The Accidental Genius of a Title
Most creative professionals believe influence is a complex art form, shrouded in mystery and reserved for the naturally charismatic. They are wrong. Influence is a science of word choice, and the right words can unlock outcomes that feel like magic.
Author and speaker Phil M. Jones has built a global career on this principle. His book, Exactly What to Say, has sold nearly three million copies and has become a staple for anyone who needs to persuade for a living. But its success was born from a brilliant accident.
The book was originally titled Magic Words. As Jones tells Chris Do, he wrote the first version on a bet in just three weeks. After it gained unexpected traction, he decided to refine it into a polished product. But just before the publication date, disaster struck. “I did a little Google search, Amazon search, and I'm like, there's a new book that somebody's just released called Magic Words,” Jones explains. The competing author was Tim David, a professional magician.
Jones knew he couldn't compete. “I can't like publish and promote a book called Magic Words at the same time that somebody else has got a book out called Magic Words,” he recalls. He needed a new name, fast.
Looking for clues, he remembered a series of live training events and a CD program he had successfully sold under the name Exactly What to Say. He repurposed it for the book, not out of strategic genius, but out of necessity.
That necessity created a masterpiece of marketing. “What I've gone on to learn to be true as to one of the biggest reasons that this has been so successful in word of mouth marketing is the curiosity gap in the title is huge,” Jones says. The title makes an audacious promise: I want to know exactly what to say. It then creates a moment of skepticism: There's no way that tiny book could teach me exactly what to say. Finally, after reading it, the reader has a moment of revelation: Oh dang, that book just taught me exactly what to say.
The title takes the customer on an emotional journey before they have even opened the cover. It was, as Jones admits, a “brilliant accident.”
Magic Words Aren’t Magic
So what are these sequences of words Jones champions? He calls them “magic words,” but clarifies they are not spells or tricks. They are “sequences of words that talk straight to the subconscious brain.”
The subconscious brain, Jones explains, is a binary machine with a “yes” output and a “no” output. For anyone in sales, design, or any service industry, the real enemy is not “no.” The real enemy is “maybe.” Indecision is the killer of momentum and a drain on resources.
“If you can show up to conversations with more competence and confidence to help people reach a decision, regardless of what that decision is… you'll increase the rate of decision,” he says. “If you can increase the rate of decision, you can increase the rate of action. If you can increase the rate of action, you can increase the rate of transaction.”
The book contains 23 of these sequences. Jones notes that they are actually deep-rooted principles of influence and persuasion, simply disguised as easy-to-use phrases. He discovered a fundamental truth about teaching: trying to teach principles makes it hard for people to find examples, but teaching examples helps people stumble upon the principles themselves. It is a bottom-up approach to learning that prioritizes immediate application.
Do agrees, reflecting on his own teaching style. “My friend Joel was telling me something about this recently. She says, ‘Chris, you're a top-down teacher. I'm trying to teach principles and people are like, what?’” The lesson is clear: give people what they want, then teach them what they need.
The book itself is a demonstration of this philosophy. Do praises its brevity and high impact, pointing out its large font and ample white space. “It's all killer, no filler,” Do says. Jones's response reveals the strategy: “I designed this as a product and not a book… The form would follow the function. It's light, it's easy to pick up, it's instantly applicable.”
The Referral Playbook: How to Ask and When
One of the most valuable applications of magic words is in generating referrals. Most creatives and entrepreneurs say they want more referrals, but they rarely ask for them. Jones identifies three reasons for this failure to act:
- They are too busy, bone-idle, or lazy. They simply don’t feel they need the business enough to ask.
- They don’t know when to ask.
- They don’t know how to ask.
The solution lies in mastering timing and skill. So, when is the right time to ask for a referral? The answer is simpler than most people think. The best time to ask is when the other person is happy. And when people are happy with a service you have provided, they almost always say the same two words: “Thank you.”
This phrase is the trigger. “How they're actually feeling is indebted,” Jones explains. “That's why we mouth the words ‘thank you,’ because we feel indebted.” The verbal thank you is the repayment of that psychological debt. The moment someone says it is the moment they are most motivated to do more for you. Your job is to set your “ear antennas to listen to the words ‘thank you.’”
Once you have the timing right, you need the skill. You need a sequence of words that gets someone to agree to do something before they even know what it is. The phrase is devastatingly simple.
“Any chance that you would do me a small favor?”
When Jones asks this of Do during the interview, Do’s response is immediate and automatic: “Sure, of course.” He agreed without knowing the request. This works because the relationship has established trust, and the ask is framed as “small.”
The full script is a masterclass in psychological framing:
- The Trigger: The client says, “Thank you.”
- The Request: You respond, “Any chance you could do me a small favor?” They will almost always say yes.
- The Frame: You continue, “You wouldn't happen to know…” This makes it okay for them not to know and simultaneously issues a small challenge to their knowledge.
- The Specificity: You ask for “maybe just one person.” This is specific and reasonable, making the mental task of filtering their network much easier than a vague request for “anyone.”
- The Compliment: You refine the search with, “...somebody who, just like you…” This is a compliment that also narrows their mental search to people with similar needs or values.
- The Payoff: You complete the sentence with, “...would benefit from [the exact thing they just thanked you for].” This gives them a built-in, portable story to use when making the introduction.
This is not just asking for a referral. It is what Jones calls “gift wrapping” the request. “We know gifts are gifts when they are well packaged,” he says. “We are gift wrapping an ask so the recipient feels valued and appreciated.” This process removes the awkwardness and transactional feel that stops so many from asking in the first place, a core concept for anyone seeking to attract new customers and grow their business.
Beyond Words: Building Sender Authority
The magic words and scripts are powerful, but they are not a silver bullet. Their effectiveness depends entirely on who is delivering them. This is the concept of Sender Authority. As Jones states bluntly, what matters most in communication is not the subject line of an email, but the sender.
“The sender is the thing that affects the impact long before the subject line,” Jones insists. “You could have a bad subject line with a terrible email that if it's coming from your boss, you're going to open it, you're gonna read it, and you're gonna do as you're told.” Without that authority, the best-crafted message in the world will be ignored.
So how does a creative, entrepreneur, or freelancer build this crucial authority? Jones provides a four-part framework. You must work on your:
- Visibility: You must be seen doing the things you want to be known for. This is about strategic presence, not just being loud.
- Credibility: This answers three questions: Have you done this before? Have you done it recently? Have you done it for someone like me? And can you prove it?
- Authenticity: Do you genuinely care about the problem you claim to solve, even when you are not being paid? Jones points to creators who pitch video editing services but whose own profiles are amateurish. “You're missing authenticity here,” he warns. Authenticity is about eating your own dog food.
- Availability: Only after the first three are established does your availability matter. Without them, you are just another person in a crowded inbox.
Building this authority is the real work. Jones talks about the flood of DMs he gets from video editors offering to make him viral. He ignores all of them. The only way to cut through that noise is with a “friend of a friend” introduction. He calls this the “side door.”
“Everybody's trying to get through the front door. The front door is well guarded,” he explains. “The side door nobody gives any thought to, but the side door access into relationships is often the fastest and the easiest door to get through.” This requires patience and a willingness to do the work before the work. It’s about adding value to the gatekeeper who holds the key to that side door, transforming a cold pitch into a warm introduction. This is a foundational element of building a strong personal brand.
Jones illustrates this with his own pursuit of a speaking engagement with the company Beachbody. For years, people have offered him the direct contact of the event booker. He has consistently declined. “That's not that helpful to me,” he says. “What I need is I need to grow authority all the way around this so that what happens is my inbox pings in the other direction.” He is orchestrating the dance so that when the opportunity arrives, it arrives with maximum authority already built in.
The Product, Not the Book
Jones’s strategic thinking extends far beyond word choice. His entire approach to his work demonstrates a powerful business philosophy: treat everything you create as a product with a specific function. For him, a book is not just a collection of words; it is a meticulously designed tool.
