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Mastering Communication: The Key to Success in Life and Business
In a gripping interview, Chris Do sits down with Van Jiang to uncover how painful failure can transform an 'invisible' creative into a master of communication.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · March 23, 2023
You Are Not Good Enough. Now What?
There are moments in life that cleave time in two: before and after. For communication expert Van Jiang, that moment came in a sterile conference room, pitching his online magic school to a group of venture capitalists.
He was the only entrepreneur in the room with a proven business. He had users, a product, and revenue to the tune of $85,000 that year. The other four presenters had nothing but an idea. They were pre-business, pre-revenue, pre-anything.
They all walked out with funding or, at the very least, valuable advice. Jiang walked out with nothing.
The drive home was a storm of anger and resentment. “[I was] so upset with the world,” he recalls. He swore, he fumed, he blamed the investors. Then, his wife, Pei, turned to him and delivered the verbal equivalent of a slap to the face.
“Maybe it’s not about [cursing] everybody else,” she said, her words cutting through his rage. “It's you. You're the problem because you keep blaming all of these other people... What if you took some damn responsibility?”
In that brutal, uncomfortable moment of truth, a new path was forged. The problem wasn't his business. The problem was his inability to express its value. For years, Jiang had been invisible, and he was finally sick of it. As he tells Chris Do, “I just decided I don't want to be invisible anymore.”
That decision set him on a ten-year odyssey to deconstruct the art of communication, transforming him from a technically skilled but socially awkward magician into a world-renowned keynote speaker and teacher. It’s a story not of overnight success, but of deliberate, painful growth fueled by failure, honesty, and an insatiable desire to be seen.
The Crutch of Craft
Before the failed pitch, before the speaking career, there was magic. But for Jiang, magic was never just about the art form. It was a tool. A shield. A fraudulent way to get the one thing he craved most: attention.
“I never got any attention when I was young,” Jiang admits. “One thing I wanted… was a girlfriend. One thing I couldn't get… was a girlfriend.”
Then, as a teenager, he performed a simple magic trick at school. A girl he had a crush on looked at him and said, “Wow, you're amazing.” The words melted his heart. It was a feeling he had never experienced, and the addiction began instantly. Magic became his shortcut to validation.
This is a trap many skilled professionals fall into. The designer, the developer, the doctor, the engineer. They become so technically proficient that they can lean entirely on their craft. The code is elegant. The design is pixel-perfect. The sleight of hand is flawless. But the person behind the skill remains underdeveloped, hidden.
This is what magicians call showmanship, a term Jiang defines simply as communication skills. He had over-indexed on technical ability and completely neglected the art of connecting with an audience. “I've been able to get away with mediocre levels of success as a magician because I leaned purely on my technical ability,” he says.
His confidence became inextricably tied to his tools. He tells a story of once forgetting his deck of cards before heading to university and descending into a full-blown panic. He desperately searched a local news agency for a new deck, feeling like an addict needing a fix.
“I couldn't talk to people that whole day,” he remembers. “I realized I was contextually confident. I was only confident when I had my cards. When I didn't have my cards, zero confidence.”
The cards were his crutch. For another creative, it might be a laptop. For a writer, a notebook. For a strategist, a PowerPoint deck. These tools become a mask, allowing you to perform a role without ever having to reveal who you are. This is the core challenge for anyone trying to build a personal brand, a path Do explores in his coaching session on building a reputation.
You are not your software. You are not your tools. Your value is not in the artifact you create, but in the thinking and perspective that inform it. Until you learn to communicate that, you will remain contextually confident, and ultimately, invisible.
A Necessary Failure
Jiang's failed VC pitch wasn't just a rejection. It was an indictment of his entire approach. He had rushed through his presentation, avoided eye contact, and failed to build any narrative or emotional journey. He presented data, but he failed to tell a story.
As Chris Do notes, every creative person needs a “truth sayer” in their life. Someone whose ego can handle delivering difficult feedback. “Other people [are] like, ‘Yeah, you're doing great, man… they don't deserve you anyway,’” Do explains. “They would just keep allowing you to create that narrative that doesn't allow you to grow.”
Jiang’s wife was that truth sayer. Her words were not comforting. They sparked a full-blown argument. But they stuck. The narrative of victimhood, of blaming a world that didn't understand him, was shattered. He was left with only one person to hold accountable: himself.
This painful realization became the catalyst for his transformation. He was tired of being invisible. He wanted, in the words of Rihanna, to “shine bright like a diamond.”
This desire soon found a specific target: the keynote speaking profession. After being paid $2,500 to speak for an hour at a corporate event, his entrepreneurial brain went into overdrive. The return on investment was intoxicating.
“I've never heard of ROI like that before per hour,” he recalls. Even though the speech itself was a disaster, a disjointed series of magic tricks with no connective tissue, the taste of that potential was enough. He saw a career path that could combine his love for teaching, performance, and magic. The desire for that career became far greater than his fear of the work required to achieve it. This pivot from one business model to another is a classic entrepreneurial move, one that requires a complete shift in mindset as detailed in the transition from freelancer to agency owner.
The dream of becoming a keynote speaker gave him the courage to step into the most uncomfortable arenas imaginable for a shy, awkward performer.
Deconstructing the Instrument
Armed with a new motivation, Jiang sought out his mentors. The first piece of advice was blunt: “Go do theater classes and do vocal classes, because you were terrible.”
This marked the beginning of a years-long journey to master the two primary instruments of communication: the voice and the body. He enrolled in vocal classes, not to become a singer, but to learn how to use his voice as a tool of influence. He took improv and theater classes, not to become an actor, but to free his body language and learn how to use gestures to support his message.
He spent years playing in these two arenas, building a foundational understanding of delivery. He discovered that the words we choose are only one modality of communication.
The other critical components are:
- Vocal Tonality: The pitch, pace, and volume of your voice can change the entire meaning of a sentence.
- Pacing and Pauses: Silence is a powerful tool. Strategic pauses build tension and allow key ideas to land.
- Body Language: Your posture, gestures, and movement on stage either reinforce your message or betray your nervousness.
- Stage Presence: This is the combination of all elements, the “showmanship” that commands an audience’s attention before you even speak a word.
During this period of intense self-development, Jiang was not a successful entrepreneur. He was working at a gas station and a takeaway shop to afford Google AdWords for his struggling magic business. He and his wife lived in one of his parents' investment properties, and he couldn't even make his share of the rent. He had to convince friends to move in so their rent could cover his portion.
His wife, a pharmacist, supported him financially through these lean years. “She was my sugar mama,” he says with a laugh. “My wife paid off my credit card multiple times.” It’s a vulnerable admission, but an honest one. Success is rarely a solo endeavor. The invisible support structures, whether financial, emotional, or logistical, are often the bedrock upon which great careers are built.
After three to four years of dedicated practice, the work began to pay off. He started booking speaking gigs globally. Friends remarked on his sudden transformation into a charismatic, confident speaker, unaware of the years of grueling work that made it possible. The culmination was a keynote in Los Angeles for 2,500 people. He received a full standing ovation, and his career ignited. He moved his family, including his two-month-old son, from Australia to the United States to pursue speaking full-time.
The Strategist’s Shortcut
Years into his successful speaking career, Jiang faced a new, more profound challenge. His son was diagnosed with autism. Suddenly, his life's work took on a new urgency. “My world crashed,” he says. “Didn't matter how much money I had, didn't matter how much success I had… it all like a tide in the ocean just pulled out. Gone.”
Communication was no longer just a lucrative job; it became a calling. His son’s biggest struggle in life would be communication, and Jiang was now on a desperate mission to understand everything he could. He fell back on a mindset he had learned as an entrepreneur: don't fumble in the dark, hire the best. This principle of buying back time is a core tenet for many successful entrepreneurs, a concept explored in a conversation with Dan Martell on how to build brand equity.
He sought out one of the most credible therapists he could find and made an audacious offer: “What do you charge for a month of your time? I'll pay you that in a day. Spend time with me.”
The price was nine thousand dollars. For a single day. What he received, however, was a masterclass in accelerated learning. The therapist spent a month preparing for their session, arriving with a massive, tagged folder of research and strategies tailored to his family's specific situation. Jiang learned more in that one condensed day than he had from reading five books on the subject.
The most valuable part was not the information itself, but the access to the expert's thought process. This is the difference between reading a book and having a conversation with the author.
He wasn't just learning answers; he was learning the operating system.
