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Say More by Saying Less | The One Thing Rule Explained · How To Talk To Humans

• 0:02
  Larry Wilson: Hi, this is Larry Wilson and this is How to Talk to Humans.
• 0:07
  Larry Wilson: This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills.
• 0:13
  Larry Wilson: Are you looking to get a better job?
• 0:15
  Larry Wilson: Are you looking to find a relationship?
• 0:17
  Larry Wilson: Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far?
• 0:24
  Larry Wilson: I can show you so easily how to change that.
• 0:27
  Larry Wilson: Now, I can only do it with humans.
• 0:30
  Larry Wilson: If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies extraterrestrials, this is not the show for you.
• 0:36
  Larry Wilson: But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned from 40 years in the show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world, and their secrets are unbelievable.
• 0:54
  Larry Wilson: What I'm going to be teaching you during the course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use to communicate toward success.
• 1:08
  Larry Wilson: Hi, I'm Larry Wilson.
• 1:10
  Larry Wilson: Thanks again for joining me on this podcast episode of How to Talk to Humans.
• 1:17
  Larry Wilson: I was in the frame of mind of remembering funny, odd events from my strange and storied career.
• 1:29
  Larry Wilson: Some of it, as I've told you before, um my producer commented on the fact that it seems like I had no idea what was going on.
• 1:38
  Larry Wilson: I think that's a very accurate appraisal of my career.
• 1:42
  Larry Wilson: Most of the time I had no idea what was going on.
• 1:44
  Larry Wilson: I tried to learn as much as I could.
• 1:47
  Larry Wilson: I tried to remember as much as I could.
• 1:52
  Larry Wilson: I tried to uh do new things and learn new things and experience new things, but most of the time I was clueless.
• 2:01
  Larry Wilson: I things fell in my lap frequently.
• 2:05
  Larry Wilson: However, the more communication techniques I learned, it seems like I suddenly got luckier.
• 2:15
  Larry Wilson: Now, I don't really think it had anything to do with luck.
• 2:20
  Larry Wilson: Oh or as Michael Scott, the character on The Office would say, I'm not superstitious.
• 2:27
  Larry Wilson: I'm just a little bit stitchious.
• 2:30
  Larry Wilson: It's just one of my favorite jokes hearing him say that.
• 2:32
  Larry Wilson: And of course, that's some writer's joke.
• 2:35
  Larry Wilson: But um I'm not really a big believer in luck, although I think such a thing exists.
• 2:42
  Larry Wilson: I think there's so many random events that are taking place all the time.
• 2:46
  Larry Wilson: There's bound to be some that are better than others, and maybe that's what we consider luck.
• 2:51
  Larry Wilson: But I do know the people I've studied in this life, the people I've worked with, some of these superstars.
• 3:01
  Larry Wilson: You might say they make their own luck, which anyone can do.
• 3:07
  Larry Wilson: I think part of that is a function of doing everything you can to weight the scales in your favor.
• 3:17
  Larry Wilson: Then if an opportunity presents itself, it may seem like luck, but it may be because you've taken the time and effort to prepare yourself.
• 3:30
  Larry Wilson: Maybe that has to do with your diet and exercise.
• 3:34
  Larry Wilson: Maybe it has to do with your communication skills, whatever it may be.
• 3:38
  Larry Wilson: I think that's what we sometimes uh think of as luck.
• 3:43
  Larry Wilson: And I was thinking I worked on a very strange job one time for the uh premiere of a film that uh very odd film uh that the actor Bill Paxton was in.
• 4:00
  Larry Wilson: Now, I was already a huge Bill Paxton fan.
• 4:04
  Larry Wilson: Um if you don't know his name, believe me, if you saw a picture of him, you go, Oh, that guy! Of course.
• 4:11
  Larry Wilson: Uh Paxton was in all these James Cameron films like Aliens and uh True Lies, and uh he's he's everywhere.
• 4:23
  Larry Wilson: He was starred in a HBO show, Big Love.
• 4:27
  Larry Wilson: Um, I'm particularly fond of a movie he did called Near Dark, which in some ways I thought was one of the most interesting and scary vampire movies I'd ever seen.
• 4:39
  Larry Wilson: And uh I don't want to give too much away, but uh Paxton had a magnificent quality of bringing almost to every role he did where his exuberance and his surprise at learning new things comes through so clearly.
• 5:02
  Larry Wilson: Uh in in near dark, he uh plays a vampire who's with a group of vampires, but they look like regular people.
• 5:13
  Larry Wilson: They look a little um trashy, they look a little low class and a little scary, but they look like regular people.
• 5:21
  Larry Wilson: And at one point there's a new guy who they've just turned into a vampire who's still very unsure about the whole thing.
