HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR AUDIENCE LIKE A TED SPEAKER ONLINE - Story crafting and storytelling - EP.01

And so we went on this massive name hunt. And both Abigail and I have theater backgrounds, and everybody who works for us comes from some sort of connection to the arts. And, and this notion of becoming a virtuoso, someone who is masterful at what they do, and not just in the sense of great technique, but going beyond technique.

Are you ready? Let's start.

I am.

Let's start. Let's go.

I think I wanted to bring you to the show for at least like a couple of months, and you're always very busy. So first of all, thank you.

First off, I'm glad to be here. Um, and also it's a nice way to spend the time.

Yeah, it is. So it's a nice afternoon. I like the scenery. Your background looks good.

Thank you. It's the fine art of how do you take your small apartment and make it look like you're not sitting in your bedroom doing a podcast?

Yeah.

And hopefully not have your 3-and-a-half-year-old run in sort of half naked during the middle of the call.

Amazing addition, by the way, I haven't had that yet, so I'm totally in, anything goes, but— so welcome to the Zavaro Show, and actually the first, I think, podcast in English, so far I've only done like, 30 episodes in Hebrew. So welcome.

I'm glad to be your first English speaker.

Yeah, I think you'll be the first guest. And I don't know if I told you that, but you and I spoke a couple of months ago when I had my birthday, and I decided that my gift to myself would be to do 100 different talks around the world. And I started a YouTube channel, I started doing videos about it, and it looked amazing. And then corona happened. So my decision was that I will not discourage and I will keep going. And you'll be my first guest on my journey to get to 100 different talks from people, with people from all over the world. So you'll always be remembered as the first.

My son is now obsessed with Neil Armstrong. He's got this children's book called I Am Neil Armstrong. And the whole theme of the book is that no matter how big the journey, you always want to start with that first step. So Nir, I'm glad to be here on your first step towards 100.

Thank you. So the show is called Zavaroness, and it's about giving some value and helping people find out one thing, one trick, one hack they can take with them from this conversation and use it in their everyday life and their businesses. And I think corona has made a lot of different changes into our lives. And I wanted to talk to you because I think when we look at this new era that we're moving to, You have so much to teach, and every time we go on a call, I'm amazed, and every time we have coffee. So I think the best start is to give our audience a quick review of who you are, and we usually do a 60-second elevator pitch.

So—

Oh, okay. Sure. So my name is Michael Waitz. I was born in the States in a small city called Savannah, Georgia, which, for those of you who may have read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil or seen many movies, it's a beautiful place to grow up. but not the most exciting place to live, at least it wasn't when I was growing up. I got involved with the theater business at a very young age, and then through that started working with executives on how do you create an impact in a live communication. Fast forward, I wound up moving to Tel Aviv, which oddly enough happens to be on the same line of latitude as Savannah, now living with my life partner and our 3-and-a-half-year-old son. And I work with founders, executives, and interesting people all over the world about how we do this better in meetings and conferences and talks. I have a company that I co-founded here. There's 7 of us, and it's a great excuse to have fascinating conversations with interesting people.

So your company is called?

Oh, right, that, yes.

Small details.

Small details. You know, we're so used to putting our clients at the front of it that we really don't like to speak about ourselves very much, but the company is called Virtuoso.

How did you come up with that name?

That's an interesting story. So my partner Abigail and I opened up what would become Virtuoso back here in Tel Aviv back in around 2009. And back then, we were just mainly known as Michael and Abigail. And around that time, there was the first TEDx here in Tel Aviv, actually one of the first TEDxes in the world. And at that TEDx was Bruno Giassani, who was TED's Global Director. And we met Bruno and got on great with him. And then about 4 years later, he said, why don't you guys come to Edinburgh and help us work with the speakers at TEDGlobal? We said, great! And then we said, but we should probably have a name other than Michael and Abigail. To make it sound professional, to make it sound like we really know what we're doing. And so we went on this massive name hunt. And both Abigail and I have theater backgrounds, and everybody who works for us comes from some sort of connection to the arts. And this notion of becoming a virtuoso, someone who is masterful at what they do, and not just in the sense of great technique, but going beyond technique. Someone that, speaking of my junior assistant, he's just walked in. Leo, you want to come say hi?

Quickly, quickly.

So here's Leo. He's come to say hi.

Hey, how's it going?

All right, Leo. I'll see you soon, ChuChu. Say bye.

Bye. Bye. Okay.

