Never Get Ghosted Again: Listening Techniques That Close Deals. w/ Jule Kim (Part. 1)
Chris Do and Jule Kim reveal the advanced listening techniques that turn sales calls into closed deals by focusing on understanding over responding.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · July 25, 2024
Anatomy of a Failed Sales Call
Most sales calls are not conversations. They are simultaneous monologues.
One person talks, and while their mouth is moving, the other person’s brain is racing. Not to process the words, but to formulate a rebuttal, a counter-point, a clever response. They are waiting for the smallest gap of silence to inject their own agenda.
“Most of us in everyday conversation are using our listening skills just to respond,” explains sales coach Jule Kim. “We're not actually listening to understand the other person.”
This is the fundamental flaw that derails countless deals. It’s the reason you get ghosted. The client feels unheard because they were. Trust was never built. A relationship was never formed. Instead, they experienced a transaction, and a clumsy one at that.
The Futur’s Chris Do sees this constantly. “It feels like two people are talking not exactly at the same time, but no one's listening,” he says. “My ability to just even process the words that she said is diminished because my brain is multitasking right now.”
This multitasking leads to one of the most dangerous conditions in sales: happy ears. Happy ears is the phenomenon of hearing what you desperately want to hear, regardless of what is actually being said. It’s a filter that mutates reality.
The client might be saying, “I’m not comfortable. This price is too much. I don’t feel safe moving forward.” But through the filter of happy ears, you hear, “I love you. Your work is amazing. I’m ready to sign.”
The outcome is always the same. You spend two days crafting a 38-page proposal for a client who was never going to buy. Then, silence. You’ve been ghosted, and you have no idea why, because you weren’t really there for the conversation.
Beyond the Words: Three Levels of Listening
To break this cycle, you must accept that listening is a multi-layered skill. It’s not a passive act of hearing; it’s an active process of deconstruction.
Do breaks it down into three distinct levels.
Level one is simply paying attention to the words. “If you could just listen to the words, that's just level one,” Do states. “That would be fantastic. And that's a vast improvement to what everybody else is doing right now.”
This is the baseline. Hearing the raw data of the conversation without your internal monologue drowning it out.
Level two is the tone. It’s not what they say, but how they say it. The enunciation, the pauses, the shifts in energy. This is where the emotional data lives. Consider the simple word “yeah.”
“There’s a lot of different yeses,” Do explains, referencing the work of former FBI negotiator Chris Voss. Voss, in his book Never Split the Difference, identifies three types of “yes”: the counterfeit, the confirmation, and the commitment. Only one of them means you’re moving forward. The other two are polite dismissals.
The difference between a committed “yeah” and a hesitant, strained “yeah” contains all the information you need. But you have to be listening for it. “When you ask a client how does $55,000 sound for this engagement,” Do illustrates, the way they say “yeah” tells you everything.
Level three is the most advanced: understanding the subtext. This is what isn’t being said at all. It’s the meaning between the words.
“We know this in movies, we know this in reading novels,” Do says. “When there's a dialogue scene between two people, we can read the emotion.” A character might say, “You’re free to go wherever you want,” but the subtext screams, “If you walk out that door, I will not be here when you come back.” As the audience, we see the full picture. In a sales call, your job is to become the audience to your own conversation.
The Listener’s Scorecard: Five Dimensions of Understanding
Kim expands on this with a five-part framework for comprehensive listening, a scorecard to audit your own perception. These layers work together to provide a complete picture of the client’s reality.
- 1. The Words: This is the foundation, a simple test of factual recall. “Did you understand and capture the basic information correctly?” Kim asks. “This is the bare minimum, and so many people get this wrong because they're not fully present.” Coaches and creatives often fail here, projecting their own stories and experiences onto the client instead of hearing what was plainly stated.
- 2. The Unspoken: This is Do’s level three, the subtext. It’s about reading between the lines and identifying the underlying emotion. “Are you able to pick up on what they're not quite saying?” Kim prompts. This requires you to ask yourself: what is the full picture here?
- 3. The Physical Cues: This layer focuses on tone, energy shifts, facial expressions, and body language. On a video call, the advantage is immense. A sudden shift from smiling to serious, a furrowed brow, a glance away from the camera, these are all data points. But even on an audio-only call, the information is abundant. Do built a career closing massive deals on a simple speakerphone. “I cut my teeth on doing sales calls and winning tens of millions of dollars of business just by listening,” he recalls. He learned to hear the space and tone in a simple response. This observation must then be measured against the words. Does the body language match what they’re saying? Or does it conflict?
- 4. The Client's Context: This is about zooming out. Who is this person? What is their background, their belief system, their level of expertise? Do recalls a role-play where a photographer pitched him headshot services. “She was talking to you like you had no idea about the photography world,” Kim remembers. The photographer failed to do basic research and, more importantly, failed to listen to the clues Do provided during the call. When he namedropped legendary photographer Albert Watson, a name she didn’t recognize, it was a massive signal. “That would have been a ginormous clue to say, ‘Wait, I cannot treat Chris like the way I treat everyone else,’” he says. She missed it.
- 5. Specific Words and Phrasing: The final layer is a granular analysis of language. When a client uses an unusual word, a strong emotional descriptor, or what author Blair Enns calls a “suitcase word,” it’s a flag. A suitcase word is a term like “strange,” “weird,” or “strategic” that carries a hidden bundle of personal meaning. When a client says, “That’s a little bit weird,” most people will gloss over it. The elite listener stops and asks, “I'm not sure, what was weird about it for you?” The answer almost never aligns with your own assumption.
This is where the infamous Mehrabian rule of communication comes into play. You’ve seen the numbers: 7% words, 38% tone, 55% body language. Kim is quick to point out that the researcher, Albert Mehrabian, has stated his work is widely misinterpreted. However, the underlying principle holds true. “Take away the overall message,” she advises. “There's the words, there's how they're saying it, and then there's the other stuff like the body language. You want to take all of that into account.”
The Internal Barriers to Hearing
If the path to better listening is so clear, why do so many people fail? It’s not a lack of intelligence. It’s a set of powerful internal forces conspiring against them.
The primary culprit is a scarcity mindset. “We don't get enough new leads,” Do says frankly. “If you have more leads, an abundance of leads...it's going to change the way you take the call.”
When you only have one new lead a month, the pressure is immense. You enter the call with one goal: to close. This desperation creates what Kim calls a “convincing energy.”
This leads to a cascade of other problems:
- A need to prove your self-worth. Because many creatives equate their work with their identity, they feel a burning need to justify how smart they are, how good their work is, and why their prices are worth it. They are defending their ego, not serving the client.
- Listening to win. The conversation becomes a debate. “You're trying to win the conversation for some strange reason,” Kim says, “instead of trying to win the client, which is a totally different energy.”
- Projecting your own stories. Instead of seeing the client’s unique situation, you see a reflection of your own past experiences and impose your narrative onto them. Kim describes her ideal listening state as being an “empty pool,” passively gathering the information the client drops in. When your own issues cloud the water, you can’t see their picture clearly.
This internal noise makes it impossible to be present. You’re so worried about saying the right thing that you miss everything the client is giving you. For creatives who feel their identity is tied to their work, this can be especially challenging, a topic Do explores in his discussions on overcoming imposter syndrome.
The Paradox of Not Knowing
The solution to these problems is counterintuitive. It’s not about becoming smarter or quicker. It’s about becoming more honest and more willing to be vulnerable.
The single greatest barrier to understanding is the fear of looking incompetent. When a client says something you don’t understand, the instinct is to nod along, pretending you get it. This is a fatal mistake.
Do shares a painful story from his first year of teaching. A student was critiquing a piece of work and used the word “cathartic.”
“I've heard the word cathartic used before, but I didn't know what it meant,” Do admits. “Here's my student asking me a question. I should know the answer to it.” Trapped by his ego, he tried to bluff his way through it, turning the question back on her. “Why do you think it's too cathartic?” he asked. After she explained her reasoning, he was stuck. He had to double down on his feigned understanding, giving a weak, non-committal response.
“I just felt like I was just being a traitor to myself,” he reflects. “Everybody in the room knew I didn't know what I was talking about. And then I made a vow to myself: never do that again.”
The lesson learned over 20 years ago is simple. If you don’t know, ask. The momentary embarrassment is infinitely preferable to the slow-motion train wreck of a conversation built on a false premise.
This creates the paradox of not knowing: admitting what you don't know makes people trust you more. When you’re honest about a small gap in your knowledge, clients assume you’re being honest about everything else. Conversely, when they catch you in one small bluff, they begin to question everything else you’ve said.
“You actually gain a lot of trust points when you admit what you don't know,” Do insists. Simply say, “That's a really good question. I’ve never been asked that before. Let me think on that.” This honesty is disarming and deeply effective, a core principle in building an authentic personal brand.
The Power of Neutral Observation
Knowing you should ask is one thing. Knowing how to ask is another. The key is to remove judgment and labeling from your language.
When a client pauses after you state a price, a desperate salesperson jumps to a conclusion: they think it’s too expensive. Their next move is to immediately start discounting or over-explaining. This was a classic mistake Kim used to make.
A slightly more advanced, but still flawed, approach is to label the client’s emotion. “I see you’re uncomfortable with the price.”
This is risky. “When you get it right, that person feels very heard,” Kim explains. “But when you get it wrong, you're increasing the distance between you two.” People hate being put in a box, especially when the label is wrong.
The most effective technique is to use neutral, observational language. State what you see, not what you interpret.
The framework is simple: I noticed...
Instead of, “I see you’re uncomfortable,” try, “I noticed you paused there. Can I ask what's going on?”
This is an irrefutable observation. There was, in fact, a pause. You are not labeling them. You are not projecting a story. You are simply pointing to a piece of data and expressing curiosity. This gives them the space to tell you what the pause really meant. Maybe they were doing mental math. Maybe they were thinking about how to get budget approval. Maybe they were just taking a breath.
By asking without assuming, you invite them into a real dialogue. You move from a place of conflict to a place of collaboration, a technique vital for both sales training and everyday interactions.
From Convincing to Understanding
The ultimate goal of listening is to make the other person feel so profoundly understood that they thank you for the opportunity to give you their money. This is not hyperbole. It happens when you shift your intent from convincing them to understanding them.
