Introvert's Edge: Negotiating Authentically with Matthew Pollard

Hello my friends, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. This show is produced by the American Negotiation Institute and with over 5 million downloads and listeners in over 180 countries, listeners just like you have made this the number one negotiation podcast in the world. Hi, my name is Kwame Christian and I am the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute here at A&I we believe that the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And we are passionate, passionate about providing you with the best content that will help you to make your difficult conversations easier both at work and at home. Lastly, I want to remind you that we offer consulting and conduct trainings both virtually and in person all around the world. Our focus is in three main areas. First, negotiation and conflict resolution. Second, leadership. And lastly, diversity, equity and inclusion. Check the link in the description below to learn more about how we could work with you and your team. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Matthew, thanks for joining us today, mate.

I'm ecstatic to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, it's our pleasure. So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Yeah, sure, absolutely. So, I mean, I'm known as the rapid growth guy. I'm also the best selling author of the Introvert's Edge book series, which I think have sold about 75,000 copies together and they're in about 16 languages. But what really was my claim to fame is I built five multimillion dollar success stories from the ground up. And really I had no right to do that because I was an introvert that was really terrified of my own shadow. And everyone knows you've got to be a successful salesperson, you've got to be successful at networking, you've got to be successful at so many things to be successful at business. And yet I found my way to doing it and it was really completely accidental. I mean, I, you know, had a reading speed of a sixth grader in late high school. I was super introverted. And if it wasn't for losing my job just before Christmas and the only job I could get being door to door sales and teaching how to sell, watching YouTube videos, I really wouldn't be the person I am today. Which is why I spend my life really educating introverts that they're not second class citizens. Their path to success is just different to that of an extrovert. And if they embrace that and embrace systems that allow them to leverage their natural strengths, they truly can have a Rapid growth business that they love. They can have an amazing career, they can be an amazing public speaker. They can do so many things that they just know that they can't do because they don't have that gift of gab. Well, that's rubbish. They absolutely can't.

This is great. I'm so excited about this. And Matthew, I think a good place for us to start is your unique definition of introversion. So tell us about what it is and then also what a lot of the misconceptions are that end up confusing people.

Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, it's really interesting when you talk about introversion. Firstly, a lot of people still don't know what introversion and extroversion is, which is crazy because realistically we need to understand ourselves as people. If we don't understand ourselves as people, we don't know what skill sets that we have. Naturally, we don't know what skills gaps we have that we need to look for training and coaching to help get beyond. For instance, some might say that extroverts aren't the best listeners in the world. And introverts have that in spades. Introverts, of course, have their own barriers. And that's really the way I look at introversion and extroversion. We all have our burdens to bear. The truth is we just have skills gaps that we have to learn how to compensate for. And actually some of those skills gaps give us amazing advantages with the extra skill sets that we have learned over a lifetime. So when I look at introversion and extroversion, I think psychologists have, they've made a lot of money making it very confusing. So I try to simplify it to something really, really easy for everybody to just go, oh, I'm introverted, I'm extroverted. Which is where you draw your energy from. For instance, I founded a festival in Austin, Texas. It's grown to be the number three conference in America for small business. And I remember when we did our first big conference and the last day, one of the speakers was Jim Cathcart. He's a great friend of mine. He's one of the most award winning speakers in the world. And he and I were both involved in the event the entire three day period. He had a wonderful time, I had a wonderful time. The difference was on day three, he wanted to go down Rainey street in Austin and experience the live music capital of the world. Because he was jazzed, he was buzzing, he was so energized because he was around people. I wanted to put on a Hoodie, go home and watch Netflix. I didn't want to have anything to do with hanging out with people at that point. Now I remember that he was my guest so I had to take him out that night. And I have never had to. I mean the guy is. I've never had to ask a 7 year old before in my life, can I please go home now? I was exhausted. So the difference is just this. If you draw your energy from being around people, you're an extrovert. If you draw your energy from being by yourself, you're an introvert. Now that doesn't mean that because you're an introvert, you don't like people, you don't like networking, you don't like sales. Now I've had people that have said to me, matt, I do not want to learn sales, I want you to teach me the marketing stuff so I don't have to sell. And then I've said, well, let's just do a little bit of sales. Let me train you just so we can validate that the words that you're using so we can build it onto a website so you never have to speak to someone again. And those people have grown to love sales and now they don't want to give it up. So the key is that usually an introvert is terrible at a lot of these extroverted arenas or so called extroverted arenas because we don't have a system and process to follow. That in truth, once we have allows us to leverage our natural skills to beat out the extroverts hands down. Now that's not to say that the extroverts can't learn these skills sets and strategies. But the truth is extroverts tend to like to wing things. They have to take a big back step to then catapult forward and they're less likely to do it. Where for introverts we're kind of terrible at sales, networking, negotiation. So without those strategies we're not going to do well. So of course we're willing to do the legwork up front so that we can excel. And you know, I mean a system will always outperform a winged process every day of the week and twice on Sunday eventually and actually not, it doesn't take that long. Now the misconceptions are pretty simple. A lot of people say things like, oh, I used to be introverted, but don't worry, I'm extroverted now. Like introversion is a bad thing. It's not a curse, it's an advantage in my world. It gives you an edge because you're more prone to learning a system. And you've got these amazing advantages of active listening and empathy that take time for extroverts to learn and actually require a lot of coaching to learn and do and achieve. Well, now other people will say things like, oh, you know, I used to be really extroverted, but since COVID I'm now more introverted. No, that's just a behavior or a habit that used to have a habit of going out a lot. Now you like watching Netflix. But the truth is, if you go out and you're actually motivated and energized because you went out, you're an extrovert. It doesn't change who you are just because you don't want to do it as often anymore. You'll find as long as you're drawing your energy from being with people or drawing your energy from being by yourself, that's the simplest way to really decide who you are.

