Speaking Authentically with Tristan de Montebello

You should be discovering the words as they appear out of your mouth at the same time your audience is, because you're so in tune with the concept that you're trying to convey that your subconscious and your whole body is just doing the action that it knows how to do so well.

Hey everybody, it's Joe Hudson from Art of Accomplishment, where we explore having the life you want with enjoyment and ease. And today we have a special program. We have Tristan de Montebello on, and Tristan, uh, runs something called Ultra Mostly Speaking. And the reason that I wanted to have him on the show was because a lot of people who've taken our courses also have taken his courses. And I've heard there's a lot of things that are really cool about his courses, but more importantly, there's just a lot that we have in common. And so I thought it'd be really cool to talk about Mostly Speaking and who knows where else we'll go and, and see what we discover and find and learn. And yeah. That's why he's here today. So Tristan, do you wanna say hello to everybody and tell them a little bit about yourself that I didn't just say? Yes.

Thanks for having me, Joe. I'm very stoked to be here because we have a lot of students on our end that come from The Art of Accomplishment. And I know that a lot of people from Ultra Speaking love The Art of Accomplishment. So I'm eager to dig in and see where we have common ground. What didn't you say? I mean, yeah, a lot of things. Well, I'm— I've dedicated the last 7 years of my life to studying communication. And I think where you and I have a lot in common is that in the way we approach this, which is thinking of everything that's happening on the outside, a lot of what you can see are just symptoms. And what's interesting to me is figuring out what the root is. And if I can solve the root, then the symptoms solve themselves. And so the pursuit of communication training, or at least a, a modern pursuit to me, is one of finding yourself and learning how to be more of yourself in all kinds of environments where you tend to be guarded or hiding or avoiding. And that's what's been driving me for the past 7 years. And I can't see myself getting bored of this.

Yeah. Yeah. Bored of this would be weird. Yeah, for sure. Okay. So if you could sum up the root of it, if you could sum up generally what makes it that people have a hard time being themselves in different situations, what, what, what would you say that is and how do you address it?

I think, I think a large part of it is just inherent to us as humans. I find that really fascinating because, so from an evolutionary standpoint, if you stand up in front of your tribe and you say something dumb, or you say something that nobody agrees with, you're going to get pushed out. If you get pushed out, that means death, isolation, and that's the worst thing that could happen to a human. So I think from an evolutionary standpoint, We want to fit in. And at the same— and so when we go through school, we have so many moments exactly like this where our teacher has us stand up in front of the class and we have to speak. And what I've noticed is you kind of have two roads. You have the naturals and then everybody else. People think the naturals are people who just— they know, they— it's— it comes naturally to them. What I think a natural is, is somebody who walked up on that stage and they may not have done any better than anybody else, but for some reason they loved the experience. They loved the adrenaline of it. They enjoyed the nerves and the nervousness and all of the prickly things that were happening. They loved how alert they were in the moment. And so when they walk down there, think, they think to themselves, whoa, I want more of that. And so they start looking for more opportunities to speak, and that turns them into the naturals because they're just, they've been training all their life basically to just thrive in that kind of an environment. The people I see most of the time are people who followed a very different route where they walk up on the stage and for whatever reason, either it's something very real, they felt actually humiliated or just extremely anxious and they hated the feeling leading up to it, the feeling of it. And from that moment on, they start avoiding. And so I'm going to avoid, even if it's small things, I'm going to say no over and over and over to all these opportunities where I could test myself. And as a desire to fit in, I start trying to avoid situations where things would go wrong. And I start putting filters up in front of me. Let me make sure that what I have in my mind is going to land before I actually say it. So I'm going to filter it. And I'm also building up these masks and I'm starting to become a different person in different environments. When I'm at work, I'm this person. When I'm with my family, I'm this person. When I'm with this group of friends, I'm this person. And that just overloads your system to a point where you have lost touch with who you are. You don't know where to— you don't know what's real, what isn't. And you're— it's almost like you're trapped in a lie. And everything you say from that moment on has to go through the filter of, does this fit the persona that I am right now? And so a lot of— so I think that's why so many people struggle at the root of it.

