You might be sabotaging your first impressions and not even realize it, and it's not because
you're making some big, terrible mistake, it's because a lot of the advice that we've
all received over the course of our lives is incomplete. And if you take that incomplete
advice and you apply it to the wrong situation, you're going to get a bad result. So in this
video, what I want to do is talk about three pieces of advice that need tweaks to actually
work in the real world. And when you add these tweaks, you'll go from sabotaging first impressions
to really, really hitting home runs.
And the first one that I want to touch on is this. A lot of people aim for harmony in
first impressions. They do not, under any circumstances, want to create conflict, but
the truth is when people cross lines, even in first impressions, the best thing that
you can do is set a boundary. I want to give you an example, so you can really take this
home. This is one of my favorites.
A friend of mine, way back, was at a company--it was a finance company--and he was presenting
to the head honcho boss. This guy's worth a hundred million dollars, flies around in
private jets, and was generally an abuser, like he was verbally abusive to everybody
in the office. So he's got this meeting and he's pitching to him whether or not they should
invest in a company that they gave him to research. And he gets around to the end and
he says, "So based on all my research, I think that this company is a pass, it's just too
risky." Head honcho guy, David, stands up, looks at him, the rest of the team, and says,
"You guys are pussies." Everyone else there gets quiet because they've taken this kind
of abuse before. But my friend is not used to this, right? He's never been treated like
this. So he looks right back at the boss and says, "David, where I come from, calling another
man a pussy is the worst thing you could do. You would immediately start a fistfight. Don't
ever call me a pussy again," then he gets quiet. And everyone in the room gets quiet.
And David gets quiet.
A few seconds passed and I'm sure it might have seemed like eternity, and David says,
"I'm sorry. I won't ever do that again." Completely goes back, the meeting starts rolling, and
people pick up the slack, but what happened is, after that, my friend never ever received
that kind of abuse that people in the office continue to get from him. That guy never gave
him any crap. Again, it's because he set a boundary, and even though he was low man on
the totem pole, he created respect. This is what happens, when people cross lines, I'm
not saying that you need to shout their faces off, neither am I saying that you need to
do what most people do and just go, "No, it's okay." I've seen people do this in so many
situations, right? Somebody makes a racist or a sexist comment that they don't like,
in a business meeting somebody shows up pretty late, doesn't respect your time, or I know
a girl in a business meeting, she was basically being hit on by the guy and didn't know what
to do, so she just kind of laughed it off, pretended that it was just a joke.
In these scenarios, what you need to do in so many words, to say, one, "Hey, I don't
appreciate what you just did," and, two, "Don't ever do it again," and then quiet. That is
it. I'm not asking you to yell at someone. I'm not asking you to take it home. I'm not
asking you to complain about it with your friends. If you do this, you will find that
the boundaries you set create more respect in all of your interactions--incredibly powerful.
The second thing is kind of a light version of the boundary setting and it's this. A lot
of people hate to disagree with anyone at first impression and it's because we know
that people like people that are like them. They want people that went to the same school
as they did, like the same sports teams, that have the same interests. So when somebody says
something that, maybe, we don't share, we tend to gloss right over that and look for the commonalities,
but the truth is, when you bring up things that are not commonalities, in fact, that
you might be polar opposites on in the first impression, you create a ton of trust.
Another example because I love this, first time that I went to Brazil, I was in Rio de
Janeiro and I went to the Copacabana Palace, a really nice place. I don't know if they
still have parties there, but if they do, check it out. And I walked in, hang around for
a while, and I saw a girl that I really thought was very pretty. So I walked up, started talking
to her, and I began to speak in Portuguese after a few sentences in English. And she
said, "Oh, my god, wow, your Portuguese is awesome, like you must be so intelligent that
people on this city are just not; they're not worldly at all." And that was, one, a
really nice compliment, but, two, it kind of struck me as, "I don't know about this,"
because I was in Rio and I found that people are extremely friendly, outgoing, exuberant,
fun, and her sort of emphasis on these people are dumb, was a bit of a turn off to me, so
I said, "Listen, first of all, thank you very much for the compliment. My Portuguese is
only good, not because I'm some sort of savant, but because I used to study Spanish. But I
got to say, for me, the most important thing about any individual is not that they've traveled
to a bunch of countries, or they're worldly, or they have a super high IQ, it's that they
make the people around them feel good, and that they're fun." And she said, "Yeah, yeah,
yeah, but you know, fun is shallow. I will prefer a guy that was intelligent and worldly
any day." And she kind of looked at me going, "Are you that guy?" And I was tempted to,
I want to go, "Oh, you're right, you said I was this guy, you like this guy, perfect,
we're gonna hit it off." But I had to continue saying, "So, I mean, listen, I would take
both, right? I want fun and intelligent, but when it comes down to it, the people that
I connect with the best are the people that spread good vibes, the people that are happy
and fun, and, honestly, if they're not the sharpest, if they haven't traveled the world,
and they don't speak six languages, they just live in their city and they have kind of an
insular view, I don't really mind that. I just care that they're a good person." And
we agreed to disagree, right? Right in that moment, she said, "Well, that's not how I
am." And we continued to talk. But what happened is that a tremendous amount of trust was built
between her and I, because I was willing to disagree with her and she was willing to disagree
with me.
