Phil M. Jones: We weren't in the situation where access to information was easy. And I actually view it as a little bit of a blessing because my ignorance was my gift. I didn't realize it was as hard as it's actually been. I believed it was going to be significantly easier. And actually my aspirations at 14, 15, 16 were quite low.
Chris Do: My next guest is someone I have quite a bit of familiarity with mostly because my good friend Carlos Garcia has been talking incessantly about him nonstop. And he gifted me his book and it's called Exactly What To Say. And I highly recommend it. It's moved on to my top five books on sales. There's a couple of reasons why we'll get into that a little bit later.
And from the cover, It says this is the dictionary of business success language right from page one. You're given this strategy to change the way you influence others. This is from Scott Stratton. So my guest today is Phil M. Jones. And Phil, welcome to the show. For people who don't know who you are, can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit of your backstory?
Phil M. Jones: Yeah, I mean, it's a joy to be here and I don't know how far we want to go back, but I've been in the business of helping people win more business for as far back as I can remember. So I started in my first business when I was 14, knocking on the doors of my neighbors, asking them politely whether they wanted their cars washed.
By the age of 15, I was making more money than most of my school teachers, had kids in the year below doing the bulk of the car washing. And I've built a career from there in senior sales leadership positions, built companies in the world of real estate. I've been head of retail commercial director for two premier league soccer clubs, and then started a little sales training company in 2008.
A little sales training company that delivered sales skills to people who didn't see themselves as salespeople. So that would have been everybody from creatives to professional services to independent business owners to brick and mortar businesses that wanted to be able to get more from their existing customers.
And from those pretty humble beginnings of creating that small business, now I've gone on to write 11 books. Spoken in 59 different countries on six different continents delivered 3500 paid professional presentations got a few bestsellers in there yet still my work really sits into the one key area of helping people find the success language that's required in the moments that matter that means that they get paid more of what they're worth when necessary and helps them find both confidence and competence in those high stakes environments that make the biggest difference between them being rewarded at the right level or performing somewhere near average.
Chris Do: Well, I don't say this often, but I'm going to tell you right now so that it doesn't get lost. If you need to, pause this episode, go to Amazon and add the book, Exactly What to Say by Phil M. Jones. There's apparently a lot of Phil Jones out there, so I understand the necessity to add the M.
Phil M. Jones: Hence the M. It's like the branding guy probably gets the M. Like, I can own Phil M. Jones and Chris, get this, right? Coming up, there was a Manchester United soccer player by the name of Phil Jones. That was tipped to be the next England captain in a soccer team. I'm like, all right, just went through a giant transfer to Manchester United.
I'm like, okay, well, I'm not going to try and be the most famous Phil Jones. And then look at on Google, Phil Jones speaker. Phil Jones is a bass amplifier manufacturer. So Phil Jones speaker has its own search criteria that kicks up bass amplifiers. I'm owning this M baby, right? This M is, is my life. And to a point that when we work with corporations and consulting works, like I changed the letter M to match the Pantone of the company I'm working with. When we put slides and proposals and things together, just little subtle branding touches to make a difference in personalization.
Chris Do: Well, I guess we can't have everything you're, you're crushing at age 14, 15. So later on in life, it's like, you're kind of cursed. You can't catch a break with the name. So you'll have to like use the Phil M. Jones.
Phil M. Jones: I got it. I'm going to be the most famous Phil M. Jones. I can do that one.
Chris Do: I love that. Okay. I know there's a lot of value packs up, but the reason why I gave it such a strong endorsement and I rarely do this, but basically there's a couple of things that I think are great. Number one, when we talk about word to impact ratio.
It's a very high impact ratio relative to the number of words on page, which I respect. There's a brevity of language and communication that's in here. So it's one of these things where you actually demonstrate the thinking and the philosophy in the writing of the thinking and the philosophy. So hats off to you.
Phil M. Jones: It was a product and not a book, right? Like that was the way I intended. I'm crafting this. The form would follow the function. It's, it's light. It's easy to pick up. It's instantly applicable. There's white space around it. We worked on page layout, like crazy because I designed this as a product, not a book.
Chris Do: Yeah, it's like 18 point type of things you would get in trouble for English class but-
Phil M. Jones: Every publisher told me this wouldn't work. Chris, they told me that it would be a bad idea. It's not big enough to be a book, but I got 2. 9 million people that would, um, would disagree. Yeah.
Chris Do: Yeah. And the reason why I like that, okay, look, I know there are books that use unnecessary words that repeat ideas over and over again.
This is not one of them. It's as the young kids would say, it's all killer. No filler. There are what I think. Several phrases in here that you call magical phrases and we're getting to that. There's an open loop everybody I want to get there just yet. Just hang in there I just want to make sure you pause go buy the book and then come back to the episode get that stuff done first.
Okay, I'm just blown away because I think every kid starts like a lemonade stand or car washing business, but most of us stop there beyond our friends and family. Basically, it's a way to get money from our uncles and aunties and things like that. But you actually turn this into a business. So what's the young 14 year old Phil Jones living in the UK got that the rest of us 14 year olds don't have? Well, what did you figure out?
Phil M. Jones: I was very, very fortunate, like a good number of people are, to have very hard working parents that distilled in an incredible work ethic. And what that did is it taught me how you could exchange time for money if you were prepared to be able to operate and do more than other people.
However, what it didn't teach me was how you could leverage that time for money. My dad's hard work and hustle got me into a schooling environment that was probably a little above our station. And it meant that all of the kids around me at school could have access to the things that teenagers would want in life a little easier than we had the ability to be able to create the means for.
And this puzzle sat with me in a very, very interesting, curious way. Like I was never in awe of anybody. I never asked the question or like showed up with the expression of, wow. I'd asked the question, how, like, how do they do what they do? How do they have what they have? And through that friend group, I got to be able to go to other people's houses, speak to other people's parents to learn about what other people would do for a living.
Is when you could combine knowledge and understanding of people who are achieving at levels of excellence, still put their pants on in the same way you wake up in the morning in the same way and aren't doing these like super impossible things. They're just having access to some information and some insights to others.
Plus I've got hard work and hustle. I'm like, oh, I could be in trouble here if I just keep going and, and that's really all I've done. I then have an unusual belief that I live my life on the relentless quest for better. We live in a world where everybody wants best practices. And to me, best practices suppress performance because they say that's as good as it can get.
My alternative has always been like, yeah, but now, yeah, but now, yeah, but now what, and that's existed in me since as far back as I can remember to again, this afternoon, yeah, but now what are we looking to work on next? I'm really happy playing in the messy gray space of success. Like no finished outcome.
Just so what's next on from here. And I believe that that strategic curiosity is fueled just to step onto another step, onto another step, onto another step. And I kind of positioned this in the speaking world, right? Is, is I'll do a hundred high level professional engagements a year. I sit on some of the best stages in, in the world and like I opened for Tony Robbins last year and all these other like really cool experiences and I have to pinch myself like how the heck did I end up here and then you second guess yourself and you go well hang on if not me then who and you then second guess yourself again and say well if somebody else can do it can somebody else be me.