Yeah. One of the things you're saying is one of the things that I find most fascinating about humanity in general is we have both a desire to be normal, to fit in, right? Which is not extraordinary. And then we have the desire to be extraordinary, right? Like everybody's like, oh, I want to be rich. That's extraordinary. It's like, you know, less than 1%. I want to be really, I want to be a billionaire. It's like 0.001%. I want to be famous. 0.0001%. Like we have all these desires to be extraordinary, smartest, best, and yet at the same time we want to fit in. And it's very rare that any human being that I've ever met actually looks at them and goes— I mean, the ones who have been extremely successful, they seem to grok it because they realize that they stand out. But anybody who's striving for that extraordinariness never puts it together that that would make them stand out. It would make them exactly not ordinary and, and not fit in, which is a totally fascinating thing. And I see these two movements in people all the time create like a fierce amount of friction in their system and, and a whole bunch of action that is not completely aligned. And so they want to go somewhere, but they don't ever get there because they have these two competing wants. So yeah, it's just a totally fascinating part of it for me.

Yeah, same. I see so many of these kind of dichotomies, these polarities that are always alive. And even the idea that speaking is natural, it's something that we do all the time.

Yeah.

Yet if I try to speak, I'm already, I've already failed because now I'm trying. This idea that like, I need to be, I need to speak in a certain way if I want to do it well. So I'm trying to be something completely different when I already inherently know exactly what to do. And I just need to learn how to trust that and build up confidence that I can do it without having to think about it.

Yeah, that's a— it's an— so whether you call it a flow state or whatever you want to call it, there's this place where you stop thinking about stuff and you, and you can just like move without that thought process. And like any musician knows it, because if you're— if you've ever played music, have you? Have you ever played? Yeah. Yeah. So you're playing music and then you start thinking too much and music goes to shit. Then you start thinking more, it goes even worse. And it's like, it's all about getting lost in it. And same if you're surfing, same if you're speaking. I notice I used to— I was not a natural when it came to speaking at all. I didn't like it and it wasn't something that was native to me. And I had this experience that totally shifted all of that for me. And then all of a sudden I dug it, which is the other thing that you're saying, which totally fascinates me about humanity as well, is you have an emotional experience that you don't like, like, like you just spoke about in speaking, and then you hit avoidance. And then like there's this whole channel of your life that's like shut down. Like speaking is this one example. This can be addiction. This can be I'm not going to date anymore. I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to go after the woman because I had this one emotional experience. And these whole parts of your life are shut down because you didn't like the emotional experience. And it could have just as easily been, oh, I like the emotional experience. And then that whole part of your life opens up, which completely fascinates me. Like, oh, I tried to attract a woman I tried to hit on a woman, a woman rejected me, and I was like, oh, that was kind of fun. Like, you'll be, you'll, you'll, you'll be dating lots of women if you— if that's what you want. You get that first rejection, you're like, oh, I'm horrible, I never want to experience that again. You're like playing video games and whacking off to porn for like the rest of your life, right? It's crazy how that works.

Humor is very, very similar.

Yeah. How do you, how do you, how do you help folks learn to love it? Like, how do you help folks who, who speak naturally all the time, but then when the stakes are high, they hate it? How do you teach them how to love it?

