Joshua Bandoch | The Science of Persuasion - Why We Feel First Then Reason Later

Joshua Bandoch is the Head of Policy at the Illinois Policy Institute and the debut author of 'How to Get What You Want'. 

It's persuasion and communication all the way down. Josh's argues that almost everything most of us were taught about how to win an argument is wrong and now the neuroscience proves it. 

Aristotle, it turns out, had this figured out 2,400 years ago. Kant, the great rationalist of the Enlightenment, did not. We feel first and reason second, and any attempt to persuade that ignores that simple fact is doomed before it starts.

Across the conversation we move from the Greeks to Adam Smith, from the Communist Manifesto as a piece of technical propaganda to what makes Steve Jobs, JFK, and Ronald Reagan so memorable as communicators. We talk about the difference between persuasion and manipulation, why authenticity is the most underrated tool in the kit, whether emotional intelligence can really be learned, and what Josh would tell the next Republican candidate trying to thread the needle between MAGA and the traditional conservative base.

It's a wide-ranging episode, and one I throughly enjoyed recording. I'm thrilled to welcome to the podcast, Joshua Bandoch.

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Link's To Joshua Bandoch

• Joshua Bandoch Website
• How To Get What You Want (Book)

Timestamps.

00:00  Aristotle, Adam Smith, and the 2,400-year science of persuasion
07:18  Persuasion vs. manipulation — the three biggest misconceptions
12:26  Authenticity, politicians, and why we lose trust
16:45  The neuroscience: we feel first, then reason
18:37  Negativity bias and the power of being FOR something
24:43  The logic tsunami and the limits of pure reason
33:02  Body language, tone, and the 7% rule
41:25  Emotional intelligence, moral foundations, and what's universal
56:54  Storytelling, aesthetics, and the masterclass of practice
01:08:24  Reputation, the long game, and the deathbed test
01:23:17  Sales, Chris Voss, and advice for the next Republican
01:34:01  History's great persuaders, and serendipity

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Both a master's and a PhD in political science. I wonder whether you came across much evidence of philosophers throughout history who thought about the science of persuasion.

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Yeah. So in my previous life, I was an academic, spent 10 years in that space. And the short answer to that is yes. Philosophers have been thinking about this for a long time, both directly, the topic of persuasion and how they go about attempting to persuade people of their perspective. So way back to the Greeks, um, and in many ways, they kind of understood this better than a lot of their successors. Uh, if you look at Socrates slash Plato and Aristotle, I think that their styles point us in the right direction for what persuasion is and how it works properly. So when you think about Plato slash Socrates, you think of the Socratic conversation, that dialogue, that back and forth, that listening. And Plato was a show don't tell with Socrates that this is how you do philosophy. It's through conversation and about big ideas. Aristotle thought directly about persuasion. So he has a book called On Rhetoric. And he says that there are three aspects to it. There's logos, which is logic, and then there's pathos, essentially like emotions or the passions, and then there's ethos, which is like um essentially like kind of how we see somebody, uh, whether it's like from uh credential credibility or just kind of this sense we get about them. Like, are they sort of authentic and genuine? So Aerosol thought about these things a long time ago. And I think that these two elements are actually foundational per to persuasion. If you fast forward then to the Enlightenment, a kind of funny thing happens. So the Enlightenment is this age of reason. And, you know, it's like literally the French word means like sort of light, and um, it's sort of trying to bring light onto the dark world that didn't have reason in it, and then it goes about arguing in a certain way. And I think the epitome of Enlightenment thinking is a German philosopher named Immanuel Kant. Immanuel Kant, um, he has books on like pure reasoning and things like that. And he is sort of emblematic of the hyper-logical way of attempting to persuade people that in this case his ethics or his views on anything else were right. So, like, sort of very much A to B to C, and like if he is right and like his views are right and they are universally right, even to the extent that he has a universal law of a morality called the categorical imperative, which, if it's right, applies always and everywhere to all 8 billion people who are alive today, has always been right and will always be right. So it is a universal law, and he got that through reasoning. Um, there was a kind of side current in the Enlightenment, which I think is actually correct, and we can talk about that more today, which is the Scottish Enlightenment, which it was much more not simply about reason, but about passions and feelings and human beings as these creatures that sure they reason, but they also feel. So um David Hume and Adam Smith are I think the two richest thinkers in this tradition. So Adam Smith has a book called A Theory of Moral Sentiments. So that's for him how the human brain uh essentially reasons and how it works. And I think that the neuroscience has proven Smith and Hume to be spot on.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

It's funny that you would introduce Adam Smith as evidence for someone who's thought about persuasion.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Oh, absolutely. I mean, well, I think that uh two things. One, just from the moral standpoint of how our brains work, uh, he didn't have all the neuroscience in psychology that we have today that I draw on in the book. And I think that the neuroscience and psychology have largely proved Human Smith right. So he was thinking about morals and how we reason and how we kind of engage with the world. And he was also attempting to persuade people of his view of not just morality, but also of economics, because his most famous book is A Wealth of Nations. And he attempted to write that in a manner, I think, that he thought was persuasive. Separate conversation about whether we like Smith or not. But I think just the sort of show-don't tell of Smith was also like, here's how I do my work.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

It's funny to think that there would be some type of science or philosophy of persuasion that underpins an economic system like capitalism. It's not just all raw trading goods, but rather morally, how does it make us feel and maybe what do we want to do? How do we want to behave as informing that system?

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Aaron Powell Which I think it has to be, incidentally. And I think that Smith understood that. Um I mean, he even just talks about capitalism as being in our self-interest. Uh it's something that we have to want to do. Um, I think that that largely aligns with how we're wired. So um I may I think if capitalism or any other economic system is going to, you know, hold true in a sense that it has to totally align with how our brains are wired. Um and I think that Smith has some good evidence on his side, both for the moral side of things and for the capitalism side of things.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

On the other side of the coin, what's the philosophy of persuasion behind the cop communist manifesto?

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Uh well, so I think one thing that both Smith and Marx um they get is that w and so this is in accordance with all the neuroscience and all the psychology, and I hate what I'm about to tell you. Um, this is how every brain, mine, yours, all eight billion of us are wired. We feel first, then reason. Sometimes it's feeling we never get to reasoning. I've definitely been there. Probably have too. So I say this because, uh, quickly just to go back to Kant, although Kant thought he was hyperlogical, that's not in accordance with how the human brain works. Bummer. Why do I bring this up now? Because I think that both Smith and especially Marx did a great job of understanding intuitively or whatever, that you have to appeal to people's emotions. And Karl Marx did a phenomenal job of that. Um, like him or not, you know, the Communist Manifesto is a remarkable work in the technical sense of propaganda, and he saw it as such. You know, those opening words. Uh, let me see if I can remember them. It's what um uh what is it about the chains? Goodness, I'm embarrassing myself, and I have the book right here. Um, you know, but it's like a spectrus haunting Europe. A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of communism. So, oh my God, what an image, right? This thing. Um, and that book, if you just go page by page, is like these sort of economic and political claims, but laced with this like raw moral and emotive language throughout that persuaded uh many people to, you know, ha continue to persuade people uh to do things, in the technical sense, a propagandist.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

So the book is called How to Get What You Want. Um, you've cited there, was it Socrates and his Evos Pacatos Logos, and then looked at the two big economic systems and how persuasion underlines it. The real emphasis of the book is more just how can you yourself get more of what you want, be more persuasive in driving for the outcomes that you're going towards.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Yeah. I mean, um the book applies in any professional or personal situation, whether you're talking to your boss or you're trying to sell a client something, or you're at an America Thanksgiving dinner, whatever the Australian equivalent is, um, of uh, you know, dinner with your crazy uncle and you're trying to persuade him of something. So it's meant to apply to any situation. And it does so through, yeah, lots of research and also just things that I've tested over time to see if they work uh or they don't work. And what's in the book, well, that's the things that work and are in accordance with how our brains wired.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

It feels like the motivation is always reduced to something like be better at negotiating a salary increase, you know, or um be better at communicating a difficult situation with your children, or something like that. But I feel like that reduces it a little bit much. I think there's a quality of life that just comes out of being more persuasive generally. And even as I say that, I can hear the other side of the coin saying something like, that's just being manipulative, and that's not being true to actually um what maybe the good morals that you think you have underneath all of that are. So, how do you balance that sort of ethical line?

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Great question. And literally, I think just yesterday I was talking to someone Saturday, an Uber driver mentioned a book. He's like, ah, isn't that isn't that just manipulation? I was like, well, no. So um let's talk about what I think persuasion isn't, because I think and then explaining what I think it is, we'll get a good answer to this. So the three most common misconceptions of persuasion that I encounter are first, that persuasion is about winning. And Ryan, if I win against you, what does that make you? A loser. Right? Oh my God. And do you want to work with somebody to make you feel like a loser? Of course not. You just want to pay them back. I sure do. Um, second common misconception is that persuasion is about convincing someone to think like you. And the trouble with that is that the Latin root of the word convince actually means to vanquish or to conquer. And conquest is barbaric. It's not persuasive. And then some people think that persuasion is just this battle of logic and reason. And as we've already talked about, it's not how the brain's wired. So it isn't just it's it isn't just launching your logic at somebody. And incidentally, when someone does that to you, do you like it? Um, no. So I think that persuasion is shared action. It's shared because it's something that we voluntarily do with others, and it's action. So it's about getting things done. Now, the tools in the book can be used for good or for evil, and the evil side of things is manipulation. It's like a knife, right? Cook a great meal, cut somebody's throat. It's like the force in Star Wars, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker. So you have to choose who you want to be. And I think the missionary reason to not manipulate people is that it's wrong. Like, do you like being manipulated? I mean, I don't. And the mercenary reason is that invariably it's going to come back to bite you. People are going to find out, they're going to tell other people. And you might one time get what you want from somebody, but you then cut off the opportunity to have repeated successes with them. So I think that in understanding persuasion is shared action, it's therefore not manipulation because you're voluntarily doing it with other people. And because it's shared, you have the other person in mind and they have to see what they're doing as in their interest too, which I think so goes back to some of your initial comments there. So it's doing something together with others. It's not just getting what you want, but since you're working with somebody else, they're getting some of what they want too.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