That is the question. And sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes the answer is heck no, right? I can have all the passion, hustle, belief in the world that I want to play in the NBA. It ain't happening. Like, that ship has sailed. In fact, that ship never probably made itself into the port. That ship was never even built. That ain't gonna happen for a 5'9 white guy from the UK.
That's an almost impossibility. I didn't grow up playing the sport. I don't have any ability to be able to do so. The lesson and learning gap, impossible, but there are many other things where actually if you're brave enough to go, what would it take to do that? The answers become very clear if you're prepared to be patient and prolific enough to work through the steps.
And that's been my life for instance, I'll just continually work out how somebody else is doing the thing that I'd like to do more of. And then be prepared to do that work.
Chris Do: At 14, who do you model yourself after? What's the pitch like? How, how is it you're able to do this? And clearly here there's an entrepreneur in the making, right?
Phil M. Jones: You don't know, right? There's an entrepreneurial background. I mean, I was reading Richard Branson books when I was 14, 15. Like we didn't have the internet back in my day, right? I'm older than I look and we weren't in the situation where access to information was easy. And I actually view it as a little bit of a blessing because my ignorance was my gift.
Yeah. I didn't realize it was as hard as it's actually been. I believed it was going to be significantly easier. And actually, my aspirations at 14, 15, 16 were quite low. My aspirations at 18, 19, 20, 21 were quite low. It was all about saying, can I set a bar that's here and then jump over it? And then once jumped over it, it's like, where do I set the next bar?
Jump over it. Oh, where do I set the next bar? Jump over it. Even when I look at my sales training business, I started in 2008, we were charging 85 pounds a ticket to put 12 people in a room to cross my fingers and hope that two would step up into one to one coaching at 295 pounds a month. It wasn't like, how do we get to six figures, seven figures, eight figures, 11 figures.
It wasn't none of that noise never existed in my world. It was, how do I take a thing that I'm good at and turn it into a sustainable income to support, family, loved one's lifestyle. And that has been a really useful gift. When I look back in reflection is that I didn't get distracted by the shiny lights of the end of the journey.
I was just focusing on next chapter, next chapter, next chapter. And now when I look back, even on my speaking, training, personal brand career since 2008, we've come a long way, but actually we've just moved through meaningful chapters every three to six months. And a point that I share with everybody. And you mentioned Carlos at the start of our call.
I share this with our certified guides community is if you cannot rewrite your bio every six months, you're not moving quick enough. There's not something meaningful that's changed in your world when you're going through a growth phase. Then you're not moving quick enough. And we should keep rewriting our bio until we get to a point we can write a one word bio.
And what do I mean by a one word bio? I mean introducing Beyonce. If you can be recognized by one word, chances are you might have done the work to build a meaningful bio. But until that point, we might need to keep adding attributes, keep adding accolades, keep adding some form of recognition of relevance of what you've done recently.
Chris Do: So soon you'll be known as M and we'll just know.
Phil M. Jones: I'll probably never get there, but I'll die trying. And I think that's, that's the fun. I, I interviewed Ryan Serhan the other day. I'm like, we want to try and turn something into noun. And I'm, I'm getting close people in companies we work with is they talk about philisms or Phil Jones is used as a verb inside comfort companies.
I'm like, that's cool. Well, people like you just feel Jones that I'm like. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I've now decided to accept the school.
Chris Do: It's kind of like your philosophy.
Phil M. Jones: Yeah, I've been there, wrote a book called philosophies way back in the day, just taking quotes and turning into a book. That was before people would productize and create courses out of things.
Chris Do: I mean, I love what you're saying. I just want to kind of not unpack it, but just hit it a little bit harder, which is the journey of 10, 000 miles begins with a single step. It's like, don't get caught up with the end and just do continuous improvement.
I love the way that you phrased this, like, rewrite your bio every six months. I always look at it because people are like, what is happiness for you? It's perpetual growth. And people don't understand that they get to a certain place. And I think you said this about best practices. Do you think that once you get there that you could just rest and not keep going? There's no such thing unless you become Beyonce, I guess.
Phil M. Jones: Yeah. But even then you're just, you're just good enough to know that you've got 50 to a 100 years of reputational growth that can continue by that. You might be at arrest. And my favorite quote around success or definition of success comes from a guy called Paul J Meyer. And I think it loops back into what you're saying there. And Paul J Meyer defined success as "the progressive realization of predetermined, worthwhile, and achievable goals."
Chris Do: I said it one more time. That was a lot to process there. One more time, please.
Phil M. Jones: You bet. I was going to repeat it. The progressive realization of predetermined, worthwhile, and achievable goals. It isn't like achieving your goals because success is a feeling, right? You feel successful. You're not successful. You feel successful. So the progressive realization was something that hit me like a train is like, you need to keep moving is you don't get to a place and then you're successful or success is in the journey.
Progressive realization of predetermined, worthwhile, and achievable. Well, you get to decide all of those things. Like, people say to me things like, how do you get to be successful with a book? I'm like, well, can you define success for starters? If success is you're holding your words between two pieces of paper and one person who isn't your mum buys one, congrats.
Like, you made success. If success is Wall Street Journal bestseller, well, then that's a different playbook. If success is Perpetual Lifetime, Evergreen, It Prints Money For You, that's a different play. Success needs to be, by design, with purpose and choice. Otherwise, it's good fortune, which is nice to get sometime too.
Chris Do: Well, on that note, I want to talk to you a little bit about the book itself, because Carlos was telling me about something. He's like, Chris, you got to get into this guy's mind. He's a genius about how he's doing this. I'm not sure if you're the first, but you're the first person I've heard of doing this, where you've kind of made your books customizable and you enroll, I guess, people into it. Can you explain that concept a little bit, how it works? And I think it's pure genius.
Phil M. Jones: We've done over a hundred custom additions of exactly what to say. One of those is in the public domain, which is exactly what to say for real estate agents. And exactly what to say for real estate agents is one of the top 100 bestselling sales books of all time.
Now, let's just catch this. This is a derivative book in a micro niche industry. That is one of the top 100 bestselling sales books of all time, even though it's not in that category and it's a micro niche and if you ever want a reminder of how sometimes making sure the form follows the function and the you are not looking to be able to create a universal message for everybody, but take your universal message and position it to individual groups of people all the time.
The customization of the book is a brilliant case study for that, and we wrote exactly what to say for the automotive industry. It's kind of fun because I don't see it too often. The book you held up at the front of our time together today is the exactly what to say professional photographers edition.
That was produced and sold in bulk of 10, 000 units to the PPA as part of a speaking gig that exists inside induction for professional photographers joining the association. So some of our custom additions live inside of organizations, associations, et cetera, that have funded it for their company. Some live in the public domain, some live on small scale.
So if I run an event and a company wants to be able to do the book in their colorway, and I'm. I think I just got one on my desk here right now. Like this is metrics coaching edition of exactly what to say that was produced a hundred copies, a hundred units. We managed to do that and make that profitable and valuable for both parties, their Pantone, their colorway, their forward industrial strength business card on the back of the book.
And I can still make profit on that. And I think that's the beauty in the book that we have is I own the IP and we have margin and systemization attached to it. That means. We can turn the book into a lot more than just a book. It's a movement and we've just launched role play cards and we're launching desk pads and 37 licensed partners that are training the work.
