How to Be Super Bold with Fred Joyal
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
Fred Joyal is a keynote speaker, bestselling author of Super Bold: From Under-Confident to Charismatic in 90 Days, and co-founder of 1-800-DENTIST. He ran the company for 27 years and now coaches individuals and organizations to develop boldness systematically.
Defining Boldness in Leadership
Boldness isn’t about being a risk addict—it’s about:
Saying what needs to be said.
Acting despite discomfort or uncertainty.
Aligning actions with values and purpose.
A truly bold leader avoids editing themselves or dominating; instead, they prioritize business solutions and team alignment.
Fred’s Bold Journey
Grew up introverted and missed opportunities due to hesitation.
Decided to teach himself boldness, starting with uncomfortable actions.
Boldness became a positive feedback loop—more bold actions led to surprising and rewarding outcomes.
Building the Boldness Muscle
Like physical fitness, boldness improves with repetition:
Start with small challenges: talk to a stranger, give a compliment.
Increase exposure gradually (“control the dosage”).
Practice intentional discomfort to build confidence over time.
The Line Between Bold and Reckless
Boldness is intentional and calculated, not careless.
"Burning the boats" can be motivating, but requires responsibility, especially if others depend on you.
Think through worst-case scenarios, but don’t let fear prevent action.
Boldness & Feedback Culture
Bold leaders:
Give direct, emotionally regulated feedback.
Ask for feedback and welcome critique.
Prioritize truth and growth over comfort and avoidance.
Feedback, like boldness, builds trust, strengthens teams, and supports accountability.
Boldness and Team Impact
Boldness creates deeper collaboration, creativity, and innovation.
It helps dismantle the fear of judgment or rejection within leadership teams.
Fred emphasizes: “Boldness isn’t just for you—it’s how you impact others.”
Practical Steps to Get Started
Reframe self-labels: You're not “shy,” you're shy in certain contexts.
Give “drive-by compliments” daily—no expectations, just positivity.
Accept rejection, embarrassment, and fear as choices—not inevitabilities.
Start where you are: even smiling at strangers can be your first rep.
How Fred Helps Others Get Bold
His book Super Bold includes 90 days of progressive boldness exercises.
He works with companies to establish boldness cultures across departments.
Offers individual and executive coaching for bold decision-making and leadership transformation.
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Mike Goldman (00:02)
Fred Joyal is a keynote speaker and bestselling author, as well as a lifelong entrepreneur having founded 1-800-DENTIST and run it for 27 years. He now speaks on how anyone can increase their boldness and confidence in a systematic way. His book is called Super Bold, From Underconfident to Charismatic in 90 Days. Fred and I met event I spoke at, and I guess,
We took an Uber on the way back to the airport and I know you were heading into the city so I recommended some good plays and that's how we got to know each other. But Fred, welcome to the show.
Fred Joyle (00:41)
Great to be here, Mike. Yeah, and it was a good start to the relationship because you teed up
a couple of good Broadway shows for me to hit, and I hit them that very same weekend.
Mike Goldman (00:52)
Beautiful, beautiful. Hey, I'll start the way I always start with a question about the leadership team. Fred, your experience, what do you believe is the one most important characteristic of a great leadership team?
Fred Joyle (01:07)
is that they, no one feels the need to edit themselves or to dominate the conversation. you know, and in a meeting or a situation, it's all about, it's not about attention for you, it's about what's the solution for the business. And a corollary to that,
is as a team that is using the core values as a lexicon for how you approach things. You know, what are our values and is this new project we're starting on or this new feature we're adding or this new pricing model? Is it aligned with our values? And so a team that uses that as a shorthand really
gets things done much faster. And also they're fulfilling the core values.
