 Well, welcome back to the show, Jonah. So glad to have you back to talk about your latest book, Magic Words. Johnny and I are huge fans of all of your work. This one in particular really struck us because we love words and the impact they have in our communication and building relationships. And it's something that Johnny and I continue to study. We're fascinated by, but often when we share that people view us as manipulative or have a negative connotation, right? Comment, confidence, all of that comes up when we think about the language we use. Why would someone like you study words and particular magic words and the impact they have on us? Language is a part of almost everything that we do. Language is how we put together emails. It's how we build presentations. Language is how we make phone calls or talk face to face. Language is how we talk to bosses and colleagues and partners and children. Even our private thoughts rely on language. But while we spend a lot of time thinking about the ideas we want to communicate, if I'm making a presentation, for example, what are the main concepts I want to get across? Or if I'm talking to a spouse, what are the main ideas I want to suggest? We think a lot less about the individual words we use when communicating those ideas. And unfortunately, though, that's a mistake because subtle shifts in the language we use can have a big effect on our impact. Adding an extra word to request, for example, can lead to about a 50 percent increase in people's likelihood of saying, yes, rather than saying, I like a certain product or experience saying I recommend it, makes people about a third more likely to take your recommendation. And in everything from the language, we use an email at the office to the language we might use in a loan application provides insight into who we are and how we're likely to behave in the future. And so the interesting question for me is what are these magic words and how by understanding them and how to use them, can we increase our impact both at home and at work? I absolutely love that because so much of what we think about consciously is how do we have more impact, but not so much of how we're communicating that impact, right? We get so focused on the outcome and this is looking at the process and the words that we choose to move things forward. One of the first pieces of information you share in the book in science is the idea of because adding that to a request. And Johnny and I actually sandwiched that in with another piece from the book questions with our clients. So a lot of our clients come to us feeling socially anxious and frozen when meeting someone new and trying to figure out how to break through and have a great conversation. And we teach a conversation formula, which relies on questions at the start to inquire about the other person to showcase interest. And we could talk about all the science behind questions. And then we add a because statement after we ask this question where we actually share some vulnerability and share a little bit more about us. And that is a very powerful combination for our clients who feel a little flat footed in these social situations. So I'd love to just discuss why questions are so powerful and how we can use questions to our advantage as we get rolling here. There are so many things that questions do. And as I studied them more and more, I become really fascinated in the work that they do and how they help us. You know, I think many of us think about questions as a way to collect information. If I want to know something, a question is a good way to collect that information. And and questions certainly do collect information. They do a good job of collecting information, but they they also do a lot of other things. They they shape how we're perceived as individuals, whether people like us, whether they think we're smart or not. They shape how conversations evolve. Questions do a great job of directing attention towards certain things rather than than other things. And they shape interactions and how close we get to other people. And as you guys nicely said, sort of how we reveal things about ourselves and show our vulnerability. So I'll start with just one example. There's a whole whole chapter about questions. I like frameworks. So this book has a framework. There are six key types of language or magic words that I talk about. I put them in a framework called the speak framework. The S is the language of similarity and difference. The P is the language of posing questions. The E is the language of emotion. The A is the language of agency and identity. One of the C's is the language of confidence. And the other C is the language of concreteness. And if you're following along going, the word speak doesn't end with a C. And it definitely doesn't end with two C's. You are right. It should end with a K. I couldn't come up with a framework that ended with a K. I will say, though, in my defense that in Scrabble, K is the most difficult letter to use. That's why it's worth so many points. But so let's talk about questions. So let's take asking for advice. So we often think, hey, I could use some advice. I want someone's opinion. I want their perspective. I want their knowledge. I want their information. But, man, I don't know if I should ask, right? We're worried that one, ask them will bother someone or they won't know what we're interested in. Or even worse, somehow they'll think less of us, right? They'll think we're not knowledgeable or incompetent. And so we don't ask for advice. Turns out that's a big mistake. Some researchers from both Harvard and Wharton did some really nice experiments where they had people have interactions. In some cases, people asked for advice. In other cases, they didn't. They found that asking for advice doesn't lead us to be perceived as incompetent. It doesn't make us seem worse. In fact, it doesn't have no