Todd: 0:00

This is the Cluttered Path, a compass for midlife. Effective communication can really make your career, it can grow your business, and it can also enrich relationships. Yet we often underestimate its true power. Imagine walking into a room, confident and articulate, effortlessly interacting with people. What if you could turn that dream into reality? But here's the kicker. Most people think they're either born with great comp skills or they'll just never have them. What if I told you that anyone can learn to be a master communicator, regardless of their starting point? Today I've got the privilege of speaking with Jeff Callahan on the topic of developing communication skills to supercharge your life, career, and business. His coaching business is called Become More Compelling, and his advice has been featured in places like Inc., Time, Business Insider, Yahoo, and many others. Jeff, welcome to the show.

Jeff: 1:01

Hey, I'm excited to be here.

Todd: 1:04

Good to have you, man. I saw your story, man. I've I actually saw you on YouTube and uh you were being interviewed there. And dude, it's it's compelling, man. You have a cool story. So I was I'm I was glad we're able to hook up and uh yeah have you as a guest on the show here. So let's start with this. What why don't you just introduce yourself to the audience and tell them about you?

Jeff: 1:23

Yeah, so so so I'll give your audience a little bit of background on me. So I uh all throughout elementary school, junior high, high school, I actually had a speech impediment so bad, a stutter so bad I couldn't say my own name. And as you might imagine, that made uh socializing and communicating a little bit more challenging than it needed to be. Um but I realized at a certain point, I I even had this a little bit into college and and uh in the professional world as well. Um, but I realized, you know, I'm planning on living a long time. I don't I don't exactly want to live, having a difficult time communicating, expressing my ideas and and and uh you know, to layer on top of all that, I was also painfully shy growing up as well. And you know, I realized like, look, don't want to live the rest of my life that way. I think this is something that can be overcome. I think it's a skill that I can fix in a sense, and and so slowly but surely but put myself in a lot of a lot of situations where I knew I would sort of have to sink or swim and become more social and and get a lot of reps in. And lo and behold, what I realized, well, I didn't know it at the time, but uh I was building a skill that uh not only applied to me, you know, they they say start a business, scratch your own itch, and I believe that. Apparently, I'm not the only person who had this this issue in terms of the you know the shyness and um call it social nervousness or overthinking is really my my sort of wheelhouse for for what I help people with. And and uh since gosh, become more compelling is 11 years old now, started it in 2014. Yeah, I'll I'll at least count after after after 10, it's just like yeah, yeah, 10 plus. But I now teach and help and coach people who would tell you, hey, I'm an overthinker, I want to have better communication skills, and uh I've been doing that for a while now, and it's doesn't really feel like work to be honest. It's pretty nice, but the impact that I make in other people's lives uh is really gratifying. And so yeah, I'm excited to talk about it.

Todd: 3:19

Oh, that sounds rewarding, man. And I think every adult can relate to the social awkwardness and wanting to develop these skills. So, man, when I heard about your story and you really overcame a lot, man. So I appreciate what you did, the work you put in to teaching yourself, and now you're willing to share it with others, man. That's cool. So I appreciate that. Yeah.

Jeff: 3:40

One one thought to add on to that too is uh uh, because at this point I've I've interacted with probably thousands of people that want to improve their their people skills and their communication skills, and and uh one of the things that I see over and over is people tend to suffer in silence where they they feel like they're the only person on earth that struggles with this, and it's like no, like if only people get together and talk about it a little bit more, and and I think that's one of the things I could bring to to having a conversation like this in public is simply like look, if you're out there and you're struggling, you're you're not the only one. Even confident people that you would never expect also have moments where they feel shy or they feel like they're overthinking, and and just to know that hey, not the only one, that really takes a lot of the sort of the teeth away from the beast, so to speak.

Todd: 4:28

Yeah, that's me. I mean, just going into I I have a lot of experience with doing presentations, public speaking, speaking to large audiences and stuff, but yeah, man, I I have to prepare myself mentally to do that. It's I'm afraid. And and the net result is I usually come across as less than myself. I get feedback from people that are like, you need to let your personality out because it's me, I'm afraid. So I put up the wall of professionalism and I'm playing a role, I'm really not being myself, and so that's that's something I have to work on. So yeah, yeah. Another reason I'm glad to have you here, man. Yeah, please be selfish. Yeah. So let's start with the questions, man. Where'd you grow up?

Jeff: 5:10

Yeah, so I grew up in Arkansas, and so uh, if you're familiar at all with Arkansas, you know that our two biggest exports uh is Walmart and Bill Clinton. And uh those are two sort of claims to fame. And uh, as I was telling you before we hit record, a couple years ago I moved out of out of the biggest city in Arkansas, and uh now I'm on a little bit of anchorage and got some chickens and I'm doing a little light homesteading, learning as I go. Uh so it's been it's been fun.

Todd: 5:37

That's cool, man. Happy for you, brother. So what activities were you into as a teen?

Jeff: 5:43

Yeah, so as a as a teen, I was thinking about this question, and one of the the things that really I think it was one of the small first steps that that helped sort of break me out of some of the issues that I had was um as a freshman in high school, I in the like a couple weeks after school started, I I joined the cross-country team. And I and I had never played any sports growing up or anything like that. I was you know not particularly athletic. And with with running, it's like, well, you know, you don't need a whole lot of coordination, just try not to fall down. Uh go go that way, you know. Uh, and and uh I joined the cross-country team. Uh it was a very small school that I went to and um ended up doing cross-country and track, and those became because we had a really good coach, we we actually ended up winning state in uh cross-country back-to-back years, and so it was the most successful sports program that our school had. And you know, I was looking back and and uh the friends that I made on that team were really meaningful, and some of them I still stay in contact with to this day. That's right. Uh and and that really helped in terms of you know, taking that first little step of like being on a team, going towards a common goal, which you know, a lot of my clients want to know how to make friends because that's a pretty important facet of life. One of the most important things is uh going somewhere regularly that has regulars and doing an activity that you like. If you mix those three things together, that sets the right conditions where you're gonna be set up for success and you're gonna have a good time no matter what happens, which I think is is important aspect of it too.

