451 - Communication Coach to Billionaires: “How to Speak Like the 1%” – Get Anything You Want

29:09And also finishing with a bang. Because there is this study we have in the book called the primacy-recency effect. That studies have shown that what you say in the first minute or two and the last minute or two has higher engagement and higher retention than anything you say in the middle. So strategically placing your most important ideas goes a long way towards being memorable. I want to talk about cliches because this is where I almost spit up my coffee this morning. I laughed so hard when I was gathering in my notes. So I got to read this, y 'all, because I have been on a crusade against this word for a while.

29:53You wrote, the spa that expresses their desire to be a part of my wellness journey. There's no journey happening. I'm just there for a massage. I cannot tell you. Every time that somebody tells me they're taking me on a journey or this is your journey, I'm like, shut up. I can't handle it. So cliches. You say the more you blend in, the less you stand out and the less memorable you are. There are other big ones. There are ones that you've seen lately that you're like, can we just stick a fork in this thing and kill it once and for all. Well, all across the ecosystem and it's baked into our DNA and we're going to be doubling down on this and doing a deep dive on that and all across the value chain.

30:35And it's like, what is this nonsense? Oh my God. Can I tell you, you cured me of one because I actually, I go deep on my interviews and I'm like, let's unpack. I was like, oh, Bill just called my ass out because unpack this or unpack that. So it was really fun. You know, it's interesting. Language is not unlike fashion. And when you have a killer outfit and you love it, and then you get out on the street and a year later and you realize, wow, everybody's like wearing what I've been wearing for a year. I think it's time to move on. Language is kind of the same thing. At some point somebody said, let's unpack that.

31:10And I bet you somebody thought, oh, that's kind of a clever, interesting new way of saying it. And then it's no longer clever and new. It's tired and old and overused. It's now in that cliche category. Time to move on and create a new one. Yes. Okay. Levity. Because this was really interesting for me in the book, this distinction between, we all love humor. And we often talk about it in our company. We're like, no one doesn't want to have more fun. Like every single person that I meet or encounter, it's like, we could all use more joy and levity in our life. So what's the distinction between when people hear that, they're like, oh, I'm not funny.

31:47I don't know how to tell a joke. And I love that you made that distinction. There's a difference between injecting humor or levity into your content versus telling a joke. So if you could unpack that, I'm just kidding. If you could talk to us about that, that would be awesome. It's a subtle difference, but I've had a lot of communications executives over the years pull me aside right before I'm supposed to train an executive and say, could you do me a favor? Could you please tell him to stop leaning every meeting with a joke? I know he thinks that it's his trademark and, you know, that people love it.

32:25They don't. And nobody's willing to tell him. We need you to tell him. And start off with a joke they'll love it is about as bad of advice as picture the audience in their underwear. Those two should be immediately discounted. Telling a joke is what professional comedians do. And listen, they make it look really easy on stage. It is not. That is the ultimate high wire act of communication. But if you can see the humorous side of something that you are already talking about, just put a humorous lens through which you want the audience to see it. that's the kind of levity that i'm suggesting having a little fun with something as you said it doesn't really matter what the topic is people basically want to be entertained they don't want to have to sit through something and feel like it's been tedium from start to finish yes they want a little little levity a little break they want you to help them see it through a very different unorthodox lens.

33:35And there's usually some opportunity in every speech or presentation that I coach people to just have that moment of fun and just to break up the monotony because it does become monotonous. Yes. Hey, are you feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, or just drowning in busy work and still not making the money you deserve? In this brand new training, you're going to learn three super common mistakes that can kill your productivity and tank your profits and how to stop them fast. Just go to marieforleo.com slash free class or scan the QR code on your screen right now. So it also speaks a little bit to energy.

34:18And this was one of the other things that you've got great energy on camera, by the way. Thank you. Absolutely spectacular. I appreciate that. And with my team who I love them, there are days, which for almost all of us, I try my best to be a professional, but some days I'm just like, mama's exhausted or something. It's just not lining up. Anywho, I've always told my team like, hey, I'm going to do a couple takes of X, Y, or Z because I have to put on different hats. Right now we're in our content creation hat sometimes if I'm doing ads for a course or then I'm in my teacher's zone or whatever and I try and bring fresher different energy and there's been times there's like Marie I don't think the energy's right in this one and I laugh so freaking hard when I think when you were in your previous careers like you know Bill the energy just wasn't there and I love that you said like what what does that mean should I start flailing my arms or talk with my hands or speak like it is the most frustrating bit of feedback that's really non-feedback because it's so unactionable and unspecific.

