Speaking and Communicating Podcast

John Gray wrote the book.

The book was originally called Men, Women, and Relationships.

Few people bought the book, but everybody who bought the book said it was profound.

He said, look, some things women laugh at and men don't understand, some things men laugh at and women don't understand.

And one of the women screams out, it's almost like men are from a different planet.

And he said, I guess men are from Mars.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Angela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify.

Leave us a rating and a review and what you'd like for us to discuss on this show.

Now, let's get communicating.

Now, let's get communicating with James.

Wait for it, James.

What's your last name?

Bond.

James Bond.

James Bond, 007, all the way from Southern California.

He is the author of Brain Glue, Make Your Ideas Stick, and he ran a behavioral management firm in Southern California.

And he's here to talk to us about how to craft persuasive messages that will stick with your audiences.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show.

Hi, Mr.

Bond.

Hi, Roberta.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you for being here.

Welcome.

So your name is really James Bond, even your birth certificate?

No, it's actually Fred Flintstone, but I changed it.

No, I'm just kidding.

I think my parents had a sense of humor.

I was actually born before the movies, but after the book, the books.

They say it's just a coincidence, but I don't believe them.

Wow.

Your parents are certainly very creative.

Welcome and tell us a little bit about yourself.

I'm one of America's leading behavioral management specialists.

For 13 years, I ran a behavioral management firm in Southern California, working with the Who's Who of American business.

We had Warren Buffett's team brought me in when he started buying companies.

He invests, but he would actually buy companies too.

He wanted to radically increase the capability of the people in the companies that they bought, so they brought me in.

I've worked with some of the world's biggest companies.

Yeah, it's been lots of fun.

I'm originally from Montreal.

I live in Southern California.

We've lived here for about 36 years.

The reason I can remember how many years is we have a son and three daughters, and we named our middle daughter, we gave her the initials LA, and Lauren Asia, AJA.

We always remember, how old's Lauren?

Oh yeah, that's how long we've been here.

As soon as she was born, we moved to Southern California.

But yeah, I started an advertising agency in Montreal.

I worked my way up and eventually had some of the world's biggest clients and companies that we had as clients.

Kraft Foods, Timex Watches, Avon Cosmetics, Seagrams, their world headquarters is in Montreal.

And so yeah, it was fun.

I'm a logical expert or a specialist, okay?

I had an opportunity to win the anti-drug campaign in America with powerful logical reasons why you should not do drugs.

And then I lost, I lost it.

And how did I lose it?

I lost it to a commercial with a guy holding an egg saying, this is your brain and cracking the shell and dropping the egg into a sizzling frying pan.

This is your brain on drugs.

Any questions?

And when I saw that ad, it terrified me because I realized it was much better than the logical reasons we came up with why you shouldn't do drugs.

But it terrified me because it was emotional selling and I'm used to logic.

When I was first starting out, I hated selling.

I was in business with one of my brothers and he was a much better salesman than me.

And it really bothered me that he could sell me better than I could sell me.

But I remember family and business doesn't always mix.

So we kind of, I love my brother, dearly, my brother, John, but not in business.

But I remember we went to Zig Ziglar, my wife and I, and I remember the coaching one while he was still alive.

He's passed away.

And he said something that was really profound to me.

He said, you know, selling is a transference of passion.

If you're passionate about something, somebody doesn't, nobody has to teach you how to sell.

I mean, there are techniques, and we'll talk about some of that.

But he said, you know, you have to understand that if you saw a movie, that was one of my favorite movies of all time was Hidden Figures, you know, but the three black women who were in NASA and all that, it's fabulous.

What a good movie.

Nobody has to tell me how to sell it.

I was like, oh, it's so good.

You have to see it in the transference of passion.

The passion works.

And so when I realized that, as he started explaining other things, you know, it just blew my mind.

One of the other things that Zig Ziglar said that was really profound for me was how easy it is for people to misunderstand what we say.

We think people understand what we're saying or communicating, and often they're not.

You know, I mean, you're talking to somebody and trying to communicate to them or explain something to them, and they're concerned, ooh, it's raining outside.

Did I forget to close my windows?

Did I forget to turn off the oven at home or the stove?

Are we going through a divorce or am I going to break up with my, you know, whoever it is I'm with?

Or did I just win a client or did I just lose a client?

Or if they have physical pain, you know, like, oh, my stomach's bothering me.

So somebody is in physical pain and you're talking to them, you know.

It looks like they're listening.

You assume they're listening, but they're not listening often.

They're just partially listening.

And you assume they interpret the message the way you intended.

And that's what Zig Ziglar has this phrase.

It's brilliant.

Listen to this.

OK.

And this is the problem with text communicating.

We live in a world of text communicating and email.

So how about this?

OK.

I did not say he beat his wife.

OK.

Listen to how many different ways this could be interpreted.

I didn't say he beat his wife.

Somebody might have said it, but it wasn't me.

I didn't say he beat his wife.

I might have implied it.

I didn't say he beat his wife.

And am I talking about tennis?

It sounded like I'm talking about something terrible.

How many you could take those words and interpret them in totally different ways.

You know what?

By email, we send an email to somebody and sometimes they get like offended.

And we can't imagine for the life of us, why did we get offended?

I'm a past workshop chairman and I'm a top coach for the US.

Small Business Administration.

And I was doing a workshop.

And then this woman came up to me at the end and she said, I love your workshops.

But you always scream.

Why do you do that?

And I started apologizing.

I'm sorry.

I have a large family that I came from and everybody would be talking.

I was trying to explain to her.

She said, no, no, no, no, no.

I mean, with your emails, you always have capital letters.

Everything's in capital letters.

Oh, not screaming the voice.

Exactly.

Oh, it's not my voice.

No, no, it's your emails.

They always have capital letters.