Todd: 7:25

Yeah, sports are so important for development, man. It's uh it gets you out there, like you said, working towards a goal, but connecting with other people, you have a commitment to the other people on the team that you're gonna do your best. I mean, you're not just running for yourself. I mean, you're alone out there on doing cross country, but you're thinking of the team. You're like, hey, I want to do well because of them. And that's such a good thing, man. I that I don't know. Did you ever do this? There's a running technique, um, like you run as a group and you hold onto a little rope. Did you guys ever do anything like that?

Jeff: 7:59

You know, we we didn't do that, but uh we did do I remember this a few blocks from our high school, there was a nice square sort of section in in the neighborhood, and uh our coach measured it out, and I can't remember it may have been half a mile around, something like that. Uh and we we played this game called Rabbit, where if I'm remembering it right, you're just bringing this back to me, is uh the slower people would start, and then there would be gaps of 30 seconds, and then the faster people would start, and the faster people would start. And uh, I mean, I wasn't I was definitely middle of the pack, uh, but it was a point of pride to like not let the fastest person beat you, you know, uh, which you know is a friend of mine. So we used to do some sort of speed speed games like that during during the like the non-long run aspects where we'd actually want to increase our our speed and our fast switch muscles and all that kind of stuff.

Todd: 8:52

Yeah, very cool. Yeah, we one time uh we were in a group running, we put the fast guys up front. I was not cross-country, I've never been able to run well. I've never really liked running, but I was in the military. Yeah, I had to do I had to run against my will, but one time they did this exercise where they just got this big long rope and we were just staggered and had the rope in between us and put the really fast people up front, and you just had to hold on the rope. You could run so much faster because you're hanging on to that rope. It was a yeah, psychological things. Yeah, that is so with the childhood stuttering problem. Can you talk about the impact that had on you? You alluded to it already, but can you dig into that some more?

Jeff: 9:33

Yeah, it's funny. I actually remember I remember being a freshman in high school and meeting my future coach, which was not my coach at the time, for the first time, and not being able to say my own name. And and part of it was stuttered. I'm sure there were nerves that were part of it too, right? But that it felt like a prison of my own making where it's like, hey, I know that there's this problem, and it made it so much more difficult to connect with other people, much more difficult than it than it should have been. I think we all have have something in our lives where it might be a stutter, but it it also might be we replay awkward memories from the past or or things that are like un sort of unnaturally limiting our ability. Like if you weren't holding onto that rope, you probably would have ran a little slower just because there was no forcing function to help you run faster. And if we key in on those moments where there are things that hold us back, and that kind of becomes an internal narrative of like, oh, you know, I I can't do this because this, or I can't do this because that. Um, now there might be some truth to it, like you might need some help to get over whatever that thing is, but I I I like what you said about sometimes we can place some psychological limits on ourselves where we're capable of doing doing more than we might think. But yeah, for for me and the stutter, like to this day, you can you'll you you may be able to hear in certain words, there's just a little hesitation, and that's the the only thing that happens these days. But I think the difference is um I know it's gonna happen periodically now. I don't care. Like it's the least of my concerns. Like, I don't you know, part of that I think is getting older too, where you're just like, you know, this is me, this is who I am. But those those things that you think limit you it in a way it can actually make you more um approachable to other people as well. There's something called the Prattfall effect where you know if you if you're seen as competent and you have a little goof here or there, people actually like you more. Uh and so there there's there's advantages to everything in life. And I think uh a mistake that I could have made was zeroing in on, hey, this is this is a problem, it's always gonna be a problem, I'm never gonna overcome it, versus, hey, I'm gonna do my best with the cards that I have because I can't change the cards that I have. And then over time, maybe I I wouldn't have thought in these terms growing up, but I maybe I can make peace with it and realize that it can actually be a little bit of a strength uh in a non-obvious way.

Todd: 11:59

Yeah, that's a famous quote. I can't remember the author, but they said life it's about playing a poor hand well. So I like that. And uh yeah, you seem to have played your hand well, so good stuff, man. So what was your social life like as a teen?

Jeff: 12:15

Yeah, so as a teen, the being being on a team really helps. And the first year that I was on on a team, uh, it was a fairly new school. Uh, and really a whole lot of my friends weren't on the team at that point, uh, or or the people that would become my friends, but then sophomore, junior, and senior year, I would like to take credit for it and say everyone gravitated around me, and and that led a bunch of people to getting on the team. But I think it's just one of those things where you end up hanging out and you want to do what your friends do. Uh, and and and me and maybe one or two other people happen to already be on the team, and so that really gravitated a lot of people to the team and it made it something really special. So a lot of our activities were centered around running, going to the movies and typical like teenager type stuff, movie nights at people's houses and stuff like that. It's funny. I was just talking to my wife earlier today about how you used to be able to go to the movies and you know, it's like seven bucks and you would just see see basically anything that was playing. I remember. I remember that. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's a little different these days with like, uh, I don't know. I will never financially recover from this this movie I want to see. Um but uh you know, like Spur, I just remember because I I graduated high school in 2004, uh, which you know 20 20 21 years ago, which it doesn't seem that long. 2004 just seems like yesterday to me. Goes by fast. But one of the things I've been thinking about is kind of just the concept of I think there was like a sweet spot in uh I'll see, I'll get your opinion on this. There's like a sweet spot in like 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, somewhere in there, where smartphones weren't ubiquitous. You didn't if you had to check something, you know, social media was nascent at that time, it it virtually didn't exist. Um, but if you did want to check something, you went home to get on the computer to check it, right? And when you just think kind of the forcing function that a lot of that played, like GPS even was just pretty new at that point. It was new enough to be able to do it. Yeah, you had to buy a unit and that unit might send you into a into a lake. And the the reason I I I bring this up is that I think that there was kind of a sweet spot there where you still had that kind of last gasp of sort of what it was like to be a teenager in like the 80s and the 90s and the early 2000s, where you had to do a lot of in-person stuff. You called someone's house and talked to their parents. Hey, you know, is Adam there? Can I talk to Adam, please? Uh, make it short, you know, and all that stuff that was really, really awesome. That you know, I wonder about kids now, like my nieces and nephews and stuff, where they're growing up in a world where just the landscape is so different. And and I think that that has impacted people's communication skills in a negative way. You know, technology's brought us so much, but I think that uh there's some trade-offs there. Yeah, I'd be curious to get your opinion on that. 100%. When we were kids growing up, you had to go physically talk to someone, whether it was picking up the phone physically and dialing them, and you had to speak to them, you could there was no texting. And we were just out and about. When we as kids, we were just out and about playing and stuff. You rode your bike and you showed up back home around dinner time or something, and that was it. And but today, man, ever all the kids are we've got unique problems. I kind of feel bad for the kids today because of the screens, and it, you know, psychologically, it negatively impacts you because people are just so accustomed to just looking at screens, they're not interacting with others, and so I think there are a lot of developmental issues, even with adults that grew up without the internet, but now are addicted to screens, and they're just on the screens all the time, and they're not accustomed to interacting with people. So isolation, social anxiety, so many things going on. So communication skills have diminished a lot, I think. I have to purposefully go out of my way to make sure I'm interacting with people, otherwise, with the type of work I do, I could just sit by myself all day long and not talk to anyone. So yeah, not a good thing. So yeah. Yeah, I I I like having GPS, but man, there's there's some stuff we probably gave up and we don't quite realize it yet. Maybe maybe we're just starting to realize it if we're having these conversations.