35:22And I just wanted to highlight this because it was one of the most useful things I've read in a while. So thank you. Your definition of energy is your visible enthusiasm for the value of the information you're sharing. I was like, dude, I get it because there's been times if I'm being perfectly honest, I'm like, do I need to make this ad again? Like I've said this so many times and that was on me. I needed to find or I knew to find that visible enthusiasm. So let's talk about, let's just talk about energy for a minute because I do think that that's so critical. Josh and I have talked about this a bunch and he's been really instrumental for me because he can detect, probably most people can too, if I am doing Marie, meaning like a little little bit of over the top energy because I am authentically not feeling it versus he's like, you can just be you.

36:18I'm like, oh, I'm afraid that that's boring. So let's just talk about the power of energy in presentations. It's definitely important to lead by example. Yeah. And you're trying to get an audience jazzed about something. Yes. And if they don't detect that you're enthusiastic about how transformational this could be for them, or that doesn't even have to be transformational, just helpful. And you're putting out an idea to them and try to always have in the back of your mind, wow, if they take this to heart, it could make an enormous difference in their daily life. And to be able through your tone of voice and everything convey this sense of just imagine how great it would be if, because you were speaking in a more concise way, every meeting that was 40 minutes became 30 minutes.

37:08Just imagine how great that would be for your day. Instead of just rolling from one meeting to the other and having that fatigue setting in, imagine having 10 minutes to just listen to music back at your desk. And what I think most speakers need to do is project in a very detailed way how good the outcome could be and what that looks like over the rise. I've seen how good that can be. And so that's why it's so important to be concise. Yeah. And it's like it's selling the dream. Like oftentimes if we're talking about in a business context, if I'm helping people fall in love with or my attempt to help people fall in love with marketing and selling, I'm like, sell them the dream.

37:52To your point, you know what's possible on the other side of this obstacle or them getting through X, Y, or Z. And it's like, you have to be enthusiastic about it. And I love sometimes a little reality TV, not all the time, but I think, um, Ryan Serhant, who do you know, Ryan? So, um, I don't know him personally, but I've seen him on enough things. And there was one clip in his Netflix. It's like selling Manhattan. I might get that name wrong, but I loved what he said because he's like, selling is the transfer of enthusiasm, the transfer of, I was like, bingo. So it comes back to this energy energy thing and this energy idea, because even if you're not selling a product or service, you are selling an idea.

38:34You're selling something that in your communication, you're trying to get other people to at least pay attention to or consider. I'm so aware of that, especially in the hospitality industry. You know, when people show you a room in the hotel and when they tell me, oh, this is the best room in the hotel, I don't know. It doesn't excite me. But if they show me, if they bring me up and say, you know what I love about this room you can see the corner of Hyde Park just over there it's that has a lot more credibility for me yes than this broad generic sell job yes um it's now got a piece of them in it as well and it's just amazing to me how many people in companies who have gone through sales training, I don't know how to sell.

39:25Yes. Yes. So one of the big pieces in the book is the Magnificent Seven. So right, your tools for making your words stick. What are, like there's seven of them. They're amazing. Again, as I've told you guys, get the damn book. I think it is one of these books that if anyone's going to turn a camera on or start to prepare a presentation or a speech or anything, it's like you got to open the book. I will. What is one of your favorites of Magnificent Seven? Like we've talked about original definitions, not really what that is because I just went right into energy, but what's another one of your favorite?

39:58The creative label I love. And if anybody is a fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David has made a living on the creative label. In fact, every episode hangs on some creative label, whether it's stop and chat or chat and cut or the big goodbye or the big salad from Seinfeld days. Every single episode has some kind of creative label, siren abuse, and they're memorable. They stick in your mind. In fact, we were working with someone yesterday and they were talking about the idea of a total addressable market for a product or a service. This was somebody from a venture capital firm. And the idea was, don't think about the depth of the TAM.

