How To Avoid Being Socially Awkward

And he gets rid of the microphone. What? This is fantastic.

Okay, great. AI.

Yeah, I'm having vicarious embarrassment. So we've all had moments in our life where we have been more awkward than we would like to be. And we've probably all had moments where we've surprised ourselves with how charming, charismatic, and confident we can be. The question is, how do we go from one to the other on command? And I think that Elon Musk is a person who exemplifies the best of both worlds, because there are times that I've seen him be incredibly stuttering, stumbling, and awkward in his presentations.

I'm just incredibly impressed with the caliber of talent at Neuralink.

But there's other times where he is genuinely charming.

There's the fast way and the slow way.

Okay, give me the fast way.

The fast way is drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles.

You're a super villain. So I want to dive into some clips of him and discuss what you can learn about. About how to take those moments where you're awkward and turn them into ones where you are actually charming and charismatic. So I think it's useful to start with the moments in which Elon is a little bit more awkward to find out what he might do differently. And one of the most famous is his infamous podcast with Joe Rogan. So let's take a look.

What keeps you up at night? Well, it's quite hard to run companies. Yeah. Especially car companies. I have to say. It's quite challenging. The car business is the hardest. More. One of all the things you do. Yes. Because.

So I remember watching this before. This is very difficult to get an engaging answer out of him. And it reminds me of the video that we did with Kanye west on Jimmy Kimmel.

Is that for you, more rewarding than hearing people say they like your music? Both. It's. Both are. Yeah. Yeah.

But let's continue here. So, obviously, the first thing you see is a lack of enthusiasm and a very literal answering of the questions that Joe is asking him. In order for conversation to flow a little bit more comfortably. You want to get. Go beyond the question that someone is asking you. Add statements that don't directly answer what they're saying, but give them a few more threads to pull from. But let's see where this goes.

Same with Tesla. We barely survived. How close did you get to folding? Very close. We 2008 is not a good time to be a car company.

So what you see here is a incredible lack of eye contact from Elon. So he's looking down in a way. I'm not exactly sure what's going on. And one of the things that I think happens later in this interview is he lights up a blunt, relaxes quite a bit. This is why people drink when they go to bars.

I mean, it's legal, right? Totally legal. Okay.

But, yeah, you obviously want to try to make a little bit more consistent eye contact when you're communicating with people and give some energy. He's not doing either of those things here. So what do you do when everything goes wrong? Here's the cyber truck, the glass that can't break armor glass.

Oh, my good. Well, maybe that was a little too hard.

See, that's actually a fantastic initial save right there.

It didn't go through, so that's a plus side.

This is actually. I haven't watched the whole clip. He's not doing bad.

Sure. Oh, man. It didn't go through. All right. Not bad.

This is actually really good. Only thing that I would have potentially critiqued here is his body language. I mean, walking around with. On stage with crossed arms is a big no no. So what you want to do is when there's something embarrassing that happens if you. If you behave as if this is something that you need to speed through, that the audience can't linger on, that they can't laugh at, it signals to the audience that you are very, very uncomfortable with what just happened. That it. That it has profound impact on not just the quality of the car, but the quality of you as a human being. But when you can stand up there in the heat, no matter, you know, if you stumble over something as you're speaking or a slide gets screwed up and you can't quickly get back on track. Actually, something that you can do is exactly what he did, which is crack an understate, a joke. Be like, well, this could be going better than it is right now. And the audience will immediately come to your side. You're inviting them in to acknowledge the uncomfortableness of that moment, to let out a laugh. And quite frankly, I'm impressed by how well he. He handled that right there. Oh, I've seen this on YouTube. Apparently, they don't like each other very much.

What are you supposed to say? Just things about AI, perhaps? Yeah. Okay, let's see.

The fidgeting. Fidgeting is tough.

Okay, great. AI. Yeah.

I'm having vicarious embarrassment as he. As he sort of stumbles here, actually.

I'm told that. Does AI mean love? There's, like, a name, AI. It sort of sounds a bit like love. Yeah. AI. I hate the word AI called artificial intelligence. I call it Alibaba Intelligence. Yeah. Might end up being true. You never know.

I think generally, people, the problem that you see here is that he can't just sit with not knowing what's going on, which is granted, very difficult when you're in front of a group of people. A lot of fidgeting, a lot of moving the feet, the hands, stopping and starting his sentences. He'd be better off with a bit of silence and a bit of just building some sort of rapport and banter between him and Jack Ma. So let's see how he gets through it.

The capability, capability of AI, they sort of think like it's a smart human, but it's really much. It's going to be much more than that. It'll be much smarter than the smartest human.