“The form would follow the function,” he says of Exactly What to Say. He chose a small size, large font, and simple language to make it “light, easy to pick up, and instantly applicable.” This defied conventional publishing wisdom. “Every publisher told me this wouldn't work,” Jones reveals. “They told me that it would be a bad idea. It's not big enough to be a book.” With nearly three million copies sold, he has proven them wrong.
This product-centric approach allowed him to turn his intellectual property into a scalable system. He does not just sell one book; he sells a platform. He has created over a hundred custom editions of Exactly What to Say for different industries and companies.
One in the public domain, Exactly What to Say for Real Estate Agents, is now one of the top 100 bestselling sales books of all time on its own. He produces custom-branded versions for corporate clients, changing the color scheme to match their Pantone and adding a custom foreword. He has even produced runs as small as 100 copies profitably.
“I own the IP and we have margin and systemization attached to it,” he explains. “That means we can turn the book into a lot more than just a book. It's a movement.” The ecosystem now includes:
- Role-play cards for practicing the scripts.
- Desk pads for quick reference.
- A workbook edition for an immersive mastermind experience.
- A network of 37 licensed partners who train his material globally.
He sees his core IP like a good spirit that “can be used in a thousand cocktails.” His goal is not to chase the next new idea but to deepen his commitment to his greatest hit. “If you're fortunate enough to be gifted a greatest hit, never get bored of playing your greatest hits,” Jones advises. This focus prevents brand dilution and allows for infinite creative reincarnation of a single, powerful idea, a lesson many entrepreneurs learn on the path from freelancer to agency owner.
The Relentless Quest for Better
Underpinning all of Jones's strategies is a core mindset: a relentless quest for better. This philosophy was forged in his childhood. At 14, he started a car washing business, not just to get money from relatives, but as a real enterprise that soon employed other kids. He was driven by a strategic curiosity. Seeing other kids with more, he didn't feel envy; he asked, “How?”
“How do they do what they do? How do they have what they have?” he would wonder. This led him to learn from his friends' parents, absorbing information about how success was built. He combined that knowledge with a powerful work ethic instilled by his parents.
This drive manifests today in his rejection of a common business cliché: best practices. “To me, best practices suppress performance because they say that's as good as it can get,” he argues. “My alternative has always been like, ‘Yeah, but now what?’... I'm really happy playing in the messy gray space of success. Like, no finished outcome, just so what's next?”
This is the engine of perpetual growth. He challenges his community with a simple metric: “If you cannot rewrite your bio every six months, you're not moving quick enough.” Your biography should be a living document, constantly updated with new skills, accomplishments, and relevance until, like Beyoncé, you can be introduced with a single word.
Do connects this to his own definition of happiness as “perpetual growth.” It echoes a definition of success from author and entrepreneur Paul J. Meyer, which Jones quotes: “Success is the progressive realization of predetermined, worthwhile, and achievable goals.” The key word is “progressive.” Success is not a destination; it is the feeling you get while on the move, a concept critical for those looking to build long-term business equity.
This journey is built one step at a time. Jones didn't start his sales training business aiming for eight figures. He started by trying to get 12 people in a room for £85 a ticket, hoping to land two coaching clients. He set a low bar, jumped over it, and then set the next one. This incremental approach is the key to navigating ambitious goals without being paralyzed by them.
You must earn your way up. “If somebody wants to be a $20,000 website designer, they can be,” Jones says. “But if they're currently at zero and they're doing websites for free, the worst thing that could happen is they could get commissioned to do a $20,000 website because they don't know what is expected.”
The path is to be brilliant for free, then brilliant for $250, then for $500, then for $1,000, and so on. You must do the work. You must earn the experience.
You want the reps. You want the scars.
You want to have earned those scars in the arena, where the judgment you receive is in line with the money you are being paid. That is how you build a career that lasts.
TRANSCRIPT
what is up everybody in this episode we're going to be talking to Phil M Jones he's the author of this book exactly what to say and we're going to be covering these three key Concepts number one is the power of magic words and how they can transform your client Communications and number two
as far as referrals go you're going to learn the importance of timing and timing is everything number three we're going to learn how to package your requests so that people say yes this and a whole lot more is going to help you change the way you communicate with your clients whether you're designer
entrepreneur or a creative so let's dive in my next guest is someone I have quite a bit of familiarity with mostly because my my good friend Carlos Garcia has been talking incessantly about him Non-Stop and he gifted me his book and it's called exactly what to say and I highly recommend it it's
moved on to my top five books on sales there's a couple of reasons why we'll get into that a little bit later and from the cover it says this is the dictionary business success language right from page one you're given this strategy to change the way you influence others this is from Scott
Stratton so my guest today is Phil M Jones and Phil welcome to the show for people who don't know who you are can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit of your backstory yeah I mean it's a joy to be here and I don't know how far we want to
go back but I've been in the business of helping people win more business for as far back as I can remember so I started in my first business when I was 14 knocking on the doors of my neighbors asking them politely where whether they wanted their cars Washed by the age of 15
I was making more money than most of my school teachers had kids in the year below doing the bulk of the car washing and I've built a career from there in senior sales leadership positions built companies in the world of real estate I've been head of retail commercial director for two Premier League
soccer clubs and then started a little sales training company in 2008 a little sales training company that delivered sales skills to people who didn't see themselves as salespeople so that would have been everybody from creatives to professional services to Independent business owners to Brick and Mortar businesses that wanted to be able to
get more from their existing customers and from those pretty humble beginnings of creating that small business now I've gone on to write 11 books spoken in 59 different countries on six different continents delivered 3500 paid professional presentations got a few bestsellers in there yet still my work really sits into the one key
area of of helping people find the success language that's required in the moments that matter that means that they get paid more of what they're worth when necessary and helps them find both confidence and competence in those high stakes environments that make the biggest difference between them being rewarded at the right level
or performing somewhere near our average well I don't say this often but I'm going to tell you right now so that it doesn't get lost if you need to P pause this episode go to Amazon and add the book exactly what to say by Phil M Jones there's apparently a lot of Phil
Jones out there so I understand The Branding guy probably gets the M like own Phil M Jones and Chris get this right coming up um there was a Manchester United soccer player by the name of Phil Jones that was tipped to be the next England captain in the soccer team I'm like all
right just went through a giant transfer to Manchester United I'm like okay well I'm not going to try and be the most famous Phil Jones and then look at on Google Phil Jones speaker Phil Jones is a Bas amplifier manufacturer so Phil Jones speaker has its own search criteria that kicks up BAS
ampli fires I'm like I'm owning this m baby right this m is is my life and to a point that when we work with corporations and Consulting works like I change the letter M to match the panone of the company I'm working with when we put slides and proposals and things together just
little subtle branding touches to make a difference in personalization well I guess we can't have everything you're you're crushing at age 145 so later on in life it's like you're kind of cursed you can't catch a break with the name so you'll have to like I'm going to be the most famous Phil
M Jones I can do that one I love that okay I know there's a lot of value pack stuff but the reason why I gave it such a strong endorsement and I RAR do this but basically there's a couple of things that I think are great number one when we talk about word
to impact ratio it's a very high impact ratio relative to the number of words on page which I respect there's a brevity of language and communication that's in here so it's one of these things where you actually demonstrate the thinking and the philosophy in the the writing of the thinking and the philosophy
so hat up to you it was a product and not a book right like that was the way I intended I'm crafting this the form would follow the function is it's light it's easy to pick up it's instantly applicable there's white space around it we worked on page layout like crazy because I
designed this as a product and not a book yeah it's like 18o type things you would get in trouble for every publisher told me this wouldn't work Chris they told me that it would be a bad idea it's not big enough to be a book but I got 2 n million people that
would um would disagree disagree yeah yeah and the reason why I like that okay look I I know there are books that use unnecessary words that repeat ideas over and over again this is not one of them it's as the young kids would say it's all killer no filler there are what I
think several phrases in here that you call magical phrases and we're going to get into that there's an open loop everybody I want to get there just yet just hang in there I just wanted to make sure you pause go buy the book and then come back to the episode get that stuff
done first okay I'm just blown away because I think every kid starts like a lemonade stand or car washing business but most of us stopped there beyond our friends and family basically it's a way to get money from our uncles and aunties and things like that but you actually turned this into a
business so what is it what's the young 14-year-old Phil Jones living in the UK got that the rest of us 14 year olds don't have but what did you figure out um I was very very fortunate like a good number of people are to have very hardworking parents that distilled in a incredible
