fred-joyal

What Is Charisma (And Why You Want it!)

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:02:13 GMT

Most people have a strange relationship with the word charisma. They admire it in others. They often secretly want it themselves, but they’re also a little suspicious of it.

It can feel like something reserved for performers, politicians, or “naturally magnetic” people. Something you either have or you don’t. And if you try too hard to have it, it feels fake.

So let me clear that up, based on my extensive observations and personal experience. Charisma is not a personality trait. It’s not something people are born with. It is either socialized in one direction or the other by how we were raised and how we reacted to messages that were given to us, positive or negative.

Most people have it suppressed, while a smaller group has been rewarded for their behavior, like being outgoing or not worrying about rejection or embarrassment, and it has developed into charisma.

It’s also not about needing attention. Charisma is much simpler than that. What I’ve come to realize is that charisma is the positive emotional impact you have on other people.

That’s it. It’s how people feel after interacting with you. They feel more confident. More interesting. More energized. More understood.

In short, it is created by your actions. And those actions show that you are comfortable wherever you are, and act like you belong no matter where you are. People are drawn to that, almost unconsciously.

The subtitle of my book, Superbold, is From Underconfident to Charismatic in 90 Days. But I’m not teaching you how to become charismatic. I’m teaching you to develop and expand your boldness. Because boldness is about taking action, and the result is your comfort zone expands, and your confidence increases in more and more situations.

The byproduct of that personal development is you behave like you belong wherever you are, and you are never the one stopping yourself. You project that increased comfort in every situation. The eventual result is that people experience you as charismatic.

I know this, because at some point in my life, people started referring to me as charismatic. It was not something I was aiming for. I wasn’t trying to impress people. I was just determined to live a bold life, and not stack regrets and miss opportunities because I hesitated and stopped myself.

My goal is to bring my full, open, vulnerable self to every situation. My bold behavior has a significant level of humility as part of it, because I know how much more I can become, I understand how much more I can grow, and I can endure the discomfort of my past failures as well as my future ones.

I see the difference it’s made in my life, both in my business success and my personal relationships. That’s why I’m so passionate about teaching it. My goal is not to get attention or recognition, but to impact people’s lives in a positive way, and hopefully inspire them by how far I’ve come and how far I intend to go from here.

This is what I know: true charisma is not a goal, but a byproduct of bringing your full self to every situation, being confident but humble, brave and optimistic, and never projecting that you’re better than anyone, but rather, that you want them all to join you on a journey of a regret-free life.

My book, my lectures and workshops, and now the video course that I’m launching next week are all about bringing as many people along on this exciting path to boldness. And I hope you’ll join me.

Boldness Exercise of the Week

Make a short list of people who you find charismatic. Write down how they make you feel, and the impact they’ve had on you. And then write two bold things you’re going to do this week that make you uncomfortable. Then do them! Because your bold actions will impact people in ways you may never know.

fred@superboldlife.com

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Boldness: Your Irreplaceable Advantage in the Age of AI

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 14:07:49 GMT

Why Boldness Will Be Your Only Durable Skill in an Unpredictable World

In 1910, there were almost 300 automobile companies in the US. By 1950, there were three.

This is what technological disruption does, over and over again. It creates explosive opportunity while radically lowering the barrier to entry. It attracts capital, dreamers, engineers, and optimists. And then it consolidates.

We are living in the 1910 moment of AI. But it’s not going to take 40 years this time.

New AI companies are forming daily. Entire job categories are being automated. Business models are being rewritten in real time. And here’s the uncomfortable truth: no one can credibly predict what their career, their company, or their industry will look like in five years. Anyone who claims they can is guessing.

I’ve lived through disruption myself. In fact, in my own small way, my partner and I totally disrupted dental practice marketing with our company 1-800-DENTIST. The company operated for 25 years and generated, in aggregate, over a billion dollars in revenue. For most of that time, our model was stable and profitable. Then Google became a major competitor, and the decline began. Our pivots were incremental and didn’t forestall the inevitable.

If we were starting that same business today, incorporating AI, it would look radically different. Back then, we needed 100 telephone operators working 24/7, 365 days a year to operate the call center. Today, AI could handle the overwhelming majority of those interactions. We might need five human operators stepping in only when AI couldn’t fully satisfy someone. That one shift would have changed our profit model from an EBITDA of 15% to 60% or more.

For decades, entrepreneurs built businesses with 10-year horizons. Venture capital firms funded companies expecting liquidity events five to seven years down the road. Today, that kind of predictability feels almost naïve. If a founder confidently pitches a 10-year run to their new enterprise in this environment, the conversation won’t last long. The pace of AI acceleration makes long-term certainty nearly impossible.

So the question is no longer, “What business model should I build?” It becomes, “What core capability will allow me to survive multiple business models?”

I recently spent a day at Boston College, one of my two alma maters. I mostly chatted up students around the campus. The number one question students asked me was, “What was your major?” What they were really asking was, “What should I study so I don’t become obsolete?”

I realized they had become aware that almost nothing they studied guaranteed a job when they graduated, never mind a career. Ten years ago, it was estimated that the average college student would have five entirely different careers over their lifetime. Imagine that projection now. Assuming they will most likely live comfortably past 100 years old with the advances in medical science, and very likely won’t have Social Security benefits (unless they don’t start paying until you’re 90!), then graduates today could have 20 careers or more.

Their ability to pivot won’t be optional. It will be survival. They will have to unlearn more than they ever learned in college. Any business you create today will need to adapt to serve a marketplace that will significantly change in five years. A need you satisfy right now profitably could not even be necessary, or will be handled by a robot, AI or a tenth of the humans it requires now.

So what skill becomes the irreplaceable advantage? Certainly not coding. That’s changing almost monthly. Not prompt engineering. And would you want to be a camera operator right now? Or an ad agency? We ran primarily television ads to promote our business, and were very efficient, producing spots at a cost of $20-25,000 each. In two years, the average cost of a TV spot will be less than $200. (Look, even I can’t resist predicting the future!)

What I’m telling the executives I advise, as well as college students, is that the core skill will be boldness. That may seem strange, but boldness is one of the primary drivers of success, in my experience. And AI is going to have trouble learning it. But what I discovered is that boldness can be learned, despite most people thinking that it’s a personality trait.

Let me be clear about something. Boldness is not the same thing as confidence. Confidence is how you feel. It’s situational. There are rooms where you feel confident and rooms where you don’t. Boldness, on the other hand, is all about action. It’s the willingness to move forward without certainty, to take risks knowing it could easily go wrong. And the willingness to make decisions without having all the information.

In an environment where clarity no longer exists, boldness becomes the deciding human element determining your long-term success. Because change is coming faster than humans have ever experienced, and that will imbalance many people. And they will be hoping and praying for Universal Basic Income.

Many companies will fail not because AI replaces them overnight, but because they won’t acknowledge that their model is almost over. They will overplan. They will protect sunk costs. They will delay difficult pivots and try to incorporate AI in ways that won’t matter in the short run, never mind the long run. They will hope stability returns (How crazy does that sound?)

Stability is no longer the default. You may need to abandon 90% of your business model two years in. That takes boldness.

As AI takes over more routine and even complex tasks, something else rises in importance: human interaction. I’m talking about real interaction, face-to-face. Not on Zoom.

Your ability to walk into a room and connect, to communicate your ideas clearly and persuasively to an individual or 2000 audience members, will be the most versatile skill you develop. Your ability to influence spontaneously, to engender trust, to inspire confidence in your versatility and adaptability, those things are what will get you the investment capital to realize your vision. Not a detailed spreadsheet or an AI-designed presentation.

AI can generate words, projections, code, images and video. But it cannot generate presence. It cannot generate conviction. And if it feels charismatic, it’s faking it.

But your own charisma, contrary to popular belief, is developable. Because charisma is simply bringing your full self to the world, projecting that you belong wherever you are. You can learn that. We are drawn to people who are authentic, energetic, enthusiastic. It’s magnetic. We admire it. And it will open doors you never even knew existed.

There is a longstanding sales aphorism that people only buy from people they like. In the world of online purchasing we live in now, most buying doesn’t even require a human. And that will be more true every month, whether it’s ordering your Starbucks or buying your new electric sports car.

But many things will need to be sold, important things that we need to be persuaded to spend money on. For that, you don’t just need people to like you. They need to be charmed by you.

Once you develop your boldness, daily, steadily, it will evolve into charisma, simply because you will naturally project that you belong wherever you are, convince people you are capable of leading through uncertainty, can admit you’re wrong, and have much more to learn, but are eager to do so. As a result, you will be staying ahead of the curve that is becoming a tidal wave.

If you haven’t noticed, there already is a counter-reaction to AI’s pervasiveness. I think this will become part of our transition into a very different future, where AI dominates in some areas, and doesn’t exist or is restricted in others.

I’m already seeing media platforms restrict AI-generated content. Publications are rejecting submissions created by AI. Whether they can detect it perfectly in two years is almost beside the point. The bigger issue is this: if you rely on AI to think for you, structure your ideas, and express your voice, you are dulling your ability to create, and more importantly, to connect. You are outsourcing your edge. And the more you outsource that muscle, the weaker it becomes.

When I tell people they need to develop their boldness, they often respond by saying, “I’d be bolder if I were more confident.” But they have it backwards. Confidence doesn’t create boldness. Bold action creates confidence. When you take action, especially when the stakes are low, you build the boldness muscle. You expand your comfort zone. You teach your nervous system that risk is to be embraced, not avoided.

That’s called resilience. And that’s what you’re going to need most to chase your dreams.

When I was building my business, the stress ramped up gradually. Today, businesses scale faster, fail faster, and pivot faster. Resilience has to ramp up just as quickly. Yet I see more overplanning, more perfectionism and, worst of all, more avoidance of discomfort. Social media doesn’t build boldness; it builds a curated and false sense of safety. But the AI era will reward those who are comfortable being uncomfortable.

If you’re not regularly doing things that stretch you, your world is shrinking. Your tolerance for stress decreases. Your confidence diminishes when it needs to be expanded. And in a rapidly shifting environment, that is dangerous.

I recommend something simple: do uncomfortable things when the stakes are low. Start conversations with strangers. Be the one who speaks up in meetings. Ask questions instead of giving advice. Be curious, more curious about people than what’s scrolling on Instagram. Seek feedback on your weaknesses. Try presenting before you feel ready. Admit ignorance and be mindful of your confirmation bias. Change your mind, and do it publicly and regularly.

This is what I call doing reps to build your boldness muscle. The growth will happen, and you will feel your comfort zone expanding, and trying and failing will feel better than not trying. And, when it matters most, instead of cautiously hesitating, you’ll find that stepping up, saying yes, taking that chance, will be your reflexive response.

Most people believe they can think their way into being more confident. That’s not how the brain works. You act your way into a new way of thinking. The bold people I’ve emulated didn’t wait to feel ready. They took risks. They failed. They adjusted. They built resilience. They expanded their comfort zone until almost nothing felt off-limits.

That’s the Boldness Advantage in the modern age. That’s how you will futureproof yourself. AI will write faster, code faster, design faster, automate faster, and analyze faster. But it cannot walk into a room and build trust. It cannot make a decisive human judgment under pressure. It cannot lead people through ambiguity.

We don’t know who the eventual “Big Three” of AI will be. We don’t know which jobs will survive or which industries will shrink. The only thing we know is that it’s moving faster than anything before it.

If you do not develop your interpersonal boldness, your resilience, and your tolerance for discomfort, you are on a path to obsolescence. That may sound harsh, but it’s the truth. The exciting part is that it has never been easier to practice boldness. As so many people are hesitating, hiding in their phones, sitting in their apartments getting food delivered, you can go out into the world and master human interaction.

And it will serve you well all of your days.

Your Boldness Exercise for the week:

Do something that scares you this week. It could be singing Karaoke or asking for a raise. You come up with it. Then do another one!

I'm No Swiftie, But...

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 22:48:01 GMT

I am a fan for a very specific reason!

I didn’t attend any of Taylor Swift ’s concerts.

But I did start watching the documentary on her Eras Tour, and I was blown away—not just by what she achieved, but by who she appears to be.

Now, to be clear, I’m not really a fan of her music. I do like a few songs—Shake It Off is undeniably brilliant—but let’s face it, I’m not a 14-year-old girl, which is often cited as the core of her audience (even though her fans span every age imaginable).

Three things about her stood out to me.

Two are impressive.

The third is something we can all apply.

First: her perfectionism.
The level of detail in this tour is astonishing. The sets. The costumes. The transitions. The planning. The technology that had to be developed just to execute her vision. Nothing felt accidental. Everything was intentional.

Second: her work ethic.
She performed 149 shows over 21 months , across five continents .
Each show ran three and a half hours .

I don’t know anyone who performs that long except Bruce Springsteen—and he doesn’t do dance numbers.

The tour became the highest-grossing tour in history, generating over $2 billion in revenue . Economists estimate it also produced another $5 billion in economic impact for the cities she toured in. Los Angeles alone estimated an additional $320 million in spending because she was there.

And as if that weren’t enough, she also produced an album during that same grueling period.

The logistics were equally impressive. The tour required two complete stages . While one crew was setting up in one city, another crew was already driving the second stage to the next city so everything stayed on schedule.

And then there’s how she treated the people who made it all possible.

You probably heard that she gave $100,000 bonuses to every truck driver . In total, she gave out nearly $200 million in bonuses to dancers, singers, and crew members.

But it wasn’t just the money.

She wrote handwritten notes of gratitude , included food, and personally handed envelopes—with checks inside—to crew members at the end of each leg of the tour.

She may be the kindest billionaire I’ve ever seen.

And she’s only 36 years old .

The third thing impressed me the most:
Collaboration.

Her vision was amplified by thousands of people bringing creativity, effort, dedication, and determination to life. This wasn’t a solo act—it was a masterclass in collective excellence.

And what was the result?

Joy.

Look at the faces of the fans in the audience. It’s beyond euphoric. They wear costumes. They trade friendship bracelets. Some even wore the jersey number of her NFL boyfriend (now fiancé).

She spreads love and happiness through her work.

Ten million fans attended.

Let’s be honest—if you can generate $2 billion in less than two years doing what you love, you’re doing something very right.

It’s a powerful reminder of what’s possible when bold vision meets relentless execution and true collaboration.

Long may she reign.

Your Boldness Exercise ��

Go to a karaoke bar.
Get up.
Sing Shake It Off.

And while you’re at it—put a little glitter on your eyes.

The Stephen Curry Lesson Most People Miss

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 13:43:20 GMT

I’m not much of a sports fan, but I love a good sports analogy. Athletes, especially elite ones, devote extraordinary effort to succeed, and their habits often translate directly into business and personal growth.

If you know anything about basketball, you know Stephen Curry. He’s widely regarded as the greatest three-point shooter in history. His long-range accuracy is almost superhuman. There’s even a video of him making ten full-court shots in a row, each one a perfect swish. Not the kind of thing AI fakes. That's talent, yes, but it's not the whole story.

There’s a lesser-known part of Curry’s greatness that’s far more relevant to the rest of us: His mastery of the free throw.

When a player is fouled, they’re awarded an uncontested shot from the free-throw line. Seems simple. But this “simple” act is often what determines a close game or even a championship.

Curry hits 93% of his free throws.

The average NBA player hits 78% .

Shaquille O’Neal, one of the most dominant players ever, averaged 52% .

That gap between 78% and 93% is the difference between good and nearly automatic. And in the NBA, where games are regularly decided by one or two points, that difference is massive.

There’s another angle: Coaches will sometimes instruct players to intentionally foul an opposing shooter they think is likely to miss the free throws. They did it to Shaq constantly, to the point where it was termed “Hack the Shaq.” They never ever do it to Steph.

Why? Too risky. Because Curry has elevated a fundamental skill to the level of mastery.

The Hidden Ingredient: Diligence

My friend Alan Stein, a top performance coach, trained with Curry early in his career. One story he shared has stuck with me ever since. At the end of each practice, when everyone else would go into the locker room, Curry would go to the free-throw line and practice his shot.

He wouldn't leave the gym until he had made 10 perfect swishes in a row. If the tenth shot touched the rim, he started over.

This is diligence. This is a master doing the fundamentals until boredom, resistance, and perfection meet. And this is where the lesson applies directly to your success.

Where Most People Fall Short

We live in a world designed to keep us entertained and distracted. Our phones are engineered to prevent boredom. Yet success very often requires boredom.

Because, let’s face it, practicing the fundamentals is boring. Repetition is boring. But do you know what’s even more boring? Staying average.

It’s the same for musicians doing scales. Actors rehearsing lines. Writers drafting endless revisions. The people who excel simply stay with the fundamentals longer than those who don’t. And they accept boredom as part of the process.

Whether you’re a salesperson, a dentist, an entrepreneur, or a leader, your “free throws” are the simple, unglamorous actions that compound into mastery.

Your free throws might be:

Making the calls you don’t want to make
Hearing “no” far more often than “yes”
Repeating your script until you can deliver it in your sleep
Rehearsing presentation over and over

And here’s a big one: role-playing. Most of us dread it, but there is often no better way to refine a skill. And the reality is, there are no negative consequences to role-playing, except in your head. We hate not being good at something. So, just start thinking of it like you’re just hitting the rim, and you get to take another shot. Nothing to be ashamed of, just room for improvement. You’re simply getting better before it matters, so you’re game is strong when it does.

Why I Tell You This (And Why I Tell Myself This)

I don’t enjoy rehearsing my presentations. I don’t enjoy repeating a section over and over until it lands. But I do it because that’s the price of being as impactful as possible on stage. And the reward is being spontaneous, creative, and fully present when I’m in front of an audience.

Mastery gives you freedom.
Fundamentals give you mastery.

If you’re getting average results, there’s a good chance you’ve been avoiding the fundamentals. Maybe it feels easier to stay where you are. But “easier” isn’t better. Not if you want more.

THIS WEEK'S BOLDNESS EXERCISE

Pick one simple boldness exercise and repeat it today.

Examples:

Smile at a stranger
Compliment someone in line at Starbucks
Strike up a 20-second conversation with someone new
Practice your pitch out loud five times
Role-play a tough conversation with a friend or colleague

If you hesitate, that’s the resistance.

The same resistance that keeps you from practicing the fundamentals.

Push through it. Do the simple thing. The low-stakes thing. The “boring” thing.

Because that’s where your boldness grows. And bold people win when it matters.

Are You a Sunk Cost Fallacy Victim?

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 23:32:47 GMT

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Don't Just Respect Your Elders--Record Them!

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 15:19:46 GMT

Don't miss the chance to create lifetime memories!

I lost my father in my early twenties, and only years later did I realize how much I took him and the time we had completely for granted. I never asked him the questions I should have once I became an adult. It’s easy to assume our parents and elders will always be around…until they’re not. And then, again and again, you’ll think of one more thing you wish you could ask them.

Years later, my father’s older sister, Rosa, who lived to almost 102, became a priceless resource for me. I visited her often. She said I reminded her of my father, who was her best friend, but she also gave me something I desperately needed: answers.
Stories.
History.
The pieces of my dad’s life that I never thought to ask him directly.

Those painful lessons taught me something crucial: don’t leave the important questions unasked. Not with your parents. Not with your grandparents. Not with anyone you care about. Life has no obligation to give you another chance.

As I’m writing this, we’re entering the holiday season—a time when many of us gather with family members we may only see once a year— so I encourage you to do something bold and meaningful:

Record the people you love. On video. Now.

Years ago, I recorded a 90-minute video of Aunt Rosa, just asking her about her life and my father. I learned many things that I had never known. That recording is one of the most treasured things I possess.

On the other hand, I deeply regret not recording a message from my dear friend, Madelyn, for her grandson to show to his future bride someday before his wedding. She passed before I got the chance. Imagine what a meaningful gift that would have been.

Today, we live in a world where everyone has a video camera in their pocket. It’s easier than ever to capture those stories and messages. And trust me, future generations will treasure them. And so will you.

I also believe in recording some of these yourself. Record messages, thoughts, guidance, things your loved ones may one day want or need to hear. None of us is here forever, and boldness means acting before regret sets in.

A Small Story About Ruth

A few days ago in Whole Foods, an elderly woman in front of me insisted I go ahead of her in line, as she was only buying a cup of coffee. After some playful back-and-forth, I agreed and then bought her coffee, to which she slyly replied, “I do this trick all the time!”

We both laughed, and later I sat with her for a few minutes while she drank it and asked her about her life.

Her name was Ruth. She had no family nearby. Some were gone; others lived far away.

