Mar 18, 2022
Today’s guest is Fred Joyal.
Fred Joyal is an author, speaker, entrepreneur, and business advisor. He co-founded the most successful dentist referral service in the country, 1-800-DENTIST. He has previously written two books on marketing, has dabbled in standup and improv comedy, acted in bad movies and excellent TV commercials. His latest book, Superbold: from Under-confident to Charismatic in 90 days, is an Amazon and Wall Street Journal bestseller and in my opinion, a game changer on confidence and finding your inner boldness. He once beat Sir Richard Branson in chess and was also a question on Jeopardy. He is an avid cyclist, a below-average tennis player and an even worse golfer. He lives in Los Angeles.
In this interview, we discuss:
- How being bold can be learned and is not inherited.
- Why interactions with no agenda will change your life.
- Why you should chase failure and experience and not perfection.
- Fred's awesome mantra to use when you feel nervous and want to tap into your own boldness.
- And so much more.
Here are some key points that I would advise you to concentrate on
- Becoming bold is a process that you can do, it is skill that you can develop and not a part of your character that you can't change.
- People mistake boldness with confidence.
- Being bold will allow you to take on the world, and do things and achieve things that stop the masses from achieving.
- Courage isn't the absence of fear, it is feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
- Regret is a lot worse to have in your life than trying and not succeeding. Failure means you tried but didn't succeed, regret means a lifetime of hating your inaction, you don't want regrets, you want memories and experiences.
- Boldness is a superpower, and everything flows from it, imagine what you could do if you didn't let fear hold you back in life.
- "There is a deep primal need to fit in" - this is from the cavemen days, that is "deep in our programming" but is not really relevant to our modern world now.
- You need to learn to have a tolerance to fear, and step outside the comfort zone.
- Our parents are partly to blame, as they tend to pass on messages like 'don't stand out' or 'try and fit in' - this is bad advice, it is meant well but we need to step outside the parental influences and find out our own abilities, not what others want from us.
- Being social is a skill that you can learn, it is not something that you are born with, it just needs to be worked on.
- Looking back at your regrets can be a great thing to do as long as you do not dwell on them, but instead use it as a fuel to motivate and inspire you to go after what you want and let the upset of missing the opportunities drives you to never miss anymore.
- Start really gradually on your journey to becoming more bold, start gradual and build from there.
- You should use intrigue in conversation - build interest and wonder. Avoid interview questions, and be more interested in the other person.
- Silence is acceptable, you don't need to fill all the dead air.
- Be confident, not cocky or worse creepy. Confidence is attractive, cocky is off putting and will kill any connection.
- Your change into boldness is not something that will stay, you need to keep working at it, and trying it. You will always want to take the easy way out until you can make it a habit, but you need to push yourself each day to be bold to change your life.
- Approach conversations without having any anterior motivate or agenda, just look to enjoy the interaction and not chase an outcome.
- Connect immediately with someone by complementing them. People love to talk about themselves and be complemented, but be honest, not fake.
- Speaking up can change your life, but you need to try it for the first time.
- Trying things just for the fun and experience is attractive to others. Chase the experience not perfection.
- Don't be the person that holds yourself back, step out your own way and let you step into the new version of yourself.
- If you feel under confident in any situation, use Frank's mantra of 'I belong here, I belong everywhere' and do it!
- Treat practicing boldness like push ups, each time you are bold it strengthens the skill and your ability to be bolder in life. Rep it out every day!
- Pushing your comfort zone will expand it so it is further away the next time you try and push your limits. You will never be the same person after being bold.
- You will not be perfect all the time. You will make mistakes. Expect to make mistakes. But mistakes are a sign of you trying and learning. Learn from the mistakes. Make mistakes not regrets.
- How you react to bad things is up to you, you can learn from it, make a funny comment, and not get stuck in your head. You can either make a regret that you will hate yourself about or make it as a funny experience and roll from it.
- Someone's reaction is rarely about what you did but more about what is happening in their life - stop taking it so personally. It is a choice and up to you if you take it personally or not.
- Not everyone needs to love you - its a tall order to expect everyone to love you, but the people who do, the friends who do are worth the hunt to find. Same with dating. Find your tribe.
- When speaking to people at parties, don't react with your own story when speaking to someone, listen, ask questions and find them interesting. Actively listen to learn, not to just reply. Connect with them, connect with others, only have the agenda to connect with people not just to talk about yourself.
- Our brains create new pathways every day and year, we can change and shape our brain to discover ourselves, we just need to step out of the familiar pathways to the same kind of behaviors that we want to fall back to when we feel nervous.
- When you write your goals, write about what you will AND what you won't accept from yourself. Be worthy, decide what you want in life, and decide what you will not accept in your life anymore and live these.
- Charisma is just feeling confident in all situations.
- Don't let a day go by without doing a drive-by compliment to someone!