Bye.

Okay, close the door.

Okay.

So our notion was, how do you help someone master techniques so well that they can forget about them, that they can be able to have it be as if part of themselves? You know, when you watch Picasso paint, he doesn't— hold on just a second. Leo, Leo, can you close the door? I'll come play with you soon. Okay, close the door.

Thank you.

So I, I'm now, I'm now waiting for him to bring in other stuff, but hopefully—

Yeah, I have to tell you, I love this new concept of home podcasting on video. Everything becomes just a bit more interesting.

It does. And it's like, um, you know, I think a few years ago when they had, you know, BBC Dad who was giving— I think he was even a WikiStrat expert. He was giving this interview and somebody and the kids walk in and he's trying to pretend like they're not there. And then a few years later was BBC Mom, who no matter what came her way, she was just sort of disarming bombs, feeding children, helping her husband find her sock. But I think that comes to the core of what it means to be a virtuoso at something, that no matter what life throws at you, no matter what tools you have at your disposal, you can always have an impact, an impact that you want to have. So that's, that's where the name really came from. How do we help people do communication, speak about their ideas as flawlessly and effortlessly as you see Picasso painting with a paintbrush?

Yeah, I think that'd be— when you look at it, you know, when I first met you and Abigail and your company and what you guys do, I think the main feeling I got was I wish I would have met you guys 10 years ago and joined your company. That was the impact I first had of what you guys actually do and how you do it. And moving forward to Corona days, I think everybody needs to be a bit more of a talent or being able to present themselves on video now, right?

Absolutely.

I think it's more about You know what we always say is we want the best version of you, the version of you that we get over coffee or tea or, or a drink or something when you're not thinking about anything else, but you're just so engrossed in what you're talking about. You're so passionate about the story or this thing that you just found out or this thing that you've been thinking about.

How do you do that in a high-stakes situation? And when we come to the age of corona and there's so many video calls, I think video calls are probably one of the most unnatural sort of weird things that we do, because it's sort of the worst of both worlds. You know, I come from theater, and, you know, the difference between acting on stage and acting on the camera is that on stage you can make a lot more mistakes. You can do a lot more things that, uh, that you can kind of get away with. But on camera, the camera picks up everything, everything, every little detail, every little muscle, every little thought that you have, the camera picks it up.

Yeah.

And so now you've got the whole world on camera. And I think for many people— go ahead.

Yeah, no, when you say that, and now when you guys work with TED speakers on a global level, and a lot of that becomes now over the past decade or so, it was also filmed, was on YouTube, was on the TED main website, and so on. Did that change the way you teach people? So you're not on stage anymore, but they need to prepare for videos?

That's an interesting question, Nir, because when we work with a lot of our speakers for TED, most of that prep is done virtually, usually via Zoom.

And the trick is, how do you create that warmth and connection via this platform? Because if you can do it this way, you can also do it in person. The general rule of thumb when training someone for TED is that we want them to really connect with the people in the room. And the cameras are there just to pick up that. And at TED, it's kind of tricky because you have someone who is usually very accomplished in their field. Sometimes they're a great speaker, sometimes not. But actually, that is irrelevant because they're there in this very strange situation.

They've got 1,200 people in front of them who paid anywhere from $5,000 to $250,000 to be in that theater, enormously accomplished. They've got these bright glaring lights. They've got, you know, 10, 15 different cameras. They've got this timer that's going to be counting down. They have to be exactly on time. And the last thing people tell them before they walk on stage is, just be yourself. Wow.

Do you think, when you look at the situation now in terms of being on TED and people tell you, just be yourself, which is the worst, do you find that most people you talk to on Zoom lately are bringing their A-game or they're still struggling with where to look, what to do and stuff? Do you think it's still not a natural thing for us?

I think for most people it's not. And also, if— I think there's video conferences, and also now we're seeing more and more video messages from leaders. So you're a manager, you're an executive in a company, you probably, especially during an emergency time, you want to have a steady rhythm with how you're communicating with the people who are close to you. You know, it used to be in the days people would send out long emails. Now it's short clips usually filmed on your smartphone at home, and there's definitely a learning curve. I think when we first saw clients doing this, you know, they would be sort of— the camera angle, they'd be either very, you know, the camera either be very low or very far away, or they'd be looking over here, or they'd be sort of reading from cards but trying to look at the camera. And I think now people more and more realize that it's about being real, it's about being honest and true, but with a few tweaks. You know, as opposed to looking at you, how I'm doing on the screen, I'm not going to look at this camera, but I'm going to imagine that I'm really seeing the smiling, warm Nir that I see over coffee talking, looking back at me.