How easy is it to misunderstand?

We think we understand and we think when we're describing something to somebody, they understand, but they don't understand.

I mean, you saw the book.

So in the beginning of the book, I give an example.

Can I ask the story about your four-year-old daughter?

That's it.

I was going to talk about that.

Exactly.

So I have a son and three daughters.

We have a son and three daughters.

Like they say, I, but it isn't me.

I didn't give birth, okay?

We have a son and three daughters.

They're like in their 30s now.

Our middle daughter was four years old.

I was standing by our door and she was just outside talking to a friend.

The friend said to her, and she's four years old, okay?

The friend says to her, do you like Alan, the boy next door?

She says, I like him, but I don't want to have sex with him.

I'm like, oh no, I'm the parent.

I better go.

First, I look for my wife.

She's nowhere to be found.

I guess I have to be the parent going out there.

I went out there and I talked to her.

I say this in my workshops and I love this because so many people get bent out of shape over this.

I say, so I went out and talked to my four-year-old daughter.

What would you say?

What do you think I should say?

I have mostly women saying, you should tell her she shouldn't be talking about things like that or whatever else.

Then I tell them the punchline.

The punchline is, I said, Lauren, what's sex?

I don't know why I asked the right question, but I said, Lauren, what's sex?

She said, that's kissing.

I said, yeah, don't do that because you'll get germs.

Yeah.

I quickly escaped.

But I mean, look at how many of us misunderstand what a four-year-old believes and understands.

If we misunderstand with a four-year-old, do we misunderstand with a 40-year-old?

It's so easy.

We say something and we don't understand how often it's misunderstood, and people get the wrong idea.

Let me give you, I think that's a great example.

I work with lots of different types of people.

I'm old, so I've had a chance to work with lots of different industries.

I work with finance people a lot, because finance people are very left-brained, they're very logical and throwing numbers at everybody.

I like to tell them, so you're throwing numbers at people.

Do you remember how many people hated math in school?

I'm one of the few though.

You're throwing numbers at them.

You need to understand perspective.

I love this example.

Americans discard 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.

Boy, that sounds like a lot, doesn't it?

2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.

What about the environment?

Let me tell you.

Hang on a second.

How about this?

Listen how powerful it is when I add this at the end.

Americans discard 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.

That's enough to reach the moon every three weeks.

Wow.

Now you have perspective.

Whoa.

Hold on a second.

Whoa.

I mean, think how profound it is when you say that.

Suddenly you have a visual you can imagine and it's scary.

If I say Americans discard 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour, okay, you'll say that sounds really bad.

But if I explain that it's enough to reach the moon every three weeks, now you can understand how serious it is.

I immediately have an image, an actual picture because our brain's thinking pictures, right?

Yes.

When you give me an actual picture, not just words or numbers, like you said, perspective.

At first, I could sort of imagine the 2.5 million plastic bottles, but as soon as you say, because now I'm picturing this pile going up, then it's a much clearer picture of how many that is.

Absolutely.

And so Brain Glue addresses this in many different ways.

There are 14 brain triggers, okay?

And when we hear the triggers, it wakes up the brain because we have to assume that people are half asleep when we're talking to them.

They look like they're wide awake, but they're not really because their brain is not woken up to it.

Until you tell them something.

If somebody has pain in their stomach, and then I started saying, well, by the way, if you know someone who has pain in their stomach, I go, oh, what, what, what, me, me, you know?

I mean, there are certain things that will trigger.

I love to use this analogy because here's how Brain Glue works.

You leave your home when you're driving down the street, you're passing all these homes or apartments wherever you live, okay?

Every day, because you pass them every day, you don't look at them and go, oh, look at that one.

Oh, look at that one.

You just ignore them because your brain is focused on where you're going.

One day, you leave your home and you're driving down the street and two houses down, you see flames coming out of your neighbor's window.

What are you going to do?

You're going to go.

You're going to pay attention?

Exactly.

It wakes you up.

It wakes you up right away.

That's what we want when we're communicating, because we want to wake up the brain so people go like, what?

What?

Then they're paying attention.

When you do that, it becomes profound in how you affect people.

Let me give you some examples of brain glue tools, brain glue phrases.

Yes.

I did not say he beat his wife.

OJ.

Simpson was Johnny Cochran, his attorney.

I remember the case.

Actually, in your book, you quoted the, if the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit.

That's right.

We were going to come to that.

If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit.

Sorry, that's what I meant.

There are just so many.

There's just sarcastic ones.

Mae West is a comedian.

She used something that's called chiasmus.

Chiasmus is rhyme is ABAB.

If the glove don't fit, you must acquit.

But chiasmus is ABBA.

I'll give you just two examples.

Winners never quit and quitters never win.

You reverse the first one.

So you reverse the first one.

You're not focused on the rhyming at the end.

You reverse what the first line did in the second line.

All for one and one for all.

One for all.

So let me give you famous presidents that used it.

President John F.

Kennedy said, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

He also said, mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.

Oh, that's powerful.

Civil rights activist Malcolm X loved Chiasmus.

So he said, we didn't land on Plymouth Rock, the rock landed on us.

Yeah.

Now, somebody could say, you have no idea how hard it is being a black person in America.

I mean, not everything, but a lot of we have to deal with this stuff.

People will say, okay, fine, but we've heard it so many times, it's logic.

But the emotion part of the brain is triggered when you say, we didn't land on Plymouth Rock, the rock landed on us.

I want to say this about Malcolm X, because he has a phrase that's so profound, that people say it all the time and don't realize he's the one who said it.

But he said, when you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything.

He was the first one to say that?

He created that phrase.

It's profound because he had wired into it.

He understood chiasmus and he knew that if I want to say something important, I want to say that you're going to stand for something.

So he knew how to phrase it in such a way that it would resonate with people's minds.

