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Hi there, I'm Ben Pearce and welcome to the Tech World Human Skills Podcast. Every episode we talk through how to thrive in the tech world, not just survive. Now, if you want me to work with your team, just give me a shout. I love to help teams be more influential, memorable and successful with their stakeholders. Head over to www.techworldhumanskills.com to book a chat.
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a real treat to have you with us now today We're talking about something a bit different. We're talking about becoming a bit more memorable. We're talking about why that's important Understanding a bit of science behind it and then how to become a little bit less Unrememberable now our guest today is a real expert in this area He's an Olympic silver medalist best-selling author keynote speaker and expert in
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Chronoception so please welcome to the podcast John K. Coyle John It is brilliant to have you with us
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Thank you for having me then I'm glad to be here Well, the pleasure is all ours now Maybe a lot of people on this podcast might not have crossed paths with you before so I wonder for all our lovely Listeners, could you tell us a little bit about your background?
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Sure, I was an average kid growing up in the Northeast of the United States place called, Michigan But when I was a kid my father Put me on skates at age 2 and age 10. He put me into a speed skating race and Fast-forward a few years later after graduating college. I managed to bring home a silver medal from the Olympics After that I went into business for a while back in the consulting But during that period in my late 20s early 30s I noticed something and we're going to talk a lot about is that summers kept speeding up and I wasn't okay with that But casting about there were no answers out there as to why time accelerates the older you get So we're gonna delve into how to fix that in today's session Brilliant and it's funny because as a kid the summers, you know lasted forever You know went so quickly as a parent now. I've got kids the summers last forever. I can't wait to get them back to school
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So we're gonna be talking, you know in the intro I Mentioned that you're a bit of an expert in in Chronoception now as we were talking about this before we got there. I had to get you to spell that for me I've never really come across that word at all. So for people that are uneducated like myself Please could you tell us what the heck we're talking about today?
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percent So first I'll give you one of the big ideas that will trickle throughout this which is just take this for a second that I'm gonna state right now that memories are the currency of time
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Money is the currency of financial capital memories are the currency of time capital. So we'll circle back to that many times but What we're talking about today is the way humans experience time. So that's what chronoception means It's the perceptual time that we have and you know, we've all experienced the nonlinear nature of this, right? Can't believe that was yesterday feels like last week can't believe that was last week feels like yesterday I can't believe that was last year feels like last week can't believe those last week feels like last year You sit down to a long boring business meeting and after what seems like three hours You realize 20 minutes has gone by and a best friend comes in from out of town And after what seems like 20 minutes three hours has gone by so The way we experience time is completely nonlinear and sadly in the English language We only have one word for time, which is time obviously and it's the most common word in the English language The Greeks had two words from time and this is gonna be a great jumping-off point Chronos, which is the way we use it clock time planes trains automobiles and meeting starting at the same time, but these the word kyros 67% of the time and that means human time the way we experience time it really means chronoception and specifically the etymology that word is when everything happens at once and the trajectory is reset and it comes from the Archer releasing the arrow and as we delve into this we'll find out that the relationship between memories and time perception are completely correlated and that Everything that's important in life happens in moments when the trajectory is reset I Think we're gonna need to expand on this already, you know for anybody watching our video You might be getting Ben confused face as it's like I've gone back to university as we're thinking about this, right? Okay, so so what we're kind of saying is the way humans experience time is Experience being the important part is very different to you know The Swiss trains always running on time the minutes the seconds
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Okay, okay, so So why and I get it and I get we said why is that important to us then?
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Well, it's important because if we pretend that clock time is all that matters we're gonna actually potentially miss out on Some of the most important and sacred moments that we experience in life And and second big idea here is that the value of an increment of time is not related to its duration So the value of an income of time is not related to its duration. Let me give you an example from sports So I was in sports and in my sport hundreds of seconds determined first from second from third and if You got fourth that actually meant nothing
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Right. So tiny increments of time completely set the trajectory of your future career as an athlete. That's obvious in sports The non-obvious conclusion that I came to in my 30s was oh shoot. That's true in real life
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Tiny moments often determine the complete trajectory of your future You've got off at the exit or you didn't you Miss the car accident or you didn't you took the promotion across town or you didn't you said yes to the guy or gal Or you didn't she said I love you or didn't write like all of these big big life-changing things Tend to happen in moments not months not years might be years and months leading up to them But our life when it comes to trajectory changing kyros Chronosception moments happen in very short intervals and there's a brain science behind that we'll get to in a minute Well, should we get there now? So what what's happening then in your brain? That means that things speed up things things contract that there are certain moments that are in Indelible in your memory. There are other moments that you can't remember ever, you know, what's going on with your brain?
