 What is up, YouTube? Today, Johnny and Michael are joining me to give you one simple trick to make all of your small talk more captivating. So let's jump right in. Now, in a previous episode on small talk, we dispelled some myths and talked about one of the biggest mistakes that you are making when it comes to small talk and why you may find it boring, uninteresting, or you just may be ineffective at actually creating the conversations that you want. Today, Johnny and Michael are joining me to discuss with you a simple trick that we can use to make our small talk captivating and allow you to instantly connect with anyone. So we're excited to dig into some science today and give you one of our time-tested strategies straight from our boot camp training that we teach to all of our coaching clients so that you can break out of boring small talk and start having the conversations that you really want to have with strangers, friends, and family. So let's jump right in. Now, we got to start with our conversation formula because one of the things that we noticed in the last 15 years of running in-person training in our boot camps as well as online coaching in our X Factor program is that many of us struggle with how to manage small talk and make it more exciting and fun for both the person we're talking to and ourselves. And in our video work, in our boot camp program, where we actually film you interacting with our coaches in small talk scenarios, we found time and time again that people just ran out of things to say. They didn't really know how to lead and steer the conversation into more exciting topics. And of course, that led to both our coaches and our clients frustrated in conversation going nowhere. So we came up with a simple conversation formula that you can use in any situation. I'm talking grocery store, shopping mall, on a date, or just on the street corner waiting for the light to change to cross. And this allows you to engage strangers in a much more meaningful way and hopefully create the conversations that are no longer boring. AJ, before we get started with the conversation formula, I also want to lay out what problem the conversation formula solves. And this problem is one that all of us deal with from time to time, especially if there's tension and pressure on the interaction. So maybe you're meeting somebody for the first time. Maybe you're on your first date or or Zoom meeting with somebody that you find attractive. Maybe you're just trying to break the ice in the cells and get to know your customer so that they would open up a bit so you can get more information about them to be able to sell to them. Now, the problem that we're going to fix that the conversation formula is going to fix is not having anything to say and it devolving into a terra gate of questioning. We all know that questions allow us to say something, but it also puts the pressure and the work on the other person to answer. So if I ask somebody a question, they're going to have to give me an answer. If I ask them another question, they're going to have to give me an answer. And you would think, well, doesn't that solve the problem? It's not the problem of asking the questions. It's the problem of asking too many questions. You see, when you get nervous, it's easy to get stuck in what we call the question train because you get stuck in your head. You're nervous. You're under pressure. There's a lot of tension on the interaction. This forces you to self soothe. So it forces you to go inward and then also into your head. So you're now, if you get a question out, they're going to answer, but your brain is working on what to say next, and it's going to be easier for you to go. What is the next question? I can ask. So now rather than listening to the answer from the other person, you miss their answer. You're also in your head looking for another question and you blurt that out. Now, the problem comes when you ask too many questions in a row. The conversation collapses on itself because the other person who is in a tension, stress, pressure filled situation of meeting you for the first time is now has the added pressure of having to answer all your questions. And you can only throw out so many questions in a row before the other person starts to feel extra tension of pressure put on them. And they start to realize that they're putting in all the work. They're answering all of your questions. And by the time you get to three, four questions in a row, they're feeling awkward. They're feeling interrogated. We're huge fans of Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and we've all heard we just need to be more interested in the other person to become interesting. It's great advice, but it's not practical because what ends up happening is you take interest by asking more and more questions and stacking all of this pressure on the other person, but those questions don't solve the riddle to effective small talk because you're not disclosing any information about yourself. And of course, a stranger is going to be backpedaling if they're telling you their favorite car, what their favorite sports team is, how they feel about the weather, where they work, how many kids they have. And you can see after a few minutes of conversation, well, there's an imbalance in how much you know about the other person versus how much they know about you. So we're taking that old advice from Dale Carnegie. Yes, you should be interested to be more interesting, but we're actually making it practical with our formula so that you can do it in a more impactful way and actually enjoy small talk because as we talked about in the last episode, enjoying small talk is very important for you to convey the right emotions to make you captivating and exciting. And we now know there are so many opportunities for you to turn small talk into connection if you have the skill in your back pocket to make small talk more fun. And as you know, we love science here. So Michael, there's a study that backs this up around the importance of self disclosure and why we can't just rely on questions to make small