And also it means if you are going to be genuine about repeated business over time, um, it means a lot of the time you actually won't get what you want. That's a part of being persuasive.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Oh, 100%. I mean, uh, first, part of persuasion is knowing when you can't get what you want from somebody. And sometimes it's, I mean, you don't always 100% of the time uh get everything you want. That's impossible. It's just it doesn't work that way. And part of it is also learning because you might go into a situation and part of persuasion is conversations. And if you think the the other person has something to learn from you, maybe you also have something to learn from them. So maybe you go and thinking that you want something, and it's actually there's something different or something better potentially there that you learn about through conversation. And part of it is that you might want five things. Uh, and you talk to somebody and um they want five things, but four of them are different. Okay, well, you could either say, nope, I can't get all five things. You could say, hey, we agree about one thing. That's really cool. Let's work together on that. You're still way better off than if you didn't work with that person.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

I think this is why people grow cynical over politicians over a long enough timeline, is because they are trying to persuade in every single interaction that they have. And on a long enough timeline, you can start to see where lies were being told. And therefore, can you really believe what the next truth is that they're going to be saying?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

And that's why throughout the book, I beat the drum of authenticity, because uh sure, I have some strategies and is and tactics in the book that I think are effective and clever. And you have to always be authentic. Because first, when you're inauthentic, um, people usually know. And that's why they don't like that sense they get when they talk to politicians, like, ah, he or she is just being political. It's like, eh, it's just there's something that just doesn't sit well about it. It's like, I don't know if I can trust this person. If you, by contrast, are authentic in all of your interactions, um, you're going to be consistent and people are going to believe you. They may not like what you say, but I don't agree with everything that I did yesterday. So if I can't agree with everything that I do all the time, then I can't agree with anybody else all the time. And as long as I approach situations authentically, at least I'm not going to give off the vibe, I don't know if I can trust this guy. Maybe I don't agree with him, but I can trust what he's saying. He seems genuine. That's somebody I can work with, I can have a conversation with, I can be open with. And when those things happen, there is so much more opportunity to work with somebody than we typically expect. You just have to actually listen and learn from the other person and look for the overlap. And that's simple, it's not easy though.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

I'm just thinking again about the ethos pathos logos, um, because it's 3,000 years now and still a framework for a lot of great speech making. Hypothetic, I could say, um, I was elected by my party. Uh I've been fighting for this for 20 years. Here is a direct story about one person who was impacted by what we did, and this is now what I'm proposing. It's just such a good build to be persuasive for what you want to get. But in the 3,000 years since, have we improved on that at all? Was there something the Greeks found out that was just so foundational that we haven't been able to improve upon that?

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Well, so I think we've improved upon it insofar as we first know that Aristotle was right now, which, you know, there are many great thinkers who were just dead wrong about things. Um, so okay, we know that he was right, but I think also now we know how he was right, and then specifically what it means to tap into the logos and the pathos and the ethos and the order in which we have to do those things, which is not the order that we want. So that's part of what I try to go into the book, is like, well, what is the order of things? And then what are some of the things that you can do that are in some ways counterintuitive, but actually do align with like parts of our wiring that if you do those things are really effective. So I think Aristotle happened to give us a great framework, and now we know that the framework is right, and now it's building out strategically and tactically, what do you do to get what you want?

SPEAKER_01 14:32

You keep mentioning the wiring. Could you be hyper specific about what it was Aristotle got right that we've now explained through neuroscience?

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Well, so I think the biggest thing that he got right is that, and I don't know that he framed things this way exactly, but he knew that pathos, the passions, emotions were a foundational part of persuasion. I don't know if he would have necessarily said that we have to start there, but he knew that they were super important. And now we know that that's where you have to start. So uh that's this is again, this is what all the neuroscience says. We feel first and reason. And that he even wedged that into a persuasion framework and that that's what rhetoric and persuasion requires was a phenomenal insight because you would think that a philosopher would just be about reason. And Aristotle knew that it was so much more than that. I mean, he even saw it with his own eyes with other politicians, with politicians who um, you know, were were active during his time. Uh, you just have to watch one political speech that Moosey, but you're like, oh, okay, there's something there. So I I think in him bringing that into an our understanding of what persuasion is was a foundational insight. And now we know that it was spot on.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Can you say a little bit more about the neuroscientific underpinnings that you wrote about in the book that explain why we're feeling first, but then reason later when if we if we're gonna be hyper-rational about it is the wrong way to behave.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Totally. So um we feel first and reason, and um, it turns out the people who suffer brain damage, tragically, who lose the ability to emote, their reasoning is actually impaired. So that means that emotions actually enhance our reasoning. And that means that the logic first approach to persuasion is not at all in accordance with the cognitive realities of our brain, which means that it's illogical. So um, you know, a lot of folks that I know and like work in like think tanks or academia. So that's like it's like, sorry, guys, well, that's illogical. It's not that it's unimportant, it's that when you start there, um, that's not how our brains work. And the beautiful thing about our emotions or feelings or intuitions is that they are based on reasoning. They're just like way faster. And if you pause and you actually really reflect on some of the intuitions or like the good or the bad feelings that you have, they're usually right, or they're at least at least usually there for a reason, right? Where like you don't feel so good about something, you're like, I don't know what's going on, but like there's like a yellow flag here. And then when you investigate, you're like, oh, yeah, that is a yellow flag. When you feel good about somebody, there's a reason for that. So my training as an academic was beat people over the head with your reason. Uh, maybe if you can make them feel really stupid and you know, tell them how wrong they were. I've I've seen the peer review process at its at its finest, I guess you could say. And uh, I mean, that never persuaded anybody of anything. Like somehow all these brilliant academics have just radically different views of like the exact same text or data or whatever. Like, how does that work? So it doesn't really make sense. Um, and I've learned to just accept the beautiful reality that our intuitions are super powerful. So that's one of the counterintuitive things. Another one is that um we are wired to be negative. It's something called negativity bias. We are more sensitive to negative information. And that is a survival mechanism. Like if our ancestors had not been sufficiently attentive to threats, then they get eaten by a saber-toothed tiger or whatever. Um, so it does help us survive. It also um it impedes thriving because uh negativity is not persuasive. And if I ask you to think about, you know, whether it's Americans if they come to mind or just people in world history that were extremely persuasive, who are some of the folks who come to your mind? Uh it's hard to go past Churchill for perfect example, right? And when I bring that into the American context, people might say Martin Luther King Jr. or JFK or Ronald Reagan. So Churchill's a phenomenal example. Um, and Churchill, big picture, was positive. Martin Luther Martin Luther King Jr., positive, 100%. It was always positive. It wasn't like, oh my God, things are terrible, and hopefully they would they won't see, you know, they won't be quite so bad. It was like, no, he was he was for all of these things and he was positive. And I mean, just absolutely phenomenal. Uh no one in the U.S. ever says Malcolm X, they always say Martin Luther King Jr. Uh no one says Barry Goldwater, they say Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, another great example, right? Um and so what did these folks do? They were for something. So although we're wired to be negative, you need to be for something because that's persuasive. And those are the positive feelings you have to generate. So it's like, well, what feelings are persuasive? If you start with feelings, positive feelings. How do you do that? You have to be for something. It's just hard because you look all around, particularly in America. Hope things are a little better in Australia. I mean, you we're just we're awash in negativity and toxic polarization. Like 2% of Americans and a survey, I think for 2023 had a positive word to say about American politics. And one of the most, so let's go, a word cloud of their responses. And one of the most common responses in that word cloud was dumpster fire. That's about right. Our politics is essentially a dumpster fire. So it's when you see that, you just assume, well, negativity is either inevitable, evasive, or both. But it's not. It's actually none of those things.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Even to look at a modern example, Donald Trump's Mate Make America Great Again is an intrinsically very positive and optimistic message about something great over the horizon that we can all achieve. And despite all the evidence of him being a liar and negativity everywhere else across the board, that optimistic message still carries him forward, presumably with a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Absolutely. And anybody that we discuss who's in politics, particularly who's still in politics today, I'll just simply try to speak in an observational manner, not in a partisan manner. So just objectively make America great again is that he is for something. And those hats, right? These are people who are a part of a movement and they believe in this thing. Um and part of the way that Donald Trump got there, if you go back to 2016, he he knew extremely well that you had to start with feelings. And one thing he said that was extremely powerful, he said to folks, he said, I will be your voice. The empathy, I mean, that was his version of Bill Clinton's, I feel your pain. I feel your pain. And that's a remarkably powerful thing when you think somebody is authentic about it. Um, and it's like, wow, really powerful. So somebody says, I will be your voice, and then that voice points you towards making America great again, like whatever that means. Um, Obama did that positive with hope and change, right? These are really powerful things that unite people.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

It's funny, you'd think evolutionarily we would have evolved over time as we became more literate and had more settled societies, that reason would start to overwhelm the emotion. How so? Well, just because reason drives things forward. I would presume. I'm not a, what are they called, an evolutionary biologist or an anthropologist or anything like that. But presumably the best ideas, we get together and we build a bridge, we can see the outcomes of the bridge. Okay, reason got us there, not emotion and feelings. And you'd think over enough iterations in time, we would have evolved to that instinct rather than still being feelings first, reason later.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

