I'll get a team. Welcome to another installing the new project. Craig Anthony Harper here, just fucking bright as a button, like a little meerkat. Stick of my my head out of the typ hole, just to see who's in the room with me. It's Peter Jonathan Sheppard. It's Tiffany and Cook good a little buggers. How are you. Let's start with the lady in the room. That's you, tif Well.
I'm looking at you in headphones, so I am real good. I'm real good, hearts.
It's only taken you six years of badgering me like a fucking kid in a lolly shop, and here I am with headphones on like a grown up. And I got to say, you should try it. It's really good. You should know you should try it. It's much better. So I'm glad I thought of it. Go Harp. So I couldn't be proud of me, you know the way that I'm just an early adopter. You know, I just picked things like this up an old I'm not that old crusty bloke in the Muppets up in the stand
next to the other krusty bloke. I'm not him at all. Run r Pat Shepherd. Welcome back to the show, son. Thanks for having me, mate.
It's good to be in the company of a technology savant and of course.
As well, I am.
I was going to use a word off the back of technologically, I'm just going to go technologically challenged.
That's the word.
Yeah, Yeah, somewhat inept.
I have Tiff.
I have Tiff, so she bullies me, but with good intentions, and I think that's the main thing underneath the bullying is love, you know.
And it took five years for the headphone, so that's.
Good, I know, And I'm on board. I'm on board. What's the next thing you want? What's thanks? What's the next thing you want to boss me on?
Let me go grab the list?
Okay, hey Pete, what are you been up to?
What are you been up to up.
There in the bloody Sunshine State?
Live in the dream mate, Just you know, chipping away. I feel like I'm on a plane every second week at the moment, trying to help trying to help leaders and teams be more effective as we try to. But outside that, I'm training for I'm doing the Nooser Triathlon in November, which is a bit of fun.
Yeah, and then you.
Know, I've got a two year old, so I feel like I'm constantly in a state of crawling around the floor, playing matchbox cars and hot wheels and running around parks chasing kids.
Well, it says one thing your two meter body is built for. It's crawling around on the floor.
You're telling me, You're telling.
Nothing will make you feel older than trying to peel yourself off the floor after playing on the ground for two hours with a kid.
Exactly exactly, it takes me a little longer to get up. And how is the little bugger? How is he going?
He's good, he's full of beans. He's tipped over to now, probably since we last spoke, which, yes, which means he's It feels like he learns. I mean, it's such a fascinating thing seeing a human learn to speak and use words and associate shapes and colors with words and numbers, and the whole thing is it's wild. It's really cool. He's great, he's happy, he's healthy, he's keeping us on our toes.
So all this and there'll never be a time in his life where he's learning quicker than now. Yeah, I mean, it's going to keep going for a while, But that the rate of learning and understanding and comprehension and cognitive and emotional and physical development is called fucking through the roof, that's why. And then we get to like twenty and then we flat line n till we die.
Totally still to.
Think about, if I think about only a year ago when he was one, you know, the difference between now and then is like different different species.
If I think about myself a.
Year ago, I'm like, huh, pretty much the same person, the same grumpy, middle age thirty seven year old, you.
Know, But that is that is you know I did. I was joking when I said we hit twenty m flat line util we die. But some people we kind of do. God bless them, they kind of do.
They.
You know, the bloke that you knew at twenty, he's the same bloke, just more wrinkles and shit and still grumpy and still hates the world at fifty, still blame
in everyone. Yeah, that's one of the challenges I think is to you know, not necessarily in a strategic or an academic or a formal way, but to be a lifelong learner, to be able to keep consciously progressing your mind and you're thinking and your brain and your cognitive function and having aware of having an awareness of that as you age, and consciously doing something to keep your brain in shape.
Yeah, it's like it takes more effort each year. It feels like more intention, more physical and emotional labor to do that.
I reckon the key is just walk through a new door. Though. It's like, if I spend the next year trying to learn more about the brain and the mind, I'm like, yeah, not that I'm elite, but like I've spent the last six years formerly doing that, right, So next year, when I finished what I'm currently doing, I would like to just go And it doesn't have to be anything strategic.
It could be do a fucking Barista course, but just something that I know nothing about I've got no skill in, you know, just to do something totally different where I'm in inverted comma is the dumbest one in the room, because then then my my, uh, you know, level of learning is high, you know, and there's that that that gradient is kind of quite steep, versus me doing more of essentially the same for another year.
Not a whole you know.
Of course I'm going to keep learning, but yeah, to consciously do something different. I've toyed with doing a second language, which I can only speak obviously English, but it's to try and get really fluent in something that I'm interested in, just for the sake of doing it for my brain, but also i'd be cool to be able to speak whatever Italian or Ye. So yeah, what about It's.
Funny you say that because I in the last twelve months I've had a few requests from clients about self paced workshops and courses and it's one particularly one of the biggest companies in Australia, which I've been running around doing a bunch of work for, and they said, look, we've got like thousands of leaders that we can't afford to always show up to all these sessions that we're running,
and we'd love to give them something. Could you do like a self paced, kind of modulized series of workshops?
