Connecting with an audience isn't always easy, especially when you can neither see nor hear them. One way to do this is by making the right connections in their thoughts and that is where the magic begins.

My guest today is making a welcome return as a friend of the show to help us connect more. In fact, he's going to teach us how we can inspire, influence and energise anyone, anywhere, anytime. Are you ready to learn a new superpower?

I first encountered Simon Lancaster watching his TEDx Verona talk on YouTube where I was introduced to the world and art of rhetoric. As someone with a keen interest in influence and persuasion, it was like being given the keys to enter a magical land that I had never known existed before. I find rhetoric just as exciting today as I did then and one of the people I have learned the most from in this subject is my guest on this episode.

During the lockdowns, many of us were desperate for connection with our fellow humans and Simon felt that need very acutely too finding new ways to connect, keeping his speechwriting skills sharp and discovering a new platform as well as a new passionate hobby.

The show was a live launch for Simon's book Connect which has taken somewhat longer than anticipated to publish as a podcast episode but I think it is a great way to close off 2022 and welcome 2023. Simon's book recommendations in this episode were Sense by Russell Jones and How Confidence Works by Ian Robertson. I added both to my own personal reading list.

Make sure you learn Simon's 6 powerful speechmaking tools near the end of the episode and join us again in the new year when we will continue our series on the 7 Deadly Sins of Podcasting that you need to avoid and overcome to be a successful guest.

Enjoying the content? Join me for the Podfluencer Weekly newsletter on LinkedIn, Medium or Beehive to get articles and show updates every week(ish).

You are warmly invited to join other coaching & speaking professionals who are building their authority through podcasting in the Podfluencers Facebook Group and get your free download of How to build authority with podcasts

Did you enjoy the show? Did you learn anything new or useful? If you did, then the best way to show your appreciation is by sharing the show with your online network. Tag me and I'll give you a shout-out on an upcoming episode. Leave a review and I'll read it out on the show.

Of course, if you REALLY liked it, you're welcome to support the show financially too using this link Support the show (https://speakinginfluence.supercast.tech/)

Can't connect, low energy, no influence.

We've got to change the way we manage our energy.

We've got to change the way we use metaphors.

We've got to change the way we employ rhetorical devices.

We can't get Podfluence carrying on like we have been.

We absolutely need to learn and practice how to connect

with anyone, anywhere, anytime.

We need to transform our ability to energize.

This will positively affect anyone we are intentionally connecting with, and

it starts with learning from an expert.

So today we are launching a brand new book that will skyrocket your ability to

inspire, influence, and energize others.

This is going to blow your mind and blow up this podcast much like

the last time my guest was here.

And in less than an hour you'll have a new superpower.

This is just one example of one of the tools that I learned in this episode

of Podfluence from my amazing guest, a friend of the show, Simon Lancaster.

Simon very kindly invited me and you to be a part of his book launch for

his new book Connect, which did come out earlier in the year and definitely

available for you to go and get right now.

We did this as a live online event.

You may have to excuse some of the sound quality at certain points.

Simon has a new book called Connect How to Inspire Influence and

Energize Anyone Anywhere, anytime.

If you Haven't Come Across Simon's work before, not only is Simon an excellent

speech writer and public speaker,

but he has written some amazing books, not just his latest book, but also

an amazing book on speech writing.

One of my favorites is his book Winning Minds.

He explores the darker side of rhetorical language with you are not human.

He's also become a little bit of a TikTok hit recently with some of his short form

videos, which we talk about a little bit.

This is Podfluence, the show for business coaches and speakers that

helps you build professional authority.

I invite you to enjoy this episode with my amazing guest, Simon Lancaster.

Welcome to the show, and today we are gonna be having

a chat with Simon Lancaster.

We're actually speaking on launch day of his new book Connect, which I have

been very happily ploughing my way through and enjoying immensely, and

I've read a lot of Simon's books, so I knew that this was gonna be good stuff

and have very much been looking forward to chatting with Simon about this.

So let me officially welcome to the new Podfluence show, Simon Lancaster.

Hi Simon.

Really?

And it's great to be here, Johnny, on your new portmanteau show Indeed.

Podfluence

Loving it.

And this is something I was thinking about whilst I was reading some of

the earlier chapters of your book, because you actually talk about

things like portmanteaus and where we combined two words together

to mean something else thinking.

That's exactly what I've done with the title of my show.

That's great.

We can we can bring it up.

And you did so fantastic.

, I would've if you.

Simon, I like to kick off my show by asking people who for you is somebody

who you particularly respect and have look up to for the influence that

they've built up and how they've used it.

Let me tell you about the legend in my life.

Who is Alan Johnson.

Now, some of the people watching this will be familiar with Alan Johnson.

For those who are not, let me just explain.

He's a British politician, a labour politician.

He grew up in absolute poverty.

He was orphaned when he was 12 years old, left school with

no qualifications, aged 15.

He then became a postman.

He works as a postman.

Ended up leading the trade union that represents postal workers

and communication workers.

And then he went into politics when he was about 50.

That's where I got to know him and I worked for him when I was in my

mid twenties and in my mid twenties.

I was still finding myself self.

I was still trying to work out who I was, what I wanted to be.

That awkward kind of post adolescence ag e.

And I wasn't sure where I wanted to get to.

Meeting Alan was incredible cuz he was someone who like me,

grew up in poverty in London.

I grew up in a one bed council flat in Paddington where

there was me and my brother.

Sharing a bedroom and my mom was sleeping in the front room.

We were on free school meals, which is a badge that you have to wear

when you are poor, but you used to in those days going going to school.

And it was working with Alan that really made me believe that where you came from

in life needn't determine where you.

You could overcome all of that.

You could leave all of that behind.

There need be no barriers.

And Alan, just the whole so much about his style, his gentle way, his very

human way of connecting with people, his compassion, his incredible memory.

He's always inspired me and he's he's a great friend now.

But that of course won't have impinged on his impartiality at all when he

was given the brilliant reference, which he did give to my book,

. John Ball: Indeed, he did.

