The Million-Dollar Skill Most Professionals Are Losing: Fearless Authenticity, Communication, and Persuasion

 the way we connect is through oral communication.
 As human beings, we are hardwired for stories.
 We are most hardwired for stories
 that we tell to each other.
 I bet if I asked you what was on your to-do list for today,
 just off the top of your head without looking at your phone,
 you could probably remember the read out of the 10 things
 that are on there because they're the most important things to you.
 If I asked you to tell me a story from a family gathering
 when you were five years old,
 I bet you could remember it.
 Why? Because you remember stories.
 Most business advice is wrong.
 Built on opinions echoed by people who've never done it.
 But the truth, it's simpler and harder.
 You don't win by following the playbook.
 You win by rewriting it.
 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real.
 No theory, no fluff, no shortcuts.
 This is right about now with Ryan Alford.
 What's up guys, welcome to right about now.
 We're always giving you what is here, what is now?
 We brought them on the show, we know they're right.
 So we want them to be right to you.
 I'm Ryan Alford, your host.
 Thank you for making us number one.
 It's never lost on us that we are number one on Apple marketing.
 We got the fastest going YouTube channel.
 We know what's happening because we are bringing people
 like author and professional award-winning speaker.
 Jean Sparrow, what's up Jean?
 Hey Ryan, thanks for having me on.
 My pleasure.
 I like to think of myself as fearless.
 You seem like it to me.
 You seem like it just from the conversations we've had
 and what I've seen online of you.
 And what you have done, yes sir.
 I would say fearless would be a very good adjective for you.
 And authentic too, you seem really real to me.
 If it's not you doing a damn good job of acting.
 I'm not a good enough actor, just me baby.
 Fearless authenticity is her latest book.
 Jean, what's happening today?
 What's new?
 I never thought I'd write a book.
 My work led me to this point where a book
 was the best way for me to explain how I think about things.
 When you commit to a book and you actually
 have it physically in your hand, it's a whole thing.
 That's where I'm living right now.
 You've been a media person out of you.
 You've been in the media.
 You're now coaching and speaking and doing all these things.
 What did it all start?
 Have you always had the media personality?
 I started when I was 17.
 I come from a family of storytellers.
 My dad, he could tell the same story.
 And listen, it didn't even have to be true.
 And to this day, I don't know which one of his stories
 are fully true or not, but they all made sense.
 And they all made us laugh.
 We would always one up each other during the holidays.
 And this is both sides of my family.
 We would gather around for the holidays and talk and whatever.
 So I feel like I was trained as a kid to tell stories,
 to amplify other people's things like,
 because the thing is, the best stories are not the ones
 that are just about you.
 They're the ones about other people, too.
 When I was in high school, I was in speech and debate,
 and the local radio station always
 like to hire local kids because the nearby university
 had a great mass comm department.
 And so they were trying to keep talent in the area.
 They were looking for people.
 My speech and debate coach sent me
 over to the local country western station.
 I might add to go and audition for a gig.
 I got it.
 That was my after school job.
 I would like get off school and then I
 go over to the radio station and work until it turned off.
 I don't know if you're old enough to remember
 when AM radio stations used to go off.
 And night, I had a whole FCC license
 and I turned that bad boy off.
 That is crazy.
 I forgot about that.
 That's jogging the memory brains.
 But I grew up with the dad and family
 that all this to talk radio on AM and everything else.
 Maybe that's where my passion came from,
 deep down, so I remember that.
 The seeds are always sewn and you don't see them
 until you hit middle age and you start
 to realize that you have become your parents.
 You do things that they do for better or worse.
 That's where it all started for me.
 And I didn't even think it was a career to be honest
 because it felt like a hobby.
 It was, I can't make money doing this.
 It's too much fun.
 From there, when I went away to college,
 that's how I got up to Chicago, went to Northwestern
 and I was working on the radio station for fun, for free,
 and got an internship.
 And next thing you know, I have a whole career.
