Lift Your Impact with Richard Newman

angela_r_howard (00:01.771)

Hello, everyone. I am here with Richard Newman. I'm excited for us to kick off this conversation today. And Richard, I'll let you do your introduction. Tell us who you are, what you do, and the impact you're looking to make on the world.

richard_newman (00:17.67)

Sure, thanks, Angela. So yeah, I'm Richard Newman. I am the founder of Body Talk. I am generally teaching people communication skills, and working with them on mindset, storytelling, and influence. And I've been doing this for a long time now. I've been running my company for 23 years. But before that, I've been fascinated with communication and wanting to make a difference in the world for a long time. So I think unusually, when I finished school, most of my friends just went off to university,

of them went straight to get jobs, but I didn't. I was profoundly moved by it, there was somebody who came and gave a speech at my school when I was 17 going on 18 years old about what he had done after he finished school. And he, instead of going to university, decided that he would go off to live near Kathmandu where he was working in an orphanage. And he talked about this incredible adventure he'd gone on. And at the end of his talk, he said, okay, so show of hands, who in the room here

taking a gap here, taking a year off before university, and doing something like I did. And I raised my hand and maybe two other people in the room out of about 150 students raised their hands. And I sort of looked at my hand in surprise thinking, that's strange. I wasn't planning to do this at all, but he's inspired me to do something. I was very much on the path of I had like university places lined up and so on. And I then decided, no, this is what I want to do.

richard_newman (01:47.69)

wanted to do something meaningful for the world. So I then looked at various options and I ended up traveling across to Northeast India where I was living in a Tibetan monastery helping Tibetans who were in exile from their country I was living there up in the foothills of the Himalayas teaching English to these Tibetan monks and for them they needed to learn how to speak English because they needed to get sponsorships so they

richard_newman (02:17.67)

When I arrived there, what I didn't realize was that they didn't speak English already. And so I had to use body language and tone of voice just to be understood, to hear, to connect with them, to help them understand me. And by the end of six months of living with them, they then got to the point of being able to have a decent conversation in English. I learned how to speak Nepali, which was the main language of the area of India that I was staying in. And I came back to the UK, really passionate

richard_newman (03:17.65)

understood why that was. So I was quite shy as a child. I'm highly introverted. And I've also been recently diagnosed autistic. And so I had various challenges that were going on then. However, I just decided I would invest time and effort into learning communication skills from my perspective. I got to the point at which I was succeeding with that. And I wanted other people to find their voice just as I was giving the Tibetan monks

to connect with people outside their monastery. I wanted to help other people find their voice in the workplace so that they could put good ideas into action and make a difference in the world the way that they want to.

angela_r_howard (04:02.111)

I love that. And I love the kind of chain reaction that happened from sitting in that seat and listening to the speaker who influenced you. And then you kind of took a different path and that led you here. So tell us a little bit more about the connection between I guess influence and impact because I know you wrote a book and I'm on my way to it, I think it's launching soon, yes?

richard_newman (04:09.813)

Hmm.

richard_newman (04:15.218)

Hmm.

richard_newman (04:30.93)

It is. Yeah, yes. So Lift Your Impact coming out May 2nd, 2023. So depending on when people listen to this, it may already be out. But yeah, I'm proud of this and I've been working on it for a good long time. I had a previous book that I launched about five years ago, was it now? Which was You Were Born To Speak, which was purely about communication skills. And this new book I created to help people where I've seen over the last couple of years that people have

angela_r_howard (04:31.817)

Or has it launched already?

richard_newman (05:00.99)

from home and being disconnected from the people around them and questioning the purpose of what they're doing in day-to-day life rather than sort of showing up for the average treadmill of going to work and being on the career ladder. I think that the pandemic gave a lot of people that moment to sit back and think, well, who am I? And what am I doing? And why am I doing this? And do I want to keep on doing this? Do I want to do this, you know, just exchange my time for money in this direction? Or do I want to do something else?

