How to Give the Gift of Being Heard with Julian Treasure

In this Episode

• [02:37]Julian Treasure recounts his background, touching on his early experiences with music, his marketing career, and the creation of the Sound Agency.
• [08:41]Julian emphasizes the critical role of both speaking and listening in mastering effective communication.
• [11:51] Julian outlines the P.A.V.E. framework: paraphrase, admit, validate, and empathize.
• [16:33]Julian underscores how vital listening is in leadership and sales, and the detrimental effects of neglecting it.
• [19:02]Julian defines conscious listening and offers insight into how it can be cultivated.
• [26:51]Julian reflects on the value of embracing silence and building a healthy relationship with it.
• [31:58]Julian introduces The Listening Society, a digital hub for honing listening skills, featuring podcasts, training modules, and research-based materials.
• [35:48]Julian offers three powerful tips for living a stellar life.
• [40:31]Julian wraps up by sharing how to connect with him and encourages listeners to reach out.

Jump to Links and Resources

About Today’s Show

Hey Julian, and welcome to the show. 

Thank you very much. Delighted to be here.

Before we begin, could you tell me why you’re so fascinated with listening?

Well, sound has been a big part of my life. Forever. I live mainly through my ears. You know, we have different people. Have different sensory leads. A lot of people lead with their eyes. They’re very visual. But there are plenty of people for whom sound is the main way they connect with the world. I’m one of those, particularly music.

I had a pretty enlightened mother who brought me up at about six. I think I was about six when I discovered The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Peter and the Wolf, and The Carnival of the Animals. These are great classic pieces written for children to introduce them to orchestral music. I loved those and listened to them incessantly. And then, obviously, my musical tastes changed as I got slightly older. 

But music has been right at the center of me forever. Then, I became a musician, of course. I learned the piano and then drums, which was my instrument for 20 years, playing in bands and making records. Then, I had a career in marketing, working with brands to produce lovely magazines for people like Lexus, Microsoft, and so forth. That was my company. I started it. I was an entrepreneur. It grew, and I eventually sold it in 2002. I was thinking all the way through this, these companies aren’t thinking at all about sound. So, I started a company called Sound Agency in 2002 and ran it for 20 years, which was about asking the question: How does your brand sound? 

Answering that question is crucial, especially in marketing. The research I did at the beginning of that company really proved that sound has a huge effect on us, although, unfortunately, most people are very unconscious about it, and we don’t listen very well. All these companies I was talking to, it was a really hard pitch to be honest. You’re selling people something they don’t even know they need.

Sound has a huge effect on us. Unfortunately, most people are very unconscious about it, and we don’t listen very well.

It’s always difficult. You’ve got a pre-sell that sound is important, and so forth. Even when we did, a lot of them didn’t get it. I started to realize the reason all these companies don’t care about sound is because they’re full of people who don’t listen. If you put a load of people who don’t listen into an organization, you get an organization that doesn’t listen, and most don’t. 

In fact, the research proves that most organizations are abject at listening. I closed the Sound Agency and moved on to write this book, which is called Sound Affects, which is all about the power of sound and why we need to listen. I’ve launched The Listening Society, an online community to help people listen better. We can talk about the problems that are happening in the world because people don’t listen. It is a major issue, but it’s so hidden, Orion. That’s the problem—noises all around us. You don’t get any politicians saying, “Vote for me, I’ll make it quieter.” That’s what people think.

People make a lot of money from all the noise. That’s why.

Well, some do. Yes, that’s true. A lot of it is just unconscious. It’s like the exhaust gas of the economy. It’s just what happens because we don’t think about it too much, and that’s true at both a personal and corporate level. On a personal level, there’s a phenomenon known as “sodcasting,” which is often caricatured. There are a bunch of hoodies on top of the bus playing loud music through a mobile phone and upsetting people around them. But equally, it could be a senior executive stalking up and down an airport lounge, having a loud conversation and upsetting all the people in that lounge. It’s just a careless and thoughtless imposition of your sound on other people. 