That's a great person to look up to as well, and certainly someone who,

he does have a good reputation for being a great speech maker and even

a writer, right, he's written some.

Yeah, he's a bestselling writer now.

He sells his book Sells Millions.

He's now he's written four volumes of biography and he's

written two novels as well.

So his next novel is coming out this September.

So I'm looking forward to his launch party is the next one after

my launch party that I'm going to

Well that's great.

It's interesting though.

This is one of the things that perhaps did surprise me a little

bit in the book and only one of the things, cause there were some others.

That you have a background that, that you do, that you haven't

come from a wealthy upper class or upper middle class background.

And I think we tend to have this association that speech writers

and people in the political world who would be created that do come

from very well-to-do backgrounds.

And it's certainly interesting to hear that, that you did not come from that.

, but how did you end up going from where you were into the world

of comms and speech writing?

Well,

I was always absolutely fascinated with language,

Johnny, when I was at school I always wanted to be a songwriter.

And so that got me into writing songs.

And when you are writing songs, you are thinking about things

like the rhythm as language.

Metaphors you are thinking about story, all of this kind of stuff.

And I spent years plowing unsuccessfully trying to be a songwriter, writing

literally a song a week and recording it on one of those little studios that

you could buy back in the nineties.

And I just got nowhere.

I send them to heaps and heaps of record companies, but never.

anywhere.

And so then I kind of slid into into the civil service really and just worked my

way up, got onto the Fast Stream program.

Which is, it is weird if you come from a poor background like I did because

there aren't many people from sort of background on the fast train, see, you

did always feel a little bit insecure.

You were always very conscious.

Oh my god, you people are probably.

Much cleverer than me, but in the end he realized no, they were just born lucky

really.

They were born lucky . Mm-hmm.

. And it's nothing to it.

And that was the thing that Alan Johnson taught me working with because

he still, still to this day, he's not got more than a couple of O levels,

and he's one of the most intelligent people that I've ever worked with.

So who

cares?

It does maybe go to show us that sometimes the only limitations we

really have are the ones that we put on ourselves from time to time at all.

Quite often anyway, we live within our own limitations and expectations

generally, and so it's always great when you see people that can step out of that.

The last time we spoke, I think we did talk a little bit about how rhetoric seems

to be something that is in the realms of the elites, the people who have the power

tend to keep that information within their own circles, and it's not commonly taught.

And so I think you were my very first introduction to rhetoric as something

that I have gone most of my life without never having even heard of.

And then when I heard I think it was your TEDx Verona talk

that you were talking about.

I was thinking this is something I really need to know about.

If I want to be doing public speaking and presentations or really any

kind of communication effectively, this is something I should have.

This is something everyone should have.

Why is it that you think it isn't so commonly taught?

That

is changing?

I mean, more and more people are now getting involved with this and promoting

oracy on the curriculum, there's a large movement of academics now that have been

working with the Department for Education.

The Department for Education has made changes to the curriculum in the last few

years where there's cross-party consent.

So there is some progress and there's all sorts of groups now that are now

actively working to help people in.

So literally, just before coming onto your podcast, Johnny, I gave a

speech to a fantastic organization called The Patchwork Foundation.

Now, the Patchwork Foundation has been set up with the explicit purpose

to help people from underrepresented backgrounds get to the top politics.

And so I just gave a speech to about 40 people.

From there, all people between the age of 18 to 30 who are very bright but are not

the sort of people that you see in the house Commons for all sorts of reasons.

And so I think we are making progress more and more people

about are talking about rhetoric.

I think one of the problems is that people think of rhetoric as a dirty word.

Do you think that Johnny is that, you know, got negative connotations?

Not anymore, but.

Yeah, I, I think I used to hear that and I had a certain connotation of it.

It wasn't necessarily a dirty word, but I don't think I really understood

the scope of it as, as a word.

It was more something like you, you understood it was a certain type of

talking or Maybe on more of a common usage that people tend to use it as.

It's just the style of language that you have.

And so it tended to be used in association with like negative stuff that certain

politicians or leaders were saying.

And so, Now I don't have that.

Now.

I understand what rhetoric is and have been learning about it for the

last several years, as much as I possibly can from people like yourself.

So I'm happy to say that my, my opinion has changed it and I do see

more people having awareness of it, but I'm still generally surprised

at how few people that seems to be.

I think it's gonna take quite a long time for that to really

spread out and become a more common level of knowledge that people.

. Simon Lancaster: Yeah.

And, and hopefully we'll get there.

I think the more the, the more that we talk about it, every time I say, I have

to say rhetoric, the art of persuasion, , you know, then people are like, oh, okay.

Otherwise you do, you hear rhetoric is just like, oh, it's hot air,.

It's,

Guff.

Yeah.

So yeah, I'm happy to say that my, my feelings and

opinions on that have changed.

But it is super important that people have this because we probably use

a lot of these things in our lives without even knowing that we do.

And I know that, I had been involved with Toastmasters for a long time,

and even in those organizations, public speaking groups, you'll hear

a lot of people talking about the power of three and things like that.

And three is a very common number.

It comes up a lot even in your books and things, and certainly appears

in rhetoric a great amount of.

But one of the things I really found interesting at the start of

your book was talking about Brexit.

Whether you loath him or hate him, Boris Johnson is a very good speaker,

communicator using metaphors and similes and being able to pull people in with

some of the things that he talks about.

And I know you talked about him before, in some of your other books.

The whole thing about cake and Brexit.

Can you just tell us a bit more about that for our

audience?

Yeah, so I run through the whole history of the language of Brexit.

Basically just, Brexit is, what is it?

Six, six letters, you know, Brexit.

And yet there's so much within those six letters and the

choice of those six letters.

So now when we talk about.

We all understand that Brexit is Brexit, but why did we call it Brexit?

Brexit instantly put the focus on exit on us leaving.

So that is the image straightaway that you are planting in people's minds.

Didn't have to call it that.

We could have called it Breu, which would've been a combination

between Britain and the EU.

This is the debate on.