Mike Goldman (02:00)
Yeah, love that. So often companies come up with, know, we're going to do our mission, vision, values, because some smart coach or consultant told us to do it. They do it, they put it up on a wall. Maybe they introduce it with some big fanfare and then they never talk about it again. Or maybe it's on some BS annual performance review where people see, but to your point, I think when people use
whether it's values or purpose, I like to say purpose rather than mission, whether it's values or purpose to use those when you're making a decision. know, should we go left or should we go right? I don't know, what would be more consistent with our values? What would be more consistent with our purpose? I love that. So I'm with you, I'm aligned on that. So we're gonna talk about boldness, obviously, today.
Fred Joyle (02:51)
Yes.
Mike Goldman (02:52)
I guess the first question I have for you is, know, boldness is not the typical topic that we talk about. I can't say I've had anybody else on the show in my hundred and twenty some odd episodes and we've talked about boldness. So it's unique. What, why, how did boldness become important to you?
Fred Joyle (03:11)
I think because of the profound impact boldness had on my life, because I was a very introverted person growing up and I missed out on so many opportunities that it went beyond frustrating to actually angering me. And I thought I have to do something about it. And I started to teach myself to be bolder despite how uncomfortable it made me. And what happened was
all sorts of positive, unexpected things started to happen. And so it created this new feedback loop. Instead of being hesitant, instead of being afraid, instead of fearing rejection or embarrassment or being laughed at or failing, I started to just go in not even sure how it was going to go. And just amazing things started to happen.
And this all sprang from watching other people that I thought, oh, they're bold. They must have been born this way because nothing stops them. Oh, they certainly don't stop themselves. They wait for somebody else to try. I thought, well, at first I thought, oh, they're a show off. They're they're they're an attention addict. And that's all just jealousy. Right. When you think that stuff, that's you just.
are resenting them for enjoying their life and not inhibiting themselves. And I thought, I gotta let go of that judgment. And I wanna discover what they have. And what happens is you create your own boldness. don't, not everybody becomes, you know, the life of the party, but what you do is chase your dreams. You're not the one.
keeping you from getting to your dreams. And that's the essence of a really super bold life.
Mike Goldman (05:12)
So is boldness, is it really about, is it about being a risk taker or is it more than that?
Fred Joyle (05:21)
I think it's more about saying what needs to be said, trying what you need to get to, doing what you should be doing, instead of coming up with several things. I'll get to it when I have money, I have time, I have more opportunity.
When you're waiting for the world to make it ready for you, you're going to wait a long time. And so what happens to bold people is they say, wow, I don't know how this is going to go, but I feel the need to do this. And so I'm going to do it. I'm going to quit that job. I'm going to ask that person to dance with me. I'm going to start this business.
I'm gonna tell that person that that joke's not funny anymore. Any one of those things is an example of just you not inhibiting yourself so that you are who you wanna be. That you are fully who you wanna be in every situation and on your deathbed, you don't have a list of regrets.
I wish I had done this, I should have done that. If only I had. You just say, I'm ready to go. Because I left it all on the mat. I left it all on the court.
Mike Goldman (06:48)
What's an example from your life? As you said, you started off where you weren't so bold and you kind of taught yourself, but what's an example in your life of being bold and what impact did it have?
Fred Joyle (07:01)
Well, I'll give you two examples. And the big example is I quit my job at an ad agency with very little extra cash. And with a good friend of mine, we started 800 Dentist and we borrowed 20 grand from our parents and launched this business. We didn't know anything about dentistry, about call centers, about
how to see dentists, what they buy, how they promote. And we were very early in the promotion of dental practices. We jumped off the high board with two glasses of water to fill the pool with on the way down. And so we had to invent every aspect of it, but we just kept showing up every day, figuring out what to do.
And it, and that just turned into one bold move after another. We'd go knocking on doors and try to get a dentist to listen to us. And we play radio spots for him or her and say, we're going to run these radio spots and we're going to give you all of the patients that come in for your zip code. we had no idea if it was even going to work. It took six months of beating the streets of, of, I mean, probably talk to 300.
dentists before we found 18 who were willing to go along with our crazy scheme. and so, but the, but I had developed my boldness in the advertising agency because it was this first place that I had worked where you expressed all your ideas and sorted them out. And that's actually a process of like, you got to get your bad ideas out first.
so you could get to the good idea. So there was never any editing or judgment. was like people just start throwing stuff out. And I had done a whole bunch of jobs before I discovered advertising, because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was a bartender. I worked laying carpet. I sold frozen meat door to door. I worked in a machine shop. I was a chef in a hotel in France.
The list goes on and on, none of them careers. And then I walked into an ad agency and went, these are my people. I could do this. I could do this for the rest of my life. so at one point, and because I had the business experience, this is getting more detailed, but you'll see the point of it, is I just, I was so bold at expressing my ideas.
I have what's called what I call the opposite of imposter syndrome. I think I'm better than I actually am most of the time. And and so. They would bring me into meetings because I had so much business experience, even though was a junior copywriter, because I would enthusiastically pitch my idea to the client, and that's what they needed was like somebody who could pitch.
Mike Goldman (09:38)
you
Fred Joyle (09:56)
and get the client to go along with the campaign and invest the money. And then one day I was at a big agency, the LA office of a big agency and the CEO and the president had both come to town. And I had remembered at one point the CEO talking about how he always gets stuff on his tie.
Just the day before he had mentioned this very casually in one of the meetings. And so the next day I get in the elevator, there's like eight other employees, the CEO and the president are both on the elevator. Everybody's afraid to talk because it's the leaders. And I turn and look at the president and I lift this tie up and I said, I'm just wondering what you had for breakfast.
Mike Goldman (10:41)
You
Fred Joyle (10:43)
Now he busts out laughing and so does the president because he knows it could actually be on there and everybody else in the elevator is like Fred's crazy. But the CEO remembered me forever after that as a junior copywriter. And it was just it was just how could this go? This could go really badly. So what?
Mike Goldman (11:12)
So that's all I
Fred Joyle (11:12)
So it's a little thing
and a big thing, very little thing and a very big thing. it all, know, some of it's just an exercise in being bold just to see what happens. Because that's all it is. Boldness builds like a muscle. You use it, you expand it, and you get stronger. And there's going to be points in your life, maybe once, twice, three, four, five times where it is critical that you step up.
that you speak up, that you act and don't hesitate. And it will change the whole trajectory of your life.
Mike Goldman (11:47)
See, here's what I'm curious about and I'll give you a little example and then I'll ask the question. You may say I gave this person bad advice and maybe I did. So a number of years ago, I've mentored a number of coaches in my life, newer coaches. And I remember talking to someone who wanted to get into coaching. They were doing zero coaching, wanted to get into coaching and
they were ready to quit their job like tomorrow, join this coaching organization I happened to be a part of and they were gonna get into coaching. And I thought of my experience getting into coaching and it took a while and man, if my wife wasn't working and I didn't have a few pennies in the bank and it was probably literally a few pennies back then, but if my wife wasn't working.
Like we would have lost the house. We wouldn't have been able to pay the mortgage because I had some years of, of difficulty. So this person's about to quit their job and go into coaching. I said, you know, if you don't mind me asking a personal question, how many months of expenses do you have in the bank right now? And he said, I've got two or three. I said,
I can't make a decision for you, you may want to think about whether you want to quit your job so fast. Now, quitting his job and getting into coaching, that certainly would have been a bold decision. You doing 1-800-DENTIST saying, we don't know much about dentistry or whether this is going to work, but we're going to do it. So it brings me finally to my question, which is, how do you know where that line is between boldness and just a bad idea?
Fred Joyle (13:26)
There's really such an interesting way of analyzing it because there's bold and there's stupid. it may be bold to ride a motorcycle without a helmet. It's also stupid. OK, unless you're an organ donor, in which case we appreciate it.
But, and that sounds very callous, be careful if you're riding a motorcycle and wear your damn helmet. I have friends who have lost their life and injured on a motorcycle. That's why I talk like this, paralyzed on a motorcycle. so that's not bold. That's just, that's the risk taking without calculating the downside.