And we have a workbook edition that plays into a two and a half day immersive small group mastermind. And I licensed the IP to some of the world's biggest brands and it lives inside their company. And. We've been managed to do a great deal with this one piece of work. And the book has become my life's work.
And I think it was Mark Twain that first said, "if I had more time, I'd have written a shorter letter." That's been the approach for this book is if I can distill everything down into something so tiny and portable, what I then have is the ability to be able to do is to breathe all these different versions of new life back into it, and like a good spirit can be used in a thousand cocktails.
That's what we look to now be able to do with the book. And my goal is to stay committed to the exactly what to say brand for the rest of my life, not new book, new book, new book, let's just stay true to the core principles. And I believe that if you're fortunate enough to be gifted a greatest hit, never get bored of playing the greatest hits.
Chris Do: That's a concept a lot of creative people like myself struggle with, Phil, because we're like, on to the next hit and we don't maximize what we've already created.
Phil M. Jones: Right. But you can be creative and the music industry allows you to do this. Like I, I look towards artists like Ed Sheeran and the number of collaborations and creative reincarnations that have come through remixes and, and, You know, alternative application and then writing in the background and being creative for other people, et cetera, but still a, a core identity of the main thing, being the main thing and without that, your brand ends up being diluted.
Chris Do: Speaking of Ed Sheeran, as a side note, I saw him perform an Eminem song and the crowd lost their mind when Eminem popped up. I'm like, these are two people I never thought would be on the same stage together. It's a magical moment. Each person lifts the other up and that's the power of collaboration.
Phil M. Jones: Two plus two equals five, right? Like that's collaboration when it happens right. And even in the personal brand space, I'm seeing more and more of this is find ways where the, you know, the overlap of the sum of the parts comes to more and nobody wins anything by themselves. And you're seeing in the music space and some of the best clues for how to grow, how to evolve, how to develop revenue streams, etc. The music stream business is ahead of us. We'd be stupid if we didn't look at it for clues.
Chris Do: Let me explain to people in case they're like, wait, what the heck are they talking about? So from my observation, Phil wrote this book, Exactly What to Say. He has 37 licensed partners who he then makes, I think, custom editions of the book for.
And as I'm trying to figure it out, the core principles are there. The manifesto, the big ideas in it, but then there are parts where there are examples that are tailored for each industry. And that's always a challenge because people always say, well, that won't work for my industry. You've addressed that problem.
So you created two solutions, right? Something that can grow over time and get stronger through collaboration, but also to kind of make it for very niche audiences. And it was, it was pretty brilliant. I think I need to read the real estate one, because as I was reading through the photography one, some of the examples were pretty good, but I was like, I think I need to get to the master version and see what that looks like so I can compare and contrast. Okay, so now I gotta buy another book. So that's all good. That's brilliant, too.
Phil M. Jones: And that's the other beautiful thing is you can sell the exact same piece of work on multiple occasions.
Chris Do: Okay, so this is an author, entrepreneur who's thinking about books differently. This is a system. This is a modular product, like you said, product. It's not just a book. There's something much bigger to it, this IP. And you can, you know, Roll that out in many different ways. To get to the core components of the book, you said there's something about magical phrases. Please explain that.
Phil M. Jones: The book is 23 sequences of magic words. And what magic words are, are sequences of words that talk straight to the subconscious brain. Subconscious brain is powerful in the decision making process because it has a yes output and a no output. People think that no is the enemy of yes in the world of sales. It isn't no, isn't the enemy. Maybe it's the enemy in decision is the enemy. So if you can show up to conversations with more competence and confidence to help people reach a decision, regardless of what that decision is that somebody makes, then what will happen is you'll increase the rate of decision.
If you can increase the rate of decision, you can increase the rate of action. If you can increase the rate of action, you can increase the rate of transaction. So that easy and it's that hard. I've just distilled down some success language that actually between you and I is not really magic words. These are 23 deep rooted principles around influence and persuasion disguised as magic words, because I've learned that if I try to teach people principles, they struggle to find examples. If I teach people examples, they trip over principles.
Chris Do: My friend, Jewel, was telling me something about this recently. She says, Chris, you're a top down teacher. So I'm trying to teach principles. And people are like, what? She said, we're bottom up learners. Give us the individual components. We'll figure out the principle. And you just said that in a different way. And I love that.
Phil M. Jones: Yeah. And both need to exist depending upon the group that you're learning with. But I think when you're operating at scale and you get this, I mean, you and I had a conversation offline a short while ago about YouTube and the way you approach YouTube is to find a way to serve the many and headlines and titles and descriptions, et cetera, doing that.
And you give them what they want and then teach them what they need. And we're just doing the same in book format. is helping people to deliver upon what their number one outcome was. And I think one of the biggest reasons that this little book does so well is even down to the titling. We talk about titling.
The less lens there are huge is this book used to be called magic words. I wrote the OG version of this book in 2011, I wrote it as a bet to be able to turn a book around in three weeks as a result of a mastermind group with other speakers I was in talking about how hard it was to publish books. And I'm like, it's not, you could do it in a weekend.
And I had to put my money where my mouth was and put the book out. And I called the book Magic Words and the book did okay. But I didn't really craft it. I just took a two page PDF, turned it into a book, put it out to market and woke up to 120, 000 downloads. Like the book did well, but it's kind of like a modern day equivalent of you putting a lazy YouTube video up and being like, dang, I didn't expect that to run but it did. And instead of saying, well, what do I do next to new? I just went back to that greatest hit and refined it and edited it and put the work in to get a package and produce it properly. So exactly what to say is the reedit. The magic words. It's the album and not the EP. And the title is genius and an accident is I was going to call it magic words right up until three weeks before pub date.
Did a little Google search, Amazon search. And I'm like, there's a new book that somebody's just released called magic words. It was by a guy called Tim David and Tim David happens to be a real magician. And I'm like, dang, I can't publish and promote a book called magic words. At the same time that somebody else has got a book out called magic words.
We can't fight this for trademark infringements, et cetera. I need to change the name of the book. And what had happened historically speaking is I used to run training sessions in theaters like on Tuesday nights when the theater had nothing going on and I'd serve the network marketing small business community a micro price point with edutainment events, 29 pounds a ticket, etc.
Have fun. Put a few hundred people in the theater. Have a good time. And I called those events exactly what to say. I had a three disc CD program that would sell back of the room for speaking events in the direct sales network marketing industry. That three disc CD was called exactly what to say, struggling for a quick name to repurpose on the book.
I'm like success leaves clues. People like that name. Let's call it that. What I've gone on to learn to be true as to one of the biggest reasons that this has been so successful in word of mouth marketing. It's the curiosity gap in the title is huge. I want to know exactly what to say. There's no way that tiny book could teach me exactly what to say.
Oh, dang. That book just taught me exactly what to say. You see that like arc and journey that can go on with such brevity. Like there's a high value pill in that, that takes somebody on an emotional journey. It was a brilliant accident. I wish I had the genius to say, like, I crafted it that way. It didn't, I only know this from what scientists have told me afterwards, but it's been a fun ride and it continues to be. Yeah.
Chris Do: Let's get into it. What are some of the examples from the book that are these magic words? And first, maybe you can give us the example, then tell us why it works.
