Bridge the Gap Unspoken Language of Leadership and Success - Jennifer Edwards

Welcome to the Proof of Podcast, where it doesn't matter what you think, only what you can prove. Today's guest is Jennifer Edwards, a version whose bridge of the gap and proven that success always starts within, that if you're going to show up and build true authentic connection, you've got to do the work. Everyone focuses on strategies and tactics and all of these different things, but until you master this, it doesn't change anything. Jennifer gave a master class on how to actually do, connect and show up in a way that can influence entire rooms, be it a boardroom or an entire audience. All right, the show starts now. Everybody, welcome back to the show. Jennifer, I can't tell you how excited I am to have you here. I am so glad Charles I've been looking forward to our conversation and happy end of the summer. It's good to be together. Yes, we have tried this for a while. So we've had audio problems that we've tried this like four or five times. So, finally, glad that everyone else gets to hear the conversation that you and I have already had multiple times for these four or five people on the planet who don't know who you are. Can you do everybody a little bit who you are? What your success has been and what's your passionate about? Great. So at my core, I am passionate about bringing curiosity in this edgy world we're living right now, especially as AI increases and as polarization and disconnection increases, Charles, I think the most important thing we can do as humanities upskill our connection skills. Curiosity may be the only antidote there is out there right now to the breakdown in relationships and that's what I'm about. So I love this idea that we're polarized. What are you talking about? It's 2025. We've seen United like that. Everyone loves each other and everyone agrees on everything. It is something that we found and that is showing up every single day and it's been proven in business that people who have worked together for years won't come into each other in business environments. Same thing in at home, there are couples that have gotten divorces because of the things over the last let's say eight years. We are more divided as a nation than we've been since the civil war. You've got ways to reconnect people and they're tactical. When you talk about reconnecting with people, most people can't connect internally with themselves, let alone to their neighbors, let alone to their loved ones. So walk me through how we do that. You are so right. I think people think connection is actually about the other person and it's actually about me and my human suit. Charles, I love this expression and it's like we all live in a human suit and I can't zip it on and off and that expression wherever I am, there I go. The very, very most important thing we have to know about connection is I have to come in clean, clean, like clean eating, right? I have to come in clean aware of the metaphorical backpack I have on my back and if I really want connection, I have to be willing to be with the brain in front of me for the optimization of connection and most of us think, oh no, I'm just going to connect at the other person's connects. No, I only connect if I'm connected deeply in my two brains. Then I have great connection with another. And for those of you who are not watching this, the two brains are head and gut. You missed her point to both because they have to be connected there. So it's really important. When we talk about this, even in relationships, most people don't do and you have this placebo or this idea there's here, they haven't done the work and most people haven't detailed that out but they show up in a relationship expecting someone else to help them. Like, hey, this is going to fill my cup even though my internal cup is empty. I have to fill it myself. When someone says, I need to show up whole. I need to show up with my two brains if you point it out connected. What are steps that they can do? What are questions that they ask every morning that you've seen that have created those results? Oh, that's great. Have you ever heard of the expression as you start there I go? Yes. I love that expression because as we start, the rest of our day will unfold, optimally or sub optimally. So one of the most important things I know through the research and through practical applications with myself and the hundreds of clients I work with is the very first thoughts we put into our mind set us up for success or not. So many of us to come up clean think that the very first thing we should do is scroll through Instagram, check our email, blood ourselves with outside noise that has no relationship to self and to self value and like that full cleanness of self. So to show up clean and to really optimize connection, I challenge all of us in its hard Charles. I'm sure you and I know this both. Sue, work on our breath to take a moment to focus on gratitude to set our brain, our pre-final cortex, that heart that makes us uniquely human, we're curiosity, reason, logic and the ability to be compassionate and courageous and curious to set that up for success. No matter what you do, you can take time to breathe, you can take time to meditate and take time to really get intentional and ground yourself and who you want to be and how you want to show up that day. That's step one. So one of the things that I do is I always say your morning starts in your evening, the evening before the time of morning starts and one of the simplest cheat codes that I learned a long time ago, it's only cost six dollars, is the little timers that you have for like the lamps or your lights in the house that you would go there, turn them stuff on and off. I have one in my home that turns off my internet at 10 o'clock in the day. It just fills the internet to the entire building. It's gone. There's gone. So there isn't any, I'm sitting on my phone anymore, there isn't any because I will bypass that. So I've got a box, all of my charging stations are on the other side of my house. I do not keep them near me. So that's the first thing I do when I get in the house. But again, at 10 o'clock it shuts off. So that's a tactical thing. But when people talk about meditation, there's all these different ideas. Like you have to sit there and say, I'm for five hours and that might work for some people. Great. I meditate while I work out. I try to use the idea of Rashido, which is the meditation in every action. So when they're asking these questions and they're going into meditation, what are some of the meditation practices that you use that you've seen that have been successful not only for you, because you've been through some stuff which we'll get into, but also for your clients. It's such a good question because you made the point, there's it one way to meditate. There are the ways that work for you and you're not going to find out what works for you by trying at one time. You're going to have to embrace or you're going to get to embrace a period of trying different things. So for me personally, it is a walking meditation. One of the things I realize is so much noise in my life and so much noise in my head that if I can get in that small still silence, walking in nature, working on my inhaling through my nose, exhaling through my mouth, maybe with one word or one gratitude, that's how I get myself out of chaos and into a sense of presence. Now, Charles, I'm sure like you when you meditate, it's not like it's easy. Don't thoughts, don't you have to always keep bringing your thought back to one thought? So I have found a way around that, but yes, there's always, if I'm trying to get to here. Okay, so what I've learned is this case, as you said, chaos, there's absolute chaos inside. I will sit there and again, write a book about it and everything happens for free, give it for forever. There's four versions of a shit in my head and they are trying to grab control the wheel. I will sit there with four pads of paper and four color pens and I'm like, okay, you all want to talk. Let's go. And I'll sit there and I'll write out whatever they're saying. It doesn't have to make logical sense. It just, they need to be heard and then they shut up. It's very much like children. If I sit there and say, yes, so you did a great job. Mommy's watching you, daddy's watching you, as you're doing that, I'll find. So I'll bring dump it out. And then once they all feel heard, then they'll quiet down a little bit. So if I'm doing a walking meditation, I'll just repeat back in my head. So if you're seeing the airport walking around talking to myself, I'm not on a phone call. Even though I have my AirPods on, it's because I've lost my mind. So I'm trying to get that calmness so I can push that out so I can get to come and find my center is letting it all out instead of resisting it. Just say, okay, one side says you have to go grocery shopping. Okay, what do I need to grocery shop for? And I'll just write it up even though it's not important for where I want to go that day. It just wants to talk about it. So oh, you have to buy your aunt Suzy this. Okay, go, I'll just write it all out or hey, you're not enough for whatever the thing is that day, whatever the wall of noise, all that it all out. So then I can get to it. One of the things that I found and I'm curious if you wrote into this as well is if I'm trying to talk about a, my mind wants to talk about everything, but hey, it wants to do everything else. So how do you run into that? So I called out my inner narrator and one of the things I'm aware of is that a lot of times something I want to think about one thing, but all the other things I call barking at me. And what I actually do in that situation is I actually talk to that bark and I say thank you for sharing. I don't really need you right now. I'll get back to you. Like just like you, I say it out loud and if that bark keeps coming, I keep saying it, but I also understand that that bark is trying to keep me safe, trying to do other things for me. So I don't want to be little the barker. And so I really embrace her and I call her Hannah. And I say, Hannah, I love that you name that. Oh my god, I love that you name that. Yes, I have named all of mine as well. I have to name them and the reason for me, I'm going to jump in and do it from there. I love it. And there's a dog named spot. And I say, can we are fluffy spots not coming to me? Because you know, it's your name. You've got a name on because that's why we name things for you. Okay, if the identity of them, then we can bring them closer and then we can call upon them and then they feel held. So I love that your name. Sorry, I just think so. Keep up. I'm so glad you understand because I actually named her a soft soft feminine name because the