But then the thing is, if you really want something and you're hesitating, you find yourself hesitating. Now it's not physical stuff. It's like...
It's an achievement. It's like, if I give myself a way out, then I won't do it as hard as I need to. So I come down two ways on this, Mike. To me, I think there's real power in burning the boats in the harbor, okay? Letting the door lock behind you, so you gotta figure it out.
But if you've got responsibilities to other people, then you can't be all gas and no breaks. So you've got to say, if this doesn't work, what do I do? What's my next bold move? How do I fall back without falling all the way down? So to me, it's like, it's always this thing. But if you're hesitating about
Speaking up about apologizing for something, about giving somebody the feedback that they need. You know, and one of the key examples I use is a good friend is always great to hang out with. A great friend tells you when you're off course, tells you when you're missing out. Like, know, dude, you're not spending enough time with your kids, buddy, you're not managing your money, right? You're spending money like a drunken sailor.
And I love you. And I want to see you. know you're you're diving towards peril in your life here. That's a great friend, because a great friend is bold enough to call you on your shit and tell you when when you're off course, whether they're right or not. They'll say, look, I got to tell you this, and I might be wrong, but I can't sit on this.
But a good friend or good acquaintance just goes along and says, I don't want to rock the boat. I don't want to upset him. I don't want him to think I'm being nosy. know, but sometimes you you got to speak up.
Mike Goldman (16:21)
And by the way, you say a good friend. I think everything you said applies to a good leader or a great leader. Right. I mean, I have had been so frustrated sometimes by leaders who, who, have a member of their team that is just not as productive as they need to be, or they're, or they're not living the core values that you mentioned earlier.
Fred Joyle (16:28)
Yes.
Mike Goldman (16:45)
And they can go, let alone days and weeks, but months and quarters, and sometimes years and not open their mouth because they're somehow afraid of the difficult conversation. Well, being bold and saying, Hey, you got to give people that direct feedback. I've had a leader that had to tell someone that they had bad body odor. That's a tough thing to tell somebody, but pretty important.
Fred Joyle (17:08)
Yeah, but you
have to tell them. Is it kindness to not tell them? Is it helping your company? I mean, that's one of the key applications of boldness as a business leader is giving feedback before it's overcharged with emotion. Because eventually it builds up so much that you just go, you are always late.
which is not true. They are often late, late enough to make you really angry. A bold leader says, I can't help but notice that you're having trouble getting to work on time. Why do you think that is and how can we fix it?
That's bold feedback. And when you're bold, you learn how to talk too, because you level off the appropriate emotion to the conversation. You are in charge of your emotions. I heard somebody say this and I thought, what's the most powerful skill a leader can have? And the answer was unusual. He said, emotional regulation.
being able to control your response, to not be reactive, but to say, what am I looking for as a result? And manage your words and your level of emotional intensity appropriately for the result, rather than the barfing of your tension, irritation, frustration, anger.
Mike Goldman (18:24)
Interesting.
Fred Joyle (18:47)
That obviously applies in your personal life too. But there's also the other side of that, which is just as important, is you have to be bold enough to ask for feedback. To say, yeah, praise is nice, but critique is useful. Tell me what's wrong with this. Tell me where I'm off course. Tell me how
this could be better. How could I be better? know, and that, and it's, so the two sides of feedback both require boldness and they make a profound difference as a leader when you master them.
Mike Goldman (19:28)
So it's easy to have a belief that I know you don't have. It's easy to have a belief that you're kind of born bold or not. Well, that's just not who I am. I'm not bold, but you've already said you didn't start off that way and you, and you learned how to be more bold. And now that is who you are. So for, for someone that is more hesitant and not as bold, what are some things we can do as leaders, as individuals?
What are some things we can do to increase our level of boldness?
Fred Joyle (20:01)
Yeah, and I think it starts with understanding that we all have situational boldness and situational confidence and situational underconfidence and situations where we hesitate. The problem is we hesitate when it matters the most to us because we're afraid that it won't go the way we want it to. Whereas by not taking any action, it's going the way we don't want it to because we're not acting.
