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How To Amplify Your Influence 2023 w/ Rene Rodriguez (full edit)
Chris Do and Rene Rodriguez reveal the science of influence, teaching you how to get your ideas heard and acted upon.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · October 17, 2023
The Inconvenient Truth About Great Ideas
Some ideas change the world. Most disappear without a trace. The difference is rarely the quality of the idea itself.
The marketplace of ideas is not a meritocracy. Behavioral scientist and author Rene Rodriguez argues a more cynical force is at play. “There are a lot of really mediocre ideas in the hands of people who know the influence game,” he states. “Man, that doesn't feel good.”
This is the central frustration for countless creators, entrepreneurs, and leaders. They have brilliant concepts, powerful stories, and meaningful solutions, yet they remain unheard. Meanwhile, louder, flashier, and often less substantive voices capture the attention of the masses.
In a conversation with Chris Do, Rodriguez deconstructs this dynamic, offering a new framework for understanding what it truly means to be influential. It’s not about becoming an attention-seeking megalomaniac. It’s about equipping good people with the tools to ensure the best ideas win.
Rodriguez, with a background in behavioral neuroscience, has spent nearly three decades asking one question: “So what the hell does that mean to X?” He translates dense scientific research into practical applications for persuasion, leadership, and change. His work is not about abstract theory but about real-world impact.
He wants to level the playing field. His passion isn’t for the rich and famous, who already understand the game. “My real passion is is those people that are quieter,” he explains. “They're good-hearted people, but man, they just they were never taught.”
The Weight of Insignificance
To understand influence, Rodriguez suggests first examining its opposite: the feeling of insignificance.
It’s a universally understood, yet rarely discussed, human experience. “You walk into a room and no one notices you,” he paints the picture. “You tell a joke and no one laughs. You share an idea, no one seems to care. You sell a product, no one's buying. You cast a vision and no one follows. That's a really tough place to be in life.”
The words people use to describe this state are telling: invisible, defeated, deflated, sad. Rodriguez argues they all point to one crushing feeling: insignificance.
This feeling has profound consequences.
- If you feel insignificant in a meeting, you start to question why you’re even there.
- If you feel insignificant in a relationship, you begin to doubt its foundation.
- If you feel insignificant at work, you join the “Great Resignation,” searching for a place that offers meaning and connection.
At its extreme, a persistent feeling of insignificance in life can be one of the most debilitating human experiences. “The lack of being a cause to any effect in the world is one of the worst of human experiences,” Rodriguez contends. It’s a direct assault on our sense of purpose.
Now, flip the equation. Imagine walking into a room where people notice you. Your jokes land. Your ideas are celebrated. Your products sell. Your vision mobilizes people to action. The feeling is no longer defeat; it is joy and significance. You matter. You have a purpose.
This is the core of influence. It is not about vanity or ego. It is about confirming your purpose and marking your impact on the world. It is the vehicle through which your ideas are heard, valued, and ultimately, acted upon.
This is not a mission reserved for extroverts. As Chris Do notes, many people, himself included, feel uncomfortable with excessive attention. Rodriguez, a self-proclaimed introvert who spoke 239 days one year, clarifies the distinction. Influence isn't about wanting attention; it's about commanding it when it matters. It's a deep human function, not a social media performance. This is a crucial difference most people miss, and it’s why many shy away from what they perceive as a game for attention seekers. The truth is that developing influence is a skill available to everyone, as it is a core component of what successful personal brands do differently.
The Teacher vs. The Pitchman
Once you accept the need for influence, the question becomes how to build it. Here, two distinct philosophies emerge: the pitchman and the teacher.
The pitchman operates on a transactional model. They follow a playbook, masterfully building emotional desire by explaining the “what” and the “why” but withholding the “how.” They create hunger and then sell the solution. This model, often seen at large-scale events, is highly effective for short-term revenue. “It's a great business model,” Rodriguez admits, adding he’s made more money using it than from his substantial $35,000 speaker fee. “But it doesn't feel good.”
The teacher operates on a relational model. They share openly, giving away the “how” without expectation of immediate return. Their joy comes from empowering others. Both Do and Rodriguez identify with this approach. “My joy comes from sharing with others fully, openly, without any expectations,” says Do.
This is not naive altruism. It’s a different strategy with a different timeline. The pitchman plays a game measured in quarters. The teacher plays a game measured in decades.
This long-term approach builds what Do calls karmic equity. By consistently giving value, you build a deep reservoir of gratitude and trust within your community. When the time comes to make an ask, that community is ready and willing to reciprocate. Rodriguez experienced this when launching his book, Amplify Your Influence. After two decades of serving his audience, people were clamoring to support him. “They were just calling say, ‘How many can I buy? What do you need me to buy?’” he recalls. This groundswell of support propelled his book to the Wall Street Journal bestseller list.
Do shared a powerful story illustrating this principle. After a talk, a woman approached him, confessing, “You have done for me more than this school has.” The school’s tuition was over $160,000. Do had provided his value for free. Later that day, he received a notification. The same woman, unprompted, had sent him $2,000 via Venmo. It wasn't a transaction. It was an expression of pure gratitude.
“I bet you that $2,000 felt like 200,000,” Rodriguez responded. It’s validation that the long game works. This is the difference between building a customer list and fostering a true community. The former responds to funnels; the latter responds to heart.
The Hidden Cost of 'Free'
The path of the teacher is noble, but it is not without its own perils. There is a tendency to romanticize the idea of giving everything away, but as Rodriguez learned, nothing is truly free. Someone always pays the price.
For years, he operated on the belief that giving away free work would eventually pay off. “I did so much free work for years and years and years,” he says. While it built relationships, it came at a significant, unseen cost. “There was somebody paying for it the whole time. It was my family.”
This was a sobering realization. “I'm borrowing from my family to pay for other people's education,” he reflects. “And then that hit me really hard.”
This is the moment of maturity every purpose-driven entrepreneur must face. Generosity must be balanced with sustainability. You cannot serve anyone if you burn yourself out or bankrupt your family. It forced a critical shift in his thinking. “There's a piece of the give, give, and give for sure,” he acknowledges, “but there's also a ‘Rene, grow up and learn how to run a business.’”
This isn’t a retreat from his core values. It’s an evolution. He sought to create a business model that could honor both integrity and profitability. The challenge was to deliver immense value in his free offerings while still illustrating the endless journey of content available in his paid programs. It’s about creating a business that is both harmonious and profitable, a challenge many face when they try to scale from a freelancer to a full agency.
The goal, he realized, is not a perfectly balanced life. That’s a myth sold by those who have already achieved wealth through periods of intense imbalance. He asked thousands of people if they achieved something great while their life was balanced. All hands go down. The true aim is not balance, but integration and harmony. It’s about creating a system where your work, family, and values can coexist without one constantly draining the others.
The Science of Learning Under Pressure
Rodriguez’s unique coaching style, which can appear harsh in short clips, is rooted in a deep understanding of neuroscience. He creates high-stress environments for a specific, scientific reason.
He explains that our brains learn in two fundamentally different ways, depending on the subject matter. He identifies these as biologically primary and biologically secondary learning.
Biologically secondary activities are things we learn for societal success but are not essential for survival. Think of algebra, reading, or writing. We can learn these effectively through traditional methods:
- Theories, axioms, and formulas.
- Guidance from a teacher.
- Reading a book and taking a test.
However, this method fails completely when it comes to biologically primary activities. These are the skills hardwired into our DNA for survival: reading facial expressions, fighting, connecting with others, and managing our emotional state under threat. You cannot learn to box by reading a pamphlet. You cannot prepare for battle in a simulator alone.
“You can pass the test on how to throw a jab, cross, right hook,” Rodriguez says, “but now I get in a ring and all of a sudden I got my butt kicked because I'd never seen a punch come at me.”
The skills he teaches, like commanding a stage, having presence, and communicating under the pressure of a high-stakes client meeting, are all biologically primary. They involve managing a physiological stress response that shuts down the parts of the brain needed for performance. Teaching these skills in a comfortable, sterile classroom is not just ineffective; it’s negligent.
Research shows that when primary skills are taught using secondary methods, only 15% of people retain the knowledge in a usable fashion. The key difference in that 15% was a preexisting condition of stress. They *had* to learn, or they would lose their job or their marriage.
Stress is the catalyst. “We have to train to the level that we're expected to perform in the environment we're expected to perform in,” he states. This is why his workshops are not gentle. Anyone who watches these sessions will find a raw and often uncomfortable environment, which is necessary for effective advanced communication tactics to take hold.
Training Under Live Fire
Rodriguez’s workshops are a laboratory for high-stakes performance. He doesn't just talk about pressure; he manufactures it. Participants opt-in to this intense process, giving him permission to interrupt, challenge, and push them past their comfort zones.
