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    COMMUNICATION
    Podcast 13 min read

    Stop Calling Yourself a Thought Leader (Do THIS First)

    with Brian Miller

    Chris Do and Brian Miller examine how experts earn authority through clear positions and persuasive communication.

    Chris Do

    Chris Do

    Founder, The Futur™ · June 26, 2025

    A title cannot do the work

    Expertise does not automatically make someone worth listening to. Neither does a microphone. Brian Miller, a former professional magician who became a speaker on human connection and built a message design firm for experts, works at the intersection of those two failures.

    His clients know their subjects. The difficulty is making that knowledge intelligible, relevant, and persuasive to people who do not share their background. His perspective matters because he approaches communication from both sides: the performer who must earn attention and the message designer who must help expertise survive translation.

    In conversation with Chris Do, Miller rejects the idea that public authority begins with a self-appointed label. Recognition belongs to the audience. The professional’s responsibility is to produce the work that makes recognition reasonable.

    That distinction sounds modest. Its implications are not.

    A person can possess deep expertise without communicating it effectively. Another can command a stage without having much expertise to communicate. Treating these abilities as interchangeable rewards polish where substance is needed and leaves valuable knowledge trapped with people who cannot explain it.

    Miller’s business serves experts who want to speak, rather than speakers looking for something to say. The difference places the burden on translation, not performance alone. Better delivery cannot compensate for an unclear idea, and a strong idea cannot assume an audience will patiently decode it.

    Before addressing influence, Miller separates it from personal branding. His definition of a personal brand centers on the promises a person makes and the expectations that person creates. The test is whether those promises are fulfilled and those expectations met.

    That makes a brand observable rather than ornamental. It exists in repeated interactions, whether someone manages it deliberately or leaves it to chance. Consistency establishes what other people can expect, but consistency alone does not establish intellectual direction.

    The distinction gives the broader conversation around personal branding a useful boundary: becoming recognizable and becoming worth following are related projects, not identical accomplishments.

    Do’s skepticism begins with the grandiosity of the label. Miller’s objection is more operational. A title says nothing about the behaviors that would justify it.

    His alternative is specific: make assertions, make judgments, and make predictions, publicly and consistently. Each activity exposes something different to scrutiny. Together, they turn an impressive professional description into a record that other people can inspect.

    This is not a demand for constant commentary. Miller is describing the responsibility that comes with asking others to trust a person’s thinking. An audience needs to see what that person believes, how that person evaluates competing ideas, and where that reasoning leads.

    The framework also removes a convenient hiding place. Publishing agreeable observations is not the same as taking responsibility for a position. Repeating familiar advice can demonstrate fluency without revealing any independent judgment.

    For experts accustomed to being respected inside their field, this creates an uncomfortable transition. Their knowledge no longer speaks for itself. It must become a clear claim, addressed to a particular audience, with enough substance that someone else can question it.

    Authority begins where the description ends.

    A position has to survive disagreement

    The first obstacle is often not a shortage of knowledge. It is the reluctance to say anything without surrounding it with qualifications.

    Miller recognizes the value of nuance. His concern is what happens when hedging becomes the dominant signal. An audience cannot follow a position it cannot identify, and expertise becomes difficult to assess when every claim retreats before anyone challenges it.

    An assertion, in his framework, makes a belief visible. His own work rests on the conviction that everyone deserves to feel heard, understood, and valued. That statement tells prospective clients what kind of work he wants to do and what kind of organizational culture he supports.

    Do tests the limit of that approach. Many people endorse fairness, justice, and other broadly accepted values. Simply announcing agreement with a popular principle does not necessarily contribute anything useful.

    Miller accepts the challenge without making controversy a requirement. The value of a statement depends partly on where it lands. What sounds obvious inside one community can expose a serious disagreement inside another.

    His account of client selection illustrates the distinction. Organizations that reject the premise of his work tend not to hire him. The organizations that approach him often already value connection and want another perspective on strengthening it.

    A clear position does not merely attract attention. It helps the wrong audience leave.

    Do pushes for statements with enough definition to distinguish the speaker from everyone else. Miller emphasizes that even familiar values become useful when stated directly and applied consistently. Their positions meet at a practical standard: the audience should be able to tell what the speaker stands for.

    The next requirement is judgment. Miller does not mean contempt for people. He means discernment about ideas, actions, and intentions, grounded in the speaker’s experience.

    That work includes evaluating:

    • What has been overlooked.
    • What has been overblown.
    • What deserves more attention.
    • What a particular professional perspective reveals.

    This is where expertise becomes useful to someone facing competing options. Information supplies possibilities. Discernment helps people understand their relative importance.

    The distinction also changes the purpose of publishing. An expert is not simply reporting that a conversation exists. The expert is contributing an assessment that others can use, inspect, or reject.

    Fear of rejection makes that harder. Do identifies the pressure to collect approval: likes, encouraging comments, and reassurance from the audience. A professional who depends on those signals can become increasingly unwilling to say anything that threatens them.

    But disagreement is not automatically evidence of failure. As a message travels beyond an established community, it reaches people who do not share the assumptions that made it comfortable inside that community. The related problem of receiving criticism appears in Dealing With Negative Feedback.

    Miller resists treating every disagreement as hostility. Genuine engagement and an attack can look similar in a comment thread, especially when the person disagreeing communicates poorly. Dismissing both as hatred protects the speaker from precisely the scrutiny that can improve an idea.

    The task is not to manufacture enemies. It is to make a position clear enough that agreement and disagreement mean something.

    The forecast is a test of the thinker

    A prediction adds a different kind of exposure. Assertions reveal beliefs. Judgments reveal standards. Predictions reveal whether those beliefs and standards help someone anticipate what happens next.

    For Miller, the fear surrounding predictions usually reduces to the possibility of being wrong in public. His response is to treat that possibility as part of the work rather than a reason to avoid it.

    He proposes a demanding standard: genuine expertise should produce a record that is more right than wrong, with meaningful accuracy when the predictions succeed. He presents this as an expectation of expertise, not a guarantee that specialists can eliminate uncertainty.

    The useful part of the argument is its accountability. A prediction leaves something behind that can be compared with events. It gives an audience evidence beyond the speaker’s confidence at the moment of delivery.

    When a forecast proves accurate, Miller encourages experts to return to it publicly. The original statement establishes that the insight existed before the outcome became obvious. Revisiting it makes the record visible rather than expecting the audience to remember.

    The more revealing instruction concerns failure.

    Miller does not recommend deleting an unsuccessful prediction. He recommends sharing it again and examining the reasoning that produced it. The subject of the examination is the idea, not the speaker’s worth as a person.

    That distinction prevents accountability from collapsing into self-punishment. A useful correction explains the error. It does not simply perform embarrassment and move on.

    The review can address several questions without becoming an exercise in excuse-making:

    • Which part of the prediction was wrong?
    • What information or development was missed?
    • Which part of the original assessment still holds?
    • How does the revised understanding change the next prediction?

    Do recognizes the difference between this approach and selectively preserving only successful calls. A public record edited to remove every error is not a record of thinking. It is a presentation of infallibility.

    Miller sees another benefit in leaving the reasoning visible. Audiences can observe how an expert works through a problem rather than receiving only the finished answer.

    He describes bringing a content distribution specialist into a session with his clients. What impressed him was not merely the information being delivered. It was watching the specialist move quickly through possibilities, disagree with an initial thought, and continue toward a better one.

    The revision did not diminish the specialist’s authority in Miller’s eyes. It made the depth of that authority easier to see.

    This is a different model of confidence from the polished certainty often associated with professional speaking. Confidence does not require defending every previous statement. It requires enough command of the subject to explain why an earlier statement needs revision.

    The model also imposes discipline on what gets published. Predictions cannot function solely as provocative content if the speaker intends to revisit them honestly. Their value depends on the quality of the reasoning and the willingness to remain accountable to the result.

    Public correction becomes part of the contribution. An audience learns not only what an expert currently believes, but how that expert responds when reality supplies a better argument.

    The room has to be worth reaching

    Public thinking still requires a public. Do presses this point when the conversation turns to audience size: “It's hard to be a leader of one.”

    His concern is the expert who takes every intellectual risk inside a protected circle. Beliefs, judgments, and predictions can circulate among sympathetic peers without ever reaching the people whose decisions they are intended to influence.

    Miller agrees with the need for reach, but qualifies its value. More people is not always the same as more of the right people. A large audience can be commercially irrelevant, while a small group can sustain meaningful work.

    He cites people he knows with large subscriber counts and little income, alongside people with small email lists and strong businesses. These are examples from his experience, not a formula connecting a particular audience size to a particular financial result.

    The distinction is purpose. An audience should be evaluated in relation to the work it makes possible, not merely the number displayed beside an account.

    Miller invokes the smallest viable audience, a concept he associates with Seth Godin. The emphasis is on finding the group necessary to support the work, then allowing that group to carry the ideas further. Smallest does not mean permanently small.

