Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. By the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review. This podcast focuses on communication skills which also include networking. And my guest today, Merrill Charette.
00:27
who is the CEO of ShipShape, a master networker and host of the ShipShape podcast, is here to talk to us about how to effectively network so that you communicate in a way that will make you always be remembered and never forgotten. And before I go any further, please help me welcome Merrill to the show. Hi Meryl. Hey Roberta, how's it going? I'm doing great. How are you?
00:55
pretty good. It's a nice sunny cloudy day in Boston, Massachusetts. It hasn't gotten super cold yet, but it's slowly getting there. Same here in Illinois, still sunny, beautiful day. So in Massachusetts, where exactly are you based? So I am based on a sailboat in Boston Harbor. I've been living on a sailboat for the past five years. It's a 40 foot world
01:24
I'm the only person on it. In a wild journey, living on a boat is certainly an extreme, definitely minimalist. And you thought if you wanted to be a minimalist, it's better to do it on a boat than on a studio apartment? So one of the things that I found out, because I've done extreme long distance backpacking in the past, is that there aren't many communities still left out there. And even when I was living on land,
01:53
many of the people on the street didn't know each other. But when living on a boat, everyone needs to know everyone because you don't know what type of issues you could run into. So community is quite powerful, especially around the water. That is amazing because I'm from South Africa and we are very much into, we know everybody, your neighbors, you greet people in the elevator. I literally, when I was driving back home, I would stop at a traffic light.
02:23
and the guy who's selling sunglasses or cans of Coke on the street comes, say, hello, I'll open up my window and we chat like we've known each other forever. I find that the more we move into the city life and apartments, everybody suddenly becomes a stranger. Do you know why that is? I think that technology has something to do with it. As technology has made us more globally connected, we have become so much more fragmented in our small social groups.
02:53
I feel that in the past, we go back a hundred something years ago, it was very easy to define where you were within the community. You knew who the people that were in charge of the community were, you knew who the pranksters were, you knew everyone in the community. But now with technology, it's a global comparison. You go online, you try to search anything and you find people that are the leaders of anything that you search. So now the comparison is very much on a global scale.
03:22
Yeah, technology is probably what's done our communities in. We just said, because one of the main needs we have as humans, we want to be heard, seen, and valued, and understood. And it seems like we are running away from all of those things. People want to be heard. So they are trying to say, wait a minute, I'm here. Is anybody home? So if technology did that, what is something that we can do well? I'm sitting talking to you right now. So thank you, technology.
03:51
So try to incorporate it into our lives while at the same time, letting others be seen and heard. Well, ultimately it comes down to actually putting yourself out there. And there's no easy way of getting around that. When I had my time doing door to door sales, essentially the only training that was required was to actually go knock on doors and talk to people. You can't sit back, especially when it's communication and think that by reading a ton of books,
04:21
or watching a bunch of YouTube videos on communication is going to drastically change how you communicate, you have to actually be out there communicating because it's a skill that's developed over a long period of time. Communication, I think, is harder than rocket science. Rocket science, you just need to go and study a book and memorize where communication, you're dealing with a different person every single time, which makes you have to be creative.
04:49
I used to do some stand-up comedy, so I could get used to essentially being booed off stage or feeling pressure and having to come up with something that will engage people and listeners. What got you started on that? Just meeting so many people, I hung out in all sorts of different crowds from music scenes to comedy scenes, and I thought I could do it all, right? I have the gift of not really having too much self-doubt. That's very good.
05:17
You said you were on a hiking trail for many, many days. Talk to us about that. So back in 2018, after a long career in fitness, I decided that I needed to really test my character. So what is there really to do that's extreme and difficult and not many people are able to do it? Well, hiking the Appalachian Trail is one of them. So it's a 2,200 mile trail from Georgia to Maine.
05:47
barely anyone is able to finish it. It was endless. A lot of people think that these type of long distance hikes, you're just walking through the woods, looking up at the trees and seeing nature, but you're actually looking at your feet most of the time so you don't trip on rocks or roots. It's a very reflective time. And people would ask me, oh, how did you train for it? And people will get really locked up into the idea of the fitness side of it.
