Evan Carmichael and @SKellyCEO discuss how introverts like Richard Branson, J.K. Rowling, and Bill Gates became strong communicators without becoming extroverts. They say introverts' natural listening ability is a strength, and recommend practicing pitches with friends first and partnering with extroverts to balance deep thinking with outreach.
First up, coming in, Roshan saying, I'm an introvert. Being introverted, how can I develop my communication skills? What advice would you have there for an introvert, Roshan?
Hey, Roshan. Now, I've got some great news for you. I'll use a couple of other quotes actually from people I think both Evan and I respect, who are amazing, but they're introverts. And I think we often forget, we kind of have, I think actually part of social media and the celebrity culture, you kind of expect everybody to be an extrovert out there, but they're not. When people are very authentic, a lot of people are introverts. Evan shared with you before on previous broadcasts about how he's overcome, and maybe he'll talk a bit about that today, but one guy we both met and we think a pretty amazing entrepreneur, Richard Branson, His quote is, "I had to train myself into becoming more of an extrovert." And we both met the guy, he's just very, very humble, super nice guy, cares passionately about our customers, always looking for the way to disrupt an industry. And then another one from a completely different field, there's someone who wrote all the kind of legendary Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling. She said, you know, "I've been writing almost continuously since the age of 6, but I've never been so excited about this idea I had then. But my intense, immense frustration is I didn't have a pen that worked, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one, you know. And that's, well, one of the most luminary authors of our times. And then someone in our industry, Bill Gates, who's doing amazing philanthropic work around the world and leading massive campaigns to do things like stop malaria. I've obviously built Microsoft. And he kind of acknowledges, you know, I think introverts can do pretty well. If you're clever, you can learn to get to the benefits of being a really good introvert, about thinking about really tough problems, about kind of reading everything you can just to push yourself very hard to think of the edge and beyond the edge of your area. But you'd better team up with some extroverts to kind of do and tap into both sets of skills so that you can build a company thrives both for deep thinking, but building a team also to go out to the world and sell those ideas. So I think, what does that mean? It means there's a lot of people around the world. You should feel very comfortable that a lot of great business people, a lot of great entrepreneurs are absolutely introvert. And I think my most sort of humble advice would be with all these things, as we talked about with people like Martin Luther King, King, take that first step on a giant staircase. And the easier, the more you pitch your idea, the more you pitch it to friends and families in a safe environment, the more confidence you get. And you can definitely overcome your level of introversion and be very successful. What are your thoughts, Evan? Because you've been very— you've shown a lot of humility and humanity in this topic, and it's a very personal topic to you.
Yeah, we talked about this either on the last one or the time before, how we're both introverted. And that may not always, like, it may not feel like it watching us on these sessions, but we're both introverted. And I, first of all, I think it's just understanding that being an introvert can actually be a strength for you in the ability to communicate. Because yes, you have to learn to talk, but you have to learn to talk in a way that other people can understand. And I think introverts actually do a better job of listening so that you can understand the other person. And so where extroverts maybe need to do a better job of listening, introverts have that already. And so just tapping into that listening ability to know what they want, to hear what they're excited about, and then give them a message that will hit home. And so first off for me would just be disassociating the idea that because I am an introvert, I can't be a success at being a communicator. Well, you can. You just do it in a different way. You do it by listening really intently and then sharing your message. You don't have to be yelling at the front of a stage to communicate. There's a lot of different ways to get your message out there and going. I don't think you should. I don't think you need to become that person who's yelling on stage. Go all in on your strengths and use that ability to listen really well to give a message that really resonates with the person that you're trying to connect with.