This is great. This is really great. And one of the things that I love about this is the fact that you're really introducing a paradigm shift where a lot of times introverts have this bias against themselves, saying that, oh, because of this tendency I have, because of this personality trait that I have, I cannot do xyz. But what you're saying is, not only can you, but you're taking it to the next level and saying, not only can you, but you can do it at a higher level. And I'll show you how. And the thing that you keep on saying is systems and processes. So tell us more about those.

Yeah, absolutely. So, and I think that it's really interesting, like, the topic of introversion. Extroversion is relatively recent. And, you know, there's been some pretty important battles to have fought before that, right? You had the women's movement, and before there was like, women couldn't be in the workforce. Right? And we've still got a long way to fight. We've got race, we've got religion. We've got all these things that we're trying to work through in both small business, in corporates, and, you know, making people realize that everybody has advantages and disadvantages. There's upbringing stories. There's, you know, whether or not somebody. What? You know, I mean, people win the lottery because they have the natural gift of gap. Maybe, maybe not. People win the lottery because they grew up rich. Maybe, maybe not, right? I've seen a lot of people that grew up rich that have had horrible lives. I've seen a lot of people that grew up poor, that made something of themselves that some rich kids would just dream of being. The truth is, introversion is exactly that. If we create this story about why we can't succeed, then all of a sudden we have no, we're not pushing ourselves to succeed. If we believe our own story, of course we're not going to push ourselves through it. We're not going to spend the time learning a system. This is probably the easiest way to explain it. When I was in, as I said in late high school, I had a reading speed of a sixth grader. I was super introverted. I just had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. My family could see that if I went to college at that point I was going to spin out. I wouldn't have been able to succeed. Now I did luckily enough get diagnosed with this thing called Irlen syndrome. Now for the video watchers at home, it basically means I can put on this pair of funny colored lenses and miraculously I can learn to read. Now I couldn't read like everyone else. I could start the process of learning to read. So, you know, I hustled for the last two years of high school to get to. I actually got into the top 20% of my state. But I mean, I was, I always felt like the slow kid. Now I'm the slow kid that had braces, had bad acne and funny colored lenses. My confidence wasn't exactly at an all time high. So I took a job at a real estate agency to have my year, gap year. I'm sure people that are listening have had kids that have had gap years. And you know, my gap year was really to find myself. Now I know what you're thinking, real estate. I was probably the guy out selling. I wasn't. I was the guy in the back office with a, a look on my face saying, don't speak to me. I'm just here to do data entry. I'm here to find myself for the year. Well, three weeks into that job, my boss pulls me aside and he's like, man, I'm so sorry to tell you this, but you know, we've just discovered that they're shutting down. The head office is shutting down this office. You're out of a job. I've been there three weeks now in Australia. I mean, we have summer break and Christmas break at the same time. And I lost my job just before Christmas. And just before Christmas in Australia means everyone goes off on the 20th of December and they don't come back till the 15th to 20th of January. So if you can imagine being a business at that point, put your hand up if you think you're going to be hiring, you're not hiring anyone. The only jobs in the paper are these things called commission only sales roles. So I applied for this job doing commission only sales because the only thing that was more terrifying than going to apply for a door to door sales role was telling my father who broke his back 80 hours a week, sorry, out of a job, going to sit on the couch and watch Oprah for the rest of the summer just wasn't going to be okay in my family. So there were three jobs. I applied for all three, I got three interviews, then I got all three jobs and I was like, maybe they see something in me that I don't see in myself. Well, my training manager put that little chip on my shoulder to bed really, really quickly. He said, matt, we just hire everyone. We've got this saying, we throw mud up against the wall and we see what sticks. Fun saying, until you realize you're the mud. Well, so here I am, after 5 days product training and not a single second of sales training, I get thrown on this road called Sydney Road in Melbourne, Australia. This is like a thousand doors on each side, just little junk stores. And I get told to go sell. Well, I didn't know what to say, so