Todd: 16:34

Yeah, in the military, they make you actually pull out a map and a compass and learn to navigate that way. Because who knows if an EMP is gonna go off and you're not gonna have a GPS to be able to get from one place to another.

Jeff: 16:47

So Yeah, one one thing that it it's a small brag, but I mean I've taken road trips with a paper map. That's great. And it's just one of those things where it that's an experience that I think everyone needs to have once, where you know it's like, oh yeah, yeah, there's there's the curve, and we can cut across here, maybe we can skip some traffic and we can go down this highway, you know. Yeah, all that stuff. Like it's just one of those kind, especially maybe I don't know, maybe more of an American experience where you you think of the great American road trip and that kind of stuff. Uh but yeah, it's just it's the good stuff that uh uh hope that that the kids these days they they probably won't get it, but man, it would be nice to just be like, all right, you're you're taking this map, you're gonna navigate.

Todd: 17:29

Yeah. My dad, I remember we took trips, he had an atlas. He was a truck driver, so he used an atlas. But whenever we drove places, he had his huge atlas, and it was just this big book that you opened up, and you could look at an entire state and plot your your route. And that was kind of a cool thing because you get a sense of accomplishment by plotting your route, and then you drive it and get to your destination. And it's like, ah, so very cool. There's so many people today that can't get anywhere, even around their town, without some sort of map application like Waze on their smartphone. So yeah.

Jeff: 18:03

Yeah, the uh safety blankets we create, right? Where we like our we like our apps, we and one of the things I touch on in my book, uh this may be a separate book, actually, uh, but there's the kind of the rise of AI companions, and like I think we're at a very interesting point in history where there's there's kind of a I'm I'm just forming this idea, but it's the idea that there's sort of a I call it like an isolation industrial complex where no one's no one's pulling the strings necessarily, but there are just incentives that are pointing everyone in a certain direction of like, hey, get on the screen, get in the algorithm, hey, here's your friendship as a service, we'll charge you monthly for. And I wonder, I just I don't have an answer for this, and I probably won't write the book, the next book until uh uh I have an answer, but I wonder if there's going to be some sort of soft rejection of not of technology because technology's here, but I wonder if there's gonna be like a little step back in future generations where maybe we're at peak technology right now, and people are gonna be like, uh we kind of went overboard when they started like having us uh with AI friends and a pod. I don't know. I don't know if I want to, I don't know if I want that.

Todd: 19:20

Yeah, I'm seeing ads on online for AI companions. You just mentioned that. And it's for guys, you can have an AI girlfriend, and she's never gonna challenge you, she's never gonna ask you questions about anything, she's just gonna do what you want. But she's not a real person, so you're not so you're not really making a connection. And then with social media, they just want us isolated. And then there's so much negativity out there, and I heard someone call it angertainment. If they can get you outraged and mad at the other group or this other party or whomever, yeah, then yeah, that's that's clicks, that's likes, and it's uh it's keeping you watching, and yeah, get being angry is a good emotional high. And it's not good though. So yeah, I think people are rejecting that.

Jeff: 20:05

So I hope so. And a term I'm playing around with right now is be a rebel, talk to people. You know, if there's if there's a a complex thing that kind of wants you to be isolated in in on on screens in in algorithms, like you can be a rebel, you can talk to people. Um which that might that might be the rally cry for the next 10 years. Yeah. Uh, which is like take a page out of like the good old days of you know the 1990s and like live live live a little closer to that, maybe than uh you know that scene in the Matrix where they're all plugged up to the they've got like like the extension cords in their heads and they're all in the pods or whatever. It's like uh maybe maybe we reject the pods a little bit and we we gravitate more towards like knowing your neighbors, throwing housewarming parties and and and you know, using using the not the self-checkout, but checking out with people and and talking to people in just a normal casual way where you're having a lot of small interactions throughout your day, and you'll notice for a lot of people that you'll actually feel better, you'll feel more connected to people.

Todd: 21:10

Oh, yeah.

Jeff: 21:10

Uh and it kind of it makes you feel good. Um and for especially the younger generation, I know like if you're if your listeners have you know kids that are around college age, for example, like they're gonna find out one way or another that you have to talk to people. You know, it's gonna it mm for some of them I might be harsh, some for some of them may be less harsh, but you're going to have to connect with other people, you're gonna have to be able to network, you're gonna have to be able to, when you're in a job, be able to sing your own praises and talk about the things that you're working on in an easy, easy and digestible way, and build connections with your coworkers and your bosses and all that kind of stuff that uh you just can't do if you keep your head down, focus on on the work and think that the work has to speak for itself, which in a perfect world, yes, but that's not exactly how it works.