He rates every attempt on a simple binary scale: zero or one. A zero means the message didn't land; the speaker is moving away from influence. A one means it connected. The process is brutal and immediate.
He will bring someone on stage and ask them three simple questions: “Who are you? What do you do? What makes you unique?”
The typical response is a hesitant, filler-word-laden disaster. “Uh, um, uh, my name is John and I'm a uh, social media uh, consultant… and uh, what makes me unique is I really care about my clients.”
Without hesitation, Rodriguez stops the exercise. “Audience, was that a one or a zero?” When the polite crowd says one, he calls them out. “You guys are liars. That was a zero. And that's okay.”
The goal isn’t to shame but to reveal. Instead of giving them a new script, he digs for the source. “You say you care about people. Why?” This question forces the speaker out of their head and into their heart. As the speaker, “John,” tells a raw, emotional story about his mother’s kindness, his entire physiology changes. His delivery becomes authentic, natural, and believable. He connects to his story, and in doing so, he connects to the audience.
This is what it means to connect to your heart. It’s not a vague platitude. It’s a specific process of accessing core memories and emotions that fuel authentic communication. This is a topic further explored in how words shape your reality.
For his most advanced students, the training becomes even more extreme. He has thrown bags of candy across a table and poured water on a speaker's head, whispering, “Figure it out.” The point is to train the nervous system to remain calm and resourceful when the unexpected happens, whether it’s a heckler in the audience or a complete tech failure on stage.
This is the same principle that forges elite performers in other fields. Comedians don’t workshop their material in sold-out arenas. They bomb in front of belligerent, 12-person crowds in open-mic nights, callusing their skin and building the muscle for real-time problem-solving.
Wrapping Vitamins in Gummy Bears
Having the skill to influence is one thing. Getting that message to a broad audience in a distracted world is another challenge entirely. This is where strategy must meet substance.
Working with social media expert Mo Ishmael, Rodriguez analyzed his content to understand why certain videos reached millions while others, containing what he considered his best wisdom, fell flat.
The pattern was clear. Audiences crave transformation, not just information.
- Videos that went viral: Clips of him coaching people live, showing a clear before-and-after transformation. The raw, emotional tension of these sessions created a powerful narrative hook.
- Videos that flopped: Clips of him sitting and delivering profound wisdom directly to the camera. His favorite content was his audience’s least favorite.
“The ones that I hate are the ones that go viral,” he laments, a sentiment many expert creators share. The public doesn’t always value what the expert values. The key is to find a way to deliver what they need in a package they want.
Do offers a powerful metaphor for this concept. Your deep knowledge, your frameworks, and your wisdom are like vitamins. They are essential but often unpleasant to consume. No one wants to swallow a chalky pill. To get people to take them, you have to put them in a gel cap or, better yet, turn them into Flintstone gummy bears. You must wrap your nutrients in good-tasting content.
This can mean using a topical hook or “newsjacking” to make your timeless wisdom relevant to a current conversation. Rodriguez did this unintentionally in a video that went viral. He started a talk by saying, “I wasn't a Kobe Bryant fan until he passed away.” People lost their minds, and the emotional response drove millions of views. The content that followed was his core message, but the Kobe reference was the gummy bear that got people to consume it.
This isn’t about being inauthentic or chasing controversy for its own sake. The audience is smart enough to see through that. It's about understanding the environment. Rodriguez admits he was initially bitter about this shift to what he called a “simple sugar, fast food environment.” But he realized he had a choice: complain about the world or learn to operate within it. He had to learn how to wrap his nutrients. For anyone trying to grow their audience, it’s a vital lesson: stop trying to go viral and do this instead.
The path to amplifying your influence is a journey of integrating profound truths. You must have a great idea, but you must also learn to package it. You must be willing to give generously, but you must also build a sustainable business. You must have command of your material, but you must also train to deliver it under fire.
It’s about playing the long game with skill, integrity, and a deep understanding of human nature. You don’t have to be the loudest voice in the room, but you must learn how to be the one that’s heard.
TRANSCRIPT
how do I say this respectfully I find myself in a simple sugar fast food environment where people can't watch a video that's Le more than a minute please join me and giv a big Welcome to our guest speaker Renee Rodriguez Renee Rodriguez Renee Rodriguez I get most joy out of helping those bring
their ideas to the Forefront and showing them that they can have impact without being attention sorry there are a lot of really mediocre ideas in the hands of people who know the influence game man that doesn't feel good if you're going to be a life coach how about get some life first I'm
giving you the attention of my entire company don't [ __ ] it up God why is Renee such an a-hole right now I needed to hear that so my next guest uh has a bachelor's degree in Psychology behavioral neuroscience and business he runs his own conference and he I met backstage at Neil's
event the Ford event we knew we had to connect because we share so many goals objectives and just ways of moving around in the world uh without further Ado Rene welcome to the show thanks for having me Chris big fan of what you're doing and every time I tell people hey I'm going
to be on the Chris do show they're like what so you're doing it you're doing it right my friend they're like what who the hell is that no no no no no no we know that's how they there you got a lot of fans out there my friend so it's an honor to
be here thank you very much now we we'll be talking a little bit about the concepts from your book amplify your influence and there's so many things I want to unpack and just dive into your brain for people who don't know who you are Renee can you please introduce yourself and tell us
your story and I just watch your Ted do frame it for us please well so my my background is behavioral Neuroscience I have spent the latter probably majority of 30 years asking the annoying question in the science community of saying okay so what the hell does that mean to X meaning what does
it mean to selling what does that research mean to persuasion to influence to body language to conflict resolution to relationships to dating what does it mean and I was never never wanted to be on the research side I understood it but my passion always was on the application side and so I sold
cookwood door to-door when I was in college so I had a very strong sales background and did that and then left when I graduated went to work for a change management consulting firm that used brain research to deal with massive skill culture change and very hostile work environment so that gave me a
background in in dealing with the real side of change not the raw raw emotional adrenaline filled side of what people think changes because it's not uh and you know this changes nitty-gritty it's it's hard and there's a way to do it and there's a lot of ways not to do it and so
then over those years combining you know being able to have a sales persuasion background background in neuroscience and dealing with real change also then working with leaders you start realizing that all of these sort of kind of compressed together and I landed um was pulled into this one singular Focus which would be
influence and that's the ability to communicate an idea that people will pay attention to and also act upon the word influen is used a lot and I think if you're listening to this podcast or watching this YouTube channel you definitely want to create more influence and impact in the world not because it's
a social vanity metric but because you have an idea and you want to be able to share that idea now in that talk that I heard you share with the young students there talked about an idea like you you were born you had lots of ideas and you started to ask yourself the
questions about why some of your ideas were not well received while other people's ideas were like people would gather around them so maybe you can give us more insight into that story and what that means especially as it relates to what you do today the best way to understand influence is taking a
philosophical approach and let's look at the opposite I I always it's weird I like to look at the opposite of things just to see if I can understand it's opposite then I can understand what it is like we know what good is I can the better I know evil the better I know
good yeah and so there's always this you have to know both sides of an equation if you want to understand psychology you also have to understand the Dark Side of psychology as well all right for me let's look at influence the lack of it you walk into a room and no one notices
you tell a joke and no one laughs you share an idea no one seems to care you sell a product no one's buying you cast a vision and no one follows that's a really tough place to be in life and you ask people what they what what word comes to mind they'll say
things like invisible uh defeated deflated sad and I probably would venture that it all sums up to the feeling of insignificant and so let's kind of dissect that a little bit because it's so often influences scen as this this offensive strategy to sell something or persuade people but there's so much more to
it so if I feel let's say I felt insignificant in a meeting uh I'd probably ask myself why am I here and I'd probably try to get out if I felt insignificant in a relationship I'd probably start going why am I in this relationship now a lot of people feel insignificant at work
and they start wondering right why am I here maybe this is great resignation there might be something in that where people now want to go somewhere where they feel a little bit more meaning and connection and sadly a lot of people feel insignificant in life I would venture to say that that feeling
of the lack of influence the lack of being a cause or the the cause to any effect in the world is one of the worst of human experiences and so now let's bring it back in you walk in a room and people notice you tell a joke people are laughing you share ideas
people love it you sell products they're buying you cast vision and you can watch people mobilized to take action now what's the feeling now it's a feeling of Joy there's a feeling of significance because now I'm doing something and so then if we go okay if I know why I'm here there's another
way of saying that I know my purpose for being here and if I don't have impact then I really have no purpose in being here it's kind of a backdoor approach to understanding this question that we all Wrestle with which is what is our purpose and so influence significance purpose the Mark we
leave on the world all to me is relatively in kind of in that same world now you're you're probably the P Piper to people who are consider themselves the alpha part of their group the people who want to be leaders the keynote speakers the authors uh the salespeople there's a whole lot of
other people who are like maybe I don't want that level of impact and maybe it's okay for me to walk into room and not be the center or for people to notice I myself have struggled with this I used to feel very hot under the collar quite literally when I got too much
