeah it's really interesting I was just thinking about interactions that I've even had today and you know like the person that I I spoke to in the gym
42:59 would I have rolled up to them and what could I have said to them that would would have been God us past the fluffy small talk cuz I met someone in the gym that I've known for Loosely known yeah and it was one of those interactions where they hey how are you you're in La now hey yeah where are you gonna live I'm like I don't know and then like so yeah fires did you are you okay yeah yeah and I just so so let's do this how where are you going to live I I think I even probably asked you or everyone's asking me because I posted on instagam take a person in the gym you don't know anything about them and I know context it's going to be dependent on what you want to learn about them what what types of things do you wish you could connect over more and I know there's this sense of like whatever they want but like you clearly care about business you clearly care like what opportunities do you want to open up for yourself do you want to
43:45 find a surf buddy do you want to find a what is it yeah so in that particular conversation I think because I'm kind of new here maybe what I would have been interested in is I actually really wanted to know something about their professional life that I that they told me about previously but also I'm like looking for friends here yeah cool things to do people to see new networks amazing you got it so so it's where are you going to live be like honestly I'm not sure I'm looking for cool places to live cool places to go new networks of people what I should have [ __ ] said that yeah it's and it's so I think it's what we mentioned earlier but the thing that happens is that people try to get through rather than connect and I think that informs a lot of the questions that people have they say yeah but couldn't it go wrong it's like yes it could but you have to consider that not connecting is also it going wrong like the number
44:31 of chances that you meet to connect with your potential spouse potential incredible friend I don't want to be uh nightmarish or scary for people but like the amount of incredible people that have walked in and out of all of our Lives is saddening right because we didn't say the thing and we it's like oh my gosh you guys would have connected so well if just one of you could have like put it out there the thing that you were interested in but it just doesn't happen 99% of the time time there's a certain individual listening right now who really wants to connect in fact they feel so disconnected and so lonely in their life and they're hearing everything you say but there's a barrier that has always stopped them adding one more sentence going deeper with the stranger and no matter
45:16 how much they listen to this kind of advice they still go through their life in this state of kind of getting through life not connecting do you have any idea a is that true like does that person exist and have you met them in your audience and be like what is step one to starting to break down that barrier because I think I even feel a little bit as you were speaking I was thinking yeah like why didn't I say that in the gym today like what is it about me that meant that I just tried to get through and get back to the weights this it's like a bad habit or I think there's a number of things in your case and I've experience this I I don't know if you have this but um when you get into a position that is a lovely one to be in of relative power right like people want to come on the show they want to know what you're up to they
46:01 maybe want to go to the parties that you're going to one of the ways to not to avoid having to constantly set and enforce boundaries is to shine less bright and so I don't know if you feel this but I notice myself not following some of my own advice these days and when I reflect on why it's because if I say that I have a YouTube channel and they say how many subscribers and I say how many subscribers then they want my phone number then then they want my this and in order just to circumvent all of that uh you know yeah I like work from home you know I like I I will shine less bright and I realized this uh years ago when I was doing breakdowns and I was doing all these famous people I'm like I'm going to do one of Justin Bieber because he was such a bright excited young kid and then I looked at him at
46:47 the time he was 16 to 18 he was on Jimmy Fallon and he was so flat and I was like why is he so flat and then he cracked a joke and the audience it wasn't even funny it was God and so any if if you get to a position where any sort of output from you CS in this just wave of attention and energy people often shut that down which is a sad thing and I want to stop doing that and people shut themselves down yes they shut themselves down because then you have to have boundaries and you have to tell that person hey I don't give out my Instagram or I don't want to trade numbers or you have to find a way to navigate disappointing other people that are interested and going having a deeper connection that you don't feel it with them does that happen with like beautiful people as well cuz I almost
47:33 certainly you know what I me I imagine they just get it all the time everywhere they're going people are trying to connect yeah well and I think you know in terms of things to watch out for I didn't realize this cuz I do think it's not necessarily a good thing but young women I think realize this as they hit puberty that there's going to be people interested in you that don't really want to get to know you right they're interested in you because you're beautiful they're interested in you for these other reasons same thing tends not to happen with young men and so I got to 19 and I wasn't wanted in any of the locations that I was at right and so there was a lady's night but I couldn't get in there was like and so people were very honest with me I got direct clear feedback about the type of people that wanted to connect with me and if someone did it was only
48:19 ever because they wanted the pleasure of my company there was not there was nothing to get from knowing me when things started to Boom I was not prepared for the ways that people adjust and manipulate when they perceive that someone has power and so people entered my life that I thought liked me and I realized later liked my ability to provide a paycheck or my ability to do this and uh it was very sad for me it was really really difficult to experience but um as I withdrew and stopped making vide and uh said you know I'm not running the I'm not running this business my co-founder is going to take you know he's in charge of the paychecks from
49:04 here on out the people that almost immediately withdrew from me was I'm very grateful to have seen it but was unprepared for the uh transactional nature that can that can happen when when you start to accumulate power and I say that because if there's aect particularly young men but it's true of women as well just be aware that as you grow and hopefully become more powerful in the world the level of uh deception and the level of even just in in the lightest like people trying to please you and make you happy is going to escalate and you're going to need to develop a discernment that I just never needed when I was in my young 20s to understand who's trying to