Phil M. Jones: Well, why don't we play this another way? What might be a scenario that many of your listeners find themselves in regularly? They either overcomplicate or they have difficulty in getting a certain predetermined outcome.
Chris Do: Okay, let's go there. I think and I believe you feel the same way because of the way the book ends is we can chase after new clients or we could just serve the ones we already have better and activate word of mouth advertising. But people get really awkward about how to ask for it and I think you do such a brilliant job of it that now I just repeat it to everybody. So maybe you can take us through that. Like, how do we do that?
Phil M. Jones: How do we ask for more of the things that people would want and in particular things like reviews and referrals?
Chris Do: Yeah, like I want another client from a client that already, uh, happy relationship, things are going great. I want more business from their friends.
Phil M. Jones: So there are really three reasons why most people don't ask for referrals, even though they say they want them. The first reason why people don't ask for referrals is because they are too busy, bone eyed, or lazy, can't be bothered, like they don't need it, they don't want it. So they, that's not the people that listen to podcasts, so we probably shouldn't worry about those people.
If it's not that reason, the other two reasons are either they don't know when to ask, Or they don't know how to ask. They haven't got the timing and they haven't got the skill. So let's look at both timing and skill. When is the right time to ask for a referral? I could ask this in a classroom environment.
I get a thousand different areas of times when somebody could ask. It's like at the point of delivery. It's just after that they've spent the money or when you see them again three months later. Like all these different ideas as to when. And the trouble with it is, is they're all good times to ask. The one thing that all of those areas have in common is it's when the other person is happy.
When the other person is happy, they typically say a particular sequence of words to you. And what they almost always say when they're happy is thank you. So let's just play with the science on that for a second. They say the words thank you. When somebody says the words thank you to you, how are they feeling?
People say they're feeling grateful, that they're feeling happy, they're feeling elated. It's more than that. If we take it crude and rudimental, how they're actually feeling is indebted. That's why we mouth the words thank you is because we feel indebted when I say thank you. I've repaid the feeling of indebtedness The thank you is the repayment of the debt.
When is the best time to ask somebody for more? Well, it's when they feel indebted. Because they are motivated to want to do more to make themselves feel better. So if you're wondering when the best time to ask somebody for more is, just set these little ear antennas to listen to the word thank you. And next time that they say the word thank you to you, don't think like, aha, I'm awesome, pat yourself on the back.
Next time they say the words thank you, think aha, they in some way feel indebted to me, this is the best time for me to ask for more, I should probably ask for something at this point in time to help them feel better. So we've got the moment, we're listening for thank yous, we now need to know exactly what to say, At the point in time where somebody says, thank you.
So what do you reach for where you're looking for a sequence of words that you could use to get just about anybody to agree to do just about anything before they even know what the thing is, right? Like that's what we're looking for. Chris is how do you get somebody to contextually agree to do a thing before they even know what the thing is.
And for this, I typically reach for a volunteer, but you're the only one I've got. So Chris, any chance that you would do me a small favor?
Chris Do: Sure of course.
Phil M. Jones: Those are the words. See, I just asked you to do me a small favor. You agreed to do the thing without even knowing what the thing is. I guess at this point in time in our interview together, I could ask you to do just about anything.
And you've already said you do it. The reality of it is though, is, you know, and I know that I wouldn't ask you to do anything that was unreasonable. There's enough rapport and trust at this moment in time. And the same would be true for most people in their customer engagements. The client just said the words, thank you to you.
And you just said, like any chance you could do me a small favor, they would almost certainly say yes with the same level of confidence, maybe a hesitance of curiosity, but they would be contextually agreeing to take an action. If I was to follow this through with a precise sequence of words onwards from there, I would position my next ask with the words you wouldn't happen to know.
If I said the words you wouldn't happen to know, what I'm doing is I'm making it okay that the other person doesn't know. I'm letting them off the hook, but also I'm throwing down a small challenge. We all love to prove other people wrong. You wouldn't happen to know maybe just one person. Why would I ask for just one person as opposed to anybody?
Well, just one person is reasonable. It's also specific. It helps them filter their own memory and a quicker level of efficacy. You wouldn't happen to know, maybe just one person, somebody who just like you. Well, this is interesting, right? See, if I said somebody who just like you, what does that say to the other person?
It says a few things. Well, it says. I like you to compliment. It also allows you to go fishing in your mind in a smaller circle. Again, it makes the sorting of your entire network easier. You say you can do me a small favor. They say, yes, you say you wouldn't happen to know maybe just one person, somebody who just like you would benefit from.
And this would be the only part of the framework I'd change. I'd just change it. Give somebody back exactly what they said. Thank you for. So if you're a graphic designer, the has just helped somebody with a mesmerizing and rebrand that helps them look like they're becoming the company that'd like to grow into, as opposed to the company that used to be, you'd say you wouldn't happen to know, maybe just one person, someone who just like you is ready to be able to reinvent themselves for the next decade, would you?
And I'm leaving this now as an open loop question. If they said, thank you to you for you getting them out of a pinch quickly and turning a fly around for them in a record period of time, you wouldn't happen to know, maybe just one person, somebody just like you find themselves needing somebody that can respond to things quickly, would you?
So whatever they said, thank you for, I'm going to give them that straight back because they've got their inbuilt baked portable story for how they could intro you to that other person where they go like, you know, how you're often finding yourself needing to make quick amends in design files and you don't have any resource, which means you missed the opportunity.
They're like, yeah, that's me. They're like, I know a guy. We all love to know a guy in the introduction is cleaner. It's crisper. There's more I could bring to that script, but I think that's enough for people to listen to at this point is, is listen for thank yous, request favors, make it easy for people to introduce, to help them feel happier about how they are happy as to how you help them.
And it's a gift to all involved now. It's a gift to you. It's a gift to them. It's a gift to the person that's receiving. And why is it a gift? Because it's well packaged. We know gifts are gifts when they're well packaged. It's called gift wrapping. We are gift wrapping requests and asks. So the recipient feels valued and appreciated in the way the ask has been made. And the reason people struggle to ask is because they don't know how to package.
Chris Do: You know what I like about this is it's not fancy language, it's common sense language, but language we don't often think of and use. And this is why I think oftentimes common sense is not so common, but once you lay it out, you now all have a choice and you could say to yourself, I can say this, I could do this.
There's nothing out of my wheelhouse that I could not say, and you can imagine how the conversation is going to go. But if I were to dive a little deeper here, and ask you what the magic words are, the first part of the question is, any chance you could do me a small favor?
Phil M. Jones: The request of a favor is the, is the lift out of the magic words.
Chris Do: Okay, so it's not just anything that's a small favor and it's reciprocity, they just said thank you. So they've already primed themselves to like repay it and I have this theory about, you know, modern decent societies that we don't like living with debt, emotional debt, we don't want to carry so we want to repay it because we don't want to be seen as some kind of parasite or user or taker. Right?
Phil M. Jones: Yeah. And it's not as rudimental as like trading, but it is a feeling of self worth. Like you don't want the balance of the universe to feel like that you're a taker and that you're not prepared to be able to give back is actually success is the movement, movement, movement, movement, movement, like even, even money, like, You don't have money.