bark is so masculine and loud at me. Interesting. So I actually invited myself to say, oh, that's just your masculine energy driving something unnecessary. Let's meet that with her. And so Hannah is just trying to keep me safe. And I talk to her. I think the other thing that's really, really important in the noise and the head is to realize biologically, your brain is focusing on so many different thoughts that you can't get mad at it. I want to really bring grace and gratitude to my brain thinking, it's just trying to keep me in my based biology alive and thriving. It's looking for threats out in the universe. And it can't change that. So give her grace, give her love and realize that if you can be gentle to her, she will come back to you and you can find a new way to use your brain to engage softer more presently. I think one of them that helped me because I grew up in soft Florida. So we have different types of road rage in Florida. We have different type of drivers. I remember I was in Pittsburgh. Yeah, I was in Pittsburgh and someone cut me off because I grew up in Florida my whole life. And then I was in Pittsburgh because I may or may not have discovered girls in video games at the same time in college. So I may or may not have had to take a break. I'm just saying and I had pulled in the Pittsburgh and someone cut me off. And the Miami version of me was, I'm going to go home. I'm going to follow your house and they'll let your goal fishing fine. Like that's it. It's murder death kill now. And then this guy cut me off and he's like, I'm sorry. Anyway, I was like, oh, sorry, sorry. And my brain just kind of blew up. But in Miami, we have intense road rage. We're all armed. South Florida is very heavily armed. We're very aggressive. It's just that's the culture down there. And when I'm missing the Ramstein and other music, I'm like, yeah, so I had that moment. And I remember 10 years ago, I was having a moment where like, that's it. I'm going to this person's house and lighting their goal fishing fire. It's on. It's just everybody's going to die. And I remember asking a simple question was, does this get me closer to my goal? If I do this, we'll get me closer to my goal. And I was like, no, I think what am I doing? And I literally had to pull over because I hadn't had the balance yet. I hadn't figured out gratitude. I hadn't figured out meditation. I pulled over on the side of road and I just stopped. I was like, okay, what are you doing? What is your goal? Does this help you get there? And then that became a narrative for everything I do. So when you're talking to Helen, what are the questions that you asked that have been that filter to kind of stop to reset? Because for me, it was, does this help me get to my goal? No. Then I walk away from immediately. And that's happened in business. It's happened in relationships. It happened in everything I do. I'm like, does this get me closer to what I want? Nope. I stop eating immediately without even meditation. I think you might be a twin from another mother because the question I ask myself is, how is this serving me? Now, the interesting thing is, is it probably is serving me in some way? Absolutely. And the crazy thing is, is I can still choose like you do. That question is my pattern interrupt. So if I can actually ask myself, how is this serving me? It makes my brain have like a spotlight and to actually look at the behavior or let's actually take it back of the energy in my body that's becoming a thought, the thoughts becoming a word or a sense of rage and the rage could turn into an action. If I can pattern interrupt that more quickly by asking, how is that serving me? I can get better to my goal. Or for me, it's the word optimal. How am I getting optimized by this? Right. Got it. I love that that your filter is optimal. So for me for a long time, it was joyful. I'm like, is this joyful? And that served me for a really long time because I grew up and this isn't mine. This is NLP. This is I didn't invent. I am not source for anything. I'm synthesis at the best. I am not source. This idea of a primary question. Everything was, is this the right thing to do? That was my original primary question, which is catastrophic because there is no right. There is no wrong. There just is. So once I pivoted that, I went over to joyful. And I think, okay, but that's a different life now. If I'm trying to do the right thing versus the joyful thing, that served me for a while, but now my truth has changed and now it's pivoted over to something else. So things will constantly change. When you're going through and you're having these pattern interrupts, what are some of these pattern interrupts that you've given to clients? Well, that's a great question. So pattern interrupts actually start before they interrupt and they start with an acknowledgement that the person I'm with is doing the best they can with the skills they can access in the moment that they are in. Think about that for a minute. To thank you. I've tried to get there. I don't have the level of gratitude and grace at this point because most of the time, it is that is on the journey for me because most of the time, I'm just going to get it all the way because having the humility and the awareness is hard to me because sometimes I'm just like, why did you not book two seats on a plane? Which then I have to go back to myself and be like, okay, why didn't you upgrade the business class? This is on you. Take ownership of this. So that is where I am right now because but at first, I'm still in that vibration and I know what I'm working on elevating my vibration of my default is if you've been in line for 30 minutes at Starbucks and you walk up and then try to decide what you want, I should have the right to let you on fire. Oh my god, the other way. I know what I want. So I'm still working on that that understand that people show up to do in the best they can or the best they're that's what it is. That would be a bad one. The best they're willing to do because they're not the best they can because I think people have limitless potential but they're not willing to put in the effort because it's if I want to lose weight and I'm willing to lose weight. So for me, that's where my struggle is. Yeah. Well, there's a formula that I teach all my clients and it's the process, it's the new book I'm writing Charles and it's this idea, don't have a title for it yet. It's eight chapters in that there's a formula that says an event plus a response factor equals your outcome. In other words, events come and go. Outcomes take care of themselves but you only have authorship over what your response. And in every given moment we're in an event right now on this podcast, when I wake up it's an event, when I'm in Starbucks, when I'm in that business class C or the other C that I should have upgraded for, I get to have ownership agency authorship choice over one thing who I am and how I show up. All right. So, but, but, but how do you know because so many people don't know who they are? And this is an important thing where we're most of them built to your point earlier, we're just trying to survive that our brain is designed on three things. Can, you know, it can I eat it? Can I fornicate with it? And you're going to hurt me. That's the only thing I was your brain cares about. People haven't done the work to figure out because this is, we all know what to do. We have access to an iPhone. We all know how to make money. We all know how to save taxes. I mean, we literally have this conversation with a client yesterday. Like, how do I save taxes? I was like, Google call segregation. I'm like, it's, it's there. It isn't complicated. Like, yeah, but I don't know how to do it. I'm like, you could Google it. So it's a choice. So people don't know who they are, even though we have all the strategies. How do you walk your clients? I mean, you mentioned you're writing another book. How do you watch your clients to really figure out who we are? Because if you don't know who you are, you don't know how to show up properly. So, I think that's a good question. And it hurts my heart that deep down inside, we are so busy. We never take the time to find out who we are. So first, I want to say is I think that a lot of the world walks through the world's sleepwalking and not all ancient. Yes. So for the sleep walker and people, it's constantly all of us just an invitation to be present with that sleepwalking person. Because we sleepwalk too. Let's not deny it. Absolutely. All the time. I just go between sleepwalk to awake, sleepwalk awake. But to be present with somebody when you're awake in sleepwalking, long enough to allow them to maybe have a new thought or a new sense of awareness that there is more for them than sleepwalking while not judging a sleepwalking. That's the key. That's the key. Because an example of sleepwalking for those of you who are listening, when you get up in the morning, what order do you do? Do you go to the bathroom first or do you brush your teeth? And when you're brushing your teeth, do you always go to the same teeth? Because I always brush in the same pattern. That is routine. It's a pattern that is a sleepwalking. I'm mindlessly going through that. That is a micro example of what we're doing in most of our lives when we interact with people, especially here in the United States, you know, for the foreigners out there. When they come to the United States and we go, Hey, how are you? When the American asks you, Hey, how's your day going? We don't want to know. It is a formal. We don't want you to break down. It's like, Well, my dog just got right over and I won the lottery and I had a really great pizza. We don't care. It is just a process. So that is one of those sleepwalking moments where it doesn't, Hey, how are you? Watch how you're interacting with people. That's an example of sleepwalking because we do that in business and relationships and investing and scaling. We sleepwalk through the same patterns. Some of those patterns are they serve as well. I brush my teeth pretty well. I had I'm really good at this. My dentist will tell you, good job. But in business, I had to pivot because again, to your point, is it getting me the outcome? Is it serving me? Is this going to where I want to go? So when back to the question of how do they figure out who they are, get out of that sleepwalking? What is something concrete? What are questions they can ask to break that pattern? It's a great question. Years and years ago, I met a, I got trained in a methodology by Dr. William Glasser called Reality Therapy. And there was a set of four basic questions that you could ask yourself to get out of sleepwalking. And it went through this order is, what do I want? What am I doing? Is what I'm doing? Getting me what I want? And if