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So let's talk about the Marantz for a second. So the hippocampus is your memory writer Okay, not important necessarily remember that but it sits at the top your spinal column sits next to the amygdala We'll get there in a second But at your hippocampus in my hippocampus is sweeping short-term memories along to memory about every two to three seconds This is happening for everybody on the planet right now Until something exciting happens. We'll get there in a second. So it's storing visuals auditory smells emotions everything but it's a heart large part 70% visual now what happens is That when things get exciting
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The amygdala wakes up next to the hippocampus and says right faster So your frame rate goes up to 20 to 30 times per second So you're writing memories literally 50 60 times faster than you were before which means Just straight borrowing from movies when the frame rate goes up. It feels like things are slowing down So this is why a car crash will feel like it's in slow motion Why when you're about to ask that girl for the first time it's gonna feel like it's a slow motion a lot of the most important memories we're gonna have feel like they're in slow motion and that's because your frame rate has gone up with the amygdala only wakes up for two reasons Never do that again or always do that again and bringing it back to straight to evolutionary theory Don't die
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Please procreate Yep, okay So the amygdala is up to keep you alive and keep you procreating and so, you know when you're eight Well, it's awake all the time because everything's new exciting scary fun First time in the mountains first time seeing snow first time to a theme park first game first win first loss first crush First breakup eight year olds cry a lot And so their amygdala is on high alert all the time and they're writing down memories 60 times faster than your average adult now this is important because
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Everything in life is happening in a moment and Then swept along to memory and then happening in a moment and then swept a long-term memory and so that's where the Greeks were right that Often most often in life the big important trajectory changing things are happening in a moment And when you can be awake and aware or designed for these moments, we'll get there You don't experience a lifetime that lasts 50 more years. You can experience a life that lasts 500 more years
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Okay, so so I guess what you're sort of saying is there's a way that you can maybe turn up that frame rate a bit more often which makes it feel like Life like life is a bit longer. Yes, and then also I'm getting you know, which like is brilliant and who doesn't want that and then also from a You know as we start to think also about this in a professional context I'm guessing there's things that we can do that make us a bit more Memorable and that's quite important as well. So to make other people Have that kind of frame rate when they're thinking about us Yes. Well, the first and most important is recognizing that when there are heightened circumstances good or bad
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That is your opportunity to be memorable if you're in a business and you have a bad client moment a Blads bad service about anything moment There's a huge opportunity to make that moment memorable in the right way If you fix that in the right way, you're actually way better off than it never happened in the first place Okay, because if everything is safe comfortable routine, the brain is lazy and it's not gonna write it down And so if you have a completely seamless flawless unexciting Experience be you a hotel or a client service or a tech operation. Yes, you want your your Server service your your middleware you want your tech software to be seamless and bulletproof We also want to design into it something interesting some unique angle something that makes it Special in some way and when things go wrong for your clients move swiftly and aggressively to fix it a way that leaves them Going yes. These are my people. Okay What should we look firstly?
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How do I in as an individual? Slow down the good bits. Is there something that I can do you were talking about there that says right? Well, this is this is it makes it feel like I've lived 50 years not 50 minutes And then should we get into the how do we become more memorable to other people? So yes How can I do that? How can I slow down and make the bits I want seem longer?
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Well, we talked about a little bit But routine is the enemy of time if you ever got to the parking garage For your workplace and you don't know how you got there. That's because the brain didn't write it down, right? There's nothing new here and the brains lazy. It's 3% of your mass 28% of your calorie burn so it's like a giant light bulb on top of your head and the hardest thing it does is right Memories, so it's not going to if it doesn't have to right? It's it's job really is keep you alive so you can procreate right? That's his first primary function at least with the amygdala. So You know breaking with routine is a really really important thing and this you know, this is where risk is an important Element of life. That's why the adage goes life begins at the edge of your comfort zone And so what's really important is to break with routine not every day Not all the time you can't live this chaotic life where everything's completely unpredictable But I try to design ten moments a year that are interesting unique that you know They tend to be sometimes stressful international travels perfect example of all this, right? There's got to be something that goes wrong and it's gonna make the story for you. So how do you break with the routine? How do you find some unique angles into life? How do you design these moments for for others? We'll get into how do they that in a minute?