I take this deep breath and I go to walk in. And luckily, luckily enough, I was politely told to leave because the next door I was sworn at. But my personal favorite was always getting told to go and get a real job. This was the only job I could get. Door after door this kept happening. I got sworn at, told to get a real job, politely told to leave till my 93rd door where I made my first sale. And I remember I made about $70. And I was ecstatic for about 45 seconds until I had my second realization for the day. I got to do this again tomorrow and the next day and the next, and this was not okay. So I went, alright, so I can do what 18 of my training group of 20 did the following day. I could have quit or I could have decided to do what the other person that stayed decided to do. I'm just going to grind it out, I'll just hustle and maybe it'll work. Which don't get me wrong, there's a lot of business owners that are doing that and as opposed to giving up, you know, absolute tribute to them. But the truth is that there's a third path that nobody ever thinks of, which is what if there was another solution to this problem? And with gift of Gab kind of ideology, you know, when confronted with gift of Gab, we believe it's either tough it out or quit. That's. That's it. But the truth is, I made the decision that there was another way. And what I discovered was that sales was a system like anything else. And that's what I had to really come to terms with. I went, what if sales was a system? Well, how would I learn that system? And what I realized is, of course, there are all these books out about sales and sales systemization. But the truth is, I had a reading speed of a sixth grader. I couldn't exactly pick one up and read it. It would have taken me a year to read it, let alone apply it. This was before podcasts and all the online learning we have today. But there was this cool tool called YouTube that had just been out for a couple of years at that point. And so I took a pun, I typed in sales system, and all these videos came up. And so every day, what I would do is I would focus on one step of the system, and I go out and I'd apply what I learned the eight hours the night before, during the eight hours that I was out selling. So every day was eight hours out selling, applying what I learned the neck. That night, I go home, and I'd spend eight hours learning the next thing or how to perfect the thing that I was working on. Day after day, I did that. Weekends, I'd spend 16 hours learning and practicing. Now, I'm sure to everyone, this does not sound fun. It was horrific. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But six weeks in, and this is all it took. I mean, very quickly, you know, my sales improved. I mean, I went from, you know, 93 doors to 78 to 46 to 21 to 18 to 7 to 3. I got it down to closing a deal. Every third door I went to. Now, six weeks in, my manager pulls me aside and he's like, well, I thought I was in trouble, by the way, because my manager pulled me aside and he had this puzzled look on his face. And I was the. I was the quiet guy that handed my paperwork in downstairs and then would listen to all the boisterous reps upstairs, you know, talking about, you know, how they close that deal or how the market's getting harder. Well, he looked at me and he said, matt, we're kind of puzzled by this, but we just got the national sales figures. And, I mean, in truth, I didn't really even know who your name was up until today. But you know, it turns out you're the number one salesperson in the company. Now this was the largest sales and marketing company in the southern hemisphere. So I'd gone from scared to sell to being the number one person that was currently, you know, working in a commission only sales job for that organization. So they went, oh well, obviously because you can sell, you could probably manage. Well, I don't know why people think that. Like it just baffles me that people think that's the same skill, right? So no, I got given my own 20 people and he said, don't worry, just mud up against the wall, see what sticks. No one stuck. They all quit. Everyone. Within 48 hours, everybody was gone. Well, I went back to YouTube but I learned how to manage. I actually got pretty good at it. Well, less than a year later, I was promoted seven times. And then, you know, fast forward, just shy of a decade, I'd started my own business and I'd been responsible for five multimillion dollars success stories. So the thing that I want people to understand is yes, of course my six week period was horrible. Now I could have broken that six week period over three months. Six months. And remember, I went from the worst having no business being in sales to the best person in the largest sales and marketing company in the southern hemisphere. Most small business owners don't have to get that good. So they don't even really need to work that hard. What they've just got to realize is that sales is a methodical process, a step by step process that leads to a sale. And it's. And if you pick the right process, you can get rid of all those bulldog hard closes, the