    Do’s concern and Miller’s qualification are compatible. Hiding inside a closed community limits influence. Pursuing indiscriminate exposure can make influence difficult to turn into anything useful.

    Audience understanding sits between those mistakes. The underlying editorial problem is the one named in Know your audience: communication has to be addressed to someone, not simply released toward everyone.

    That audience is not necessarily the group closest to the speaker. Miller warns that friends and family can be unusually difficult people to persuade because they already carry a fixed picture of the person speaking.

    A stranger encounters the present argument. A family member can encounter the argument through years of remembered mistakes, immature behavior, and outdated assumptions. Do connects that resistance to personal branding: the existing frame has not necessarily caught up with the person.

    For Miller, the practical alternative is to begin with people who can benefit from the idea, rather than defaulting to people who already know its author.

    His years in magic sharpened that distinction. Approaching strangers meant interrupting a conversation they were already enjoying and earning enough attention to make the interruption welcome.

    The audience owed him nothing.

    That experience supplies a tougher standard than simply being noticed. A performance had to justify the attention it took. The same standard applies when an expert asks a room to stop working and listen.

    Miller also carries forward a lesson from a magic mentor: assume the audience is intelligent. Weak performance depends on people overlooking obvious problems. Strong performance anticipates the explanation already forming in their minds.

    For a speaker, this means resistance is not merely an obstacle to overpower. It is information about what the audience already believes. A message becomes stronger when it addresses that thinking instead of pretending the room arrived empty.

    Reach creates the opportunity. Respect for the audience determines what happens next.

    The message needs more than a story

    The practical problem now becomes structural. An expert has something to say and an audience worth reaching. The remaining question is how to build communication that makes the idea relevant, establishes credibility, and gives people a reason to adopt it.

    Miller’s answer is the core message triad. He treats core messaging as a practice that can support a keynote, presentation, website, or ordinary professional conversation, rather than as a technique reserved for the stage.

    The triad contains three pieces:

    • The filter: a sentence establishing what the expert does, who it serves, and why it matters.
    • The story hook: a real story demonstrating understanding of the audience and authority to help.
    • The argument: a rational sequence that moves the audience from its current position toward a different one.

    Each piece answers a different concern. The filter establishes relevance. The story hook explains why this person deserves attention. The argument supplies a reason to change how the audience thinks.

    Miller’s own filter describes working with organizations and educators to build connected cultures where people feel heard, understood, and valued. It defines the audience, the work, and the intended effect.

    Its usefulness is internal as well as external. When preparing a speech or talking with a prospect, Miller can test whether a point directly supports that statement. If the connection is not immediate and obvious, the point takes the conversation off message.

    A filter is therefore more than a polished introduction. It is a constraint on what belongs.

    The story hook does a different job. Miller asks for a literal story, not a metaphor, that demonstrates both familiarity with the problem and qualification to help address it. Either element on its own leaves the audience with an unresolved concern.

    His example is a doctor treating shoulder pain. If the doctor responds only by describing an equally painful shoulder, the patient receives recognition but no evidence of help. Shared experience can support connection while leaving competence entirely unproven.

    “Authority matters,” Miller says.

    The point is not to strip empathy out of communication. It is to stop confusing empathy with a complete case for trust. Recognizing someone’s difficulty and being able to help with it are separate claims.

    This places a useful condition on the promise explored in Storytelling Is A Superpower. In Miller’s model, an engaging story must still do a specific job inside the larger message.

    He argues that speakers frequently overestimate what emotional engagement can accomplish alone. A listener can feel understood, appreciate a story, and still lack a rational basis for adopting the idea attached to it.

    The argument supplies that missing connection. It does not replace the story. It gives the audience a way to explain the decision beyond the feeling the story produced.

    Miller also insists that these pieces answer the audience’s questions in the order they arise. A brilliant explanation delivered before relevance or credibility has been established can fail because it solves the wrong communication problem at that moment.

    His warning is concise: “The right ideas in the wrong order are the wrong ideas.”

    Earn the reveal before delivering it

    Miller’s argument framework makes the importance of order concrete. It proceeds through premise, status quo, paradigm shift, success. The sequence asks the speaker to begin where the audience already stands, rather than where the expert wants it to arrive.

    The premise establishes shared ground: something the audience wants, fears, struggles with, or already believes. That agreement provides a foundation for the rest of the argument.

    The status quo examines how people usually attempt to solve the problem and why those attempts fall short. The paradigm shift then introduces a different way of understanding the problem. Miller names success as the final stage without developing it as extensively as the preceding steps.

    The most important omission, in his experience, is the status quo. Speakers often move directly from a recognizable problem to their preferred answer. That leaves the audience silently comparing the proposal with alternatives the speaker has never addressed.

    The proposal can sound difficult, unnecessary, or less appealing than something already familiar. Until those competing explanations receive attention, the audience is not fully available for the new one.

    A card trick makes the mechanism visible.

    If a spectator selects the seven of diamonds and the magician produces it from a pocket, the spectator can explain the result with a duplicate card. The effect may surprise, but the explanation contains it.

    The magician therefore changes the conditions before the reveal:

    • The spectator signs the card, making a simple duplicate explanation inadequate.
    • The card returns to the deck, which the spectator shuffles.
    • The magician shows empty hands before reaching into the pocket.
    • The signed card appears after those alternative explanations have been addressed.

    Each action anticipates a thought. The spectator does not need to voice the objection for the performer to take it seriously.

    Do connects this to handling objections in sales. Miller’s broader lesson is that an audience cannot fully consider a new explanation while relying on an old one the speaker has ignored. The argument must establish why a different approach is needed.

    That requires an honest account of the alternatives, not merely a more dramatic introduction to the preferred answer. In Miller’s formulation, existing approaches can fail outright or work less well than they should. The distinction allows critique without pretending every previous attempt was worthless.

    He favors a paradigm shift over a narrow tactic because a different way of seeing a problem can travel across industries. A platform-specific tactic can become obsolete when its conditions change. The larger perspective can continue guiding decisions even as particular actions change.

    The final lesson from magic concerns attention. Miller prefers direction to misdirection: giving people something genuinely interesting to notice rather than conspicuously trying to conceal something else. A story’s setup must earn attention before its transformation can land.

    For the expert preparing to speak, the resulting standard is practical. Establish relevance. Demonstrate understanding and competence. Examine the audience’s existing answers before asking it to accept another one.

    A title cannot perform any of those tasks. The next claim, story, and argument have to carry the weight themselves.

    Stop announcing authority. Make the next idea worth following.