richard_newman (05:30.85)

set. So a lot of people struggling with connection as well. We saw recently from data that people's ability to just get on with each other has gone down significantly since before the pandemic because we're spending less time around, you know, just grabbing a coffee break with people at work or standing around a water cooler. We have just less of that day-to-day physical interaction and engagement. And so I wanted to help people return to having a really strong mindset stronger than maybe they've had before a strong sense of purpose

richard_newman (06:31.25)

isn't so good for the planet or other people around you. And there are plenty of books out there that will tell you this is the way to manipulate those around you to give you what you want which is like a win-lose situation. And that's not what I'm about at all. So I always care about the influence and the impact. So putting people in a position where they can have deeper connections with people, stronger relationships with them, able to influence the hearts and minds of the stakeholders around them, whether that's

or at work, but also to think about, well, what is the impact that you're aiming for? And so, you know, what is the impact when you leave a room, when you've spoken to someone, do they feel disheartened, disappointed, or do they feel elevated by you? And part of the reason I called my book, Lift Your Impact, is that that element of lift is, you know, what if you could go into every interaction, and you could take anybody whom you're speaking to from a negative or a neutral state up to an elevated or lifted state, and

richard_newman (07:30.91)

and you create a lovely ripple effect just like that guy I spoke to you about before who was standing on stage at my school assembly back when I was sort of 17, or 18 years old. I've been trying to track him down actually to thank him for the effect that he had on my life but he doesn't know that he inspired me. I then worked with those monks and my team subsequently trained 120,000 people he doesn't know what happened there but just imagine you know what you could do how many people you interact with day after day anybody listening to this show

richard_newman (08:01.65)

And once you've interacted with them, what is the impact of that? What does that go on to be? Because whatever happens next ends up truly being your legacy, the legacy of impact that you've created. So I always like to get people thinking about what is my path. What is my true North? Where do I want to head to? What interaction skills do I need that are going to get me there such that I influence people towards a positive impact?

angela_r_howard (08:25.211)

Yeah, and I think sometimes when we hear, I love what you said about kind of what we've been taught around this idea of influence and where we, it's a positive force for good if we harness it, but we've kind of centered it on maybe selfish aims. So if we just like centered it on a little bit of a serving mentality or selflessness,

angela_r_howard (08:56.071)

I would maybe call myself an ambi avert because I kind of toggle between the two. I'm right in the middle there. You know, some of some people are listening to the maybe introverts or folks who are neurodiverse and are thinking, wow, that sounds like maybe something that feels uncharacteristic to me, like to be able to walk into a room and kind of, you know, perform even. But I know you see it differently.

richard_newman (09:06.471)

Hmm.

Hmm.

richard_newman (09:20.892)

Yeah.

richard_newman (09:24.31)

Yeah, so I think, I mean, the lens that I've always had on communication I've known is different, where I've essentially been looking at communication as an outsider, trying to figure out what is it that people are doing that makes communication work? So to break this down, from my perspective, when I see people having banter back and forth, what I see is two people insulting each other and then laughing in each other's faces. And as you can imagine, when I've tried it in the past, it gets a really bad reaction. I'll just look at them and think,

exactly what you did. Now, like, what did I miss? What are you doing that I didn't do? And for me, the secret bullet, if you like, was always this concept of lift. So if you think about what people are doing when they have banter, is that they may say insulting things. They may laugh in each other's faces, but their intention is lifted. They want the other person's state to be elevated as a result of the interaction rather than depleted. That's when you know it's truly banter. And, you know, there's the opposite of that where you can see people just being mean and cruel and then laughing and saying,

angela_r_howard (09:56.531)

Hmm.

richard_newman (10:24.25)

as banter, but it isn't really. So true banter has that element of elevating the other person's state. And so that was one of the elements that I noticed in communication as I studied it, really feeling like an outsider from a very early age. And then I looked at all kinds of books, all kinds of research around communication to figure out what it truly that you can do that works every time, works with people from around the world. I then studied it through, I worked for five years.

Formula One racing team had these events where they were speaking to sponsors from all over the globe who would come in and work with them. They had to essentially convince them to keep on investing their money because those cars are expensive to run and they'd want the investors to put their logo on the side of the car so that they could then go on and continue racing. And I was there to host events for them and speak to them and essentially I was given a script that was a two-hour long presentation that

word for word, I couldn't change it because it was legally approved and it was statistically correct and I had to deliver it in a way that was going to engage people and I then delivered that 200 times per year for five years. So I delivered the same information, a thousand times to a thousand groups of people and I was able from that experience to see, okay, how do people react when I say things this way versus this way? If I change my body language slightly if I change my intonation slightly, do I get