things that we just as introverts find uncomfortable. Now when I came to the United States, I had to separate myself from an awkward network. Well, let's just say a network that I'd awkwardly fostered over the last 10 years and completely start again. And because of that, I literally, I went from knowing no one and really struggling to articulate the value I offered because I decided to become a coach and consultant to teach people how to do what I do. I even spoke on the topic. And it's funny, when you say to somebody you're a sales trainer, they look at you like you one step above a scam artist, right? Especially introverts. They're like, oh yeah, I can't sell. I had somebody try once and it just didn't work right. You say you're a marketer, they Go. Oh, that's interesting. How much do you cost? Now you're talking about price. You just met them. So I had to realize that there was another strategy that I needed to learn, which was how to network in a way that sidestepped the commodity bucket that talked about they got me straight away talking about price or got them to disqualify me. And what I realized is network could have a similar methodical process that I put together by taking what other people did, looking at what worked for me and creating some unique theory of my own. And then I started speaking from stage and now I'm one of the most award winning speakers in the world of sales. And I've spoken on stages like Microsoft Inspire, for Intel, for Oracle. I do all these presentations. I'm one of the most requested speakers in the small business space. And again, it's a similar methodical process. You can apply this to negotiation, you can apply it to parenting. The truth is there is not one behavior that you will not benefit from having a planning a methodical process that you plan and prepare. What you've got to realize is that introverts in a lot of ways have an advantage because they're willing to take those steps to actually learn that methodical process. And you don't even need to learn it that well. And truthfully, the process doesn't even need to be that good if you just pick a process and stick to it. Forget about the bells and whistles is what introvert do. And anyone learning a process does wrong. They read all the books and then they're trying to put it all together into a format that works best for them. It doesn't matter what process you follow. Follow somebody's methodical process without the bells and whistles. Till you get that right, it will probably still outperform what you're currently doing. Then add the bells and whistles on later by trying to add the bells and whistles on and educate or over educate ourselves. What we're actually doing is overcomplicating it. We're doing what I call busy procrastinating, procrastination. Trying to do the things that feel comfortable with while avoiding the thing that feels uncomfortable. Whether it's because we're an introvert and we don't actually want to sell, we don't actually want to network, we don't want to negotiate or it feels uncomfortable to try and piece together a process because it feels more comfortable even though it doesn't result in great results and it doesn't feel comfortable to get rejected it feels more comfortable just to wing things. Right. So we avoid that. So the only piece of advice that I will give you is that anyone that is an introvert, it's best to learn off an introvert. Because the truth is that the hardest thing for an introvert to do is not learn a sales system, learn a networking process, a way of negotiation, but instead believe that they can. So if you're speaking to, if you're getting trained by an extroverted coach or speaker or author that says it's easy, you just do this first thing that goes in your head. Well, it's not easy for me. My situation is different. Same for an extrovert. Of course my processes and systems will work for you. But for you have a lot of advantages that I don't. You don't have some skill sets that I have. And because of that, it's best for you to learn off somebody that's extroverted that maybe had to learn active listening and empathy or how to demonstrate that things that I got naturally when I, you know, because I'm an introvert. So it's always best to follow somebody that has a similar natural skill set. And that's why, you know, I wrote the book the Introverts Edge, which focuses on sales, the introvert's edge to Networking, which focuses on networking. But truthfully, just because I have the word introvert stamped on the COVID doesn't mean I'm the only person out there teaching this stuff. Like if you think about sales, Jeb Blunt, Mark Hunter, Lee Suls, I mean, goodness. Zig Ziglar, the most well known sales trainer and probably one of the most well known speakers in the world is introverted. If you think about networking, you know, Matt Alderton, the founder of BX Networking, Ivan Meisner, the founder of bni. These people, I mean, they're networking titans. They're both introverted. It doesn't really matter what skill set you can think of. There's an introvert out there that has mastered it, that's written a book on teaching it.