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But you know, that's really a one quick starting place is how do I wake up on the occasion the amygdala to write more memories? Okay, like it You know anything that says I've got to plan more holidays. I am a fan of I think you know I like it. So so maybe then if we start to switch this into that sort of professional world that we were we were thinking about so You know being memorable is really important, right? If I've got an important customer I will and they've got a problem. I want them to think about me. I don't want to think about my competitor
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And if I'm going for a job interview, I I want them to remember me as the candidate of choice Not the person that was after me So how how do we start to become more memorable or or enforce that on other people?
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Well, you know that the the quote I I'm trying to push out there into the internet world is that if you can become first recall You become first call
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Okay Okay, and so the way the brain writes memories and it's really three important things Was it written was it stored in a canopy recalled?
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Because all three important right? You know, if I didn't write it down, they don't remember you at all Well, if that's not gonna work If they wrote down that I met then but then I can't find it that requires a good hypnotist That's not all that useful. So was it written was it stored and recall? That's where you want to be you want to be written stored and recalled and the brain does that under certain circumstances And there's really six key drivers for that Okay, and so when it comes to your work, it comes to your job comes to other people you want to design Experiences that leverage one of these six two of these six when you get to all six of these six That's the kind of moments that happen before and after and reset trajectories, but let's go through each one briefly Is there some risk or uncertainty around this? Now, how do you how do you create that in your day-to-day life? I'm not sure at work when we come back to that, but let's talk about with your spouse plan a vacation But don't tell her where you're going
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Hey ever trust you yeah bags we're going somewhere for three days You're gonna need following a bikini and this that and the other thing that's gonna create some risk and uncertainty But it's gonna make it memorable
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Uniqueness is the second key driver. So risk and uncertainty is number one. That's wakes up the amygdala A uniqueness is similar to but different than risk and uncertainty because you can have a daily job That's risky and uncertain right? Like I don't know if I'm getting fired today. That's not unique after some point, right? So is it different so don't go to the same place you went to on vacation last time with her?
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I'm emotional intensity, right? How do I create sort of a perfect moment where time stops? How do I get us into that zone where we're really really bonding?
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Physical intensity not necessarily required but it can help We still on three or is that fourth one? That's four. So four risk and uncertainty uniqueness emotional density physical intensity. Yeah beauty Okay, not tragedy not trauma. They both work sadly here. They make those gonna wake up for either one, right? Yeah, so we're designing for a beautiful moment I'm gonna give you an example here in a second and then finally getting into the flow state Are you familiar with flow state? I'll define regardless because of your audience Peak performance zone. This is the those points in life. We were time stops or speeds up or both quick Where did those three hours go? I can't believe that my best friend's been here for three hours Feels like 20 minutes or you're working on a spreadsheet because you're good at that and like oh my goodness Where did the time go like those are moments of flow and when you're in the flow state you remember four to five times more data But then when you're not in flow state you combine that with amygdala driven 60x returns And now you're remembering 300 times more data in those moments. So Let me give you an example from From one of my clients. Okay, so he wanted to design experience for his son After listing this and so he wanted all six of these things Okay
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Cuz if you get all six, I mean that's like that's a moment that there's before and after brains explode. Yes
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So his son was gonna turn club they live in Australia. He's from London His son had never been to England, but he follows a football club from London for since he's five years old Where's the jerseys dad says let's go to London, but I'm not telling him pack your bags son We're going somewhere for your 12th birthday kids. Like where are we going? Wait, we're going to London Why are we going there when they're on the plane and then get off the plane? What are we doing here? Dad, you'll find out they uber to the stadium suddenly he knows why they're there, but he still doesn't really know that's unique The stadiums good what's more unique is they pull around back and the entire team files out holding a jersey for his son He puts it on goes on the field with them warms up sit with them throughout the game They sign his jerseys. He was the mascot for this game and then they flew home. He had it all right He had some risk and uncertainty some uniqueness some emotional intensity some physical intensity Absolute beauty and he was in the flow state for that whole game. Dad can't tell the story without crying So both of them got a completely memorable memory from designing that moment
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Wowzers wowzers. Yeah, I can only imagine living near London. Yeah. Yeah