Do aims to speak for only 15% of a sales call. “The clients have all the knowledge about the problems, the solutions, their hang-ups, and who they want to work with,” he says. “By asking smart, calibrated questions, I gain an unfair competitive advantage.”
The feedback he strives for is consistent: “You've asked me more thought-provoking questions than anyone's ever asked me. You help me to achieve a level of clarity I haven't been able to get to in weeks.”
When you achieve this, you are no longer a vendor. You are a partner. You are a clarifier. You are indispensable.
You can practice this everywhere. On a call with a client. In a role-play exercise. In a conversation with the server at a restaurant. Every interaction is a chance to sharpen the tool.
Stop trying to win the argument. Start trying to win their trust.
The clients who ghost you are not the problem. Your listening is. Change how you listen, and you will change how they buy.
TRANSCRIPT
thank you Chris thank you Andes hello everyone thank you for joining us today if you're here you are wanting to learn all about the art of listening and so if your sales calls haven't been going very well or maybe you've never had any sales calls and maybe even in your conversations with other
people on every day your listening skills can make or break the entire conversation it will change how other people feel when they're around you now the question is is why are we focusing so much attention on listening it's because I think most of us in everyday conversation are using our listening skills just
to respond right we're only listening to respond we're not actually listening to understand the other person and so in general I'm going to Define listening for us today and then we'll do some role plays so hopefully some of the people here you'll want to come up with us and do a little bit
of our role plays but it will be different you won't be so pressured it won't be as hard as they've been in the past okay so today our role plays are only going to focus on listening and how well you listen so the way I Define listening and Chris please tell me if
your your idea of listening is different at all for me listening goes beyond hearing the words someone says it's the ability to understand the full meaning of what the person is communicating even if they don't say everything or or if they use the wrong words okay so really one of the keys here
is if you are listening if you don't understand what they mean then that's the opportunity to ask a question today we're not going to go into questions that'll be for one of the later calls but we will be going into do you understand what they mean okay not just the words coming out
of their mouth but the whole picture and so the goal of listening is to make the other person feel hurt when they feel heard they feel understood now trust begins they start to feel a relationship with you or maybe even a friendship with you I've had so many people tell me that I'm
that they're my best friend that I never knew about just because of what I was saying that they really related to okay when someone moves along that spectrum of the relationship they start to feel a relationship with you that's when they'll want to take your advice especially around hearing your recommendation on the
best course of action they'll want to learn from you and then eventually they will want to work with you so that's why we're here today Chris what are your sounds great that sounds great juel I think there are levels to listening I would just start with level one everybody which is are you
giving that person your undivided attention and paying attention to just the words I think if you could just listen to the words that's just level one that would be fantastic and that's a vast Improvement to what everybody else is doing right now I find it interesting that a lot of times when we
do the RO plays or if I was able to easop on anybody sales conversations it feels like two people are talking not exactly at the same time but no one's listening and so what's happening I and envision this in my head Jewel's talking and I'm here and my mouth is not moving but
I'm just thinking about what I want to say as soon as juel goes quiet and so my ability just even process the words that she said is diminished because my brain is multitasking right now so maybe picking up a few things and at worst what's happening is I have a lens a frame
in which I presume juel to be saying something so whatever word she's using gets mutated through my filter and so then I hear different things in sales we call this happy ears and happy ears is kind of what it sounds like like you hear what you want to hear so Jewel may be
explicitly and implicitly saying I'm not comfortable I don't feel safe I'm not moving forward this price is too much but what you're hearing is I love you your work is amazing I'm ready to sign the dotted line and there's no amount of money that I wouldn't pay to receive your services and we
can usually tell because when you respond the other person usually has a reaction and if you're paying careful attention you'll see the reaction in a weird pause in a change in body language in a raised eyebrow or furled eyebrows something is off and you're still not listening so now we're talking about listening
without even using words like listening looking at the visual non-verbal cues so I would say the base level is just pay attention to the other person's words I think what juul's talking about is layers two and three paying attention to tone and she's pretty good at picking these up like when I like
yeah she's like there's a lot of different yes but the way she says it I can't tell the difference between each y but there's definitely a lot of different yes like there's yeah there yeah the strained pregnant yeah and there's yes like with a question mark at the back end of it so
we know that U from different studies and kind of made famous through Chris voss's book never split the difference so there are three yeses and only one of them is true one is yes I hear what you're saying the other yes is yes yes I don't want to hear you speak anymore so
I'm going to just say yes so you could shut up the one yes that we're looking for is yes I'm ready to move forward we're in complete agreement alignment okay so there's the words there's the tone in which the words are being said and how it's being enunciated or pronounce that's very important
for you to pay attention to I would consider layer three what isn't even said at all understanding the the subtext what's happening between the words and we know this in in movies we know this in reading novels when when when there's a dialogue scene between two people we can read theem motion like
uh maybe one character is saying if you walk out that door I will not be home when you come back but she's saying you're free to go wherever you want we as the audience know this but the other person who's about to walk at that door doesn't understand the subtext at all and
that's what's caused some of us not me in the theater stand up like don't walk out the door he or she will not be here when you come back and it makes us all kind of our guts kind of churn and just tie up into knots because we we know what is being
said what is meant and they do two different things so for me there's at least three layers here juel do you see it any other way well I'm so glad you asked I just published my PDF which I forgot to publish earlier I did create a listening scorecard so if you look in
the chat everybody and you click on that link it's five layers of listening and they're not rated from you know easiest to hardest but there are definitely three of what you just said overlap with uh some of the categories sorry I'm a little bit distracted with messages so really quick I will run
through them um sorry I've lost my own link Okay so Chris has already covered some of the basic layers so if you go to slide six the words coming out of their mouth do you at least have the facts correct did you understand and capture the basic information information correctly so this is
the bare minimum and so many people get this wrong because they're not fully present they're not focused and they're not actually hearing the words and like Chris said earlier happy ears so sometimes I've literally seen this even with coaches like our job I I would say like 75% of our job is to
just listen and yet I see coaches get this wrong because they're so quick to spin up stories um they're projecting their own experiences onto the client and they're not actually hearing the words coming out of the other person's mouth so this is the bare minimum level right here okay if you go to
slide seven is understanding the unspoken So reading between the lines aka the subtext identify the emotion if you can so are you able to pick up on what they're not quite saying what emotions are they displaying and then ask yourself what's the full picture here this is definitely a little bit more advanced
if you go to the next slide they're the physical cues physical cues such as the tone the shift and energy watch their facial expressions or their body language so if you're on the webinar with us you actually have a huge advantage today that you never had because when you were listening to us
on LinkedIn audio you only had our voice to listen to which is still plenty of information and in our coaching one of the coaching programs I've been to multiple but one of the coaching programs I was taught by this master coach who has been coaching for over 25 years she was taught by
one of the very first prominent coaches ever like the guy who is considered who have started the entire coaching industry and their old school philosophy is that if you're really a good listener if you want to train yourself to be a good listener you don't even need video you would only listen so
don't sit here thinking you need to have video because there's still lots of information coming through unjust a voice so pay attention to how they're saying something um or what they look like now the kicker is does it match or does it conflict with what they're saying if you're familiar with this study
the the Moravian rule I think that's how you say it I I think we've seen the numbers something like uh seven Chris you know the percentage breakdown I I should know this but I don't know it off the top of my head I'll look it up yeah so you've seen this all over
social media I'm sure where they say uh small percent are paid attention to the words and then more attention paid to how you're saying it right like your your voice do you have the percentage breakdown I do I do it's 73855 so I think it's 7% of what is said the actual words
communicate what you're saying then 30 38% takes place through tone and voice and the remaining 55% are factors that take place through body language facial expressions Etc okay now this may be weird that I'm bringing this up because those percentages are actually wrong so the guy who actually did the study said this
was never the the conclusion of his study but it's one of those things that's caught on like wildfire in the mainstream people will quote this all over the place and the percentages are not correct but I want you to take away the overall message right there's the words there's how they're saying it
and then there's the other stuff like the body language you want to take all of that into account and then lastly the client's context so this specifically is a very coach oriented Dimension here as in who is that client so maybe about a month ago we had somebody who did a role play
with You Chris um the photographer who was pitching you her head Shot photography CL um Services she did not look up any information about you she didn't know who you were and so everyone in the webinar today I'm assuming you know who Chris is like you joined this from his LinkedIn live you
have some idea who Chris is you know he's an influencer you know his history with design and branding having an agency all of this maybe not the details but you have an idea that he's pretty up there right he's got a video team so if you look at that client context who are
they what kind of experiences have they had what's their values and belief system so if you consider what they're sharing in the context of who they are what does that tell you in terms of what your Hearing in terms of your listening so that photographer who was pitching you her Services she was
talking to you like you had no idea about the photography world like you had no idea on these kind of services and and that was where I was cringing a little bit because I was like dude like why are you talking to Chris like he's a total Noob like he has so much
knowledge and in fact he has even more knowledge than she herself did so take these things into consideration something so simple can be a quick turn off to someone okay so do you have anything else you wanted to add what's real interesting to me juel is I had seen your PDF slides and
here I am saying very similar things using similar language and I just wanted to reassure people a couple different things I think in this day and age where Zoom has become so ubiquitous it it can be pretty easy for us to kind of get lost in a sauce here but I do want
to tell you for the vast majority of my professional career as a motion designer director and a production company almost all of the new business calls happen with voice only good oldfashioned speaker phone on a polycom triangular spaceship looking phone and I cut my teeth on doing sales calls and winning tens of
millions of dollars of business just by listening in fact some of the calls I Clos while driving in my Mini Cooper via the speaker phone in the car and so you can get really good at this and I've been able to close6 700,000 jobs walking in a factory with the echoe sound nonideal
conditions because I've learned to listen not just to the words but the tone and how it's said right so for example I'll give you here's the classic example I just use my own children here uh I'll say to Matias my youngest hey you are you gonna take out the trash yeah I'm like
I the gap between me asking and him responding says a lot to me like he's thinking about something and the way he said yeah like is he annoyed by it that I'm asking him to do a basic responsibility at home and that's that just just that simple thing space and tone tells me