them. Does it work every time? Does it work for people from all backgrounds? And so I started to put that into a methodology of thinking, ah, okay, I think this is working. This led me towards a study that we published, I forget the year, I think it was 2016, I want to say, that was published in the journal Psychology, where we put together this study that involved people from all over the world if you make slight changes in your behavior, it dramatically improves your impact on the people around you, plus it makes you feel better when you're doing it. So as an introvert,

then sort of stand on stage, stand in front of a boardroom meeting, feel good, present well, and people feel that you're in command of a situation, they are convinced by your message, and the sort of the stunning element of these statistics we came out with, which was unexpected from this study, is that if you make a couple of changes, you can have 42% more people convinced by what you're saying, when you're saying the same information, and you could get 59% more people to vote for you in an election when you haven't changed anything.

richard_newman (12:54.25)

wearing the same clothes, and saying the same words, but behaving in a way that is gaining much more engagement and convincing many more people. And so what I love to do is to share this with people, and I love training people who are introverts around this because they go, this is amazing. I wanna learn all this stuff, I can put it into action, and it works every time. And importantly, what we're teaching, it's not techniques that sort of take people away from themselves, it's bringing themselves back to who they are because what we tend to do is get in a rut

where I've talked to so many people who say, you know, 10 years ago I was told not to gesture when I expressed myself because people said I was just flapping my arms around so I just sit on my hands when I'm communicating which is not good for interaction, it's not good for your flow of thoughts either. So we talked to them about various things that they can do to come back to themselves, to open up their style, not to be like other people but to open up their way of communicating and by so doing, trained so many introverts over the years, people who are neurodiverse

angela_r_howard (13:30.893)

Hmm.

richard_newman (13:54.25)

gives you a path to think, okay, this is a way for me to open up my potential to be more of me when I need to be and to get more engagement. That has been a huge pleasure for me to be able to show people who previously felt they didn't have a voice that there are things that you can do.

angela_r_howard (14:11.131)

Yeah, and I think you're right. I think we've been taught that we have to like perform when we're speaking, when we're giving, you know, I'm also a speaker. So I have that anxiety every time before I'm going to speak because I sense a great sense of responsibility to the people that you're serving in that moment, right? So you want to be of service and you want to have an impact. And so are you

richard_newman (14:29.191)

Hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

richard_newman (14:40.65)

Sure.

angela_r_howard (14:41.272)

you know, folks can maybe tweak or just adjust to get that impact.

richard_newman (14:45.85)

Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned there the anxiety that might feel before going on stage. I have a whole pre-event routine that I use and I mentioned it to you before that because I know you're based in Chicago. I was in Chicago just a couple of months back and there I was doing an event. It was at the Hilton Hotel and there's a ballroom there that I think if I get this right it's like 22,000 square feet or square meters I forget but it's like a

angela_r_howard (14:55.131)

Hmm.

richard_newman (15:16.01)

on the main stage is like the closing keynote speaker. And people would say to me before that sort of event, are you nervous about this? And I've always learned this trick, and people may have come across this, that you don't say that you're nervous, you say that you're excited. So you say, no, I'm not nervous, I'm excited. The reason this is beneficial, I think this has gone around the internet a little bit as well, is that if you're feeling nervous, then what happens is you have a high heart rate, you might have high clavicular breathing,

angela_r_howard (16:10.631)

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richard_newman (16:15.99)

he's feeling excited. And so that can be part of this situation. But I also say to people that when I'm speaking in front of a room, I also imagine it like I am surfing in an ocean. So I'm a surfer and that's the ocean. So what you do as a surfer, if you want to get good at it, is that you might have, you know, put your board on the beach where it's safe and practice, you know, popping up, imagine that you're riding the waves, get into that place. But you can only really ride an ocean. You can't ride to the beach. So when you get out to the ocean, you have to see

Sometimes the ocean is going to be flat, sometimes it's going to be choppy, so you have to write what is there. So that's what I imagine doing as a speaker as well. I need to find out where is the audience now and where I want to take them and as a surfer write the energy within the space. By doing that, what it allows me to do is come out of my head into the minds of the audience. So it allows me to get past any sense of self-consciousness. So I'll focus on myself and what I want to say before I go on stage.

