Scott Bornstein - Memory Power: Your Secret Weapon

Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for. Their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Welcome back, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Again, uh, if you are looking for uh interesting stories, uh, go to exit coach Radio, look at the advisor, uh, excuse me, the uh the uh uh boy I need, I need my next guest bad. Well. The audio library we have over 500 topics, 500 interviews, 1 minute highlights on 35 different topic file folders. You can find something interesting there to listen to every day and we upload new content every day, so please join us on. Uh, Facebook at Exitoachradio, please join us on iTunes at Exitcoachradio and and learn something every day with us. My next guest is Scott Bornstein, and I do need him. I think a lot of our listeners probably need him. If you're over age 50 plus, especially, and you're wondering if you're having a little trouble with your memory, you're going to want to listen to my next guest and probably write down some some notes, uh. Scott is the chief memory training expert at Memory Power for sales, performance, and profits here in Mission Viejo, California, and Scott's job is to make memory and recall as effortless as possible for business leaders, managers, and salespeople. That's so important. Scott's one of the top two memory experts in the world, presenting his methods and training to executives and CEOs of Vistige. YPO entrepreneurs organization and tech and Scott's topic is memory power, your secret weapon. Scott, welcome to the show and thanks so much for joining us today. Good morning, Bill. Thank you very much for having me. And and you you heard mine's mine's a little bit on the outside, the outskirts there, so I need some help with my memory too. I'm sure a lot of our listeners do. Tell us a little bit about how you got. Started and and when did you realize you were a memory expert? I mean, that must have been something that you, you realize, wow, I remember everything, or a lot of things that other people don't early on. How did you get started with that? Well, when I said I'm one of the top two memory experts in the world, my father actually is #1. Well, I, he's still #1 in my book, but he started the first memory training company in the United States in 1952. So we've had the pleasure to train people. I've worked in over 50 countries with CEOs and and sales groups training them in a very the simplest, most effective way to expand your, your, your assets, your, your, your, your basic, you know, your memory is your, your greatest asset and your greatest untrained asset at the same time. Every accomplishment in your life is proof of a solid memory and your credibility depends on it. Uh, and whether you're over 50 or under 30, it, it's still the same challenge, especially nowadays. Uh, your, your memory really works fine. It's just there's so much more to, to try and keep track of today than ever before, and I think people are feeling so overwhelmed that that that the part of the memory that that processes and recalls information is being hijacked by all the distractions in your life and And it's easily recovered and it's easy to improve. Well, that's for sure. I have, I've said for a long time if I had a a sign on my forehead, it would probably say memory full. That's so much. I know you know you get a computer, you get a computer like 10 years ago, and, and now it can't handle all the things that that are loaded onto it anymore. Memory is full. So, uh, what, what is going on? I mean, we're, we're sent so many messages to try to learn and remember, and it seems like a lot of people are saying I just, I'm getting that CRS. And you know what that stands for. Our listeners can't remember, you know what people are saying, I just can't remember stuff anymore. So you're saying no, it's there, it's just, it's just being pushed back a little bit or it's not connecting as fast or what's happening? Well, what, what, what's really happening, I call it the Google effect. Essentially nobody has to remember anything anymore. So because we have all the technology, everything is stored someplace else, but it's not at our fingertips when we need it. And part of it is just training yourself with the right routine to be able to fix, focus, and then, and then know where to anchor and recall the information by just a simple set of trainings that enable you to manage names, facts, numbers, details, presentations easily. It's just about establishing the process and then practicing it over a few short 10 days in order for it to really become embedded. And as they say, it takes about 21 days to hit that tipping point where this becomes the new normal. It's it's like anything else. It's an activity that you can use to strengthen your, your recall with a few simple steps and then, and then it's what. Focus on and frankly I would advocate remembering less but just doing it better and, and that should be your starting point. And then as your confidence and skills increase, then you can expand and increase the, you know, the amount that you that you choose to know. Now when you're talking to business owners and groups of salespeople, what areas do your tools help leaders and salespeople the most? Well, clearly the most important is, is on the human level, the contact with either the engaging the client or the employee. The great start for most is simply being able to recall the names and facts and details of the people that work in the organization. I had one fellow after a program say his goal was to learn all the names of the employees for the for the holiday party in December, and he said, not only do I want to know their names, I want to know the spouses and the children's names that would be there. And so he set up a simple schedule. He accomplished it in a little under 2 weeks, didn't tell anybody 85 employees plus spouses and kids, and he knew, you know, 25% of the people, but he didn't know everybody and now he did. And he, he blew everybody away at the holiday party last January, gets a call from the first day back at work from one of his employees who said, when I got up this morning, my wife said, not only will you be on time, you'll be early because not only does he know you, he knows me and he knows everybody in the house. Wow. So, so leadership is about, about influencing others and, and essentially we're