You're that's an enlightenment thinker. No, I'm kidding. I mean, um, reason is a beautiful ideal. And when um the research shows that we feel first, then reason, we do reason still. It's just that's the order of things. And strategic reasoning is extremely Is is extremely important, particularly when you're looking at like science and medicine, engineering and things like that. Like, I don't really want like that many feelings coming into like, you know, uh what we need to build a sturdy bridge. Maybe uh about what how that how that bridge should look. Um so in scientific endeavors, when you're just kind of running the numbers, sure, it's you know, kind of reason rules the roost, and there are equations and things like that. Um, in your more standard human interaction. So I think I for a long time I I would have totally agreed with you that, man, you know, can't we just be more reasonable? And as I've came to first grudgingly, but now happily embrace the power of intuitions, they are based in reason and they're way faster. So that's actually like that's really cool. That like we just kind of feel something and like it's actually like more times than than not, it's pretty accurate. I think that's amazing. You're talking about instincts there. Yeah, like intuitions and just like those sort of quick emotions and feelings that happen. Um, look, I mean, are our are feelings always good? No. And do you need to be able to control them? 100%. Absolutely. Um and it's just it is, right? Like that is how things are.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

But we we we we have we might have an instinct for people or instinct for a situation. How does it make us feel? And that might be more true than what our reasoning of that situation might be. Um, but when it comes to the the physical construction of our society, the institutions, all of the corporations, yeah, you know, instinct doesn't do much for us there, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Uh um yes, and no. I mean, when you say institutions, I I want to first pull on that because absolutely. So although we have these passions, they can be powerful both in a negative and a positive way. So kind of in the West, we're lucky enough to, in I think pretty much every country, have some kind of separation of powers. Because the idea of the separation of power is essentially knowing that people in power, they're gonna feel at times that like maybe they should do some things that aren't good ideas. So you have institutional constraints, whether it's through separating the legislative and the judicial. In America, we have an executive branch as well, that's like elected separately. Um, France has that too. Uh, so like separating these things and separating powers is a way to make sure that the impulses, which sometimes are good but sometimes bad, that those bad impulses are controlled so that things don't go off the rail. So, in no way do I wanna suggest that like feelings and emotions are always good. I mean, uh I've certainly I've certainly been overallwhelmed with negative emotion and said and done things that I wish I hadn't done. So you need constraints on your individual behavior, but also society-wide, totally need constraints on those things, 100%. That's in institutions that are grounded in reason, but also sensitive to people's emotions. That's what they're there for.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

True. The get the guardrails are to stop the emotional hijics. 100%. Absolutely. Yeah. Uh I I liked when you wrote about the logic tsunami, where academics, lawyers, otherwise intel otherwise intellectually capable people uh tend to be the worst at accepting that we feel first and then reason later. And you had a great example of this in the book about your dissertation advisor. I'm not sure the exact title, but you turned in your master's thesis, she tore it to shreds. Um, it kind of destroyed your confidence, but then six months later you submitted it nonetheless, and people loved it.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Yeah, I mean, um, so the logic tsunami, it's kind of my way of representing what people try to do to persuade, that it's like if you just launch as much logic as possible at somebody, you just kind of you're gonna beat them over the head or what's a tsunami, you're gonna totally wash them away. And that you're gonna kind of like, you know, knock loose or wash away those bad or mistaken thoughts. And then they're gonna, you know, having cleansed them with all that water from the tsunami, they're gonna finally see the light and of course start to think like you. And I mean, tsunamis are destructive, first of all. Um, just like launching your logic that's destructive. And I mean, has anybody ever in your life have they ever persuaded you of anything that way? Aaron Powell With sheer logic? Uh with a logic tsunami just beating over the beating you over the head with their logic.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

I don't know, Josh. I might be the wrong example here. I think I tend to be more persuaded by something like that. But I do absolutely understand what you're trying to say. Because I've tried to convince people with logic tsunamis before and it's gotten absolutely nowhere.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

I mean, you know, I've tried to, and you know, do I still do it sometimes? Yeah. And then I'm like, wait a minute, this isn't gonna work here. So I think academics and intellectuals, people who get think tanks and that kind of stuff, that they are most susceptible to this. And so you mentioned the example of my distinction advisor. Yeah. I mean, I turned in my dissertation, and I went to my advisor's office the next day and like, I was on cloud nine, right? I'm gonna have a PhD, it's gonna be amazing. You know, so I'm a good school when I'm going to a postdoc at a really prestigious school, an Ivy League school. Okay, that's amazing, man. Like, wow, this is like a big step. And like, this is like early career success. And then literally the first words out of her mouth were if you didn't have that postdoc, I'd have made you rewrite your dissertation. And I mean, that was like, that was such a deep cut. It was, it was like within an inch, sorry, two and a half centimeters uh for all the folks that use the proper measurement systems. Um, you know, I was within centimeters of just completely destroying my career. Just like, I mean, this destroying all of my confidence. It took six months to recover. And it was okay, finally dusting myself off. Okay, like I'm I'm still breathing here, barely, but like I'm still breathing. Um, the wounds have started to kind of heal. And then I picked myself up and eventually submitted that manuscript for publication. And I got just wonderful reviews from top scholars who were really well respected, which meant that my discharge advisor was wrong. There was actually a lot there that was quality, and um, it was so counterproductive because the right way to go about it was um, you know, hey, kiddo, good job. And uh here are some ways we can enhance this to turn this into a book. But she just had to be right. She just had to make her point that this could have been better, which of course everything can be better. But uh, you know, she just had to uh she just had to prove her point and be right and and you know, show who the boss was.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Do you do you chalk that up to just uh egotistical abuse of power from her situation?

SPEAKER_00 28:28

I think it's common among academics in particular because I saw this at, I mean, got hundreds of workshops and conferences where a basic academic raises their hand and says, You're so completely dead wrong. And I am, of course, so right. Um, let me explain why you're so wrong and why I'm so right. And I mean, this happens every day in academic seminars all around the world. Um, that's just that's just kind of how things work there. So no as typical behavior, perhaps a little bit, you know, on the extreme end of typical behavior, but like fairly typical, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

I'm sorry I'm lingering on this so long, but just because it really is probably at the very core of the book that we feel first and then reason later.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Um it makes me think of the exceptionally successful corporate leaders who are neurodivergent. I'm thinking Zuckerberg, I'm thinking Musk, I'm thinking Jobs. There are many other examples, of course. But these are people because of the wiring that they came out with from the womb, they don't feel as much. It's purely reason. And they are extraordinarily successful because of it, but leave behind them reputations of being bastards, essentially, just horrible people.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Fair. And um, again, the point is not to diminish the role of reason. I think that even all in all the stuff, you know, the feelings and intuitions I talk about, it's grounded in research and there's reason there, right? So uh I would say that my book is grounded in reason, right? So it's super important. And this is by the way, a fun thing to linger on because it's so important and it's so hard for people to accept uh that they just fight me on it or they ignore it. And I'm just I'm just drawing the neuroscience. So I mean, to your point, um, it is true, right? That like uh some of the smartest and most respected and most successful people in human history, uh, they maybe haven't been as emotive as the average person. Um and there are some wild successes. And I suppose what I would say that for every one wild success like that, just imagine the thousands, tens of thousands of people who are also super smart, but because of their inability to demonstrate an emotional intelligence, they burn bridges, doors close or don't even open because they just they don't know how to behave properly. Um and I would even say with Elon Musk, um, certainly when he, you know, uh took on a more political um face, uh, you know, I mean, there was a lot of emoting there as well. So uh, you know, I mean, imagine him like going on a stage of the chainsaw with the doge thing. That's a really good point. That's it, that's a really good point. Even Musk knows that there are all these deeper things. Let me give you another example, which um I talk about in chapter eight, which is called Gooby on Words. It's like all these other things that go into persuasion. Well, one thing that Musk is extremely sensitive to is body language. And I know this because when you look at especially recent pictures, um, especially when he was in the White House, he's always doing this thing called hand steepling, which for anybody who watches this on video, they'll see what I'm doing. And if otherwise Google hand steeping, basically put your fingertips left and right hand together and point them towards the sky. That's not something people do naturally. And people who are extremely trained in body language, like Musk and Angela Merkel and Vladimir Poutine, by the way, um, they are always using persuasive and sometimes dominant in the case of Poutine, body language. So Musk has trained to present his body language persuasively. So he knows that there's more to it than simply sending a rocket to space or building an EV or something like that. He knows.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

And in chapter eight, you go into why words is something like I think 7% you cite of how persuasive you are, the choice of words that you know put together to come out of your mouth with. But then something like 33% is tone, and then the rest is body language, which is probably why we are so instinctively good at uh at surmising whether someone is trying to manipulate us or they're kind or they're mean or something like that, because it's 70, 80% of the things you're doing with your body that you don't consciously notice, what the tone of your voice is, how consistent your cadence might be, what you're doing with your hands, uh, whether you can smile, whether you can make eye contact, just a billion little things. And again, this kind of gets into why it can start to feel manipulative when you're trying to learn these tactics, rather than them just being instinctive to oneself.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

