Transcript of Bridge the Gap Unspoken Language of Leadership and Success - Jennifer Edwards

Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it doesn't matter what you think, only what you can prove. Today's guest is Jennifer Edwards, a person who's bridged the gap and proven that success always starts within, that if you're going to show up and build true, authentic connection, you have to do the work. Everyone focuses on strategies and tactics and all of these different things. But until you master this, it doesn't change anything. Jennifer gave a master class on how to actually do, connect, and show up in a way that can influence entire rooms, be it a boardroom or an entire audience. All right, the show starts now. Everybody, welcome back in the show. Jennifer, I can't tell you how excited I am to have you here.

I am so glad, Charles. I've been looking forward to our conversation. Happy end of summer. It's good to be together.

Yes, we have tried this for a while. We've had audio problems. We've tried this four or five times. So finally, glad that everyone else gets to hear the conversation that you and I have already had multiple times. For these four or five people on the planet who don't know who you are, can you give everybody a little bit of who you are, what your success has been, and what you're passionate Great.

At my core, I am passionate about bringing curiosity in this edgy world we're living right now, especially as AI increases and as polarization and disconnection increases, Charles, I think the most important thing we can do as humanity's upskill are connection skills. Curiosity may be the only antidote there is out there right now to the breakdown in relationships, and that's what I'm about.

I love this idea that we're polarized. What are you talking about? It's 2025. We sing united like everyone loves each other and everyone agrees on everything. It is something that we found and that is showing up every single day, and it's been proven in business that people who have worked together for years They won't communicate with each other in a business environment. Same thing at home. There are couples that have gotten divorces because of things over the last, let's just say, eight years. We are more divided as a nation than we've been since the Civil War. You got ways to reconnect people, and they're tactical. When you talk about reconnecting with people, most people can't connect internally with themselves, let alone to their neighbors, let alone to their loved ones. Walk me through how we do that.

You are so right. I think people think connection is actually about the other person, and it's actually about me and my human suit. Charles, I love this expression. It's like we all live in a human suit, and I can't zip it on and off. That expression, wherever I am, there I go. The The very, very most important thing we have to know about connection is I have to come in clean. Clean, like clean eating, right? I have to come in clean, aware of the metaphorical backpack I have on my back. If I really want connection, I have to be willing to be with the brain in front of me for the optimization of connection. Most of us think, Oh, no, I'm just going to connect if the other person connects. No. I only connect if I'm connected deeply in my two brains, then I have a great connection with another.

For those of you who are not watching this, the two brains are head and gut. You missed her point to both because they have to be connected there. It's really important. When we talk about this, even in relationships, most people don't do. You have this placebo or this idea, they haven't done the work. And most people haven't detailed that out. But they show up in a relationship expecting someone else to help them. Like, Hey, this is going to fill my cup, even though my internal cup is empty, I had to fill it myself. When someone says, I need to show up whole. I need to show up with my two brains, as you pointed out, connected. What are steps that they could do? What are questions that they ask every morning that you've seen that have created those results?

Oh, that's great. Have you ever heard of the expression as, As you start, there I go? Yes. I love that expression because as we start, the rest of our day will unfold, optimally or suboptimally. One of the most important things I know through the research and through practical applications with myself, and the hundreds of clients I work with is the very first thoughts we put into our mind set us up for success, or not. So many of us, to come up clean, think that the very first thing we should do is scroll through Instagram, check our email, flood ourselves with outside noise that has no relationship to self and to self-value, and like that whole cleanness of self. To show up clean and to really optimize connection, I challenge all of us, and it's hard, Charles, I'm sure you and I know this both, to work on our breath, to take a moment to focus on gratitude, to set our brain, our prefrontal cortex, that part that makes us uniquely human, where curiosity reason, logic, and the ability to be compassionate, and courageous, and curious sits. Set that up for success. No matter what you do, you can take time to breathe.

You can take time to meditate and take time to really get intentional and ground yourself in who you want to be and how you want to show up that day. That's step one.

One of the things that I do is I always say your morning starts in your evening. The evening before is how your morning starts. One of the simplest cheat codes that I learned a long time ago, if you only call $6, is the little timers that you have for your lamps or your lights in the house that you would go there, you turn them off on and off. I have one in my home that turns off my internet at 10: 00 in the night. It just fills the internet to the entire But it's gone. Brilliant. So there isn't any... I'm sitting on my phone anymore. There isn't any... Because I will bypass that. So I've got a box. All of my charging stations are on the other side of my house. I do not keep them near me. So that's the first thing I do when I get in the house. But again, at 10: 00, it shuts off. So that's a tactical thing. But when people talk about meditation, there's all these different ideas. You have to sit there and say for five hours, and that might work for some people. Great. I meditate while I work out.

I try to use the idea of Bushido, which is the meditation in every action. So when they're asking these questions and they're going into meditation, what are some of the meditation practices that you use that you've seen that have been successful, not only for you, because you've been through some stuff, which we'll get into, but also for your clients?

It's such a good question because you made the point there isn't one way to meditate. There are the ways that work for you. You're not going to find out what works for you by trying at one time. You're going to have to embrace or you're going to get to embrace a period of trying different things. For me, personally, it is walking meditation. One of the things I realize is so much noise in my life and so much noise in my head that if I can get in that small still silence, walking in nature, working on my... Inhaling through my nose exhaling through my mouth, maybe with one word or one gratitude, that's how I get myself out of chaos and into a sense of presence. Now, Charles, I'm sure like you, when you meditate, it's not like it's easy. Don't you have to always keep bringing your thought back to one thought?

I have found a way around that, but yes, there's always... If I'm trying to get to here... Okay, so what I've learned is this chaos, as you said, chaos. There's absolutely chaos inside. I will sit there and, again, wrote a book about it and we can have it for free, give it for forever. There's four versions of us in my head, and they all are trying to grab control the wheel. I will sit there with four pads of paper and four-color pens, and I'm like, Okay, you all want to talk? Let's go. I'll sit there and I'll write out whatever they're saying. It doesn't have to make logical sense. It just they need to be heard, and then they shut up. It's very much like children. If I sit there and say, Yes, sweetie, you did a great job. Mommy's watching you. Daddy's watching you. If you're doing that, it's fine. So I'll brain dump it out. And then once they all feel heard, then they'll quiet down a a bit. So if I'm doing a walking meditation, I'll just repeat back in my head. So if you're seeing me in the airport walking around talking to myself, I'm not on a phone call, even though I have my AirPods on.

It's because I've lost my mind. So I'm trying to get that calmness so I can push that out, so I can get to come and find my center is letting it all out instead of resisting it, just saying, Okay, one side says, You have to go grocery shopping. Okay, what do I need a grocery shop for? And I'll just write it all. Even though it's not important for where I want to go that day, it just wants to talk about it. Or so, Oh, you have to buy your aunt Susie this. Okay, cool. I'll just write it all out, or, Hey, you're not enough, or whatever the thing is that day, whatever the wall of noise, I'll let it all out so then I can get to it. One of the things that I found, and I'm curious if you've run into this as well, is if I'm trying to talk about A, my mind wants to talk about everything but A. It wants to do everything else. How do you run into that?

I call that my inner narrator. One of the things I'm aware of is that a lot of times, I want to think about one thing, but all the other things I call them barking at me. What I actually do in that situation is I actually talk to that bark, and I say, Thank you for sharing. I don't really need you right now. I'll get back to you. Just like you, I say it out loud. If that bark keeps coming, I keep saying it. But I also understand that that bark is trying to keep me safe, trying to do other things for me, so I don't want to belittle the barker. I really embrace her, and I call her Hannah. I say, Hannah, thanks for your- I love that you named her.

Oh, my God, I love that you named her. Yes, I have named all of mine as well. You have to name them. The reason for me, I want to jump in and jump out there. I have a dog, and there's a dog named Spot. I say, Come here, Fluffy. Spot's not coming to me because- No, he's not. You got to name him because that's why we name things. We have an identity of them. Then we can bring them closer, and then we can call upon them, and then they feel held. I love that you named her. All right, sorry. I just feel so sorry. No.

I'm so glad you understand because I actually named her a soft feminine name because the barg is so masculine and loud at me.

Interesting.