So you're defining yourself. I take it as something as simple as when you say, I'm a shy person, I say, really? Are you shy at Thanksgiving dinner? Are you shy at a Seder when you're there? You know, are you shy with your best friend? Probably not. So what the change that stop defining yourself.
peel that label off your forehead, if that's where you happen to have it, in reverse type. So every time you look in the mirror, it reads, I'm shy, and say, I behave in a shy way in certain situations, because that's the truth. And what you want to do is expand that comfort where you're not shy, where you have situational boldness instead of situational
hesitation. And it's and like I said at the beginning, boldness builds like a muscle. You know, if you say, look, I want to be a I really think I want to be a public speaker. But I but I'm terrified of being on stage. So what you don't do is get in front of a room of 300 people and try to give an hour keynote as your first try, because you'll never speak again, because you will.
do so badly that it will be painful to even think about. So you go to Toastmaster and you have to do a five minute talk. That's it. And everybody sucks in the room. And they are there to get better. So they're there to critique you and support you at the same time. Now, that's public speaking. Let's say, I just want to be able to be more comfortable.
just speaking to people. So talk to a stranger every single day, just wherever you are. Talk to the person in front of you in line at Starbucks. Talk to somebody in an elevator. I talk to people every time I'm in an elevator, I talk to people. And you just, and you go, well, I don't know what to say. It's like, well, you don't have to, do you think you have to be clever, witty, interesting? No.
You just have to be nice and observant. Go with a compliment. That beard looks great on you. I can't grow a beard to save my life, but on you, that beard looks great. OK, that's it. And with no expectation of any response whatsoever, if you lose the agenda and just say, I'm going to offer a compliment, I call it a drive by compliment. And it's it's to somebody.
where the stakes are so low that if they say, get out of my face, it doesn't matter. They're a complete stranger. You could almost say, I'm going talk to three strangers or more a day until somebody cold shoulders me. And I'm not going to take it personally. That's just building your boldness muscle. That's just saying, I could do one more rep in the gym. We go to the gym.
to be deliberately uncomfortable for 45 minutes to an hour.
So all I'm saying is be deliberately uncomfortable, intentionally uncomfortable for a minute a day, for 30 seconds a day. And realize that you're feeling more comfortable. You're starting to come up with things that people are responding to. If you start doing drive-by compliments, you'll be amazed that you've been out there
You're sprinkling this fairy dust of positivity on people. Why not be that? Why not be a voice of upliftment in the world? Be generous with that. Perfect example is I'll when I get I love coffee with a mad passion. So if I get a Starbucks and I I'll grab it from the counter and and then I'll go back.
And I'll say to the barista, excuse me. And now what are they expecting? A complaint. OK, so their expectation is all as low as it could possibly be. And I say, this is absolutely perfect. And I just had to let you know. It changes their entire day. You see it on their face.
And how long did that take me to say? Eight seconds? And you start to do that and you say, this is who I want to be. This is the real me coming out. All I want you to do is bring your fullest self to the world. Because you're depriving the world of you when you do this hesitation and inhibition and self-definition.
of, I'm an introvert, I don't like crowds, I don't like people, people don't find me interesting. All this horseshit we tell ourselves so articulately over and over again.
Mike Goldman (25:46)
So you've just inspired me. I'm absolutely going to do what you just said the next time I'm in a Starbucks. And because I mean, really is such an easy thing to do. And you guys know exactly that they expect, they expect a complaint. So I love that. So, so I heard two things out of what you said in terms of activities people could do to be more bold. One is, is, is rip that label off, reframe. And you're not a shy person. You're shy in this.
Fred Joyle (25:55)
Yeah.
Mike Goldman (26:13)
situation. You're not indecisive. You're indecisive in these situations. So one is about reframing and not labeling yourself. The second is building muscles, taking the small steps, the drive-by complements being an example. What else? What else could we do if we want to want to start building that boldness muscle?