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How hard that would have been to pull off That would have been hard and expensive I reckon to pull off Time and money are fungible if you have money you should be trading you trade your time for money You should be trading your money for time And so if you have financial resources, you need to be spending them sometimes to buy moments Okay. Okay. Yeah prioritizing where it's going not on the dull routine stuff sometimes But sometimes the these things that bring that alive Yes, Ben. So you have money somewhere, right? Yeah, you know where it is, right? It's not all on your savings account
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It's not all in my No, it's not all non's it's not all in stocks but probably a lot And maybe once in a while you've written you put some money into high risk high return unicorn hopefuls, right? Yeah, okay. Okay, same goes for time You cannot expect high returns from your time investments for low risk short-term time investments. You can't Okay, but everybody that's rich seems to want to do this. Let's make everything safe comfortable routine get rid of any of the risk Let's not you can't that's not the way it works, right? You have to have some risk to get the returns and the unicorn moments those kyros moments those trajectory taming Those tend to be high risk Right. I'm i'm gonna take that new job I'm gonna quit this safe comfortable income and start this business i'm gonna put on a podcast and god knows if it's gonna go anywhere Right. I'm gonna write the book. I'm gonna you know, like those are the trajectory changing moments where you make a decision to change your future Archer releases the arrow. Yeah, no very interesting very interesting And it is, you know, and I think about those, you know those those things that you remember most Uh are often and it's that emotional intensity, isn't it? That's things that you've really been wow and enjoyed all those things have been really terrible or you know Those are often the things that are in indelible in your memory, right? Whether you want them to me or not great
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So so if we start then Although i'd love to talk about how I can make my kids lives the most amazing ever Which would be a different podcast and a good one i'd listen to But from a professional perspective then we you you mentioned that little phrase there. Uh First recall first call I think was that was that that that what you said? Yes, so How do we do that then? How do we become that first call? Um from perhaps our customers from perhaps our bosses or whoever it might be those stakeholders that we really care about How do we kind of do this to them? You know, I think this it's being highly attuned to the two types of memories we know get hard written stored and recalled
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so
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Let's go to the part that we already talked about a little bit is when things go to hell in a hand basket That's your opportunity. So Aggressively move to fix it in a way that makes it memorable So whatever that looks like for your business, just make sure you take care of problems Aggressively swiftly in in a unique way if you can The other thing that people miss people kind of know this right the thing that I think most clients miss is Your clients are also your customers are also occasionally Teasing you with something some highlight of their life. They They went somewhere. They did something they experienced something that they really enjoyed And if you make a mental note of that and figure out a way to sort of tackle that I mean Gifting is one way to do this and but not gifting of the normal Send you a bottle of wine or roses like you know, you find your your clients going on a cruise You find out the cruise line name and date and then you send them a bottle of wine to their cruise ship now That's fundamentally different, right? That's a surprise That's unique, right? Yeah, find out their daughter's going into track and field for long jumping You happen to stumble upon an article about the art of long jumping and you send it over That shows that you're aware of their cares and so really just be highly attuned to moments of joy and passion for them and be aware of moments of pain where particularly when you cause them To fix those and that way you will always always be memorable and and how do you stay? the right side of creepy like so so What I mean by that is right like you know, if I went on holiday and a bottle of wine turns up, you know There's a little bit me going stalker alert like what is what is going on here? So so how do you kind of write that? This is going to be memorable in a good way as opposed to this is going to be memorable in a prison sentence way Right. Well, I mean if we think we all know sort of contextually You don't know the person very well He probably can't do that. But if you've been working with them for years, yeah, and you know, his wife loves to go on cruises Yeah, that's probably perfectly appropriate. You have to sort of gauge the circumstances, but you know just anywhere that they key into something they're passionate about if they're Super passionate about and this is a client of mine super hot chilies. Well, I used to grow them. So I sent him a box you know um Of hot chilies that I grew
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Particularly with things that you've made or produced that can be super memorable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah and and What about I guess in the more the day-to-day of your your working professional life, you know where maybe you're having regular meetings With with customers that you you know in the day-to-day Is there like normal sales calls or you're trying to get them to to deploy your solution or you're trying to influence Are there any techniques that you can use? On that sort of day-to-day basis that really help out
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Yes, so let's do a little quick role play. Okay, um, and just play along don't try to be contrarian. Okay, you ready? Okay
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So ben, do you need a pat on the back to do your very best work?
