Speaking and Communicating Podcast

And I sat there for about five minutes staring at my phone.

So after five minutes, I handed the phone back to her.

Instead of her trying to convince me, Craig, you have a broken belief system.

You think you can use your phone, but you can't.

You don't understand how broken you are.

I understand how broken you are.

You don't understand how broken you are.

Let me tell you the ways.

Instead of doing that, she became the champion of my goal and said, okay, you know what?

I'm gonna help you do the things.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Ndela.

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 and leave us a rating and a review.

Now, let's get communicating with Texan Craig Andrews who is a US.

Marine turned electrical engineer, a mobile phone designer turned marketer and multi bestselling author.

Craig is here to talk to us about how communication plays a huge and crucial role in your business.

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

Hi, Craig.

Hi, Roberta.

It's so good to be here.

I've been looking forward to this.

I'm excited that you're here.

Welcome.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Well, I've taken anything but a straight journey through life, but it's been a rewarding journey.

And you know, you hit on a few of the highlights.

I spent six years in the Marine Corps, which was outstanding, worked with amazing people, and very thankful for that.

More recently, I spent three months in the hospital, six weeks in a coma, and they told my wife for four or five of those six weeks that I was going to die.

Obviously, I didn't, but when I came out, I had to learn how to walk again, and pretty much learn how to do everything else again, because my body had completely atrophied.

So it made me really thankful that I started off the earlier part of my life in the Marine Corps, because it gave me a good mindset for recovery.

And how so?

By the way, welcome back, and we're so grateful that you're still alive.

How did it give you that mindset?

What do you mean by that?

Well, recovery is hard.

When I woke up from my coma, I couldn't lift an arm, I couldn't lift a leg.

My first memory, I had a series of dreams, we can talk about that, and the dream, dreams is the word that I use, because I lack a better word to describe sort of the transient state that I was hanging out in.

But one of my first memories, when I first woke up, was I was feeling around on my hand, I was looking for my wedding ring, and I couldn't find my wedding ring, and I couldn't lift my hand up to see what was there and what wasn't.

And I knew that I was in a very bad spot.

Well, initially I couldn't eat, because when all of your muscles atrophy, that includes also your swallowing muscles.

And so I was being fed through a feeding tube, but when I first started eating, I could eat broth, but not all on my own.

Some of my had to actually food feed me like a little baby.

And there are a lot of things that I couldn't do for myself.

Well, the process of learning how to walk again and basically do everything that you and I take for granted today was hard.

And there were days where it was easy to give up and just say this is too hard.

But I thank the Marine Corps for building a mindset in me that said no.

There were days where I was facing a hard part of recovery.

And the one thing that drove me forward was a desire to not disgrace my fellow marines.

You know, people were watching me.

And I thought for the sake of the name that I have, which is US Marine, for the sake of that name, I will get up and walk.

Wow, when the motivation is something bigger than you.

Yeah.

And when we spoke earlier, you said there's a very powerful story during that period of your life when you're in a coma.

Would you like to share that with us?

Sure, sure.

Well, first, let me ask this.

Are you married or have you been married?

Never been married.

No.

Never been married.

Have you ever had a stupid argument with a significant other?

Of course.

Whatever argument you've had, I've had one that's even more stupid.

I've had the most stupid argument with my spouse.

And it was actually back when I was in the hospital.

I told my wife, I said, I want to go home.

She said, you can't go home.

You can't walk.

I said, I can too.

I can walk.

She's like, no, you can't.

You can't lift your arms or legs.

I said, I can walk.

I've been up four or five times already.

It's time for us to go home.

What makes it a dumb argument is all the evidence pointed to the fact that I couldn't walk.

I couldn't lift my arms.

She was right.

I couldn't lift my arms.

I was sitting in a hospital bed.

I was so weak, I couldn't even press the nurse call button.

Not only that, but I had a big tube coming down my throat.

And so all the evidence showed that I was wrong, but I truly believed I could walk.

And I'm sitting there trying to convince her I could walk.

She's trying to convince me I can't walk.

By far the dumbest argument that I've ever had with my spouse.