Neighbor noise—a lot of violence is caused in cities by neighbor noise. It’s one of the main issues that the police have to intervene in when there are fights between people. Often, noise is a factor. Partly, there are people making money, certainly, out of distracting us and imposing stuff on us the whole time. You know, pipe music. Apart from anything else, there are a lot of people who really don’t like that, and you don’t get a choice in that. But a lot of the noise is just exhaust gas.

You mentioned the sound of a brand. What does that mean? I wasn’t clear about that. What should be the sound of a brand? What does that mean?

Well, Orion, you experience the world in five senses, not just one. When you have a connection with a brand, it’s not just for your eyes. You speak to them on the phone. Perhaps that’s sad. You might see their advertising, which may have music and a voiceover involved in it. There may be a sonic logo, think of Intel. Not many people could draw Intel’s logo, but I bet a lot of people will be able to sing. That’s a very powerful little sound. It’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Intel. 

It’s really worth thinking, just as it is, individually, thinking about being responsible for the sound we make and the sound we impose on other people, whether it’s the music we play or the noise at our house or whatever it might be, or, of course, first and foremost, our voice, which is what I talked about in that TED Talk that became the sixth most viewed of all time—the importance of the human voice. That’s a hugely important sound, unique to each of us, and one that most people don’t think about, train, or do any work on at all. But speaking is a skill, and listening is also a skill. It’s different from hearing.

Can we start with the sound we make and then move on to listening? 

Sure. 

How do we sound more authoritative? How do we sound serious or in a way that people really want to listen to us?

Well, there is a circular relationship between speaking and listening that is important to understand at the very outset, before we talk about either of them, because the way I speak affects the way you listen, and the way you listen affects the way I speak. It’s circular, if not linear, and that means that any great speaker, first of all, does need to be a great listener.

Any great speaker needs to be a great listener.

I would say listening is the foundational skill. There are a couple of very important understandings about listening. First, listening is unique. Your listening is different from mine because we listen through a whole set of filters that are associated with how we’ve grown up, our background, our history, and so forth. 

The values, attitudes, beliefs we have, the language we learn to speak, the culture we’re born into, and in any given situation, our intentions, expectations, emotions, and assumptions, all these things create a listening. Listening is different from person to person and from audience to audience, so if you want to speak with power, it’s essential to first understand the audience you’re speaking to.

Most people make a very fundamental mistake, which is to assume everybody listens like I do; they don’t. If you have that assumption, you’re basically speaking to yourself the whole time, which doesn’t work very well, because people are different. I just came back from Mexico, where I spoke at a wonderful event called Festival de las Ideas in front of 6,000 people. 

Listening is different for each person and for each audience, so if you want to speak with power, it’s essential to first understand the audience you’re speaking to.

You step onto the stage, and I’m asking myself, “What’s the listening I’m speaking into?” Sensing it. Now, clearly, you can prepare for the question. I just asked you about your audience. It’s important to understand who it is you’re speaking to, as best you can work out. What’s their problem? Why are they here? What do they want? What’s the pain you can solve? What’s the journey you can take them on? All those kinds of questions are very important before you get there, but the moment you get there, you can actually be sensitive, because that can change. As a professional speaker, I can walk on stage and the person before me might just have really pissed off the audience.

Oh, no. What do you do? 

Yes, someone who really misread the room and upset people. Or, of course, it could be the person before you who has been incredibly funny, and when you walk on stage, the audience is still laughing and remembering that. Listening is not something you can take for granted. It’s really important to be sensitive to it. If they are pissed off, then you have to work a little bit harder and make clear this is different. 

I wouldn’t apologize for a previous speaker. It’s got nothing to do with me. What I would do is be sensitive to the room and say, “I can see that the mood in here is interesting. Can we move on from that?” Just really draw a line. Make a demarcation. Make it clear that this is different. They can let go of that. Maybe have them stand up and do a bit of movement to change them. 