And what wound up happening is we did connect. I spent the rest of the week that I was there
in Rio with her. She let me stay at her place when I got kicked out of my hostel and left
me alone in her house while she went to work. And I do believe that a huge, huge, huge component
of that trust that was built was because so early on, I was willing to say, "Listen, we
might not be a match. We might not work out, and if we're not a match, that's totally fine,
but I'm going to be transparent about it."
When you let people know about the ways that you disagree with them, not shoving it down
their throat, but just saying, "Hey, that's not how I am. We can totally agree to disagree.
I'm not trying to convince you, but you should know that's not my feelings. People trust
you so much more. So that's the second piece to making a really good first impression and
sometimes, the things that you don't have in common can be just as important as the
things that you do have in common.
The third piece is this, fake it till you make it is often misinterpreted, and it's
a great piece of advice. Don't get me wrong. But fake it 'til you make it applies only
to body language and non-verbal communication. When you start using fake it 'til you make
it in the things that you say, that's when you run into trouble. So, for instance, the
CEO who had a terrible quarter, speaking in front of his company gets up there and says,
"Hey guys, we're doing great, you know, not exactly what we want, but this is really on
track and our numbers are kind of off in the projections, so we're killing it right now,"
or like the guy in that networking event who goes out and pretends that he has a kind of
status at his company that he can help people up because you know what, man? Just send me
your resume, I'll get you a job, no problem. And he's got no such power.
This happens all the time. People fake power that they don't have. Or
a guy who wants to impress a girl, takes her to a nice restaurant, really great, but rather
than acting like, you know, this is a special occasion, pretends that this is something
he does all the time. That kind of stuff does not fly. So here's what you want to do. Fake
it till you make it in the way that you speak, in the way that you carry yourself, your tonality,
the way that you gesticulate, the way that you breath, that's gonna affect your head,
which is going to actually change the way that you feel, right?
Your physiology does change your emotion and we've talked about this at length. I don't
want to go into it here, but when it comes to the things that are coming out of your
mouth, be honest to a fault.
So, for instance, that CEO might get up there and say, "Guys, listen, this quarter was a
disappointment. We did not hit our numbers. We did not do the things that we needed to
do. I've spoken to many of you. I've reflected on what needs to happen and here's how we're
going to do it going forward."
The confidence that he speaks with is what's going to inspire people to hang on, to continue,
and the honesty is going to make them trust him that "Holy cow, we can do this. He's not
just going to sugarcoat everything." Take the guy who takes a woman to a nice restaurant,
right? Rather than going in like, Oh, yeah, pretending he knows the maitre d' or that
this happens all the time, or talking about his investment portfolio. Whatever it is,
he might go in there and say, "Listen, I got to be honest, this place is way nicer than
the restaurants I'd only go to, so I hope that you're impressed by the food and that
makes you laugh extra hard at my jokes," right?
Play it off fun, funny, but you can let people know, this is special, this is nice. That
honesty is going to let her know, which is a huge concern for women, by the way, that
the man that they're dating are not being real, are not being honest. When you show
things that might not be to your favor, and you're not doing it in a calculated way, but
you're doing it because it's honest, that's going to create a bond of trust between you
that is actually going to make the relationship go much, much better.
The thing that ties all three of these together is this. The charismatic person, the person
that is comfortable with themselves is comfortable with the truth, and they can sit with it,
and they recognize it's gonna make me connect really well with some people, and some people
are not gonna connect well, but I will not be disrespected, I'm not afraid to share my
opinion, and I'm not going to pretend that something is the case when it's not. So that
is the thread that ties them all together and I hope you see it in our other videos
because it's a big one.
There are other things that can sabotage first impressions. In fact, one of them is the order
that you create these 4 emotions in. There are 4 emotions that create an amazing first
impression. Get the order right, it's amazing. Get the order wrong, it's sometimes not so
great. So, if you're curious what that is, hit the link here. It's going to take you
to another video that shows you what those 4 emotions are, and more importantly, shows
you the order that you need to hit them in because that's the thing, a lot of people
create them, but they don't do it in the right order.
So if you want to see that, click the link, drop your email. It's gonna take you to that
video right away. If you guys did like this video, please subscribe to the channel. We're
making more of these videos at least one a week. It's gonna show up on your homepage
when we do it. You'll see my face or you'll see a charisma breakdown. Sometimes we do
people that are fictional characters like Tyrion Lannister, anyone from Game of Thrones.
We did Muhammad Ali, maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger coming up, but we take these very charismatic
people and break down exactly what they're doing so that we can learn from them. So those
are some of my favorites. They take a long time, but should have one of those coming
very soon.
So if you want to see them, subscribe to the channel, and, of course, any comments, any
questions, drop them in the Comment box below. They inspire a lot of these videos and a lot
of the people that we do breakdowns of.
In any event, I hope that you guys have enjoyed this video, and I look forward to seeing you
in the next one.