I thought, yeah, I could, And so rather than sit here and record it on my iPhone, I thought it would be cool to call our mutual friend Josh Jansen, who runs a video production company, and say, if you were tasked with helping me build a little studio at home so that I could sit in front of a camera and record higher quality videos with good sound that look better than like they were shot on my iPhone?
What would that look like?
And he sent me off down this rabbit hole of this other I don't know what you call him, educator course, content creator. And I did this online course essentially on how to build a home studio. And when I say I was feeling totally out of my depth where they're talking about apertures and cameras and lenses, I mean I was so out of my depth. And I would message and call Josh every now and then and be like, I just spent fucking half a day trying to get the lighting right.
What a waste of time.
And he was reminding me just like you kind of did a no, that's this is the fun part. This is the point you're learning about something that you know nothing about. As a result, you will have knowledge at the end of it that you will be able to have forever. And like you're just doing something you haven't done for a while, which is learn something from scratch.
And the end product is like I have a pretty good grass one.
How to set up my little office here as a home studio, get the light right, get the camera going, get the sound in and it looks pretty cool, and so it it's the most recent example I have I've had, apart from learning how to be your father, of like trying to learn something from scratch as a total newbie.
It was totally really hard as well, I.
Think apart from the obvious outcomes of whatever it is, better skills, better knowledge, better capacity to produce you know, whatever you want to produce. But yeah, just the just what happens to your brain and your mind and in the middle of all of that is awesome, you know.
I remember when I started, So I finished my last degree in two thousand and three, two thousand and two, started my next one in twenty nineteen, and I remember having conversations with professort Yousell, who was the head of Brain Park, which is a neuroscience neuropsycho lab. It's been on the show once and one of the smartest people
I've ever met. And even with my supervisor now Chris and I've got too lucy, But back then, when I was talking going tou Sell, I'm he would say something, you know, like November when I started, and we're having these conversations about what my research would look like and how to do this and how to do that right. It's very very well, it's not very much. It's completely self directed learning, right. So you've got to design your own studies, run your own studies, get the venue, get
the people, get ethical approval. There are no semesters, no one standing over your shoulder to help. There's no one to go talk to. You need to make appointments with your supervisors and you can't just walk into someone's room and go, hey, I wanted to know. You can't do that right. It's all well for me anyway, and they're all very busy and they'll have multiple students that they take care of in that PhD supervisory role. And I remember him talking to me and I'd go wait, wait, wait,
and he's like what. I go, I don't know what that means. He's like what he'd be saying something. I'd go, yeah, that's cool. I don't know what it means though, and I go, I'm fifty five, I'm dumb, and you're one of the smartest motherfuckers in Australia. So I did say, motherfucker, I'm mad. It might have.
You know.
Yeah, And just like even learning the language, even learning like what is a thesis. I don't know what a thesis is? What is that?
Right?
You know?
What is a dissertation?
What is you know? How do I design a study? What's ethical approval mean? Like? What is that? You know?
What is Yeah?
Like when you're starting from almost behind the starting line, like a lot of obviously the majority of half my age of the students, which good, well less than half my age, right, some of them, and then they come in fresh off the back of you know, study, like they finished four months ago. Now they're doing their PhD. I finished when just after Jesus passed away, right, So it's like so long between I didn't know anything. I
was so dumb. But anyway, you get you get good, you get better, you know, I still want to rate myself highly. But I have a language now that I didn't have.
Yeah, Yeah, And it's it's the discomfort that you have to go through to get to that sort of learning though, that I think we we call myself out. We avoid probably almost unconsciously, because we like comfort. I mean, you know this better than anyone having studied it. Yeah, we like to do things that are comfortable. And putting myself intentionally in a position where I know nothing about a topic.
Is a is a pretty good way to make myself feeluncomfortable, but it's trying to remember the benefit of doing that.
I've probably had ten times over the last seven years or eight years of the show where I've been talking to somebody and I literally have this feeling in the middle of this idea, I'm too fucking stupid to talk to this person. I like, I don't even know of the middle of that's it.
That's it.
Like they're talking about something and I'm I understand twenty percent of what they're saying, Like I don't fully understand what they're saying. So I'm going, oh God. And I interviewed this old dude who's just a sweet art called Professor Ahmi Goswami, who is an academic but also like a spiritual guru and just this giant brain and this beautiful nature and this giant heart right just the I've
never met him, I've only met him online. And I spoke to him for an hour and he was just going down rabbit holes and explaining things, and you know, you want to ask a relevant, informed question off the back of that for the listeners, you know, because you're kind of the conduit between you know, some really really smart people and you kind of almost just trying to keep the lines of information relevant and understand and you know, so you go, so do you mean by that? ABC? Right?