effect. It actually makes us seem better. People that asked for advice were seen as more competent and more knowledgeable. And you might say, well, why, right? Doesn't asking for advice show we don't know what we're interested in. But what's interesting about asking for advice is it's less about us and more about the people whose advice we're asking. Because everyone loves to feel like they have great advice. All of us are egocentric. We think our advice is fantastic. And so when someone comes along and they ask us for advice, we go, wow, that person's really smart. Out of all the people they could ask, they asked me for advice. And so they must be pretty sharp. And so asking for advice not only allows us to collect information, but it actually makes us be perceived better by the people we ask as well. And asking that question, you're showing somebody that you understand that they have a unique view, a unique perspective to them and their experiences and that you want to know what that is. For a lot of people, they're gonna feel like, well, I'm just asking this question that it's pretty general, but really it isn't. And that's why people who are gonna be in our conversation with you are gonna feel their ego being stroked because they get to share that unique experience. Yeah, and building on what you just said, there's another type of question people call follow-up questions. And what does that mean? When someone says, hey, I really enjoyed that meeting, not just saying, oh, I did as well, but what'd you like about it? Or yeah, I thought that movie was really, really interesting. Oh, what did you like? Why did you find it interesting? Research finds whether looking at dating situations, getting to know you conversations of a variety of different situations, questions lead people to like us more. But follow-up questions in particular are impactful because what questions and follow-up questions do in particular when we ask them, as you nicely said, the right way is they show we care, right? When someone cares enough about what we're saying, not just to sort of take the conversation in a completely different direction, but pick up on what we said, show they heard it, show they want to build on it and learn by asking more, well, it suggests they care about us. They're responsive and they're interested in learning more about us and as a result, we like them more. And that likability piece, I love the visual of a spotlight or a flashlight with our questions because your questions are framing what you're looking to explore. In that example, you're looking to explore more of their thoughts, more of their advice, more of what they enjoyed, but sometimes we're in situations where we don't want to come across in a negative way. We still want to be likable and we can use questions to deflect when asked a question that we don't want to answer. And I thought that was a very powerful tool because we've all been in that situation where, well, if I reveal this, they might think negatively of me and might hurt my job chances and might hurt in the negotiation and actually asking a question, shining that flashlight in a direction that's related, can deflect from that negative response and have a greater impact. So could you share the science behind that because that was so fascinating. Asking questions is a way to make people feel like they have more of a choice, right? So, let's say you're a boss, you're trying to get people to stay late after work. If you tell them to stay late, they'll be upset. But if you say instead, hey, how can we become a more successful company and you have a conversation about it and somebody's gonna bring up, maybe we need to put more hours in and now it was their opinion, not yours. And so they're much more bought into the solution. Now, if you ask a wrong question, if you say, hey, do you like staying after work? People would say no, right? And so what questions are doing there is, if you ask people, do you like staying after work? They shine the light on that part, that thing to think about. If on the other hand, you shine the light on how do we become a good company, now everyone's brainstorming ideas to achieve that solution. And so that idea of a question as a flashlight, I think is a really powerful one. In particular, as you were suggesting it, in terms of using questions to deflect, and it's almost like a shield. Someone asks us, hey, would you get paid at your last job in a job interview? It's a little bit unfair, right? Because if we tell them what we got paid in our last job, then they'll say, great, I can pay you a little bit more in this job. I don't have to pay you a lot more. So we've given away some revealing information. If on the other hand, we say, hey, I don't really feel comfortable talking about that, then they'll say, oh, and it makes us seem like a not very nice person, right? We sort of, that nicely sort of conversation, it's chugging forward and it's come to a screeching halt when we say something like that. And so often we kind of don't know what to do, but questions can be a great way to kind of take that, and almost in an improv way, right? Take that incoming input and sort of pass it along in a nice way, right? If someone says, oh, how much did you make at your last job saying something like, oh yeah, how much do people usually make in this role? That shows you're interested. You don't dislike them. You're not trying to be difficult, but you're sort of moving the focus of the conversation onto this particular role that you're interested in. Now they can still come back and say, well, you didn't answer my question, but then they're the one being rude. And if they want to move with that ball of conversation, they'll be more likely to take it in the direction that you sort of pushed it. And so questions can be a great way to kind of take the spotlight off something you don't want to focus on and sort of push