I think what, what's important is that you— this can't happen just in your head. You can't read 50 books sitting down by yourself and then say, oh, I get it, and walk out and think that you're going to be confident because the confidence is when I'm walking into this situation, that's super scary to me that the very situation I've been avoiding, you have to be able to say, no, no, no, I got this. It's going to go okay. I'm going to, I'm actually, I'm going to do well even. But you need to believe that your subconscious has to trust you, has to trust those words. And your subconscious knows without a doubt whether or not that's true. So if you say, I got this because I read a bunch of books, your subconscious is going to say, bullshit, you've read a bunch of books, but we've never tested this out. This is probably going to fail. And it's probably right. So the most important ingredient is you can't get better at this without doing the thing. You don't get better at speaking without speaking. So you need to figure out an environment that replicates what you're trying the environment you're trying to thrive in as closely as possible. So you find other people that you can be around with, with whom you can practice speaking. And the way you practice is as important as the environment as well. So number one, you have the environment. I'm gonna spend time actually doing the thing. The second piece is you need to be practicing for the right state. And I really think you talked about flow. I think speaking is about state. It's about tapping into forgetting about the fact that you're speaking. You should be discovering the words as they appear out of your mouth at the same time your audience is, because you're so in tune with the concept that you're trying to convey with the person that's in front of you or with the emotion that you're holding onto. That your subconscious and your whole body is just doing the action that it knows how to do so well. The moment you start thinking about it and trying to hit a framework or trying to get the words right, you're out of the flow. So when you train, you need to train in ways where you, when you finish your rep, which should be short, you look back and you almost wake up. And sometimes you, it's so much of an awakening at the end that you don't even remember the details of what you shared. That's because you did the right thing and you were completely in flow. So you do that short reps, you get feedback from your community, which will usually be supportive. And maybe they point something out that you weren't aware of, but oftentimes they're gonna say, wow, that was so impactful. And you're gonna think that just felt so random and boring and simple and normal to me. Now, no, no, no, no. That was the best speech I've ever seen from you. And so that's, you start thinking, you get 1 rep, oh, I can do this. And then you just layer them up over and over and over. And eventually when you go out into that environment where you say, hey, I got this, and your subconscious comes up and checks, they say, yeah, we've done 100 reps in a similar environment and it worked out and we kept getting good feedback. So yeah, we probably do got it.

Yeah. Yeah. That makes, it makes sense. The thing that I know about your work, because of what people have told me, is that like your classes are incredibly fun, that people get in and it's like, it's like our stuff. It's, it's not a normal classroom. It's, you know, you're just doing lots of experiments and you're getting it in your body and you're learning stuff for you all. It's speaking publicly for us. It's like dealing with conflict or how to connect. And but it's all about getting it into your body and I remember the way you talk about it. I remember this time where I was a venture capitalist and I had been giving this presentation and I was at a conference and they lost the presentation and I had to speak for 20 minutes on this thing, man. And it was, it was, I remember it being scary. I also remember I go, shit, I don't have a choice. And I had like the outline in my head kind of because I had written it and I knew what I was going to say. And I was just like, okay, let's, let's do this. Let's get up and do it. And it was in front of like a couple hundred people. And after that experience, I was like, that was that moment I was talking about early in the podcast. I was, it was done. I was just, I will never prepare for a speech again. It was so much better than anything I had ever done. Up into that point, it was, it was amazing and God, it would've been a lot nicer if I had had some reps. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

The way, the way we talk about that is, is most people learn, think about the speaking as something very linear. It goes from A to Z and it's a bunch of chain links together. So you're memorizing word after word or step after step. And if you think about it that way, then any chain link that breaks and you're, and it's gone and there's nothing beyond and you're lost and now you're, it's full panic mode. What you had to do was come back to the very, very essence of what it is you were gonna talk about. Like, what's the one thing I want to convey? And then what were those bookmarks along the way that I knew I need to hit? But then you have total freedom since you didn't know, literally you didn't prepare for it, so you didn't have all the details down to a T. So you were, now you had access to a tree with tons of branches where it doesn't matter if you snap one branch off, you still have a beautiful tree. So now you're just navigating this beautiful three-dimensional thing that's your mind and you can access and you might even, oh, you tell me, did you access anything in the presentation that you hadn't prepared for? It kind of popped out.

Of course. Yeah. I mean, that's the best thing about doing podcasts and about all the content I make is because I do it extemporarily. Extemporarily?

What's extemporaneously?