On that latter point first, um, the the two things I would just come back to is authenticity and the missionary-mercenary dynamic here, which is that like treat people how you want to be treated. So uh, and people are gonna find out, right? For every one kind of psychopath who on Wall Street or wherever made a lot of money. Um, I mean, there are just tens of thousands of people who um they they tried to manipulate and maybe they succeeded. And because of that one success, they never succeeded again because people found out and they said, man, that Bob, Bob is a maniac. Do not deal with him. Stay away from Bob. Susie, by contrast, she's lovely. Work with her. Bob might be smarter than Susie. Uh Bob might be harder working, but I don't trust him. And he's a he's a terrible person. Don't work with him. So I mean, I think the exceptions in many ways prove the rule. Um, be authentic, don't manipulate. And in terms of just the general stuff, yeah, I mean, the research uh that you mentioned is on it's like verbal liking, kind of how much we like somebody based on and like kind of how we experience them. And sometimes as little as 7% of that is the words they say, which is also really hard for really smart people to process because they think, well, okay, look, if I just get the words right, then I'm gonna get what I want. It's like, no, not exactly. Because if I say to you, Ryan, I say, Brian, that was a great idea. That's pretty positive. If I say, Ryan, that was a great idea. Well, for the folks hearing that, that same word is that tone was not the same. And uh any of the folks in video, they'll they'll see my eyes rolled, which is a sign of contempt, absolute contempt. And, you know, sentiments is like the joking eye roll, like my son does something. I'm like, all right, kiddo, come on, like you're killing me here, right? But like I love him infinitely. There's no contempt there. You'll see though, when um when people change their tone and the body language, uh, it gets contemptuous, like you just kind of know it. Like I remember I used to work with a girl and we had a boss that nobody likes. And every time she talked about him, she rolled her eyes. There was pure contempt every single time. It was just, oh, this guy again. Uh and those things are powerful because they're sending signals. So, you know, are there ways you can kind of be mindful of your tone and body language? Absolutely, which is a really empathetic thing to do because even when I'm frustrated, if I can calm down my body language and breathe. Like I do that with my son. He's three and he's a he's amazing. And sometimes he he's a handful. So if I get frustrated with him, that's gonna be counterproductive. If I can be the adult and the calm one and just bring absolute calm to my tone, it calms him down, which is better for everybody. Does that require me to really think? Yeah, I'm not trying to manipulate him though. I'm trying to help him and try to help us. Just calm down, get him through a challenging moment, and then get him back on track.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

It's perplexing how some people can be in their 30s and forties and still exhibit such poor body language again and again and again and not have the self-awareness to correct it. Like, are they just being are they being purely authentic? Should I should should I really respect the fact that they're at least not trying to hide how they feel? You you know what I mean? Rather than try to convince me otherwise and persuade me otherwise by giving off all of this positive body emotion and cadence and tone and make me feel like I'm in a soft little cocoon when in fact they're trying to knife me in the other room?

SPEAKER_00 36:31

Look at all good. I think there are a couple of layers to that. One is, you know, there's something raw and and beautiful about just somebody revealing their authentic self. And I think it's incumbent on us to say, look, I mean, how I am authentically now, is that the best version of me? So like the thing that I care about most in life, just just period, is empowering people to unleash their unique potential because I believe that we are all bundles of potential. That's one of the things that this book is all about. It's like, it's for people who like they want to work hard, they want to improve, and they have good ideas and they know that how they communicate those ideas is extremely important. So this book is giving them all kinds of tools just to climb as far as they want up that ladder. Um, so it's like, well, we can all be so much more than we are. So I think it's okay to say, look, my authentic self is, you know, I don't have good body language. I don't, you know, my tone's not right, or I just I get too frustrated or whatever. Um, I'm too selfish to look, think about another chapter. I don't have enough vision for my life or for this team or whatever. I think it's okay to recognize that I'm not as much as I could be, because we can all be so much more, and then try to improve that. Um, and you know, when you observe that in people that you care about, then you know, maybe it's incumbent on us to help them. If you notice that someone you really love, they're just their tones off. You know, they're they're just they're really worried about something, you know, or they're they're by the legacy. They seem kind of slouched over in a way that that they're not usually, then being empathic and caring, we can observe that directly or just kind of ask them, like, how are you feeling? Like, what's what's going on? Is everything okay? Boom, okay, right. So these are things that can help other people too. It's not just about improving your tone, it's about helping people who you care about or observing when their tone is off. You know, when somebody's stressed and you can observe it. Or, like, even, you know, I was talking to somebody recently, um, you know, it was like an important professional conversation, and I could hear that this person was stressed because they were gulping in their throat uh when they would talk, and that's that's a good indicator of stress. So there were things that I didn't press on in the conversation because I knew that this person was stressed. And pressing on those things would have made it worse. So I sort of took my foot off the gas a couple of times to make sure that this person wasn't feeling under unnecessary stress in the conversation. So it's doing it to be empathic because pressing her on this would have been counterproductive. It would have made her feel bad and it would have impeded my ability to get what I want. So don't do it.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

What I understand you really believe and also want to uh impart from the book is that this is all teachable and learnable for individuals. But I just wonder whether you think there isn't some just natural born emotional intelligence, which some people come out of the womb with that make them really good at perceiving all the subtleties in how someone might be feeling and what they're really trying to say, and then knowing exactly how to engage that with them so they do feel comfortable and so forth along the way. Do you do you really think that that can be taught? Um, because my instinct is just that some people have it, some people don't. It's it can get a little bit better over time, but you look at phenomenal communicators, they just have emotional intelligence off the charts. And, you know, is that really achievable for most people?

SPEAKER_00 39:47

So um this is where I'm gonna go to the data. Ha ha, right? We'll start there. Um, because the short answer is yes, and then I'll give you a couple of examples. So I am super lucky to have Peter Salave, um, who is one of the founders of emotional intelligence as a field Yale professor, was president of Yale for a long time, endorsed my book. And when I talked to Peter about my book, he said, um, you know, hey, uh make sure that you you highlight that we can learn emotional intelligence. So he was he was kind enough to share some of his data with me that aren't public data, but are those those are his data, which I I cite in the book that show that uh over time people's emotional intelligence increases. So it can be learned because people who are in their 50s and 60s have higher emotional intelligence than people, say in their 30s or 40s on average, which means that over time, people actually are able to learn this. So um, how do we do that? Uh, I mean, I think part of it is over time, like what happens over time. We tend to be a little bit less self-centered as we kind of open things up. And emotional intelligence is it requires you to really understand the other and to think and care about them. And then ultimately, I think to put them first. And I think as we get a little older and we mature from this standpoint, you know, it's like a fine wine. It gets a little bit better with with age. And I think emotional intelligence starts by putting them first, really understanding your counterpart, understanding what emotions they're experiencing and helping them navigate those things. Um, and I think also just learning the world a little bit better and kind of seeing some things that do and don't work. So intuitively, right, you tried these things and you know that in your 20s and 30s, maybe maybe those things weren't so effective and you stopped doing those things.

SPEAKER_01 41:37

What was the hard data he shared with you?

SPEAKER_00 41:39

Well, that like so they're able to measure emotional intelligence, like they give people scores, and that over time, if you look sort of by decade in their data, the average score of emotional intelligence goes up. So the people in their 50s and 60s, they have higher emotional intelligence. The way that Peter Salave and his associates measure it, um, they have higher emotional intelligence by like, you know, a notable increase in the data than people in their 20s and 30s. So over time, people's EI actually does increase. Do you know how they measure it? Uh I mean, that's you know, uh they have tools for measuring emotional intelligence. I'm not the psychologist who do this, but um he has a survey you could take, so you can uh measure yours.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

Um I know nothing about the field, so I can't critique it by any measure. But you know how you can take an IQ test and maybe you have extraordinary pattern recognition, right? Which puts you off the charts for your IQ score. But does does that really track into your day-to-day life? And therefore, is it truly a great measure of actually how intelligent one might be? And I just imagine sort of similar flaws might exist in trying to measure one's emotional intelligence one way or the other.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

So the unhelpful answer is twofold. Uh, and I'll try and be a little less helpful. Um I haven't just looked at the details of exactly how they measure things, because that's that's kind of their proprietary information. Again, unhelpful. I realize that. Um I do believe though that you know it is essentially like a peer-reviewed and validated metric, um, because these are like the premier people in the field. So um I think so. Those are unhelpful. Uh I appreciate that as answers. Um, what could be a little bit less unhelpful? Um so uh let me just think for a second here.

SPEAKER_01 43:27

Um while you're thinking about it, because obviously intuitively it makes sense that the older one gets, the better their emotional intelligence becomes because they've just dealt with more people. They've been betrayed by more people, they've been made happy by more people. They probably have kids, and so they see this emotional spectrum rise over time.

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

You know, um, but then maybe for someone who's 20, and by the time they're 30, they want to be better, uh more emotionally intelligent, rather.

SPEAKER_00 43:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:50

Yeah, is is there a good way to measure that or to test for it or to improve on it? Back to the core of my question, which is just how much are we really born with this versus can we truly