    TRANSCRIPT

    Best training ever for the world of business was being a magician. What you do, Brian, is you help people who are experts become speakers and there's a difference there. Hopefully to then to become a thought leader. Anybody speaking professionally needs one story that they can tell over and over and over again. Anytime somebody asks, that answers the question, why am I listening to you? My name is Brian Miller and you're listening to the future. I was listening to one of your episodes while I was cooking dinner. You were talking about thought leadership, and that's a topic that comes up a lot. And I was loving the episode the whole way. It was like 40 minutes into an episode, and everything had been great. And then you asked the guest a question about thought leadership, and they gave... a vague, nondescript answer like most people do when asked about thought leadership and it made me angry. Not really, but it just I just went, there's a better way to talk about this. And it's one of my little pet peeves. And so I reached out to you to say, hey, would you like to talk about thought leadership in a way that's not fluffy and vague? Yes, I would. And I have to admit to you, I've had problems with that term for a long time. It seems very self-important. I mean, there's two words in there that are like, can't you just deal with one? Like I'm a thinker. I'm a leader. No, I'm a thought leader. Wow. That's a lot. Okay. So if you're just joining us, Brian, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your story? Yeah, sure. Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it. So Brian Miller, I am a former professional magician turned i'm not going to say thought leader turned uh speaker you can say it you can say no you can't because you can't say it about yourself that's the point other people can say it about you no so i'm i'm a speaker on human connection so i do corporate culture a lot of health care patient experience that that kind of stuff But then somewhere along the way, I started getting people asking me to help them with their own speaking engagements because I had given a TEDx talk that went mega viral. So I started helping people with TED talks and then eventually built a message design firm for experts who want to speak, not for speakers, but for experts. So basically, we help smart people speak. explain their big ideas to the rest of us. That's what we do. I think that's where diving deep into and spending the next hour or so talking about because we have friends that are experts. We have friends that are speakers. Sometimes they're not experts and some of our experts aren't speakers. So let's figure out where they overlap. But let's start with the definition. How do we define thought leadership that's not fluffy? Thought leadership, I wish we had a better term, I think just like you do. I think many people wish we had a better term for that. But as you noted, expert is not the same thing. And personal brand is not the same thing. Personal brands, thought leadership, They're related, they intertwine, but they're not the same thing. We can do personal branding real quick. I can give you my vantage on that real quick to distinguish it from thought leadership, because I know you talk about personal branding a lot. I do. So for me, a personal brand, everybody has one, whether you like it or not. Obviously, there's nothing you can do to not have one. The question is, are you intentional about it or not? Right. And for me, a personal brand is the promises you make and the expectations you create. That's it. Really simple, really easy. Promises you make and the expectations you create. Do you make promises and fulfill them? Do you create expectations and live up to them? So we think of people with great personal brands. I don't know, Brene Brown. It doesn't matter if she's on X or making a LinkedIn post or on stage speaking or doing a TED Talk or on a podcast. You know it's her because there's promises she makes and she upholds them. There's expectations she creates. She lives up to them every time. So that's Brene Brown, right? So that's a personal brand. Not everybody who has a personal brand, which is everybody, is a thought leader. And thought leaders are, of course, people who pave the way. They lead with their thoughts. But I think of it very, very specifically. There are three things that you have to do to be a thought leader, and you have to do them publicly and consistently. First, you must make assertions. Second, you must make judgments. And third, you must make predictions, assertions, judgments, predictions publicly and consistently. So we can go into any of that, start anywhere you like if you want to dive in. That seems pretty clear. As I'm absorbing this, I'm going to map it to other things in my mind to see if it passed the test in terms of how I've been thinking about it and who I see. If my brain is kind of like grinding away at something else, that's because that's literally what I'm doing. Let's go through each one of these things. And OK, it seems pretty fair. You have to say something. That's an assertion, right? You have to have a point of view and you have to figure out what side of that fence you want to be on. So I think there's some judgment going on there. And then you kind of have to lead, I think, by forecasting what's going to happen. Right. So there we go. Let's break it down. Assertions. How do you want to talk about that? Yeah, so it's funny. All three of these things scare people. It's not like there's any, it's not like you go, oh, one of these things scares people more than others. I've worked with, you know, many of our own clients. The first time I pitched this to them, I go assertions, judgments, predictions. All three of those words make them go, it's very scary. So assertion is saying, this is true. I believe this, right? It's a statement of fact. And they usually come out as beliefs or values, right? So for me, in the space of human connection, as a speaker, I believe everyone deserves to feel heard, understood, and valued. That is just, I plant my flag in the ground and I go, I believe that. And instantly, you know a lot about me. You don't have to know me personally, you just know a lot about me, right? And so people get really People get really nervous to do this. What happens most of the time is they use hedging language. I think, maybe, sometimes, in certain circumstances. And nuance is important, obviously, in life and in discussion. But the problem with if you want to be a thought leader, if you want to lead the way, people are very nervous to follow someone who doesn't sound sure of themselves or sure of where they're going or sure of what they believe in. You got to just say the thing. You got to say it. There's a... reason that Malcolm Gladwell is famous and not the hundreds of scientists and researchers on which he has built his work, right? Because the scientists and researchers who have to do this, they have to say, this was true this one day for 12 people in this room while the moon was in retrograde. They have to, that's what science is. But you'll never hear of them. Nobody will ever read those papers. But Malcolm Gladwell reads all that stuff, puts it into a book, Probably 50% of it is wrong, if not more of it. Some cases, like he's on an apology tour right now for stuff he said in a book 20 years ago, the one that made him famous. But he starts the conversation in the culture. People still talking about 10,000 hours. It's been debunked a billion times. Doesn't matter. The idea has permeated the culture because he was wanting to go, I think this. He just made the assertion. Okay, let's unpack this because everybody has beliefs they believe to be true. But it's probably connected to the other two, which is they say things that are true and usually universally accepted to be true. So I want to see if there's a perspective on that. For example, they'll say things like, I believe in justice. I believe in fairness. I'm sure there's some people who don't believe that, but the vast majority of us already believe that. So is it a condition of your assertion that it needs to be something that not everybody believes to be true? Okay, so it's not a condition of it, but if you're only saying things that everybody believes and you haven't said anything, right? I mean, there's no point in only saying things. Even what I said, everyone deserves to feel heard, understood, and valued. Right. To me, people like me and you, you're like, well, obviously. I've got to tell you something. I work with a lot of executives who do not believe that this is true. I talk to a lot of organizations broken on purpose, right? Not by accident. So... You would think everyone believes this, but I think more often than... I mean, our worldviews are so shattered these days and so siloed that when you actually state it outright and you don't do the... You can get into nuance later. Yeah. Right. But first, lead the way, bring people in, engage. And if people debate with you, that's still good. You because that's that's leadership. That's bringing people into a conversation. So those people, those executives, those leaders that you're thinking about that might disagree with you, would they ever openly disagree with you? That's a great question. Would they ever openly disagree with me? So I'm at a point now, I think when people see the work I do in human connection, they think, well, you must work with terrible companies, people who need to bring in someone to talk about human connection. Right. And it's like, no, they self-select out. Yeah. So what happens is because I put my stake in the ground, the people who get on my discovery calls and talk about their events they have world-class cultures they're already the best of the best and what they're doing is bringing in someone like me to just share a different perspective on the thing they're already good at they already believe in but the reason they know that i can come in and do that is because i state outright the belief that they associate with so it does help us it's good it's a very kind of seth godin like not everybody's for you and that's okay right you need to be able to look people in the eye and just say I'm not for you. And this is one of the ways we do it. Yeah. Okay. It's interesting. Okay. So in my mind, I'm thinking an assertion is to just say something kind of boldly to not only say what we all believe, but to say something that's a little bit different than what we all believe. And that way it's like, wait a minute, you stand for that. That's kind of interesting. And then usually a fight ensues. And I, people, you know, I was on an interview yesterday and somebody's like, Chris, you're a very controversial person. You're polarizing. I'm like, I don't think I'm controversial at all. I don't think I'm polarizing. You couldn't tell from the comments because that's what they come at me for. I just believe what I believe and I'm not afraid to say it. And it turns out to be the things that people have issues with. Well, doesn't that happen at scale, though? Right. So if you're only talking, it happens more than more people. Right. I mean, I heard you. I was watching a video you just uploaded the other day at Adobe Max, whatever it was, and you were talking about the videos that initially went viral, the reels, and suddenly you're in front of 40 million people and those aren't all your people. So of course, once you get outside of your immediate community, you're going to get more pushback, but you will also find more more followers, more interested people. - Yeah, okay, so let's add that to the conversation to say that you can say things and the circle, the size of the circle of people who hear that message will also kind of determine how many people are disagreeing with you. Because first it's like friends, friends and family, and then friends of friends and family, and then it's not friends and then haters. And eventually you get there. Hopefully. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Hopefully. And I was a magician for ten years. And so haters just come with the territory. It was best training ever for the world of business was being a magician. It just, you know, you walk up to a group of people called strangers and you have to convince them to not only stop the conversation and the laughter that they're already having, fully focus on you, and then you have to lie to them and deceive them for a few minutes And walk away where they think, boy, I'm so glad he interrupted us and lied to me. That was so much fun. Right. So it's just like, yeah, haters, you know, I hesitate with the term haters because there's a big difference between people who are genuinely engaging with your ideas and have a different viewpoint. which is it's but it's hard to tell on the internet when all the comments look the same right right oh yeah like it's one of the problems yeah i've had my share so i can tell the difference yeah i know i know somebody who's like hey i want to have an intellectually stimulating conversation with you about this because i just disagree they don't usually say that because they're not great communicators and sometimes they're just leading with emotion and i i think i can sift through that you know look i'm sure i'm sure you can all right so we have to say this is what we believe yeah okay now let's move to the to the judgment part yeah this this is a word that scares people again judgment scares people i think and probably for good reason right you're taught most of us are taught as kids by either a parental guardian a teacher somebody says hey don't judge right don't don't judge people it's not polite and i think that's right we shouldn't judge people But goddamn, we should judge ideas. We should judge ideas and actions and intentions like we should. What I mean by judge, though, is I mean it in more of a clinical sense. I mean it as discernment. They don't have to sound hateful. They just have to sound like... what's been overlooked, what's been overblown, what is not being talked about enough, how do I feel about this based on the unique perspective and experience that I have? And it's really valuable for people when someone that is an expert in their topic, like you do this all the time, it's one of the reasons that you've blown up, right? I mean, because you are very discerning and that's really useful for creatives trying to build a career and a business. So I think judge away. I think this episode is going to help a lot of people. All right. So if you're listening and you're like, whoa, maybe I'm being called out right now. Maybe you are. I don't know. I don't know. But I think it's kind of important to have Common definitions of shared language that we're not all saying different same things so that we're not saying the same things, but meaning different things altogether. Totally. Language is I'm obsessed with language. It's before becoming a magician. I was starting a PhD track in philosophy of language, contemporary analytic metaphysics. And then, I mean, who knows what my life would have been like if I had spent seven more years doing that. I did have to call home and say to my parents who are computer scientists and PhDs, a whole family of intellectuals, you know, mom, dad, I'm going I'm not going to do the PHDI. I'm going to do card tricks for a living. It was tough. It all worked out in the end. Yeah, it did. Obsessed with language, though. Common definitions are important. So many times we get into arguments with people, not because we actually disagree, but because you're using the same words to mean different things. Yes, absolutely. Okay. It sounds to me like versus... I have to have a point of view. Yeah. And then the second one is like, I have to have a point of view on my point of view. That's so great. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this scares a lot of people, though. Yeah. Yeah. They're they're unwilling to say things because they're so afraid of the blowback, the criticism, the hate or whatever it is they're going to get because we're so much extrinsically motivated. We're so concerned about the number of likes and engagement and nice commentary and the pats on the back virtually. So we won't say anything. Okay. All right. We have to have one of you, everybody. Let's move into predictions. Yeah. And this one scares people for one more different reason. Okay. And there's the obvious reason that predictions scare people. So, of course, predictions, we may as well have some kind of definition. It's saying what you think is likely to happen. Okay. So I think we all kind of agree to that. is predictions scare people for the basic reason that they go, well, what if I'm wrong? Right? I'm making this publicly. What if I'm wrong? I go, what if you are? And there's usually nothing. They don't know what to say after that. Right? And here's the truth. I heard somebody say this once, I cannot take credit for the phrasing of what I'm about to say, but I just wish I knew who said it. If you are actually the expert you claim to be, you should be right more often than you're wrong, and you should be right to a greater extent than you are wrong when you're right. Okay. So first, if you find yourself making predictions frequently and you're just always wrong, probably go revisit the topic you think you're an expert in. If you are the expert, and many people are, they're afraid to make predictions because what if I'm wrong? It's like, okay, so two things can happen. You make the prediction publicly. you turn out to be right three months later three years later beautiful you go back and you share it you remind people that you called this and the amount of authority and trust that you gain from that is tremendous i mean on my website as a human connection speaker we have like on the the home page of the website one of my favorite sections just like just like personally is in it says something the copy is something like in 2023 the surgeon general declared a loneliness epidemic but Brian Miller has been talking about the human connection emergency since 2015. It's like, "Hi, I've been talking about this forever publicly. I have 400 blog posts about this," which is why a lot of companies are willing to listen to me, even though I have no credentials in that space at all. So what happens if you're wrong? If you're wrong, also share it. Share it. Remind people that you made this prediction. You got it wrong. And then judge yourself, not yourself. Judge the idea. Judge the prediction. You go, okay, what might I have gotten wrong? What didn't I see coming? What can we learn from this? And then make a new prediction based on the new insights that you have. And you should actually get better at making predictions the more often you evaluate your failed predictions. And I think people really like seeing thinking in action too. Okay, very good. So when you make predictions as an expert, you should be more right than you're wrong by not just a little bit, by a good margin. I would think so. Right. And when you're right and you called it really early, Don't be shy to point this out again. Yeah. Okay. This is where I found it real interesting when you're like, and when you're wrong, I thought you're going to say delete all your posts. Yeah. Delete them all. Yeah. That's what a lot of other people say. But I like that. So that was kind of like a zig or a zag, you know, when I've heard so many people say make lots of predictions and just delete all the ones where you're wrong. if you care so much about being wrong. But I like that you say, just own it and say, here's what I've learned from it. And here's where I read the data incorrectly. I'm human. I'm not saying I'm always right. And I think that is actually how you become more of a thought leader. I agree. I think that we trust people more when they're not Superman. There's a reason Superman's always had kind of a, you know, they've had so many troubles bringing Superman back, but no trouble bringing Iron Man, right? I mean, Iron Man's flawed. He's on a journey. Superman's perfect. They had to try to make him flawed to make him interesting and nobody bought it, right? It's really hard to do. So yeah, I think when people can see you not only admit that you were wrong, but not admit it as an apology. Say, hey, I got this wrong. Here's to the extent I got it wrong. Here's actually something I still think I'm right about, but we just haven't seen it play out yet. Or here's what would make this possible. Like whatever it is, you give your evaluation, you judge the idea, then you make a new prediction. And I think people really appreciate and they like seeing an expert's gears turning and seeing, oh, this is how someone at that level thinks through ideas. You know, I love it when I bring guests into my groups of clients sometimes and watch it. We just did it yesterday. Watching an expert on content distribution. This guy was a Jedi. He was on a level. I thought I understood the world. No, I knew nothing. This guy got into stuff and he was fantastic. fast and flying through and showing us ideas and giving out this 90 minutes of insanity. And we were all like this. And part of it was watching him think through and then disagree with himself and then move past that idea. And it was like, oh, this is how someone who really knows what they're doing thinks through problems. I want more of that. I want to follow this guy everywhere now. Okay. So we need to have a point of view. We need to have a point of view on our point of view. And our point of view is so clear that we're going to tell you what our point of view is going to be in the future. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah, exactly. Publicly and consistently. Yes. The bigger the audience, the better. It's interesting, right? Because I heard you talk about that. Of course, more people is typically better. but always with the caveat of more of the right people right who okay who are you trying to make an impact for right you know they're it's where that term vanity metrics you know comes from right it's like i know i'm sure you do too i know per people personally with millions of subscribers and no money yeah it's just they're there's they're not the right people i know people with 500 people on their email list and they're making a fortune so i think more people can be very good. And if you're trying to make an impact and spread ideas through the world, the more people who hear your ideas, the better. It was better that my TEDx talk got three and a half million views than if it had 300 views, of course. But yes. Well, it's hard to be a leader of one. It's hard to be a leader of one, but you can be a leader for, I mean, what is it? We mentioned Seth earlier. I know you're a Seth fan. Like the smallest viable audience, right? Find the smallest group of people that you need to do your work. Not the largest possible, but the smallest viable and start there and then let them carry the ideas through. I've always liked that idea because it doesn't have to be small. Maybe the smallest viable audience is 100,000 people, but of a certain kind of person. the reason why i say that is because we have friends who are afraid and so they make their predictions and their discernment and they have their belief statements but they only say it in closed communities and yeah like what if you want to influence folks if you want to change the trajectory of the human where we're heading in the arc of humanity then you need to share your ideas with as many people as possible even the the ted slogan was ideas worth sharing and that's the platform the stage that they promise you if your ideas are good people will share it and they'll see it and you you can actually make a dent in the universe totally tell more people and honestly i actually think you know i learned this as an entertainer sometimes your worst audience is the friends and family i wouldn't start there they they know you too well they know they remember that dumb ass thing you did when you were you know 12 years old and that stupid thing you said when you were 17 whatever yeah those are harder people for to take you seriously if you're going to start engaging with the world where if you're going to start smashing ideas into the world like this you probably skip the friends and family first and go to people that you think could really benefit from it. Yeah, that's what I would do. So we'll tie that to your whole personal brand thing because their frame of your personal brand is stuck since like the sixth grade, whereas strangers have no frame for you. So they're more likely less biased and can hear what you're going to say. And that'll be their new frame. And hopefully you're right. Yeah. And that's where you build that relationship. Wonderful. Now, I want to do a side side quest with you and just geek out on Superman for a second. Okay. Because you're studying philosophy, you're a magician, and now you're a communications connection person, and you help to coach experts to be speakers. Okay, side note, Superman. And you're like, well, Superman has no problems, and that's why he's so unrelatable, and that's why they're having a really hard time building a franchise around his character and you're absolutely right because the time in which he was created do you know much about the origin of superman like why he was created i know enough yeah to use that example without fearing what's about what you're about to say but not why not but i'm not a superman either so go ahead yeah yeah yeah dangerous territory let me just tell him this