 Seven-time Emmy winner at that, right?
 Yeah, regional Emmy's here in Chicago
 because I moved from radio to TV.
 It was an opportunity that came up
 and then you just do work, you submit it
 and people like it and you're like,
 what, I got Emmy's?
 Might have packed away.
 I usually boast about it, but I just moved.
 So I haven't put my shelves up and things like that
 to have my brag wall up.
 But the thing about awards is that there
 for what you used to do, what you have already done.
 For me, it's always what are you gonna do next?
 I like that, I might take that.
 Yeah, absolutely.
 You're gonna have it, my baby, you can have it.
 I'll put a little J.S. on the end.
 I'll give you attribution.
 Not gonna steal you, but I love that.
 I do see a lot of people that live in the past.
 I always like to reflect on the past,
 but I also say,
 the only thing you get from looking back is a sore neck.
 That's 100% true.
 Or you look in the rear view mirror
 and you end up running into what's in front of you
 and that doesn't do anybody good.
 Listen, we have to know and look at the past
 to learn from it so that we don't make
 the same mistakes going forward.
 But don't be that person that peaked in high school.
 There's better that you have ahead of you.
 You know what I'm saying?
 Some people, they had really great lives
 when they were 18, like fam, you 152 now.
 You really need to start thinking about something else
 other than that.
 That's just my perspective.
 I'm always one to look forward.
 Cause I had a boss who said to me in music radio,
 there's this thing we call for emotion
 where you're always pushing to the next thing.
 And I think as because a lot of what we do in radio
 is really related to your expertise in marketing.
 It's about pushing the message forward.
 Cause people don't care.
 They already heard the song you just played.
 Yeah, we could tell you what it is if you really liked it.
 But what you really care about is what's coming up next
 because that's going to keep them listening.
 When I learned that philosophy,
 it really helped me to start looking ahead
 because people who can project what's happening next
 are the ones who are going to be successful
 and always on top of what's going on.
 But it is informed by where we've been before, for sure.
 Over some of the media background,
 you're training treeless authenticity.
 I think about that name and it's very direct, which I like.
 But I have to think some things in your life
 help paint that picture for you.
 Talk to me about some of the inspiration
 and where that came from.
 Discovering treeless authenticity
 has been sort of a circular path
 because it started with my media work.
 I had a boss who told me one time,
 same boss with the Ford machine.
 He was very influential
 and I think we all have those mentors in our lives
 that do it because they help us to see things
 and that helps us to get to our philosophies.
 But he said to me, he was like,
 I don't pay you to play the hits.
 I pay you for what you say in between the hits
 because that's what's going to make people stay
 because they can get these hits anywhere else.
 And this is before Spotify and all the different streamers,
 I heart, all of this stuff.
 When I went into TV, I realized
 every station is talking about the same four stop top stories.
 The reason why we watch particular stations
 if we do nowadays is because that's the perspective
 we want to hear that news from.
 Same thing with if we only get our news online.
 Some people love TMZ, some people love MSNBC,
 some people love Fox because it's something about the people
 who are there that keep us there.
 There are a bunch of other marketing podcasts.
 There's something about you that resonates
 with the people who vibe with you
 and the way you give that information.
 That was kind of the first realization
 that my perspective mattered.
 Then I started to realize when I looked back
 at how I grew up because I'm adopted
 and I started to realize that your identity
 has a lot to do with how people connect to you.
 What happens to a lot of us?
 Like our mama's and our daddy's always told us the same thing
 when we went off to school, just be yourself.
 You're gonna find your friends, your friends are gonna find you.
 But nobody tells you how to do that.
 When you get outside of your house,
 if you had a happy house to begin with,
 you start to have all of these other influences
 that tell you what you should be doing
 and I hate that word should
 because it's more of a judgment than it is a direction.
 What I learned looking back at how I grew up,
 a lot of what I was doing when I was younger
 was trying to fit in, trying to please,
 trying to do these things.