Listening is not something you can take for granted. It’s really important to be sensitive to it.

I like that. It seems like you were just acknowledging their feelings and validating them, so they’re already in your corner, like, “Oh, he gets us. Okay, we’re ready.”

Validation is one of my favorite words around; it’s the biggest thing that’s missing in the world today, I think. There’s a tool I teach in as far as listening goes, which is PAVE. It stands for paraphrase, that is to say, you repeat back what you heard to ensure you actually understood it, which allows it to be accepted.

That is to say, even if you fundamentally disagree with what somebody just said, let them be right, because two people can have very different views, and both be right in their own worlds. We’ve got this fiction going on. It’s getting really serious in the world that it’s all a zero-sum game. I’m right. You’re wrong. 

Have you seen Miss Piggy from The Muppets? It seems like every argument, especially with the younger generation, ends with, “I don’t want to hear you.” They’re doing the Miss Piggy. They’re not listening to each other. There is no communication. How can we base peace and prosperity on zero communication and a zero-sum game? It’s impossible.

Absolutely. That’s what PAVE is all about. You admit it, you let them be right, even though, if you disagree fundamentally, that allows you to validate them. What validation sounds like is: “I’m sorry, I really don’t agree with what you just said, but I completely see why you believe that.” That’s totally different, which is just a weighted conflict, and nothing is going to come out of that at all.

Conscious listening always fosters understanding.

Whereas, if I validate you, you might sense that we disagree, but I’m giving you the respect of saying, “I see why that’s inboard you,” and then the E of PAVE is empathize. 

I can then say, “Okay, if that’s what you believe, then I can see why you’re upset about what just happened. I wouldn’t be upset about it, but I can see why you are.” We then have a connection. There’s empathy, compassion, and understanding.

To me, conscious listening always fosters understanding. I went off piste a little bit there, because you were really originally asking me, how do you speak with power? But you see, listening is very important, underlying speaking with power. There are a lot of other things you know, such as the TED talk on speaking. And by the way, my TED talk on speaking has been seen by five times as many people as my TED talk on listening. Because if we all want to be heard and nobody’s listening, that doesn’t work very well.

Well, listening sounds more boring. Speaking sounds more out there. If you go on social media, it’s all about being out there. It’s not about being quiet and listening, unless it’s some kind of fancy yoga video about meditation. The value of our society is about who’s the loudest, who’s the prettiest, and who can showcase themselves more.

Totally, totally tragic. It depresses me enormously to hear you say that. That’s like an evil force at work, because that’s absolutely pointing in the wrong direction. It’s pointing away from the connection. It’s pointing towards what we see among young people, which is disconnection.

Validation is one of my favorite words; it’s the most significant thing that’s missing in the world today.

All the research shows that they’re less socially connected face-to-face than ever before, way less. They would rather be on a screen, disconnected, and lack learning. There are people in the education industry who are tearing their hair out in despair at the doom scrolling that goes on in their classes, at the lack of attention, and now, with ChatGPT being used to roll out answers to everything, there’s no learning going on because listening is how we lead. 

How can you lead a group of people if you don’t listen to them and understand them, what motivates them, what they’re fearful about, and what their challenges are? Shouty leaders don’t work. I just did some research on this. I did a talk in Copenhagen to 2000 CEOs. The cost of disengagement from bad leadership is $8.8 trillion a year. 

Wow, trillion. 

Shouty leaders don’t work.

This is about just leaders not listening and not engaging people. So, listening is how we lead, listening is how we sell. Again, this is all topsy-turvy. It aligns with what you just said about the values that are available on the internet. I don’t agree with the world, but I think you’re talking about the internet.

Yes, I was referring to the internet, not the world. I mean, there are still amazing people out there. This is not black and white. There are fifty shades of gray. When you go on social media, that’s the trend. Who’s the biggest, loudest, prettiest, most eye-catching, and fastest? 

The answer to that is, don’t go on social media, if you ask me. But you know it’s good, but it’s so much fun.