not, what's my plan? And it made it really, really simple. Because if I actually want to get out of sleepwalking, I got to start getting clear about what I really want. What's optimal for me? What's my goal, as you said? Most of us are sleepwalking so often. We just even forget that we had agency over what we want. So the poor question to make it so simple for all of us is, what do I really want? And very few of us spend enough time thinking we have authorship of a want. It's interesting you say that, because I've hunted after what I want. What's going to make me happy? And I learned two parts of this. There was one question where there was a guy who asked Buddhist monk. He was like, I want to be happy. And how do I become happy? Because that's a question we ask. I just want to be happy. I'm on this journey. I do the yoga. I do this. I just want to be happy. And he goes, well, is there any happiness in what you're doing? And he's like, no, he's like, so if you want to be happy, it's very simple. Stop doing all the things that make you unhappy. The only thing that will be left will be what's happy. And then the other one that I learned, which was really powerful for me, was the conversation of the David. So there's this huge culture. It's in Florence. I think yet, Florence of David. And they asked my glandulof. I'm doing this right? How did you make the David? By the right artist? And he goes, I just took away all the parts that weren't David. When I carved in the marvel, I just took away the parts that were David. So those are those when people get stuck. Like, what is my goal? I don't know what my goal is. Cool. What is your goal? This is about that. What don't you want in life? Like, I don't want to be 500 pounds. I don't want to be broke up. I call. All right. So we're not going to do anything that feeds towards that. And then you slowly get going there because as much as I would love that hope and intelligence and awareness and vibrating on a high level would get you there. Sometimes you've got to let the light out of the cage and be chased by it because fear and pain will get moving. It won't sustain you. But it will get you moving. So if you're stuck and you don't know who you are, start with what stairs you crap at it because you will start moving. So going through billions. That fuel of fear will drive us. But you know what sustains us. And you and I've talked about this in the past is the power of a community. The power of an environment. And I really believe deeply that as we get deeper into technology and as you know, my three daughters and as I watch what's happening in society so much of our time is living in a comparison of artificial making. And there is a epidemic as we have seen through all the research of loneliness. And the antidote to change is get in a community. You are the sum of who you surround yourself with and build a decision in your choice of what you want to be with people who will hold you capable. Not accountable. MAPEBLE to that greatness you want to become. Even if you're not there yet. Right. And just be kind of round them. I love it. It's interesting. I'm up right now I'm traveling, which is why this wonderful background. And I'm up in Lexington right now. And I'm around people who are just they're brand new to me. They're gifts. They're amazing human beings. And we went to a football game which I don't like watching. Men in tights play with balls. It's not my thing. But I understand men like sports. So have fun. We go to a football game and we're in the clubhouse. And it's beautiful. It's there. There's food. It's have a great time. And there's kids running around. But the conversations I'm having in those environment, not from a place of them bragging or them showing off, leveled me up because the people I'm in there with. Oh my god. Okay. You're working on this and you're doing this and you're doing that. I'm like, okay. And this was a 14 hour drive. I just got the cars and I hear you. I go, hang out and do this. And I've been up in for a couple weeks. It's amazing that we are all one plane ticket away. One six hour drive away from a completely different life. And people don't do that. So when you have to build community, because you do this really well, you talk about community, you talk about building connection better than almost anyone. I know how do you build that community if you've never done it? Because you've only known your house, your home, your street, your neighborhood. I mean, you get away from it. How do you face that? First, you have to understand your brain does not like change. So the very first thing that I'm going to understand is like, remember those file cabinets back in the old days, you pull them out the metal file cabinet and you look in and there be all these folders in them. That's what our brain is like. And those folders in our brain are all the things we know we know where we're comfortable. And when a new person or a new idea comes into our brain, it looks for a file to slot it in. And if it can find it, it's like, oh, yay. No change necessary. Yet when a new person or a new idea, like you just said at the clubhouse, enters your brain most of us, most of our brains send middle finger energy to that new idea and say, reject. Get out. I don't have a home for you in my brain. To build new community, to build new courage inside of yourself, to start the neuroplasticity of your brain and to really want to know what you don't know, you don't know or explore people you're uncertain about, but you know might have contribution to you. You have to invite it into your brain and to help your brain find a new folder. And that's not natural. And so I'll ask you, I'll ask you, Charles, when have you encountered a new person or a new idea that you were like in a little bit of resistance energetically too? And you said, no, I'm curious long enough. Okay, so tell me how do you do it? Because I bet you do it the right, the scientific way. How do you do it? So for me, it's again, it's very technical. You know, I've learned very early on that human brains, I don't have a negative connotation toward things that are selfish. I just don't. All human beings are driven by hate. This is my goal. This is what I want to do. This is how I'm trying to get there. When people, you know, a friend of mine, he's an officer and I said, you know, what are you going to do if you're ever, you know, you're putting your life on the line every single day? I go, are you worried about that? You're about dying. He goes, I will be so proud to die for to service. And I was like, that is driven by not if, because it was like, oh, that's service to others. That's not service to others. That's service to himself. Again, there's seven human needs that we talk about. And when I talk to him, about I was like, wait, wait, time out. You want, you're willing to sacrifice your life for someone else because you want to be seen as the person who wants to sacrifice his life for someone else. And I was like, holy moly, it's like in combat. People are like, I'm willing to die for my friends in combat. My brother, so I've been around that people who are operators because they want to, like, though, I want to be a good brother to them. It always comes from a self-serving need, but there's this negative connotation towards it. This idea, like, okay, I want to be there for my wife. It started with an eye. It's like, okay, because you can't, it's a people, the monks who are like, I'm proud to be humble. I'm like, wait, what? That's not how this works. So if you're going to, I want to reach this level of awareness or this high vibration where I'm not driven by ego. It started with I, dude. So you're starting with this idea that all human beings are driving towards however they want to see the world of birth received in the world, understanding that so if I meet someone, I start with what is what is this connection on its surface? Is this dangerous? So that's always where I start with first. Is it a real danger or a perceived danger? And so that's step one because I grew up in a very violent environment. Am I right? Is this person dangerous? The second thing I go into is sitting down and saying, does this person fire off what I call it keeps? Now, there's do I have a gut feeling that just does not resonate with me? And if it does, I always honor it anytime. I've ever violated this. It always comes back and bit me as always. And then do I sit there and say, okay, if this person is not a threat and this person doesn't give me any aches, do I have the bandwidth to sit down and just truly be as you said in the beginning? So up with both minds and be present and just be open to whatever comes with it. And sometimes right, someone will talk to me about how wonderful Indian food is. I hate Indian food. I don't like spicy things, but now ice cream is too spicy for me. I just can't do it. I'm like, great. I'm glad that works for you at the football game. So when I was sitting down and telling me how the defense was, I couldn't care at all. But I wanted to connect with him as a human human. So I listened to how the balls are different. I was like, okay, awesome. So I think it's for me it starts with those. I'm curious what your scientific method is because you've written book and you've talked about this and you've had some trials and tribulations and you've got three little girls who aren't that you've gotten through and you've raised them. What have you taught them? Well, one of the first things I hope that I've taught them that is we only learn and grow through fumbling forward, failing forward. So one of the things I have teach my children and my clients is we have to start embracing falling forward. And so if there's one thing I know, it's that I have never learned anything through my success. And success is bleeding. Who just said, oh, stop these shuffler, I'm a golfer, said it the other day that he's one and one and one and after he wins, the biggest tournament, the next day it's just back to the grind. It's back to doing the basics. So how have I taught this over and over? What's the actual scientific success? It's discipline and practice realizing there is no destination. It's just a journey. It's about showing up with a commitment in every single conversation, making sure you're awake. And when you're asleep walking, moving to awake, to realize that the person I'm in front of has a legitimate, lived experience, perspective, set of moods, biases, mental models that informs them and how to see the world. And when I am with anyone, I have to know that I get to travel to their place to understand their truth and their reality because it's not wrong. It's just what they see. And if I'm willing in any situation and business at home in my community to be with someone, hear this, with them, like genuinely with them