I actually invited myself to say, Oh, that's just your masculine energy driving something unnecessary. Let's meet that with her. Hannah is just trying to keep me safe, and I talk to her. I think the other thing that's really, really important in the noise in the head is to realize biologically, your brain is focusing on so many different thoughts that you can't get mad at it. I want to really bring grace and gratitude to my brain, thinking it's just trying to keep me in my base biology alive and thriving. It's looking for threats out in the universe, and it can't change that. So give her grace, give her love, and realize that if you can be gentle to her, she will come back to you, and you can find a new way to use your brain to engage softer more presently.

I think one of them that helped me, because I grew up in South Florida. We have different types of road rage in Florida. We have different types of drivers. I remember I was in Pittsburgh. Tell me about that. Yeah. I was in Pittsburgh, and someone cut me off because I grew up in Florida my whole life. Then I was in Pittsburgh because I may or may not have discovered girls in video games at the same time in college. I may or may not have had to a break, I'm just saying. I had pulled in to Pittsburgh and someone cut me off. The Miami version of me was, I'm going to go home. I'm going to follow you to your house. I'm going to let your goalfish in fire. That's it. It's murder, death, kill now. Then this guy cut me off and he's like, Oh, sorry. He waved at me and I was like, Sorry. I waved and my brain just blew up. But in Miami, we have intense road rage. We're all armed. South Florida is very heavily armed. We're very aggressive. It's just that's the culture down there. When I'm listening to Ramstein and other music, I'm like, So I had that moment.

And I remember 10 years ago, I was having a moment where I was like, That's it. I'm going to this person's house and lighting their goalfish on fire. It's all. It's just everybody's going to die. And I remember asking a simple question was, Does this get me closer to my goal? If I do this, will get me closer to my goal? And I was like, No. Then what am I doing? And I literally had to pull over because I hadn't had the balance yet. I hadn't figured out gratitude. I hadn't figured out meditation. I pulled over on the side of road and I just stopped. I was like, Okay, what are you doing? What is your goal? Does this help you get Then that became a narrative for everything I do. When you're talking to Helen, what are the questions that you ask that have been that filter to stop, to reset? Because for me, it was, Does this help me get to my goal? No. Then I walk away from it immediately. That's happened in business, it's happened in relationships, it's happened in everything I do. I'm like, does this get me closer to what I want?

No. I stopped it immediately without even hesitation.

I think you might be a twin from another mother because the question I ask myself is, how is this serving me? Now, the The interesting thing is, is it probably is serving me in some way. Absolutely. Right. The crazy thing is, is I can still choose like you do. That question is my pattern interrupt. If I can actually ask myself, how is this serving me? It makes my brain have a spotlight. To actually look at the behavior, or let's actually take it back, of the energy in my body that's becoming a thought, the thought is becoming a word or a sense of rage, and the rage could turn into an action. If I can pattern interrupt that more quickly by asking, how is that serving me? I can get better to my goal. Or for me, it's the word optimal. How am I getting optimized by this?

Got it. I love that your filter is optimal. So for me, for a long time, it was joyful. Mike, is this joyful? And that served me for a really long time because I grew up, and this isn't mine, this is NLP. I am not sourced for anything. I synthesis at best. I am not sourced. This idea of a primary question. Everything was, is this the right thing to do? That was my original primary question, which is catastrophic because there is no right, there is no wrong, there just is. So once I pivoted that, I went over to joyful. And I was like, okay, but that's a different life now. If I'm trying to do the right thing versus the joyful thing, that served me for a while, but now my truth has changed, and now it's pivoted over to something else. So things will constantly change. When you're going through and you're having these pattern interrupts, what are some of these pattern interrupts that you've given to clients?

Well, that's a great question. So pattern interrupts actually start before the interrupt, and they start with an acknowledgement that the person I'm with is doing the best they can with the skills they can access in the moment that they are in. Think about that for a minute. Do you think you agree with that?

I've tried to get there. I don't have the level of gratitude and grace at this point because most of the time... That is on the journey for me. Because most of the time, I'm just getting out of the way. Because having the humility and the awareness is hard for me sometimes because sometimes I'm just like, why did you not book two seats on a plane? Which then I have to go back to myself and be like, okay, why didn't you upgrade the business last? This is on you. Take ownership of this. So that is where I am right now. But at first, I'm still in that vibration. And I know I'm working on elevating my vibration of my default is if you've been in line for 30 minutes at Starbucks and you walk up and then try to decide what you want, I should have the right to light you on fire. I'm like, Oh, my God, get out of the way. I know what I want. I'm still working on that, that understanding that people show up, they're doing the best they can or the best... That's what it is. That would be a better one.

The best they're willing to do. Because they're not the best they can. Because I think people have limitless potential, but they're not willing to put in the effort because it's different. I want to lose weight, and I'm willing to lose weight. For me, that's where my struggle is.

Yeah. Well, there's a formula that I teach all my clients, and it's the new book I'm writing, Charles. It's this idea, I don't have a title for it yet, it's eight chapters in, that there's a formula that says an event plus a response factor equals your outcome. In other words, events come and go. Outcomes take care of themselves, but you only have authorship over what? Your response. In an ever given moment, we're in an event right now on this podcast. When I wake up, it's an event. When I'm in Starbucks, when I'm in that business class seat or the other seat that I should have upgraded for, I get to have ownership, agency, authorship, choice over one thing, who I am and how I show up. All right.

But how do you know? Because so many people don't know who they are. This is an important thing where we're... Most have been built to your point earlier, we're just trying to survive. That our brain is designed on three things. Can I eat it? Can I fornicate with it? Is it going to hurt me? That's the only thing your brain cares about. People haven't done the work to figure out because we all know what to do. We have access to an iPhone. We all know how to make money. We all know how to save taxes. I literally had this conversation with a client yesterday. How do I save taxes? I was like, Google cost segregation. I'm like, It's there. This isn't complicated. They're like, Yeah, but I don't know how to do it. I'm like, You could Google it. It's a choice. People don't know who they are, even though we have all the strategies. How do you walk your clients? You mentioned you're writing another book. How do you walk your clients to really figure out who am I? Because if you don't know who you are, you don't know how to show up properly.

Such a good question. It hurts my heart that deep down inside, we are so busy, we never take the time to find out who we are. First, I want to say is I think that a lot of the world walks through the world sleepwalking and not awake.

Yes.

For the sleepwalker people, it's constantly all of us just an invitation to be present with that sleepwalking person because we sleepwalk, too. Let's not deny it. Absolutely. All the time. I just go between sleepwalk awake, sleepwalk awake. But to be present with somebody when you're awake in sleepwalking long enough to allow them to maybe have a new thought or a new sense of awareness that there is more for them than sleepwalking while not judging a sleepwalking.

That's the key. That's the key. Because an An example of sleepwalking, for those of you who are listening, when you get up in the morning, what order do you do? Do you go to the bathroom first or do you brush your teeth? When you're brushing your teeth, do you always go to the same teeth? Because I always brush in the same pattern. That is a routine. It's a pattern. That is just sleepwalking. I'm mindlessly going through that. That is a micro example of what we're doing in most of our lives. When we interact with people, especially here in the United States, for the foreigners out there, when they come to the United States and we go, Hey, how are you? When an American asks you, Hey, how's your day going? We don't want to know. It is a formal... We don't want you to break down and say, Well, my dog just got run over, and I won the lottery, and I had a really great pizza. We don't care. It is just a process. That is one of those sleepwalking moments where we're just saying, Hey, how are you? Watch how you're interacting with people.

That's an example of sleep walking, because we do that in business, in relationships, in investing, in scaling. We sleep rock through the same patterns. And some of those patterns, they serve as well. I brush my teeth pretty well. I'm relatively good at this. My dentist will tell you, Good job. But in business, I had to pivot because, again, to your point, is it getting me the outcome? Is this serving me? Is this going to where I want it to go? Back to the question of how do they figure out who they are and get out of that sleepwalking, what is something concrete? What are questions they can ask to break that pattern?