I mean, it's so powerful that when you learn this, that's why I have Jack Canfield who wrote Chicken Soup For The Soul.

He reviewed your book Brain Glue.

He was really impressed with Brain Glue.

Yeah, but he got mad at me.

I'll tell you why he got mad at me.

I'm a logical person.

Brain Glue is really for logical people to understand how to do emotional selling.

Me, like an idiot, my title of my book was different.

It was Sell More With The Right Brain Marketing Strategy.

That was the original title?

Yeah.

Jack Canfield loved the book.

He got really mad at me.

He said, I'm really pissed off.

I have so many books to read.

I picked up your book and I couldn't put the damn thing down.

I'm like, I am so sorry.

Can I use that as a quote?

Can I use this as a testimony?

He said, on one condition, your book is all about brain glue, but you call it somewhere with the right brain marketing strategy.

That's logical.

You're teaching us to be emotional and you've got a logical title.

Stop.

I'll give you beautiful quotes because I love your book.

He actually forced everybody in his company.

He bought copies for everybody in his company.

He's forcing them not just to read it, but to use it, to apply it.

He said, you can do it on condition.

You change the title.

When you create a book, especially on Amazon, once you get like 80, 90, 100 reviews, then it helps the algorithm to sell more.

I'm like, do I have to?

He said, yes, you have to.

You have to change the title.

You can't be.

That's a stupid title.

Nobody's going to remember it even.

You've said it about two or three times, and I still don't remember what the original title was.

The first problem is nobody can remember the title.

Then they couldn't look up James Bond online because they don't get it.

It was going to be Sean Connery and everybody else up to him.

But he was right.

If you're a speaker, if you're communicating, there are three things you want to do.

The first thing is you want to wake up their brain or their awareness.

They go, oh, okay.

The second one is you want to be clear what it is that you're saying.

Like I said, with the American Ciscar 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour, give them perspective.

I love this.

Then the third thing is you have to be consistent in what you communicate.

You can't overwhelm a person's mind.

If you overwhelm their mind, then they just turn off.

It looks like they're listening, but they're not listening.

It's a common mistake that we make is we assume people understand.

I want to give you something profound.

It's profound for me.

It changed my life and hopefully it'll change the life of your audience.

The reason Brain Glue works is because it recognizes the brain's patterns.

There are certain patterns that the brain likes.

That's why it likes rhyme and it likes chiasmus and things like that.

It likes alliteration, the repetition of sounds, Coca-Cola, Best Buy, PayPal, Lululemon.

Our brain likes those types of things.

There are certain things it likes.

There's something called reintegration, which is the brain's need for completion.

Not reintegration, but reintegration.

It's funny because I coached a lot of my psychologists, PhDs in psychology, and I was doing it at a university and one of them said, that's not a word.

She looks it up on her phone.

I love it when this thing happens.

She goes, oh, it is.

Look at that.

It's a psychological term.

Instead of saying, I haven't heard of that before, let me Google.

They just say that's not a word.

Exactly.

Reintegration is the brain's need for completion.

Let me hit you with one of them.

It's why we like symmetry.

My wife hates when some guy has like a lazy eye.

You can cover half their face and they look like one person.

You cover the other half, they look like a different person because they, you know, because they're asymmetrical basically, but asymmetry works also.

I'll talk about that in a second.

So what's the most powerful tool of human interaction that exists?

I'm using it now, aren't I?

Can you tell what I'm doing?

What am I doing?

I'm using questions, aren't I?

Oh, questions are powerful.

Questions are powerful, yeah.

Our brain is triggered that when you hear a question, we kind of have to answer it, don't we?

I mean, I'll do it to like two, 300 people in an audience and I'll say, so every time I ask you a question, you're going to answer it, right?

And then they start nodding their heads.

Well, will you still keep answering it?

And eventually they start stop moving their head.

I said, you're not moving your head, but you're still answering it, aren't you?

Because it's wired into us.

To answer questions whenever they ask.

Exactly.

But that's why for us in communicating, questions are the most profound tool we can use.

I'll give you some examples.

But let me give you a tool first.

The words, isn't it, doesn't it, shouldn't it, don't you agree, are are simple, reflexive questions, aren't they?

So try that with me.

Isn't it, doesn't it, shouldn't it, don't you agree?

OK, say that.

Isn't it, doesn't it, doesn't it, doesn't it, don't you agree?

OK, what we do is we're used to making phrases, especially as public speakers, but otherwise too.

But if you end it with a little simple, reflexive question, it engages the other person more.

So it wakes them up a little bit mentally.

And so let me give you an example.

So I was with a friend and we went outside and I looked at it and I said, what a beautiful day.

Now, normally I would say, what a beautiful day.

But I didn't say that because it's wired into me to use simple, reflexive questions.

So I said, what a beautiful day, isn't it?

And he went, yeah.

And I went, well, what's wrong?

Nothing.

Come on, what's wrong?

Nothing.

What, what, what?

I'm having a fight with my girlfriend and I just said, well, what, what, what?

He said, no, if I wouldn't have had wired into me the simple, reflexive questions, I would have said, what a beautiful day, isn't it?

Let's go, you know, do whatever we're going to do.

But instead, I became much more interactive with this.

It's changed the relationship that I have with my kids.

My daughter, I wrote a book called The Secret Life of Fathers.

I interviewed, I created something called the Father Daughter Project.

So I was talking to my middle daughter, LA.

I was sure we were talking about something.

I said, hey, Lauren, is everything okay?

And she said, it's fine.

I said, no, what, what?

I said, it's fine.

What?

I said, no, what?

She said, and she finally explained, you're this expert and you're supposed to be the specialist in behavioral management and we don't have a really good relationship.

I said, well, I tried, but you're the quiet one.

And she said, yeah, but it isn't that.