40:56Think about the breadth of the TAM. and so one of the recommendations that we were we were making to this person was what if you put just the word tam on a piece of silly putty and you stretch the silly putty horizontally so it widened and in fact we could call this we could give this a creative label we could call it the silly putty principle and she goes i love that and now a lot of people would probably say the audience is going to think i'm a moron if i do something like that it's like no actually they're going to remember that because it doesn't sound anything like any other pitch any other presentation they've heard in the last 12 months and i guarantee you they will take it away.

41:47Yes. And it's memorable. And I often think about this. I've often thought about this in our own work. Like I love infomercials. I will make no beef. I grew up on infomercials. I was like, if I was going to have another career, if I could have done infomercials, I would have been great at it. And I've always wanted to demonstrate stuff. And what you just took was this concept and you actually physicalized it, which I think, and also imagery, it's like, that's brilliant. You know, we have, as human beings, these movie reels spinning through our heads at all times, and we're very visual creatures.

42:21We need to grab a hold of pictures to make sense out of the world around us. And when people get up in front of a room and they speak in a very abstract and theoretical way, they're not feeding images to those movie reels that are spinning. Yes. And when you don't do that, your audience makes up their own images to fill that reel. And that's what daydreaming is. Yes. People will grab a hold of something to visualize if you're not giving it to them. So when you're in front of a room of people, ruthlessly gain control of that movie reel in your audience's head and fill it with images of every point that you can make.

43:02It sounds more difficult than it is, but you have to speak in a visual, specific, and anecdotal way as opposed to theoretical, abstract, and vague. Oh, I love it. In fact, it brings right to where I wanted to go next was the notion of a 10-minute warning. This was something I feel like is really, really important, especially in a context if you are selling, if there is a webinar kind of thing. So what is the 10-minute warning? and tell me about what are some easy tips that people can use when they know they're coming up to, let's say, and does it happen at every 10 minutes? Yes, it does. And I was a little skeptical.

43:44This is a study and we have it cited in the book that the maximum amount of time you can count on the attention of your audience is 10 minutes. And after, at the 10 minute mark, something has to change. It cannot be just more of the same from the first 10 minutes. And which I thought, 10 minutes, that sounds long to me. But anyway, and so when I'm working with people who have to speak for 30 minutes, say, and they have maybe three video clips they want to use in this presentation, I'll tell them, let's space them out. Let's start, you have a sizzle reel. I understand you want to lead with that.

44:22We'll put that right at the top. Wheel two will go at the 10 minute mark and reel three will go at the 20 minute mark. And so we have them evenly spaced out. So every 10 minutes, something is happening that represents a change. Or it could be an exercise, or it could be you showing the results of a study, or just something to break up the patterns. And in fact, pattern disruption is what keeps the audience's attention to a much higher degree than just more of the same in a very narrow range. I want to talk about prepping and rehearsing because I believe, right, you're a very big fan, prepping and rehearsing.

45:07Big believer. I'm curious of your take on memorizing scripts, talk word for word. And I want to tell you some context here. that has been when I need to show up in a high stakes situation. So Oprah was having this thing called super soul talks. This was back in like 2016 and they asked me to come do it. And it was like, you have 18 minutes. And so, and I'm also, again, most people know this about me. I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I'm a maniac when it comes to like certain things. And that's both how I torture myself and also how I succeed. So do you know what I mean? It's a double, a hundred percent.

45:44um it's got its pluses and its minuses and i was so for obvious reasons terrified of messing that up doesn't get much more high stakes than that so i scripted out that talk and bill i drilled every damn word into my body because i knew i was gonna be freaked out yeah you know what i mean on that stage seeing miss oprah winfrey who i've loved and admired for years like staring up at me like don't you know not that she was delivered girl yeah you better make me my team make a good choice like hope we did right um and i've done that a few times like i developed a new talk within the last couple of years and it was on a topic we have a program that's called time genius and that was another one of the talks where i dropped in a drama story first and then went throughout the content and that was more of a not an 18 minute talk that's like close to a 60 minute talk.