otherwise chris is gonna put me on blast and the judgment is coming all right Superman was created as a character as a reaction to what was happening in Nazi Germany. They needed a character that was strong, iconic, American, who could take on everything. And so they built into him no weaknesses, except for one. It's a minor weakness, Kryptonite, right? A piece from his home planet, I believe. Now, the challenge with Superman is if you're like, how do I get into Superman? How do we do this right? Superman doesn't have a problem like Brian Miller or Chris Doe has. Superman has a problem of a God. And God has problems and God can be relatable because God lets the fire happen and destroy lives and homes and livelihoods. God has problems too because God can't save everybody because every time God interacts, God changes the course of human direction. And so when Superman's stories are written that way, they become super fascinating. It becomes way more philosophical. Really interesting that you say that because I enjoyed Man of Steel and I was most excited about the climax of the movie when he just snapped Zod's neck. And I was excited about that because I was like, we have a flaw he hasn't figured that's that's a real that's a i haven't figured out who i am yet and that was so much more interesting than kryptonite because kryptonite feels like a you know a writer was like wait a second we need to have at least one thing like let's just make this glowing green thing the thing uh but no like i agree i think that that direction Is much more interesting. I think the other thing that they explored, which I thought was successful, but didn't fully capitalize on this is that he is an alien and we're dealing with issues of aliens and people who are emigrating to the United States or wherever. And there's some issues with nativism. And so you can see like, how is this person who's like a really benevolent person who's trying to do as much good as possible? Now the people turn on him and he can't kill the people. It's an idea. It's a sentiment. So those are more interesting themes of threads to pull on, which I wish they went deeper down, but yeah, it is what it is. I often wish Hollywood would go deeper down the interesting themes, but there seems to be a huge resistance to that as of late. Yeah, and I think a lot of it is because they underestimate the intelligence of people. And as moviegoers and fans become much more mature and they're not just teenage boys who are like, yeah, punch something, shoot something with your eyes, right? They're underestimating the appetite for like deeper concepts. Yes, but and and and That so what a great point that was 1 of the earliest lessons I learned in magic from 1 of my mentors as a magician. 1 of the biggest mistakes that young magicians are newer magicians have to be young, but newer magicians make is assuming that their audience is stupid. These people aren't smart. I can get away with anything. It's like, no, you can't. Assume they're really smart. The most interesting magic comes from when you actually assume the audience is really smart. Have you ever seen a magician and you're like, it's obviously in his other hand? You know, like, what is, like, how are we still doing, you know, how are magicians still doing that? No, no, assume the audience is smart and that they might think it might be in your other hand. Let's come up with a different way. You'll do more interesting magic. Oh, I like that take on this. And we probably should get it back on track. And experts becoming speakers. But I think the way to do that, if that is a good idea, assumption to make that the audience is smart and they think it's in this hand. Like when you do one of these things and you go like this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you actually show them the hand that they think it's in and then that'll blow their mind. What you just described is how I discovered part of our messaging framework that I now use with speakers, which is pretty. I learned almost everything I learned as a magician and then applied it to the world of speaking and communication because it was such a fascinating world. What is this framework? Lay it on. Yeah. So, okay. So we do core messaging. Core messaging is a practice. It's not a framework. It's something like inbound marketing is a practice, but everybody who practices it does it differently. They have their own frameworks. So core messaging is a practice. We have a core message triad, three things, the filter, the story hook, and the argument. These are the three pieces of messaging that we build for everybody, no matter what they're going to do. It's our starting point. Day one, doesn't matter if we're building a keynote speech, web copy, presentation, whatever it is. Prepping you for casual conversations for networking events, doesn't matter. Filter, story, hook, argument. I'll go to the other two in a second, but I want to talk about the argument. The argument is a rational sequence of. Thoughts that brings someone from where they are to where you'd like them to go, or you're hoping that they will go right. We're trying to get them to go. It's the thing that's missing in almost all messaging. A filter, so I'll come back to the argument in a second, but let me spread it out. The filter is what you might think of as a big idea statement, a one sentence, a single sentence that states what you do, who it's for, and why it matters. This I learned from coaching dozens of TED Talks, because you have to be able to state your idea in one sentence, or you can't even answer the first question on a TEDx application, right? So we use the filter for, we call it a filter for two reasons. 1, because it keeps you on track once you have a single sentence. Where you can explain what you do, who it's for and why it matters. You always know what you should and shouldn't be talking about. And so, okay, I'm a human connection speaker, so I work with organizations and educators to build connected cultures where everyone feels heard, understood and valued. there's my filter statement. So if I'm ever in a conversation with a prospect, if I'm ever working on a keynote speech, if I'm chatting with the people who saw me speak earlier at the thing, if I'm about to say something that does not immediately and obviously support, I work with organizations and educators to build connected cultures where everyone feels heard and understood and valued, I'm off track. I need to stay on message. So it's a filter. And because it's a filter for me, it also keeps the audience on track, right? They know where I am and where I'm going. They know what the boundaries are. So that's our filter. Once we have that, we're going to go to a story hook. I'm not going to dive into story. You talk about story all the time. We consider the story hook something that does two things. It does understanding and authority. So you tell a story, a literal story, not a metaphor, but a literal story that tells the audience, I understand the problem you have or the worldview you're in or the struggle you have or the thing that you want. I understand you. and I'm qualified to solve it, or I'm qualified to help you solve it, or I'm qualified to guide you to solve it, right? So a story hook is understanding and authority. And the authority part's really important. We miss it in story all the time. People tell stories all the time that do understanding, that do empathy, right? And they forget that authority matters too. If you go to your doctor and you're like, doc, my shoulder's killing me. I can't raise it up. I'm in all this pain. I can't even play with my kid anymore. And the doctor's like, tell me about it. My shoulder's been killing me. I can't play with my kids. It's the worst. And you just stare at each other and you'd be like, I'd love to get a beer and talk about that sometime. But in the meantime, can you find me someone who can fix my shoulder, right? Authority matters. Okay, so we've got a filter, we've got story hooked to engage people emotionally. What's missing? What's missing is a rational argument, a case for why they should adopt your idea that hits the rational part of the brain, not just the emotional. Stories, everyone says story is, you know, it's the thing, right? And it's true. Story is important. I've got a storytelling specialist on my team, Story Matters. Story engages. It does not persuade. we need a story and then we need an argument people need to justify rationally to themselves why to adopt your idea beyond their emotional engagement so that was just the framing to get us back to the question that you asked me which was what did you learn from magic were you talking about you put a thing in one hand and then you show them oh it's actually not in the hand you think it is so where does it come from this comes from our argument framework so if you're going to build a persuasive argument i'm going to give you another framework there's a lot of frameworks out loud so i'm going to give you another framework the argument is premise status quo paradigm shift success Just a few months, we're going to hit our 400th episode of this podcast. And before we get there, we want to take a moment to really listen to you, our loyal listeners. If you're open to chatting with my producer, Rich Cardona, or someone on his team, we'd love to hear from you. Just fill out the short form in the show notes. It takes less than 20 seconds. So... When you've got a job to do, Lowe's knows how to help you keep it moving. My Lowe's Pro Rewards members save more with member volume discounts on eligible orders through a quote of $2,000 or more. Plus, save time with job site delivery on select purchases. Not a member? Join for free today. Exclusions, more terms, and restrictions apply. Can't be combined with any other discount, including but not limited to contract and or special pricing. Loyalty programs subject to terms and conditions. Details at lowes.com slash terms. Subject to change. This idea from magic that you asked me about is the status quo. The status quo is how do people typically try to solve the problem that you're talking about and why doesn't it work? Some people do this instinctively. Almost everybody skips it. Like very few people think to talk about this. What you see in most communication, in most keynote speeches, in most TED talks, you see people If they even start with a premise and they hardly ever do, they start with a premise, which is something like, what does the audience want? What are they struggling with? What do they fear? What do they believe? It's something they already hold true. So premise, it's a foundation, right? You go, hey, we all want to feel connected to others and everybody nods. Great. That means we've got a premise. We have foundation. We can start this conversation. What happens is after that, almost everybody skips to the paradigm shift. They skip to their solution. They go, and here's how we're going to do it. And what happens is you present this unique, special thing that you do, whatever your thing is, your uniqueness, your solution. And people sit there with all these objections in their head. They're like, that sounds hard. It's going to take a long time. I already think I know how to solve that. I've already heard about other ways that sound easier. All that stuff, they can't listen to you. They can't hear you. the status quo is when you systematically talk them through each of the ways that you might try to solve it or we have historically tried to solve it or people tend to try to solve this problem and why they don't work or don't work as well as they could you have to dismantle them what's this got to do with magic this is how i learned it as a magician If I ask you to choose a card, I go like this, choose a card, you look at it, it's the seven of diamonds, whatever it is. And then if you put it back in the deck and I pull the seven of diamonds out of my pocket, you might go, ah, but then immediately your brain goes, I wonder if there's a second seven of diamonds. Maybe he's got one in the deck and one in his pocket. So the magic's gone. There's no magic. Okay, so that's not what magicians do. you here go here go choose a card they pull it out seven diamonds i hand you a sharpie marker to draw your name on it you draw your name on it it goes in to the deck i pull it out of my pocket you go ah and then you go wait no maybe he's got a second one no he can't have a second one because it's got a sharpie mark i wrote my name on it but then they go They go, but I wonder if he held it in his hand secretly. Still no magic, because they've got a way to think through it. What do we really do? Choose a card, seven diamonds, here's a marker, write your name on it. It goes back in. You hand them the cards. They shuffle. You show