a lot so when you ask a client how does $55,000 sound for this engagement yeah like there's a lot of ways for us to try to figure out what this is Happy ear says yes they're ready to sign the dotted line I'll send you a 38 page proposal it'll take me 2 days
to do and then they ghost for you ghost on you for like weeks and you're like Chris I don't understand clients keep ghosting on me because you weren't paying attention so if you're never sure what someone's saying just ask just say I I notice a pause quite literally my observation is there was
a pause I don't know what that means so I'm just going to ask you I just noticed a pause before you said yeah tell me what was there any kind of meaning behind that and they'll tell you and you want to ask in the most neutral language that you can versus saying I
see you are not comfortable with moving forward there's too much interpretation there I think juel I see your face kind of changing here maybe you have a different point of view oh no no like I'm totally agreeing like I'm I'm prec cringing at anticipating someone saying that to me because they have in
the past um and what's happening there is not just interpretation but you're labeling the other person and that's what people don't like so this is this is all really part and parcel of active listening but we've split this up today so we have the call today and we also have the call um
Sunday right very close together because there's a listening component like literally the information you're taking in but then there's a response component what do you do with that and how do you respond in a way that's appropriate and so one of the biggest problems in what you just said I see your own
un comfortable is like am I how do you know I'm uncomfortable so you have to be careful of when you place descriptors or labels on other people it's risky so the problem here is when you get it right that person feels very heard they're like oh they get me but when you get
it wrong you're increasing the distance between you two right it's it's off-putting to be placed into a box I've heard so many creatives who are like don't put me in a box so just keep that in mind and then that also reminds me of my next uh my last dimension on the scorecard
but before I move on to that Chris um what do you think causes some of the issues that we're seeing with people with the happy ears or just anything that gets in the way of listening I I have talked to enough creative people juel that I think I can pretty safely give you
a broad answer to this that I think will ring true for a lot of people maybe not for everyone I think number one is we don't get enough new new leads we just don't and that's generally the problem so if you have more leads an abundance of leads that you don't even know
how to schedule the calls it's going to change the which the way you take the call and your mindset and how you frame it but the problem is if we get one new lead a month that's not enough for us to get any kind of real traction and then we feel like so
pressured to close this and that's CLE CED with the mindset a scarcity mindset where if we don't close this job we'll never see another opportunity and so all that is conspiring against us to actually be fully present in the moment on the call to be of service to the other person to act
with integrity and to also see what we do as valuable and and those are some challenges that people have you're so desperate you're going to pre-negotiate against yourself you're going to ask for the sale long before or or just wait too soon before the client even knows that there's Rapport or trust being
built or you have an understanding of them and the problem I think all those things plus the lack of training you know one of the biggest things that people blame when a relationship falls apart whether in a romantic sense or a business sense is we're just not communicating we're not seeing eye to
eye and that's really what that means we don't know how to listen so we haven't been trained to do this oops you're muted I think I I agree uh there there's a lot so I have my little list of stuff that I've observed from my encounters one-on-one coaching with creatives and definitely being
desperate for the sale they enter the conversation with the intent to convince there's a convincing energy I have to prove myself instead of just listening and so when I think of myself in any conversation with people but especially in the context of sales or coaching I sort of picture myself as this empty
pool and the the other person is dropping things into the pool and my job is to just gather them and just just see just keep Gathering them and see what kind of picture it makes and when your pool is cloudy because you've got other stuff going on it makes it a lot harder
to see that person's picture okay so part of that is entering with desperation you place pressure on yourself you come into this saying I better not F this up I haven't had a sale in six months I have to I have to land this when you place pressure upon yourself you're already probably
not going to be able to listen you may be listening with 10% of Your Capacity the other big issue I see is the need to prove your selfworth so how smart you are that's always been my traditional hangup there how good your work is and that your prices are worth it and that's
because in the creative space especially is you equate your work with yourself so your prices of your work you think your prices are about yourself you're trying to justify your selfworth to the other person and again it comes off with this very off-putting energy in the conversation you're not listening and then you're
listening to respond as in to win you're trying to win the conversation for some strange reason instead of trying to win the client which is a totally different energy uh but some of the other stuff I see that sort of cloud the pool here is one you're literally not listening and a very
clear indicator of this is if you're not recording your sales calls you should record your sales calls and then upload them into some sort of transcription service like otter AI Chris in your conversations what percent of the time do you think you're generally speaking it depends juel it depends if it's a sales
conversation I I aspire to to say as little as possible and then every word that I say carries a lot more meaning and I've realized that the clients have all the knowledge about the problems the solutions their Hang-Ups and who they want to work with and by asking smart calibrated questions I gained
an unfair competitive advantage over the other people they're considering and that's what I want and I also I I get this feeling sometimes it's just a feeling and sometimes they literally say this to me I've and this is what I strive for at the end of the conversation they say you've asked me
more thought-provoking questions than anyone's ever asked me you help me to achieve a level of clarity I haven't been able to get to in weeks forget about like the half hour we spent together they'll say things like this was really uncomfortable for me to do but it's worth it and thank you for
doing this they thank you for agreeing to to for them to give you money which is I love that part like thank you for giving me the opportunity to give you my money because I just feel that you just get me and even when I'm not qualified for work the clients just say
you know what I don't know who else I would give this to cuz who's going to understand me the way you do I've heard those phrases too I remember once was a guy who hired me late last year and the thing that I like to do is I'll often say like if somebody
is a little bit on the fence or I can see they're a little hesitant maybe they're coming at this with one of those um let's say they like to consider their options I'll I'll say go consider your options but with this one guy I'll never forget what he said to me I said
yeah go go ahead you know check out other coaches if you have to you know you got to do what's right for you and he said oh no where else am I going to find a life coach who is familiar with the gaming industry and even familiar with the product that I work
at like the company their gaming product and I was like wow that's that's insane yeah so a lot of the stuff you said about people having uh or feeling uncomfortable with the questions thought-provoking questions like all of this sums up to when you are listening and you're listening well you will naturally come
up with questions that will help them learn about themselves and that's the gift that keeps giving okay people will never forget that feeling when you help them realize something about themselves so percentage of the time if you're in a sales call I'm guessing you're talking maybe 30% is would that be fair I
think that would be fair my my goal is to do 15% the only times which I feel really comp to speak is towards the end when I'd like to summarize or provide insights unless the clients are asking me lots of questions but even when they ask me a question I just want to
turn around and ask them more questions okay how do you do that without coming off evasive can you give me an example of when you think somebody's asking a question and it feels evasive to you well only if I've asked them a question first and then they turn it back on me sometimes
I've seen some of our role players do this where you ask them the price and then they turn on and ask you something about price instead of just answering the question okay did you feel like the question I asked you was evasive no I just asked you two questions you see what I
just did there right yeah okay now would youel I have seen this before it's like monkey see monkey do but monkey do all wrong okay so you're like oh Chris says I asked a lot of questions and they're like what is your favorite color what do you think my favorite color is and
it's like no that's the wrong way to do it that's when I was like can I get a straight answer from you or not there are times when you'll need to answer a question but a lot of times what I'm trying to do is I want to give you the right answer I
just don't understand the question well enough I don't want to rush to give you an answer and that's where I'm coming from it's the intentionality behind it versus I'm trying to avoid something because I don't know the answer now there will be times when somebody will ask you a question where you don't
know the answer there's no way you can know the answer or your brain just locked up and just say you know what that's a really good question I owe you a better answer than the one I can give you just off the top of my head I need a minute to think about
this or and if I can't figure it out may I have your permission to DM you or email you later what I think the answer is supposed to be or sometimes I just have some fun with I say oh uh that question or that answer is above my pay grade I need to
contact the technical team and I know they'll know the answer and you actually gain a lot of trust points when you admit what you don't know and I'll tell you why this is the Paradox of knowledge or not knowing okay when you tell someone something that you don't know you just made up
and they can they know it then they Wonder to themselves what else have you been telling me that you're just making up a lot of BS for conversely if you say I don't have a good answer for this like he's been this honest about little things he's probably honest about everything else and
this is by the way how con artists get you to believe things they tell you some truth so that you believe all the lies or they'll admit to a lie so that you believe everything else is the truth so when you when someone asks you a question you don't know the answer just
say I just don't know that's a great question I've never been asked that before let me think on that and that's what you need to do we'll see it we'll see it when we advance in the other parts of our calls where we're actually getting to live roleplay with each other and then
you'll see like oh my gosh I'm doing that thing that Chris and juel warned me about doing I I want to touch on one thing I almost forgot to talk about this juel you had said the photographer should have known who I was should have figured this out before the sales call I'm
gonna I'm going to help all of you because that could be very stressful even if you knew nothing about me you know something about what you do so when the photog photographer asked me who are some photographers that you look up to and without hesitation I was able to say Albert Watson a
photographer she didn't know which is really weird so that's a clue like I'm not some some guy who fell off the photography truck and doesn't know anything about photography so if you were really listening that would have been a ginormous clue to say like wait I cannot treat Chris like the way I
treat everyone else I can't tell them here's how it works cuz that's what people do all the time time you see so she wasn't even listening juel well not only that but you literally came out and said I'm in the industry like you said that phrase so she just kind of brushed right
over it and then when we took a sidebar I said hey Chris said this very specifically what do you think he was trying to tell you and she was like I don't know you know it's like no shade to her right but it's like no shade when you have a conversation I think
this is what we're all doing our brains will take in certain pieces of information when we don't know what to do with something we just throw it out like as if we never heard it but I want you to go into these conversations thinking when you're in a sales conversation or a coaching
conversation there's nothing that the person is saying that is random there is a reason they are saying it to you so just because you don't know what that means or what you're supposed to take away from that does not mean you should just dismiss it and ignore it like it never was said
if you don't know then just ask yeah so I'm sorry I was just going to say if you don't know what I'm in the industry means you just ask I'm just curious like what do you mean when you say you're in the industry what industry are you in then she would know yeah
exactly and what I was going to say is I know like the first thing that I was thinking when you said if you don't know just ask like earlier and even now the number one thing I think that keeps people from doing this is their ego their pride they're afraid of looking bad