I didn't even know, and I just stopped and he finished, and I said, Professor, can I admit something? And he goes, of course, of course, and I go, I think I'm too stupid to interview you, and he laughed.
He laughed.
I said, I literally don't know what to ask you. I said, oh, you know, it's like I've just been thrown into a game of ice hockey with in the NHL, and I'm wearing all the shit, but I can't play, you know. I'm like, oh my god. And he's anyway, he was amazing and it made me feel better on my own show about my inadequacy.
I'm like, professor, can you please give me a question to ask you? Because I don't know what.
You just said?
Yeah?
Yeah, could you send me a few questions so I sound smart and I can regain some of my lost self worth. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about And by the way, did you not t just getting on stage a bit these days? And I don't mean dancing and singing.
I feel like I heard rumors last time we were chatting with that, well a little bit on it.
She's climbing the ladder and she's got a gig coming up.
Nice.
Tell tell Pete at l what you're up to in October.
TIV very excited, Pete.
I've been doing a course in speaking, which has been well out of my comfort zone, learning lots of new stuff, well out of my comfort zone. And seven of there's an event at the end of October, so there'll be eight of us speaking and we had to put in a pitch to an external panel, so we had to go through the whole process and I got I got a spot, So I'm really excited.
Congrats. Let's just don't eat me clapping, but I'm clapping.
And so the whole thing's filmed, right, and yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got a thousand questions.
Well, I want to know from Tiff, like.
You know, as someone who's I've probably drowned in corporate the last eighteen years, what's what's like? What's it like from a beginner's mind perspective? What are your learnings or quirk that you notice amongst corporate audiences as you're learning this and getting better at this, undoubtedly very good at the skill.
A lot of the learning has been around how to structure information and how to structure the talk. And that's not my jam. I like to be very harpified, a very freestyle and very just engaged with the audience. And I think you from previous talks you might be very similar. So there's been but there has been a lot of great insights into how to make things land and how
to not overwhelm audiences with too much. I think I'm probably as guilty as I can be of that, wanting to kind of give all of all of the gold, all of the things. Yeah, and I think it's made me So, it's made me here and see speakers differently. So and notice what about speakers engages me or what lands and what I'm left with? Which is the most
important part, isn't it? Because we can all like people, but it's what we are impacted by that stays with us and makes us change things that actually really matters.
H love that.
Yeah, what's the what's the one thing, if anything, that you've kind of changed your mind about or you've done a little bit of a one eighty on in terms of how you do this thing, like from two or three years ago when you were opening the door and getting some momentum to now where you've got more momentum, what have you what have you learned or what have you unlearned and changed?
I reckon I'm still in the middle of that because one of the reasons I'm really excited to have been gotten an opportunity to have this particular event is because I don't believe that I would see through all of
the learnings left to my own devices. So this is the opportunity to be coached and I like to say forced, but that sounds negative, but yeah, forced to deliver exactly everything that we're being taught in terms of how scripted and how curated the content is, which is going to give me a lot more of a lot more control over timing, which will be important in doing more corporate stuff, Like I can't just wing it and go, oh, well, I'll talk about this, this and this and then we'll
I'll just do Q and A if I need to fill it in, Like I've always landed well with timing, but I think that is not always a great thing to have f lining by the ceedy of pants m.
En years. For you, what's maybe two big things that you have learned that may or may not be relevant to but they are for you that you either it was a light bulb for you and it made things better for you, or you did like I said with Tiffer one ad on changed in mind about you know two things that were significant over that eight a year journey.
I think.
The two that comes to mind immediately I both learned from the same person, which was Seth Goden, who I've mentioned in our previous chats.
I've been lucky enough to spend a.
Bunch of time with working on projects for and also just becoming a friend of a mentor. But the two things that I think about the most. The first is he wrote a book called Purple Cow.
I knew you were going to say that, I love that. You no better. I love that. It's like he and I went Purple Cow.
But great book.
No great book.
It's a great book. And I mean the premise is you don't need to read the book to get the premise.
The premise is.
You walk past the field of cows, and one hundred percent of the time the cows are a combination of the same color. They're black or they're brown, or they're white, or they're white, or they're black or they're brown. All the cows essentially look the same. And can you imagine what would happen if you walk past the field of cows and all of a sudden there was this bright
purple cow in the middle of it. You would stop, you would take a photo, you would call your friend, you would pass it on, you would tell a story later that day.
I can't believe I saw this purple cow. You won't believe it. Let me show you. Let me show you.
And the point of his metaphor is, if you're going to go to the effort of creating something, create something worth remarking at, create something that has a little bit of purple in it. And so I think a lot about if I'm doing a talk or a workshop or getting on a stage, what is my purple cow?
I think about that a lot.
The second one I also learned from him, which is a I think perhaps the number one thing that makes me.
Perhaps sound smarter.