work ethic and what that did is it taught me how you could exchange time for money if you were prepared to be able to operate and do more than other people however what it didn't teach me was how you could leverage that time for money my dad's hard work and hustle got me
into a schooling environment that was probably a little above our station and it meant that all of the kids around me at school um could have access to the things that teenagers would want in life a little easier than we had the ability to be able to create the means for and this
puzzle sat with me in a very very interesting curious way like I was never in awe of anybody I never asked the question or like showed up with the the expression of wow i' had asked the question how like how do they do what they do how do they have what they have
and and through that friend group I got to be able to go to other people's houses speak to other people's parents to learn about what other people would do for a living and is when you could combine knowledge and understanding of people who are achieving at levels of Excellence still you know put
their pants on in the same way you wake up in the morning in the same way and aren't doing these like super impossible things they're just having access to some information and some insights to others plus I've got hard work and hustle I'm like uhoh I could be in trouble here if I
just keep going and and that's really all I've done and then have an unusual belief that I live my life on the Relentless quest for better we live in a world where everybody wants best practices and to me best practic is suppress performance because they say that's as good as it can get
my alternative has always been like yeah but now what yeah but now what yeah but now what and that's existed in me since as far back as I can remember to again this afternoon yeah but now what are we looking to be able to work on next I'm really happy playing in the
messy gray space of success like no finished outcome just so what's next on from here and I believe that that strategic curiosity is fued just to step onto another step onto another step onto another step and I kind of position this in the speaking world right is is I'll do a 100 high
level professional engagements a year I sit on some of the best stages in in the world and like I opened for Tony Robbins last year and all these other like really call experiences and I have to pinch myself I'm like how the heck did I end up here and then you second guess
yourself and you go well hang on if not me then who and you then second guess yourself again and say well if somebody else can do it can somebody else be me that's a question and sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes the the answer is heck no right I can have all
the passion hustle belief in the world that I want to play in the NBA it ain't happening like that ship has sailed in fact that ship never probably made itself into the port that ship was never even built that ain't going to happen for a 5 foot n white guy from the UK
that's an almost impossibility I didn't grow up playing the sport I don't have any ability to be able to do so the lesson and learning Gap impossible but there are many other things where actually if you're brave enough to go what would it take to do that the answers become very clear if
you're prepared to be patient and prolific enough to work through the steps and that's been my life Chris is I'll just continually work out how somebody else is doing the thing that I'd like to do more of and then be prepared to do that work at 14 who do you model yourself after
what's the pitch like how how is it you're able to do this and clearly here there's an entrepreneur in the making right there's an entrepreneurial background I mean I was reading Richard Branson books when I was 14 15 like we didn't have the internet back in my day right I'm older than I
look and and and we weren't in the situation where access to information was easy and I actually view it as a little bit of a blessing because my ignorance was my gift I didn't realize it was as hard as it's actually been I believed it was going to be significantly easier and actually
my aspirations at 14 15 16 were quite low my aspirations at 18 19 20 21 were quite low it was all about saying can I set a bar that's here and then jump over it and then once jumped over it it's like where do I set the next bar jump over it or
where do I set the next bar jump over it even when I look at my sales training business I started in 2008 we were charging £85 a ticket to put 12 people in a room to cross my fingers and hope that two would step up into one toone coaching at £295 a month
it wasn't like how do we get to six figures seven figures eight figures 11 figures it wasn't none of that noise never existed in my world it was how do I take a thing that I'm good at and turn it into a sustainable income to support family loved ones lifestyle and that has
been a really useful gift when I look back in reflection is that I didn't get distracted by the shiny Lights of the end of the journey I was just focusing on next chapter next chapter next chapter and now when I look back even on my speaking training personal brand career since 2008 like
we've come a long way but actually we've just moved through meaningful chapters every 3 to six months and a point that I share with everybody and you mentioned Carlos at the start of our call I share this with our certified guides Community is if you cannot rewrite your bio every six months you're
not moving quick enough if there's not something meaningful that's changed in your world when you're going through a growth phase then you're not moving quick enough and we should keep rewriting our bio until we get to a point we can write a one-word bio and what do I mean by a one-word bio
I mean introducing Beyonce if you can be recognized by one word chances are you might have done the work to build a meaningful bio but until that point we might need to keep adding attributes keep adding accolades keep adding some form of recognition of relevance of what you've done recently so soon you'll
be known as M and we'll just know I'll probably never get there but I'll die trying right and I think that's that's the fun I I interviewed Ryan Siran the other day I'm like we want to try and turn something into it's a noun and I'm I'm getting close people in companies we
work with if they talk about philisms or like Phil Jones is used as a verb inside comp companies I'm like that's cool people like you just Phil Jones that I'm like I'm not sure how I feel about that but I've now decided to accept his call it's kind of like your philosophy yeah
yeah being there yeah wrote a book called philosophies way back in the day just taking quotes and turning into a book that was before people would productize and create courses out of things nice nice okay I I I mean I love what you're saying I I just want to kind of not unpack
it but just hit it a little bit harder which is the the Journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step y it's like like don't get caught up with the end and just do con continuous Improvement I love the way that you phrase this like rewrite your bio every six months I
always look at it because people are like what is happiness for you it's perpetual growth and people don't understand that they get to a certain place and I think you said this about uh best practices you think that once you get there that you could just rest and not keep going there's no
such thing unless you become Beyonce I guess yeah but even then you're just you're just good enough to know that you've got 50 to 100 Years of reputational growth that can continue by that you might be at to rest and my my favorite quote around success or definition of success comes from a
guy called Paul J meire and I think it looks back into what you're saying there and Paul J meire defines success as the progressive realization of predetermined worthwhile and achievable goals like the progressive said it one more time that was a lot to process there one more time going to repeat it the
progressive realization of predetermined worthwhile and achievable goals like it isn't like achieving your goals because success is a feeling right you feel successful you're not successful you feel successful so the progressive realization was something that hit me like a train is like you need to keep moving is you don't get to a
place and then you're successful success is in the journey Progressive realization of predetermined worthwhile and achievable well you get to decide all of those things like people say say to me things like how do you get to be successful with a book I'm like well can you define success for starters if success
is you're holding your words between two pieces of paper and one person who isn't your mom buys one congrats like you made success if success is Wall Street B Journal bestseller well then that's a different Playbook if success is Perpetual lifetime Evergreen it prints money for you that's a different play success needs
to be by Design with purpose and choice otherwise it's good fortune which is nice to gettime too well on that note I want to talk to you a little bit about the book itself because Carlos was telling me about something he's like Chris you got to get into this guy's mind he's a
genius about how he's doing this I'm not sure if you're the first but you're the first person I've heard of doing this where you've kind of made your books customizable and you enroll I guess people into it can you explain that concept a little bit how it works and I think it's pure
genius we've done over a hundred custom editions of exactly what to say um one of those is in the public domain which is exactly what to say for real estate agents and exactly what to say for real estate agents is one of the top 100 bestselling sales books of all time now let's
just catch this this is a derivative book in a micron Niche industry that is one of the top 100 bestselling sales books of all time even though it's not in that category and it's a Micro Niche and if you ever want a reminder of how sometimes making sure the form follows the function
and the you are not looking to be able to create a a universal message for everybody but take your Universal message and position it to individual groups of people all the time the customization of the book is a is a brilliant case study for that and we wrote exactly what to say for
the automotive industry it's kind of fun because I don't see it too often the book you held up at the front of our time together today is the exactly what to say professional photographer Edition that was produced and sold in bulk of 10,000 units to the PPA as part of a speaking gig
that exists inside induction for professional photographers joining the association so some of our custom editions live inside of organizations associations Etc that have funded it for their company some live in the public domain some live on small scale so if I run an event and a company wants to be able to do