Jiang started asking questions like, “How did you come to that? What was the path? How did you navigate from X to Y?” This is the strategist’s shortcut. Most people try to learn everything themselves, the “old-fashioned way.” But as the story of Henry Ford illustrates, the smartest people don't know everything; they know who to ask. They hire intelligence. Jiang's investment wasn't just for his son's well-being; it was an investment in a new way of thinking that would inform his own teaching for years to come.
This approach highlights a critical distinction:
- The DIY Mindset: Believes learning must be hard-won through personal trial and error. It's slow, inefficient, and often leads to reinventing the wheel.
- The Investor Mindset: Believes time is the most valuable asset. It readily exchanges money for condensed knowledge and proven frameworks, collapsing decades of experience into days.
By paying for access to an expert's operating system, Jiang received early intervention for his son that made a world of difference. He also stumbled upon one of the most powerful principles of personal and professional development: find the people who have the results you want and pay them to teach you how they think.
The Art of the Link
How did Jiang go from a disjointed presentation of random magic tricks to a keynote that commanded $13,500 an hour and standing ovations?
He mastered the art of the link. It's the five percent tweak that separates an amateur from a professional. The amateur entertains. The professional teaches through entertainment. He stopped performing magic tricks and started using magic to illustrate business concepts.
He explains a routine designed to teach the importance of collaboration. He brings a volunteer on stage and makes a small piece of tissue disappear three times in a row. The volunteer on stage is completely astonished. The audience, however, is laughing hysterically.
This is a classic magic technique called dual reality. Two different realities are occurring at the same time. The volunteer is focused intently on Jiang's hands, so they don’t see him simply tossing the tissue over their head. The audience, with a wider perspective, sees the entire trick.
After the reveal, Jiang doesn't just move on. He links the experience back to a core business principle. “Why is it that this person here can't solve it, yet all of you can?” he asks the audience. “It's because you have a different point of view. You have a different perspective. This is the reason why collaboration is so important. Other people can see things in you you can't see in yourself.”
He then performs another illusion that fools the entire audience, driving the point home. Suddenly, they are the ones with the limited perspective. The lesson is no longer abstract; it’s a felt experience. This method of making ideas tangible is a core part of effective storytelling, a skill discussed in detail with Andrea Sampson on how to craft an idea-centric narrative.
His keynotes became a powerful fusion of three key elements:
- Entertainment: The magic tricks, humor, and high-energy performance that capture and hold attention.
- Education: The concrete business lessons, frameworks, and actionable advice.
- Inspiration: The personal stories of failure and transformation that make the lessons human and relatable.
This is the formula. It’s not just about being a great speaker or a skilled magician. It’s about being a great teacher who understands that medicine goes down easier with a spoonful of sugar. He uses the spectacle to open the mind, then delivers the lesson.
From Invisible to Inevitable
Jiang’s journey reveals a fundamental truth about success in any creative or entrepreneurial field. Your raw talent, your technical skill, is just the price of admission. It gets you in the room. But it won’t get you the funding, the promotion, or the standing ovation.
Growth only happens when you are willing to face uncomfortable truths. It requires radical responsibility, the kind that forces you to look in the mirror after a devastating failure and admit, “The problem is me.”
It requires a willingness to feel foolish, to be the worst student in a theater class or a vocal lesson, all in service of a bigger goal.
And it requires the strategic humility to recognize that you cannot learn everything on your own. True mastery is accelerated by learning from those who have already walked the path, by deconstructing their thinking, and by paying for access to their operating system.
Van Jiang's story began with a desire to stop being invisible. But invisibility is a choice. It’s the choice to hide behind your craft, to blame the world for your failures, and to believe that your work should speak for itself.
The opposite of invisibility is not fame. It's influence. It is the ability to communicate your value so clearly and powerfully that you become inevitable. You achieve this not by being the most skilled person in the room, but by being the one who can connect, teach, and inspire.
Stop waiting to be discovered. Learn to play your instrument. Tell your story. And step into the light.
TRANSCRIPT
and I say this to people if your ego can handle it you need a truth Sayer in your life you need it because other people like yeah you're doing great man um they don't deserve you anyways and they would just keep allowing you to create that narrative that doesn't allow you to grow
when I tell people that you're going to be on the show like what they're losing their mind they're just losing their mind I'm like hey it's my brother from another mother a younger hairier version of me I love it he's very successful so so then let's just jump off right here I I
there was this period in time when I can't tell you how many people that are my circle who are messaging me uh you gotta check out this guy van I'm like guys if we just calm down a little bit just calm down and I don't know when it happened but you're going stratospheric
on social and I'm watching you I'm watching I'm like God I want to hate you I really just don't want to like you at all you're smart you know magic you have command of the stage in your voice and you're dropping just gold and we agree you know like you can't even be
that old I just don't like you but here we are I dropped into your DMs and I said can you can you come on the podcast and the way the internet works we're connected across great distances across time and space and I know who you are I've watched a bunch of your videos
but for people who don't know who you are can you introduce yourself and tell me how you say your last name and tell me a little story about you and we'll just go from there the last name is pronounced Jiang I'm as excited to be here as as you are too uh yeah
and I love the introduction you just gave me a more hairy version and and just thank you for that I appreciate that because I actually this is my mustache because like this is six months extensive six months brother it's six months to grow this and it looks it looks like bump off for
those who are listening so just bump off but look an intro to who I am look I think we are all we have multi-dimension we're all multi-dimensional and I think to give you a very distilled version I teach communication skills I teach people how to use their instrument I believe your voice is
an instrument and I teach you how to play the instrument and then I teach you how to write great music which is again metaphorically used for storytelling metaphors analogy similes how can we use all these different devices that are available to us for us to become more engaging more influential and and how
we can use our communication ability to drive the outcomes we desire you know when I I learned that from The World of Magic from the world of keynote speaking I used to run a production company with one of my best friends I learned it from a cinematographer's point of view a director's point
of view so I've kind of taken all of that from all those different areas and and kind of combined it into to the classes that I teach and the classes that I run on communication and thank you for saying I'm massively successful my mum still doesn't love me uh she's still not proud
of me so so yeah join that club and help me Chris this is just a tough love of Asian parents that's just the way it's going to be for a while it's gonna be a therapy podcast about how to express yeah um there are so many things I want to talk to you
about but I think from a timeline point of view the thing that I always like to ask people about is when did they realize how old were you where were you what happened when you said you know what I'm going to teach people how to use this wonderful instrument that they have to
be more effective and Powerful communicators because this is the glue to everything that we do when was that where were you what happened oh I remember it it's almost if we planned this question I I was pitching my online magic business I I had a I had this idea where I wanted to
build an online magic school to teach magic tricks and I created it it was called Encyclopedia of magic and at the time we had about three or four thousand users on there and I took it to a group of venture capitalists and I remember that evening because I walked in I was one
of five other entrepreneurs I did my pitch it was okay and then I watched four other entrepreneurs go on and do their pitch and the most painful part about that evening was that I was the only entrepreneur in that room that was post Revenue I had made about 85 Grand that year which
was like to me that was huge money yeah and all the other four entrepreneurs were pre business pre-revenue they haven't even created their business yet and the saddest part was the other four got funding or they got advice I walked out with nothing oh my God yeah oh thanks for laughing yeah that's
nice that's lovely didn't know it was one of those mum this is no no just um you have an idea you have a business model and you can't get funding I couldn't get funding and I remember oh man I remember that evening I've got the video of it and I played in my
class if I had it here I'd play it for you but then yeah I just I raced through it I didn't look at the audience there was there was no storytelling no emotive Journey during my presentation nothing just just someone who was shy awkward couldn't Express the value they had inside nor did
I properly portray the value within my business and then I walked away that evening I remember sitting in the car with my wife my wife and him was pay when I was pissed man I was swearing in the car to the max I was I was saying you know [ __ ] them
[ __ ] this [ __ ] that and I was I was so upset with the world and I was so angry and I think my wife leaned over and said something to me that I'll never forget and she goes my wife is not very uh she's she's a boss she's a Savage
she goes to her she goes no no maybe it's not about [ __ ] everybody else and it's it's you you're the problem because you keep blaming all of these other people and and what I saw tonight was you not being able to show how good you were that's all that it is
and you when you blame everyone you're just giving away all of the power that you have what if you took some damn responsibility what if you're the one that is not doing the business Justice and your self-justice and and I remember that brutal conversation which I did not take very well of course
okay I want to tell you oh that's the moment I transformed that's the moment we got into a full-blown argument so so what what happened that evening to me was it just it was a moment where everything in my life pointed to one thing and it was that I was invisible and I've
