 Well, considering the pandemic has put us in this position, everyone needs to take the lead here and look for what their week, their days and their weeks look like. And if they don't have opportunities, they need to be creating them. They need to be seeing this as working it as a muscle, just like they're scheduling time at the gym, just like they're scheduling time to make sure that they get the things done that they need to do that would benefit their lives. This has direct benefit to their lives. 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 gonna 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. Now, a big part of small talk is simply to find out if the other person is receptive to conversation and receptive to potentially connecting and socially bonding. So it is important to realize that small talk is a small phase of any interaction. It's certainly not something that we want to stay in for a long period of time. We wanna have the ability to transition out of small talk into more meaningful conversation, but it does have an important role in terms of meeting and connecting with strangers. Because of course, we need to gauge first, is this person even interested in talking with me? And if all you're doing to break the ice is making statements, making observations, going for the laugh, that's not a really effective way to survey if the other person wants to participate in this conversation, if the other person is interested in engaging with you. So that's why we're so big on questions to break the ice, to strike up that conversation, to become more interested. But it is important to note, many of us who maybe have listened to the podcast before who have tried that exact strategy of asking a question to break the ice, we'll often find ourselves in a bit of a trap. And that trap is we ask a question that we don't really care that much about. And therefore we probably don't pay too close attention to the other person's answer, right? How's the weather? Where are you from? Well, we probably don't really care that much about that information. It isn't necessarily that meaningful to us. So we end up not listening. And then when you don't listen to the answer, you kind of fall into a trap of not knowing again what to say next. So the simplest answer to get out of that trap is to ask another question. Oh, well, what'd you like about growing up in Detroit, AJ? And over time, asking a ton of questions actually leads the other person to feel interrogated, to feel that you're not really that interested in what they're answering. You're maybe making fun of them or saying that you're not happy with the answers that they're giving with these quick retorts of questions. So questions are effective to break the ice, but it's not where we want to lean and keep the conversation going by questioning every single thing that person says. And we see this on video work inside of X Factor in our boot camps where it's super easy to get in your head, to not pay attention to their answer, to not really value their answer and then quickly respond with another question. I think for our purposes here in doing this show is to get people to be breaking the ice more often. You're not gonna listen to the show, hear a couple of these bits, and then just start having amazing conversations at your next networking event. This is a skill that you build. The idea of because or asking open-ended questions needs to be done in your daily routines and your daily habits. If you're unable to do that, turning this on is going to open up floodgates that you're not gonna be able to control. And then while you're computing all the information that you're being told, you're going to go blank. Well, you're going to go blank because you're unable to absorb it all because you're trying to do all of these different things that you've been told will work in breaking the ice. The more you think about this, the more it's difficult, the more hurdles you're gonna find in front of yourself. So to listen to this is to pick out one of these concepts and do that concept over and over and over again until you're competent in that concept. I mean, for everything that we discussed in the show, hopefully the first time you hear it, it is you're now finding something out that you need to know to make your conversations much better. The second thing is now that you have a, you found out what you're unconsciously incompetent about, it is now putting it on a conscious incompetence. So you're working with it. You're getting better at the idea. You're getting better at implementing this concept. That concept will then slowly become ingrained the more you do that concept. So now we're on a conscious competence road. You've gotten better. You've used the cause effectively and now you're using it to actually hold real conversations because you're not trying to implement all these different tricks and tactics and that you've heard on a radio show. And then after that, once you are doing that regularly and you enjoy it and you're having fun and you're using it to your advantage to gather information so that you can make a sale. So you can learn about the person that you're speaking to so you can actually drive this to an intention that you have, whether it's connecting, relating or just trying to gather information from the people that you're with. And then slowly to an unconscious competence, you've learned it to the point where it's just something that you're naturally doing. And then you grab the next piece. I think it's important to point out that conversations are opportunities. And there are certainly a few members of our audience who are feeling like they don't have many opportunities in their life right now. Maybe they're frustrated with their job. Maybe they're frustrated with their current social circle. Maybe they're frustrated with feeling lonely and feeling disconnected from the pandemic. And science shows you're not alone. Many of us are feeling that way because of what has transpired. When you start to think about every single conversation as an opportunity and we look at the science behind that, science shows between 60 to 80% of jobs are through personal relationships. Those personal relationships started with someone breaking the ice, with someone striking up a conversation. Conversations are the seed that gets planted to grow into a fantastic relationship that leads to jobs. It also leads to romantic opportunities. Many of us listening to this show are going to find our significant other, our spouse, through our personal