SPEAKER_00 44:00

train it. Well, okay. So um we can train it because we know that it well, so over time it improves and we can learn these things. I mean, that's part of what I'm trying to do is show people, okay, well, this is how our brain is wired. So be mindful of that. But also here's how you can do things that are more emotionally intelligent and that are again for the right reasons that are going to help you get what you want and help somebody else get what they want because it's shared action. So I think part of learning it is just accepting and navigating the cognitive realities of the human brain instead of fighting them. And a lot of people, they just want to fight them. So because I mean I think that one of the biggest things that I've learned in this work. And so one of the biggest framing um questions for me with all of this is that each and every day we are faced with a decision. Do I want to be right or do I want to make a difference? It's really easy to be right. And I think especially young folks who are you know really smart and eager, they love to be right. And making a difference is so much harder and it's so much more satisfying because being right is easy. You go on X, Twitter, whatever it is, um, you know, you have a blog post, uh, you know, you go on a podcast, right? You write not-ed, whatever. And you just, you just unleash and that's that. And then you move on with life. And I think over time we we realize, you know, on average that that's not such a productive strategy. So I try to outline some more productive strategies. Now, do I think that some people are born with more emotional intelligence? Sure. And I think that's maybe just intuitively things that they do better. So um you know it's not simply voice. Like I lived in France with a host family for a little while when I was there and Pascal, my host father, um, he actually wasn't French. He insisted he was Parisian. And he um yeah I mean his voice was majestic just talking him to him about like you know uh the most basic things, right? Like the banalities of life was divine because his voice was absolutely majestic. You just like it just melts. Oh my God. Like it's so good to hear him talk. Does that make him more persuasive? I mean yeah you know it's a little bit nice to listen to him. I think one of the things that maybe people uh if they they tend to be born towards this would make them really persuasive. I think people who intuitively are better storytellers or know that you have to tell stories and so you know some people's minds are like logic, logic logic. Well it turns out that we're story processors first. So people who uh lean more towards telling stories and I think that some people do that. They just they kind of default to a story that's extremely powerful and that gives you a big edge. People who are uh you know born being a little bit more other oriented, I think the foundation of rule persuasion is that um it's about them not you. So you got to put them first. And if people are born being a little more other and a little more other oriented, a little more caring, um, that they have a little bit of a leg up already. Um people who are able to really cast a vision some people are really great at being just granular like you know forest to trees they're not just the tree they're like really great at just getting super granular to like the branch and the leaf and the bug and like the little you know bite out of that leaf and whatever. And that's really powerful in certain ways. And I think that the biggest thing that animates action is a vision. And some people I think they're just they're more gifted at like zooming out and thinking in that like really big picture way. So I think those are probably three things that yeah, some people are just better than that. They're just better than others at doing that. And that does get them a leg up. The happy thing is though that you can learn how to do those things. So although you might have an edge, I mean think about all the athletes who like they seem like just an absolute freak of nature because so like tennis is the place I go to. If I had to build a tennis player like I was God and I got to build a tennis player, I would build the Russian Marat Safin. I mean just the perfect body for tennis. I mean just like the power, the movement, the agility, the form, everything and yet he only won two Grand Slow because up here he didn't have it and he didn't want it. So even though he was built I think perfectly for a tennis player, there was something missing. So even though he was an absolute freak of nature that's not enough.

SPEAKER_01 48:32

Um it helps doesn't guarantee anything um have you come across any studies cross-culturally about how emotional intelligence breaks down just be curious to see if there's any cultural inputs that actually drive more emotional intelligence out of people.

SPEAKER_00 48:50

Well um one of the most important cultural studies that I've encountered is one of the big feeders into chapter five of the book, which is about morality um that in fact um morality is pretty universal in the the sense that people like there are certain things like certain values that like people tend to hold and that are important. So the research that I'm talking about um is uh work led especially by Jonathan Haidt um who is a social psychologist and famous for a variety of reasons. I know you talked about him I think in the podcast with um Johan Norberg right about I said the Ray Saki so he has a book from uh about 14 years ago called The Righteous Mind. And um so he's like the sort of main person in the moral psychology space that has an approach to to morals and to values called moral foundations theory. Okay, background what is it? So um we think that morality is just this like fully reasoned process. Again, going back to Kant where we started the episode just like pure morality and reason. It's like, well actually no as it turns out that in the same way that we have five maybe six uh physical taste receptors on our tongue, which are sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami, and maybe oligustus fat, we have six, maybe seven uh moral taste receptors that are wired into our hearts and minds. Um they are uh care, um, which is essentially being attentive to somebody's needs or suffering that they experience, equity, which is a concern with equal outcomes, proportionality, which is a concern about like what people deserve based on their merit. And then loyalty, which is a sort of in-group-outgroup dynamic, and then authority, which is essentially about respect or lack thereof for hierarchies, and then purity, which is like concerns over sanctity and degradation and disgust and things like that. And then freedom, which is essentially being free to live as you want. Some more complicated, but um I say this because uh there's recent research that I talk about in the book that uh these aren't just like American values. These are like these six or seven moral flavors essentially, they are universal insofar as they've looked all around the world and they've done surveys not just in the US, but in um Asia, the Middle East, Europe, everywhere. And like these really are the moral flavors that human beings experience. Is there a difference, you know, across cultures in certain things? I mean, sure you hear about like East Asian values, you know, they're like a little bit different than like American values, Europeans are different, the French enzymes are different, fine. But like these at least seven moral tastes like they are the moral tastes of human beings fab. It's not like in China they have like five totally different tastes in in Australia they have five totally separate tastes from all these and now we're up to 17, right? No, no like these are the six, seven moral tastes that people have that is like a universal thing in that sense. And why does that contribute to persuasion? Well because um once you know that these are the moral claims or the values that are going to resonate with people and then you have certain ways to understand what's going to probably resonate with this person, which we can talk about, then you know the kinds of moral appeals to make to people and what's the best way to generate positive or negative emotions to make moral appeals to somebody. I mean think about uh if I had uh sufficient clarity on your morals, I could offend you badly quickly or I can make you feel really good by making a moral claim that you're like, yes, and that that totally resonates with me. Totally resonates with me. Or that's that's that's absolutely awful and I'm I'm deeply offended. Totally deeply offended. So once you have clarity on somebody's morals, you have a great way to persuade them because you can ideally make positive appeals that are going to resonate with them so that they could be for something and you're gonna generate emotions that are going to help you share action with with somebody.

SPEAKER_01 52:47

And was Heights point that these are moral tastes that we've evolved so we can get along with one another?

SPEAKER_00 52:54

They are evolved. Yeah I mean they all make sense right like take loyalty in-group outgroup like it makes sense that um for people who are more sensitive to this taste and we are not all equally sensitive to all these tastes we can get back to that in a moment um that makes sense right uh it's like well there's like this us and them and you know sometimes the the them is fine but sometimes the them might be a threat to us. Hierarchies are important, you know, like do you want uh Nova employees like defying their bosses all the way up the chain? I don't know. Um are bosses always right also no um these things are evolved mechanisms and I think height and others do a good job of talking about like like they make sense. Um we're not equally sensitive to them but like it it makes sense that these are things that would like resonate with people.

SPEAKER_01 53:40

You spoke about the soft aesthetics of Pascal earlier how he had this lovely voice, right? So almost irrespective of what he would say, you'd probably listen quite intently uh and in the book you also write about jobs and the role he used aesthetics in his persuasion. Yeah. So could you just and as I'm saying it I realize I haven't shaved maybe my hair could be better. I'm not necessarily presenting the most aesthetic sense that I probably could whereas you on the other hand you're wearing a suit, you're shaved, you've got the books behind you. Like the the aesthetics really works. And so I just wonder if you could comment on where is aesthetics particularly useful to be persuasive.

SPEAKER_00 54:19

First of all, I actually think you look nice it's like this nice white shirt where it's like professional but like the open button kind of relaxed um you know like you are dialed in. I just can't get away with the gruff. It just doesn't look good on me. Um but I think on you it looks good, right? So uh I I disagree um in any event then I like your watch by the way so um in any event uh aesthetics are important because how we say things matters right I mean that's kind of part of the point of the book is like how we convey ourselves it's extremely important because you can say the exact same thing in a technical or logical sense and how you say it makes all the difference in the world. Um shorts the tone, the body language it's also what you say. And like so um one of the most beautiful aesthetic things that we can do is tell a story. So I work in an intellectual space, think tanks, but academics to et cetera, where their default is to launch logic tsunamis. The more logic the better write white papers, policy papers, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And like I I do some of that stuff, don't get me wrong. And it's like, well, what is much more persuasive and beautiful to capture what you want to say in a story, to capture in a story. So like and give you an example, I passion space is opportunity and social mobility and anti-poverty. Poverty is the antithesis of opportunity. There was some good research that came out uh about a year and a half ago now from a Harvard professor and some other folks and the research said, hey, look, uh the best way to ensure the the single biggest driver of upward mobility is whether a child grows up in an environment um that uh where there are other adults who work. So they see adults working. That's like a really complicated explanation. So instead I tell a story. I say look um I was at a conference and talked to a colleague and she said I just talked to a foster mom and that foster mom said that her foster kid came up to her and said, Where do you go all day? And do you know what the answer is? It's work. It's work. The foster mom goes to work all day and that kid had never been in an environment where adults worked which is crazy. It's crazy and it's so tragic. That's why it's important for kids to see that. Well I put thought into crafting that story and I think that's aesthetically much more appealing than me trying to like you know de-wonkify a wonky reporter. So when you can uh craft a compelling an authentic story that actually happened and like that that has not left me when I think about it some ways it's just it's like a haunting conversation. So it's like when you're sensitive that okay we're story processors, what are authentic stories that I can tell that I can craft in a way that's going to resonate with people that's a beautiful thing. And you can practice this stuff. You can practice it I had the good fortune of um talking to a former Ronald Reagan speechwriter and he said that Ronald Reagan edited heavily and practiced every speech and it showed I mean he was an actor but he was a phenomenal orator. And uh he was also a speechwriter for George H.W. Bush and he said that the very first time that uh George H.W. Bush practiced a speech was when he walked to the lectern opened the binder and started talking. Same speechwriter, right? Could have been the exact same speech and the delivery, the practice, the intentionality which Reagan brought to things, uh Bush didn't so you can practice these things, they can get better and you can be intentional by doing the right things that yes are aesthetically pleasing as well.

SPEAKER_01 57:54

It's funny it's back to ethos pathos logos again because you come up there with the heavily credentialed background and then the pathos for where you work and then finally the ethos of the story and it drives a significantly better outcome than just a presentation of statistics in a binder.

SPEAKER_00 58:11

I mean on that point especially look I mean um when I do the opportunity anti-poverty stuff and I'm up there in a suit you know blue suit, white shirt, tie, dress shoes, I look like the antithesis of poverty. Like nothing about me looks impoverished and I know that. So I just have to diffuse it and I do it authentically. So I literally say to people, I say look, um you're wondering why I'm here. I don't look uh at all impoverished. So like why do I care about poverty? And I tell them I say look um poverty is seared into my family's history. Uh my mom grew up dirt poor. Uh my grandmother raised five kids by herself and um sorry sometimes I get emotional doing this like right now. And uh my grandmother Lily had to count pennies. And um every Christmas my mom wondered if there were going to be presents around the Christmas tree because most years there weren't. And that poverty scarred my mom and her brothers and sisters and I mean it impacted my upbringing um and my mama still does crazy things. I'm like why are you doing that? It's because she grew up dirt poor and I don't want anybody else to suffer the way that my mom did. And so that's that's why I care about expanding opportunity to as many people as possible.