Fred Joyle (26:34)
It comes down to finding times when you're saying no to fun, which is a really bizarre thing that people do all the time. Like people say, come on, we're gonna go sing karaoke. And you go and they say, come on up, you can sing back up and you go, no, no, no, I have a terrible voice. And you say, like, did you hear the last guy?
It's, he's having the time of his life because this, he loves this song there so much and he's going and he's putting us through his off key singing of it, but he's enjoying himself. Why are you saying no? So find those little places where you, where you think you need to excel when actually you just need to participate. People will love you if you get up and dance.
My business partner is a wild dancer. It's hilarious to watch him, but it also looks like he's really enjoying himself as he does it. And so people can't judge him negatively because it's like he's enjoying himself. Well, I can say he's he's he's not a balletic dancer or, you know, he's never going to back up JLo on stage. That doesn't matter. It's like.
Why are you forcing yourself to be a bump on a log? Why are you choosing to be the wallflower? Speaking of the wallflower, that's another little boldness exercise. Whenever I'm in a room and I see that person, who used to be me, by the way, who is...
looking at the record collection or the books in the library or examining the artwork while everybody else is talking to somebody, I go right over to them and I start talking to them.
And what happens is they start to open up because I just probe. I want to know who they are, what matters to them. And that's one of the great things is just have your first question that opens people up. Like what's the most interesting place you've been to this year? Or how did you happen to know the host? Because she's a great woman and I just met her, but I'm so curious.
how you met her. Just have your go-to, know, what's the most interesting thing that happened this week for you? What's the most surprising thing that you learned this week?
beauty of it is it's not a yes or no. It's not how are ya. It's tell me about you. And then the other key to it is when they answer.
listen to the answer and ask the next level question. you know what? The most interesting thing to me is like, actually finally decided to go buy a car and they would charge me so much for the car that I actually left the dealership. And I was pretty proud of myself for not just letting the sales guy talk me into it. I said, yeah, so what kind of car do you want?
Have you thought about buying a used version or doing a swap a lease on the car and just ask questions? That's this is people think they have to be interesting in situations and all they have to be is curious. And if and if if you're if you're not curious about people, that's your problem. That's not their problem that they're not interesting is that.
You have built up this shyness wall that you say you're not curious about people. We are all social animals. We are not rugged individualists like everybody thinks Americans actually are, which we're not.
Mike Goldman (30:34)
One of the interesting things about what you're saying is, you know, initially we started the conversation, I think, of boldness and if I'm more bold, how is it going to impact me? You know, making the, or we think how it's going to impact the individual that is hesitating to start a business or make that decision or ask that person to dance or whatever it is. But a lot of what you're talking about is more about
you're impacting other people, whether it's, and it impacts you too, but the drive-by compliment, the wallflower going and talking to them, it's more that boldness is not just how it impacts you, it's how you could have greater impact on others.
Fred Joyle (31:17)
And you know, and a more serious example, because I talk about the the situations that are come up that if you don't act, that is a regret you are going to drag all the way to your deathbed. the example I like to use, because this happens so often is when you're at a funeral and they say, does anybody want to get up and say something?
And I have been at so many of those where nobody will speak.
So what I've learned to do is get up and be the first one. Because people are playing this thing in their head. I don't know what I would say. What if I cried? What if I choked up? It would be so embarrassing. What nonsense to be telling yourself. This is your last chance to say how you feel about this person. It is not a performance that you are going to either get an Emmy or an Oscar for.
It is not a speech. It is an expression of how you feel. So I'll get up and I'll talk and I'll say now I'm usually prepared to say something. But what I do is I just I pour out my heart. I say something funny. I say something deeply touching and invariably by the time I'm done, I'm completely choked up and it gives everybody else permission.
And before it's over, 10 people have gotten up and said something. And 10 people left that funeral going, crap, I should have said something. And I don't want people to be that because that window is going to slam shut.