Todd: 22:02

You have to communicate about what you're doing, otherwise nobody's gonna know. Bottom line. And thinking about college kids, there's this thing going on these days where the girls want to meet the boys, but the boys won't talk to them. I've heard a boy about this. But the boys will go, hey, can I get your Snapchat? So they'll come they'll friend you, they'll follow you on social media, the boys, but they won't just come up and talk. And it's I can't relate to that at all because when we were growing up, it was like you gotta go talk to a girl, otherwise, you know, you're just gonna be hanging out with your buds. Yeah. So I I think this what you're doing, man. Everybody needs this. Even even adults that we've just gotten into this rut of screen time and just being isolated from each other. So yeah, this is a timely conversation, I think. I think so. So what so where'd you go after high school?

Jeff: 22:58

Yeah, so after high school, I did some college, went to school for journalism, and I started working right away. Uh one of the things I knew that would probably be helpful is um I needed to get a job where I interacted with people a lot. Uh because I had a sense that you don't get better at something by not doing it. You know, it's like I I didn't get better at running by thinking about running, you know, it that's not how that works. So I got a my first job was in a running store fitting people for running shoes based on their biomechanics and picking out the right shoes and all that kind of stuff. So everyone from your 5K runners to marathon runners and that kind of stuff. Worked there for a long time and then eventually wound up working for Apple at one of the retail stores. Uh, and so you know, I estimate just on the on the retail side of things, I probably had over 100,000 conversations. But being a young person in my in my 20s, I was also, you know, going out and socializing and all that kind of stuff too. And so my ethos for for that period of my life was just have as many conversations as possible. And one thing I think was really fortunate was I was never in, you know, I was in sales for a long time. And uh if you own your own business, spoiler alert, you're also in sales. So I've been in sales my entire career. I was very fortunate to only ever be in in sales sort of situations where it was what what you would call inbound, where someone's interested in something, they come and talk to you. And you're really it's more about building a relationship, being a trusted advisor rather than cold calling on like I've never had to cold call and you know, I've never done anything like that.

Todd: 24:34

Oh miserable.

Jeff: 24:36

Yeah, I'm sure. Like I hear, you know, it's kind of kind of miserable. Uh and luckily my business, you know, I I don't I don't have to cold call because you know I've been around a while now. And it's really nice because when you get to just have conversations with people, it really becomes more about just building rapport and finding the right thing for someone. And this the same thing's true, you know, if you're selling a computer or you're selling a shoe or you're talking to your neighbor, and you're just like, hey, so what's going on in your life? You know, what's you know, oh you're excited about this, you're excited about that. Like building that rapport, building that relationship one uh one little conversation at a time. Uh it it's all it's all the same, effectively. Right. Just some some interactions in with a transaction, you know.

Todd: 25:21

Right. Yeah, no, doing research before this conversation, I I I came across the phrase that you shared with you called it reverse engineering social anxiety. So how did you get the idea that you could reverse engineer to build your social confidence?

Jeff: 25:39

Yeah, so you know, I thought about one part is is reps. You have to you're just going to to to be competent. Everyone wants to be socially confident. One of the things that I preach is there is no confidence without competence. You have to be competent first. And you can't feel competent if you are zeroed in on times when you are incompetent. And when you're starting something, your percentage of instances of incompetence is going to be higher than your than your percentage uh of times that you're that you're competent, right? So w one of the very first things is starting as small as possible and realizing that hey, anything counts as a social win, I can stack wins and I can feel more competent. That will eventually lead to me feeling more confident because I I have had a high number of repetitions, and with that high number of repetitions, I can more uh accurately predict the outcome of any one interaction. You know, no two interactions are gonna be the same. That's not how social interactions work, and that's part of the fun, because you wouldn't want social interactions to all end up the same, but you can reasonably predict of like, oh, you know, I've been in this situation hundreds of times or thousands of times. It's probably gonna be between this range and this range. You know, it's somewhere in there, and there's probably like a 98% chance that it's gonna be within that range. And so you end up feeling really confident because you've been there before. And so slowly but surely, I really keyed in on that aspect of it, and lo and behold, that also works for other people. And and uh as I'm finding out now, so I'm having some clients come back to me and say, Yeah, I was trying some of the stuff we talked about with people skills. I'm trying that on the golf course or the you know the tennis court. It's like, oh, this is actually transferring to other skills that I just wouldn't have I wouldn't have pegged that it would work for that kind of stuff, but uh well, it makes sense because it's the same framework of learning a skill. You know, you learn any skill kind of the same way. You want to be doing the right things. If you practicing incorrectly, you're not gonna be good at golf or be good at tennis or be good at talking to people. But if you're doing the right things and you're reinforcing and you're showing yourself proof that you can be successful, eventually you're going to believe the proof.

Todd: 28:01

Belief is such a huge factor. Knowing you can do it, believing you can do it. I've I've dealt with social awkwardness, being scared, not really liking being in groups and stuff like that. And yeah, man, if if you believe that you can have a positive interaction, that's gonna get you 90% of the way there, I would say. But I don't have experience in coaching this stuff. So now you said you reverse engineered over 90,000 conversations. So what were some of the biggest patterns or lessons that stood out?

Jeff: 28:33

Yeah, so I'll break it down into a few categories. One is I'll call it the like the mindset piece of the puzzle. If you're heading into an interaction viewing yourself as incompetent, then guess what? That interaction's not gonna end up that that that great. You know, it's you're priming yourself to uh not perform well. And so the first thing you have to do, like we talked about, and I won't rehash it, but you have to instill that feeling of competence. You do that by keying in on very small wins. Everyone starts at a different spot. So for for some for one person, a a a small win might be having a good conversation. Great. That might be advanced. For another person, having small win might be smiling at someone and they smile back. So we start where we start, that's okay. So step one, get your mindset dialed in. Uh, an additional aspect of that is take the multitude of ambiguous things that could happen in a social interaction, and you don't quite know how to take it. Well, most people, I see this over and over, unfortunately default to the most negative, least generous interpretation of an event. You know, one example might be you text someone and they don't text back. What did I say? Oh God. You know, you you just run, you just run the tape, you know. It's like um uh like the sports bloopers in the 80s where they just run uh Jose Canseco, you know, the the baseball bouncing off his head over the uh fence. And if you do that, That's unhelpful. I categorize uh I categorize things between helpful and unhelpful. So that's unhelpful. You need to explain things in in a more helpful way. Because the spoiler alert is we are really good at making up stories. Our stories are going to be inaccurate. So why would you make up a unhelpful, inaccurate story when, if it's going to be inaccurate anyway, go ahead and make up even just a neutral, helpful story. Just a neutral one. Like, ah, you know, they're probably busy. I'm sure they'll get back to me. That helps so much.