SPEAKER_01 59:33

It's uh it's intriguing that it still emotionally hits you. You must have told that story a thousand times.

SPEAKER_00 59:38

Yeah I told a couple months ago I just started crying and I had to apologize. Um you know I'm not crying just yet but say it's authentic and it brings out emotions in me and it's a story and it's way more powerful than me just saying look and it's completely undeniable clearly mean what you say. That's why you can wait as as long as you're authentic um and then you can think about what to say in an authentic manner and people will then trust you more and that will be more persuasive.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:06

Um so it's like yeah the I I I think the jobs example is so good because he still 20 years later has has absolutely legendary presentations, company presentations and then as well speeches himself he does the graduation speech at a university and it's fantastic. It's unbelievable and back to Churchill as well he famously spent maybe more time preparing for his speeches than he did working on any other policy or meeting with his cabinet and so forth. Yeah um it's hard to execute it's really hard to execute polished aesthetics. It takes such a long time that you know if you think about the pie chart of persuasiveness actually just being able to deliver great aesthetics might be as important as the delivery itself.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:52

And the first step is recognizing that this stuff is super important. And the second step is realizing that you can train these things. So like you mentioned jobs and um you know one of his uh the the things that really just made him different was that um like he took a calligraphy class in college and he thought so much about just the aesthetics of things and I mean obviously a wonderful tech mind and then the beauty that he bought he brought to everything. Like when you open a Mac product just the packaging but then the product itself it's it's a gorgeous product. It also works worked extremely well and I mean jobs practice his presentations for months you know I mean I think one of the fallacies that we have is that oh some people are just naturally good at this. Of course like we've discussed people have some natural gifts Pascal my host father right people just like that they're beautiful. I mean like JFK was a beautiful man, right? Just like you know visually you saw him in the 1960 debate versus Richard Nixon. And if you watch TV, you thought JFK won. If you listened you thought that Nixon won. JFK was a beautiful man. Sure, fine I don't want to diminish those things and um what we can accomplish through intentional practice is amazing. So how do you do this? You can't learn a million things all at once. You just you just focus on one or two things at a time. And then as you solidify that skill you learn the next skill and you learn the next skill jobs if you look at jobs in the 80s I like his interviews some of them were absolutely terrible. Some of his prestations were atrocious. They were absolutely awful it's like what not to do. And yet I mean his iPhone launch was I mean an absolute pure masterclass that he practiced for months and months and months only after having been exiled from Apple and then right the whole Pixar thing and then coming back to Apple and bringing this like aesthetic sense to everything layered on top of the tech, right? Because like the tech is right, that's the logic the engineering is great but then this aesthetic sense set him apart but then all the practice it's like you see great athletes you just think Michael Jordan greatest of all time I mean he didn't need like he was cut in ninth grade and in from the high from the basketball team was like uh right and it's like he he was back at it. So we can practice these things and we can get so so much better. Are we all going to be Steve Jobs and Michael Jordan? No, we can be so much more than we are through intentional practice one or two things at a time. So it's like in the book, I mean each chapter has a lot of things, but maybe the thing that you you struggle with is your body language start there because better body language gets you confidence. Maybe what you struggle with is, you know, you're just like a little more negative than you feel like is is helpful. Learn to be for something. Just flip things around what are you for? But just one thing at a time and just make it a process and don't judge yourself. Because I think one thing that impedes people's ability to improve is judgment. I used to be this way for a long time. I mean I was like the harshest judge of myself possible. It was always super counterproductive. So I have to stop doing that. And you just observe and then you say okay well I can get a little better. Cool a little better about this. And then over time weeks and months if you're really intentional about your tone or you're being for something or be putting them first or whatever it is, after a couple of months of that compound interest, oh man, it's like it's a it's not just a tool, it's a powerful skill that you can deploy when you need it.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:24

Um forgive me if I miss this from the book, but I was thinking about how important the reputation of one's person is in persuasiveness. Yeah. Um and if you agree that someone's reputation going into any sort of interaction is extremely consequential to how persuasive they're going to be, then another way to think of how you how to get what you want would just be playing the long game all the time across every dimension. You know, aim for the outcome when you're a hundred and therefore you'll be consistent over time and that reputation will carry you through.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:55

The long game 100% because it's not how to get what you want just once and then upset somebody, violate trust, you know, like you pulled the you pulled the wall over their eyes, ha ha, rinse and repeat. No, no. The best way to get what you want is to form trusted partnerships with people that are mutually beneficial. And then time and time again you're going to have doors open for you that were hidden and people are going to come to you and say, hey how about this too? Right? Like maybe let's do this together. So a hundred percent it's long game. And I think a lot of people they think about persuasion and this sense of like manipulation, it's like, yeah, just once it's a one off thing. Man, just imagine if instead of it being a one off thing, that could be a repeated thing. Cause like most people, they don't have that many potential partners, customers, employers, whatever. So if you're not caught doing those relationships in an authentic and long term manner, at some point you you run out of counterparts. So like who are you going to deal with then? I guess you can keep moving, but like that's a that's like not so that's not so helpful, not so productive. So 100% long term.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:58

And the more interconnects We become, the more one's reputation will be carried forth with them. I'm going to have a daughter who's born in three months. I mean. She'll be born in 2026. I mean, by the time she's 20 years old, her entire life will be digitized. Who knows what the type of tools and products are that she's going to be interfacing with by thinking about, gosh, how can you hold on to the long game and those in that type of environment. Because even for the two of us and we were growing up, you know, you could still I I I was employed in Amsterdam, then I was employed in Stockholm, now I'm employed in Sydney. You know, hypothetically, I could have been a disaster across all three of those different instances and still been okay. Um, but that that doesn't seem to be the trajectory we're on. Not just still be okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:44

Nobody would know.

unknown 1:06:46

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:48

And now everybody can know because the internet, you put in anybody's name. And a crazy number of things came up. Even just today. I mean, one of the reasons you uh you're a a great host is you did homework and you found out that I had a background in political philosophy. Well, that was all over the internet. I can't hide that, even if I wanted to. I don't, but I can't hide it because it's everywhere. So, like all those things, um, the good, the bad, those things that you posted on social media that no, like you shouldn't have posted that, but like here we are. Uh, I mean, I I I tell interns when they come, I say, like, beware, because things that you publish when you're 20, they're gonna be with you for the next 60 years. So really be mindful of who you are and what you say and where you say it. Um, yeah, it's like it's real easy to find out a lot about people real fast. Google is that's a remarkable, it's a remarkable tool.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:43

I really noticed this in the content creation space, like the the question of authenticity, because many of my peers are a thousand times bigger than my show is and they create incredible lives for themselves. Uh, but I have noticed that there is an inauthenticity that drives them to that outcome much faster. Because hypothetically, if I had on um you today to talk about how to get what you want, and then tomorrow I got on a person who wrote a book about why how to get what you want doesn't make any sense. And I both get you the most polarizing ex um examples of both of your positions, present them one week after another, and then next week I'll get on uh and the title will be you know, why sugar is actually good for you. And then you get all these crazy numbers. A lot of people are going to listen to the show. Um I I just I have noticed the the half-life of inauthenticity is just getting shorter and shorter and shorter, and the gains might be enormous in the short term. I mean, you don't have to go far to look online to see what a lot of influences and how they're behaving. You know, you look at this new trend called looks maxing and just the enormous rise in wealth and and and attention that these individuals will get for themselves. But the inauthentic nature of that means it's going to be a very short half-life, and therefore the crash is going to be just utterly devastating, and they'll be 25 years old, and it's like their career has already happened. What the hell do you do from here on out? Um, and obviously, how to get what you want. Underneath all of that is also, you know, how how does one live a good life? Um, one that they can be proud of, that they felt useful and that they can feel good of, you know, when they're on their deathbed. Um, it is that authenticity, and as much as it sucks in the short term, it's playing that long game as much as you can. Um, it's really hard, obviously, but it's I don't know. There's no question there. Just a little football.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:29

Well, no, it's uh it's it's a great observation that we are essentially incentivized to be inauthentic and to, you know, disregard a lot of things that we've been talking about today, like why not manipulate? Why not be an authentic? Like you can be a YouTube and Instagram celebrity. Like, why not do it? And I mean, one of the reasons I think not to do it, you know, you mentioned your deathbed. And one of the exercises that I do with interns when they start, uh, you know, I say, look, uh, just close your eyes for a moment, please. And they're like, What? I'm yeah, just uh trust me, close your eyes. And I say, okay, just imagine like you're you're real close to the end of life. And you look in the mirror and you say, That's my life. That was worth it. What does that look like? And within 15 seconds, they all know with like remarkable clarity it was that. And the things that matter are the things that gave them meaning. They're the things that gave them meaning. That's sure work, but family, relationships, things like that. So I say this because I don't think there's a lot of meaning in the inauthenticity, but the authenticity, there's meaning there because it's about who you are and who you want to become, the things that you care about, and making sure that you stay true to them. So could you get more more views on your podcast through clickbait? Certainly. Um, you wouldn't find that meaningful and it would be inauthentic. And so, like, is that a good way to live? I don't know, probably not. And I think the the people who authentically seek meaning throughout their lives, they are far happier um and far more successful personally and professionally, um, on average, than the people who don't.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:09