Extemporaneously. Yeah, I do it that way that I'm discovering stuff all the time while I'm talking, right? Oh, that— I put those two things together, right? And I've seen it over here and it happens. And it's— I mean, that's— I don't think I would be interested in producing as much content as I do if I wasn't learning. And I think everybody's experienced that when they're writing a paper. And you write the paper and you're learning something while you're writing the paper. It's the same experience. It's lovely. Oh yeah.

It's like, it's like life, right? If you knew everything that was going to happen before it happened, it would be insanely boring. There's a— life is inherently an improvisation. And I don't think there's, there's almost nothing in life that's worth not making an improvisation. It's just life is much more interesting and there's much more you can get. Otherwise you're just set in a direction and you watch your life go by.

Yeah. Yeah. There, there's something else you said back, which explained something to me that I, I know the phenomenon because everybody says things like, oh, you said that thing in the podcast. And I was like, really? Yeah. And then I hear it. I'm like, yeah, that sounds like something I would say, or that sounds smart. Or, and, and I'm, and I, but I don't remember much when I'm actually in that state. I remember very little. I'll remember stories of other people. I'll remember, it's the same. You've seen me do the rapid-fire coaching. I'll remember them as a person and they're like how they present themselves and the trauma that's in them. But I have a hard time remembering words. When I'm doing any of that work, because it's— I've never known why, but it's nice to hear that it's like, this is something that happens for a lot of people when they're speaking this way or when they're coming from that place.

It's one of the most common things I hear in the beginning of Ultra Speaking training is I ask them, how did it go? And they said, I have no idea. I genuinely just don't know what happened. Because it's also heightened if there's— if you have adrenaline in the moment. So if you're— if your senses are heightened, you're, you're even more hyperfocused. And so there's just— there's no point for memory in a state like that.

Yeah. Yeah, it's the same. I'll walk out of— like we did the rapid-fire coaching at your, at your class and I have no idea. I walk out of them like I have no idea how it goes. I just like, I'm just— I know it felt good or it didn't feel good to me and that's all I know. I have no idea. Oftentimes I'm like, ah, and then 20 people will be like, that was the best thing ever. I'm like, ah, you know, just no idea about it. Yeah. It's such a crazy thing.

I feel very similarly in coaching. I host a hot seat coaching every week where anybody can show up and anybody raises their hand and I coach them in front of everybody else. And then we have a discussion. That's in your—

once when someone signs up for your class, that's part of it every week.

No, it's actually, it's free. It's every week.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's one of my, I started doing it because I was so focused on the business at one point that I realized, oh no, I'm not coaching enough and I hate that I'm not coaching anymore.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So I thought, how do I, how do I get back into it? And that was something that I felt, oh, I could give back. And it was very scary at first to jump back into it with the hardest, possibly one of the hardest ways of doing it with an, with an actual audience watching you as the founder. That was kind of scary, but it has now become my favorite, absolute favorite moment of the week every single time. But yeah, one thing is super frustrating is that in those moments, it's probably the moment when I have the best insights I ever have all week related to speaking. And there's— I'm coaching, I'm in it, and somebody asks a question and I'll just— for some reason everything lines up perfectly and I can give a 2-minute monologue that I think to myself, I'm like, wow, even myself thinking, man, you, that was just, that's exactly what you have been trying to figure out for these past 3 months. And I can say it perfectly. And then when it's over, I'm like, that needs to be a video or something. I need to get it out because it was so well said. And there's no way to reaccess that state in the moment. Afterwards, I'm like, ah, it's, it's gone.

Where is it?

It's like trying to catch a dream. So I have to find a way to recreate the state. Please.

I have a solution for that. Um, record your own camera on QuickTime.

Yeah. Nice.

So you're not recording the other people so that they all have that. And then anything you have, you can actually cut and paste.

Oh, nice. Done.

Yeah.

I'm in.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. 'Cause it is, I totally know that thing where you're just, you're saying the thing and you know it's the right thing and you've discovered the thing and it's, and you're never gonna say it. Like that again.

That's where writers have it, have it nice, right? They, they get to, whenever they get something, a good, it's like, ooh, there we go. I got it. Then it's there.

Yeah, exactly.