attention I I just I I actually wanted to disappear for a while so what's happening with my brain versus the brains of the people who want to do that well I think one that's a really great Point by the way first and foremost I want to clarify influence isn't about attention like my
gaining attention you have to capture attention by the way so but it's not wanting attention for the sake of attention like holding your phone up saying hey everybody it's just not about like social media attention it is a much deeper human function in my opinion right so I also am an introvert if
I'm not working I don't want to be the center I don't I don't energize in groups I energize one-on-one for me being a public speaker especially I think that happened the more and more events I started doing so last year I spoke 239 days and you do that for enough years you start
realizing that you start valuing sort of the the quieter time for me it's it's not about whether you're an introvert or extrovert I know I do this more for if you want to ask my real purpose let's have a real conversation I don't I don't want to do this for the Rich and
Famous they already know how to be influential they pay the bills for sure but there are a lot of really mediocre ideas in the hands of people who know the influence game that are influencing people in in the game is played a lot of times by people that aren't even that good at
people right but there's a lot of really good people with great ideas that have never learned how to get them out and that's where my real passion is is those people that are quieter they're Pro they process more they think they're probably shy introverted but man they have brilliant ideas they're good-hearted people
but man they just they were never taught and so I get most joy out of helping those bring their ideas to the Forefront and showing them that they can have impact without being attention whes Hogs sorry you can say whatever you want it sounds to me like the the thing that's driving you
the bigger purpose from what I'm hearing is that you want to create a more egalitarian society and that the best ideas win not the person with the flashiest smile or the biggest in Bat or the the richest or or the the biggest platform and I noticed this in watching several of your videos
the clips that I was able to see online where you coach people over it seems like a multi-day event and you can see how they start it's like you can't even recognize it it's like you can't even believe that they're the same people but they look the same it's their same voice but
first they start off unsure of themselves they're stammering they're inserting a lot of ums ums likes you know that kind of thing and you're helping them through all that it's remarkable to be able to see but then now I understand your point which is these are the meek not the alpha types who
have powerful stories to share can create tremendous impact in the world and might have a better idea than some of these louder people so yeah and one thanks for watching those and you're right it's it's sometimes the power goes into the wrong hands but and I don't know I'm thinking through you ask
a really good question is do I want to create a different kind of society where I wish it was the case I don't know if I can create that but what I can do is help those that maybe don't see their power realize that they have more than they thought help them also
embrace the fact that unfortunately there are some rules that the world has created and unfortunately the world does listen to louder more boisterous people let's break that down further loudness and boisterous is a tool to be heard there are other ways to be heard that doesn't mean you have to be loud there
are other ways to command attention without screaming there's a lot of other ways to stop the show without jumping up and down what we have found is helping somebody tap into their most authentic style let's look at you so you say that you're quieter shy but yet you have a really loud style
like fashion style that is one way to to make an impact on people which is fantastic by the way I love it and that's also a really nice way to stand out and choose saying okay well there's a visual aesthetic to Chris doe you know and then part of the brand promise is
I know that he will always show up he's not going to show up in a white shirt with a black tie black shoes he's just not unless maybe that that tie is you know around his shoulder and and the pants are rolled up to his ankles and you know maybe there's one uh
Jordan on one side who knows but it's going to be different you can expect that from Chris there's a way of screaming without screaming like there um a book my mother made me read when I was 18 called Lions don't need to Roar the lion walks in the room we know it's a
lion we know it can kill us but if a line comes in Roaring we're wondering does it even realize that it's a lion I mean we know you're a li I'm a lion it's like yeah dude we know it's like what do they feel insecure they have to yell and scream we know
that you're a lion like just how about just hang out and that's where I think people confuse Alpha with the the role of the alpha this is a great conversation by the way it's like so what what would you say the role of the alpha number one role should be to take care
of the pride I think yeah so how right and it's so a lot of people say Protect right to dominate to win and to fight it's actually Harmony the harmony is what protects the pride and protects the pack and Harmony if you look at even ape communities it's it's not always the biggest
that's the alpha it's the one that can get others to do favors it's the one that resolves conflict yes it can fight and yes it is dangerous and yes it can has strength but that's not that's just one of the many skill sets and so when there is disharmony the betas get together
and OU the alpha until one emerges and the one that emerges is keeps sort of this harmony and so I love that role of Harmony and that's usually through conflict resolution and for that I've got to be highly influential and I I know a lot of people that are half my size that
have more Alpha energy and capacity than I do this this size isn't it that's just one piece of it I know a lot of people that are twice my size that I wouldn't follow anywhere right I don't care what they say there's a beauty in that sense of Harmony and influence that is
equal opportunity when people understand it you are so unlike most of the public speakers I saw at the two-day event you walked on stage you were pretty grounded in where you were you weren't jumping around so this man is practicing what he preaches he stood there kind of almost connected to the stage
and you you weren't boisterous you you weren't jumping around uh throwing things at the audience there was none of that Fanfare but was just came from you a quiet confidence and I'd love for you to maybe compare and contrast the different styles cuz I know that you also work with other speakers that
were on that stage at least one of them how would you describe that in your approach cuz I I love this part you help people find the most authentic style to themselves and that sounds like that's your style but talk about that a little bit please thanks for pointing that out I'm actually
in a in a in a in a conundrum there because that is my style isn't one of jumping around but now I'm also an extremely intense person when it comes to work in my passion I'm really really really really intense I think a lot of people have really mastered the louder stage presence
and they do it really well some of them do it really really really really well and of course there are others that make up in loudness what they lack in content and so there's an emotional side to doing that and there's a success to that too by the way it's rewarded if the
if you do bring that big presence there there's a lot of perceived value in the moment there I was raised through the ranks where my clients would not allow they wouldn't hire you if you were running around a lot of those speakers would never make it with you know some of my clients
like Coca-Cola and and Cargill and and some of the more what you know I quote professional clients because that they're they're there for business tactics and and they need some how how do I do something some internal change processes versus advice like you should work on yourself every day and everyone's like wow
I write that down and then they leave they go what the hell does working on myself mean it was so emotional it made so much sense at the time but when the emotion wears off I don't have an answer answer to that question and that's where we say it wears off well it
wears off because you didn't really say anything you just yelled it and there wasn't anything too working on yourself versus saying you should work on yourself every day but here are three things that I do and we're going to do one of them right now I want everybody to put a pad of
paper and a pen and so then all of a sudden now I'm doing the work or give them saying so when it comes to working on yourself here are three things that you can look at to decide and here are three resources that you can look at or here are here are here
are or when you you come up and I bring somebody on stage and and I can talk about this way we bring people on stage all the time because I want to take the theory into practice and I'll hand somebody a mic and I say who are you what do you do what
makes you unique and they go uh um uh my name is John and I'm a uh social media uh consultant and uh what makes me unique is I really care about my clients so awesome they say okay now John and so when it reveals I don't need a PowerPoint to show what poor
presentation Styles is I just need to bring somebody up on stage who's nervous and let them be they also choose their way into that and I I say okay so John was that a one or a zero and I I I rate people an influence on a zero or one scale zero you're
moving away from it one you're moving towards it and he's like uh I'm go audience what were they they go one I'm like you guys are liars that was a zero that was a zero and that's okay it's totally okay that it's a zero because I'm going to show you what a one
looks like in a minute here and John has it in him but he's just out of sequence and so now we're taking this idea of sequence and say okay what does that mean I said okay so now John you chose you really care about people so you let you care people I said
why I said what happened you know well my mother always did well tell us a story about your mother it's like oh wow so my mother every Sunday would always and she tells us amazing story about mother would always take care of this kid down the street on Sundays and didn't know why
but she was always so caring to the kids and realized that her her her dad was in uh the kid's dad was in AA and and uh knew that he wasn't there going to eat so she always fed him and and you know just had all these influences about this but the moment
they start telling that story they in a very different chemistry and it's such an authentic delivery and it's so natural and believable and so that's what we call connecting to your heart versus me sitting up there and saying you need to connect your heart every day and I go yeah I need to
and then I go how the hell do I do that well I'm going to show you exactly how and so I'm I and this is by the way it's bitten me in the ass too by the way because you know we're transitioning into doing more webinars and doing more pitches from stage which
I never did I was always about let me tell you how to do something and I'm going to I'm a teacher I'm I'm I'm lit going to show you how on stage which is why you know I get paid a lot for it but then the free talks where you have to pitch
something you don't give any how you talk about what and at the end when they want to know how that's when you charge them which is a great business model by the way I've done it a couple times and I make a lot more doing that than a speaker fee and we we
have a pretty heavy speaker fee of 35,000 holy [ __ ] you make more money than the other but it doesn't feel good right and it doesn't feel right so when you ask me in the conundrum uh by being transparent I am in that battle right now saying man how do I I