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I probably it helps actually me. Yes Oh, no, so sorry. I'm not trying to be Right. Right. So hold on. Right. Let's just break out of the role play Right, so you don't want me to answer this honestly you want me to right? I'll say no, right? Okay, right. Go on then say what I ask this one. It's one-on-one People will actually be honest But if I ask this to a large audience by and large you'll be like people look around me like no, of course not right No, i'm cool. Yeah, i'm too cool for pats on the back. That's what I that's what I wanted to say Yeah, i'm too cool for pats on the back perfect and then uh So then you know, the next question is so is anybody or have been working on a project? That's going really really well and you're crushing it And you're going to kill this thing and then your boss comes along and says This is literally the best work you've ever done And you go from what you thought was 100 to now 150. Does anybody experience that? Okay, everybody says yeah, and i'm like, okay, let me ask the question again Does anybody here need a pat on the back to do their very best work?
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Yes, yes We live our feedback like we are human beings here We are inspired by positive feedback and what tends to happen in most offices will Will ignore the people high performing To focus on the people screwing up and you need to do that
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but if we're But actually your upside for giving positive feedback for the high performers is potentially much higher than trying to fix those that are screwing up Okay. Okay, so that that feedback that's a great way to add in one of those though. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay Now they're in the post-it they're in a memory mode. They're Probably in amygdala driven. I'm so engaged in this so they're going to remember that I used to here's another way to do it I used to write the way I used to do it and this gets into the uncertainty risk part Is when somebody was really performing? Well, I would leave them a note unsigned Saying I just noticed how well you're doing on project x and you're really doing x y and z specific I have no idea who was from and I would see those notes on their desk for years
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When it's what they don't know what is coming from it can make anybody so now they look at everybody in office different Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah now now often, um Yeah, so everyone listening to this is probably working in the tech world, right? And so very often we are talking a lot about facts logic rationale
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Which can get pretty boring and pretty pretty pretty dry at sometimes now just thinking about what you're talking about there You know where something's boring boring routine dry. We're not going to be writing any memory banks about this So is there anything we can do when we're sort of working with perhaps some of these? more boring or drier or logical factual things all the time that kind of bring that to life and get that Um those memory banks writing a bit more Well, i'll make an analogy I made on stage once it was right after hampton lewis spoke the f1 driver. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah And so when he's out there driving, there's literally a hundred data points That he could be taking in But between the car the engineers and the tire people everybody else that works on the team. They're taking care of 95 of those
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He's really just focused on the windshield and head of him His speed the breaking the life of the tire like he's got four or five things He's got to be aware of the rest is taken care of so we were working in a team You can't pay attention to the hundred stimuli, right? You want to know for each person? What is the windshield this be the tires like the what are the five things that matter to ben? And i'm going to pay attention to that Because you can't focus on a hundred different things in the office place in what they're doing And so finding out what those are of course takes some empathy and understanding in time But once you know how what drives what creates performance out of sue versus ben Then you can start to adjust your leadership style to say what matters most to the people that need to hear when it matters most Okay. Got it now
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What I introduced you one of the things I said was uh, you're a keynote speaker and um When we were we first met and we were having a little bit of a chat you were talking to me about One of the things that you think is really important is about how you you tell stories when you're Either trying to influence people or even trying to sell stuff to people you were saying that that's really really important here Could you maybe unpack that bit a little bit for us? Yeah, well i'll just tell you how I sell and this this Won't be the same maybe for a tech sales person or an agent, but it it's probably metaphorically similar. Um telling people about the fundamental attributes of your products of service
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You don't probably need to do that. They can read that What you need to do is share a story of how it helps someone and so In my case i'm selling me Okay, and so i'll just walk you through the steps that I think fundamentally align with the brain science It's the first thing I do is ask them what's going on with them. So i'm not even talking about me What's going on with ben? What's going on with your podcast? What are you looking for from your audience? Like i'm asking a client, you know, what are they looking for for the meeting? What's the theme? What's going on with your culture? What's going on with your leadership? What are your mission vision values ben? I don't need to know any of these things to go give a speech. I don't Um, but they think I do so that's important. Okay, so i'm demonstrating empathy for what they're going through And if you're a good sales person, you'll know what's going on because you know businesses aren't that much different clients Not that much different. And so what I do then is I repeat repeat back to them what they just told me in my own words Which I can do because i've sat in the corner office. I've sat in a cubicle I've worked in tech like i've i've done the thing because the guy that climbed ever seven times blind
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Amazing story, but he cannot empathize with somebody sitting in the corner office drudging away on a spreadsheet for eight hours necessarily right, maybe he can but
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So demonstrating empathy repeating back to them what they heard and then I do this fun thing called Confabulation, did we talk about this?