It's there. I have a, I have a question for you related to, yeah. What causes the thing that we're then trying to, um, what, like unlearn or, or, or trying to, to, to unblock for the person we're working with.

Yeah.

In the early days, we used to try and figure out exactly what the inciting incident was. Like, the very, very early days of Michael and I— so Michael's my co-founder, we, we built this together— and we would, for the first 3 years, we did 100% of our coaching together as a partner coach, which was probably one of the best things we've ever done because we, we learned twice as fast or 3 times as fast as a result. Because we could debrief, we would watch the other, learn from the other. It was magnificent. In fact, we do that in our coach training now after we have them coach one by one, then they partner coach. That's not the point of this. We used to— we used to go incredibly deep, sometimes spending 2 hours just trying to figure out what— why did this happen? And then once finally, once we got it, we're like, oh, now I know exactly what created it. Then we would start the coaching and we'd try to figure things out. And I forget why, but all I know is one day I realized, oh, we don't do that part anymore at all. In fact, it almost doesn't matter because what I've noticed is like, there's just— it's the same pattern over and over, and I don't need to, to know the exact why in order to unblock. And I'm curious if in your coaching, in your practice, it's similar, different, or am I missing something?

Yeah, it's a great question. Oftentimes I don't really need to know the backstory of the person, and sometimes it's really critical to know the backstory of the person. So it's kind of a hit or miss on— just recently, I've been working with this person for many years because I have long-term clients, and I was working with them, and some insight about their mom showed up that totally unraveled, like, 3 patterns in their life. And it was amazing, and it would not have would have happened if the, the mom incident and the mom thing hadn't like unraveled, right? And, and so, but we had never spoken about his mom before that moment, and lots of other stuff had unraveled. So it's kind of a, it's a strange thing. What I notice is that nowadays what I'll do is I'll, if I have a long-term client, I'll spend the first hour with them just hearing their backstory. Because it helps me put some patterns together. But if you see, my experience is if I see the pattern, so for instance, I see like a man comes to me and they're womanizing. I don't need to hear their story very much to know there's a 90% chance that they had an emotionally unavailable mom. Like, I just, I can tell you that, like, right? And so So similarly, if I see somebody like with their chin up and they're armored, like I can tell you that they don't have good access to their emotion, which means probably there's a bit of a narcissistic parent involved. That term used lightly. So like there's just a lot of things that where I can just see it so I can work without it. However, sometimes it's really important for them. So typically it's whether, when it's important for them to see, oh, this, click, click, click, and they can have a mental click that allows the emotional stuff to move. But yeah, if you understand the patterns, it's usually not so necessary to make progress. But sometimes it is.

Yeah. Very similar. Very, very similar.

Yeah.

I think like for the 80/20, I don't need it anymore, or it's just, but every once in a while, as you were saying that, there were examples popping into my mind of, oh yeah, pointing that out or them bringing it up and why, like, pausing is a big, big chunk of what we do. It's ridiculously simple and incredibly hard to do. To you, literally, I'm saying, I'm going to put a timer on. This is your space. Now you're going to hold that. You're going to be in this space. And anytime during this time, or as you're speaking, I just want you to stop and do nothing. Just take a pause. Ideally breathe, but I don't care. Just pause. And most people genuinely cannot.

Yeah.

And that often stems from a lot of, a lot of past baggage of, I'm not worth it. I don't feel like I have my seat at the table. This space should probably be used by somebody else who's more worthy than me or has more interesting things than me to say. Or if I pause, I'm going to look stupid or it's going to look like I'm blanking and I'm deathly afraid of blanking. There's so many reasons, but it's, it's fascinating. Yeah.