balance those two I always want to be like whether you buy something for me or not I want you to say that was valuable and I can do something but then the Consultants the coaches on M said don't give them that let them pay for it and I'm like man that doesn't feel
good so I'm I'm convinced RIS and I'm going to find a way to do both and I might lose Mass along the way but who cares I think you and I are very aligned in that and probably many other things I don't want to make any assumptions here we see people who sell
very specific way they follow the Playbook they value stack they talk about the why you need to learn something the what but not the how and they make them hungry they they capture that high emotional state and they they pitch from the stage and they they close deals at the end of the
day and they make a good amount of money probably more money than than this other approach would for sure but you and I were I think you've already said it self-identify as teachers like my joy in my life doesn't come from making more money my joy comes from sharing with others fully openly
without any expectations and I believe and you you you have to like chime in on this I believe it's like they're playing a game that is in quarters I'm playing a game that might be measured in decades and we've seen this happen before where somebody works and gives and gives and gives and
they they're like poor as hell or maybe they're they're not poor they're doing okay but we're like why aren't they super crazy rich and then one day they flip that switch and that entire community and audience who shown up for them time and time again who feel a personal connection with they will
then pour it back at least that's the hypothesis I'm not sure how it's going to play out but both new I seem to be on the same trajectory I love how you said that and I've been looking for a way of thinking so I'm 30 years into this game people ask me they
go how did you get to Wall Street Journal bestseller and I said you know when I think back to it there's there's a whole algorithm to making it work and you can't buy your way into it I'd been and I told you I said I spent 20 some years serving and ging value
without asking for anything and and then when I came for the book and I said hey can can you guys help out I had so many people come well can I buy 500 [ __ ] okay yeah well all right well then I'm going to give you this and I you know I'd
give him a $35,000 product of mine that I would normally charge for the purchase of 500 bucks which is what 15 grand on their end they're like this is all day so we just I'm like okay now I Ed up losing about $400,000 worth of sales right to get there but people were
so willing to help in that time they were just calling say how many can I buy what do you need me to buy I'm like well I don't know what you tell me what you need and you know it's like it was just really really cool to see that and I love that
and I I I would agree 100% we are very aligned in that and everybody that that knew you before I knew you that told me about you said you guys would get along really really well even Neil uh shout out to Neil Neil dingra uh said the same thing there is a long-term
approach to this and I get a lot of people that say I want to be a good speaker all the time from different kind of questions so I'm I'm struggling I'm doing this but I want to be a coach and I and I just wrote a I would think somewhat controversial article in
my newsletter about the ethical dilemma in the rise of the coaching industry there's a lot of coaches out there that are brand new and you know there's a good meme out there that says Lord give me the confidence of a 25-year-old life coach and a good mean I've seen it it's not to
rain on their parade but it's it's you know you're you're if you're going to be a life coach how about get some life first go down some of those paths before you start doing that and it's it's akin to giving directions in a town you've never been and so if you if you're
a personal trainer and you're overweight Maybe home first I like I'm not going to do a course on how to grow rich and thick hair yeah I'm not going to do a course on the menstrual cycle and what women are getting wrong one cuz I've never had one and that's not my world
and so there there has to be sort of an ethical guide in in this and there is no governing body about it but there's everybody's a coach now and and that isn't even a get out of my territory this is more of a get in your lane and and I told this kid
he's said you want to be a coach I said I go let go of wanting to be a coach and be so good at what you do that people start asking you how and then you have something of value to offer but if you stop it I was even on a call just
even this this morning they were saying they wanted to coach and I said you run a successful brokerage keep doing that don't stop you want to be a speaker don't stop doing that because you want to stop to become a speaker you're going to make more money in your brokerage but what's odd
is that you'll stop The Brokerage to be a speaker but the brokerage success is what gets you people to want you on stage so don't stop that you got to be successful at it to to to lend to the other and we can go down that rabbit hole there's an idea that um
I Heard Alex Heros say from the stage at a different conference and he said something about if you just give enough value the sales become so easy that you won't even have to ask for it anymore and really ties into this belief that I have about karmic equity in that if you could
just keep giving eventually maybe the other person's guilt or gratitude I'll take either one they'll find a way to reciprocate I'll tell you a little personal story and that I would love to hear if something like this has happened with you I was at an art center grad show and it just right
after the P the pandemic so the energy funky everybody's still wearing masks and this woman comes up to me I don't recognize her and she's like oh my God Chris I can't believe you that you're here I'm like okay cool in my mind I'm like how do I know you where have we
met and most of the times I don't know who they are and she says you know I got to tell you something I'm like yeah you have done for me more than this school has the tuition at Arts Center the last time I checked was $23,000 a semester so I'm s sitting here
thinking I've done more for you for free than you have gotten from spending 160 Plus th000 at a school and so I did something uncharacteristic of myself I said well you know there's always a way for you to pay me back if you're super grateful but that's up to you we have products
that you can buy you know and she smiled we all laughed everything and that was the end of that later that day I'm on Instagram and somebody messages me I mean going through my messages and says hey do you have a venmo account yeah I didn't fully connect that that was the same
person I go to sleep no big deal I wake up in the morning as I always do check my emails to socials and it said somebody is giving you money like what I can't remember the exact amount I should know this but I think she sent me like $2,000 and that was completely
blown away Renee because yeah this is the truest expression of gratitude when they don't even buy anything they just send you money for me it's like just validation that what we're doing is working and I'll take that and any which way they want to give it and if we can continue to work
this way all I want to do is just teach all my life you I bet you that $2,000 felt like 200,000 oh it it felt like even more than that maybe two million yeah it's yeah I feel that's a great story man has it happened to me yes and people do I do
an event as a favor for somebody I've done that for a lot of years it's harder now but I've done a lot of it and they'll come back and they' be like hey we did really well X and I'm like wow that was really cool but this here's what I've learned too and
I also believed believe in the karmic equity and the and all of those things but there's another side that I think we need to add to it let's go back to like herosian some of the bigger players that are really good at it there's a lot of times where people will tell you
you just have to add value but they forget how talented they are also at business model like harosi is really good at creating a profitable business model is really good at the psychology of getting people to fall in line and follow a funnel is really good at asking for business in really good
ways and so it's not just and I don't mean to say because I don't know him but I do admire him a lot yes it's not just adding value you got to do the work to understand the psychology of how people pay for things because we also know when you give away things
for free they don't value them the same and so there's there's a balance in there that you know I did so much free work for years and years and years and years I'm talking two plus decades hoping well this will come pay off well it did in the sense in other ways but
I also had to go through the maturity of saying okay hold on a second I have to know my work wor and I have to be able to ask for it because what was happening and this is the hard part there was somebody paying for it the whole time it was my family
and I realized that I was like no I'm giving away value giving away value while I'm taking from my family I'm borrowing from my family to pay for other people's education and then that hit me really hard going okay I need to think broader about what Equity means CU there Nothing in life
is free now there's an ethic in terms of how much there's U there's gouging that can happen there's things that you know so there's that moral compass and a friend of mine I what we're talking about there's a there has to be an Integrity alarm uh JJ Mazo if you're listening to this
this is our conversation that that Integrity that internal alarm that goes off of saying uh CU we have a lot of things that accountability that's external we you know go to the gym you get to workout partner is external but there's a lot of internal challenges that I think we have to be
able to resolve and that's one of them so I think that there's you have to look at the overall Equity of who all is doing it who sacrif ricing time away from you like I owe it to my kids and my wife and and my family to charge what we're worth and what
we've been creating so that especially if I'm doing this business that has no asset I can't sell what I do at the end so I have to be able to build something that if I were to pass that my wife and kids are okay now I'm not saying I need to leave them
a bunch of wealth my wife I need to leave her the same quality of life I had to kind of say okay there is a um there's a piece of the give give and give for sure but there's also a Rene grow up and learn how to run a business and now within
that I'm giving and I'm running a business now do it ethically and how do I say this respectfully a lot of people that will tell you like life balance is important they're also the people that are very wealthy that unbalanced their life to create the wealth that now go back and go shoot
hey you can have all that I have with you know you know with life balance but that's not how it works and I've asked thousands of people this question how many of you have done something big in your life great how many of you did it balanced and all hands go down and
it's like okay so maybe it's not the goal isn't balance maybe the goal is in in integration and Harmony that's how I think about it I'm glad you brought that point up about heroi and that he did something good in his life that he had enough money to do whatever he wants and
then he also built a different business model that this whole giving actually feeds into that business model the funnel as you say if you give away and you're not taking care of yourself like the whole oxygen mask on the airplane if you don't have you're aish right and it's not that he's not
giving he is giving but and I think just a lot of people know they have to get the business bottled on I wanted to just come back to this real quick um you had said you came to the realization that it wasn't free it comes at a cost and it came at the