The well brew is then a warm cup of tea.

Sounds a little bit different.

Yeah.

Or why didn't we call it Brin?

A vote on Brin?

Which I'm speaking to you now from Wales.

Brynn is a lovely hill.

That's progress.

But we called it Brexit.

And Brexit Sounds like breakfast.

, there's a, phonological connection between Brexit and breakfast,

and we saw this all the time when people were speaking about Brexit.

They'd say breakfast, and when people would then said about their

breakfast, they'd say Brexit, and people kept muddling them up.

And so they had, in our brains, in our subconscious, there's a little, there's a

connection between Brexit and breakfast, just as there is now between Jeremy Hunt

and another word, which I won't say on your program, but to the extent people

are in it now, it's very hard to say, Jeremy Hunt without making a mistake.

Although I've managed to do it so far, Johnny, maybe the

third time I'll make the slip.

So you, there was a phonological connection there between

Brexit and breakfast.

But Boris Johnson then actively exploited that and you could see

he did throughout the campaign.

So in the run up to the referendum, he literally, his last visit before the

vote, he went to a biscuit factory.

He walks in there and he says, I've never seen so much dough in

all my life, but the trouble is you've got control over your dough.

We don't have control over our dough, 50 million pounds a day.

We are sending to Brussels.

We need to take back control.

So he was establishing this connection in people's minds.

Biscuits food and the European Union taking it away.

Then he started talking about how we are gonna have our cake

and eat it in the negotiations.

No one understands European treaties.

We all understand cake.

Cake is lovely, and when we look at cake, we start salivating.

A stomach starts producing enzymes.

Then of course, in the 2019 election, he kept talking about his oven ready.

, and again, he's making a connection.

He's making a connection in our minds between Brexit, which is a geopolitical

treaty, is very, very complicated.

No one really understands much about it.

Even experts, they don't really understand the implications.

Who can?

It's way too complicated.

But we all understand cake.

And that's what he did.

He made a connection.

And so every, everyone forgets about that.

Cause all they're looking at is the cake or the scones or the

buns or whatever else he's doing.

Boris Johnson is a communications genius.

He, he

certainly has done very well with a lot of his communications.

I, I know he's certainly having some struggles at the moment, and I wonder if

if that sort of magical way of speaking is really gonna dig him out of this hole.

But he is certainly keeping him going for a little while longer, at least.

But even with something like that we generally like to

think that we are not so easily

swayed along or influenced by things like that because they,

they seem like they shouldn't have such power over us, but they do.

Why is that, do you think?

Because we're human beings and we just have these

instincts to save us to keep us alive.

If we didn't salivate when we saw food and we didn't start thinking

about food when we saw food.

We would perish if we didn't have an appetite.

And so, these are vital things that we need, but essentially what Boris is

doing there is he's hacking us, . You see, he's making a connection between

something that we don't like, don't care about, don't understand, ie.

Britain's relationship with the European Union, and he's connecting

it with something we do like do care about and do understand.

So yes, we been, which is of course the other important thing about

teaching rhetoric, not only so that we're able to lead ourselves, but

also so we can understand when other people are misleading us or falsely

directing us by an in instinct.

Yeah.

Do you think then having an awareness around the subject does Afford

some level of resistance potentially to these things being used on you?

Yeah, I do.

Well, I think so and you can certainly highlight it, but then

again, we are all human beings.

We all fall for I've been thinking about this stuff, writing about this stuff,

for like a couple of decades now, and yet still, still, and I swear this to

you, Johnny, if I see Boris Johnson

Making a jam, scone and putting cream on, and then jam.

I'm sorry, I'm hungry and I'm thinking about, I, I can't help,

I literally can't help that.

You know?

And this is where he's very, very clever because even people who

are not sympathetic to him, either personally or politically, which is me.

I'm not sympathetic to his politics or to his personality, but still, if he

shows me a cake, I'm gonna get hungry.

And if he tells me a funny joke as he frequently does,

he's frequently very funny.

He will make me laugh.

And he does that.

He does that, and he does that with a lot of people..

And that's why on a still think the Tories will be insane if they

let him go even after everything.

I think he's still the person who, for the conservatives is

most likely to beat Kier Starmer.

I think they still believe that as well, which is

why he is hanging on in there.

I was enjoying listening to the audio book today came through and I've been

listening to you on high speed today.

And, You speak fairly fast anyway, so listening to it on high speed.

I have to be careful with missing stuff, but you were talking about

the clown effect and and how that's had a, an impact on this.

Well, it's actually much more powerful than we think, and it's.

Devised is planned.

It's not spontaneous.

It's not who he is, it's a device more than anything else.

And it's an effective one

at that.

Well, I think probably he is a bit of a jerk.

And he probably is a bit scruffy, but you can see he just hams it up.

And this is a part of his character, a part of his personality that

he sees is actually advantageous.

He exploits it.

But again, it's this thing about the ability to distract us from

the real issue and by make us laugh and actually make us feel good.

Cuz when we laugh, we, we do feel good.

And in the book I draw a comparison actually between Boris Johnson and

Zelensky, which is not necessarily a point of connection, which many

your listeners will appreciate.

But I do see that they're very much from the same, peas from the same pod

basically, that both of them rose to the top through appearances on satirical tv.

TV programs, They then all of a sudden actually became serious

politicians, but they won elections.

Both of them won elections with cries of, I'm very conscious your mother's

listening, Johnny, but with cries of and Eff the electorate , I'm,

I, you see, I'm really fighting hard not swearing this podcast

I was just, I, I would go for it.

My mom doesn't know where you live.

You'll be, Okay.

I think she's probably got the idea now.

Anyway, she has heard that word before.

E even from her youngest son.

To move on a little bit from Boris and political rhetoric, one of the things that

surprised me about your book was there's quite a bit of personal development

stuff in there, and I'm someone who's worked in the personal development

area and professional development for a long time.

So I wasn't expecting it.

And it wasn't an unpleasant surprise or anything there, it

was just a bit of a surprise.