Than I am, and that is to not say and so Seth, I think you wrote a blog post about it. But I had a conversation with him about it one day, where he was saying, what happens when I'm speaking is where our brain is trying to think of what to say next, but it's also speaking what we're saying now. And if we go too fast, what ends up happening
is our brain doesn't have the ability to do both things. Now, this is probably a little bit of bro science, so feel free to forgive me all of your science listeners, and you, Craig. And so what happens if we're going too fast is we stop saying the thing we want to say, and in order for our brain to think about the thing it has to say next, there's this gap and we fill the gap with because most of us feel uncomfortable filling it with nothing. Yes, that said
to me. The fix is so simple. You just instead of saying ah, just say nothing.
Yeah, yeah, just.
Just sit in silence and wait. And by the way, if you slow down, you'll find that you actually have to say it or use that even less. And so through having a podcast, doing a bunch of speaking, and working my tail off at it, I can pretty comfortably go weeks without using the word or a phrase. And that involves talking on stages, doing live Q and a coaching one on one without script. And I've had people.
I've had people ask me at the end of a workshop, how did you how did you not say ARM once today?
Like that was their takeaway.
It was like they didn't even really hear anything I said other than they noticed the delivery was this guy didn't say uh. And I don't fest to have this superpower. I just fest to have learnt this skill from SETH which is instead of saying just say nothing and just give you a brain a chance to catch up.
I feel like the twenty twenty five version of ARM is like.
Now that one I still have in my vernacular. So that's my next one I need to work on.
So we like like an ARM or in the one sentence, yeah, he was he was like really mad? Like well, was he like really mad or it was actually really mad or just like it? And what's the difference between like really mad and really mad? That's true verbal?
Yeah, yes for me.
When I and it's funny now that I have spent so much time energy trying to get that out of myself.
Yes, I cannot help. But notice when there's.
An hother on stage and it is great, you'll get the most senior leaders of some of the biggest, most important organizations or peak bodies on stage doing a Q and A with whoever, and they are just arming everywhere. And I just have this theory that if you don't, you can just sound smarter than you actually are.
At least that's been my experience.
It could be the title of the show, arming everywhere.
I'm going to go all over the place.
It's either going to be purple cows or umming everywhere.
There are the two that come to mind for me, What about you? What are your two harps.
For a so for a period of time, okay, two things come to mind.
One is.
I used to really stay in my comfort zone with what I knew. I've spoken to Tiff about this because I think TIF and I our development and how like there was real similarity between you know, where I was early days and where she was a year or so ago, and even recently I've said to her, which is where I was, that like, you're really good in this space.
You're really good, You're confident, but you need to get into that space a bit because we can't only talk about you know, physiology and training and sets and reps and fucking micros and macros for the next thirty years, like we really need to, you know. And so for me, I had a real propensity to stay in my safe space and I would talk about human performance and you know, self management and human optimization, but I wouldn't really open the cognitive, emotional, human behavior, who am I?
Who are you?
Connection rapport, like all these other kind of sociological and psychological and emotional kind of factors that are really important components of living and thinking and doing better. Because I felt fraudulent, you know, and maybe that's even part of what I did my PhD. Right. And one of my friends actually said to me when I was about thirty, they heard me at a gig. It was a public gig and it went quite well, but they said, you're really good, and I loved it, but they had heard
me ten times. You need to learn more stuff, like you stay in this little echo chamber of knowledge. And I stayed where I was safe, and yeah I could. It's like I was a triathlete. I was awesome at fucking running, but I couldn't ride or swim, yeah, you know, And I did all my training as a runner because I was good at that and when I swam, I was shit, and when I rode, I was shit. So
I focused on the thing I was good at. The second thing for me was like a learn and then unlearned was I did a gig years ago where somebody from I can't remember which speaking agency, maybe ICMI or Saxton's like as you know who they are, but most of our listeners might not. There like two of the biggest speaking agencies in Australia. And it was back when a lot of people got a lot of work through speaking agencies. Now a lot of it's online and through
word of mouth. And you know, it's still they have a place, but I don't think it's the same as it was. And I'm still represented by eight or ten different companies, right And anyway, this lady was coming to assess me and I was doing I was actually doing the opening keynote for what's it called TIF the Fitness Industry Firelex. I was doing the opening for FILEX, which is a big was a big deal back then, and heaps of people and I knew this lady was coming,
so I thought I need to be good. So I made all of I didn't somebody else did made all of these powerpoints, so I'd be razzle dazzle, I would look professional. I was, you know, so look at me. I'm slick, I'm organized, I've got a process, I'm a speaking professional, and of course you know what I'm going to tell you, right. So I got up there and I just started banging on, and twenty minutes in I forgot that I even had slides, So I went, oh,
or maybe not twenty, maybe ten. I'd been talking for ten and then I turned around and I'm like, oh, cover that, op, cover that. So everyone's now looking at my back as I'm looking at the screen and I'm sliding like a fucking wombat, and the lady, the ladies in the front row over near the door, like twenty feet away from me with a fucking clipboard writing notes. Am I okay? Anyway? And then I did the best thing I could have done, and I went, hey, everyone,
can I be honest? And they're like yeah, I go, okay. See that lady over there, she's she's from a speaking agency and she's assessing me right now to see whether or not I could be part of the team on that, and I said so in order to impress her, I told the story. I sat literally on the edge of the stage, swing on my feet and talking. It was a high stage, and I told the story and I said, so. I didn't say fuck, but essentially I said, so, are
you okay if I fuck off the slide show? And they go, please, please fuck the slide show off, and I went, yeah, I'm sorry. So I'm probably not going to get a gig with that organization, but fuck it, let's go. And then so for the next forty or fifty minutes it was just free range me doing my thing right, and at the end I got the gig anyway. But the lady came up and went, oh, you definitely shouldn't use that every again. She goes, not everyone needs
to do that. She goes, you definitely don't, and by the way, you're terrible at it, so don't. I'm like no to self. Yeah, So I thought I used to think I needed to be more like other speakers. I need to be more like them, because whenever I would go to a conference, everyone but me had this great slideshow and videos and graphs and charts and data, and I'm like, I don't have that. I'm just a storyteller, and I just you know, I share thoughts and ideas and messages mainly through metaphor and story.
