How to Talk to Anyone (Even If You're An Introvert) With Brian Miller

The loneliness epidemic is real — but it’s not hopeless. In this episode of Not Nice, Clever, Human Connection Specialist and TEDx speaker, Brian Miller shares his journey from magician to one of today’s leading voices on connection.

Brian opens up about overcoming social anxiety, reframing imposter syndrome, and discovering the power of small gestures that transform strangers into meaningful relationships. 

He introduces his “Natural Networking Introduction” framework (you are going to want to take notes on this- trust us!), and why he says opportunities look like people — and how you can stop missing them.

This interview is packed with practical advice for introverts and all entrepreneurs who want to start conversations, build confidence, and create deeper connections in both personal and professional life.

• Brian Miller Website
• Brian Miller TedX Talk "How To Magically Connect With Anyone"

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• Not Nice Clever
• Candice Carcioppolo
• Kat Torre

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Transcript

 People who don't have imposter syndrome think they know everything. Imposter syndrome is a signal that you're qualified. Yeah. Unqualified people don't have imposter syndrome. They'll tell you all about a topic they don't know about. Ever wonder why you can say all the right words and still be completely misunderstood?

Today's guest says it's because communication isn't about what you say. It's about what people hear. Brian Miller is the magician turned human connection specialist who has spent over two decades helping industry leaders turn big, complex ideas into messages that are clear, compelling, and impossible to forget.

His TEDx talk with over 3.6 million views didn't just go viral. It made people rethink the way they can act. On average, two out of the three of us feel lonely or isolated on a regular basis. So in a world where we have a loneliness epidemic, it is selfish to not reach out and try to connect with people who are starving for connection.

So Brian, today we're gonna dive deep into your expertise, but before we even get there, can you tell us something that our audience couldn't Google about you? Couldn't Google about me. Uh, I think this would be hard to Google about me. I don't know if you couldn't, you could find almost everything. Now I think Google, scary Google know more about me than I do besides who's Googling and is.

And instead of chat GP ting these days, so in middle school, sixth grade, I'm sitting in the second to last row in uh, English class and it's book report day. And I am prepared. I am not popular. I do not have friends, so I make up for that by being a straight A student. That just breaks the curve in every class and definitely helps me with my friend problem.

Mm-hmm. Uh, so I am, I'm totally prepared for this book report. I've got my binder and color coded and the teacher calls my name and I stand up and take a step to walk to the front of the room, and I wake up in the nurse's office. Apparently I blacked out. Hit the floor. No. And that is how we discovered I had a fairly debilitating social and speech anxiety.

Wow. Wow. I was not prepared for that. No, that's like, I love plot twists and damn, that is a plot twist, Brian. Yeah. So that's where it all started. And now you're an expert in helping other people other, and now this makes so much sense. And just helped me to realize that, yeah, I was a straight A student because I was an introvert.

Like, what else was I gonna do? I needed to study same, that was the thing that I could master, and I didn't, I didn't need anybody else's help. It also meant freedom in my household. So I'm like, oh, if I get A's, you won't ask me, like where I'm hanging out all the time. Perfect. You know? Yes. Let me ask you about the extrovert introvert thing.

I, I, I know that your whole thing is leadership and introverts and, um, my wife identifies as an introvert. I think almost everybody would identify me as an extrovert. I'm curious how you use the words though, because they're very specific words that mean different things to different people. Yeah. For me, I feel like I'm an introvert because being around people depletes my energy.

So it's about energy. That's how I would, it's about energy for me. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I am an awkward conversation starter because I can't do small talk. And I think that's related to introversion as well. Like I wanna talk about real shit, hence why we have the podcast, because I get to talk about the things that I care about most, and I don't have to do the small tox.

Yeah, yeah. The Bitesize, three seconds, five seconds. Five minutes. Like we, I don't know how not to see through things and to go deeply and, you know, I value empathy. I think our values also play a part in, you know, how we identify. So I just, I was never good at small talk. Um, it's why I was not good at dating, which is why I was probably been a serial monogamist for most of adult life.

And thank goodness I found my hubs now. Right. But, uh, yeah, for me it's energy. We need, um, Netflix, couch, rot, time, r ot, ring time. There you go. Post, post. Any speaking engagement, any traveling and whatnot. Yeah, I, it's interesting because I, I, I, I think those terms are also largely about energy. 'cause like my wife is very outgoing, but she depletes energy quickly in social situations, which has nothing to do with how, like she's good at conversation.

She's very outgoing. Yeah. But within an hour she's like, I need eight or 10 hours to read a book and recharge. Yes. Which is hard when you have a 4-year-old. Um, it totally changes that paradigm. Like, oh, you thought you were an introvert. Good luck. Um, does it. Well, I'm a six month old, so now I'm, now I'm nervous.

Yeah. Well, depends on what kind of kid you have. Uh, we, we got a mini me. He never stops talking. Mm-hmm. My wife is like, I need a break from everybody. Um, but I, you know, we, we met it forward at the event and I, I power up like, I'm like, I power up in social situations. Mm-hmm. And when I'm by myself for too long, I deplete energy very quickly.

Um, but I, I. Came from a world where I was friendless and bullied and had horrendous social and speech anxiety. Mm-hmm. And it was the desire to be able to do that, that actually led me down that entire, that entire path. So for a little bit of context, we saw Brian last month at Forward, and Kat and I loved the framework that he shared with us there about how to answer the question, what do you do?