For her, that short conversation mattered. For me, it was a reminder of a younger version of myself who was uncomfortable talking to older people. And of how far I’ve come.

This, too, is boldness: Taking a moment to connect with someone who might otherwise go overlooked.

THIS WEEK'S SUPERBOLD EXERCISE:

If the opportunity appears—and it almost certainly will— spend a few minutes chatting with an elderly stranger.

It will brighten their day more than you know.

And it will strengthen your boldness muscle in a meaningful, human way.

And please… don’t stack regrets.
Ask the questions now.
Record the people you love.
Capture the stories before they disappear.

Your future self—and your family’s future generations—will thank you.

Apparently We're Not Perfect Yet!

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 14:55:20 GMT

Why asking for feedback is important!

There's a question that makes many people cringe when they hear it, And it's this: “Can I offer you some honest feedback?”

I must admit, I don't particularly enjoy receiving feedback, but I've learned how valuable it can be. One of the great revelations in life is when we realize that most people don't see us the way we see ourselves. Very often we're very kind in our opinion of ourselves, although sometimes it's the opposite, and we have a much more negative view of ourselves than the rest of the world. Either way, we are seldom 100% accurate in our self-awareness.

But the whole fallacy of not liking feedback implies that we are somehow perfect already. We don't want people to think that we have flaws or that we make mistakes, which is a little crazy. Or maybe just human. In actuality, we don't expect anyone else to be perfect, and we expect people to make mistakes. We hope that they acknowledge that they're making a mistake, even though we very often resist acknowledging our mistakes ourselves.

The reason I have embraced feedback is because one of my goals in life is to always be getting better, better at speaking, at writing, at communicating, at being in a relationship, at being a friend, and at being a business advisor.

I want to get better at all these things. And yes, of course, I can take video courses and read self-help books and get all sorts of safe input, but many times, the most valuable feedback is from someone who observes you in action.

I recently was in a two-day workshop, working on my speaking skills, because I was determined to get significantly better this year. I would watch videos of myself and couldn’t see what was wrong. And I secretly suspected I wasn’t perfect!

The first hour into this workshop, I learned half a dozen things that I could improve, all because I willingly subjected myself to painful feedback. (I also believe that if the feedback isn’t painful then they’re not being honest with you!)

And here's the cornerstone of feedback: you have to trust the source.It has to come from someone you respect, and it also has to come from someone who doesn't have an ulterior motive. It needs to be somebody who has your best interest at heart.

Let me make a clear distinction between feedback and unsolicited advice. Another term for unsolicited advice is unwelcome advice. It’s not feedback, but comes in that disguise. More about that in another newsletter.

The pure intent of feedback should be constructive. There is no chastising element to feedback. Also, let's forget about the whole “criticism sandwich,” where you give praise, then criticism, then praise again. Everybody's gotten wise to that.

Feedback is also something that needs to be accepted. Otherwise, it’s unsolicited advice. For example, my coach would often ask me, “Can I offer you an insight?” That's a really great question, because it requires me to say yes. I have the opportunity to say, “No, I'd rather not hear your insight.” But if I give permission, then I have to listen.

An interesting example of powerful feedback in my business career was when we were doing a 360 Evaluation with our VP and executive team back when I was CEO of 1-800-DENTIST. This is a process where everyone writes anonymous feedback about everyone else, and then it's compiled and, if it's consistent, let's say 60 or 70% of the people said certain things about another person, then it is considered useful feedback, and you would get to read it. It turned out that one of the things my team agreed on was that I shoot the messenger. I was very surprised at this, and said so. And my COO looked at me and said, “Seriously? You don't know this about yourself?”

I reflected on it, and when I started playing back specific conversations, I saw that I indeed did do that.

I don't do it anymore. I got better because I got feedback about something that I really didn't know about myself.

It takes boldness to ask for feedback, just as it takes boldness to offer it. Keep in mind, if you want to offer feedback, remember how much you don't like it yourself, but realize that, if it is constructive, then it is an act of kindness. Also, you could preface your feedback with, “I might be wrong. This is just how I see it.”

We all need to get better at being a leader, a team member, a partner in a relationship, and a citizen of the world.

Finally,if you don't want to get better, well, I have some feedback for you.

This Week's Boldness Exercise:

Your boldness exercise this week is to ask at least three people for some feedback about your work performance, and then do the same with a good friend and your significant other.

You could simply ask, “Where do you think I could improve?” or, “What do you think I’m not aware of?”

And with your significant other, if you’re feeling bold, you could ask, “What is it I do that really bothers you?” And then stop doing it!

Following Up, and Why You Avoid It!

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 23:28:33 GMT

We all know the rush of a fresh opportunity: the new prospect, the new idea, the new connection. It feels clean. Full of possibility. No awkwardness, no rejection risk. And yet, statistically, that’s not where success actually happens.

A remarkable insight from HubSpot says 80% of deals close in the follow-up, which means not the first conversation, not the pitch, not the “Hey, great to meet you.” In the follow-up.

Yet very few people follow up enough.

Why?

Because rejection stings. Because silence feels like a “no.” Because it’s emotionally easier to chase the new than to continue nurturing what’s already started.

But if you want to live a Superbold life and build a business or career that actually grows, you need to master the art of follow-up. Not as a chore or a sales tactic. But as a form of generosity, professionalism and, of course, boldness.

Why People Don’t Respond (And Why It’s Not About You)

People are overwhelmed—messages, tasks, notifications, family needs, appointments, deadlines, distractions. You are not being ignored because you’re unworthy. You’re lost in the noise. Think about the number of meaningful emails you unintentionally miss in a week. For most people, it’s several.

Follow-up is not pestering. It’s service. It’s helping someone remember what matters to them. Remember, most of the time it’s not a rejection. Silence is the new normal. But we stop ourselves because we’ve been ghosted, (in our mind, at least!)

We create stories in our head:

“They must not be interested.”

“They would have responded by now.”

“They already said no.”

But here’s the truth: Many “No’s” are simply “Not now’s”. You know this, I’m sure, but you hesitate to follow up. Yet I know people who closed deals a full year after their initial outreach because the timing finally aligned. Persistence isn’t annoying. It’s professional.

The Greatest Mistake: Not Systematizing the Follow-Up

Every successful business, from dental practices to consulting firms to coaching programs, runs on consistent touchpoints. The earliest lesson I learned in advertising was that repetition alone is what keeps you top of mind. We are bombarded with messages all day. When you don’t systematize follow-up, you rely on memory, which is the least reliable system ever invented. Create a systematic way to continue reaching out to prospects at specific intervals with a different message. And do it. Once you see the results, you’ll be hooked.

If you’re looking for what message to send, try gratitude or appreciation. Or just a simple tidbit of useful information not directly related to your product.

And finally, accept that ghosting is going to happen. It is the new norm and it’s not going to improve. Don’t ascribe any meaning to it. That’s a waste of calories.

Be bold enough to do the hard stuff and make following up part of your daily activity.

This Week's Boldness Challenge:

This one should be pretty obvious. Follow up with someone you've been avoiding. Do one for business and one personally. Because sometimes we neglect our personal relationships, too, don't we?

Boldly yours,

Fred

When to Ignore Criticism, and When to Enjoy It!

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 17:43:35 GMT

I had the occasion to attend a live taping of a national talk show while I was in New York last week. As we waited for the show to start, they showed video clips from past episodes, and then they ended with a screen showing all sorts of negative critique of the host. Most were insulting and some profane, and I was struck by the host’s embrace of those criticisms and the humility that it took to show them to us. It was also quite funny.

It also exemplified something I talk about in my lectures and book, which is not worrying about everyone's opinion of you. One of the greatest liberations you can have in life is when you stop worrying about what everyone is thinking about you. Instead, you think about what you're trying to accomplish and the people that matters to and simply disregard the rest.

Face it, you are never going to make everyone happy. You are never going to make everyone love you. And you're never going to make everyone understand what you want them to. If you try to please everyone you would need everything you say to be bland and innocuous. If no one ever disagrees with you, you are either hiding in an echo chamber or never really taking a position on anything. When strong enough to take a stance on what you believe, there will always be people who think you're an idiot.

I’m sure there are many people who think I’m an idiot. Some of them probably were in my audiences. All I care about is the people that I can impact, and I don't worry about the rest. I don't worry about their judgments. The reality is people aren't thinking about you that long and hard when they are judging you. They are seeing your through their filters and biases and looking at just a snapshot of who you are.

I want people who are interested in where I'm going and where I can take them. I don't need it to be everybody. In fact, I hope I have a certain number of detractors. It means I'm pushing my envelope, and it also means I could be wrong. I'm totally accepting of that fact, and I'm willing to learn where I could be mistaken. I believe I can learn something from my critics. I invite it. To me it's just feedback. They may overcharge their opinion with emotion and harshness, but I'll dismiss that part of it and extract what value I may find.

If you want to live a bold and adventurous life, you can't let other people define how you should behave all the time. If you want to chase your dreams and live your own life rather than what someone else expects of you, then you are going to be criticized, possibly with a certain level of cruelty. There is nothing more liberating than ignoring that and considering it as irrelevant.

If there's value in it, then maybe listen to it. But don't allow yourself to be hurt by somebody else's opinion. Many people like to feel smart by criticizing someone. It makes them feel important, superior. If that's what they need, let them have it. Make a gift of that to them and let it bounce off you. Because you've got work to do. You've got people that matter and people whose opinions are important. Ignore the rest.

Bold people only have a handful of people whose opinions they value more than their own. When you let somebody else's opinion of you matter than your own opinion of yourself, you've surrendered the power and control over your own life, your own destiny. Why would you want to do that?

Don't ever let somebody else's criticism or insults knock you off your path, your goals and your love of yourself. Be bold enough to accept you’re not perfect, and focus on getting better, not pleasing the haters. Embrace the joy of being your unique self and bring that to the world!

THIS WEEK’S BOLDNESS EXERCISE:

Here's your boldness challenge for the week: Sit down with someone whose opinion you value and say, "Please tell me some criticism you have of me that you haven't told me because you didn't want to hurt my feelings."

Then listen to what they tell you. Don't try to explain it away. Just absorb it. You might find it to be the most valuable conversation you have all month.

And of course, don't just be bold, be SUPERBOLD!

Fred

That Dang Ocean Won't Boil!

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 14:08:45 GMT

There’s a business expression I love: “Don’t try to boil the ocean.”

It’s a vivid way to say don’t take on more than you can possibly do well. Yet so many entrepreneurs, myself included at times, fall into that trap. We keep adding another product line, another side venture, another “can’t-miss” opportunity until our energy is scattered and our results get diluted.

When you try to focus on everything, you end up being effective at nothing.

I’ve been there, launching side businesses, making investments without enough investigation, and chasing too many good ideas at once. The result? A lot of effort gets spread too thin.

Now, I’ve learned to narrow my focus.

I pick one top priority. Okay, maybe a couple of secondary ones, too, but the main one always wins. It gets my time, my energy, and my full attention. If there’s time left for the rest, great. If not, I don’t sweat it.

This same concept applies to your marketing strategy. Too many entrepreneurs think they need to appeal to everyone to succeed. Not true.

When we built 1-800-DENTIST, people assumed we had a majority of the dentists in the country as clients because we were the biggest referral service. In reality, we generated nearly $50 million a year with less than 3% of U.S. dental practices participating. We didn’t need everyone. We just needed the right few.

That’s true across almost every industry. Think about bottled water brands. How many found huge success by serving just a small slice of the market until a giant like Pepsi or Coke bought them?

The beauty of not needing everyone is that you can market more precisely, focus more deeply, and serve your ideal customers exceptionally well.

Companies also do this by adding more and more features to their product. The challenge with that is your salespeople can’t pitch effectively because the potential client is getting demo fatigue halfway through the presentation.

Which is why the best salespeople ask questions to figure out what the customer cares about, and narrows their focus to those features. The novice salesperson believes the more features they present the more excited the customer becomes. This happens almost never.

In another venture I’m involved with—a premium cannabis company—we aim for the top end of the market. We offer the most expensive product in the state, and yet we generate as much revenue as the cheapest one. Why? Because we’re clear on who we serve and unapologetic about it.

And that brings us back to boldness—my favorite topic. It takes boldness not just to start a business, but also to resist distraction and say no to the shiny next thing. It’s not bold to believe you can do five things at once brilliantly. That’s hubris, not courage.

And the difference between boldness and hubris is very often the difference between success and failure.

There is abundance in the niches, and simplicity conquers complexity every time.

THIS WEEK’S BOLDNESS EXERCISE:

Turn down one opportunity without explaining why.

Maybe it’s a meeting, a pitch, a dinner invite, or a webinar. Simply decline. Resist that urge to give a reason (especially a fictional one!)

You’ll find yourself with more time and more energy to move forward on what really matters. Fight the FOMO. Protect your focus.

Finally, don’t just be bold. Be superbold!

—Fred

The $25,000 Lesson That Changed How I Value Myself

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 12:21:35 GMT

This week I want to give you one of the most impactful lessons I learned that requires my boldness whenever I apply it. It’s this: to never undervalue myself.

I think it's very easy for any one of us in certain situations to feel we are not deserving enough. We also underestimate the value other people ascribe to us. We ask for less money, salary or equity or opportunity, maybe even love. And we don’t receive our full value. And that even affects what we believe our value is.

Let me give you one example that was quite significant for me. I was offered a consulting opportunity by this university to prepare a very detailed business plan for a new project. I knew it would have been fairly easy for me to do, because it was exactly in my field of expertise and experience.

That week I was talking to my coach, and I told him about the project, and that I was thinking about only charging $5,000 because it wasn't going to take me a lot of time.

And his first question was, “Who else could do this for them?” And my answer was, “No one that I know of.” “So,” he said, “Why not ask for $10,000?”

I thought about it seriously, in part because my coach was the one who had first told me I should never be undervaluing myself. (I love coaches. As painful as their feedback can be!)I tumbled around my pricing strategy in my head and decided and thI should probably ask for $20,000 for this project. This university wasn't broke, and I'm good at what I do. I have 30 years of experience in what they required.

In the end, what I finally asked for was $25,000.

And they didn't even blink. They accepted it without negotiation. In fact, three months after I completed the project, they came back with another project for another $25,000.

Imagine if I had said $10,000. They certainly would have accepted it and definitely wouldn’t have offered more. And I probably would have been okay with it. And I would have been okay with it a second time, too. But I would have made $20,000 instead of $50,000. Big difference!

That taught me how easy it was to undervalue myself, and how I had to never do it. I could have easily been overbidding that university job, and I might have had to reduce my offer. But then I would know that I reached the top value. Maybe I should have asked for $35,000 just to make sure!

Let me ask you, where are you undervaluing yourself? Is it in deals? Opportunities? Investments? Relationships? Everywhere?

The only way to know is to stretch yourself, push yourself, take the risk. In short, believe in yourself and project confidence in what you are worth. And many times people will just say, “Yes.”

9 Reasons Why Dental Implant Marketing Is So Hard

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 23:42:35 GMT

It’s not a simple answer. There are several problems with how most dental implant marketing works. I’m sure many of you have experienced this and have spent tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to find a sustainable solution, particularly in attracting full-arch cases.

There are many factors along the way that shrink what’s called the Marketing Funnel. Simply put, that’s all the constraints that reduce the number of patient leads your advertising generates until you finally have a paying patient. I’m going to go through the key challenges, and then explain what could work and why.

1. The Practice Takes All the Risk

With virtually all implant marketing programs, you pay, and they promise a certain result. Or worse, they don’t promise anything except to do their best to attract cases. But most of the time they are not getting you patients. They are getting you leads, which is to say, potential patients that you have to then sell your dentistry to. Leads can vary widely in quality. There are few terms more vague than “a qualified lead.” And by no means does that translate to accepted, financed cases.

Some programs will even “guarantee” results or your money back. Read the fine print on these. This is where they narrowly define what is a successful result, and often it could be as worthless as an email address or a form that’s been filled out online. You have to do all the selling yourself. But they met their guarantee.

Try and find any dentist who got his money back on one of these deals. I’ve never met one. The reason for that is it’s not a viable business model for a marketing agency. Too much is out of their control for them to guarantee anything close to a real patient who accepts treatment.

2. Your Front Desk is the First point of Contact

First of all, practices are only answering the phone, at the most, forty hours a week. Usually less. Second, that person is multitasking, and is often not trained to convert potential patients into appointments. Often the call goes to voicemail. Finally, if the contact is an email form, it could be hours before you get back to the patient. Days, even.

Meanwhile, people are doing their research at all hours of the day, and if they don’t get a fairly immediate response, they keep looking. This means by the time you get back to them, they may have found another practice. The funnel shrinks.

3. Your Success Depends on Your Case Presentation Skills

Advertising only begins the process. Your website might continue that process if it is extremely well done, but once you get the patient in the office, it’s up to you to convince the patient to accept treatment. If you’re great at case presentation you might convince 30% of patients to accept. And the bigger the case, the lower your percentage will be.

For full mouth restorations, it’s not uncommon to have to present to as many as ten patients to get one or two to accept. And then they have to pay, which is the next problem.

4. Financing Approval Rates Have Plummeted

FICO score requirements have gone up at the same time as many people’s scores have gone down. And the interest rates that are charged now send that monthly payment sky-high, beyond the reach of 90% of patients. And that’s not likely to change significantly in the coming years.

This adds a complication, because you can’t start the presentation with, “So, how much extra money do you have?” or “How’s your credit?” Very often prejudging what people can afford is a mistake, and so you need to present to several patients to get an accepted case. And so the funnel tightens.

5. Marketing Agencies Can’t Track True Success

The real success of advertising is if it attracts a sufficient patient number of patients who accept the treatment and can afford it. Agencies don’t have access to this information unless you give it to them, and very often they can’t trace it back to the exact media source.

The ideal for agencies would be to know with a high degree of accuracy which messages, media channels and placement schedules are creating the most qualified patients. They cannot do this without having some access to your production or your PMS. So, they measure website traffic, clicks, and forms. And you look at your production and see if it went up. This is called hoping for the best.

In the worst-case scenario, they attract no viable patients. In the second worst, they attract a lot of bodies but very few accept. This sucks up a significant amount of time for you and your team, starting at the front desk, for a low net result. But either way, you’re paying for the advertising.

6. Agencies Need Lots of Clients

Virtually no agency can afford to give you exclusivity in your area. Most of them won’t even discuss the possibility. They’ll put five clients in the same zip code if they can, because that’s their business model. In most cities, if they did offer exclusivity, your media budget would have to be huge.

Also, they make money by keeping a percentage of your media budget for themselves. This means typically only 80% of your budget is going to running ads. If they’re really good at what they do, they can justify the difference. But if they have multiple clients in your area, then results have to diminish. There are only so many potential patients in any given month.

The fact is they’re put in a position where they are bidding on the same keywords for you as their other five clients. Or using the same message. Which leads to the next problem.

7. Nothing Makes You Unique

You may have noticed that everyone is advertising essentially the same message to attract implant cases. It’s a free initial consultation and some kind of discount. What does make you unique is what your patients say about you online (as well as the patient experience in your office) but that assumes the advertising can get them to read those reviews.

8. You Can’t Do This Yourself

Advertising is the fastest-moving target out there. Sometimes Instagram will change the algorithm in the middle of the month and your ad disappears. Also, Google keyword bidding requires almost daily attention, and effective SEO on your website is a constant challenge as well. People who do this for a living are challenged by it. How could you possibly do it yourself, or have a team member do it part-time?

9. You’re Not Doing the Math

I often hear dentists say things like, “I make at least $10,000 in profit on a full mouth reconstruction.” I then ask them how much time they spend doing case presentations on patients that don’t accept, and how much they get paid for those. (They reluctantly say “Nothing.”)

The fact is, every minute you don’t have an instrument in your hand you’re not making money. If you need to present ten full mouth cases to get one, you’ve got 10 to 12 hours that you worked for free for that $10,000 in profit. Suddenly that ROI is not so high, once you add in the monthly marketing spend.

So, What Can You Do?

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not the marketing agencies’ fault. Most of them are hardworking and reputable. But some of them don’t know what they’re doing, and there are a few that are totally disreputable. And others that are good at selling themselves but not so good at selling you. And no matter how good they are, they can only be so successful without end-to-end tracking of the results of their campaigns.

However, you will need an agency of some kind. Choosing an agency is hard. Here’s one red flag: a two-year contract. It only takes 90 days to know if they’re successful, and if they are then they should be month-to-month thereafter.