That's your purple.
Yeah, that's that's my purple. I guess, yeah, and I thank you that is that is true. So yeah, and I mean, but then over the years, you know, I've kind of I've woven more science and more information and data and research in, but it's still usually it's backed up with a story or a metaphor or a real life kind of explanation, and I keep the jargon out of it. So so I mean, but I think also, you know, you you go in with an idea of how things are going to go. And I told this
the other day on the show. So I apologize and I mentioned to you before. But I did a gig up in the bush the other day and they were just amazing. And now imagine how much you could not do this in the city. So all super laid back, all super laid back. They've never had a professional development day. It was a real estate company, Milduror, so this was a new thing and they've got me all day. Now
that's a lot. You know, It's like when people don't even when somebody's got a sit and be present and pay attention to one hour of someone unless that someone's pretty good. It's like ten minutes in everyone's checking their watch or their phone or their you know. So they were very gracious and also very grateful, which was nice. But we I could tell straight up, it was very informal. The I really relaxed and before we got gone, it's like, I'm going to get some going to get some coffees, Craig,
do you want to do you want to coffee? Craig? Do you you know, like really laid back, and I said, before we start swearing or not, and this is at the start, and about six of them go fuck yeah of course, and then the rest laughed and kind of pumped the air. I'm like, okay, this is this is my natural habitat. And I said to them, you know what this is? Like they go what? I go nine eighty five?
I go, this is this is the best.
Like they're like, what's political correctness? What's HR? You know, and like just nobody chos nobody chose to. I mean, we need HR. I get it. I get we need political correctness. I get it, But sometimes it's that far over the line. I'm like, fuck, it does my head in and it was just a fun day and I really enjoyed it. But the thing is the way that I spoke with them that day, and the way that we interacted and the stories that were told, and the level that we went to by the way we would
have had I reckon. Three to five people on the day come up to me and cry and just because we pushed a button, you know. And then the boss who I'm going to throw him under the bus because he's a good man. His name's Joe. There's two bosses. He's one of the bosses. He comes up to the front and we just finished for the lunch break and he's standing next to me and he's talking about what we've been going through, and what we've been going through.
Had pushed some buttons for him and soding up the front. He just started to he couldn't speak for a moment, and he was getting emotional and then he shed a little tear up there, and I just walked over and gave him a hug. I just like, I don't care if he doesn't want it. He's fucking getting one, right, So I just gave him a big hug and I just whispered in his ear mate, you're great, you're doing great. Gave him a hug. He was good, everyone was respectful,
and you know, so it's nice to have this. I don't know this pendulum between you know, here's some funniness, here's a bit of whatever, here's a couple of stories. But by the way, we can talk about how you're feeling. We can talk about depression and anxiety and mental health. We can talk about why you're sad right now. And I'm not going to make fun of that, and I'm
not going to tell a dick joke. I'm just going to be here listening to you and giving you a hug if you need that, you know so, I think that for me, I need that flexibility to be able to re read the room and respond accordingly. And because I'm terrible with a script, terrible, I'm not even good with just a plan that alone a script. But you know, we get through it all by the end of the day.
What about yourself, Where do you sit in these scripted versus freestyle like which I mean it's a scale, right, yeah, I think one's pretty much a soliloquy. The other ones, you know, you're running around with your undies on your head punching the air.
I'm probably closer closer to the undies. I think.
That's good though, right, maybe not all that way, But I go in. So the questions I want to get super clear and before I go in is who's it for? Who's in the room, who's the audience are they? Are they the country? Are they the country? Folks from a small town and a real estate agency where they've never done any professional development. Well, if I know that, that's
probably going to change how I approach it. So I want to know who's in the room or are they you know the bankers A's ed in Melbourne on Collin Street and they just want it. You know, there are a different audience, So I want to know who's in the room. I want to know what a success look
like for them in this session. If success is we want three new ideas on how we could you know, have our leaders thinking about AI or we want to have four questions that we can ask to coach each other next time we're in a T meeting, whatever it is.