Um, and we had to have him on the podcast. So Corin, our podcast producer, um, stalked him and we have him here today. So we're super excited about that. But we wanna dive into the conversation now. A little bit of background on what it is you actually do. So for people who don't know, you were a magician. No worries.

And how did that lead to what you're doing today? Yeah, I guess I am, I mean, once a magician, always a magician. It's kind of like true story. I, I, I feel like there's some careers that, or there's some things that transcend career. So I don't, I don't make my living doing magic shows anymore, but I will always be a magician.

I think my kid thinks I'm a magician 'cause I think he doesn't. Well, that's kind cool. Get what I actually do. Right? Because how could you explain that to a 4-year-old? He's like, he's like, mommy works with kids. I'm like, yeah. He goes, do you work with kids? I'm like, no. I work with adults. I work with grownups.

And he goes, what do you help grownups do? And you like, you realize, you try to explain it to a 4-year-old. And I'm like, well, I help grownups talk about the things that they care about. And he's like, can we watch Bluey? I'm like, yeah, we can watch Bluey. Well try again with your age. Like, you lost my dad.

You lost me. So, so I was, I, I was a full-time magician. I started off doing magic, uh, when I, I think when I was 16, 15 or 16, I had my official doing business as Brian Miller Magic. Uh, I, I started my first page shows at 13 or 14 and started doing magic professionally at 16. Way to go. Supported myself all the way through college and then beyond that, and, um, uh, built a career.

Touring the world, a as a magician, started off doing backyard barbecues and, uh, ended up doing, kind of finding my niche in corporate and exclusive events. Mm-hmm. So I did a, I was living in Connecticut for a long time, and we just moved a year ago, but I was in Connecticut for 15 years and in that. Part, there's like the tri-state area, kind of Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, where there was a lot of wealth and a lot of private families having very exclusive events where it was like the point of the event was to show off to their equally wealthy friends how cool their event could be.

Mm-hmm. And so they were always trying to one up each other. And I managed to get into that world. Where I would do like 45 minutes of card tricks in someone's living room for like them and three of their friends, which was being privately catered with like, you know, world class chefs and it was crazy world class chefs and it was, it was really bananas.

So I, I really enjoyed that. And what happened is I had been, I used to say I was about as successful as you can be as a magician without being famous. So I was making a full-time living beyond what anybody could have possibly imagined a magician could make, or the kind of lifestyle you could have, uh, without being famous.

Uh, and I got invited to speak at a TEDx conference. I was, uh, walking into, uh, I was actually walking into a, a, a corporate magic gig. I was walking through like a dark, uh, like a, a dark parking lot of a banquet hall for some corporate, you know, awards banquet or whatever. My phone rang. And when you're self-employed, you have to answer.

It doesn't like, because it could be a, a potential gig, and if I don't answer by the time I get out of this gig, they'll have called the next three magicians on Google and I won't get it. And then I can't afford to feed myself and my fiance will leave me and I'll die alone. You know, like there's that whole like self-employed, it's the whole thing.

Thing you do within seconds in your head, it escalate, spiral quickly, you know, quickly. And uh, and so I answer and I'm like, you know, I'm flustered 'cause I'm walking in, I'm like, hi, this is Brian Miller. And they're like, Hey, uh, my name is Prag Joshi. I'm an English teacher or history teacher at the local, uh, high school.

And we're putting on a TEDx conference for the first time. We got your name. Wonder if you've been interested in speaking at our 10 x event. And I was like, ah. I would love to speak at your TEDx event. Can I call you back tomorrow? I'm walking in to do a gig and he is like, sure. And I hung up the phone and had no idea that that phone call would change my life forever.

Uh, gave my TEDx talk a few months later. And the way I got from Yes, about magic to speaking is I had been asked to give this TEDx talk and I didn't know what to talk about because back then TEDx was not what it is now. Now people spend years. And a lot of money dreaming of pursuing, you know, tech events.

And I know that, 'cause we run a program to help people do it, like it's a whole thing. But back then I basically, he said, yeah, we heard about you, you sound pretty cool. And I said, great. And he goes, perfect. So you'll speak at our event. And he goes, what do you think you might speak about? Like, it was the opposite.

It was like, we'd love to have you speak now, what do you think you would speak about? Right. It is not how it is today. Yep. And so. I had this, I used to, I ran my whole business on yellow legal pads back then. I mean, do you remember the different world that we used to live in? Yeah. And I, I have a yellow legal pads.

It's still, my parents did the same thing and I just, I always have a stack somewhere. Yeah. Isn't amazing. And so I have, I still have all of them in storage, all of the like, like hundreds of them that I built my career on and, um, before CRMs and everything. And so I. I had these notes of different topics, like what would I talk about as a magician for a TEDx talk?

And the thing that at the time there were only four or five TED or TEDx talks that had ever been given by a magician back then. I mean, it was not like Ted is today. There were only a hundred talks ever uploaded to YouTube. Now there are 240,000. Right. It is just, it was a different world. Mm-hmm. And I watched them all, and I thought they were kind of interesting.

But the talks that magicians had given, I thought. Nobody who's not a magician would care about these topics. It was like the art of misdirection, the beauty of wonder. And I was like, this is the crap that I talk about with magicians at two o'clock in the morning after a magic convention. This is not the stuff normal people care about.

So I was like, what would a non magician care about and could benefit from that a magician has to offer uniquely? And what I ended up on. Was what magicians master is the ability to make quick, meaningful connections with strangers. And there's a way that magicians learn to do that instinctively. 'cause it's the job.