all in the selling business in the sense that that our job is to persuade and convince and, and get people to trade time or money for, for the trust and the promise that we deliver, and we have to be precise in how we communicate that. And one of the areas that I focus in my programs with the executives and their companies is what is it that you need everybody in the in the room to remember flawlessly so that when the customer asks about a product to service their competition. Each person is prepared to say exactly what you want them to hear. It's already on your website, yet when I ask people in the room, Give me the top 3 reasons why I should do business with your company, they all say the same three things, you know, price, service, expertise, and I'm going, but your website says the following 8 things, and I repeat it for them just to make the point. That I know as much about their company as anybody else who's coming to them in advance. And, and if you think that I'm expecting you to hear, to hear something that's not on the website, it better be good. It better not be, you know, average. So you invested the time and resources to craft your message. Ultimately marketing is memory training specifically to get people to remember your message, to get them to align and and act on the things that are important in your company or organization. So I help in the connect the dots in terms of here's some useful skill sets that anybody can profit from immediately and everybody walks out feeling like the smartest person in the room because suddenly they're remembering lists of facts and and and knowing how to apply them and then with the simple worksheets that I give them, help them define is it the message. Is it processes and procedures? Is it sales scripts? Is it how to respond to customer objections, you know, is it maybe you're, you're overhauling the company or you, you bought a company and you now have to build these, bring these cultures together, together, and you have to get everybody on the same page. How do you make it possible for them to know what you want them to walk out talking about? And that's what I do. I help facilitate that and I show people how to do it for themselves. And most importantly, it's, it's one of those assets that will serve you well as you get older because frankly the brain and the memory tend to be the last thing to go unless of course there's dementia, another subject altogether. But frankly, thanks to, you know, medical science, we're going to live a lot longer, so we better train and, and, and, and increase our skills and uh and have fun in the process because this is really play. It, it lights up the brain and, and it makes, it makes recall effortless. So Scott, what I hear you saying is that not only is it important to to remember, you know, as an asset, but once you understand how people remember, you can become more memorable with the way that you craft your messages to other people. That's very important, very important. And so at the end of the day, whether, whether you're onboarding new hires that have to learn. You know your processes and your or the language around how they communicate with with with each other or you know the jargon that's necessary. You want to be sure. Why not show them how to know that and that's the fun of what I get to do. I was working with 1-800-GOT-JUN salespeople and I said, what do you want people to remember? They said, Well, they have to ask a series of questions in a certain order in a certain way. And I said, Great, how many questions are there? And they said 15 and I said, you know, I can do that. And literally within 20 minutes I had everybody remembering exactly what it was the questions we're supposed to say specifically. And that way, you know, they could be confident that everybody knew what you wanted them to do, but the point is that the next group of hires, they already had established the same training learning methodology so that everybody would know the same stories and the same thinking and the same and behave in the way that would created consistency and drove results. Now we hear a lot from branding people and others that have been on the show that, you know, it's important that your employees know your mission, your, you know, they should be able, everybody should be able to recite the same message. So this is important what you're talking about. But is there a magic number of items? I mean, 15 seems like a lot. Is there a magic number at which people's memories start to break down? Well, if they're not, if, if their memory isn't trained, usually it's about 5 to 6, and then after that they lose focus. In fact, for most people, their greatest problem is focus interrupt us, not a poor memory. They just don't know how to focus in the in the way that gives greater results. So what I do is I teach 4 different systems, so to speak, or in effect, you know, mental store places for information. And once it gets wired into the mind, and, and here's just a little bit about the research about the brain is that you need to reinforce information a few times in order for it to consolidate in the brain and the synapses and the neuronal networks demand this, and most people don't make the time. Review or refresh anything, you know, after, you know, after a day it's just buried. And so part of it is establishing a routine and, and a certain type of discipline that, you know, enables you to do it in a focused, deliberate way and in addition to that, it's just about defining which methods make the most sense. There's really only 3 systems in the universe of memory training. There is what is known as the location method, which simply means you create a fixed set of locations you always visually use to anchor and connect information to. And here, by the way, is the underlying factor of the way the brain works is that we remember stories best. Our brain fires up when we hear a story, and it can be, it can be just a word, it can be a name, it could be a number. I mean, for example, let me just give you an illustration. If someone said it's a 10 digit string of numbers that might be useful to know begins 888 711. When I say 7-Eleven bill, what comes to mind, by the way? The the stores, yeah, exactly, you know, the slurpees and oh, and the last four digits are 1215. So you could see, well, you go in and park in front of the 7-Eleven, middle of the day, every day from now