the book in their colorway and I'm I think I just got one on my desk here right now like this is metric coaching edition of exactly what to say that was produced at a 100 copies 100 units we managed to do that and make that profitable and valuable for both parties their panone
their colorway their forward industrial strength business card on the back of the card on the back of the book and I can still make profit on that and I think that's the beauty in the book that we have is I own the IP and we have margin and systemization attached to it that
means we can turn the book into a lot more than just a book it's a movement and we've just launched roleplay cards and we're launching desk pads and of 37 licensed partners that are training the work and we have a workbook Edition that plays into a two and a half day immersive small
group Mastermind and I licens the IP to some of the world's biggest brands and it lives inside their company and we've been managed to do a great deal with this one piece of work and the book has become my life's work and I think it was Mark Twain that first said if I
had more time I'd have written a shorter letter that's been the approach with this book is if I can distill everything down into something so tiny and portable what I then have is the ability to be able to do is to breathe all these different versions of new life back into it and
like a good spirit can be used in a thousand cocktails that's what we look to now be able to do with the book and my goal is to stay committed to the exactly what to say brand for the rest of my life not new book new book new book Let's just stay true
to the core principles and I believe that if you're fortunate enough to be gifted a greatest hit never get bored of playing your greatest hits that's a concept A lot of creative people people like myself struggle with Phil because we're like on to the next hit and we don't maximize what we've already
created but you can be creative in the music industry allows you to do this like I I look towards artists like shiran and the number of collaborations and creative reincarnations that have come through remixes and and you know alternative application and then writing in the background and being creative for other people Etc
but still a a core identity of the main thing being the main thing a and without that your brand ends up being diluted yeah speaking of Ed Sharon as a side note I saw him perform an Eminem song and the crowd lost their mind when Eminem popped up I'm like these are two
people I never thought would be on the same stage together it's a magical moment uh each person lifts the other up then that's right like that's collaboration when it when it happens right and even in the personal brand space I'm seeing more and more of this is find ways where the you know
the overlap of the sum of the parts comes to more and nobody wins anything by themselves and and you're seeing in the music space and some of the best Clues for how to grow how to evolve how to develop revenue streams Etc the music stream business is ahead of us would' be stupid
if we didn't look at it for clu yeah okay let me explain to people in case they're like wait what the heck are they talking about so from my observation Phil wrote this book exactly what to say he has 37 licensed Partners who he then makes I think custom additions of the book
for and as I'm trying to figure it out the pr the core principles are there the manifesto the the Big Ideas in it but then there are Parts where there are examples that are tailored for each industry and that's always a challenge because people always say well that won't work for my industry
you've addressed that problem so you created two solutions right something that can grow over time and get stronger through collaboration but also to kind of make it for very Niche audiences and it was it was pretty brilliant I think I need to read the real estate one because as I was reading through
the photography one some of the examples were pretty good but I was like I think I need to get to the the master version and see what that looks like so I can compare and contrast there you go okay so now I gotta buy another book so that's all good that's brilant that's
the other beautiful thing is you can sell the exact same piece of work on multiple occasions okay so that this is an author entrepreneur who's who's thinking about books differently this is a system this is a modular product like a you said product it's not just a book there's something much bigger to
it this IP and you can roll that out in many different ways but to get to the core components of the book you said there's something about magical phrases yep please explain that the book is 23 sequences of magic words and what magic words are are sequences of words that talk straight to
the subconscious brain subconscious brain is powerful in the decision-making process because it has a yes output and a no output people think that no is the enemy of yes in the world of sales it isn't no isn't the the enemy maybe is the enemy in decision is the enemy so if you can
show up to conversations with more competence and confidence to help people reach a decision regardless of what that decision is that somebody makes then what will happen is you'll increase the rate of decision if you can increase the rate of decision you can increase the rate of action if you can increase the
rate of action you can increase the rate of transaction it's that easy and it's that hard I've just distilled down some success language that actually between you and I is not really magic words these are 20 through deep rooted principles around influence and persuasion disguised as magic words because I've learned that if
I try to teach people principles they struggle to find examples if I teach people examples they trip over principles my my friend Joel was telling me something about this recently she says Chris you're a top- down teacher so I'm trying to teach principles and people are like what right she said we're bottomup
Learners give us the individual components we'll figure out the principle and you just said that in a different way and I love that yeah and both need to exist depending upon the group that you're learning with but I think when you're operating at scale and you get this I mean you and I
had a conversation offline a short while ago about YouTube and the way you approach YouTube is to find a way to serve them many and headlines and titles and descriptions Etc are doing that and you give them what they want and then teach them what they need yeah and we're just doing the
same in book format is helping people to deliver upon um what their number one outcome was and I think I think one of the biggest reasons that this little book does so well is even down to the titling we talk about titling the lessons there are huge is this book used to be
called magic words I wrote the OG version of this book in 2011 I wrote it as a bet to be able to turn a book around in 3 weeks as a result of a mastermind group with other speakers I was in talking about how hard it was to publish books and I'm like
it's not you could do it in a weekend and I had to put my money where my mouth was and put the book out and I called the book magic words and the book did okay but I didn't really craft it I just took a two-page PDF turned it into a book put
it out to Market and woke up to 120,000 downloads like the book did well um but it's kind of like a modern day equivalent of you putting a lazy YouTube video up and being like dang I didn't expect that to run but it did and instead of saying well what do I do
next and new I just went back to that greatest hit and refined it and edited it and and put the work into to be a to package and produce it properly so exactly what to say is the re-edit of magic words it's the album and not the EP and the title is genius
and an accident is I was going to call it magic words right up until three weeks before Pub date did a little Google search Amazon search and I'm like there's a new book that somebody's just released called magic words it was by a guy called Tim David and Tim David happens to be
a real magician and I'm like dang I can't like publish and promote a book called magic words at the same time that somebody else has got a book out called magic words we can't fight this for trademark infringements Etc I need to change the name of the book and what had happened histo
historically speaking is I used to run training sessions in theaters like on Tuesday nights when the theater had nothing going on and I'd served the network marketing small business Community a micro price point with edutainment events 29 a ticket Etc have fun put a few hundred people in the theater have a good
time and I called those events exactly what to say I had a three disk CD program that would sell back of the room for speaking events in the direct sales network marketing industry that three dis CD was called exactly what to say struggling for a quick name to repurpose on the book I'm
like success leaves Clues people like that name let's call it that what I've gone on to learn to be true as to one of the biggest reasons that this has been so successful in Word of Mouth marketing is the Curiosity Gap in the title is huge I want to know exactly what to
say there's no way that tiny book could teach me exactly what to say oh dang that book just taught me exactly what to say you see that like Arc and Journey that can go on with such brevity like there's a high value pill in that that takes somebody on an emotional Journey it
was a brilliant accident I wish I had the genius to say like I crafted it that way I didn't I only know this from what scientists have told me afterwards but um it's been a fun ride and it continues to be okay well let's let's get into it what are some of the
examples from the book that are the magic words and first maybe you can give us the example then tell us why it works well why don't we play this another way um what might be a scenario that many of your listeners find themselves in regularly that they either over complicate or they have
difficulty in getting the a certain predetermined outcome okay let's let's go there I think and I I believe you feel the same way because of the way the book ends is we can chase after new clients or we can just serve the ones we already better and activate Word of Mouth advertising but
people get really awkward about how to ask for it and I think you do such a brilliant job of it then now I just repeat it to everybody so maybe you can take us through that like how do we do that well how do we ask for more of the things that people
would want and in particular things like reviews and referrals yeah like I want another client from a client that already happy relationship things are going great I want more business from their friends so there are really three reasons why most people people don't ask for referrals even though they say they want them
the first reason why people don't ask for referrals is because they are too busy Boney or lazy can't be bothered like they don't need it they don't want it so they that that's not the people that listen to podcasts so we probably shouldn't worry about those people if it's not that reason the