been invisible for the longest time in my life up until that moment as a kid not many friends you know not many girlfriends Etc just always led to one thing invisible invisible invisible and that point Chris I just decided I I don't want to be invisible anymore and that's when I went down
the path of in the wise words of Rihanna I wanted to shine bright like a diamond I wanted to learn how to shine man I was sick of being invisible yeah how old are you at this point 36 turning 37. okay so this is not like the realization of a 20 year old
man when this happened I was in my mid-20s oh okay I'm sorry let's rephrase that how old were you in this story oh yeah yeah when I that was about 25 26 okay yeah it's been 10 years okay so up until this point you've been doing magic up and you could you've developed
a product you have a community so what I'm having a hard time reconciling my mind is how does a person who's a performer I mean this is what magicians do they're in the spotlight quite literally and so how could you be invisible as a magician because in the World of Magic you can
lean on your technical slot of hand to astonish and you can do this as designers you can do this as an engineer you can do this as a doctor you can become at times so technically good at what you do you can lean purely on the technical side of it and I've been
able to get away with mediocre levels of success as a magician because I leaned purely on my technical ability I didn't work on I mean magicians we call it Showmanship it's a fancy word for communication skills but I I was completely underdeveloped in that area I see over indexed on technical skill hmm
yeah okay so this person who didn't want to be seen at that point in time leaned in on the craft yeah the skill the repetitions so you had a lot of technical skill but you didn't really work on the person behind the skill not quite ready to be seen that way you just
made me think of something really interesting what's that I used to only be able to talk to people during that period when I had my packet of cards my confidence was so attached to the playing cards that I remember one day I went to University and I just forgot my playing cards and
I panicked and I went to a local news agency to try to find cards and it was almost like an addict who needed who needed their drugs and I I couldn't talk to people that whole day because I couldn't find a packet of cards and it was freaky I just remember that being
so freaky because that day I realized I was contextually confident I was only confident when I had my cards when I didn't have my cards zero confidence it's crazy yeah so the cards become part of your your crutch definitely quite literally and that without them you didn't have an identity and there are
a lot of parallels the reason why maybe I don't like you because I'm like God this guy's just like me what is going on with the two of us don't want to be seen I see myself as a graphic designer when I'm outside that context I'm nobody I'm nothing and there's not a
lot of places where you can go around talking to people about graphic design at least you had cards to work with and then you hit some low point and you realize I'm tired I got to do something different but before we get there to tease us out a little bit because I'm interested
in the transformation Journey is you mentioned you went to to college yeah the career choice of being a magician is not an obvious one especially one of uh of Asian descent from strict parents yeah I mean how did this go over with the family yeah they definitely wanted me to fulfill the prophecy
Chris and I didn't nor did you we're just saying right now we're on the same team brother we're on the same team yeah my my you know it's funny the way you phrase questions makes me think of moments that often don't come up when I was 18 I wrote the first choice Chris
that I wrote down was teacher because in my family uh culturally we we we looked at us oh teachers don't make that much money uh the status and then and then I I literally had to ask my teacher for a new form and then instead of teacher I wrote pharmacist uh which I
didn't get enough points to get into then after that was Commerce and law and then I got enough points to get into that so I did that but I just still remember the again just super sad moments but the moment where I wrote down teacher and I kind of kind of scrantured up
and went I can't I can't do that um mum and dad would be happy and maybe my friends will even laugh at me because everyone wants to be a doctor everyone wants to be a lawyer or an accountant Etc I better write what's honorable reputable and then I wrote that down and then
I I got into Commerce and laws I did Commerce and law at University so what part of you and your childhood made you think teacher would have been a good choice for you what were the clues early on my dad my dad was a teacher when during the during the Vietnam war my
dad was a teacher and he taught people in like in the mountains of Vietnam because the Viet Cong pushed them out of their businesses and into the freaking jungle right and Dad growing up would tell me about all these stories how he taught basically in the jungle and the things he would teach
and I was inspired really early on in life with my dad you know and and yeah it's interesting because yeah I mean I don't know we have time for the story but my dad now in his life you know four years ago my dad came to me and said you and your brother
ain't getting the inheritance and we're like what the hell you know can we negotiate this and he said no and he said mum and dad are also no longer going to be mum and dad I was like what the hell are you getting a divorce you know what the hell's going on he
goes no no just shut up son and my dad said Son I've been a devout Buddhist for the last 15 years your mum and I want to become monks and I was like WTF is this like what are you doing what are you talking you want to become a monk my dad's now
a monk it gave away all of his possessions my mum's traveling to India later this year in November to become a monk herself and my parents have always been teachers and now they're formerly teachers in their lives in their own way and that was a part of my DNA growing up I just
didn't didn't feel that I had the freedom to do what I wanted to do because of the cultural pressures the society pressures so I kind of went into Commerce and law but those teacher that teacher DNA it's in my family through and through you know even to now what my parents are doing
it's it's fully a part of my DNA I'm not that familiar with what one has to do to become a monk but do you renounce everything you've done give up all your possessions disavow your children is that what being a monk is yeah well mum and dad are no longer married they denounce
the marriage they gave away everything they owned we didn't get any that's okay it's all good my dad did say look what you did get is the opportunities to fail the safety to grow the comfort of doing what you want to do that's all you need so yeah my dad gave away his
wealth to the Palm Village Association and you know he yeah you should see him now I've never seen my dad more happy hmm you know because my dad told me he was suffering he said son I'm suffering and I'm suffering from a lot of first world problems in that your uncle just bought
a new BMW I feel like I need to buy one now too no we we son we have a boat um I don't even have a boat license none of us do in the family why do we have that I'm playing the material game I'm trapped in the material game I don't want
to play these games anymore I'm suffering and I mean it's quite dramatic way to do it to become a monk but that was my dad's way and I respect that I honor that you know and I've never seen him more happy you know he's got he's got a big block of land right
now and he teaches people how to meditate with their hands in the garden and it's just amazing how he can take someone who comes to him who's so frazzled and stressed and within just four or five hours he can just unwind all of that through meditation different types of meditation and I see
him so happy Chris sometimes I slightly envy that because I'm still playing some of the games that he was talking about wow okay probably a different episode I would like to follow that rabbit hole but I'm gonna just pin that here yeah so I understand the motivation now your dad's a teacher or
maybe your mom's a teacher too but your dad was a professional teacher right and now he found his life calling his purpose and you were inspired by these stories about how he transformed lives and so you wanted to fall in those footsteps but you can give yourself permission to do that wasn't quote
unquote respectable enough to do that and you're going to have a life of suffering so you temporarily put those dreams on whole on hold you get into Commerce and law I still don't understand where magic comes into this because that's even crazier than teaching magic came into my life because I never got
any attention when I was young I I couldn't get attention from people even when I wanted it specifically from the girls because you know when I was young one thing I wanted Chris was a girlfriend one thing I couldn't get Chris was a girlfriend are you laughing because you relate or was it
always easy okay okay good because I was like now my turn to hate you I don't know and you know what man I remember when I was in my mid-teens I remember doing a magic trick once and then one of the girls that I really liked at the time I did it at
school and she said these very words she says wow you're amazing dude that melted my heart I was I've never had a girl say that to me alone like just ever let alone this girl that I I adored at the time I had a crush on and that was it man the addiction
began I was like this is my and I guess that's why I often say that magic is the most fraudulent way to get attention because I realized that now I had this tool that I could get attention anytime I wanted so that started way earlier on in my life and it was kind
of in the background you know it was that thread that was under in the background that thread that kind of ran through my entire life and I started in my mid-teens and I only got into it because it wasn't even because I had this pure love for Magic in hindsight only loved it
because of what it got for like what it helped me get which was attention fascinating so you you became really curious about magic because it it got you what you wanted which is the attention from people not to be invisible in that way yeah it takes you for another seven years until you're
about 25 and then you pitch your business idea and are shot down and double shot down because you expect some love and comfort from your your wife your partner I feel your pain here too and there's something uh is your is your wife Asian Malaysian Chinese yeah Malaysian Chinese there's something about Asian
women that just they've got no time for BS and I say this to people if your ego can handle it you need a truth Sayer in your life you need it because other people like yeah you're doing great man um they don't deserve you anyways and they would just keep allowing you to
create that narrative that doesn't allow you to grow but then she turned it on you and said you know what maybe it's you maybe you need to stop blaming people I don't know I'm just throwing that out there's a question and I've heard similar things not those exact same words but the same
concepts for my wife which it kind of the first is like anger bitter you know you're bitter you're resentful like stop that can't you just be there be on my side for for once but then however long it takes you to get out of your cave and you're like you know it's time