on. What time of day is that, by the way, Bill? 12 exactly. And of course all the snacks you buy you 888 until you're satisfied. Got it. But if I said now all I've done is just told a story, but if I said picture those 10 numbers flashing on and off like a neon sign, the first three are the same. What are the 1st 3 numbers 8888, right? The next three numbers 11 1215. But if I said that 10 digit string of numbers backwards, you could picture it in your mind and what's the last number. And backwards, Bill, we have what? 5. Keep going 5121 117888. Perfect. So the point is simply your brain is fired up around stories. Stories are really the magic sauce that makes, you know, the memory more active, and it just lights up the mind. And the other rule, as I said before, is that you need to refresh information 7 times within 10 days. That's the rule, 7 and 10. If you want the information to get hardwired, your brain requires a little conscious effort to be able to make sure that it's got the pathways anchored and consolidated, and it only happens with the defined, and that's not 7 times a day for 10 days, that would be 70 times, but just over the next 7 days, you know, times. Next 10 days, pick a day, do a quick review, and then what happens is that suddenly it gets hardwired and you free the memory space to be able to capture an anchor and remember more because you know, you know that you know, whereas again there's a transition and you need a little practice and now it's just about how you then You know, extend that into other areas. So certainly, you know, names is something that's top of people's lists. You know, my first name is Scott, so immediately you might picture me drinking what, what kind of beverage Scotch, right. Now of course if you knew that my favorite beverage. Maalbeek, you, you wouldn't think of me that way, right? But the point is, now you've got a fixed image for the name Scott, and you can see, you can, every time you meet someone named Scott, you could picture them drinking scotch. For you, Bill, you know, if I go out to dinner with you, you'll always be picking up the bill because you're just such a great guy. But you may not actually want to do that. Um, but the point is that it's about creating a space in your mind for just a moment to allow the mind to creatively somehow create a story and then connect it in some meaningful way to something that is important to remember. But, but this is just a very simple beginning. What you take from that is that your mind can craft and connect and retain even longer strings of stories that have more items in them. And then in effect, use that as a launch point to get everybody to think and remember the same story and then have that story tell them reveal something else that's important like that number from the story or from. or from whatever the name might be. It's really fascinating and it of course very valuable if you first meet someone. I have trouble with that myself. I don't, you know, I meet someone and I meet someone else and I meet someone else, and then I can't remember the first person's name I met because I didn't have a routine down. What's a good routine for remembering someone's name as soon as you meet them? Like you said, I mean, picture scotch and that kind of thing, but what, what else? Right? So, so here's the The three top rules of this. First and foremost, as in sales, as in conversations, when people, you know, ask things of you, you need to give, you need, if you say if you immediately respond, then you're, you're, you lose an opportunity to just slow things down. So focus is really top of mind in terms of give yourself a second or two longer before you actually respond. You obviously will say the name back to the person to give them a chance to confirm you heard it. But in that process, in those few seconds, your mind is racing and working to connect make and to make things happen in your mind, and the, the, so you say the name back to the person and one other thing that's a great rule is simply I call it the rule of three that you use the name 3 times in the course of a conversation. If you do that one thing only without any of the memory techniques, you'll, you'll increase your recall immediately by 80%. Because you're immediately upping your focus and attention to hear the name, you're gonna use the name in the in the course of the conversation, and then you want to use it once at the end of the conversation. So if you just take, if you do that one thing that'll immediately make a difference. But assume for a moment that you, you have trained yourself in these methods as I teach you as so you can learn anywhere and what you would do is you would approach the situation differently. Uh, I had one fellow. Who is being interviewed for a bank president's job, and he walks in 40 people sitting around the conference room table. They go around, introduce themselves, and then they go on to interview him. And then after the interview he said, I want to thank each and every one of you personally. He goes right around the table, calls them by their first and last names, and then when it gets to the last person, they jump to their feet, give them a standing ovation, shouted, You're hired. And when they asked, When did you do this? he said, I didn't wait till this morning. I knew in advance who was going to be in the room. And Bill, for example, if you ever find yourself, you know in advance who the people are you're going to meet, you already have the list of names. So in effect you could do a little pre-work in order to make the names unforgettable and then attach it as you meet them. And again, one more thing. Is that I, I always have, I'm always prepared with a question. So when somebody says, Oh hi, my name's Bill, I said, Bill, that's great, and what do you do? So I'm immediately slowing things down, collecting a few more data points, but giving myself a chance to suddenly say, OK, Bill, I can see the bill on his forehead, he's paying the bill, he's he's he's got $100 bills, you know, in his pockets, whatever the thing that will trigger, and once I've created that picture once I can use it for every other bill I'll ever meet again. So what I, what I think I hear you're saying is the, the brain doesn't it when it's racing, when it's when it's racing on to the next thought, it, it doesn't uh remember as well as when you can slow things down and then it can kind