Money moves and the movement of the money creates an economy. An economy of relationship is created in the movement of favors, asks, help, gratitude, gratification, deliverables, service. It has to move. If it gets static, that's where we get stuck. So yeah, I think we're saying the same thing.
Chris Do: Yes. And the other thing that people don't often realize, and Dr. Caldini writes about this in Influence, is oftentimes our desire to reciprocate outsizes the actual thing that they receive. So, you've done a great job. Let's just assume you've done a great job. And the reciprocity of that favor should be giant, but you know what? It doesn't need to be. You're asking, hey, any chance, can you do me a small favor? Would you categorize the word any chance as the wrapper of the request? Or is that just part of the language?
Phil M. Jones: The specifics in there that hold the most currency is the request of the favor. What we're doing around that, to soften, to position, to add curiosity gaps, that's just skill indeliverable. I believe that every word that leaves your mouth is helping or hurting.
Nothing is neutral. If it is neutral, it was a waste. The heavyweight story math in that, that would call out is the request of a favor, because the reason that I would say that particularly at scale, is there are a number of people that would say, I could never say, is there any chance? I'm from the South.
Those words would never leave my mouth. But they could say a version of like, hey bro, like you good for a favor? And that might be more realistic. Like everybody can find their way within their vocabulary, within their dialect, within the way that they show up around others to request a favor. Not everybody could say, is there any chance?
The Futur: It's time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.
Chris Do: When I started my motion design company Blind in 95, there was a lot I didn't know. So I tried reaching out to other business owners and professionals for help. What did I find? Many saw me as competition and those who didn't. Weren't able to give advice that made sense for my line of work. Thankfully, I was able to find my first and only business coach, Kira McLaren, who mentored me for 13 years.
I also learned that my story isn't unique. Many entrepreneurs feel like they're left to figure everything out on their own. It's why I created The Futur Pro Membership, a community I wish I had when I first started. And I'd like to invite you to check out all that we have waiting for you inside at thefutur.com/pro.
The Futur: And we're back, welcome back to our conversation.
Chris Do: As a person who has in the past struggled with saying no to people, I always feel that when people ask me to directly, I either will say no outright, or I will say yes, but with some kind of resentment attached to it, a passive aggressive.
Phil M. Jones: It's timing. And that's why I've said the request of a favor following a thank you.
Is the moment to be able to deliver that request is I get it all the time, right? My Instagram DM's lined up is like, hey, I'd love to pick your brain on something. I'm like, that is the worst way to ask somebody for help. Just think about the, the pure mechanics of like picking at somebody's brain. I'm like, oh, so you want to do what?
Like it's rude. It's uncomfortable on both parties is, is if you're going to make asks with finesse. It needs to feel good for both parties. It needs to feel like it's a fair trade. The thank you and the favor feels like a next natural step. Equally as if you wanted somebody's time and attention to be able to support you in some way, what you might want to be able to do is to have given before you asked.
That given could be an act of service. It could be a compliment. It could be some encouragement. It could be some recognition towards the value that person has provided in previous times as a frame attached to it. And with that, it's a lot easier to ask, even in simple forms of. You know me saying to you, Chris, like I've been watching what you've been doing on YouTube.
It's mega impressive. I love how you've managed to achieve blank, blank, and blank and blank. You know? How would you feel about finding any time on the schedule for me to quiz you about some of the strategies with an audience of other people that I think would be interesting for you to meet? That's a nicer invitation for everybody involved than, hey, I wanna pick your brain on how you're crushing on YouTube so I can steal your best ideas, right? you're like, one feels violated and the other feels appreciated.
Chris Do: Yes, but there is some context here because the person who's asking does matter a lot. Even if you ask the magic phrase, like, uh, like a request, it matters a lot.
Phil M. Jones: A hundred percent. Like we teach people a ton around email marketing and, and I ask a, a room full of people, like, what's the most important thing that affects the success of a, of a mass email?
The whole room smartly raised their hand up and like, it's the subject line. It's the subject line. It's the subject line. It's the subject line. And as much as they're not wrong, I'm like, uh, it's the sender. The sender is the thing that affects the impact long before the subject line, whose inbox is hitting whose inbox will carry more weight than some witty subject line.
So do work to be able to make sure that your sender authority is where you're likely to be able to lose the most. Like employees listening to this right now, you could have a bad subject line with a terrible email that if it's coming from your boss, you're going to open it, you're going to read it and you're going to do as you're told, or you're going to react in some way, right?
Is it's going to drive a response. Whereas you could decide that you have no respect for the sender. And the best subject line, the best written email, the best call to action, the best offer, never even get any light of day because the sender had no authority. So I agree. The words that we provide and exactly what to say are a pantry of ingredients to help you conjure better dishes when you are communicating with other people.
You still have to work on you being a great chef. You still have to communicate the message between you and your patrons. You still have to give thought and attention towards tonality and body language and timing and intention. I can give you the notes, I can teach you how to play scales, but I'm not making you a jazz musician.
Chris Do: Well, I like the, the phrasing of sender authority. Uh, if I'm listening to this, I'm like, okay, nice for you two big shots to say something like that. Cause you have sender authority already. What can I do to increase my sender authority? Any tips there?
Phil M. Jones: There's a three day masterclass on that if we wanted to run it. What you're talking about is who you are to them, right? Is what are you doing to be able to amplify the value of your relationship to the person who's the other side of that. And like, my phone is permanently on do not disturb. You cannot call me on my phone. It is impossible to call me unless you're my wife. She gets through, do not disturb. Everybody else doesn't.
That's sender authority. So what can you do in the relationships that matter in your life to be able to grow your equity and grow your stock? Well, some of it is getting clear on who are the people you help and what are the problems you solve for them, and then build a proven track record of being able to solve those problems.
In simple mass marketing, that is, if you keep showing up, but last time I read from you, it was valuable. And the time before that I read from you, it was valuable. And the time before that it was valuable. There's a chance. The next time something comes in, I decide it's valuable before I read it. That's just habits, breeding behavior.
So you could be doing that. I think more than that, though, is you can work on how your offline reputation affects your online authority. The quickest and easiest way to be able to accelerate that is friend to friend is, if you can be a friend of somebody who already has online authority or inbox authority in that person's life, You get the side door access.
Everybody's trying to get through the front door. The front door is well guided. The back door is sneaky. The side door, nobody gives any thought to, but the side door access into relationships is often the fastest and the easiest door to get through. If you're prepared to do some work before the work. So if you're looking to grow authority, I'll be looking at who holds the key to the side door.
How do I get to add value to that person? So that when I show up, it's friend to friend. And the same would be true on referrals. Like I don't want the referral. Because if somebody gives me the referral, i. e. the name and the number too quickly, well, I just swapped a meaningful introduction for a lead. I'd be better to stay in that messy space for a little and wait for the introduction to be able to present itself.
And I'm working a speaking gig right now. It came up today with a little company called Beachbody. And they've been on my radar for about five, six years. And for years, people have said, like, why don't I just give you the number of the person that is involved in the booking of events there? And then you can call her and like, tell her how awesome you'll be at the event.
I'm like, that's not that helpful to me. What I need is I need to grow authority all the way around this so that what happens is my inbox pings in the other direction. And it's being patient enough to orchestrate that dance that when you're looking to win big opportunities, you want the opportunities to arrive with the right level of authority attached to it, like friend of friend introduction, huge weight and body of work that means that the resume adds up.