for me to look myself in the mirror and like Michael Jackson make that change yep and yeah sometimes I just wish she had a little bit of time for a little bit of you know instead of always just tough love just yeah sometimes just squishy TLC you know but my wife's like I
don't do that that's not why you married me I was like okay that's cool we don't need to compromise you know what that is that's like post-rationalization after abuse I'm just tell you right now yeah that's what that is I don't know you need a little sandwich here you know the sandwich critique
give me a little bread on the top of the bottom hit me with the meat in the middle yeah I like a bit of bread I do like my car a little bit so yeah to make the meat go down a little bit easier okay okay so now I get it now you
want to be visible you start to have to learn how to tell stories that connect and resonate with people yeah what is the journey like because this is where I would like to spend the rest of her time because look we can talk about life stories but I want to help lots and
lots of people you have a gift at teaching you have a gift of distilling down complex ideas into ways that are highly relatable you're very humanistic in your approach and affable all those kinds of things so let's learn how to be better communicators moving forward here sure how did your journey begin in
discovering the skill and then how it translates into a career doing this there's a motivation behind it that I've got to share quickly too and the motivation behind it is that once I started to once I started to get better at it I I got exposed to this thing called a keynote speaking
profession I didn't I've never heard of that before because again growing up what the hell is a speaker you talk all you get is a bottle of wine I mean no one's going to no one's going to live off that right right so so then I I then I started to see at
the same time while I was trying to improve I go what's this keynote speaking thing this is amazing where you could speak and I thought my creative brain just went crazy I thought oh I could do magic and I could bring it all in I could tie points in I could teach at
the same time I could make medicine taste good and then I got obsessed I got obsessed about this career path that I've never discovered ever before in my life I couldn't believe that it existed and that was the fire that fueled even more so the desire to be seen was the desire to
be able to walk down this career path so then I remember telling a couple of my mentors here in South Australia I said I'm going to become this thing called a keynote speaker and the first thing one of my mentors early mentors said to me David Griggs one of my early mentors is
he said well then do the what a favor young man and go do theater classes and do vocal classes because you were terrible first clue that I've ever been given is that right okay I need to learn how to use this instrument the voice and then I also need to learn how to
use this instrument called the body so then I went and I did years of vocal classes Chris and I did that without the intention of becoming a singer I know I just wanted to learn how to use my voice well and then I also did that with the theater coach I did improv
classes I did theater classes and again not to become an actor but rather to free my body language and learn how to use my body to support the things that I say and I spent years playing in these two Arenas before I ever became you know this keynote speaker thing and that's where
I started to do so I I from a foundational point of view I started to learn the importance of the human voice how we use it all the different strategies in which we can use our voice to make it more pleasant for other people to listen and then the lessons of how you
play the instrument will also dictate how others receive the information and I never thought about that before because I just thought oh talking she's talking words are the only modality for communication that's it I didn't know delivery mattered so again then I went down that rabbit hole so those are the two Arenas
that I had to First Master quite unquote because I I feel you never truly Master something you're always a student so I started to go down that rabbit hole in those two different Arenas I'm still having a hard time figuring out here you are a magician who's got a product and you've made
some money but yet you have a mentor and you have the ability to disappear for a while and do theater and vocal training quickly just explain to me how that's happening because I know people are like wait wait what doesn't he have to support a wife and you know pay the bills well
how are you doing this you see this is where I bring up my wife a lot my wife's a pharmacist and my my parents loved her because she you know the proper profession that you should be doing in in my family and yeah my family also also owns pharmacies so they loved her
she was my sugar mama she looked after me during that period I kid you not I married well I've never really I've never really said this before because but it is what it is it's the truth my wife paid off my credit card multiple times during that time I did this all wrong
oh you your wife didn't pay for any of your expenses where do people find these women to take care of things I don't understand if people look for a sugar daddy but hey there's this I love this I love this you're just gonna you're gonna reveal me as a fraud and I'm just
basically a I'm just a gold digger it's the hair of the magic you work the hair in the magic in the Charisma and you roped a girl in you're like you know what you're gonna take care of me baby while I develop myself but that's dude that's what happened man always living always
living in one of my my mum and Dad's investment properties at the time and I couldn't make rent so I had to bring in two of my best friends encourage them to move out of their mum and dad's houses because Asians we live with our parents till we're 50. and I said hey
come live with me it'll be more fun had to influence them to come out so they would pay you some extra money so I could make rent and then my wife paid for my part I had two of my best I had my cousin move in because we're the four bedroom house and
then I shared a room with my wife and my wife paid for my part on top of paying for all this debt that I had as well wow and and and that's the thing is that and I reluctantly share these things often Chris and I really haven't shared with it on a public
medium because I I think then people go oh well that's you know that's how you made it but it's the truth you know right I like the truth yeah it's part of my story I love that and one of the things I try to encourage people as much as possible is it's your
truth in whoever wants to judge you get in line and you know what yep whatever happens happens but yeah you have some things going for you here that I do allow you to do this and we all make different choices you can say you're lucky or maybe that's a residue good timing and
good for whatever it is that's fine okay yeah so you have someone who's gonna support you you have parents who can afford to support you too but they don't choose to but that's okay yeah and then you spend however years a good period of time in theater doing improv and vocal training now
I have to ask this question because there's there's some cognitive dissonance for me here which is yeah there's this guy who seemingly is somewhat shy socially awkward doesn't have high self-esteem and to seek improv and vocal training seems like the worst possible choice for a person of that composition talk me through your
mindset your beliefs what's going on in your head that's why I wanted to frame it with a keynote speaking career from an entrepreneurial standpoint I learned at that point that because I got asked to do a speech one speech and and I did it and it was terrible it was for a Building
Association in Sydney and that's when I didn't understand what keynote speaking was my first exposure to it was this man said uh CEO of the company reached out you saw some of my magic shows and he goes oh come speak to my company and I'll pay you two and a half Grand to
speak for an hour wow okay my entrepreneurial brain at the time because of financial scarcity and everything that went with it went you for 60 minutes two and a half thousand dollars for see who's paying am I paying for the you're paying for the flights and accommodate my entrepreneurial brain at that point
went crazy I've never heard of Roi like that before per hour so my brain went into overdrive mode I completely like that that keynote was awful because I didn't understand the importance of linking things I just did a magic trick in a random point a magic trick and a random point and at
the end of it this I remember the CEO walked up to me and said he said he said have you done this before young man and you know I felt sick I remember feeling sick like from Euphoria of being paid something so crazy that would take someone a month to make right me
a month to make to then just completely I should never do this again but but taste of that in that moment was so intoxicating because it was teaching magic performance everything at the same time for me and even the money component to call that out that drive was so strong because I had
tasted it now I didn't care what it took the fact that I knew that this was a now a viable career path that that desire for that now was far greater than the fear of what needed to be done the desire was so strong and then again I just I just I just
do have to pick one step back as well I didn't I wasn't I wasn't just 100 a gold digger I was about 75 gold digger 25 I was working at a petrol station and I was also working at a takeaway store to try to continue that online business I said I could so
I could afford Google AdWords to find more users yeah okay so so yeah you know was it it wasn't it wasn't not 100 do some manual labor yeah you tried a little bit yeah yeah yeah yeah I like that and I actually recommend people that want to pursue something creative don't do a
job that sucks all of your creativity because you have nothing left in your own tank so if you're gonna do something to kind of make ends meet or to pitch in even if it's 25 even if it's five percent doesn't matter do something that's not gonna rob you of that creative Spark because
now not only are you are you not making any money you've left nothing for yourself okay this is fascinating okay and I love the level of transparency that we're having here you're intoxicated by this feeling though you bombed and we I don't know very many speakers who like the first one nailed it
it's always like oh I could barely recall that story without throwing up right because the feeling of the guilt and the shame and letting yourself down letting them down okay all that stuff so you do go down this path and you're motivated by capturing this feeling and going down this path pretty remarkable
stuff now you shared a story I think I saw it on Instagram I think maybe it was on Facebook you're in my feed all over on Facebook so it's probably Facebook and you said something and and I'll I'll tee you up and then you finish off the story okay okay you said that
you approached I think a psychologist or a therapist and said teach me everything you know whatever your price is I want to hire you and this points to a mindset that you have so pretend I didn't say that set up that story and tell us because I want to dig deeper there what
I've learned in my life is that I used to I used to think that I have to learn everything by myself and I have to know everything in order for me to be an expert and then I'll never forget reading I can't remember which book it was now but it was Henry Ford