Yeah, on average. The trouble is, Josh, is that the people that might generate the most attention and appear the most aspirational might not present the best side of themselves, um, not necessarily intentionally, but that's just the filtering mechanisms for how we get to know a person. You know, like I interviewed a guy who wrote a book about Elon Musk uh just a few days ago, who's a person I admire tremendously, Elon Musk. But I'm not I'm not um I'm not blind to just how much I would not want his life. You know, the fracturous relationship with his children, the fact that any room he goes into, half the people will love him and then half the people will loathe him. The the artist stress. Um, and so this is definitely getting away from persuasion and the point of the book, but I I guess if we're talking about it, but you know, the the the life worth living isn't necessarily in copying those we admire or those who make it big to society. It's something softer. But then again, it's very personal. Maybe that's just how I feel and I'm projecting it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:12

Well, um, I don't know that it's totally divergent from the book because core themes here, and I think just core themes for life in general are authenticity and meaning, and what does it mean to be successful? I mean, um, one of the reasons I define persuasion is shared action because it's a cooperative endeavor. And I think part of success in life is learning how to not just play nice, but to play successful with people time after time after time, to bring empathy when people need it. And people are screaming for help, be empathic, demonstrate understanding with them, listen to them, learn about who they are and what they care about. That's a great way to connect with people. Have a vision for your life and for any organization you're gonna be a part of. Either buy into the vision or craft the vision if you're the leader. And then bring emotional intelligence to things, be for stuff. I mean, those are all things that if you do right authentically and driven by meaning, you're gonna be, I think, uh, yes, on average, a lot more successful. And uh, I mean, I I I think the the data show generally speaking that like um, you know, old people close, you know, close to their deathbed, they identify just a couple of small things that matter. That's family.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:24

Don't they always say the same thing at the end? Yeah. I just wish I spent more time with family and friends.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:29

Totally. I mean, people don't say, you know, damn it, I didn't build enough hours in my 40s. I didn't build enough hours in my 30s. God, I could have made so much more money if I had billed another 10 hours a week for 20 years. What was I doing? They say, oh my God, I missed so many soccer games. Football, sorry, we do the soccer thing here. I know, you know, I miss so many football games, rugby games, right? I missed, I missed so many meaningful uh experiences with my friends and family. I'm not saying works on important. Look, I mean, we're working right now, and this is such a pleasure. Hooray. It's just, it's it's not the only thing. And people, people never say, you know, like, I mean, even people who are wildly famous, like if Elon Musk doesn't found three more companies, they can make him a failure. Of course not. So it's like we know those things are what drive meaning. And um, a lot of the people who look, I mean, even some of the tragedies, right? You see some of the most famous people in the world, uh, a lot of musicians, they seem to be on top of the world. And then what do they do? They commit suicide. They kill themselves because all the fame in the world, all the money, um, all the whatever. It's not enough. Something's missing.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:35

Isn't it funny how we can perennially diverge from what the good advice is of people that have come before us? Th there's something, I don't know what what it is within our makeup, but we almost have to, we have to lead the road ourselves. There's there's no amount of advice, no matter how good it is, that is really going to fundamentally change a person. They have to do it themselves.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:58

Look, I mean, you cannot force people to do things. Uh, it doesn't work. So, I mean, again, persuasion is shared action, but when you just you I mean, sure, in the military, you can force people to do things. Uh, but like if you otherwise force friends, family, uh, coworkers, whatever, um, your subordinates to do things, I mean, they do it only because they're in an authority structure and they have no choice. And then the overbearing parents, what happens? They destroy their relationship with their kids. The awful boss, like, people are undermining them behind their back. The awful CEO or president, uh, there's a board coup. And then they get ousted because they're a jerk and nobody wants to work with them and people are leaving. Um, so like these things, these things happen for a reason. Uh, and people have to experience these things themselves. So you can't just tell people, hey, man, like I don't know, it's gonna blow up in your face. Like, kind of has to blow up in your face. So you hopefully, you know, help people that you care about and personally you avoid the enormous failures. Um, some failures are important though. Like when you do something that's inappropriate and someone responds negatively, that's a signal to you. It's like, oh, okay, like that didn't go over well. And then how do you learn from it? Or you make them you make the same mistake again. And the people who learn from their mistakes are the people who succeed. And the people who don't learn from their mistakes, the people that they never achieve as much as they possibly could. So a lot of the stuff is trial and error. Um, because you have to see, okay, well, does this work or not? And did I do it right or not? Was it effective here or not? The error is part of being human. It's just do you learn from it?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:28

Do you adapt and change? Totally. Uh okay, we've gone a bit over time, but is do you have quote f uh time for a few more questions? 100%. Fire away. Okay, so in your day job, uh did you ever experience some dunning Kruger moments? So for example for instance, you've just done this research on a really good tactic, you know, a really good way to persuade people, some body language expression, something like this. And you tried it in real time and it just completely failed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:55

So um, like I said, I work in the opportunity space. And uh I've also thought a lot about, as you can imagine, how to message things. So um when I uh I talk to folks on the left, I have to message things a certain way. So I use language of empowerment and I will talk about equity. Remember, we said that was one of the moral tastes, that's a taste that's more sensitive on the left. And empowerment is this, you know, it's kind of like a sort of care um kind of language. So I went to a conference on opportunity that was primarily with conservatives. And I was using, I thought I was so clever. You know, I was like, you know, using this like other language that was like, you know, really sort of broad and diverge about empowerment, and people were just cringing. And I'm like, okay, I should probably stop doing that. I thought I was so clever, but no, it did not resonate with them. And it they actually found it aversive. So I was like, uh, oh, you're too clever by half here. Like, stop doing that. Is it because it came across as pandering and inauthentic? No, because it's not their moral language. So their moral language is not empowerment. So I thought I was being clever and saying, hey, you can actually frame it this way and it's gonna resonate with more people. And they just said, no, I find that aversive. Stop it. So it's like, you know, you go like I but I got I could see, like they didn't say it, but I could see from their body language and tone that like some of the faces cringe and like they're like, uh about that. And it's like, hmm, I didn't do a good job of making it about them because I thought, oh, uh, I'm gonna show how clever I am with how I message things, and it was a spectacular failure.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:30

The your your book is right alongside Chris Foss's Never Split the Difference in terms of ideologically what the message is and what you're trying to teach people and so forth. Sorry?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:40

I'm just pointing to the book, I think it's right there exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:43

Oh, alright, yeah. No, exactly. Um to apply it directly to sales is one of the quickest use cases, right? How can I be more persuasive? How can I get more out of this deal? How can I convince them to use us and not a competitor, etc.? Yeah. And so I I've tried to apply particular lessons from it uh as much as I can. I find that typically in sales, the the the best outcome from your book, from Chris Voss's book, is simply just the open questions and the sort of uh discovery farming that that can happen, which also counterintuitively is a part of being persuasive because they're being listened to and therefore what you're going to say after is more relevant to them, um, rather than just a pitch, a pretty pitch and a discussion on price.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:30

100%. And I'll say quickly, I think that Chris Voss is a visionary thinker in the negotiation space, tremendous hand of his work. Um, one of the chapters in the book deals in in part with Voss's work, uh, the chapter on negotiation, chapter seven. So I think Chris is he's he's well visionary. Um the open-ended questions are really powerful. So uh one thing, like one of the spaces where I think my book applies the most is to sales. And what are some of the ways? And I'll even take the open-ended question thing. And I think with four open-ended questions, you can, I mean, you can significantly increase your chances of sales success. So you've got to put them first. So, how do you do that? You start by asking two questions. Instead of just walking into a meeting and saying, um, all right, here's what I have. Do you want this? Right. It's kind of how people sales like here, buy this thing that I have. Start by forming a connection with them and authentically ask them, what's your story? And they'll tell you. And it's just, it's such like a warm, disarming question. And I love hearing about people's stories. And then ask them, like, what are you looking for in a product? And then just listen and then see if your product meets their needs because it might not. And then maybe you tell, hey, I don't think it's a good fit for you. Uh, and then um ask them, uh, how would you feel? Matter back to feelings, how would you feel about whatever it is? If they're a current client, maybe the question is, how would you feel about increasing your purchases with us? Or if they're a new client, how would you feel about testing out our products, giving us a go? And then the last thing I would say is identify barriers because I think one of the biggest fallacies of persuasion is that we think it's about getting people to do something. And it's much more about removing barriers to them doing something because they're not doing it now. So you have to find out what's stopping them. So you literally just ask them, say, right in the case of sales, what would stop you from increasing your purchases? What would stop you from buying from us? And they'll tell you. So you've connected with them by asking about their story, you've made it about them by understanding what their priorities are. And hopefully you can show how what you offer aligns behind their priorities, not yours, because they might be totally different. Uh, and then you understand how they feel about something that generates a really boom, quick intuitive response because they're gonna say, like, yeah, I mean, this sounds really great. And they're gonna be like, well, you know, I mean, just I don't know. And then there's hesitation, and then you're like, well, what would stop you? And then they'll tell you. They'll just say, well, um, I don't know if we have budget for this right now. Uh, we can't really increase our sales. But if things go well, maybe in six months, come back to me. Fine, come back in six months. Don't press them right now to buy more things. Um, or if they say, look, you know, this is just, it's an untested product. Um, how do I know it's gonna work? You say, Well, um, you know, I I have a couple of other clients who love this. I'd be happy to give you their names and you can talk to them about how the products worked for them. So you but if you don't remove those barriers, you're not gonna either get them to buy for the first time or get them to buy more. So identify barriers and then remove them, all with open-ended questions.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:37

And this is a big left turn. And remember, I edit it. So it all comes innately together in the end. Left turns, right turns.

unknown 1:22:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:44

Whatever you got for me. Uh your head of policy at a right of center think tank. That's a correct uh assumption, right? Free market think tank, yes. Okay. And I wanted to ask you for if you were to consult the next Republican candidate for how they would be able to persuade the America First crowd, the MACA crowd, and the traditional conservatives crowd, how would you advise them through the shitstorm that is currently unfolding under Trump?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:13