So tell me what success is, tell me.
Who's in the room, and then I'll I'll concoct on a on a whiteboard or I'm holding up like a yellow legal pad, literally a scrap at a paper, a rough idea of how I think we can get there.
You got the same one.
I'm trying to show you it at won't show up, yep.
Go on, and I'll have an idea of how I want to deliver success based on who's in the room. And then I give myself permission a bit like you, but nowhere near to the to the to the skill set probably or the undies on my head that you might embrace.
I will.
I will give myself permission to get there. However, we need to get there based on what's happening in the room. So if someone asked a question two minutes in and I'm like, huh, it feels like something we should spend some time, I'll spend some time on that question. I will not think I've got a whole script here, and I want to get through this script.
Yeah, And I think it's really important to acknowledge that I've seen you speak multiple times and I'm not pissing in your pocket. You're amazing. You're an amazing speaker. And if people said to me, we want you to go in there and do what Pete does. I couldn't. I couldn't because I'm not you. And it's not trying to compare the quality of what you do or TIF does or I do, but it's like you're great at what you do, but you're not me. There are similarities, I think,
and I'm not you. We're not better or worse. I think we're both somewhat competent at what we do with
room for improvement. And you know, I think that realizing that there are a myriad of different coaches and teachers and speak and for want of a better term, you know, subject matter experts that will all approach this, you know, what looks to be the same thing a different way, and all produced pretty good outcomes, even though they're they're unique in the way that they deliver whatever it is they're delivering.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean that's what to me why I go back to, not to like redversise it one hundred times, back to the idea of purple, because what's purple for you is different to what's purple for me, and what's purple for Tiff is different to what's purple for both of us.
It's like tips.
Holding up a purple stress ball and you missed it.
It's a blue apple, and it's it's Jacqueline's version in this course, and that's what we started by buying our blue apple before we did anything else.
Yeah, no way, I wondered, I thought you had I thought you had.
A massage ball and you were like working your lower back while we were recording.
Like I was looking for it when I disappeared under the desk, where's that blue apple?
So that's that's so she talks about that in the same.
Kind of Yeah, it's the very first thing we work out, because it's because there's no new concepts, there's nothing that hasn't been talked about before, So you've got to make sure that you've got something that's worth hearing.
Yeah, that's true. That's great in terms of wisdom, and you know, of course knowledge is always developing, but in terms of human behavior, there's not a whole lot that hasn't been spoken about or the mind or the brain or you know, communication or connection or happiness or joy or sadness or Yeah, yeah, that is that is true. You're always trying to figure out how can I essentially share the same stuff in a way that's more resonant or you know, like I feel an anecdote, Yeah, I
feel did something just happened? If?
Yeah, it came back.
Though, I feel like I'm like I'm the singer, not the message, you know, the conduit to the wisdom, not the wisdom all that philosophical shit. But I truly feel like that, like I'm the conduit to that which is great and truthful and empowering. You know, I didn't create
any of this. I didn't invent any of this. All I do is try to figure out how I can you know, share it and sell it for one of a better word, you know, and you know, download it in a way that's digestible and maybe inspiring for people.
Yeah, I think I totally agree with that. I think about it as creating the conditions for learning. Like my role is to try and create the conditions for learning to happen, to try and create the conditions for someone to have an aharm moment, or for a light bulb to go off, or for them to open a door and turn on a light that they couldn't see. Otherwise, it's not for me to be the guru, the chosen one that has to have all the answers and has
to be the one speaking the entire time. Actually, what I'm here to do is create the conditions.
For us to learn.
Yeah. Yeah, I think very.
Often doesn't come from me.
It might come from the conversation you had with the person next to you in the breakout.
If it was a workshop with a breakout, you know, and.
It's like, oh that thing Craig said, who I'd never met before on my table really helped me unlock this thing.
I'm like, cool, it doesn't have to come from me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you ever gone in with a bit of a plan or an idea of what you're going to do and realized maybe not that it was not landing, or maybe you did realize that, or maybe you realized, oh, this is not the group, this is not the vibe that I thought, This is not what I thought it was going to be. So we're going to do a slight left turn here. Have you done that?
Oh?
I mean, probably too many times to count, right right. The what I think about a lot is when I was briefed on this commercial, big commercial team of one hundred commercial directors of this big organization, and the briefing was, you know, they're commercial, so they're very confident, they're very outspoken, they will be not backwards in coming forward. So I'm okay,
so we're going to have a super enthusiastic group. So five minutes se and I'm going to ask the audience a question and just see based on what they say, which story I might tell next, you know, slight, a slight version of choose your own adventure with a pretty clear idea where I want to go anyway. And so I said to them, like, I don't know what's the current challenge you have right now and your roles leader something like that.