Okay, and he's in. As I'm watching some of these clips with Elon, it's a very, very common thing that I've experienced in my own life is it seems that he needs time to get warmed up and started and feel comfortable in a new situation. It doesn't necessarily need to be with a new individual just sitting on this couch in front of this audience talking about this topic. He tends to pick up steam as he goes. Now, this is true of a lot of us, right? The first time that you go out to a networking event or when you're early in the day of an office and you don't know a ton of people, those are the hardest moments to get going. So what is best if you find that you're struggling to get that steam going is to have a little bit of a pre going to wherever you're going routine to get yourself amped up. And what I find is that as you're getting dressed, wherever you're going, play music that excites you. Move around as you're doing it on the ride over, right? Play loud music. You can bang the steering wheel. If you're in an Uber, start talking to that driver. Get in the habit of warming yourself up so that when you arrive at that place, and if it's an interview, I've talked about this, you want to start talking to the secretary, to the other applicants, so that when you sit in that seat, you're not going in cold. From a social perspective, you're going in warmed up, you're comfortable conversing with that person, you have some stuff to say, you can build rapport, and you don't feel like you just need to for the first time all day, start croaking something out of your dead voice box. What is he doing with his lips? This is good stuff right here. This is fire. And he gets rid of the microphone. What? This is fantastic. Perfect. Perfect. Dancing. Dancing is obviously something that you can be good at. You can be not so good at it if you're doing it in a public venue of any kind. I will say 80% of the reception that you receive is based on your commitment. If you go up there and you are just trying to have fun, you can know that you have no rhythm, no moves. And quite frankly, I don't know that I've ever seen anyone with. With less of a repertoire than Elon has here, but it's awesome. And especially where you see him commit the most is where it gets good, where he sells it. He takes his jacket off, does the fling thing. The more commitment that you have in these sorts of scenarios. And again, this is something we've covered. Jack Black knocks us out of the park. Plus, he's actually got fantastic singing and dance moves. So I don't really have the moves. No, you do. But I thought I'd make up for it with just, like, commitment. Yeah, this. This is so, so, so huge for any sort of situation where you need to dance or participate. If you find that you're in some sort of exercise and you've got to stand up in front of a group and pretend to be a character, what will, what will make people like you enjoy that, whether it's dancing or anything else, is the level of commitment that you put in. Thank you for coming. And I want to know, what is the one thing that has surprised you about your life?

Oh, one thing. Wow. Well, I certainly. I'm surprised by the whole thing, honestly. I certainly didn't expect to be. To be. For any of these things to happen, honestly. Yeah, I just, you know, I knew I wanted to be involved in technology, and in fact, the only reason I started a company Back in 95, an Internet company, was because I couldn't get it. There were only a few Internet companies, and I couldn't get a job at any of them. So I tried to get a job at Netscape and sent my resume in and tried hanging out in the lobby, but I was too shy to talk to anyone. And then I was like, okay, well, I guess I'll have to start a company because I can't get.

Wow, that's crazy. And, I mean, I don't even know what to make of that. I guess that's a really good thing that he did. He didn't have the guts to go up and speak to anybody. But I do think what that illustrates is that he sounds like he's come a long way, quite frankly. If you're going from not being able to speak to an individual or with no eyes on you, to speaking in front of an entire room full of people, sometimes with thousands of people, millions of people on the Internet, public facing constantly, that's a huge, huge leap. So kudos to him for doing it. And it does seem like he has built dynamism into his ability to be outgoing and charismatic. But what he hasn't built in is consistency. So if you're finding that that is something that you are struggling with as well, you might be interested in checking out our course, Charisma University. Charisma university is a 30 day course. It's actually the best thing that I think that I've ever made in terms of learning charisma and turning it from just theory that you know and maybe you watch on the channel and you enjoy it, to something that you live and practice. Starting with habits that are thinking, but then moving into completely second nature. That's the whole point of it and it's built around action guides. These are little things that you do. Every day of those 30 days, start to establish habits of everything from how do you introduce yourself? How do you answer common questions like where are you from? And what do you do for a living? All the way moving through conversation into body language, talking about speeches, and of course even ending with something like leadership, which is very important when you're someone like Elon Musk and hopefully becomes important in your own life. So if you want to check that course out, I highly recommend it. We've got over 5,000 students that have stayed in the course and they have the opportunity, like you will, to get your money back if it's not for you. And every One of those 5,000 people has decided to stay. So that is the group size of people that think that Charisma University is well worth the investment. And it comes with a 60 day money back guarantee for any reason at all. So if you go through the course and you find that for whatever reason you're not into it, you just drop us a line and you can get all of your money back. And we do that because quite frankly, if it's not worth it to you, then I don't think you should have to take it. I hate those types of courses and all those businesses that run off of grabbing credit card information and then never letting go. That's not what we do. So if you think you want to check that out and you think that you've got some growth, you could perhaps become more charismatic, more confident, or even just more consistent in the times that you are. I highly recommend checking out Charisma University. Either way. I hope that you've enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. Peace.