But how did those sorts of things like visualization and breathing

exercises make it into the book?

What made you think that, that was important for us to be understanding

and utilizing with connection.

That I think they're just absolutely critical.

And they're things that I've always practiced, but they're things that I've

never really talked about them before and I've always focused on kind of the

speech writing aspect of what I do.

But the thing is that now more and more people really

need to know about this stuff.

And I think particularly post pandemic.

as people slowly everyone's moving at their same space, but slowly

getting into the real world.

And I can tell you that everyone has had struggles with this.

Even people you'd never imagine have had struggles with it.

And over the last few months, a couple of household name politicians and a

couple of CEOs that I've worked with for years who are big, big hitters

have been speaking to me about they're feeling nervous before a speech that

in the past just wouldn't have been.

So I'm like, well, I'll tell you what I do.

And these, this advice goes down very, very well.

And it's very, very simple.

But just, a lot of the time it's just about drowning the negative narrative that

many people have running in their mind.

and just literally not giving it airtime, not giving it airtime, and

just creating your positive narrative and keeping on coming back to that.

I just think it's essential.

I think people really need to know this stuff now, and I've written

this book much more for a general audience than my previous books,

because you've read all of them.

I can speak to you about them.

In turn.

Speech writing guide was for professional speakers.

Winning Minds was the PR experts and leaders, and then you are not human.

That was for a general audience, but it was taken a very particular

view on the dark side of rhetoric.

This one is really, if I've written this.

The, thinking very much of me when I was like in my mid twenties and like really

thinking, how do I make breakthrough now?

How do I establish myself?

And so I've.

This is how you do it.

But it's written with the benefit of 25 years experience working with

these top leaders and some of the things that I've learned and of course

that I've studied and read since.

And I think it's valuable stuff.

And it's funny cuz when I've been talking about the books people, it's

always the positive visualization stuff that they come back to.

I did a thing, I did launch event just in the local beautiful independent book shop

in the Brecken Beacons called Bookish.

And there were about 40 or 50 people there.

Some were friends, but not all of them were friends.

There were a few people who just bought tickets and had come along and they

were the ones who were coming up to me afterwards and saying, oh my God,

I still suffer from anxiety terribly.

The stuff you were saying about positive visualization so important and so

useful, and I think this is great that people are talking about this stuff now.

Cause I'll tell you what, when I was in my mid twenties and I suffered from

anxiety, used to get terrible shakes in meetings and all, terrible stuff.

I never told a soul about it.

I told my mum about it, I told my brother about it.

That was it, yeah, no, no one else.

It's great that people can have these convers.

Equally, I think there's a danger that in having these conversations, you then keep

having those conversations and people then judge you as being you are the anxious

bloke or your, do you know what I mean?

So it's.

It's still, it's torchmans territory.

Yeah.

It can be a bit like, if you start still, it's torturous territory.

Yeah.

Support group and stuff, then you, your whole focus becomes on that

and you might end up amplifying the issue rather than resolving it.

So, yeah, I think it's important to be aware of that It needs to get support.

You need a bit.

Absolutely.

I like to be solution focused.

That was one of the reasons I got into coaching in the

first place some years ago.

I feel it's very serendipitous that we are talking when we are because the, this is

also me launching my new podcast or the new iteration of my podcast, which is like

said, is called Podfluence, a portmanteau of Podcast and Influence, moving on

from Speaking influence much more to influence and in the world of podcasting

particularly, but, influence in general.

But a big part of that is connection, and that's something I've really

wanted to focus on with this, like how important it is for podcasters and

podcast guests to connect with each other and to connect with the audiences too.

And I think there's a lot in your book that helps that, not really

just for podcasters as well.

You talk about TikTok in the book and how we can learn things from into us a

specific lessons that we were able to learn from some successful TikTok ERs.

And I think that would be interesting to, to get into right now as

to what what sort of connect.

Areas or techniques or help we can get from people who

are doing this well already?

Yeah.

I mean, TikTok I consider myself amateur and a relative newcomer,

but I have to say I absolutely love it as a communication medium.

I think Twitter has just become so toxic.

Even smart people who are very capable of arguing are now scared to say stuff on

Twitter for fury, the fury of the masses.

It's become, as a forum for debate, it's.

Unstable.

You're bet better off going to the pub at 1130 in the evening and

going in there and saying, I love Margaret Thatcher, who's with me.

In Wales wont go down.

Well, just wait for the onslaught.

Whereas TikTok does seem very

positive.

Of course there are negative elements to it, generally it seems

to me that people are on there to make themselves better people.

And whether that's my eldest daughter going on there for beauty tips or

style advice or whatever, or other people going there and working out

to how to make a cupboard, and people are going on there for all sorts of

reasons, but it feels to me like a very.

Environment.

And so this is something that I got into as part of my kind of rhetoric for the

masses thing, which was the rallying cry in my TEDx Verona talk in 2016.

And so I thought this is a great way to connect with the next generation

and just give them really quick tips.

Free but do it in a TikTok style and it so it was my daughter, I

think, I dunno how much of this I put in the final draft of the book.

Actually.

A lot of it might have been out by Final Draft, but it was my daughter Yeah.

Who got me on TikTok.

. And she helped me, make my first few videos and she was literally coaching me.

She was like 12 at the time or something like, yeah.

But she was like, you've gotta be more energetic.

You've gotta be faster.

If you stop like this, it's gotta be less than a minute, dad.

If it goes over a minute, no one's gonna listen to you.

And so I, I was like, as someone who's always had the luxury, either given one

hour lectures or if even a whole day workshops, short speech for me as a TED

Talk where it's like 60 minutes and all of a sudden it was like, fucking hell.

I've gotta put this in a minute.

After , sorry, Johnny's mum, we got one in the end.

No, it was, I'm, I warn you.

No, but it was a great challenge.

So it was like, I'm gonna give you six rhetorical tricks in one minute.

Start the clock.

I'm gonna give you five persuasive hacks in one minute.

Start the clock.

And people loved it.

