Inside Influence

This week’s guest is legendary sportswoman, speaker and author Jess Watson. Jess has navigated some of the world’s most remote oceans and has spent 210 days alone at sea where she became the youngest person to sail solo, nonstop around the world. And she did it at 16, an age when I know I was busy trying to grow out an 80's perm. In this episode we talk about how to lead a crew when your life is at stake, how to bounce back from public failure and how to shut down the critics even when that critic is yo

Creative Director of Google’s Unskippable Labs, Ben Jones, believes the key to influencing consumers these days lies in story telling – thanks to the one billion hours a day we spend viewing content on digital platforms. Ben has spent decades creating advertising campaigns and, on a hunch, performed a brief experiment that uncovered something astonishing about how digital has transformed our thirst for story telling.

This is one of my most special (and hardest) episodes of Inside Influence – with Emeritus Professor Judy Atkinson. We talk about her extraordinary career in inter-generational healing from trauma in Aboriginal communities. At the core of our discussion is her unique approach to listening. That in order to heal - or in any way influence traumatic situations – first the stories behind the pain must be heard.

$8 billion of Australian's retirement saving was once invested in Tobacco. But now it isn't. Why? Because of an oncologist called Dr Bronwyn King. She's spent the last few years going to the good and great of finance and compelling them to change. In the next 30 mins we talk about what happens when a cause finds you. We look at the tools she used to get a seat at the table. We talk about using compelling language and how you need to go against the ‘activist norms’ to make change happen.

The bottled water industry is worth a huge $600m a year. The number of people who don't have access to clean water is close to three times that. If you're anything like me you hear that number and you think 'too hard'. But at the age of 19 Thank You's Daniel Flynn, made a different choice. He created a company which has donated six million dollars to get safe water, food and health programs to people in need. So what does it take to turn a moment of passion into a global movement?

A trek through the rainforest, one life changing decision and one incredible fight for survival. It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood movie right? It is, but before this story became a blockbuster, one man lived through it and that man is Yossi Ghinsberg. Yossi is a true master of storytelling and in this episode I find out from him what gives a story soul. We talk about how to prepare to be present on stage and we look at what it takes to let your story go, and allow others to interpret it.

Happy New Year everyone. Welcome to 2018. Now with this episode we decided to do something a little bit different and I wanted to share, and actually actually start a conversation with you, about New Year's resolutions. What are the three things I'm going to commit to doing to lift my own influence game? And what are the three things you are going to commit to doing? Hopefully you'll find some inspiration here and then we can keep each other accountable.

How does your biology impact your intuition? How can understanding of neuroscience help you be a better leader? Sylvia Damiano is a self described part Gloria from Modern Family and part neuroscientist. She has spent her career immersed in getting to grips with how our brains actually work. More recently she's taken this deep understanding and applied it to the modern world of leadership and influence, where leaders need to master 'attractorship' to really create change.

John Hall is the creator of the world's most influential influence agencies, Influence & Co. They have been ranked the No.1 company dominating content marketing in the world. In this episode I managed to grab John to talk about a number of different things to do with content and influence: Charisma vs. credibility. What's most important? What makes a piece of content compelling? How do you put yourself in a position to grow your business or brand And why failure really isn't that different to success.

How do you go from an idea to influence to income? My next guest is Dorie Clark, author of the groundbreaking book 'Stand Out' which was named the number one leadership book of 2015 by Inc magazine. In this episode we discuss how to find your breakthrough idea. We discuss the keys to building a following when starting from scratch. Why most success stories you see on Facebook aren't true and why fear plus 10 percent is the magic number when it comes to turning it expertise into income.

Tell me what you're paying attention to and I'll tell you who you are. That's a quote from this episode's guest Alison Hill. Alison started her career as a professional head mechanic, where she spent many years tweaking the minds of top performers as an in demand coach with some of the world's largest companies including BHB and McDonald's. I'm a big believer that your ability to influence is 100 percent correlated to what or who you let in so we talk about how you create and defend boundaries. 

For anyone looking to be an authority in their industry I can promise you that being able to stay five steps ahead of the others in your space is one of the keys.  Henry Mason is the master of determining trends over fads, this London based think tank has been across the innovations that are transforming today for many years - he decodes for us how to get ahead of what's next.

I want you to imagine that for the first 30 years of your life you couldn't read. Then fast forward 10 years and imagine finding yourself at the world investment forum having been invited to facilitate 462 people. One hundred ninety three countries countless languages. And your role is to make sure that they are all heard. It's all recorded and that an agreement is found. That's the role and the history of our next guest Alan Parker. 

Former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt once said I'm not the smartest fellow in the world but I sure can pick smart colleagues. Building a high impact community of people around you who are smarter or more experienced than you in a variety different areas is one of the largest things you can do to fast track or up the ante on your own influence. Luckily for me obviously and luckily for you my next guest has decoded it all.

My next guest Chris Voss was the FBI lead kidnapping negotiator and what that means is he had to understand influence at a level and with stakes that you and I can barely imagine. We talk about high stakes conversations. How does he prepare. His mental state going into these conversations where literally lives are on the line. We talked about delivering bad news. How to do it quickly and efficiently and get straight into what's next.