richard_newman (17:15.79)

them. I found that this allowed me to get much more settled and feel more connected with the audience. A few other things that I like to do. So the last thing I do before I go on stage is to work on my breathing. So I was always taught and trained as an actor, as I think I mentioned earlier in our conversation, is that I was trained as an actor that you can control your emotions by controlling your breathing. So we were taught to cry on cue and to laugh on cue and you can trigger

angela_r_howard (17:31.314)

Mm-hmm.

richard_newman (17:45.79)

connected to all of your emotions. So if you're feeling depressed, then you might sigh, or if you're feeling excited, you might gasp. So there's a breath linked to each emotion. So if you are about to go to an important interview or a presentation or speak on a big stage, then if you change your breathing, you can change your emotion and therefore be in control of your state. So my favorite version of this, if I share two, my favorite version I've used for a long time is

richard_newman (18:16.09)

you can control your heart rate, and slow your heart rate down, and the version I like to do is called 5552. So I breathe in for five, hold for five to process the oxygen, breathe out for five, and then hold for two. By doing this you highly oxygenate the system and oxygen chemically burns off adrenaline. And by slowing down the rate of breathing you can slow down your heart rate. And if you just do it for 90 seconds you can move from the sympathetic nervous system across to the

nervous system and being in a thoroughly good state. And that's the one that I've done so often now that it's just, you know, when somebody starts introducing me at an event, I'm doing the breathing. That's the only thing I'm thinking about at that point. There's another great one I've come across recently which people may have heard of, which is the physiological side. This was popularized recently by Andrew Huberman, who I think his podcast is becoming quite well known. And the way that you do this one is that you take two breaths in

angela_r_howard (18:56.831)

Hmm.

richard_newman (19:15.81)

And so it sort of sounds like big breath in to begin with, then another top-up breath, and then pushing all the air out. And there's good science on this that's come out recently that if you do that for five minutes, then 24 hours later, you're still getting the benefits of that, that it's reducing stress, improves your heart rate variability, and would seem to be more effective than any other style of breathing. So that's a nice one to be doing too.

angela_r_howard (19:16.772)

Hmm.

richard_newman (19:45.75)

of my routine. The other piece just to mention too, which I do all the time, I've done this for 20 years before every event I speak at, is that I do a moving meditation in the morning. So as soon as I wake up, I have my running shoes, and my running outfit by the bed, I take all-weather clothing so that wherever I am in the world if I'm in Chicago and it's snowing, I'm still going outside. And so I put on everything I need to. Yeah, very brave sometimes. And I go outside and I do a moving meditation, which simply means that I'm walking,

angela_r_howard (20:06.645)

Brave.

richard_newman (20:15.87)

something like that and I'm simply imagining that day going exactly the way that I want it to do to go based on how will I act and how will I react in every situation that's coming up so you can't in your mindset visualize what other people are gonna do because you don't know but you can visualize how will I act and how will I react and if you do it as a moving meditation you get good blood flow going you get it really into your system and so I found that to

for the day before anything else happens.

angela_r_howard (20:49.811)

Oh, that's great, great tips. Thank you for also demonstrating some of the breathing exercises, because I think we hear about these box breathing exercises. And I think just hearing you do it is going to provide some tools for people to get back to themselves, which I think is the theme of what you're talking about. So I have to ask because I did see a recent video of you singing with your favorite singer, Michael Buble. So did you use any of these tactics?

richard_newman (21:17.01)

Yeah.

angela_r_howard (21:19.751)

more about that because I think it's fascinating. I would be so nervous.

richard_newman (21:23.832)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was a wonderful moment. Yeah, people want to check it out. I think it's on my LinkedIn and maybe on my Instagram page. So this is an incredible moment where my wife and I have been fans of Michael Buble since before people knew who he was back before his first album even came out. Like we were interested in what he was doing. He's such a great performer. And so we've been to see a few of his concerts. But this one, in particular, was in London. There were about 20,000 people or so in a stadium

And there was like a long catwalk stage that went all the way through the middle of the audience. And we stood right near the front. And at this point, he'd walked down this catwalk. He stood right in the middle of the arena. So actually quite a long way from us, like 50 meters away or something like that. And he said, you know what, it's such a privilege to sing to an audience like this. Is there anybody else here who'd like to just have a go and do some singing? And of course, half the audience put their hands up. So it's now like 10,000 people for him to choose from.