It's a great question. Years and years ago, I got trained in a methodology by Dr. William Glasser called Reality Therapy. There was a set of four basic questions that you could ask yourself to get out of sleepwalking. It went through this order as, What do I want? What am I doing? Is what I'm doing getting me what I want? If not, what's my plan? It made it really, really simple. Because if I actually want to get out of sleepwalking, I got to start getting clear about what I really want. What's optimal for me? What's my goal, as you said? Most of us are sleepwalking so often, we just even forget that we agency over what we want. The poor question to make it so simple for all of us is, what do I really want? Very few of us spend enough time thinking we have authorship of a want.

It's interesting you say that because I've hunted after what I want, what's going to make me happy. I learned two parts of this. There was one question where there was a guy who asked a Buddhist monk. He was like, I want to be happy. How do I become happy? Because that's a question we ask. I just want to be happy. I'm on this journey. I do the yoga. I do this also. I just want to be happy. And he goes, Well, is there any happiness in what you're doing? And he's like, No. He's like, So if you want to be happy, it's very simple. Stop doing all the things that make you unhappy. The only thing that will be left will be what's happy. And then the other one that I learned, which was really powerful for me, was the conversation of the David. So there's this huge culture. It's in Florence, I think it's Florence, of David. And they asked Michelangelo, if I'm doing this right, How did you make the David? If I was the right artist. And he goes, I just took away all the parts that weren't David. When I carved in the Marvel, I just took away the parts that weren't David.

Those are those when people get stuck, like what is my goal? I don't know what my goal is. Cool. What isn't your goal? Listen, what about that? What don't you want in life? I don't want to be 500 pounds. I don't want to be broke. I'm like, Cool. All right, so we're not going to do anything that feeds towards that. And then you slowly get going there because as much as I would love that hope and intelligence and awareness and vibrating on a high level would get you there, sometimes you just got to let the lion out of the cage and be chased by it because fear and pain will get moving. It won't sustain you, but it will get you moving. If you're stuck and you don't know who you are, let's start with what scares the crap out of you because you will start moving.

Brilliant. Brilliant. That fuel of fear will drive us. But you know what sustains us, and you and I've talked about this in the past, is the power of a community, the power of an environment. I really believe deeply that as we get deeper into technology and as my three daughters, and as I watch what's happening in society, so much of our time is living in a comparison of artificial making. There is a epidemic, as we I've seen through all the research of loneliness. The antidote to change is get in a community, you are the sum of who you surround yourself with, and build a decision in your choices of what you want to be with people who will hold you capable, not accountable, capable to that greatness you want to become, even if you're not there yet.

Right. Just being around them will elevate you. It's interesting because I'm up right now on traveling, which is why I just wonderful background. I'm up in Lexington right now, and I'm around people who are just... They're brand new to me. They're gifts, they're amazing human beings. We went to a football game, which I don't like watching men in tights play with balls. It's not my thing, but I understand men like sports, so I have fun. We go to a football game and we're in the clubhouse, and it's beautiful. It's there, there's food, everybody's having a great time, and there's kids running around. But the conversations I'm having in those environment, not from a place of them bragging or them showing off, leveled me up because the people I'm in there with, I'm like, Oh, my God, okay, you're working on this, and you're doing this, and you're doing that. I'm like, Okay. And this was a 14-hour drive. I just got in a car. It's like, Okay, here we go. Let's go hang out and do this. And I've been up here for a couple of weeks. It's amazing that we are all one plane ticket away, one 6 hours drive away from a completely different life and people to do it.

When you have to build community, because you do this really well, you talk about community, you talk about building connection better than almost anyone I know, how do you build that community if you've never done it? Because you've only known your house, your home, your street, your neighborhood. How do you get away from that? How do you face that?

First, you have to understand your brain does not like change. The very first thing you have to understand is, remember those file cabinets back in the old days? You'd pull them out the metal file cabinet and you look in and there'd be all these folders in them. That's what our brain is like. Those folders in our brain are all the things we know we know, where we're comfortable. When a new person or a new idea comes into our brain, It looks for a file to slot it in. If it can find it, it's like, Oh, yay. No change necessary. Yet when a new person or a new idea, like you just said at the clubhouse, enters your brain, most of us Most of our brains send middle finger energy to that new idea and say, Reject. Get out. I don't have a home for you in my brain. To build new community, to build new courage inside of yourself, to start the neuroplasticity of your brain, and to really want to know what you don't know, you don't know, or explore people you're uncertain about, but you know might have contribution to you, you have to invite it into your brain and to help your brain find a new folder.

That's not natural. How do you do that? I'll ask you, Charles, when have you encountered a new person or a new idea that you were in a little bit of resistance energetically to? You said, No, I'm going to be curious long enough. Okay, so tell me, How do you do it? Because I bet you do it the scientific way. How do you do it?

For me, again, it's very tactical. I've learned very early on that human beings, I don't have a negative connotation toward things that are selfish. I just don't. All human beings are driven by, Hey, this is my goal. This is what I want to do. This is how I'm trying to get there. A friend of mine, he's an officer, and I said, What are you going to do if you're putting your life on the line every single day. I go, Are you worried about that? Are you worried about dying? He goes, I will be so proud to die for to service. I was like, That is driven by not... Because it was like, Oh, that's service to others. That's not service to others. That's service to himself. Again, there's seven human needs that we talk about. And when I talked to him about it, I was like, Wait, wait, time out. You're willing to sacrifice your life for someone else because you want to be seen as the person who wants to sacrifice his life for someone else. And I was like, holy Moses, in combat. People are like, I'm willing to die for my friends in combat, my brother.

So I've been around people who are operators because they want to be like, I want to be a good brother to them. It always comes from a self-serving need, but there's this negative connotation towards it. This idea like, okay, I want to be there for my wife. It started with an I. It's like, okay, because you can't... It's the monks who are like, I'm proud to be humble. I'm like, Wait, what? That's not how this works. So if you're going to, I want to reach this level of awareness or this high vibration where I'm not driven by ego. It started with I, dude. So you're starting with this idea that all human beings are driving towards however they want to see the world or be perceived in the world. Understand that goes. So if I meet someone, I start with, What is this connection? How does this serve me? Is this dangerous? So that's always where I start with first. Sure. Is it a real danger or a perceived danger? So that's step one, because I grew up in very violent environment. I'm like, Is this person dangerous? The second thing I go into is sitting down and saying, Does this person fire off what I call ickies?

In other words, do I have a gut feeling that just does not resonate with me? And if it does, I always honor it. Anytime I've ever violated this, it always come back and bit me in the ass. Always. And then do I sit there and say, okay, if this person is not a threat and this person doesn't give me any ickies, do I have the bandwidth to sit down and just truly be, as you said in the beginning, show up with both minds and be present and just be open to whatever comes with it. Sometimes, great, someone will talk to me about how wonderful Indian food is. I hate Indian food. I don't like spicy things. Vanilla ice cream is too spicy for me. I just can't do it. I'm like, I hate that. I'm great. I'm glad that works for you. At the football game, someone was sitting down and telling me how the defense was. I couldn't care at all, but I wanted to connect with him as a human being. I listened to how footballs are different. I was like, Okay, awesome. I think for me, it starts with those. I'm curious what your scientific method is because you've written a book and you've talked about this and you've had some trials and tribulations and you've got three little girls who aren't little, that you've gotten through and you've raised them.

What have you taught them?

Well, one of the first things I hope that I've taught them that is we only learn and grow through fumbling forward, failing forward. So one of the things I have teach my children and my clients is we have to start embracing falling forward. If there's one thing I know, it's that I have never learned anything through my success. And success is bleeding. Who just said, oh, Scottie Scheffler, I'm a golfer, said it the other day that he's one and one and one. After he wins the biggest tournament, the next day, it's just back to the grind. It's back to doing the basics. How How have I taught this over and over? What's the actual scientific success? It's discipline and practice, realizing there is no destination. It's just a journey. It's about showing up with a commitment in every single conversation, making sure you're awake, and when you're sleepwalking, moving too awake. To realize that the person I'm in front of has a legitimate lived experience, perspective, set of moods, biases, mental models that informs them on how to see the world. When I am with anyone, I have to know that I get to travel to their place to understand their truth and their reality because it's not wrong.

It's just what they see. If I'm willing in any situation in business, at home, in my community, to be with someone, hear this, with them, like genuinely with them and where they are, I will find something new. I will find something that can grow me, even even if I don't agree with them. That's the key.