You're a problem solver.

You do problem solving for all your clients.

So whenever I start talking about something, you always start telling me how to fix it.

You know, it's like you're telling me, Lauren, you're stupid and daddy's smart.

So let the daddy tell you how to live.

And I said, oh, I didn't mean to say it that way.

I know you didn't mean to, but that's how it feels.

You know, you never say, Lauren, you're so smart.

What do you think is the answer?

And it's funny because I would teach facilitation of workshop groups when we had our behavioral management firm.

And I train my my facilitators to if somebody asks a question, you know, how do I do this?

And we can answer it by saying, well, what's the problem?

What caused the problem?

What are the possible solutions?

And what do you feel are the best solutions?

And usually or what do you think is the best solution?

What do you think is the solution to solving it?

Do that in such a way that you're not always the smart one.

You know, we try to especially guys more than girls.

OK, I want to answer the question because our problems are wrong.

I'll show you how smart I am.

We don't say it that way.

But that's how we're seeing it.

Basically, it really crushed me.

I felt so bad when she said this because she's right.

She was 100 percent right that, you know, when I interact with her, she starts talking and I practically cut her off and say, oh, you know, you should do instead to solve this problem.

I have a problem with my boyfriend or my husband or whatever else, you know.

OK, well, you know, here's something you can do instead of just saying, well, what do you know?

Tell me, tell me more.

Just I'll listen and shut up.

But I would never have been able to open that up, that communication path with her if I didn't have simple, reflexive questions.

I forget what we're talking about.

We're talking about something.

I said, don't you think?

It's like it's a beautiful day, isn't it?

If I would have just said it's a beautiful day, I wouldn't have gotten feedback from her because I said it's a beautiful day, isn't it?

It was different when I said to her, but it's the same concept.

Then she responded and went like, no, OK.

When you're explaining something to somebody, if you say explain it and you think they got it, if you say, does that make sense?

And they go, yeah.

Then you know it didn't fully make sense.

What questions do as well is make the other person realize that you are genuinely interested in them.

Exactly, exactly.

And it connects you with them.

You're not talking at a person.

You're talking with a person.

OK, because we need to engage.

We need to interact and we need to listen to.

OK.

I used to say we have one mouth and two ears.

Use in proportion.

Exactly, exactly.

But once you learn this, it's so profound.

And isn't it, doesn't it, shouldn't it?

Don't you agree?

When you can wire it into yourself, so you get used to saying that, it literally changes your life.

I know maybe a dozen people, you know, because I've done a big workshop, but they came back and gave me feedback on it.

And they had the same feedback as me, as my experience is that, no, this changed my life.

I'll talk to a group of 300 people.

In my book, I talk like that.

I engage people, and I don't do it as a trick.

I can't not do it anymore, because it's wired into me.

But it's so profound.

So I'll be talking to 300 people for the Small Business Administration, and I'll say, no.

Does that make sense?

And I'll look at the audience, and if I see too many people going, you know, you know, what do you think I'm saying, or whatever else, and I'll engage with the audience?

And it just becomes so profound.

And one of the things that made me think of this, and how profound questions are, was we often will engage a person and almost push them into a corner.

If you're religious or not religious, big deal.

I'm going to say this thing, okay?

Not you, but I mean your audience, okay?

Here's the thing, okay?

Somebody said to me this, and I love the phrase, and they say, what do you say to an atheist?

Do you hope you're wrong?

Do you hope life has no purpose?

You're a freak of nature.

Life has no purpose, and when you die, you turn to dust?

Or do you at least hope that there was something before this?

Life has a purpose, and when you die, you somehow move to the next level and be able to take all that you've learned in life, you know?

And what happens is that instead of attacking, because I know this guy who says, you know, what, you're an atheist?

Oh, that's ridiculous, blah, blah, blah.

So I'm like, no.

That does not help at all.

Back to asking questions rather than just the judgment, the assumption, the I'll tell you what to do.

Yeah.

Questions will always be much better than the alternative.

Because we assume the other person has the same understanding that we have.

And I'll go back to my four-year-old daughter.

You know, I mean, we knew sex.

We understand sex differently than she understands sex at four years old.

But it works with adults, too.

I mean, we say something and people don't understand.

You know, we think they understand.

And they look at us, go like, OK.

But do they really understand?

But if we said, does that make sense?

And they went, kind of.

And that's what they are communicating to you.

They might not say no, but the facial expression, the body language is saying it makes zero sense to me.

Do that again.

Exactly.

You can pay attention to that and say, wait a minute, let me go through this again.

Let's see if we can try a different approach this time.

That's right.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Well, and that's why I love how Brain Glue applies.

A lot of people who are authors use Brain Glue and become massively successful.

A lot of people who are selling products and services use it and suddenly become massively successful.

There's a Utah couple you mentioned that was selling books.

No, they were selling a very clever thing.

So this is a mom and her son living in Utah, an older mom.

And when she goes to the bathroom, she realizes that it's good to raise your feet about six inches because it's better for the shape of your body when you're going to the bathroom.

I don't want to get too much into that, but that's what it is.

So she came up with this little toilet stool.

They have no business experience.

Here's how successful they are.

Let me tell you about the success and then I'll explain what they did.

They have no business experience and within two years, they reach $100 million of sales.

$100 million of sales.

They actually got on Shark Tank and the investors were standing in line to invest in them.

Because of how they named the product.

Okay.

So here's what she did.

She said, when anybody's in the bathroom, it helps your body if you can raise your feet about six inches off the ground.

And most people don't do that, but it's much better for your body.

So why don't we call it the, you know, we'll create this toilet stool.

But somehow calling it the toilet stool doesn't really sound like it's exciting for anybody to buy.

My wife likes to say she should have called it the stool stool, but I don't think that would work.

