G'day, my name's Chris Anderson, and this is the Ando & Co podcast. We've just gone through the five episodes that I've initially set up for beers with mates and I realized that there's one particular episode that we haven't touched on yet. Because when you meet a new person, I've said previously, that it's best for you to initially just ask them questions and help them talk. The one thing that I've left out is that when it comes time for you to talk, you need to be able to really own your story. Now, each one of us has a story. But actually, in truth, each one of us has many stories. And we are a collection of many stories. Every person who knows you, knows you based on different stories. When you meet someone new, you have the opportunity to tell them whatever story you wish.

So you can put together all of the stories that you have in your life, and combine them into the story that's right for that particular person. The benefit that you have, after having spoken to them for a little while, is that you already understand some of their story. So once you've heard a little bit about them, and they've been able to talk and you've been able to understand what's important to them, you can craft your story in such a way so that you start touching on some of the hot buttons that they'd already mentioned when they started talking. And they had already spoken about what some of their interests are and what it was that you noticed lit them up, when they started talking, you noticed that they were speaking faster, speaking with more animation, using their hand gestures, opening up their body and starting to show more animation, more life more excitement, right?

So you can, in that way, then tell a story about your life, which touches on some of the points that they've already spoken about. Right. So you've already pretty much set yourself up to be able to tell a story that in some way aligns with them. And you're able to pick all the pieces of your puzzle, and put them together in such a way that works for you with that person, right?

So when I have people come onto the podcast, I help them tell their story better. I help them to walk away with a story that's positive. I'm reading a book at the moment, it's about confidence. And the real story that this person is telling in this book is people with confidence, remember, and focus on all of the positive about themselves, and forget the negatives. They don't focus on the negatives. I know there are certain parts of your story, which you're not particularly proud of. I know there are certain parts of my story, which make me a little bit worried for people to learn.

I did a podcast episode A little while ago, which I don't share publicly now, where I shared a lot about myself a lot. And it was like all the bits that I hadn't shown people, I decided to show people all in one episode. And it took a lot of energy to do that. The thing is, when you meet someone, you don't need to tell them all the things that went wrong for you. When they ask you that question, what can you tell me about yourself, you can choose to tell them all the positive parts. And when you start getting to know them a little bit more, and you understand some of the things that they've shared with you. You could have something that's happened in your life, which aligns with something that happens in their life. And at that point, you have that opportunity to share that story of your own that somehow makes you more similar to the person that you're speaking to so that you can relate better. But I think when you start in telling that story, generally people will lead with what they do for work, and that's fine. I'm really work focused, and quite often I'll speak about that. But that's not generally where I'll start.

I really like to, because I because I like learning a lot, one of the big things that I first did when I was meeting people in Canada, was that I'd recommend a book based on what we’d been discussing. Now, the issue with recommending a book is that there's a quite a lot of time involved in having to read that book and when for someone to be recommended a book or a TV series, there's a lot of time involved in checking that out. Right. But there are certain passages that you can take from a book that you can share with someone where they just go, oh, shit, like, that's something that you've just shared with me, that makes me see that you know what I'm talking about? Right, you can have little snippets of things that aren't quite book sized, you can have a little video on YouTube, a little short on Instagram or something like that. You can have a quote from a book, you can have something that you've created. And I'm at the point now where I have stuff that I've created that I can share with people. And, because I've sat down and recorded that story, which was very personal, and I made it very public for a little while, I now have the ability to say to someone, hey, look, there's this little bit more than I can tell you. Probably the easiest way for me to do that is to send you this. It's a recording that's not public anymore but it will tell you a little bit of story about why it is that I set up years with mates.

A short version of that is that I went through some pretty serious mental health struggles when I was in Canada, and they continued when I moved back to Australia. And I needed a way to get that sorted. And partly, I needed to rebuild friendships. And I needed to meet new people. So I've developed the skills that I've shown you on this podcast series over the last few years at Beers With Mates, and other events that I've been to. My cousin Mike and I were sitting together having a look at what the slogan could be and I spoke to a mate Eddie about it as well and we sort of keep kept working on how it could change. And then my mate Chris Gosling, over in Toronto, had a look at the logo for us and kept playing with the slogan. And in the end, we moved towards Solid Chat : Stronger Contact. Because I was of the opinion for a little while, that if you shared a lot about yourself, you could have someone share with you.

I don't think that was quite right. But I believe now and actually what happened was when I went through that process, I over shared, and there's no way that someone can get to that level of sharing, after I just recorded like a 40 minute podcast, telling a really detailed story about some really difficult times in my life. So no one can really back that up and come in and share something similar. So instead now what I like to do is, as I said, Ask those questions, understand what's important to that person. And then when I go to tell my story, I share some stories that are somehow related to some of the stuff that they have already mentioned. Now, it could be that that's related to sports, it could be that it's related to music, it could be that it's related to reading, could be that's related to learning could be that it's related to work could be related to people that we know, could be that's related to a whole lot of different things. Maybe it's cars, maybe it's cycling, who knows, maybe it's drinking, maybe it's wine, maybe it's beer, maybe it's spirits, maybe it's something to somehow make that person see that we are somehow alike. We have similar interests, and I have a lot of interests. So generally, when I meet new people, I can find something that shows them that I'm interested in something similar to them. But when you get to tell your story, you don't need to share the whole story with everyone. You can come up with a really positive story that goes for just a couple of minutes.