other two reasons either they don't know when to ask or they don't know how to ask they haven't got the timing and they haven't got the skill so let's look at both timing and skill when is the right time to ask for a referral I could ask this in a classroom environment I
get a thousand different areas or times when somebody could ask it's like at the point of delivery it's just after that they've spent the money or when you see them again three months later like all these different ideas as to when and the trouble with it is is they're all good good times
to ask the one thing that all of those areas have in common is it's when the other person is happy when the other person is happy they typically say a particular sequence of words to You and what they almost always say when they're happy is thank you so let's just play with the
science on that for a second they say the words thank you when somebody says the words thank you to you how are they feeling people say they're feeling grateful that they're feeling happy they're feeling elated it's more than that if we take it crude and rudimental how they're actually feeling is indebted that's
why we mou the words thank you is because we feel indebted when I say thank you I've repaid the feeling of indebtedness the thank you is the repayment of the debt when is the best time to ask somebody for more well it's when they feel indebted because they are motivated to want to
do more to make themselves feel better so if you're wondering when the best time to ask somebody for more is just set these little ear antennas to listen to the words thank you and next time that they say the word thank you to you don't think like aha I'm awesome pat yourself on
the back next time they say the words thank you think aha they in some way feel indebted to me this is the best time for me to ask for more I should probably ask for something at this point in time to help them feel better so we've got the moment we're listening for
thank yous we now need to know exactly what to say at the point in time where somebody says thank you so what do you reach for well you're looking for a sequence of words that you could use to get just about anybody to agree to do just about anything before they even know
what the thing is right like that's what we're looking for Chris is how do you get somebody to contextually agree to do a thing before they even know what the thing is and for this I typically reach for a volunteer but you're the only one I've got so Chris any chance that you
would do me a small favor sure of course those are the words see I just asked you to do me a small favor you agreed to do the thing without even knowing what the thing is I guess at this point in time and our interview together I could ask you to do just
about anything and you've already said said you do it the reality of it is though is you know and I know that I wouldn't ask you to do anything that was unreasonable there's enough report and Trust at this moment in time and the same would be true for most people in their customer
engagements if the client just said the words thank you to you and you just said like any chance you could do me a small favor they would almost certainly say yes with the same level of confidence maybe a hesitance of curiosity but they would be contextually agreeing to take an action if I
was to follow this through with a precise sequence of words onwards from there I would position my next ask with the words you wouldn't happen to know if I said the words you wouldn't happen to know what I'm doing is I'm making it okay that the other person doesn't know I'm letting them
off the hook but also I'm throwing down a small challenge we all love to prove other people wrong you wouldn't happen to know maybe just one person why would I ask for just one person as opposed to anybody well just one person is reasonable it's also specific it helps them filter their own
memory and a quicker level of efficacy you wouldn't happen to know maybe just one person somebody who just like you well this is interesting right see if I said somebody who just like you what does that say to the other person it says a few things well it says I like you it's
a compliment it also allows you to go fishing in your mind in a smaller Circle again it makes the Sorting of your entire network easier you say you could do me a small favor they say yes you say you wouldn't happen to know maybe just one person somebody who just like you would
benefit from and this would be the only part of the framework I'd change I'd just give somebody back exactly what they said thank you for so if you're a graphic designer that has just helped somebody with a mesmerizing Rebrand that helps them look like they becoming the company they'd like to grow into
as opposed to the company they'd used to be you'd say you wouldn't happen to know maybe just one person someone who just like you is ready to be a to reinvent themselves for the next decade would you and I'm leaving this now as an open loop question if they said thank you to
you for you getting them out of a pinch quickly and turning a fly around for them in a record period of time you wouldn't happen to know maybe just one person somebody just like you finds M themselves needing somebody that can respond to things quickly would you so whatever they said thank you
for I'm going to give them that straight back because they've got their inbuilt baked portable story for how they could intro you to that other person where they go like you know how you're often finding yourself need to make quick amends in design files and you don't have any resource which means you
miss the opportunity they're like yeah that's me they're like I know a guy we all love to know a guy and the introduction is cleaner is crisper there's more I could bring to that script but I think that's enough for people to listen to at this point is is listen for thank yous
request favors make it easy for people to introduce to help them feel happier about how they are happy as to how you help them and it's a gift to all involved now it's a gift to you it's a gift to them it's a gift to the person that's receiving and why is it
a gift because it's well packaged we know gifts are gifts when they're well packaged it's called gift wrapping we are gift wrapping Quest and ask so the recipient feels valued and appreciated in the way the ask has been made and the reason people struggle to ask is because they don't know how to
package you know I like about this is it's not fancy language it's Common Sense language but language we don't often think of and use and and this is why I think oftentimes common sense is not so common but once you lay it out you now all have a choice and you could say
to yourself I can say this I could do this there's there's nothing out of my wheelhouse that I could not say and you can imagine how the conversation's going to go but if I were to dive a little deeper here and ask you what the magic words are the first part of the
question is any chance you could do me a small favor the request of a favor is the is the lift out of the magic words okay so it's not just anything it's a small favor and it's reciprocity they said thank you so they're they've already primed themselves to like repay it and I
have this theory about you know modern decent societies that we don't like living with debt right emotional debt we don't want to carry so we want to repay it because we don't want to be seen as some kind of parasite or user or taker it's not even it's not as rudimental as like
trading but it is a feeling of self-worth like you don't want the balance of the universe to feel like that you're a taker and that you're not prepared to be able to give back is actually success is the movement movement movement movement movement like even even money like you don't have money money
moves and the movement of the money creates an economy right it yes an economy of relationship is created in the movement of favors asks help gratitude gratification deliverables service it has to move if it get static that's where we get stuck so yes yeah I think we're saying the same thing yes and
the other thing that people don't like often realized and Dr cinia writes about this and influence is often times our desire to reciprocate out sizes the actual thing that they received right so you've done a great job let's just assume you've done a great job and the the reciprocity of that favor should
be giant but you know what it doesn't need to be you're asking hey any chance can you do me a small favor does would you categorize the word any chance as the rapper of the request the or is that just part of language the specifics in there that hold the most currency mhm
is the request of the favor yeah what we're doing around that to soften to position to add curiosity gaps that's just skill in deliverable MH I believe that every word that leaves your mouth is helping or hurting nothing is neutral if it is neutral it was a waste the heavyweight story math in
that that we'd call out is the request of a fa yeah because the reason that I would say that particularly at scale is there are a number of people that would say I could never say is there any chance like I'm I'm I'm from the I'm from the south those words would never
leave my mouth right but they could say you know a version of like hey bro like like you good for a favor and that might be more realistic yeah like everybody can find their way within their vocabulary within their dialect within the way that they show up around others to request a favor
not everybody could say is there any chance but you know what as a person who has in the past struggled with saying no to people I always feel like when people ask me to directly I either will say no outright or I will say yes but with some kind of resentment attached to
it a passive right it's timing yes and that's why I've said the request of a favor following a thank you is the moment to be able to deliver that request is I get it all the time right my Instagram DMS light up is like hey I'd love to pick your brain on something
I'm like that is the worst way to ask somebody for help just think about the the pure mechanics of like picking at somebody's brain I'm like oh so you want to do what like it's rude it's uncomfortable on both parties is is if you're going to make asks with finesse it needs to
feel good for both parties it needs to feel like it's a fair trade the thank you and the favor feels like a a next natural step yeah equally as if you wanted somebody's time and attention to be able to support you in some way what you might want to be able to do
is to have given before you asked that given could be an act of service it could be a compliment it could be some encouragement it could be some recognition towards the value that that person has provided in in previous times there's a frame attached to it and with that it's a lot easier
to ask even in simple forms of you know me saying to you Chris like I've been watching what you've been doing on YouTube it's Mega impressive I love how you've managed to achieve blank blank and blank and blank you know how would you feel about finding any time on the schedule for me
to quiz you about some of the strategy with an audience of other people that I think would be interesting for you to meet that's a nicer invitation for everybody involved then hey I want to pick your brain on how you're crushing on YouTube so I can steal your best ideas right like one
