How To Effortlessly Charm Anyone

Theo Vaughan jumped onto my radar when listeners voted him the best podcast of 2018 on the fighter and the Kid. And that is a podcast that has had tons of charismatic personalities. Here's Theo is showing off his belt from winning that award.

Oh, this is the oar son from fifth, himself. Yeah, baby, welcome. It's happy days, baby. I'm the Fonz with the bronze, daddy. You feel me now?

Theo is obviously a funny guy, but what I have found most intriguing about him is how he conveys a sense of effortless charm, whether he's doing stand up monologuing on his podcast or making a guest appearance on some someone else's.

Very charming, very charming.

So in this video, I want to.

Look at three things that you can do to incorporate some of that charm into your own life in a genuine way. And to be clear, this isn't intended to be a full breakdown of Theo's style, just a snapshot of those three things that you can use starting today. The first thing that you notice about Theo is that he isn't an over the top attention grabber like some of the other personalities that I've covered on this channel. Theo has a relaxed and laid back style and it makes him more approachable. But sometimes that relaxed attitude can make it tough to maintain the attention of an audience. Except that Theo has developed some excellent tools to grab attention without resorting to raising his voice or over the top physical comedy. Here's an example of what he does.

That's when I got involved in this damn cult.

What the fuck is that? A real cult.

Yeah, bro.

Are you not on set there?

That's out in the seat of dude.

You notice that Theo instantly has Brendan's attention without having to raise his voice. And he does it by being deliberately vague. Watch how Brendan continues to ask questions and say, what is going on here?

What are you doing doing?

Huh?

Why are you doing.

Looking for the Lord, brother. What do you think I was doing? Same thing you probably were.

But hey, man, what do you. Yeah, bro, whatever, dude.

Here's another example. Again, Theo calmly makes a statement that immediately raises a question in Joe Rogan's mind. And you'll probably have the same question when you listen.

We had a dude in our neighborhood named Mr. Langenstein. He used to invite us over to chill out and shit, but we didn't know he was. That he was a pedophile. But you didn't know.

How'd you find out?

He ended up going to jail for it.

So you're hanging out with him for a while. And you didn't know.

Now, you may not have any particularly crazy stories, but you can make all of your stories much more engaging if you have the self control to purposely leave key questions unanswered, especially in the beginning of the story, rather than rushing to tell how things turn out. The bait your audience with a puzzling setup and let them ask you to elaborate. Because if people start asking you questions, you know that you have their full attention when you do speak up and continue. Now this is a charming and non pushy way to hook an audience's attention, even when you're in a large group. The next point is one that I haven't often covered on this channel and it's Theo's style of active listening, where some of the charismatic personalities will dictate the topic of conversation at almost all times. Theo is very comfortable listening to others, building fascinating convers and then working off of that, whatever topics they choose. The next clip is a great example. Here he and Jordan Peterson are speaking about the results of marijuana legalization. Pay careful attention to how Theo listens to what Jordan is saying and then expands on it in a humorous way.

Crime rates have gone down. Interesting. Well, people stoned on pots like the Porsche.

It's hard to pick somebody's pocket.

People break into a building? I don't think so. It's not going to get it together.

You might knock for a long time. I think you might knock at the front door. I don't think you're going to break.

In and you're not going to. You might. That's right. You might knock. You're not going to go out. What, are you going to go out the alley and have a fight? No, you're not.

A real slow fight.

You notice that in Theo's response, he's doing more than simply listening and nodding his head and just repeating the last few words of what Jordan said, which is what active listen is often considered to be. Theo is going a step further and yes, ending what he hears. Now, yes, ending is an improv technique. I've talked about this in the past on other videos, but the basic idea is that you hear the premise of what so someone is saying and then build upon it. When you're aiming for a funnier interaction, you can use the yes and technique to build an absurd interpretation of what they just said. So here are two examples with Jordan Peterson. First, as they talk about what happens when you leave your house alone for an extended period of time.

Like leave your house alone for a year.

Yeah, see what happens.

Oh, it's way better. It's like. No, it's not. It has black mold everywhere. Right? And a vandalist moved in. There's graffiti everywhere.

And yeah, there's squirrels drawing a pentagram. Like things have gotten out of hand.

And then again, when Jordan says that you need to be realistic in your desires and not want to have, say, a castle in the sky, Theo, yes, ends that premise adding more absurd reasons why you couldn't have a castle in the sky. Aside from the obvious, watch here you.

Have a castle in the air. Well, except they won't stay in the air.

So like, you know, let's stay with gonna be laws.

Well, there is. There's only.

Are there. You know what I'm saying?

Like there's gonna be law.

They're gonna tax you, probably.

And there's gonna be other people that you have to take into account.

Here's one more examp ending to the absurd extreme. This time it's as Theo ruminates to himself on his own podcast. And the context in this case is that Theo thought the people only had nine pints of blood in their body, and he's hearing for the first time that the actual number is more like 12 pints.

Oh no, that's not. Well, nine pints. Isn't that. I mean, if you only have nine, you would have 12. I mean, you're gonna have kind of a squishy handshake. I feel like.