Does your company invest in professional development training? If you believe that your team would benefit from a negotiation workshop, all you need to do is go to our website, fill out the workshop request form and then we'll set up a time to chat. These workshops are completely customizable, customizable, and we've done them all around the country. Negotiation and conflict resolution skills are beneficial across all professions, but they're especially useful in procurement, purchasing, sales sourcing and contract management. Our calendar is filling up Quickly. And we even have some workshops scheduled for next year, if you think you might want one. I'd suggest reaching out soon so you don't miss out. Check out the link in the description to learn more. And now, now back to the show. This is incredible. So some quick notes first. Matthew, your storytelling is impeccable, and I know that's one of the things that you speak on. So I think next time you come on, you need to walk us through how you did what you just did, because that was really good. I forgot I was hosting for a little bit. I was like, man, this podcast is awesome. So kudos on that. And then I love the fact that you talk about. About the value of strategy, the value of a process. There's one thing that all great strategists have in common. A strategy. That's it. And winging it isn't a strategy. Right. And I like the fact that you said a process or a strategy is better than nothing, because then it puts people in a position where they can replicate what it is that you did because you learned, then you immediately applied, and then you started honing your skills. Okay, this works. This doesn't work. I'm going to do it incrementally better every single time. So you're essentially running a lifelong experiment, and that's really what life can and should be if we're willing to put our hypotheses into action. And that's what a lot of people don't do. Because really, a lot of times procrastination is just an intellectualized form of fear. We are afraid. And then we just hold back, but we convince ourselves, oh, you know, I'm just a thoughtful person. I like to think things through. And then we think ourselves out of doing what needs to be done. So I love the fact that you not only focus on learning, but also being experimental and taking action. Because a lot of times people don't take what they learn and put it into action. So I think all of this is really great.