And it's just these few tweaks and having, I would say, a little bit more energy than one normally would. Because when you're sitting down on a virtual conference or the video conference, Our energy tends to sort of kind of sink down into the chair and we kind of just sort of kind of go into some sort of monotone kind of voice as we kind of respond. And there's a mirror effect between the speaker and the audience. So you can see the whole meeting starting to sort of lose energy and everybody sort of feeds on themselves. So I would say, you know, one is to look at the camera and 2 is to bring more energy than you think is necessary. Right now I'm sitting down with my feet flat on the floor and I'm leaning forward a bit so I can make sure that I'm engaged with you and that I'm not sort of slumping down and having that energy go down into the chair.

That is interesting. I think so, you and I are members of EO, the Entrepreneurs Organization, and that's how we met, luckily for me. And over the past 4 years, we've been using online video conferences with 15 people doing the presentations, doing a lot of stuff. You're used to working online. with video calls and things like that. But suddenly I gave a class last week, I think you and I spoke about it, and there's 40 people on the class, okay? And this one guy didn't turn off his camera and he's rolling a joint, okay? And that's, that's on a, on a formal class. And I'm, I'm wondering if I should say something or not, but then I noticed that other people on the call are starting and feels like a real class for a second, you know, where everybody's noticing that one guy who's doing something they shouldn't. So I made a sarcastic, funny remark about it, and the whole class started laughing. And you can actually, in a weird kind of way, bring the room together. You're controlling the room like you should as a presenter or an actor or anything like that. Do you think that that's a skill that now more people need to understand how to Become better actors or be more engaged? Is that a skill that people will look for? Will the next webinars be about how to lead a winning Zoom call or Skype for that case?

Well, listen, I think the ability to hold a room and to facilitate a conversation is, you know, a critical skill that everybody in this day and age needs, whether it's around the dinner table, whether it's at work, or whether it's just with friends. Where it shows up, I think, in the virtual realm, it's really interesting because a lot of people are talking about the downsides of these virtual meetings, but there's actually a lot of upsides as well. And I think that you're pointing to one of them, which is this notion that we're all in this together, that more than any other medium, I think virtual calls creates an equal playing field. Usually in a meeting, you have one or two people who are the dominant personalities who tend to dominate the conversation.

Yeah.

But in the virtual world, you know, that's much more evened out. So to your class thing, I think what's going on as far as education in general is fascinating because now you have— we teach at a business school here. Within one week, we had to move from offline to online, and they've been sending us articles every single day. Here's how you do it. But I think the interesting part of this is that not only in academia but also in the business world, so many people are now having to be online that weren't there before, that all the old rules are up for grabs, that we're going to see, I think, a new culture developing online and new rules, um, as far as this online portion. But offline, yeah, I, I think those same skills, uh, apply.

So I think, you know, we've been having a lot of discussions over the past 2 or 3 weeks and I'm at the point where I am— I don't know what's the right word, but I'm kind of starting to be fed up with that saying of, you got lemons, make lemonade out of it, where most people just have no clue what that means. Like, dude, I lost my job, my business is crumbling, I'm gonna lose everything, people are gonna lose their homes, and what's this lemonade that everyone is talking about? We are in a new time, new era. What do you think people can do to squeeze some lemonade out of those video calls in terms of your skills?

I think it's, especially if the calls are recorded, it's a great platform to practice. If you're running the meeting, it's a great time to practice setting up ground rules at the beginning, doing housekeeping, experimenting with which different ones will work. It's a great way to experiment with your leadership and how you facilitate and how you give airtime to people, how you find those who may not be speaking so much and bring them into the conversation, how you use things that we don't have in the physical world like chat. And if you're in the meeting itself, it's a great time for you to practice using stories and examples to back up the points that you want to make.

Storytelling is a key factor.

I think so. I mean, coming back to what TED has shown us is that if you have a strong enough story and if you tell it in a way that is really meaningful to you, you can hold an audience's attention for a long time online. I mean, when TED first premiered, it was 18 minutes, and some of the talks went into 21 minutes. And a lot of people watched those all the way through. They had all the cat videos on YouTube at their disposal, but they chose to stay with that one speaker because they found what they were saying so engaging. Not just because of— and not just because they're charismatic, the speaker, but also because they use stories and examples, they connect with their body and their voice. There's sort of this— I don't even— I lost my train of thought.