that energy or interest in a different direction. And we're often compelled to answer questions. There's this innate human desire in all of us to be helpful, to be supportive. And even in that job interview situation, by you deflecting, you get some valuable information out of the interviewer who wasn't even planning on sharing those numbers or those details. And you talk about, a lot of times, there might be someone who's reticent to give you the answer, like the iPad for sale example. And if we ask the wrong question, they'll focus, again, that spotlight on positives that aren't helpful for us making a buying decision. But if we ask the right question, we can actually get them to give us some information that'd be helpful for us and might be harmful for them. So unpack that because this question thing, we talk so much about questions, we love questions, obviously, interviewing, but there's the nuance here that's just so helpful for our audience. Yeah, so one thing you're highlighting is kind of what questions assume that may seem a little bit weird to think about. But there are some types of questions that assume the answer is one way or another. So there was a really nice study some researchers conducted, for example, where they asked people to imagine selling an iPad to somebody else. And when they did so, the people were asking different questions. And when people ask questions like, there are any problems with it, are there? That's a situation where it's really easy to say, nope, there are no problems, even if there's a little bit of problem, or maybe it's not clear that it's a problem. Maybe once in a while there's a small issue, but it's not a big problem. And if someone said there aren't any problems, are there? It's really easy to go along and say, no. Just like if you're a doctor, a nurse, or a medical professional, sometimes you're seeing patient after patient. When you check somebody in, you say, you don't smoke. Do you don't abuse drugs? You exercise once in a while, don't you? You eat your vegetables, don't you? It's really easy to go, yeah, I eat my vegetables. Yeah, I don't abuse drugs, all those things. Because it's hard to oppose what they're saying. But their goal actually isn't just to get you to say yes or no, their goal is to get you to reveal that information, to be honest. And so we need to be careful of the types of questions when we ask in those situations. Instead, saying something like, to go back to the sales example, what kind of problems are there? It shows that, hey, I'm actually zeroed in on the problems. I wanna learn more. And it makes it hard for someone unless they're gonna drastically lie to our face to ignore what we're saying. I think about this a lot in the classroom. I used to say something like, are there any questions after a lecture or something along those lines? And that doesn't have an assumption baked in necessarily, but it's so common that people ask a question phrased that way, that it's really easy to think I'm just being polite and if you're a student and you have a question, but you don't wanna be rude, you don't wanna sort of break up the conversation, maybe you'll just not say anything. But a colleague of mine, she does a really interesting switch there. She says, what questions do you have? And notice, that's a really subtle change, right? Do you have any questions? Are there any questions? What questions do you have? But what questions do you have says, I'm sure you have a question. What is it, right? I'm really interested in knowing what your questions are. I'm not just trying to move past this, but I wanna know what your questions are. Tell me so I can answer them. So it's a great way to get people to chime in whereas otherwise they might have kept to themselves and not given us the benefit of their question. We've definitely felt that in our X Factor Accelerator Virtual Coaching Group, we used to ask to start the program, are there any questions? And on these sessions, we have new members joining every week. And of course, there's gonna be a pause, no one wants to go first, no one wants to break in. Then you ask, well, what problems do you have? And again, now we're a little nervous. Like, I don't wanna volunteer problems. I don't know everyone. I'm not sure what's going on. And I switch it and I say, what can I help you with this week? Yeah. And immediately, you notice people are chiming in because it's like, oh, it's a supportive frame of that question. It doesn't put the problem on them. It doesn't lower their status in the group. And it showcases to them like, hey, everyone's working on something. So then it gets the ball rolling and we have momentum instead of sitting on an hour long session with no one chiming in or asking any questions. Yeah, I even loved, and I think I heard you say it correctly, but you said, how can I help? Rather than something like, what problems do you have? And notice the subtle shift in a pronoun there, the difference between an I versus a you. We do this all the time. I'm terrible at this, but use can feel quite accusatory even when we don't mean them that way. So in our personal lives, if someone said, did you walk the dog? Did you file this report? Did you make dinner? You might say, what do you mean did I walk the dogs? Yeah, my job to walk the dog. The person that they're really asking is, did the dog get a walk? I wanna know if the dog got a walk because if it did not go give it a walk, but it can feel quite accusatory. It can feel like they're sort of singling us out. And so we need to be really careful about the way we use the word you. And I call them accusatory use because even without intending to use can suggest blame or responsibility. And in a way we may not mean, a few years ago I did a big study with a large consumer electronics firm where I analyzed all their help pages. So think about if your laptop breaks, you have an issue with