relationships. Yes, we find ourselves swiping more than ever. We've talked about this, but the way the algorithms online are set up, they are not set up to help you find your true match. They're set up to keep your attention, to keep you on the app. Many of our clients inside of our boot camps and X Factor accelerators will end up finding jobs through their network, will end up finding their significant other through their network, will end up meeting new friends through their existing network simply because they've taken this strategy of breaking the ice, of having more curiosity and interest in the other person to its full conclusion of having more conversations which forget more opportunities in your life which then lead to you changing your entire surrounding, changing where you're working, changing that five closest friends who now have a positive influence on your life. So that's why we're so big on this concept of breaking the ice, not only giving you the science behind it, giving you some simple strategies, but this is the genesis of every relationship that you're gonna have in your life and science definitely shows us that relationships matter to our longevity, our physical health, as well as our mental health and well-being. We drop great content each and every week and we wanna make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that, you're gonna 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. Well, considering the pandemic has put us in this position, everyone needs to take the lead here and look for what their week, their days and their weeks look like and if they don't have opportunities, they need to be creating them. They need to be seeing this as working it as a muscle, just like their scheduling time at the gym is like their scheduling time to make sure that they get the things done that they need to do that would benefit their lives. This has direct benefit to their lives. If you're not creating these opportunities in your days and your weeks and your months, well, then those opportunities are just not going to exist for you and while other people have all the information of the world at their fingertips and this internet, they are leveling up. They are making time. They see the science of how important these things are in their life and they're going to make time for those things. This is exactly the same thing as growing up and seeing all this sugary foods on our table, only to learn later that there is not good for us and we've decided to change our eating habits so that we could take direct advantage of all the great nutrition stuff that we do have. When you start getting into all of these things and you start looking up how good this is for you, how it relates to your state of mind, your self-esteem, the confidence that you have and the bonds that you've created with other people, well, then you are either going to take the time to strengthen all those because that enhances life or you won't and life will continue to deteriorate at a rapid pace because right now, where we're at, things are going to continue this way unless you make a change and that's what we do in our programs. I think an important thing to point out, having lived on both coasts and lived in the Midwest, the podcast started in Michigan and then we relocated to New York and now LA and Johnny lives in Las Vegas, is there is this phenomenon in big cities of avoiding small talk with strangers, of avoiding these small micro interactions with strangers. I've gone on elevators where people just stared at their phone. I've sat on a bus ride where people are just on their phone focused on screens and it's easy to get conditioned to avoid these small interactions. It's easy to fall into the trap of looking around in the elevator and going, well, no one else is talking, I'm not going to say anything. But like Johnny said, it's also easy to eat two Snickers bars and not work out. It's also easy to have the full pizza as a cheat meal three days in a row to break your diet. Just because it's easy and just because others are doing it doesn't actually lead to long-term growth and success and health in your life. You will be shocked to see the difference when you are the one on the elevator who does break the ice, who showcases warmth, who takes a little bit of interest, exchanges names with your neighbor, with the person who lives on the fifth floor as you're pulling your groceries up. And over time, those micro interactions start to create the community that our human success and survival depends on. Evolutionarily, we are community focused and our survival depends on it. So even if you're living in a big city and you feel like, well, no one else is doing this, no one else is breaking the ice with me when I'm out and about, doesn't mean that that's good for you and it doesn't mean that that's going to help you reach the success you're looking for in your life. Well, let's dive into this a bit. This is something that we had discussed with our program over the last week with the military guys, the strategies over goals. And Scott Adams, I listened to his show in the morning, he talks a lot about this as well. And for those people who are listening to his show right now, they're like, oh, okay, breaking the ice, talk to random people. No, no, that's not what we're saying at all. Where what we're discussing is that you know what is good for you. You know what enhances life and what are your strategies to implement these things in your life? If you have a mission, if you're in your life, if you have a weight goal and a nutritious goal in your life, if you don't have strategies lined up that begin to implement all of these things, well, then listening to this is, it's just passive listening. And another thing, this is something we discussed this week. This is not a passive listening show. This is not a bunch of wacky wild comedians saying goofy stuff all day. So that is in the background while you change the oil in your car. This is educational content that is going to enhance your life in multiple facets. Everyone who has come through our programs have seen an uptick in the enjoyment that they extract from life every day. And it's not about waking up upset about what they have to take on. It's about waking up excited that they have all these tools to navigate the world around them to implement these strategies that at the end of the day, once you've put them in place, you're authoring the reality of your world because your world now has been created due to the strategies that you've implemented.