I think, you know, I started watching TED on the main website when they just released it. I know this was probably 2007, I think, '06, that they started launching the talks a couple of months after they were presented, and they started to launch that on the website. And I remember, and sometimes when I wanted to watch it, I had to wait like 20 minutes for the movie to download. There was no live streaming in that. The bandwidth was not there yet. And I would literally wait for 20 minutes to watch a 20-minute talk, whereas today they're like, people are clicking. But going back to storytelling, I think if you're the kind of person who can sit in a bar or can engage your employees or talk to your friends in an engaging way. If you can maybe understand what are those small things you do and bring them into the calls and become that storyteller on a virtual platform. What are the few— let's take 2 or 3 tips that you've seen over the last couple of months that we can use?

Well, I think when we talk about storytelling, I think there's 2 parts of it. There's the story crafting, how we craft stories, and there's the storytelling, how we actually deliver it. So if we look at the crafting of it, you always want to keep, especially content online, really, really short. But the essence of a good story is that the main character changes. So if you're going to be telling the story, And if it's a story about you or someone you know or an employee, really think about how is this person different at the end of the story than they are at the beginning. One of the most powerful ways of introducing a new idea is talking about the world before this idea and the world after this idea. And that's what a great story is. It's the world before for this character, something happens to them, and then the world after. And when it comes to the telling of it, We like to think of what creates presence and charisma as 3 overlapping circles of connection. You know, if you could think about a Venn diagram. So we have connection to your audience, connection to your content, and connection to your body and your voice. And each of these, there's, you know, tools and principles behind it. So I'll share just a few. So talk about connection to your audience. There's 2 TED speakers that we worked with that I think really offer gems on how to do this effectively, both offline and especially online. First one is Uri Hasson, who is a neuroscientist in Princeton who I think has one of the coolest jobs in the world. Uri puts people in brain scanners while they listen to and tell stories. So you can imagine these 2 brains going and, and the, the different parts of the brain lighting up. And what he found out is that the more that a listener is engaged with the speaker, The more that their brains start to mimic each other, and he calls it neural entrainment. And it takes a little while to get it. It's like a little click. And online you can feel that, where before you dive into the business stuff, all that sort of chitchat about how was your week, how's the weather, how's it going, how's your quarantine going— that's not needless, useless stuff. It's actually helping us start to get in line and get in sync. The other thing about connecting with your audience—

In Israel, that takes 30 minutes. You know, meeting starts with 30 minutes of small talk, and then we have 10 minutes of conversation about something, and then they have to leave because the parking is going to be— the meter is going to run out.

So I'd say as a foreigner here, when me and my partner, business partner Abigail, would go on meetings together, there was this full 10 minutes part of the conversation, all in Hebrew generally, where they had to figure out who they knew in common, right? The meeting couldn't start until they found at least one person that both of them knew, whether it was in high school or university or some other context. And they always found somebody, and I would just sort of sit and wait until that happened.

That's the most Israeli thing we do, you know. It's, um, you know that they say that go on the subway in New York on a normal day, no, no problems. If you go on a subway And you meet 2 people from any other nation, and if they hear one another speak the same language and understand where they come from, I don't know, Dutch, anywhere, most probably they might nod. But if 2 Israelis are assembling and they realize they're both Israelis, they most probably stop playing that game. Why are you here? What are you doing? Oh, good. You know my cousin? You went together to the army?

Amazing.

And that's what binds us together. That, that becomes a small tribe. Every single time, doesn't matter where.

Actually, you know, Yuval Noah Harari has a really interesting interview with Natalie Portman online. You can find it at the How To Academy, where he talks about one of the reasons that humanity was able to become the dominant species is because, unlike all the other animals, we can believe in things that don't really exist, and he calls them stories. So one of the stories that allows humanity to build trust with strangers is this notion of a common background, some sort of shared— like we share an ancestor, therefore we can trust each other even though we're complete strangers.

Amazing. Wait, so I'll throw you back to the second part of— you had crafts and storytelling.

Right, so the other part about connecting with your audience. So one is this neural entrainment, giving it time for it to really sink in. But in order for that to work, you need one more critical piece. And that comes from a speaker named Apollo Robbins. Do you know Apollo? Have you ever seen any of his stuff? So Apollo, Apollo has a very cool job. Apollo calls himself a gentleman thief. He is a pickpocket. He's played—

Ah, yeah, I saw him, I saw him. Unbelievable. Okay, yeah.

