 What is up, YouTube? Today, we're talking about how to transition out of small talk into meaningful conversations. Now, in our previous episodes here on the podcast, you can find them here and here, we talked about small talk, how important it is to create those opportunities in your life, and some simple strategies to start having more fun interacting with small talk with other people. Today, we're going to give you the science and strategies on how to transition out of that small talk and have amazing conversations with anyone that you meet. What's up, everybody? And welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week, and we want to make sure that you guys get notified. And in order to do that, you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. So in our last two Toolbox episodes, we talked about how to make small talk more compelling and open up a world of opportunities with anyone that you meet. Today, I'm joined by Johnny here in Las Vegas and Michael all the way in Vienna. And we're going to break down how to take small talk and turn it into meaningful conversation, or as we call it, smart talk. That's right. How do we transition out of those surface level conversations into something deeper that can create that opportunity for a relationship? It's all about relationships. Where are these relationships that we're talking about? We're talking about relationships at work. We're talking about leadership. We're talking about sales, talking to your prospect. In all of these cases, you need to be obsessed with your audience, with your prospect in order to get the information that you need in order to give them value to be able to solve their problems, to offer solutions. And you can't do that without having an understanding of who you're talking to. Now, we've been discussing this for weeks now. And my favorite thing about this, and we've said it before, if you're somebody who hasn't taken the reins of small talk, you find it boring or it doesn't go anywhere, that's on you, because it is an opportunity to set a foundation for you to allow comfort and trust to be built and vulnerability to happen from that point. Exactly. And if you're struggling with small talk, we put together a cheat sheet. That's right. A phone wallpaper with our conversation formula, compelling questions to use in conversation, and some quick tips for you. If you'd like to learn more and get that free cheat sheet from us, go to the articharm.com slash small talk and grab that download today. After we've initiated small talk, well, as Johnny said, we have to take the lead. We have to take it somewhere. But there's a huge myth. And that myth is that it's binary, right, Michael? Most people think that you leave small talk and you jump into the deep end and you go full on vulnerability, full on big topics, talking, vulnerable stuff. In reality, it's a small and gradual process. And we're going to show you guys how you can slowly transition by adding just a tiny little bit of vulnerability, see how it's received, how it's reciprocated, and then move on from there. So really in baby steps going from small talk to the really big stuff. Now, we see this blind spot in our boot camp participants all the time. They think that if they just have a bunch of little small conversations, then naturally something is going to come out of that. And as we know, hope is not a strategy. You can't just rely on your small talk to create connection in your life. You have to be able to transition out of small talk into our meaningful conversation. And the way to do that is with vulnerability. Now, here's where that blind spot comes in. Because many of us think that vulnerability is sharing our deepest darkest secrets, the things we're afraid of, the things that make us anxious. And that's just not the case. In fact, vulnerability is a lot easier if you shift your perspective on it. But first, we want to share with you a metaphor that we use that hopefully will help you understand how important vulnerability is and how you can lead. And that's our cave metaphor. Right, Johnny? Report is built on disclosure and disclosure happens when two people risk vulnerabilities. It is that risking of vulnerabilities is showing investment into the other person and that you trust the other person. And you're going to have to lead that if you expect the other person to be vulnerable to risk in that relationship. So the cave analogy allows us to look at it objectively and paints a good picture of what it looks like. So Michael was talking about lateral conversation, lateral questions. Where are you from? What do you do? Do you enjoy that line of work? And these are basic. We hear them all the time. And this is how conversations get started. You can say that they're almost as if they're ice breakers. But where are we going? Well, if you're in cells, if you're building a team, if you're trying to get people to buy into your ideas, you have to lead them into being vulnerable and lead them into hearing your ideas and accepting of those ideas. So we're going to use those ice breaking type lateral questions to walk up to this cave, the mouth of the cave. So I'm talking to AJ. I'm asking him where he's from, what he does for a living, and he's following along. He's answering. There isn't much in the way of vulnerability to answer those questions on a surface level. And you could say that we've walked up to the cave. Now, I may ask AJ on a vertical question. Now, what is it about that line of work you like so much? Now, for AJ to answer that question, he will have to take a step into that cave. Now, as you could tell from the analogy, if he's nervous about it, if he has any discomfort in this idea of being vulnerable, he's going to look to me, and he's going to be hesitant in walking in. I have to be the leader here to show that going into that cave, nothing is going to happen, that risk is great, and that vulnerability will lead to us enjoying the conversation and having more fun and being more vulnerable together