Stool again, yeah.

And she's thinking, okay, so what's a toilet stool?

So we always start with the logic, right?

It's a toilet stool.

Start with that, okay?

We say, well, I don't want to call it the toilet stool, but it's a toilet stool.

So what's another word for toilet?

Potty.

So it's a potty.

And how am I sitting?

And then, well, she went through some words and said, well, I'm squatting.

So it's a squatty potty.

Let me call it the squatty potty.

Squatty potty.

And sales exploded.

Just by changing the name.

Just by changing.

And how did I learn this about the power of changing the name?

John Gray wrote the book, one of the most incredible books.

Wait, don't say it yet, because that's a punch line.

Yeah, you got it.

You got it.

The book was called, originally called Men, Women, and Relationships.

Okay.

And he sold a few thousand copies.

But he was struggling because few people bought the book, but everybody who bought the book said it was profound.

But almost nobody bought it.

He ultimately sold 20,000 copies, which if you make a dollar a book, that's not very much for a book.

It's your life creation.

But then he got this crazy idea.

He actually got an idea because he was doing a webinar, a seminar to try to promote the book.

And he said something, and all the women started laughing hysterically.

And all the men looked at the women and went, what's so funny that he just said?

And then he said, look, some things women laugh at and men don't understand.

Some things men laugh at and women don't understand.

And there's some things everybody laughs at.

And one of the women screams out, it's almost like men are from a different planet.

What planet you think men are from?

And he said, I guess men are from Mars.

And everybody laughed.

So when he got home, he started thinking, okay, if men are from Mars, where are women from?

I guess women are from Venus.

Venus is the god of love.

Huh, my book isn't selling very much anyway.

What if I change the title to men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and just tweak the content a little bit so it referred to men are from, you know, men are from Mars, women are from Venus throughout the book, but it's the same basic book.

What do you think happened?

Almost overnight, half a million people bought his book.

He sold 50 million copies, 50 million.

He went from 20,000 to 50 million, all because he changed the title.

Now, why did it work?

Because it resonates with the brain.

You know, I remember reading, seeing the book in a bookstore, and I'm sort of looking at books, books, books.

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus?

What's that?

I picked it up.

Which is the first step to buying it is picking it up, right?

I started looking at it and I go, oh, wow, this is great.

I have to get it and I got it.

So it took off like crazy all because he changed the title.

A book written men, women and relationships wouldn't have sparked your interest like that.

Correct.

Because it doesn't trigger the emotion size of the brain.

And so we're emotional people.

I'm going to go back to Zig Ziglar.

Zig Ziglar said, selling is a transference of passion.

So here's what we do.

We are inspired by something.

And then we're kind of taught in school to be logical on how we explain it.

So we explain it logically, but we were inspired passionately.

We've watered down the passion when we explain it logically.

Logic actually turns off the emotion centers of the brain.

And there are major studies that showed that more than 90% of buying decisions are emotionally triggered.

Logic could be a part, but it's the emotion centers of the brain that need to be activated in most cases.

In marketing, they say, you want people to know, like, and trust you.

But that shouldn't be the only thing.

Yeah, if it's somebody you don't like, you probably won't buy something from them, you know.

But he's not a nice person at all.

So you want people to know, like, and trust you.

But in marketing, even in communication, that can't be the only thing.

And there are quotes that are profound.

I love metaphors, metaphors.

You know, men are from Mars, women are from Mars.

Men aren't really from a different planet.

Okay, all you women out there, we are not from a different planet.

Let me say that, okay?

I know you think we are.

So it feels like we are sometimes.

Warren Buffett.

There are a lot of wealthy people, the media like, but the media love Warren Buffett, okay?

You know, he is on his way to becoming the world's richest man and all that stuff.

He loves metaphors.

I love, this is one of my favorite metaphors of his.

It's only when the tide goes out, do you realize who has been swimming naked.

Now, what he is basically saying is only when times get tough, do you realize who is really confident, okay?

But if he says that, only when the tide goes up, do you realize who has been swimming naked?

What?

What did he just say?

Yeah, but if you say only when times get tough, do you realize who was incompetent or unprepared?

It doesn't have the same impact.

No, it doesn't.

And that's why, like one of the tools, one of the Brain Glue's tools is humor, comedy and humor.

You don't have to use it all the time, but I love this phrase.

So I'm working with these women who are, I was talking to these women who are like religious women, and I said, so the little girl comes up to her mommy and says, mommy, daddy says we came from Apes, and you say we came from Adam and Eve.

Honey, daddy's talking about his family.

I'm talking about my family.

Oh, I love that.

You start with something like that.

People are really attentive.

They're like, oh, what's he saying?

You know, speakers, some of the best speakers will start with a joke or something.

Something fascinating could also trigger.

Oxytocin is basically what it triggers in the brain.

One of the things we don't realize is cortisol, and cortisol is the fight or flight drug.

It gets triggered in the brain when you're mad or scared.

If I start hollering at somebody, they're going to get mad.

Then cortisol gets triggered in the brain.

It's a protecting thing to protect us.

The problem is that cortisol stays in the bloodstream for up to 36 hours.

If I'm talking to somebody who just got into a big argument with his father, mother, wife, or husband or whatever else, and then within 36 hours, I start trying to convince them of something, usually they're going to say no.

It's because what they're saying is, look, I'm not going to talk about anything.

I'm just so mad I can't turn it off.

But the way to solve it is with oxytocin, with a joke.

I saw this guy was talking, and he tells a joke to this other person.

He says, don't make me laugh.

I hate you.

Why are you making me laugh?

It's hard to hate somebody who makes them laugh.

I have two friends who are among the top attorneys in America.

One of them is in the top 10 attorneys.

I don't want to say who it is, so I don't want to give away a secret.

But he was telling me this, and he said, I make people laugh, and it's wired into me.