One thing I will say to that is that I just talked about sales networking. You just talked about negotiation. The truth is that if you say, I'm going to learn all of those things, that's also busy procrastination, because then it will become overwhelming and you won't do any of them. So pick one frontier. Like, there's one thing that I'm working on right now. There always is one thing I'm working on right now. Now that I plan on going from conscious incompetence, because I'm Terrible at it, and I know it. And moving myself to conscious competence to eventually it'll be unconscious competence. I just know exactly how to do it and it's natural. And then everyone will say, you're so lucky you just were born with that natural ability. No, I worked hard for that. Right? So the thing is that you need to be fixated on one thing and that could be just becoming a better parent, right? Getting more involved in your child's social life or whatever it takes to pick one thing, read the books on it. Read a book on it and focus on a system and process. Listen to a bunch of podcast interviews, pick one authority on the topic and go. I'm going to go deep into that person's book and learn their system before I get creative and piece anything else together. Then turn it into a masterful level and you will succeed. Now, the truth is that, I mean, this isn't new stuff like Brian Tracy, who is extroverted, by the way, says the top 10% of all sales performance have a planned presentation. Now, if you think about that, I mean, the bottom 80%, he says, just say, says whatever comes out of their mouth, which of course extroverts are better at and why the introverts are at the bottom. But in the top 10%, funnily enough, you know, I spoke at the AAISP, which is the American association of Inside Sales Professionals. And if you think they're, you know, of all the big brand names that you can recognize, the head of all their sales departments were at this corporate retreat. And I did a survey beforehand. Guess What? More than 50% of the people in that room were introverted. The best in the business are introverted. You go to the top 30 sales gurus, list of which I'm on by globalgurus.org you'll find that half of that list is more introverted than extroverted. It's common knowledge to the people that know that introversion is an advantage. The problem is the world knows that extroversion is an advantage. And that's the problem. If you think about the world of networking, you think about the skill sets that people don't like self promotion, obscene confidence. These are commonly seen as extroverted skill sets. Now, truthfully, there are skills that extroverts can learn to not come across that way, but it's not a natural thing for them. On the other side, the things that introverts, sorry, the things that people like in networking tend to be more commonly introverted strategies. But without a process to actually start a Dialogue, you have a problem. The same thing when you think about speakers. If you ask me to go and deliver a topic, there's two things you're going to know. One is it's going to be pretty close to exactly what you experienced last time. So you knew it was good last time, you know it's going to be good this time. And secondly, I'm going to research your organization to the hilt to make sure that the things that are different are uniquely customized to your organization with a huge amount of knowledge behind it. Because I have made sure that anything I say from stage, I don't feel self conscious about, I don't feel like an imposter about. I need to have done my homework. A lot of times when you say to an extroverted speaker, hey, I loved what you did there, can you go and deliver it for our other department? They'll say, well, I don't even know what I said. I might be able to stay slightly, you know, in the same framework as what I know, but maybe it's going to be probably 20, 30% difference. With me it's probably going to be 10% different, maybe 5. But every part of that is going to be planned. Now if you think about that kind of framing and the advantage that gives you, it's huge. Now going back to storytelling because introverts, there's a huge power in storytelling. For instance, that story of my personal life, I've got a story of Wendy that I tell. I say, you know, on Introvert U, I have a program called, you know, you're one story away. And I talk about the fact that every business is one story away from, you know, a, you know, rapid growth business that revolves around then their family and their life. Because I believe if you have one story and it's not your story, it's a story of a customer you worked with that had a problem that you got to an amazing result. If you can share that story in a way that you don't currently tell it, trust me. Because everyone says these really boring business stories, customer wanted this so we gave it to them. There's no emotional rollercoaster. I'm talking more like the story of how you met your, your husband or wife, your life partner, right? If you can tell a story that has that emotional fabric to it, there are some amazing things that happens. It short circuits the logical mind which speaks directly to the emotional mind which by the way, the logical part of the brain is going, that'll work for me. That won't work for me. I don't have time for this. The emotional brain literally short circuits that when it hears a story, goes story time. And it just listens. Now the power of that is even a host of a podcast might disengage and go, wow, this is an engaging story. And forget that they're a podcast host, right? So stories are powerful for that. People Remember up to 22 times more information when embedded into a story. And thirdly, this research out of Stanford that says that when I tell a story, what happens is it activates the reticular activating system of our brains, which causes our brains to synchronize. It creates natural rapport that an introvert can then leverage into real rapport with those three things combined. Think about the power it gives you on podcast interviews, speaking from stage selling, negotiation. It's hugely powerful when you tell a story because what happens is you get the. Instead of telling somebody why they're wrong or why they should see it this way, you're actually getting them to live an experience, to see it from somebody else's point of view. And as long as the moral of the story hits, that can be transformational for anyone that is listening. So if you're an introvert, especially, you can write these stories out, you can practice them, you can plan them. Not in a scripted way that sounds robotic, like that telemarketer that calls you at 8 o' clock at night that you don't want them calling you because you're trying to have a family dinner. But by the way, you know your favorite movies, like all of your favorite movies, they're reading from scripts too. They didn't write it out, but they remembered it, they've embraced it. I mean, Leonardo DiCaprio in some of his parts, I think he's fantastic. Another introvert, by the way. But he's read the script, he's embraced the character so that he can deliver it on camera. You remember one story. If you can deliver one story, maybe two really well, well, that's all you need for your business. But most introverts will just wing it, just like the extroverts. And by the way, nobody should. If you tell one story well, it should be the same story the same way every time. And the only change is how you're applying it to the unique circumstance they highlighted when you were networking, just before they spoke, when they were, when you were negotiating. If you can do that, you can be masterful at really a lot of these so called extroverted arenas, because story over logic wins every time. So leave your fire hose of jargon at home, tell a story instead.