The cost of disengagement from bad leadership is $8.8 trillion a year.

But what if it is intertwined with your business, and you have to be out there?

Then you have to be careful. Remember the importance of listening and practice. That’s something I talk about a lot—exercises which improve listening, and that’s what a lot of the book is about as well. It’s full of tips for improving this thing in a world that’s very distracting, a world that is full of the kind of stuff you just talked about. Let me just make that point I was going to make about selling the interest. It’s interesting that the statistics show that most salespeople speak 60% and listen 40% in a conversation, but the really successful ones have that exactly the other way. They listen 60% and speak 40% because listening is the most important part of a sales conversation. 

How do you know what somebody wants, what their pain points are, if you don’t listen to them? The biggest complaint about salespeople is that they’re not listening. They’re just high-pressure sales tactics, selling you. Listening has so many important connections with how we perform. I bring it down to three things: your happiness, your effectiveness and your well-being. All three are affected by how well you listen and how well you speak. I think we are in a world where there’s a huge amount of pressure on listening. 

The stats back up. What you’re saying is that listening is in decline, particularly among younger people who use a lot of social media, who are very screen addicted. There’s a kind of dopamine addiction in the world to these constant hits of “somebody just tagged me” and all that kind of stuff, which is ultimately meaningless. There’s a great book by Sherry Turkle, another TED speaker, called Alone Together, which I recommend to anybody. It’s about this phenomenon. 

The idea of a family sitting around a meal table or looking at their hands, nobody’s talking because everybody’s communicating with somebody distant, that a small number of deep relationships that we used to have, perhaps when we were living in small communities, we’ve turned that into a very large number of extremely shallow ones. Friend has got a slightly different meaning now than it used to be. 

Now, I’m not on a polemic against social media. I think it can do great good. It can connect people, but unfortunately, it also has the effect that we’re seeing, and the research is now backing this up enormously, of increasing stress, loneliness, depression, anxiety, and suicide rates among young people. They’re higher now than they ever have been, and I think we can see the reason for that.

It’s very sad. What does conscious listening look like? How can one develop that? When you tell me it would be a good listener, I’m like, “Okay, now I’m going to really try to listen to Julian and prove to him that I’m a really good listener.”

Listening has so many important connections with how we perform. I bring it down to three things: your happiness, your effectiveness, and your well-being.

But then my mind goes like, “I want to ask him about this and about that and about that. What are some things?” I noticed that you are super focused, because I’ve been asking you questions, and you have something you want to communicate, and you just go back to that. Your focus is incredible. How can one be a better listener and also have a little more focus, more like yours?

Well, the first answer about becoming a conscious listener is to appreciate that listening is a skill. It’s work. It’s a thing you do consciously, different from hearing. Hearing is a capability. It’s automatic. Sound comes into your ears. You hear it listening, you do two things: you select certain things to pay attention to, and then you make them mean something. So, my definition of listening is making meaning from sound, and that’s a conscious process.

As I said, different for everybody. Now, once you understand that listening is a skill, and it’s work, it’s effort, then you have gone through a door which opens a whole world of a new relationship with sound and new ways of interacting with people. 

You have this new skill, so you can actually set about mastering it. I think there are many ways to listen. I talk about listening positions, so there’s no right way to listen. I’m not saying that we should always put everything down and absolutely pay attention to the person speaking. I mean, that’s a great gift to give. If somebody’s saying something important, it’s really important to give that, and it’s rare in this world; far too rarely do we do that. There’s a great quote from M. Scott Peck, the American author, who said, “You cannot truly listen to another person and do anything else at the same time.” 

Becoming a conscious listener means appreciating that listening is a skill. It’s work. It’s a thing you do consciously, different from hearing.

Well, that’s true, but we can’t go around doing that all the time. Partial listening is what we do a great deal of the time, not really paying attention, but listening with half our brain. We’re cooking, sending an email, doing a text, or whatever it might be. Well, you know, that’s fine. Sometimes the key thing is always to be conscious of where you’re listening from, and asking yourself the question, “Is this the best place I can listen from in this conversation?” 