your phone, you're trying to sync it with something else, you go to these help pages to get help. And sometimes people say this page was helpful and sometimes it wasn't helpful. And so I looked at the language on the page and how it linked to whether people found it to be helpful or not. And I found that the more a page used the word you, a second person pronoun like the word you, the less helpful people found it. And when I dug a little deeper, I found it was these sort of use suggesting work or blame. If your phone isn't working, you need to reboot the phone and you need to do X, Y, Z. And it feels like, well, wait, why do I have to do all that work? It's your phone that broke, it's not my phone, it's the company's phone, it's not my fault. And so being really careful about how we throw around I versus you, you can be helpful, but it can also be detrimental and make people feel singled out. To me, use can act a little bit like a stop sign. If you're scrolling through social media or looking through email or you have a bunch of different pieces of content you're looking at, it's really easy to move from one to the next without paying attention, without opening, without looking. If something says you, it feels like they're speaking to you directly, right? You have the opportunity to do this. You might wanna think about X, Y, Z. Now it feels like they're not just talking, they're talking to me in particular. And because they're talking to me in particular, I'm much more likely to listen. I've also noticed it in report building as well. If you use you perspective, so if I say, well, you know what, it's like Jonah, you went over there and this happened and you felt like this and you're like, well, I guess so. I mean, sort of, I mean, I've never really been in that position, but I guess so, yeah. But if I said, when I go over there and this happens to me, I feel this way. And this gives you an opportunity to now have an empathy for me. And then you can explain for me, I felt this way. But if I place all those emotions on you, you get defensive because you're like, well, do I feel that way or do I not feel that way? Or the other one is when they call it God perspective, where I say, well, it just fills this way. And again, you put in your mind like, well, does it, is that true? And if you're thinking about whether or not that statement is true, you're not following along. I even think about sort of, as you said, the God perspective or sort of cases where the you is implicit, right? So we don't use the word you, but you say something like, in situations like this, it makes sense to do that, right? Well, really saying is if you are in situations like this, it makes sense for you to do that, but that can feel again, accusatory, blame, singling out. And so sometimes it's better to remove the you because it doesn't feel like, that we're focused on a particular individual and any one particular individual, it's sort of this more generic you or even implicit you, which can avoid some of the problems that you sometimes has. Well, in that language acts as a hurdle and even in the catalyst, and you were writing about cells, it's about removing all those hurdles so that the reader or the person who's looking to buy can follow along and not get stuck on these hurdles, trying to debate whether or not that is true for them. And if they're trying to figure that out, well, they're not moving emotionally towards that cell. I certainly agree. And in sales, we have to be a little bit careful. You can gain attention, but you can also lead to pushback, right? When somebody says you'll like this, I might say, well, do you know me well enough for you to say you'll like this, right? If my friend says you'll like this, I say, great, my friend tailored this to me. If a salesperson says you'll like this, I may go, wait, hold on, you don't know me well enough to make that inference. And so my anti-persuasion radar goes off and I'm more likely to push back rather than just go along. One other piece of the questions, because I absolutely love this section of the book, is getting to a place of building real connection. So we've heard the science, it takes a long time for two people spending time together to build real relationships and build a strong connection. But we actually walk through a series of questions in the book that start off with light vulnerability that get pretty heavy pretty quickly. And the science shows that actually those deep vulnerable questions when asked with some level of trust and comfort at the beginning leads to a deepening and speeds up the process of building relationships, which I think can be a hurdle for a lot of members of our audience who feel like, where am I gonna find all the time as an adult to spend with this person to foster a relationship? What's the shortcut to building that relationship? So here's the challenge and you laid it out really nicely to deepen social connections, whether to turn, you know, acquaintances into allies, whether to turn strangers into friends, or whether just to sort of get a deeper connection with those we already love, but don't talk to that often. We need to reveal a little bit about ourselves, right? If we call someone and all we say is, oh, you know, what'd you do today? What'd you do today? And we have this sort of fatic nice kind of get to know you conversation. That's good, it doesn't hurt, but it doesn't make us feel that deep emotional connection. And so to do that, we need to reveal a little bit things about ourselves. We need to be a bit vulnerable. We need to talk about some things that show depth, but the challenge is to do that, we've got to already feel some sort of social connection, right? You know, if you walked up to someone and you said, hey, you know, what are three of your biggest fears? The person would be like, what? And even if it's a friend of yours and you call them up and you