and how when Henry Ford does a presentation he will go into that room and in that room he will have his Engineers with him behind him and then people would ask him a question about how the motors work or whatever and then he would just divert to oh James you got this one
mate and then people kind of came to him and said you don't know anything you're stupid and he goes well no it's not that I'm stupid I just hire smart people and I remember that that just kind of resonated in my brain I couldn't stop thinking about that so I thought to myself
well why could I do the same thing but hire brilliant people to teach me and be my teachers but I had such a bad relationship with education that I never looked at teachers as something I wanted in my life almost to the point where I found learning nauseating I just I just didn't
want to learn so then when and there's something there's there's a bigger thing behind this as well and so Chris I I teach communication for many reasons but but one of the one of the main reasons which people don't know because I I genuinely just I just don't say it but the reason
why I hired a therapist at the time the reason why I hired a speech pathologist foreign my son has autism my son is five and when we found out he had autism man my world crashed didn't matter how much money I had man didn't matter how much success I had didn't matter this
definition of who then Jane is and whatever whatever it it all like a tide in the ocean just pulled out gone caught naked and I freaked out and the only thing I knew at the time was I need experts around me so I didn't care I was in Southern California at the time
I looked up the most credible people I could find in that realm and I was desperate and I remember just asking them you know what do you charge for a month of your time I'll pay you that in a day spend time with me I'm in trouble with my father who needs help
and in doing that Chris something so powerful happened because these people would distill information for me and teach it to me in a way that I've never been taught before and I remember them sharing with me insights about autism that I had read three to four to five books on this topic within
discovery of my son's autism that I could not I did not find anywhere and there was insight and depth to these communications because with a book I can't ask questions while reading but while they were dispensing these incredible pieces of knowledge based on the five bits of five books that I've read on
the autism I was able to ask them about so what do you mean about this what do you mean about that you know why does light become an issue for kids with autism I don't understand how sound comes into that and I learned more than I've ever learned about communication in those moments
where I spent time with these incredible experts it's funny you asked me the year before why I teach communication it's a job that's all that it is it's a job it paid really well I enjoyed it it's funny because after that with my son this is no longer just the job it's become
a calling because one of the biggest struggles my son will have in his life is communication right and you know it's yeah so yeah it feels weird to say it out loud because I I don't talk about it yeah so well thanks for sharing that yeah it's okay you know I guess when
I hear your stories and this is the beautiful thing about social media and one of the benefits of learning how to communicate and then also being able to distribute that across social channels as you get to an asymmetric communication and getting to know people before they get to know you it's a powerful
thing so I'm getting to know you before I get to know you yeah I hear the story I'm like that guy's smart so smart this is what entrepreneurs do they spend their money to buy time and then what they do with that knowledge and the time that they save is they go make
a ton more money or they make a lot of impact or they're able to build stronger relationships so when you share that story about the therapist I too have had some brilliant moments with my therapist as well saw a family therapist and I said I felt like that was the best money I've
ever spent in my life now I didn't do it like the way you did which was to condense it down today I saw my therapist Joan every once in a while for an hour and I think it was only 100 bucks an hour it doesn't even it's not even a lot of money
but what I got was I got help but I got to watch a therapist work diagnose the problem and help me to see the answer in the most efficient way possible by just asking really beautiful Socratic questions challenging my logic and allowing me to discover the answer so when you told that story
before on social media I'm like this guy gets it this is what you're supposed to do and then I think there are people in this world and there's probably more than two the kind of people is like you know what nobody can teach me anything I'm gonna just learning myself the hard way
the old-fashioned way because that's how my dad did and my grandpappy did it and his granddaddy did it that's how we do it and then there are other people are like is my money better use used for something else and in a story you said it was kind of shocking because when you
approach the therapist how much are the costs like it's too much and you're like no no just try me and then it's like a day and what and then you said the amount of work they put in in preparation for that day it was incredible and you got a lifetime's worth of knowledge
and experience in a day and I think you said it was like nine grand yeah something like that it was like it was an organ and I did that out of desperation because of the situation that I was increased it was out of desperation I didn't I didn't I didn't I wasn't please
don't think I'm this crazy intelligent person because I'm not I did that out of desperation and then in doing so I couldn't believe that person spent a month preparing so it feels like I paid them a month uh nine grand for a day but it was no they they prepared for a whole
damn month right and I remember when they came it was this foldering I got a folder at the end and things were tagged and I was I did not expect that and it was almost it was by it was by chance that okay I mean look surely I I may have done this
with somebody and I've picked Paulie they would have just came along and said okay q a time you know what do you want to know right but I shared with them my situation and then they came prepared yeah and I walked away and again you know we met for many days after at
a much cheaper rate mind you uh there is an Asian in me too I do haggle and and after that we developed this beautiful relationship yeah and they pointed me to amazing therapists who came and started different forms of therapy with my son my son has progressed immensely so from again never mind
like again it's a powerful strategy but far out for me as a father I I was able to have early intervention for my son which has made a world of difference and and I think we all need early intervention or maybe your children don't have autism but maybe there's a problem in your
life and I love how you're framing it to make it valuable for the listeners but goodness knowledge knowledge is so valuable and there are some things that what I got out the most out of that Chris was their way of thinking yeah what I found powerful was not the answers that they gave
me because that almost came too easily but then asking them the question but how did you come to that um what was the path how did you navigate from X to y and then you learned their way of thinking not only the answers that they share and again that that to me is
the Brilliance is is the thought process required to to to get to certain destinations I thought that was fascinating it's the not studying the answer but studying the thinking behind the answer that reveals the real value the operating system the operating system they had to have developed to be able to execute that
program that created that result it's like I'm more fascinated by the sitting and being able to to interact with that operating system at that level that was the coolest experience ever because it's almost it's almost like you feel like you're a monkey trying to yeah and it's just it was a super cool
thing because if they're great teachers they you know they go down to monkey with you and then they take you up to human right which is really cool yeah love it and I didn't know that about the autism part and the motivation and I'm grateful that you're telling us the whole story it
makes it seem more relatable more human than like I'm a genius and this is how I become more of a genius and I do this and I get X result somewhere along the way here and and helping with the timeline the year the age that you start booking regular speaking gigs teaching people
how to be a better Communicator where are we in the timeline I'm in my late 20s at this point around 29 years old it took me about three to four years to start to really hone my craft as a speaker I then started to get these Keynotes globally and I the career was
going pretty strong at this point I've abandoned the online business with magic at that point uh because it no longer really was an interest of mine you know we continue to do well and well and well but I thought you know my heart's not in it anymore I didn't really want to teach
magic I just enjoyed being a teacher but it wasn't in the art form of magic I I started to have a negative relationship with magic almost at that point because I yeah it helped me then it harmed me and then I was kind of weird with it so I had some weird years
with magic and then the Korea started to flourish as a speaker and then people I remember my friends wow you know all of a sudden you just become this charismatic speaker on stage and you're not nervous anymore it was it was a good four years of work but they just didn't see me
during that period so then that happened and and I'll never forget One agent reached out from Canada and she goes hey you know you're good speak at this event for me in LA and then I spoke at an event in La two and a half thousand people oh you know without without you
know taking my humble pie hat off for a second he crushed it full Standing Ovation with two and a half thousand people wow that manager of mine her name's Karen Harris and then she also brought another couple of speaker agents along in the U.S and then Chris boom this crazy speaking career started
to happen so then I moved my family from the US I'm from Australia to the US to pursue this speaking thing full-time wasn't teaching communication at this point this was purely right now um very zoned in on the craft and doing it did your wife your sugar mama should say did she give
up her career as a pharmacist now it's like now take care of me sugar daddy yeah yeah no it was it was this is where it turned this is where it turned this is when she said okay your turn right right I did my part I put in my investment now time for
me to collect the dividends here she calls me vincoin V coin she goes I'm so glad I invested in V coin nice and early I cashed in so she she totally cashed in on it and uh yeah she's expensive because like a VC she she takes half so she yeah oh it's a
expensive deal but but it was it was worth it right okay so I'm doing my math here you're 29 is it 2014 15 16 something like that yeah yeah career starts popping okay 2016. all right and you're doing this thing and you're doing Keynotes yep if you don't want to answer this question
like what what kind of money are you making as a keynote speaker yes well in front of 2500 people uh this is the so the start of my career yeah uh that was about 13 500 per hour for the keynote um so at that point and again at this point it was completely