Find one that wants the production data from you, ideally digitally so they can perfect their strategy on an ongoing basis. And one that's completely transparent about what they're measuring. What exactly are they promising? How are they defining success? You don’t want a flood of patients contacting you that are the wrong fit for your practice. Your ROI depends not just on how many patients accept, but how many didn’t that you had to have an appointment with and present to.

Once you choose an agency, here is what I recommend you do on your side:

1. Have realistic expectations. It’s competitive out there.

2. Have a robust, content-rich website. This is where a lot of decisions are made by the patient before they even come in.

3. Accumulate patient testimonial videos. This is the most versatile marketing tool there is, for both you and for your marketing agency. You don’t need a lot of them. You need good ones. Five or ten will make a huge difference.

4. Create a remarkable patient experience. Read my book Becoming Remarkable if you don’t know how to do that.

5. Give as much tracking information on production as possible to your agency.

6. Sharpen your presentation skills.

7. Do the math.

8. Have a coach like one from Fortune Management that can help you with all of this.

Finally, there is only one company I know, Renew Corp. , that solves every step of the marketing funnel, but they have limited availability. But they’re the best marketing solution I’ve ever seen. If you’re lucky, they’re available in your area.

Tucker Max on Catching Gators and Other Bold Moves

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 15:18:43 GMT

Fred Joyal's Superbold Podcast interviewing Tucker Max

Boldly Disrupt Yourself–or Else! with Jay Samit

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 15:17:17 GMT

Superbold Podcast #2 features bestselling author Jay Samit

Preparation: The Foundation for Boldness with Bestselling Author Chris Voss

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 15:00:54 GMT

Fred Joyal interviews Chris Voss on Superbold Podcast #3

Boldly Challenging Yourself with High-Performance Coach Alan Stein Jr.

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 14:57:26 GMT

Superbold Podcast featuring Alan Stein Jr. Episode 4

Mastering Bold Empathy with Dr. Mark Goulston

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 14:52:52 GMT

The Superbold Podcast featuring Dr. Mark Goulston

Igniting Your Boldness with Sanyika “The Firestarter” Street

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 14:49:56 GMT

Superbold Podcast Episode 6 featuring Sanyika Street

Making Your Fortune with Boldness with Bernie Stoltz

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 14:47:16 GMT

Superbold Podcast #7 featuring Bernie Stoltz

Boldness and the Vagabond Life with Amber Lethem

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 14:44:51 GMT

Superbold Podcast #8 with Amber Lethem

Episode #15 ~ Job Search TV

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 14:43:19 GMT

Being Bold? No, SUPERBOLD! | JobSearchTV.com

Episode #14 ~ Career Warrior

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 14:41:47 GMT

Get the Job Faster than You Think | The Power of Boldness | Fred Joyal

Episode #12 ~ Always on the Grow with Manny Vargas

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 14:40:47 GMT

How to Get Whatever You Want in Life by Being Superbold

Episode #9 ~ Best in Practices Show

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Sun, 17 Apr 2022 14:39:43 GMT

Contribution Margin in Your Dental Practice

Episode #11 ~ Amplify Prosperity

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Sun, 17 Apr 2022 14:38:38 GMT

On this episode of the Amplify Prosperity Podcast host Harrison Painter interviews Fred Joyal, the author of SUPERBOLD - From Under-Confident to Charismatic in 90 Days.

Episode #13 ~ Raving Patient Podcast

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Sun, 17 Apr 2022 14:37:47 GMT

How to Get Whatever You Want in Life by Being Superbold

Episode #10 ~ Tbone Speaks Dentistry

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Sat, 16 Apr 2022 14:36:28 GMT

Fred Joyal is a speaker, author, and business coach. He specializes in helping people develop what he calls “the superpower of boldness.” His systematic approach allows anyone to gradually build their “boldness muscle” and be comfortable in uncomfortable situations.

Episode #8 ~ The Thriving Dentist Show with Dr. Gary Takacs

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 14:35:00 GMT

Introduction 00:10

This is the thriving dentist show with Gary Takacs, where we help you develop your ideal dental practice, one that provides personal, professional and financial satisfaction.

Gary Takacs 00:25

Welcome to another episode of The Thriving Dentists show. I’m Gary Takacs, your podcast host, I have an awesome episode for you today. You know, we mix up the format a little bit in the thriving dentists show. And this format, I have an interview from someone that you likely already know. And if you don’t already know my guest, you’re in for a real treat. My guest today is Fred Joyal. Hey Fred, how are you?

Fred Joyal 00:53

Fantastic, Gary, great to see you.

Gary Takacs 00:55

And let’s just let the cat out of the bag, Fred. The interview that we’re doing today is to talk about your new book. And the book is titled Superbold. And I was privileged to receive a pre publishing copy. And I’ve had the privilege of reading it. And, Fred, I gotta tell you, you knock this one out of the park. This book is absolutely amazing. And it is such a powerful, the content is so powerful, not only for our profession and for health, you know, for dental professionals, whether they be dentists or team members. But this is a book that extends far beyond our profession. It’s really a book that that everybody needs to read.

Fred Joyal 01:47

Yeah, and the title is Superbold. I always make sure I pronounced that the hard d at the end because they go you wrote a book about the Super Bowl like No, no, it’s no about how to go from whatever level of confidence and boldness you’re at to whatever level you want to get at.

Gary Takacs 02:05

I love your subtitle, which is, from under confident to charismatic in 90 days. And if you can’t leave, well, you deliver on that because not only the is the book full of content related to the character of boldness, but it actually is as much a workbook as as a you know, content book. And the workbook makes everything actionable. And I love that because Fred, you’ve you’ve heard me say that information is great. But information without application is merely entertainment. I mean, I’d like to think that that what you and I do when we’re speaking or we’re running workshops, or whatever, I’d like to think it’s entertaining. And I’m sure you as well. Yeah, but perhaps more importantly, I think both you and I feel much better when we know what we’ve shared is actually being applied.

Fred Joyal 03:09

Yeah, I’m much happier when somebody comes up to me and says, I read Becoming Remarkable. My whole team reads it. We changed everything that we’re doing. What up 30% This year, like, Yes, that’s what the books about put into action.

Gary Takacs 03:24

But by the way, I enjoyed the book, but I’m also up 30%. Yes, Fred, let’s back up a little bit before we take a deep dive into the book. You know, we have new listeners all the time on The Thriving Dentist Show. We’re now up to listeners on 188 countries. And may I take a stab at credentialing you and then you correct me for accuracy? And maybe add to it for any of our new listeners that may not be familiar with you. That’d be all right. Sure. Yeah. And for the record, Fred and I have known each other for Oh, my goodness. I was thinking about the other day, and I think we’re coming up on 35 years.

Fred Joyal 04:03

Yes. Yeah, it doesn’t seem possible because we’re both in our 40s You know, so.

Gary Takacs 04:12

I think we’ve known each other personally and professionally for 35 years and I count you as not only an amazing colleague but one of my dearest friends on the planet. And from a professional standpoint. I like to credential you whenever I introduce you to people that I know. I like to say that you know more about how the dental consumer thinks than anybody I know on the planet. And that comes from your experience in CO founding one 800 dentist and running an organization that would I’m not sure how many millions of connections you made for people looking for a dentist but I know that number is in the millions.

Fred Joyal 04:59

Yes But it’s exceeds 10 million at this point.

Gary Takacs 05:03

And you’re the best selling author of of two books. Everything is Marketing, which is exactly what the title says. A brilliant book on on Everything is Marketing. And you wrote a sequel to that that kind of brought things up to date in the digital age. And it was titled Becoming Remarkable. And so this is your third book, Superbold. How did I do at credentialing? Would you add to that?

Fred Joyal 05:33

and that was it. You know, the those books were for the dental industry. And they were everything that I knew about marketing and advertising to the, you know, based on, you know, millions of consumers contacting us and spending half a billion dollars in advertising, to attract consumers and serving patients and all of that. This book is everything I wish I knew when I was 20 years old, that I had to figure out the hard way. So it’s aiming at a bigger audience, but it’s certainly applicable to anybody. We’re as a dentist working in a dental practice. That is trying to increase their confidence and their boldness from whatever level they’re at. I’ve talked to several people who’ve read the book now that kind of surprised me, because they, they’re kind of bold people in my mind, and they want, yeah, pretty bold. But several things in the book showed me I could much bolder, I want to be super bold. And so it’s interesting, because I thought this is this is maybe for a younger audience, that of people trying to find their way like I was in my 20s. But everybody, at every level seems to be getting real value out of it, and going and taking themselves from good to great. Those are the easiest people to coach aren’t they, right? Absolutely. Somebody who’s already good, knows they can get better and wants to figure out how

Gary Takacs 07:05

well and based based on our personal relationship for all these years, I know something about you that maybe you know, other folks don’t although if they read the book they will learn and that is that you yourself weren’t always bold. See, I know you and I think of you as as a brilliant example of someone who walks the walk on boldness. But that wasn’t always the case.

Fred Joyal 07:32

Not at all. No, I was I grew up in the category of painfully shy.

Gary Takacs 07:37

And for people that know people that know you today, I think they’ll have a hard time. Kind of coming to grips with that, because that is not the Fred that I’ve known for 35 years.

Fred Joyal 07:49

No, it’s i It made me unhappy. It made me angry sometimes. And all the times that I hesitated right. And I missed great opportunities, possible great relationships, great adventures, and just great moments, just because I was too shy, too hesitant to under confident. What most of us do when we hit an under confident moment, is the brain goes into the worst case scenario, right? This is the worst thing that could happen. People will laugh, I’ll be embarrassed, you know, I’ll fail or we the brains great at coming up with how bad things can go. Bold people have figured out that 99% of the time, that doesn’t happen. And if it does happen, it’s not a big deal. Right? They laugh it off rather than going whereas other people would shrink and go like, you know, crawl back into their shell, the bold person goes, Wow, I bet that could have been humiliating, if it wasn’t so funny, you know?

Gary Takacs 08:55

Well, and now share because it’s in the book. So you know, I can’t wait for our our listeners to read it. But I’ll share with you that this extends personally as well. And you share a very personal story from your life. Uh, you know, kind of amplifying the concept of being super shy, and how boldness would have been the right approach, but you just didn’t have it at that point. And that was when you had the opportunity to to eulogize your father. Yeah. And and if you might, would you mind sharing that and, you know, at a very personal level kind of sharing, you know, that experience in your life and maybe how that among others, really, you know, pivoted you to make some changes.

Fred Joyal 09:42

It’s a perfect example of something that you get one shot at, and it’s true of a lot of things in terms of opportunities, where if you’re not bold, if you don’t step up, that fleeting moment is gone forever. And I was I was just too young and no confidence to, to get in front of a room and say anything. And, and so I didn’t prepare anything and there was just the funeral, the wake and everything. And that was it. And now, I look back on, you know, now I look back I was in my 20s when my dad passed away, I look back and think, you know, I was just too young to even get to know him as an adult. Nevermind express my appreciation to him for all the sacrifices he made with me growing up. I mean, he was he was always there he was he was going to be home when I got home, I was going to be able to borrow his car, you know, he was going to lend me money as I was trying to figure out my way because I was a vagabond, and a wanderer and, and directionless guy for many years. And, but I did get to eulogize my mom, and it made all the difference to be able to honor her. And you get one shot at that. So

Gary Takacs 11:08

Well, Fred, thank you for for sharing that. And I think that resonates with our listeners, or will resonate, you know, in many ways, with our listeners. So hey, I’ve got some questions for you. Can I fire away?

Fred Joyal 11:24

Yes,

Gary Takacs 11:25

Well, it’s the title. But what do you mean by Superbold?

Fred Joyal 11:34

Superbold means you have gotten your confidence, your boldness to a level where you can act, no matter what the situation, nothing is going to hold you back. If you want to meet somebody, you’re going to meet them, if you’re going to try something, you’re going to try it if a moment presents itself, you are not going to think about it a long time and overthink it and talk yourself out of it. You are going to act, you’re going to have the ability to be energized and relaxed, at the same time, be able to say what you want to say, think of what you want to say. Have had that experience have that interaction. And and, you know, my goal is to make the world a bolder place. I think bold people are the ones that make all the difference in the world. And I want more bold people, we got big problems. I want people you know, stepping up and trying to solve the world’s problems and believing that they can’t, because a lot of it is when you believe you’re you can and this is the neuroscience behind it. And you know this, of course, because you’re always coaching people, but but when they have goals, and they believe it’s possible, the brain steps up and says, I guess we got to figure this out, and it gets creative, and it works in your subconscious. That’s why people think of stuff in the shower, right? It’s like, because it’s running in the background. But if you decide it’s impossible, the brain goes on vacation, right? Because the brain is is is an energy conservation device, right? It’s 2% of our body weight and burns 20% of our calories. So it’s looking for any way to not work. So if you go, that’s impossible, they go good. I don’t have to think about that anymore. So

Gary Takacs 13:28

I loved every part of the book. But I have to tell you, the way you have seamlessly integrated neuroscience in a cool way, is is just absolutely invaluable. And it explains so much doesn’t it? We’re learning. You know, there’s been many advances in the last 10 years about what we know about about the brain, and neuroscience. I incorporated into how I work with doctors to increase their case acceptance and increase treatment acceptance. You know, obviously, if you think about it, and, you know, you think about how the brain responds. You know, if we go back to the caveman days, we were either in, you know, fight or flight, or rest and digest. And that was about about it. We know today, think about the crazy world that we live in, you know, in the merry go round spin spins pretty fast. Pretty much everybody most of the time is in fight or flight. You know, they’re not subconsciously, they’re not thinking about it. But if you can subtly switch the brain over to rest and digest. There’s an opportunity for so much comprehension and understanding to happen. And especially in dentistry, Fred, you know, the mind of the consumer, and I think it’s fair to say that virtually every patient in a dental office subconsciously in fight or flight? Would you agree?

Fred Joyal 15:03

Yeah. And as we know, from the science, when somebody’s in an apprehensive or an anxious state, there’s a whole different set of chemicals running through their body. And the body is it’s in a mode that’s trying to protect itself. So it’s not creative. It’s not positive. It’s not it’s not Oh, no, it’s no, it’s using its limiting cognitive skills, because it’s like, I don’t need to think about stuff, I need to be able to react and protect myself, it’s, we get the same chemicals, and the same reaction in our body, if it’s a saber toothed Tiger gonna bite our head off, or we’re worried that something’s going to be more than we can afford, right? It’s fascinating, because but that’s who we are, we are in this body with this, you know, set of neurons. And so there’s a real power, when, when you’re confident, as a dentist, and presenting, that that makes a huge difference to, to somebody who’s listening to you. You know, I, the dentist I know who are so successful is they are that way, that they absolutely believe that that their skills are top notch, and what they’re recommending to this patient is the best thing possible.

Gary Takacs 16:31

Absolutely. Well, I love the way you have so brilliantly incorporated neuroscience into the entire book. And it’s not a text. It’s not a textbook is just fascinating.

Fred Joyal 16:45

No, no, it’s not a science book.

Gary Takacs 16:47

Don’t worry, that won’t be on the midterm. But it’s really brilliant, because it has so much application. I think I know the answer to this, but I’d like to ask it anyway. Who’s the book for?

Fred Joyal 17:02

It’s really for anyone who wants to be more confident than they are now. Somebody, anybody who feels like they’ve missed opportunities, that they’ve missed sales, they’ve missed relationships, they missed adventure. And that, and they feel in the grip of something holding them back. And sometimes it’s the stories they’re telling themselves or the or the voice, I call a doctor no the voice that’s telling you everything that’s going to go bad and why you should do this. And, and because bold people have Doctor Yes, talking to them yet, like, Yeah, let’s go, you know, let’s try it. Let’s see what happens. And that’s and I say, charismatic, you know, you can go from under candidate confident to charismatic, because that’s how people perceive you. It’s not me going, Oh, I’m charismatic. It’s like, people will see you that you’re so comfortable. In your confidence in your boldness, that they they see it as charisma, you you are magnetic to people. We’re all drawn to those people sometimes if they’re so bold, they would they freak us out. But they don’t care. Right? That’s like you’re telling this story. It’s like, oh, they’re a show off, you know, their, their intention whores and stuff like that. It’s like that. No, they’re just, they’re just getting the most out of life. And why wouldn’t you want to live a life that you’re proud of? That you didn’t miss many opportunities. Instead of you know, I think people you know, I don’t think people give up on their dreams because they fail. I think they gave up most of the time because they stopped trying, they had a couple of failures that had a couple of disappointments, they got embarrassed, they got, you know, humiliated even, but a bold person realizes that there’s no such thing is dying of embarrassment. It is not a medical diagnosis, it is a thing you tell yourself happened. Embarrassment is a choice, right? You can spill wine on your shirt at dinner, right? And everybody around will look at you and you could be humiliated or embarrassed. Or you could say, This is why my dry cleaner loves me. Right? And everybody laughs. And so it’s again, you just you just made a choice, and you just made the bold choice. But obviously you want to make bolder choices when it matters, because that’s a lot of people who are confident until it matters. I have a good friend who’s confident all the time unless he’s trying to sell his paintings which are superb. They breath-taking, but he’s afraid to ask for good money. He’s afraid to figure out how to promote himself. He’s so he’s missing the confidence when he needs it most. And so, you know, and it could be like, let’s say, you’re, you’re seeing somebody that you always wanted to meet, maybe it’s an athlete, maybe it’s an actress, some somebody like that. And you hesitate to walk over and introduce yourself and express your appreciation for this as as a sidebar. A quick story I just listened to Steve Van Zandt autobiography, and he tells this story. Now, this is guy that’s been in rock’n’roll forever. He gets to meet Van Morrison after 40 years. And he’s in the greenroom meeting him and Van Morrison has asked to meet him. And so he’s there chatting a little bit. And he’s and he notices as a vacuum cleaner in the greenroom. And, and he says to Van, he says, he says, I don’t know any other way to express how much appreciation I have for you, and, and your music and how much it’s given me all my life. So I’m just gonna clean up a little bit, and he grabs the vacuum cleaner and starts vacuuming the room. And Van Morrison just falls apart laughing It says his manager says I haven’t seen him laugh that hard in years, right? And it’s just like, beaming. That’s such boldness. It’s like, I’m gonna do something really naughty and see what happens. Yeah, seize that moment. So

Gary Takacs 21:34

you’ve used the word opportunity. You know, in our in our interview many times here, and of course, it’s woven throughout the book. But it kind of reminds me of a recent quote that I heard. And this is a quote that has really given me some some pause and give me something to think about. And let me just, I’ll get it close. Let me go ahead and gonna go ahead and give it a try. Yeah. One of the most frustrating things in the world would be to meet the person who you could have become.

Fred Joyal 22:09

Yes,

Gary Takacs 22:11

Now yeah, I’m getting a close I may not have it exactly right. But certainly the message of that quote, I was able to capture there, but this is a lot of of really what this book can help you achieve your full potential. Now, I meant to start with this question. I got so excited about talking about the book, but I jumped ahead but let me back up. What sparked the book? You’ve written two and so you know, the the act of writing is something that you do very, very well. But what what sparked this book?

Fred Joyal 22:49

I went back to a thing that Imtiaz Montes, boys Rizwan and Killeen did many years ago, young and motivated, which was a weekend course, for young people, teens, primarily, to teach them how to manage their time, money, and relationships and set goals for themselves, all the stuff they don’t teach in school, and it was this fabulous weekend course. And we were me, and several of my friends were brought in as mentors. And we would each do a little presentation to the to the young people. And so one of the things I threw out was that Boldness is a superpower. And I would, and it really resonated with them, I could see the difference have made and I would talk to you know, we would all hear from these kids as their lives progressed. Because you would watch them over the weekend, get the aha moment. And where they went, Oh, I this this is you know, I actually have to save money if I want to have money or something like that. And like, you know, which is the this is tremendous gifts, and I just want I want like, you need to understand that. you don’t ever want to be the one that stops you. Okay, let somebody else stop you. This is what bold people know is that 99% of the time, nobody stops you. And 99.999% of the time, nothing bad really happens unless you decide to make it back then and so the book is full of all of these exercises. And they’re designed to take you gradually step by step so that you’re building this boldness muscle without overwhelming yourself but you’re getting stronger and stronger and stronger and bolder and bolder and bolder every day. So that in 90 days, you are that you are meeting that person you want to be and so the I start I kept hearing back from people and actually a couple of the teachers in the workshop, and I mentioned one of them in the book. One of the other, some of the other mentors, were telling their kids this, right, they would go back and say, you know, boldness is a superpower. Right now, you don’t have to hesitate already. And so I’ve have people doing exercises that show them that nothing bad happens. I say, if you see a sign that says employees only, go in. You know why? Because nobody’s gonna shoot you on the other side, nobody’s gonna nine times out of 10 Nobody even says anything. I mean, it’s like, I’ve walked into the back of a grocery store deliberately, right? And nobody will say anything. Even though it’s a big sign that says employees only if they say something they can they’ll it’ll be like, Can I help you? Right? And you just go eat something, you say something? Like, I’m looking for the bananas. Right? And they look at you like, You’re crazy, right? And they go there in the produce section? Oh, yeah, yeah, I should have looked there first. But but it’s, it’s to make you go into this situation where you go, Oh, something, nothing’s gonna happen. Well, then, and it’s building the neural pathway, it’s changing. It’s, again, it’s neuroscience, it’s changing the neural pathway, because bold people have this superhighway of boldness in their neural pathways. And under confident people have have all sorts of neural pathways that talk about danger, risk, embarrassment, humiliation, failure.