them your hands are empty. You reach into your pocket. You pull it out. So what magicians have learned to do instinctively is before I get to the climax, I have to remove one by one all of the other possible ways you could think it happens. So you get to the moment of of magic and the audience goes well it could be no because he it could be no because he no it could have been and when they get through all of them their brain explodes they have no options left and that's when magic happens same approach for communicators if you remove all the possible ways someone could solve this problem and show them that they don't work They're in worse shape than the beginning of the speech because they still have the problem and now they have no ways to solve it. They have to listen to your solution, which is then when you can go into a paradigm shift. That's excellent. So when magicians show you all the ways that they think you think it can be done, it just makes the reveal even more powerful. Because I guess in sales terminology, you're handling all the objections. Yeah. upfront and and the better you are as being magician the better you are going to demonstrate how it can't be right and then the paradigm shift is the mind blown right so I say paradigm shift and not so you heard me say solution a bunch just for the sake of ease of conversation yeah but I don't like the word solution solution implies tactics typically a lot of people when they're especially speakers I work with a lot of keynote speakers they want to offer solutions but solutions tend to be do this thing, this really specific thing. And tactics don't, tactics tend to be industry specific for one thing. And they tend to be like medium specific, like a tactic only works on LinkedIn and it only works today until they change the algorithm. But a paradigm shift is a different way of seeing the problem, a different way of thinking through the problem. paradigm shifts tend to carry across industries. It doesn't matter if I'm talking to healthcare professionals or accountants, the same paradigm shift will help them in their world think through their problem differently, like help them think through their problem differently, but the same as another industry could think through it. And I usually say, if you're looking to be a paid professional speaker, the highest The biggest paychecks go to the largest paradigm shifts, basically. Once you're dealing with getting paid as a speaker, the folks who can afford to bring you in at those kind of fees, the 10, 15, 20,000 or above fees that non-celebrity paid professional speakers are getting, the executives and folks bringing you in, they're not looking for tactics. Tactics are easy to come by. They're looking for, can I get my entire organization to think differently? Because that's tremendously valuable to them. As we understand the word paradigm and a paradigm shift, it's really big. Like humanity used to do it this way and they no longer do it that way. It's something we don't go backwards. Like a paradigm shift is, I think, the invention of the internet. A paradigm shift is the invention of AI, probably as some people have described the greatest human invention ever. Yep. Right. The splitting of the atom. Yeah. That's a big one. Yeah. Those are like, we cannot go backwards. So yeah. a solution could just be a really small little thing that you've done and here I'll use this thing. Yeah, and you should give people solutions too, but it's like the solution should fit within the paradigm shift. It's like, first, let me get you to think differently about this. Then we can talk about ways to tackle it today. But that might change by next week. Let's plug this into probably one of the most viewed, if not the top viewed TED Talk ever. Simon Sinek start with why I believe the big idea that he's like saying in this one talk, the golden circle or start with why is because people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Is that the big idea that the filter? Yeah, I mean, it's not how I would actually put it on the page. But yes, it's essentially the big idea. It's the filter. The framework we use for the filter is something like two actions. So that impact. that if we want to achieve this impact, we must do this action, right? So two actions to that impact. The action is what do you do? What do you want people to do, think, or rethink as a result of your talk? Or if you're thinking about your business and you're not thinking about it as a speaker, the action is what does your business do, right? What do you do? Not at the granular, but at the 20,000-foot level, right? So Simon's might be two... to start with why so that our ideas carry through the marketplace, right? Something like that. - I see. - That's not a super sexy way to put it on the page, but something like that. - But then we understand exactly what we're saying at that point then. - Right, and so does everybody else and instantly. - And then I see the argument, the rational sequence of thoughts that's easy to follow that he starts to talk about Martin Luther King Jr., the Wright brothers, Apple, So we understand like what they're doing and how they're doing things differently. So it's building up this thing like how they challenge the status quo. There's a paradigm shift and then they have success. What I didn't get from his talk was his literal story how he understands the problem and how he's an authority. Yeah. So he snuck it in. So he snuck it in there. And my guess is as soon as I say it, you'll remember it. But it's not the most memorable part. Is it right at the beginning? He just slips it in? Yeah, it's right at the beginning. He basically indicates, and I don't remember exactly how far, and it's been a long time since I've actually watched it. By the way, if you haven't watched the original Start With Why talk, first of all, that's not even the title of it. And it was how great leaders inspire action. His story hook is something like he was in marketing, he was in advertising, he was getting burnt out of the corporate world, but he had this inkling. He started sharing it with his friends, bringing people over to his house, just to his apartment and just giving them presentations about the golden circle in his living room. That was his story. And then he started seeing it work and people started getting the idea and saying that was his story hook. It was the how How do I understand this idea? I was in the world of marketing advertising. I saw this problem. I started to feel this burnout thing. And why am I qualified to solve it? I developed this system. I started showing it to people. They got it. They used it with their companies. I started getting invited to speak about it. That's a story hook. Now, I'm going to have to rewatch because I've watched it many times. I believe I watched the original and they changed the titles because as it got bigger, they changed. It used to be called the Golden Circle or something weird that people are like, eh? nobody's searching for that nobody understands that and i think it was tedx portland it wasn't ted the main no they were it was a tiny little tedx talk in a half empty room i mean it was okay yeah it was wild if you go watch that so i haven't seen that one but the one that has the gazillion million views it's still pretty crap in its production. I mean, they're not known as the best video production team on earth, right? But you're saying like, despite flawed production and bad audio and video quality, if the idea is really good and you use frameworks that people have used throughout history, you can change whole groups of people. You can change how humanity perceives a problem. Francisco, my kind of lead story consultant, he says a story is a real life example that makes a point. he's like don't get too crazy about stories people get too nuts they get too in their heads about it's just a real life example that makes a point so there's different types of stories you need you might need a value story a story that that through the course of telling them essentially a case study why your idea your topic your product your service is valuable right there's mentor stories why am i the person to guide you along this journey there's lots of different types of stories We call this the story hook because every communicator, thought leader, expert, anybody speaking professionally needs one story that they can tell over and over and over again. Anytime somebody asks that answers the question, why am I listening to you? It's the why you question. Okay. The filter answers the question, how is this going to be relevant to me? Right. The story hook answer is okay, this idea is relevant to me, but why shouldn't I just go Google this, look up the best expert on YouTube? Why listen to you about it? Story hook tells them your unique perspective and why you're qualified. And then the argument answers the question, so how do I do it if I want to do it? So yeah, the way that I build kind of communication frameworks and particularly speaking frameworks is Every part of your speech or your communication is an answer to a question the audience is asking. And we have to answer those questions in the order they think the questions to themselves. I say a lot, the right ideas in the wrong order are the wrong ideas. It's one of the most common problems with speaking is all the right ideas were in that presentation, but they were in all the wrong order. And so nobody got it. I started to see the overlap between a bunch of different things in terms of conceptual advertising, storytelling, and magic, and joke telling. And it all came down to one thing, misdirection. So the magician wants you to look at something because the real trick is happening somewhere else. And their ability to hide and misdirect you is the power of of magic the same thing about the comedian the comedian sets up the premise of the joke but if you can see it coming the punch line then it's not very good and dave chapelle is probably the master magician of story of joke telling because like i don't know where this joke is going then he lands on like oh my god in a million years i didn't know but when you land it like that i see he's so good that he tells you the punch line up front tells the story and then he lands the punchline. By the time he's ready to land the punchline, you forgot what it was because he's so good at it i'm curious about your thoughts on this direction and its role in storytelling i'm so thrilled you asked me this question because i so rarely get to flex the philosophy of magic uh kind of muscle anymore because i'm not i used to just spend my whole life with magicians and it was just nothing but these kinds of conversations so everything you said i 100 agree with except for the terminology which i think gets people very confused. All right. And misdirection is just a bad, it's the word that magicians use, the bad word. It's a word that means to look away from something, right? I want to distract you from something. Mm-hmm. The problem with that is if I want to hide one of these guitars that's on the wall here, I kind of have two options. Like if you and I were in the room together, I can stand in front of it like this and talk to you the whole time, hoping that you don't see it. But that's super suspicious. At some point, you're gonna be like, "What the hell is he hiding?" Right? Because I'm trying to get you not to look at something, it's going to bring your attention to that thing. Or I could just stand over there on the other side of the room. You would be standing here with your back. You would never see the guitars even though they're in full view. If I'm having an interesting conversation with you, you've got something to look at in that direction. You never, I don't need to hide the guitars. You can't see them. You'll never will. So direction is the right term, not misdirection. What magicians, if I'm trying to hide that something's not in this hand, I'm just going to, my energy is all on the hand I'm hiding. I'm like, don't look at this hand. Don't look at this hand. It's like, what are you going to look at the hands? Like, don't think of a pink elephant. Oops. There it is. Right. So instead, what I want to do is not hide that something's in this hand. I want to show you something much more interesting in this hand. I think that's the same thing that storytellers do. I think that's the same thing that comedians do. They don't hide the punchline. They tell you a setup that is so interesting, you don't even notice the twist that's coming. If they actually started, if a storyteller's classic mistake, the setup has to be interesting. A lot of times people make the setup is boring because they think, oh, these are just the details. I just got to get the details so that they understand. It's