If I’m cooking and my wonderful partner comes in to joke with me, that’s absolutely fine. Partial listening works. But if she comes in and she’s in tears, really upset, something’s just happened, that’s the time to put the cookie down, or say, “Well, give me two minutes. I just put this away, and then I’ll come and listen to you.” Because sometimes you need total listening—conscious, real, attentive, and focused listening.

There are lots and lots of places to listen to. I talk about many, many listening positions in the book and in my work, the key thing is to ask that question. You said, “How do you become a conscious listener?” This is actually part of a bigger conversation, I have to say, about being a more conscious human being and having a more conscious presence in the world.

Let’s talk about that. Being a conscious human being. Whatever you just said sounds amazing. I didn’t listen to like, “Oh, it’s amazing. Let’s go there.”

Well, yes, I think you know, a lot of people sleepwalk through life, or a great deal of life, doing the same thing all the time, paying scant attention. We do that with people we’ve lived with for a long time. Our partners for decades. “Oh, I know what they’re going to say next.” This kind of dismissive, tired listening. I talk about being empty when you’re listening. It’s almost a form of meditation. If you like listening, it’s an empty place where you’re not thinking about what you’re going to say next. Stephen Covey talked about listening and not really listening as just preparing your next bit of talking. 

I’m not on a polemic against social media. I think it can do great good. It can connect people, but unfortunately, research is backing this up, with increasing stress, loneliness, depression, anxiety, and suicide rates among young people.

I call that “speech writing.” That’s not really listening either, and that can give rise to an awful lot of conflict. Being empty, trusting that when it comes to your turn to speak, your mouth will know what to do. It does take a bit of faith, and then being empty and just receiving. It’s a lovely, quiet, empty place to be.

It’s also humble because you’re giving another human being your attention, which is respect and allowing, perhaps, that they might teach you something. They’re an opportunity to learn, perhaps, or you’re seeking to understand them. That is humble. That’s why listening becomes quite difficult for senior people in organizations, and indeed, for the kind of influencer class that you’re talking about, who are all about speaking. 

They’re supposed to know everything. Speak influence, lead, tell all of this is outbound, outbound, outbound, and it kind of gets in the way of the deep connection you can get with people by being quiet and humble and listening. Now, even a great listener can do that. Think of Gandhi. You do not have to shout in order to be a great listener. Just in the same way, you don’t have to be an extrovert in order to stand on stages and give great speeches. I’m an introvert. Actually, funnily enough, on the professional speaker circuit, when I bump into other speakers backstage, the vast majority of them are introverts. 

Now, not all know. I’ve never met Gary Vaynerchuk, but I don’t imagine he’s a quiet flower in his house because he’s not on stage. But most of the speakers I’ve met are, in fact, fairly quiet, introverted people who really enjoy giving the gift to audiences, and that’s how you get through the introversion. You practice the skill, and then it’s all about the gift you’re giving. Here’s a great visualization I can give you. For anybody who has to speak in public, just imagine you’re giving the best present ever to a six-year-old for Christmas, and they are going to be so, so excited when they get this present. 

That feeling as you’re giving them that present is the one you want to go on stage with, because you’re about to give 100 people, 6000 people, whatever it is, the gift of what it is you talk about, and if you’re not giving them a gift, I don’t think you should really be there. There’s got to be a reason. That’s something that you know you can be so excited about doing, you can walk on stage with a smile, and it’s about that. It’s not about you. It’s not about approbation, affirmation, applause, anything like that. It’s about giving the gift. Then you have a connection with the audience.

With so many years of speaking, what are some of your greatest lessons from your own personal life?

Well, I think I’ve just given you possibly the biggest one that’s come to me over the years. Because when I started out speaking, it was very much about looking good and— 

Not looking bad. 

You cannot truly listen to another person and do anything else at the same time. – M. Scott Peck

Yeah, how did it go? Did everybody like it, and did they receive affirmation and so forth? I mean, I still care. Did everybody like it? But I care because I want them to receive what I’m giving. So the message becomes very, very important. I think that’s one of the biggest things. I have, certainly, over the years, emphasized over and over again the importance of training the voice. Have you ever done any vocal training? 

Yes, I have. I should do more, but I have. I’m a good singer.

There you go. Then you know how important vocal training is in terms of being able to project and use your diaphragm and breathe correctly, have good posture, moderate your timbre and tone, use effective prosody, and so forth. I highly recommend that anyone who uses their voice in an important way, whether that’s in business, as a parent, a teacher, or whatever it might be, go and get trained, find a coach, and work with a coach who can help you improve the basics that you’ve been given. We’ve all been given some equipment, but it can always be optimized, and most people have never made the effort. 

I think that’s a really significant aspect: training your voice. The other really important thing that certainly has helped me over the years is keeping a good relationship with silence. People often say when I’m speaking that I’m so grounded, and you use the word “focused.” It’s really important to have a good relationship with silence, so that you can pause and not feel uncomfortable.

Vocal training is essential for projecting your voice effectively, utilizing your diaphragm and breathing correctly, maintaining good posture, moderating your timbre and tone, using effective prosody, and so forth.

One of the biggest things I see people doing wrong on stage is gabbling, filling every moment with words. That’s where the filler words come in, “ums” and “ers” and all that kind of stuff. 

Silence is your friend, serving as the baseline for all sound. A good practice is to take three minutes of silence a couple of times a day, sitting quietly in the quietest place you can find and being present with silence. You don’t have to meditate. You don’t have to do anything, just be silent and let your ears relax and refresh.

Now, some people will find that intimidating. I know people who live in cities who go to the countryside, and they say, “Oh, it’s so quiet I can’t deal with it.” If that’s the case, that just shows that you really need to practice this, because if we lose contact with silence, the world just gets noisier and noisier and noisier, and that’s a bad thing.

Do you feel like you’re one of the last people who have a relationship with silence, or is it a new trend that is up and coming where people learn to be more silent, or people are just losing this ability completely?

Well, I do hope I’m not one of the last. That would be very sad. I think there are green shoots. You can see good things happening around the world. For example, there is a very strong movement around the world called shinrin-yoku. 

What’s that? 

It’s Japanese. It means forest bathing. It’s been going on for thousands of years; people have been going into the forest for a walk. But in Japan, they kind of rebranded it a few decades ago as shinrin-yoku, and it’s become a thing. Now, you can find shinrin-yoku centers all over America, South America, and Europe. They organize walks to beautiful places where people go out, don’t talk, and just listen to and be with the forest in all senses.

It’s not just about sound, but it is very much about reconnecting with the sound of nature, which we now know is very good for us. It’s not surprising, because over 3 million years of evolution, and 300,000 years for Homo sapiens, we’ve been in a pretty quiet period. World, wind, water, birds—these are the sounds that we evolved to and we’re designed for. Just 200 years ago, we invented machines, and now we’ve got a very, very noisy world. Extremely different. Not only that, we lock ourselves away inside buildings in hermetically sealed units. We cut ourselves off from the sounds of nature altogether. 

There’s a cost to that, and I think that’s what we see in stress in so many people who have to work in noisy offices, noisy hospitals, noisy schools, and are getting really, really stressed. That is a killer. There’s also a massive cost of our disconnection. I think there is a movement towards quietness and silence. I did see it happening in advertising. Some time ago, they started replacing the words “speed,” “quick,” or “fast” with “quiet.” You get slogans like “the quietest cabin in the sky,” that kind of thing. I think there are some green shoots, but we can’t rely on that, because there’s a kind of linear relationship between population and noise. 

If we lose contact with silence, the world just gets noisier and noisier, and that’s a bad thing.

