Communication Kung Fu

I need a daily boost It is The Daily Boost from MotivationToMove.com. My name is Scott Smith. How are you? Good to have you here today and happy Friday.

Feeling better? COVID is getting further. I did not go to the gym today. I thought I might. I did not. My wife said, you're not going to the gym because I came out from the bedroom dressed today.

Not in my work clothes, but in my work clothes. Not in workout clothes, but in my work clothes. I said, no, I'm going to take another day off. She said, you're doing everything else.

You're just busy doing all kinds of stuff and you can't go to the gym. Let's see a long time ago. I used to weigh 248 pounds. Very long time ago, like 25 years ago, 20, 20 years ago, I lost the weight, never gained it back.

It's been really good, but some of the habits stick. Have you noticed how that happens? So even though I haven't gained the weight back, the habit of I'll start on Monday has stuck. So I'll start Monday.

Now I've committed it to her. I've committed it to you. So I have to do it, get back in. Once I get in, I'll be fine. You know, they, The hardest part of going to the gym, you know what it is, right?

Opening that heavy front door. That's the hardest part. Everything else is easy after that. All right, so today, let's go down the communication route.

I've done communication my entire life, ever since I can remember when I... I started talking. I was communicating. When I got in high school, I did stuff like that.

Then I got professionally into broadcast and all the stuff I've done for the past long time. That's kind of what I do. Now, one of the niches that I have discovered here in my coaching, my consulting practice, is that I tend to help my clients communicate and navigate areas of life that sometimes, you know, those moments, I don't know what to say. I don't know how to get around this.

I don't know how to communicate with this person. I help them navigate that. Not unusual for me to spend a good part of a coaching call talking about a conversation somebody has to have and helping them navigate it. And also, I've had people give me emails and say, can you tell me how to answer this?

And I will. I'll tell them how to word it properly or in some cases, in fact, most cases, not respond at all. Anyway, bottom line is I've got some experience here. So let me give you a couple of tips here.

I take my stuff from kind of normal, everyday learning, if you will. And when I say that, let me explain. Many, many years ago, when I was trying to get better at voiceover work and doing radio and the stuff that I do, I knew I wasn't real natural. Now, I've got this radio voice.

It's just kind of built into me. I don't sound natural anyway. Sorry. It's the voice I have. But when I was doing more spokesperson work and more acting work, I had it to sound natural.

So what I did was I took acting classes. That was kind of cool. I took a lot of commercial classes, a lot of drama classes. I scared a few people with my acting chops, I think.

I was that good. But the thing that got me really over the edge was improv. Now, if you've never taken an improv class, you should. It's a lot of fun.

And you probably like watching improv and like, how do they do that? How do they keep coming up with all these things? How do they, they look so talented. How do they do it?

It's actually a magical thing. It's fairly simple to do. But what I learned during that improv class has helped me in so many conversations over the years.

That's what you're going to learn today. So a couple of things. The number one goal is to keep you from going off track. That's it. To keep you from getting your foot stuck in your mouth.

Now, yesterday I talked about my pre-planned response on the program I did, teaching you how to pre-think what you might run into. And at least then you're not going to be surprised, right? That's a great way to do it. I do that all the time.

So always have a pre-planned response if you possibly can. And by the way, it sounds like work to do it. But for the most part, we all kind of do the same thing generally every single day. Same kind of people, same kind of job, same kind of stuff.

So for the most part, the responses you're going to run into are kind of the same anyway. So do a couple of times and you'll have it down. So let's get back to the improv and a couple of words you can use. So if somebody comes to you sometimes and they ask you to help them,

ask you to help them reach their goal or get something done. Maybe it's at the office. They want you to do some work for them, but you're like, I got too much to do. I don't have time to help.

Have you noticed things keep getting piled on you? So this came directly from an improv class. I forgot who taught it. I forgot who invented it, but I see it working all the time in life and on television and movies too.

When somebody asks you to help them, I want you to agree and defer. Get that line. I want you to agree. And then defer. I don't want you to say no. And that's normally what we do.

We get defensive, right? No, I can't help you. I don't have time. Do it yourself. So we want to agree so nobody gets mad at us. And then defer. So, for example, I would say, yes, I can help.

And let's talk about it later when I finish what I'm doing. Yes, I can help. Yes, I can talk about that. Yes, maybe I can. But let's talk about it later later.