And whilst I started off doing this for, I suppose you'd say, a 16 to 24 demographic,

in fact, I found a lot of the people that were liking it on TikTok were people in

their thirties and forties that probably shouldn't have been on TikTok, and they

up, no, they're not thought like, well, I wonder whether there'd be a crossover and

I can use these videos that I've created TikTok on LinkedIn and the feedback on

LinkedIn as, as you would have seem,

it was phenomenal.

And so like the videos that I've done, these little one minute

bite size communication have been getting tremendous views.

So a lot of them have had almost 200,000 views on TikTok.

And then when I've shared them on LinkedIn, they've had 50,000 views.

And so they, it's great, great, great impact.

And it's challenged me.

I always love being challenged, that's why I like writing books and a new challenge.

How much can you say in a.

Brilliant.

Love it.

Think it's super important and to me it makes sense.

I think there's a very high demand for short form content right now.

and the nature of social media tends to be that we are scrolling through various

social media channels to find the content that we want or that we connect with.

And so stuff that stands out is gonna be super important.

And also stuff that doesn't slow down our us scrolling for too

long as well is probably even more helpful, like a five minute.

If it's really interesting, good.

Then yeah, people might take the time or longer, but 30 seconds to a minute.

Yeah, that's no big deal.

People can tune in for that and if they get some value from that as well.

Things like YouTube doing it Instagram are doing it.

TikTok of course but and that's why the other channels are doing it.

I guess probably even LinkedIn is gonna get in on this at some point a bit more

as well and make more space for it.

But yeah, it makes perfect sense to me that short form content is a great way to

introduce and connect with an audience.

Yeah.

One of the things that really fascinates me about it, Johnny, is that how it

works in that second way, particularly with TikTok, when you are just.

Swiping through and you know you do it so absentmindedly, you are certainly

not rationally analyzing anything.

You're just like, oh well I'd look at you.

And it's that thing that, I think you think about like with your drop

and your lighting and all of this.

So it's like, it's interesting.

I remember we spoke about this the last time that I was on and I need

to get as good as you on the backdrop and stuff like that too often, nor.

It's like really messy bookshelves and insight into the, the crazy

mind of a speech writer, I think.

And it, and if this is what you can see seriously, you wanna see the mess on the

floor around me, I'm not gonna show you.

It's okay.

We don't need the full tour of of the floor and everything's Simon.

But but yeah, books on the shelf behind you is generally is considered

a good idea when you're doing video stuff anyway, especially if

you're doing educational content.

You know, that association.

That collection is there straight away.

It's like, oh, there's books.

This is some to something educational or informative or someone who has

some intelligence that that connection definitely is there for people,

especially if you are an author.

If you are writer, it makes sense that you would at least have

some books in your background.

And I think once I published mine I'm like, well, change my background a little

bit as well to match that a bit more.

Yeah.

But I think you can get.

Smartronix.

I'm not sure with this, it's like I'm selling a book now.

It's obvious I'm selling a book.

There's a guy in Sweden that you should check out, and I think

my friend Ricard might be in the audience right now, also in Sweden.

If so, hi Ricard.

And the guy I'm gonna talk about in Sweden is David JP Phillips.

Check him out Johnny, what he's doing on.

I have, I've heard the name before.

Yeah.

So on TikTok, he is smashing it.

He's absolutely smashing it.

He's got something like 3 million followers and his, some of his

videos of 15 million views and it's really great little communication.

But what he does with his background, and there was one TikTok where he talks.

He was talking about, you'll see I've got the lighting at this level and

that induces in you this emotion.

The color is this and that induces this emotion.

The background music is that and that induces this.

So he's like really hitting all of the senses and in actual facts there, there

is cuz you like book recommendations.

On your show, don't you let me recommend this book to you and all your listeners.

Don't.

I should recommend it after my own book actually.

You need to get me first.

This request.

Now definitely have inspire influence, energize anyone anywhere, anytime.

But after you've ordered that, then get this one, which is Sense by Russell Jones.

Unlock your senses and improve your life.

And he writes in, this guy is a sensory designer and he works for all sorts of big

businesses, like the coffee stores and stuff like that, where they think to

every detail, what color do we need?

What music do we need playing and he unlocks in here the science of

senses in a way that will make anyone who's interested in the devious

art of persuasion and influence.

It'll slowly, I'll get your mouth watering almost as much as boris's cake

That, that sounds very exciting to me, and I'm.

I'm a big fan of that level of attention to detail as well, so

I know that I will enjoy that and I'm sure my, my audience will

appreciate that kind of thing as well.

It's like there, there's a level of just get started and do it, and then there's

a level of, well, let's master this and let's really be intentional about it.

If at let's make let's create the right atmosphere for learning, for sharing,

for storytelling, whatever, tho those sorts of things, like atmosphere is so

important when it comes to connection.

even without all of that, what are some of the things we can do on

a more personal level to create

that, do you think?

To create connection with the, just with people when we meet them.

Yeah.

To create that, yeah.

That sensory atmosphere.

To change mood perhaps, or to put people into a certain state.

Well, I think that the most important one for me is how we feel.

If we feel Good, other people are gonna feel good if we feel excited.

Other people are gonna feel excited.

If we feel anxious, other people are gonna feel anxious.

So I think that and this is why I have the whole mind body thing that

mind Body connection chair chapter comes before the me we connecting

the personal with the universal.

Cuz I think it's so important that you are in a good place

before you go and speak to other.

Whether that's going to a social function or you are doing a big conference speech

or your chair in your team meeting, just taking time to check in and get

your own mind in the right space, reminding yourself of your purpose.

Why are you here?

What do you actually, what are the feelings you want to create in people?

And then if you're like, well, I need to excite them, then you

need to be excited to yourself.

You're not gonna excite them if you go in there and you've only

had three hours sleep or whatever.

Yeah.

. So for me it's kind of the, the things that are maybe a bit more

contextual and and so things like metaphor, which you talk a lot about

to me sort of set the scene there the context of what things come into you.

There's that setting the tone or you talk about things like we talked about covid

as coming in waves, or we talk about.