or incompetent in front of the potential client but I tell you what's worse is if you just keep glossing over things and you know let's say the destination is Costco and you end up at JC Penney that's going to look a lot worse so your conversation the goal is to end up at
the same place as where that person wants you to be the more you vear off the fewer questions you ask the more you ignore things you just reject things straight out of your mind the more likely it is you're going to end up at a totally different place and then guess what you
get ghosted yeah so the best time to raise the question about something you don't know is the first time because what happens is they keep talking and you're getting deeper and you're like uhhuh uhhuh and then it's like oh I'm so sorry the last 10 minutes were worthless because I didn't even understand
what you're talking about in the first part so you see it just gets worse and and we see this and this is like usually a a statement when it comes to politics the cover up is worse than the lie if you just say you're right um I had an affair or I I
misappropriated funds I I filled out the the form incorrectly and I was I didn't think that was an expense or something like that and then they're like okay let's just move on it's almost always that way it's the lie that's what gets you all messed up in not admitting to someone you don't
understand what they're saying it's not really a lie but it's an emission of the truth so I guess that's a lie sort of like a white lie I think it is like it's like sweeping things under the rug like trying to cover up and then what that creates is like this really weird
tension like it's so awkward because they see what you're doing and you see what you're doing but you're not coming out and saying it and most people are going to be too polite they don't have the courage to just be like hey um I don't mean to make you feel at ease and
so so here's the weird thing is I noticed this in the call with you and Carlos that very short role play uh when was it it was on um Monday yeah yeah so there was a point where you took the conversation and you said okay look I don't want to pay your prices
at this rate but why don't we give this a try and then if I feel like it's going well then I'll pay you the full price you're asking like the price increase and I was like that right there a client would probably never do that right like you were you were um what
is it you're sort of changing the conversation to suit your needs you were taking the driver's seat at that point and that's something most clients will never do like never they may propose it but most clients are going to just say yeah you know this is a huge price increase but they won't
even be willing to tell you that so they they'll just say I have to go think about it and then you'll never hear from them again or maybe in a follow-up email so followup email is maybe the best you'll get so it's it's an it's a weird thing right so the the concept
of feeling awkward like I keep thinking about this is when both people in the conversation see something is happening and yet no one comes out and just says it so the tension just keeps building and then the weird Vibes start happening so quickest way to dispel the weird Vibes is to just come
out and say it admit what you did or admit what happened and then you're good so even let let's say it is that awkward scenario where I thought I understood what you said but then 10 minutes later I realized oh shoot I had it all wrong it's not too late to recover I
can say okay I got to admit something I thought you meant this when you said in the industry and now I'm realizing I was off so thank you for clarifying that yeah so so just be honest Joel do you have a moment when you were in a sales call when things were on
the line and that happened to you when I was the one who was being awkward when there was an awkward moment and you had to like take the pressure off and you just had to say something or you didn't say it when you should have didn't say it when I should have I'm
like uh hello three years ago that was like all my sales calls uh so three years ago that pause people take when you tell them the price or even five years ago the pause what I would do was I would automatically discount myself my mind was spinning a story and projecting that this
is what their pause meant when in reality maybe they were just thinking about it maybe they were just taking in the information um but let's say you know now three years ago they would clearly feel uncomfortable about something I don't know what but my mind was jumping to price already and as instead
of just saying hey it seems like you are experiencing something you're you're you're feeling something about the price or you're you're hesitating here what's happening I didn't have the knowledge to do that so there were so many cues like physical cues that I was missing you you can see it if you have
the privilege of video you can see when someone starts being like you know these sorts of facial expressions maybe they were very Smiley and then they become very serious suddenly like that's also like a turn right a shift in the energy I just blew right past those like most of those um and
then I I'll tell you this this is super embarrassing people would sign up for me but because of the impostor syndrome I was feeling I would take more than a week to send them the invoice and the contract I would send it to them with no explanation I wouldn't even say hey I
I know it's it's been a week I'm so sorry like I promise you this is not how I do business so this this ability to dispel the weird Vibes the tension to offer some sort of explanation like this is really key and it doesn't have to be just in a live conversation I'll
something super embarrassing just going to go out and say it myself the very first time I taught a class at Otis I'm only like a a year into teaching so I'm I'm really kind of on Shaky Ground maybe not even a year into it and what fueled my imposter syndrome was because I'm
teaching something that no one has taught me so if I taught graphic design principles I can just go back and look at the catalog of ways teachers taught and the assignments they gave I I'll just model after that but I'm teaching motion design which I kind of just learned on the job so
to speak and so a young woman I I think her name is Arian or Ariana and she's like um like I want to say Argentinian or something like that and she was we were looking at storyboards and and she had said Chris don't you think that idea is too cathartic I've heard the
word cathartic used before but I'm like I didn't know what it meant here's my student asking me a question like I should know the answer to and so I do the idiot thing kind of in my rookie year year one of teaching and I'm like um why do you think it's too cathartic
there were crosses and God rays and all this religious metaphor in there and she was explaining I kind of I deduced the meaning of the word cathartic after she explained it and now I feel trapped because I'm like um I don't I don't think so and then now after she explains it I
have to double down on my kind of idiot or idiocracy and I'm like yeah I I think it's all right it's just like if anybody was watching this if juul Kim was there the juul Kim from 2024 were there she's like he's like skating on ice right now this guy is fully just
bsing the whole time and you know what the worst part is I just felt like I was just being a traitor to myself and that everybody in the room knew I didn't know what I was talking about and then I made a vow to myself never do that again with clients with students
if I don't know what I'm talking about or they're asking I'll just say um yeah I don't know what that is tell me I've heard the word before but what what is the meaning of the word I'll just ask now now I'm not perfect everybody I'm not saying I always do that but
I strive to do that and that was a lesson I learned 20 plus years ago and I hold that with me it's like when somebody says something you don't understand be brave enough to ask it'll solve you or'll save you from making a lot of mistakes dumb mistakes unnecessary mistakes all right juwel
when do we get to the part where we get to play with people okay in five minutes let me go over this one last point because it's part of the scorecard but it does tie into everything we've been saying if you have not already looked at this scroll to the very last slide
in the scorecard and just look it over really quick but it's the specific words or phrasing so in Chris's literal example here when the person said cathartic it's not a word that gets used all the time when your person you're talking to describes feelings you should always pay attention to that if they
literally toss out like an emotion type of word you should write that down if they are using specific descriptores or labels for things write that down one of the key things I see designers or creatives doing constantly also people in Academia is they will hear someone say something and then they will Auto
adjust to their language don't do that okay do not change my word for your word because you may think they mean the same thing but that's not necessarily true on the other person's side uh unusual phrases like I had a role play um several weeks ago or a month ago where I said
oh shizel you don't hear that all the time if you hear the person make an exclamation or some sort of unusual comment like that that should cue you in some something is happening for that person and then the suitcase words I think you said it's from Blair ends suitcase words in particular can
be tricky if I say that's strange it's very easy for most people to say yeah I I know I know that's strange but do you know why I think that's strange you don't not unless you ask me a question and so one of the points that we covered in our last um LinkedIn
audio event is that there are many ways to get to an island and just because you arrived at the same island does not mean you took the same route to get there and sometimes you're not even on the same island at all so ask those questions one of the key indicators of a
suitcase word is if you will feel dumb asking the question about that word what does that mean so if Chris if you were to say well that's a little bit weird most people will just gloss over that and be like yeah that was weird I would be the person asking the dumb question
I'm I'm not sure like what was weird about it and then you would tell me what I've learned about you is that probably 50% of the time what I thought was weird about it does not match what you think is weird about it you offer surprising insights and that's even after knowing you
for a couple of years so imagine how much harder it would be to match up on the same level with somebody you just met okay so just notice the specific words they're asking and then ask yourself do you know what these words mean chances are you don't so that's it shall we get
into role play Let's Do It All right who up we have by the way we have some questions here do you want to answer them now sure I think you should run the call the way you think best and I will do my best to support you Al righty I know we have
some people who've been waiting for a while so Anonymous attendee says uh how I mentioned I see you're uncomfortable can be risky so what's the neutral way to respond to a pause or a hesitation do you want to take this how to respond to a pause or hesitation well I shared earlier how
I I would have responded I'd be curious to see if you have a different take on this because I'm I'm afraid I'm going to say the same thing or similar thing I'm always a fan of offering the observation so just saying what is happening instead of putting a label so I see you're
uncomfortable the uncomfortableness is the label and I would just say I noticed you paused there can I ask what's going on that's that's how I generally handle this like a pro I notice is a great phrase to use I notice something whatever it is you notice versus jumping to the conclusion of what
you noticed yeah yeah wonderful okay gladley asks how can someone practice active listening in a sales call environment if they don't have enough leads to practice good question you don't have to practice on a sales call you can practice in every dialogue that you have but here's the beautiful thing about the LinkedIn
lives that I've been doing with my friend juel also with Carlos and and soon to be analie is you have to be brave enough to raise your hand and you can get practice and this is a perfect segue for me to do a little bit of an announcement here ju I have a
little business to do tomorrow I don't know what time but we're doing a future Pro Tour I'm going to show you what it's like to be part of the future Pro Community it's the place and space that I've created that I've always wished I had when I was starting out so that I
can have these kinds of conversations and be able to practice and learn from people a little bit ahead of me a little bit behind me I think that's the beauty of this group that we've assembled that no matter where you are there's a good chance that there's someone ahead of you and good
chance someone's behind you even if you're starting out we have people who are 16 years old in there and I'm like this is crazy that you're here and we can learn from each other you can help someone and you can get help from someone that's happening tomorrow so on the event here if
you want to just type in the word Pro not not here in the webinar chat but in the event on LinkedIn and I'll make sure to send you the link and if my friend car's here she'll drop the link here I'll try and find it right now okay Joel what's what's the next
question I I'm sorry did I miss it did you answer the question about I'm I'm like ready to race and go find the link my squirrel brain has gone there oh Andress has got that for me okay sorry what was the question again uh the question how can someone practice active listening in
a sales call if they don't have enough leads oh I I thought I did answer it you practice in your interpersonal relationships with your partner with your children with your parent with your sibling you'll practice on on role plays you'll do it anywhere and everywhere you can and it's wonderful I actually made
a habit of this because as some of you know I'm I'm painfully shy and socially awkward those are awesome traits to have as I'm trying to build a thought leadership so one thing that I did and I started doing many years ago probably 10 years now was I would just strike up conversations