 As a young woman, especially I'm a gen exer,
 there were still a lot of gender roles
 that I felt I had to fulfill first or whatever.
 But really it's about what resonates with you.
 Understanding that when you do something
 that feels right in your gut,
 then you're on the right path
 and you're doing what you're supposed to do.
 A lot of us wake up at middle age
 and wonder how we got where we were.
 And some of that is because of the choices we make along the way.
 And that's really what fearless authenticity is to me
 is all of us staying true to who we are,
 trying to grow in the way that we want to grow
 to do the thing we wanna do
 and our purpose finds us that way
 because we're all like pieces of a puzzle Ryan.
 We all fit together and we're all here
 to do something particular.
 We don't have the know what it is
 because it's gonna find us.
 But we have to be true to ourselves to do that.
 It's the true as a brand, if you will.
 It's true.
 And a lot of people struggle with it.
 I'm gonna go down two roads with Eugene
 because I got two sides of this.
 That wanna break that down what you just said.
 One, in short supply.
 In today's role, unfortunately,
 I'm gonna give you two sides of the coin
 like any good marker.
 I love speaking at both sides of my mouth.
 Look at their kind of related.
 It gets in short supply.
 Sometimes people think they're being
 fearlessly authentic,
 but it just rubs everyone the down wrong way.
 There's this fine line for me of being
 not trying to be liked and to be yourself,
 but if you're selfishly authentic,
 that doesn't get you very far either.
 I love to you to kinda dig underneath.
 I think you don't have going with this.
 Yeah.
 I know exactly where you're going
 because this is a conversation I have often.
 Part of fearless authenticity baked into it
 is the idea that this is how we really build
 a true community because if we are true to ourselves,
 then we find our people and our people find us.
 It is also baked into this
 that we are in service to each other.
 Not here to please each other,
 but to be in service.
 There is something that I can do that you cannot.
 There is something you can do that I cannot.
 And we are here to share that with each other
 that it doesn't work any other way.
 That's what community is really about.
 It's a fellow Southerner.
 You understand what I'm talking about.
 When you're from a small town,
 you understand how we are all connected,
 how the ecosystem is connected to each other.
 And this is not to down urban life
 because I love living in a big city.
 The thing is is that if we keep in our minds
 and in our hearts the spirit of service
 that what I am good at is to be used
 in service of a greater higher good
 than we get away from the selfish part of it.
 Now, some people's authentic selves might be kinda selfish.
 That means they got some growing to do.
 Though as you look at yourself,
 you start to see where you need to grow
 and where you've gone wrong.
 And it's easier for you to take that feedback
 when somebody's like, you know what?
 That hurt my feelings or that did not serve us
 as a group, as a team.
 There's nothing we can do especially nowadays
 that doesn't involve teamwork.
 And I can tell you almost every company I go into
 that brings me in, a lot of times they bring me in
 to talk about their external communication issues.
 But I know you know this
 because you've probably seen it in your work nine times out of 10.
 The issue is almost always an internal problem
 in communication with each other.
 They need to get their story together inside
 before they're able to do it outside.
 We focus so much on what we put out into the world
 that we forget about what's happening on a smaller level.
 For me, fearlessly authentic is not a pass
 for you to be a jerk.
 It is a responsibility for you to be your best self
 to be the highest version of yourself
 that is in service to other people
 because that's the only way we move together as a world.
 The world is getting smaller and expanding at the same time.
 Like the way that technology has brought us together
 has also separated us
 that the more we lean into the human connection
 and I know that this is resonant with your work,
 the more we lean into those relationships and things like that,
 the better off we're gonna be.
 But the only way those things are really real
 is if we are real about it ourselves.
 Yeah, there it is.
 I love that breakdown.
 I did not think I could stomp Jean Sparrow by any means,
 but I just struggled with that sometimes.
 I see some people that think they're acting authentically
 and I think they are, but I'm like, damn,
 we can't pull our eyes everybody.