• 5:27
  Larry Wilson: They go into a uh some kind of sketchy roadside joint, jukebox joint, and there's some very dangerous-looking characters in there.
• 5:38
  Larry Wilson: But of course, the vampires are all kind of cheerful and oblivious because they know they're vampires.
• 5:45
  Larry Wilson: You can't hurt them.
• 5:47
  Larry Wilson: And at one point they start to make trouble, and the the barkeeper pulls out a shotgun from behind the bar and shoots this new guy in the stomach.
• 6:00
  Larry Wilson: And the new guy looks horrified, but then he looks down and realizes, yeah, it's blown a big chunk out of him, but he doesn't feel any pain.
• 6:08
  Larry Wilson: And Paxton, who's standing next to him, looks at him and goes, It's a kick, isn't it?
• 6:14
  Larry Wilson: And from that moment on, of course, I was a Bill Paxton fan.
• 6:19
  Larry Wilson: But when I worked with him, he had to get up at this premiere and introduce the film and say some things.
• 6:26
  Larry Wilson: Now, I'd seen Paxton in all these films.
• 6:28
  Larry Wilson: He's always fantastic.
• 6:30
  Larry Wilson: He always does a great, great job.
• 6:33
  Larry Wilson: But I guess the reason I was brought in is because Bill was not comfortable with getting up in front of a live audience and talking.
• 6:43
  Larry Wilson: And so we worked on some stuff and we talked on some stuff.
• 6:47
  Larry Wilson: And I was, you know, uh I have a tendency to try and uh bring a lot to the table when I'm working.
• 6:55
  Larry Wilson: Well in this is, of course, long before I had ever thought of synthesizing everything I learned into Wilson Method.
• 7:02
  Larry Wilson: I was simply uh uh I was often hired to work one-on-one with people.
• 7:08
  Larry Wilson: And also uh they didn't want to advertise.
• 7:12
  Larry Wilson: Um the studios didn't, the individual actors sometimes were very generous, sometimes uh would prefer that I stay in the shadows.
• 7:20
  Larry Wilson: Because I understand that.
• 7:22
  Larry Wilson: It's, you know, they they would like to be presented as uh all these skills they were born with, you know.
• 7:29
  Larry Wilson: That's okay, I understand that.
• 7:31
  Larry Wilson: Uh but Bill was uh charming and open and down-to-earth and just a lovely guy.
• 7:39
  Larry Wilson: And uh he went up and uh spoke in front of this group at uh the New Art Theater in Los Angeles, I recall, and he did great, as I fully expected him to, but he seemed surprised.
• 7:54
  Larry Wilson: And afterwards he was saying, you know, of all those things you talked about, he said there was this one thing you said, and uh I'm gonna really hold on to that and keep that in mind.
• 8:03
  Larry Wilson: And uh I said, Well, uh, you know, I really appreciate that.
• 8:07
  Larry Wilson: And we had been talking in the course of working together, and he said something about uh about uh hand gestures and using his body and stuff, and I'd said something about I thought he did that really well.
• 8:20
  Larry Wilson: And his animation on camera, his physicality always looked really authentic.
• 8:26
  Larry Wilson: And he said, Well, you know, I found that when you use your body, when you use your hands and gesture, it makes people pay more attention to what you say.
• 8:36
  Larry Wilson: And I said, Really?
• 8:39
  Larry Wilson: I said, Bill, do you do you think it's really as simple as that?
• 8:42
  Larry Wilson: And he said, uh, yeah, I do.
• 8:46
  Larry Wilson: Well, I turns out I have to agree with him.
• 8:49
  Larry Wilson: I think he is right.
• 8:50
  Larry Wilson: Because we're used to seeing people use their bodies when they gesture with their hands.
• 8:56
  Larry Wilson: You know, there's some cultures where we think of this as very predominant of people gesticulating, and it brings so much semiotic, unspoken information to the communication, to their message.
• 9:14
  Larry Wilson: In uh I I don't wanna I don't want to resort to uh cliches here.
• 9:19
  Larry Wilson: I know that you know when I refer to different cultures, I know that you know what I'm referring to.
• 9:25
  Larry Wilson: And what was so funny for me, as always, I was trying to keep my ears open, learn things.
• 9:32
  Larry Wilson: But uh Bill said something that I thought was so interesting.
• 9:35
  Larry Wilson: He just said, you know, I frequently uh find, you know, in a situation like this, if I can just learn one thing, I consider that uh a real win.
• 9:48
  Larry Wilson: And I thought, oh, that's really smart.
• 9:53
  Larry Wilson: That he wasn't the slightest bit anxious about trying to learn everything.