You walk up to a group of people cold who are already talking. They already know each other, they're laughing, they're holding drinks, and you have to interrupt them and then get them on your side instantly. Show them a couple of tricks where you literally lie and deceive them for five minutes and then at the end.

They are thankful that you interrupted their night and lied to them and deceived them for five minutes and they're applauding for you. Like the job is making instant connections with perfect strangers. And so I thought, well, let me see if I can teach non magicians how magicians make these quick connections.

Mm-hmm. And then maybe that would be valuable to them in their lives as well. And uh, so I gave that talk. How to magically connect with anyone was the title. My fiance at the time, wife now came up with that title. Thank God for that. Mm-hmm. Uh, what a title. Who knew? And it went mega viral. And uh, I started getting invited by massive organizations to come and speak about human connection and perspective taking in communication because I had a viral TED talk on it.

And so I fell backwards into speaking and freaked out. 'cause I was not an expert on that topic. I was a magician. With precisely 14 minutes and 12 seconds to say on that topic. I said it in a TED Talk and people were like, yeah, can you do that? But for like an hour and a half at our event for lots of money on the other side of the world.

And I was like, sure. You know what I mean? I'll figure it out. Yeah. Just first figure it out later, you know? Exactly. And, uh, went on that journey. Yeah. It's amazing. Just for context, uh, the last we checked it had over 3.6 million views on that video, so. It's a gift that keeps on giving mega viral. That's crazy.

Yeah. In 2015, those were impossible numbers. Nowadays on the internet, that doesn't even feel that interesting. We're used to seeing 20 million, 80 million, a hundred million, right. But like, that was impossible when there were only a couple hundred TEDx talks ever given. It, it, it was really, I got recognized in airports, like it was really weird at one.

There was legitimately a time when I was like in an airport and a guy. Passes me and then stops, whips around with his girlfriend or whoever, wife or whoever it was, looks at me and goes, wait, did you? And then he holds up his phone, shows it to me and goes, is this you? He was watching it at that moment, no, crazy.

I was like, yeah. He goes, oh my God. I saw this last night. I was just showing it to my girlfriend 'cause I thought it was amazing. So we have to catch a fight. Bye. And they were gone. And I was like, well, my life is peaked. That's about everything. Everything's downhill from here, right? Uh, so yeah, it was, it was nuts.

So how do you go from saying, I only have 14 minutes worth of content to actually building out multiple businesses, it seems from this? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, deep, deep imposter syndrome. Um, a, a tremendous panic over having accepted huge sums of money and not being able to deliver and thinking it was gonna ruin my life and reputation.

Yeah, I mean, really that, the real answer is I, you know, when people started offering me the kind of keynote speaker fees, you know, even as a very successful corporate magician, it just dwarfed. The highest fees I was getting as a magician. And I had to say yes. That's why I said yes, we were, we were getting married at the time and mm-hmm.

I was supporting me and, uh, Lindsay, while she was finishing, I was putting, you know, supporting her through her masters to become a therapist and covering both of our lives full-time, doing card tricks, you know, like I had to say yes to these gigs. Yeah. But then once I said yes, it was just like. What am I doing?

Like they're flying me first class to the other side of the world to give a talk. They're paying this amount of money. Like I, I don't know anything about this and I, I didn't wanna do like a magic show with a little message thrown in. 'cause that is what a lot of former entertainers end up doing when they become speakers.

Which can be very entertaining to an audience, but it doesn't actually do anything. That's how I always felt about that, like with due respect to my colleagues. Mm-hmm. In magic and hypnosis and comedians who have gone into speaking, a lot of 'em are really doing 90% a show and 10% a little hacky motivational message thrown in.

I just didn't want to do that. I wanted to do something for real, and so what I did is I, I read. At the time the topic was human connection, but that was not a term, it is a term that if I didn't invent, I was one of the handful of people that invented it right around the same time. If you go track on Google Trends, it was basically my TED Talk.

No one's talked about human connection and that everyone's talking about human connection. Mm-hmm. So a, a couple of us kind of zeitgeisty right around the same time started using it. So there wasn't, it wasn't like you could Google for books on human connection or podcasts on human connection. That wasn't a term.

So I was looking for like communication, but then you're getting like traditional sales skills and art of persuasion, you know, art of persuasion stuff, which wasn't what I was talking about. It was like, this is more human than that. And so I started just reading any book I could find from like sociologists and psychologists and philosophers on interpersonal communication.

I started reaching out to academics, um, that had written or, or, or talked about this listening to any podcast. I really just obsessed. Over anything I could find written by or spoken by any proper expert, people with real research to back it up that felt aligned with the human connection thing. I actually wanted to, to describe, but didn't have the words of the research to describe.

Um, and that what I, what I learned doing that was really interesting. It is that there are two ways to become an expert. One is to go to school, get credentials, get a PhD, do the research, all that. That is a legitimate way to become an expert. And I actually like sidebar, think that is a very important thing that we have somehow dismissed and we need to bring back respect and reverence for people who've done that.

Mm-hmm. Because there's a reason that there's gatekeepers. Gatekeepers are important, but. The other way to become an expert is to simply obsess over a tiny, tiny niche topic more than anyone could reasonably expect. And I did that not out of some integrity for like the, you know, academia or anything. It was really just to avoid looking like a damn fool in front of lots of people and people who had paid me lots of money.