cost of your family how' you come to that realization and and take me back emotion like once you realize that what kind of decisions did you make from there so I think it was just looking at so my wife and I you know the 239 days that I spoke you know people say
well it's unbalanced I said well it's integrated because my wife booked it you know she runs the business and it's harmonious cuz she said hey go play this tune and I'll play this tune you know she comes on a lot of my trips you met her she was there that was harmonious but
now you know in the last year or so she's like I I don't know if I want to keep doing this you'll be gone this much and I'm like I don't either so we don't like the tune so we go okay so how do we change it that's where we started doing more
of the and not doing we're not getting rid of the high impact work but we're incorporating what I found was that there was a wayed to achieve both where we're giving we're doing our free master class which leads to uh a 2hour value added event which I do show some how and the
thing that I discovered was I can give you a ton of how and then at the end say there's a heck of a lot more how here if you want to do that you can buy into a different program I think we we found a pretty high integrity way and the coaches that
I have do this for some of the biggest names that you and I would both know we spent I put both of them through my program so they go okay I I get where you're coming from Renee so they get back and they're like okay Rene's program has to be different it can't
be gimmicky it has to be something that if you don't don't buy you still get value but yet has to illustrate the immense value and endless journey of content that is also on the other end of this and so yeah I think we've innovated in a pretty cool way of achieving both of
those so we'll have to Circle back in a year or so to see how the program is going the this the transition that you made the Innovation and all that kind of stuff to say like looking back now what would you do differently what what kind of insights can you share with us
we have another friend in common Mo and I know works with us he works with you and I was looking at your Tik Tok account with over a million followers the question I have for you is everybody would love to be in that position to have that kind of social proof what have
you noticed in terms of the videos that you you put out there any patterns where those are the ones that connect and resonate those are the ones that go viral those are the ones that get a lot of people to follow you because I'd love to learn from not only what you did
but what messages were contained in those videos for sure well yeah and shout out to Mo if you don't know him follow him Mo Ishmael he's a genius and he he was uh one of the first people to tell me about you too so I think that what he and I talk talk
about our videos every day he knows that I am highly Hands-On so he loves it and is frustrated with just how Hands-On I am and so in terms of every when we first started it was like okay what worked what didn't work what do we like we do another video okay that worked
that didn't how about this then we need to change the color no you can't read this and what people don't realize there it's a it takes a lot of effort I mean it's an everyday look at the content and every day saying what's working what's not and right now we're kind of in
this little lull I'd say you know we were getting you know 50 to 100 you know to 500,000 views and some you know one of them got 25 million and now we're getting anywhere from a th000 to 12,000 and so it's it's an interesting time but but we looked at it and mo
was so genius and we know that if if I have a hook in the front of it meaning where I'm speaking to the camera saying here are the three things that or you know have you ever found yourself some sort of hook that it performs a lot better and we were doing a
lot of videos where I just got really busy and I wasn't able to provide a hook for the video cuz we would do like a podcast clip and then we I would record a hook to put in the front of it that always perform better my podcast when I sit here and record
and I just give wisdom nobody likes it and it's my I my favorite stuff no one likes by the way that's just like I know and I'm not going to hit good I'm like I love this one and my wife's like we know and what 100 people are going to like it yeah
it's crazy and the ones that I hate are the ones that go viral but what we found is that my audience doesn't like sales tips the videos that kind of brought us viral were me coaching people and so if I'm there coaching somebody through a process and they watch a before and after
they love those that's where we start going viral and so we're we in fact Mo and I had this conversation today where we're going to go back and just dissect I've got 14 terabytes of video of me coaching people so we're going to go back I've skimmed through the content on on Tik
Tok and I've come to the same conclusion so look at that i' I barely looked at it and I can spot patterns myself people love role plays for a bunch of different reasons it's because you can demonstrate what you've done an expert is someone who's practice something and you can literally see the
before and after and your style and I have to say it made me feel a little uncomfortable watching it cuz like I'm feeling bad for the person they're stammering their way through and you're like stop stop like they got a word out like Rene's killing them right now he's just destroying them and
so what we find in our own videos is things that are illicit and emotional response from the viewer are like 10 times more likely to be watched because we need to know how this turns out either they love you or they hate you but they're going to keep watching it to see and
and that's why that's why these deep philosophical thoughts that like yeah okay yeah I'm zending out but then you get 100 views or 100 likes and that's it it's interesting you said something about uh so one of our videos I think at like 6 million I started off by saying I wasn't a
Kobe Bryant fan until he passed away and then I learned his story and I grew to love who he was that was the hook it was like it wasn't even the hook it was just what I said on stage yeah and people lost their minds about me saying I wasn't a Kobe Bryant
fan how dare he use that man's name get that man's name out of your mouth we need to cancel this guy immediately I said I grew to love who he was I just wasn't a fan I was a Michael Jordan fan if you want to go viral just talk about Kobe that's another
thing it's got to elicit that emotional response I you know it's fine I've never approached it from that perspective but I think you know it's what's interesting too and this is we can have this conversation it's okay then I go out trying to elicit an emotional response versus let it organically come up
because I see a lot of people trying really hard to do it and it's embarrassing to watch like you're just trying to be controversial and you're trying to do stuff and I think the audience is also smart enough to see through that too I think they are when you're trying too hard we
can see and it comes across as inauthentic the other thing that I've noticed too is that when you say something like um I wasn't a fan of Kobe bride until he passed away then I learned to love him what you're doing there is you're jumping and catching Trends and you're making your content
topical for a whole group of people who don't know who the heck you are the metaphor I describe to folks is think about it it's like your know know your experience your wisdom all the Frameworks and tools that you provide that's like a vitamin and no one likes to take vitamin they they're
gross they're they're rough on your throat so what do they do they put them in gel caps or if they're brilliant they make them into Flintstone gummy bears I try to tell people it's like you have great content you're a great teacher there's so much you have to offer the world you got
to put it in this gel coating that people can swallow and then they're going to get the nutrients that you provide in that case you're you're news jacking or you're Trend hopping and it's it's not a bad thing it's not an evil thing to do that you're just making it contextually relevant to
people I needed to hear that thank you because it's you know it's funny like I'm My Own Worst Enemy in some of the stuff because I opt out of so many things because I don't feel the authenticity of it but the news hacking in terms of that CU here it's funny like three
years ago four years three four years ago I wrote this somebody asked me what I think of the state of the the world right now and I said and I wrote this art this thing for myself it was we were going through a bunch of branding stuff I said what world have I
found myself into I find myself in a simple sugar fast food environment where people can't watch a minute a video that's Le more than a minute whatever happened actually consuming and sitting down and studying an art form and and you know if it doesn't capture attention right away it must not be valuable
and I was just so I was so bitter uh about how the world had transitioned to this sort of quick hit I called it simple sugar fast food but nothing is just mental junk food I was almost then rebelled against it I'm holier than thou and then that's when I when I realized
I'm like okay well what if I could wrap like you said and I love that wrap good nutrients in it in the good tasting content or something that captures attention and that's where Mo came in and help me sort of see that the thing that I have to bring up now is that
those videos that I watch where you're coaching people I love to see the transformation there's a like I'm on the edge of my seat there's kind of like some emotional anxiety that I'm feeling like oh yeah it it's so rough like I can only imagine being that person you come across a little
bit different in some of those videos and the part that people don't get to hear sometimes is you ask the class the workshop that you're running I need your permission to be able to kind of interrupt you to be a little bit aggressive to to grind it out because I think you said
something about either discomfort or anxiety that's where the learning comes from can you expand on like what you say and why you do what you do I'm curious how I do come across from that perspective but you're right they don't see that this is some people op not some all of them opt
into it I use a very stressful approach for a very scientific reason so I'll get nerdy for a minute okay so when it comes to learning there's two types of things we have to learn one of them is called biologically primary things and some things are biologically secondary so biologically primary are things
that we have to learn in order to survive how to read a friendly face versus a dangerous face how to protect ourselves physically in battle anything emotionally intelligence related right in intuition to uh connection and all of that stuff is primary activities and then we have biologically secondary meaning things that if we
don't learn we won't die but there secondary to work success like algebra reading and writing anything that's biologically secondary you can learn through theories axioms principles and formulas basically school with a guide which would be a teacher and you can take a test because you read about it and you learn about it
through theories and formulas and you test well you can perform well and you'll retain the knowledge in a usable fashion that's the cable Fashions a CR the critical piece so what happened is is most often our schooling system and teach and coaching is designed around using biologically secondary modalities we here are the
theories here's the axioms here's the pamphlets to read it's like basically saying I'm going to teach you how to box here's this pamphlet read it I'm going to teach you how to shoot a gun and get you ready for war in this simulator wow you're bullseye bullseye bullseye well I passed the test