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I'm gonna say no because I can't I think you did but there's so many new words coming at me today I'm just gonna say no and let you go for it So I help them confabulate confabulate's my second favorite word next to chronoception. It's also a real word though Okay Confabulation is the process by which somebody that's emotionally attached to something gives a rational reason So they may not know why they like something you ask them for a reason They can't tell you the emotional one because that feels private. So they'll give you a rational reason. Why did you sit in that chair? Uh to get a good view of the stage That may or may not be true. Maybe there was a girl sitting across them Maybe they didn't want their back to the exit. Maybe they don't even know why they did it Right, but they're gonna try to give you a rational reason because that seems like an what an adult would do So we finished hearing about their story that takes about 20 minutes And then I say that reminds me of a story I might tell if we work together Can I tell you the short version now? So I get permission. They say yes every time I tell them the story And then I say Do you think this might be a fit with the theme of your meeting or with what your culture what your leadership's going or what? You're asking for this is when they can fabulate. They're emotionally attached to that story It's an emotion story And now they have to come up for reasons that they can justify this to the people that are going to pay the bill for me So they can fabulate and they say oh that's a perfect fit with our theme or that's right along with our mission Or that's what our ceo is looking for and they say we're going to go and sell this up We're going to go down swinging for you john Because they've just given the reasons that they're going to use to justify the expense That are rational because they can't say It was a good story. I really liked the story. I felt emotional about the story. They can't use those reasons So confabulation gives you the rational reasons to justify the expense and so that's how they hire me and it works 95% of the time. I pretty much always close And so what you're saying there is actually people always Do what they emotionally want to do? Not how they logically rationally need to do behavioral psychology will tell us that People will nod and smile all day with their rational mind and do nothing Motions 100 drive human behavior. So unless you get grip people emotionally, they're not going to change your behavior They're not going to buy they're not going to do any of the things you need them to do You need to get the rational part out of the way because if it doesn't like what you're saying if it doesn't believe what you're saying Well, then it's going to shut down and I won't even let you into the back part of your brain Yeah, yeah, you have to sort of empathize and demonstrate knowledge and then you tell the story Okay, but may I tell the story that I can tell? And this really it sounds like the magic story. I think I need it in my life This is one of the stories I tell so I was I got into stanford. I was the dumbest kid there, but I got in and
[00:33:10:17 - 00:33:47:18]
I was still trying to be an olympic speed skater while living in california studying full-time in engineering with no coach no training program and almost no time on the ice But I still managed to get 12th place in the world in a sport of the speed skating my senior year So I graduated And now i've got all the time in the world to train with the best in the world at olympic training center And so I move in and i'm sure i'm going from 12th to 6th to 1st But they put me on a program of fixing my weaknesses Which turns out her minian varied and I went from 12th to 34th to not even making the us team So backwoods. Yeah Finishing 30th in the us trials. I had won two years prior
[00:33:48:23 - 00:35:57:05]
So at this point i'm ready to quit But I started thinking about Maybe this training program doesn't work for me. Maybe I needed to design a program for my strengths And so I quit the team not the sport double down on my strengths Which is anaerobic power sprints and jumps did all that did the stuff I like to do was good at For the next year showed up to the exact same meat same structure same everything In a sport where hundreds of seconds determined first from second my first race back I broke the us record by five seconds I wrote the world record by over a second and wanted to set every single us record back to back And then went on to win a silver medal, which is all to say that when you Have trouble if you're solving a problem and you Don't see progress. You're probably solving the wrong problem So you need to back up get perspective and solve the problem differently and this applies to business Personal life you name it in life every time you're stuck. You're probably solving the wrong problem Hey, okay. And so that that's the story that you might tell to somebody when right now And then I I asked them to confide it do you think this is a fit with your mission? More often than it's not like