We’re a noisy bunch, and the more of us there are, the noisier we are. Especially now, 50% of us live in cities. It’s very sad that all those billions of people, four and a half billion people, do not have any relationship with silence or natural sounds, and that’s not good for them. We need to do something about this. My call to everybody listening to this is, take some action. Find silence in your life. Obviously, read the book. Join The Listening Society, please. Let’s get listening regenerated in the world. Because if we do nothing, it’s a tide that’s just increasing the whole time, and it will get worse and worse.

What is The Listening Society? I know this is something that you offer as a club. What do you do there?

Well, it came out of writing the book, actually. So, the book’s just out in America now, and when I was writing it, I thought, “Well, there’s nowhere people can go.” It’s all right reading a book that’s lovely. My book’s got a website where you can go and listen to the sounds as well. That’s another dimension, but that’s kind of a one-hit. I wanted to find somewhere where people could go and share their issues about sound or listening, and learn from other people. There was no such place, so I created one. So it’s on a platform called Circle. 

It’s the world’s leading online community platform, and it’s just opened its doors, and I have populated it with every podcast I’ve ever done, all my training courses on speaking, listening, audio branding, all sorts of different training courses are in there, free to members, lots of scientific papers and research. There are also interviews. I’m doing interviews in there exclusively for the club, a little half hour, five set fireside chats with some really interesting people. So it’s designed to be a place. It’s a resource where you can go and find out how to listen better and train and learn, and find everything you want to know about listening, sound and noise. 

But it’s also a place, I hope, as it grows, where it will become a community of people helping each other, not just me doing it, but thousands of people sharing their problems and solutions with one another. That’s the vision for it. I want it to be a force for listening in the world, and I’m very excited about it. This is my work for the rest of my life, Orion. This is what I’m now going to be doing for the rest of the years I’ve on this planet: generating, listening, being creative, recreating, and rediscovering in the world because we really, really need to do that.

My call to everybody listening is to take some action. Find silence in your life.

Yes, I totally agree. Do you remember a moment in your life where great listening just changed everything for you?

That is a very, very good question that nobody’s ever asked me before. Yeah, I think when I started my business, I sat with my oldest friend, a guy called Rod Banner, a wonderful man, one of the nicest people I’ve ever known. I was pretty despondent. I just got dumped by a girl. I was not enjoying my job. I didn’t like my house. I didn’t like anything about my life, really. I spoke with him for quite a long time. He really, really listened to me, and at the end he said, “Juls, why don’t you change it?” I hadn’t really thought of that. I thought, “You know, I could.” So, I left my job and I started my little business with an honor and a prayer. 

As many entrepreneurs do, I think I talk about listening to positions of fear and faith, and entrepreneurs, I think, have to listen from a position of faith. I don’t mean religious faith, but rather the conviction that all will be well; somehow, it’ll be okay. That’s where the entrepreneur runs up to the cliff and says, “I’ll have a go at getting to the other side,” whereas everybody else is going, “Okay, will you do that? We’ll just watch.” The entrepreneur is the person who thinks they’ll get to the other side, has faith that they can jump the gap. And so that’s what I did. I didn’t have any clients or anything. I left, and it turned out okay. It took a while, but I want a client, and then another one. Then, it evolved into a company with 200 people and offices in the UK, the US, Germany, and other locations. 

Just because one person listened to you.

And responded thoughtfully, having heard what was going on. So, listening can be very, very powerful. 

Yes, what are your three top tips for living a stellar life?

Well, first, of course, learn to listen. That’s critical. I think it’s so forgotten in the world that you inhabit. If you’re gonna have to be on social media the whole time, and it’s all of this sense, and put it out there, and be big and loud, and so forth. The noise is enormous, so learn to listen. There are tools and techniques for that. In my book, The Listening Society, I’ve discussed a few of these concepts in this conversation. 

Entrepreneurs have to listen from a position of faith.