on how to throw a jab cross right hook and Parry a punch but now I get in a ring and all of a sudden I got my butt kicked because I'd never seen a punch come at me and there's a whole physiological resp response that happens that you can't learn in a classroom
you can only learn that by being in the ring the stuff that I teach where we talk about being intuitive on stage and having a presence and being able to communicate under high levels of stress meaning eyeballs meaning a client that says I'm giving you the attention of my entire company and don't
[ __ ] it up in fact deliver the message I mean that's pressure and any professional athlete any military um Personnel would understand that level of pressure they didn't learn what they did under uh easy environments every one of the elite learned under stressful environments because so they studied when they looked at
people learning primary activities using secondary methodologies 15% of them retain the knowledge so they go okay let's look at the 15% what was different about them and so they zoomed in on that study and they said okay well these people had a pre-existing condition of stress meaning I better learn this or my
wife is going to leave me I better learn this or I'm going to lose my job so stress was this component to drive it in a lesson that was a primary activity and so we go okay so we know stress is a big component if you know the same way like I I
get I talk to military leaders all the time and I say so when you learned how to shoot a gun I'm sure it was a room it was air conditioned and Mozart was playing with big ear mus right no people yelling and screaming and and bullets flying at us and well that's not
optimal learning environment why would they do that well we have to train to the level that we're expected to perform in the environment we're expected to perform in some people come to me already highly stressed then I don't have to be really hard on them in fact what I'm trying to do is
help them now manage it cuz I want to teach people that stress is not a bad thing they say well do the butterflies go away I said no but you can teach them to fly in formation and so I got to put you in that very uncomfortable environment from a place of love
and they know that I'm coming from that position to then say okay now you're here what do we do and then we learn in that moment right there what do you do when you're stressing they learn about breathing they learn about attentional narrowing they learn about all these little techniques to get them
really honed in and focused so that they can access the parts of their brain that already retain the knowledge because what happens under stress that parts of the brain shuts down and so if I can teach you the simple methodologies to get access to it during the times of stress that's where we
begin to perform at a whole another level that makes a lot of sense and I see why you're doing that you're trying to recreate the conditions under which they're going to perform your stress testing the system so if they can can perform there everything else is going to be like a walk in
the park right you got to use live ammunition you got to use real explosions otherwise just too comfortable I don't ever do it with somebody who doesn't ask for it that's what uh the audience doesn't know because when you watch these one minute Clips I'm like watching like God why is Rene such
an a-hole right now and you're like they just say one um you're stop and they say two two more words stop okay is he going to let him get in a rhythm or no so something magical has happened but please say what you're going to say and then I'll follow up with the
question what we want them to to understand is that what ends up happening I've had people one person went through this course 11 times in one year and he got to the point now where when he does his talk I would literally go and throw things at him and one time I dumped
a bag of candy in front on the table while everybody's looking and he had to step in front and continue his conversation and continue the talk and then he used the noise as part of a framing and one time I poured water on his head as he was speaking and I just whispered
in his ear figure it out and he had to just deal with the anger imagine you're on stage and your PowerPoint doesn't work or the lights go off or your mic goes off or you get a Heckler when you're training the elite on this you got to get them Elite Level Training now
he's remember he's 11 times into it a big prop he was using wasn't working so his presentation was going to bomb and he turned that into a cool L and he came after us he goes thank God you did that to me in training cuz I don't know how else I would have
made it out of there and nobody knew it bombed but we both knew what he was trying to do didn't work and he just just turned it because he was able to maintain a really calm State you just reminded me of this thing that I really uh Love and Enjoy and that comedians
do all the time so before you're you're going to sell at the football stadium go on a global tour you're playing in very small venues with a crowd that doesn't care that's belligerent they could give an f who you are they're just there for drinks and you're working in front of 10 12
people and you have to hustle to get those people in the in the room to begin with and they're just trying material they're bombing all the time getting heckled but that builds a muscle and it it it callus their skin and so they're so good and they're ready so by the time the
general Public's ready to see them like how did this guy get so good why are they so witty I'm always wondering is there a space like that for public speakers yes and it seems like that's what you've created in a way lots of them I try to tell people if you follow the
Journey of a comedian it's the best Journey like so I call them open mic nights I said you and I use the same example I said watch like when Dave Chappelle before he came back from like when he was gone he was like in Minnesota and he'd pop up at my buddy's restaurant
and just show up there he'd pop up in different clubs and and he'd be hanging out my friends um people that were nobody's in their houses smoking weed and he did it for years he'd show up in Detroit and do this stuff and he was getting to know what the crowd what what
was the world what was happening with the world getting reacquainted again and doing Open Mic nights and you try out new materials and I remember watching one of my favorite uh why am I forgetting his name um what he died he he was a Harvard attorney and he was always on the roasts
he was just one of the best roaster out there he's really really super smart but he was out there and I I went and saw front row and he was doing all this material and nobody in the audience knew who he was because his jokes weren't landing and he kind of talks I
goes oh he goes Nobody seen me before let me try some more material and he starts going to these old jokes that I heard like 10 years ago and they started hitting and he's like okay well this stuff works I'll give it to them you know and so he's like testing out material
as he's going for what works and yeah I will sit with an idea before it hits a big stage for 2 to three years in that environment before I bring it to a big stage because they pay for an idea that isn't that has been vetted it's you got to test the ideas
and sometimes your these ideas are wrong and they're not all that good and there's no depth to it and but yeah if you can test those ideas I mean rotary clubs free events associations create your own do podcasts this is open mic night you and I are testing material right now you and
I and anytime you get a chance to open your mouth in an environment where people are going to judge it there is an open mic night give a toast with your family do a toast at a wedding those are all opportunities just to get your chops in and just do it as often
as you can and somebody asked me was listen to Joe Rogan and he nailed it how long does it take to create an hour talk he said well it takes 30 days to create 10 minutes so it takes 6 months to create an hour and I was like that's about right I want
to Circle back to something this miracul transformation of the caterpillar into the butterfly it seems to happen over a period of time I think it's 3 days but I don't know what is happening in between the the the the Cinderella moment you know and the the ugly step sister kind of like what
what has happened there what are the key ideas the breakthroughs the things that you're teaching people that allow them to have such kind of radical transformation there's a lot happening so part of it to understand this my my background is also in accelerated learning so my mother was started accelerated learning in the
70s and and so I grew up around those ideas and accelerated learning began with what they call liberating education in the in South America where they were teaching you know adults how to read and right in a faster way you know to liberate them and you know so if they were stuck in
a communist environment education would help free them out of that or an oppressive environment and so they had to learn really fast ways based on brain research back then and how to teach them but now we call it adult learning it's really just accelerated learning techniques and so a lot of it has
to do with stress and caring enough we use a process called co-learning co-learning is real-time feedback real-time correction and so that's where the uncomfortable piece comes in if you're saying ums it's like you're two ums in and uh uh okay you're fifth okay good let's just start over and then they start it
okay so now I'll make people learn how to walk onto a stage and they'll watch me practice at 30 times with them and within they 301st time they get it instead they got 30 reps in there instead of doing it one time getting feedback on a sheet of paper and says okay try
to fix this and then they may not get 30 more reps at that same walk in their lifetime I'm going to give them 30 reps in about 5 minutes and what happens the co-learning is I'll ask people when like the like when you're watching the stressful learning if you're feeling the stress of
someone's learning you're also learning with them and so when it comes your turn you're going to take every single thing that you witnessed and you're going to incorporate it because of the stress that was Associated to it it ingrains into your brain so I'm walking in audience all the way through this process
there's a couple things that happen one is that we create a baseline of what's happening and so that's where we we do a lightning round who are you what he do it makes you unique and let everybody fail and we of establish this is the Line in the Sand the Baseline we're never
going to go back from here and then two each person there a new lesson that comes up and they we teach them how to tell stories and so most people try to memorize their talk but if I were to ask you to tell a story of something that happened to you you wouldn't
have to memorize it memories are memorized and so we teach them the art of speaking from the heart which is three things your belief systems your values and your memories your memories are the only way you have access to your belief systems because those are formulated between the ages of 9 and 13
so we we dive into that time period because the things that happen who was around and what happened become the foundational core of who you are then if you can learn to hit play on those memories now all of a sudden because of the recollection of them and the authenticity of them and
you didn't write them down the delivery becomes really authentic and very real and then we teach them what we call Aristotle's rhetorical triangle of ethos pathos and logos ethos is your credibility or character pathos is the emotional the passionate appeal it's got to be emotional and logos is a logical appeal so they
learned structure those stories within those three but then they get practice doing it and then they go to sleep because the first day is really grilling there's new research coming out this has been around for a little bit but it's uh huum has made it pretty popular around a set of neurons that