and where they are, I will find something new. I'll find something that can grow me even, if I don't agree with them. That's the key. So that I've known that as holding space. This is the greatest gift you can give for someone as you hold space, but it's hard to do. You've done this on a very high level. You've taught people out of hold space and business to create success because a lot of people who listen to this are okay, this is greatness, this is all fluffy, and this isn't fluffy. This is the core of what you need to do in order to show up. So I'd love for you to talk about how you teach your clients to hold space, what are some of the success, and some of the challenges that you've been through where all of this has been born from. Holding space with a client with anyone, it starting to long before I walk into a room, long before you walk into a room, we live life coming in hot way too often. If I really want to hold space and be with someone and maximize my brain's ability to think reason and to find a third way, my job is to make sure I'm optimized. Here's how we do it. The very first thing we do is we make sure we have done some breath work. We make sure our jaws loose, our shoulders are loose, and we make sure we have a context that says, when I walk in that room, my ambition, I love the word ambition, and ambition is not about achievement, it's about an energy of how I will show up. My ambition is to be so present that a new idea arrives that none of us expected to arrive. A new experience or a new flow or a new business opportunity arrives because in the room, we have not come with preconceived solutions. I haven't come with a talk track to how I'm going to show up. The only track I'm bringing is an ambition to be in wonder. Now, what's the skill? It is just that, Charles, you know that. You know, and I know that if I walk in with a agenda to move someone, to manipulate someone, I won't be able to be in curiosity. I'll be playing chess. Instead, our goal as great leaders in helping other people become great leaders is to do in cure curiosity and wonder, what don't I know I don't know? And to let their brains explore in a safe place where my face is present and not as sumped as in every given moment. And I know you do that because this is what you do on your podcast. So how do you act? I mean, you're brilliant. The way you get people to share things that they would not normally share, how do you, how do you do it? You must have a routine long before you start. So I just send them lots of money in advance. You already know this. I've already given you a hundred million dollars. That's the true. Yeah. That's a simple easy. That's the story. And a four of those have showed up some mausole-topic. Congratulations. So for me, I just am constantly asking what what I'm curious about. So as far as it goes back to your conversation, I'm curious. Like when you were telling me this, I'm like, okay, this is great. I don't need to be some business. So this is going to be some facts on the end of business. I was like, okay, so I won't ask Jennifer. Okay, we're getting it. We're aware. We're present. That's cute. That's nice. How does that monetize? How do I need my team to set up? How do I show up in a desire to where I'm trying to go? So if I'm in business and I'm trying to build this community, which will make you just completely unstoppable, if you can master community now, as things are falling apart inside your org and you can create it so people will bleed for you. And I have very specific ways that my team is willing to bleed for me. How are you? It's the simple answer is you must be willing to bleed for them. They must see you bleed first. That's how you get your team to bleed for you. It's simple and easy. And there's conversations we have about leadership and where to lead and how to do that, which we can get into if we want. But for you, when you're working with your clients, what is the normal goal that they want more than anything else? What is and what's in their way from getting that? The normal goal is always optimization. I can't tell you all of my clients are looking to optimize whatever their product is and they're looking to optimize their human suits, specifically how their brain thinks about the product opportunity or the solution sale they're looking to create. And what is in their way is them. Yes. What in their way is ego, fear, a defense doing it the way we've always done it. It is always myself. I am my worst enemy. And I'm sure you've found the same thing Charles. So there's one thing we have to do constantly in our human suit is start asking, keep asking ourselves, how is this serving me? And what am I unwilling to get curious about that could actually be the thing that could change us all? How it could repackage? How it could reiterate something? And we get way too stuck in the mud. I'm sure you know that because okay, I got to give you an example. When I wrote my book, there were sentences I was addicted to. I loved. I didn't want to give up. And I was challenged by our editor. And she asked me this. And it was a slap. Do you want to look smart or do you want to make an impact? And it is a hugely different conversation. I talked about it all the time. Do you want impact or do you want income? They are not the same. They are not the same. And people turned like, oh, I want to do this wrong with you that. And I did podcast with an individual. And I said, what's your filter? Because he's he's he's a billionaire. His kids are billionaires. He I go, what is the one filter you give before you start a business? He goes, does it serve and help a billion people? And I was like, I was like, okay, hold on, time out. He goes, that's the rule. If you're creating something that does not serve and help a billion people, he goes, don't worry about the income. Can you impact a billion people? If not, don't do the business. And all of a sudden, all of my business failures were and went away. So to your point of, you know, what your editor said, do you want to be intelligent? Let's see him intelligent. What do you want? You already want impact. So yeah, it's a huge one. The defining questions. And I think the other thing I have to always work with my client is, is the quality of our questions. We're not asking only ourselves, but we're asking our teams. And how much of a disruptor are we willing to be of our assumptions? Right. And that's you do. It's ego. And we're comfortable. Go back to my brain file cabinet. Am I willing to actually bring in a brand new file that I've never had before? Or am I going to keep circulating on what I know? I know. I know. Charles, you and I know this. We are in the next evolution, revolution, the next iteration of society where information will be coming so fast at us that the one thing we as leaders, and I believe this with all my heart, the one thing we as great leaders have to do is upscale our ability to ask great questions about the information coming in. That's what I do. Yeah, I think it's interesting. People, people said this recently said, information is like salt. And I was like, wait, what? Do like salt in ancient time was the most valuable resource on the planet. Now you need to containers of it in the dollar store. Salt is like information is not like salt. Information used to be coveted and we used to fight for it and protect it and all that. And I've got enough AI out there that'll tell me everything and tell me how to build a nuclear bomb if I want to. Information is free. Implementation and connection to information. Totally different conversation. And what I loved about what you do is the idea that it's the same because you and I both like sayings, if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. You have all the information just like everyone else does. We all have the processes like every else is we have the systems like everyone else does. Do you have the community to execute on it? And most people don't. So when your clients come to you and say, I get it, my ego's in the way, I am the only problem that I'm ever going to have and I am the only solution that I'm ever going to have. We know that. So how do you then take the next step to say, okay, I have to rebuild the connection because we've got it internally. We've done that. How do we build connection and community externally now? What are the tactics that we can do to do that? Yeah. I always encourage my clients to build a community with people who are geniuses brilliant in their own lanes because a lot of leaders, we have to admit, they need to be the top dog in the organization. Big mistake. In fact, my favorite leader is a man named Mark right now. I won't give you his last name and Mark is a certified genius. And you know what he is fearless around is bringing in other geniuses. His whole goal is to say, if I in my community can surround myself with other people who in their lane bring an unparalleled optimization and skill set that I don't have, so much better can we be. Mostly, there's don't want to do that. They say they do. But there's a fear in it, isn't there, Charles? Have you ever noticed that there's a fear of some people have in surrounding themselves with others who may be brilliant in their own way? So what I've learned is the people who are radically successful, the high end Urala, they're driven by a certain amount of pain and fear. So one of the gentlemen that I'm standing up with here, he had tragedy early in his life and he lost something and he's constantly trying to prove to that individual I'm enough, I'm good enough, whatever it is. Another of my clients, very high unspectrum, he's very much unspectrum as far as ADD or altism and all that. He uses his pain to the point of just going, going, going, going, going. And we talked about this early on, pain will get you moving. It's just going to burn you out. That fire will burn you ultimately. So when we talk about getting in the rooms with those people of more impact, of more connections, how do you teach your clients how to do that? How do they get into the rooms? Because we all talk about it, raise your network. If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room, how do you push yourself? How do you get yourself in that environment where you are around people who are smarter, better, more dynamic? I have found it so much easier than most people think. It's called, it's called, identify who you'd like to be in the room with. And the chances are, if you're a person of character, you're going to be wanting to be in a room with a person of character. And it's as simple as this. If you pick up the phone and say, Charles, my name is Jennifer, and I've been watching you from afar, and I'd love a chance to learn from you. Sit at your feet and absorb you for an hour. Would you be generous enough to give that