 No, it's not about that.
 The more in touch I get with where I am,
 the more confident I am with where I am
 and the better I am to let other people,
 I get to stay in my lane and I get to own my lane.
 And then I'm more happy to let other people do what they have
 to do around me.
 It's made me a better leader.
 It's made me a better collaborator.
 It's made me better for my clients.
 Some people get lazy and say that this is just who I am.
 Mm, when you start talking like that,
 then it's in service to you.
 It's not in service to somebody else.
 And then you're frankly just being a dick.
 No, don't do that.
 Don't do that.
 Part of the reason I was pumped to have you on the show, Jane,
 is I feel like this book applies to a lot of people
 and a lot of things.
 It's business leaders, hell, soccer moms.
 It covers the gamut because there's a lot to learn here.
 Talk to me in your mind.
 Who did you feel like you were speaking to?
 There are a few different people I was talking to.
 Most of all myself, some of it was just about how I move
 through things.
 When you go through the book, I try to include
 a lot of different perspectives.
 I have a podcast as well that's on pause right now
 because the book has overtaken my life.
 But the whole point of it was to find out
 how what I believe to be true applies in other places.
 So I've talked to people wide ranging from authors
 to business leaders, other marketers, entertainers,
 comedians, actors, writers, all these different kinds
 of people to see entrepreneurs, to kind of see where this happened.
 And I found it to be true everywhere in every phase of life.
 And when I first started doing this work, Ryan,
 there were people who told me, and it still
 happens in some of my trainings when I go in.
 They're like, I'ma try this out on my kids today
 because there's a part of my process
 that I call it, live it, tell it, sell it.
 Live it is about use.
 To me, it's the three elements of how we communicated.
 Live it is about you.
 You have to understand how you affect other people.
 Tell it is about the vehicle by which we do it.
 The stories that we tell each other
 because those are the things that that's a connective tissue.
 And then sell it is about the people you're talking to
 because you're always selling something.
 But you gotta know something about the people you're talking to
 and you have to talk to what they care about.
 If you don't talk to what they care about,
 then all you're doing is having a monologue
 and hoping somebody else listens.
 It is not a two-way street.
 And unfortunately, we don't do that with our young people.
 When I first wrote the book,
 I was really writing it for my clients,
 the different kinds of people that I encounter.
 But what I've learned,
 because now I'm teaching at Northwestern
 and a grad communication program
 and a lot of my students are fresh out of college,
 still kind of searching for themselves,
 trying to find their voice.
 I have figured out that my work works best for people
 who are in transition somewhere.
 They're either trying to level up,
 maybe in the corporate gig they have,
 trying to get to the next level up,
 trying to break through to the executive level
 or break through to the Swiss sea suite,
 or maybe just get out of middle management
 or into middle management
 so they can start moving up the things
 for young people who are entering the workforce
 for the first time.
 The transition from college to real life
 is even harder than it's ever been
 because the job market, the competition
 that these young people have been under since they started.
 The shift from saying,
 I'm trying to get grades to actually giving results
 is a very different thing.
 The first day of class, last quarter that I taught,
 I said to them, look, your grade in here,
 doesn't matter to me.
 You're gonna get an A if you're better
 at the end of this quarter than you are right now.
 And they looked at me like I had sprouted horns,
 they were like, what?
 I was like, I got assignments and stuff like that,
 but legit, you will get an A in this class.
 If you just do the work and by the end of it,
 what you turn in for the first assignment,
 for the last assignment looks better
 than what you turned in from the first
 and it's all about performance
 and how you deliver.
 So if you're better than you got an A,
 so don't worry about the grade.
 And literally some of these kids imploding on me
 because they can't, I was like, but honey, at work,
 nobody gives a damn about your grades that you got in college.
 Or grad school, what they care about is can you deliver
 what it is you need to do?
 And they looked at me like, is that the key?
 And these are kids that are about to be
 interviewing for their next job.