Gary Takacs 26:43

you share a fact in the book that is literally worth reading just for this fact. And that’s that many people have been taught that the brain develops at, at an early age, and at a certain age, it stops developing. And that has, that’s old thinking. And that’s old knowledge. And in fact, you have and you share some research and you share some data about the fact that the brain can continue to develop throughout your entire life, would you talk a little bit about that?

Fred Joyal 27:21

I mean, they have, they have found that you can stimulate different parts of the brain, and you can create new neural pathways which will be which will have more neurons built into the brain that will actually keep building neurons. Andit will, the more interesting thing is when you start becoming, in this case, bolder, and create those new neural pathways, the under confident neural pathways, those those things, those reactions, that program because the brain is just all code, right? in one form or another, they atrophy, which is fascinating. They become the constricted roadway that the brain goes, I’m going the other way, you’re going to bolness this way. Because what happens is, the boldness builds the rewards. I mean, we’re we’re in a reward system, the brain is looking for rewards and reinforcement, the more you act boldly, and that’s the beauty of the exercises is your expectations are, I’m doing something with with nothing in return except expectation except to do it and have done it, right? I’m going to smile at 20 people today and if nobody smiles back, I don’t care. Because I smile at everybody, because what happens is 19 People smile back, and the 20 of doesn’t, and you just go that poor guy, we must be having a rough day. Right? And and all of a sudden new neurons going, look at all that reward that reward, you know, I feel good about making them feel good. You know, and that’s you know, we’re getting to one of the big principles in the book and what I call the Prime Directive, which is to make everyone you meet feel better about themselves. Imagine if we all did that. Imagine the change in the world if that was our intention with everyone we met.

Gary Takacs 29:29

I love the insight about how in the research that you backed it up with how the brain can continue to develop throughout your life. You and I are similar vintage, and I’d like to state for the record that it was a darn good vintage.

Fred Joyal 29:43

Yeah. Some good years there.

Gary Takacs 29:45

Yeah, we’re very, we’re similar vintage and yet our brains can can years in mind can continue to develop we can continue to mold it and we can continue to develop it in a really positive way, and that’s a breakthrough, you know, in the world of psychology, experts will tell you that you’re born with your IQ. The experts in psychology say that, you know, you come out of the womb with your IQ, and it doesn’t change. I don’t know that I fully believe that Fred. But that’s what the experts say, emotional intelligence, on the other hand, EQ can absolutely be developed. You know, and, you know, one of the things I’ve noticed in making my life’s work studying world class dentist, is I’ve yet to meet a world class dentist, that didn’t also have a very high level of emotional intelligence. And I’m gonna also make a statement in the context of your book, now that I think about it. I’ve yet to meet meet a world class dentist, who I wouldn’t also think of as being bold. They are both absolute, and they’re bold about their passion. They’re bold about helping patients, they’re bold in their behavior. Well, I want to pivot and make it real tactical here, because your book makes everything very, very practical. And you introduce a method you call the Pride method. And pride is actually an acronym. Would you share the pride method? With our listeners? And then, and then we’ll talk a little bit about how the book has these brilliant exercises that convert that convert everything from academic to to actionable?

Fred Joyal 31:24

Yeah. So the the product, there’s five steps to building your boldness in any situation to be able to turn to the steps and say, How do I act? Okay, it is preparation, the P, relaxing, insight, dosage, and everyday action. And I’ll break them down a little bit. Preparation, if you’re coming into a situation that you’re not used to, or that you’re that you want to be confident in. Prepare yourself, if you’re going in to ask for a raise, if you’re going to walk over across the room and talk to somebody if you’re going to introduce yourself to that, you know, athlete that you’re you’ve been dying to meet, prepare something, rehearse it, I mean, this is we have this constant message that you we shouldn’t have to prepare for social situations what guess what, that people who prepare it actually make it work. It’s like saying you don’t really the best marriages, you don’t have to work. No, the best marriages are people who work on it. They weren’t in communication, attention. All of that stuff they realized is work involved. Preparation, first step, prepare what you’re going to say prepare, how you’re going to react. You know, what are you going to look like? What do you what’s your physiology? What’sall of that? Second step?

Gary Takacs 32:53

Can we pause for a second? I know you and I enjoy theater. And you also enjoy performing. You’vedone some very cool stand up. And, you know, if you and I are involved in community theater theater, the producer isn’t going to just have a show up on opening night. They have these things called dress rehearsals.

Fred Joyal 33:18

Some practice I mean, they go really badly.

Gary Takacs 33:21

But isn’t that what you’re talking about in preparation?

Fred Joyal 33:25

Yeah. And the next step is relaxing, is that you, a lot of people say, well just relax, I was like, Okay, tell me how. I’m going to tell you how. There are some simple steps, techniques that you can use to relax yourself. Because when I walk on stage, and you’re the same way, when we walk on stage, people say, are you nervous, no, it’s like I can’t wait to get on stage. I’ve transformed all that anxiety into feeling energized. I’m excited to get in front of those people. Because I know how to, I’m relaxed. I’m not drowsy. I’m fully energized. But I’m completely in my core, I’m completely relaxed. And so there’s a couple of techniques as breathing exercises, very simple ones that I teach in the book and a couple other things. The next step is insight. And I’ve talked about those insights, but it’s having an insight about the situation and about things in general, the Big Insights, nothing bad’s probably going to happen. And I won’t actually be harmed, right, and that the upside is probably waiting and failure is just another step up. That’s what bold people see. Failures is a stairway up, right? Whereas the under confident people go like failures is a barrier. It’s like a is a is a field of landmines. All right. The next step D is for dosage, control the dosage of the experience is the intensity of that experience, if you’re incredibly shy, you don’t say I’m gonna go to a party and I’m going to meet everybody. Go to a party and say, I’m going to meet one person and have an in depth conversation. Don’t overwhelm yourself, you’re going to move out of your comfort zone into your discomfort zone, but you’re not going to go 10 miles into your discomfort zone, you’re going to, you’re just going to keep expanding it by moving in just far enough, where you get stronger, then you come back and refresh yourself and your comfort zone. So controlling the dosage of these experiences as you build your muscle, it’s just like with doing anything, you wouldn’t do it with exercise, you wouldn’t lie down and say I want to be able to benchpress 300 pounds. So I’m going to start with 300 pounds, right? Because you are going to be crushed to death. Right?

Gary Takacs 35:51

And as an endurance athlete, someone who does marathons, half marathons and triathlons This relates very specifically, you don’t run a marathon without some preparation without some dosage.

Fred Joyal 36:06

Yeah. And then the final step, which is critical is every day action. We build more for ourselves by what we do every day, than with anything else. It’s not how much you do anywhere near as much as how often you get to it. This is because it’s about again, it’s about neuroscience, and to translate the neuroscience into something simple is that the brain says, Oh, I guess this is who we are. If we do something every day, if we’re consistent about it, if we’re if we do it on the weekends, or we do it when we feel like it, we’re a dabbler and the brain says this is something we’ve dabble in, right? And so it doesn’t, the brain doesn’t build the neural pathways. But when you get to it every day, even if you get to it the five minutes, I mean, I, I’ve written all my books by getting to them every day. Even if it’s for five minutes, even if it’s once my minimum is my requirement is one sentence. I forgot to write at least one sentence every day till the books done. And I and I’ll go a year and I may miss four days the whole time. But what happens is I do more, right. But in the end, I got 400 pages, I got too many pages. Now I got to spend every day editing. But that’s the power of the Pride method is all of these steps.

Gary Takacs 37:37

That pride method, since I’ve read it in your book, it’s it’s become your daily activity for me. And it’s so powerful. Right, I want to bring it back to dentistry. I had the privilege recently of spending some time with Frank Spear are our audience will absolutely recognize Dr. Frank Spear. And I turned to Frank and I said, Frank, can you share one tip that dentists at with can you share with one? One tip with me that I can share with dentists, that would accelerate a dentist at any stage in their career, early career, mid career and late career. And without a moment’s hesitation? He said, Gary, can I give you two? I said, since you’re Frank, you can give me two? You bet. They said number one I would. It’s kind of tactical, but I would teach him to use digital photos for patient education. And that’s because we all know that a picture’s worth 1000 words. He said number two, I would teach them how to present and how to communicate confidently. With that in mind, Fred, can you share some application of your book to our dental professionals and our listeners?

Fred Joyal 38:51

Yeah, if you are bold enough to ask for more valuable, and let’s call them expensive cases, more comprehensive treatment plans. I do this exercise with dentists when I lecture and I say okay, we’re trying to find out who’s handling the biggest case in the room. So everybody stand up. And then I go who’s had a case bigger than 50,000? And or if not sit down 60, 70, 80, 90, 100. I’ll eventually get down to two people with cases over 100,000. I said these guys have had one case that is more than whatever the average that this makes in two months, because they’re confident enough to ask for it. And I said and then I say, now does that person complain about the $100,000 cost? And they go no, not at all. And I say and yet the rest of you have people complaining about the $135 charges. Right? So when you are confident about your dentist and bold enough to ask for the treatment you deserve, you’re going to make a lot more money. And you’re going to create people who are out there with $80,000 of treatment done. Who better to promote your practice, they have to justify spending $80,000 They got the best dentist in the world there. They justify it.

Gary Takacs 40:18

They’d become your superfans.

Fred Joyal 40:21

Yep, yeah. So you can find out more about the book and mean everything on Fred joyal.com. And of course, you could just click and buy the book the books available on Amazon and Kindle and, and audiobook and it’s me reading it.

Gary Takacs 40:39

I love you narrating your own books. I like it when the author narrates her own audiobook, because you put the emphasis on the on the right point. Yeah, and I would recommend that our listeners buy all three forms by the physical book. So you can make notes, send it by the ebook, so you can read it on your reader. And then listen to the audiobook as well. But I know you’ve got another site that might be useful for our, our listeners that might kind of help accelerate the learning because of some of the other features that come with.

Fred Joyal 41:15

Yeah, so Fredjoyal.com is where they can get the the exercises, they can download a PDF of the exercises, if you want to go straight into Amazon, you go into G and I dot U S slash super bold, and you capitalize the s in super bold, and that goes straight into Amazon where the book is, you can go to Fredjoyal.com, if you need any, any of the other resources

Gary Takacs 41:44

for and I’m gonna put it for the for our listeners benefit, I’ll put a link in the in the show notes. So you can just go to thriving dentists.com. And you’ll just scroll down, we’ll put a link, just one click, it’ll take you right to those sites, we’ll put both the Fredjoyal.com and gni.us forward slash SuperBold. Remember to capitalize the s, we’ll put that in the show notes. So you don’t have to remember it right now. Fred, I just as we’re coming to the finish line here, I just want to say that you know what I love about our profession. And I know you and I are simply brothers from a different mother on this one. And that’s that we have the ability to change people’s lives every day. And I’m going to tie us to this book, reading this book will change your life. We’ll be doing it with my clients as book club. I’ll be purchasing it for all my team members. And we’ll be doing it as book club in my own office. And I will become a zealot advocate of helping everybody I meet, I’m going to practice some of those boldness skills, I’m going to tell everyone I meet that they need to read this book. And it be because it will change their life. Fred, thank you. Thank you for 35 plus years of friendship. Thank you for all the professional knowledge and inspiration I’ve gained from you. My practice wouldn’t be what it is today, if it wasn’t for your influence. And that goes back we’ve owned Paul, Paul and I now Paul and Tim have owned that practice for many years. And it simply wouldn’t be what it is if we if we didn’t have your influence on our practice. I can’t wait to share this book with Paul and Tim and my entire team. I know our listeners take action. So I hope you’ve enjoyed our interview. But more importantly, I hope you apply it because it will make a massive difference in your life. You can thank me later. You can thank Fred later for that. Fred. On that note, let me simply say thank you. I also want to take a minute and thank our listeners. We appreciate each and every one of you. Thank you for the privilege of your time, and I look forward to connecting with you on the next thriving dentists show.

Introduction 43:49

When you cry me shoe, dryer I bet a day show. When you smile, be sure to smile why? And don’t let them know that they have one. When you walk outside, don’t show the hurt inside because the pain will soon be gone. When you drain dream as big as when you dream in mind come true. When you dream dream

Episode #3 ~ Speak Up with Laura Camacho

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 14:28:26 GMT

Speaking and communication skills were already tough to develop - adding social isolation to the mix made it even more challenging! Everyone is feeling rusty these days... and social awkwardness is on the uptick.

Episode #7 ~ My Wakeup Call with Dr. Mark Goulston

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 14:20:39 GMT

Fred Joyal In this episode I speak with Fred Joyal, founder of the leading referral company, 1-800-DENTIST and author of, "Superbold: From Under-confident to Charismatic in 90 Days," whose wakeup call was his determination to overcome being shy because of realizing how much it caused him to miss out on things. https://fredjoyal.com/

Episode #6 ~ Your Dental Top 5 with Amanda Hill

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 14:19:36 GMT

Introduction 00:00

You’re listening to your dental top five p odcas t with Amanda Hill informing you on the top trends in dentistry every Thursday, brought to you by the creators of a tale of two hygienist podcast. And now here’s your host, Amanda Hill.

Amanda Hill 00:17

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of your dental top five, where we take trending topics in dentistry and break them down into five usable highlights that you can take back to your life, your app, or just look smarter at your next dinner party. I’m your host, Amanda Hill. So today’s podcast falls at the beginning of the month. So it’s the beginning of November. Of course not when we’re recording this, but you know, just pretend. And so I get to do my top five and so my top five for the month. The first one is this new neck pillow that I’ve discovered now that I’m traveling a lot more. And it’s called the turtle neck pedal pillow TR T L it’s like a scarf, but it has like this plastic thing in it. So it holds your head up when you fall asleep on the airplane, and you don’t wake up with that neck then you can’t string back out again. So that’s really cool. The next thing I’m super into is the platform Fiverr which is like gig economy stuff. And I’ve had all this work done super cheap by M green on Fiverr. And I’m really excited about that one. And then along with travel, I’m super psyched about the Delta sky lounge, I recently got some status on Delta and really like hanging out the Delta sky lounge I feel pretty fancy. It’s pretty cool. And then I’m also into a lamb Milan preventive treatment gel, which is a great thing to give to my patients. And it really helps with sensitivity and dry mouth. It has stannous fluoride in it, no S Ls and it has ACP, which re mineralizes teeth. It’s really great for our patient. And the fifth thing I’m super into is a new book I’m reading called SuperBold by Fred Joyal. And guess what, guess who our guest today is Fred Joyal, author of Superbold, he also has written The Remarkable Dentist: becoming remarkable and everything is marketing. He’s the co founder of 1-800 Dentists. So Fred, thank you for coming on today to tell us all about your newest book.

Fred Joyal 02:02

I’m excited to do it, Amanda, and always great to see you. So

Amanda Hill 02:05

So I’ve only started to dig into the beginning of that book. I haven’t gotten the whole way through yet. But I’m really excited about it. The one quote that has already struck me and I already wrote it down, was it says this book is about discovering who you might become if you only dared? What an awesome challenge.

Fred Joyal 02:22

Yeah, that’s, that’s the essence of the book. And that’s, you know, it’s become my passion is to help people be as bold as possible to achieve their dreams and to not have any regrets at the end of their life and not hesitate when they want to step up. So

Amanda Hill 02:40

It can be you know, it can be a little scary. And so I love that you have written this book to really help people figure out, certainly within their careers and within just their life and with everyday experiences, how just pushing out a little bit more and maybe saying the things that you’re afraid to say or do the things that you’re afraid to do, how that can really change and affect your life.

Fred Joyal 03:01

Yeah, man, it’s a systematic approach to building your confidence and boldness to whatever level you want. The fact is boldness can be learned. And that’s, that was a revelation to me and that but over the years, I developed a very specific way for people to do that. Because most of the time we grow up, we see bold people, we go, oh, they were just born that way. Like no, they just didn’t become under confident, like we did. And so this is something that I have figured out how to help people to learn and learn very quickly.

Amanda Hill 03:37

Because I would say, I mean, I’ve known you for a few years now and I would say Fred’s really bold, and I would assume you’ve always been the way that you are but according to your book, that’s not always the case. Is it?

Fred Joyal 03:48

No, I grew up as a really shy person a real introverted, shy hesitan,t and missed tons of opportunities and situations where I could have had a great relationship or a great job or a great adventure just because I was hesitant under confident couldn’t step up and impaired me considerably but I managed to overcome it. And people who know me now go oh, this like you say, Oh, I see you is completely bold and you know and I got there though so if I can get from where I was to where I am, you can too.

Amanda Hill 04:26

Awesome. Well let’s dig into your talk find that five then so the top five reasons for the power of boldness in dentistry. How can we why should we be bold? How can we be bold?

Fred Joyal 04:36

Let’s Let’s talk about something very specific. The number one way to grow a practice and the most cost effective way is by word of mouth. What that requires is the boldness and confidence to ask people for referrals, to ask people to recommend your practice, to ask people to do a Facebook video for you, or an online review for you. We have these media that we want to get people to do stuff in, requires asking them to do it. Most of the time, it’s much more effective face to face than with a text or an email or something like that. Your chances of doing it a lot of time to get him to do it right then in the office, could you shoot a video for us? Would you take a picture we wanted, we’re doing patient of the week, all of this stuff, both the dentist and the team members need the confidence to do that. And a lot of people that just don’t do it. That’s not me, that’s like, it doesn’t have to not be you, you can develop this. And it’s because they’re, they’re shy right about certain things. People don’t have to be shy everywhere. And that’s true of most people, they’re confident in some areas, and then they’re not confident in areas where it counts. And that’s part of the theme of the book is like you want to be bold, when it counts, when it really matters, when you may only get one opportunity to do something. And with your patients, you want to be bold, you want to be bold in terms of asking them to help you tell the world how great you are.

Amanda Hill 06:14

Absolutely. And particularly I think, Fred, when you said like having them even do it right then or there. Sometimes, you know, my patients need a little help. Like they’re like, Well, I don’t really know how to do it. And so if you’re bold enough to be like, well, I can totally help you with it. Let’s go through it. I’ll show you where to click. Yeah. And then and then you get like those I find we get the best referrals from those. They’re really genuine and they’re really, because they’ve done them right away.

Fred Joyal 06:37

Right. And also, the word of mouth is where the greatest case acceptance is going to come from. Right that they are already predisposed to like you, trust you, value your dentistry.

Amanda Hill 06:50

Absolutely, absolutely. All right. Well, what’s number two?

Fred Joyal 06:53

One of the things that it’s important to learn and it’s a tremendous life skill, and it really applies to dentistry in everybody working in dentistry. And beyond dentistry in life is the ability to make that person you’re with feel like they’re the only person in the room, they’re the only person that you’re focusing on.

07:15

You do this just naturally I don’t every time I’ve ever talked to you, I always feel like you’re just talking to me.

Fred Joyal 07:21

Well, there’s a I’ve laid it out in the book has what I call the laser technique technique, which is an acronym. And I’ll break it down very simply because people will want to read the book and figure out how to apply it. But it’s the L is look at the person look only at the person, don’t look over their shoulder, don’t you know, and this is what people do that. Please don’t look at your phone. Oh my god, you know. So that’s the, that’s step one, just look only at them, then actively listen. Now we’ve all you know the difference between actively listening and listening, waiting for your chance to tell them what you need to know. And ideally, a chance to interrupt and tell them what you want to say. Right? Active listening is a whole other thing. It’s focusing completely on them. And then staying focused on them not breaking away, and not not giving them that sense that your attention has wandered somehow. And then oh, how you end the conversation end it well, don’t let the conversation run out of gas or whatever or that that interaction go into stale air. You go just say something while you’re still locked in on them saying, well, it was really great to talk to you. And I’m going to there’s a couple of people I want to meet, I’m gonna go talk to them. But I look forward to seeing you again. And then the R is remember their name, remember them, a thing about them. If you lock in their name and something else. You know, that story you told me about skydiving, the last time I saw you just stuck in my mind and I’ve been dying to try it ever since Angie. You know, that’s suddenly, they think you have made them the most important person. And that’s that’s so incredibly powerful, because we all want to feel important. So really, that technique to be able to do that to make someone feel that way. It’s incredibly powerful.