But it came out of the fact that I had a broken belief system.

And until that belief system changed, I couldn't come into a realm of reality.

And the fact is she wasn't trying to hold me back.

She wanted me home too.

She just knew I hadn't reached that point.

But she was trying to give me more facts, and facts weren't working.

Well, I think everybody has had that experience.

Maybe it's with a customer or a potential customer.

And you're looking at your customer, you're like, you've got a broken belief system.

Here, let me give you all the facts of why you're wrong.

And you walk away frustrated because you're like, I gave them all the facts, and they still believe the wrong thing.

Well, I got news.

If I'm laying in a hospital bed, so weak I can't lift my arms or legs, so weak I can't press the nurse's call button, and somebody can't convince me that I can't walk then, then there's a good chance you can't convince your customer or your significant other or someone else that has a broken belief system until they reach that point on their own.

That's why you call it broken, the belief system.

Yeah.

We call it BS, which is belief system.

So you say a broken belief system.

It's broken because it doesn't take into account the facts.

Is that why you call it broken?

Well, let me give you the reason why my belief system was broken at that time.

So you remember earlier, I said I had dreams, but dreams is kind of the imperfect word to describe where I was.

I was in sort of a transient state between unconscious and conscious.

And I have weird interpretations of reality.

And in my reality, I did know I was in a hospital.

I knew I hated my bed, which I did.

And because I hated my bed so much, when my wife was away, when she wasn't in my room, I snuck out, and I went up to a room on the second floor.

That was sort of a lounge for the hospital staff.

And I snuck in there, and I hung out in that lounge.

And it had a bed in there that was a lot more comfortable than my bed.

And I would go up there because I liked that bed more.

And I would always try to get back to my room before my wife showed up, because I knew she would be worried if she came to my room and I wasn't there.

Of course.

That was my reality.

It was completely false, but that was my reality.

And anybody who tried to convince me that my reality was wrong, I just like, no, you're wrong.

You think I'm wrong, I think you're wrong.

What are you going to do about it?

And where do we meet each other in the middle?

Well, and there was no meeting in the middle.

I mean, so there's a philosophical concept called the fallacy of the golden mean, that, you know, truth is founded between two extreme positions.

Where it was presented to me was in the context of belief of the age of the earth.

So if you believe the earth is 6,000 years old, and you meet somebody that believes the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and you say, you know what, we'll meet in the middle, we'll call it 2 billion years old.

Well, nobody's happy there.

No.

6,000 is still very far away from that number.

Yeah.

And if you believe the earth is 4.5 billion years old, you're like, 2 billion, okay, that's movement, my direction, but you're ignoring all the signs that leads me to believe it's 4.5 billion years old.

And so it's not about meeting in the middle.

It's about creating moments of inception.

And when you can create these moments of inception where somebody changes their belief system on their own, they hold it tightly.

And so of course, your podcast is about communication.

Well, one of the most important things we do with communication is we try to persuade.

And if you can persuade in a way that somebody believes they arrived upon a belief on their own, you've done the most effective form of persuasion possible.

Because they will hold to that belief tightly.

If you bully them into a belief, they'll hold true to it until you leave the room.

And as soon as you leave the room, they go back to their old belief system, their broken belief system.

And so there are three ways, and one of the things we'll talk about is I have a book called Make sales Magical, which is actually a marketing book, because when you do the marketing right, the sales are magical.

But in that book, I talk about three methods of inception.

And I'll actually time back to my time in the hospital.

The first method of inception is how.

Ask some of my how questions.

Asking them to construct a implementation path, or recall an implementation path.

One of my broken belief systems was at one point, or no, I actually emailed clients saying, hey, I'm back, let's have a meeting.

And my assistant intercepted the email, told the clients saying, I don't know where this email came from, it's not real, please ignore it, there's not a meeting.

And I was telling my wife about how Libby had saved my hide again.

I said, yep, I said she intercepted that email, and stopped it.

And my wife asked me a how question.

She said, Craig, how did you send that email?

I had to pause and I had to think, you know what, I haven't seen my laptop in nearly two months, and I can't lift my arms and I can't lift my legs.