 Maybe for the soccer moms, the ones whose kids are growing up
 and they're going back into the workplace
 or they've started a side hustle that they've done
 while their kids were little
 and now they want to turn it into a legitimate business.
 I have a lot of entrepreneurs who've asked me for help.
 That's who I wrote the book for.
 It's not who I initially wrote the book for,
 but that's who it's for.
 It's anybody who's trying to navigate a change
 in what they're doing.
 Yeah, I'd argue that any brand could learn
 how to take their brand in this direction in a way.
 I want to talk about speaking sensationally
 while also validating a point.
 I graduated from Clemson with a 2.01.
 You had to have a 2.0.
 Let's just say my lifetime earnings,
 I'd put it up against anyone else I graduate with.
 Oh, wait, you froze, I'm running.
 You froze on me.
 He said you graduated from Clemson with what?
 A 2.01.
 You had to have a 2.0 to graduate.
 I'd put my lifetime earnings off of GPA up against anyone
 else in that graduating class.
 There you go, brother.
 That's what I'm talking about.
 Years ago, people didn't really care.
 Maybe your 4.0 got you in the window.
 You got you in the door, but it didn't get you in me
 further than that, you know, maybe.
 This is what goes back to what we were talking about earlier
 about the past.
 That was something you did.
 It is not what you are doing.
 That's right.
 Speaking sensationally,
 talk to me as a marketer,
 that's probably what stuck out the most.
 Speaking, writing, talking.
 A lot of people are uncomfortable with that
 because I think they think very immediately
 that it's overselling or theatrical or something,
 but I don't think that's what you mean here.
 Not at all.
 The reality is a way we connect is through oral communication.
 As human beings, we are hardwired for stories.
 We are most hardwired for stories that we tell to each other.
 I bet if I asked you what was on your to-do list for today,
 just off the top of your head without looking at your phone,
 you could probably remember the read out of the 10 things
 that are on there because they're the most important things
 to you.
 If I asked you to tell me a story from a family gathering,
 when you were five years old,
 I bet you could remember it.
 Why?
 Because you remember stories.
 We connect through stories so many different ways.
 Our brains activate in different ways,
 whether it's our vision,
 because we're imagining something,
 whether it's our senses.
 We remember what something smells like
 or what something sounded like.
 The neural activity,
 the more neurons that are firing off,
 the more we are to remember something.
 A list doesn't have that kind of context.
 To lead the best people to sell,
 the best people to market,
 the best people to do anything,
 are the ones who can tell the stories that people remember.
 We remember commercials from 20 years ago.
 Why?
 Because they told a good story visually,
 auditorially, whatever the word is,
 audio sense, whatever the case is.
 Even if it's a catchphrase,
 the reason why we remember catchphrases
 from back in the day, where's the beef?
 Because those three words have a story built into them.
 When I say speaking sensationally,
 I think that many of us have become way too dependent
 on texting people, emailing people,
 and there is not a lot of nuance in the written word,
 the way we communicate through those ways.
 In books, absolutely,
 because we have a lot more characters that we can use.
 But when we talk about social media,
 when we talk about texting and all those different things,
 we've become so reliant on that,
 that it has damaged our relationships.
 And part of it,
 it has also damaged our way that we communicate with each other.
 A lot of the young people that I'm starting to teach now
 are the ones who were in important developmental stages
 during the pandemic,
 when they weren't interacting with people as much outside,
 the people that they were in their pods with.
 And you can tell because they're not communicating verbally as well.
 I'm sorry, I don't care how good of a tool I AI is,
 and it is, I don't care how good of a tool, email,
 and text and whatever other technology is next is,
 nothing will replace our ability to understand
 when somebody is explaining something to us,
 and nothing will replace the way we get motivated
 when we are inspired hearing other people speak.
 And that's the way stuff gets done.