I've known that as holding space, which is the greatest gift you can give for someone is you hold space, but it's hard to do. You've done this on a very high level. You've taught people how to hold space in business to create success, because a lot of people who listen to this, Okay, this is great, and this is all fluffy. This isn't fluffy. This is the core of what you need to do in order to show up. I'd love for you to talk about how you teach your clients to hold space. What are some of the success and some of the challenges that you've been through where all of this has been born from?

Holding space with a client, with anyone, long before I walk into a room, long before you walk into a room. We live life coming in hot way too often. If I really want to hold space and be with someone and maximize my brain's ability to think, reason, and to find a third way, my job is to make sure I'm optimized. Here's how we do it. The very first thing we do is we make sure we have done some breathwork. We make sure our jaw is loose, our shoulders are loose, and we make sure we have a context that says, When I walk in that room, my ambition—I love the word ambition. Ambition is not about achievement. It's about an energy of how I will show up. My ambition is to be so present that a new idea arrives that none of us expected to arrive. A new experience or a new flow or a new business opportunity arrives because in the room, we have not come with preconceived solutions. I haven't come with a talk track of how I'm going to show up. The only track I'm bringing is an ambition to be in wonder.

Now, what's the skill? It is just that, Charles. You know that. You know, and I know that if I walk in with an agenda to move someone, to manipulate someone, I won't be able to be in curiosity. I'll be playing chess. Instead, our goal as great leaders and helping other people become great leaders is to be in pure curiosity and wonder, What don't I know? I don't know, and to let their brains explore in a safe place where my face is present and not assumptive in every given moment. I know you do that because this is what you do on your podcast. How do you act? You're brilliant. The way you get people to share things that they would not normally share, how How do you do it? You must have a routine long before you start.

I just send them lots of money in advance. You already know this. I've already given you $100 million. That's the- True. Yeah. It's simple and easy. And a Ferrari. And a Ferrari. Four of those have showed up. Mazel tov, congratulations. For me, I just am constantly asking what I'm curious about. So as far as it goes back to your conversation of curiosity, when you were telling me this, I'm like, Okay, this is great. How do we do this in business? How does this introduce an effect for me in business? I was like, Okay, so I want to ask Jennifer, Okay, we're getting it. We're aware. We're present. That's cute. That's nice. How does that monetize? How do I lead my team with that? How do I show up in advance where I'm trying to go? So if I'm in business and I'm trying to build this community, which will make you just completely unstoppable, If you can master community now as things are falling apart inside your org, and you can create it so people will bleed for you, and I have very specific ways that my team is willing to bleed for me. How are you?

The simple answer is you must be willing to bleed for them. They must see you bleed first. That's how you get your team to bleed for you. It's simple and easy. There's conversations we have about leadership and where to lead and how to do that, which we can get into if we want. But for you, when you're working with your clients, what is the normal goal that they want more than anything else? What's in their way from getting there?

The normal goal is always optimization. I can't tell you, all of my clients are looking to optimize whatever their product is, and they're looking to optimize their human suit, specifically how their brain thinks about the product opportunity or the solution sale they're looking to create. What is in their way is them, their voice. What in their way is ego, fear, a defense of doing it the way we've always done it. It is always myself. I am my worst enemy. I'm sure you've done the same thing, Charles. If there's one thing we have to do constantly in our human suit is start ask or keep asking ourselves, How is this serving me? What am I unwilling to get curious about that could actually be the thing that could change us all? How it could repackage, how it could reiterate something. We get way too stuck in the mud. I'm sure you know that— Okay, I got to give you an example. When I wrote my book, there were sentences I was addicted to. I loved, I didn't want to give up. I was challenged by our editor, and she asked me this, and it was a slap.

Do you want to look smart or do you want to make an impact?

It's a hugely different conversation. I talk about this all the time. Do you want impact or do you want income? They are not the same. They are not. They are not the same. People turn like, Oh, I want to do this or I want to do that. I did a podcast with an individual. I was like, What's your filter? Because he's a billionaire. His kids are billionaires. I go, What is the one filter you give before you start a business? He goes, Does it serve and help a billion people? I was like,. I was like, Okay, hold on, time out. He That's the rule. If you're creating something that does not serve and help a billion people, he goes, Don't worry about the income. Can you impact a billion people? If not, don't do the business. All of a sudden, all of my business failures went and went away. To your point of what your editor said, do you want to be intelligent and seem intelligent? What do you want? Or do you want impact? So, yeah, it's a huge one.

The defining questions. I think the other thing I have to always work with my client is the quality of our questions. We're not asking We're asking ourselves, but we're asking our teams. How much of a disruptor are we willing to be of our assumptions?

Because that's his ego.

His ego. We're comfortable. Go back to my brain file cabinet. Am I willing to actually bring in a brand new file that I've never had before? Or am I going to keep circulating on what I know, I know, I know? Charles, you and I know this. We are in the next evolution, revolution, evolution, the next iteration of society, where information will be coming so fast at us that the one thing we as leaders, and I believe this with all my heart, the one thing we as great leaders have to do is upskill our ability to ask great questions about the information coming in. That's what I do.

I think it's interesting. People said this recently. They said, Information is like salt. I was like, Wait, what? They're like, Salt in ancient time was the most valuable resource on the planet. Now you can get containers of it in the dollar store. Salt is like... Information is not like salt. Information used to be covered and we used to fight for it and protect it and all that. Now I've got enough AI out there that'll tell me everything and tell me how to build a nuclear bomb if I want to. Information is free. Implementation and connection to information, totally different conversation. And what I loved about what you do is the idea that it's the same because you and I both like sayings, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. You have all the information just like like everyone else does. We all have the processes like everybody else does. We have the systems like everyone else does. Do you have the community to execute on it? And most people don't. So when your clients come to you and say, I get it, my ego is in the way.

I am the only problem that I'm ever going to have, and I am the only solution that I'm ever going to have. We know that. How do you then take the next step to say, Okay, I have to rebuild the connection because we've got it internally. We've done that. How do we build connection and community externally now? What are the tactics that we can do to do I always encourage my clients to build a community with people who are geniuses, brilliant in their own lanes, because a lot of leaders, we have to admit, they need to be the top dog in the organization.

Big mistake. In fact, my favorite leader is a man named Mark right now. I won't give you his last name. Mark is a certified genius. You know what? He is fearless to surround is bringing in other geniuses. His whole goal is to say, if I in my community can surround myself with other people who in their lane bring an unparalleled optimization and skill set that I don't have, how much better can we be? Most leaders don't want to do that. They say they do, but there's a fear in it, isn't there, Charles? Have you ever noticed that there's a fear, some people have in surrounding themselves with others who may be brilliant in their own way?

So what I've learned is the people who are radically successful, the high-end they're driven by a certain amount of pain and fear. So one of the gentlemen that I'm standing up with here, he had tragedy early in his life, and he lost someone. And he's constantly trying to prove to that individual, I'm enough, I'm good enough, whatever it is. Another one of my clients, very high on spectrum. He's very much on spectrum as far as ADD or autism and all of that. He uses his pain to the point of just going, going, going, going, going. And we talked I talked about this early on, pain will get you moving. It's just going to burn you out. That fire will burn you ultimately. So when we talk about getting in the rooms with those people of more impact, of more connection, how do you teach your clients how to do that? How do you, as I say, get into those rooms? Because we all talk about it, raise your network. If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room, how do you push yourself? How do you get yourself in that environment where you are around people who are smarter, better, more dynamic?

I have found it so much easier than most people think. It's called- Okay, walk me through that. It's called, Identify who you'd like to be in the room with. The chances are, if you're a person of character, you're going to be wanting to be in a room with a person of character. It's as simple as this. If you pick up the phone and say, Charles, my name is Jennifer, and I've been watching you from afar, and I'd love a chance to learn from you, sit at your feet and absorb you for an hour, would you be generous enough to give that to The answer is 9 out of 10 times yes. Now, we make it much harder. I know that if I just pick up the phone and somebody calls me and they ask that, I want to pay it forward, pay it to that next generation. Let me ask you this, what's the most courageous phone call you've ever made and been mentored at? Where have you done this and built a community? Like, I want to meet this person and grow from this person.