if you go to sleep and you have a sort of an intense day of training and you have an intentional change in mind right before bed these set of neurons has to do with a cocoline system line up in essence basically the moment you go to sleep they go to work making change
in the brain and making new Pathways so that when you wake up it's much easier that's an oversimplification of what's going on but it explains why every time we have sort of a day of learning and then we rest and we come back that things move exponentially faster because of the prep and
the priming that's happened the day before they come back on that second day and all of a sudden it's the the things are clicking and they're telling a story and we give them a very simple sequence of of set up the frame which is a story deliver the message on top of the
story and then tie it down which says here's what this means to you and they use that methodology to to be able to deliver that it's an intense 2 and 1 half days but um the Transformations are just really fun to watch well let me queue you up to demonstrate this this idea
of setting up the frame the now and then tying it down by asking you a question which you've already answered but there's a good probability that people haven't seen this part yet Renee what is your favorite color so I was born in Miami Florida and moved to Minnesota when I was about 7
years old and lived halftime Miami halftime Minnesota and so I really never felt at home but if I found myself uh on a beach and I saw palm trees and I knew that I was close to my friends my food my music my family and all the things that made me happiest and
palm trees are green so my favorite color is green okay now explain to everybody the difference between that and just saying orange or purple or blue what's the difference what's happening what's the stuff that's happening beneath all that is what we call the question trap right so most people fall into question traps
meaning that most people that ask questions don't put much thought into the questions that they ask for some reason we feel compelled to answer questions that are asked of us even if they're dumb questions and thirdly the person asking the question is leading if somebody asks us who are you what you do
what makes you unique we feel compelled to answer that and so if you put all three of those together is that we feel compelled to answer questions and let we feel compelled to let somebody lead us down a path that they didn't put much thought into and so we have to sort of
unlearn that and we be we teach that through a stupid question like what's your favorite color and so we use that as a training tool to say you know I'll go around the room and say what's your color blue red green purple yellow I said great and then I'll ask a past student
that question or they'll come to me me and I I'll give that answer and like okay all right so now the skeptic is going to say just answer the question no one wants to hear your story it's a training tool so let's put that context together why because it follows the pattern of
how memory works in the brain It's associated to a story and an emotional connection and secondly it's I gave it I told you a lot about me just because of a stupid story or question and a lot of people will wait for for good questions to give Rich answers but they'll give stupid
answers because they were asked stupid questions so I say stop waiting for Rich questions give rich answers even in the face of dumb questions and so that's like the art of even would be on media you get the media will try to pin you in a corner you still can answer the question
but in a way that serves your purpose you learned about me that I'm from Miami that I like that I'm probably Cuban and I like Latin food and I didn't feel at home so there was a lot of so a lot of turmoil during that time period so you learned a lot about
me just to a question and so a lot of people that that we experience that way are the ones that we go God I just met them but I feel like I know them so well it's cuz they usually have more of a structure so the technical structure is the mistake is is
avoiding the mistake that most people make which is when they're asked questions they answer in the Here and Now what's your color red but that's not how the brain works the brain to make sense of the red or the here and now we have to use what we call constructs of reality how
do I construct red well based on past frames of reference so if I were to say used car salesman what word comes to mind snake snake sleazy slimy all those things well I just gave you a here and now and immediately without any context your brain was forced to go to your past
frames of reference or we call and pull a frame that creates a narrative and together the frame and the narrative construct your reality of understanding the sleazy douchebag salesperson in front of me if we know that that's how the brain works and we're constantly answering questions in the here and now without context
or frame then we don't know the narrative that surrounds that that constructs the meaning and the understanding of what's going on so the first thing we teach is is to don't answer in the he and now answer with a frame I'll give you an example so my grandfather was in Cuba he uh
saw the CU Revolution was about to begin and he knew that was not good for his family so he had this bright idea to write a letter to the president of the United States and saying that if you get me and my family out of this country I'll come in and fight for
yours so that letter somehow made it the right person and they pulled my grandfather out my grandmother my mother and my aunt he went and served in the American armed forces for8 years and finally he got his American Dream landed in Homestead Florida now if you ever been in Homestead Florida especially at
that time the only thing that was there was Patrick Air Force Base so there wasn't much employment but somebody saw my father saw what he did for this country or grandfather saw what he did for this country and got him into an older vehicle and that older vehicle allowed him to extend his
reach by 50 25 maybe even 100 miles allow and have better employment make more money and change the trajectory of his life my mother's life and ultimately my life and that person who believed in my grandfather was a used car salesman so now did you have any sleazy negative thoughts about this person
no no because why I went and filled the gap of what your brain would have done automatically but it didn't have to so I'm much easier to listen to because it didn't force your brain to work and pull some frames of reference just to fill in some gaps and if you bought into
the story you use that to create meaning and construct this person in front who seemed like a great guy just happened to be a use sales usar salesman which really was irrelevant to the fact because he helped your grandfather he seemed to be a really good guy and he helped somebody who was
a warbat wow that's really cool so think about like the job that we all do and how often we leave the gap or we call the narrative Gap open for others to fill we don't know how they're going to fill it and so that creates a massive risk in communicating price value communicating
your profession what your intention is and so that's that's I mean that's why it's a three day or two and a half day course it's just there's a lot of depth to it but a lot of practice as well so there's the here in the now which is hardwired it seems like we
maybe socialized or cultured in society and classrooms to give quick answers be Su synct brevities ass so that kind of thing so we're we're like we're we're accustomed to doing something like that you talk about well ABS in the frame of reference we're creating to too many gaps for the other person to
come up with their own narrative their own story but by providing the frame we tap into the emotional part we give the context and then we answer it what is the Tie Down Part the tie down is a third part of what we call the amplify formula formula cons of three things one
is frame second part is message and tie down so it's a sequence set the frame deliver the message and then tie it down so the framing is the storytelling and using something to create context sometimes a frame is a is as simple as a prop sometimes it's as simple as one word like
somebody says hey can you make it to the party and you answer without a frame you might say no or you could say unfortunately no so that word unfortunately creates a frame and a more better narrative to understand that I wanted to go but I can't make it the ver is just no
the brain is forced to then make something up and if they're insecure they're going to go wow he hates me right it's almost like the Trojan Horse right the Trojan Horse what would happen well there was guards up and they wouldn't let the the the soldiers in but then they disguised a message
this was a message of death unfortunately in this gift and so that lowered the guard and so frames lower the guard of the brain and get people open to an idea and that idea is a message so here's what I want you to understand that maybe our product is valuable or I'm the
I'm the right speaker for you at your event or that you should go on a date with me whatever message you're trying to deliver but then there's a tie down at the end now the tie down it's a very unique concept but it's it's something that people do intuitively already and you do
this already I've watched you do it it answers the question of what this means to you and I would venture to say it's also one of the reasons why people love you because you're constantly answering that question for them of what this means to you so if I the example the best example
would be through the story of Janice this is I had an executive that they wanted me to to prepare for a very big job interview this is a a billion- dooll president position and the interview is a six to 10 hour interview where she sits in a chair and there's 10 people in
front of her and they drill her with questions and so we did a mock interview and I put her in front and I I look off to the side and ask questions or I just observe sequencing timing language body body language facial expressions all the things I look for first question we asked
her was tell us something you're proud of and she answered like most Executives were taught short concise to the point with no frame she said I got straight A my last year in school they said what' you think Rene I said well since there were no frames I started framing her because that's
what the brain does I said oh so you're you're a procras you're straight as your last year in school so you're a procrastinator you're going to procrastinate for us as well she looks at me like I'm crazy I said oh sorry did Mommy and Daddy pay for school so you didn't have to
work that hard now she's got a tear running down her eye and I said Janice I said I didn't mean any of those things I said but what am I supposed to do with straight A my last year in school I don't even know what that means like there's got to be more
there but I do know it was important to you wasn't it and she just nodded ahead and I said why and she said when you grow up as a kid and surrounded by adults to told to tell you that you're not very smart you tend to believe and act that way and tell
you that you're stupid and so I didn't do a real well in school so I looked myself in the mirror of my last year in school I said either I'm going to believe them forever or I'm going to do something about it and I did something about it that frame changes the entire
story here was somebody who now was a procrastinator to now somebody who was abused and told that they weren't smart they were stupid but we haven't she hasn't influenced us yet she's brought us in she's enrolled us but she hasn't influenced us yet that's where the tie down comes into play so to
understand the tie down you have to have what's called an IO an influence objective and in a job interview your influence objective would be to get the job so if you were to put all three together and this is what it feels like remember the first one was tell something you're proud of