46:40And so it was a brain challenge. I'm like, can I memorize that? And while they were all my stories, again, I write all my own stuff, but I was like, how the hell am I going to memorize something word for word for 60 minutes? But I did it. Is there another way? Because it's daunting to me. It's funny. I just had this happen a couple of weeks ago. I had to give a talk at an event and there were no slides, no script, no nothing. And you're just hanging out there. And so what I did was, excuse me, I wrote it out because I feel with my TV background, I can write for the ear. Yep. And then what I did with that was I collapsed it then into bullets.

47:28So I pared it down language-wise and then I merely gave topic headers. So I had say one through 12, like you'd almost have for slides. And topic one was going to be about levity and topic two was going to be about brevity. And what was important to me was understanding what's the segue line that gets me from topic one to topic two. Because that's where people most struggle. Yes. And so the segue lines that helped me stitch all this together were the last to go off the card. I wanted to really know those backwards and forwards. And like you, I just said it 10, 12 times. Mine was more like 500, but yeah, keep going.

48:25There's an eight to one ratio that if you've got a 15 minute talk, you should be practicing out loud for two hours. This is great. Please say that again because I need to hear it again. For every minute of content, you should be practicing and rehearsing out loud for eight minutes. So you should be doing it eight times at least. At least. So let's say you've got to do a presentation on a Friday, do it a couple of times on Monday, a couple times on Tuesday, and so on. And that's usually what it takes in order to really know and own the content. Now, that's assuming that you wrote it and you did and I did.

49:08But if you haven't written it, I would say that ratio is probably 16 to 1 in order to really get it under your belt. Steve Jobs, who people think was born with some great orator gene, he wasn't. he put in the hard work and he practiced every product launch keynote 70 times and so by the time he got on stage he knew every move there was no nothing that was going to come up to surprise him he knew all the transitions he knew all the punch lines so that when he went to deliver it he was no longer focusing on what word comes next he's focusing on here's where I drop my voice and keep up the intensity to make this point hit deeper.

49:56So he's able to free himself from the content recall considerations and now focus on the tools that make the execution memorable. Yes. It's so fascinating. Varying your pace, your pitch, your projection, and using your voice as the musical instrument it is in order to keep people captivated. It's so wild. I've often had these conversations in my head, and I'm curious if you've ever thought of this too. So I'm thinking of two people in particular that I know them both. I love them both. So a dear friend who's like so gifted, Marianne Williamson. Do you know who she is? I've known Marianne for a very long time, and I've seen so many of her talks.

50:40And I would always just sit there and watch Marianne. And I'm like, she is a genius. Cause I, I don't know. I haven't asked her, but I actually think I might've asked her once if she prepares, but I think she's got a gift from like another place. And then my other, um, colleague friend, I'm sure you've seen like Gary Vaynerchuk, like sometimes he just goes on stage and I always have like such like admiration. Do you know what I mean? Admiration. I'm just like, I don't know what planet y 'all were born on. I was not born on that planet, but I like so admire and respect that. I just feel those are special humans right like I'm not think it's just yeah I think there is it's like Robin Williams was in comedy yes you know you can't replicate that yes um but I do feel that there are people there's also a group of people who work so hard on something that they achieve that state of flow yeah where they make it look effortless absolutely like watching somebody like Roger Federer played tennis.

51:42And he makes it look so effortless that you actually watch it and delude yourself. Yeah, I bet I can go down there and hit a few with him. And you just lose all perception of how incredibly difficult this is. Oh, you know who else is like that? Another pal, Tony, Tony Robbins. Like I'll sit and talk with Tony. Well, here's one of the things I know about him specifically. it's like he has been doing his craft for decades and decades and decades and that so much of his content and so much of his wisdom and ideas like they live so deeply in his body that he can then on state like i've just seen him in so many different contexts and i was like yes like i don't know when i watch great people and actually i'll say this too i think like ramit dear friend I'm like, I love, he was on the show not so long ago.