It wasn't a phone call. It was at an event. I was speaking at an event, and I will leave the person anonymous. I don't fan girl over a lot of people. There's only two people I've ever fan girled over. One of them is Nalilama, and the other one is Neil deGrasse Tyson. Those are the two people I fan girl over. I'm like, Oh, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Yeah, because I've never got full of. But I've met presidents, I've met generals, I've been really high in people. I'm like, Whatever. I was more excited to meet the president's wife than I was to meet him because I knew she was years more intelligent than he is. He knows. So if listening to this, yes, you can call up and yell at me again for talking about that. It's okay. I don't mind. We'll talk about it again. For me, there was an individual at this event, and I admired his ability to command this stage, which is something... It's just human behavior, and I love it. When we talk about community, we talk about connection. The ability to move a stage is amazing. I walked over to him because I had just gotten off stage and I knew he was there.

I walked over to him, I said, Excuse me. I go, Do you have a second? He's like, Sure. I go, You're one of the best speakers I've ever seen in in my life. I would love some feedback. What did I do right? What did I do wrong? If you have a minute, I'd love to sit down. I don't drink coffee, but can we grab a coffee? And he's like, Dude, you crushed it. I was going to ask you questions. And I was like, And then we still have a friendship to this day. But he sat down and it was having the humility to go to him and say, You're amazing. I'd love to get some stuff. If you have a moment, I'll buy you. Can I steal five minutes? And I found walking that in is important. To, Hey, You have five minutes, you have 10 minutes. Then I normally do it in weird numbers. I'm like, You have seven and a half minutes. They're like, Wait, what? Yeah, so you do it as well. They're like, Wait, what?

Seven and a half minutes.

Oh, my God.

Because the brain then tears a different look.

They're not accepting it. Exactly. It's an energy snack. They're like, Wait, what? That stuff that I've done is to pivot that around. Like, Hey, do you have seven and a half minutes? That was one of the times for me that it's worked, is just walking up from a place of humility and saying, Dude, really impressive. Then the other thing I would tell people is, I have a client right now who's about to literally go meet Oprah Winfrey, and she's freaking out. I'm like, Oh, my God, it's Oprah. What do I do? I was like, Go research what she's talked about for the last two and a half weeks. Bring value to that discussion. Say, Hey, I saw you did this and this. You're not like, Oh, my God, you're wonderful. You're amazing. Sure, her brain turns off to that. She's in autopilot. She's in sleepwalking mode. Oh, my God, can you help me? Sleepwalking mode. It triggers it because she knows to your point, they know where to put the file in the filing cabinet. Soing up a little bit different. The other thing I will say on this because I have so many more questions for you is, one of my clients wanted to meet another one of my clients who's a billionaire, and he's never met a billionaire before.

There was no way I could teach him what he learned at the end. So he spent day and a half, two days with him, and we drove around, and we ate, and we saw the cars, and we saw all the thing. And we were driving away after day one. And he goes, Dude, he's just a good dude. I was like, Yeah. He goes, He's no different than me. I'm like, No. And he's like, All you're billionaires like this. I was like, All of my clients, I won't interact with people who aren't like this. However, they're all just the same dude because we think, Oh, my God, it's Potis, sorry, President of the United States. Oh, my God, he's a different human being, or It's a billion. It's a different human being. Or she's won a Cy Young Award or won the F1 race. They're different human beings. Trust me, as someone who's been around these individuals, they are... I'll put it this way. You've written a book, right?

Yes. I've written a book. Yes.

For me, it was the most insecure moment of my life. Because I put everything in because I was like, Someone's going to judge me. So literally, don't hire me for 25K a month. Yes, just go buy the book. I get more value in the book than you get for me to buy the book. So we're all radically insecure. So when you wrote your book, what was the name of your book?

Bridge the Gap. All about collaborating in tough times. How do we collaborate with the brain in front of us?

Let's walk through that because I want to get tactical because you and I, when we talk We go in so many different directions. I want to get locked in. How do we bridge that gap tactically? I'm sitting across from someone who has vastly different political beliefs than me, or vastly different ideas about the deal we're trying to cut, or vastly different ideas of how they want to run the division where I'm underneath, where they're under my command. How do you do that? How do you reconnect with them and bridge that gap?

One word, psychological flexibility. We hear a lot about psychological safety in the world It's critical. There is a secret weapon, and that secret weapon is to walk in with a psychological flexibility, a willingness to be so present with the person you're in front of and ask questions like, Tell me about. Share with me, what about? To be so engaged and so in wonder that when you're with that person, you can see why their truth is their truth, not from judgment, but from a real curiosity that you will find a third way. Charles, there is such a odd thing in our human suit, and our human suit is constantly looking for confirmation bias. We pretend we're curious or psychologically flexible, but we are not. We are looking to confirm what we know we know to make sure we really know it. We're looking to confirm our ego and our insecurity. So well said. No growth happens there. To bridge gaps with people in my family who share different political beliefs, I have to ask myself this, what is my outcome? What is my goal? What do I want? Do I want to confirm my bias or do I want to be present?

How do I want to contribute into that other person's life? If I can be clear on that and bring a psychological flexibility, I can change the dynamic and bridge the gap. Now, I want to say one thing. If it's a canyon, and I have the ickies, you called them, I don't want to bridge that I'm going to keep myself safe. There's a big difference between a gap and a canyon.

I think we talked about this before about being a zombie. There are times where I want to immediately... My brain wants to go back in the sleepwalking mode because it's got other It's one of the things that one wants to worry about. If someone brings a political belief or religious belief or something, I immediately, because I'm a minor in theology. If someone brings up something religion, I want to go into, Okay, I know this conversation. I've said this conversation. I'm going to pull that folder out of that file. I file it out in that folder, and I'm just going to start regurgitating. I'm like, Here we go. I think to your point, what you're telling the audience is, Don't do that. Ask them very open-ended questions. What were those three? You mentioned three open-ended questions. What were they doing?

There's three questions There's some questions that really open up the brain, and then there's some other techniques. Let me teach them to you. The first question is, Tell me about. If I ask you, Tell me about, your brain is hearing, Oh, there's not a judgment in the way you're asking me to explore the conversation. So I'll oftentimes use the tell me about four times. Someone will say, I'll say, Tell me about your choice to vote for X. If I let them talk, talk, talk, and the next question I ask is, Tell me about whatever their big energy was, and I let them start emptying their metaphorical human cup. I don't jump back to position against or with them. I just let their brain drain, let their brain drain. At the end, I can to a different outcome than if I had tried to wrestle with them with my own thoughts, or as you say, my own knowledge and my own file in my head. The biggest secret to bridging a gap is to not wrestle in the beginning with somebody. Let them fully express themselves. Charles, we live in a world where we ping-pong back and forth.

We don't let people fully wrestle with their thoughts. When people fully wrestle with their thoughts, often they realize they don't have a full thought. They have an opinion or they have a bias. Have you found that?

Yeah, so that's the tactical mirror that I use all the time. You're asking me- Tell me more about that. Hey, you believe in ABC? Awesome. Walk me through that. Then I say, Okay, so what you're saying is this. Then I'm like, No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm like, okay, seems like. There's a great author, his name is Chris Foss. Don't ever have steak with him and his son. They will eat it. His son is huge. Man, he's got really great. Braden's great. But he always talks about, it sounds like, it seems like, it feels like. He wrote a book called Never Split the Difference. Chris It's a great book. Sounds like, seems like, feels like. We'll sit there and when I'm talking to someone, so I would start with your example, Tell me about why you voted for blah, blah, blah. It seems like what you're saying is that, that, that, and they will immediately come back, No, I'm not saying that. I'm like, Okay, it just seemed like that. Walk me through that. Where did I miss? You'll find sooner or later, they can't regurgitate MSNBC, CNN, Fox, whatever it is. At some point, that regurgitation, they'll run out of fuel, and they're just being redundant.

Now we've gotten to the point where they need to think. In negotiation, I always tell people, Don't start negotiation first because they're not going to hear anything because they have their negotiation that they've built in their head. They have to get to their points, and they're trying to remember it the whole time. Let them dump first, which I think is what you're trying to say. Am I correct?

Oh, completely. Let's have a one-way conversation. When I'm in business or when I'm with a difficult family member, the last thing I want to do is to trigger their brain by actually slapping it with an aggressive question that may be just It's really genuinely curious for me, but not to them. You know what the last question I want to ask is? The question like, why? Charles, you and I are in a conversation about business, and you're struggling. You're an employee that's struggling. I say, why does your pipeline look so lean right now? Why did you build the deck like that? What do you actually feel inside your body when I say that?

