072 – 10 Tips for Having Better Conversations [Spark Infinity]

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Are you having trouble connecting with the world around you? Are you having drab and boring conversations? Do you wish you could connect more effortlessly with the people around you? Communication is one of the most crucial skills you can learn, and sad to say, formal education doesn’t do much to support you on that journey. In this installment of Spark Infinity Office Hours, David shares time-tested methods for having better conversations. Later, Jody joins David to unpack the conversation further. Download the PDF Transcript Sponsors: Productivity, Performance & Profits Blackbook: Get a free copy of the “Definitive Guide to Productivity for Artists and Entrepreneurs.” The Renegade Musician: David’s magnum opus on building an independent music career is here! Highlights: 00:17 – How this topic was chosen 01:14 – What’s the goal of this presentation? 01:29 – Set an intention for the conversation 02:41 – Introduce yourself 03:47 – Learn the FORM 06:43 – Do your homework 07:57 – Tune into WIIFM 08:46 – Ask more questions (and listen) 09:49 – Find common ground 11:02 – Learn something about everything 12:23 – Become a journalist 13:19 – Ask for what you want 15:37 – Be spontaneous and/or funny 16:15 – Additional resources 17:26 – Next steps 17:50 – Group discussion Transcript: David: We are talking about 10 ways to better conversation, which already sounds ridiculous, bad wording and all. This is something I just found out the other day. So YouTube literally tells you what it thinks your channel is about, what your audience is searching for, and the types of content it expects you to be creating. So it suggested 10 ways to better conversation. It's one of many topics it brought to the table for my channel. So yeah, the phrasing is awkward, but I like the topic, so I am running with it. And I do reject some of its suggestions because they're just kind of way out there. However, Spark Infinity is all about social media growth. So my thought process is if we can cater to the algorithm and give it what it's expecting, maybe we can improve our results. And we might as well do that and test it for ourselves to see if that's the case. Obviously in Spark Infinity, just for anybody new that might be coming along to watch this, we're focused on social media growth. So we are mostly going to be looking at how to interact with others online today. But much of what we'll cover can be brought out into the real world as well. What's the goal? What are we aiming for here? In an earlier presentation on what's the point of social media, we determined that establishing connections is one of the reasons to be using social media in the first place. So let's use these tips. Let's get better at having conversations that matter. Number one is set an intention. Many conversations suffer for lack of intention. If you don't know why you're calling someone in the first place, you're basically just hoping that something will magically happen. And yes, sometimes it does. I've had spontaneous conversations like that. But you will get better results if you know why you're contacting someone in the first place. So ask yourself, why am I contacting them? What am I going to talk to them about? What do I want to get out of the conversation? I don't want to put too fine a point on it. We don't want to overthink this. It's not about analysis paralysis, but take a moment, take a breath and think about these questions before contacting anyone. Examples. You might be contacting someone to congratulate them on their new book, to ask for a shout out, to assess the suitability or their suitability as a client. That would be like a pitching or quote calling example, to request help with a project, to invite them to an event. Those are just a few examples. So key lesson here is always set an intention, not an agenda for the conversation you're about to have. Agendas are for meetings.