The CHARM Factor: The Hidden Key to Better Relationships & a Better Life

What if the same principles that drive success in business could completely transform your personal life? 

In this episode, Jim Krigbaum breaks down the powerful CHARM framework: Communication, Honesty, Appropriate Quality, Risk, and Markets—and shows how these principles shape your relationships with family, friends, and the people who matter most. From mastering communication and truly listening, to understanding emotional tone, trust, and how you “market” yourself in everyday interactions, this conversation reveals why most relationships struggle—and how to fix them. If you want a deeper connection, stronger trust, and more meaningful conversations in your life, this episode will change the way you show up every single day. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

In this episode, we'll talk about how the charm dance principles work into your personal life. Though we talk a lot about the business aspects of charm dance, it all the principles in charm dance can directly apply to your personal life. In this session, we'll talk about that. Please join us.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Are you sick and tired of spinning wheels, wasting time and money in your business, but getting nowhere fast? With the 10 Keys to Thrive podcast, it's your masterclass in momentum by International Business Strategists and your host, Jim Krigbaum.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Welcome back to 10 Keys to Thrive in Business and Life. I'm your mentor and host, Jim Kriegbaum. We've talked about charm in the Charm Dance Principles and how the mnemonic works to apply to business skills and concepts and philosophies based on practical experience. Today we're going to talk and understand how those principles apply to our personal lives. Everything that we teach in the Charm Dance Principles can be applied to an individual and applied to your personal life. They're not just for business. And we'll cover them now. For example, communications. Communications are important when you're communicating with friends, family, loved ones, probably more so than in business associates, because the family and the friends and the loved ones you have to live with. You have to be able to get along with constantly for a long-term relationship. It's not something where you have a passing understanding and a passing discussion, but it's something that is ongoing and people remember what was said before and they react based on what they remember and based on the dialogues. And I've had experiences in both good and bad. You know, all the things that we learn in communications under the business about the pause, about the importance of listening, and about how we can speed up and emphasize things. We learn communications is not just what we say, it's also how we stand, how we look, how much attention we pay to something, whether our arms are crossed, whether we're looking people in the eye. Those all apply to your personal life. We've all had situations when we're dealing with family and we're talking to them, but they're not paying attention. They're looking off in the distance. Their body language is language tells us that we need to either adjust our conversation or understand that they're not listening and not paying attention. One of the things that I've struggled with in personal communications is tone. And my wife says that I don't understand tone. And part of that's because for me, happy face, sad face, excited face is all the same. I don't get too emotional in things, and you probably found that in listening to some of these podcasts, in that it's pretty steady. So when my wife says something with a tone, I don't always pick it up. So the other day she couldn't find the key to the mailbox. So she said, You must have it. And I took that offensively because I said, Wait, why do you if you don't have it? Why do you assume I have it? And she said, That's not what I said. I said, You must have it because I don't have it. So understanding the tone, understanding how to react to that tone is important. And again, I don't always get it right. You won't always get it right, but we have to understand it. Like in business, we have to understand that people don't always listen to hear. When you say something, they're immediately thinking about their response. They're thinking how to either counter your objection or your point or how to agree with it. So when you're talking, you have to understand that as soon as you say something they don't like, they're going to start thinking about how to respond. People spend time figuring out how to respond, not how to listen. So you have to understand that and adjust your dialogue and adjust how you address that, maybe you have to repeat something a couple of times so that when they listen and think about what they're going to say, they hear it again. It reinforces what you're trying to say. Which brings us to the next point, which is listening. We don't always listen. And listening is one of the most important skills in communications. We have to listen to what people say. You can't just assume they're going to say something. You can't fill in the words or change things so that understand things differently than they mean them. You have to listen. And, you know, like we said in the business concept, you've never learned anything while you're speaking. You've also never communicated effectively with your associates or your wife or your family or friends when all you do is speak. One of the challenges I have, and I've had for a long time, is my family will be talking and they'll be giving input and back and forth in the dialogue. I never know when to inject my comments into it. It's kind of an awkward thing for me. But I have to listen and I have to listen for the pause. I have to understand when my voice needs to be heard and when I should say something to them, and other times when I should just be quiet. One of the things that we have to remember too is we have to think everything that we say. We don't have to say everything that we think. So if I disagree with somebody, I have to weigh. We talk about risk and we will talk about it again. I have to weigh if the risk of my comments are going to create more problems than my risk of not making the comments. So we weigh that ourselves. And again, so we're thinking what we say before we say it. And again, that's not something that comes naturally to a lot of people. I kind of gain it with age. You know, when I was younger, I would talk uh without always thinking, and sometimes that insulted people. And, you know, even though I felt that my comments were correct or right or spot on, it wasn't necessary that they heard them. So sometimes you have to think about it and not say it. So that's also a form of communications and something that is doesn't come natural and something you have to get practice in to understand. You have to understand that it happens and then figure out how you can correct it. And how you correct it is up to you. But if you understand that it exists and you understand that it's an element that impacts your communication level, you can improve it. The next letter in charm is H for honesty. And honesty is probably more important in a personal relationship, whether it's again friends, family, or really associates, than it is with a business relationship. Though it's important in business, it's more important when, again, you have to live with people, you have to deal with your family. You can't just have a passing dialogue where you can say something dishonest and not be found out that it's dishonest down the future. Because if you make a mistake and you're dishonest at one point in time, recovering that is difficult. And sometimes in the business situation, they won't discover it's a situation or a problem until you've passed and the situation's passed. You've got your purchase, order, your shipment, whatever it is that you're working with them. On a personal side, people remember things. People remember that Jim said this before. Jim was dishonest in this area. So it's important that you be honest. Probably