of. Like kind of think of the roulette wheel when it's moving very quickly, the ball can't drop, but when it's, it slows down, the ball can drop. we're talking about. Exactly. And and think of it this way in the brain, where the part of the brain that processes memory, it's called the hippocampus. And it's it's on both sides of the brain and just above the hippocampus is is the organ called the amygdala, which is actually what gets activated under stress. So they're literally right next to each other and they kind of share the same, you know, energy source. So when you get stressed suddenly. Amygdala is going over into overdrive and the energy for the hippocampus, which is the memory, gets less and less and suddenly shuts down. And then when you relax, like, the stress is gone, you move away from the situation, suddenly the name pops back into your head. The thing that you wanted to say suddenly comes to your lips, and part of it is managing the stress and knowing that you have a routine that will help you make it possible to, you know, confront those situations confidently and comfortably. That that is a difficult, I mean, that's, I've had that myself where I'm thinking of something and I'm used to, you know, I'm trying to remember the name of a restaurant or the name of a person or whatnot. I get to it in the conversation. It's just like you're going to have to give me a few minutes. I'm having a senior moment. What I hear that from more and more people these days. How do we, how do we avoid that senior moment and, and find that, you know, let the roulette wheel slow down a little bit so that drops into place, right? Well, that, that, that's what the training, the memory training is all about is that it trains you to know that that your mind can slow things down, that you can, you know, calm the calm the mechanism a little bit and protect and make the asset work, you know, effectively by, by in a sense almost distracting yourself and relaxing the stress so that your brain can process and recall information. And so that's one of the things that I focus on by teaching these deliberate techniques and these systems, these systematic ways of organizing and remembering information, and then applying it to things that matter to people, whether it's names or facts or numbers or presentations or concepts. It's just a function of training yourself to do this and then in the training you're Confidence grows and those moments don't, don't stress you the way that they used to so that you, you can, you can say, oh, I realize that it's not coming yet, but it will come, and the expectation then just builds to success. Well, that's fantastic. So for you listeners out there that are a vestige member or visage chair or members of other business organizations, this is a universal topic. Everybody. can benefit from this. So I want to, you know, think very if you can remember, get in touch with Scott and Scott, tell our listeners you have also a system that they can get on your website and learn more about this as well, so they don't have to wait to see you speaking somewhere. How do they get that and what's, what's it all about? Well, thank you. My website is memorypower.com. And if you go there, you'll see a link that says connect and then and also uh there it'll say Bill Black and, and there's an offer, and you're welcome to go there to to contact me and we'll be happy to send you an invitation to uh for some of the materials that we have at a discount to bill black listeners. Also it lists my uh my travel schedule for Visage and and YPO and the other groups that I speak to and. I'm traveling and possibly if I'm in your city you'd be welcome to be my guest to sit in on a session if the opportunity presents itself or of course you could always call me and Bill, naturally you know the number they would call, right, because it begins 888. What are the next three numbers people would call 711-111215. 12:15. So did you really did you really Teach me your your phone number. That's correct. And anybody else who's listening, it's out there too. But you know it's all about, you know, once you get the right people, you want to give them the right perspective, and you want them to behave properly right now. And so I want to be the person to help you make that happen. And so if you have a challenge, you're doing some kind of transition and you want people to remember things. your cultural focus has changed or or your website's being rebuilt and you want people to be able to to know it, you know, I'd be happy to share with you how to go about making that happen and certainly love to lead you in that exercise if you're interested in making that a part of, you know, the way in which your business works. I think it's fascinating, and Scott, I want to consider this as part one of a multi-part interview because we're talking about. Self improvement with your building your memory. But think about the self empowerment when you're able to talk to people knowing how they're going to remember and making yourself memorable during that presentation. That is a gem that everybody can learn about and we're going to have to save that one for the next time. But I really want to thank you for coming on. It's been very fascinating 888. A 7-111215. Thanks very much. We'll do some subliminal material in here, Scott, great job. Thank you. Really a pleasure to meet you. It was a lot of fun. Thank you. I did as well. Look forward to taking it to the next level with you next time. All right, we're going to take a short break. We'll be right back after this, so please stay with us. Just thinking about what will happen to your business if you're gone keep you awake at night? Will you get the price you need from your business to carry you through retirement? The BEI Network of Exit Planning Professions is the world's leading advisor network with the power to help business owners transition out of business on their own timeline and terms. Ask your most trusted advisor to create a BEI plan for you, or visit us at exitlannning.com. That's exitlannning.com. You're listening to Exitoachradio.com, the information station for age 50 plus business owners, where we're interviewing top advisors for their best tips, ideas, and precautions so you can be well planned. We upload new one minute tips every day. Exitcoachradio.com. Come listen for a minute. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio.