Hey, what's going on? Tripp Kramer here from www.trippadvice.com. Today we're talking
about small talk and I have 3 incredible tips for you that are going to be crucial to your
conversation game. Small talk gets a bad rap. It really does. I think that the reason
why people don't like small talk is because they feel it's boring.
But really, to me small talk is just conversation that gets you to more interesting conversation.
That's the small talk that eventually leads to big talk. So you have to be good at small talk because
it's inevitable that you will be talking small. Talking about little topics here and there and
just having generic conversations. So you have to know how to start that with the girls that you are
meeting up with. Now real quick, just to help you out, a lot of guys are scared to talk to women.
They're very shy. I know I work with a lot of guys in my coaching program on that. If you are feeling
that you have a hard time talking to girls, I have something for you. It's completely free. It's a
series of videos called Instantly Confident. I'll put a link down below. What you'll do is,
you'll see the link down below, you can put your email address in and then I will email you over
the videos. And then you'll have the videos. And you'll be on my email newsletter, which I send
emails every week with awesome tips for you, stuff that I don't necessarily talk about here or on
my podcast. Instantly Confident is going to give you some techniques on how to be more confident.
Let's go into the tips here for small talk. The first one is you want to practice the art,
I should even say this skill of active listening. All this flows together. First, the tip is active
listening. If you can listen to her without thinking about what's going on in your head,
it's going to help conversation go smoothly. I'll explain why in the next tip because there's
some things you're going to do with the active listening. What is active listening exactly?
It means that when you're talking to her, you are hearing the words that are coming
out of her mouth, you are digesting them, you are understanding what she's saying,
and you're doing it with detail. You're not just catching a word here and there. You're not nervous
that you're thinking about other things. You're not drifting off into space. You're with her,
you're able to listen to her. And you're listening so much that you know exactly what she's saying,
which is going to make it easier to be able to progress conversation. The way the conversation
is had between Person A and Person B is Person A will say something and then Person B will say
something related to what Person A said, or maybe ask a question. And then the person B will say
something and then maybe ask a question and this person, here's what they're saying and answers the
question and says something else and maybe answers another question or gets interrupted by this
person who says something. It's a series of back and forth statements and questions that are solely
based on what they're hearing the other person say. You have to have active listening skills.
One thing you can do, and you can practice this is you can talk to people. Talk to whoever you're
talking to friends, family, women, men. When you talk to them listen to what they're saying
so much that you're even starting to memorize what they're saying. Really get on board with focusing
in on what they're saying and you can practice by listening in and sort of repeating it to yourself
in your head. I'm not saying you have to do that every single time. But that's going to help with
that. Now the second tip here, the thing that you can do is, once you're active listening,
another skill, and this is what's going to take your small talk to an insane level,
is you're able to listen to what they say and then extract a word and relate it to a story
that you have. This is what's what makes very charismatic people. People who can listen in
and then be able to relate it to something interesting that they have to say and then
repeat it back to the person that they're talking to. Imagine I'm talking to a girl and
she's saying yada, yada, yada. And then she says the word Texas. And because I'm active listening,
I hear her say Texas and then oh, Texas! Oh man, you know, I remember went to Austin
a few years ago on a bachelor party. It was so much fun. We went to see live music and I
discovered this amazing barbecue sauce called stubs that I still use to this day. And it's
so awesome that I can find that in this grocery store. But I discovered that when I was in Texas.
By the way, that is all a true story. Everything I said there and I literally just made that made
that up on the spot. I do have notes here, but I made that up on the spot. Because I've practiced
this. I practiced this skill of improving to the point where I'm active listening enough and then
taking what they're saying and being able to tell a story out of it. Now I know that
this isn't going to happen every single time you're talking to a girl. You're not going to
necessarily hear a word then go "boop" and then interrupt her and then tell a story. That's not
good social grace. But you will do that sometimes so you want that skill because that can happen
a good amount of times when you're conversing back and forth with someone and talking to
them. You want to make sure that you practice this idea of listening to what they're saying.
And you can practice this by just saying it in your head. Imagine you're talking to someone,
they say a key word, or some word... in your head real quick, think about just a quick, very
quick story that you would tell. I'm not saying to do it. Again, you're practicing the ability
to work off of what they're saying and then tell a story. Again, listen to what they're saying,
listen for keywords that you can then take and then say a story based on that related to you
that's going to make you much more interesting. I keep on flubbing my words here and we're talking
about small talk. It's going to make it much more interesting as the conversation gets her
more interested in you. Next, here's a little tip for questions. If you're in a small talk
conversation or you're in any conversation at all with anybody and they ask you a question, you want
to stay away from one word answers. Let's say she says where are you from? Then I go Chicago.
Pretty boring. We don't want to just give one word answers
or one sentence answers. If you get the opportunity where someone asks you a question,
take that opportunity, and just talk a little bit. It doesn't have to be mind blowingly interesting.
But take this opportunity to say more than one word. So if someone says where are you from?
I'll say Chicago. Yeah I lived here my whole life. There was one point where I decided to
move to LA and then I moved back to Chicago. It's freezing cold, but I love it. Family here,
friends here. It's amazing. Something like that. And we've been talking a lot about cities so
let's use another example. Say someone asks you a question and they say what did you do last week?
Of course you could say something really boring like oh, nothing much just like watch some TV.
But that's not true. You probably did something at least a little bit more interesting than that. So
answer it by telling a story. Or say something a little bit more in depth than just giving one word
answers. People are very lazy in conversation. And we'll do this with friends and family.
Take the opportunities to not give one word answers and be a little bit more vocal in the
conversation to help you with this small talk. If this is a little bit hard for you and a little
bit tricky because you're very shy and it's hard to talk to people, don't forget to get Instantly
Confident which is down in the description below. Click that link and you get a series of videos
teaching you my tricks and techniques on how to be more confident with women and people
in general. But just understand here, a good takeaway is if you want to get better at this,
try to be more present in the moment, try to focus on what she's saying as much as possible
to extract words and then take those to then boom... push that into a story or something
more that you can say because that gives the other person an opportunity to work off of that. This is
something that's gonna be very helpful for you. Your homework today is to practice listening to
what someone is saying. Make sure you do that. In fact, I'm going to hold you accountable here and
even test if you're still here on the video, which I know you are. I want you to write down in the
comments "did the homework!" if you had a conversation with someone
and you active listened. Write that down. Let's see a bunch of them. I want to see 500 of these.
Write "did the homework!" and then it will encourage people to watch the video because
they're gonna go like what is he talking about and what was the homework? Alright,
sounds good. I'll see you in the comments. Hope that helps. And I'll see you on the next video.