And because of that, I win more cases than most other attorneys.

In fact, a lot of attorneys, they know they can't win this case.

They'll often ask me if I can handle it, and I often will take it.

And often I'll win, not every time, but often.

And why do I win?

Because if you make the jury laugh and if you make the judge laugh, they tend to want you to win.

It's subconscious, but they tend to want you to win.

Because you're a funny guy.

I don't want you to lose.

You're so profound.

Usually judges tend to come across as very strict.

I'm not taking sides.

I'm just going to have this straight face, expressionless.

The fact that you can make a judge laugh, that's quite profound as a lawyer.

You don't have to be great at humor to make somebody laugh.

In fact, I'm terrible at it, but I practice a lot.

My wife and my kids all go like, oh, dad's going to tell a joke again.

What's the joke?

I'm so used to it.

I'm practicing.

People appreciate you when you're trying to make them laugh.

Throughout my book, I give jokes too.

I show jokes.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

I mean, I'm not a drinker, but I do this chiasmus.

Mae West, who was in the early days of the movie industry, had a lot of really good ones.

She said, it's better to be looked over than overlooked.

She was fabulous.

She discovered Cary Grant.

I'm surprised I've never seen a movie on her.

She was just amazing.

She said, women like a man with a past, but they prefer a man with a present.

You needn't show up with a present, okay?

Yeah, flowers, chocolate, bring it.

Yeah, exactly.

She says, good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.

I'm not sure I totally agree with that.

When you start with something like that, you open up a person's receptivity, and it's just really, really powerful.

You mentioned Elizabeth Holmes, and I'm not asking any listeners to follow her bed example, but what you said was the reason she was able to get all that kind of funding for what we discovered was a fraudulent company was hand messaging.

Can you explain that more to us?

Our hands, we often talk with our mouth, but we can also talk with our hands.

Everybody knows what middle finger means.

Let's start there.

If you're communicating, I know what that means.

I got it.

Everybody knows what the peace symbol is.

Right.

A lot of people know what the split of the middle fingers is.

If they know Star Trek, it's like Spock's Live Long and Prosper.

Hands up, don't shoot.

Their fist and all that stuff.

Elizabeth Holmes recognized the importance, the power of hand movement, of hands.

Your hand can be part of what you're doing as far as communicating is concerned.

She was brilliant.

It's really a shame that she would be great teaching people sales or marketing or persuasion instead of getting into business where she ended up doing fraudulent stuff and it's really a shame.

But she was very smart.

She actually lowered her voice.

Yeah, she practiced.

I watched a lot of the documentaries and movies.

She practiced lowering her voice because her business partner said, no one's going to take you seriously sounding like a soprano, so you need to sound more bass.

That's right.

That's right.

That's like, what's her name, who is the female Prime Minister of England, Molly Thatcher?

Margaret Thatcher.

Margaret Thatcher.

Margaret Thatcher could not get to the top of her political party because she had a squeaky voice, literally, and she actually went to a voice coach who was phenomenal.

He slowed her down when she talked, because she talked very fast with a high voice, and he forced her to have a lower voice.

He trained her to have a lower voice, and then they liked her enough that they made her head of the party, and then she became Prime Minister of England for a long time, okay?

And it's because the power of your voice.

So what was I talking about?

We were talking about Elizabeth Holmes.

Elizabeth Holmes, she also dressed like Steve Jobs, okay?

She wore a black turtleneck, okay?

So she understood that.

But what she did was she was inventing this product that could take one drop of blood and analyze everything.

Now, sadly, she's way behind.

Maybe in the next 50 years, they'll figure out how to do that, but she didn't.

And then she ended up selling and pretending that she didn't solve it.

But what she did was she took a small vial with just a few drops of blood in it, and she would hold it in between her thumb and her forefinger.

What she was basically communicating was, what I'm holding on my finger is the future of medicine.

We can figure out anything, any ailment that you have with just this one drop of blood.

And so when people would ask her like, so what is it you're selling?

She would pick up this thing with a tiny vial and she would show it in her fingers.

And so she was able to raise $500 million of funding, okay?

$500 million of funding because she was such an effective communicator.

She was persuasion.

But what she was doing was she was saying, you know, here's this little thing inside our fingers.

So there's a famous guy, Jerry something, I forget what his name is, but I talk about him in the book.

He was trying to get funding for this new computer, really thin computer that he wanted to create.

And he went to like one of the biggest funding companies in America, in Silicon Valley.

He was sitting in the waiting room waiting and people were coming out and they had like, you know, props and everything like that, that they went in and presented to the investors and he freaked out.

And he went like, I don't have any props or anything.

And then he realized, wait a second, I've got a notebook with a leather binder on it, very thin notebook.

So when he walked in, he looked at the table, it was a round table, and he picked up this thin notebook and he threw it on the table.

So it clapped, it slapped on the table.

And he said, there's the next computer that we are all making.

And so he said, one of the guys went like, what?

OK, he picked it up.

He was picking up a notebook.

He wasn't picking up a computer.

He was looking at it and he went like, hmm, this looks really good.

And he was able to raise millions of dollars all because of this little prop he came up with.

Because if he just talked about it, that's one thing.

But if you're saying it's going to be a thin computer, you can throw a notebook on the table.

It's about as thin as the computer that you're selling.

It becomes easier for people to relate to.

Do not do this if you're trying to sell oil.

But this guy was selling motor oil.

He was one of the world's top motor oil salesmen.

He would sell it to like four General Motors, Toyota, and they would put it in all their cars.

And he said, this is one of the purest oils you can ever get, motor oils.

And he said, let me prove it to you.

Let me show you.

And he would open up the oil and he'd start drinking.

But in communication, everybody remembered.

Everybody remembered.

Okay, yeah, it's pretty pure.