Todd: 30:33

Any thoughts there? I do the same thing, man. I I have an interaction, and then after the fact I go, oh, why did I say that? Then I just zero in on that and I tell myself negative stories about that. Uh, this guy thinks I'm an idiot, you know. I do that, man. So what yeah, that's you're speaking to where I'm living, man.

Jeff: 30:52

Yeah. And and it's a huge, huge problem. And when when you once you key in on the fact that, hey, I'm gonna make up a a false story anyway, I might as well make up a helpful one. That flips everything because you're like, oh, well, I could just explain this any multitude of ways. And explaining something in a neutral way is great. That's probably the best thing to do. But you you can't even lean a little positive with it, which I think is helpful within reason. We don't want to put on rose-colored glasses and start missing stuff. But one of the most helpful reframes that I walk clients through is uh pretend that someone like your best friend came up to you and told you about this situation where you said something or you know, this thing happened or that thing happened. What would you tell your friend? You probably just tell them, like, dude, dude, don't worry about it. I'm sure they're just busy. Like it's it's it's no big deal. Because we give other people the benefit of the doubt way more than we extend that same kindness to ourself, which is a problem in itself, where we are so a lot of times we're really hard on ourselves. Yep. Where we I I've seen it a thousand times where someone will take a an interaction was 95% great, but then there's five percent that could be improved upon, which spoiler spoiler alert, look, every interaction is not going to be perfect. Most interactions won't be perfect, that's okay. But they'll take that 5%, magnify it, color in the the rest of the 95%, and wad it up and throw it in the failure bucket. And my my goodness, if you're trying to improve something, that's not helpful. That's not helpful at all. And so sometimes shifting and thinking, like, hey, if I if a buddy came up to me and told me about the situation, here's what I would tell them. Oh, I could tell myself that same thing. And just realizing that we have more options than maybe we might think. Uh and so I call this choosing your own reality, which is just one of the most important things that that you can do. Uh I've got more thoughts, but any any thoughts on that?

Todd: 32:57

You made me think of when I met my wife for the first time. And be I'd just gotten out of the out of boot camp and I was in a different mindset. I was an arrogant young kid, so I thought I could just conquer the world. But it gave me a mindset of like, what's the worst that can happen? I was like, what's she gonna do? Say no? And so I just went and talked to her, and she's we just interacted. We ended up starting, we dated for three years and got married. So, but if I had met her in high school, I would not have talked to her at all. I would have been like, Nope, she's too pretty, not gonna even talk to her. I'm way she's way out of my league, so not even gonna go to bat for that one.

Jeff: 33:38

Yeah, you miss 100% of the chances you don't take, right? Yep, yeah, and you know that there's something probably the arrogance of a early 20s male, you know, there's probably some downsides there. There, but there's some upsides too, where you know you might meet your future wife and and spend many, many happy years and decades with that person, which is which is huge when you think of like life satisfaction and life happiness. Like who you pick to surround yourself with could be could be a spouse, could be a really good friend, whatever it happens to be. Yeah, that's really important because that that color is so much uh you know, joy and and happiness in just your everyday life.

Todd: 34:16

Yeah. And man, you said it right, dude. It's like we tell ourselves negative stories, especially about ourselves. We have to work through that. And honestly, you gotta get help to do that. I didn't even know that that's what I was doing, telling myself a negative story until someone told me that. Someone had to tell me, hey, look, these are just your thoughts, they're not you. Yeah, and I'm like, okay, well, what does that mean? Okay, you can entertain a thought and not accept it and just let it go on. I'm like, what? So yeah, you need we need help. We're social creatures. We do these things and we don't even know we're doing them. Telling ourselves negative stories, we need to learn how to challenge them. And just listening to us talk about it, that's not gonna do it. You you need to put it into practice, and getting someone to coach you in these things is of paramount importance because you learn these things, but then you got to go out and practice them in the wild with people as you're interacting, and then you can come back and talk it over with the coach. Maybe it's a therapist, maybe it's Jeff, where you you just look at it and you do an after action and say, Okay, cool. This is how that played out. All right, cool. The next time you encounter this, this is what you need to do, and tell yourself this, and you know, just and yeah. So you're gonna fail at whatever you do, you're learning something, you're gonna fail at it, and then you just come back and regroup after action, jump back in and try it again. And over time, you just see these incremental improvements. So yeah, man. I'm still working on this stuff though.