06:16
But if you're walking for 172 days, you're fit after a month. So you're just in your head all the time. And how do you manage that? So you said you wanted to test your character. If anybody's listening, they're thinking, OK, do I have to do something that extreme? Do I have to do it, pray, love and travel to other countries and India and meditate? Or is there a way to test your character while being in Boston? I'd say.
06:42
that doing something extreme and out of the norm is going to be beneficial in any aspect of your life. If I had just gone and traveled around Europe, a lot of people do that. But with a story such as Hiking the Appalachian Trail, now I have a battery of stories that I can throw at someone that they'll be so engaged in.
07:08
Even when I was at law school and I was getting recruited by all these law firms, the only questions that they had was about the Appalachian Trail. That's all they wanted to hear. They didn't care about how I did in school, what I thought of the law. They just wanted to hear some crazy backpacking stories. Why do you think that was so appealing? There's a lot of people that have these dreams. I don't know if they're really much a dreams as just like thoughts.
07:37
I run into people all the time that are like, oh, it's my dream to hike the Appalachian Trail, live on a boat. There's something crazy about it that people just want to hear. And then you said earlier that hiking the Appalachian Trails develop your communication skills. Well, it certainly makes you reflect on yourself. That's probably the biggest thing because I don't think you can be a really great communicator unless you're able to communicate within yourself correctly.
08:07
So it was basically a fast track of having to really sit on my ideas. Walking 12 hours a day with literally thinking of every terrible choice you've ever made and having to walk through that and think it all over definitely puts you in a far different mindset than if you were still working your job and only part of the time you devoted to really reflecting on yourself.
08:34
I tell a lot of people that are in scenarios in which they're questioning kind of their roles in society and their choices and all of that to go and have a journey and have an adventure. And maybe you'll come to far different conclusions than jumping from one drama to another drama. If we take five, 10 minutes to reflect and meditate, if you are home and everything is familiar, you just go back to that. Right. Whereas if you were far away on the trail.
09:03
You had nothing to fall back on. Comforts, all your daily habits. So we talk about inner dialogue a lot. You know how sometimes when things get rough, we either give up or we feel like we're not equal to the task or we just fall back to our norm and say, Hey, wait a minute, why am I making life so tough? It's unnecessary. So what is it about our inner dialogue that we can adjust so that we use it in our favor?
09:29
I guess to begin, I believe that every person is born with confidence. And it's all of the things that happen in your life over time that ultimately shades the confident light that you naturally have. And the human mind is always thinking. Even when you are sitting by yourself and the TV's not going on, you're never just blankly there. You're always thinking of something. And so generally if you...
09:58
don't have any passion or anything that you spend your time being busy with, you can get locked into these internal narratives of stories within your own mind. And not all the stories are great stories. But I argue that we need to start telling ourselves happy endings. And a happy ending could be even the most terrible story that you have. You were in this marriage and it didn't work out and they cheated on you. You could carry that baggage for the rest of your life.
10:26
Or you could tell a story in which all of that happened and at the end of it you learn some lessons about being independent or whatever it may be. And what are the things that you're gonna take from this experience so it doesn't happen again? That's how you come up with a happy ending. Start telling yourself better stories that'll help build your confidence.
10:46
Besides, if you're ever telling these stories to other people, it's always good to have some lessons learned and a happy ending because that's what people want to experience. Happy endings. It's in human nature to be fearful of things. And technology, I feel that it is also highlighted how we are still animals and how many of these different organizations like Facebook plays on how the human interacts, how it sees color, how it is engaged. And so...
11:16
It's in our natural ability to be fearful of things because if we go do something wrong, that could cost us our position within society, which makes us a greater chance of dying in the natural state of things. So it's definitely fighting through the fear. You'll always have fear. And I've been in plenty of scenarios in which I'm going up to do public speaking and I have this overwhelming feeling of anxiety.
11:45
or concern, but I've also put in the work and studied and I know everything about the subject. So with that knowledge that I did put in a ton of work in order to be good at this presentation and also having that anxiety feeling of, oh my God, I can't do this presentation. I reflect on it and I say, okay, this is a good emotion to be feeling. It actually shows that I care, that I'm engaged because it's a good emotion to have. It almost X's out.