And you can share that story initially. And as they ask more questions, you can start to uncover a little bit more. And this is the fun unraveling that you have when you're with a person when you’re in a really good conversation. You just watch each other unfold in front of each other. And you start to be more and more open and let people know more and more. What I learned after having been very open about telling that story was that it's best to hold back a little it and not share all of that upfront, you know that you have all of that to share on the back end. But you don't need to share it all at once. You can share parts of things, you can tell a little bit of a story upfront and then if they ask more questions, you can share a little bit more. But it's best to just keep people guessing a little bit, share enough to make people interested to make people think, oh, there's a little bit more that I can learn here. Let's keep going. Let's keep having this conversation. I'm excited to keep this conversation going.

But if you tell the warts and all story upfront, where you tell all the issues that went wrong, and the breakup and friends not being in touch anymore, and mental health issues, if you tell all of that, upfront, you are being brave. But it's unnecessary, you're making it unnecessarily difficult for yourself. And I know this from experience, right? So it's okay, to tell a positive story. Even though somehow you believe that a lot of what's been happening for you has been negative, it's completely fine to just focus on the positives. If you're meeting someone new, you want to paint yourself in the best possible light. If a friend was trying to tell someone else, that they should be friends with you, they would sell you in the most positive way. There's no reason why you can't do that for yourself.

What I love to do on the podcast is to sit down with people and set them up in such a way to tell the most positive story about themselves. So that they can walk away feeling confident in knowing that they have a lot to offer. And that people listen and go, Oh, that guy's really interesting. Well, that girl's really interesting. I really like I really appreciated getting a chance to listen to that. And there's so much more that I can learn from them. And it could be that you share some stuff on your socials every now and then like a quote, or some sort of recommendation for a video or a book or a song. You can share those little things with people. And you can walk away from that conversation, giving them almost a little bit of homework.

And I'll just give this recommendation as well, because I've made this mistake in the past, if you're going to give someone a little bit of homework, make sure it's only a little bit, think 5, 10, 20, 30 minutes, probably not hours, probably not a book, every now and then you can recommend a book and some people will make the effort to read it. But generally, that's a big commitment of time for someone that they've just met. And a lot of people are not willing to put in that effort. But if you recommend a TV series, and someone likes that TV series, it could be that it's just one episode that they start with or a snippet of that, of that TV series that they like, for instance, one of the TV series that I love is Deadwood. And if I were to say that there's a couple of scenes in Deadwood, where you can just share with someone to give them a sense of what it's like to watch that TV series. Right, I don't need to give them the whole first season, I can just give them a five minute scene. And they can get a sense of the characters in a story and whether it's something that they'd like to do more of.

So one of the great things that you can do is tell your story in tidbits. Give them a little bit, don't give them all of the information upfront. Give them a little bit and then open up the possibility that they keep unraveling your story. Right, just like the way that you've sat there and ask questions and help them feel interesting. When you're telling a story well, other people will sit there and want to know more. Not everyone starts out as being great at telling their story. But guess what? You have plenty of opportunities to get better and better at it.

If you'd like to speak with me, I can help you to initially get that story sorted start to tell a positive story. But you can keep rewriting it. You can keep rewriting your story. You start with one story and then you can and add and subtract little bits and elements along the way to tell a story, which is more and more encapsulating. When someone asks you that question, what can you tell me about yourself when you've just met someone to have a couple of stories up your sleeve to just be able to start with to be able to just give them a little bit? Like, for instance? I actually moved to Canada. Oh, yeah. I lived in Canada for a couple years. Oh, you lived in Canada? What what are you doing over there? Oh, I sort of blew up my life a little bit. And I decided that I wanted to work more with people. So I moved into sales. Oh, what were you doing before that? I was in mangement consulting. Oh, right.

Now you notice that I'm getting focused on speaking about work. An easy thing to speak about, especially with men. If you speak about work, quite often, other men will be comfortable speaking about work as well. But there are a whole lot of other things that you can speak about. And as I said to you, the biggest thing that you should look at, and this is the thing, I can't really tell you what you should say with every individual person, because it could be that your story changes for each person. If you're on a podcast and you record a story, you record one story. But if you want to share that podcast with someone, you probably would only share a snippet, you probably would share like a five minute segment of that story, just to give someone just a little snippet of something that interests you. Right. And that's all you initially want to do. When you start telling someone your story. You can focus it wherever you want. But I would start to say to you that it's best for you to focus it in something that they've already told you they're interested in. And then you can keep expanding from there. But let them ask the questions to help you keep on coming.

Don't tell too much upfront, have lots of depth, to be able to deliver over time. But just keep it interesting. Initially, don't speak too much about yourself. Be open to share, and allow them to keep asking questions for you to keep sharing. But if you can just flip it back on them again. It's not about you, you have enough story for them to want to know you. But the what you're looking to do here is to have them have a good time in this conversation. Some people like listening to people talk. But generally people like to be able to talk, people like to be able to talk about stuff that they're interested in. So when you have that opportunity to find out what they're interested in, the easiest thing you can do is also tell a story which shows in some way that some of what you're interested in, is similar to what they're interested in. And so your choice, your story will change depending on who it is that you're sitting with. And this, all of the stories that you're telling are true. It's just that you're changing your market slightly, you're changing the story to suit the market. Right.

Now, this is a skill that you can work on but I find it a lot of fun. As I said to you, though, it's it's not your job to tell your story upfront. Just get a bit of a sense of what it is that they're interested in first, because you'll have a lot more impact when you start telling your story once you know what your audience is actually interested in. So hope you find that helpful. And I look forward to seeing you at beers with mates on the first Friday of every month at Soapbox Beer.

I've been running BWM for almost five years now. I’d like to do this forever. And I'm just in the process of getting all the branding sorted and starting to give you a bit of content that hopefully you can find useful. So thanks very much for tuning in. Now we'll get back to our regular broadcast of me interviewing other people to learn more about them, which is exactly the skill that I've been teaching you in this particular podcast series.