like, no, no, no. Make the context, the setup really engaging, really interesting. That matters because then whatever the transformation is, so story, we would say something like context transformation result, right? The transformation is the pow is going to come out of nowhere and it's because you were so engaged in the context. So I would just say that the word is direction. You want to lead people to look at something to pay attention to something that's really interesting, not try to get them to not notice something that you don't want them to see. Well, I'm not going to have a magician on the show and argue with the magician about the term misdirection. I just see it a little differently. But, you know, it's the art of misdirection. And so I think the amateur, like, don't look at this. The ones that we care about are like, I didn't even know I was not supposed to look at that because I'm making this really interesting. And I think that's the point, is that the masters of it are doing something so interesting that it would never even occur to you to look at the place they don't want you to look at. They're not focused on the place they don't want you to look at. One last geek out on magic here. We've seen magicians I guess reveal how certain tricks are done. And it's fascinating to watch that too, because they'll show you the trick and they're like, the masked magician, like, here's how it's done. And I guess it's like, it went against all the magician's code of conduct. You're not supposed to reveal the trick. It breaks the illusion. And now those magicians can't do those tricks anymore because people are going to say, no, I know how it's done. The ones that they haven't really shown are how mentalism works. Now, I know it's not real. - Are you sure about that? - But they're doing a frigging pretty good job of making it look real. And I'll tell you one and you tell me how it's done. If you can break the code, is that all right? - Listen, I'm not gonna reveal something that would give any professional magicians trouble, mentalists trouble with their act, but I have no issue. I think it's the, I have no issue with revealing magic tricks. I think people mostly, it's very hard to appreciate something if you don't understand anything about it. It's like we like the behind the scenes in movies for a reason. So go ahead. So I set it up and I think it's an evolution of different kinds of magic tricks and they're all magic and illusion. But the way they make you think about it is like I can read your mind or I can manipulate you with verbal cues and then you're going to do exactly what I want. At least I think that's the premise. So the trick is think of a card and a suit. and you think of something right and you say it out loud what is it we'll use the same example seven of diamonds and then like okay and then they open up the deck and they pick any card but don't look at it yet and they draw the card okay and then they put in your pocket or whatever and then they put the other deck away or whatever they're holding the deck and then they're like okay um go ahead and reveal to everyone what your card is and they hold it out and it's a seven of diamonds but it's handwritten with a marker And while the deck is still in plain view, it's never disappeared. They're like, okay, would you like to see another card? Pick another card. And I'm like, it's a white card. It's a white card. And the whole deck is white. So not only did they know the card you're going to pick, they hand wrote it with a Sharpie and they put it in one place where you're going to pick it. And then they show you that all the other cards are blank. And I'm like, what the F happened here? That's a good trick. That's a really good trick. What can you share with us how these things are done? So what I can share with you is it's precisely all the things that we already talked about, which is one, just your memory of the trick, the way you described it tells me a lot about what the magician did. Okay. Because the way you described it is it was in full view the whole time. Since you said that, I'm like, there's no way that's true. And it's funny because magicians learn the difference between impossible and actually impossible. And so no way to do that if the deck was in full view, which means whenever the deck got switched out, which you know intellectually that had to have happened at some point, you didn't even notice that it would have never occurred to you because you were looking at something much more interesting. You were engaged in something fully at that moment. But also, you... are having trouble processing even how it might have been done which one which means any of the potential solutions where things that magician must have removed along the way right right right and so what i can tell you about how the trick is done is i mean i can personally think of 10 different ways to do that right now but can you think of any way that you would do that? Like if you had to do that, you had to create that trick knowing nothing about magic, what would you do? That is how, you don't have to say that out loud right now, but that is what I would say. I would say, you figure it out. - I like this, so I'm not a magician, so if I accidentally guess it, it would just be like a random guess, okay? So my guess is that whole deck was handwritten for all the suits and things. And somehow they had to figure out and magicians can do this when you pick the card, somehow they slip the card underneath it. So you the card you grab isn't the one that you think you grabbed. And it's the one that you said. So that's the biggest part of the trick. Somewhere along the way, they swap out that full deck for a blank deck. And then the trick becomes even crazier. And now we forget that even about the how did you make me pick that one card and say that card that you wanted me to say? Thoughts on that, Brian? My thoughts are that would be one way to do it. And what I usually say to people is, does that change what you just did? Does that change your experience of the trick? Not at all. Not at all. So that means you were in the hands of a master magician. Yeah. So for me, a really masterful magician, just like a storyteller, a filmmaker, anything else is if you know how it works or you think, oh, I kind of get it, but you still enjoyed it. That was art, right? That's the difference between a trick and art. So here's the thing. I think magicians feared magicians. that we're going to reveal how these tricks are done. So there's a code and you don't reveal the tricks. And then somebody decided they're going to do it under a mask. And then all kinds of people are doing it. And then they realize people still want to see magic. I revealed the secret to a magic trick in my TEDx talk that went viral. I revealed the secret and magicians were so upset. They were so upset. And I'm like, I guarantee you of the three and a half million people that watch that video, any non-magician, if I ask them, do you remember how the trick works they don't they remember the story surrounding the trick they'll tell me all about oh my god that story about the blind guy in the restaurant and how you created magic for him it was so meaningful no one in 10 years since that talk at youtube has ever said to me kind of ruined the trick for me though that has never happened yeah let me ask you this question while we're on the topic of this viral ted talk that you did what do you think you did that connected with the audiences that led to so many views? That's a great question. I've had 10 years to think about that because it's like coming up on the 10 year anniversary of that. It's kind of crazy now. You know, the little talk changed my life. So Mostly luck, and I'm going to qualify that, which is not to say I didn't work my ass off. I didn't have the right to be there. It wasn't a great talk, all that stuff. Pre-pandemic, I was halfway through writing my next book, which was going to be a book about the role of luck and success, because I really get tired of really, really successful people ignoring the role of luck and just inventing hero's journeys in reverse and kind of things. So it was mostly luck, but here's where the luck happened. One, The title of the talk was a stroke of genius, and it was my wife who came up with the title. The work that we do, we are known now for helping our clients create phenomenal titles for their talks. We have a process. I was just a magician. I was not a speaker. I was a full time magician when I got invited to this TEDx talk, having no dreams of being a speaker, hoping that my TEDx talk would get 5000 views and we can increase my corporate event rate from 1500 to $2000. That was the dream. It's a good dream. I was supporting me and I was putting my wife through her masters and supporting both of us as of doing card tricks for a living. I was very happy. and much less stressed than I am now running a consulting firm. I don't know what happened. I should go back. So the title was How to Magically Connect with Anyone. I didn't come up with it. I went through 25 different variations of magical making connections, all those words. I couldn't get it. And I was like, tearing my hair out. And my then fiance at the time, she said, give me your legal pad. I had this yellow legal pad. She goes, leave me alone for an hour and she just like disappeared and she came back in a little bit with how to magically connect with anyone and i was like that's it so that title if you now go to headline analyzers and stuff like that today like the ai systems it's like gangbusters so that was luck that my wife came up with that and it happened to be this phenomenal title um luck of the youtube thumbnail ted doesn't let TEDx speakers choose the thumbnail. TED doesn't even choose them because there's too many TEDx talks. There's 220,000 of them on the TEDx YouTube channel now. So it's just whatever at that time it was just whatever YouTube decided was the thumbnail and the thumbnail Chris happened to be me holding two pieces of rope like this because I was in the middle of one of the only magic tricks I did in the whole talk with the title how to magically connect with anyone now who is this fedora wearing goofball in a suit holding ropes talking about connections it's just weird The weird factor, the what is this, the curiosity factor is enough. And it was 2015, the luck of it happening to be that year. What was happening that year? We remember it was right before 2016 in the US, this was a big year. This was the year that everything started becoming more divisive, more polarized, more disconnected. It was the year leading up to a big election that changed the course of American history. We're all feeling it again right now. So It was talking about making connections in a world that was rapidly becoming more divisive, more politicized. I was wearing a fedora for some reason and a suit for some reason with two ropes and the title of the talk was how to magically connect with anyone. Now, what does that all buy you? That buys you the click. So the luck, all that bought me the clicks. The work was, it was a great talk. And I worked really hard for many months and called in a mentor of mine who was a professor, a renowned professor at Yale who had helped me write the talk. And I didn't know how to write a talk. I wasn't a speaker then. So how did I get three and a half million views? A lot of luck, a good talk. And then down to the practical stuff. I've had people ask me, how did you make it go viral? You'll make videos go viral. You'll make, I didn't make it. I sent it to everyone I'd met in my entire life in the first two hours when it hit YouTube, got 800 views and it stalled. You know, that was it. It was dead for two weeks. I thought, climbed to like a thousand views and that was it. Somebody somewhere saw it and put it in the Reddit, the subreddit for communication skills. And it went to 100,000 views in a month, a million views in six months, two million in the first year, and then climbed to three or whatever, three and a half million after that. So a lot of luck. But it was a good talk. So it earned the luck, I guess. Well, thanks for breaking that down. I'd like to think luck plays a role in things and timing. So luck and timing. You're unlucky with your magic because you said it was uncool. And, you know, 2015... YouTube is just becoming a thing. It's starting to catch attention of not kids and amateurs. It's starting to hit a more professional audience. Also in 2015, TED meant a lot more than it does today. Correct. When it's 200,000 talks later, unfortunately, the TED brand doesn't carry much weight and distribution of good content comes for free. Now you don't need TED to anoint you. You just make a really good video and you follow best practices. and you might have some of that luck. I don't think it's that lucky that your fiance is like, let me think on this. And I'll tell you why. Okay. Because you had the smarts to find a really smart woman and you had the you didn't have a big enough ego to say, like, I'm not going to ask for help. And you grinded on this. And so you gave her something to work with. And then with fresh eyes and without the attachment of what you're going through, she can look at it. It's like, yeah, it probably should be this. Not saying that we know we're like geniuses. We know how to do titles, but it's simple. It's elegant and it's clear. No, I mean, totally. And my wife and her name's Lindsay. She was paramount in this talk, not just the title. What was that was, that was another quote unquote, lucky thing. I mean, she, at the time was in her master's, she was in her final year of her master's to become a licensed marriage and family therapist, which she's been doing ever since. And so she was actively studying, taking classes all day, studying psychology, studying therapy. And I was gonna talk about my intuitions from being a magician about human connection, but I didn't have the words or the terminology or the history, any of the academia to support it. It was just what I learned. And so I started taking her to dinner once a week or whatever it was for months, every other week, whatever it was for like months leading up to the TEDx. And I would we would talk over dinner and I would tell her about what I was trying to say. And she would tell me what the terms were and she would go, oh, that's actually called perspective taking perspective taking. Well, now I'm 10 years. I'm famous for that. Like, that's what I talk about. people think i'm an expert in perspective taking it's like i wasn't i just had this intuition she said there's a term for this and so i bought all the books about it because she said that so she was paramount So the luck of having a fiance that happened to be studying the psychology side of what I wanted to talk about was nuts. But then the work was doing the conversations and following up and reading the book. So there's always it's like talent. Yes. Work. Yes. Luck. Also, yes. It's like, just don't forget to talk about luck. That's how I feel when I listen to really successful people. Yeah. I think from a person who makes a lot of YouTube content, who I try to engineer some of that luck, is there three things that you needed to do really well for that to happen? And I think you were pointed out. So let me share with our audience really quickly. Number one is you have to make something that's easy to find. The title and the thumbnail are paramount to that. You call it something else and then no one finds it. So it doesn't matter how good your video is. It's not going to be seen by anybody. Number two is once they find it, then you have to deliver on the goods. Maybe this is the big idea of the store hook and argument all in play in a YouTube story here. So you have to deliver the goods. The last component of it is it needs to be pushed out to a platform where other people can find it more easily. So this is where you're like some stranger somewhere says, hey, this is a master class on communication with human connection. Check it out. And whenever videos go off like that from a zero audience to something like that, it's because someone else has intervened because you did the first two parts. You made it easy to find and you delivered on the goods. And we like to live in this idea, I think, of meritocracy, where The best things will, the cream rises to the top, but you have to help it a little bit. You don't just say here, I hope it works out. There's man, I can't agree with that more. There's, there's a slide in my presentations. I do on message clarity, which is the one slide that everybody takes their phones out and takes a photo of. And it's the dumbest, simplest slide. It says the best ideas don't win the clearest ideas win. And I just, I just believe that through and through more every single day as the world becomes noisier and less trusting. The clearest ideas win. You have to say the thing. Just say the thing. I think the meta conversation here is that you've done a really good job of telling a story of why you shared real life examples of what you did, and you made it in a way that we can understand that you've gone through this, and then you proven your authority here. So this is one of those like inception things where we go inside the circle and we're like, oh my God. So I think it's like these inception things like we're inside the dream of the dream. And we just kind of pull back. It's like, here's a person who's demonstrating the concepts while telling you the concept. It's like you're telling us what the trick's going to be and we're still engaged. And you have proven to me that you've spent enough time thinking about this, working on this, that you know what you're talking about. Okay, so let's do a really quick recap and then let's add any final thoughts on this before we wrap up. Okay, what you do, Brian, is you help people who are experts become speakers and there's a difference there. And hopefully to then to become a thought leader. You've drawn the distinction between a personal brand because everyone has one. I agree. Not everyone has a good one. Not everyone has a real one. Yeah, but they do have one. We have an impression of you, their expectations and promises. We get that. But you're talking about doing something different, like doing three things, an assertion, judgments and predictions to do this publicly and consistently. And the way that you help people is using this triangular framework, your core messaging thing that you have to have a filter, a story hook and an argument. If you follow those things, you're going to do really well. Now, those words mean different things. So be sure you listen, of course, to the entire podcast again, now that you're at the end, because sometimes people phase in and out of the tension and you probably need to go back because how you explained is different than how I initially interpreted. And this is very important. What else do they need to know before we direct them on how to find out more about you? I mean, I think the big thing to know in 2025 moving forward, whenever you're listening to this is We now live in a world of low trust and high noise. Right? There's never been more people and more things shouting at us, trying to get our attention. And the average person has never been less trusting of anybody. People, do-gooders, nonprofit organizers, politicians, educators, healthcare professionals, doesn't matter. Low trust, high noise. If you have an idea that you care about, that you're trying to put into the world, You need people to share it. You need people to spread it, which means first they need to understand it. If people do not know how to talk about what you do, they will not talk about what you do. They don't have the mental capacity. So I'll kind of leave you with a metaphor, which is the marble elephant. There is an old engineering riddle. How do you carve an elephant out of a block of marble? The answer is you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant. Sounds simple, but almost nobody knows how to do this. So what happens to us in the idea space is I have an idea and I know how beautiful it is. I know what it looks like. I know who it's for and how it would benefit them. I have a marble elephant in my head, but I'm holding a block of marble and I hand it to somebody. I go, look, an elephant. And they don't see the elephant. They're holding a block of marble. They have no idea why you've handed it to them, what it's for, what they're supposed to do with it. It's heavy. It's cumbersome. It's sharp. What do they do? They either hand it back, they put it down, they throw it out, and then they walk away. They walk until they find somebody who hands them a marble elephant because that's what they're looking for. And they need to see it immediately and obviously as what they're looking for. And that is what we need to do with our ideas. It's been a real pleasure talking to you, Brian. I'm fascinated. I've learned a couple of new things, and I can't wait to apply this to my own talks and try to be that thought leader that I aspire to become. Now, How do people work with you? Do you have like a signature keynote that you do on stage? And I know there's a program or something that you do on a consultative basis. How do people work with you? Yeah, I appreciate that. So I do give keynote presentations on message clarity, change communication, all these frameworks. I do workshops for teams, leadership, break them down. You can go to our site, clarityupconsulting.com, clarityupconsulting. consulting.com. So that's the speaking side of things. If you're interested in you yourself becoming a top communicator, especially as a keynote speaker, actually right now, halfway through my the actual next book, which will hopefully be out late this year, maybe early 2026. It is my framework for how to design a world class keynote that gets you booked, rebooked and referred. So So you had Robert Fitzpatrick on once, and he wrote the book on workshops. Yeah, I'm writing that on keynotes, because that book is phenomenal for people needing to give a workshop and that book does not exist for keynote speakers so I obviously need to finish this now before this podcast comes out. So, before someone else writes it and gets it there before I do. But here's where you can go. You can go to KeynoteDesignBook.com. KeynoteDesignBook.com. It's built on ScoreApp. You can toss your name and email and answer a couple questions and just basically say, I'm interested in this book. When it comes out, that's the easiest way into our world right now. When is the targeted completion publishing shift date? Likely... December, January, you know, 2020, very late 2025, early 2026, depending on how fast it's going. No, you're gonna have this out way before that. I was gonna ask you, you want me stalling? No, put it out. Okay, no, don't stall. You tease us like that. Come on. But But I have a you know, I have a membership community. I'm on LinkedIn, I have all those things. So if you if you go there, toss your emails in and you click the box, it says yes, I'd like to hear about some of your programs. We'll say, hey, here's our community. Here's my LinkedIn, all that jazz. So you can stay in touch. I publish constantly about this stuff. Before we get out of here, I want to thank you once again. And you shared a very personal story about like our connection point. And I'd like to just acknowledge this person who kind of connected us. Do you want to say something to them? They may or may not be able to hear this, but I'd like to send that energy into the world. Yeah, I appreciate that. So my lifelong best friend, Adam Krutinger, uh, If you know him on the Internet and some of your listeners might because he's a maker, he's in the creator world. He runs the YouTube channel Puppet Nerd. He's a world renowned puppet builder. We've been best friends since childhood. He introduced me to the Future podcast and Chris's work probably really like a decade ago, probably early days of the YouTube stuff and everything. and we've always discussed it as one of our regular podcasts and talked about the episodes a couple years ago adam unfortunately found out that he has stage four brain cancer um they did all the surgeries did all the treatments and we're kind of out of things now it's we don't know what's going on but there's no more treatments being done uh so when chris invited me on the show a couple of months ago i was able to go tell adam uh that i was gonna be able to go on the future and uh and talk to chris and he was just so excited for me and we had this moment and it was beautiful and so that was a great gift i was able to give to him it was a great gift to me so i uh deeply appreciate that and if you're interested in puppets or makers adam's got books out and he's got puppet you know his puppet nerd channel all that stuff is unbelievable you'll never see anything like it that's such a touching story and it's it's just a reminder to me and all those people out there maybe you being a thought leader isn't about being successful or famous but it's just that you can reach and touch people in ways that you just don't even know and it's it's I mean, I've not had anybody share that kind of story. So I just really appreciate you doing that. And Adam, if you can hear this, thank you so much for doing what you've done and sharing your gift with the world. Thanks for doing that, Chris.
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    “It's hard to be a leader of one.”

    — Chris Do

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