 So if you can't speak sensationally,
 you're missing a part of what it is you want to do,
 whether that's selling your business,
 or the products that your business,
 or the services that your business provides,
 whether it's leading your team to get the results
 that you've been tasked with doing,
 whether it's taking something to the next level,
 or actually speaking to audiences or being on podcasts,
 whatever that is, if you can't do that, success is gonna be hard.
 It is.
 This is one of the biggest attributes I see
 owning an ad agency and hiring a lot of younger people,
 23 to 30.
 The technology is great, but the biggest skill set I see missing
 is the ability to talk.
 They would classify what I'm saying as selling.
 I'm not necessarily saying selling,
 but making what they're talking about
 and understanding how to talk about it in an exciting way,
 that's a missing skill set.
 There's nothing wrong with calling it selling.
 We have an aversion to calling it selling.
 Literally, we are selling people
 on something all the time,
 even if it's just what couch we're gonna buy.
 Or I really want that piece of art,
 or that picture, or we gotta go take a family photo
 for the holidays.
 Well, no, I don't really wanna do.
 We're always selling somebody on something,
 and the better we get, or more comfortable we get with that.
 There's a negative connotation to selling
 as if we don't buy stuff all the time.
 Come on, man.
 We're always trying to convince somebody of something.
 Let's just call it what it is.
 Let's get used to it, and let's make it enjoyable.
 Like, it's fun.
 Have you ever met the best salesman in the world?
 And you're just like, you know what?
 I'm a buy it.
 Why?
 Because you sold me on it.
 Let's appreciate that again.
 My daddy told me he was like,
 gee, don't buy nothing from nobody.
 You don't like?
 He says, some people can convince you to buy
 when it's cold outside.
 He was like, they should be rewarded for their stuff.
 We all should be at least giving it a little bit of effort.
 Some of us are better sellers than others,
 but we're doing ourselves and each other disservice
 if we don't learn how to sell to each other.
 It's respect.
 Let's get hashtag bring back ABS.
 Always be selling.
 Always be selling, baby.
 Always be selling.
 Close that meal.
 Gene, what's the additional plans
 with promoting the book and locations people can find it,
 and just, what everything else you got going on the rest of the year?
 Fearlessauthenticity.com slash book
 is where you can always find everything about the book.
 That's where I'll have all of my appearances and things.
 I am doing book clubs and stores.
 So if somebody's watching,
 it wants me to come and speak to their group,
 or whether it's virtually our in-person reach out
 at Fearlessauthenticity.com slash book,
 we will get you on the roster.
 Anybody listening, here's a deal.
 Loppy write books and they might be a wonderful book,
 but they don't have the personality
 to kind of get out and bring the whole thing to life.
 Jane has got it all.
 She's got the person out there to talk the book,
 walk the book, and do it.
 You need to get her on the docket.
 She'll sell some copies, bring some people in,
 and entertain you, because she'll speak sensationally.
 Thank you, my dear.
 You're so sweet.
 That's an endorsement I can get behind.
 I appreciate it.
 It's been fun talking to you, Ryan.
 It's been great.
 I really appreciate it.
 Hey, guys, we're going to have all the links to Gene's stuff
 on the website, on social media, et cetera.
 Go to RyanasRite.com.
 You'll find links to the show, highlight clips.
 Everything included, Gene, it's been great.
 Can't wait to stay following what you're doing,
 and let's stay in touch.
 Same, same.
 Hey, guys, thank you for making us number one.
 It's because of Gene Sparrow's of the world that we are.
 We bring you the best, the brightest,
 and, hey, most authentic.
 That's what we do, right here, all right about now.
 Here's the truth.
 Information doesn't change your life.
 Execution does.
 So don't just listen to this episode and move on.
 Take the idea.
 Make the call.
 Launch the thing.
 Fix the problem.
 Build what you keep talking about building.
 For more, follow Ryan Ulford on Instagram at Ryan Ulford.
 And watch or listen to every episode at RyanasRite.com.
 This is right about now.
 Now quit waiting.
 Go win.