it's like overcoming obstacles or yeah, you know winning or Yeah adapting or yeah fixing the wrong problem. Yeah, yeah Innovating Innovating under pressure right? Like these are all the themes for every company They think they're unique, but every company has pretty much the same challenges and pressures And so they all have similar themes and it always pretty much always works I have a couple other stories, but yeah, that's probably the one I tell most often and so they're emotionally hitched Yeah, right And now they're gonna rationally give a reason to their boss. Why they need to bring me in And so not only that they've written their business justification for you They're emotionally hitched and then going back to the bit that you were talking about chronoception earlier because they've been emotionally engaged You've got one of those six things going there Um, so they're more likely to be you're more likely to be the first recall So if there were a number of people pitching because of that emotional engagement you're more likely to be Emotionally connected to them which means you're more likely to persuade them influence and win the deal. Whatever it might be Absolutely, if the next guy is the world's leading economist
[00:35:58:12 - 00:36:01:20]
Rationally, he's a better choice at least in terms of expertise
[00:36:03:06 - 00:36:30:10]
So it's riskier to pitch me but they're emotionally engaged with me And so they're going to remember me much more than the guy that droned on about some economic commerce rules and regulations And so that's why how I beat people like that again and again because they've got a story They're emotionally hitched their brain has written it down and made it highly recallable And so first recall becomes first call and I get the first call Pretty much all the time. Yeah
[00:36:32:04 - 00:36:49:00]
Very interesting very interesting now i've just glanced at the clock and and time is rapidly escaping us. Can you believe it? so shall we wrap up for for um Everybody that's been listening or maybe heaven forbid even zoned out whilst we were talking
[00:36:50:01 - 00:36:54:11]
What would be your your key takeaways from from from this episode?
[00:36:56:02 - 00:37:13:04]
I'll give them to you. I think in order first is recognizing that the nature of time is not linear the way we experience it That we experience human time not clock time The second is that the adage is so true life begins at the edge of your comfort zone if you're not taking some risks And your life doesn't have to be every day, but occasionally
[00:37:14:05 - 00:37:51:00]
Then you're not living the way that you can in terms of creating memories Uh when you have choices in life choose the one that makes the best story Not the one that's the most difficult or the funnest just choose the one that's going to make the the best story Time and money are fungible You trade your time for money every day There comes a point in your career where you really think hard about how you're investing your time and how do you trade? Your money back for time and finally memories are the currency of time if you're not investing Your time into creating memories using those six key drivers. Well
[00:37:52:00 - 00:38:20:12]
You might just lose a decade here and there Because nothing will be written down and life will accelerate and the next thing you know The bell is tolling the fat lady is singing you're at the end and you miss the opportunity To create a long extensive memorable life for yourself and for others. Yeah brilliant It really fascinates, you know as I sort of reflect on what we've been talking about for the last half an hour Firstly these new languages new words chronoception. So that I say it away. Let me try and get this again
[00:38:21:13 - 00:39:11:15]
conflab confabulation or conflabulation confabulation Confabulation, so so love it and and what i've really liked is thinking about well actually from my personal life I want this time this life full of memories So what can I do for that? And then also thinking about how can I apply that to others so that I can be a bit more successful In what i'm doing in my in my every day, you know when I when I am working and it is routine What what can I do to try and get some of those things like at risk and uncertainty and uniqueness and emotional intensity? You know and all of that kind of stuff. So Absolutely fantastic really fascinating. So thank you so much john for for sharing with that now Just in terms of I guess like uh, if people have been interested in the things that you've been saying Where can people go to connect with you or find out a bit more about what you're talking about?
[00:39:12:20 - 00:39:34:05]
Yeah, it's super easy. I have blog youtube channel, but all of it's found on my website johnkcoil.com Johnkcoil.com So i'll pop that in the show notes so that everybody can make sure they get the right link as well if they want um, so Final thing for me to say is john. It has been an absolute pleasure. It has been fascinating So thank you so much for spending the time with us
[00:39:36:18 - 00:39:56:21]
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