And what happened is accidentally over the course of a couple of years. I became the expert on human connection 'cause I was the only one that had done talking about it. Researching, yeah. Of, of, of understanding. And I started writing a blog. Um, I, I committed to a weekly blog at one po. So I had published over 400 weeks in a row.

At one point, I, I published a weekly blog. It came out every Wednesday at 8:00 AM It's the original Human Connection blog. You can go to Human Connection blog. It still exists. I don't write it anymore, but like, so I had just, I became the guy that just obsessed over this and, um. That is, that is how I ended up having more than 14 minutes in 12 seconds to say.

There's so much there that I know our clever crew is eating up right now because Kat and I talk about imposter syndrome often, and to see someone who's. The level of success that you've had, who also has dealt with, and I would imagine probably continues to deal with imposter syndrome at every new venture more every day.

Right? Because that's because. That's the Dunning Kruger effect in reverse. Right. Okay. So the Dunning Kruger effect, which I know most of us are familiar with, but in case you aren't it, the easiest way to understand it is I, I'm gonna paraphrase the way Steven Fry once talked about it. He said the Dunning Kruger effect is basically you have to be reasonably smart to know how dumb you are.

In other words, yes. If you don't know anything about a topic, because you have no context, you think you know a lot. People who know a lot about a topic realize how much they don't know because of how much they do know. And so what happens is you get this opposite, this inverse effect where people who know nothing think they're geniuses and experts, which is how you get the, I read three articles on Google and now I'm gonna tell the world's most the keyboard warrior scientists.

Yeah. Why they're wrong. Right. Uh, and then you get people, the kind of people that are our clients, real experts who, because they know so much, they massively downplay their level of expertise because they realize how much they still don't know. And so they don't speak confidently about their topic. They hedge too often.

They don't build trust and so people don't listen to them. And so yes, imposter syndrome is like what happens to people who are actually experts? You can be fairly certain that if you have imposter syndrome, uh, you know enough to talk about what you're talking about. 'cause people who don't, who, people who don't have imposter syndrome think they know everything.

Imposter syndrome is a signal that you're qualified, not that you're unqualified. Yeah. Unqualified people don't have imposter syndrome. They'll tell you all about a topic they don't know about. Mm. And then you'll just sit there and be like, well, they sound confident, even though they're contradicting everything that I have read or researched.

Totally. Or learned, or studied on. Totally. Yeah, a hundred percent. I think imposter syndrome is a great signal. Uh, but it, it, it is something that people need to overcome. Although I do think it is in some ways easier to overcome than the Toms that have been written on it. Uh, suggest I I I do not think you need years in therapy to overcome imposter syndrome.

Um, uh, you, you basically. You, you basically just do the work. Uh, you, you, you just do the work. Pay attention, like results. Re just take a look at your results. If you have results, you can, you can get over your imposter syndrome. Yeah. Yep. Those are the receipts. Yes. Focus on the, yep. I love that. Okay. This next question is really for all the introverts in our audience.

We, Kat and I included, have had challenges building relationships with new people because we don't know how to start conversations. Um, at the beginning of this podcast, I talked about how, I don't like small talk at all and try to avoid it at all costs, but the framework that you taught us at forward kind of help to get over the small talk part.

Mm-hmm. Can you give a little blurb of how to start conversations if you're feeling. You know, scared, nervous. Yeah. Yeah. So let's take it from two different angles, because I do both. So we can take it. What you saw me do it forward is I was talking about essentially connecting with people at the level of ideas.

So that's that question, what do you do? And people just go bananas, right? It's this incredibly terrible question that makes people filled with anxiety, and so it leads them to do all kinds of terrible things. There's also the human level, so how do you connect with people with the love of ideas? We can talk about that.

Mm-hmm. How do you talk about your work or what you do, but there's also, how do I just connect with a person at a human level, not at the level of ideas. How do I just make a new friend or start a conversation with a stranger, which is what I give. Let's do that personal brand, right? Yeah. Do on human connect.

Let's connection. That's actually what I built my career as a speaker on. So, 'cause that, that one I think is, is in some ways it's more interesting, uh, because it's, it, it just doesn't matter who you are and you don't have to have, you don't need an ROI on the conversation, like when I'm talking about how do you connect to the level of ideas that's like, I want an ROI on this conversation.

Mm-hmm. I want 'em to understand what I do so that they can talk about it. I often say, you know, you can turn any conversation into lead generation if you understand mm-hmm. How to talk about what you do. As humans, we're not always looking for an ROI. It's just like, Hey, life is better when we have nice conversations with people.

It just is. Right. Agreed. I'm sure we can all think of a time when if you're an introvert and an extrovert struck up a conversation with you in an airport or somewhere, and then it ended up because they kind of. They took the lead, but it ended up being this wonderful conversation. You talked for an hour and you learned something new.

You discovered some new perspective, learned about a story you wouldn't have before, or felt seen in a way that you hadn't. There's something really wonderful that happens, especially when we talk to strangers. Um, so why do people get so stuck? Introducing themselves to strangers. I'm gonna just ask you, instead of assuming, so what is it, what, what makes you nervous to start a conversation with a stranger?

Like I think about what they would want that experience to be. Maybe, I think I'm interrupting them, is one thing. Mm-hmm. Like I'm being a nuisance. Another thing is like, what are they gonna get from this interaction? Kind of, I guess, what do I have to offer? I think also, again, me going like deep and not knowing how not to go deep.