to me? The answer is nine out of 10 times. Yes. Now, we make it much harder. And I know that if I just pick up the phone and somebody calls me and they ask that, I want to pay it forward. To that next generation. So let me ask you this. What's the most courageous phone call you've ever made and then mentored at? Where have you said done this and built a community? Like, said, I want to meet this person and grow with this from this person. So it wasn't a phone call. It was at an event. So I was speaking at an event. And I will leave the person anonymous. And I don't fan girl over a lot of people. There's only two people I've ever fan girled over. One of them is in the Al Yalama and the other one is New to Grass Tyson. Those are the two people I fan girl over. But I've met presidents, I've met generals, I've really high-em people on the phone, whatever. I was more excited to meet the president's wife than I was to meet him because I knew she was like years more intelligent than he is. He knows so he's listening to this. Yes, you can call it but yell me again for talking about that. It's okay. I don't mind. We'll talk about it again. For me, there was an individual at this event. And I admired his ability to command this stage, which is something that it's just human behavior. And I love it. When we talk about community, we talk about connection. The ability to move a stage is it's. Yeah. So I walked over to him because I had just gotten off stage and I knew he was there. And I walked over to him. I said, excuse me. I go, do you have a second? It's like sure. I go, you're one of the better speakers I've ever seen in my life. I would love some feedback. What did I do right? What did I do wrong? If you have a minute, I'd love to sit down. I don't drink coffee but can we grab a coffee? And he's like, dude, you crushed it. I was going to ask you question that I was like, and then we thought we should have a friendship to this day. But he sat down and it was having the humility to go to him and say, you're amazing. I just, I'd love to get some stuff. If you have a moment, I'll buy you a cup of steel five minutes. And I found blocking that in. It's important. To hate you have five minutes. You have 10 minutes. And then I normally do it in weird numbers. I'm like, you have seven and a half minutes and they're like, wait, what? Yeah. So you do it as well. They're like, wait, why? I do seven and a half minutes. Oh, I'm like, seven and a half minutes. Because the brain then tears a difference. They're not exactly. It's an energy snack. They're like, wait, what? Yeah. So that's that stuff that I've done. It's kind of the pivot that around. Okay. Do you have seven and a half minutes? So that was one of the times for me that's that it's worked is just walking up with the plate from a place of humility and saying, dude, really impressive. And then the other thing I would tell people is, whoever you're so I have a client right now who's about to literally go meet Oprah with for and she's breaking out. I think, oh my god, it's Oprah. What do I do? I was like, go research what she's talked about for the last two and a half weeks. Bring value to that discussion. So yes, I saw you did this and this. You're not like, oh my god, you're wonderful. You're amazing. Sure, her brain turns off to that. She's an auto pilot. She's in sleepwalking mode. Oh my god. Can you help me sleepwalking mode? She just intrigues it because she knows to your point. They know where to put the file and the filing cabinet. Stowing up a little bit different. And the other thing I will say on this because I want so many more questions for you is, what are my clients wanted to meet another one of my clients who's a big man and he's never met a billionaire before. And I there was no way I could teach him what he learned at the end. So he spent day and a half two days with him and we drove around and we ate. We saw the cars and we saw the all the the thing. And we were driving away after day one. And he goes, he's just a good dude. I was like, yeah, he's no different than me. I'm a no. And he's like, all your billionaires like this. I was like, all of my clients, I won't interact with people who want like this. However, they're all just the same dude because we think, oh my god, it's it's it's potent. So it's present in the United States. Oh my god, he's a different human being or it's a billion. It's a different human being or he's one of Saiyong award or one the F1 race around. They're two different human beings trust me as someone who's been around these individuals. They are, I'll put it this way, you've written a book, right? Yes, I've written a book. Yes. For me, it was the most insecure moment of my life, right? Because I put everything in because I'm like, someone's gonna judge me so literally don't hire me for 25,000. Yes, let's go buy a book. I gave more value in the book than you get for me to buy the book. So we're all radically insecure. So when you wrote your book, what was the name of your book? Bridge the gap. All about collaborating in tough times. How do we collaborate with the brain in front of us? So how, so let's walk through that because I want to get technical because you and I, when we talk, we go on so many different directions. I want to get locked in. How do we bridge that gap? Like, tactically, I'm sitting across from someone who has sleep-different political beliefs to me or vastly different ideas about the deal we're trying to cut or vastly different ideas of how they want to run the division where I'm underneath with earnings my command. So how do you do that? How do you reconnect with them and bridge that gap? One word, psychological flexibility. We hear a lot about psychological safety in the world. It's critical and there is a secret weapon and that secret weapon is to walk in with a psychological flexibility. A willingness to be so present with the person you're in front of and ask questions like, tell me about share with me what about and to be so engaged and so in wonder that when you're with that person, you can see why their truth is their truth, not from judgment, but from a real curiosity that you will find a third way. Charles, there is such a odd thing in our human suit and our human suit is constantly looking for confirmation bias. We pretend we're curious, psychologically flexible, but we are not. We are looking to confirm what we know, we know to make sure we really know it. We're looking to confirm our ego and our insecurity. So well said. No growth happens there. And so the bridge gaps with people in my family who share different political beliefs. I have to ask myself this, what is my outcome? What is my goal? What do I want? Do I want to confirm my bias or do I want to be present? How do I want to contribute to that other person's life? And if I can be clear on that and bring a psychological flexibility, I can change the dynamic and bridge the gap. Now I want to say one thing. If it's a canyon, I have the ickeys you called them. I don't want to bridge that gap. I'm going to keep myself safe. There's a big difference between a gap and a canyon. I think we talked about this before about being a zombie. The times where I want to be my brain wants to go back in the sleepwalking mode because it's got other things that I want to worry about. So if someone brings a political belief or religious belief or something, I immediately, because I'm a minor in theology. If someone brings up something religion, I want to go into, okay, I know this conversation, I've said this conversation, I'm going to pull that folder out of that file, that file out of that folder, and I'm just going to start regurgitating. And like, here we go. I think to your point, what you're telling the audience is, don't do that. Ask them very open questions. And what were those three? You mentioned three open them to questions. So there's three questions that really open up the brain. And then there's some other techniques. Let me teach them to you. The first question is, tell me about it. If I ask you, tell me about your brain is hearing, oh, there's not a judgment in the way you're asking me to explore the conversation. So all of a time you use to tell me about four times. Someone will say, I'll say, so tell me about your choice to vote for X. And if I let them talk, talk, talk. And the next question I ask is, tell me about whatever their big energy was. And I let them start emptying their metaphorical human cut. And I don't jump back to position against or with them. I just let their brains rain, let their brains rain. At the end, I can get to a different outcome than if I had tried to wrestle with them with my own thoughts. Or as you say, my own knowledge and my own file in my head. So the biggest secret to bridging me gap is to not wrestle in the beginning with somebody. Let them fully express themselves. Charles, we live in a world where we ping pong back and forth. We don't let people fully wrestle with their thoughts. And when people fully wrestle with their thoughts often, they realize they don't have a full thought. They have an opinion or they're have a bias. Have you found that? Yeah. So that's the tactical mirror that I use all the time. So you asked me to be able to put it up. Hey, you believe in ABC. Awesome. Walk me through that. And then it's okay. So what you're saying is this. And then it's not what I'm saying. I'm like, okay, seems like there's a great author's name is Chris Foss. Don't ever have to stay with him in his son. They will eat it. His son is huge. Man, it's got really great, great. But he always talks about sounds like seems like feels like you wrote a book called Never Fleece the Difference. Chris Foss, great book. Sounds like seems like feels like. So we'll sit there and when I'm talking to someone, so I would start with your example. Tell me about why you voted for blah blah blah. Okay. It seems like what you're saying is that. And they will immediately come back. No, I'm not saying that. I'm like, okay, just seem like that. Walk me through that. Where did I miss? You'll find sooner or later, they can't regurgitate MSNBC, CNN, Fox, whatever it is. At some point that regurgitation, they'll run out of fuel and they're just being redundant. And now we've gotten to the point where they need to think so I can negotiation. I always tell people don't start negotiation first because they're not going to hear anything because they have their negotiation that they've built in their head. They have to get to their points and they're trying to remember at the whole time. Let them dump first, which I think is what you're trying to say. Am I correct? Oh, completely. Let's have a one-way conversation. So when I'm in business or when I'm with a difficult family member, the last thing I want to do is to trigger their brain by actually slapping it with an aggressive question that maybe just really genuinely curious for me, but not to them. And then you know what the last question I want to ask is the question like why? So, Charles, you and I are in a conversation about business and I said in your struggling, you're an employee that's struggling and I say, why does your pipeline look so lean right now? Why did you build the deck like that? What do you actually feel inside your body when I say that? Resistance. I want to engage. Yeah. It's kind of like when you tell your partner, what do you want for food? Where do you want to eat today? Yeah. That's not a big pro now person, but this is when I get into pronouns where I sit there and say, you know, what do you want to eat? Say, what do you like last a week? What we would love to have today? What do we feel? We versus I? We versus you because now it's a competition. It's now you versus me. Correct. There's no collaboration and that why were triggers me to build a life for death by the way. Oh my god. Yeah, because now it's my identity. Now if it's time to who I am, it's a human being. 