feels violated and the other feels appreciated yes but there is some context here because the person who's asking does matter a lot you got it even if you ask the magic phrase like like a request matters aot like we teach people a ton around email marketing and and and I ask a a
room full of people like what's the most important thing that affects the success of a of a mass email and the whole room smartly raised their hand up and like it's the subject line it's the subject line it's the subject line it's the subject line and as much as they're not wrong I'm
like uh-uh it's the sender the sender is the thing that affects the impact long before the subject line right know whose inbox is hitting whose inbox will carry more weight than some witty subject line so do work to be able to make sure that your sender Authority is where you're likely to be
able to lose the most like employees listening to this right now you could have a bad subject line with a terrible email that if it's coming from your boss you're going to open it you're gonna read it and you're gonna do as you're told right hopefully or you're gonna react in some way
right is it's going to drive a response whereas you could decide that you have no respect for the sender and the best subject line the best written email the best call to action the best offer never even get any light of day because the sender had no Authority so I agree is the
words that we provide in exactly what to say are a pantry of ingredients to help you conjure better dishes when you are communicating with other people you still have to work on you being a great chef you still have to communicate the message between you and your patrons you still have to give
thought and attention towards tonality and body language and intent and timing and intention I can give you the notes I can teach you how to play scales but I'm not making you a jazz musician well I like the the phrasing of sender Authority if I'm listening to this I'm like okay nice for
you two big shots to say something like that because you have sender Authority already what what can I do to increase my sender Authority any tips there um there's a I mean there's a three-day master class on that if we wanted to run it um what you're talking about is who you are
to them right is is what are you doing to be able to amplify the value of your relationship to the person who's the other side of that and like my phone is permanently on do not disturb you cannot call me on my phone it is impossible to call me unless you're my wife
she gets through do not dist everybody else doesn't that's sendor Authority so what can you do in the relationships that matter in your life to be able to grow your equity and grow your stock well some of it is getting clear on who are the people you help and what are the problems
you solve for them and then build a proven track record of being able to solve those problems in simple Mass marketing that is if you keep showing up and last time I read from you it was valuable and the time before that I read from you was valuable and the time before that
it was valuable there's a chance that next time something comes in I decide it's valuable before I read it that's just habits breeding Behavior so you could be doing that I think more than that though is you can work on how your offline reputation affects your online Authority the quickest and easiest way
to be able to accelerate that is friend a friend is if you can be a friend of somebody who already has online Authority or inbox Authority in that person's life you get the side door access everybody's trying to get through the front door the front door is well guided the back door is
sneaky the side door nobody gives any thought to but the side door access into relationships is often the fastest and the easiest door to get through if you're prepared to do some work before the work so if you're looking to grow Authority I'd be looking at who holds the key to the side
door how do I get to add value to that person so that when I show up it's friend a friend and the same would be true true on referrals like I don't want the referral because if somebody gives me the referral IE the name and the number too quickly well I just swapped
a meaningful introduction for a lead I'd be better to stay in that messy space for a little and wait for the introduction to be able to present itself and I'm working a a speaking gig right now it came up today with a little company called Beachbody and they've been on my radar for
about five six years and for years people have said like why don't why don't I just give you the number of the person that is involved in the booking of events there and then you can call her and like tell her how awesome you'll be at the event I'm like that's not that
helpful to me what I need is I need to grow Authority all the way around this so that what happens is my inbox pings in the other direction and it's being patient enough to orchestrate that dance that when you're looking to win big opportunities you want the opportunity to arrive with the right
level of Authority attached to it like friend of friend introduction huge Weight and Body of work that means that the resume adds up so I'd view it like if you're going to a job interview to get your dream job you don't want the interview you want the interview when you've done enough to
mean that your resume meets the opportunity so that when you get the interview you've got a fair chance of getting the job get the interview too early guaranteed failure so that's what I'd be working on for inbox Authority is where can the message meet the moment and what you can do is you
can work on all of your credibility over here before you show up and ask and we did an Instagram live right with with Carlos who you mentioned earlier and talked about all the creatives that are just blowing up people's inboxes by offering to do free video services for people I get maybe 30
requests today from video editors telling me that what they can do is turn me into the next viral sensation by re-editing our existing videos like how does one differentiate when everybody is making the exact same offer well what you choose to do is ignore all of them unless there's a friend to friend
introduction so why not do the work to find out who the friend of friend is do the work to name drop somebody whose name you knows matters not just an ego name that you'll looking to flex upon and watch how in a sea of sameness your Authority gets Amplified enough for you to
have visibility and credibility and authenticity now I want to check your availability these are the four things we should always be looking to work when we're trying to build a a business is visibility but you want to be seen to be doing the stuff you want to be seen to doing not seen
to be doing the wrong stuff credibility is have you done this before have you done it recently have you done it for someone like me and can you prove it authenticity is do you really care enough about the problem that you're saying that you're here to solve or are you only doing it
because you're being paid like you wouldn't believe the number of speakers that speak about disruption that when our industry got disrupted in 2020 lost their Marbles and had no idea how to be able to operate I'm like you realize this is your time to shine like this was your moment I meet sales
and marketing speakers struggling to close deals and generate leads I'm like are you sure they're like yeah yeah they're like what do you think I should do I'm like I've got a book you should read they're like what is it I'm like you wrote it go read the book you wrote and do
some of that stuff and and put it into practice that's what I mean by authenticity is you've got to care enough to eat your own dog food which is why when I see creators telling me that that like all I need to do is to be able to re-edit my videos more like
they have the skills to do and you flick through to their Instagram profile with you know six posts and 117 followers and you know the last video they edited looks like if I did it blind and drunk i' a probably done a better job you're like you're missing authenticity here only then do
I care about your availability so if you're growing your stock grow your visibility by being seen alongside the right people grow your credibility by working on your future bio to prove that what you're inviting somebody to give you consideration before you've done it before you've done it recently and you've done it for
someone like them and then your authenticity is caring about the problem that you commit to solve even when you're not being paid and that's what I see you do very well from the outside world is like you people are showing up in your comments and you're reigning like high value positive advice on
them that are going to help them achieve the obstacle you're not like oh through this payment Gateway and in this course and once you've paid me blank only then do I tell you the secret you're like here it is here it is and that's why you're stock gross because people see you caring
about the thing you say you care about all these things lead to trust that's it I mean the way you answer that question and tied it back to the magic word is is beautiful it's a thing of art they see weave those things together I do know my work well done there philm
Jones well done well played um people people underestimate that if you if you work on I I don't know how to say this but like the small stuff the big stuff becomes much easier and everybody just wants to jump right to thing where they can get what they want but they haven't done
the work and this takes you back to your childhood just take the next step and the next step raise the bar and then what's next and what's next and you just keep doing when you've done the work when things go wrong you know how to get out of it when you haven't done
the work when things go wrong you go back to square one and then you call yourself a failure and the journey backwards to where the point you got to is too distant you want the Reps right is you want the scars and the experience and you want to have received those SCS and
experience in the arena where the Judgment you received for it was in line with the money you were being paid like if somebody wants to be a $20,000 website designer they can be but if they're currently at zero and they're doing websites for free the worst thing that could happen is they could
get commission to do a $220,000 website because they don't know what is expected within the value of somebody who's spending that kind of money they don't understand what that is looking to be able to achieve typically so the journey is and how much time you want to spend there is up to you
but you should be brilliant at what you do for nothing then brilliant for 250 bucks then brilliant for 500 then brilliant for a th000 then brilliant for 2500 then brilliant for five then brilliant for 7500 then 10 then 125 then 15 then 20 knowing that you can overd deliver every single one of