with strangers who I knew they had to talk to me one such person is like when my family and I we go on vacation we sit down at a table we're being served I I'll just find a way to have a conversation with our server I say oh I noticed you have an
accent where are you from and then they just tell you stories and you can just listen okay I'll just add one small thing here if you do role plays with other people make sure it's real not real as in you have to get the sale but make sure that you are being who
you really are that that other person is being who they really are the worst is when someone pretends to be someone and they start tossing out things that aren't real like they're not true and then the conversation takes some crazy turns like you've seen this right like you've done role plays with people
pretending things what did you say I said that no real person would say these things because you're confused as to who you are let's just face it most of us are not character actors or method actors and we can't really do a great job of pretending to be someone else so we bring
in lots of things like we might bring in our Student Self our professional self something we saw on TV and it's a it's not a real person and so you're responding to something that you you will never get in real life okay perfect and then we have two more questions let's just address
one and then we'll address the other maybe in the roleplay itself so the third question is what to say when the client questions while you're recording the sales call oh okay um there's a couple different things you know now that Zoom almost by default starts recording and so people become really used to
that and you can just say do you mind if I record this I I I use it to to make sure I don't miss something later on and it helps me to review our conversation if you give people a reason as to while you're doing what you're doing it makes it go down
a lot easier versus uh it's just going to be broadcasted on YouTube or are you going to spill Trade Secrets those are the kind of things and you could reassure them that no one else outside of you or your team members will ever see this yes so give a reason but also make
sure you give them the choice nothing annoys people more than being trapped into the call and you never even address it they can see us recording so then you create one of those awkward moments I mentioned earlier right you both see something and then the fact that you're not addressing it so address
the fact that it's recorded and give them the choice some people will say no even if you say it's just for my private use only so that I can review my notes this will never go out into the public in anyway they still won't like that so give them the choice all right
so alleo I believe is ready okay let me bring Alo up there he is allowed to talk Alo I believe I've added you you are now permitted to talk hello guys can you hear me well yes maybe I need to promote you to panelist so we can see you as well should we
do that are you camera ready I am camera ready ready yes let me do that promote to panelist just what you're doing right now okay come on I see your hands up um we will address you when we can there he ISO okay hey hey guys how you doing buddy good to see
you oh good to see you too thanks for the opportunity of course okay Joel what are we doing with the Leo all right if you're up for it Chris I would like you to enter the conversation or start the conversation by sharing something with allejo it can be sales related or it can
just be about anything that happened recently allejo your job is to ask yourself three questions actually I'm not going to give you the questions let's just see how you are default with your listening skills so Chris will share something Chris if you can share something for at least a minute so give him
enough details to last on to okay I'll try this is difficult for me just to go for a minute without interaction here hey so Leo I noticed you've been really busy I'm excited for you I've seen you attend many events and I look forward to hanging out with you at the Ford event
and I notice every time you go to an event you're posting a lot more content you're doing a lot of sketch notes and you're you're doing also pictures and videos with folks that you hang out with one of which is our mutual friend uh Mexi Funk I'm spacing on the dude's name right
now but should know it I'm I'm curious if there was an intentional strategy on your part as to why you're doing this so much and if if you're seeing part positive Roi for yourself as someone who's trying to get more work and doing visual notes great um well thanks for noticing all that
Chris um I've I've been very intentional on doing those things I'm just curious about what you're asking this question just like catching up or is there something that you that I could be of value with this information well I'm I'm mostly curious I've we've had multiple conversations together I think your visibility is
going to ultimately improve your marketability and I'm just kind of excited to see how you progress in your journey as a a professional and I just wanted to know more about what you're trying to do chis it's definitely I've I've taken some of the advice that you have given me and apply it
it it it sounds that you want to see if what you're advising me is working is that am I assuming correctly no not necessarily because I don't remember what I advise you to do I'm just okay look here it is I know most people think I'm just a coldhearted bastard and sometimes I
can be but I actually genuinely do care about people making progress in their life that they're maybe not a thousand steps closer to the goal but they're a few steps forward and I'm curious as to what's triggered this activity what it's doing for you and just kind of more of a check-in call
with you more than anything else oh okay thank you um well definitely thanks for checking in Chris and yeah it has helped a lot being intentional and all these things excuse me um I've seen some progress as you mentioned the ROI on things is has translated did in some people calling me I've
definitely had more sales calls than the first time we interacted so um I thank you in many ways for that um yeah I don't I don't know where to go from here okay I was gonna ask a question I was gonna ask a question before he started um but he just got started
so okay okay yes let's let's pause what was the question going to ask well the the question I wanted to ask was if because I had this since the beginning I often encounter that people start talking and then I have a question while they're talking and I don't know if I should interrupt
right away to clarify or just keep let them you know spread it out and then just kind of go back and okay let's let's let's match the dots so I guess my question is like how advisable it is to interrupt for clarifying or just let it all go and hoping it would clarify
uh at the end because at the beginning I had that like situation I didn't I don't know where he was going where if this was a sales call or a coaching call or just a friend call but I just let it go all right can we put a pin in that question and
we answer this later yeah the reason is we have certain questions and I I wasn't expecting you guys to actually have a conversation so this is my bad for not setting the parameters clearly enough in the beginning so when we do this again and we'll try like around two here Chris or I
can do this myself I just want you to share a story about something that's happened for you something you want to talk about that's true okay but the same questions that we're going to walk you through here and this this is also for everybody will still apply to this conversation all right so
I'm going to take you through the questions and then we'll do this again Chris if you're up for it for round two with him okay number one alleo what did you hear I heard that he mentioned many things that he had noticed about myself and my presence online I heard that he was
curious about my progress and how these things are translating and um yeah that's that's the main things that I heard Chris how close was he well there's a lot there that he we're not talking about there's a lot so that's your if that's your summary of it I think that's 10% or 15%
of the conversation not 85% okay I I will say this am I allowed to critique or make any observations here ju are we at that place yes I think juel said and and maybe we got lost in the instruction try to ask three questions and I think you only got to two and
one of them was assumptive question like oh are you looking for this or that and it's like no that's not what I'm looking for at all no no I I didn't ask him to ask any questions okay yeah so this this is interesting because you played out like a conversation I think there
were two or three back and forths but in this in this particular part we're not going to score his responses we're just checking whether his responses indicate how well he was listening I see yeah okay so by the nature of what I was doing making it very personal to him he felt compelled
to talk to me and we I derailed your exercise a little bit no no it was good because I think what allejo could have practiced was dispelling the awkwardness because he wasn't sure where this was going so you know like everything thing we have just been saying is okay well thanks so much
Chris right um I'm honored that you have taken such an interest in what I've been doing and then just asking either one of us like okay am I am I supposed to be the seller or are we just having a friend conversation right to spell that awkwardness get clear on why you're here
and what you're talking about yeah yeah okay but let's go back to what did you hear can you list for me every single thing to the best of your abilities we're not expecting Perfection what do you remember Chris saying to you what I remember Chris saying to me was that he mentioned that
he had seem me very busy that every time that I attend events I take a lot of photos and I do a lot of sketch notes um that he's curious about the ROI that I'm getting from that um he mentioned about us meeting in a in an event coming up in a few
weeks uh in our mutual friend Orlando that's his name I Al Al sometimes also forget his name um and um yeah just mention kind of I'm not gonna I'm gonna put I'm not going to put words in his mouth he mentioned something but it's a little bit blurry after that I think at
that point I was like I'm I was trying to understand where the conversation was going that's what I asked um what was the the purpose okay Chris yes how close was he he's much better now I think he's getting to 65% maybe 70% I think he's missing some of the emotion behind some
of the words because I was like I was really excited looking forward to seeing you at the forward event I'm excited for you as a human being and your your path I wanted to know your intentionality your plan how things were working out [Music] I I think that there were some kind of
like the subtext that he was missing there I think he got a lot of the data points now okay yeah so that brings me up okay that brings me to my next two questions so number two is what does this person mean like essentially what's the main point of their communication what are
they trying to communicate to you so if I were to ask you that question allejo what would you say my my first response or my first thought about that is like this person is interested in my progress or in or excited to use his word in my development um yeah I think that's
that's the main thing that I caught from that how close is he Chris he's pretty close I think I I'll say it like this I'll try I think the question is based on all the garbage I was saying what is your main take away from what it is I was saying and I'll
tell you I noticed you doing a bunch of things I'm excited for you I'm curious what your plan is and how things are working out for you that's the general essence of what it is I was saying okay right I noticed you're doing lots of things I'm excited for you I just want
to know what you're plan if things are working out yeah that makes sense good because that was what I wanted to say sense I mean I was I was I was trying to use less words because all that means in essence you were interested and care for me you know and excited for
me so yeah so maybe take away this like should I be more more um what's the word uh nitty-gritty is the only thing like more uh I'm forgetting the word and for those of you who are putting nonnative speakers this happens to me too so I'm GL to put myself on the spot
um a little bit more concrete maybe not so much like rough idea abstract and try to yeah see you're ning okay yeah so remember so look at the scorecard right the specific words or phrases they're using mhm we don't want you to repeat everything like a parrot that's not the goal but there
does need to be some level of you knowing which pieces to pull out of the conversation I don't expect you to do that totally today right so today is not so much about the quality of your response we'll get into that more on Sunday today is just how much are you actually picking
up on what he's sharing with you or what anyone is sharing with you so the last question is what is Chris experiencing when he was talking to you what was he experiencing what was he feeling well excitement he definitely was happy uh how would you describe his expression right now right now well
right he can't hide Chris yeah right now he's happy he's he's uh he's now thinkative I don't know if that's a word and now he looks like he's evaluating you yeah suspecting uh all right yeah how much of his expression did you pick up when he was talking to you I got it
yeah I I could feel it he was exciting well to be honest there was part of excitement part maybe I don't know if that's appropriate maybe but like kind of nervous because the prompt initially was a little bit unclear so he kind of went for it and you know in part of the
improvising kind of try to make it form on the go so I think he was a little bit nervous but it showed up more as excitement when he started mentioning U the things that he was looking forward to um am I on to something Chris am I allowed to answer Joel yes I'm