He played in Vegas for a long time. He played in Vegas for a long time. He had a TV show called Brain Games. Like, super smart, super funny, super clever guy. And Apollo has engaged in research with researchers about what is it about the human brain that allows itself to be fooled so easily? You know, how does pickpocketing actually work? And Apollo in his talk says, well, it's all about how we use our attention. And he unveils what he calls the Frank model of attention, which I love. We use it in all of our workshops. So he says, imagine, if you will, that inside your brain is a security guard named Frank. And Frank is male, and we're going to come back to why that's important in a second. So in front of Frank, he's got a readout for all the senses. You know, he's got monitors for the eyes, he's got a phone he can pick up for the ears, he's got all these sort of doodads for the readouts for all the other senses. And then behind him is a whole bunch of filing cabinets where he stores information. That's where the memories are. Now, in order for Frank to get a memory, he has to turn around to go access it. And when he turns around, he can't see the senses. And that's when Apollo will do his thing, where he'll loosen an earring or a watch or loosen a tie. Because Frank, since he's male, he can only focus on one thing at a time. So when we talk about connecting with the audience, getting that neural entrainment, what we need is your Frank. We need your attention. And that's something that you can see very clearly online. Because when we have your Frank, we see a little sparkle in your eye. And for 90% of the people, I would say, not everybody, but 90%.

Yeah.

And when we don't have your Frank, your eyes go kind of dead. It's sort of like, you know, I'm talking to you, but I'm right now thinking about my dishwasher, which may need to get fixed, and the oven, which broke yesterday. And I have these cookies I really want to bake. And you can kind of see that my eyes have kind of gone dead. So we talk about the audience, that's what we're really talking about, connecting with them. Same is true for body and voice, same is true for content.

I think, um, when you said that, the only thing I could refer to is when I used to teach sales. So I don't know if you know this, I used to sell snowboards in Israel. So it's like dead, dead hot summer and people were selling snowboards and flip-flops. and shorts and selling the dream of how the snowboard would feel when you're on a mountain in France or in Austria and you're— it's cold and it's fun and you're having fun and it's unbelievable. And I was about 23 when I started to do it, and I noticed that when I speak fast, no one listens. They go a bit numb, and then you can basically plant the ideas of what you want to do. And then at a certain point, you'd show them the gear, and when you touch something and they touch it, you know, they snapped out of it, and the only thing they can remember is they want this.

True.

And now you stand next to them, and together you debate about why this was the right decision. So there's not— it's not about selling, it's about telling the story about how this boat will feel in that situation. And that person went from summer in Israel top of the mountain in France in like 20 minutes sailing. And I noticed that—

So I have a question about that. So when you would be talking to them, what kind of stuff would you be telling them? What kind of content were you using?

So I learned every single data I could about the industry. So for example, I learned all the metrics about every single board. So that created a situation where I need to give you a huge amount of information. quite quickly involving a lot of numbers. I remember there's a lot of acronyms about it and there's some stuff about 3-letter about, I don't know, wood, plastics, and all sorts of stuff. I remember when I would speak fast enough, I could just throw in different stuff from sports cars and they wouldn't even notice. So it's an amazing board, you know, when you look at the layers, the GTI concept or the WRX concept, and it would not be You don't notice if it's fast enough. So important, just need to make sure you emphasize things you want to emphasize. How does that cold make you feel? How will it make you feel if that's so? When I went to that vacation, I felt kind of like how you're gonna feel.

Yeah.

And again, it's about talking fast and planting in the feelings you will have if If you make the right decision, so how can you not make the right decision? You want to feel like that.

So Nir, I like how you— I attribute it to you speaking fast because you mentioned it a whole bunch of times. But even as you're telling me the story, there's other things that you're doing that I'm not even sure that you're aware of that also make you really compelling. So for example, how much did you love putting this pitch together? Doing all the research, finding all the deep— finding all the data, finding all the different materials, watching all the sports, bringing in that stuff?

I think for me, that's when a passion and your hobby become your work. I didn't mind if it took me 8 hours a day. I wanted to read as much as I could. I was— you want to devour every piece of content or information you can find.

Yeah.

And when you were telling the story, how much did you love sharing this information with other people?