It's you gotta seize the moment. This is a really important point. So I wanna make it is when it comes to boldness is people say carpe diem, seize the day. But here's the reality. Most opportunity and the most important ones, the most crucial ones in your life happen in a moment. You don't have all day to debate what you could say and.
summon the courage and all of that and the wherewithal and and the audacity to to speak up or step up or take action because the window shuts sometimes it's seconds sometimes it's yes or no right then and you go I should have said yes but it's too late they've gone to the next person they've given the opportunity to somebody else or the opportunity has disappeared
I want you to build your boldness muscle so that when it matters most, you carpe momentum, you seize the moment.
Mike Goldman (34:19)
What's the biggest thing that holds people back from boldness? mean, is it as simple or maybe as complex as fear or is it sometimes something different than that?
Fred Joyle (34:33)
It's a fear, a fear. It's not fear itself. It is a specific fear very often of being embarrassed, of being, or it's a fear of being rejected. It's a fear of looking stupid. Bold people aren't worried about looking stupid or being embarrassed or getting rejected.
Those three things don't affect them. They say, those are choices I choose not to make. My favorite story about that embarrassment concept is a good friend of mine, she's a great public speaker, walks on stage, she's on stage for about 10 minutes, hooks her high heel in a seam on the stage and snaps the heel right off.
And there's a gasp in the audience and it's all the women, because this is horrifying. And she looks down, kicks off her shoes and says, well, I guess I got to start spending more than 30 bucks on shoes.
She made a choice not to be embarrassed. And the net result, she owned that audience. Because they all went like, I would be so embarrassed. She said, I'm not embarrassed. Don't be embarrassed for me. And she just did the rest of the performance barefoot. But she showed them, I'm a human being. Stuff like that happens. I choose not to be embarrassed.
And that's the thing, rejection is a choice. Embarrassment is a choice. Feeling dumb or stupid or not smart enough is a choice. Feeling like you're not worthy is a choice. It's a really bad tape to play in your head, the not worthy tape. And that's one of the big things that keeps people from acting, that makes them hesitate when it matters.
Mike Goldman (36:36)
Yeah. And, and this is, this is something for, when you talk about this, I think about my own struggles and there are certainly areas of my life where I have been bold, but there are also areas I think about. So I'm a member of the national speakers association, New York chapter and joined probably five or six years ago, maybe right before COVID or a few meetings before COVID. And I didn't know anybody.
So I went and sat and learned from the speaker and did a little bit of networking. But one of the labels I put on myself is I don't like networking, you know, all that much. And it's a label. So I'm sitting there and then near the end, the MC of the two and a half hour meeting we had says, no, we're about to be done, but we're not really done because all of us are going to go down the street to, you know,
the bar two blocks away and we're all gonna hang out so join us there. There's no way I was joining them there. Cause I didn't know anybody. I'm gonna stand there and not know who to talk to. In my mind, they're all good friends, which is bullshit, but they're all good friends and I'm gonna be on the outside and I don't know, I'm not gonna talk to them. So you know what? I should probably get home anyway. I got a lot of work to do and I would leave.
Fred Joyle (37:41)
Yeah.
Mike Goldman (37:54)
And I did that for about a year and barely got to know anybody at the chapter beyond just a smile and a wave. And then my bold move, and this is kind of a small step bold move to your point was I said, I got to do something, get more involved in the chapter. So I said, what, does it take to be on the board of the chapter? Thinking that being on the board with some prestigious thing, it was all the
you know, the new dumb people that didn't know any better that they'd asked to be on the board. But they said, sure, come on the board. And I joined that board and made some of the best friends that I've had in my life. And now I'm the first one to say, Hey, we're going to park Avenue Tavern a block and a half away. Who's going up? That's where the real meeting happens. And we have a blast there for 60 or 90 minutes after every meeting. And I look, I'm like,
Fred Joyle (38:33)
Thank
Mike Goldman (38:53)
I wasted over a year of thinking, I don't know anybody. So I struggle with this as well. So Fred, for me and anybody else before we start to wrap up here, is there one more piece of advice, one more for those folks like me that, for me it's about networking and meeting new people and a...