The connections that we make, like going on a journey, for example, or the food

connections those sorts of metaphors and similes that we use with that.

How conscious, we talked about detail of sensory detail before with the other

book, but, How conscious can we be of that with the sorts of metaphors we use

when we are looking to set a particular emotional scene in a story or a speech?

Yeah.

Well, look I think just going back to the Covid point generally, because I think the

thing is, the important starting point is just that we think through connections,

you know, connections is the way that we.

So it's not just a rhetorical trick, it's like an appreciation of the way

our brain works that a new topic, something novel, complex, ambiguous,

is introduced to us and then instantly the way we make sense of it is to make

a connection with something else, which is what we do when we meet people.

We are like, oh, you are like this person.

Your name is Johnny Ball.

So you are gonna be fun because I grew up watching Johnny Ball on tv.

So your name's great.

You look very smiling.

Yeah,

but I'm terrible at maths so

, Simon Lancaster: I, I'll forgive

Likewise with issues, so you get Coronavirus comes along,

scientists all around the world are trying to make sense of it.

And the way they make sense is through making Connections.

And some of those scientists are saying, this is like Spanish flu shit.

This is gonna be serious.

It could wipe out millions of people unless we take it seriously.

Other people in Asian countries more familiar with sars are saying,

this is like, SARS means we need to invoke all of those procedures

that we had in place on sars.

Then you've got people in Whitehall who are like, ah, it's like seasonal flu.

It's just like seasonal flu.

It's a variation on that.

So they're like, it's mild and moderate.

Those connections that people were then making.

Scientists are just as liable to get things wrong in this way by starting

with this connection, which is then now hypothesis, which then proves

to be wrong, as the rest of us.

And so that's the thing, that it's an awareness that this is

actually the way the mind works.

And if you get locked onto the wrong connection, then yeah the consequences

can be fatal for a country or for yourself with people like, and the judgment some

people made about vaccines where people like, oh, but this is like, You know how

they lied to us about Iraq or they lied to us about the financial crisis, or they

lied to us about this, or they lied about that and they're, therefore they're making

connections in their own mind, which then lead them not to have a vaccine.

I got, my wife's maiden name is Jenner.

So for us, there was never any question we were having the vaccine

in our household cuz it was like, well, we see vaccines as being things

that saved the whole of humanity.

We've got a connection.

And so it's really just, it's that awareness.

This is how we think and a lot of thoughts works through connections

cuz that's the way our brain works and we should be conscious of that when

we are communicating as well, that often think about making connections.

It's the most effective way to get across a powerful message.

Yeah, I mean our brains are essentially pattern seeking machines.

Really.

We're always looking for patterns, always looking for connections,

but they're not always never, don't necessarily find the right ones the most

supportive or positive ones for sure.

And I think one of the things you talked about in the book was about having your

kind of your own metaphors, like for yourself or for your business as well,

ones that relate particularly to you.

Yeah.

Can you talk a bit more about that?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, so many businesses get lost, particularly bigger businesses get

lost in mixed metaphors where they're fighting this and they're killing

that and they're planting seeds and they're playing in different fields

and they're driving change and they have no clear image of what it is

that they're trying to communicate.

You wanna sit down, and I do this with clients, we'll sit down and literally

we'll just workshop it and we'll consider different types of metaphors

and then we'll land at the one which we think is gonna have the biggest impact.

So one of the ones, I mean, I used to think about my business as that

I was basically a pirate and I was getting all of this treasure from

ancient rhetoric and neuroscience.

and I was presenting nuggets of information, so I had a clear vision

that I was like, you know, Jack Sparrow or something like that.

And that image like worked for me.

And I would suggest that, anyone listening should look to do the same.

So, I mean, it, like the book Connect, this is about giving you superpowers.

This is basically making you into a superhero, this book, and so it's

gonna, it's full of super powerful devices if you want the wow, order it,

and of course the cover of it is very much like the marvel comic superhero.

Wow.

Pow.

But which also fits in with the idea of electricity, which runs through the book.

So I've thought about the metaphor in that and I try to make sure that all of

my comms is sticking to that metaphor in as far as it can, you know, you can't

be too anal about this if you, there will always be some mixed metaphors,

but I know what I'm trying to say.

Whether I succeed in saying it is another matter.

Hey, I think you do pretty good job, Simon.

Wh what I maybe explains for me why I'm so interested in the world of

influence and persuasion, because my biggest ambition when I was a

kid was completely unrealistic and impossible of wanting to be a superhero.

Like I loved comic books.

I wanted to be, I think initially Superman, but then it was more Spider-Man

and I don't have that desire anymore.

You know, haven't least, I thought, although the idea of being able to

fly, although is still very appealing, but you know, I live in reality.

But I do feel that these sorts of things do give you a

certain amount of superpowers.

I, I feel even like, , even in the world of coaching, I've studied NLP and

personal development and things like that.

Like some of it's great, some of it maybe not as much but a lot of it's very useful

and and I always continue to learn stuff and I do think it gives you special powers

to be able to change people's thinking, powers to be able to change an atmosphere

or a mood or to be able to influence individuals or groups or even governments.

I've talked about that on the show before, but, This really is a

superpower being able to intentionally influence and persuade people.

Yeah, and think not just let's be clear as well,

it's not just about influencing and persuading other people.

You can use this to influence and persuade yourself.

So I start thinking, I'm giving people superpowers that makes me

really excited about what I'm doing, and so you just use that language

and it frames it a different way.

And this is stuff actively that I've used throughout my life, so I say in

the book about how Paul McKenna tapes really helps me find my confidence

when I was in my mid twenties.

When I gave up smoking, I used to be a proper chain smoker.

I was not a social smoker.

I was a real smoker.

I was like 40 to 60 cigarettes a day.

And the way that I got off was the Alan Carr, the easy way to give up smoking.

Of course, he, him.

Me too.

Yeah, me too.

Genius.

Genius.

I've got, I've been in a bad mood ever since, but never.

It's, it's and of course Paul McKenna and Allen Carr, they're both NLPs now.