Amanda Hill 09:41

That makes so much sense. Especially, when you know when when we’re with a patient and I know that sometimes we can get so distracted about oh my gosh, I have to get all of these things done in 60 minutes and and so we’ve already moved on to okay, how am I going to get into perio charting when is my assistant going to come in and help me and how am I going to get this room turned over but really to to just focus in on that on that patient and their needs for that moment, and then they’ll really feel connected. And I think you’ll end up getting, you know, have a better relationship and getting better treatment acceptance that way.

Fred Joyal 10:10

Yeah. And then the third thing, third, third in the top five, that relates to dentistry is being comfortable presenting what the patient needs. Now, this could be as the hygienist, this could be as the dentist just saying, Look, this, I know you’re, you’re trying to save money or whatever, or you’re not sure what’s the best thing for you. But I have to tell you how important optimal care is, why this is so valuable for your overall health. And so it’s not expensive, when it’s worth it. Nothing’s expensive, when it’s worth the money. And so you have to, it takes boldness and confidence, to tell something to somebody that they need $25,000 worth of dentistry, $40,000 worth of implants or something like that, you say, Look, I’ve been seeing you for five years, all you do is complain about your dentures, right. And meanwhile, you’re losing bone. And this is why the fit is changing, and you’re still still spending 234 $1,000 to replace these dentures, you’ll need implants. I know this is an investment that’s going to change your life. I see it happen over and over again, to be comfortable saying that because a lot of people the idea of suggesting that somebody spend 2030 $40,000, or even $5,000 is overwhelming when you make $60,000 a year $80,000 a year, or you know, I know dentists who you know, they’re making $300,000 a year and they’re afraid to bring up cost like that. But the

11:53

At times I’m afraid to bring up a fluoride treatment that’s only like $25.

Fred Joyal 11:59

Yeah, so let’s start there, let’s be confident enough to bring up these things that the patient will benefit from, and not be hesitant to say that and when you get good at it, doesn’t sound salesy, right, it doesn’t sound like you’re hustling them, because it’s always about their benefit. As long as that’s the place you’re coming from, that’s the way they hear it. So

Amanda Hill 12:23

That makes you know, Fred, I really, I really resonate with that I remember as a baby hygenist really just feeling like when a patient had gum disease, or they had, you know, a cracked tooth. And I remember just getting so nervous to be the one to have to tell them about it, like I was owning their condition, as opposed to, you know, giving them the information and knowing that I was truly helping them. And so that’s, you know, part of where that boldness I think comes in, it’s knowing that knowing your purpose, your why, why you’re doing that.

Fred Joyal 12:48

And number four would be asking for what you need in the practice, to be able to beat to be confident enough, bold enough to tell the the doctor or the office manager, what you need, and even your team members what you need from them in the morning huddle or something like that, or just just something that would make the workflow better. But to just not go out and want to bring it up, even though I would I would like to have these instruments that would make a huge difference. Or I would like to try bulks or Sonic or whatever. Because I’ve used it in other places, and it’s great, whatever it is, and you know better than me, but a lot of times we don’t want to bring it up. And that’s not helpful. Doesn’t help the patient, doesn’t help you. And actually, it’s not good for the practice.

Amanda Hill 13:38

Right? And I think when you remember that, that it’s not just about you and you being needy, it’s about you, you know, bringing your best for your patients and you bringing your best to the practice and tapping into your boldness that way it makes a ton of sense. Absolutely. Well, what’s number five?

Fred Joyal 13:52

Number five is maybe you’re at a point in your life where you need to ask for a raise, maybe you need to look for a job somewhere else, you need to be bold enough to say, I want to work in a different place. I want to work in a different culture. The energy of this place is okay. But it doesn’t match my core values, my dreams, where I want to go. Maybe you need to be bold enough to expand your skills and increase your, you know, your credentials to allow you to do more. Instead of going I you know that’s really hard. I don’t know if I can do it. This was the you know, becoming a hygienist was hard enough and you got to be comfortable trying stuff failing at stuff because that’s how we all get better at stuff. But most of the time you put yourself in a situation, I love the whole idea of committing to something and this sort of locks the door behind you and you go oh dang, I gotta make it work. Now I am in the room, you know, so that’s, and that’s what, you know, this whole, the whole idea of becoming super bold, is embracing your discomfort zone, knowing that’s where all the rewards are in life.

Amanda Hill 15:13

Well, I think I think the super secret that, you know, not everybody knows is that not everybody, nobody knows exactly what they’re doing all of the time. Most of us are just figuring it out as we go along. And that’s, I think part of that Boldness is not waiting until okay, I knew everything, now I can do it, it’s more like step forward and do it as and you’ll learn as you go.

Fred Joyal 15:35

Yeah, and that’s there’s a, I have a very systematic approach called the pride method that’s in the book. And there’s a whole bunch of exercises that move you up gradually to become bolder, and bolder and bolder. And, and it’s just like building a muscle. But really what it’s doing from a scientific standpoint is it’s building these neural pathways, that it becomes your reflex to behave in a more confident way, to behave in a bold way. Because the rewards have come, you’ve done this thing, you figured out what bold people know is, 99% of the time, nothing bad happens, unless you decide it’s a bad thing. Unless you label it as bad, you can think, Oh, I’m going to fail, or I’m going to be embarrassed, or I’m going to be humiliated or whatever, I’m going to be anxious or nervous. That doesn’t matter. If you decide to not make that bad. I go into situations where I’m anxious all the time, I work on a stage with 5000 people, I’m backstage, I breathe in, right, I’m filling myself with oxygen, because I need to calm myself down. So that I can give them everything I got and not and not be nervous, I want to be creating on stage. And so I know that I have to do that. And so I’m not afraid of how anxious it’s going to make me feel I go like, yeah, this is gonna be uncomfortable, and yet really fun. Because it’s gonna be really satisfying to communicate with these people and deliver the message that I want to do. And that’s what I want people to be able to do is say, Okay, I’m not just trying to be comfortable all the time, I’m trying to be comfortable to strengthen myself, that’s where I go to rest to so I could charge into my discomfort zone again today. So that’s, that’s the thinking behind it. And that’s, that’s what’s worked for me. And I’ve seen it work for lots and lots of people, very successful people. And very, very, very fulfilled people. That’s the other thing is, I want you to have a satisfying life. I want more bolder people having more satisfied, satisfying lives, and making a difference in the world wherever they can.

Amanda Hill 17:49

I can’t wait to work through these exercises. These all sound great. I gotta say the best things that I have done and accomplished in life I have done completely scared. And they are the best. Like in the end, they’re like, oh, my gosh, I’m so happy that I did that. But that’s I think that’s where the coolest stuff happens is in that sort of discomfort zone. Like you said, I love it. Yeah, well, let’s review. So the top the top five reasons for the power of boldness in dentistry is number one marketing asking for those referrals. Number two is how to make people feel like they’re the only person in the room. I love that laser technique. I’m going to use that. Number three case presentation. Number four speaking up for your needs. And number five, seeking that promotion or that better position or whatever you’re looking for in life, but knowing enough to stand up for it. Well, Fred, thank you so much for coming on today. People want to reach out to you. I know everybody wants to buy the book now. So tell us how we do that.

Fred Joyal 18:42

Okay, so the book is on Amazon. So you can either search my name Fred Joyal, or search Superbold. Some people go you wrote a book about the Super Bowl, no, no is the d at the end Superbold. And or you can go to Fredjoyal.com, you’ll does a quick link there on that site. And there’s and there’s more information there if you want it. And there’s information on all my books and stuff there. And there’s podcasts and stuff that are all there as well. But so Fredjoyal.com, or Amazon it, and it’s on Kindle, however you want to digest it, it’s on Kindle. It’s an it’s in hardcover in a printed book. And it’s on Audible. And it’s me reading the book. So and if you’re doing one of the digital media, you can also go to my website and download a PDF of the exercises and also the journal format because I want people to do a journal at the same time because there’s the stuff that I’m asking them to do along the way. And I want them to keep track of the exercises and what happened in them. So that’s how you do it.

Amanda Hill 19:47

I love it. So I could have Fred Joyal Read me a bedtime story.

Fred Joyal 19:50

Exactly. Yeah. And I’ll be your companion in the car when you’re driving along. Whatever.

Amanda Hill 19:55

I like it. I like it. Well, everyone, everyone we all know that only four Out of five dentists could agree so if you have something to add to this top five, or you have an idea for a whole nother top five, email me at Amanda Hill rdh@gmail.com and we’ll be sure to include your dental top five. Make it a great day.

Introduction 20:12

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of your dental top five. Be sure to join us next Thursday to hear more from Amanda

Episode #7 ~ The Thriving Dentist with Gary Takacs

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 14:17:04 GMT

In this episode, Gary interviews Fred Joyal, and they discuss about Fred’s new book Superbold: From Under-confident to Charismatic in 90 Days Shownotes https://bit.ly/3Ect7b5

Episode #2 ~ Networking RX Podcast with Frank Agin

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Sun, 10 Apr 2022 14:01:01 GMT

Frank Agin 00:00

Welcome to networking RX, a podcast devoted to helping business professionals like you enhance your networking skills in order to become more proficient giving and receiving quality business referrals and improving the overall quality of your life and the lives of those around you. The networking RX Podcast is a production of am spirit business connections, an organization whose mission is to empower business success through networking. Welcome to the networking RX podcast I’m your host Frank Agin and founder and president of am spirit business connections. Today I have a another great guest on we’ll go into that in here in a second but as our ongoing subscribers know often on this podcast, I will be sharing ideas insights best practices for being that great person that professional relationships and allowing you to excel with respect to building your business network. Occasionally, however, I will be interviewing subject matter experts, authors, speakers, thought leaders and social scientists. And these people share their knowledge to help us build relationships which are really important. Today’s guest is kind of a trifecta. I’ve got a speaker, I’ve got an author. And I have a Why don’t we call you a recovering introvert but an introvert and Fred Joyal is he is an author, a speaker, and entrepreneur. But he took himself from being painfully shy when he was younger, to be able to speak comfortably in front of audiences of 5000 plus. Fred, welcome to the program.

Fred Joyal 01:37

Great to be here Frank. I hope to really add some value to your listeners.

Frank Agin 01:42

While I’m sure I’m sure you will, you know, one of the terms that we were throwing around, you threw around in the beginning is, you know, this notion of being a bold introvert and I think most people are comfortable with, not comfortable, they understand introvert/extrovert. Many of us are somewhere on a spectrum in there, I guess. Share your journey, you know, of kind of how you broke out of this. And we’re not you know, how you how you came to this bold introvert. And I think there’s, I think there’s a lot of learning here for us.

Fred Joyal 02:16

Yeah, it’s so I was painfully shy growing up, I couldn’t ask a girl on a date. I couldn’t make a phone call. I actually had a job where I was working, you know, I bumped around and did a bunch of dumb jobs. And when I finished college, I was aimless, and I was working in this machine shop on the shop floor. And the owner said, you got a lot of promise. He says I’m going to I’m going to give you an opportunity come into the office, he shows gives me a desk, gives me a phone, gives me a list of all these businesses. He said start calling these guys and see if they want to do business if they need anything from us. I couldn’t dial a phone. I couldn’t make a single phone call cold call, back to the machine shop. Right. Then eventually I started working in the advertising business. And I And along the way I kept meeting bold people and I’ll go like, why the heck are they this way? Are they born this way? You know, they were the extroverts that but they were also just bold, it was just extroverts. They were taking risks, they weren’t they they weren’t bothered by rejection. They seized opportunities, they didn’t hesitate. I was the captain of hesitation. And I was learning that hesitation is the opportunity killer. And I was stacking up the regrets. And it just upset me, made me angry. You know, I missed a couple of big things. You know, relationship, things work things, and I went, I gotta fix this. And so I just pushed myself into my discomfort zone, and to realize that I could transform myself to becoming bolder, and bolder and bolder. And that all the great stuff happened outside my comfort zone. But every bold move I made paid off and nothing went bad like I thought it was going to because you know when you’re shy, you’re great at coming up with how bad it’s gonna go. Right? You’re just not really good at what the odds are that actually happening whereas bold people don’t even bother calculated they just go and they deal with whatever happens.

Frank Agin 04:24

So are you still are you still you still consider yourself an introvert?

Fred Joyal 04:30

I you know, I really am because I have to summon it. You know, so I’m not the life of the party sort of guy. I don’t even want to be that guy. But I want to go into a room. I want to meet four or five people and really connect with them. Go deep with them. That’s what matters to me. Now another person may go, no, I want to know everybody by the time I leave the room. I want them to all know who I am. That’s great. You know if you’re a real estate broker or something like that, you want to connect with as many people as possible, I’m much more interested in who that person is, what matters to them, you know, what are their dreams? How are they getting there, and maybe how I can help. Or maybe there’s a story I have, maybe there’s a mistake I made, they don’t have to make. So that’s what matters to me. But I have a systematic way that I use myself that I teach in my book, to summon my boldness whenever I want. And it’s really important because what happens is, in life, there are moments where there’s a window of opportunity that if you don’t sieze it, it’s gone. It disappears. And, and it could be as something as simple as asking for a promotion, and then somebody else bolder in the business goes into the boss and makes a heck of a pitch for themselves. And they get the job you wanted, or a raise or being bold enough to leave the company and go interview somewhere else. All of those things, and hey, I’ll take it all the way to something very personal. So many people are afraid to speak in front of people, that they won’t eulogize their best friend, or a parent who’ve passed away. They go, I’m not comfortable speaking in front of people, and it’s like, I tell them, well, it’s like, you only get one chance to do this. It’s not a performance, right? It doesn’t matter. If you cry, or you get tongue tied or anything, you’ll there won’t be a dry eye in the house, if you cry, that’s not going to be a problem. But what’s going to be a problem is if you don’t say anything, and you have that regret you carry around the rest of your life that I should have told everybody how important my mom was to me in my life. And when people do it, I see it, I see the impact it has on everyone. So why wouldn’t you want to have that sharing? With all of those people who in that in that room are grieving that loss? why don’t why wouldn’t you want to give them something that they can all connect to? Because that’s really what you and I are talking about is what? How would you refine and expand your ability to genuinely connect with as many people as possible?

F r ank Agin 07:20

No, I think that’s a that’s a great answer. It’s a fair answer. In all honesty, I’m an introvert. You know, you know, as you’re talking, it’s kind of describing me because I will myself to do these things. I will, you know, Friday night, I want to go home, I want to sit and watch TV with my dog and my wife. Right? That’s it. I don’t need to go to a party. I don’t need to have lots of people around. When I go to the movies, that kind of plot and scheme. When Are there going to be the least amount of people there? Because I don’t need that interaction. And I think a lot of people look at me, well, you’re Mr. Network, you know, everybody I do. I just don’t want to know everybody all at once. Right?

Fred Joyal 08:00

I think one at a time work. Right?

Frank Agin 08:03

Yeah, right. Go ahead.

Fred Joyal 08:05

But that, you know, that’s another thing. I talk about this in my book, which is how do you how can you connect what is a way that you connect with somebody and make them feel like the most important person in the room? The most interesting person in the room? And it’s, it’s a really simple step by step process. But nobody teaches you that in high school or in college, or your parents don’t know or whatever. But it’s, it’s really simple. Learn their name. Look at them, look at only them never look away. Ask them questions that tell them tell you about them. Not yes or no questions. Ask them. Like, you know, where have you been interesting lately? Oh, you know, I just came back from Rome. Really tell me more about that. Because the other thing people do is somebody will say, I just get back from Rome. And they’ll go, I was in Rome. I saw the Rolling Stones there. And you know, and went backstage and met Mick and Keith and everything. Now where does that person get? They get nothing, right? Because you top them. They go like I just had espresso and gelato and went to places like the Colosseum, you know. So be interested, genuinely interested in the, the simplest way to do it is to ask probing questions, and then say, tell me more, and never look away. And I’ve seen people, the people who do this, they may never say anything about themselves and people will go around the room and they’ll say, did you meet Fred? He’s like, super interesting. And I’m thinking I haven’t told him anything about me. Right? I’ve just talked to them about them. And that you know, it’s the old aphorism, if you if you want to be interesting, be interested, but it’s a life skill. And then and then the other thing is also, ended it well. Don’t don’t let the conversation fizzle and trail off. Just if you sense that’s going on, ask another question. And then finally say, remember their name, again. And if you forget their name, just ask and say, look, this is how you do it. You say, you’re so damn interesting. I forgot your name, right? I’m busy thinking about all this stuff. You’re telling me this, but remind me your name. And then you go, Frank, it was so great to meet you. There’s other people that want to meet in the room. But you know, I loved hearing your story about Rome. And I’m gonna go to that restaurant when I when I get there next time. And then you leave. So you don’t break content, you don’t do a walk away kind of thing halfway through the good the exit, right? You say your exit line, and then you exit. And they feel connected with and it’s amazingly powerful. I’ve watched people do it, I talked about it in my book, I watched Bill Clinton do it. When he was first campaigning, I watched him do it with 200 people in a row one at a time. Everyone felt connected to that guy. I think that’s why he won the presidency had that ability to make people feel that way. But it’s, it’s, it’s incredibly effective in creating a network of people who feel good about you, and they feel they feel good about themselves after they’re done talking to you. And that’s kind of the point too, is like why not make them feel good about themselves. Don’t top your their vacation with your vacation, or their career with your career or your job or your income or whatever. You know, I made a million and a half last year, Oh, great. I made I made 150. So, you know, don’t play that game. Just be impressed with them, make them feel good about themselves. It’s a gift you give yourself in the end because they appreciate meeting you. And they remember you.

Frank Agin 11:58

You know, you had said something early on. You know that you go to an event you’d like to talk to four people, four or five people and other people want to meet everyone. It reminds me of a quote from a coach out there. That was she’s an author, Coach speaker, Berta Medina, and she says, You know, when I go to a networking event with 100 people, or I go to a networking event with five people, I bring five business cards. When I go to a networking event with 100 people, I bring five business cards. And that’s, and that’s her whole shtick, too, and she’s very gregarious, but I think she’s an introvert as well, that we talk about going to the movies alone, you know, is that you limit yourself and I think so often people look at that big networking event, as the big networking event, I think what you’ve done, correct me if I’m wrong, is you look at it as there’s a lot of people around, but I’m just talking to one person.

Fred Joyal 12:50

Yeah. And if you, whatever the size of the network of your event is, it’s only one evening or one afternoon or one luncheon, right? If you meet one really interesting person, and really connect with them, that’s the home run to me. You know, it’s like summer camp, if you make one good friend at summer camp, summer camp is really good, you know, and that it’s so I’m not worried about it. And you also when you aim that way you go, like I can meet a couple of people, or I can even walk into a conversation of two or three people and just listen in and go, You know what, this is great. But I’m not dialed into these guys. And you just you can just move on you, you can you can ask a couple of interesting questions. Don’t jump in with your comments, jump in with your questions. Because that that’s really that’s how you hook in to a small group of people. And you can just say, this looks like a really interesting conversation. But if it’s a private one, I don’t want to intrude. But I’d love to join you guys, if you don’t mind. And they’ll tell you the truth. And they’ll go, you know what we’re, you know, we’re sharing some sort of insider stock trading right now, and we can let you in was like, Okay, fine. You know, maybe we’ll talk later. And you you and also don’t take it personally, right? They told you why they didn’t want you in the conversation. It’s not because you’re funny looking. It’s because they’re having a private conversation. And this is the other key. This is what bold people don’t do. They don’t take on. They don’t fantasize about other people’s judgments and take them on. They understand that everybody’s in their own headspace. And the number of people whose opinions really matter to them is really small. They never say to themselves, Oh, people are gonna laugh at me because people is a category of too big an audience and with zero opinion that they care about because it’s like, do they really know me? Why would I worry about their opinion of me. So it’s a very powerful insight I talk about a lot of that stuff in my book, to the the insights, you need to be comfortable being bold, because you know, you’re you have all these barrier beliefs that are stopping you that are not accurate, right. And they’re just holding you there preventing you from chasing your dreams, having a fulfilling life, meeting great people and having a real connection with them.