intoxicating now because hey I love it Chris it was so fun to me I finally in my life was able to find worker that feels like play yes I didn't didn't believe that that existed before that uh being rewarded financially so damn well and then you get off stage and people come up
and shake your hand and and say that you've changed their lives and you're inspiring I mean nothing more intoxicating than that I think I I it was euphoria and at the time yeah it was um it was kind of crazy I know we'd speak about things a little bit out of order but
then my son was two months old at the time when we were about to move to the U.S so my wife not only had to give up her career which was a very very grateful that she was willing to kind of on a whim believe me that we're going to get more than
one gig we're gonna get paid this more than once I promise so she left her career my son was two months and then we moved to the US so it was crazy off the back of this one standing ovation two and a half thousand people it wasn't even locked in but from what
my manager told me at the time and she was right she was like look you did it come here and we're about to light this on fire and then we went and she was right it just kind of it just went crazy after that what is the basis of what you're able to
teach if I look at this you're doing magic we don't talk too much about your Commerce and your law of Pursuits you do the Improv the vocal training like what does Vin know about teaching communication to 2500 people like where is this information coming from I wasn't teaching communication at the time what
were you teaching okay so they booked me as a keynote speaker because I had won some awards with my online business at the time you know young entrepreneur of the Year here in Australia and then I got these these these opportunities to be invited to speak and then I would speak about our
Journeys I was sharing our story so this was this was the the inspirational keynote right well I spoke about our story here the three lessons that I've learned and what I did there Chris was I I infused the keynote with entertainment education and also inspiration so I combined those three together so I
would speak about the importance of collaboration and how that led to a big part of My Success online and then I would do a piece of magic that represents collaboration and then I would do one on again your environment environment matters and then I'll kind of do a piece of magic that kind
of displays that and it was more about me sharing my story and I did that for a good three to four years yeah five years and then covered oh okay yeah and then as as it happens as we kind of see the timeline then my son around two uh was then we suspected
he had autism and then that's when I went down that communication Rabbit Hole I said and then again at that time I was starting to teach as well so it's just kind of all happened around that time it doesn't sound that different to me from that first talk that you did for 2500
where you bombed you said basically magic random point trick random point now it was point relevant magic relevant trick yeah yeah it's a small tweak and and this is what I want entrepreneurs now out there yeah everybody thinks that the Silver Bullet that's going to change your life your career your relationship is
some massive change and it's not at least in my experience it's actually very small changes that you just can't believe will work so you don't do it but you apply that thing it could just be waking up an hour earlier or writing for 30 minutes every day it's something so small that you
you can actually do these very small steps and I heard you talk about this it's not like trying to get an entrepreneur who's like 10 20 years ahead of you it's just the thing that you can do in the near term and executing on that I've seen countless other speakers say to me
if only I had magic and then they add magic to the repertoire and it doesn't work because they're not they're not doing the five percent move of linking it making it relevant okay and and I love what you just said because as entrepreneurs we obsess over the magic thing the Magic in the
world of entrepreneur might be this new piece of software it might be this new camera might be this new computer it no no whatever it is whatever it is right it's it's the Finesse it's those moves it's not just that sometimes it is that but it's not just that side tangent random maybe
not even connected but like Kevin Smith in his movie Chasing Amy they're Chasing Amy they're chasing something that they think they need in order to achieve what they want and it's usually not that Almost Never tell me something though when you talk about collaboration you're making a point about collaboration yeah what's the
trick that brings collaboration to a point so I do this piece of magic and you all have to just believe it's amazing while I describe it we're gonna visualize this right now visualize this visual storytelling here everybody lean in so I bring I bring a volunteer on stage and I sit here or
her onto a stage onto the chair and then I have a piece of tissue in my hand and I'm able to make this tissue disappear three times in a row and the person that's watching it on stage in the chair is freaking out they're thinking how the hell are you doing this this
is amazing the rest of the audience is in laughter they're just they're just holding their bellies laughing because they can see how the trick is done um and I've created a moment what in Magic we call a dual reality moment where there's two realities occurring at the same time and magicians use this
a lot and what I did there was I'm just throwing the tissue over the person's head but because they are so focused on my hands because of a certain series of gestures that I've made their focus is so zoned in here that they can't see the solution to the problem because a magic
trick is just a problem you can't solve and then that's when I highlight why is it that this person here can't solve it yet all of you can it's because you have a different point of view you have a different perspective this is the reason why collaboration is so important other people can
see things in you you can't see in yourself and then I use another illusion to really tie it in then I fool the whole audience and then they don't see it and they're like what the hell and then I show them again they're like oh oh and then I go that is why
we need to collaborate marketing accounting sales you all need to come together my friends and take over the world and then and then and then cue Standing Ovation you know like right right and then I'll take my check and I go home and my wife takes off so that's my agent my name
is like subscribe and share when you pull it apart like this Chris it's really gross it's really gross it's really gross when you dissect the Frog you know it's just it's not nice for anyone I love it man what a great way to bring it all together what a beautiful illustration and I
just I just got really good at this right and then I just started writing keynote after keynote afterquino bringing these things together and then the career just kind of going boom boom boom and then what happened was I just had and while doing this I got better at the craft and better and
better and better so it kind of it got timed really well with the teaching of it all because then I drew upon all the knowledge from the past of you know theater vocal classes as well as my career that I was building and I went huh for the first time in my life
I feel like I'm teaching something well I'm not a fraud I didn't fall victim to imposter syndrome because I felt like I'm doing it and I'm teaching it oh this was really cool and then I started my first class stage class You Know It All Happened quite rapidly Chris it happened around 217
I started my first class you know and again I just want to give Clarity here I taught communication without even knowing that at the time my son had autism and then a year later he was diagnosed with it so it's like [ __ ] sometimes things happen for a reason in life it's
crazy right yeah hearing your story first of all beautiful by the way if you want to study what Vin just shared with us it's like stories with a point points with stories I think Les Brown sits online don't tell don't make a point without a story and don't tell a story without a
point and don't do a magic trick on stage Without a Queen yes I've learned that lesson well right and I'm sitting here thinking if only I knew magic man no I'm just kidding I'm just kidding everybody I'm just kidding everybody for nine thousand dollars a day you can hire my services Chris I
too want to practice the art of misdirection and sleight of hand now I have to lean in and here's what I want everybody to think because you're thinking it's too late for me I'm not gonna learn magic the point of this I don't think is for you to learn magic the point is
to figure out what your gifts are yeah but to use that in conjunction with your voice your instrument and become the teacher you were meant to be so here I am me trying to unpack all this stuff and making it gross okay you wanted to be a teacher you put that on hold
you then thought you should be a pharmacist you weren't smart enough the grades weren't good enough I'm married one though so it's fine that's fine that's consolation right still win then you wanted to do magic and got shut down but then you found a way to bring magic teaching and discovered communication along
the way to serve yourself to serve your community but also to help you to be a better father and a parent now here's the part that I think maybe everybody already sees which is and you package powerful lessons in a very digestible way much like a pharmacist would and giving you life medicine
trifecta are you waiting response for me no no because you also talk about the power of Silence so sometimes we just need to let something sit for a little bit because somebody is probably driving in their car or running on the treadmill like I just need a minute to process which is how
what just happened there and I'm okay with that and so I think I'm starting to find my calling too and I keep thinking I found it and then two months later I'm like no no I really found it and it just keeps evolving so here's my thing I thought my mission and my
purpose in life is to be a teacher just like you but I think what it is it's meant to awaken the superpower that's latent inside each one of us that we carry that mutant X Gene homo Superior and I'm Professor X and cerebro and I see you but you don't see it and
I have to go visit you and tell you do you have this thing you don't need to be like that other person or follow anyone else's plans you can be your thing and you clearly have found your thing quite early on in your life at 29 30 years old you found your thing
and what a beautiful thing because that point forward your life is different and some people will go to their grave having never even asked them what is themselves what is my thing or having been able to discover it it's a beautiful thing and I and when I see it it's like somebody told
me like Namaste doesn't mean what people think it's like the light in me salutes the light in you oh and so when I see someone who's found their thing I'm just here in admiration and inspired uh like respect that you found your thing and it's a very magical thing to see I mean
no pun intended with the word magic there [Music] uh you just painted this incredibly beautiful picture and metaphorically now I I need to take my paintbrush and just put a really terrible stain on it to share with you the transparency behind it because same thing that happened with magic happened to me with