Yeah. There's, yeah. It's an, what's fascin— yeah. What's fascinating to me about it is that there's a, um, in general, there's a receiving, a listening, an allowing that people don't ever think about how they do that. They always think about. How they do do the thing, right? So, meaning, how am I going to say? What am I going to say? When am I going to say it? What does the presentation look like? Is the graphics all right? It's all about the things they're going to do. I coach executives and they're like, I'm going to go raise money, and they're going to tell me all the things they're going to do to raise the money. And I'll ask, so what are you going to allow to raise the money? What are you going to listen to to raise the money? What are you going to— that, that whole aspect, it's not just in the, in speaking, it's in like so much of life is lost because people aren't doing the pause, the receiving, the allowing part of it. And the best example I have of this is like, so if we teach, if we're teaching somebody coaching, we have like a very long process. If anybody wants to, like, coach with us and/or just wants to learn about coaching, and the first year of it, half of it is just about listening. It's just about how you listen, because there's so much that your reality is so based on what— how you, how you listen. If I listen to you one way, I'm going to get X information. If I listen to you another way, I'm going to get Y information. If I listen to you one way, you're going to feel closer to me. If I listen to you another way, you're going to feel removed, estranged, angry at me, or more likely to feel that way. That's true with investors. That's true with customers. That's true with— And so how you listen is such an important part, which is all a pause, right? Like that whole thing, how you listen is a pause. And people are far more concerned with the with the format of their PowerPoint presentation than, oh, how am I going to listen when I go into this meeting? It's an amazing thing. So it seems like they're very parallel, those two.

Very, very parallel. Because I think you're also showing up, you have to show up more trusting if you're going to listen because you're trusting that when it's my turn, I'll be okay. I think that's one of the big reasons people don't listen is because they're thinking, what should I say next? What will I say when it's my turn? And if I, if, and communicating, interacting in life is so much about kind of, it's a, it's about flow. So it's about subconscious, your subconscious, not your conscious mind as much. Your subconscious is much more powerful, has many more answers. And if you put, take the whole being in place, what pausing, slowing down, listening does, it just allows you to see more, hear more. So you, it's, it's very counterintuitive. And I think that's why people struggle with the, the pausing so much, which is very related to the listening, is that you wanna do something. No, no, no. I need, I need to perform very well. I need to get something really, really— I need to say the right thing. Okay.

Yeah.

So if I need to say the right thing, I need to, I need to tense my brain and like, ugh, get the right thing out. But the reality is the exact opposite. It's no, no, no. You have to stop everything so much so that the essence of what you want is going to come up for you. I have this visual in my mind that your subconscious always has the answer right there for you on a platter. It's your personal butler and they're right there, but most of the time you just can't see it and you just have to relax.

Yeah.

Take a breath out, slow everything down, and suddenly the butler's there. And then the butler's there. In fact, I have a little story from partner coaching with Michael in the early days when I was still really— I had a lot to learn. And we were coaching and I forget why exactly. But what I remember is Michael, I remember noting, oh, Michael's really on a roll right now. And so I'm— the client's in front of us, Michael's like locked in with her. And they're going back and forth and I'm watching. And usually I was in a position where I felt I need to add value. So I need to jump in. And also when I, when something pops into my mind, I need to say it. And in this moment, very similar to what you're describing for your coaches, I decided I'm not going to say anything because it was more of he's on a roll. I don't want to interrupt. But the, but I was very calm and I was very present. And the butler came up and I had a really cool insight on what was happening.. And I thought, oh my God, I was like, oh, I really want to share this. This is so good. But I didn't. And so that kind of faded in the background and I just waited and I watched and I listened more. And then something else came up that was even more pointed and even more profound and even more true because now I knew more the situation. And that little cycle happened maybe a dozen times over the course of 25 minutes where I didn't say a single word. And I was just in awe as I watched, and it was like a whole feu d'artifice, a whole, I don't even have the word in English, but it was like an explosion in my mind of ideas.

Boom, boom, boom.

And every one felt more and more precise, more and more delicious. And then when he, by the end, when it was my turn to speak, I was able to ask just one question, like 5 or 6 words, boom. That was just exactly what was needed. And all of the rest I realized was superfluous and didn't need to be said.

