Improving Communication with John Bates

Hey everyone, thanks for stopping in and watching us today. You know, it's not always about what you say. Sometimes it's also about how you say it. I had the privilege of working with John Bates. I also consider him a friend. John is great. He's going to give us a lot of great information here. But one thing that you'll know is that sometimes we have to get people to buy into our vision. And how does that happen? John has a unique way of teaching and I just, it was really great. So anyways, I'll stop with all the prefacing stuff. John, thank you for being here. First of all, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, you're welcome, John. I'm thrilled to be here. I, so I'm a leadership communication expert and I focus on bringing the best of the TED format to the rest of life. And, you know, that might, that might not make a lot of sense. So, so why I say that is because I'm one of the most prolific TED format trainers in the world. I've never worked for TED, but I've trained for about 35 or 40 TEDx events, and I've trained thousands of executives in the corporate world in the TED format. And I think that bringing the best things of the TED format, you know, people watch TED Talks. I think probably everybody's heard of TED Talks. If you haven't, go to ted.com and watch a talk about any subject you're interested in, and you'll know why we're so excited. But that TED format, it ends up being like— I think it's actually the original format. TED didn't invent it, they just kind of repopularized it. It's what works with human beings, you know. And so bringing the best of the TED format to the business world and to the, to the whole rest of life is what I think is a big part of what I do.

Yeah. So how— so if I'm a gym owner and I have to talk, like maybe I'm leading a class or I'm talking in a team meeting to my coaches, yeah, how does that TED format, learning that TED format, how's that going to help me?

It's a great question, and, and John, I think you could probably answer that question from your personal experience, but let me tell you my answer and then let's see if any of it fits, okay? Because the— some of the key pillars that I think are important in the TED format are that you're succinct. You got to be quick because TED is 18 minutes or less. I've given— I've spoken at TED a number of times. I usually got 3 minutes or 4 minutes, you know, like it's the— it's 18 minutes or way less. So you got to be succinct. So it's got to be really well done in a very short time. And to do a good TED-like talk, one of the requirements is that you be vulnerable. And, you know, when you're really authentically vulnerable and you share some insights, it's what I call insightful vulnerability. That just has people fall in love with you. It just can't help it, you know, because you're being authentic and vulnerable and giving us some insight that's really valuable to people. And it's got to be personal, and it's got to be, as I said, authentic. And the other thing that the TED format requires because of all this is it's got to be ultra clear. So you've got to be clear with yourself in the first place. And then you've got to figure out how to be ultra clear in the words you choose and the way you communicate so that you can get all that done and accomplished in a really short time. And it just turns out that's useful everywhere in life.

Yeah, I think, I think it was Mark Twain, he gets quoted for this where he wrote a letter and he apologized like, I'm sorry, if I had more time, it would have been shorter.

Yeah, right. Sorry I wrote you such a long letter. If I would have had more time, it would have been shorter. Yeah, exactly.

Like, we, we get it. We've all been participants in a meeting. And, you know, if you're a gym owner or coach, you've had to lead something. Look, the people who are there in the audience, whether it's your members or your coaches that you're talking to, they'd rather be somewhere else usually. And so part of our job is to want his We have to get them to want to be there. And yes, like you're saying, the best way to do that is to be succinct and clear. Like, how many times have we gone to meetings where the first 10 minutes of it is just them talking about whatever the heck we're going to go over? Why don't we just get into it and just go over it?

Totally. Well, and you know, the other thing, John, that you want to be doing at all times, I think, as a gym owner, as any kind of business person, even as any kind of human, creating things like loyalty and trust. And how, you know, I talk about a lot in my courses that even more important than establishing your credibility, you know, usually by the time you're in that conversation, your credibility has fundamentally been established. So what's even more important is establishing your emotional credibility, because that's where things like loyalty and love and trust and connection and all those great things we want to generate as leaders, that's where they come from. Not, you know, the fact that you studied this or got an A on that or have this accreditation, that's all your credibility. Okay, great, but that doesn't cause loyalty, you know. It's the emotional credibility and the vulnerability and sharing your insights and telling what I call your leadership stories, stories of why this principle matters to you, you know, where did that come from? Who did you learn that from? What was the experience? Because, you know, I love the saying, never tell a story without a point. That's very good. And never make a point without a story. If you really want your points to land with your team or, you know, your investors or whoever, You've got to back those points up with a well-told story that illustrates the point, you know?