not nervous I'm not nervous at all I'm I I know it's hard for people to understand this but I'm genuinely excited for you and I'll give you some context okay usually when I tell people to do things they don't do anything at all and then you and I have had a couple of
conversations on Instagram and then I see you doing things and that really excites me and I'm genuinely concerned in a positive way and for me if I were to summarize what I just said to you which is I observe things I'm excited for you I'm curious if it's working out for you in
your plan which is it's a it's a check-in which I'm genuinely I care about you man thank you I know no one thinks that I care about anything I really do and it's like inside this Vulcan brain and body is there's a tiny little beating heart and I do care about you and
I like to see that live long and prosper and I just want to see you do well so I'm looking in my mind the sub subtext of to all this is I wonder if there's anything else I can help you with so I'm just checking in on you and this is interesting because
I think at some point I think you were like am I supposed to sell you something wasn't sure that threw me off you know I was like no I'm just checking in because I want to be a service to you I don't want to be sold anything right so I I think that
part of our brain is so present yeah in in our in our mind and that it's like anytime we think there's an opportunity we're like deing help with some sketch notes do you know what I mean and that's not necessary that's all that's great and I appreciate you saying that Chris thank you
yeah and I want to just quickly mention one of the comments I'm seeing here one from Austin who says o this is tough like when you're asking questions about intention and meaning we realize how hard this is layer one is just what the hell are the words Layer Two is like what is
the meaning behind all of this and there's lots of Clues being dropped we have to be more attuned to picking them up is the thing oh um can I so one thing that also threw me off is like this is an exercise in listening so after he checks in I feel compelled to
just start sharing but then it wouldn't be about listening that much and I would just start telling him everything so I wasn't sure if I you know in the role play if that was something that I should have done so just mentioning that also kind of threw me off a little bit well
there's no should here okay one um I think there are two things that you're mentioning like we'll just lay aside that it was unclear like how we were structuring this but I think it was still a good learning opportunity for everyone Chris came at you with question to begin with which is why
you're like oh am I like how am I supposed to do this yeah okay but two is I think there's something in your response that indicates that you feel the need to like respond immediately and so this is one of the things that we must all learn is for listening to Just Dance
with silence like make sure the other person is done speaking with video it's a lot easier to tell because you can see you can can see you usually will see visual acces so here's one of the easy visual acces when someone is talking and let's say they're talking for more than a minute
like a couple minutes even as they're narrating or recounting a story they're telling you something they experience they'll tend to look around they'll look at you but then they'll look around and that's because one of the key things our eyeballs do is we look to I believe the left when we're recalling something
okay when they are done speaking they the eyeballs will usually return to you and then they'll wait for you to speak right we all know this generally when we're in person conversations we can see that but if you're one of the people who tends to speak over people before they're quite done speaking
you should learn The Art of Letting the silence ride a little bit okay so just just a couple of notes um I think overall you did well if you are taking notes and I would strongly recommend everybody take notes when you are listening to someone in everyday conversations you may not be able
to do this all the time but let let's say after this call you decide to pair up with someone from this call or just a friend and you take turns sharing a story take notes right what did you hear are you getting the basic facts correct right go through my scorecard number two
what does this person mean and number three what is the person experiencing the experience part the feeling part A lot of it will come from their facial expression the visual the physical cues you probably didn't take any note if I were to ask you at what point did his energy really shift when
did Chris do like a big smile you won't be able to tell me because you weren't noting that so we takeen all this information subconsciously but if you want to actually be able to do something with this information then you must start taking a closer look a more precise look at the data
coming in you have any questions um don't have questions at the moment I don't know if there's going to be a round two if there's somebody in the line Chris I would love to be able to to apply this again if that's I would like to do round to but I don't know
Chris when's your hard stop here for today good question my goodness I've spaced out of my own calendar thanks for looking out for me juel I have until 11:4 and I have another podcast at 12 okay perfect so we have time to do around two and we have our next person queued up
too so Austin just so you know you're coming up next so get ready all right so Chris do you want me to share a story or do you want to share a story for him to practice listening I think maybe you should share the story so I can I can kind of watch
now all right before we get into the next one though there is there is a good question here that I think now would be timely what to do when the client has a serious face all the time I feel like they're are avoiding to be read by their face so they're trying not
to be read poker face that's a question MH I I have the benefit of not actually seeing people for the most of my sales calls so it doesn't bother me that the faces there or not I I'll I'll give you a couple of theories and I'll I'll try my best to work through
how I might answer this question I think people hold things close to their chest because they're afraid that by revealing anything you the salesperson will take advantage of them so even though they're really excited about something that you have to say they won't Express that because by showing their enthusiasm they think in
their mind a sophisticated salesperson going to take advantage of them and charge them even more they also don't want to send false positives to you some people are very naturally Smiley positive happy and they don't want to accidentally send you signals to say like I'm I'm doing the deal with you so that's
why they have the poker phase and it's totally okay you don't need to read their face you can just ask them whatever it is that you're thinking and that will usually work around this using that phrase everybody should write in a notebook I noticed I noticed whatever I noticed the tone had changed
I noticed the long pause tell me what that's about can you can you tell me if there's anything behind that and you can just literally ask them how does this feel to you like when you float the price this is a classic one okay and this happens to me on both sides let's
just say Alo you're going to do some sketch notes for me or something like that and you say it's going to be $35,000 here's what's happening in my mind I don't want you to think I'm cheap that's so far out of the ballpark of what I can afford and and we are just
like two ships in the you know Crossing in the night we don't even see each other now I don't know how to respond so I'm thinking we're so far off I think I'm wasting your time and I'm trying to be a good client here some other people are like oh you're you're smoking
crack right now there's no way I would pay that much they would kind of insult you and feel insulted by you trying to float such a high price so in an instance like this I might respond like okay that's a lot of money I like h i i i don't know if it's
a good fit for me I might say that but behind all that is all these other things I'm feeling and experiencing and so then you would probably have to ask me a question at that point and I can prove this to you at some point if there's time we can turn off everybody's
video camera and we could just talk and I'll tell you exactly what you're thinking and feeling or meaning because I'll ask you I won't rely on assumptions or me projecting what it is that I think is happening Joel how would you handle that pretty similarly I mean all you can ever go off
of is your observations right like what you're seeing is happening so I generally try to stay out of the uh what do you call it like the pothole I I try not to fall down the hole of labeling other people and if they're not giving me facial expressions then you know I work
with the information I have um sorry there is a comment that Rose made in the chat that she said I prefer not seeing people as it's more distracting for me to try and interpret their facial expressions I have my thoughts here so depending on the nature of your work for instance because I'm
a coach the relationship I have with my clients is much more close and intimate than most service providers would have right it's almost like a therapist everybody wants to meet with me either in person or they at a bare minimum want to see video so this may not be your challenge but I
would say just be careful that you're not engineering everything to your preference because if someone wants to see your face right they want to do a Vibe check that's usually what they're asking that for they want to see who you are they want to feel your energy they can get some of that
on a phone call but these days is almost the expected Norm to have video like a zoom call okay we ready for round two here just a reminder if you have questions put them into the question box and we'll try to get to them okay for this round I actually do like what
happened with you and Chris where you responded twice so that's how we'll do it I'll share an initial story you'll make whatever response you feel is appropriate there is no sale to be had okay so for everybody we do this with today and um well at least just for today there's no sale
so just practice listening the same three questions I gave you earlier what did you hear what does the person mean what is the person experiencing and if you want to pull up the scorecard and just kind of flick through that as a reminder also helpful all right you ready let's go okay I
put out my first video on Instagram in quite a while so I'm I'm not super consistent on Instagram lately uh it was on an interesting topic I I was talking about how there's one phrase that people will tend to throw around that tends to piss people off not everybody but it's it tends
to PE piss people off if you're not close with them what I noticed that was very interesting on Tik Tok versus Instagram and posted the same video on Tik Tok so many comments were God thank you for explaining this I always felt like this but I didn't know why and yet on Instagram
the comments were I'm not like this I don't take it that way and I found that really annoying slash interesting so interesting because the quality of the comments were so drastically like different from each other Tik Tok versus Instagram but Instagram I'm definitely getting way more comments of people saying yeah I'm not
like that and then one person his response I don't know if you realized this but it was coming off very much like you're wrong like that that's a little bit how it felt like you're wrong um I never take it like this and he was insisting that it's a positive phrase and I
was like I I don't know what to tell you man like I'm just telling you from a lot of people I've heard that they have a major problem with hearing this phrase from people they're not close with he we we continue to converse okay let's say um that's that's my nice way of
saying that and then finally we end the conversation but I've noticed a trend in the comments the other trend is either they're saying I don't take it like that I don't agree or they're saying well there's something wrong with the other person for taking it like that and I was like wow that's
a that's kind of judgy so there you go Okay so do I respond to that or just just respond like it's continue the con like a conversation okay conversation okay well first of all what you mention of interesting slash annoying um I can definitely I can definitely see that it's interesting that it
moves in two directions in two different platforms um for that um I also noticed that you mentioned that this was like the first video that you posted in a while so I can see that you have a lot of well my not is that you have like a lot of emotions towards it
um because you I don't know I'm gonna I'm gonna pause you right here I feel like a question yeah no no no you don't have to ask a question but I'm saying if you and I were friends I don't think this is how you would be responding okay how would you actually respond
in a normal conversation okay so what I'll say is man that's weird to start with because I mean I I know that social media platforms interact differently but to be one platform that is so positive and the other one so confrontive I'm curious about what phrase was it like do you mind sharing
it with me because I don't want to use it on Instagram if that's the case definitely what like what was it or but was a phrase yeah the phrase is I'm proud of you really you look surprised yeah like why would people take that as a negative well that's kind of what the
post is well right yeah interesting um is is this that so like I know you you post stuff about coaching generally was it something that was related to like Co coaching in like you as a coach saying I'm proud of because I'm trying to understand why the reaction could have happened which reaction
like the the negative Rea so what I'm saying is like if the phrase is I'm proud of and you as a coach are saying like no just just I'm proud of you like if I were to say to you I'm proud of you okay you've done a you've taken a lot of action
based on what Chris is saying I've seen your work your sketch notes are amazing I'm proud of you how does that land I mean that lands okay to me yeah yeah because I've heard that in the context of somebody who cares about me you know it doesn't sound uh patronizing I feel like