talk captivating. Yes, that's right. There's a lot of research around this. And my favorite comes from Sidney Sharar. And he writes in self disclosure and experimental analysis for the transparent self. Disclosure begets disclosure. So let me explain this. What he found is that a stranger is much more likely to share something personal with you if you share something personal. First, they're even more likely to share something personal than your close connections. Let me say that again. A stranger is more likely to share something personal with you than your close connections. And the reason for that is that when we engage with someone we don't know, there are actually two levels to this. The first one is that if you engage with someone you don't know, you automatically explain a little bit more. You mention things that with a close connection, you might not necessarily bring to the forefront again because you assume often wrongly that the other person thinks about this right now. And the other reason is that you tend to explain more and be more open yourself as well. Here's where it gets interesting and counterintuitive. This doesn't work when you're sharing facts. This only works if you're sharing emotions, but we'll get to that in the second part of what we have to share with you guys today. So let's talk about the conversation formula and how we can get out of this question train. And remember guys, if you've learned something from this video and I hope you did, make sure you hit the subscribe button, hit that notification bell, that way you'll always know when we put up a new video. And if you have any questions, make sure you put them in the comments below. During our video work in bootcamp, one of our coaches came up to me and said, I find the same conversation happening over and over and over again. And we need to figure out a way to get our clients to stop asking so much questions because I feel like I'm under a spotlight, like I'm being interrogated as if I did something wrong. And I don't think or feel that they actually care about my answers. So think about that for a second. If all you're doing is asking question after question, the other person starts to feel like, well, I can say anything. I could say I love unicorns and I was born on the moon. AJ is not doing anything with my responses. So we have to treat their answers to our questions with care and actually start to relate to their responses. Because what they're doing in giving us their answer is they're opening up conversational threads for us to explore and have fun with. So let's set the conversation formula because this is such a powerful skill to have on your tool belt. And it's so easy to apply everywhere in your life with every conversation, you're going to see the magic happen immediately when you follow this formula. So what do we do? We ask a question, right? We talked about it. Questions are great. They get the other person to open up and we're all wired as humans to help one another. So you've been stopped on the street with some stranger asking you for directions to the nearest Starbucks or what the time is or how do I get to this gas station? I'm lost. Those questions, even if we don't know someone at all and we're in a hurry, will often stop to help a fellow human. It's just hardwired into our DNA and our survival mechanism to support one another because we're community creatures. So questions compel the other person to give you an answer versus just walking up to someone and making a statement like the weather's great. Well, if I make the statement the weather's great, that person standing at the stoplight could assume I'm talking to myself, maybe I'm talking on my phone, I have my earbuds in. It's very easy for that person to assume that that statement wasn't towards them. So a question is actually a very pointed way to start a conversation with a stranger. You're asking them for some bit of information. You use the word that if you ask a question, it would compel them to answer. And that's exactly right. Most people are very friendly and will oblige you in answering that question. And we tested this in Times Square, in Union Square, in New York City, arguably one of the most difficult places on the planet to strike up conversations with strangers. You've probably heard how unfriendly New Yorkers are. We've used this in Vienna with Michael. So this question to start a conversation with strangers universally works because of what Johnny just pointed out. Now, what are the questions? Because the questions are important here. These are not yes or no questions. We're not asking, did you, do you, can you? We're asking slightly open-ended questions. What are you drinking? Who are you with? Where are you from? These are questions that require an answer that's more than just a yes or a no or a grunt or a nod. Okay, that's a really important distinction here. And we actually spoke with Dr. Carol Robin at Stanford recently on an interview and she said, we want to avoid the why questions and especially in small talk because why questions put people on the defensive? All right, so we're talking about who, what, where, when, how questions. Those are great questions to ask someone for the first time to strike up that conversation. And it's an important first step in our conversation formula. So let's say you meet somebody, you're having a drink, they're sitting next to a debar and you strike up a conversation and you ask, oh, so what is it that you do for a living? Oh, well, they answer back, I'm a nurse. Now, the closed-ended question is, do you enjoy that line of work? Well, yes, I do. Now you have to find yourself another question because the conversation is dead. So rather than asking, do you like that line of work? What if you asked, what is it about that line of work you enjoy so much? Do you see in that question how they now have to think about a few different reasons and you're focusing them on what they enjoy about their line of work. So you've also put them in a positive state where they can now begin to give you a few reasons about why they cherish being a nurse.