I'm also curious how you sent it.

I didn't, it was one of my dreams.

Oh.

This was something that happened in my dream, which is pretty cool because my assistant is saving my hide even when I'm in my dreams.

Wow.

She didn't work for me anymore, but she was awesome, still is awesome.

But see, here's a place where my wife effectively, because my wife learned quickly, because I sat there and argued with her about how I could walk.

And she'll tell you, I saw, I looked him in the eye, he completely believed he could walk.

I later asked her, I said, hey, is there a second floor in this hospital where the lounge was, where I went and hid?

And she's like, nope, no second floor.

This is when I started realizing how broken my belief system was.

One of the methods of inception is ask people how questions.

Instead of telling them they're wrong, start from the perspective of, okay, you sent the email, that's awesome.

How did you do that?

Walk me through that.

Instead of how could you possibly send it?

You don't know how to use your hands because that's usually what we gravitate towards.

Yeah, because it's easy.

It's obvious to us.

You are wrong.

I'm going to tell you how wrong you are.

Stand by.

And probably I would guess when you heard me saying those, obviously I was acting out.

You probably internally were hearing that and recoiling and saying, oh my goodness, Craig, all in my show is about, tell me how wrong I am.

And it doesn't feel good.

It doesn't feel good when you do that.

So that's one method is ask people how questions.

Another method is what questions.

And here's an example of where my sister-in-law, who was visiting me in the hospital, also did that.

At some point, I did get strong enough that still couldn't press the nurse call button, but I got strong enough to use my phone.

And it was one of the first days I had my phone that my wife was leaving my phone with me as they left at the end of the day.

And my sister-in-law said, hey, if you need anything, just call me.

And I said, well, Jean, do I have your phone number?

And she could have said, Craig, that's a dumb question.

But instead, she tapped into a what methodology?

And what is tapping into, what have you done in the past?

So when you're trying to change somebody's mind, tap into their own personal experience, what have you done in the past?

And she said, Craig, what do you do on Friday nights?

I said, well, I go to the Wizard Academy.

It's a little place here in Austin.

It's like Disneyland for marketers.

She said, okay.

And on your way to the Wizard Academy, what do you do?

I said, I call you.

And all of a sudden I realized I do have her phone number.

The number.

So you're getting the picture.

My brain was not in perfect shape when I was waking up.

Of course.

But instead of telling me or shaming me, she asked white questions that tapped into what have I done in the past?

So then the answer comes out of you instead of being condescending.

I said, are you stupid?

You know my number.

Yeah, exactly.

And so then the third method of inception is help them in their journey, become their champion of their journey.

And so this was actually something that happened before the other two.

The next potential argument that I have with my wife that she very wisely avoided is there too.

I can't remember when after I tried to convince her, I could walk and she tried to convince me I couldn't.

The next thing I said was, I want my phone so I can text people.

She knew immediately there's no way he can use his phone.

She was looking at my motor skills, she was looking at my mental skills, and there was no way I could use my phone.

And she said, sure, let me get it for you.

She pulled my phone out of her person, she put it in my hands.

And I sat there for about five minutes staring at my phone.

I could hold it, but that was it.

You couldn't use your fingers.

So after five minutes, I handed the phone back to her.

Again, so we have inception.

Instead of her trying to convince me, Craig, you have a broken belief system.

You think you can use your phone, but you can't.

You don't understand how broken you are.

I understand how broken you are.

You don't understand how broken you are.

Let me tell you the ways.

Instead of doing that, she became the champion of my goal and said, okay, you know what?

I'm going to help you do the things.

Here's your phone.

Get started.

And then at that point, I realized how much help I needed.

Right.

And it came across as caring and loving instead of argumentative.

Or persuading you that you're wrong.

What she's saying is right.

Because usually when we sell or when we communicate in any situation, which we also we say every form of communication is selling, usually we're trying to convince you that, hey, what I have is so good for you, there's no way you're going to say no.

And when you try to say no, I must convince you that it is good.

Why aren't you listening?

Look how good this is for you.

Yeah.

And part of making sales magical is creating these moments of inception where they reach these conclusions on their own.