speaking hmm as beautiful as it was Chris that I it seemed like I found the trifecta okay at the peak of it all in 2019 I was doing 80 events a year it meant that I was on the plane 200 days and away from my son and my wife doing this thing that
I thought was my life's calling okay that was exactly what I wanted to do found myself in a New York hotel depressed called one of my best friends Ali and literally called him in the middle of the night and said [ __ ] I think I'm in trouble I've never felt like this
before and bless my mate's heart he he said uh okay never heard you sound like this before it's Wednesday I'll see you Friday I'm flying over stay in New York don't go home uh pull yourself together I'll be there he flew over I spent two weeks with me in New York pulled me
together it was so weird to have created something that you love so much and yet it didn't make you happy I felt guilty I felt bad I felt stupid I felt ungrateful I feel like how can I complain when you don't have the peak of it Chris you know it was yeah 30
40 50 Grand a torque I couldn't I couldn't I I wasn't allowed to complain in any environment that I was in because people would just call me you're an idiot you're stupid but I've created something that made me severely unhappy and it was weird because then covert happened around the corner and it
took all of it away and I was able to reset and ReDiscover what my next Journey was going to be and that's when I started to commit to teaching way more than I do Keynotes I do less than 10 a year now I maybe eight that's it you know so I think I
really connect with what you're saying because I think we are forever evolving and to think that we have one destination and one only I think is we're not thinking deeply enough in those moments maybe it's all the one it's the only destination we can see for the time being but once you climb
one mountain you might realize that oh there's another one over there well that looks fun let's go over there and I think giving ourselves permission to recreate ourselves at different points in life is so important because the sun cost fallacy right oh I've moved my family overseas I should stay in this career
I should I should milk it for another 10 years then come on you've worked so hard for this and many of people who are working well some of my agents were saying hey you're going to commit career suicide if you just stop I was like yeah but I think I'm destroying my happiness
as well if I don't stop for my sanity and and again then covert happened which I know awful for many people and just in my context in my life that saved me man [ __ ] you saved me so you know I didn't mean to you know take away from that beautiful picture
it's just again transparency reality uh once again something that I love so much had become something that I I resented you resented it because you achieved exactly what you thought you wanted but yeah when getting it it took you away from the things you cared the most about yes and okay in hindsight
in thinking about it Chris it's because by the time I achieved the thing that I wanted which was four or five years I'd become somebody completely new and I didn't recalibrate my actions and my goals to the person that I currently am now right or in that moment so I had achieved the
goals of a previous version of Yin hmm the the current version had evolved yeah but the accomplishments was from an old plan yeah an old goal okay that's what was confusing yeah okay I don't think you've painted with a dirty brush yet because I still think my perception of who you are and
what you're doing is still the same but we'll we'll cross that bridge in a second here I just want to take a moment to point out that in your story in these pivotal pivotal moments there have been really important people in your life that have taught you lessons your parents your wife saying
hey shut shut the front door you know it's you it's not every everyone else not blaming people and then to have a friend who would drop what they're doing yeah to fly in to just like you know I have my own problems but right now your problem takes precedence over it yeah and
drop with it I mean that is a testament and a half there so Props to Ali yeah right so we we want to acknowledge the people in our lives that help us because you you would probably figure it out it might have taken you longer yeah but you know it's good to know
that you have these great pillars within your your support group that you can always count on and maybe some of us are a little bit braver can take more risk because we know that net will always be there to catch us yeah and we have dark days we have the days in which
we question what we're doing the results aren't lining up and we're getting hated on because something we said or did just wasn't didn't wasn't received well and we need that support network and I love that okay now you're like this isn't working I need to change my life I need to re reorient
myself and then covet happens which is like the world is gonna basically collaborate with you and conspire with you because nobody's speaking anywhere yeah right and I think magic you can't pull the handkerchief virtually on Zoom the same way you can on the stage it's a different kind of trick okay take me
to like where now where where are you now you're 36 and we're 20 23 here what is your current plan and what are you executing on today I spent I I spent seven days every year trying to reflect on the previous year and how I've lived and I looked through my journal and
I try to gain some clarity there and what what were my up moments what were my down moments and it always gives me Clarity so that you review how you lived so you can act out or you can live out a better year the next year hopefully more refined and a little wiser
and I spent a lot of time thinking about this and to me I know I teach communication skills the reason a big reason why I teach it Chris this is very selfish and I want to give myself a little bit of space to be selfish here just for a moment and the reason
I teach it from a selfish standpoint is when you teach something you deepen your knowledge in that craft I'm deepening my knowledge in this craft for one main reason my boy is going to need me one day man and when he needs me my only hope is this father will be very ready
and prepared to help him take on the challenges that he's going to face in his life and I'm very singular in that I'm a new father I'm only five years in and I know that me teaching helps other people as well but deep in my heart man if you ask me why I'm
doing it that's why I'm doing it you know and and this wonderful byproduct that exists as a result of me doing this is I get to teach people from all over the world this wonderful craft you know and yeah it's weird because when I when I kept asking myself why why why why
that was at the end of a list of questions was just that did you switch accents on me when you say you know why I'm doing this are you just go New York I mean what just happened there did you know but I could also do a text and I don't know I
heard that yeah I don't I don't know you just yeah I'm being shaped a lot by fatherhood yeah you know and a lot of what I do now is I I try not to do as much traveling anymore and I know I'm saying that but you know this Sunday I do do a
one month um tournament yeah and then but then that's that's it it's just one tour of you no more so where are you going to be touring I'm going to Seattle Austin California and then Vegas okay so that'll be your speaking tour yeah and then the rest unfortunately unfortunately it's a corporate thing
it's a corporate thing so a lot of people on my Instagram say oh can we come I'm like ah they don't let people in I'm sorry oh these are like private speaking events corporate yeah yeah companies that I have a conference and then you keynote speak for them and you open or close
the conference right but I know you're doing workshops too because I saw that on your on your website well something that's interesting here is that yeah covert broke a lot of rules for me I had all these rules Chris okay be a keynote speaker I have to be with you in person where
you are so during covert before covert like covert with lockdowns were about to happen I went to a video store and I bet I bought everything I could in that store and I said what's the refund policy and they said 30 days I'm like great I'm gonna experiment with virtual setups so I
bought all this gear then if the lockdown happened and then I experimented with the virtual Studio I was one of the very few keynote speakers on the books of the speaker bureaus where I was the one of the first out of the ranks to do virtual Keynotes I'm still doing them so the
reason I bring this up is because during covert I I realized that it was the travel that I disliked it was being away from my family that I disliked so now all of the things that I do I do I'm running a class right now and it's all through my studio we've got
people from California we've got people from France we've got all over the world I'm doing it in my garage so it helped me really understand the quote behind Tim Ferriss and I love this quote so much where he says reality is negotiable whereas I didn't believe that pre-covered I had very fixed rules
I was playing within rules that other people had set and I thought no no it's not negotiable I can't just do a virtual thing now I can you know so so I I bring that up again because I do my workshops I don't I do them virtually so it doesn't matter where you
are you can be a part of it and and then the only place I do them live in Australia right this last class crazy someone came from Austin Seattle London outrageous I couldn't believe that came from that far I couldn't believe it I was like I almost feel like you shouldn't have but
this is crazy I love that it's a testament to the impact you've made in the world and to the power of your teaching ah thank you man that people would you know relocate themselves for a period of time to to learn from you in person um talk to me about when you started
making content on social and how that exploded man I've been creating content for eight nine years when I started my journey in the US in 216 I hired a full-time videographer because I wanted to be like Gary vaynerchuk sure and I said film everything that I do and then we turned all of
that into content and we got nowhere from 216 to 2021 and I was like damn you Gary damn you dude none of this [ __ ] Works what is this I've spent so much money flights hotels everything for this videographer I didn't understand I couldn't I couldn't understand why nothing was working in
2021 around April I had 12 000 Instagram followers and I've been creating content for years before that man uh and I what I felt was pretty high quality video right and then during the pandemic I I learned I had to say no to things so I could create space for things that are
more important and impactful so I said no to creating content in 2021 I didn't create anything and I remember just one day sitting there staring at a pile of hard drives where we had 50 plus terabytes of content that would captured all these years and I just said I'm gonna give it one
last crack and then I hired a Content distributor uh hired a video editor and I said here's 50 terabytes of content make stuff and can you post them on a regular schedule because I'm not very good at doing that and can you post one piece of content per platform per day go and
then something happened I don't know one video went viral and then it just caught on fire and I I honestly I wish I could sit here and tell you the strategy behind it but there really wasn't it was just here's a bunch of hard drives create throw paint at the wall and we