Resistant. I want to engage. It's like when you tell your partner, What do you want for food? Where do you want to eat today? I'm not a big pronoun person, but this is when I get into pronouns, where I sit there and say, What do you want to eat? Say, What did we like last week? What would we love to have today? What are we feeling? We versus I. We versus you. Because now it's a confrontation. It's now you versus me.

Correct. There's no collaboration. That Y-word triggers me to go to life or death, fight or flight, mom or dad.

Oh my God. Because now it's my identity. Now you've attacked who I am as a human being. A hundred %.

We never want to lead with a why question. We want to lead with questions that open up the brain to say, Hey, I'm with you. I'll listen. I'm looking for the third way. Lots of voices enter, new thoughts exit. I really think we need to be careful about the energy and the tone and the language choices because words, they build worlds.

I love that you spoke about energy and tone. People don't get that. Can you walk the audience through? Because I've taught this forever. Can you walk people through energy, tone, and cadence when you talk to someone? Yes.

My favorite example is these three words, It is raining. It is raining is a simple sentence. But depending on how I deliver that, I will be sharing my poker and it is raining. It is raining. It is raining. As you and I know, people People are not looking for words. They're looking for the energy behind the words and what it tells you about them. Energy completely changes who you are experienced as. I know you've seen that as well because you are very attentive in when you're working with clients and teaching them negotiation and how to show up optimally. How do you help people understand tone?

I do something called the Dude exercise because it guides... I don't know. So as guys, we use the term dude, especially if you're Gen X, best generation ever, I'm just saying. Well, right now. So the greatest generation is the greatest generation. But after that, I like that's Gen X. So I will see you.

No bias there.

No bias, no. No, no, no, Eric. But we use dude. So when I'm talking to a buddy of mine and every guy will get this, I'm like, Dude. Now, I'm upset with him. Dude, I'm surprised. So we play the dude game. I'm like, Listen, how many different ways? And I will sit with a client and we'll just get goofy. Because the minute you start using dude, it- Dude. Yeah, the watches come off, the ties come off. We're like, Dude or duda. Because I swear to God, if your side of the species wasn't on the planet, we would just revert to dude. That's all it would be.

You wouldn't be dooders.

We're just like, Dude, duda. So we play the dude game. That's great. That's a big part. We play the tonality with that. The second thing I teach is mirroring. We've all heard about mirroring. So you mirror body language, you mirror tonality. Mirror breath, and this is hard. And the next evolution of that is mirror of heart rate. So it takes a lot of energy to get to that. But you will be able to mirror... If you mirror someone's verbiage, their physiology, you then mirror their breath, your heart rate will change and match them. We know this from couples. When couples are in love, their heart rates, just like they're walking, will sink. So you have the ability to do that. Heaching people how to do that when they're across the table from somewhere, to mirror their heart rate, all the walls go down, all of them. So you have to be able to, again, to your point, bridge that gap. And these are some of the higher-end techniques that if you don't know these things, you're going to come in with a strategy that you learned on ChatGPT, and because you didn't talk to Jennifer, and you don't know how to bridge this gap, you don't know how to build this connection to another human being.

And I think to your point, it worked out really well. I'm just going to ask. I'm not going to push my opinion because my opinion is never going to change. It just is what it is. My ego is going to feed that unless I come in with humility to say, Okay, I'm open to what I don't know. Because we don't value what we know as much as we don't value what we don't know. So showing up and saying, Okay, walk me through that. My aunt is a great example of this. I live in South Florida. As we mentioned, I've had guns since I was way too early, and I can't admit it on a recorded live. Okay. So I've had guns for a very long time. And my aunt was like, You shouldn't have guns. She's very anti-gun, and I love her for it. She's great, and I get it. I understand that. And in the last two years, there has been a massive rise of violence towards my community. And it got really, really ugly. There's people walking around with swastikas on their shirts and stuff like that. And they're flying flags, Nazi flags around.

And she turns around and she goes, Can you take me shooting? And I didn't take that opportunity to say, Okay, no, I'm going to get in your face. You're horrible. I told you you should do this. You should buy this. You should buy that. I was like, Whenever you Steve was open to sit there, and I didn't take that opportunity to say, You're wrong. Whenever you want. We'll sit down. I go, How about we start instead of you shooting, since you've never held one, let's just sit down. I'll take it apart. It's basically a paperweight at this point. Let's have you just hold it and see how you feel. In negotiation and in business, have you found, would you need to bridge that gap? What works the best for you when it's a huge organization? Because you've worked with very high-performance CEOs. How do you bridge that gap for their entire teams downrange.

Before we go there, can I ask you a really important question? Sure.

Because I don't want to lose it. No, the podcast is over. Click.

That's fine. Okay. I am flirting with a new way of engaging with people. I'd love your perspective on it. I completely agree about the matching heart rate and the matching vibration. I've noticed that if I change my vibration in a a bit of tension, I can sometimes flip the entire room. Let me give you an example. There's a ton of... It's a tense conversation. Instead of meeting the tension with the tension, one of the techniques I'm really engaging with and practicing is getting really soft and gentle, or inverse, if it's too soft and gentle, raising the vibration to flip the script on how the brain is connecting to the information. Have you have a lot of experience in that. Could you talk a little bit about that? It's an interesting way to change the vibration in the room to have the brain think differently.

Right. I think what you're talking about is pattern breaks, and I have ruined this one now because I've talked about this before on another podcast. I've actually had people come up during a negotiation, and they've used them against me now. I'm like, You're listening to my podcast.

I want to send me that podcast. I haven't listened to that when you said it.

Okay, I'll just tell you what it is. They did a study, and again, I'm not sourced. I'm synthesis. They took a lady and they gave her a clipboard and they gave her a container of liquid. They said, Hey, do you mind if I ask you a question? They said, Sure. She was, Okay, well, can you hold this for me? While she asked the questions. They hand the drink, so coffee or whatever it is. Then they walk away to whoever she asked questions to. Another person goes, Hey, we just hired Susie. I would love for you to get feedback on what you think of her. Some of the people said that she was warm and inviting. Other people said she was cold and distant. Same tonality, same questions, same attire. What was different? The drink. It was either hot tea or cold drink. So then we're holding it. It influenced their perception. So when I'm in this tough negotiation, I will do a pattern break, which I can't do anymore since I've already made it public. So this is a byproduct of doing a podcast. I will sit down when you're just budding heads with teams or potential clients or negotiating hotels or buildings.

We've reached the point where I can tell we're done. Everybody's sponge is full. We're just getting into ego. We're not working anymore. I will sit there and go, hungry. I'm like, Anybody like fo? I'm like, Anybody know what faux is? And I will normally pronounce it wrong. I'll be like, Anybody what fou is?

I heard that.

They're like, Wait, what? I'm like, Yeah, fo. They're like, Fo? I was like, Yeah, that's soup. I'm like, I'm sorry, guys. I just can't think. They're like, No, it's fa. They're like, Okay. I was like, There's this place. Can we just sell this for a minute? We've been eating here. I haven't eaten all day. Do you guys mind? It's on me. I'll buy it. I will then go, and we will proverbinal break bread with each other, but we'll eat soup. That deal closes every single time at that restaurant, every single time, because I pattern-breaked it. Being able to do pattern breach on a high level, sometimes they can just be silly. But if you want to make it so it doesn't, it won't, it won't, it won't make sense toward the Harvard's and the Yale's. And sorry, guys, I've had to deal with you guys. It won't make sense to them. It has to be... So one of my clients, his pattern break, when he was stuck into it, I'll give you two examples. One of my guys, massive PTSD. He's got TBI, traumatic brain injury, been in combat, was a Marine, gone through some stuff at some really intense level.