When I finish what I'm doing. Now, there's a couple of words here I dropped in the first time, not the second time. You can drop it if you want to, but I want to call your attention to this. I say, yes, I can help.

Yes, we can talk about it. Yes, maybe I can. That's the agreement statement I'm asking you to do. If you say that, nobody gets mad at you. They're like, oh, yeah, they're going to help.

And then you say, and, and you redirect. Let's talk about it later. And watch how people just say, oh, cool, thanks. I appreciate that. And what they do is they leave your office.

They get off the phone, whatever they do. And they walk down the hall. Then they find somebody else. And they ask them if they can help. And that person didn't have the lesson.

So they say yes. And you're off the hook. That's the key here. It's the agreement and the deferral. So here's a super duper secret trick. Now, in the beginning, you're going to do this.

You're going to say yes. Perfect natural. Then you say, and let's talk about it later. Drop the and. That's the pro tiff here. Just drop the word and.

I actually did it a little bit earlier. I just dropped it naturally. If you watch anybody who does improv, any comedians on TV, you'll see them do that. They'll agree with you right away.

They'll drop the and and then say what they want you to do. So yes, I can help. Let's talk about that later. Okay. That cool. Boom. Just do it. It's awesome.

And watch how, again, how they just leave you alone. It is magical. It takes the stress away. You can use it all day long. Use it on your kids. Use it on your boss.

You can use it endlessly. They'll never know you're doing it. All they know is you're the most agreeable person in the world. And about five years down the road, they say, you know, they never actually helped me with anything.

It's awesome. And then they'll say, I wonder if they could teach me how to do that. And you'll say, I learned it from Scott. Number two, here's the next thing.

I use this word all the time. In fact, I'm going to hear it over the next two or three weeks because when I do a podcast, it'll start coming back to me in emails and phone calls and everything else.

Inserting the word yet into any conversation. It allows you to stay positive. It allows you to keep your momentum. For instance, saying, not yet. I'll let you know when I'm ready.

It does wonders. Hey, can you help yet? Nope, not yet. Sorry. Still caught up in it. Hey, how's summer going? Well, don't really know yet. It's not over.

It's crazy. And again, it's just kind of an agreeable thing. It's a deferral, and people just go away. And in the opinion, you just stay in the same routine.

Keep using the word jet. Keep saying yes. Keep saying and if you need to. Just keep bouncing around until it gets uncomfortable and they leave. Just keep doing it.

Do not allow it. Be a politician. That would be a scumbag, right? Just keep bouncing things around. The whole goal here is not for you to get out of helping people.

No, I'm a helpful guy too. In fact, I help so much it gets me in trouble. I like to be generous with everything I have. It's kind of how I like to live.

But sometimes I get way too generous. And when it comes to what I do for a living, if I get too generous, I don't get to make a living, right? Plus my voice gets tired and everything like that. So I have to watch this.

So let me reiterate one more time if you didn't get this. This is so simple and you'll use it. I've taught this for years and years and years. It really works.

And like I said, people are going to comment on this. They're going to send me notes saying, Scott, it worked. Yes, I can help. Let's talk about it later when I get done doing what I'm doing.

Try that today. And secondly, yet. Yeah, I'm not there yet. Are you ready? Can you help me now, Scott? Can you come down the hallway? Not yet. Besides, I actually have to leave a little bit later to go have dinner with my wife tonight.

But can we talk about it tomorrow? Yeah, we can do that. And they come in tomorrow. Hey, man, I want to talk to you. You know, I want to do that. Can we talk about a little later?

I'm still finishing that project. Bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. Just keep doing it. And nine times out of 10, and this is probably the thing that I just want to make sure you understand most importantly, is before they have a chance to ask you again, they would have found somebody else to do it.

Or they would have done it themselves. Or very likely, the thing that needed to get done didn't even have to get done. And you would have been doing something that didn't matter anyway.

Boom. That's how we take control of our time. I should check in the Perfect Quick Planner stuff. I should do that. PerfectQuickPlanner.com if you don't have that.

It's on in there. I haven't taught that in there. I should because if you learn how to control your time, hold your space, and you have this little tactic to allow you to do it, things happen. That's usually what ends up happening, by the way.

The thing you want to get done, you can't get done because you don't have the skill set to make it happen. I just gave you an incredible skill set. Give it a try this weekend. I'm going to see you Monday.