Yep.
And when I say there were crickets, I mean one hundred people just sat in total silence, including the event organizer, who knew I was going to ask this question.
And I'm like, at least you could ask me. Come on, Yes, yes, I have this out.
Of body experience, which is I think you're bombing right now. I think this is bombing. You have totally misread this entire situation. And ironically, the topic was to communicate more effectively as a leader, So there was like this out of body better experience of I'm trying to help them be better communicators. Clearly I'm not nailing it because they're not even responding to what I'm saying.
Did you go by the way, don't do this, by the way, avoid this.
I made some poor joke about I don't know, maybe they just had lunch or something, and I made some joke about, you know, everyone's still digesting the tuna sandwiches or something. And so about five minutes later, I was like, I'm I'm going to try something different, and I said, now this time, I want you to turn to the person next to you and say, this is something I'm grappling with in my communication as a leader.
And all of a sudden, they lit up and they couldn't stop talking.
And I got that experience of they're they're so confident and over enthusiastic because they're commercial directors. And it was the change in who you have to speak in front of, and that there was a more specific audience rather than yell out in front of one hundred of your peers, by the way, ninety nine of whom you might not even know.
Yes, So it was like.
There's one hundred people that are confident, but actually maybe they don't know each other, and so they're not going to yell out in front of a hundred people, but if you give them the task of talking to the person next to them. And so I think I salvaged it a little bit. But there was a moment there where I was like, what I've misread the room here. This is is not going well.
Yeah, that's oh, I mean yeah, I've had a version of that. But it's funny. You often see people who are new to the stage and they'll walk up and.
Haw's everyone going, people just like a fucking it's like a library, great morning hah.
And people are like, oh god, I'm like, oh, don't don't because no one, especially if you're right, especially if it's say a conference where it's like an industry conference where there are a bunch of strangers who don't all work together in the room. So you've got thirty different companies, you might have three people from each company, and you've got one hundred people or so, and yeah, you just
ask these questions that don't really demand an answer. So that is, yeah, like my go to if I'm stuck, which I've shared ten times, free to use it, everyone is, I might say, because we're going to talk about the mind and thinking in human behavior, and you know, blah, blah blah blah blah, and I won't even go I'm Craig. This has a bit of my backstory. I don't do anything. I go, all right, put up your hand if you're an overthinker. And everyone goes, oh fuck, I'm an overthinker,
and all the handscarp. I go, how's that working? How's that going for you? And they all laugh, how's that working out?
That's good? That's good.
I go, that has the mayhem in your scom going? What is that about? And then I'll walk up someone. I go, all right, be brave and bold. What do you overthink and are? Usually? You know it'd be everything. Okay, give me one thing on the everything list. I go and they'll go, you know, like being embarrassed or failing or whatever it is right, and I go, anyone else, anyone else in that group in me? I don't want to fail. I don't want to look silly. I don't
want to be embarrassed. I don't put you know, I go, all right, well that's a very big club. So you know you're not a weirder. In fact, you're more common than weird, you know. And then then we've got a conversation then we've got interaction. Then we've got participation. Now I'm not on a Now I'm not a bloke on a stage talking to one hundred trees in a room. Yeah, you know it's that that can I What can I ask that almost is impossible to not participate in? Yeah?
How do I create connection? It's like connection over content. It's not that I need to get up and deliver all this content to you. It's I'm going to get up and connect with you immediately, and that is going to be the thing that we all remember in the experience that makes us feel something rather than jeeze.
I had some good content, yes, And.
Also like and I've had lots of resistance from news speakers that I've helped that are very smart, very knowledgeable, and in their area, way more knowledgeable than me. And when I say you need to be more of an edutainer than an educator, they're like what, And I go, if you are boring, if they do not en or you, if you can't tell a story, if you can't be a little bit amusing. You don't need to be hilarious
or a stand up comic. But if your information and your data and your research is brilliant, but they are not engaged, they are not enjoying it. They don't enjoy you. They won't enjoy the experience. You're not getting any more work. So how well can you build connection and rapport and trust and respect, also sharing your ideas and your information
and your knowledge. Do that, but also realize more important than your content is your capacity to engage a room of humans and read the room of humans in real time and then respond accordingly. Which sounds overwhelming, but you know you build on that because you go, oh, I did this last time. It didn't work. Well, I'm not fucking doing that again. When I ask that, it's like generally you know that gets a response.
Yeah, they'll feel fine. You'll find the thing, the tool that you have that you get really good responses from, like your one, you know, like how many people are overthinkers. You'll find your version of that. Yes, and you can use that, you know, repeatedly. Just because you don't have a script doesn't mean you know, in my context, I don't always have a scripture doesn't mean I don't tell the same stories or use the same ideas. Yes, I
mean they don't come out the same every time. Because it's not scripted, but the punchline should still be the same.