And it's their deeply held belief because they arrived at it because you were kind enough and patient enough to get them to that point without shaming them, without condescending them.

And when you do that right, they now value you because you helped them understand some deficits because they start putting some things together.

You don't have to tell them how smart you are.

They start figuring it out.

Oh, you know, like my wife, she knew I couldn't use my phone.

I realized at that point she had superior knowledge to me.

She didn't have to tell me she had superior knowledge.

She became the champion in my failed pursuit to use my phone.

Until I realized I'm not there yet.

And if I need to call some of my or text some of my, I need you to help me with that.

And when we do that with our customers or our spouses or our colleagues, we become much more valuable people to them, partially because we're more trustworthy, because we were kind and considerate in the way we help them recognize their broken belief system.

Then the question becomes, Craig, if I have several customers, every single one of them has a different belief system, how do I apply these three methods of inception in different scenarios when I'm dealing with each one?

Because everybody's got a different belief system.

They do, but at some level, you can simplify it.

At some level, you can create a playbook.

Of how to address these different belief systems.

Now, one of the things that we do is we always start every engagement with what we call first time offer.

An important clarification is we do high ticket sales.

Kind of the magic trio for us is high ticket, long sales cycle, requiring a high level of trust to close.

So that's our type.

When we're closing a piece of business, that's what we're doing.

But it's also the people we help.

They have the same traits.

They usually have a high ticket service they're selling that has a long sales cycle that requires a high level of trust.

And so we realize there's only so much that we can accomplish in the sales conversation.

We realize that during the sales conversation, there's parts of their broken belief system we will never change.

And just the sales presentations and sales conversations, those are the wrong places to change them.

And in the same way that my wife was my champion in trying to get me back to normal and helping me in individual steps, what these first time offers do is it's the first step in becoming your customer's champion.

For us, it's a mini project.

And when we lay that out, whether it's for ourselves or for one of our clients that we're helping implement one of these, during the process of that, one of the key elements that makes it work is you're actually helping them solve a problem in their life.

You're helping them solve a small problem.

There's a verse in the Bible that says, those who have been trustworthy in the small things will be entrusted in the big things.

Yeah, I think that's one of those principles that applies in a lot of situations.

And I think when you help your customers solve a small problem, they're going to trust you more to solve a big problem.

And while you're solving that small problem, we structure these first-time offers to help change their broken belief system.

And to do it in a slow and deliberate way, where they start coming to these realizations on their own, using these methods of inception that we laid out.

So they come to the belief on their own, so that when you leave the room, they still believe that they still buy into that.

yes.

And because they believe it, and because you were thoughtful and considerate in the way that you brought that out, instead of being condescending towards them or preaching to them, they trust you as the person that's going to help them accomplish what they've been unable to accomplish on their own.

How do I establish that, me on the other side of that?

Do they come to you and say, this is my problem, and do they articulate it that well, or is there a way for me to establish what really is the core problem?

Yeah.

So I had a professor in university.

I remember we turned in our first homework assignment.

In this class, it was a graduate level class, and each homework assignment was worth 10 percent of our final grade.

So if you screwed up your first homework assignment, you pretty much screwed up the whole semester.

And somebody came in the class and said, you didn't give us enough information to solve this problem.

professor kind of rocked back and forth for a second, and he said, what are you expecting of your customers?

If your customers know enough to come to you with the right answers, they don't need you.

And that's what he told us.

And that's the truth.

If your customers know enough to give you all the information you need to solve the problem, they know enough to where they don't need you.

Yep.

And so here's the reality.

Of course, your customers are going to come to you with a broken belief system.

If they didn't have a broken belief system, that would mean that they know what you know and they don't need you.

Common sense would say that, yes.

So don't be upset when they come with a broken belief system.

When you see them come in with a broken belief system, you say, thank goodness, this is somebody I can help.

Now, how can I help them in a way that preserves their dignity, that preserves their autonomy and leads them down that path?

But they will come with a broken belief system.

And somebody who comes without one probably doesn't need you.

Yeah.

So let's go through the three inception methods again.