say, hey, hey, you know, guy or gal, what do you worry, what are you deeply worried about in your life? They'd say, I'm not going to answer that question. And so you need to sort of build a base to get to that deep revelatory stuff. So how do you do that? There's a series of questions called the fast friends paradigm, which asks a simple set of questions and then a more complicated set of questions and eventually an even deeper, more revelatory set of questions. But they lead people in sort of 45 minutes to feel more connected to anyone, whether it's a stranger initially, whether it's someone that you already know. At the end of this series of questions, you feel more like you deeply know this person. And the way it works is it starts safe and then it builds. And what do I mean by that? Well, it starts really in a very basic, simple, non-revelatory way. You know, if you had to pick somebody to have dinner with anyone in the world, who would it be, right? That's an easy question that anybody can answer that doesn't feel too revelatory. But by asking some of these initial questions, revealing some small, simple, you know, beginning things about each other, we start to build trust. We go back and forth. I ask you, you ask me. I start to feel like I know you a little bit better. And now when we get to some more of the deep, more revelatory questions, we're both more willing to answer and play that game because we feel like we have that base to build from. And so don't start with the deep revelatory stuff and don't end up with the really sort of just surface level things. Start surface, use that to build a base and from that base get to the more deeper, more revelatory type of questions. And what I love is allowing an opportunity for both of you to share. So so often we'll feel like, oh, if I just keep asking questions, maybe it's on a first date or maybe it's the first time hanging out and we're not revealing much about ourselves, right? We're doing follow-ups, you heard from the show, follow-ups are likable, I want to be likable, but if you're not revealing, that's the other piece to this. So if I were to call you and say, hey, Jonah, I've really been struggling with this deep fear of public speaking of mine. I've taken courses. I'm not sure about hitting record on the podcast. And I reveal that to you. If I go, hey, what have you been struggling with? You're more likely to think about something in that vein to, again, meet me in the middle to mimic, to foster that connection. But if you're just asking a series of questions without divulging your answers, right? So the study was both sides participating. That's something that trips up a lot of our clients. And the work that we do is they get so excited for the magic word and the question to ask, the prompt, and they forget that it's a two-way street. You have to be sharing in the vulnerability to build that fast connection. Starting safe and building only works if both of you are sort of revealing things, right? If one person reveals a little bit, it makes the other person more comfortable with revealing, which makes the other person more comfortable and sort of it builds by going back and forth. I think we all have friends, I can certainly think of one in my own life who is really interested in how my life is going and that's great. And they often ask me questions, but it's basically just that question after question after question. And it's nice in some ways. It suggests that they care, but I don't really have any understanding of how they're doing. And at a certain point it feels a little bit forced, right? It feels almost like we're walking through an exercise rather than you're really asking how I'm doing. And so it's very important to do a little bit of that back and forth and not just ask, but reveal as well. And that is somebody that you have a relationship with. So it's even more awkward for somebody to go to a networking event or a first day and go, okay, show interest in the other person. I'm just gonna ask them questions and I'll let them do all the work. Well, it's like, okay, well, it's going, after a while, there's only so many questions that one can ask before that interaction. The conversation sort of collapses on itself and it feels interrogative. And the minute it feels uncomfortable, the other person is trying to figure out, how do I get out of this situation? Yeah, we did some interesting research. It's not in the book, but about why certain conversations last longer. So we had people have a variety of conversations with people they know a little bit well. They could talk about whatever they wanted and at any point they could move on to another conversation topic rather than sort of sticking on the same one they were on. And you touched on this a little bit, but part of a conversation lasting is both people contributed. Absolutely. We found when we measured sort of how much each person talked in a given topic, when it got too far from even, then the conversation tended to die, right? On the one hand, yeah, you're showing interest in what someone else is saying, but if they're hogging all the space, either because they want to, they're a little too self-focused or you're encouraging them to, it doesn't feel even. And so they might be happy to talk forever, but it'd be boring for you or you keep prodding them and eventually they go, I don't know anything about you. And so it fizzles out. And so keeping it a little bit closer to even seems important for our leading conversations to last. Yeah, thank you for sharing that because it's something we've been preaching in class. And of course, it's very easy if you're analytical to think of great questions because you don't have to divulge. You don't have to share much about yourself but we can find ourselves on a question train that actually kills the possibility of a conversation or even a relationship if we go too far and we're out