52:34We just had such a ball because he can play so well in this context where I know he knows exactly where we're going sometimes. And then we can take guitar solos. And it's an awesome gift. It's unspoken communication, which is so delightful. And people like Tony Robbins, he doesn't have the 10 ,000 hours of nothing. He's got the 100, 200 ,000 hours. A million hours. Yeah. Yeah. No, brother doesn't stop. Okay, so let's talk about prep and practice a little bit more because I think that it is underrated. It's something that the more comfortable I am, like I remember I really loved my book tour because I was just so in it, you know, every day.

53:16I love getting in beast mode when it's appropriate. And it was just so alive in my body that I could get to that flow state with so much of that content. I wouldn't be like that today if we just did a whole interview on my book, but prep and practicing. Let's say someone is, they can get your book, but they're not able to work with a coach. Is there anything that works or what doesn't besides sheer repetition? For example, sometimes I will do my rehearsing in the morning, take a break, and just give my subconscious time and then kind of revisit it. Almost spaced repetition in a way, or I don't think I'm actually pulling the right term there, but it's an idea or a concept that's relevant in language learning.

53:59it's almost like you alternate the space someone will correct me on it somewhere but are there tips or tools that work or that don't work when it comes to prepping and practicing should people film themselves anything you want to share on that that's the number one yeah that's the number one tip because the video doesn't lie like your friends do when you come off a podium and you say how did I do don't ever ask somebody how did I do because people lie and they say oh Oh, you were great. Yeah. You should come off the stage and say, give me two things I should do differently next time. Oh, God. Really swing the door open.

54:38You're so strong. God, I feel, don't, you don't, you're, you're so much stronger than I am. I'm so vulnerable when I come off stage. I feel like I'm like a little baby Bambi. But you deep down, Marie, know it went well. I mean, there has to be a certain awareness that, yeah, that was, that was pretty good. and I felt the energy from the audience, but I'm a perfectionist. And I need to know what are the two things I don't do differently next time. So that is helpful and people are reluctant to give critical feedback. But the video is so important. If you look at professional sports, players are watching video of what happened five minutes ago instead of waiting three days because it's such a great learning tool and the majority of people are completely unaware that they're speaking fast, that they have all these verbal and physical tics that detract from their executive presence.

55:35And recording people in our training sessions is just standard. And of course, it elicits the number one thing that people say, which is, oh, you're not gonna make me watch that now, are you? Like, everybody says that. So I get how cringy it can be. But it does reveal an awful lot. And when we show people the video back, 90 % of the people make the same observation. And that is, wow, I look kind of bored. They're amazed at how flat they are. And they thought, wait a minute, I was just up there. I was really bringing it. I was like lively. I was animated. And where did that guy go? And so they realized from watching the video that what probably feels a little over the top to you is probably just about right.

56:24I've learned that. And I'll tell you, I remember in my fitness days, I'd never been the lead in a fitness video before. And that was a dream of mine. I was always like the backup girl. And when I was getting up, taking those steps, they made me put myself on tape. And here I am thinking I'm doing like all these dance fitness things. I'm like, Ooh, I'm the best. I saw that video bill, my arm. Do you know what I mean? I was like, Oh girl, you got to get your together. I was like, I'm here. So the video, it's like, it is cringy. It is hard. But damn, does it work? It does. And I think what it also exposes for people is that they sometimes go into a big communication opportunity with the wrong mindset that they define success as the absence of mistakes.

57:14And perfection is not what you're going for. If you define the absence of mistakes as your goal, then you will flatten out. You will play not to lose. And you ask anybody in professional sports, when you start playing not to lose, you lose. Instead of going for it. And I tell people, yeah, I could care less if you have a little stumble here, a little hiccup there. Who cares? Nobody's going to remember that. But they will remember that you brought it with real energy. And sometimes when people get freed of that burden, it relaxes them and they're able to really execute. Let's talk AI and technology.

57:53I love that you had a chapter in the end about AI. I thought this was so good. And somewhere in the book, you wrote that using our ability to communicate is like a muscle. And if we don't use it, it atrophies. So I see so much AI communication, mostly in email these days. And it is staggering. I cannot believe how many people like want me to give them money. And I'm like, dude, all of the AI tells and all your stupid emojis and all the triples. I'm like, come on. Like you got to do a little better than that. So tell me about your take on AI. How, because I think that there's a huge opportunity that is going to continue to grow for people that actually know how to communicate and that actually know how to be original and that actually know how to connect because there's so much freaking garbage.