So when they come with a broken belief system, what's the first thing?

So one is how?

Asking how questions.

OK, well, how how are you planning to implement this?

Or how will we move forward?

How questions are incredibly powerful because they talk about implementation.

The second method is what?

Asking what questions and what questions tap into what they've done in the past to solve that or to try to solve that.

And so in the process of telling that, they start realizing if you say, well, hey, what have you done in the past to try to solve this?

One, that's very important information for you that will help you do your job better.

But two, as they're saying this, they're recalling history and recalling, oh, I've tried this in the past and it didn't work out.

And then the third is help them in their journey, become the champion in their journey.

Even if you know it's a broken belief system, you say, well, why don't we give this a shot?

Here, let's map out a plan to move forward and do this.

And in the process of doing that, they see you as a ally, and when things go wrong, all of a sudden, they start realizing, and you're there to help them say, you know what?

We see this happen often.

Here are some ways to address that.

They see you as an ally, and they see you as their champion.

So those are three things.

There's something else that we could talk about also, which is something you can do in the sales conversation.

We call these priming questions, and priming questions prime the mind for a changed belief system.

We would say that the perfect priming question is a question that's 100% reasonable for you to ask.

It's a question somebody would expect you to ask.

It's a question that you're reasonably certain that when you ask it, they won't know the answer to it.

And it's also a question you're reasonably certain that they will believe they should know the answer to it.

When they ask that, and again, the key is not to shame.

You're there to help them.

You're not there to help them.

You probably need to rethink what you're doing.

You're not there to shame.

But when you ask these questions and they realize, oh, I should know the answer to this, and I do not know the answer to it, all of a sudden they start connecting the dots.

They do it immediately at lightning speed in their brain.

They figure out if you're smart enough to ask the question, you're also smart enough to help them answer the question.

So you never have to tell them, hey, this is what we do, because they realize that's something you're only asking because you already know that that's important.

You already know that you can help them in that.

Right.

It's almost like you lead them to the promised land.

You kind of like the GPS, but you're not telling them, you're not spoon feeding them.

Because I think grownups don't like being spoon fed, but asking the right questions and let them find those answers, like you said, to make them feel smart.

Yeah.

And we had a client years ago that would write some of the, I call it obtuse writing.

It was difficult to read and they would use big words.

And in a very real discussion we had, I said, I think you need to simplify that.

And they said, no, no, no.

Our customers, our clients expect us to be really smart.

And this is how we're going to show them we're really smart.

Did the customers say that?

No.

How much is it?

So what we did, so this was with a financial advisor, and they were using all this financial jargon.

And I said, well, why don't we run a test?

This was an election year, and people get a little twitchy around election years.

They're worried if the Democrat wins, what will it do to the economy?

If the Republican wins, what will it do to the economy?

And so they had a piece of material that basically said, you know what, if we look in history, it doesn't matter who wins, at least in terms of stocks.

The value of stocks will go up regardless of who wins.

And I said, why don't we just do a test?

Why don't we take this piece, and let's just simplify it, and let's put it in the simplest language possible.

And we answered this tough question, and we answered it in 300 words.

300 words and five or six graphs.

And it was simple, it was written, literally written at a fifth grade level.

When we put that out to their email list, the engagement on all content increased 1800% instantly.

For simplifying the language.

Just by simplifying the language.

You studied engineering, I have an engineering background as well.

When we say sometimes the Catch-22 situation is, do I show them how smart I am in my subject matter expertise?

But at the same time, I want my potential customers, my audience to understand what I'm talking about.

So what do I do when I communicate, when I make a presentation, when I'm standing in front of Silicon Valley investors asking for money?

Because they are not engineers.

You know, I'm going to go back to that same professor I took.

He's truly one of the smartest people I've ever met.

This may not mean much to you, but he had a filter named after him.

In engineering, most people have filters named after him, have been dead for a couple hundred years.

He was extremely smart.

I watched him in two minutes explain what he does in a way that destroyed hundreds, if not thousands, of doctoral dissertations.

And he explained it in the most simple terms.

If you had made it through your second or third year of engineering, you would understand everything he was saying.