I think about are they having a good day with this interruption and what I have to say, improve their day or irritate them, or have they had a poor experience in the past when somebody has approached them? Or are they like not feeling well or they stressed about traveling? Like if I see them in the airport, like I love to travel, but I see a lot of anxieties heightened in airports.

All their emotional triggers, abandonment issues, all those things just to the forefront. Uh, so I get in my head about all of that, and then I just, like, even if they seem nice or I wanna compliment them on their jacket or how they did their hair or their makeup, I'll just, the words will just get stuck in my throat.

Yeah. So you actually both hit on one of the most common, which is why I asked, and I, I, I, I wasn't sure which way. There's a few common reasons that people get hung up on this that I hear a lot, and, um, one of them. Is one of the most common ones is what you both articulated in different ways, which is actually a deep sense of empathy.

That actually one of the reasons that people struggle meeting new people is because you're so concerned with how they will receive it, if it will be a nuisance to them. If they're having a bad day, if, uh, if they're not in the mood for this, if they, and that's, that's a deep sense of empathy, which is a good thing.

Here's a reframe on that. We are in the middle of a loneliness epidemic, and this started way before the pandemic. I was talking about the loneliness epidemic in 2016. I mean, I've been talking about this so long. When in, in 2023 when the surgeon General officially announced that we're in a loneliness epidemic, I was like, we great.

Thank you for catching up. But if I knew about this in 2016 and I was writing blogs and giving speeches on this, like, where have you been? Like it, like, you know what I mean? I'm not special. I, I knew this was happening. So here's the thing. Depending on which study and which year you're listening to this in, uh, the numbers change a little bit, but somewhere in the realm of 60 to 65%, roughly two thirds of Americans feel lonely or isolated on a regular basis.

They self-report feeling lonely or isolated on a regular basis. Right. Okay. So that's, there's three of us on this call right now doing this podcast. So on average, two out of the three of us feel lonely or isolated on a regular basis. Right, right. Okay. So. That's what you can assume in any given room. So in a world where we have a loneliness epidemic, it is selfish to not reach out and try to connect with people who are starving for connection.

That's the reframe. The very best thing you could possibly do if you're an empathetic human is offer the gift of connection to people who are lonely and the there's a good chance they are. Right. Wow. That's the first way I think about it. Now, when I say offer the gift of connection, it's a gift, is not something that people are required to accept.

So sometimes I, I, I'll give a whole presentation to a whole workshop and people will go, I, I tried that, but you know, the person was just really rooted. They weren't interested in talking. I tried to like, whatever I say, that's fine. That's on them. They can choose to receive or not receive the gift. That's got nothing to do with you.

All you can do is control the your own output. Are you offering that to people? Are you giving people the opportunity to feel connected today, to be seen, to be heard, to be understood, to be valued. Right. And it can happen quickly. So for example, when you're in line for coffee, right? First, most people these days, we've accidentally gotten ourselves into a situation where we treat interactions as transactions.

It's just happens slowly over time and nobody's doing it on purpose or to be mean or to be rude. But when you treat an interaction as a transaction, essentially what you're doing is, say the perfect example is getting coffee. It's a little trite, but this really happens all the time. People walk up, we no longer even look the person in the eye.

We look past them, or worse, we look through them to the menu, we order, and then we bing our phone or our bing our card, and then we move on. Or worse. We order in the parking lot or at home. We walk in earbuds, in podcast on grab our thing, walk out without any acknowledgement of the human being that actually was involved in that.

It's literally a transaction, but these are real people, and so even in the 12 seconds that you're at the register, they've got their name thing on you. You know, you can say, Hey Mary, I noticed it's pretty busy today. How's your day going? Using someone's name and asking them a question, even a trite one like this small talk question, Hey, I noticed it's busy.

How's your day going? You will watch people's entire body language change in that moment. They will literally, they almost listen up, look to see if there's a different Mary, because no one does it. Yeah, there's nothing to it and no one does it. And the acknowledgement of them as a real human being and not merely a means to an end, a means to your coffee fix is enough.

And so you can do this in situations in, and there's, we can talk about all kinds of tactics. Like I've got tons of like, here's a great conversation starter. Mm-hmm. We can talk about those if you want, but like, fundamentally, it's not the tactics, it's not the words, it's the the mindset. The mindset, mindset.

Right? Mm-hmm. Of, Hey, I'm going to make an effort as often as I can within reason to give people a chance to feel seen as a human being. If that's it, things will be better. It's just so funny because it's it's so true. Like with, with coffee, I see it too. One of my corporate clients is a, a restaurant group here in Philly and I work to train their maer D'S and their hosts.

And it's a lot of high volume restaurants. A lot of clients coming in, uh, Taylor, 7 32, 2 people and I'll tell, I'll work with the team to say. Good evening, Ms. Taylor. How are you, like, excited to have you in or acknowledge their anniversary and to just slow it down and nine times outta 10, the person will be like, oh, how are you?

You know, it'll, it'll jog them into being human again. And then the one time outta 10 is like Taylor, 7 32, and that's okay. But it's, it's, that's fine. Right. Exactly. And they just move forward to the next person. Right. Not everybody's for you. Right. That's, that's, it's, it's really like, that's, that's okay. Uh, but.

There's a huge amount of studies on this, but we massively overestimate people's, A stranger's awkwardness with a conversation or how they will feel that there's a huge amount of studies on this, even with weird or uncomfortable topics, that almost every time people walk away from an interaction, particularly with a stranger feeling better, they just feel better about their day.