that's maybe what people might have heard okay yeah that's that's fair so let's end it there what did you hear I heard that you have been UNC consistent with content and you posted something for the first time recently that you posted it on that it was a phrase uh on an interest interesting
topic you posted on Tik Tok and on Instagram and then you had you said Annoying slash interesting results because on Tik Tok people were very supportive and yes and on Instagram there was some conversation with a specific person actually that and you said you continue to to converse to put it the nice
way which just sounds like you were not just conversing um um because they felt that that phrase was wrong and yeah that's pretty much what I got okay Chris what about you how close do you think he was here I think he he got I think he got quite a bit of it
I think I I think this time he did a better job of of hooking into some of the emotions that you're were feeling because it it it changed quite a bit there there like I couldn't totally map it out on a graph but I felt like there was this thing about I hadn't
posted in a while so there was like the kind of self judgment there at the beginning I've been inconsistent in the way that you're like how should I put it Converse and there was kind of a smile so I think you're annoyed but beused by it so there was a a change in
Emotion there and this maybe there was a confused state to like how how come God darn it same freaking piece of content hits on two platforms and I get totally different reactions one seemingly overly whelming positive and the other one almost the exact opposite and some part of you was trying to understand
that and deeper like why you why you want to get into the comments with one of these guys you know and and why we have such strong reactions to this phrase yeah okay I would say Alo you got the facts of what I said pretty well like you're were pretty close I would
score you like 85% okay and again I don't expect you to repeat everything I said like you're some kind of robot recorder okay so let's move on to what did I mean like what was the main thing I was communicating to you here it it seemed to me that you were trying to
to communicate a sort of confusion slash annoyance with how a piece of content is being taken that's something that you put out in the while um it it seemed to me like there was some yeah it was like annoyance with people getting it like poking it like not taking it as you meant
it in the beginning [Music] um yeah that's what it look like to me when you were mentioning all that okay remember when we reset I said I don't think this is how you would be talking to a friend yeah do you remember what's the first thing you said right after that how annoying
I think that's what I said yeah because I was trying to empathize like I I do that when people tell me things I immediately try to sync with their emotion and be like oh gosh you know like I feel it too but for some reason when I started the role play I was
like just focusing on the facts and not so much on the feeling or like making you feel like I'm getting what you're experiencing or that on your side maybe um perfect you actually said that's weird so that was great that's weird okay yeah yeah what I'm noticing here is yes so even you
just saying that one little phrase helped me feel seen yeah you smiled yes because great job the the main thing here if someone is complaining about something which is essentially what I was doing they're trying to get it off their chest right they're looking for some level of validation also slash understanding there's
possibly some sort of energy that I don't really want let's say negative energy even though I didn't say that that we are trying to dis when we share this sort of experience with anyone else okay when you don't share with other people something that is bothering you it tends to Fuster you saying
that's weird instantly lighten the load probably by like 50% for me okay and then when I prompted you to just talk to me like a normal friend instead of trying to be so formal about it your energy dropped into a more natural state which I really appreciated there is one thing I noticed
that you did you started labeling the two experiences so on Tik Tok I never said it was a positive experience you said supportive at one point which I took a pause and I was like supportive did I say that I don't think I said that what I said was I had a lot
more people saying man I always felt that way but never knew why thank you for you know posting about this thank you for explaining this never heard anybody explain it this way but I myself did not label it so that's where it could be okay to label it and in this case you
know I was like I'll let that pass supportive sure but for me it's not so much of is it positive negative it's just very interesting when I said interesting slash an knowing interesting that the responses on the two platforms are so drastically different when it's the same video when I said Annoying what
did I find annoying that's a good question I after you said Annoying you started talking about the person who specifically was like say like being contrarian I guess it's to word um was that the reason you found it annoying yeah that would be a question for you to then ask like what was
so annoying about it it seems like here's some stuff you've mentioned so here's one of the risks you'll run into sometimes when you ask a seemingly dumb question like what is annoying about this you may have some people come back at with you like I said earlier which is so annoying itself it's
like so passive aggressive but you're just trying to understand them if you want to avoid that as best as possible what you'll do is just you'll recount one or two of the things they said so you know I remember you said this but you know what else did you find annoying about it
so that's how you would sort of build in to maybe avoid the well like I said earlier are you paying attention you're not even listening to me sort of vibe that some people will get they'll get a little bit judgy here okay perfect Chris any comments here the comment I want to make
is is you'll find out and I'm pretty sure Al will affirm this actively listening is exhausting and if you map the way that you're focused right now as opposed to everyday conversation your brain is probably an overdrive you probably need to take a nap or something after this and that's the problem so
in most of our daily interactions we're barely listening at all we're making lots of assumptions we're packaging and compressing these files down to like tiny little things that when we try to look at it again it's so like filled with artifacts it's like a low resolution JP Peggy kind of image right and
I think that's the difference so I think that's okay because you don't want to burn all your calories is just listening and paying attention to everything in in your daily life but when you're on a sales call you need to be you need to have the ability to access this skill on demand
now do you feel kind of tired Alo you've done this twice now yes certainly yeah yeah I'm kind of tired too to be honest that's why when people get up on stage and they tell me their whole life story and then there's a question in there somewhere I'm like oh I can't keep
up with this do you know what you're trying to ask because I need your help cuz that's what it means now people don't understand this so I I would say this is a broad statement but people who are used to talking while other people are talking they don't find it exhausting at all
because they're actually spending almost none of their brain power listening they're spending all their time either talking or getting ready to respond I'm waiting for you to be quiet so I can say something and so of course they're not tired but I I would argue that I don't think you're really paying attention
yeah so juel my my response you having listened to this and I'm tired also just trying to listen because thinking maybe you'll test me was I think I would have just said God that freaking sucks and I would just try to help shift your energy away from the negative right I was like
what what is really kind of eating at you here because I want to let you dump I know you're complaining about something and I want to get it all the out of you so we don't have to sit here and circle around for like 3 hours like and then I I would probably
ask you is there anything I can do to support you in this moment besides listening because most of the times I think guys especially but some women too make the mistake of let me try and solve this for you juel why do you respond to those comments and she's like you're not listening
to me right now I just need to tell people you how people suck you know why do people why why is this person saying you're wrong juwel no want no one wants to hear that like you're wrong especially when they're not seeking that so I would just like that sucks oh my God
freaking internet what else can you tell me what's going on here yeah that's pretty much it I would say I I would caution upon wanting to shift the person's energy away too soon so this is what I term like pulling the cake out of the oven too soon there is a certain process
that we all go through when we're trying to figure out what's happening especially if it's something we didn't enjoy there's a level of processing time what most people will do is they'll try to skip over the processing because they don't like feeling icky and they try to get to the good part but
what happens when you do that is the same sort of encounter will keep happening I will you know theoretically I would further be triggered by more internet people trying to prove me wrong um there was a comment here by Elise when I said why was I annoyed right like what did I find
annoying at least wrote the person was not trying to argue about the subject they were trying to prove her wrong um I don't know what she meant about not trying to argue but I would say he was very much trying to argue and he was trying to prove me wrong right like his
his writing style at least did not demonstrate he wanted to just have an open conversation but that was most of the comments like well I don't take it that way I don't know what you're talking about kind of thing you know so it that's that was just like people yeah all right uh
I think that's about all we have there is one other thing I will say here Chris kind of scooted under like under everybody's radar what he was saying is gosh that sucks that is validation he was telling me it is okay for me to feel that way that's the same thing you did
when you said that's weird right you were telling me it's okay to feel that way now the other thing that Chris did as well is he said um he wanted to shift the energy right so in order to shift the energy he must have first noticed what I was doing so in the
back of your mind hold this question in your mind when you're listening to people just ask yourself what are they doing are they complaining are they dodging the question you give them piece of advice are they just looking for all the things wrong with your advice instead of actually listening or are they
like you where they take in the advice and they actually go act so what are they doing all right so thank you so much Alo any questions before we questions excuse me I don't have questions at the moment thank you so much guys for the opportunity and the coaching the observations all that
it's it's wonderful being able to share and learn from you guys life so thanks again and Chris see you in a few weeks thank you Alo Chris a time check with you do we have time for one more person or do you have to really hop off at 10:45 I could I could
I could push a little bit here I know I have a heart at 12 so as long as I get off like with a couple minutes you know to recharge here so juel there's something that I want to share with you I'm glad you point out all these these little things when you
said this is freaking annoying uh interesting whatever I my% I know what you're talking about I feel the same way that's why freaking sucks and the reason why my energy changes because I know that we need to get this off our chest but I also know like you know this grand scheme of
things fre this is just the internet it does suck and you know I know my personal conversation with you we laugh a lot a lot we laugh a lot about stupid things so that we can just let's yeah you're right let's put everything in perspective everybody so I'm not telling people to do
that just it's just my nature with you right we'll laugh about the dumbest things and then we move on yes we do move on and we're able to move on because it's such a simple thing right validating just saying just agreeing it's like yes that does suck I hate it when it happens
yeah yeah and I'll I'll give everybody like a brief teaser into one of the future calls when we talk about questions right I it's either call four or five I can't remember but not every response on your part has to be a question you notice Chris said gosh that sucks it's not a
question it's just a comment so just keep that in mind okay let's bring up Austin Austin here we go Austin I see him patiently waiting here more promotes a panelist and before Austin comes up I just want to remind everybody if you're curious about the future Pro Group we have over 250 people
who signed up for the tour that's happening tomorrow I will show you behind the scenes I'll show you how to use it so even for existing future Pro members that are like I didn't know this existed just to in tomorrow it's it's kind of my walk through okay there's Austin what sup Austin
what's up guys thanks for having me hey okay Chris do you want to share something or do you want me to share something I could share something all right let's GNA hope I say this in advance I apologize if I short circuit your brain all right it's already there okay it's okay you
got this use use the remaining 4% push through this I'm just going to share a story and then think we're going to do the same thing cool I'm really curious about people who who aspire to be better public speakers and communicators and one such person is my friend Carlos who recently took part