Jeff: 35:52

It's it's a lifelong thing, right? Like there, there's no end point until you know, I guess after we pass away. But it's just one of those things where every day we have an opportunity to just improve a little bit. And uh if we're not getting the outcomes that we want and we're not learning anything from it, and we're maybe externalizing the problem, like, oh, it's the world, it's not me. Well, I need uh just to make sure it's not just to make sure it's the world, I need to make sure it's not me. Like change yourself first and just see what happens because odds are you might be surprised uh that things change and uh you get different outcomes. And then, like you said, that after action report, like I have my clients do a version of that. Uh, I call it a weekly notes doc where they write down what's going on with their action steps. And it's so funny. I'll I'll I'll literally see clients write out like an awkward moment that happened, and then they'll literally write, you know, after writing that down, that's not that big a deal. Yes. That's yes. Um we're of a certain age, so you can probably appreciate this reference. I always think of Terminator 2 where it's the liquid metal robot, and you know, something gets thrown at it or whatnot, and then it just kind of heals itself, right? Yep. You know, like right away, it's like, yes, I'm turning, I'm turning this person into into like that police officer Terminator from Terminator 2. Yep, unstoppable. Exactly. Yeah, that's so good, man. But um And um I want to because we talked about mindset, the other points that I'll cover really briefly are what a lot of people, the trap a lot of people fall into is when it actually comes to starting a conversation and continuing a conversation is they think they have to have the perfect thing to say. And boy, that is centering you in your own head. The more internally focused you are, the worse your interactions are going to be. The more externally focused you are, the better your interactions are going to be. And so what I tell clients all the time is when you're looking to start a conversation, the perfect thing to say does not exist. When you're looking at continuing the conversation, the perfect thing to say does not exist. The social answers that you seek are in the environment or in the topic of conversation, waiting for you to uncover them. What that means is that there's something in the environment that you you and this other person share that you can start a conversation about. There's something in that environment that is helpful to you. And when you're in a conversation, you're looking to prolong it. Well, think around the current topic. Like if someone's talking about mountain biking, well, maybe you know something about mountain biking, great, but most people maybe don't. So maybe you think, okay, mountain biking, maybe there's a I call this the spokes method where it's like a bicycle wheel and there's spokes coming off of it, where you think, oh, maybe they're into the outdoors, that might be, that might be something. Maybe they're into hiking, maybe that's something. Maybe they're into triathlons, maybe that's something. And so you've got options. You know, it's kind of like a to mix metaphors, like a quarterback with a bunch of receivers that are all great. Like you've got people you can throw to, right? Spokes that you can go to, topics of conversation. But that's much better than trying to think, oh, I need to say the perfect thing. Because the only the reality is the only way to say the perfect thing is you have to know everything about that person's life up to that point. And guess what? You can't read minds, you don't have access to that, so you gotta let it go. Do the next best thing, which is be flexible and uh sort of like a shortstop getting ready to field a ground ball, be in the ready position so you can be flexible and move when you need to move and and adapt. Right.

Todd: 39:19

And sometimes it's just not a good fit, the person that you're interacting with. Yeah. And the interaction may be short and you move on to the next. So it's okay. It's perfectly okay. And sometimes sometimes you just encounter jerks in the wild that they're not good socially, so you gotta kind of hey, okay, and move on.

Jeff: 39:39

And and I think what really helps that, because that's that's absolutely true. If you have enough interactions, then you know how most interactions end up going. And so you know if there's an outlier that's way far outside of the landing zone of like where most interactions are, then you're like, oh, okay, well, that one really wasn't me. And I know that because most interactions are perfectly fine. And so what's great about that is that then you can really just discard that interaction because it had nothing to do with you for someone who does who doesn't have isn't getting enough reps, if they have one of those interactions, then it's hard for them to parse out was it me, was it the other person? And then that's that's when you can kind of roll into, well, maybe I'm just not good at this, or you know, all these negative stories that you might tell yourself. But uh reps are kind of the great equalizer. It doesn't mean that you have to have a million reps or a thousand reps, it might be hundreds, but that hundreds might be over years. But reps help the more reps you have, the faster you'll improve. The less reps you have, the slower you'll improve. It's like any other skill.

Todd: 40:41

That is true. So now a lot of adults feel like they should have become socially confident by now, but honestly, we all struggle. And why do you why is that? Why are we struggling as adults lacking social confidence?

Jeff: 40:56

Yeah, so this is an interesting question because I think there are a few possible answers. One, a lot of the people that I work with, they have had to focus on their technical skills for so long. You know, the average age of my client is 31, but I I've had clients from their early 20s to clients in their 60s, and so I've had the whole gamut. Oftentimes it's hey, I worked really hard in school, I worked really hard in college, I had to work really hard at my job, and now I'm like, oh no, I developed my hard skills. Where are my soft skills at? Oh no. And so I have to develop those soft skills to get to the next level in my career or my business, you know. Maybe I'm an employee and I want to start my own thing or something like that. And so there's some of that specialization where people just have to put their heads down at work so so long, and and especially in technical fields. I think that's part of it. I think when you layer on some of the stuff that we were talking about earlier about the rise of algorithms and screens, every every pocket has a phone, every phone has has a screen, every screen has an algorithm. I think that there are loosely knit forces that aren't making it as easy as it used to be. And I think what layers on to this too are the um the uh dwindling of third spaces that aren't home or work, where there's just less of those spaces now than than there ever have been. And you know, the this kind of started in in the 60s with there were more suburbs and and uh people spread out a little bit more, and then there's even there's even stuff about like the purchasing power of a dollar and and the productivity wage gap is is a little different since the early 70s, and so people have to work a little bit more, there's less time for leisure. So it's a combination of a lot of different factors. Yeah, and that ends up causing, unfortunately, I think, people to think that I should have learned these skills. Why didn't I learn them? It's all my fault. The reality is there's a dichotomy there because it's important to take responsibility for the stuff that you can control. So it's you need to take that responsibility if you're not where you want to be, but you also need to realize that, hey, there probably are forces just in the modern world that maybe aren't aren't all that helpful. But that doesn't mean I abdicate my responsibility. I have to I have to take responsibility to control what I can control. And the the flip side of it is we actually might be entering a time when the pendulum's starting to swing back the other direction a little bit, and so you can kind of get out ahead of the curve and uh be a rebel, talk to people, and improve your skills, and you're gonna be set up really well, I think. No matter what, no matter if that pendulum ends up swinging hard or swinging gently, you're gonna be set up really well for um your career and your social life, which is gonna bring you a lot of probably a lot more money and probably a lot more happiness. And that's gonna that's gonna be helpful. You're gonna have a good life.

Todd: 43:53

True. Now, for somebody who feels stuck socially and they're they're like, what do I do? So, what's the first step that you typically take people through to break that cycle?