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that feeling. I, when, when you realize that you're in a room with like, let's say I'm in a room with like 30 students and I'll have that, those moments many times. And then what happens often is that somebody else will say the thing I'm thinking. I'll have the thought process, then somebody else will say it, and then I have the thought process and somebody else will say it. And so now when I'm in a room, often unless I'm asked a direct question, if I'm facilitating like a group conversation, I won't say it until it's like 5 minutes has passed because I'm sure somebody else will say it. And what's fascinating about that for me is like a lot of times when people come to the work, I'll say you're here because of me. But what you're going to find out is that you're really here for each other. That, like, you're going to learn more from each other. You're going to learn more from people sharing their stories. You're going to learn more from the lessons that they've just learned. And, and that's why it's because that wisdom, it's, it's, it's like the butler's there, but it's there for everybody almost, which is really fascinating to me. It's like the butler comes up and is like, this needs to be said. Oh, you're not going to say it? Will you say it? Will you say it? It's this very fascinating thing. That happens. And it's such a pleasure to watch that, how non-personal it can be. It's like it's not even your butler, you know what I mean? It's— it feels far more like a channeling when I, you know, I— it was funny because you said something about trust, which is a word that we can use nowadays. That's— everybody can get into. But I actually like the word faith more. Not faith.

Oh, I like faith so much more. Yes.

Yeah, of course, because it It's, and even if you think about there, I was told in ancient Greek, I think it was ancient Greek, that faith used to be a verb. You were faithing. Like it was like, it was some, it was like, I'm walking, I'm faithing. So if you think about like when you're speaking this way, you're just faithing. You're just faithing that the butler is going to, and it's not faith in like some external thing. It's just like faith that. It's all there for you. And I— and there— so for me, that's what I really like. And, and I love it when there's like— it's— you can see it in a group, that the whole group has the butler.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked a little bit about it last time. We, we had a discussion where we talked about this idea of what we were uncovering, the both of us, in our, in our practices, whether it's Art of Accomplishment or Ultra Speaking, how it feels like we're just unearthing something that already exists like an archaeologist and that we're just unearthing the truth, sharing it, packaging and sharing it in a way that can be understood in our current zeitgeist. But really it's a, we're not inventing anything. I'm just bringing this stuff back up and presenting it to people. So that they could take advantage of it. So I love that idea of this idea that the, yeah, the butler is there for everyone. Everything you've discovered and encountered is discoverable and encounterable by anybody else, just as mine is.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that feeling. I had this moment the other day, seems related. I'm not sure if it will be, so maybe we'll cut it out of the podcast, but I was having a conversation with people who had been through our masterclass from like year one. 2 and 3. So I had 3 years. I wanted to just— I wanted to talk to them about, like, what happened and how is it now after years and years and years and years. And somebody had said— one of the people said, you know, it wasn't what— it didn't change my life, it changed generations. Every generation after me will be changed by the transformation that I experienced in which I had felt for myself, but I had never felt for the people that I was working with. Like, I never really— like, it was— it hit me in a big way at that moment. And, and in that recognition, there was also the recognition that, like, that wasn't actually my work. Like, it wasn't me doing that. It was like the 20 people who had a huge influence and taught me and it was the 20 people and some of them 2,000 years old and the people who taught them and the people who taught them. And it's like, it's such this interesting thing. It feels so good in my system when I see the— like you said, like you're uncovering stuff that's been uncovered 100 times before, that you're like, that the butler's for everybody, that there's a faithing that's been going on for You know, for eons, 200,000 years, people have been pausing and seeing what the fuck comes outta their mouth.

Exactly.

You know what I mean? And they're, yeah.

And then like the thousands of years prior, the millennia prior to that, there's probably somebody who invented a better version of ultra speaking than I, than Michael and I have been able to create so far. And I'm just still catching up. This would look ridiculous. You know, somebody's like, just got it. Uh, Yeah.

Except nobody would understand it cuz it's in ancient Aramaic and exactly. And it doesn't, and it doesn't reference AI once. So it'd be completely, you know, like it would be out.

It wouldn't work.

Yeah.