100%. So we never want to lead with a why question. We want to lead with questions open up the brain to say, hey, I'm with you. I'll listen. I'm looking for the third way. There's lots of boys that enter new thoughts exit. I really think we need to be careful about the energy and the tone and the language choices because words they build worlds. I love that you spoke about energy and tone that people don't get that. Can you walk the audience through because I've taught this forever? Can you walk people through energy tone and cadence when you talk to someone? Yes. My favorite example is these three words. It is raining. It is raining as a simple sentence, but depending on how I deliver that, I will be sharing my poker hand. It is raining. It is raining. It is raining. And as you and I know, people are not looking for words. They're looking for the energy behind the words and what it tells you about them. And so energy completely changes who you are experienced to ask. And I know you've seen that as well because you are very attentive in when you're working with clients and teaching them negotiation and how to show up optimally. How do you help people understand tone? I do something called the dude exercise because of guys. Yes. So as guys, we use the term dude, especially if you're Gen X, best generation ever. I'm just saying it right right now. The greatest generation is a great generation. But after that, I kind of like that gen X. So I will say no bias there. No bias there. No, but we use dude. So when I'm talking to a buddy of mine and every guy will get this, I'm like, dude, now I'm upset with him. Dude, I'm surprised. Yes. So we play the dude game like humbly different. And I'm like, listen, just how many different ways and I will sit with a client. What does it get goofy? Because the minute you start using dude, it dude. Yeah, the watches come off. The ties come off. We're like, dude, dude, because I swear to god, if your side of the species wasn't on the planet, we would just revert to dude. That's all we would be. You would be dude. We're just like, dude, dude, duh. So we play the dude game. So that's great. That's a big part. We play the tonality with that. The second thing I teach is mirroring. And we've all heard about mirroring. So you mirror body language, mirror tonality, mirror breath. And this is hard. And the next evolution of that is mirror heart rate. So it takes a lot of energy to get to that. But you will be able to mirror if you mirror someone's verb that vertage, their physiology, you then mirror their breath, your heart rate will change and match that. We know this from couples. When couples are in love, their heart rates just like they're walking will sink. So you have the ability to do that. You change people how to do that when they're across the table from somewhere to mirror the heart rate. All the walls go down. All of them. So you have to be able to again, to your point bridge that gap. And these are some of the higher techniques that if you don't know these things, you're going to come in with a strategy that you learned on chat GPT and because you talk to Jennifer and you don't know how to bridge this gap. You don't know how to build this connection to another human being. And I think to your point, it worked out really well. I'm just going to ask, I'm not going to push my opinion because my opinion is never going to check. It just says what it is. My ego is being that unless I come in to humility to say, okay, I'm open to what I don't know because we don't value what we know. As much as we don't value what we don't know. So showing up in the end, okay, walk me through that. My, my, my aunt is a great example of this. I live in South Florida. As we mentioned, I've had, I've had guns since I was way too early and I can't admit it won't have recorded life. Okay. So I've had guns for a very long time. And my aunt was like, you shouldn't have guns. She's very anti-gun. And I love her. She's great. And I get it. I understand that. And in the last two years, there has been a massive rise of violence towards my community. And it got really, really ugly. You know, there's people walking around with swatzes on their shirts and they're flying flags, not see flags around. And she turns around and she goes, see, you take me shooting. And I do take that opportunity to say, okay, no, I'm going to get in your face. You're horrible. I told you to do this. You should buy this. You should buy that. That's that. That's that. That's when everyone. Sure. Steve was open to sit there and I didn't hate that opportunity to say, you're wrong. Sit down. Whenever you want. And we'll sit down and go, how about we start instead of you shooting since you never held one. Let's just sit down. I'll take it apart. It's basically a paperweight at this point. Let's have you just hold it and see how you feel. So in negotiation and in business, have you found what you need to bridge that gap? What works the best for you when it's a huge organization? Because you've worked with very high performance CEOs. How do you bridge that gap for their entire teams downrange? Before we go there, can I can I ask you a really important question? Sure. Because I don't want to lose. No, my guess is over. Click. Okay. Okay. So I am flirting with the new way of engaging with people. I'd love your perspective on it. So I completely agree about the matching heart rate and the matching vibration. And I've noticed that if I change my vibration in the moment of tension, I can sometimes flip the entire room. So let me give you an example. There's a ton of, it's a tense conversation. And instead of meeting the tension with the tension, one of the techniques I'm really engaging with and practicing is getting really soft and gentle or inverse if it's too soft and gentle, raising the vibration to flip the script on how the brain is connecting to the information. Have you have a lot of experience in that? Did you talk a little bit about that? It's an interesting way to change the vibration in the room to have the brain think differently. Right. So I think what you're talking about is pattern breaks. And I ruined this one now because I've talked about this before in another podcast. And I've actually had people come up during a negotiation and they've used it against me now. Like you relive them by podcast. So I want to send me that podcast. Yeah. Obviously, what did it? So they did study. And again, again, I'm not I'm not source. I'm synthesis. They had took a lady and they gave her a board and they gave her a container of liquid. And they said, hey, do you mind if I ask you a question? And they said, sure, it's okay. Well, can you hold this for me? And why she asks the questions? And they hand the drink. So coffee or whatever it is. And then they walk away to whoever she asked questions to. And another person goes, hey, we just hired Susie. I would love you to get feedback on what you think of her. Some of the people said that she was warm and inviting other people to choose hold in distance. St. tonality, same question, same attire. What was different? The drink. It was either hot tea or cold drink. So then we're holding it. It influenced their perception. So when I'm in this tough negotiation, I will do a pattern break, which I can't do anymore since I've already made a public. So this is the byproduct of doing a podcast. I will sit down when you're just, we're just buddy pets with teams or potential clients or negotiating with hotels or buildings. We've reached the point where I can tell we're done. Everybody sponges full. We're just getting into ego. We're not working anymore. I will sit there and go hungry. I'll make anybody like foe. I'm like, anybody know what foe is? And I will normally pronounce it wrong. I'll be like, anybody with foo is. And then I'm like, wait, what? I'm like, yeah, foo foe. They're like foe. I was again, that's soup. I'm like, I'm sorry, I just can't think. They're like, no, it's foe. I'm like, okay, I was like, there's just place. Lexus, can we just sell this for a little minute? We've been here. I haven't eaten all day. You guys mind? It's on me. I'll buy it. I will then go. And we will proverbial break bread with each other, but we'll eat soup. That deal closes every single time at that foe restaurant, every single time, because I patterned break it. So being able to do pattern breaks on a high level, sometimes they can just be silly. But if you want to make it so it doesn't logically, it won't logically make sense toward the Harvards and the Gales. And sorry, guys, I've had to deal with you guys. It won't make sense to them. It has to be, so one of my clients, his pattern break, when he was stuck into it, I'll give you two examples. One of my guys, massive PTSD, it's got TBI, traumatic brain injury, Ben and Cobb at was a marine, gone through some stuff, and some really intense level. And he was very mad at me when we were working on what we were working on. That's okay. You can punch me as hard as you want in the face on one condition. It's like, what's that? I'm like, you don't get to smile. He's like, oh, don't worry, I won't smile. It's a perfect. I said, ready? I'll ball up your head. He ball up his head, and I got close enough so he could strike me. I said, cool. Take your finger, your other finger, shove it up your nose. And he's like, what? And he jams it up and he's like, what the hell? And then he said, you're laughing. You're like, it's a punch. He's like, so was this pattern break? Another one of my clients, whenever he got stuck, he's very powerful individual. I will not give you his name because he will be very upset that I told people this, but do you know what? One is called when you pants