Frank Agin 15:27

One of the things we didn’t touch on what’s the name of your book,

Fred Joyal 15:31

oh, the name of the book is Super Bold, from under confident that the subhead is from under confident to charismatic in 90 days. And the book has exercises in it that take you from the simplest level, nonverbal actually, all the way up to some really crazy stuff, just gradually building, expanding your comfort zone and building your boldness muscle, because it really is just like that you literally create new neural pathways that make your default mode to be just to act with confidence and act with boldness. And confidence is just how you feel about yourself. Boldness is taking action, Super Bold, is you can summon this when it matters most. When this like, oh my gosh, there’s there’s Tom Hanks, or Justin Bieber, or whatever I want to meet them. And you are bold enough to walk up to them and relaxed enough to not freak out and be just a drooling fan or something like that and be a normal human being. And I have met amazing people, billionaires, famous actors, serious athletes, and because I’ve learned to relax and come from a place where this is this is the mantra of a bowl person. And the Super Bold mantra is I belong everywhere. When you can tell yourself that you can walk up to anybody and have a normal conversation. And that’s what they appreciate. I’ll never forget Richard Branson when I met him, I was with a group of people and all the other people, it was like they were conducting an interview with him. Right? And go, how did you do that with your business? Or I have a business that does this. What do you think about that? Or who could get me money for this? Or do you want to invest in this? And it was it was a much more social gathering than that demanded. And so he and I ended up playing chess, and talking about politics, right? And we had like, five or six great conversations, because of the dinners, you would always go, sit, sit here with me. It’d be big, long table and people go like, you’re hugging Branson, and went, like, he asked me to sit with them. It’s because you guys don’t know how to talk to him. You know, talk to him like a regular person and stop interviewing him to stop having an agenda in your conversation. So

Frank Agin 18:04

Do you have go to questions?

Fred Joyal 18:06

Yeah. Do I have go to questions? I do really like, you know, what’s the most interesting thing that happened to you this week? And because it’s so wide open, but it’s not a yes or no question. Right? Got it. Cuz I have it a good time here. Yep. Would you like a drink? Yep. You know, but something like that, or who’s the most interesting person you met this week? Or what’s been your biggest challenge this month? You know, if you know, if it’s more of a business environment, you can start to throw the that things out. It’s like, it gets something keeping you up. I’d love to hear what that is, you know? And you’re not it doesn’t have to start that way. You can just say, how do you know the host? This is a really great way to start, or how do you know, you know what got you here to this meeting? And it’s, that’s a great way to start to go like, I just know, one guy. This is the other thing I do. I pick out the, if I see Frank Agin in the room, I’m going over to him, he’s hiding in the corner, right? I’m going to this person in the room, and I’m going to engage with her orr him and just, you know, pull them out of it. You know, I aim for the wallflower. Because they’re the usually the most interesting, right? Because they’ve spent way more time reading and thinking and growing. And they got all sorts of interesting things to say but they haven’t said them. And so when you when you pull them out, and then I then I release them into the wild, right? I’ll take him and say I just talked to this guy. You need to meet him, right? He’s fascinating. And we you know, Frank meet Eloise, you know she’s done blah blah, and get in here, and then I’m gone. And what are they talking about? First, me when I leave, right hip friend, he’s so interesting, right? He’s such a great guy. And they know very little about me, except I know how to engage and connect. Right. So

Frank Agin 18:21

Let’s shift gears a little bit, let’s talk about, well, we are talking about you professionally, things you’ve got going, we got a book, assume you’re out there speaking, talk about that other things, seminars, workshops, anything like that going on, consult with businesses.

Fred Joyal 20:36

So what I do is primarily is keynote speaking and executive coaching. So there’s a lot of executives out there who are missing these boldness skills, because they are the founders a lot of time. And, and they just haven’t developed that. And, you know, everybody’s got confidence issues, some when it matters, you know, a lot of people are really confident with their doesn’t matter. And I tell people, like, don’t define yourself as shy. Shyness is the behavior you have in certain situations, you’re not shy with your family. You know, you’re shy when you get in these certain situations. So what you want to do is, it’s, you’re not going to change yourself, like, no matter what I do, Frank, you’re still going to be Frank. You’re just going to, you’re just going to be able to reveal the full Frank to people when whenever you want. And that’s going to be powerful, why deprive people of the full Frank, but so so I’ll coach executives. And I’m also doing a two day workshop, where I’ll put you through your paces, I’ll it’ll be transformational, because it’ll be very interactive and very challenging. But you, you will get a sense of how you can be super bold, how you can really summon that confidence really quickly. And the book, of course, is full of exercises, you can get the book the books on audible and Kindle, as well as hardcover. If you’re going to read a digital version, then you should go to my website, Fredjoyal.com. And download a PDF of the exercises and also of the journal format. Because you’re going to be journaling. This book is about taking action. This isn’t something you read and go, Oh, those are some great ideas. No, you’re gonna do stuff. And it’s and that’s where the impact comes from. And part of it is journaling. It’s like I made this bold move, I did this bold exercise. And this is what happens. This is what happened. And this is what I wished I said, or I was so glad I said this. And you’re gonna it allows you to track your progress and reflect on it.

Frank Agin 22:53

Can people get a hold of you through your website? Fredjoyal.com. Yeah, and they can download the first chapter of the book if they want. They can find out when workshops are happening, if there’s any happening near them. And if they want, they can book a half an hour consultation with me. If they’re feeling like, you know, I’m really struggling with this. I don’t even know if your book is going to help me, like schedule an appointment. We will talk about it for half an hour, and I’ll get you jump started. Sounds great. Fred, I really appreciate your time today. Fred Joyal, author of Super Bold, appreciate you being on.

Fred Joyal 23:32

Thank you so much Frank. Hope it was helpful for everybody.

Episode #4 ~ Behind the Story Podcast

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 12:24:45 GMT

It's simple to learn how to be bold if you know the right method. In this podcast, SPEAKER, AUTHOR, DENTAL MARKETING EXPERT, ENTREPRENEUR and author of SUPERBOLD, Fred Joyal will take us through some of the steps to achieving boldness in 90-days

Episode #1 ~ Ideas + Leaders Podcast with Dr. Elena Paweta

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 12:15:34 GMT

Elena Paweta 00:03

Okay, we are recording. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next episode of ideas and leaders Podcast. Today I have a great guest it is Fred Joyal, he is number one Amazon Best Selling Author, his speaker is an entrepreneur and his business advisor. And today we’re going to speak about a very interesting topic about becoming bold and overcoming shyness. Hi, Fred. It’s great to have you on ideas and leaders.

Fred Joyal 00:40

It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Elena Paweta 00:44

So your book SuperBold is number one Amazon bestseller. Well, congratulations on this. Can you tell us a little bit about how, where did you get this idea to write this book? How did it all started? Tell us a little bit about your story.

Fred Joyal 01:03

Well, I was a very shy person growing up and in my early stages of my life, and I gradually had to figure my way out of it, because I kept missing opportunities and fun and relationships and everything. And it just frustrated me. And after a couple of really big misses. I said, I gotta fix this. And I would see bold people. And I would wonder why they were that were they born this way? Why are they like this? Why don’t they process rejection like I do? And why don’t they embarrassed? Why? Why did why did they just go out and do stuff without worrying about it. And I gradually taught myself to do it. And then I was teaching some high school students many years later, and I would say, boldness is a superpower. This was part of a whole mentoring program. And I explained that, you know, the cure for a life of regrets is boldness. And they said, that’s great. How do we do it? So I made a commitment on stage, of course, which is makes you have to get it done to write a book about a systematic way to cultivate boldness. So then I worked on that for a couple of years. And that’s what this is, this is a book about actively changing and cultivating and increasing your confidence and boldness radically, so that you have it as a life skill. So that’s where it all came from. And it’s been really resonated with people, which makes me very happy.

Elena Paweta 02:41

Yeah, so this is definitely a topic that we all need. And I think that we often look at those bold people and pursue will say, Wow, maybe I would like to be like him or like her. So do you think and I’m sure that the answer will be yes. Or do you think that everyone can learn to be bold, even the shy the most introvert and shy people? Yeah, well,

Fred Joyal 03:12

I, the reason I say that is because I did it, because I’ll go, you know, experience by experience with people to say, Oh, you think you’re shy? Well, I can top that I did, I missed this, this happened to me, this happened. So I worked my way out of it. It didn’t change my personality, what it allowed was for me to bring my full personality into the world and and offer it to everyone that I encounter. And I can meet anybody I want to meet, I can talk normally, to anyone, I can talk to 5000 people on stage, I can do a presentation to a marketing team, I can meet a athlete or a movie star, and have a great conversation with them or a billionaire. And anybody can do it. It’s just a life skill you develop almost like you would develop like you would get in shape. Or learn to sing or learn to play guitar, any one of those things, you can do it. And it just can happen a lot faster than you think you just don’t have a method for doing it, which is why I developed one.

Elena Paweta 04:24

Yeah, so when we go to gym when we want to get fit, we have a trainer and the set of exercises that we have to do regularly. Is there something like this, if we want to get bald do Is there something that you can recommend to do regularly in order to build this this muscle?

Fred Joyal 04:48

Well, yes, and that’s that’s what the second part of the book is, is five levels of exercises that take you from very simple non verbal exercises to start To get you more and more comfortable to expand your comfort zone on a gradual basis, so that you feel more and more confident in more and more situations and you develop the social skills, and also even the neural pathways that allow your default mode to become bold, rather than hesitant or shy or under confident. So the exercises are started simply as just smiling and everybody you meet, waiting for somebody not to smile back, your goal is to find somebody who won’t smile back to teach you that you don’t have to take that on that what they’re thinking what’s going on in their day. It’s got nothing to do with you. So let it go. And it takes practice to do that. It’s toughening yourself up in some ways, but also this insight that people you know, you don’t know what kind of headspace they’re in. And you, there’s no reason to take it on. If there’s only a small number of people whose opinion should really matter to you. And stop worrying about complete strangers and what they’re thinking of you. This is what bold people do. They never take that stuff on. And it’s just a shift in mindset. Because the truth is, those people don’t know you. So why would you worry about their opinion about you? But we do know that people are going to laugh, I always say, what people? Oh, well. I said, Do you know any of them? Do they know you? Would they be accurate? If they had an a judgement about you based on a snapshot of you? Well, no, okay, then don’t take it on, let it go. But we have this, you know, deep in our primal programming, since we were out on the African plane is fitting in, we need to fit in, we don’t want to get kicked out of the tribe, because 100,000 years ago, you got kicked out of the tribe you died, you needed the tribe to stay alive. So we have this strong need to fit in. And Boldness is about overcoming that to actually chase your dreams. Now, of course, as a business person, it takes boldness to say, I’m going to start this business. Now, when I started my business many years ago, one 800 dentist, everyone told me it wouldn’t work. That’s a terrible idea. That’s never been done before. It’s not going to work. You don’t know how to do it. They had all these reasons. So I had to be bold enough to say, it doesn’t matter what they think it matters what I think because I think I can do it. And my partner and I did it. Now we could have easily taken the discouragement as good advice. But you have to summon the boldness to say, No, I will figure out how to do it, I will I will do something that hasn’t been done before. Because and we need that we need bold people making a difference in the world. We need entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, are the ones making the world a better place.

Elena Paweta 08:04

Yes, for the most part. So we have a lot of Entrepreneurs also listening to us. And it is great that you’re touching on this topic. So it definitely you need to be bald to start your own business. But also you need something more. So what would you what would you recommend to our listeners who are, you know, looking for this perfect moment to start or maybe they started and they are not feeling very secure? What would you recommend to them, based on your great experience, to what is the most important, especially in the beginning of running your business.

Fred Joyal 08:54

There’s a lot of people that they use perfectionism as a way to not be bold. They say I’m going to get it really right, first, I’m going to get this business really good. And then I’m going to launch it, I’m going to perfect all of these things. That’s just a way of saying, I don’t want to fail. So I’m just gonna keep tinkering with it. I’m gonna keep adjusting it. What all successful entrepreneurs, basically create a minimum viable product, launch it and fix it as you go. Because you don’t know what the market wants until you push it out there. You could have to pivot four times in the course of the first year of the business or the first five years of the business. And they may only care about one of the five things you offer. You have to be bold enough to go out and try it. To be bold enough to sell it and pitch it bold enough to raise money to do it to believe in yourself and say no, no, I’m going to make this work, I will make your money it to five times that money that all of that takes boldness. You can’t just be an inventor or an engineer you, you can be a creator, but you got to be bold enough to launch to sell to raise money. And you got to be bold enough to take feedback. We hate feedback. We hate criticism. We like Praise, praise, feels great, has no information whatsoever. Makes you feel good criticism. It’s all information. Now you can weigh how important it is. But take it all on I use the example when I lecture is like I know a bunch of people love the lecture, I thought it was great and change their life, whatever the heck they’re gonna say to me. I want to talk to the guy who thought I was an idiot, thought I was full of it. I want him to tell me why I didn’t get through to him or why I was wrong, or what was wrong about my presentation. You know, I had one guy come up to saying after the lecture, he said you shouldn’t use curse words in your lecture. It really offends people. And I thought, did I curse? Because I don’t remember. I know generally when I curse, I said shit in the lecture to him that was cursing. Right? And it was this great moment of like, wow, to some people. That’s not a casual word that they stopped listening because I said that. So I don’t need to say I can say crap. I could say junk, I could say trash, right? So that feedback, it takes the boldness to say, What’s What did I do wrong? It takes boldness to watch a video of yourself. And you know, as podcasters, right, we we watch our podcasts and we go like, What the heck are we doing? Why are we you know, why are we saying that? What’s What’s with the facial expressions, you know, and all of that. And, and we get better, because we’re willing to painfully watch the video is this we become afraid of making mistakes. And this is both entrepreneurs, you can’t be afraid of making mistakes, because that’s how you that’s how everything is built. Yes, series of mistakes, you survive.

Elena Paweta 12:21

Absolutely your I can totally agree with you that it is so important to just act and just go there to the market start. And you definitely need to be bold for that. So you mentioned that in order to become bolder, to become more courageous, we can do certain exercises, for example, we can smile and look for people who are not smiling back. What else can we do to become more courageous, especially for people who are introverts, and for some people, it is really hard to just smile and to look people in the eye. So what would you recommend to such people?

Fred Joyal 13:11

Well, a lot of what I talked about in the book are these social skills that people don’t teach you how to make someone feel like the most important person in the room. This is this is a life skill that you should learn how to do. And mostly it’s about listening and paying attention. But I go into much more detail about it. But there’s all of these exercises are, are meant to make you comfortable. Like the next step would be to just whenever you’re in a Starbucks or a coffee line, or somewhere where you’re lined up with people start a conversation with the person in front of you. And the easiest way to do it is just by complimenting that, say, oh, that you know that outfit looks great on you. That was a great choice. It really goes great with your hair. Oh, thank you very much. The trick is to make sure you have no agenda. That if you if you project that you have an ulterior motive, you want to meet them, you want to sell them something you want to give them your business got any of these things that people do by accident because they think they’re networking, what they’re doing is repelling people. What you want to do is invite people in by offering them a gift, which is a generous act of of appreciation, a compliment, and then just just leave it there. Now it could turn into a whole conversation. But what you’re going to do is make a habit of doing that so that occasionally it turns into a conversation. I’ve had it I’ll give you an example. I was in the Starbucks line. The there was a flight attendant in front of me I was at the airport. And when she went up to pay I just said to the cashier I said, you know, Can I can I pay For her coffee, she has such a wonderful smile. I just wanted to show my appreciation for Can I buy her coffee? Now, some guys with that think that’s a pickup line, except I didn’t turn and try to ask her name and get to know her. And so she just was beaming with appreciation. She says, Oh, that’s so sweet that you would say that, thank you so much. And then I let her walk away. Now, when we were both picking up our coffee, we had another quick exchange, we had a human interaction. But it was because I had no agenda, that interaction occurred. And that’s, that’s it’s such an important life skill. Another thing like I have you doing all sorts of crazy exercises, like, if you see a sign that says employees only go in, if it’s not locked, go in. You know why? You’ll figure out what bold people know, which is that 99% of the time, nothing bad happens. But we’re constantly telling ourselves of what could happen, oh, people are gonna yell at me, they’re gonna kick me out, nobody’s gonna beat you to death, nobody’s going to arrest you for going in an employee’s only. Broom, the sign is the only thing keeping you up. If you go in, people are going to assume you belong there. And if they tell you to leave, you’re going to leave because you’re not an employee there. But you what you’re doing is you’re building up your boldness muscle by realizing, wow, I don’t have to label that as bad. I was walking in there knowing I wasn’t an employee. Or you’re walking in the back of a supermarket where it says employees only somebody is gonna say, Can I help you? They’re not gonna say get the heck out of here. What are you doing? You know, I’m calling the police, they’re not going to do that. But we build this stuff up in our mind. And we do this with everything. Under confident people are masters at coming up with the worst case scenario, or a dozen worst case scenarios. And bold, people don’t do that. They act and deal with whatever happens. And they don’t label anything as bad. They don’t label anything as a failure. It’s a mistake to learn from it’s a, it’s a new experience to learn from. That’s all the end. So what they do is they just keep getting stronger and moving up and moving up. They don’t get discouraged. They just learn. And they and they don’t take it on. They don’t they don’t take the most severe criticism on as anything but information to get better. Because they they believe in themselves. It’s a really powerful shift when you realize you are worthy. Because we’re constantly telling ourselves, we’re not worthy. We’re not worthy to talk to this person, we’re not worthy to meet this person. We’re not worthy to try this thing. People don’t want to buy our stuff. Only these new people would want to buy our stuff. We don’t know that. Why don’t you find out by talking to everybody who would actually want to buy your stuff. And then decide who your audience is, rather than try to pre decide. So you don’t embarrass yourself because you’re so worried about rejection, that you shrink your audience, your potential customer base down so tiny that you can’t make a living? Yeah, I’ve gone off on a tangent there. But because I’ve run businesses, and I know that’s what we do.

Elena Paweta 18:29

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that this employees only sign I find this hilarious. It is such an amazing analogy to what we actually do to ourselves in our minds. Because this sign is something that we put on everything that we are afraid of doing. We don’t want to do well, I’ll do it later because and we are putting labels on things and making excuses why we don’t do something because I’m not ready. For example, even looking at the my podcast, sometimes I’m inviting a person who is who is an amazing person and I know that they would be they would speak about very interesting things and concepts. And they are great when we speak off camera but when I am asking them to be on my podcast they say oh, maybe let’s do it next month maybe I’ll because this month I have something and they come up with all sorts of excuses. Why not now and I think that this this employees only sign is something that we put on on a lot a lot of things for ourselves in our lives, and we just need to go there and just start doing this. This is this is the way I realized Love it. So what do you think? What else can we do? We can smile, we can compliment people. What else can help us on a regular basis to become more confident, more bold?

Fred Joyal 20:14

What the goal is to do something every single day to do a boldness exercise, and analyze what happened. What What could I have done differently? You can go a little crazier you could be in let’s say, you’re in Starbucks, you see somebody sitting alone, you say, do you mind if I sit with you? They’re gonna probably saying, Yes, I do mind. But in your mind, they think that’s like 99% of people are gonna say that I have found that it’s about 10% That actually say that. The rest of them just go, oh, yeah, sure. And you sit and you leave them alone. So you reinforced that it was okay to let you sit. So they relax. You know what happens? They start talking to you. And all of a sudden, I have I’ve had hour long conversations with people that I’ve done that. Why? Because I was ready for them that they had every option to say no. And it was ridiculous that I was asking, in my mind, like part of the way back in my brain. This is ridiculous. Why are you asking this? Because I’m expecting them to say no, and I’m not going to take it on. If they say no, because it’s their right to say no, I’d rather sit alone. I’m busy. I’m working on something and making a private phone call whatever the heck it is. That’s all right. But I’m just asking to sit. They could say, well, there’s a bunch of empty tables. Why don’t you go sit at one of them? And you just go Oh, yeah. Thank you. And you don’t take any of it on? It. It’s it’s just it’s an experiment. It’s social interaction. And then they can just do like, stuff that you go, Oh, I shouldn’t do that. And there’s no reason why you shouldn’t do it. You’re at the movies. At the end of the movie. You there was a great movie, stand up and yell. I love this movie. You know what? Nothing’s bad’s gonna happen. A bunch of people are gonna go. I didn’t like it that much. Or, yeah, I feel that way too. Or some people are gonna clap. So I’m gonna go Oh, yeah, I loved it. You can do the same walk into a candy store and yell, I love chocolate. Or an ice cream shop. Just yell it. Nothing bad will happen to you. You’re in a place where people are eating ice cream. They love ice cream. You give me a clue. They feel exactly about it like you do. They’re just not yelling it. So they look at you like you’re weird. Or they go, Yeah, I love ice cream too. I’m, I actually feel exactly how he feels about ice cream. He’s just happens to be expressing. You do that sort of stuff. And you realize you don’t die. Right? You realize there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. And that some people will find it interesting. Some people will find you weird. And so what? When you can say so what to all of these stupid things that you’re telling yourself in your head? You can make a giant leap forward.