I've never studied N L P but I've read a few books, I've read, I've

literally, I think I've got N l P for Dummies somewhere down here.

But so I get the kind of, I get the idea.

But I think that's a really important point this, and particularly

for, I know a number of people that listen to your podcast are

people who work for themselves.

And so it's actually making sure that the way you communicate with

yourself is effective as well.

And particularly post covid.

I think we all need to make sure that we're given ourselves a boost

and keeping ourselves excited and inspired about what we do.

Yeah.

And that is one of the hardest things to do.

And I do feel, having been a coach for such a long time, one of the things

that I feel is most important is, Energy state that you are in on each day.

Like if you are in a really bad, energetic way, and I don't mean this in any kind

of spiritual woowoo where I mean it more than says like you would understand,

if your emotions are really down, if you're feeling really low, you do tend

to find that that affects your experience and often even your results as well.

And yet when you feel great, when you feel on top of things great things happen.

I think it was.

I'm gonna have struggle to, but the luck factor, Dr.

Richard Wiseman, who was talking about what luck is about and how essentially

the experiments that he performed pretty conclusively showed that good

luck or bad luck really depended on whether you believed you were lucky or

whether you believed you were unlucky.

It really was that sort of your state of expectation would determine the

kind of action you'd take and therefore the kind of results that you'd see.

And lucky people were more likely to go for it.

And unlucky people were far less likely to go for it.

More fearful.

And I think this applies not just to luck, but to so many things in our life.

It's like if, if your energy is in a bad place, not only is that

affecting you, it's also affecting everyone you come into contact with.

Yeah.

Well, absolutely.

The book that I've read recently that I found really inspiring that

I did draw on actually and cited in Connect, is the book called Confidence

by the Neuroscientist Ian Robertson.

And Ian very generously gave me a lovely quote which is on the front

page of connect, but that is stuffed with advice along those kinds of

lines about, how you've gotta sort out your internal narrative basically.

And he's not, sometimes I think, some people in the area

that NLP can be a little bit.

The, this guy's a neuroscienctist here and with you, and he re I mean, he

knows it, he really knows his onions and you read the book and he tells

it in a very relatable way, but all very much backed up with science.

Yeah.

I love that, that's something I haven't come across.

And I will check out that book and sounds great.

One thing I do want to get to, I think it's great.

We have some really interesting stuff that we've been talking about.

Something that people actually take away on a very practical basis.

Hopefully they're already thinking about this force, how

they're using those as well.

But you do talk in the book about six specific things that you can

do for a more powerful speech.

I wonder if you can share some of those things with us now?

Are these my six rhetorical devices?

Johnny?

Yes.

Fabulous.

I've just, cause I, I have a few six step structures.

I just wanted to.

Amongst my, cuz it fits so beautifully in 60 seconds, but yeah.

Okay, here we go.

See if I can do it in 60 seconds for you.

So start off one re breathless sentences, profits Down Markets

internal competitors on the move.

Sounds urgent like your hyperventilating two.

Three repetitive sentences where you repeat the opening clause.

We've gotta change the way we think as a business.

We've gotta change the way we market ourselves as a business.

We've gotta change the way that we interact with our customers as a business.

Then free contrasting sentences where it sounds like we're weighing something up.

So, we can't maintain the status quote.

We need to absolutely transform.

And this begins not just with people in the sales force,

affects us on the board as well.

And that is why today I'm said instead of doing things like we used

to do, we must move to the future.

And then you have a metaphor.

The metaphor plants an image in people's minds.

So you're like, today we are launch.

A new business that is gonna go into the stratosphere in

it, then you have exaggeration.

That's step five, and it's gonna blow all your minds.

It's gonna be absolutely incredible.

No one's ever seen a business like this in the history of business.

And then you end with rhyme because rhyme, sublime.

And this will ensure that we thrive, not just survive.

and so these are six super powerful rhetorical devices.

Boom.

You can attach it to any issue at any point and improvise

a super powerful speech.

Even the most ludicrous arguments in the world can be made sound quite

compelling by deploying that structure.

Might be quite fun actually, if someone in the audience wants to come in and suggest

a or you, Johnny, anyone, if anyone wants to suggest a topic and I'll riff a.

About using those techniques on the fly.

If I can, I should bear it.

Just say in my defense, if it's a bit shit, then it is the end of very

long day but I'll personally do more

best we'll be as kind to you as possible one that there are a few

people in the in the audience who can use the chat box if they're not aware.

Cecile, who is joining us from Switzerland, gives you

the topic of water sewage.

Water sewage.

Can I just say, Cecile is an amazing woman and you absolutely

need to check out her TEDx talk.

She is super, super in inspiring.

But really Cecile, you, is that the best you can come up with?

But what on earth got you to say.

So, okay.

Alright, you have another topic as well to choose from.

Isra.

Isra suggests banning school uniforms as a topic.

No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stick with the first, my, my mind.

I, it's, it it is rocking now.

But do we have to look at sewage this way?

Do we have to always see the negative side of things?

Do we have to dwell on the things we don't like about everything instead of

always looking at the worst of something.

Instead, we should look at the best not being hung up by the challenges,

instead looking for the opportunities.

And whilst of course there are toxins in sewage, At the same time,

there is plenty of good to be had.

Now, I happen to know that at the bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they

are developing technologies right now where you can instantly purify the most

putrid sewage water, and this is the golden goose that will change everything

about the way that we see sewage.

When.

Instantly, all of us will just be able to take water out of the river

and just drop a little tablet in and instantly we'll be able to drink from.

And this is gonna be amazing.

It's absolutely gonna transform the world.

And so I'm gonna close by saying, and I hope you don't think I'm a bit of a.

I'm gonna call on all your viewers to start drinking shit.

I think you did very well there, Simon.

And that was excellent.

Very entertaining too.

So, those are the six principles, the six rhetorical devices that

Simon saw, that inaction that you could practice and do for yourself.

And one of the things you said in the book, I think is

really important with this.