in a improvisational course and I was really curious about like what is it that you do to be honest I'm really chicken ass when it comes to like doing things like that so I just wanted to live a Carly through them and so Raul and Carlos were sharing like how does this begin
and I thought was fascinating they give you a prompt they'll say something like balcony and the two of you have to Define certain things who's the character what's the situation I forgot the rest of this but without getting into Exposition they can just start to respond to each other right so Carlos starts
and he's thinking himself on the balcony and he says something like Dad you know how I was late before so that puts Raul in the position that our relationship is you're either my daughter or my son and then he has to play with that and he cannot ask like uh why were you
late because that means they have no history this was fascinating to me because this means that the construct is you're trying to be very real people and it's not the origin story it's somewhere kind of in in a real situation where you have history together and you can just respond to that and
they used a lot of yes and and then I asked them like what makes one of the classes good and versus bad and it's all about the teacher they both prefer teachers that stop them correct them ask them to make a small adjustment because it opens up the the sandbox for the other
person to play whereas a less or more passive instructor doesn't know what to do with them it just lets them go off the rails and they don't feel like they're really learning okay sorry I'm trying to forget I think we wait for juel to well yeah yeah I think I'll respond like like
prior just like a sentence or two to show active listening so um that's super interesting I've never had any uh interest in improv because I'm uh fairly introverted uh overall but I think that if you in this context of discussing sales and discussing active listening that's like an the ultimate I guess practice
to be able to be do something on the Fly based on people's context that just come out of nowhere so that's um based on sorry apologies I I'm assuming Carlos is taking that course um maybe not because he wants to be an improv comedian or anything but he probably wants to sharpen his
sales skills and his active listening skills which is really interesting angle to improving that I I never it never crossed my mind so I'm assuming that's maybe why you're interested in it too if you're going to give it a shot you'd be really good at it so there you go too nervous guys
didn't think I'd be nervous but I didn't think I'd also be on video with you guys so it's another layer it's okay hang in there Joel what do we do next I think let's just pause here because you're running out of time so Austin what did you hear Chris share just really the
basic facts it seemed like Chris was interested in he he heard from Carlos about him taking an improv course he asked him about why taking it as well as kind of what what teachers were why what made a course better than other courses and and Carlos responded about the teachers and instant inst
feedback from the teachers could allow them to just like your guys' calls make adjustments um to in in real time versus just writing down notes and practicing later with a friend um also he talked about the intricacies of improv and the fact that you have using the like yes and to be able
to jump into a situation and throw your other I guess the person you're doing improv with into context of a I think he mentioned like a child or spouse so they with just a sentence out of nowhere with some with a prompt so that way he could jump right in and and try
to kind of It kind of seemed like they were just jumping and going for it which is pretty interesting um aside from that um I mean he based on my notes I think I oh he mentioned he mentioned to be better public speakers I I I missed that that was one of my
earlier notes but that was kind of the intent of this this course curious about aspiring to be a public speaker okay good Chris how did he do he did okay I think there was some interpretation of what I did not say he got lot facts correct I think he missed all the emotions
and potentially we haven't asked him the meaning of what it is yet but yeah okay I'm not going to ask the meaning just yet uh what did you notice about Chris's energy when he was telling you this yeah I missed that apologies um was excited and interested you seemed like it was a
like like I kind of expressed it was something he was he was like almost vetting to see if it was valuable for him to take a course and maybe asking Carlos what course would he recommend based on the teacher is that true emotionally yeah yeah sorry no no okay he said he said
something z% yeah okay so on on the point of unique phrasing words that the client said Chris said I'm way too chicken s what does that tell you he's an introvert as well he he doesn't he doesn't want to go down that road but maybe's he's interested in those who do want to
pursue that good good call I miss that okay now even look at the way he said chicken s what does that tell you about Chris and language I'm not sure to be honest it's more obvious than you think used chicken s in my life so right what does it stand for afraid or
he's he's that's not something he's interested in I don't know what do you what do the what does s literally stand for chicken s okay are people putting this in the chat I'm looking in the chat is this I'm making this too hard okay I knows oh chicken okay sorry I didn't I've
never heard any use chicken s yeah okay okay got it so the fact that he said s instead of what does that tell you about Chris and his values that Chris is professional and tries to keep his language Under Wraps on a whether it's a personal conversation or business conversation sure look at
him with a Halo he's a Halo yes he's he's a god fear and Christian apparently I don't know never you want to CAU all right there is one word he used more than once to describe his observation of watching Carlos about the Improv thing he said you know I'm curious about people who
are aspiring to be public speakers Etc there's one particular word he used to describe this entier this entire encounter and how he's watching them what was the word anybody I catch it anybody know in the chat it starts friendor it starts with an f f as in Fox okay did anybody catch the
word he said it more than once no takers Chris said fascinating he said fascinating more than once he's watching how they're going about this journey so how would you describe Chris's energy you said interested earlier but if you look at fascinating and then you even look at the fact that he's asking them
what makes a good course from a bad course or a good instructor from a bad instructor what does that tell you about him I guess g to give you a longer answer but please don't Bas keep it your man two sentences we're running out of time okay you're right it seems like Chris
is trying to he doesn't have interest in doing this but he wants to learn as much as he can from what Carlos has learned from it perfect okay Chris yeah I said I'm living vicariously through these people those are words that you would want to pick up on chicken ass VI fascinated and
there's a certain manner of speech ju's just trying to help you understand how to pick up the clues which people are dropping the example is pointless meaning like it's not relevant to anything that we're doing but just to learn how to listen and to tune into words and I can I I I'm
going to make an assumption here Austin your pattern of speaking and how you say choppy little s like you're get a little nervous and you're trying to say too much yeah just take a deep breath and just be present okay I think the notes are actually hurting me too sorry to interrupt but
I think I focus so much on getting those key words trying to write them down instead of just listening to you I'm it kind of backfired on me a bit I I understand I could totally relate to that so everybody we've noticed two different things Alo changed his personality as soon as jueles
like just react to me like a human they really shouldn't be any difference between you as a human and you as a salesperson and we've seen this time and time again when people step up to role play with us like wait do you normally talk like that I'll give you an example okay
and I'm just exagger Li hey Austin it's so good to see you and talk to you today and like let's talk about the problem that you have and I'm excited about doing this like are you like that all the time because I would run I would just run from you I just can't
and so why do people feel like they have to become someone else and do you think do they hate themselves so much that they think by becoming the other person that they're going to get business in my experience when you become other person I'm just already turned off by you yeah because I
want to work with a real human so what we have to do is remember we need to be ourselves and if we're out of ourselves the the tool that I use a lot is just say sorry I need to get a quick reset I don't know why I'm just so nervous and that
usually dissipates like what juel said before if there's tension awkwardness holding it in only makes worse it's like the pressure cooker you just got to release the valve so to to be brave enough to take the risk like I'm just a little nervous talking to you I need to just let you know
and people do this to me all the time yeah you're so cool and everything is chill and I'll do this like if I'm with a celebrity that I've been admiring for like 50 years of my life whatever I'm like oh my God I can't believe I'm in the same room got that off
my chest and then it's it's cool otherwise in my mind oh my God I can't believe we're in the same room and I'm going to bounce off the walls and I'm going to say stupid things at that point two minutes left Joel all right just one observation which Chris barely or very briefly
touched upon with you Austin is we all go through this we feel like we have to take all the notes but then that takes us out of presence and out of listening so you have to find the right balance of taking notes for you there's no magic answer here you just have to
do it enough and then find what works for you you already noticed that taking too many notes uh was detrimental and how you weren't listening like you normally would if you were just a friend the other thing that I'm observing about you is there is this tendency because of the nerves which I
think most of us PA pray to when we feel nervous we'll either talk too much or we'll shut down we stop talking entirely I believe to be in the camp of talking too much so I didn't to be rude earlier but when you said this is going to be a longer answer and
I said please don't keep it there two sentences I appreciate that okay I've heard you on the previous LinkedIn audio when you stepped up and asked the question to Chris and Carlos and you were saying how do I I think your question was around how do I basically get this uh side hustle
going when I'm working a 9 to5 and then you were like my answer is to go get a better job um or that's what you used to think right yeah so I remember you very clearly and what really struck me is that your energy was so honest it was so natural and then
today the energy you're showing up with is different from the guy I remember back on that call so maybe let's this happens on sales calls too it's not just the Christo being intimidating I mean yes that's a layer of it but sales calls it does bring a little more out of me in
that front I don't like it sure you know it's it's something you get used to practice maybe yeah so maybe we'll see you back again on Sunday we can follow up on the actual response the other thing I'm also observing about you is a tendency to sort of cut people off before they're
done talking so I would say just walk out for that all right so no shade to you not a problem okay yeah because we're practicing Ching you're doing it nonstop Austin stop it you're doop like here's what you do I know some people are like this just put yourself on mute you're yes
you're right they won't even hear you it's very important for the other person to be heard and you can do it once or twice I I hope you never do it but if you do it five times like I'm out literally in my mind I'm in the airplane I don't even need a
parachute I'm jumping I'm done so just keep that in mind okay my number one pet peeve with my creative directors on a call if you cut off the client I'm going to give you the the the dagger eyes like don't do that again I will take your away your ability to speak if
you do this again right oh I'm like you stop it stop it stop I need to hear what they're saying this is the thing I think somewhere in our lives we feel really smart if we can complete someone's sentence like you know how much I love you like no I hate you you
know you know my favorite dog we just do this all the time so don't do it silence is gold and silence is your friend and you got this Austin I know you got this juwel doesn't pick up pick random people to talk to she she picks people she believes in so you know
that you have her vote of confidence and when the client agrees to call you have a call with you they are voting also with their time you have Goodwill you don't need to prove nothing just just relax and you're good all right I have to get out of here juel okay I wanted
to tell you the reason why improv is so important and I didn't get to tell you this all is because Carlos and other people who've done improv say it's one of the best exercises to be grounded you got to forget who you were and you have to just be in the moment like
what are they saying what does it mean what are they saying what does it mean how do I play with them how do I be generous and give them something so they can play too and that's the whole reason why Carlos and Juan are doing improv to learn how to be more present
with that I have to bail juel awesome as always hopefully next time we're able to do this Simo but I believe if you've enjoyed this you'll come to the next Zoom webinar and Technology be damn we'll do what we need to do okay everybody yeah thank you Chris and hopefully I will see
most of you on the pro tour tomorrow if you're not already a part of the pr group I'm a big believer I've been in the pr group since 2021 and I'm still in it so thank you Chris thank you I'm going to end this now so goodbye everybody see you next time bye
everybody oh
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