• 10:01
  Larry Wilson: He wasn't somehow focused on the idea that if I don't get every single thing, then this is gonna be a tremendous failure.
• 10:09
  Larry Wilson: No.
• 10:10
  Larry Wilson: Now, I also think this may be um emblemic of working actors who frequently have to learn a lot of things new, whether it's a physical skill, they need to learn how to fence or ride a unicycle or whatever it is.
• 10:25
  Larry Wilson: And they also have to say their lines and they have to hit the marks that are on the floor so that they're in the right camera position.
• 10:33
  Larry Wilson: They frequently have to learn a lot of crazy things, and they have to learn them fast, really fast.
• 10:42
  Larry Wilson: So I shouldn't be surprised by that, but the more I thought about it, the more useful I realized that attitude was.
• 10:53
  Larry Wilson: In my Wilson Method training, I have uh online training that's available.
• 11:01
  Larry Wilson: I have corporate events where I'll do a half-day training for large groups of people, and I'll do my two-day boot camp.
• 11:10
  Larry Wilson: But that's limited to just 10 people.
• 11:13
  Larry Wilson: And that's very intensive.
• 11:15
  Larry Wilson: It's immersive, it's a very full two days.
• 11:19
  Larry Wilson: And sometimes I think that people are nervous about boot camp because they think, well, there's so much going on.
• 11:28
  Larry Wilson: I can't keep up with it.
• 11:30
  Larry Wilson: What if I don't get everything down and learn it perfectly?
• 11:35
  Larry Wilson: Well, no one can.
• 11:36
  Larry Wilson: I couldn't do it.
• 11:37
  Larry Wilson: I don't know anyone who could learn it all perfectly.
• 11:40
  Larry Wilson: I'm hoping that you learn a lot.
• 11:43
  Larry Wilson: I provide so much follow-up contact with students and continue to send them materials and um trainings on video so that they can keep referring to things they learned and practicing, getting better.
• 12:02
  Larry Wilson: But it makes me think of that one thing idea.
• 12:07
  Larry Wilson: And I foolishly call it the one thing rule, but it's not really a rule, it's just a suggestion.
• 12:18
  Larry Wilson: Because I've had the experience on more than one occasion where someone offered a tremendous panoply of delights, uh, whatever it might have been education or training or a skill or something, and I just would go into it with thinking, if I can get one thing out of this.
• 12:41
  Larry Wilson: I remember at one point uh I had hired um some specialist in uh uh technological stuff for the internet and paid him a goodly sum of money for some consulting on some very complicated, intricate internet sort of thing.
• 13:06
  Larry Wilson: And uh he didn't really deliver on almost everything that he had promised.
• 13:13
  Larry Wilson: And the people who work with me who are on my team were very angry about this and were like, this guy didn't do what he and I said, no, but you know what he did do?
• 13:21
  Larry Wilson: And there was one little thing he did on a website that we were concerned with with a certain name.
• 13:28
  Larry Wilson: He came up with a much better idea that was clearer, easier to remember, and had a real uh evergreen quality to it, that it was not gonna go out of style.
• 13:43
  Larry Wilson: It was not a fad, it was not a passing fancy.
• 13:46
  Larry Wilson: And I said, think about it for a second.
• 13:48
  Larry Wilson: What if he just said, yeah, you have to pay me that amount of money, and I'm gonna give you this really great website URL?
• 13:57
  Larry Wilson: And everyone sort of thought about it and they kind of nodded, saying, Well, yeah, I thought that's the one thing.
• 14:03
  Larry Wilson: Now, obviously, if you if you invest in Wilson method training, I want you to get a wide variety.
• 14:14
  Larry Wilson: I want you to get a lot out of it.
• 14:16
  Larry Wilson: But I also had another good friend who was a very talented uh uh visual artist.
• 14:26
  Larry Wilson: And he he also, it's funny, he had a background, uh, he actually had an engineering degree before he got into visual arts.
• 14:37
  Larry Wilson: And he loved buffets.
• 14:41
  Larry Wilson: He that was to him the greatest thing in the world.
• 14:44
  Larry Wilson: Now, I must confess, I'm I'm not a huge fan of the buffet because I feel like there's all this stuff and I wind up eating more than I really need to eat and probably more than is good for me.
• 14:56
  Larry Wilson: But this friend of mine, his theory was if he could find one thing on the buffet that was great, that was worth the price of the buffet, then everything else was like it was free.
• 15:16
  Larry Wilson: And the more I thought about it, I had to agree.
• 15:19
  Larry Wilson: I I couldn't really find fault with what he was saying.
• 15:23
  Larry Wilson: I think it's a really smart way to approach any kind of training, to focus on the idea, to go into it knowing that it's impossible for anyone, if you're going into intensive expert training, which Wilson method certainly is.