And he was very mad at me when we were working on what we were working on. That's okay. You can punch me as hard as you want in the face on one condition. What's that? I'm like, You don't get to smile. He's like, Oh, don't worry, I won't smile. I said, Perfect. I said, Ready? I go, Ball up your head. He bought up his head and I got close enough so he could strike me. I said, Cool. Take your finger, your other finger, and shove it up your nose. He's like, What? He jams it up and he was like, What the hell? I said, Now you're laughing. You're not going to get to punch me. He's like,. It was this pattern break. Another one of my clients, whenever he got stuck, very powerful individual. I will not give you his name because he will be very upset that I told people this. But do you know what it's called when you pants someone? When you grab the side of your pants and you... No. Okay, so pants in someone. We do it- We don't think girls do that. Girls don't do this. Guys will pants each other as a joke when we're teenagers.

We'll just grab the side of the pants. I couldn't get him to snap because he was just in it. He was low vibration. His ego was involved. He was scared, feared. I got his pants and pants them. And that broke his pattern. Okay, normally I have your boxers still, and I'm not taking everything down, just the shorts. And that broke his pattern. So to your point, yes, you got to break patterns. And it could be as easy as I mean, a cup out of the way. But I'm curious, how do you bridge that gap? How do you get across that one?

How do I break that? I do this. I am oftentimes doing exactly what you do. You're using humor, you're using food. What we're really doing is we're it back to a shared humanity. It's not really me versus you. It's finding a new we. Just like you, I think I love your ideas. I'm going to try some of them. I do pattern interrupts. I call them pattern, not shift, but pattern interrupts. It's about bringing something, an unexpected moment of levity, humanity, or a new thought that reminds us, Oh, actually, this is just business. This is just a game for identity out here. We're more than that game. When you can bring that, it helps the brain stop being hyper-focused on one thing and sees the bigger picture. I like to think about it like this. I remind people that we're actually at the buffet table. We're not just in the lettuce. There's a lot of other options to make this salad beautiful. It's not hyper-focused on one thing, and I do that that way. One other thing I love to do is I love to ask people a question in the middle of the pressure that you talked about is, Tell me what would matter most to you in this deal.

A lot of times, if I can do that, it's not about the deal. It's about the impact of your family. It's never about the deal. Oh, you found that.

It's never about the deal.

It's not. It's about the impact or the legacy or whatever it is. Get people to remember what they're actually fighting for.

One of the strategies I use to do a pattern interrupt, is I will set an alarm on my phone on purpose.

I do this, too.

During the meeting, I will have the alarm go off. I'm like, That's unacceptable. And I will toss my phone on the other side of the room like, That's not important. I want to be here. And all of a sudden someone sees, they're like, Oh, my God. They put me in front of their phone? Oh, my God. It'll just pattern interrupt them so hard. They're like, Okay, I need to be fully focused. This guy threw away his phone. Because for them, not having their phone next to them is this huge Which thing. So they perceive perception as reality. Wow, he's willing to put his phone on the other side of the room to have this meeting. So when I walk into meetings as well, if I know it's going to be tense in advance, I will walk in and I'm like, Hey, guys, how are you doing? And I'll look at my phone, turn it off, drop it in my bag, and I'll walk away.

You just nailed something, Charles. I can't tell you how important this is. And I asked the audience this, do you know that when I actually ask people when the last time they remember being fully experienced and listened to, they can't tell you? Because it's this. Yeah, for the audience, I'm looking at my phone and you think, I am not present. This individual item, this object on the phone is gabbing more of my attention. We are crying out as a human species to be seen, understood, and valued. Our emotional needs are aching. If there's one thing we can all do to bridge the gap in business, in our families, and in just the average experience I have driving through my Starbucks line, give someone your presence. That is what they want. They don't want your words. They only want your energy. What a gift that is in business. That is how you can be a remarkable business leader.

A thousand %. The people that I, and again, I talk about people I fan over. One of my people who's no longer with us, he passed. My uncle Barry was the best at being present that I've ever seen in my entire life. I spent a finite amount of time with him in my entire life. I only got to meet him about a year before he passed away. I spent a very limited amount of time with that. But his impact in my life, because maybe across that whole year, maybe two hours, maybe of total time, we went to a Red Sox game, so maybe five hours, that we spent around each other. He was He was completely there whenever I spoke. And it is a powerhouse move to do. You just sit there and you stop. And there's physiology you could do to lean in, but you sit there and he would mirror my nodding, he'd mirror my breathing. And he just did this in Actually, because he generally loved human beings. I don't have that blessing, but he generally loves human beings. So if you're in a business environment when you don't have this one-to-one, when you can't do the game and you can't do the phone game, how do you teach your clients to connect on that high level?

Connection, I'm going to go back to the very, very beginning, does not happen. I'm a big leader, and I'm coming into a big room, and I want to connect, and I want to create an experience where we all leave with many voices to come out with a great solution. Let's just set that up. That's typically what we're looking to do. It's not about me in the room. It's about who I am before I get into the room. I cannot stress this enough. The most important thing there is for connection, for breakthroughs, is being present in your body and being your uncle. What was his name again?

Barry.

Barry would have been great in those rooms because what he would have walked in with is a sense of It's almost like an aura that you walk in the room. You walk in the room and people know you are here. You are not here. You are here. If you want to be here, it is that simple and that hard.

I remember President of the United States, Bill Clinton walked into the room, and the person I was hanging out with at the time was not a fan. I'll say it as nice as possible. She was desperately not a fan of the individual. And Bill Clinton is not an attractive man. Before we went into the event, at least for her, she did not feel he was attractive. Some other people might think he's attractive. I don't know. He's got external plumbing, doesn't do anything for me. Sorry. So we go in and she's like, I can't believe I'm doing this. I don't want to be here. She was really upset. Thirty seconds into the room, he just saw him walk on a stage, and she goes, Okay, now I want to hook up with him. What the hell just happened? He had this aura about him. I remember looking over at her and I was like, How? So how does someone build that level of aura, that level of intensity? Because some people just had it. They either repel or they draw you in.

I'm an expert at that because I think about that all the time. It comes back to when I walk in a room, who am I going to be? Not, What am I going to do? Big difference. We've been taught in the world to do, once I do something, what I'll have, then I'll be happy. I like to flip that and think to myself, No, actually, it all starts with, Who am I going to be? Am I going to be generous in a room? Am I going to be wanting to be seen in a room? What you focus on is what you will see and what you will create. If I actually am I'm telling my client that they're going to go and pitch to... One of my clients just pitched it, Andreessen Horowitz, and they got a great raise. The question I was is, it's not what you're doing, it's who you're being. They are buying the energy of connection to who you be. Not who you are, who you be, the being deep inside of me that compels them to say, I trust you. I can smell your commitment.

I have a question. Do you find it's easier to do that now or it's harder to do that in this time and age?

Never thought about that. Let me think about that. What do you think? Where did the question come? What are you thinking about?

I personally feel it's never been easier to create connections with other human beings than it's been now. Because to your point, this stupid thing, this stupid device has the phone because you're so connected. We're so desperate for that drink of water in desert. We're so desperate for connection that if I just show up, I just want to connect with the person. And again, I don't know a whole lot about football. I never really have. It's just not my thing. Again, men in tights playing with balls, it's not my thing. I walked in and I got invited. I was like, Hey, I don't have anything about football. I'm like, Why does this do this? The guy was so happy just to talk about... He was like, Okay, well, this is this and this. I'm like, Yeah, but why this? He was so desperate to to have that conversation. It was authentic questions. I wanted to know. I was like, Why does this happen this way? Or why do they do this? And why don't they do this player? He loved it and we talked about it. Also now I'm his buddy. I love talking to the guy because he'll listen to this.

I love talking about what he shared with me. I was like, That was really cool. I did not know that this is how coaches plan out. For example, at the game, there were three people giving out plays to the team. I was like, Why are there three people giving up? And then they had different shirts on and they had flags behind them, and they looked the people who lay on planes if you had given them crack and they were on speed. Because I was like, What the heck is going on? They're like, Oh, it's a decoy strategy. I was like, Wait, what? It's like the other team is trying to read their plays, so they're using, and then they tell people each time, different color shirts are different. That's what they're giving away for the plays. And they're telling the team. I was like, Son of a bitch, I would have never thought that. I was like, Oh, cool. That was interesting to me. So for me, when I want to create connection, it's always about, Okay, how do I want to make that person feel? Now, what do I want? What is my goal?

Because I'm a comedian. He's like, I just want to make people laugh. And I was like, Yeah, but that's not connecting with them. In his case, he's like, I can't find a relationship. They view me as this dancing monkey. I was like, Dude, your intent is just to make them laugh. Of course, you're the dancing monkey. So when you're bridging the gap, and I'm going to keep pushing on this, when you're working with clients and you're there, they're coming to you because they're in a specific pain. How do you fix that pain? What is the pain that they're in and how do you fix it?

I can't fix that pain. I can only offer their brain a chance to see things differently. Let's be really, really clear. The only thing I can do is affect me. But what we can do to help a client fix their pain is decide if it's worth fixing first. No one does anything without a really important reason. It always starts as, why would this be worth it to you? Sometimes it's not worth it. Let's all admit it, it's not worth It's worth it. Once we determine if it's worth it, we have to go into the human suit and say, what am I committed to changing? You brought it up about people who say they want a diet, but they won't stop eating, right? The question really is, what is your level of commitment, of discipline It's a beautiful word if we think about it, to get skills toward transformation and change? Then the real question, and I'm going to keep coming back to it, is what is your willingness to be present in the room with your ego, with your Hannah, your Barker, put on time out in a loving way so that you can learn and hear something differently?

Charles, you and I both know this. The most important piece in the world is trust. People will buy what You are selling them, solution selling them, if they trust you. I cannot scream, Trust me. I cannot trust as an experience, and it's a feeling that people get over time, and it's based on one thing. Are you present with me and not running an agenda over me? With versus over. So constantly, that is the conversation I have to have with clients. Can you be with some, no matter how maybe crazy their idea is, long enough to maybe see something or to contribute a different idea with them because you've created enough connection. Charles, when it gets down to it, you said something really, really... You asked me, do I think that it's easier to connect with people now as opposed to the future. I don't think I agree with that. I think the human condition is always starving to be experienced.

Right. Interesting.

I think it's starving. I think that if there is one thing that you said that I would agree with in that premise is maybe that because of technology, people don't realize it's available to them, and so they're excited to get engaged because they haven't had that. But I don't think humans have changed over time. I think, actually, we are so starting to be seen, known, understood, and valued that it'll never change the human condition. I don't know. Do you disagree with that?

I think we're saying the same thing.

Okay.

I agree. The human condition by itself has always wanted to connect. It's a survival mechanism. We need each other to survive, if not the sabre-tooth tiger eats us. We've always had that. That's hard-coated in who we are. What I think has happened is because there's the lack of that, because in the past, you and I grew up at a time when we went to school where there wasn't cell phones, and we had to actually talk to people, wild. We had to interact with people.

Write letters.

Yeah, letters. Amazing, right? You actually had to communicate. You had to be present. You had to give that person the gift of you, which was being present. We had to do that. We had no choice. We would go out and we had to use our imaginations and ride bikes, and then the streetlights would come on and we'd come back. We grew up with that. We were forced where there was more authentic, real present connection back then. Now, because of the little glass box in our pocket, we walk around and ignore each other all the time. I can't tell you how many times when I'm in New York, I will physically have to move someone because they're looking at their phone and they're going to walk into me. So I will physically just like, Hey, how are you? Again, I'm a big guy. So when people walk in, I'm just slowing down like, Hey, how are you? And just do like... They're so starving, a self-induced starvation, by the way, because all of this is self-induced, that when I show up with just a little bit, they can be like, Oh, my God, I'm this oasis, where I think when I was growing up, to put it in a food metaphor, there was a bazillion different steaks, there was a bazillion different buffets, and they wouldn't have cared about the one person giving out French fries.

But And now, since they've self-induced this starving mode, I show up with a French fry, the brain explains, Oh, my God, connection. It's here. Give me a fry. So for me, it's easier now as long as it doesn't come from ego, because that's the other thing we're battling. Because Again, your phone, the algo, your algorithm, will teach you and show you only what you want to know. So I will mess with my friends' phones all the time. If they leave the room, I will mess with them. I will sit there and say, hammer a cream or hamster sacs, and I'll read it and I'll say it on their phone like 15 times, and then two days later, it's all this hemorrhage cream in their algo. They're like, Are you a bastard? So we mess with each other. We know that the algo is constantly listening. It's coding us to be disconnected. It's easier for me to bridge a gap by showing up, to your point, without an agenda, to actually be present. But most people don't do that because they're afraid.

Well, and I think most people don't do that for one important reason. They don't think about how they're Their energy, their behavior, their quiet behavior impacts the room. There's this new idea I've really enjoyed thinking about, and it's about this idea that we're all a virus. I am a virus. Think about this. When I walk I'm in a room, I'm an unconscious virus. My energy will impact the room for good or for bad. It'll impact the energy curve. I don't think anyone, I talk about this with my CEOs and my leaders all the time. You are a virus, you enter that room, it will shift the room. It will infect the room. It will create whatever your unconscious creation in the back of your unawareness is running on you. The most important thing you can do is decide who you're going to be in that room, how you're going to show up. The word that I've been talking about, most of them is, how can I walk into a room clearly generous to understand The other brilliant ideas in the room that I might have been blind to before, that I might have been sleepwalking before.

I can't emphasize this enough that there are no magic bullets except this one. How you walk into a room and who you decide to be in that moment will entirely shift everything. You know this. You know this. How you prime yourself, how you set yourself up for success. That bridges the gap. Keep walking, A, that ain't going to work. Well, it's going to create something, but it's not going to be optimal. The intentionality of who we be in the world bridges all the gaps. The generosity I bring to the other person's perspective bridges the gap because everybody's fighting for something for a really good reason.

If someone wants to learn how to do this, how to bridge the gap and to track this down, because most people, and you know this, they'll come to us strategies. They'll come to tactics. I'm like, How do I do a negotiation? How do I make an extra seven figures? A lot of this you've gone over, and this level of awareness, and this level of vibration, they never heard it before. And they don't have someone who's done it because you've done this for a very long time. You've done it with very high performers. If someone wants to bridge that gap, how do they track you down? How do they get a hold of you? How do they start implementing this right now?

Good. Thanks. I'd love them to buy a copy of our book, Bridge the Gap by McGraw Hill. In that book, they're going to understand a set of paradigms and tools that will have them start setting up their biology for success, understanding their identity and the skills that they can have inside that identity that will bridge gaps. For example, if there's one word that I would give you that I've experienced you in completely is it's in authenticity. Not the authenticity that the world talks about, but the I actually want to know who you are. I want you to know who I am. I'm going to be generous with how much I listen and how much I share. That is who you are at the depth of your core. The very first thing we teach in the book is, who are you? What's important to you? Why does it matter? Well, it matters because who you are in that room changes everything. Everything. If you don't know who you are. Find me at Bridge the Gap, how to go to www. Com. Com. Most importantly, find a bunch of people in your life. If you don't find me, find other people in your life who make you think differently.

I'm going to change that word. Find other people who invite you to think differently, who see you as so possible and so amazing, and they're willing to challenge your bullshit.

Yes. I love the people who want to challenge my bullshit and get in my face.

I got a lot of it.

Oh, my God. There's a reason my eyes are brown. If someone wants to track you down on social media or anything, is there other ways that they can get at you? What's the best way to do it?

Yeah, Google Jennifer Edwards, How to Bridge the Gap. You will find me on a number of maybe over 150 podcasts. You'll find me on LinkedIn. In LinkedIn, I really attempt to deliver a value proposition that has us think about bridging gaps in our everyday life and specifically in business. More importantly, give me a call. I love having conversations, and I guarantee I'll do one thing with you. I'll be with you, I'll be present, and I'll help you hopefully open a door to something you haven't seen about yourself.

Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on and being with me and being present here and having this conversation. I've enjoyed it immensely.

Charles, every minute I get to spend with you, create some laughter, some new learning, and I always leave more joyful than I became in. So thank you.

Thank you so much. All right. Well, that wraps up another episode of The Proven Podcast. Jennifer came on and she showed us exactly how to bridge the gap, how connections and communication and success all start with you. I hope you guys had found it valuable. It was a blast to talk to Jen. You should hear the conversations we have when it's not being recorded. It is wild. I think it's the best part of being a host of a podcast is the conversations you guys don't get to see. Anyway, maybe one day we'll bring everybody together and share it. In the meantime, go track on Jennifer. She got a great book. I'll see you guys in the next episode.