those levels yeah and that's where confidence comes from in time is because you've played all the levels and then you both understand what's valuable to them but also you understand your own value which is what allows you to be able to set boundaries in client relationships I have two more questions how are
we doing on time do you have a heart out I'm good this is fun okay because I realized it's a beautiful day I don't want to keep you in here okay I'm gonna ask you these two questions the first one's actually really difficult I want to ask you a meta question because people
people ask me this I don't have a good answer so I'm going to ask you you have an incredible ability to phrase things to package the information to wrap it so that people can understand it if somebody aspires to be able to speak with such Clarity and potency what are things that they
can do to increase their communication skills that's a difficult question answer it in which way you want I'm going to rephrase the question because they asked similar versions of this from either people that have seen me speak or have read the B Etc and they what I believe that they're asking is I
believe they're asking how do I practice how do I practice this in order to be able to elevate my performance and the reason I rephrase it that way is is people come to me and they say how do I master these skills and my response is typically you can't you cannot master the
skills you can only choose to practice just like meditation or yoga or any of those other you know softer art forms is you can make an in commitment to practice so that you can act with more intention so start by saying you're committing to practice now what does practice look like practice looks
two ways one way you can look at it and say well I'm going to Define an over indexing moment that I'm looking to get better at just one moment and one moment alone now that could be as simple as I'm preparing for a speech on Thursday that looks like blank so I'm going
to take that moment and I'm going to run any version of new skills through that one moment and the level of specificity and precision around that allows me to elevate my practice that could be taking the book exactly what to say and rewriting an example of every sequence of words to support me
in that moment and that moment only so I'm stretching muscle memory so pick a moment run the book to top to bottom through you crafting and producing your own examples to support that one moment that could be a email you're choosing to craft that could be the moment that you have as a
recurring moment which is I keep finding myself in sales conversations and where I get to the point where we're going to talk about price I crumble so let's take the price moment positioning of price moment and take the book from the beginning and say well like like how am I going to craft
myself and I'm not sure if it's for you by example or most people example Etc they can give me confidence in pricing discussions because now what I've not got is a perfect pricing discussion I got 23 tools that can help me when I'm having pricing discussions that is why people who get into
a fighting arena aren't concerned about getting hit with the first punch because they got they got moves they got tools they don't have a oh I had one game plan and when that game plan gets off I'm in trouble they get moved to plan BCD f and g so moment and all the
words the other practice that you can bring to this is you can pick any sequence of the words and decide to intentionally practice it to an obnoxious level in a 24-hour period so if you take the sequence of magic words the words most people decide for example it's most people Monday and on
Monday you're going to utilize the words most people in context as much as humanly possible when you're at Starbucks when you're CH speaking to your kids when you're communicating with a vendor over the phone in every email that you craft on that given day you're going to position it into text messages with
your spouse or your buddies and you're going to get a 100 200 300 500 at bats with that one sequence of words in one day and watch how it stretches your performance and then that will never stretch back just like an elastic band never goes back to where it was when it gets
pulled enough so those would be my Echoes for practice behind that you've got to think about your debrief how do you debrief important moments to put you on this relentless quest for better and most of us are very bad at debriefing ourselves on anything because we are mean cruel horrible people to ourselves
we jump straight to the things we did wrong we make the things we did wrong worse than they were in reality and we wonder how we're going to move forward based on the fact we've just destroyed and self-sabotaged our own potential so I built a model for how we can talk to ourselves
more effectively following an event that means your debrief is more constructive and it's a model I call BS and NTS and lb stands for like best coming out of a major conversation a major interaction a recurring moment what I like best about how I showed up on my sales calls today you're not
allowed to move on from this until you finish the list well I was on time I was professional the PowerPoint looked good I mean the proposals were straight the camera was good the background was tidy like I don't mind what it is you just got to exhaust the list of lbs only once
you've exhausted the list of lbs do you jump to the second list and the second list is NTS what NT stands for is next time what am I going to do different next time and then write that list and the difference that happens when you do lbs and NTS as opposed to what
did I do right and what did I do wrong instead of taking a photograph of the past you build a playbook for the future and you crafted it yourself which means you believe it which then also means you're excited to play again and the only way you find confidence in conversation is through
experience so what I'm looking to try to do is to accelerate experience that's all accelerate experience with intention experience times intention steps you to closer to Mastery experience times intention I'm sorry experience uh repetition with intention that that's what's going to get us to where we need to be so that would be
my long answer to your short question that was beautiful thanks for sharing that this this was seg way to the other question and it's tied to the answer you give I think it's just like one conversation really and there's like little threads that up here you mentioned something about public speaking and and
Beachbody a company I'm familiar with and I heard something from our mutual friend Neil and you gave a presentation to his Mastermind and you're going to be speaking at the forward event and he said Phils special he goes into the crowd he works the crowd he's done things that I've not seen people
do in a meaningful way tell us a little bit about what you're doing and how you view public speaking and if you can unpack any of the the Lessons Learned as a professional public speaker I'd appreciate it as an aspiring public speaker myself you're more than an aspiring public speaker but I think
we're all aspiring to be better right that's the route that we're at um there's a few things one is it's not a speech to an audience it's a one-on-one conversation with 3,500 people that just happens to be happening at the exact same time like this isn't you to a block of 3500 people
this is you with 3500 invisible threads to everybody who's in that space and that number could be 12 it could be 12200 it could be 3500 it could be 247 but people in that room are not a group they are individuals there's also a level of responsibility that comes to delivering a professional
presentation that many people Overlook if I'm speaking to 3,500 people for an hour I'm not responsible for my hour I'm responsible for 35 100 hours of productivity from some of the most successful people in an organization that's the moment that I decide that I'm in service of not my speech 3500 hours of
productivity from some of the most influential people on the planet and that raises the bar changes the stakes and puts you into a situation where you understand what winning really looks like once you've got that narrative you can start to craft a speech that has a lot less to do with your PowerPoint
presentation remembering your lines and making sure that you land on the beats that you were supposed to within your time frame it becomes a lot more aware of saying well what moment am I being asked to serve so if we use Neil's event as a narrative I went to the event the night
before to get a Vibe on what people were struggling with at that period of of time I didn't go to Hangout I got to be able to learn with some side one-on-one conversations what were the front of Mind obstacles and puzzles that a large proportion of that room were looking to overcome this
didn't change a huge deal about my speech it just ch changed a huge deal about the tone the timing how I could meet them where they're at and maybe craft 3 four five examples slightly differently what else that then would almost always happen is I was the penultimate speaker so I was after
lunch heavy content fueled morning with 90 minutes in what many speakers would view to be the graveyard shift right right they're full up on content like this is the this is the third leg of the 4x400 on a big race day is the one that doesn't get the Glory but it's the race
it's the leg that you could win or lose the race by right it's there's a lot that can happen here that if you don't understand your role in your responsibility so it's a heavy lift in that to make that heavy lift relevant well you stay and listen to everything that's laid down before
you because now what happened prior isn't an anchor it's a trampoline it isn't something that weighs you down it's something that can bounce you forward if you have the knowledge and skill set to be able to bounce off of it because what you can do is you can now borrow the energy that
was created by other speakers prior just with some subtle meaningful callbacks the reason in that environment the choice was to then on purpose work walk the floor is people miss the fact that most audience members don't listen with their ears they listen with their eyes when Lethy exists in an audience the easiest
place for them to be able to zone out first is eyes what they can then do is just go into a meditative state that they were there but they weren't really there you drop your eye level to their eye level you raise the intensity as to how you're connecting eyeball to eyeball you
watch how the energy and the intention in the room now carries cuz people have nowhere to hide you work an audience on purpose to say that nobody knows where I might go next you drive a nervous energy through the participants CU they are worried that they might get picked on and by picked
on I mean included therefore they don't want to miss anything because they don't want to appear stupid at any point having missed something that's important these are intentional decisions what you craft is humor into it that is often a callback from something that happened in the morning or a humorous moment that came