Yeah. So I think uh we'll try to take the the partisan politics out of this. And I'll just try to be observational. I think that one thing that Trump did extremely well, you don't have to like him. One thing he did extremely well. We talked about this earlier, is he said, I will be your voice. And I think that one thing that traditional Republicans have not done a good job of is they have not observed and really just um treated as real the lived experiences of many Americans who are suffering. And like take the rust belt. So uh that's like sort of this uh Michigan, Ohio, like kind of middle part, the industrial heartland of America, Illinois, um, Pennsylvania, et cetera. And it was built largely on like manufacturing. Well, what's also happened as a result of globalization and capitalism, all kinds of stuff is that a lot of factories have closed and moved either elsewhere in America or across the ocean, right? To China, Vietnam, whatever. And the reality is that, you know, we have like a 32-year-old guy who's worked at a factory for 14 years, and uh he comes into work on a Monday morning, you know, 500 guys on the factory floor, and the boss says, Hey guys, huddle up. And uh, bad news. Factory is closing in three months. It's it's moving fill in the blank. Well, this guy has three kids and his wife is a stay-at-home mom. And oftentimes the response from market-oriented folks is hey, look, the market on average solves, globalization is on average good, and just upscale and learn to code, which incidentally is terrible advice now because AI does a lot of entry-level coding. So those jobs of eight years ago that paid really well, they don't exist anymore. So that is like it's it's tone-deaf. It's tone-deaf at best. And I think that the American first crowd, led by things like I will be your voice, they have showed some empathy towards these real concerns. And I think a lot of traditional conservatives have not. So I would encourage traditional conservatives to be mindful of these live realities. On the flip side, what do I think that, you know, say like your Reagan conservatives, what they do really well is that they understand how to create opportunity, um, that capitalism is an engine of opportunity, uh, warts and all, it's a beautiful system. Um, it has pulled billions of people out of poverty. Uh, it has created more wealth and prosperity than we could ever imagine just in a couple hundred years. It is great at creating opportunity. So uh if you want to help the people who um who are uh dispossessed right now from things like globalization, you ultimately need capitalism. You just need to be really mindful. So then both I think need to be serious about how do we actually create more opportunity, not just economic and economic system, but how do we empower people with specific tools that will give them in their individual lives opportunity? So, what I would say is I would say, look, uh megapolks, Reaganites, whatever, you know, whoever else you want to throw into this basket here, unite around opportunity. Recognize that some folks are doing great and some folks are struggling, and recognize that we need a system that's gonna maximize opportunity and that we also need to be serious about giving individuals the tools, ensuring that communities give individuals the tools that they need to thrive. Uh unite around that and focus on the 80% that you agree on. That 20% is not important, but focus on the 80%, be for opportunity, and you're gonna be way more successful and much less divisive.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:47

But what are the tools you can give someone in a globalist system where their marginal competitive advantage has just been offshore? Isn't this this is the whole this is the whole battle between them? America first says forget the rest of the world. You even if it means massive subsidies and massive handouts. Yeah, that's how we solve this problem. Um, not a free market solution, which would be something along the lines of, man, you guys all need to find new work. But that is that is the antithesis to what half of the bases are going to be saying.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:18

So, for example, I think that we need a career-first education system. I think that in America, much worse than probably anywhere else in the world, we have a degree-first education system where if you don't go to college, um you're done. Uh so I think many other places like Germany and Switzerland are much better about this. We need a career-first education system where we say, look, the goal of the education system is to do this and then give people practical skills. And the really cool thing is that when you have things like apprenticeships, you don't only apprentice in fields like plumbing or being an electrician or an HVAC specialist. Now, for example, in Illinois, you can um you can apprentice to work in IT fields, in banking. In just a wild number of fields that before I did that research a couple of years ago, uh I had no idea that you could apprentice in these things. So as the future of work evolved, because that's kind of what we're talking about too, is the future of work where the workplace in five, 10, 20 years is going to look so different in so many ways. We need an education system that's nimble enough to identify what those upcoming fields are and then give people like practical ways to apprenticeships to get those tools now. To get those tools now instead of uh, hey, in five, 10, 20 years, uh, we'll maybe have a system. So it needs to be nimble. It needs to know where the economy is going and it needs to provide people the opportunities that they need. So I think that's one way to be nimble that can still be nested in a capitalist system.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:42

This is a semi-related point. Um, have you seen Sam Leith's political theory of American presidents? No, I haven't, I'm afraid. Okay. He's a he's a British journalist. He wrote a book called I think Words are more powerful than guns. I'm not sure. It was a basically a really fun study of the best speeches over time and what made them really good. Um, and he made this observation that America has gone from uh very charismatic speaker, say Clinton, to uncharismatic speaker, Bush. To charismatic speaker, Obama, to uncharismatic speaker Trump. And now it's looking like maybe Gavin Newsom might be the charismatic speaker who comes next. And then the theory would suggest that then the uncharismatic speaker coming in after will be some type of uh Republican. But on the point of persuasiveness, does that does that ring true at all?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:38

Well, I would disagree that uh Trump is not charismatic. Again, just observational here. Um, Trump spent like a decade uh on TV literally just watching what did and did not resonate with people, seeing when people were tuning in, you know, tuning out, and just learning what interested people. He was so true. He was an extremely successful TV personality. And I mean, if you just watch one of his rallies and you could hate everything he's saying, and if you deny the energy at those rallies and just like the extent to which people are just crazy fired up, I think to say that he's not charismatic. I mean, he says things that literally no other human being on earth could get away with saying, and somehow he does it, and it's charisma. So that's where I would disagree.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:20

Um I think you would that's that's true, actually. I don't think that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:23

So I think you can say JFK charismatic, uh Nixon, uh Ford, um not so much, Carter, not so much, Reagan charismatic, Bush, not so much, Clinton charismatic, Bush 2, not so much, Obama, charismatic, Trump charismatic, Biden, not exactly, and then back to Trump. So that's I guess how I would quickly score things.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:46

Um which historical figure stands out to you as being expertly persuasive?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:51

Three. Just from American history, Churchill. You mentioned, I mean, I guess for Abraham Lincoln, um, go back to the 19th century and then 20th century, uh JFK, people never say Walter Mondale. Martin Luther King Jr., people never say Malcolm X, and Ronald Reagan, people never say Barry Goldwater. And when I, you know, give talks and give workshops, I ask people, and those are like the first three that always come to mind. What did JFK say? He was for something. He said, ask not. Martin Luther King had a dream, and Ronald Reagan saw America as a shining city. They were for things. They were consistently, persistently, insistently happy warriors. Happy, happy warriors, and they were for those things. Uh, and they were remarkable orators, they trained it, they had great speechwriters behind them, at least the presidents did. Um, so again, there was a team to help them be persuasive. And I mean, as just so many levels, they were so intentional about not just what they said, how they said it. And they were for something that made people feel really persuasive feelings. And there's a reason why those names always come out boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Anyone non non-political that comes to mind? Steve Jobs, for example. Absolutely. I mean, phenomenally persuasive. And he's such a great example in part because we uh most people in tech, they're not persuasive. And they just think, well, let me just tell you about the invention that I have. And then is that enough? It's like, no, no, that's necessary. It's not sufficient. Of course, you need to have a good idea, and how you present it matters uh like more than most tech people uh realize. And I think that's it, it it holds a lot of them back. And then the folks who can uh really just be compelling, you don't have to be at the Steve Jobs level, but the folks who are good presenters, it's like, whoa, a great tech and a good presentation. Uh-oh. Because they're the founders who are gonna drive not just a$10 million valuation, but a hundred million dollar or billion dollar or ten billion dollar valuation, and they're gonna drive that company forward.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:49

It's funny you're seeing how corporate leaders have to embody more of that persuasiveness and charisma and so forth. Think of people who wouldn't otherwise have done it if they didn't need to, like a Will Marshall at Planet, a Jensen Huang at Nvidia, a Jamie Lyman, a JP Morgan. All these individuals are now becoming sort of public figures themselves and have to go through the whole training and playbook about how do I deliver a speech really well.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:14

Another example, um, I was lucky enough to be at a private event with Ginny Romney, uh, who at the time was um CEO of IBM. Oh my God, she is a presence and a phenomenal speaker and just a great personality. Um you know, uh, yes, leading a premier tech company, but um really just remarkable on how she presents herself with so many levels. I was so insanely impressed.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:36

Josh, the final question for you, mate, and this is one that I've tried to ask every guest who's come on the show so far. It is simply what is the role that serendipity has played in your life?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:44

Yeah. Um, that's such a great question. Uh man. Um serendipity. Uh, you know, some just remarkable chance encounters, if we can roughly describe it that way. Um, you know, uh Yeah. Look, I mean, um although I don't believe in luck metaphysically, just these like chance encounters that happen. Um one of them in in fact is the person to whom I dedicated the book. Um, you know, it was uh just a chance encounter that um allowed me to meet him. And it was just a moment early on in that chance encounter where I really learned something about him and then helped him with a really important project and only ever made it about him and never expected anything in return, but the relationship that we formed and just the tremendous belief and support he's always had in me from that early, early encounter that we had. It has meant more to me than I could ever express. And that was just uh the meeting was um serendipitous, but the moments in that meeting and like just all those things were so serendipitous. And few people have been more important to me in my life than somebody who was an absolute, uh, complete stranger that on paper, like, why would we ever interact? And if we interacted, why would it be for more for more than two minutes? And he remains just an extremely important person. Uh, he will remain one of the most important people ever to enter my life. And that was just pure serendipity. And what's his name for those who haven't read the book? His name is Kent Lawrence. It's the book is dedicated to him.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:24

All right, Josh. Well, absolute pleasure, mate. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. And I love the book, and I appreciate you being so open with your responses today as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:34

Remarkable conversation. I am so grateful. Uh thank you so much, Ryan.