58:39there's it's like a it's terrible so i want to hear your perspective and how can we train ourselves to be so original and so authentic and so unforgettable that no bot is gonna well the reason i put the ai chapter in the book marie is because i found it so central to the theme of the book. And that is when we communicate, the idea is to be memorable and to stand above the noise and to stand out and be distinctive. And to me, relying on AI is completely antithetical to that. And what you're really doing by relying on that for content creation is you're exacerbating this numbing sameness of the way people communicate that makes people tune out.

59:30And there's also just something very odd about hearing somebody deliver something that you know was the result of the amalgamation of millions of other people's thinking that now is so watered down and undistinctive. Yes. And like you said, I think because that's going to gain more prominence, I think the need to have somebody write something or somebody say something through a lens that is different, where I bet in a couple of short years, somebody will read something that you've said, scream job, whatever it is, and they will say, no large language model could have come up with that. and that will be a badge of honor.

1:00:18Yes. And I think the people who are not allowing that muscle to atrophy are going to be rewarded. I agree with that. You know, I think about it too in the context of business and the context of customer service. Like I have, this is a little bit off to the side of communication, but I think it's all connected where there is such a disintegration of that human connectivity in customer experience, being able to actually talk to someone who understands what the hell's going on, someone that's giving you their full undivided attention and they're hearing your issue and wanting to solve it. I'm like, I just think the more humanness we can bring to every aspect of our quote unquote customer journey, looking at it through a business lens from that first interaction all the way through, there's a huge opportunity to win.

1:01:10Huge. and even just the act of listening yes people treat listening as the time they have to wait before they say their next thing instead of what you're doing here is you're listening to my answers and you're rolling with that and it's influencing the next thing you say that's what's called the conversation and that's it and that's a dying art yes and you know i've been doing a lot of podcasts obviously with this book and I'm enjoying this conversation immensely. And probably because I read the book, that was a big, that's a big bonus. That's a big, big bonus. So you know what to ask, but even in some highly touted ones, there's been a little bit of going down the list of pre-prepared questions and this fear of deviating off of that, which yeah, it can feel like the high wire act without the net, But you absolutely have to take those chances.

1:02:12You have to wander outside your comfort zone. And there's a quote in the book from Eleanor Roosevelt who said, you should do one thing every day that scares you. And I feel as though that can be adapted to public speaking. Every public speaking opportunity, you should do one thing that scares you. I love that. Yeah. And try something new. Just one thing. It doesn't have to be radically transformative. But if you saw somebody give a speech or a presentation two weeks ago and they did something that really captivated you, jot it down. Realize, you know, that person's personal style is a little similar to mine.

1:02:55Maybe I can borrow that technique and road test it. Write it down. Try it out. See if it works for you. You and your team have worked with platforms like TikTok and Meta, right? which are part of, I think, this cultural shift that we've experienced where attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and shorter. Is there any lesson that you've learned in this world that's addicted to like 15 second content? I think, you know, when I was reading the book and there's some classic, really important principles about openings and closings, where it's like the opening hook is everything. So I'm curious if you have any reflections or lessons, whether it was from just how our culture has shifted in that way or things you're like, yeah, hooks are more important than ever.

1:03:42Yeah. There's no question. I mean, when I was a kid, it was about having the channel changer. Yeah. Right. The remote. And now it's this. How do we stop the scroll? How do you stop the scroll? And the competition to kill the scroll is so, kill the scroll, is so intense that it has distorted the way we communicate. I think that opening three to four seconds is critical to get people to just stop and watch for a second. But I think there will probably be a number of different camps of people who, they want to consume all their information in 15 second little nuggets. And then there are some people who will rebel against that and want something deeper, more thoughtful, more insightful, and will feel unfulfilled by the empty calories of 15 seconds.