Yeah, when I start to introduce the idea of metaperception, you know, my research, which is understanding what it's like being around you. You know, you can go through this whole cognitive kind of explanation of you know, metacognition and theory of mind and metaperception and all of these constructs
that live in the world of psychological research and analysis. Right, but it's boring, Like it's boring, and I can exp to in that context it's boring, but I will go rather than saying, hey, everybody, I've just spent six years researching this thing called meta let me unpack it with you. So get out your note pad and switch on and eyes to me, you know, like everyone's like, ah, fuck off, right,
So I go, all right, put wrap your hand. If you've ever heard your voice on audio, like audio recording, And people go, oh, fah, that's the worst, and they and they all put up their hand reluctantly, and I go, now, put up your hand if you think you sound shit, that's good. I love that. And everyone laughs because to them, when they hear themselves, you know, on audio recording, they sound rubbish, so you know, and I go, well, here's the bad news. That's what you sound like for the
rest of us all the time. You know, that whiny nasally thing that you got going on, that's all we hear. So when you hear yourself and you go, I don't sound anything like that. You sound exactly like that all of the time. All of the people who fucking hear you, So that what you've got going on in your head, we do not live in there. And I go, and
then I unpack it. So this is the opening of the door to trying to understand what you are like for me, not in a good way or a bad way or a critical way, but just in an awareness way. You know, we go oh oh, and I go, this is why this stuff matters. You know, Like what if you're a coach and you're talking to your ten athletes on the basketball court and you think you're inspiring and directing and captivating them, and they all think you're a dickhead,
but you don't know. You know, they all think you're they don't understand what you're talking about, or they're not inspired, or they're bored or they're intimidated. Well, even though that's not your intention. Obviously, it's certainly in your interest to understand their version of right now, because your version of right now is not theirs. And if you don't know that, you're going to create more problems and solutions. Nice, but you get there by opening that other Have you heard
yourself on audio? This is like these stepping stone this is the oh yeah, a little bit of a story, a little few laughs, and then so this is how this relates to this other thing.
Yeah, that's such a I feel like there's a master class in like, yeah, take can you take your knowledge and wisdom? And undoubtedly everyone listening has a bunch of it, but can you actually distill it into something that is relatable, maybe humorous, that I can engage with, that I can wrap my head around, not just I mean it's kind
it is kind of the in a meta way. Can you understand how you're coming across on stage in the same way that you understand how your voice sounds when you listen to a recording, Because if you sound professorial like a professor yea, and that's not what the audience calls for, you're pretty quickly going to lose them. So that it's not about knowledge dumping knowledge sharing. It's about can you translate that into something that is worth connecting with and over And I.
Think a lot of people naturally have a better understanding and grasp of this than they think. Yes, but it's like, you know, so if if let's say Tiff wasn't a speaker, she was a boxer and a trainer, right, which is part of her background as well. But if she had to talk to a bunch of forty year old ladies about you know, beginning off in boxing or whatever, versus a bunch of forteen year old boys, right, it would be even though she's talking about the same thing, it's
a very different energy and conversation. And you know, and nobody said to her, Hey, when you talk to the boys, don't talk like you did to the women, because that's self evident. So we do it anyway. We have an awareness anyway. But it's you know, it's like me knowing that the mil Jura vibe and energy and language is not going to work at A and Z in Melbourne. That's not the right approach or vibe. And just yes, we can share all the same ideas, but not in the same way.
Totally.
People speak to my son differently to how they speak to me, shocker, and like we do that, we do that subconsciously, so it's the same, it's the same skill.
It's always good talking to you, mate, I love talking to you. How is that going.
I've got a page of notes, which is great. I feel like I just got a masterclass, which is great.
Well, we always learn from you too. I love that. I know, I know it's not yours, but I love the purple cow thing and tips blue apple thing. I love that. How do people connect with you?
Oh human?
Periscope dot com is the one stop shop for all things, all things Peach Sheppard podcast, blogs, all that jazz, emails, reach.
Out, giddy ut butto cup. Have you got lots of corporate on at the moment?
I do?
Yeah.
I feel like I'm in Sydney every other week at the moment, which is which is fun, which is good. And I've started doing a few a few local gigs up here too, with the with the Queensland Rugby League and the Great Barrier Refoundation and a few others. So a few local gigs and jumping on the plane plenty.
Yeah, Well you're good at it. That's why you're in demand and and let me tell you, like there companies are spending less on the speakers, and so the fact that you are busier than ever is a sign. So go you and TIFFs on a way, TIFFs on TIFFs number number, I don't know whatever with a bullet. You're on the rise. In a year, you're going to be teaching me and Pete how to do this shit. I'm straight We're going to have a little bit of a workshop.
She'll bring out the blue Apple and I'll be like, oh my god, the blue Apple.
There it is again.
And Tiff, good luck for your escapades in Queensland. That's coming up very soon, so we hope that goes great. Smash it, Tiff, all right, team love your guts is so yeah.