because of an awareness and her understanding that was something unique to their industry and you throw it away like it's nothing even though you know it was everything and why are you doing that because you're hitting the show me that you know me button inside that audience environment they're like oh dang he
gets us therefore he ain't lying therefore trust is elevated and what you do when you're crafting a presentation of that nature is you view it like you're producing a rock concert you cannot produce a rock concert for 90 minutes where everything is you know the loudest rip roaring Banger of a song again
and again and again the reason the highs exist at a concert is because also they crafted time for some lows and some relaxation and some insight and some expression and so much more that comes with it so you then craft your content accordingly and just like a rock concert you open strong and
you finish strong that way you know that you're going to get their attention and you're going to leave them with a meaningful takeaway so you plan your bookins you plan your checkpoints in between and the way you structure a presentation or certainly the way that I would think about it is you tell
a story you make a point you make a point you tell a story you tell a story you make a point you make a point you tell a story you tell a story you make a point you make a point you tell a story so you bought your points and you bought your
stories that's how you can make music what most people do is they tell a story they make a point they tell a story they make a point they tell a story and make a point it becomes predictable and they make their stories and their points the same predictable length a point could be
17 seconds a point could be 17 minutes a point a story could be 30 second antidote a story could be a six minute segue but you in purpose play with the track length and now what you've got you got people listening to a melody of a speech that is a well orchestrated playlist
so just mix all that stuff together and call it a speech so you have the entry and the exit you have the the EPS are yep in between how much of that do you build into it that I know here I can play and I know that there's flexibility in there and we're
okay with going off the cuff yeah and you're not going off the cuff you're giving yourself freedom to play and I would actively always leave 10 to 15% of every presentation where I'm triling something new for the first time M and that could be as simple as the way I'm going to make
a point that I've know that I've made in the past because actually if you're triing something new with something you've done a thousand times before you've got a benchmark a data point to be able to reference it against so for example you know there are points that I've made with a slide that
then I'd scrap the slide and I'd use a prop and I'd pull a chair from the audience and use the chair from the audience as the prop to make the point there's times I've taken that chair and I put it up on stage to make a point but there's also times like in
a more intimate environment that the chair I've picked is the one lonely chair in the middle of the room and I've sat alongside somebody whilst we've created that moment there's points where we've created moments of intimacy up on a stage there's points where you'll look at it and you go well actually I've
got imag in the room today if I go take a $25 gift card to the imag operator and let him know the play that I'm trying to run there the chance this imag operator can deliver something mesmerizing for this audience of this period just by capturing a close up of a one-on-one intervention
with an audience but now the crowd are all seeing on the big screen because it doesn't matter what's happening down here on the moment it's like what's happening up there on the visual is you're always putting something in that you're trying for the first time always but if I'm writing a speech and
like we um are semi on video right now my notebook is across the other side of the room for my journal I use is I I write every single one of my speeches and if people ever follow me on Instagram I'll share these on occasion is it's just a messy mind map like
I take a I take a typical Journal size I flip it on its side it the lines go this way I go across the lines I do little mind M bubbles it looks like a car crash of a mess of me crafting a speech but what I'm doing is I'm writing points and
transitions if I write Usain I know I'm going to tell the story of when I interviewed Usain Bol but I could tell that story this long this long or this long I got a 30 second version of that a three minute version of that a 15minute version of that exact same story with
the exact same point this gives me utility because now what I can do is I can live edit a speech that if something does get segwayed and I still want to make the core point that I wanted to make to be able to land the plane well what I do is I go
right 30 second version 30 second version 30 second version I just bought myself 12 minutes back great still in flow so I could take the same slide deck and deliver a 100 different speeches with it so it's that utility that says I have baked in versatility I have a plan but I have
a plan B CD e FG hi J K so if something happens in a moment and I have a moment of influence or or impact where there's a choice that comes up is like oh do you stick to the plan or do you follow the clue I can choose to follow the clue
and know that I've got resource already baked in that can get me back on track and I think that's what happens when you invest in experience you can have the bravery and the freedom of somebody looking to be able to chase a moment because it presented itself and this exists in the world
of acting people talk about know High Caliber actors and you know the moments of Brilliance that have been recorded and they're like that wasn't even written into the script the actor just did that they went they went off the cuff they didn't go off the cuff they went off script they knew the
script so well they knew the intention of the director so well they knew the understanding that was hoping to be achieved so well that when that moment presented themselves they had a feeling that they could try something different that would be even better than what was written so they had the confidence to
give it a shot that's what can happen when you speak that's what can happen in sales conversations once you've got the ability to say I'm okay if this doesn't go the way I'm intended because I know how to get it back on track once again you tied it back to exactly what to
say beautifully done I for one am really excited about speaking but I'm more excited about seeing you do your thing because I love to see other Master practitioners do their craft because there's so much to learn and it's the benefit of just not hearing the information but seeing the process and how you
work with the material and where you play and and loving that there's no one way to do it right but you can be inspired and influenced by it and like I love the like Oasis didn't copy The Beetles Oasis were inspired by The Beetles and we see it so much in our industry
that people don't understand the difference between being inspired by other people and copying other people and the trouble is when somebody copies somebody else they don't have what it takes when that gets tested but when somebody's inspired by somebody else that's back to the collaboration that we were taking from talking about earlier
where the two plus two can equal five like that becomes a multiplier that becomes something that is excessive and in the right ways and like none of us have UniQue Ideas every idea belief skill set wonder that UI and everybody else listening has in their repertoire right now it's not yours we've just
got our take on a number of things that have been learned and experienced by others that we've molded and you know thrown together to be a to create our unique flavor but it isn't a new idea it's just a new take on existing ideas based on your knowledge of different circumstances in different
environments so we're all the sum of some parts that came before us yeah I believe that this has been fun Phil thank you so much for being a guest on the show I've been talking to Phil M Jones he wrote the book exactly what to say I believe there are a multitude of
versions of this but the the one that you can buy that's in the public domain as he says is for Real Estate professionals and the OG version as well so the OG orange version what is OG so yeah search exactly what to say Amazon anywhere else you find books you can grab it
it is also the most listened to non-fiction audio book so if you like to hear it in spoken word then come grab it on Audible and um it's one of those books that people like to listen to on repeat and I think that's why it gets those accolades is because it has a
seven and a half eight times listen and I don't know about you I haven't listened to many books eight times well that's it is is is a book or an Audi book that you do need to play back several times the concepts are simple but powerful Phil talks about the 23 magical words
that tap into someone's subconscious and he does it in a way I think as a creative introvert myself that you too can can be more intentional in the words that you choose to achieve the results that you want and that's kind of all why we're existing here we want to be able to
help and serve people and we can't do that if we get our own way you know it so Phil thank you very much if people want to find out more about you where where can they go where should we direct them philm jones.com is me exactly what to say.com is the movement that
we've created together and if people just want to continue the conversation then come find me on Instagram it's film Jones UK let me know that you heard um this conversation here with Chris and let's see if we can pick up the conversation there in the DMS wonderful there's a handful of people who
listen to this podcast so everybody if you're unfamiliar with Phil once again I can't recommend his book enough do yourself a favor it's it's like it's not even a lot of money I don't know what the price of the book is but it's it's value packed it's value packed and you guys know
every time I drop a book and I I'm saying this so emphatically you need to get the book you need to read it and more importantly you need to apply it and probably reread it and reapply and just keep doing it and you're going to see your life change there's a testimonial inside
the book written by Jeffrey Hazlet he says Abracadabra you're a millionaire this is what will happen if you follow the advice from Phil Jones in this book read it more than once and it means even more I mean that's a pretty brilliant way to begin that that he is the chairman of seet
network prime time TV and podcast host Phil thanks very much for being our guest huge pleasure thanks again for having me if you want to equip yourself with the right Community training and resources to take your business to the next level I want to personally invite you to check out the future PR
group and our membership specifically created for experienced business owners ready to scale if you enjoy this episode be sure to check out the one we just did with Daniel Priestley on how to 10x Revenue
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