1:04:41I think it's important. It's been something that I've had to kind of navigate and dance with just because, and I love it. I love having done this for a long enough time to have perspective, to watch things shift and change. And it's always something that I'm playing with myself too because I can look at data and I can hear from like, there's tons of experts now in each platform. And sometimes I'm like, I don't give a shit. I'm like, do you know what I mean? I want to do what feels like in my power alley. And intentional of service of my audience, authentic to what I genuinely care about. And I'm like, you know, it's like I can't really do all the cheap tricks.

1:05:22You know, it doesn't feel aligned. And it's just an interesting thing. Yeah, try. I think it's really important not to play somebody else's game. Yes. And I remember years and years ago when the Stones, when disco was really big. And the Stones came out with a couple of songs that were kind of a nod to disco. And everybody thought, oh, did you really have to do that? And they were sort of pilloried for it, and deservedly so. Yeah. And so I think knowing what you're good at and sticking with that is important. It doesn't mean you can't experiment with other things, but trying to transform yourself into something you're not is not a good strategy.

1:06:05Not a good strategy. So as we wrap, if someone's about to pitch an idea, right, or they're about to launch a product or they're about to go on camera, is there one sentence or one idea that you would want them to put on a little post-it note before they go on so that they could be unforgettable every time? I would say that if you could figure out a way to create an analogy for the value of what it is you're pitching, that could be really powerful. And you draw the analogy to something that has already proven to be really valuable. So years ago, Sheryl Sandberg was doing an interview and she, this was before privacy really genuinely became an issue for Facebook.

1:06:59And she was asked the privacy question and she said, well, you know, I can remember when caller ID first came out, there was all this uproar that my privacy was being invaded and And there were calls to regulate it. There were calls to ban it. I don't know anybody today who isn't 100 % reliant on caller ID. And it was a great historical analogy because she's basically saying in that story, yeah, I know you think there are some issues with Facebook, but it's all going to turn out great. And all that fear and hesitation is going to be unfounded. And it will become just this daily tool that you use and can't imagine living without.

1:07:38so that short little analogous story accomplished an awful lot for her i love that and then i think it takes work too it's like to be a powerful memorable communicator it's like you got to sit down and strap yourself in and it does and you know whether it's on your phone or a moleskin or whatever you know we're out for a walk we're out for a drive you're out for a run whatever it is those are when the really good ideas come to you and try to jot them down. And because 90 % of what you think about, you forget and realize, oh, that's a really interesting thing that that woman said in that interview.

1:08:16That's a really interesting story. Maybe I'll use that story when I lead my next presentation and think I'm in anecdote acquisition mode. I need to be observant of everything going around me in the world and realize how is that a parallel to what I have to talk about a lot and I'll just bring it into play creating you know my best friend and I always talked about this too with our our talks because we both struggle in the same ways but it's also great for writing in terms of books or any content creation is like story banking of like right like writing down those simple little stories that in the afternoon or you know something's going on when you're cooking or whatever, that to your point, I know this happens to me all the time is something's really funny or it happens in a workout class.

1:09:02And then if I don't write it down, dude, it is gone. So gone, never to come back, never to come back. But some like little anecdotes have literally turned into enormous bits of my content. And so I'm constantly working on that skill, like working on that muscle. That is incredible time well spent. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, anything that you want to leave our audience with besides, get your hands on this book if you want to communicate better. Well, what you said earlier was the best compliment that I love, and that is that you found it funny and you laughed because there are a lot of self-help books out there that are a little medicinal, shall we say?

1:09:44Yes. And I wanted this to be a fun, enjoyable read for people. Oh, it is. So the fact that you found it like that, I am very grateful. Awesome. Thank you so much, Bill. Thank you for the invite. It's a fun conversation. Super fun. So you can direct any of your questions, comments. If you got something big coming up, you know what firm you need to go to. But most importantly, get your little paws on this book because it is fantastic. And until next time, stay in your game and keep going for your big dreams because the world needs that very special gift that only you have. If you're struggling to make progress on your dreams, this free tool is going to help.

1:10:20It's called the yearly goals map. And in just 10 minutes, you're going to get clear on your top priorities and let go of what's keeping you stuck. It's super quick. It's powerful. And you can do it any time. Get it now at marieforleo.com slash yearly dash goals, or just scan the QR code on your screen right now.