49:51 manipulate you and get things from you and what's real yes to understand this the subtle difference between like who likes me for me and who likes me for these status things that I can am connected to or can provide and uh yeah I mean is there any such advice you can give someone to figure out whether they're being used or the relationship is authentic and real yeah well I can give some not to do that's where I'm at today this is Niche but if you're a business owner be very careful about making a single I I made a single person my like point of contact to the business and that meant that any feedback that came from like the front lines of the
50:36 business was coming up funneled through him and spoken to me and any like thing that I said to him was then distributed to the business and I wasn't doing enough direct connecting with people on the ground and what happened over a course of years is I learned and I didn't find this four years is that I was being uh a generous word would be like there was some fudge of the truth and and then there were outright lies be very very careful about making one person your eyes and ears in any aspect of your life but I did that in the business and didn't you know touch base and connect directly with people and say hey is this how are you feeling is this true and I and I lost those direct connections and it wasn't required in a company of my size it was just a a foolish novice entrepreneur mistake that I'd made
51:22 happen so many times it happens a lot in business people listening to this now if you've got if you working in a business and there's a manager in between you and maybe the top of the business managers have a tremendous power to control narratives narratives yeah everyone wants power I would say I think that's a fair statement pretty much everyone wants power and we can Define whatever power means but I guess there's two paths to attaining power there's delivering value for people and being useful and then there's what you described there which is is manipulating the situation so that you're perceived as being necessary mhm yeah and it's it's uh making sure that your name is on the project right there's in a group project there's there's always people that are
52:08 doing the majority of the work and there's people that are making sure that they're presenting the most important piece or making sure that their name is on the project narcissists sociopaths some of some of the videos you've made on your channel before speak to this type of behavior yes what were the things that you missed that are like characteristic of narcissist cuz I know yeah you've made videos about this subject where you analyze other interactions with other people but for someone who might not be aware of some of those subtle cues what kinds of things my co-founder and I had several conversations about this person where we said man and we had these dozens of times I wouldn't be shocked to find out that he was lying on his job application and we would just say that to each other and so if you find that there's just a doubt that that you don't believe that
52:55 somebody says that they were very successful in a thing and just doesn't look like it you know there's that phrase in in business which is is if there's doubt there's no doubt when it comes to hiring and firing I didn't Follow That So just pay attention to your doubts and if you need to write them down but it's the voicing of it in a weird way was a way of blowing off steam and not addressing the core issues so that was one thing and then I think the last thing is it's this um I felt guilty verifying I felt guilty verifying his job application I felt guilty going to the guy that he said had offered him a job whose number I had and saying hey wanted to check on this because that would have been an indication that I didn't trust him and it was my way of saying I trust you I know you won't hurt
53:41 me and maybe you can trust me that I won't hurt you too never mind that they were not reciprocal relationships but the reason that I'm so interested in these sorts of things is because I had by the time I was 28 or 29 built the life that I dreamed of when I was 18 I had the girlfriend that I wanted I had more money than I dreamed of I had the dream job and it fell apart because these core things hadn't been addressed and when I say fell apart it wasn't like the world took it from me it was like my own ey fell apart in my ability to sustain them or it fell together thank you that's the truth no that's the truth man is um I'm so grateful for the ways in which it broke down and I think there's many
54:26 times in my life and when I've seen other people where they get fired or the thing doesn't work out or the first business fails and you're like oh it fell apart and you're right it's uh you get five years down the line it's like no man that that felt together yeah because if it wasn't you being your true aligned authentic self whatever that means then it wasn't real anyway it was something you were holding together and it sounded like it was exhausting to hold that together yes unconsciously life shouldn't be exhausting to hold together so if you're if you're exhausted holding your life together in the relationships of people then it's not sustainable and it's not real yeah well I'm curious and you're taking business on this because I've since found business mentors that there's so many mentors that are like here's how to build your business so that you can sell it and the implicit understanding there is that this thing is a pain in the butt
55:11 you don't want to have it and you'll be happier when you can get rid of it and exchange for a lot of money and there's a guy Joe Hudson who I've mentioned before who talks about you know what if a billion dollar business was not a business that was valued at a billion dollars but it's a business that you wouldn't sell for a billion dollar the things that you got to do like if you had to sell it and you could never do that thing again you wouldn't take that deal and when you think how would I run this business if it had to be my billion dollar business today what sort of things would I allow myself to do what sort of things would I cut out it's a total paradigm shift on business what an amazing question to ask yourself what an amazing question to ask yourself so the way that I heard that was if I wanted to run this business like a business that I would never be prepared to sell what the decisions I
55:56 would make today MH okay so you'd get rid of the toxic people that are destroying your piece irrespective of how many clients you might lose or the short-term net loss of that or how it might disgruntle people um you would probably set a pace that you could go at for 50 years and you'd probably disregard like metrics and growth numbers and stuff like that yeah you'd focus on doing work that you truly love not what the audience want not what the
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