The second would be to train your voice. The voice is how we make change. You can’t accomplish many things on your own in this world; you need to inspire and enlist people to join your team. Now I’m sure you have a team working with you, and they’re inspired by what you do, and speaking to them is how you get them enrolled, passionate, and engaged. I think I mentioned earlier that the cost of disengagement for companies is astronomical, at $8.8 trillion. Not speaking well and not listening to people who do not have that flow creates nothing but disengagement and disconnection. 

The third thing I would say is to be healthy. In my training course, my wonderful partner, Jane, is a four-time World Champion Martial Artist. She has a chapter in there called “Fit to Speak,” which is about looking after yourself. 

If you’re going to do anything, even if it’s standing on stage, people would think, “Oh, you have to be fit to stand on stage.” You should do it because you want to be at your peak when you’re doing that. You want to make sure you’ve managed your nutrition, your hydration, and you’ve done stretching beforehand. You’ve done the Amy Cuddy power poses to give yourself a boost of testosterone. Looking after yourself physically is very, very important in every walk of life. Otherwise, we don’t have a nice time as a human being, do we? I would say that if you learn to listen, train your voice, and look after your health and well-being, you’re in a pretty good place to live a stellar life.

What are some habits that you do every day to maintain that for yourself?

Well, nutrition first and foremost. I eat well. I don’t drink alcohol. I do like coffee. That’s my remaining vice in the world. But good coffee, really well made. Of all the kit stretching, I think it is absolutely critical. I’m very lucky to have Jane with her stretching programs. She integrates martial arts, yoga, tai chi, all sorts of different disciplines, pilates, and stretching routines, which are designed to be anti-aging. There’s nothing that helps me more than stretching every day. I’m 67 years old, but I can still touch my toes. I think I’m probably quite a lot younger than that, physically and mentally, I hope. 

It is very, very strongly anti-aging, because when you ossify, when everything tightens up and you can’t touch your toes, you can’t bend, you’ve got aches and pains. I see people my age who are barely able to walk, and I think it’s so sad for their quality of life. That’s something I do every day, which enormously helps me. I think everybody needs to have a program of stretching to stay mobile and healthy. 

So, you stretch and you eat healthy. Do you do voice exercises every day? Do you do any meditation? You mentioned having a three-minute quiet time that you took. Anything else that you do to improve that tool, that beautiful body, that mind?

I don’t do vocal exercises every day. I do before I have to speak in public, obviously. Before I go on stage, I do so generally. My voice is quite reliable. But it wouldn’t do any harm to do vocal exercises every day, that’s for sure. Professional singers and actors definitely would be doing that on a very regular basis. Meditation, I’ve done in the past. My silence is really my meditation now, and I do a lot of that, both here in the house and also walking. 

I live in Orkney, which is an archipelago off the north coast of Scotland, so it’s very remote and quite windy, but it’s very, very easy for me to get into nature sound. I don’t have to walk very far to go to a beach where all I can hear is wind, water, and birds, which is lovely, and I commune with that. The other thing I do a great deal is music. I listen to music in a very intense way, and it touches my soul very deeply. I still have a massive relationship with music. It’s at the core of me. Listening to music is something that transports and elevates me to wonderful places, and I still love doing that.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom. Where can people find you, get the book, and learn more about you?

Well, I think the book’s available in all the usual places now. It’s available in the USA as of yesterday, as we record this, and it’s been available in the UK for some time. It’s called Sound Affects. I’d love to offer your wonderful audience a free trial of The Listening Society. Come and join me in there. Have a week free on me, and you can do that by going to betterlistening.today/yes. That gives you a free week where you can go in and have a look around and see if it’s for you, and I hope it is. I’d love to see you in there. If you want to contact me, my website is juliantreasure.com, and you can email me at jt@juliantreasure.com. I’m always happy to hear from people.

Thank you so much, Julian. I really appreciate you being here.

Thank you. That’s wonderful to speak to you, Orion. 

Thank you, and thank you, listeners. Remember to learn to listen, train your voice, and be healthy. This is Orion till next time.