So I'd view it like, if you're going to a job interview to get your dream job, you don't want the interview. You want the interview when you've done enough to mean that your resume meets the opportunity. So that when you get the interview, you've got a fair chance of getting the job, get the interview too early, guaranteed failure.
So that's what I'd be working on for inbox authority is where can the message meet the moment? And what you can do is you can work on all of your credibility over here before you show up and ask, and. We did an Instagram live with Carlos, who you mentioned earlier and talked about all the creatives that are just blowing up people's inboxes by offering to do free video services for people.
I get maybe 30 requests a day from video editors telling me that what they can do is turn me into the next viral sensation all by re editing our existing videos. How does one differentiate when everybody is making the exact same offer? Well, what you choose to do is ignore all of them. Unless there's a friend to friend introduction.
So why not do the work to find out who the friend to friend is? Do the work to name drop somebody whose name you know matters, not just an ego name that you're looking to flex upon, and watch how in a sea of sameness, your authority gets amplified enough for you to have visibility and credibility and authenticity.
Now I want to check your availability. These are the four things we should always be looking at work when we're trying to build a business is visibility, but you want to be seen to be doing the stuff you want to be seen to doing not seem to be doing the wrong stuff. Credibility is have you done this before?
Have you done it recently? Have you done it for someone like me? And can you prove it? Authenticity is, do you really care enough about the problem that you're saying that you're here to solve? Or are you only doing it because you're being paid? Like you wouldn't believe the number of speakers that speak about disruption that when our industry got disrupted in 2020, lost their marbles and had no idea how to be able to operate.
I'm like, you realize this is your time to shine. Like this was your moment. I meet sales and marketing speakers struggling to close deals and generate leads. I'm like, are you sure? And they're like, yeah, yeah. They're like, what do you think I should do? I'm like, I've got a book you should read. They're like, what is it?
I'm like, you wrote it. Like, go read the book you wrote and do some of that stuff and, and put it into practice. That's what I mean by authenticity is you've got to care enough to eat your own dog food. Which is why when I see creators telling me that. All I need to do is to be able to re edit my videos more like they have the skills to do.
And you flick through to their Instagram profile with, you know, six posts and 117 followers. And, you know, the last video they edited, it looks like if I did it blind and drunk, I'd have probably done a better job. You're like, you're missing authenticity here. Only then do I care about your availability.
So if you're growing your stock, grow your visibility. But being seen alongside the right people, grow your credibility by working on your future bio to prove that what you're inviting somebody to give you consideration before you've done it before you've done it recently, and you've done it for someone like them.
And then your authenticity is caring about the problem that you commit to solve, even when you're not being paid. And that's what I see you do very well from the outside world is people are showing up in your comments and you're raining like high value positive advice on them that are going to help them achieve the obstacle.
You're not like, oh, through this payment gateway and in this course, and once you pay me blank, only then do I tell you the secret. You're like, here it is. Here it is. And that's why your stock grows because people see you caring about the thing you say you care about, all these things lead to trust.
Chris Do: That's it. I mean, the way you answered that question and tied it back to the magic word is, is beautiful. It's a thing of art. They see you weave those things together.
Phil M. Jones: I do know my work.
Chris Do: Well done there, Phil M. Jones. Well done. Well played. People underestimate that. I don't know how to say this, but like, the small stuff, the big stuff becomes much easier. And everybody just wants to jump right to that thing where they can get what they want, but they haven't done the work. And this takes you back to your childhood, just take the next step, and the next step, raise the bar, and then what's next, and what's next, and you just keep doing that.
Phil M. Jones: When you've done the work, when things go wrong, you know how to get out of it. When you haven't done the work, when things go wrong, you go back to square one. And then you call yourself a failure and the journey backwards to where the point you got to is too distant. You want the reps, right? Is you want the scars and the experience, and you want to have received those scars and experience in the arena where the judgment you received for it was in line with the money you were being paid.
Like if somebody wants to be a $20,000 website designer. They can be, but if they're currently at zero and they're doing websites for free, the worst thing that could happen is they could get commissioned to do a $20,000 website because they don't know what is expected within the value of somebody who's spending that kind of money.
They don't understand what that person is looking to be able to achieve typically. So the journey is, and how much time you want to spend there is up to you, but you should be brilliant at what you do for nothing. Then brilliant for 250 bucks, then brilliant for 500, then brilliant for 1, 000, then brilliant for 2, 500, then brilliant for 5, then brilliant for 7, 500, then 10, then 12, 5, then 15, then 20, knowing that you can over deliver every single one of those levels. And that's where confidence comes from in time, is because you've played all the levels, and then you both understand what's valuable to them, but also you understand your own value. Which is what allows you to be able to set boundaries in client relationships.
Chris Do: I'm going to ask you another question. Because people ask me this, I don't have a good answer, so I'm going to ask you. You have an incredible ability to phrase things, to package the information, to wrap it so that people can understand it. If somebody, aspires to be able to speak with such clarity and potency. What are things that they can do to increase their communication skills? That's a difficult question. Answer it in which way you want.
Phil M. Jones: I'm going to rephrase the question because I get asked similar versions of this from either people that have seen me speak or I've read the book, et cetera. And then what I believe that they're asking is I believe they're asking, how do I practice?
How do I practice this in order to be able to elevate my performance? And the reason I rephrase it that way is, is people come to me and they say, how do I master these skills? And my response is typically, you can't, you cannot master the skills. You can only choose to practice just like meditation or yoga or any of those other softer art forms is you can make an commitment to practice so that you can act with more intention to start by saying you're committing to practice.
Now, what does practice look like? Practice looks two ways. One way you can look at it and say, well, I'm going to define an overindexing moment that I'm looking to get better at. Just one moment and one moment alone. And that could be as simple as I'm preparing for a speech on Thursday that looks like blank.
So I'm going to take that moment and I'm going to run any version of new skills through that one moment. And the level of specificity and precision around that allows me to elevate my practice. That could be taking the book exactly what to say and rewriting an example of every sequence of words to support me in that moment and that moment only.
So I'm stretching muscle memory. So pick a moment. Run the book top to bottom for you, crafting and producing your own examples to support that one moment. That could be a email you're choosing to craft. That could be the moment that you have as a recurring moment, which is I keep finding myself in sales conversations and where I get to the point where we're going to talk about price, I crumble.
So let's take the price moment, positioning your price moment and take the book from the beginning and say, well, like, how am I going to craft myself? And I'm not sure if it's for you, by example, and most people, example, et cetera, that can give me confidence in pricing discussions, because now what I've not got is a perfect pricing discussion.
I got 23 tools that can help me when I'm having pricing discussions. That is why people who get into a fighting arena aren't concerned about getting hit with the first punch because they got moves, they got tools. They don't have a, oh, I had one game plan. And when that game plan gets off, I'm in trouble.
They go move to plan B, C, D, F, and G. So moment and all the words, the other practice that you can bring to this is you can pick any sequence of the words and decide to intentionally practice it to an obnoxious level at a 24 hour period. So if you take the sequence of magic words, the words, most people will decide.