Elena Paweta 23:19

Yeah. And what what kind of leap can we make in terms of our careers or in terms of business opportunities? Do you see that people who become more bold, they, it actually reflects in their business life in their private life.

Fred Joyal 23:37

It affects every part of your life. Because you say what’s on your mind, you get better because you’re comfortable making mistakes, inviting feedback, trying stuff, the only guarantee of failure is not trying. That’s is when you know, you will not succeed. Everything else has some margin of potential for success. And every bit of failure has information that leads you towards that success. Now, it could be that, you know, some people say no, I’m confident most of the time and I say Yeah, except when it really matters, right? And they say, yeah, like if I really want to meet somebody, like I see an actor that I really want to talk to, I can’t talk to them. Or I see a really attractive man across the room. I want to go talk to him. But you know, I’m afraid he’s gonna think I’m coming on to him and I just really want to meet him but I have a little optimism that he might be an interesting person to date or whatever. And the woman stops themselves. And then they watch some other woman walk up and talk to the guy and they go whoo, why did that happen? And the guys do the same thing, obviously. But bold people don’t do that. So when you what you’re doing is practicing to be bold when it doesn’t matter. So that your bold is muscle is strong. long enough, when it does matter, I’ve met amazing people just because I was able to calmly walk up to them and talk to them and have a normal conversation. If you’re anxious, and nervous, you’re going to project a certain weirdness, and you’re going to have trouble with your processing chips, right? You’re not going to say what you want to say, your tongue is not going to work. Well, you have and part of what I teach in the book is how do you relax yourself? Before something important like that there are techniques for very quickly relaxing yourself.

Elena Paweta 25:35

So what should we do to relax ourselves, especially when we’re in a situation like, for example, we need to speak in public, I think that those are the most common, the most common situations when we get super nervous, and we don’t know what to say we forget everything, when we need to present something when we have maybe presented the conference or even in the small conference room. So what are what do you recommend? How can we relax ourselves in the moment?

Fred Joyal 26:12

The very basic techniques are and there’s two steps to it. The first is to check your physiology, what are you doing, that’s tensing you up, like when we’re nervous, we tend to, like, fold our arms or tighten ourselves up, put our shoulders up. Yeah, you know, will even stop breathing will get so anxious that we’ll stop breathing. Because we’ve done this, we perceive psychological danger. So the body says danger. That’s one category, I know what to do. Tense up, stop breathing, pump, these threes are flight, chemicals in our body, which slows your your cognitive skills down depletes your memory, it’s about saving yourself, it’s about defending yourself, it’s not about being your creative, open cell. So you have to shake that off, literally, physically catch yourself doing it and go, and then it’ll shake off it like you can’t stay like this, if you say, I’m just gonna shake my shoulders down and move my neck around and rattle my body a little bit, shake it off. Animals do this all the time, you see a dog that’s had a stressful moment, they’ll just go. We have trouble doing that as human beings, but it’s really effective. To do the same thing. The other thing is focus on your breath, take three deep breaths, it’s amazingly calming. And when you start to relax yourself, you realize you can relax yourself, so it drives it down, you go, I am in control of my state. The other if you’re really anxious, or you feel it really rising, you can actually make a sound to vibrate the vagus nerve that runs down the center of your body. It’s called the vagus breath. Vegas not Vegas, like the breath you have from staying out all night in Las Vegas. But the the, the breathing, making this sound, you take a deep breath and then you go let this out very slowly a go you do that as long as you can you do that three times. You’ll be astounded. You’ll feel it, relax you and then you can say, Okay, I’m more relaxed now. And then you can run with it. And most of the time, the only anxious part of everything is starting. And once you start once you get you know, it’s public speaking classic for that people get all anxious, and then once they end in the first five minutes, they’re they’re nervous and they’re incoherent maybe or something like that here and all of a sudden they sort of find a groove and away they go. Or they never get off the nervousness but most of the time it’s the front end that’s really hard or something goes wrong once you’ve built your bowl this muscle anything can go wrong on stage, and you’ll just use it I’ve had the power go out while I was on stage and just keep right on going emergency lights come on and I just I have no more projector I got no more bike. I’m still going and and or I’ve gone out and I’ve had like my shirt half on tucked because the sound got put the wire for the mic under me and didn’t and I didn’t I was such a hurry to get back on stage the wires hanging out my shirt, Hannah, and I didn’t notice it for 10 minutes. And as when I noticed it, I make a comment and everybody laughs You know what happens? I become human to that. Now I could be humiliated. Right or I could just go, Yep, I probably should have dressed for the occasion. And they’ll just laugh at me. And I said, like, the sound guy touched me inappropriately, I could say any number of things. Because I’ve decided not to take it on as embarrassment, I have chosen not to be embarrassed. And that’s when you realize that’s a choice. That’s really powerful. And when you start to execute that, you realize you’re invincible, that nothing can go wrong, because you don’t have to label it that way. You can roll with it. Because you’re relaxed and calm enough to say, how do I make this fun or funny, or, or let it let everybody and when everybody sees that it rolls off you. They say, Wow, she’s really comfortable on stage. Wow, nothing that you know, you break your heel, and you go, here I go again, you know, I’m going to have to spend more than $30 on shoes from now on. And they will just die laughing, right that you said something like that. And, and you go, guess the rest of the show, I’m doing it barefoot, and you kick off your shoes, they will love you. Because you embraced it, you didn’t crumble, you stepped up and they did and they will, they will just admire you. That’s why what i The final part of my book is from under confident to charismatic charisma is just when you’re confident everywhere you feel like you belong, wherever you are, whatever happens when people see that they are drawn to you magnetically, and you can learn to do that.

Elena Paweta 31:38

Yeah, yeah, such such a great tips. Thank you so much. I actually remember one of my best moments on stage best moments. When I lost my voice on stage, I was speaking in front of a very big audience, and I lost my voice in the middle of my presentation of my speech. And then I, I had to finish. And I finished whispering. And after this, you know, nothing happened. I didn’t die. People listened to my whispering for some time. And And after this, when speaking in public, I’m like, what, what worse can happen, then this?

Fred Joyal 32:25

Yeah, that’s really hard to come up with it not being able to make sounds anymore.

Elena Paweta 32:30

Yes, yes. And I think that everything that he said, I could totally relate to that, the more uncomfortable we get, the more uncomfortable situations were exposed to, the more confident we are in the next situation. So I think that this is really a great tip. Thank you very much, Fred, for speaking about being bold about being courageous. It was such a pleasure. So summing up, what are the what is the biggest advice, then that you can leave our listeners with what they should do every day, in order to get bolder and bolder?

Fred Joyal 33:15

Well, I always like to point out this very important thing is that the only person you need permission from to have the life you want is you. Nobody else you don’t need permission from anybody else. So you have to decide that you are worthy of the life you want. And you are you just have to acknowledge that and act and boldness will become a life skill that will transform every aspect of your life. And anybody can develop it. And and that is how you’re going to chase your dreams. That is how you’re going to have a satisfying, fulfilling life. So cultivate it, do it, start doing it, do something bold every day. And I can lay out how you’re going to do that in the book. Yeah,

Elena Paweta 34:13

thank you. Thank you so much. You’re so inspiring. I’m already inspired to be even more bold every day. What where can we contact you if our listeners want to reach out to buy your book to ask you some additional questions? Maybe how can how can we reach you?

Fred Joyal 34:33

So the book is available on Amazon. It’s in hardcover. It’s in audible, and it’s me reading it, and it is on Kindle it is in ebook form. So there’s three ways you can get the book. If you do it in a digital form. You’re going to want the exercises in a physical form. So you can go to Fred joyal.com My Website Joy A L and You can download a PDF of the exercises because you’re gonna I want you to physically have them so you can download them. You can also download the first chapter of the book at Fred joyal.com and and get a sense of if it’s something you want and also if you want a half hour conversation with me because I do keynotes I do executive coaching and and I’ll just but I’ll help anybody if you want to book a half hour conversation with me because you just say, Look, I I don’t know how I’m ever going to get out of this under confidence this shyness box I’m in or whatever, get jumpstart me help me out what? I do shy, I can’t do it. I’ll get you out of the house. I’ll get you doing stuff. Give me a half an hour. So you can just book that on my website.

Elena Paweta 35:51

Perfect, perfect. We’ll put all those links under the episode so that our listeners can immediately jump there and and book a call with you or buy your book. Thank you so much, Fred. It was a pleasure speaking to you today.

Fred Joyal 36:07

Thank you very much. I hope this was valuable for everybody. Get out there and be bold.

Episode #5 ~ Be Healthy in a Hurry Podcast

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 12:10:42 GMT

Have you struggled with confidence? Curious about how people master the confidence to do bold things? Does lack of boldness hold you back from opportunities? You will enjoy today’s session with Fred Joyal, author of Superbold: from Under-confident to Charismatic in 90 days, was just released in October. Fred provides insight and exercises to increase your boldness muscle. Like all muscles, exercising it makes it stronger!

7 Power Tools for Mastering Social Interactions

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 12:03:33 GMT

The following is adapted from Superbold.

Meeting new people is stressful. When was the last time you heard someone say, “I can’t wait to go into this room full of strangers and engage in a lot of small talk?”

The reality is that most of us dread meeting new people. But, if you walk into a room of strangers with just a few “power tools” in your back pocket, I bet you might enjoy those conversations with strangers. You may even make a meaningful connection.

I didn’t always enjoy meeting new people. I was shy, and I found it both arduous and overwhelming to attend even a small networking event. But, over time I realized that if I just kept a few easy things in mind, I could not only meet people effortlessly, but also create opportunities through those quality interactions. By doing something as simple as remembering someone’s name, I was able to immediately form a connection with that person later on in the evening.

I call these tips power tools, because they are just that: powerful. However, the tools themselves are truly simple, and to use them, you just need to put a little bit of extra thought into your everyday conversations. And, if you utilize each of these tools at your next networking event, I guarantee that you will walk away feeling good about yourself.

Power Tool #1: Learning Names

We all love to hear our names. It’s music to our ears.

Naturally, if you tell yourself you’re bad at remembering people’s names, you will be. The fact is, most of the time we can remember names if we associate them with something about the person and repeat their name a few times in the first interaction. It also requires active listening, which we neglect very often when we first meet someone and hear their name for the first time.

Power Tool #2: Asking Questions

Your simplest solution to making a connection in any new conversation is to ask the person questions. Questions are magic. They are powerful. The subtext is “I’m interested in what you think” or “I’m interested in who you are.” And it leads to an exchange. You get to listen and learn, and then add to it.

To be interesting, be interested.

I can’t tell you how many situations I’ve been in where all I did was essentially ask a question, listen to the answer, and then ask another question, for the entire conversation. Later I would hear that the person thought I was really interesting, even though I had hardly said anything to the person.

Allow yourself the release of being interested in someone else, and they will respond. Active listening is crucial to do when you first meet someone, and as a general life skill it is in the top three.

Power Tool #3: Upgrading Your Default Expression

Every one of us has a default expression, which is what our face looks like most of the time. Check your face. It’s what you look like when you’re not smiling.

What is your default expression? By that I mean, when you are just sitting there, relaxed, not communicating with anyone. Is it neutral? Is it inviting, happy, warm, friendly, or is it sad, frowning, grouchy, judgmental? Do you find yourself scowling a good part of the time? Or just sitting there with a downturned mouth? If so, I want you to try to catch yourself at it and deliberately bring some lightness, some positivity, into your face.

Your face is what you project to the world. Just think about how you respond to other people’s expressions. Listen to your internal monologue, your judgments about them. They are almost always at least partially based on their facial expressions.

Smile more. A lot more. Upgrade your default face. And use other people’s unpleasant expressions to trigger you to reset yours to something happier, more appealing, starting today.

Power Tool #4: Using Key Words and Compliments

Complimenting early on in an encounter is a powerful tool. But it has to feel genuine, not excessively flattering, and not weird or creepy. Find some words that you feel comfortable with, that you can say believably, and that don’t push the boundaries of a healthy exchange.

Remember that the unexpected is memorable. Here are some that I consider unique and also less focused on appearance: observant, perceptive, intriguing, intuitive, energetic, relaxed, dynamic, serene, playful, fun-loving, worldly, wise.

Try to develop your own repertoire of words that are unique, positive,complimentary, but not bizarre or esoteric. When you find out what best rolls off your tongue, these words are reusable, so build up your working vocabulary.

Compliments are a gift you give to someone else. And everyone likes presents. Get good at being sincere in your compliments as well as unique, whenever possible. To put a smile on someone’s face, or just to know that you did something without expecting anything in return, becomes a precious gift you give yourself as well as them.

Power Tool #5: Adding to Yes

The best speaking training I ever got was in improv comedy classes. One of the ironclad rules of improv comedy is this: when you are building a scene and it’s your turn to speak or do an action, you are always adding positively to something. You never negate anything that has already been presented. That principle is called “Saying yes, and…”

It’s exactly the same with conversation. The easiest way to build an interaction is by always adding something, not reversing the direction or negating what someone has just said. That way, the conversation gains momentum instead of screeching to a halt.

I think adding to yes is a great rule to apply to your whole life. But let’s start with conversation. By starting your response with “Yes,” you trick yourself into saying something positive. I recommend saying the “Yes, and…” out loud until you find yourself not needing to, until it becomes a reflex not to negate what someone is saying.

Power Tool #6: Saying the Unexpected

When we hear something we’re expecting someone to say, we don’t store it deep in our memory. What we do remember are unusual or unexpected things. This is how you can become memorable easily.

To be memorable, get good at saying something positive and unexpected. Bold people are always memorable.

Here is one of the most unexpected things you can express: appreciation. We all are fairly terrible at expressing appreciation, and it is one of the most powerful messages you can give someone. It’s memorable in large part because people seldom expect it.

Once you realize how many situations present themselves when you can do this, you’ll start to revel in the reactions you get. Thanking someone for being courteous or considerate will be both well received and likely to start a conversation. Letting someone close to you know that you appreciate what they do for you is an extremely loving gesture. Don’t hesitate to express appreciation at every turn.

Power Tool #7: Employing the Power of Suspense

Every good story has suspense. In all good storytelling, something is always held back. It’s the same thing in conversation. Use suspense by not giving in to the urge to immediately roll out a whole story.

By combining the Power Tool of Asking Questions with the Power Tool of Suspense, you will seem more interested in people, which makes you even more interesting, with the suspense thrown in. For example, you could go on and give a full description of what you do for a living, what your job entails, who your clients are, and all that. Or you could say, “I work in an esoteric part of the communication field, but I’m more interested in what you do.”

See? You teased a bit about yourself, and then you said you were more interested in who they were than talking about yourself. Wow. You really are in communication!

These Tools Will Open Doors

If you use these tips regularly when meeting new people, they will become reflexive. It will be so natural for you to use them that you won’t even need to think about them.

Some may seem obvious and some are more subtle, but each works to create impactful, memorable interactions and open doors that previously would have been locked to you. You will start looking forward to things like networking events and random parties. And before you know it, you will be capitalizing on opportunities you never would have known existed.

For more advice on mastering social interactions, you can find Superbold on Amazon.

Fred Joyal is an author, speaker, entre preneur, and business advisor. Along with a lucrative career in advertising and marketing, he co-founded the most successful dentist referral service in the country, 1-800-DENTIST. He has written two books on marketing, dabbled in stand-up and improv comedy, acted in bad movies and excellent TV commercials, and visited over forty-four countries around the world. He has an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from the University of Rhode Island, perhaps because of his generous donations. 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.

Redefine Rejection by Reframing It

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 11:56:57 GMT

The following is adapted from Superbold.

Here’s an interesting story about an incident that I saw happen recently. There is a place near my office where people jaywalk all the time, and one day there was a policeman lying in wait for anyone who attempted it. A woman was about to cross, saw the officer, and instead walked around to the crossing light where I was also waiting. I looked at her and said, “I’m surprised. They really are writing jaywalking tickets. They never do.”

Instead of responding, she turned and looked away, and at the same time did a little dismissive flick of her wrist in my direction. It shocked me. It was like I had asked her for spare change. But then I laughed to myself. “What an amazing total fail,” I thought.

I didn’t say anything rude back. Instead, I imagined that whatever headspace she was in, or whatever social skill level she was at, I simply chose the wrong moment to speak to her. Nothing more. Nothing to worry about or retreat into shyness about. Just the opposite.

This example illustrates the fact that you will frequently encounter rejection in your mundane daily life and especially when you step out of your comfort zone. Don’t let it throw you off or ruin your day. Instead, push yourself to confront rejection head-on. Don’t fear it—simply reframe it.

If you can start redefining rejection, viewing it through a different lens, you’ll feel a weight lifted off of your shoulders. Start small and purposely put yourself in situations that might result in rejection or failure, such as the one I just shared with you.

Once reframing rejection becomes second-nature, you’ll be ready to tackle more challenging situations. You won’t hesitate to go after even your biggest goals, because the worst thing that might happen is rejection. And you’ll know exactly how to deal with it.

To Fail is to Learn

The problem is we interpret rejection as some sort of failure. But when we let go of failure as something to avoid and make it a goal, then rejection falls by the wayside. Learn to accept that you will inherently not be good at some things at the outset. Owning this realization will be a transformation for you.

It’s time to stop labeling experiences as failures, and start calling them “learning.”

The trick is to make the individual failures simply steps upward, stages of learning and growing, not something any more painful than a hard workout or a well-executed sales pitch where you didn’t close the deal. You gave it your best shot and have something to mine for some lessons. That’s not something to be afraid of.

The beginning of most learning is the most painful part and usually the most discouraging. Once you get beyond that fear of failure, you will start to embrace it, revel in it, and enjoy it, because it means you are on the path.

You have a choice. You can say, “I’m terrible at this. I hate this. I wish it were easier!” Or you can say, “I’m terrible at this, which means I’m at the very exciting part, the very beginning of learning something new. And because it’s so hard, it will be a great challenge and be incredibly satisfying when I get good at it.”

Which choice are you going to make?

Care Less About Others’ Opinions

You will meet people at a party whose attention always seems elsewhere, like they are looking for something or someone better than you at that moment. In fact, that’s exactly what they are doing, and they are always doing it. It’s their behavior in most situations. So, expect it to happen. It is not a reflection on you.

Even if it were, why care? Why would anyone’s opinion besides your own matter? Or at the very least, why would it matter more than your own? I know right now it matters—even pains you—to feel rejection. But this nonchalance about others’ opinions is a powerful new mindset that you’re going to get to, a little at a time.

You’re going to find out as you take more risks in your social interactions that there are people more socially inept than you. You are suddenly going to be on the other side of the fence, and the closet-case shy people are going to be judging you, rejecting you, ignoring you, and even insulting you. (You know, maybe like you used to do.)

This is a good sign, because everything they do is a reflection of the state they are in and how unhappy they are with it. It is NOT a reflection on you, so why would you care about someone’s opinion who is trapped in an unhealthy frame of mind?

Redefinition in Action

Imagine a scenario where you are in a restaurant and you spill something on the table, or worse, knock a glass onto the floor and it breaks. It could be embarrassing. It doesn’t have to be. You can choose to stand up and say, “And for my next trick…” or “Show’s over, folks. Next performance at ten o’clock.” Hard to do? Not really. Why should it be? Only because you tell yourself it is. It’s not hard to stand up and say words. People do it all the time. You could too.

But you hesitate to do this because you’ve added an extra charge to it, this definition of what is acceptable, appropriate, or not showing off, or a dozen other self-imposed excuses for why that’s a response choice you would never make. But is it difficult? Not at all. Physically, it’s ridiculously easy. Which is why the psychology of it is so fascinating. Our minds, our twisted, inhibited, over-thinking brains, can stop our bodies from the most effortless of actions.