straightest my here in school frames gone wild if you frame it I told that was stupid we're like wow that was amazing she's a fighter who's next no action taken so all three feels like this way tell us some tell us about some tell us about something you're proud of frame well unfortunately
growing up I was surrounded by a lot of adults that told me I wasn't real smart and when adults speak to you that way you tend to act that way and I did not do real well in school but something happened my last year in school where I looked myself in the mirror
and I said either I'm going to believe them forever or I'm going to do something about it so I went out gotten the help that I needed put my nose to the Grind Stone and I'm proud to tell you a message that I got straight A's my last year in school tied down
now Chris I'm assuming that I get if I get a chance to work with you and your team that we're going to be facing some pretty big challenges maybe some some seemingly insurmountable obstacles but if I get a chance to be on your team I can promise you this that I'll be out
there next to you if not out in front overcoming those challenges in the same way frame that I did in my own personal life except for this time tie on for you and your team frame message tie down thank you for doing that I've seen it I've heard it and I needed to
capture it for our audience who are probably at this point like give me more baby give me more I love it this is so awesome I want to say this thing because your your path in life is quite different than mine but here we are kind of going our own way and then
there's this crossover where we get to meet in in real life and have some very serendipitous conversations outside a cafe or something like that that's led us to this moment right but is fascinating to me the similarities in which you teach the frame the message and the tie down to something that I
teach and I just want to share with you because it's just remark love to hear it okay i' love to hear it I teach in one of the things that I do a communication module where I teach people about how to say the uncomfortable things or how to deliver unpleasant news and things
like that I'm serving mostly creative people who are conflict diverse who are doing everything they can to avoid any level of stress emotionally I want you to imagine your mind a train and the train has three parts the engine the middle part and the Caboose I don't know what the middle part is
called and unfortunately what most people do is they just say you're fired or I can't take this job and that's the Caboose that's the outcome the delivery of the message that you want so we have to go back we have to see like what's the engine that's driv this message so the example
that I like to give is when you're ready to fire somebody you have to tell them emotionally what what you're going through so I would say to them the engine is I've been up all night I've been thinking about this for three weeks and I'm at a point in which I don't know
what else to do but here's the thing John or Mary you and I have talked about this before and you can't consistently show up late and still be here and I've warned you before so unfortunately as much as I don't want to do this I have to let you go there's a little
bit of a quick story and then you have to get to the outcome if you spend too much time in the story they start to lose what what's going on and you'll lose the courage to say what the outcome that it is that you want so what we say think about the outcome
the impact or the outcome that you want to have the message and then build it backwards but don't just go in there and say yes no you're fired I want the job I don't want the job I hate you just this little trick allows them to feel Brave and courageous enough to say
uncomfortable things so there is some overlap there yes it's your framing your deling a message and I love the analogy it's like it's so easy to follow especially from I mean that's the beautiful thing is like this is this is all about I tell people it's like the people that are very successful
are following this model in their own way they've intuitively figured it out in some way shape or form I'm just labeling it in that way and so but I love that sort of three-part series because you're really setting the frame and you're using an emotional frame and you're also there's a framing thing
that I like in there is you're you're also saying that you care you're starting with care so you're following how the brain needs to to be to be able to reduce what create what we call psychological safety by saying showing that you care it's one of the first brain questions the brain asks
it says am I safe first and then do you care about me you know if I can show that I care that's a really strong way of creating safety as well so you kind of kill two birds with one stone and so um I love that that's really brilliant thank you as you
were sharing it you have the Neuroscience the psychology the 30 years of talking about stuff like this whereas I'm I've been coached but I've just been doing it and then trying to explain to people how I do what I do and like oh that makes it a lot easier and the thing that
really is difficult for folks is inertia they're on the train track and you know it's like thousand you however many tons it's very difficult to move and so looking at someone in the eye someone that you you care about emotionally professionally personally and saying you can't stay here anymore it's too difficult so
they punt and they keep punting you down the field so two weeks two months sometimes a year later like I got to get rid of this person it's creating all kinds of internal conflict for them but if you just start with like here here's who I am as a human being this is
the thing that's driving me all of a sudden you start to build a momentum it becomes a lot easier for you to follow through with what it is that you have to say and I'm speaking from the patient point of view I've struggled with this for many many years no dude you're doing
you're doing such good work man and I love that you're you're you've got a really clear community of the creatives I have a passion for the creative Community because just my creative director uh George Castillo is a huge fan of and so we give you shout out to George he he sent an
email he's like I got a chance to email with Chris I was like I was like if Chris saw your design he would be a big fan of you George he's George is amazing then George is what the type you're talking about he's very quiet um ridiculously talented so incredibly talented I mean
if you ever seen my logo I don't know if you've seen my logo but you'll see that um the word neuro is hidden in it it's ridiculous I don't know how he did it and how he found it but yeah I just I think that the the creative Community can create some so
much healing in the world because they hit on things they communicate things in such a beautiful way that can be lost in the business world in the hardcore approach to things but creativity is and the creatives are the ones of the artists it's just it's a they're they're a beautiful group of people
so I've been talking to Renee Rodriguez he's the author the bestselling book amplify your influence there's a couple other things that he's doing but if you've enjoyed this episode I want to tease the audience here I think this is part one and we're going to bounce podcast because eventually I'm going to be
on Rene's podcast so we'll continue these conversations will geek out on public speaking our mission to teach the world without being scumbag marketers we'll see if it's gonna work or not I believe it will Renee what are you doing next what can people get excited about one I look forward to part two
and three and four um so the we've got our ampon event coming up uh in October 26 which you and I should talk about I would love to incorporate you somehow there the elici just introduce you somehow to to our audience I think they would be it' be a high value add to
them and a gift to them so it's October 26 in Dallas Texas and we've got some pretty cool people I don't know if are you familiar with Jefferson fiser he's you should follow him so give you an idea of Jefferson he is a trial attorney give you an idea Ed myet is about
2,000 posts in and he has about 2.6 million followers Jefferson is 245 posts in and has 2.5 million followers every one of his posts are almost a million if not 2 million in reactions he sits in his car holds his phone and gives a tip on communicating and it's really simple it's really
humble he's really brilliant and he's the most likable person anyways he's going to be speaking there uh we've got Neil Ford who is was ranked in the top 10 most decorated creative directors in the world and if you follow Neil NE a l f o a r d also I believe to be
probably the best Storyteller I've ever met he's going to be there we've got Rachel uh Lambert who is the president founder of brain code centers and so she she own the biggest Center Across the Nation with that does neuro feedback and brain training uh I'll give it away here um are you familiar
with Clinton Sparks so Clinton Sparks is uh Grammy nominated 80 million records sold Eminem Jay-Z You Name the artist this guy either did the beat was their DJ or was the producer behind it and he's a music mogul he's going to be the face of a I can't tell you the magazine right
now it's going to come out in the coming weeks but a magazine both of you and I know what really well but he's a business businessman too uh he'll be there so it's a really cool group of people very different I didn't go after the the mainstream but I went after the people
that are doing stuff that that you probably haven't heard of but you're going to hear about uh or the ones that are just too busy doing things right now that it's a pretty cool audience I got some other really cool ones Aaron Williamson's going to be there who's the celebrity trainer for the
rock Zack Efron syva Stallone yeah he was in the movie Terminator so he's going to be there he's my personal trainer so it's uh it's going to be some cool stuff and maybe we'll get some time for chriso up there wonderful I would expect nothing less from you in terms of the lineup
because I think you and I we resonate the same kind of energy there are the kinds of speakers who have accomplished a lot in our life but don't have a lot to share with you besides what we'll affectionately refer to as inspiration porn or hope marketing we're both Educators at heart and it
it drives what we do and there's names here that I'm sure people know right away but if you trust them in if you've enjoyed this episode then you'll trust his ability to curate and put together a powerful panel a curriculum that's designed for you to be uh the the most optimal version of
yourself Rene it's been a real pleasure chatting with you I'm so glad we got a chance to bump into each other at Neil's event likewise a pleasure and the honor is all mine and shout out to Neil for the amazing work he's doing and for bringing some good people together and uh for
Mo for being the creative Master behind a lot what we're doing here too so my my friend it's uh I wrote down inspiration porn and hope what did you say hope hope marketing uh hope marketing man oh that's so good D I just it's your reputation proceeds you and and being able to
have a conversation with you has been just delightful and refreshing and I am looking forward to the next 30 Years together having fun even more conversations beautiful I look forward to it myself thanks Renee awesome thank you this is Renee Rodriguez and you're listening to the Future and before we hang up beautiful
with that deep voice of yours straight into the mic love it love it love it you know what we need to do we just have to have a conference where it's just bald men only we'll think bald women too but there not many of them it's the bald conference it's the Power Ball
that's what it is are you bald are you bald am let me see yeah oh [ __ ] wait let me see this let me see no [ __ ] hell yeah man
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