There's something interesting with strangers is that because you don't expect to ever see them again, people will actually open up to you. In a weird way, they'll, they'll actually tell you deeper, weirder, stranger things jump in. Yeah. Because it's safe. Right? And they get a chance to say the thing that they wouldn't say to their spouse.

And it's not that they don't trust their spouse, it's that they're gonna see their spouse again tomorrow. Every day after that. And so if I say that and it doesn't track, or doesn't go well or makes them think of me in a different way, I have to keep living with this. But they'll say it to a stranger 'cause I, I might never see you again.

Right? And so if you give people the opportunity, some, they'll tell you their life story and everybody's got a story. Everybody's got a story. And so one of my favorite reframes, 'cause I, I'm about, I'm gearing up right now, it's mid-August when we're talking. Mm-hmm. I'm gearing up to do the kind of back to school tour every August, September.

I do a bunch of, uh, not, not nearly as much as I used to, but I do a bunch of speaking at college campuses for incoming freshmen. I used to do 30 or 40 of these like every fall. Uh, now I just do a handful. Um, but. When I talk to incoming freshmen, uh, these days at colleges, I mean, they, they don't wanna talk to anybody, right?

Yeah. They just, they literally don't wanna leave. There are colleges that tell me that they have had to rebuild, do construction on the dormitories because they were all doubles and students will not live with a roommate anymore for, so they had to rebuild them as only singles. Like this is a real thing that's happening.

Yeah. And so they bring me in to be like, help these kids like just talk to people because like. If they're gonna be so screwed if they don't do know how to do this. You know what I mean? Yeah. And there's two different reframes on this for, for students. One is, um, we all want great opportunities. I don't know anybody at any age that doesn't hope for a great opportunity to fall into their lap.

They'd like something better for their life. And we spend our lives staring up into the sky hoping that great opportunity will fall into our lap. And what happens while we're looking up? That we miss all the opportunities that are right in front of us. And the reason we don't notice them is because opportunities don't look like opportunities.

Opportunities look like people. You have to talk to people, right? And so that's one reframe, but the other one is you can assign yourself a job title in life. And this is my favorite thing you can do. Give yourself the job title, collector of stories. If your job title is collector of stories, it's a lot easier to talk to a stranger because you're not trying to connect with them, which feels hard and heavy.

You're not trying to make small talk, which an introvert might find scary. You're not trying to make deep talk, which an extrovert might find scary. Uh, right? Like we have different problems. If your job is collector of stories, the only thing you have to do is collect their story. That's your job. And so what would you do if your job was collector of stories?

You would ask them about their life, you would ask 'em a follow-up question. You would ask them, well, what brought you to that? Well, why did you care about that? Why did you make that decision? What might you have done different? You would ask them interesting things. It wouldn't be that hard. You actually know what to ask people instinctively if your job is collect stories.

Mm-hmm. And so if you give yourself that job title, meeting new people becomes a lot easier. And to be honest, a lot more fun. It's funny, Candace and I are part of a community for real estate professionals and when it came time to set up our profile, 'cause we launched a new app earlier this year, uh, job title was one of the fields on the profile.

And I'm just like, uh, and so I put, uh, brand hype queen nice as my job title. My job is to hype you up about your brand or branding in general. And so it's, it's funny, I kind of. So like my go-to is always like, let me hype somebody up if they're uncertain or mm-hmm. Had a, a shitty day or a deal fell apart, whatever it is.

Uh, yeah. That's great. Good tip for all the introverts in our clever crew, I feel like I can talk to you. I have so many questions about this topic. I can talk to you forever. But we're gonna have to do a part two at some. We're gonna have to do a part two. Absolutely. So, um, before we get to the, the not nice advice segment of our episode, although this entire episode has been basically not nice advice, which we love for our clever crew, the idea framework that you had shared, um, in Vegas, I'd love for you to share that because insider tip here, clever crew.

I legitimately use this framework on the airplane top. That's right. From the conference and I saw the light bulb go off and the gentleman who I was speaking to, and I think Brian, I emailed you after, I was like, I used it. It was amazing. Oh my God, you did? Yeah. Right away. Never going back again. That's great.

So please share it, uh, with our, our crew here. My pleasure. Yeah. Okay, so, so this is basically, this is, how do you answer the question? What do you do? Or some version of that? Uh, this is for networking, but not just networking in, in traditional networking situations like networking events. 'cause that's where those are.

Oftentimes the worst possible place to do networking is any event with the word networking. The title, uh, what, what I mean is so true. Like you just meet people in life. You're at a, friend's get together. There's just people around all the time. And so when someone says, well, well, what do you do? That was fun.

What was that? What, what? Just broke my AirPod just fell outta my ear. It's fine. That was for the blue. I can still hear you. I can still, that was a little asmr, uh, bonus. Uh, for you, it's like the sound of a smartphone falling down. A flight of every time I smile, they pop out. Stop being so happy, Candace.

Sorry. It's great. All good. So, yeah. So. When somebody asks you some version of what do you do, which comes up all the time. The framework that I teach, I call it the natural networking Introduction, and it's because once you do this, you will realize how natural it feels to the listener, not to you as the one doing it.

It's not natural or people would do it, but it feels natural to receive. And that's because what? The way that we want to receive information, there's a very specific order that people have, which crosses most cultures in my experience. Mm-hmm. There's an order we like to receive information, so. The framework.