someone, when you grab the side of pants and you do, okay. So pants him someone, we do it. We do it. We do things guys. Girls don't do this. Guys will pants each other as a joke. We're like teenagers. We'll just grab the side of the pants. And I couldn't get him to snap because he was just in it. He was just, he was low vibration. His ego was involved. He was scared, feared. I got the side of his pants and pants them. And that broke his pattern. So, okay, normally, I have your box, you still, and I'm not taking everything down, just the shorts. And that broke his pattern. So to your point, yes, you've got to break patterns. And it could be as easy as moving a cup out of the way, but I'm curious, how do you bridge that gap? How do you get across that one? How do I break that? I do this. I am oftentimes doing exactly what you do. You're using humor. You're using food. What we're really doing is we're bringing it back to a shared humanity. It's not really me versus you. It's finding a new we. And so just like you, I think, I love your ideas. I'm going to try some of them. I do pattern interrupts. I call them pattern not shift pattern interrupts. And it's about bringing something an unexpected moment of levity, humanity, or a new thought that reminds us of actually, this is just business. This is just a game for identity out here. We're more than that game. And so when you can bring that, it helps the brain stop being hyper focused on one thing and sees the bigger picture. I like to think about it like this, is I remind people that we're actually at the buffet table. We're not just in the lettuce. There's a lot of other options to make this salad beautiful. It's not hyper focused on one thing. And I do that that way. One other thing I'd love to do is I love to ask people a question in the middle of the pressure that you talked about is tell me what would matter most to you in this deal. And a lot of times if I can do that, it's not about the deal. It's about the impact of the family. Oh, you've never about the deal. It's not about the impact or the legacy or the whatever it is. Get people to read but remember what they're actually fighting for. That one of the strategies I use to a pattern interrupt that I I will send the alarm on my phone on purpose. And you see your notes during the meeting. I will have your alarm go off like that's unacceptable. And I will toss my phone on the other side of the room. That's not important. I want to be here. And all of a sudden someone sees they're like, oh my god, they put me in front of their phone. Oh my god, they will it'll just pattern interrupt them so hard. And I, okay, I need to be fully focused. This guy threw away his phone because for them, not having their phone next to them is this huge thing. So they just see perception as reality. Wow, he's willing to put his phone on the other side of the room to have this meeting. So when I walk into meetings as well, if I know it's going to be tense in advance, I will walk in. And my hey guys, how you doing? And I'll look at my phone, turn it off, drop it in my bag, and I'll walk away. Hey, you just need something Charles, I can't tell you how important it is. And I ask the audience this. Do you know that when I actually ask people when the last time, they remember being fully experienced and listened to they can't tell you? Because it's this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, hunt. So for the audience, I'm looking at my phone and you think I am not present this individual item, this object called a phone is grabbing more of my attention. And the human, we are crying out as a human species to be seen, understood and valued. You know, our emotional needs are aching. And so if there's one thing we can all do to bridge the gap in business, in our families, and in just the average experience I have driving through my Starbucks line, give someone your presence. That is what they want. They don't want your words. They only want your energy. What a gift that is in business. That has how you can be a remarkable business leader. A thousand percent. So the people that I, and again, I talk about people I fanboy over one of my people who's no longer with us. He passed my uncle Barry was the best at being present that I've ever seen my entire life. And I spent a finite amount of time with him in my entire life. I didn't, I only got to meet him about a year before he passed away. So I spent a very limited amount of time in that, but his impact in my life because the maybe a process whole year, maybe two hours, maybe of total time, maybe two, no, we went to a red socks game. So maybe five hours that we spent around each other. He was completely there whenever I spoke. And it is a powerhouse move to do. You just sit there and you stop. And there's physiology. You could do it lean in, but you sit there and he would mirror my nodding. He'd mirror my breathing. And he just did this naturally because he generally loved human beings. I don't have that blessing, but he generally loves human beings. So if you're in a business environment, when you don't have this one to one, when you can't do the fun game and you can't do the phone game, how do you teach your clients to connect on that high level? So connection, I'm going to go back to the very, very beginning. Does not happen with if I want to, I'm a big leader and I'm coming into a big room and I want to connect and I want to create an experience where we all leave with many voices and come out with a great solution. Let's just set that up. That's what typically what we're looking to do. It's not about me in the room. It's about who I am before I get into the room. I cannot stress this enough. You know, the most important thing there is floor connection for breakthroughs is being present in your body and being your uncle. Is this name again? Barry. Barry would have been great in those rooms because what he would have walked in with is a sense of like it's almost like an aura that you walk in the room. You walk in the room and people know you are here. You are not here. Right. You are here. And if you want to be here, it is that simple and that art. I remember there is a president of states, Bill Clinton walked into the room and the person I was painting out with at the time was not a fan. I'll say that as much as possible. She was desperately not a fan of the individual and Bill Clinton is not an attractive man. Before we went into the event, at least for she did not feel he was attractive. Some of the people might think he's attractive. I don't know. He's got extra plumbing. He doesn't do anything for me. Sorry. So we go in and he's like, I can't believe I'm doing this stupid. I don't want to be here. She was really upset. 30 seconds into the room. He just saw him walk on a stage and she goes, okay, now I kind of want to hook up with him. What's that? What just happened? He had this aura about him. I've been looking over her and I was like, how? So how does someone build that level of aura, that level of intensity? Because some people just had it. They repel or they draw you in. I'm still even expert at that because I think about that all the time. And it comes back to when I walk in a room, who am I going to be? Not what am I going to do? Big difference. We've been taught in the world to do once I do something, what I'll have and I'll be happy. And I like to flip that. And think to myself, no, actually, it all starts with who am I going to be? Am I going to be generous in a room? Am I going to be wanting to be seen in a room? I mean, like, and what you, what you focus on is what you will see and what you will create. And so if I actually am clear, and I'm telling my client that they're going to go and pitch to one of my clients just pitched it in Dries and Horowitz and they got a great raise. And the question I was is it's not what you're doing. It's who you're being. They are buying the energy of connection to who you be. No, you are who you be like the being deep inside of me that impels them to say, I trust you. I can smell your commitment. I have a question. You find it's easier to do that now or it's hard to do that than this time and age. Never thought about that. So let me think about that. What do you think? Where's the question come? Where what are you what are you thinking about? I personally feel it's never been easier to create connections with other human beings than it's been now. Because to your point, this stupid thing, this stupid device, size the phone, because you're so connected, we're so desperate for that drink of water in the desert. We're so desperate for connection that if I just show up, I just want to connect with the person. And again, I don't know a whole lot about football. I never really have. It's just not my thing. Again, many types of playing with balls is not my thing. So I walked in and I got invited and then I was like, Hey, I don't think about football. I'm like, why does this do this? And then I was so happy just to talk about, he was like, okay, well, this is this and this. And I'm like, yeah, but why this? And we just, he was so desperate to have that conversation. And it was authentic questions like I wanted to know, it was like, why does this happen this way or why do they do this? And why don't they do this player? He loved it. And we talked about it. And also now I'm his buddy. And I'm talking to the guy because I'll listen to this. I love talking about what he shared with me. I was really cool. I did not know that this is how twitch is playing out. I did like, for example, at the game, there were three people giving out plays to the team. I was like, why are there three people giving up and then they had different shirts on and they had flags behind them. And they looked like the people who land planes if you had given them crack. And they're on speed because there's a lot of what the heck is going on. They're like, oh, it's a decoy strategy. I was like, wait, what? There's like the other teams trying to read their plays. So they're using it. And then they tell people each time different color shirts and different, that's what they're giving away from the place. And they're telling the team. I was like, huh. I would have never thought that. That was interesting to me. So for me, when I want to create connection, it's always about, how do I want to make that person feel? Now, what do I want? What does my goal? How do I want them to? Because I'm just a comedian. He's like, I just want to make people laugh. And I was like, yeah, but that's not connecting with them. So he's like, I can't fight in his case. He's like, can't find a relationship. People just they view me as a dancing monkey. I was like, dude, your intent is just to make them laugh. Of course you're the dancing monkey. So when you're bridging the gap and I'm going