Now all of the phrases Theo has used so far have been unique to the story he's about to tell.

But there is one phrase that you.

Can use repeatedly in any sort of situation where something un undesirable happened. And this is it.

I'm a sober guy. Thank you. Appreciate it. I didn't want to be but this what happened.

The phrase I didn't want it to, but this is what happened immediately captures attention because it sets up a story of frustration.

And we all love those when they involve other people.

Plus, if you get the timing on this phrase right, you will start your story off with a laugh. The value of this technique is not only in that it's fun and funny, but that it's also a non domineering way to add to conversation. You don't have to lead every single topic. You simply need to listen and respond with these fun tangents. It's a way to be charming and engaging without having to be a prima donna who requires the attention all the time. Now lastly, I think a good portion of Theo's charm comes from his non judgmental authenticity. He often shares Stories from his own life that don't exactly paint him in the best light. Like the creepy text that he sent to the wrong woman when he was feeling lonely.

She wrote, cool, you are going in my Rolodex, right? That's what she wrote. So I thought, it's a Snapchat girl. She'd ask me for my number. I said, I want to go in more than that creeping dammit, turning in dammit. And I'll tell you what it is, man. I'm alone by myself at night.

He also talks candidly about his drug use. And while his stories are funny, he doesn't shy away from speaking about the emotional state he was in that made drugs an issue for him in the first place.

I just wanted a different story, man. I wanted to be. I wanted to be in a family and I wanted to feel loved, you know? You know, I just really. I mean, I think. And I didn't even know it. I didn't know how much I wanted to. How much I wanted to be loved, man. I just didn't even know it.

Now, being vulnerable is key to the authentic style of charisma that I've spoken about in previous videos. But it's not easy for many people, especially since there's no shortcut to being comfortable with this level of vulnerability. Essential piece that you can begin to implement today, though, is non judgmentalness, both for others and yourself, because you really can't have one without the other. Theo expresses his feelings on it here.

This isn't a sob story I'm trying to tell you guys. I'm trying to tell you how I ended up getting into Alcoholics Anonymous. For me, I'm not saying you need to do this. I don't know your life, I don't know your world.

You see, when you judge other people, you are essentially looking down on them for not living in the quote, unquote right way. The problem is that that perspect lacks compassion for the difficulties of their life. So when your own life inevitably gets challenging and you wind up feeling just like the people that you've judged before, you're going to probably want to hide that fact to avoid being a hypocrite. So that forces you to pretend to feel and be something you're not in order to live up to your own judgmental standards. And that's how judgmentalness of others can kill your own authenticity, because you're afraid of being a hypocrite. Now, to be clear, that's not to say that you can't recommend that someone's suffering gets help, or that you have to condone destructive behavior. It's simply to say that you can also have compassion and understanding when people make mistakes. You can recognize that everything you judge out there in the world also exists in some form inside of you, so you don't need to go around acting superior. In fact, that's counterproductive. If you can avoid judging others in that way, you will naturally feel more comfortable sharing the parts of yourself that you might consider shameful. And when you can do that, you can really tap into the authentic charisma that comes from that openness.

Now, authenticity is a deeper topic than it may seem. It's not as simple as saying just be yourself and then doing it. In fact, that advice is usually good, but is useless in practice. There has been one resource, though, that has very much influenced me when it comes to authenticity, and you can get it for free courtesy of our sponsor for this video Audible, and I'm talking specifically about Radical Honesty by Brad Bland. I've gone through this now about three times. I've been recommending it like crazy because each time I get more out of it and it influences my behavior every single time. So if you want to check that out today for free, the link in the description www.Audible.com Charisma will get you a free audiobook with your subscription to Audible. And if you know that you want to stick with Audible, you can get the second button on that page, which is a special promotion up until February 18th that gets you nearly half off for three months of audible. That's three audiobooks that you will essentially get for half off.

Now I would personally recommend A New.

Earth by Eckhart Holly and Loving what Is by Byron K. You want to get some really great stuff on becoming more authentic. Both of those have been huge for me. But either way, with Audible, you can listen to a massive library of audiobooks no matter where you are. In addition to an audiobook a month, you will get two Audible originals each month, which are titles that are exclusive to Audible. If you ever get one that you don't like, you can exchange it for free with no questions asked. So this is a great alternative to reading for those times where your eyes are busy. So for instance, if you're commuting to work and you added the habit of just listening to an audiobook or to school, wherever you're headed, you can usually finish a book a month without having to add any extra effort or time to your life. And that's obviously an awesome perk. So if you want to check out Radical Honesty today for free. You can do that with your subscription to audible@audible.com Charisma Also, one other announcement.

The foreign language channels that I announced way back are in fact up. I'm going to link to them. Beneath this they are Hindi, Arabic and Mandarin. So far we might be adding others. Thank you so much to everyone who reached out and applied to help us run those. Now whether you sign up and you're interested in those channels channels or not, either way, I hope that you guys enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.

I.