12:14
it just cancels out. This emotion is a sign that everything I'm doing, I'm doing well. And that you care. If you didn't even feel a bit of nervousness, it shows that you care. Nerves are not always a bad thing or a signal that you should run for cover. Exactly. So talk to us about ShipShape. How did you get started on that? ShipShape is the National Directory of Marine Repair and Refit. So if you're a boat owner or a yacht owner, you can go on the platform and find any
12:43
service provider across the United States. How it came about was I had built a general contracting company for yacht repair in Boston and I happened to know a diver and people would come up to me and they'd be like, do you know anyone that does diving work? Yeah, I do. So start connecting people together and then eventually the amount of service providers I had increased to
13:11
welders, all sorts of different jobs within Marine. And everyone was coming up to me because I was the guy who knew all the people. And so just connecting the dots. After I had done that for a while and went from barely any work to way too much work, I thought, how could I make what I'm doing national? How could I make it global? So using technology in order to connect the dots for a much larger audience is kind of the direction I went.
13:40
You need to be good at networking in order to thrive in that industry. The Marine maritime boating industry, whatever you would want to call it, is one of the last industries that's almost entirely word of mouth. Many industries have started to use all sorts of different technologies in order to make things easier to communicate with larger groups of people, but almost all of the technology that we take for granted in our everyday lives just.
14:09
does not exist in the marine industry. Personally, I believe it's the lack of awareness of the ocean. Like not many people have even seen the ocean to begin with. That makes my industry not a who you know, but who likes you type of industry. And it very much requires that you meet the people. Because if you don't meet the people, no one cares about you. Not only no one cares, but
14:36
then how are you gonna do business if nobody knows that you exist, that your service offering can do something for them? Yeah, I started off as a general contracting guy, right? So I was basically managing a bunch of pirates. So I had earned a lot of respect within Boston Harbor, which is a pretty big harbor. When I started going to boat shows in Florida with my company Ship Shape, because we're this national directory now, people would be like, oh, you're a tech guy.
15:05
I'm not a tech guy. I was the general contractor in the ground. I know what's going on because in marine if you can't speak the language Then everything that you do is going to be messed up So you can't really hire anyone to even build your website unless they know about marine so everyone has this fear of technology a fear of strangers coming into the industry and there definitely is an idea of
15:34
earning your salt as it's called. So it most definitely requires that you actually physically meet these people and communicate with them. And when you meet these people, what are some of the tips you can share with our listeners of when you meet these people so that you network effectively, they always remember you? Well, I will start with a do. And the first do is what's called conversation framing.
16:02
So when you first start a conversation with someone, it's almost like a chess game where someone is vying to have a lead in the conversation. You will always hear in every book about communication that if you listen to the person, that's how you build rapport with them. By the initial start of the conversation, you have to put it so that you're in the position to be asking questions. If you're just entering into a room,
16:31
people will likely come up to you and say, what's your name, what do you do? Instead of answering that, use this, the better question is, and then you flip their question on them, which starts out by you asking them a question, which they'll always answer. And now you can continue to ask questions and be engaged and build that rapport. It's very easy to get hung up as soon as you enter a room, because if you just give up your information,
17:00
they're just gonna keep asking you questions. Does that mean you are now in control of where the conversation is going? Exactly. I've had guests who say that if you ask questions, they find you interesting instead of just talking about yourself. Do you agree with that? Certainly. The wise man is the guy who just sits there and asks questions, who doesn't tell too much about what exactly they do, but...
17:25
I mean, certainly asking questions, that's a huge one, and be involved. And it's one thing to ask questions, but with anything, you should have a good grasp on the subject or be able to ask pointed questions. Because if you're asking vanilla generic questions and you don't necessarily know the subject, it'll come right through. So with anything that you do, you should aspire to be an expert in it. Do you have a story, an incident you can share with us on how you use that strategy?