You say, the more you use this stuff, the more it becomes part of who you are.

And I think, I think for anyone who wants to be a good communicator, whether

that's public speaking, podcasting videos, TikTok, whatever, We need to be

a, we need to be intentional about it.

We need to be committed to the art of doing this and to doing it well and

aim to make these things part of who you are by practice and repetition.

So I'm fully behind your message there to do that and make it part of who we are.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's one of the things that I did in lockdown actually, that

when I was just trying to make.

I was keeping my speech writing capacity, Tim, like when it

was quiet for commissions.

It's always quiet for speech writing in summer.

Basically I do probably 80% of my work from October through to March.

Literally about 80% of my years working those five months rest

of the year is quite quiet.

That's when all the conferences take place, all the big conferences take place.

And so to keep my brain active, literally every morning I

would just walk up the hill.

I live in the Breckon Beacons gorgeous part of Wales, and I would just

walk up the hill with my dog and I would improvise a speech using the

six steps that I just did for you on whatever the top news story was.

And I did that every day, like for a couple of weeks, and then uploaded

it to TikTok and it was great.

Just a good way to keep a brain muscle working.

Just for fun.

Not being paid for it, but just making sure that I maintain my faculties.

Simon in the book, you talk at the end about about how

you discovered a love for football particularly, and and I was thinking,

I was hearing football is not my thing and I know that you were saying it

wasn't yours either and it hadn't been.

Something you interested, like you'd glaze over.

I was like, yeah, that's me.

I'm gonna kind of glaze over when we talk about football kind.

, but I think some of that connects in with why you wrote this book

or why you write about this topic.

And so I'd love you to share a little bit about.

We were, you are newly discovered love of football.

I mean, it's crazy, I think as many writers

are, I'm quite happy on my own.

So first lockdown I was ever so happy, I loved it.

Just so with my family, it was really, really nice.

I wasn't working, I wasn't flying all over the place.

It was really, really cool.

And then, The second lockdown.

I, I was like, I was beginning to get very, very hungry for just

companionship and connection, real connection with people.

I was really, really missing it with friends, but also that feel of just being

with large, large numbers of people.

I grew up in the absolute Center of London.

I grew up in Paddington.

We'd walk to Oxford Street, we were used to really being in really packed areas.

Look, my God, I just missed it.

I missed it so much.

And now I took my daughters to, my eldest daughter is in the local football team.

She's a great footballer.

She's amazing.

She's she's a goalie, but she can play in any position more or less.

And so I'd taken her before to see Brentford play and.

Then the first match we had gone when they were just in the championship,

when they were in like the lower league and then they got promoted to the

Premiership and we watched on TV their first game of the season against Arsenal

and they were in a brand new stadium and everyone started singing, Hey Jude,

which is a song that is meaningful to me.

For so many reasons.

It was number one when my eldest brother was born.

And see, this book is dedicated to my eldest brother, who's been an inspiration.

He's energized me throughout his life.

You should see his TikTok channel where he's roller skating

into hip hop all of the time.

He's, I mean, he's grum.

He's absolutely great.

So it was number one when he was born, when nine 11 happened.

I was the grand Hotel in Brighton where, cause it was t u c and Blair had been

given a speech that day and that I was there with Alan Johnson actually.

And that evening we were all in the bar and I got on the piano as I always do.

You know, whenever there's a piano, I'll always hijack it.

and I remember that night so well that, I played, Hey Jude, and you

had like heaps people, like literally a hundred people singing along.

And I remember watching that Brentford Arsenal game and seeing

everyone singing, Hey Jude.

And literally I had tears down my running down my cheeks and I was just like,

oh my God, I need to, I want to go, I want to be at the next Brentford games.

And so we've gone to a heap of games this season and there is something so

Phenomenal about after all of the shit of Covid being with 35,000 human beings.

and you are all singing the same song and you're all wearing the same colors and

you're all wanting the same thing and none of you are looking at your bloody phones.

You're focused on what's going on on the pitch.

I still can look at it rationally and say, this is bloody stupid.

What a complete waste of time watching people kick a ball about.

I mean, this is ludicrous, is absolutely ludi.

, but I freaking love it.

I absolutely love it.

So I've become a complete football addict.

I've literally, I've been to about 15 games this season and I'm afraid I'm

probably a football addict, like having spent the first 50 years of my life.

Not caring as shit about football at

all, . Well, may maybe there's a chance that I'll yet discover the joys

of it, but who, who can say, but I can certainly appreciate the atmosphere side

of things and the engagement and that for many people it might be one of the only

real times in their lives where they're actually really present in the moment,

as you say, not looking into phones and doom scrolling through Twitter or.

Simon, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you, as it always is, and

I wish you every success with the book.

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

And there'll be links in the show notes for the book, your

book recommendations, and.

Some of the other stuff that we've talked about today as well for

people to go and check out, so

Simon Lancaster, thank you so much for coming and being a guest on

Podfluence and for making us part of your connect book launch event.

Johnny, thank you so much Having me on.

I always love speaking with you and I wish all the best to you and Podfluence.

I'm looking forward to the next few shows.

Well, thanks for tuning in.

I hope you have enjoyed the show.

If you did, make sure you are subscribed for future episodes.

In my next episode, I will be continuing my series on the seven

deadly sins of podcasting, things that you definitely should be

avoiding doing if you are looking to build influence as a podcast guest.

Let me once again quickly apologize for some of the sound issues in this episode.

One of the reasons why I generally don't do live episodes of the

show is the technical issues that come along with that that make it

not ideal for podcast listening.

Rest assured that my upcoming shows are all recorded in full studio

quality and certainly when Simon comes back on the show, we will do

a full studio recording for that.

If you enjoy the show and you would like more content of this

nature, you can subscribe to the Podfluencer Weekly newsletter.

And you are also welcome to join the Podfluencers Facebook group, both of

which are linked in the show notes, as well as links to Simon's books and his

book recommendations from this episode.

I do hope you'll join me again next time, but for now, wherever

you're going, whatever you're doing, have an amazing rest of your day.