I don't want any thank you, but I bite it as cure.

So we have to understand that sometimes a prop or body language can help us in what we're communicating also.

You know, if I say it's really small, you don't know how small it is.

How small is it?

You know, if I say it's short compared to it's five feet instead of six feet, you can understand.

If I say it's 30 feet tall, it's really short.

You're thinking, why?

If I say compared to like the Empire State Building, it's really a short building.

But if I say it's like it's really short and I show my fingers, then you can relate.

And so that's why when we're talking, we need to have perspective.

Now, let me give you a good example.

So we had a, I ran a behavioral management company.

California's top behavioral management firm for 13 years.

We had like 22 psychologists and organizational development, all that stuff.

And it was very sophisticated because behavioral management, it changes behavior.

And so we, with psychologists and everything, would describe the psychology of it.

And I'd look at people's faces and they'd be glassy-eyed.

They'd be going, oh, because you're describing science.

We're scientists, you know.

I realized I needed to come up with a metaphor or analogy to describe what it is.

And so I said, just think of us like a personal coach.

Okay, a personal coach can come to your house and get you to do more pushups than you could ever do on your own, right?

Come on, Roberta, two more pushups.

Come on, two, two, two.

Yes, one more.

You can do it.

You can do it, okay?

Yes, and I'm huffing and puffing, but because you keep saying that.

Exactly, but you have that person pushing you.

I said, just think of us as we're just like a personal coach, but with psychology, that we're going to get your top people to tackle stuff a little bigger than they could normally tackle on their own.

And when I used that analogy or metaphor, people went, well, that makes sense.

That's interesting, because they can relate to it.

And so that's why it's so important when we're communicating, we have to make it simple enough for people to understand.

We're looking at it from our perspective.

And we've been doing it over and over and over and over again.

We know it backwards and forwards and all that stuff.

So we assume people understand things that they don't understand.

Because we understand it.

Doesn't everybody understand it?

But it's not true.

And that's the thing we always emphasize with speaking as well, is that your audience is hearing this for the first time.

You've been giving the same speech for the last 50 times.

You know it all by heart.

They are hearing it for the first time.

So pause, give them a chance to digest, use metaphors as you mentioned, all those things because it's the first time.

They're not understanding at the level that you do.

Exactly, exactly.

That's why, you know, whether you're naming a product or you're describing or you're trying to describe something that you want to resonate with your audience, if you can say it in such a way, and if you're using body language, if you're live, if you're not live, you might not, you know, you might be just an audio, which is fine.

But, you know, even audio can work, you know.

They use, I remember, I'm old enough to remember, plop, flop, fizz, fizz.

Oh, what a relief it is.

Alka-Seltzer, okay.

You know, sort of, you know, it isn't just touch, it's sound.

It's not a visual just, but it's sound and all this stuff.

I love Kurt Cobain, the musician, and he had a song called, Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Ew, what does teen spirit smell like, a locker room?

A fabulous song.

I absolutely love the song.

It's phenomenal and everything else.

But he has an unusual way to describe it.

You know, when you can trigger the motions, the senses, you have a better chance of people understanding what you're saying.

It's actually easier to sell and it's more fun.

And you add that to a simple reflexive question.

Isn't it, doesn't it, shouldn't it, don't you agree?

And it becomes much more engaging to your audience because we have to assume they're half asleep.

You have to assume it.

I mean, if they're not half asleep, you're lucky, and you don't have to say a lot and they like you and all that stuff.

But often we're fooled because we think they understand and they don't understand.

At least if we get a hint, like we say, does that make sense?

And they go, yeah.

We at least know, wait a second, it didn't.

What's not resonating with you?

What's not connecting with you?

And when you use these tools, it becomes easier to have flames coming out of your window.

So when they're driving, you go, what, what, what's that?

So there's a crazy price.

So this guy created an electric razor.

I don't know why I'm talking about things like this, but I'll go through this because it's funny.

And it's great examples for us too, yes.

So this guy creates an electric razor for man's private areas.

I don't want to get too much into that, OK?

That's what it is.

So he wanted to come up with a name for his product.

So what would you name the product?

He was laughing, probably sitting with a bunch of friends, and he said, you know what?

It's like a lawnmower.

Why don't I call it the lawnmower?

Why don't I call my company Manscapes?

So you're landscaping.

You're a man with a lawnmower.

Oh my goodness.

But it's designated with these target markets.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, it connects.

So what happens is, if I got one, I wouldn't share it.

So let's start there, okay?

But I would share the story.

I could imagine telling my friend, which I've done.

I said to my friend, I just got...

I didn't say it because I didn't buy it, but if I did, I would say, guess what I just got?

The lawnmower.

Oh, why?

You have to mow your lawn?

No, no, no, it's for man's private areas.

What?

You know, they may not buy it, but they're going to start telling their friends about it.

Guess what?

He just got the lawnmower, you know?

It spreads like wildfire.

And because it sounds funny, it's memorable.

That's how the word is going to spread, and that's why you make tons of sales afterwards.

And it explains what the product is, like squatty potty.

You know, you can laugh when you're in a squatty potty, but you know what it is.

It's a squatty potty.

You can visualize it.

You know?

Pop tarts is a good example.

So here's a good example.

Pop tarts, Kellogg's, in creative pop tarts, but they didn't invent it.

Post-serials invented it, and Kellogg's stole the idea from them.

How would you like to invent something that's amazing?

Somebody you dislike steals the idea from you and makes so much money you have to stop even trying to sell it because you can't even make a living.

Sounds like the McDonald's story.

What was his name?

The one played by the former Batman.

The McDonald's story.

Oh, what a fabulous, that was fabulous.

Yes, because he stole the idea.

That's right.

Exactly.

Michael Keaton.

That's a fabulous movie though.