17:54
I went to a networking event in Boston. It was a CEO networking event. I show up kind of late, my fault. As I walk in, there's already 20 people in there. They're all wearing suit and ties and playing the part. And they all look at me as I come through the door. And one of the girls says, "'Oh, it's great that you're here. "'What's your name? "'What do you do?' And everyone is staring at me.
18:20
And I knew that I needed to put myself in a position of being dominant within conversation. So instead of answering the question, I said, the better question is, who are you and what do you do? And then everyone turned their head towards her as she started trying to come up with what exactly she did. But from that moment on, it had established that I'm confident in myself. I don't really need to talk about myself that much. I'm interested in what everyone else is doing.
18:49
So throughout the night, everyone came up to me and spoke to me. So essentially a win. Does it create some kind of mystery about you? Well, it certainly does. In my industry, it's pretty hard to just frankly communicate what exactly I do to people, because if I start talking about yachts and boats, people assume I sell yachts and boats, which I don't. And most of the time when I go to these networking events, I don't go to a networking event thinking I'm going to get some type of job out of it because
19:18
No one's in Marine. I'm always the only person that's in the yachting business when I go to these events. But I do go to the networking events under the impression of if I meet someone there who might have a connection to another person I know, or some benefit could be created through connecting the dots for people, that's what I go to the networking events for. And I generally try to not talk too much about myself and what exactly I do because it usually gets mixed up in communication.
19:48
but I try to highlight that I am a guy that knows a lot of people. You go to events that are not about sailing or the marine industry, but a lot of us would think, hey, wait a minute, this is not related to me, so I shouldn't go to this networking event to begin with. How do you reframe that whole scenario and think, I still can go here and network effectively, despite none of these people being in the marine industry? Well, the story I tell is that everyone wants to meet me.
20:17
I mean, I've set up from going to those events, and I think you bring up a good point. A lot of people, when they first start going to networking events, they're like, I am gonna go and I'm gonna try to get like a lead or a job out of it. I'm only going to go to the things that are relatively related to me. But I would argue as an entrepreneur or someone who starts businesses, that you should try to meet as many people as you can.
20:43
It creates such an interesting perspective of different scenarios. Like if you're talking to some guy who's in the product side of some industry, they make metal widgets. Well, you can find out some interesting ways of how they handle business that you can take back to your own industry that might not even have thought about it. But I've also set up two $100 million deals.
21:09
from just going to networking events and just being like, run into one person who's trying to get investment to start this huge organization in South America and needs $100 million worth of funding. Well, I've also gone to a networking event in which I ran into these people that have offshore money in the Cayman Islands that have hundreds of millions of dollars. So then I just connect the two dots and now they're in communication, which is its own side hustle. Your network is your net.
21:38
Yeah, I certainly have heard from people, they're like, you know, you say you go to networking events, but does it really like matter? I'm like, of course it matters. You just meet fascinating people and you're able to connect the dots and they certainly won't forget you after setting something up like that. There's also the persistence. Every year, it seems that from January, February to March, there's a new group of people that are like, my new year's resolution is to go to more networking events. And so you'll have
22:07
a huge group of people that show up in the first month. They'll go to two networking events a week, and they think that somehow by just attending a networking event, they're gonna get everything that they had hoped for. A month goes by in which they haven't really met anyone that's of interest to them, and then they stop going. So not only is it people's fear of, oh well, it doesn't really relate to my industry, why the hell would I show up? And then also the persistence, oh, this isn't.
22:36
working out, I'm just going to give this up and go back to the old ways. Those are some traps that people certainly run into. Do you think maybe we should also look at it from a perspective of what could I potentially do to help someone else or what could I give instead of only looking at networking events as what am I going to get out of it? Exactly. What you said is the point of networking events. Networking events are to connect the dots for other people. They're not necessarily to connect the dots for you. That is a...
23:06
problem that's happening. Pre-COVID, the networking events in Boston were very much people that were CEOs or founders. They were seeing networking as connecting the dots for other people and helping people out. Post-COVID, I think the whole game with marketing has changed. And so now when I go to networking events throughout Boston, about 70% of the people that show up are salespeople, and they're just trying to sell something when we're at a networking event.