of balance. I'd love to, we sort of touched on this, but I'd love to delve deeper into identity and agency because this was also a very revealing part of the book. And I think some members of our audience have children and there are a lot of great examples of ways that we can have a positive impact and influence on people in our lives when we understand how to use our language to tap into identity. And then we could also influence ourselves by tapping into identity. So I was chatting with one of my coaching clients this morning and he's been working on his marathon pace. And he's trying to set a PR in this upcoming marathon. And one of the goals we had set together was he's a mean lean runner. And he loves running, talks a lot about running but he tied his goal to this identity that I'm a lean mean runner. And he had been struggling with eating too many cakes and desserts, apparently in Denmark there's a lot of Danishes and cakes going around. And he's like, you know, I can't eat cake, I can't eat cakes, I'm a lean mean runner. And it was working, but he was still struggling time to times with eating cake. And then we switched it to I don't eat cake because I'm a lean mean runner. And he found it much easier to avoid cake and he was tapping into now with this identity piece, the training sessions were easy, he signed up for a running coach and all of a sudden he's meeting and surpassing numbers that were crazy to him and we had started working together. And I just found that so interesting combining those two things for him at such a huge impact when it comes to identity, we often don't realize that language is impacting our identity and it can lead us astray if we're not using it properly. So what's going on with identity and the words that we're using? We'll start simple and maybe get a little bit more complex but often we're trying to get other people to do something. We may be asking them for help. We may be if we work for a nonprofit, asking them to vote or engage in a number of different actions that we'd like them to engage in. And often when we ask people, we do exactly that. We ask them for help, for example. But a few years ago, a study looked at whether there might be a better way to ask for assistance. And so they went to a local elementary school and they asked four and five year olds to help clean up a classroom. Books were everywhere, toys on the floor, crayons and so on. And for many of the students, they said, hey, can you please help clean up? But for a second group of students, they added just a couple letters at the end of that word rather than asking people to help or for help, they asked them to be a helper. Now, the difference between the word help and the word helper is quite small. You can probably tell they're two letters different so they're quite, quite small. Yet that small difference had a big impact. People were about a 30% more likely to end up helping if they were asked to be a helper rather than just help. And it's not just kids in classrooms. There was another study on voting that happened more recently where they asked some people to please go vote. And other people, they asked them to be a voter. Now, again, the difference between voting or going to vote and being a voter is quite, quite small. Yet it led to about a 15% increase in people's likelihood of turning out. And so you could say, well, hold on, vote, voter, help, helper, what's the difference? And the difference is that asking people to be a voter or be a helper turns an action into an identity. And what do I mean by that? Well, there are many actions that we could take. We can go for a run, we can help somebody, we can vote, we can do a variety of different things. We're often busy, we don't have time to do all these actions but we wanna hold desirable identities. I wanna see myself as a runner maybe, I wanna see myself as a helper, I wanna see myself as a voter, I wanna see myself as smart and competent and all these things. And so when the actions become opportunities to claim or sort of hold desired identities, we're more likely to do them, right? Voting, sure, yeah, I know I should vote, I don't have the time, but if voting's an opportunity to be a voter, well, now I'm more likely to do it. Similarly, if running's not just a thing I do, but it's an opportunity to show myself and others that I am a runner, I'm more likely to do it. And so by turning actions into identities, we can make ourselves more likely to take those desired actions. And Johnny and I, when SoulCycle first came to LA, we took some classes together and it's interesting to watch businesses use this same identity language. So we'd get on the bike and they would call us athletes. And it's like, this is my first workout class, like how am I an athlete, right? You look around, you're like, well, at least they're not athletes next to me, we're all trying to get fit but I don't know that we'd classify ourselves as athletes but they'd use it over and over again. And I'd love to know how that helped with their retention, people showing up to class, keeping the membership, because they tapped into that identity that's aspirational that we all hold in high regard. It also works in the inverse, right? You can actually, if you force identity on people that they don't want, you can make them less likely to take that action and disagree with you as well. Yeah, so sometimes people ask me if I'm an expert on XYZ and I always say, I'm not an expert because I'm sitting there going, an expert is a strong consistent thing, right? If I tell you about two people, one person runs and one person is a runner. If you had to guess which one runs more often, you'd say, well, the runner, right? That's an identity rather than just an action. And so, I'm sure I have some expertise but I don't know if I can call myself an expert. That to me seems a little bit too strong but I love what you talked about