This is an example of the process of redefinition through reframing. You will redefine actions that scare you as something harmless. For example, let’s say that you are giving a speech to a roomful of people. This isn’t public speaking – it’s simply speaking–a conversation. By redefining it, you will become less intimidated.

This is nothing short of a change in your worldview. We have a tendency to overload things with excess meaning, often a meaning that causes us to hesitate or misjudge the situation completely. If a definition is holding you back, redefine it. Trim off the excess baggage and put it in its simplest form. Then action becomes easier.

Take the Leap

It’s important to know and accept this very simple fact: not everyone will find you interesting. This doesn’t make you a freak; it makes you normal. No one is interesting to everyone. I guarantee you that some people would have no interest in meeting Justin Timberlake, or Taylor Swift, or Tom Hanks, or even Abraham Lincoln. Prepare yourself for this and it will not hurt. At least not for long.

In short, learn to reject rejection. Which is a lot easier when you redefine it.

This is a big leap, going from fearing rejection to expecting it, redefining it, and reframing it. But, I know you can do it. So, the next time you find yourself in an intimidating social situation, prepare for it. Know that there might be a couple of moments where you feel rejected. In those moments, simply reframe that rejection. And discover how liberating that is.

For more advice on redefining rejection, you can find Superbold on Amazon.

Fred Joyal is an author, speaker, entrepreneur, and business advisor. Along with a lucrative career in advertising and marketing, he co-founded the most successful dentist referral service in the country, 1-800-DENTIST. He has written two books on marketing, dabbled in stand-up and improv comedy, acted in bad movies and excellent TV commercials, and visited over forty-four countries around the world. He has an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from the University of Rhode Island, perhaps because of his generous donations. 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.

Why You Need to Make Boldness a Superpower

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 11:34:26 GMT

The following is adapted from Superbold.

My friend Will has a six-year-old boy, and whenever his son is hesitant, shy, or worried about what other kids might think, Will tells him this: “Boldness is a superpower.” Will heard this from me in a lecture a few years ago, and not only has he never forgotten it, he drills it into his son’s consciousness so that he never misses out on anything in life.

I didn’t develop confidence growing up. I was a nerdy kid with glasses who skipped the second grade, so I was always smaller and younger than my classmates. And so, I became painfully shy. I let it define me. Until I got so angry at how much I was missing out on that I figured out how to redefine myself. I met bold people, and I marveled at their behavior, at how much they didn’t care what people thought. They just lived wonderful lives.

Then I used every resource I could to transform myself. Now I get excited at the idea of getting up in front of 2,000 people. I walk into a huge empty conference hall and think, “I would love to be in front of a crowd in this room.” With my boldness, I create change. My actions, simple as they may be, ripple out into the world and have an impact.

You know those people you’ve been labeling as “charismatic”? It’s their boldness. It’s coming off them in waves, and they’re moving through the world with it, making the changes they want. Many people—and I know this because they’ve told me—perceive me as charismatic for precisely this reason.

Cultivate your boldness. Everything flows from it. Don’t believe me? In this article, I’ll explain exactly why boldness can completely change your life and how you can live a life of greater purpose by embracing boldness as your own superpower.

What Opportunities Have You Missed?

One of the biggest reasons to develop your boldness is because you’ve already paid the price for your unboldness. Hesitation haunts us. Sometimes the opportunity passes in just a few seconds, but other times we’ll burn up five or ten minutes, or longer, letting that attractive woman or man stand alone in the corner and, just as we summon the nerve to vocalize something, someone else walks up to them.

Or the right moment to ask for a promotion passes because the other person at your level asked first and got it. We let chances slip away, and we’ve done it so often, we think it’s normal.

Undoubtedly, you’ve experienced more than once how hesitation is not rewarded. You’ve watched that window of opportunity close as you overponder a situation and play out scenarios in your head. It’s not really because you’re shy or lack confidence. It’s because you’re not prepared. You haven’t developed the right skills yet – you haven’t honed your superpower: boldness.

With Boldness, You Will Always Be Ready

The biggest WHY in terms of developing your boldness is not the day-to-day impact on your life which, don’t get me wrong, I consider very important. The real WHY is because you never know when that moment is going to come, that moment when you are going to need this skill for what may become one of the most important days or events or encounters in your life. You don’t know if that will occur tomorrow or next month, or ten years from now. But you’ll want to be up to the task.

One of the most important reasons to master this skill is because there will be singular moments, opportunities to speak or act that will occur only once in your life, and you’ll want to be ready. That’s where superboldness comes in. You will always be ready.

You know the expression, “No one died wishing they spent more time at the office.” This will be true for you with respect to your boldness. You will not regret your boldest moves, but rather your most cautious ones, your most hesitant ones, your words unspoken, your risks not taken.

The Reward of Genuine Boldness

The power of boldness that you need to harness involves more than just being comfortable meeting people. Genuine boldness means deciding to put yourself in situations that most people normally wouldn’t. Shy behavior doesn’t just keep us from saying things, but from doing things. Our hesitation ends up preventing us from having unique and satisfying experiences all the time. In essence, boldness is simply moving from inaction to action.

But that is a big move. Most people choose inaction. Most people stay in their comfort zone 24/7. It’s a whole lot easier. But if you’re dissatisfied with life so far, and want to discover what’s really possible, you’re going to have to make that crucial, simple move from inaction to action.

Most people go through life dodging imaginary bullets, and most of the time nothing is aimed at them at all. Or is as harmless as a marshmallow. The reward of genuine boldness is discovering how to act boldly and feeling the thrill of it. And seeing the power of it. And the joy. And most of all, the fulfillment of your dreams and greater purpose.

Boldness in Action

Let me give you a detailed example of boldness in action.

Recently, there was a special meeting at a convention I was at, a dinner exclusively for CEOs of companies that I do business with. I was not invited to the dinner, but there were a number of people I wanted to meet, so I walked into the cocktail party portion of the evening. No one stopped me, and I didn’t have a badge on to identify myself or say I belonged, and so I just started introducing myself.

Now don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t entirely comfortable. But I was acting like I was comfortable—smiling, introducing myself to people, connecting to them with my eyes and attention. And when someone who was in charge of the badges asked my name, I told her the truth, that I wasn’t invited. She didn’t ask me to leave, but told me that people would eventually sit down to eat, and they only had so many seats, and at that point I would have to leave.

Later, as the cocktail party transitioned into a sit-down dinner, she came up to me and I thought, “OK, now I’m getting the boot!” Instead, she said, “Some people didn’t show up for dinner, so you’re welcome to stay.”

This all happened because I followed one of my prime boldness rules: always wait until someone else tells you that you can’t; don’t be the one to stop yourself. If it’s seriously important that you shouldn’t be doing something or shouldn’t be somewhere, someone will stop you. But that will usually be the worst of repercussions. Which means…NOTHING BAD HAPPENED!

That night I met several new business contacts, which was my goal. But if I had gotten thrown out, hey, I wasn’t supposed to be there anyway, but at least I tried. Also, the hostess clearly observed me interacting with people and assumed I belonged there, so she invited me to stay. This situation demonstrates an essential rule of boldness: never be the one stopping you.

Bold People Change the World

As I present people with the possibility of becoming bolder, one of the classic defense mechanisms they default to is saying, “This just isn’t me.” From wherever you are on the boldness scale, you can choose to grow, advance, and elevate yourself to untold heights of boldness until you are superbold, summoning it whenever you choose.

You’ll still be that essential you. Just a more wonderful version.

What I’ve observed over more than sixty years is only the bold individuals change the world, those who are undaunted by other people’s judgments and daring enough to chase the highest ideals and the biggest dreams. You know their names: Abraham Lincoln, Amelia Earhart, Walt Disney, Bill Gates, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, Meryl Streep, Elon Musk.

Nothing prevents you from adding your name to that list.

For more advice on becoming bold, you can find Superbold on Amazon.

Fred Joyal is an author, speaker, entrepreneur, and business advisor. Along with a lucrative career in advertising and marketing, he co-founded the most successful dentist referral service in the country, 1-800-DENTIST. He has written two books on marketing, dabbled in stand-up and improv comedy, acted in bad movies and excellent TV commercials, and visited over forty-four countries around the world. He has an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from the University of Rhode Island, perhaps because of his generous donations. 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.

10 Principles to Guide Your Path to Boldness

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 11:18:02 GMT

The following is adapted from Superbold.

I’ll never forget the moment being bold changed my life forever.

I was 14, hanging around the local boys’ club, when an older man came bursting through the door. He was looking for another boy, who was not there at the time. The man was agitated. “He’s supposed to be washing dishes for me tonight,” he said, frustrated.

From the corner of the room, a meek little voice said, “I’ll work.”

The man jerked his head toward me. “Who said that?” he shouted.

“Me,” I replied.

“Come with me!” he commanded.

I followed him as he rushed out of the club and jumped into his Cadillac El Dorado convertible, and we sped off to his restaurant, where I worked a ten-hour shift for a dollar an hour. Cash.

Let me tell you all that came from that moment where I decided to speak up. That dishwashing job turned into a cooking job, and then bartending, which I used to support myself all through college. Gary, the owner’s son, has become one of my oldest and dearest friends, and eventually a partner in my business, 1-800-DENTIST, as well.

If I had said nothing, that friendship and that pathway that had so many benefits in my life would never have begun. It was not until many years later that I connected that briefest moment of daring—which, for someone as shy as I was, was extremely rare—with the power of boldness.

That’s what I want for you.

The following are ten guiding principles in your path to boldness. These principles will spark you, motivate you, and guide you in your choices. In my experience, they are valuable beyond becoming bolder. As standalone thoughts, they are keys to living a full and fulfilling life.

#1: The Prime Directive—Be the Voice of Upliftment

If you’re a Star Trek fan, you recall the prime directive, the rule for all of Star Fleet prohibiting them from interfering with the development of alien civilizations. I have a different prime directive for you, one that is perhaps the most powerful guiding principle I’ve ever discovered. It’s this: Lift people up.

In other words, in every encounter, make the other person feel better about themselves. I call it being the voice of upliftment. You will start to feel amazing things if you make other people feel good about themselves, and amazing, positive people will gravitate toward you.

The prime directive isn’t only about making people feel good about themselves. It’s also about breaking out of your prison of negativity. Many people complain, criticize, and accentuate the negative all the time, often to complete strangers. The prime directive asks you to change that.

#2: If You Want Different Results, Do Something Different

The key word here is do. Action must be taken. Wishing doesn’t work.

I’m going to spell out what may seem obvious, but it’s what most people ignore all the time in their personal behavior, and that’s this: if something isn’t working for you, try something different! Don’t keep doing the same things hoping for a different result. That’s not only unscientific, it’s crazy. Many people live their lives wishing, hoping, and expecting the world to change its response to them. They think things should somehow magically be different without them changing any of their behavior.

Remember, you are not just learning but also unlearning. You are writing over the stale code, the programming that got you this far but is now holding you back. That code likely protected you, as you were not old enough or mature enough to deal with what came at you. Doesn’t matter. You will unlearn those messages and learn to become bold.

#3: Be Proud

You’ve tried shame; now try pride. Not some preening vanity, but feeling good about yourself as you move through the world. Aim to be that person you want to be proud of.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Let that negative connotation go. Why wouldn’t you want to live a life you’re proud of?

#4: Embrace Failure

Expect to stumble before you walk and trip when you run. This is how you learn and grow. When you succeed, it will be a delicious surprise instead of the expectation that you used to need to motivate you. Failing only makes you a failure if you decide to give up.

I heard a podcast interview with Matt Mullenweg, the developer of the highly successful software WordPress, where he said that the history of the human race can be summed up in one word: mistakes. That’s the essential concept here. The goal is to endure the discomfort of making mistakes, and translate it—transform it, even—into learning. That is the true essence of confidence. Underlying genuine confidence is the courage to be uncomfortable, the willingness to take risks, which by definition means you might fail.

#5: Neutralize Rejection

This is an extension of the fourth principle, because many times the failures will come in the form of some type of rejection. It’s important enough to be its own principle.

I want you to develop what I call your rejection callus. This requires a combination of the critical insight that most rejection is not about you and the repeated exposure to rejection so that it becomes harmless.

#6: Suspend Your Judgment of Other People

Stop creating truths about people out of thin air, or casual observation, or bias. You’re wrong so often it’s a waste of energy, and you will miss out on experiences and people who will bring unexpected reward to your life.

Stop judging people with so little information. Their height, their weight, their attire, or their facial expression is not the whole story. Not even a tiny part. Not to mention that most of the time you just have a snapshot of them, not their whole life. This could be the worst day of their life, or the best. Or anywhere in between. How would you know? It’s not helping you to do this.

Suspending judgment is the first step in a new encounter. Be open to who they might be. Judgment will block your positivity. I can attest to that.

#7: Let Go of Other People’s Opinions and Judgments About You

The bolder you become, the more people will have sneering judgments about you. Most often these are rooted in their insecurity, resentment, and jealousy. They secretly would like to be you. But this is the Insight: people constantly have judgments about other people’s actions and behavior as if their lives are perfect and they’ve figured everything out. Guess what? They haven’t. No one has. So, ignore them.

The greatest achievers in the world had people who detested them, railed against their every action, and belittled their every achievement. You will achieve boldness only when you stop caring about unimportant opinions. And only you get to decide who is important. Fairly empowering, isn’t it?

#8: Most of the Time, Nothing Bad Happens

This is the reality when it comes to being bold. All those terrible things that you imagine might happen never happen. Worse, we decide to call something bad when it isn’t. Embarrassment can be funny. Rejection can elicit empathy for us. Actual bad things can happen in your life, but not because you are bold. Usually, because you weren’t.

#9: Your Brain Needs Regular Washing

You need to overwrite the negative messages you tell yourself with positive ones. Change every “I can’t” to “I can.” Every “I’m not” to “I am.” Just say the opposite. You might call it brainwashing yourself, but most of our brains need a good washing.

Rinse out that bad programming the second you hear yourself replaying it. Brainwashing is actually rather fun to do. You simply take something you’ve said you hate or that you’re not good at, and tell yourself, out loud, every day, that you love it or you are really good at it.

You will find that in about two weeks, if you do it four or five times a day, you will have reprogrammed yourself. Dig up some of your bad lines of code and overwrite them one at a time.

#10: Never Be Rude, Inconsiderate, or Cruel

I do not advocate getting ahead at other people’s expense. That’s not what true boldness and self-confidence are about. True boldness is founded in a belief in abundance, which means you don’t have to harm anyone else to achieve your goals or your dreams.

When you get there, it doesn’t mean you get to look down on everyone. Cruel behavior is the sign of a lost soul, in my mind.

When I talk about being bold, I’m not suggesting a lack of manners, or discourtesy, or rudeness. But, many times, we use being considerate as an excuse for being reticent, not taking action, or not making a bold move. You tell yourself you don’t want to make people uncomfortable, which is just your excuse for not being bold. Most bold moves don’t harm anyone, unless it’s their ego or the fact that they are envious of the bold person.

It All Starts Here

Embrace these principles, and you will be one step closer to being superbold. You may find yourself in a situation where being bold will change your life forever, just like it did for me. Be the person who acts, who steps up and discovers the hidden gifts that only come to the bold.

So, the next time you find yourself in a situation where you are hesitant to speak up, tap into some of these principles. After all, your next big opportunity might be just one bold move around the corner. And it all starts with these ten simple principles.

For more advice on becoming bold, you can find Superbold on Amazon .

Fred Joyal is an author, speaker, en trepreneur, and business advisor. Along with a lucrative career in advertising and marketing, he co-founded the most successful dentist referral service in the country, 1-800-DENTIST. He has written two books on marketing, dabbled in stand-up and improv comedy, acted in bad movies and excellent TV commercials, and visited over forty-four countries around the world. He has an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from the University of Rhode Island, perhaps because of his generous donations. 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.

Facing Headwinds

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 11:02:59 GMT

As I was taking my last bike ride of the year, riding along the beach, on the return leg I was facing a very strong headwind. And it made me think of how 2020 was for me because, on my personal road back to prosperity, I faced some pretty strong headwinds.

It also reminded me that on the first leg of my ride, I had a strong tailwind. As riders, we usually don’t notice that until we look down at the speedometer. We just think we’re doing really well, feeling really strong that day.

And then I reflected on the fact that, economically, we have all enjoyed a strong tailwind for the past ten years.

The drawback with having a strong tailwind is you don’t get stronger. It’s not challenging. With a headwind, you’ve got to work harder, you’ve got to put your head down. You’ve got to pedal faster to go slower. You’ve got to shift gears.

It’s the same with your practice and your life.

Think about 2020. With the shut-down, patients reluctant to return, team members who wouldn’t come back to work because they didn’t feel safe, questionable support for the dental industry, and many other challenges, we faced some mighty headwinds.

Before that, we had a long run of people paying for their dentistry, taking care of their teeth, and practices growing at a nice steady pace. It allowed us to buy new equipment, do marketing and advertising and bonus our teams. And some dentists, facing these new headwinds, didn’t make the right choices. They didn’t see where technology and processes that made it safer and faster for the patient to be in the office would make a significant difference. They didn’t adjust to the shift in patient behavior and patient mindset, and watched their practices shrink.

And there were others who figured out how to accommodate their patients, protect their team and get the money that the government provided in order to keep their doors open. They started doing teledentistry. They started taking many more emergencies. They even saw it as a chance to eliminate some of their more problematic (read, non-profitable) patients.

If you weathered this year, you’ll find going into 2021 that your practice is stronger. The choices you made to sustain your practice, by determining who were the strongest players on your team, streamlining your operation and adapting new software and technology, will pay dividends for years to come.

I even see that dentistry as a whole got stronger, because the healthcare industry suddenly realized that oral health is essential to maintaining people’s overall health and immune systems. That’s a big shift that happened much more quickly because of this headwind. This new understanding actually got a tailwind, and probably accelerated the appreciation of dentistry by five years or more.

Maybe the headwinds knocked you off the path. That’s going to happen to some of us, and it’s not always our fault. But it’s a strong reminder that there is no such thing as a permanent tailwind. Or maybe you just wished the problems would go away and things would get back to the way they were.

Complaining about the headwind never makes it go away. It only makes the journey harder. I’ve seen nothing more effective this year than the application of positivity in the face of extreme difficulty.

I’ve also seen that the practices who succeeded were the ones who got coaching, particularly those who worked with Fortune Management. Fortune immediately went into action and created a 12 -Week Recover Plan for their clients to deal with this crisis and adapt new strategies and tactics to stay strong. It’s a powerful lesson to not try to figure it out all by yourself.

I remember my biking coach telling me, when I was struggling with a headwind on a ride earlier this year, to lower my body and use the lower part of the handlebars to grip so that I would face less wind resistance. Why didn’t I think of that? Too busy pedaling as hard as I can.

So, it’s not just about putting your head down and working harder. It’s about getting insight, advice, guidance and embracing adaptability. We have to be willing to change and learn. That’s not just a survival technique. It’s a thriving technique.

This year, we might have to keep pedaling harder, because the headwinds are not abating just yet. Don’t fear these headwinds. Appreciate them, and get stronger and smarter. And get help. And then, when the next tailwind hits, you’ll go even faster. Won’t that be fun?!

Want to make the best of 2021? I’m forming a mastermind for a select group of high-end dentists in Southern California. Check it out here .

Teledentistry: How and Why to Do It Now

Ruan@develomark.com (Ruan Marinho) — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 16:37:49 GMT

The conventional wisdom in dentistry has been that we have to physically see the patient. But during this crisis, virtually all practices are only seeing emergencies. And what we’re finding is that a significant percentage of dental emergency patients can be treated with teledentistry. (For a video on this topic, go to: https://youtu.be/_amZ7qjfUxc )

Treating Dental Emergencies with Teledentistry

Let me stress this first. It is your civic duty as well as your professional one to see emergency patients during this crisis. I’ll give you three key reasons why:

Your patient won’t get their dental problem solved in the ER;
The ER’s are already overwhelmed, and don’t need dental emergencies on top of it;
Your patient could possibly leave the ER with the coronavirus, with an immune system that is already compromised because of their dental problem.

The ER is not where you want your own patients to be going. You have sterilization procedures to protect yourself, but now you have the ability to do teledentistry, triage those patients and be compensated for it.

There are a number of options out there for teledentistry, and the one I’ve found with the most comprehensive solution is offered by PatientPop . It is a cloud-based system that works directly with your PMS, streamlining the process.

Teledentistry: https://nexhealth.com

Coaching: Fortune Management: https://www.fortunemgmt.com

fred-joyal

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