Well, I did it for about 7 years, 12 hours every day, 7 days. So at a certain point, I sold to about 60% of the snowboarding audience in Israel. Like, I single-handedly met most of them.

Yeah.

So that's how much I love telling that story over and over.

And when you would tell the story, would you be as animated as we saw you get just now when you're talking about, you know, the materials and the data points and throwing in sports?

Yeah, it's part of passion.

And how much would you be watching the other person as you were doing this to watch their reactions and to see if they were with you or not?

So after a while, I think you know your baseline, so everything becomes about how they react. So if they become a bit more tight, if they're a bit loose, if they're laughing, if they feel you, the conversation becomes a friendly conversation, not a sales conversation. It's all about the audience, it's all about the customer. So I can give you a nice example about that. I went I was in Germany last year. I was asked to give a talk to about 20 startups. And 5 minutes into the conversation, I noticed that they're not flinching. They're not even blinking their eyes. Like, I think they're dead. And I didn't know if I should keep going with that conversation. Should this— is it a good talk? And I actually started to sweat. So I heard something, a question about faith. And I noticed 2 or 3 people nodding, so I left the pitch I prepared and went into a whole rant about things, and suddenly that came in. And when everything ended after an hour, people came and said, that was a very good talk. And I'm like, shit, you couldn't say that like 50 minutes ago? So it is about listening to your audience in terms of body movement.

Yeah, but, but just to roll back to your, your, your snowboarding sales example, that was a great illustration of the 3 circles in action. Because you are so connected to your content and you're so passionate about it that that passion is infectious. And we talked about this mirror effect between the audience and the speaker. So when people— I think when they were excited about this, it wasn't just because you were speaking fast. It's basically they wanted what you were having. Like from the famous scene from When Harry Met Sally, right? I'll have what she's having. You were so jazzed. You were just sort of like, man, this guy knows everything. He's so cool. It's giving him such joy and passion. I want that joy and passion. And I have a feeling that's why they were just like, Nir, whatever you're selling, I'm buying.

So how do we— I think a lot of people are now looking at what they've done over the past couple of years and rethinking or reimagining how their life should be or could be, and some of them are now realizing that their jobs are not their passion, that they're not happy about what they did and stuff like that. Would you— do you think it's a good time to reflect and think back and try and find your passion again for some people?

I think it's always a good time to reflect. I think one of the things that makes humans so remarkable is our ability to reflect. We're the only, that we know of, creature that can look at what we've done and then think about it and think about why we did it and if we're happy with the result and what we would do different. And this power of reflection is a superpower. But I think there's a trap with thinking that we have to do what we're passionate about as a profession. There's some people who, you know, they feel like that's the only thing they can do. But research shows that for the vast majority of people, that's not it. You know, for them, it's finding something that they can get better at that requires effort and that they can see progress and, and feel like they're going to get rewarded for that effort inside of it. So I think that, like—

I love that.

You know, 10 years ago, uh, or 15 years ago, the career advice was go follow your passion and the money will follow. Well, it turns out that that's pretty not good advice for many people. But a lot of people stumble into jobs that they never thought they would even be applying for. And then they find, oh, there's something interesting here. Let me see if I can get better at that. Or let me see how I can meet people who can mentor me on that. And that process of just how do I get better turns out to be enormously satisfying. Yeah, not how do I be perfect, but how do I get better?

We have in EO the concept of telling the rough or tough truth of the 5% or stuff that's intimate, and I'd like to share something with you. In October of last year, I went traveling, I went to Japan, I came back, and I felt I lost my passion. I wasn't sure why I'm doing what I'm doing, should I keep my business, and I kind of like Let it be. I wasn't very passionate. I didn't want to write content. I didn't want to do a lot of stuff. And the most interesting thing is I noticed that it doesn't matter what happens, if it was a good week or a bad week, the only thing I wanted to keep doing was my podcasts on video. And now when I'm stuck at home and I was looking for something to hold on to, I went to the office, I got my mic, and I started again. And I noticed that came before other things.

Hmm.

And I think when you look at— sometimes I totally agree with you, just start doing something. If you find you like doing it more, it's not necessarily your passion. It doesn't need to be this thing, but it's just something you might be doing that becomes your job or your passion at a later stage. People are looking for that quick falling in love One sec.