Jeff: 44:04

Yeah, a couple things. So one is look at your life, like just get out a piece of paper right now and write down in detail an entire week for you. You know, maybe you're maybe you're remote and you work at home, or maybe you go into the office a few days a week, or maybe you're full-time in the office. Write out the entire thing. And what you might find is you're ignoring some opportunities to be social that are right in front of you that you didn't even realize. So, first step is kind of doing that audit and saying, like, oh well, you know, I can talk to my doorman. I just always walk past him. Okay, I'll talk to him. You know, it doesn't have to be long. We're not talking a 25-minute conversation, we're just talking a couple seconds or maybe a minute if he's feeling really chatty, right? I get into work, you maybe I the coffee I grab before work, I talk to the barista if it's not too busy. There are probably five or ten points in a typical day where you could get reps in. And and what's great about this, this is stuff that you're already doing. This is not changing your life all that much. Now, if you're a remote worker, you might have to change things up a little bit more, and that's okay. Where it maybe instead of working from my house all day every day, you know, you know, like you've got your home office dialed in, and and you know, you you're you you really like what you have, you might think, oh well, maybe I can go to a coffee shop a couple times a week and work there in the afternoons just to mix things up. Uh so it's about looking at your environment and saying, hey, what's what's helpful and what's probably not helpful. That's one part of it. And then you're stacking those reps throughout your your day and your week, and you're zeroing in and stacking those wins and saying, like, hey, I can be competent, I was competent here, I was competent there. Write them down once a week, flip back and look at them. Right. Because if you write them down, you forget about them. Well, that's not really help anything. You need to instill that feeling of confidence by showing yourself frequent proof of your competence. Yeah. And so I think those two things, it that's where you can start. And if if you feel really ambitious after that, you start looking at stuff in your neighborhood or your city of like, hey, what are events that I like that have a high chance of having regulars and happen regularly? Oh, well, you know, I kind I kind of like pickleball. I guess I'll go to pickleball. I kinda I've been wanting to get into a running club, I guess I'll go to a running club. Oh, there's a chess club that I think I might like, and then start going. And you'll start to develop a shared history with everyone there just by virtue of showing up, and even if you didn't open your mouth. You know, if it's a big group and you don't you you can't talk to everyone for a few weeks, the fact that you came three or four times over over a month, and then you talk to that one person that you haven't talked to yet, they're gonna feel a lot more comfortable just because they've seen you around. Right. And so those three things, that's exactly where I would start.

Todd: 46:59

Nice. Yeah, so it's it's not like you're gonna go tell people, hey, sign up for Toastmasters and give a speech next week.

Jeff: 47:06

So Yeah, I mean some people do that, and you're starting small. And that and that's okay. I I'm a fan of, you know, if you when when motivation is high and you're like, oh, I really want to I want to blow the doors off this thing, and you know, I want to go hard, okay. You could do that. There is a higher percentage chance that you'll burn out. Yeah. I am a much bigger fan of like, hey, do something methodical, do it consistently, and ramp up the intensity over time. Right. And if you do that, then you what's nice is you'll constantly feel like you're winning because you're putting in effort. If you've if you put in effort and you're proud of that effort, you're in a constant winning state, which is much better than uh, yeah, I have some clients when they first start working with me, they think, oh, well, I'm gonna go out and make a friend.

Todd: 47:55

Well, okay. Maybe no one likes you.

Jeff: 47:58

You're in a uh it could be uh you're in a constant losing state until you make that friend. Yeah. And so how much harder like how much harder would it be to do anything if you felt like you weren't good at until you did it? I'm not I'm not a fan of that personally. I was like, okay, right, start those small conversations, feel like you win multiple times a day, and you will feel like you want to continue winning. Yes.

Todd: 48:23

And that to me is where the secret is. Yes. I like that. Yeah, I I heard I was talking to an Iron Man athlete, and she was saying, I learned this just within the last few years. It's like when you're training to learn to be a runner, run a marathon, basically you go out and run and you measure your heart rate, and you don't exceed a certain heart rate. So you're gonna be running stupid slow initially. You're gonna be running really slow, and you're just maintaining that pace at that heart rate. And then over time, as you just keep up with the consistency on that, you'll you start running faster at the same heart rate. So that's to me, that's an analogy for getting better socially. So it sounds like that's what you're doing. You're just like, hey, where are you? And then get a snapshot of where you are right now, and then okay, well, hey, let's make some small adjustments and build up those wins, and then over time they get better and get it's so rewarding, man. When you just have when you just talk to someone where you just connect and you walk away from that, and it's like ah, whether it's business, your job, or just out socially, you're at the park and you meet someone and you just naturally fall into a conversation. That's just that alone is rewarding, but it just just just pays dividends across the spectrum of our lives, man.

Jeff: 49:41

So yeah, and it it compounds over time, like six months of focused effort, a year of focused effort. That may be all all you need. Beyond that, it's maintenance. And so it's shocking what you could do over not that long of a time period. And the younger you are, you you get that benefit of the long tail of compounding interest on your skills, where you get to benefit from that for the rest of your life, which is incredible. Um, and so yeah, just it it's uh I mean the same thing applies in in fitness and and other aspects where you get started, and okay, it might be a little challenging when you get started, but over time that effort, I call this effort gravity, which I don't think I'm coming up with a new concept, but it's very similar to to what to what you said, where what's hard now won't always be hard if I keep doing it. And if I keep doing it, the effort decreases, and so it's easier to do it. And uh, and then it makes it really easy to do it. And then you're in maintenance mode and you don't even really realize it, and uh you're getting to reap all those rewards.

Todd: 50:44

I love it. And so eventually you decided to flip the switch and start teaching others what you've learned. Now, how did you decide to start your coaching business?

Jeff: 50:55

I've always kind of had the entrepreneurial bug where you know something about having a job and realizing that, like, oh, you know, I'm not you know, jobs are fine, a lot of people have them. But I think for me, what really flipped the very first switch of even thinking that it was an option was uh reading Timothy Ferris's The Four Hour Work Week for like 2007, you know, something like that, whenever it came out. And it was a whole new world, because I never even thought that was an option. Like, oh, you could have your own business, like what like I don't understand. But I you know, I realized that, like, oh well, you kind of go through that and you and you think, well, what's a skill that I'm doing pretty good at that I could help others with? Well, okay, maybe communication. I wonder if other people have that issue. And turns out people do, they just don't talk about it all that much, uh, but they hire me. And then they get to reap the rewards, like giving a great, you know, uh like a best man speech and blowing the doors off the thing, and and uh people are like, oh, how'd you do that? And you just kind of wink and like, oh, you know, I don't know. And so being that secret weapon for other people is is fantastic because uh the ripple effect of what I'm doing would become more compelling, I hope, is is making a big difference in other people's lives. And also, I think about like you know, if my clients, my clients have kids and they're teaching their kids, and so like the ripple effects um you know, immeasurable, hopefully.