23:34
Sounds like online marketing and what it has become since COVID. Do you get approached at all by people trying to sell you something? Well, I'll tell you, once you pass 4,000 followers, you start getting a ton of them. Once you get past 6,000 followers every day, there's three financial advisors that are trying to hit you up. I think financial advisors are the new used car salesmen of our era.
24:00
Yeah, I get at least three financial advisors reaching out to me on LinkedIn a day. And then when I go to networking events, even events that are under 30s meet up in Boston, that's not supposed to be business, just meeting people. One story I have of that is I go to this under 30 meet up event. I show there, it's totally disorganized. I know how to set up an event slightly. So I get everyone together and we're all sitting at the table. There's absolutely supposed to be no business.
24:29
So these two guys that were sitting next to each other, young guys, they start talking to me and they tell me that they're financial advisors and I'm like, oh, financial advisors, more you guys. So after the event, I go back home, a few days later I get a phone call from one of the guys that was sitting at the table, these financial advisors. He calls me and he says, oh, Merrill, it was amazing to meet you. You were such a fascinating guy. Would love to talk to you again. And I wanna be such a good friend to you that I'll be your financial advisor.
24:59
And I'm just like, what? He has that as a marketing bitch. And so I rip him a new one. You know, what are you thinking? You know, you don't think that at this level, I would already have a financial advisor. And he's like, oh, you know. And then two days later, I get another phone call from the other guy and they work in the same office. He calls me and he says, oh, Merrill, it was so fascinating to talk to you. I'm like, oh, thanks. And he's like, I would really love to.
25:25
meet up again. I was like, sure. And he's like, I want to be such good friends with you. Let me be your financial advisor. The exact same script. Yes. But pretty much every email I get from financial advisors are, you look like a great guy. You know, I'd love to be friends with you. They don't necessarily realize how huge communication really is and how it can really make or break you. A lot of people will create businesses under the impression of if you build it, people will just come.
25:55
but it requires a lot of work and especially in today where people are bombarded with advertising all the time. There was some crazy statistic where it was like, people in America see 10,000 advertisements a day. Oh my word. If they're constantly being sold and told about how great things are, you gotta change it up somehow. And I think as time goes on, we'll see more and more that communication and personalization is going to be what.
26:23
is the real driving factor of success. Because what's gonna make you stand out if you sound like everybody else? Exactly, that's the problem. I started my first job back in 1995, and obviously there was no internet and everything that we have today. We were all about relationship building with a potential client in the future. You know, back home rugby, soccer, cricket, all big games.
26:48
you will get them rugby tickets for the box seats. You haven't spoken about what kind of project you want them to give you and how much you are just building the relationship over. You're playing the long game, as we say. Why have we lost the thing of building trust, build the relationship, get to know the person, and then one day the business conversation will kick in? Well, things that are easy are usually not the best approach. And...
27:17
I think our society has created a level of ease within everyday life. For the most part, everything's really taken care of. If you want any food, you can instantly order it, it'll show up at your door. So I feel that there's a general easiness that fumigates our everyday life. And conversation is not easy whatsoever. It's uncomfortable. It creates this level of anxiety. So people kind of shy away from it.
27:43
and ultimately it's just really getting out there. Another tip I will give is that when you're showing up at these networking events, I believe that you should have a unique style about you. I go to a ton of networking events where everyone's wearing the same khaki pants, blue blazer. I think that just makes you fit into the grain. And we had mentioned this prior to the interview. Everyone's playing a game into.
28:11
kind of step back and realize that everywhere you go, everyone is in some type of game. It could be the big societal game, it could be a small one. If we're talking about long distance backpackers, some person's telling you that they're a long distance backpacker, you can look at what they wear, how they talk, how they interact with you, if they really are one. Just like if you go to a business CEO networking event, you can look at how the guy's dressed, how he communicates, how he stands.
28:39
and make a determine if he's actually a CEO or if he's just this guy pretending that he's an entrepreneur. So when I say unique style, I think that every person in their wardrobe should have a pair of really nice shoes, really nice pants, really nice blazer that's slightly unique. I wear rings and watches and all of that with my own unique style, but people certainly will look at what you wear and how you interact as a sign of where you are.