It was beautifully simple.

As a matter of fact, it was so simple that I thought, this is easy, until I actually tried to do it.

And then you realize.

But he made you feel smart, like you said.

At that moment, you feel smart.

yes.

And that's when you would be open to even more of whatever he is that he's bringing.

Because that's where the tricky part about sales is, if you make your audience feel smart, then they'd be open to listening to more.

Yeah.

And what they remember about you is, you were the person who was able to make the complex simple.

And if you want people to pay you a lot of money, make the complex simple.

Yeah.

Make the complex simple.

Words of wisdom from Craig Andrews, the former US Marine, turned electrical engineer, mobile phone designer, and now multi-best-selling author and marketer.

Thank you, Craig, for first of all, sharing your story.

We appreciate you and welcome back.

And most importantly, thank you for sharing these words of wisdom with us.

We appreciate you being here today.

Roberta, thank you for having me.

It's been such a delightful conversation.

I do have a gift for your audience that I would like to offer.

Would it be okay if I do that?

We love gifts.

And then after the gift, you'll tell us about your book and your website and your podcast details.

I talked a little bit about these first-time offers.

In concept, they're simple.

And as I learned the hard way, there's a lot of mistakes that could be made.

I wouldn't say I've made all the mistakes.

I'm sure I still have many mistakes left to make, but I've made most of the mistakes.

And I've put those together in a guide to help folks avoid the mistakes I've made.

Also, I've given folks 23 days access to a course, where if they want to have a first-time offer for their business, so they can create these moments of inception, this course will help them do it.

And the reason I limit it to 23 days, we study human behavior.

I know if I give you unlimited access to the course, you'll sign up for the course and never take it.

Procrastinate.

Yeah.

And we're in the business of changing lives.

I want your life to be changed.

I know if I put that 23-day limit on it, I see it in the analytics, you'll go in, you'll consume the material and that makes me happy.

So the way they get that gift is they go to our website, which is allies4me.com.

That's spelled A-L-L-I-E-S, the number four, me.com.

And then just add slash speaking and communicating.

All lowercase, all one word, allies4me.com/speaking and communicating.

And they'll be taken to the page where they can sign up for these gifts.

Thank you for the gift.

We love gifts, Craig.

You came to the right place for giving gifts.

We love them.

Alistair will certainly, certainly tap into those.

Thank you so much.

allies4me.com/speaking and communicating.

All one word.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

And then the books.

So one book that I've talked mostly about is Make sales Magical, which is actually not a sales book.

It's a marketing book because when the marketing is done right, the sales are magical.

And that's on Amazon.

The other book is titled Hope That Won't Die.

And my wife and I wrote that together about our journey through the hospital.

And it's written in three parts.

Part one is Craig's Journey.

Part two is Karen's Journey.

And part three is lessons From The Journey.

Because we should always, always learn from our experiences.

Always take the lesson from it for sure.

So hope that one die and make sales magical books from Craig.

We'll put all of those details on the show notes so that you know where to get hold of them.

And Craig, you're a fellow podcaster.

Please give us details about your podcast.

Oh, thank you.

You're so kind.

yes, I have a podcast called Leaders and legacies.

In that podcast, we celebrate everyday leaders who are making a difference in the world.

Of course, it's exciting to hear how the titans of industry are doing things.

I've decided, you know what?

There's a lot of small and medium business owners who need to hear from other small and medium business owners on the challenges they're facing.

So that's who we primarily focus.

We do have some A-listers, a name I wish I could release right now, but I've found that everybody I mention them to, everybody knows one of his two, usually both of his two big companies.

And so we have them as well, but the podcast is called Leaders and legacies.

Hope folks will give it a listen.

Oh, definitely will.

And I'm sure our listeners will tune in as well.

Leaders and legacies, a podcast by Craig Andrews.

Hope That Won't Die, Make sales Magical.

Books by Craig Andrews.

allies, the number four, me.com/speaking and communicating to tap into the gift.

Thank you very much.

This really has been a delight for me as well.

Appreciate you, Craig, being here today.

Roberta, thank you so much.

My absolute pleasure.

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

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