as we build this rapport. So I'm going to answer those questions. I'm going to start to become vulnerable first. This allows me in the analogy to walk into the cave, shine a flashlight around to show AJ that it's okay, that he's welcome to come in. And the way we do that simply is through sharing emotion. In fact, emotion is the single commonality that's universal amongst all humans. You may not have the same family experience, you certainly most likely don't have the same occupation, maybe you don't enjoy the same things to relax and unwind, and maybe your dreams are completely different. So when we're using the Ford acronym, we're talking about data and that exchange, it's a great way to get started and to move laterally. But vertically is on emotions and emotions have a scale. So when we're trying to take small talk into smart talk, we want to start focusing on positive emotions and sharing our own positive emotions because emotions are also contagious. So if we're bringing energy and emotion into the conversation, like that cave analogy, we're taking that first step into the dark cave. And of course, they're going to be ready to follow behind you and start sharing more emotion. And I know we've used this Maya Angelou quote on this show constantly, because it is so impactful. People don't remember what you say, they don't remember what you do, they only remember how you made them feel. That's right, your sales prospects only remember how good you made them feel. Are you able to solve their problems and feel supported? Do they really believe that you understand that, right? Those are the feelings that guide our decision making, that guide our ability to purchase something, that guide all of our behaviors. We like to backwards rationalize those behaviors, but it all starts from an emotional place. So what we're doing is we're adding emotion into the conversation. You can think of it as sharing what you're excited about at your job or why you're fired up in the morning to do what you do. And then asking, what is it about your line of work that's so exciting for you? We've walked a step into that cave. We've created an opportunity for the other person to add emotion into the conversation. And what do you know? We've started to transition out of boring small talk and into smart talk. Now, if you enjoyed this video, smash the like button and go ahead and subscribe. Every single week, Johnny, Michael, and I are delivering great science strategies and tips to help you supercharge your conversations and make more connections and create more amazing opportunities in your life. The way that I like to describe this is lateral communication versus vertical communication. So I think about small talk like throwing a skipping stone over Lake and it's like touching the surface again and again and again, but it never goes deep. It always stays on the surface. Those are the small talk questions like, where are you from? What do you do? What do you do for fun? Right? It always stays on the surface. Now, how could we bring in emotion? How can we bring in just a little bit of vulnerability to test the ground and to shine the light into that cave? Well, we go vertical by saying, what do you like most about it? Like if I were to ask you, what do you do? And you say, well, you know, I'm a barista, I make coffee. I could now ask where you're from, or I could go deeper, bring in that emotional component and ask, what do you like most about being a barista? And now we're going just, it's just a tiny little step, but it's me bringing emotion in by showing you sincere interest about your work and you bringing emotion out in the answer that you're going to give. And this is where this entire process that we're talking about of going vertical is so bulletproof because you make that first step into the cave by asking an emotionally charged question like, what are summers like in Toronto? What is that like? Now, here's the cool thing. So you make that small little step and if the other person doesn't want to follow because that is not something they like to talk about, maybe the summers in Toronto, I have never been either, maybe they're always like really rainy and they don't want to talk about it. Guess what? They're going to give you a very short answer and they're not going to follow you into the cave, which is perfectly fine. You just move to the next lateral question and maybe now they're talking about their favorite hobby. And again, you're like, hey, what do you like most about wakeboarding? What do you find so amazing about that? And so again, you're probing deeper, you're going vertical. And maybe they bite there, maybe then they're like, you know, this is a cave I want to go in. So you're leading, I'll follow. Let's go that route. So, so this is the slow transition into vulnerability that is really like bullet proof, because if the person doesn't want to follow, you just go to the next question. That's right. That's the family occupation, recreation and dreams or the Ford acronym, which you probably heard on past small talk episodes. That leads to very surface level conversation. And what Michael is talking about is it's okay to go surface until you can find some emotional contacts to relate on. And then we go vertical. And let's be honest, not everyone is ready to go vertical all of the time. Not everyone is ready to get vulnerable. So we like to think of it as like casting if you're fishing, right? You throw the hook out there, you see how they react. If they're not interested in that conversational hook or those vertical questions, you simply skim over the top and move to another one of those subjects until you can really find that emotion to connect and resonate on. And how do we find that emotion? You know, we hear this time and time again from our boot camp participants. I'm boring. I don't have interesting stories. I don't know about these emotions. It made me happy. It made me sad. And we like to think of emotions as painting with watercolor. You want to add more