For example, it's most people Monday. And on Monday, you're going to utilize the words, most people in context, as much as humanly possible when you're at Starbucks, when you're speaking to your kids, when you're communicating with a vendor over the phone in every email that you craft on that given day, you're going to position it into text messages with your spouse or your buddies, and you're going to get a hundred, 200, 300, 500 at bats without one sequence of words in one day and watch how it stretches your performance. And then that will never stretch back. Just like an elastic band never goes back to where it was when it gets pulled enough. So those would be my echoes for practice.
Behind that you've got to think about your debrief. How do you debrief important moments to put you on this relentless quest for better? And most of us are very bad at debriefing ourselves on anything because we are mean, cruel, horrible people to ourselves. We jump straight to the things we did wrong, we make the things we did wrong worse than they were in reality, and we wonder how we're going to move forward.
Based on the fact we've just destroyed and self sabotaged our own potential. So I built a model for how we can talk to ourselves more effectively following an event that means your debrief is more constructive. And it's a model I call LBs and NTs. And LB stands for Like Best. Coming out of a major conversation, a major interaction, a recurring moment.
What I like best about how I showed up on my sales calls today. You're not allowed to move on from this until you finish the list. Well, I was on time. I was professional. The PowerPoint looked good. I mean, the proposals were straight. The camera was good. The background was tidy. Like I don't mind what it is.
You just got to exhaust the list of LBs. Only once you've exhausted the list of LBs do you jump to the second list, and the second list is NTs. What NT stands for is next time. What am I going to do different next time? And then write that list. And the difference that happens when you do LBs and NTs, as opposed to what did I do right and what did I do wrong, instead of taking a photograph of the past, you build a playbook for the future.
And you crafted it yourself, which means you believe it. Which then also means you're excited to play again. And the only way you find confidence in conversation is through experience. So what I'm looking to try to do is to accelerate experience. That's all. Accelerate experience with intention, repetition with intention. That's, what's going to get us to where we need to be. So that would be. My long answer to your short question.
Chris Do: This will segue to the other question and it's tied to the answer you give. I think it's just like one conversation really and there's like little threads that appear. You mentioned something about public speaking and Beachbody, a company I'm familiar with. And I heard something from our mutual friend, Neil. And you gave a presentation to his mastermind, and you're going to be speaking at the Forward event. And he said, Phil's special. He goes into the crowd, he works the crowd, he's done things that I've not seen people do in a meaningful way. Tell us a little bit about What you're doing and how you view public speaking, and if you can unpack any of the lessons learned as a professional public speaker, I'd appreciate it as an aspiring public speaker myself.
Phil M. Jones: You're more than an aspiring public speaker. But I think we're all aspiring to be better, right? That's the route that we're at. There's a few things. One is it's not a speech to an audience. It's a One on one conversation with 3, 500 people that just happens to be happening at the exact same time, like this isn't you to a block of 3, 500 people, this is you with 3, 500 invisible threads to everybody who's in that space and that number could be 12, it could be 1, 200, it could be 3, 500, it could be 247.
But people in that room are not a group, they're individuals. There's also a level of responsibility that comes to delivering a professional presentation that many people overlook. If I'm speaking to 3, 500 people for an hour, I'm not responsible for my hour. I'm responsible for 3, 500 hours of productivity from some of the most successful people in an organization.
That's the moment that I decide that I'm in service of, not my speech 3, 500 hours of productivity from some of the most influential people on the planet. And that raises the bar, changes the stakes and puts you into a situation where you understand what winning really looks like. Once you've got that narrative, you can start to craft a speech that has a lot less to do with your PowerPoint presentation, remembering your lines and making sure that you land on the beats that you were supposed to within your timeframe.
It becomes a lot more aware of saying, well, what moment am I being asked to serve? So if we use Neil's event as a narrative, I went to the event the night before to get a vibe on what people were struggling with at that period of time. I didn't go to hang out. I got to be able to learn with some side one on one conversations.
What were the front of mind? obstacles and puzzles that a large proportion in that room were looking to overcome. This didn't change a huge deal about my speech, it just changed a huge deal about the tone, the timing, how I could meet them where they're at, and maybe craft three, four, five examples slightly differently.
What else that then would almost always happen is, I was The penultimate speaker. So I was after lunch, heavy content fueled morning with 90 minutes in what many speakers would view to be the graveyard shift, right? They're full up on content. Like this is the third leg of the four by 400 on a big race day is the one that doesn't get the glory, but it's the leg that you could win or lose the race by.
Right. It's, it is, there's a lot that can happen here that if you don't understand your role and your responsibility, so it's a heavy lift in that to make that heavy lift relevant where you stay and listen to everything that's laid down before you. Because now, what happened prior isn't an anchor, it's a trampoline.
It isn't something that weighs you down, it's something that can bounce you forward if you have the knowledge and skill set to be able to bounce off of it. Because what you can do is you can now borrow the energy that was created by other speakers prior just with some subtle, meaningful callbacks. The reason in that environment the choice was to then on purpose walk the floor is People miss the fact that most audience members don't listen with their ears, they listen with their eyes.
When lethargy exists in an audience, the easiest place for them to be able to zone out first is eyes. What they can then do is just go into a meditative state that they were there but they weren't really there. You drop your eye level to their eye level, you raise the intensity as to how you're connecting eyeball to eyeball, you watch how the energy and the intention in the room now carries because people have nowhere to hide.
You work an audience on purpose to say that nobody knows where I might go next. You drive a nervous energy through the participants because they are all worried that they might get picked on, and by picked on I mean included, therefore they don't want to miss anything because they don't want to appear stupid at any point having missed something that's important.
These are intentional decisions. What you craft is humor into it. That is often a callback from something that happened in the morning or a humorous moment that came because of an awareness and our understanding that was something unique to their industry. And you throw it away. Like it's nothing, even though, you know, it was everything.
And why are you doing that? Cause you're hitting the, show me that, you know, me, but inside that audience environment, they're like, oh dang, he gets us. Therefore he ain't lying. Therefore, trust is elevated. And what you do when you're crafting a presentation of that nature is you view it like you're producing a rock concert.
You cannot produce a rock concert for 90 minutes where everything is, you know, the loudest roaring banger of a song again and again and again. The reason The Highs existed a concert is because also they crafted time for some lows and some relaxation and some insight and some expression and so much more that comes with it.
So you then craft your content accordingly and just like a rock concert, you open strong and you finish strong. That way, you know that you're going to get their attention and you're going to leave them with a meaningful takeaway. So you plan your bookends, you plan your checkpoints in between and the way you structure a presentation or certainly the way that I would think about it is you tell a story, you make a point, you make a point, you tell a story, you tell a story, you make a point, you make a point, you tell a story, you tell a story, you make a point, you make a point, you tell a story.
So you bought your points and you bought your stories. That's how you can make music. What most people do is, they tell a story, they make a point, they tell a story, they make a point, they tell a story, they make a point, it becomes predictable. And they make their stories and their points the same predictable length.
A point could be 17 seconds, a point could be 17 minutes. A story could be 30 second antidote, a story could be a 6 minute segue. But you, in purpose, play with the track length. And now what you've got is you've got people listening to a melody of a speech that is a well orchestrated playlist. So just mix all that stuff together and call it a speech.