Yeah, it's funny when you're saying like the emotional credibility, that really rings true for me. When I bought into GSL, the gym, like none of the— I had to establish my credibility first, and basically none of the coaches at the time were even interested in looking into my past to see who is this guy?

Right.

They didn't, right?

They didn't, that didn't, they didn't care that I'd worked with hundreds of gym owners before and that I know what was successful. They, that wasn't important. So now I'm gonna try to establish that. I'm also trying to establish emotional credibility, which I did not do a good job doing. Because look, when you ask your coaches for change, which if we're trying to improve and we're trying to move from maybe where we're at now to maybe more profitability, change is going to be involved. Like we need to, we needed to introduce new service streams. We needed to change the way we formatted our classes. And that initial group, I failed to establish emotional credibility. So they literally did not change. They didn't buy into the vision because they had no connection to it.

You know, and Jon, we go into it deeply in my course. And I know that you were there and you've heard this before.

But But the short, short version of what happened there is that your logical brain is wrapped around the outside of your emotional ancient brain. And the logic lives in the new brain, the neocortex, the part that's wrapped around the outside.

So even though your plan may have made perfect logical sense to them, even though they could see this is what we need to do and blah, blah, blah, When the logical brain wants to implement something and actually take an action on it, which is what you ultimately need your people to do, it's got to go through the emotional brain. And if the emotional brain doesn't have a connection with you, if you haven't established what I call your emotional credibility, as we talked about, then your logical brain can be all in. But it cannot actually get to take any action because it can't get to the spinal column to send the signal to sign the check or say yes or take an action because it's getting blocked by the emotional brain that hasn't bought in yet.

Yeah, so true, right? They— I think people credit Abraham Lincoln, but now that they're saying maybe he wasn't the one who said this, but people don't know, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. That's saying— that's the same principle, right?

Absolutely.

Until we're emotionally tied to it, it doesn't matter what the logic is, the emotion is what spurs us to motivate.

Right. And, you know, that's one of the things that I work on a lot in the course is it's easy to say, it's not easy, actually, it's pretty brilliant. It was hard to figure it out in the first place, but it's easy to hear something, let's say it that way, like people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Okay, that's great. It's brilliant. It makes sense. But like, okay, what do I do with that?

Right?

You know, okay, I— that's what we're gonna do, you know what I mean? That's what, that's what I spend my life supporting people in figuring out how to do authentically and genuinely for themselves, you know? Because it's not like there's— there are principles that you can follow. There's not a checklist, right? I can't give this person the same checklist as that person and say, okay, just go do these things and it'll work. No, because they're different people, and what's authentic for one will not be authentic for another. But I can give people principles and examples and stories and guidance, and all of a sudden life alters. Like, things change, right?

Yes.

I mean, I've had—

I had the privilege to go through your intensive. In fact, we did like We did it a couple times. You had like the course and there's an advanced course. Yeah, I brought you in to talk to my team.

Yes.

Um, I mean, yeah, what you're talking about is great because so many times we hear these theoretical statements that ring true. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Yeah, great, right? We, we agree that that's truthful, but who's talking about the actual steps?

People like me need to know, like, well, how do I actually do that? I don't innately have the ability to just somehow do that.

Yeah, I care.

Yeah. Yeah, so I was just thinking about it too, because one of the things that you talk about is the origin story, like your hero story. Tell us a little bit about that, because I know that was really powerful for my team when they heard it the first time.