to keep pushing on this when you're working with clients and you're there, they're coming to you because they're in a specific pain. So how do you fix that pain? So what are the pain that they're in and how do you fix it? I can't fix that pain. I can only offer their brain a chance to see things differently. Let me really, really queer. The only thing I can do is affect to me. But what we can do to help a client fix their pain is decide if it's worth fixing first. No one does anything without a really important reason. So it always starts as why would this be worth it to you? And sometimes it's not worth it. Right. Let's all admit it. It's not worth it. Right. And once we determine if it's worth it, we have to go into the human suit and say, what am I committed to changing? You brought it up about people who say they want to die, but they won't stop eating, right? The question really is, what is your level of commitment, a discipline? It's a beautiful word if we think about it to get skills toward transformation and change. And then the real question and I'm going to keep coming back to it is what is your willingness to be present in the room without with your ego, with your Hannah, your Barker, put on time out in a loving way so that you can learn here something differently. Charles, you and I both know this. The most important piece in the world is trust. People will buy what you are selling them, solution selling them if they trust you. And I cannot scream, trust me. I cannot trust as an experience. And it's a feeling that people get over time. And it's based on one thing, are you present with me and not running an agenda over me with versus over? So constantly that is the conversation I have to have with clients. Can you be with some no matter how maybe crazy their idea is long enough to maybe see something or to contribute a different idea with them because you've created enough connection. Charles, when it gets down to it, you said something really, really, you asked me, do I think that it's easier to connect with people now as opposed to the future? I don't think I agree with that. I think the human condition is always starving to be experienced. I think it's starving. And I think that if there is one thing that you said that is I would agree with that premise is maybe that because of technology, people don't realize it's available to them. And so they're excited to get engaged because I haven't had that. But I don't think humans have changed over time. I think actually, we are so starting to be seen, known, understood and valued that it'll never change the human condition. I don't know. Do you disagree with that? Yeah. So I think we're saying the same thing. So I agree that human condition by itself has always wanted to connect. It's a survival mechanism. We need each other to survive if not to save a true tiger. Jesus, we've always had that. That's hard coded in who we are. What I think has happened is because there's the lack of that. Because in the past, you and I grew up at a time when we went to school, there wasn't cell phones. And we had to actually talk to people wild. We had to interact with people. Right. Letters. Yeah. Letters are amazing. Right? I'm actually actually had to communicate. You had to be present. You had to give that person the gift of you, which was being present. So we had to do that. We had no choice. We would go out and we had to use our imaginations and ride bikes and then the streetlights would come on and would come back and yeah, the island. That's that's we grew up with that. We were forced where there was more authentic, real, present connection back then. Now because of the little glass box in our pocket, we'd like you walk around and ignore each other all the time. I can't tell you how many times when I'm in New York, I will physically have to move someone because they're looking at their phone and they're going to walk into me. So I will physically just like, how are you? And I'll just I get I'm a big guy. So when people walk out, I just slow down like, hey, how are you? And just do that. They're so starving. Self-induced startation, by the way. Right. Because all of this is self-induced. That when I show up with just a little bit, they can go, oh my god, I'm this oasis where I think when I was growing up, to put it in a food metaphor, there's a bazillion different steaks. There's a bazillion different buffets. And they wouldn't have cared about the one person giving out french fries. But now since they've self-induced the starving mode, I show up with a french fry. The brain, it's really gone. Connection hits here. Give me a fry. So for me, it's easier now as long as it doesn't come from ego, because that's the other thing we're battling. It's so because again, your phone, the algorithm, your algorithm will teach you and show you only what you want to know. So I will mess with my friends, phones all the time. If they leave the room, I will mess with it. I will sit there and say, hemorrhaggrym, or hamster sacks. And I'll read it and I'll say it in their phone like 15 times. And then two years later, it's all at the hemorrhaggrym in their algorithm. I'll go, I'm like, I'm faster. So we'll mess with each other. So we know that the algorithm is constantly listening. So it's coding us to be disconnected. So it's easier for me to bridge the gap by showing up to your point without an agenda to actually be present. But most people don't do that because they're afraid. Well, and I think most people don't do that for one important reason. They don't think about how their energy, their behavior, and their quiet behavior impacts the room. There's this new idea I've really enjoyed thinking about. And it's about this idea that we're all of virus. Okay. I am a virus. Think about this. When I walk into a room, I'm an unconscious virus. Okay. My energy will impact the room for good or for bad. It'll impact the energy curve. And I don't think anyone, I talk about this with my CEOs and my leaders all the time. Like, you are a virus. You enter that room. It will shift the room. It will infect the room. It will create whatever your unconscious creation in the back of your unawareness is running on you. So the most important thing you can do is decide who you're going to be in that room, how you're going to show up. And the word that I've been talking about most of them is how can I be walk into a room clearly generous to understand the other brilliant ideas in the room that I might have been blind to before that I might have been sleepwalking before. I can't emphasize this enough that there are no magic bullets except this one. How you walk into a room and who you decide to be in that moment will entirely shift everything. You know this. You know this. How you prime yourself. How you set yourself up for sex. That bridges the gap. Leap walking a that ain't going to work. Well, it's going to create something but it's not going to be optimal. The intentionality of who we be in the world bridges all the gaps. The generosity I bring to the other person's perspective bridges the gap. Because everybody's fighting for something for a really good reason. So if someone wants to learn how to do this, how to bridge the gap and attract this down because most people and you know this, they'll come to us for strategies, they'll come to tap to explain how do I do negotiation. How do I make an extra something figure? A lot of this for you gone over and this level of awareness and this level of vibration. They never heard it before and they don't have to attack or sorry because you've done this for a very long time. You've done it with very high performers. If someone wants to bridge that gap, how do they track you down? How do they get a hold of you? How do they start implementing this right now? Okay, quick. Thanks. I'd love them to buy a copy of our book, Bridge the Gap, by McGrawhill. In that book, they're going to understand a set of paradigms and tools that will have them start setting up their biology for success, understanding their identity and the skills that they can have inside that identity that'll bridge gaps. So for example, if there's one word that I would give you that I've experienced you in completely is it's in authenticity. Not that authenticity that the world talks about, but the authenticity. I actually want to know who you are. I want to know who I am. I'm going to be I'm going to be generous with how much I listen and how much I share. That is who you are at the depth of your core. And the very first thing we teach in the book is who are you? What's important to you? Why does it matter? Well, it matters because who you are in that room changes everything. And if you don't know who you are. So find me at Bridge the Gap, how to bridge the Gap.com. And most importantly, find a bunch of people in your life. If you don't find me, find other people in your life who make you think differently. I'm going to change that word. Find other people who invite you to think differently, who see you as so possible and so amazing. And they're willing to challenge your bullshit. Yes, I love that people want to challenge my bullshit and get my face. Got a lot of it. Oh my god, there's a reason my eyes are brown. So if someone wants to track you down on social media or anything, is there other ways that they can get it? What's the best way to do it? Yeah, Google Jennifer Edwards, how to bridge the Gap, you will find me on a number of maybe over 150 podcasts. You'll find me on LinkedIn and LinkedIn. I really attempt to deliver a value proposition that has us think about bridging gaps in our everyday life and specifically in business. And more importantly, give me a call. I love having conversations and I guarantee I'll do one thing with you. I'll be with you. I'll be present and I'll help you hopefully open a door to something you haven't seen about yourself. Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on and being with me and being present here and having this conversation. I've enjoyed it immensely. Charles, every minute I get to spend with you create some laughter, some new learning and I always leave more joyful than I became in. So thank you. Thank you so much. All right, well that wraps up another episode of the Proving Podcast. Jennifer came on and showed us exactly how to bridge the Gap. Our connections and communication and success all start with you. I hope you guys have found it valuable. If it was a blast to talk to Jen for you, you should hear the conversation we have when it's not being recorded. It is wild. I think it's the best part of being a host of podcasts. Is the conversations you guys don't get to see. Anyway, maybe one day we'll bring everybody together and share it. In the meantime, go talk to Jennifer. She got a great book. I'll see you guys in the next episode.