just kept throwing paint at the wall and at the end of every month we'd sit down we'd go hey why did that piece of paint work really well what about that really worked we went oh it was about okay so maybe when I used metaphors it really engages with people oh when when
you when you list things out in steps and and we just learned baby steps we just learned as a team what worked and what didn't work and when we thought we knew what worked it doesn't work so we're like okay great let's just throw more paint at the wall so again by no
means do we have a formula or a pathway I think the most valuable thing I learned about that experience was having an archive of footage is extremely useful because out of those 50 terabytes we maybe have used five my team could continually create content even if I passed away for the next five
to ten years and we're mixing in Old content with new content and we're just doing that and when the new content is more strategic because we're using lessons we're learning and old content is throwing data or just throwing random things out there to try to learn from and then the new content is
created very strategically here's the actionable part of our podcast together okay three tips you can do this rapid fire style you don't have to go too deep if you don't want to okay three tips on how to be a more effective Communicator how to use that voice that instrument that you're talking about
you can pick any uh in for people who are going to listen to this who don't know about you you're obviously hooked at this point will include the the notes and the links in the description so make sure you check that out and follow bin you're gonna see all the tips and you
don't have to like just power through just three okay so been three public speaking communication tips become a gold digger no I'm kidding all right so we start with number one number one Kanye song it's a secret to life and happiness okay the first thing is self-awareness and the way you develop self-awareness
is the following record a video of yourself speaking for five minutes it's gonna be excruciating do it once you've recorded this video of you speaking for five minutes then you're going to review it in three different ways but here's the tip leave it for a day don't watch it straight away if you
watch it straight away you are too damn self-critical leave that video for a day then you're going to review it in three ways the first time turn the sound all the way up press play on your phone turn your phone around and just listen and listen to the qualities of your voice what
do you like what don't you like and it's okay it's okay to like some parts and not like others and just take notes pay attention to yourself vocally what sounds are you making unnecessarily here's the self-awareness process but it only happens when you isolate things second time you review it turn the sound
off press play and just look at yourself talk what do you like about the way you move what do you feel needs to be improved are you expressive with your face do you move your hands when you talk is there anything non-functional about it just take notes write it down this is again
self-awareness and then at the end of that just get that video transcribed whatever transcription service you want to use and then key thing here leave in leaving the non-words and the filler words non-words being the sounds we make to feel the silence filler words being the words we use to fill the silence
and then when you get it transcribed use a head red highlighter and highlight the key non-functional Behavior or non-functional sounds or words that you make this one move alone will completely transform how you come across you'll be shocked how many of my students just by getting rid of their arms and their eyes
increases their clarity and increases their Authority and credibility dramatically just from removing one damn thing it's crazy people get held back from promotions because people will say things like you seem unsure about your ideas your leadership style seems you don't have enough you're not assertive enough and when I review it it's just
because a lack of clarity too many arms and hours the first thing I would do very good the second thing second thing I would do and I've got a lot of people who follow me who are ethnic and I want to share a a tip that helps my ethnic viewers and listeners here
grammatically if you speak and you work with a lot of people in the western culture and you have a lot of grammatical errors this robs you of authority and credibility very quickly record yourself speaking for 20 minutes then once you've got this get it transcribed send that video and the transcription to an
ESL teacher English as a second language teacher and say with my current language in which I speak with and again you could again what do I talk about in these videos improvise because we're trying to tease out the behaviors that are non-functional so what's your favorite food what's your favorite location talk then
that ESL teacher will Zone in on the key areas where you need to improve with your grammar you do this one it's gonna cost you a couple hundred bucks they'll send back all the 80 of the key phrases you use all the time that is grammatically incorrect boom enhances the way you come
across dramatically dramatically okay so just showing a bit of love because I know I've got a lot of listeners from Asia and India et cetera from from those regions and the third thing I'll say is to it's a mindset thing is to fully understand that the way you speak is just a series
of behaviors and these behaviors are either serving you or they're not and behaviors can be changed right I went a bit New York before I could do the Asian tool man right these are just behaviors these are just a series of behaviors and this is what I'd say to my students all the
time don't be so attached to who you are in the present that you don't give the future version of yourself a chance don't be so attached to a series of behaviors behaviors can be changed you can change you can transform you can evolve you're not a stationary being you're forever evolving forever growing
so should your ability to communicate you should grow with you love it I'm gonna ask you a question quite selfishly okay voice is a tricky thing the quality of one's voice and as a person who's very self-conscious introvert shy and not wanting to seek the spotlight I was talking about myself here I've
never liked my voice I had to get used to it I tolerate it and eventually I'm okay with it from a vocal point of view just to get your brain in on it what do I need to do what are the lessons that you've learned that can be applied to me in terms
of my voice and what I can do to be a better effective speaker feel free to say anything on thick skin thank you for the opportunity to be able to share some thoughts here thank you for your vulnerability as well there's something really interesting in the world of communication where it's about energizing
your sentences completely and energizing your sentences completely means that you start the sentence with the same energy as you complete the sentence and when I listen to your talk one of the things I notice is you start your sentences extremely energized at the end of your sentences you fall into vocal fry right
and vocal fry is that part of our voice where when we no longer energize it it falls into that state of vocal fry is what vocal coaches will call it so to me one of the things I would work on is to ensure that I energize my complete sentences and the way you
start the sentence is the way you end the sentence so that way the full sentence is energized otherwise what people tend to do is they tend to they run out of breath they talk to they run out of breath and at the end of their sentences they just run out of energy completely
and that's what I noticed happening a few times and I think it's because your thought processes are they happen very fast and the and and your your voice is trying to keep up with the thought process and we don't think about taking another breath soon enough so to me the simple tweak there
is to take regular breaths and energizing the sentences from beginning to the end perfect I love that thank you for that analysis because I wanted people to listen to the kinds of things that you're saying and see a real world tangible benefit of someone who has mastered their voice and who can coach
other people to do the same one of the things that I tell one of my friends is he ends his sentences always with a rising intonation it always feels like he's questioning me and he's keeping saying that and I think it undermines his authority it's melodic to listen to but I would say
to him are you asking me a question are you making a statement um so we can notice these things and I think this exercise that you've given these three things that you're talking about especially if English is your second language you're going to benefit from tremendously I've heard you say this before and
I'm thinking what a brilliant exercise so simple that no one would no one would think to do it that's how powerful it is that's how you know someone knows what they're doing it's so obvious you wish you thought of it yourself there's one last hack if if I may uh listening I'll be
done very soon the the last hack is this yes that same video that you recorded for 20 minutes that you're sending to an ESL teacher right send it to a speech pathologist also and have video on it because where people go wrong who have English as a second language and I have a
lot of love for this because English was my third language is a speech pathologist will look at your mouth movements and the reason our articulation suffers is because often we're speaking our native language and we're speaking English with our native language mouth movements so for example what creates the Vietnamese accent and sometimes
a lack of clarity is I'm speaking English with Vietnamese mouth movements so when you send that same video this is two bird no one stone two birds move here is that you're able to get the speech pathologist to say oh the way you say this word is you're not moving your mouth correctly
I used to say the number three as free can I have three of those words can I have three of those and it was three working with a speech pathologist I learned oh the tongue comes out what the hell I didn't know that so three oh wow and then all of a sudden
in many situations now I have more respect I command more Authority I have more confidence and I enhance Clarity in that communication so I had to throw that one in there you know just I love that yeah absolutely I think in one of your videos that you talk about how to get rid
of your accent you say over enunciate exaggerate every single word and then soon your mouth will start to learn the way it's meant to be said right it doesn't get rid of your accent it lightens it and it enhances articulation yeah very good okay so that I don't get you into hot water
even though now you're the sugar daddy I mean you have some leverage now so don't get you into hot water I just want to make sure that everyone who's excited who's turned on by what we're talking about and I think how could you not be if you're a fan of the channel and
fan of what it is that we try to do how can people find out more about you where do they need to go I mean my Instagram's a great place so ask Vin a-s-k-v-i-n-h feel free to follow me on there and it'll be great to connect with you through the internet foreign
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“You keep blaming all of these other people.”
— Chris Do
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