29:09
And you hear the stories of these famous con men were able to do it because they created such a unique style that just with their voice and their communication skills, they managed to rip people off for millions of dollars. Speaking of voice, the Elizabeth Holmes story. So she dip into her voice because she was told you'll be taken more seriously. What are your thoughts? Well, I followed the whole story. I found it quite fascinating. Yeah, that's very much in line with what I'm talking about.
29:37
Eventually if you keep doing it over and over, whatever it is, whether it's making your voice a little bit deeper, wearing rings, you'll eventually become comfortable to it. Every time I get a new style for my wardrobe, I will purposely dress up in that style and just go to as many events as I can and meet as many people so I get comfortable in it. Yeah, certainly having a unique style about you makes you somewhat memorable. So if you learn how to play those games, small games...
30:06
It just overall helps with your whole communication. Also, body language is a huge one too. Okay, give us some tips on body language. I'd say that one of the key points to take away is the idea of open palms. So when you're communicating with someone, if you have an open palm somewhere in the visual, it could be at your side, just an open palm facing them, their brain will subconsciously see that.
30:33
They might be looking at your face, but their brain is unconsciously looking at everything. And so if they see a palm, that's a very passive posture. But passive is strength in body language. If you get these books about body language, it'll definitely tell you about how to read other people's body language and how to interact with that. But I would argue to say that the body language that you present yourself also has a direct impact on how you remember things. So if you have an open
31:01
posture towards someone with like a palm facing them, then not only will it make them feel comfortable with you, but you will have an easier time remembering what was said. That's very profound. I like that. And also I've heard that open palms means you are more welcoming. Yeah, the open palms, there's a lot of different meanings behind it. At the core of it is a passive body posture and the human body, the front side of it is exposed.
31:30
our stomach is our weakest point on the body. So if you're enclosing your stomach in any way, you know, with your arms up or whatever, you're protecting yourself in a way. That also means that they're gonna be in their mind. So if I'm talking to anyone and they're showing signs of being closed off in any way, I will purposely find something to hand them so it breaks them free of this enclosed mindset. Because even though I have the open body posture and I'm remembering everything that they're saying to me,
32:00
with their closed off posture, they're not reme... It's blocking their remembrance of me. So one of the key things is to try to break them out of any type of enclosed body posture. So they will remember you as well in the future. Yeah. Any last words of wisdom before you go? Well, I think one of the key takeaways that I've gathered over my time networking is that there really is no secret to success.
32:29
besides hard work. I've also gathered that you can truly do anything that you want in life if you put effort and your mind behind it. You'll run into people that have accomplished amazing things in their life. And it's very easy to have some type of hero worship behind that. But if you realize that the only difference between them and you is that they made it their goal.
32:55
to accomplish this one thing. If you had set your mind to it, you could have done the same thing. And so anyone that I talked to, I tried to talk to them in a way that's, we're on equal playing fields. Merrill Charette, before you go, please tell us a little bit about your podcast. So I have the Ship Shape podcast, ship shape being one word. We interview everything from environmentalists to professional sailors, to...
33:24
boat builders and everything in between. Our goal is to create awareness of the ocean and all the opportunities that actually exist in marine because pretty much anyone at this point can get in and find some niche within it and be successful. So we try to get that word out there. That is the Ship Shape podcast hosted by Merrill Charette.
33:45
the CEO of ShipShape and a master networker. Merrill, thank you so much for your time today for helping us to network better and to communicate even better. Well, thank you for having me. Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review, and we will be with you on the next episode. So Merrill, before you go, where can we find you on the social so that we can continue to know more about this and how to network?
34:11
effectively. So really the only social that I use is LinkedIn and you can find me with my name Merrill Charette. There's only one of them out there and if you have any questions or you want any insights into communication feel free to reach out to me. I'll give you some free advice. Only on LinkedIn? Yes. Okay thank you so much. That was Merrill Charette, the CEO of ShipShape and host of the ShipShape podcast.