more important that you're honest in your personal life than in business. The first person you need to be honest with, again, is yourself. You have to make sure that you understand yourself. You understand what it is you're trying to accomplish. You understand that everything you see is based on your perspective. It's not based on somebody looking above from 30,000 feet. Sometimes you see things one way, but in fact they're happening another way. So you have to make sure that you understand your position and you have to be honest with understanding yourself and understanding that you don't know everything. And things may not always be the way you expect them to be, or the way you experience them, or you the way you saw them. So you have to be honest, you have to let honesty work its way through and make honesty part of your DNA and part of your character. The next letter in charm is A for appropriate quality. So appropriate quality isn't again, is not just a business principle. Appropriate quality is in your personal relationships. You have to make sure what you say is appropriate, you have to make sure what people expect, and you have to understand the market because you are marketing yourself, but you have to make sure that the quality of what you do, the quality of what you say, the quality of how you direct things is appropriate for the dialogue, appropriate for the people. A good example of that is if I'm going on a date, I have to dress appropriately. If I'm going to a concert, I have to dress appropriately. And it's different if I'm going to a concert than if I'm going on a date. If I'm going to a business meeting, it's completely different as well. So we have to have the appropriate attire. We have to have the appropriate level of intelligence and communication and dialogue. When I'm talking to younger people, children, I have to change my dialogue. I can't use too big of words. I have to make sure that they're it's understanding. You have to adjust what you're saying to your audience. You have to understand where your audience is coming from. If I'm addressing a group of friends that are uh PhDs in different things, then I can have a totally different conversation than if I'm addressing a bunch of people that have high school degrees. Not that they're any more or less intelligent, but their dialogue, their vocabulary is probably different. I have to understand that. So make sure that you have the appropriate quality in your relationships, appropriate quality in presenting yourself to your friends and family and associates. Now we move on to our risks. And risks in personal relationships exist. We all know that. We all know that if we communicate ineffectively, if we are not honest, if we don't have the appropriate quality, we're placing ourselves and our relationship and our families at a greater risk than is necessary. We have to analyze what the risk of what we're doing. You know, in the first session and the first earlier session, when we talk about risk, we talk about the risk of getting out of bed and the risk of staying in bed. The risk of staying in bed is that I may lose my job. Well, in the case of the business, if I stay in bed and my wife has to do all the morning chores, is that what is expected? Is that appropriate? Is that what is anticipated to happen? If I get out of bed, what are the benefits and what is the risk of getting out of bed? If I get out of bed too early and wake her up, then is that a problem? You have to weigh those. You have to figure out what is appropriate and you have to analyze the risk. You don't sit down and write a piece of paper. That doesn't happen too much in personal relationships, unless you're seeing a therapist and they can walk you through it. But you have to analyze what is the risk in all that you say and do. And how does that impact the people that are special to you? The final letter in charm on a personal relationship is markets. And you think markets, I'm trying to sell something, trying to find an audience that's willing to buy it. But in the personal life, you are marketing something, you're marketing yourself. And people, you're trying to get people to buy into what you have to say. You're trying to get people to buy into your personality and to buy into your relationship and your friendship. So everything that you do are your marketing and you're marketing yourself. Now you have to again understand what the market is. You have to be a student of the market. We talk about that. You have to know what it is that people expect. You have to put yourself into their position, put yourself into their shoes. Remember that everybody sees things from a different angle, everybody has different experiences in life. So, in the marketing aspect, you have to figure out how do I meet those expectations? How do I meet what they want from me? How do I satisfy and solve their needs? And in a personal relationship, we want to satisfy people. We want to make sure that they're happy with what we're doing. And so the doing to be able to accomplish that, we need to make sure we understand what the market is. They are the market. How do you sell yourself? How do you sell your ideas? How do you sell your concepts? And how do you get them to have faith in you? So all of these things, from C to M are part of charm and they work for business. No question about it. We've done that for decades. They also work on your personal life. So when you're working through these letters and through the mnemonic, think about it. How can I apply these to my relationships? How can I apply these to my personal relationships, to my friends and family? And if you start doing that, as I said earlier, I don't always do it well. I don't always understand when my wife says things with a tone, I'm not always able to understand the tone. What did she mean by that? So, and it's tough because I will react. I'll react based on what I think I heard because I haven't heard properly. I haven't adjusted or taken into consideration what her tone is. So putting the charm together, putting all the things into charm, putting them into your personal DNA, not just your business DNA, but your personal DNA, so that when people talk to you, whether it's business associates or friends and family, they know that you're a person that can communicate effectively. They know that you have honor and integrity, they know that you're appropriate for the situation, they know that you've analyzed the risks and make sure that the risks are balanced. And then you have to understand, they have to know that you know the market, you know who you're selling to. So in everything we do, we're marketing, we're marketing ourselves. Customers will buy from you if they trust you. Family will stay with you if they trust you. If you have all these other characteristics, you can be successful in business and life by using the charm principles. Next session, we'll talk about details and we'll go on through the mnemonic related to dance. And stay tuned for that. And again, as you walk through life, as you walk through your personal relationships, as you walk through dialogues with people, think about these principles. Try using the pause. Try using body language, change your body language, see how people react. You know, and by seeing how people react, you'll begin to understand and be able to, I don't want to use a bad word, but you'll be able to manipulate the conversation to drive it toward what you want to do. And again, as we talk about, if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. So in a dialogue and conversations and relationships, you kind of have to know where you're going. And you have to plan accordingly, you have to react and you have to apply the principles of charm. And we'll learn later that you have to apply the principles of dance to business and personal relationships. Stay tuned. Hope to see you then next week.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

So that's it for today's episode of Ten Keys to Thrive. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. Be sure to head on over to tenkeys to thrive.com to pick up a free copy of Jim's gift and join us on the next episode.