That's, it's so interesting. And I think it's also very easy, or at least you can see how easy it would be to be caught in your ego. If you find something very exciting, like you find the nugget of gold, you're like, I'm a great, gold digger, right? I'm good at finding gold, but you were just incredibly lucky. And I think that you're lucky from, you know, you grew up a certain way, you met a few people, you had all kinds of circumstances, and you probably showed up a lot of times in a way that created this for you. But I've found that the act of pulling myself out of the limelight more, yeah, especially when it comes to the, to the the act of coaching and the essence of what it is we do to actually be incredibly freeing. Because it's— because you're, you're always kind of pulled in. You always want to, you know, look at anybody who's, who's any early stage entrepreneur. It's almost like you have no choice but to pump up your chest and say, what I'm doing is so important and so amazing and I'm changing lives. And you can, you can get caught into that so easily. Yeah, but there's something very freeing of letting that go and saying, wait, wait, I'm—

but I think I channel— when I see the people who have done it the other way, where they get, oh, it's me, then with that, oh, it's me, there's a responsibility that becomes an obligation that turns into a resentment, but they can't leave it because the girlfriend's too sexy. It's like making them lots of money and everybody's looking at them and And then it leads to like some crazy addiction typically and like need for control. So, so to me, in my mind, having worked with people where that has happened, where it was them, it was all about them. And eventually I've just seen where that, that, that lands in a, like a very terrible place. And so for me, when I think about it, it's, it's either I can acknowledge that it's not me, it's never been me, it's like I'm channeling something, or I can be, you know, with some terrible habits trying to get the fuck away from this feeling of I'm responsible for everything and I'm alone in it. So like, those seem to be— eventually those seems to be the options when the pressure gets too big. And I feel like to some degree that's like a macro of the thing you're teaching in, in Ultra Speaking, right? So it's like if you come in thinking you're responsible, thinking it's about you, thinking about it's about your reputation, thinking about like it's your wisdom, you're going to give a shitty speech. If you can walk in and you can be like, more in faith, more in trust, more waiting for the butler, knowing that it's about the butler, it's not about you, then the speech goes well. It feels like that's like a life thing. It's not just a speaking thing. Yeah.

And it's the— that's why this pursuit is so liberating and why the most common feedback we get, and I'm sure you get a similar version of this, but for us it's like, oh, this is so, this is about so much more than speaking. It's always that that comes up. And I think it's because you, because it's not about how you move your hands or where you look or how you structure your speech. And it's more about who you are, how you're showing up, how much faith you have.

Yeah.

That in order to access that, you need to, you need to rewire your brain. You need to literally change certain ways in which you show up in the world. And you can't do that just for speaking and for one moment. You, when, if you change something and how you show up, it's, it's going to spread. Speaking's a meta skill. It, it improves everything and spreads out. So that's why I think this is such a worthy pursuit. Because if you're stuck in your ego, you're not going to be able to break through until you realize that and you see it.

Yeah.

And then you have a choice to do something about it. And if you do, there's magic on the other side.

Yeah. We don't get that, by the way, that feedback at all, because we, we're not promising something like, yeah, it's one of the weird things about us is that like we don't have that one thing that we're you know, that we're focused on that is a gateway to something much bigger. We're just like, ah, here's a whole bunch of shit.

Yeah.

You're already on the— that we didn't market all that well, but people come and then they recommend it to their friends and it kind of shows up.

I mean, you, you say that, but you guys have insane word of mouth. So whatever you're doing is working very, very, very well. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a pleasure. Um, cool, man. I think that feels really good.

That feels Same.

Pleasure to be with you again, have a second conversation with you. For all of you who are listening, we had had a conversation the first time and I had screwed up the miking, so you didn't get— you lost some really good parts of that conversation. But this one also feels really good.

So I agree.

What a pleasure. What a pleasure to see you again.

Absolutely. It's my pleasure too. Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and rate us in your podcast app. We'd love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions or comments. You can reach out to us, join our newsletter, or check out our courses at artofaccomplishment.com.