Yeah, it's interesting. There's a book called Working Identity by an author named, I think it's Herminia Ibarra, and she did research into what is it when people make a successful career change from one career to another, what do they actually do and how long does that take? And she has a number of really counterintuitive findings. One is that it's not about finding your passion. It's often these sort of chance encounters. You were at some sort of lecture and you met somebody, or you were just sort of, in our day and age, scrolling around the internet and you clicked on this site and you found something that caught your interest. And that oftentimes it's these chance encounters more than our own network that give us an idea, oh, let me go explore that. And we usually have explored, you know, 4 or 5 different options till one begins to become more and more of our thing. And she says it takes about 5 years before you're sort of sitting comfortably in one job, transitioning to the other. But I love that it's, it's more about going out there and experiencing the world than necessarily sitting out and sort of doing, you know, meditation about what I'm truly passionate about.

I have to say that we've been talking for about 30 minutes or so, and as we're about to like do a final question and so on, wrap soon, I feel I want to do so many more, so much more than I did yesterday after this call. So first of all, that's unbelievable.

Like every time I meet you, It's inspiring, I have to tell you, every time. Nir, it's very, very, very, very much mutual. I love the way that you tell stories. I love the way that you bring such warmth and care into every conversation that you do.

Thank you. You know, let's finish off with a story I love telling. I believe, or I consider myself to be a very good storyteller. And I was invited in 2018 to give a talk in Hamburg for EO, an organization for about what I thought would be 200, became about 450 people. And I was asked to talk before a very famous speaker named Wim Hof. And I received about 12 minutes and they said, can you squeeze everything in 12 minutes? Because usually I rant for about an hour and a half. I said, sure, and I called you and asked you, would you help me? And you said, anything you want, which was amazing. And I was so excited. And you told me, but please come prepared, write everything down, the whole talk, and we'll work on it. And I remember that when we were sitting in that office working with you, I understood the difference between what you were saying about telling a story and crafting a story. And, and After leaving that meeting, which is something I recommend if you ever do a webinar or a talk or anything, I'll tell everyone to go watch it. And I think I left that office with a feeling, I think I'm very good at what I'm— what I do, but boy, do I have so much more to learn. And I think crafting a story is a skill that most people do not have. And, and, or lack the understanding of how much goes into that thought process of what you guys are doing. And I think maybe even preparing the Zoom call or the online virtual conversation or whatever could be kind of like crafting that talk like you did with me, right?

Uh, absolutely. Listen, what we find is the best practice before any meeting is for people to have a set of questions they ask themselves. You know, just 4 or 5 questions that help them just get really laser-focused about, you know, why we're having this meeting, what the outcome is. Because listen, before BC, before corona, you know, to have a meeting was, okay, so we're gonna have a meeting, maybe it'll be good, maybe not. But now that everybody's stuck at home, to make people show up at the same time is a huge ask. You know, I mean, I only have one child, and you could see just even like keeping him occupied is tough for this.

Yeah.

So knowing— so bring— you better have a really good reason and then think about, you know, how can you make this meeting as short as possible? Like, what is the goal? What is the minimum that you need to get done? And I think when you think from that point of view, it helps make meetings more effective. It helps make you more powerful. And a meeting should feel, in my opinion, like a really good story. You know, you should have some sort of beginning, some sort of challenge point in the middle, and some sort of ending that, that everybody feels clearer or different. Like the world should have changed in some way by the end of this meeting, even if it's just a, hey, we need to touch base because, you know, we may— we just want to reconnect as a team.

Yeah, that is, by the way, something most people should do is try and like reconnect with either friends or their teams, managers. and so on. I love the way you just spelled out VC in a new way.

Listen, that's what we're facing, right? Like, there's— we don't know how this thing is going to last, but the one thing we know is that the world is going to be fundamentally different in the way that we work, in the way that we interact, the assumptions that we have about, you know, what we need to be happy and satisfied. I'm really excited to see where we get to after this.

Amazing. I want to say thank you, a huge thank you. This was a true pleasure for me, and I have another presentation that I'm giving this evening to a very important crowd, and I'm going to take a few tips and stuff. So thank you.

It's, it's, uh, it's been really fun. I, I, I didn't know what to expect, so thanks for having me.

And it's your first time, right, doing something like this?

Yeah, first time ever doing a podcast.

Amazing, I'm very happy. So you have to come back to the 100th episode.

Done, sold.

Sweet. Okay, so Michael Weitz, thank you so much for being here, and, uh, thank you so much again for everyone watching. And feel free to subscribe and join and anything you want. And if you have any questions to me or Michael, feel free to reach out. See you guys on the next chapter, in the next episode.