This is great. This is great. Matthew, before we go, because I know we're coming up on time here, if you were to come up with one last parting word of wisdom that says, that tells people like, you know what, I'm going to Give Matthew a 5 star review on this podcast, what would be that one parting word of wisdom for the audience?

Absolutely. So I think the piece of advice, because we were just talking about stories is remember that stories short circuit your logical mind and speak directly to your emotional mind. So if you're telling yourself this entire story about why it's more difficult for you because you're an introvert and because you just, you don't find it as easy as everyone else, you're not naturally gregarious, well, that's short circuiting your logical mind, which might be able to tell you it ain't true because your emotional mind's hearing. The moral of that story is don't try. So I'm telling you to stop telling yourself these horrible stories. You know, one of the biggest hurdles that I find introverts have, and don't get me wrong, everybody has this. But introverts have specific dialogues that they tell themselves, connected with the fact that because they don't have gift of gab because they're not naturally gregarious, they cannot succeed. And it's stopping them from starting their own businesses. It's stopping them from having the careers that they want. It's allowing them to accept subpar performance in their careers in their businesses that they just wouldn't if they weren't telling themselves this monologue of we're just lucky to be where we are today because it's tougher for us. Us. And that's what's got to stop.

This is good. I've taken so many notes here, Matthew. You see this? This is great. I love this. So you know, this will not be the last time you come on the show. If I have it my way. I appreciate it. But Matthew, before you go, let the listeners know about you, how they can get in touch with you. And I know you don't. You told me not to push the products too much, but they're too good, my friend, so let them know how they can work with you too.

Absolutely, absolutely. I appreciate you asking. So obviously for those people listening, I mean, the easiest way to check me out is obviously type in Matthew Pollard online. I mean, I'll take up the first 10 pages of Google, but truthfully, I put out so much free content on YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, just because that's how I learned on YouTube, right? So I try to give back in the place that I received amazing content, but the other way that I would suggest, and my publisher hates me when I say this, but you do not need to buy either of them my books. You can go to the introverts edge.com or theintrovertsedge.com networking. There you'll be able to download the first chapter of both of my books. But the reason I say that is that the biggest hurdle, as I said, is for introverts to believe that they can. And in both of those books I'll help you overcome that belief or that misbelief that you can't sell or network as an introvert. So I'll help you get over that and then I'll outline the exact step by step strategy, you know, with the sales book as an example. You know, if you do nothing more than grab the seven step process that I give you, look at the chapter headings that I give you for the exact process you should follow, look at what you currently say and fit it into that, you'll quickly realize there's some things out of order, there's some things that don't fit, like throw that out. You shouldn't be saying that to customers. Then you'll realize there's some gaping holes like telling great stories, asking great questions. If you do nothing more than do that, you'll double your sales easily in the next 60 days. And then their networking book is will help you do the exact same. So Those links are theintrovertsedge.com and the introvertsedge.com networking. And you know the other thing you're definitely welcome to try, you know, we just released a new platform called Introvert U and it is a learning hub specifically for introverts. And the whole goal is that we're not teaching these mega trainings on that platform. It's like a Netflix style platform that focuses on introverts all over the world. Because you know, my brand's grown to a point that I'm trying to showcase case other introverted experts or what I call introverted titans, which are industry experts that just happen to be introverted. And what we're getting them to do is create what I call a micro course, which is where instead of teaching someone how to play the guitar, for lack of a better example, they're teaching somebody how to play one song with three chords. A simple training that focuses on one tangible, instantly appliable ideology that an introvert can learn and apply tomorrow to better their small businesses and better their lives. So definitely I'd love you to check it out. The introvertsedge.com as well as introvertu we can see those micro trainings and that's also where the one Story Away training is hosted as well.

This is fantastic. Matthew, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

It was my pleasure to be here mate. And thank you for having me. And thank you for outing yourself as an introvert. I really appreciate it.

My pleasure. Thank you for the increased self awareness is Congratulations. You've just joined an elite club by listening to a full episode. You're now officially on the Negotiate Anything team, so welcome aboard. What most team members do is they subscribe to the podcast because that allows them to automatically get the latest episodes of the show. The best things in life lie on the other side of difficult conversations. Keep learning, keep practicing and keep getting better. Your relationships will improve, your career will soar, and you'll have the confidence you need to get the most out of these crucial conversations. Again, thank you for joining the team. We're excited to have you and I will see you in the next episode. I'll catch you later.