Uh, you know what, let's, let me do the example first, so you can ask me. I'll do the, I'm a human connection speaker version of this. Okay. And then I'll teach you the framework so you can ask me the question and I'll give it to you. Yeah. So, uh, Brian, what do you do? So, you know how these days it feels like everyone's talking and nobody's listening.

Like everyone's just shouting past each other all day, every day. Yeah. It's just a lot of noise, right. So I'm a human connection specialist. I work with organization, organizations, healthcare facilities. To help them build connected cultures where everyone feels heard, understood, and valued so they can attract and retain top talent.

Right? So. That is the natural networking introduction. It's a three step framework, and what it does is it starts with, so you know how and then problem, and what this is, is what's the main problem that your work or you solve, or your company or your role or whatever it is, however you want to answer it.

You can answer it from the brand level, your company, or from your individual role. Mm-hmm. But the question is. What's the problem that you solve? But the, the key here is what's the problem you solve That would make sense to anybody right Now, if you're in a room of specialists who, like, if you're in a room of realtors, you know that you can go do this at a more niche level.

But if you have no idea, you're at just like your friend's birthday party and they're like, Hey, meet my friend Joe. Like, you don't know who Joe is or what, where he's coming from, right? So. What's the problem? And you could think of this as so you know how, and then state the problem. Or you could say, as you could probably imagine, and then state the problem.

That's a different way to do it if you're like, I don't know, any version of this problem that would make sense to the average person. Mm-hmm. If you're like a real specialist in some weird electrical engineering niche field for atomic missiles, like who knows? Right. So, you know, you go, so as you could probably imagine, and then you're like, people in this field often struggle with this.

Which is actually how I answer when people, when I answer the other version, when I do communication consulting message, like we do message design for experts, it is not a normal thing. We kind of invented it, so it's like so, right. So it's not an obvious thing to say. So when people say, what do you do? I go, so as you can probably imagine really, really smart people like engineer, scientists, academics, researchers, they often struggle to explain their work.

To the rest of us, right? That's the version of that idea. And they're like, oh yeah, that totally makes sense. I know a super smart person and I can never tell what the hell he's talking about, right? Mm-hmm. Like that makes sense. Yeah. So it's so you know how problem now what that does is it puts the job title you're about to say in a context.

It puts it in a bucket in their head. Because if I just said, I'm a human connection specialist, people are like. Cool. Where's the nachos? You know what I mean? Like this is, where are we going from here? I have no idea what, I know what those individual words mean, but I don't know what, and now I feel like an idiot because I don't know what that means.

And I don't wanna ask you a follow up question because maybe I've just misunderstood you, or maybe I should know this and I'll have to look it up later. So if I go see, you know how these days, it feels like everyone's talking, nobody's listening. Everyone's shouting past each other and people like, totally.

That happens all the time. Great. I'm a human connection specialist. Now human connection specialist is attached. It's within the context of people shouting past each other, right? And then I go, I help. And then it's like audience or client or type of person I help audience to. And then it's like whatever the ultimate impact is of your work, like what do you do?

And then it's to achieve some goal. By doing something. So it's like I help audience to achieve impact by doing an action, by doing a thing. So for human connection, it's something like, you know, I'd change it depending on who I'm talking to, but it's something like, I help, you know, mission-driven organizations, uh, build connected cultures by teaching them how to take on perspectives different from their own.

That's a version of that. I said a different one earlier, but you can see how that was just a different version. You can see how that would work. And so that's basically it. The natural networking introduction is so, you know how problem I am, job title. I help these people achieve this thing by doing this.

It it, it makes so much sense and it works. Kat text me immediately. She emailed Brian. She, she's made connections. It was great because, you know, the, the title, the most palatable title of, of what Candace and I do as brand strategist. Mm-hmm. But even that is a very jargony industry term that makes sense to people like us who are already kind of the digital entrepreneur space consultancy space.

Exactly right. So I, and, and this guy was a creative director for a major MBA team, and it clicked with him and I said something like. You know how the, like old school folks who are super expert 20 years in the industry are getting outshined by like the TikTok famous influencers in their space. And he was like, yes, yes, I see that.

Yeah. And then I was like, well, I help them articulate and show up in a way that doesn't make them feel like a fraud, you know? Or beautiful. A selling out. Yeah, exactly. And so the key to this is this, the key, the, the reason this works is. It doesn't tell them everything that you possibly do. It gives them enough context to know what follow-up question to ask you.

The key to this is it gives them a way to engage with you 'cause they don't feel like an idiot. They know enough about it and the context that they can confidently ask you a follow-up question and now you can get into a conversation. And so it just stops the conversation from ending at small talk.

Right from ending at the weather or, you know, I always give the example weather. What do you you do? Weather? I'm an accountant. Cool. You know what I mean? Yes. There's just nothing. Nowhere to go. There's nowhere to go. But even if it's an interesting, you know, I'm an, I'm an electrical engineer at nasa. Cool.

Yeah. You don't know what to ask anything about that. What would I ask you? Right. And the only thing people ever think of is. How long you've been doing that, which is a bad question because people, the people answering it don't care how long they've been doing it, and you don't care how long nobody cares about the answer, including the person doing the work.

Right. You know, and so you're just like, oh, 12 years, what did that do? Like that didn't do anything for this conversation. Yeah, nothing. Or, or they, you know, what's the other way? People, you, you, you say, I'm an electrical engineer from nasa, and they go, oh, do you? Like that. Like that's okay. But the problem is if you ask people, do you like your job?