• 15:46
  Larry Wilson: But whether you're doing Wilson method, whether you're doing um musical training on an instrument or your voice or writing or construction or whatever it is you might be doing, you have to go in with the understanding that it's impossible to absorb every detail of something that's brand new to you.
• 16:12
  Larry Wilson: But go in with the idea that you want to find one thing that is really worth the value of everything you've invested for this training.
• 16:25
  Larry Wilson: And then everything else you get out of the training is an unexpected bonus.
• 16:33
  Larry Wilson: And if you have a particularly strong trainer, like I like to think of myself, you can get a great deal more than just one thing.
• 16:44
  Larry Wilson: You can come out with a dozen things or two dozen things, which I think is more than a normal person can process on a regular basis.
• 16:56
  Larry Wilson: Two dozen things?
• 16:58
  Larry Wilson: Why that means you could be practicing one of them a day for almost an entire month without repeating them.
• 17:05
  Larry Wilson: That that seems like perhaps too much for anyone to absorb.
• 17:10
  Larry Wilson: But a dozen things, well, now maybe you can practice three a day and work on them.
• 17:18
  Larry Wilson: And invariably you'll find that there's some that speak to you more than others.
• 17:25
  Larry Wilson: There's sometimes we'll say something uh came to me naturally.
• 17:30
  Larry Wilson: I think what that really means is it resonated with you.
• 17:35
  Larry Wilson: It may not be that it came to you naturally, it may simply be that for whatever unknown reason it made sense to you, it resonated, it seemed particularly appealing.
• 17:51
  Larry Wilson: And so things that are appealing are very easy for us to do and do regularly.
• 17:59
  Larry Wilson: You know, nobody has to be tricked into eating chocolate.
• 18:05
  Larry Wilson: It's delicious.
• 18:07
  Larry Wilson: Well, I'm sure there's someone out there who probably is allergic to chocolate, but for those of us who love chocolate, you don't need any excuse.
• 18:17
  Larry Wilson: And so in the same way, when you find things that resonate with you, I've said this, I think, in other places on this podcast.
• 18:26
  Larry Wilson: I don't think I'm the perfect trainer or mentor in communication for everyone.
• 18:34
  Larry Wilson: I can't imagine there is anyone who's the perfect trainer for everyone.
• 18:41
  Larry Wilson: I'm the perfect trainer for the person who feels my message resonates with them.
• 18:50
  Larry Wilson: That's who I'm the perfect trainer for.
• 18:52
  Larry Wilson: Because then you're going to invest yourself in the training with everything you've got.
• 19:00
  Larry Wilson: And hopefully anything you choose to pursue is as easy to do as Wilson Method.
• 19:09
  Larry Wilson: I've said this also before, but I'll reiterate everything I teach is simple.
• 19:18
  Larry Wilson: Everything I teach is easy to do, it works, and you can do it.
• 19:25
  Larry Wilson: I don't know what other criteria you may be looking for.
• 19:29
  Larry Wilson: I hope that those of you who are interested will pursue Wilson Meta.
• 19:34
  Larry Wilson: And I hope that for those of you who enjoy this podcast, you'll share this with everyone you know.
• 19:41
  Larry Wilson: I'm dying to find a response from some listener outside the United States.
• 19:49
  Larry Wilson: There have been a couple of people in Europe I know, but I'd love to find someone in Fiji who's listening to this podcast, uh, or in Botswana.
• 20:00
  Larry Wilson: That would be so exciting for me.
• 20:03
  Larry Wilson: So help me out, would you?
• 20:05
  Larry Wilson: I hope that you find this information valuable because I sincerely think this is some valuable information I'm presenting here.
• 20:16
  Larry Wilson: I've seen the extraordinary results that it's produced in my own life.
• 20:24
  Larry Wilson: And more importantly, I've seen what it did for my students.
• 20:32
  Larry Wilson: I am of course enormously proud of them, but but really it's more exciting for me to see them do things whether it's for business, whether it's for relationships, whether it's for unexpected endeavors that they didn't plan to do.
• 20:54
  Larry Wilson: And so I welcome the opportunity to share this all over the world.
• 21:01
  Larry Wilson: This has been Larry Wilson.
• 21:03
  Larry Wilson: I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you found this information useful.
• 21:10
  Larry Wilson: If you're looking for more, you can find it at thewilsonmethod.com.
• 21:14
  Larry Wilson: There's a ton of stuff there.
• 21:23
  Larry Wilson: Send me an email at info at wilsonmethod.com because I read every single one.
• 21:32
  Larry Wilson: I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey.
• 21:38
  Larry Wilson: And you'll be with me for the next episode of How to Talk to Humans.