Chris Do: So you have the entry and the exit. You have the EPs are in between. How much of that do you build into it that I know here I can play and I know that there's flexibility in there and we're okay with going off the cuff?
Phil M. Jones: And you're not going off the cuff. You're giving yourself freedom to play. And I would actively always leave 10 to 15 percent of every presentation where I'm trialing something new for the first time.
And that could be as simple as the way I'm going to make a point that I've known that I've made in the past. Because actually if you're trialing something new with something you've done a thousand times before, you've got a benchmark, a data point to be able to reference it against. So for example, there are points that I've made with a slide, but then I'd scrap the slide and I'd use a prop and I'd pull a chair from the audience and use the chair from the audience as the prop to make the point.
There's times when I've taken that chair and I've put it up on stage to make a point. But there's also times, like in a more intimate environment, that the chair I've picked is the one lonely chair in the middle of the room. And I've sat alongside somebody whilst we've created that moment. There's points where we've created moments of intimacy up on a stage.
There's points where you'll look at it and you'll go, Well, actually, I've got iMAG in the room today. If I go take a 25 gift card to the iMAG operator and let him know the play that I'm trying to run, there's a chance this iMAG, Operator can deliver something mesmerizing for this audience in this period just by capturing a close up of a one on one intervention with an audience.
But now the crowd are all seeing it on the big screen, because it doesn't matter what's happening down here at the moment, it's like what's happening up there on the visual is, you're always putting something in that you're trying for the first time, always. But if I'm writing a speech, and I write every single one of my speeches, and if people ever follow me on Instagram, I'll share these on occasion, is, it's just a messy mind map, like I take a typical journal size, I flip it on its side, it, The lines go this way.
I go across the lines. I do a little mind map bubbles. It looks like a car crash of a mess of me crafting a speech, but what I'm doing is I'm writing points and transitions. If I write Usain, I know I'm going to tell the story of when I interviewed Usain Bolt, but I could tell that story this long, this long, or this long, I got a 32nd version of that, a three minute version of that, a 15 minute version of that exact same story, but the exact same point, this gives me utility.
Because now what I can do is I can live edit a speech that if something does get segued and I still want to make the call point that I wanted to make to be able to land the plane, but what I do is I go, right, 32nd version, 32nd version, 32nd version. I just bought myself 12 minutes back still in flow so I could take the same slide deck and deliver a hundred different speeches with it.
So it's that utility that says I have baked in versatility. I have a plan, but I have a plan. B C D E F G H I J K. So if something happens in a moment and I have a moment of influence or, or impact where there's a choice that comes up is like, oh, do you stick to the plan or do you follow the clue? I can choose to follow the clue and know that I've got resource already baked in that can get me back on track.
And I think that's what happens when you invest in experience. You can have the bravery and the freedom of somebody looking to be able to chase a moment because it presented itself. And this exists in the world of acting. People talk about high caliber actors and, you know, the moments of brilliance that have been recorded.
And they're like, that wasn't even written into the script. The actor just did that. They went, they went off the cuff. They didn't go off the cuff. They went off script. They knew the script so well. They knew the intention of the director so well. They knew the understanding that was hoping to be achieved so well that when that moment presented themselves, they had a feeling that they could try something different.
That would be even better than what was written. So they had the confidence to give it a shot. That's what can happen when you speak. That's what can happen in sales conversations. Once you've got the ability to say. I'm okay if this doesn't go the way I'm intended because I know how to get it back on track.
Chris Do: Once again, you tied it back to exactly what to say. Beautifully done. I, for one, am really excited about speaking, but I'm more excited about seeing you do your thing because I love to see other master practitioners do their craft because there's so much to learn. And it's the benefit of just not hearing the information, but seeing the process and how you work with the material and where you play. And I'm looking forward to it.
Phil M. Jones: And loving that there's no one way to do it, right? But you can be inspired and influenced by it. And Oasis didn't copy the Beatles. Oasis were inspired by the Beatles, and we see it so much in our industry that people don't understand the difference between being inspired by other people and copying other people.
And the trouble is when somebody copies somebody else they don't have what it takes when that gets tested. But when somebody's inspired by somebody else, that's back to the collaboration that we were taking from, uh, talking about earlier where the two plus two can equal five. Like that becomes a multiplier.
That becomes something that is excessive and in the right ways. And like, none of us have unique ideas. Every idea, belief, skillset, wonder that you, I, and everybody else listening has in their repertoire right now, it's not yours. We've just got our take on a number of things that have been learned and experienced by others that we've molded and, you know, thrown together that we had to create our unique flavor. But it isn't a new idea, it's just a new take on existing ideas based on your knowledge of different circumstances and different environments. So we're all the sum of some parts that came before us.
Chris Do: Well, Phil. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show. I've been talking to Phil M. Jones. He wrote the book, Exactly What To Say. I believe there are a multitude of versions of this, but the, the one that you can buy that's in the public domain, as he says, is for real estate professionals.
Phil M. Jones: And the OG version as well. So the OG orange version. So yeah, search Exactly What To Say. Amazon, anywhere else you find books, you can grab it. It is also the most listened to non fiction audio book.
So if you like to hear it in spoken word, then come grab it on audible. And, um, it's one of those books that people like to listen to on repeat. And I think that's why it gets those accolades is because it has a seven and a half, eight times. Listen, I don't know about you. I haven't listened to many books, eight times.
Chris Do: Is a book or an audio book that you do need to play back several times. The concepts are simple but powerful. Phil talks about the 23 magical words that tap into someone's subconscious. And he does it in a way, I think, as a creative introvert myself, that you too can be more intentional in the words that you choose to achieve the results that you want.
And that's kind of all why we're existing here. We want to be able to help and serve people. And we can't do that if we get in our own way. So Phil, thank you very much. If people want to find out more about you, where can they go? Where should we direct them?
Phil M. Jones: philmjones.com is me. exactlywhattosay.com is the movement that we've created together. And if people just want to continue the conversation, then come find me on Instagram. It's at PhilMJonesUK. Let me know that you heard this conversation here with Chris, and let's see if we can pick up the conversation there in the DMs.
Chris Do: There's a handful of people who listen to this podcast. So everybody, if you're unfamiliar with Phil, once again, I can't recommend his book enough, do yourself a favor. It's not even a lot of money. I don't know what the price of the book is, but it's, it's value packed, it's value packed. And you guys know, every time I drop a book and I am saying this so emphatically, you need to get the book, you need to read it. And more importantly, you need to apply it and probably reread it and reapply and just keep doing it.
And you're going to see your life change. There is a testimonial and inside the book written by Jeffrey. He says, abracadabra, you are a millionaire. This is what will happen if you follow the advice from Phil Jones in this book, read it more than once. And it means even more. I mean, that's a pretty brilliant way to begin that, that he is the chairman of C Suite Network, primetime TV and podcast host. Phil, thanks very much for being our guest.
Phil M. Jones: Huge pleasure. Thanks again for having me. This is Phil M Jones, and you are listening to The Futur.
The Futur: Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get new insightful episodes from us every week. The Futur Podcast is hosted by Chris Do and produced and edited by Rich Cardona Media. Thank you to Adam Sanborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts.
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