emotion to your conversation, more emotion to your story time. That's the magic. So how do we do that, Johnny? Before we get there, I want to go over the idea of casting. And I want our audience to look at it as casting. Every time you cast your line into the lake, does it mean just because you cast it in that you're going to get a bite? And you're going to throw out, you'll use one of those icebreaker questions. You'll use the Ford acronym of family, occupation, recreation and dreams. And that doesn't mean that because you've thrown it out there that you're going to get a return on that. That that other person is going to bite. But that's okay. Anytime you've been out fishing, you give it a few times or you go or to use the baseball as another analogy of going up at bat. Sometimes you're going to get hit and sometimes not. But what's important is that you throw your line out a few times, testing the waters to see what comes back. If we're looking at our conversation to go from lateral movements to vertical movements, we want to enhance the good feelings that are already happening. And we do this with yes and we do this with matching the energy. And we allow the questioning. I mean, AJ brought up the Ford acronym, family, occupation, recreation and dreams. Those are questions about those subjects are easy, they're relatable, and they're very exciting. So if we're going to be discussing the subjects in the Ford acronym or any of the ice breaking questions that get small talk movement, it's apparent that when you are looking to go vertical, you're not using why questions. You're asking questions that will enhance the emotions that they're already feeling and allow them to open up and continue being vulnerable, going deeper. If you ask a why question, so for instance, we were using the barista job, right? So what is it that you do? Oh, I'm a barista. Why do you like that line of work? Or why did you get into that line of work? Well, that triggers them into now rationalizing their behaviors and thoughts and actions around that line of work. And this is what we're trying to avoid. So with skipping the why questions and go to what is it about that line of work that you enjoy so much? What is fun about a regular day going into making everyone's most favorite most important drink of the day? And we know that those vertical questions will break anyone out of their autopilot. So don't be discouraged if it takes a beat for someone to answer your vertical question, like what's so fun about being a barista? Guess what? They probably haven't heard that question before. So it's going to take them a second or two to really think through that answer. But those are the magical moments in compelling conversations where people snap out of their autopilot and they actually engage with their emotional sense and they start to think about what's truly enjoyable and exciting in their life and then they share it with you. So now Dave shared something that's excited them and they're going to remember that feeling of excitement tied to you. And we've just created a compelling, captivating, charismatic conversation out of a simple, small talk strategy that everyone has heard before. So let's give a few examples here. AJ, what do you do for a living? Oh, I run a restaurant. Ah, and how do you enjoy it? Yeah, it's pretty fun. Man, I can only imagine sitting down, thinking of decor and the food and the emotions that you want to elicit and the experience that you want to give people goes from not only the food but walking into that restaurant. And if you can turn them on through the decor, the food, the energy, you are going to not only have a patron for life, you're going to have a friend for life. There's nothing better than watching our customers leave the restaurant smiling after the great experience they had with the atmosphere and the food. Now, I wanted to pull this interaction apart. I gave AJ the question. AJ answers, restaurateur. I give him another question. What is that line of work? This is now the vertical, right? And the answer I got back was, I like it. And what happened? I realized that I wasn't going to get much from AJ. So I go ahead and answered that question. I used excitement, emotions, and I built a narrative of what that sort of work would mean to me. And now, because I shared, I walked into the cave, that evokes emotions from AJ and now he feels compelled to share what he likes from it because I've already added to how I felt. This goes back to a few episodes ago where I talked about the imaginary jelly bean jar between me and the person that you're speaking to. In this case, it's going to be AJ. And I threw a jelly bean in as a question. AJ just threw a jelly bean back and it wasn't very much to go on. So I threw another jelly bean in hoping that he's going to throw some more in. And he didn't. He just matched that jelly bean. So I started throwing in the verticals, right? I started throwing in more and more jelly beans till it got to the point where now AJ felt compelled to give me his position, his side, why he enjoys it so much. And we got to that place because I shared first. That's so key. If you find that you're ending up in conversational dead ends or you're not getting a response, answer your own question and share that excitement and enthusiasm. And you will see that actually powers through any moments of silence where you might be thinking it's awkward. You can paper that right over with some excitement and some energy and you will not miss a beat conversational. As we say all the time on the show, the stronger frame dissolves the weaker one. So if you're bringing the energy, you're bringing the enthusiasm, you're answering your own questions. Sure enough, the person you're having a conversation with is going to start to pick up pace, pick up speed and match you because you're adding to. And when we're giving value, we're adding that energy and emotion into the conversation. That's how we transition out of small talk into compelling conversation.