SoulCycle doing. Now going to class isn't just an opportunity to go to class, it's opportunity to be an athlete. I like seeing myself as an athlete and so I'm gonna be more likely to go to claim that identity and it can even lead us to avoid negative things, right? Losing is bad, being a loser is worse. Cheating on a test is bad, being a cheater is even worse. And so research shows, hey, when cheating would make you a cheater, you're less likely to do it. When in a classroom setting, for example, if students were told that cheating would be an indication that they were a cheater, well now they don't wanna do it. And so it's like that old littering campaign which went something along as a, don't be a litter bug. Well, if littering is just an action, maybe I don't mean to, but I've dropped something, but hold on, if littering would make me a litter bug, now I'm less likely to do it. You know, it's funny that you mentioned that identity at SoulCycle, because now their apparel was part of that branding of you. And so of course you go there, then you wanna be part of the group and that identity because they cherish it, they speak to it so highly. Now you're spending money on the clothes that you fit in and that you are this person. I love that. And one of the things that we do in the X Factor Accelerator is we work on everyone's identity right out of the gate by getting them to identify and define what their core values are. And then engaging in those core values throughout their week, which only then solidifies that identity and now they're living into it. And all the things that in the past, they may have felt was difficult, all of a sudden it's easier to stick to because now they have a why because it is part of their core values, that core identity. Another big piece of the work that we do, and I'm glad you mentioned that identity piece around loser, is self-talk. And very often, if we aren't using the right magic words in our self-talk, we can take on identities that lead to poor behaviors, terrible beliefs about ourself in action, bad habits, but if we create space, diffuse from those thoughts and emotions in our self-talk, we can actually live in a manner and take action in a manner that fosters us reaching our goals, us building the right habits. So I'd love for you to unpack self-talk because Johnny and I are huge fans of it, but I know many in our audience use it in the wrong way and sometimes have self-talk that guides them astray. There's a great book called Chatter that talks a bit about self-talk and is by a researcher from University of Michigan who's done a bunch of foundational work in this space. But one thing I wanted, some of his research I talk a little about in the book, is kind of how, as you guys said, we talk to ourselves when we're challenged. And so imagine you're really nervous about a big presentation or a first date or a meeting or something and you say, oh, I feel so nervous, what am I gonna do? I'm probably gonna mess it up. You often talk to yourself in first person, right? I this, I that, why can't I do this? Those type of things. But if a friend asked you for advice, if a friend was dealing with, about to give a tough presentation or nervous about something, what would you tell them? You'd say, you're gonna be fine. You're gonna do a great job. You're really smart. Go get them Jonah, you can do it. Part of that is yes, we're not dealing with the situation, the other person is, but part of it is also not dealing with it allows us to distance ourselves from that situation because we're not part of it, we can see it in a more distant way, which can allow us to see that actually it's gonna be fine. It's not gonna be as big of a deal. And so Ethan and some colleagues did some really neat work here where they asked people, some people who were put in a situation of giving a difficult speech, some of them they were asked to talk to themselves like they usually would. So use I and first person pronouns and those type of things. But for a second group of people, they were asked to talk to themselves like an outsider might, right? Use words like you or use a first name or something along those lines like an outsider might. And they found that this subtle shift talking to yourself like somebody else might made people not only give better presentations but be less anxious as a result, right? Because it helps them move beyond the situation itself construe things a little more broadly and feel less negatively as a result. Yeah, and there are so many instances where that anxiety can get the best of you. So if you dial in the self-talk, it allows you to overcome it in a much more compelling and easily digestible way, which I know for many in our audience that could be the job interview, the first date public speaking where that anxiety comes up. Another point that I wanna touch on that I also found fascinating and obviously many in our audience want to learn how to become more confident and be more confident in their communication. And the piece that really stood out to me is tense. So often we throw around past tense because it happened to us. We love that book, we love that movie, I watched Last of Us last night, it was great. We don't realize that tense actually has an impact on how people perceive us and whether or not we're seen in a confident manner. So how does past versus present tense work in our communication and which should we be doing to appear more confident? Yeah, so this is some recent research actually. I don't even know if it's out yet, but it's almost out that a colleague and friend Grant Packard and I did. And the key intuition here is, as you said, is we often talk about things in certain ways. We could say I liked this restaurant or I like this restaurant. The food is good or the food was good. That job candidate seemed interesting or they seem interesting. In all of those cases, we have an opportunity to