away, he's not going to choose us. And he turns around and starts walking back towards the main stage, which is where we are thinking, he's going to pick me. I genuinely thought quite early on, that he was going to pick me. And then he came towards me, I could see him looking at me and he went, you, and gave me the microphone out of there and everybody else and sort of sat down beside me and said, so what, what do you want to sing? And I'm a fan of, you know, the songs that he chooses. So I thought there's only one song that I

richard_newman (22:50.35)

that I sometimes would sing at karaoke. And I thought, I'm just, I'm gonna sing feeling good because that's, you know, that's the song that he's known for singing. The audience here would like it. I'm just gonna go with this. And I would say in the moment of that, the only thing that I was aware of was I must control my breathing because if I don't control my breathing, all that's gonna come into this microphone is a squeak. And so I got myself, I did various things though, I would naturally do on stage. I coach people to get balanced in their stance

like a pushover, you feel like a lightweight, you feel off balance. And so if you stand with your posture, you're equally putting your weight on your left foot, right foot, toes, and heels, you feel more grounded, more balanced, and more ready for action. So I did that and worked my breathing while he was introducing me to the audience. He was saying, ladies and gentlemen, here he is, live for one night only. It's Richard from London. I was like, yeah. And then the band struck up playing behind me, at least the piano player did.

richard_newman (23:50.63)

I got two lines into it and then I thought, I cannot remember the words to this song because it wasn't rehearsed, I wasn't expecting to sing. And then he had to shout the words to me or whisper the words down to me so I could keep going. But it was just a tremendous moment. I remember afterward thinking, I'm so glad that I felt present through that experience that my mind wasn't sort of drifting off anywhere else. I was just a sense of, okay, I'm listening to him, looking at the audience, I'm gonna have a good moment here. And even felt present enough to ask him for a selfie

I looked at my phone and thought, this is it, this is the only moment, gotta get a selfie in here. And it was incredible the next day. There were people in that arena that I didn't know were there, who were right at the back, who had filmed the whole thing on their phone, showing like 20,000 people focused on my image. My face was then being filmed on the big screen that was up on stage, which I didn't realize because it was behind me. And I looked at that and I thought, oh, that was quite a big, that was quite a big moment. Like I'm pleased, I managed to, in my head, keep it as an intimate conversation

angela_r_howard (24:46.631)

Yes.

richard_newman (24:50.43)

sort of singing. So yeah, definitely a few techniques came to be very useful at that moment.

angela_r_howard (24:58.071)

Yeah, it feels like a kind of a culmination of, again, practicing some of these tactics, also focusing on the audience, which I'm sure in your mind, you were starstruck. So it was a bubble. You were focused right on Buble. But your impact spanned 20,000 people at that moment. And so I think that's a lovely bow to kind of tie to this conversation. I want to thank you, Richard, for your brilliance today,

richard_newman (25:14.591)

Hmm.

angela_r_howard (25:28.071)

you know, as we're thinking about, you know, how can we kind of change our paradigms around what it means to make it impact. And leadership in particular, I know we didn't get a chance to talk about leadership within the workplace, but I think there's also a transfer of how we, as leaders, regulate to serve our people and to create that impact. So I would love to have that second conversation at some point because I think we could probably spend some time between both of our

richard_newman (25:49.833)

Yeah.

Sure.

richard_newman (25:57.831)

Absolutely.

angela_r_howard (25:58.552)

But tell us where people can find you so folks want to work with you or they want to learn more where can they find you?

richard_newman (26:04.65)

Great, yeah, so people can go to, first of all, go check out the book, Lift Your Impact, which is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Portulite, and wherever you get good books. Go and check out Lift Your Impact, Richard Newman. And if people wanna find me on social media, then they can look at me on Instagram. I'm at Richard Newman Speaks. And on LinkedIn, I'm Richard Newman Body Talk, so you can find me there. And if people wanna book me as a speaker, they can go to ukbodytalk.com

and work with them anywhere around the world.

angela_r_howard (26:38.451)

Wonderful. I hope your next engagement takes you to Chicago, hopefully in the summertime, so you can have your run. But maybe we could also meet in person, which would be, which would be fun. Richard, thank you so, thank you so much. Appreciate you.

richard_newman (26:43.792)

Yeah.

richard_newman (26:48.69)

Fantastic, yeah, certainly hope so.

richard_newman (26:53.75)

Ychydig i chi.