Well, you know, I So let me share my origin story really quickly, and then I'll break it apart a little bit. I was always the guy with the soft skills, and I always worked with a bunch of people who had the hard skills. I was in the technology industry. I was a dot-com guy since 1994. I was always an early-stage employee. I was either a founder or co-founder or like, you know, a very early-stage employee. And And I worked with a lot of people who had the hard skills, and they called what I did fluffy, you know, because I'm the soft skills guy. And, and now look, I was always the chief evangelist for my companies, and I was always on, you know, my teams and I raised several hundred million dollars in Silicon Valley and beyond, but they still called what I did fluffy. So I kind of had this chip on my shoulder, and I would go around trying to prove I was valuable while I secretly like I wasn't valuable and it was just awkward. And then, by the way, I never had a successful exit. So, I can raise it, but after that, we'll talk about it. But anyway, I finally, in 2009, I went to the TED Conference for the first time and I just saw person after person get up and give the most unbelievable speeches I'd ever heard in my life. And I remember thinking, wow, I've basically been a public speaker my whole life, but I have never done that. So I came back and I got very involved in the TED and TEDx community. And at one of those very early, early TEDx events, it was TEDx Santa Monica, my friends were running it, it's an all-volunteer effort, so I was volunteering and helping them. We had this guy who had all the hard skills in the world and he had a really interesting, exciting topic. He was the guy I was the most excited to see the whole day, but when he got up on stage and started to speak, everybody in the room checked out because he was so nervous and awkward that we all thought we were going to throw up, right? And so, you know, and I remember being really genuinely sad for a minute, John, because I'd seen that so much— people who had so much education and so much brilliance and clearly so much to offer, and they wanted to make a difference so bad, but they just couldn't quite close the gap, you know. And So I was really sad for a minute, and then the evil part of me popped out, you know. And I remember sitting there quietly to myself going, ha ha ha ha ha, hard skills guys blowing it, calls what I do fluffy, neener neener, you know. And, uh, and as I was indulging the evil side of myself, my buddy walked over, Michael Weiss, and he leaned down and he said, dude, we got to do something to help people like this. And, John, it was like the lights turned on, the angels sang, the clouds parted. Like, I— it was like I could have had a V8, you know? And I remember thinking, wow, if I just got over myself for 5 freaking minutes, I could totally make a difference for that guy. I could totally— if I stopped honoring the chip on my shoulder, got rid of that thing, and just honored the people right there, I could totally make a difference. And So, I went home that night and started working on the training that you went through, the training that, you know, I mean, I pinch myself, the NASA astronauts, General Electric, Johnson& Johnson, Accenture. I mean, I, you know, I pinch myself because it didn't look like it was going that way at that moment. But I created the training that I now give all over the world. And the thing I did differently that made it work so well is because of that moment, I realized, okay, if I want to make a difference for that guy, I'm going to have to base everything I do in human evolutionary biology and human neurophysiology so I can show people not only what works when it comes to communicating with and inspiring and leading human beings, but also why it works based in science. And the thing I didn't think about at all at the time, because I'm a soft skills guy, remember, was like, oh, if I base it in science, it's going to work like a charm all the time. But it does, right? I didn't think about that, but it does. And so that's where all this stuff that I'm doing came from. And, and my fundamental realization and saying is that communicating with human beings is not logical. You might have noticed it's biological. And when you understand the biology, you can make it logical again. But logic by itself is just never going to be as effective as logic plus that special something.

Yeah.

So, so that's, you know, that's where this came from, and that's my origin story. And everybody listening right now, you, John, you know you do, everybody listening right now, you've got this fabulous origin story because what you're doing right now is what inspires you more than anything else, or you'd be doing that. But most people don't relate to what they're doing that way, you know, and they, they certainly haven't sat down, even some that sort of have an idea, to sit down and really look back over your life and find that golden thread that goes through every decision you ever made that led you right here doing what you're doing right now. That is a fabulous exercise. And then the generous thing to do is to craft that story so that it's pretty short and pretty succinct and just has the important points in it and share it with people. Because all of a sudden they understand where you're coming from and why it matters to you and a little bit of vulnerability, right? Like I admitted I was having those evil thoughts and I admitted that I was always jealous of hard skills people, and it's all true.

Right?

If you do that and it's not true, then it's a manipulation. That's not going to work. But it's all true. And when you share that stuff with people, yes, the story is about you, but the ultimate effect is for them. They get to understand who you are, what makes you tick, where you're coming from. And then, Jon, when you share your origin story with those key components in it, you start to attract people in your world who resonate with that. And all of a sudden, getting them to take action, like your crew who didn't take action, right? If you had brought that crew in and them hearing your origin story was part of it, them resonating with what matters to you was part of it, this would have much more naturally occurred and it probably would have had a much better end result because you've already made those emotional connections and given that the logical brain permission that traipses through the the emotional brain and actually, you know, send signals down to make things happen, right?

Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about this too from the standpoint of, man, especially if you're an established gym owner, imagine having that origin story of why you became a gym owner and you have it succinctly. Imagine how much more effective your sales meetings are going to go with prospects.

Yes.

They're going to buy into what you accomplished and what you saw and why you're doing what you're doing. And they're going to want to be part of that.

Yes.

Your personal training sessions with people to get them to do what you're asking them to do.

They're gonna do it.

Uh, your goal-setting meetings with your existing members to get them to set goals and to continue to improve their health.

Like, absolutely, I can see a lot of benefit just by that one thing.

And I know that you talk about a whole bunch of things in your course. So yeah. Why don't you go ahead and tell us about what you have going on so that people who want to participate, who resonate with this, um, can do that?