Almost everybody says no. Which is not a good way to get into a conversation. No. Yeah. So here's a little, here's a little pro tip on on this. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll tag this. Um, resist the urge to ever ask, do you like your job? Or even if you can avoid what you do. My favorite different question to ask everybody is, what do you love about that?

What do you enjoy about that? So when someone says hi, if they just give you their job title, hi, I'm an electrical engineer and you don't know anything, and they've done, they haven't heard me talk, so they haven't given you anything to go on, right? The question you ask is, electrical engineer. What do you enjoy about that?

Instantly, what people do. Go one or two levels deeper and they'll tell you something that indicates values or beliefs. Mm-hmm. Their answer will always contain values or beliefs. And where we actually connect with people is at the level of values and beliefs. And so what they can do is they might say, well.

Uh, uh, what I love about that is there's all these, you know, really intricate problems that people aren't usually aware of, but it, it, you know, when these things, I love trying to put the pieces together of the puzzle to figure out what actually went wrong. And it's really fun to see that the impact on, on, on, on the people who use our technology.

Once I can figure that out, and you might have no idea about electrical engineering, but you might go. Oh man. My favorite thing about being a nurse is that something's gone wrong and I, and, and I'm able to get the pieces together and I can see the impact on their lives when I, you can actually find something in common with two.

Mm-hmm. Incredibly different seeming jobs because of the values or beliefs. So what do you enjoy about that? That's my go-to question. New go-to clever crew. Yep. There's so many nuggets in this episode. I'm so excited to share it with people. I'm actually gonna re-listen to it, even though I do not like listening to the sound of my own voice.

I'll just skip through the parts where I talk. Okay, so this is our favorite segment called Not Nice Advice. Um, so Brian, you can answer this as a business owner, essentially, um, our audiences wrote in and it says, sometimes when I meet a new client, red flags go up right away. I have this habit of GI giving people the benefit of the doubt, and almost every time I ignore my gut, I end up wishing I'd listened.

How do you know when to trust your instincts and walk away versus giving someone the chance to prove you wrong? My gut says no, but my brain says maybe. Mm-hmm. This is a really, really smart question. How do you know when your instincts are right? When you have a gut instinct? Where you're meeting with a potential client, a prospect, they say something, do something, your red flag goes up and you're like, Ooh, I don't know about that.

How do you know when you should give somebody the benefit of the doubt? Okay, my instinct here is your instincts are probably right if you've been in business longer than like a year. You know what I mean? Like if, if, I mean. Mm-hmm. Okay. So here's the thing. If you're brand new in business, you have no idea what makes a good client.

If you haven't done the work yet, just say yes to everything. Say yes to everything you just have. You don't know what you're good at. You don't know what kind of people you like working with. You don't know what kind of projects are good for you. At some point, once you've done enough work, you've got enough testimonials.

Maybe you know you've raised your price twice already, like what you know, you can kind of tell you're at that level when you've raised your price a couple of times. Yeah. Okay, so you've done a couple of price raises, which means you are legitimate at what you do. You've proved that it works. You gotta sit down and go.

Okay. Who were the Abso? There's two questions. One is, who have I worked with that got the best results from my work? One, and then two, who did I have the most fun working with? Who was I lit up most by Venn diagram? Those two things. Mm-hmm. Who got the best results? Who I love working with? Whoever's in the middle, that's your client.

And what I tell people is moving forward. Anybody who's not in the middle of that Venn diagram, think really hard before you say yes. Because if you only say yes to the people in the middle of that, you'll be shocked at how much better your work will be, how much more you can charge, and how much better.

You'll enjoy, like those people will take up 10% of your time versus a hundred percent of the time and they'll love you for it. And they won't question you. They'll tell their friends, they'll tell who are similar to them. Right. Be like, where, and you'll love to work with them. Yes. And you're like ready to objection, handle, but then you don't have to, you don't have to.

Right. You don't have to. And so if you, if you've got a red foot, like I, I was joking, uh, earlier today, uh, on, on my, uh, I had my weekly team meeting earlier today, and I, I, I said to my team. Once a year, I make this mistake, the one you just said, it happens once a year, every year. Somehow with one client. I ignore 2, 3, 10 red flags after 20 goddamn years in business I should be listening to because I just like this person.

Or I just, maybe there's a challenge element. Maybe it's ego where I'm like, I, yeah. I. Fucking conquer this one. You know what I mean? Yeah. I could, I would be, I would get, I, this would be a great case study to be able to go, we took this impossible thing and turned around. Love how we rationalize those situations.

And then, you know, and then within just a few weeks, you're just like, how was I thinking? I knew this was gonna happen. I saw that red flag. Mm-hmm. And so no one's immune to it. I, I did it just a few months ago. You know, I, I said yes to someone I shouldn't have, who's a wonderful, wonderful person. It was not a good fit for us.

The work was not a good fit. Um, if you've been in business longer than you know, a minute, uh, you probably should trust your instinct happened. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, I would say trust. Trust your instinct more often than not. Thank you so much, Brian. We really loved having you here. We are linking all of Brian's information in.

The show notes, so definitely go there and make that connection. Thanks so much for having me. I love this. Thanks for joining us on Not Nice Clever. Remember to follow our podcast wherever you listen to audio and head to www.notniceclever.com to connect. For more drop a question, we'll shoot you an answer.

We're not gatekeepers here. Signing off, you're not so nice, but also clever besties that mean business. See you next week.