It's really fabulous.

So Pop Tarts.

Post was competing with Kellogg's, Post Cereals.

And the head of Post Cereals wanted to invent something totally different and he said, well, let's come up with this little cake that you put inside a toaster and has jelly inside it and the toaster heats it up and it's really great.

Why don't we call it Country Squares?

And he was so proud of it that three months before he launched it, he bragged to the press explaining what it was and everything else, even though it's not available for three months.

But we're coming out with this product and you guys are going to love Country Squares, blah, blah, blah.

So the head of Kellogg's heard this.

What a brilliant idea!

So he trained his people.

We've got to figure out how to make one of those too.

But back then, Andy Warhol was really famous, the artist Andy Warhol, and he was a pop artist.

Everybody knew the term pop art.

So he said, let's call it Pop-Tart because it pops out of the toaster.

So you've got the auditory, you know, the sound, it pops out of the toaster and it's Pop-Tarts.

The word Pop-Tarts is already in everybody's brain.

He launched it a week before post-launch their product and sales exploded.

So much so that they ran out of product.

They couldn't believe how much people, almost overnight, they ran out of product.

So he ran a full-page ad and major newspapers that said, we are so sorry, you know, we didn't realize so many people are going to love, you're going to love this so much.

If you hang on for about a week, we're going to have more Pop-Tarts available in the stores.

Nobody, almost nobody bought Country Squares.

They waited for Pop-Tarts to become available.

And eventually, after a short period of time, like less than a year, Post decided we're not even going to sell it anymore because nobody was buying Country Squares.

But everybody was buying Pop-Tarts.

It became billions of dollars.

I mean, massively successful.

All because they stole the idea, but they had a better name.

We need to know how to resonate with the mind so that it goes like, you know, so flames are coming out of your Pop-Tarts, you know, like Pop-Tarts?

What's that?

Interesting, interesting.

You know, and yeah, if I say to James, please get me some country squares from the store.

It's very different, right?

Very different from Pop-Tarts.

We know it is, but yeah, the word works and it pops out of the toaster.

It's all working with the brain.

Like you said, it's playing with the brain and the things that trigger it.

Well, and we're trying to convince people.

We're trying to persuade people often.

Persuasion is one of the most valuable tools we can ever have.

This guy was telling me, hey, I can actually go on dates now.

I couldn't go on dates before because I'm using Brain Glue.

I said, it's not really meant for that, but it's easier.

Well, it is bringing him results, so that's good.

So what can I say?

But this mom was asking me, she said, well, you're an expert in Brain Glue.

Can you help me with my 14-year-old son?

And I'm like, okay, I never know what she's going to ask me.

She says, my 14-year-old son said, mommy, why do we have to follow so many rules in life?

Okay.

She said, how do I answer him?

And so I started brainstorming with her.

I said, okay, well, rules, what rhymes with rules?

How about fools?

Only fools don't follow rules.

That's one way I could do it.

But let's make it even stronger by using an analogy or a metaphor.

And so I brainstormed with the mom.

And then we came up with one and I sat with her and her son.

And I said to her son, 14-year-old son, I said, so you're asking your mom why we have to follow so many rules in life?

And he said, yeah.

I said, well, think about it.

If you're thirsty, you could always drink out of the toilet.

But why would you want to?

Remember, only fools don't follow rules.

And he says, he looks at me and he goes, that makes sense.

For getting a 14-year-old to say that anything makes sense is a miracle.

14-year-old boys especially.

But does it really make sense or did I simply just trigger the parts of his brain?

So they have these political phrases that really work with this.

It's the same thing.

Usually one of the tools is called anchoring, where you take two things that don't go together and you put them together in an unusual way.

Anchoring like an NLP, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

So it's you can't hug a child with nuclear arms.

Well, you can't hug a child with one third.

He's putting one emotion, nuclear arms, totally different emotion, but you bring them together.

Our president, Ronald Reagan, he was trying to launch the rockets that would shoot down missiles.

OK, and it was right after the Vietnam War.

So people weren't into it.

But the movie Star Wars was very popular right at then.

So he called it the Star Wars Missile Defense System.

And suddenly people went, oh, and they went, oh, OK, that sounds really cool.

The Star Wars Missile Defense System.

OK, he put the two things together.

I'm not saying he was smarter, not smart, but anchoring works well.

Here's for somebody.

And I'm not taking a side on pro guns or anti guns or anything like this.

But here's a phrase that I heard a comedian use that actually resonates because it's brain glue.

It's the right to bear arms is almost as crazy as the right to arm bears.

It's like that boy, you trigger something in the brain.

OK, well.

And when you start to think of the image of the bears being the ones having arms, then you think, wait, wait a minute, that is a thing.

Yes.

That's a very good one.

James, we can carry on forever.

You have so many stories, such powerful metaphors and brain glue, sticky ideas to share with us.

But I'm going to have to let you go.

But before that, first of all, thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me.

My pleasure.

Before you go, please tell us where we can find you online.

You can go to yesbrainglue.com and that will tell you all kinds of stuff about the book and about brain glue itself.

That's an easy way to do it.

Yes Brain Glue.

Or check out the book Brain Glue.

It's on Amazon and at bookstores.

And remember, simple, reflexive questions.

Isn't it?

Doesn't it?

Shouldn't it?

Don't you agree?

Just try it and watch how it changes your life.

It's just amazing.

I think you guys and gals will just love this.

How it gets you interacting with everyone.

But yeah, Brain Glue.

yesbrainglue.com.

yesbrainglue.com.

Isn't it?

Doesn't it?

Shouldn't it?

Don't you agree?

Don't you agree?

Thank you so much, Mr.

007, James Bond.

You're so awesome.

Thank you.

Appreciate that so much.

Thank you for joining the Speaking and Communicating Podcast once again.

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