use the past tense, the food was good, you liked the restaurant, the candidate seemed good or present tense. They seem good, the food is good, you like the restaurant. And it's a subtle shift, but what talking about the present does rather than the past is it makes it seem more general, right? If I liked the food, it suggests, okay, the time that I went to that particular place, the experience I had, the food was good in the past. If I say the food is good or I like that restaurant, it says not only was it good for me in the past, but I'm making a suggestion that it will be good forevermore for anyone else who goes, right? When I'm saying the food is good, I'm making an assertion. It's just the truth, the food is good. And by speaking in the present tense in those cases, it increases persuasion in part because it makes us seem more certain and confident. If someone's willing to not just say they liked the food or that the food was good, but that the food is good and they like it, it suggests something is generally true. And if it's generally true, they must be confident enough to make that assertion. And so we're more likely to listen to them. Now the flip side is we may find ourselves hedging. And that hedging can actually make us appear less confident. And it's something that Johnny and I catch in our clients all the time. And it's a speech pattern that if you've ever recorded yourself or edited a podcast or listened to, you'll catch yourself doing and you can quickly correct. But hedging is often a part of language because, well, we don't wanna come across too certain of things. We wanna leave ourselves some wiggle room, but it actually makes us appear less confident. Yeah, I find hedges to be quite interesting. And I hedge all the time, right? I'm the worst at this. I say, you know, this might be true or this will probably work. Or I think this is a good course of action. And in some sense, we hedge almost non-consciously, right? It's like a linguistic crutch, like ums and us that we might throw in along the way when we're trying to figure out what to say. But these crutches that we use often undermine our air impact. We did some research looking at tens of thousands of online reviews, as well as conversations and other situations. And we found that the more people hedge, the less likely others are to listen to what they have to say. The less likely people are to be persuaded and the less likely are to listen to that person in the future. Because if someone's not even sure themselves whether something will work or whether themselves whether something is a good idea, why would I go ahead and do it, right? On the other side, if someone seems really confident of what they're saying, they seem really certain, it's hard to believe that what they're saying couldn't be true because they seem so confident about it. And so I'm not saying never hedge. There are certainly situations where hedging is a good idea, but let's not just hedge because it's convenient, right? Let's make sure we're using hedges on purpose. And second, right, maybe sometimes that we do have uncertainty, right? We're not sure a strategy will work because to work a few things have to happen. Well, then call out that uncertainty, right? Own that uncertainty rather than saying, I don't know if this will work. Instead we can say, I think this is a great strategy, but for it to work, these things need to happen. And so we're being very clear where the uncertainty is and telling everybody, hey, I'm not uncertain that this is a good idea. I do think it's a good idea, but these things have to happen for the magic to work. When I first started learning to write copy for the company hedging and those words were, was one of the biggest things that I had to learn how to break. And it made me think about why did I use that so much in my speech and in my writing? And when you are so certain to say things are this way, you run the risk of being challenged. That's what we think in our head. So rather than run the risk of being challenged, I'll just use this edge and I can squeak by, but the reality is the other person now is just tuning out. And so you wanna opt for being challenged. At least they're paying attention. At least you can have a conversation about what it is that you're so certain about. As you guys already said that there are times, these are tools, right? And there are times to use the tools and there are times to use a different tool. And there are times to hedge, right? If we want to show that we're open and opposing viewpoints that receptive to what somebody has to say, sometimes hedges can be a good idea. We're not overconfident. We don't think we know everything. We're willing to listen. And so hedges can be a good way to help in that regard. We love this conversation and all of the work that you've done. Magic words that certainly have a huge impact on Johnny and myself and our clients. As you know, we love asking every guest what their unique X factor is. What do you think makes you extraordinary? And don't hedge in your answer, Jonah. I don't think anything makes me extraordinary. I think I'm a pretty ordinary person, but I will say that one trait that I value in myself and others is curiosity. Being curious is a really valuable skill. Being willing to learn, being willing to find many things fascinating, I think has served me well in life and I think it's a good trait in anyone. So Jonah, where can people find your work in the new book? Yeah, so you can find more information about the book, one pager with the framework, application guide and those sorts of things at my website, which is just JonahBurger.com. The book is available wherever books are sold and folks can also find me on LinkedIn or Twitter at J1Burger. Thank you for stopping by again. It was great treat and we're excited for our audience to check out. Magic words, thank you, Jonah. Thanks for having me.