Todd: 52:24

That's the idea, at least. Right. So that's how you you you decided on that. So now I can only imagine how fulfilling this type of work is, just helping people get better at communicating. Do you have any success stories you could potentially share?

Jeff: 52:39

Yeah, so on my site, I I have a bunch of case studies, and one of them I I pulled is from my client Julian, and uh one of the things that I work with Julian on, and you can hear all this by actually going to my website and and listening to to him tell you, but the gist of it is uh he was having a hard time getting promoted and and having a hard time advocating for himself and talking about his successes in you know a clear and concise and compelling way. And we worked hard on on dialing in his message and helping him kind of get out get out of his own way and and delivering a really polished message that was easy for other people to consume and digest. And lo and behold, like he got like a 10% salary bonus, which is unheard of at his company, and like he's on the fast track for promotion, and and uh, you know, that's just one one story out of out of a ton where someone knew that there was a gap. So that's the first step. They knew there was a gap that they wanted something uh that better communication skills would give them. Because most people don't just learn communication skills to have better communication skills, they they want something on the other side of it, they want more friends, they want you know a better business, they want an uh accelerated career, whatever it happens to be. And so helping him sort of jump that hurdle and get to the other side and most importantly execute, because that's the most important thing. I can I can show people the path and make the path as easy as possible, but they have to actually do it. They gotta put in those reps. Gotta gotta put in the reps, and then for him to get the results that he got, I mean, I know he's super excited about it, and uh, you know, this is gonna have a big impact in his life forever. Just having the skill to rely on, and and uh it's really gratifying. And I some days I can't believe I get to do it.

Todd: 54:23

That's cool, man. So that is cool. So you're currently writing a book called Confidence Maxing. So what inspired you to write that? And what do you hope readers will take away from our conversation here?

Jeff: 54:35

Yeah, so I decided to write a book because I kind of have this idea of cloning myself. And uh, you know, like if you've there is a good old movie from I think the 90s, Multiplicity with Michael Keaton, he clones himself and gets in all kinds of hijinks, and I'm like, man, you know, wouldn't it be great if I could clone clone myself? And and the the way you do that is by writing a book. And so for the people that want to get a taste of what I do, they can read the book, apply the lessons to their own life, and and reap all the benefits. Like, I'm not holding anything back, I'm adding even more stuff than I typically teach my private coaching clients. And they're gonna have their life impacted where they're gonna get a complete system on how to be more confident and become more compelling. And and ultimately at the time of this recording, the book is gonna release in 2026. Uh, it's effectively done, just need to ship it off to my editor, but there's a lot of stuff that goes into a book launch. But it's been a it's been an exciting, exciting process, and uh it's been it's been a lot of fun.

Todd: 55:37

Yeah, that's cool, man. Happy for you. So yeah, we'll uh when you release that, man, I'll definitely grab a link for it and share it with our audience here. But yeah, I would love that. Yeah, so how do people connect with you, Jeff?

Jeff: 55:48

Yeah, so two ways. So if you're listening to this conversation and you're thinking, oh well, it sounds great for me, or you know, maybe you have a college stage, a kid, or or someone in your in your life that you think this might be valuable to them, or you might just be interested in the book when it comes out. You can go to become more compelling.com slash group, and I will uh send you my group conversations audio guide. But you'll also be on the list so when when I do release the book, you'll be able to uh snag it and all that good stuff. And what I'll I'll tell you the second thing too is for anyone listening to this, if you feel like you're struggling or there's a gap and and you you want a pointer of where to go and what to do, you can email me at Jeff at BecomeMoreCompelling.com and I'll respond to every single person. There's probably something that I've produced over the last 10 years, an article, a video, a podcast. There's something that I can point you to uh that will point you in the right direction and get you going where you need to go uh to help you improve your communication skills.

Todd: 56:47

Nice. Yeah, my takeaways here, what you've triggered in my mind is being able to communicate with others. That just opens things up for you. First off, professionally, if you can't talk about your work, if you can't communicate your ideas, you're not moving the ball. You're not getting to where you want to be. And so just, I mean, and in the workforce, being able to communicate what you need and what you're working on, what help you need from others, being able to connect with people to get them to join you and what you're trying to accomplish, communication skills are vital for that. And I'll just point out so I went to engineering school, I went to NC State, graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, and I was surprised that the majority of what we did was writing about the stuff that we were doing. So that was eye-opening for me because if you're working on these things, coming up with new products and all of this stuff, you've got to be able to communicate that out so that it can be replicated. And I'm so thankful for that because you you think that you're just gonna go work on something and in a vacuum and you know, without really communicating it out to the world. That's that's not reality. You have to be able to communicate. And thinking about the tech industry and startups and all of this stuff. The ma the majority of the activity is communicating with others. So professionally, we need these skills. Socially, we need these skills. We all like having friends, we all like enjoying social activities together, and just being able to sit down and have a conversation with a friend, that's so valuable. So that's my takeaway here. And I I think we need coaching because we have our blind spots, we don't know what we don't know. And if you can have someone outside looking in, giving you pointers on well, hey, here's what you're struggling with. Here's something you could try to overcome that and get better. We all need coaching, whether it's martial arts, sports, things like learning how to communicate better. We need that. So, yeah, reach out to Jeff. We'll put links in the description of the episode here. And Jeff, thanks so much, man. We appreciate you being on the show, brother. Yeah, that was awesome. I appreciate you having me. All right, man, we'll talk soon.

Speaker 03: 59:04

This is the cloud. Stories of firefly.