Sure.

So today, I know it's in like 30 minutes, so it's very soon, um, but I'll be doing these things again. Uh, I'm gonna do a, a 2-day course for 45 minutes a day starting at 11 AM Mountain Time, and the link for that John is Luma, L-U dot M-A. I'll put it in the chat: L-U dot M-A forward slash capital T-E-D dash capital F format, and then dash July 21. So capital J July 21, which is the year. So luma/tedformat July 21st. And I'm gonna just talk about— because I know a lot of people want to give TED Talks, and I think that's fabulous. You should give a TED Talk, and don't wait for TED. So I talk about the difference between TED and TEDx, and then just doing a TED Talk wherever, right? Do a really fabulous TED format talk, and who cares if you're on a TED stage? Just get on a stage somewhere and do it because it's going to be so powerful. You don't need TED. TED's awesome, but you don't need them, right? So, uh, and then, and then tomorrow at the same time, I'm gonna break down the TED Commandments, and they're freaking brilliant, and they'll make an enormous difference for you no matter where you're speaking, even if it's just the, the, uh, you know, all-hands meeting, or if it's 3,000, 10,000 20,000 people, these are great, great things to know, the TED Commandments. And then, um, on July 13th, I'm going to be doing a virtual version, so it's a lot more affordable, of the course that you did with me, John. We're going to go through my Speak Like a Leader Boot Camp, and I'm going to take people on a 10-week journey of creating their TED-like talk that they can give anywhere. And even if they don't give it anywhere, All the pieces that we create to put that TED-like talk together will come in hugely useful in conversations or training sessions or all-hands meetings or whatever. And the link for that is bit.ly/sllexperience. Speak Like a Leader, S-L-L experience.

I'll put those links in the chat, in the comments.

Okay, awesome.

People can see those. It's funny, as I think about this, I came across this concept a few, well, almost a decade ago. But it's the same idea, like jazz musicians don't usually have memorized songs. They have riffs.

Yeah.

Comedians do the same thing.

Yes.

When you see comedians present, they have riffs and they memorize those riffs. where it becomes natural to them where once they start going, they don't have to like, oh, I'm giving a memorized speech. That's not what we're talking about. What you're talking about is with the TED Talk, you basically are going to be able to pull out these different pieces which then will make it beneficial in your conversations with prospects, with members, trying to get your coaches to motivate, those types of things.

Yes. And I don't like to, I do not encourage people to word for word memorize their talk for this very reason. I give them a much better way to do it. And then when you have your talk done that way, it's like Lego blocks, right? Or like reusable code or whatever.

You, you—

there's these little nuggets, and they're not like memorized word for word. They're just conversational snippets that you've gotten really good at saying in your own natural way, and that you can expand or contract on and things like that. And they come in hugely beneficial and, and useful in All of those things— conversations, sales, you know, leadership, management, everywhere.

Yeah, look, I'll just say this, guys. Um, the reason I had John on here, you know, I normally don't have people on here to promote events, but I sincerely believe in what he's doing. I've personally been through it. Again, I had him come and talk to our team.

I—

you can never underestimate the power of improving the way you communicate in general. And the stuff you're talking about, Speak Like a Leader, is all about improving that communication so that your communication is heard and you're at least giving that person the best chance to take action. Obviously, we can't control that, but you just improve the odds that action is going to happen after you speak.

Yeah.

And, and to me, especially as a gym owner and as a business owner leading a team, nothing's more fulfilling than seeing somebody do what you knew they should do because it's going to improve their life.

Yeah.

Um, so certainly I encourage you guys to look at this. Obviously the 2-day format might be a little late notice, but, uh, look into his virtual Speak Like a Leader boot camp stuff. Really great stuff.

Thank you, John. And I really do appreciate you having me on and letting me share that. And I hope that The people that are listening, I hope that you got something valuable out of this, whether I ever see you again or not. Take it on because it will make a really big difference for you. And I really appreciate your time and your friendship, Jon.

Yeah, you're welcome. And I'll just say this, everyone, like, if there's one thing you can take away, like, knowing that you have to connect to their emotions first. If you're not going to do anything after this, At least try to approach the next time you are trying to get a prospect to sign up or your coaches to make a change that you need. Think about that first. That alone is a gigantic golden nugget. I also think obviously the better we communicate, the more profitability we'll have because members will want to come to us. They're going to want to refer people to us. So as always, everyone remember profitability is a choice. Have the courage and wisdom to choose it.