Fred Joyle (38:56)
Yeah.
Mike Goldman (39:17)
getting into a new group of people that I struggle with a little bit, although on stage I'm fine when it comes to meeting one or two or five people, you know, I hesitate. What's one more piece of advice before we start to wrap things up?
Fred Joyle (39:31)
It's probably the most important thing is start where you are. I mean, you may be incredibly introverted. So the big thing for you is to start at the right dosage. Life is about controlling the dosage. And you don't want to do something that overdoses you. Forget how I am, because I was just like you.
I was the wallflower. I was the one hesitated. I was the one. I could go to a party and meet nobody. And with whatever reason, you know, they weren't interesting. I don't like to meet people. The reality is you meet one interesting person at a party. That's a home run. Go deep on one person, but it's control the dosage from where you're at.
I coach bold people all the time who say, I'm bold, but I don't know how to do it systematically. I'm sort of randomly like that. But then there's times where I hesitate and I said, yeah, when it matters. And they went, yeah, exactly. I said, so I can help them expand their comfort zone from how wide it already is to where they want to be. say, because you can always become bolder. I'm on a lifelong journey of becoming bolder.
So be truthful with yourself about where you're at and start where you need to start to be uncomfortable, but not so uncomfortable that you retreat into your shell. So if you're a total closet case with introversion, you need to just go out and smile at people. Smile at five people a day and don't worry if they smile back because
Some won't. Don't worry about it because you have no idea what headspace they're in. Just smile and keep moving. I do it all the time. Just for practice and also just to see what people do because the strangest people will just speak to you. You know, I remember riding, I'm going on a bike ride in my old neighborhood and I
would always be on this bike path. And it'd be this guy who was walking cowboy hat and stuff like that. He saluted everybody that went by in a bike. And I thought, that's a really fun thing to do. But he didn't decide whether you were going to salute him back or not. He wasn't expecting a salute. He was just doing it. So with anybody, control the intensity of the experience so that you're uncomfortable, not
forced to retreat farther back into your shell. You want to just like with exercise, you're trying to get in shape. You have an exercise in three years, don't try to bench 200 pounds, you're just going to crush your chest gap. Start with what is difficult, but doable.
Mike Goldman (42:31)
it. Love it. So it makes me think of that year that I didn't go and hang out with everybody. I could have just said, I'm going to go for 10 minutes. And my guess is 10 minutes probably would have went to 20 minutes and 30 minutes because I would have had a good time. But it would have been an easier small step for me to take to build that muscle.
Fred Joyle (42:47)
Yeah, I'm going to I'm
going to I'm going to have one drink. I'm going to talk to one person. That's the thing is, like you say, I have trouble meeting people at events. Your goal talk to one person. If that's too much, say one sentence to one person. If that's too much, smile at one person. And the next time smile at two people. It's your journey. It starts where you are.
but it can go an amazingly high level where you're just comfortable everywhere. And that's really the goal is to choose action every time instead of hesitating and missing that opportunity. Now you got lucky with the National Speakers Organization because you had a year. Never mind Carpe Diem, you had Carpe Anum.
Right? You took you a year to seize it and you've managed to get away with it. So that's not a good example. I was like, take your time. That's not what I'm recommending. Wait a year until you're ready.
Mike Goldman (43:53)
Yeah,
was a plea for help, Fred, not an example of what to do. And I think this is so important, back to the whole purpose of the show is leadership teams. you pointed it out earlier is that this isn't just for you. It's the impact on the people around you as well. And I think on a leadership team, if
people are bolder. If you're a member of a leadership team, being bolder is going to help you create. It's not only about making bold decisions, it's also going to help and I'm bold business decisions, but it's what's going to help you create deeper, more open, more honest, more mutually beneficial relationships with the team members around you, the people you work with, the people you work for.
So I think this is very, very relevant to creating great leadership teams.
Fred Joyle (44:48)
And just
one more thing on exactly that is some people hesitate to collaborate because they don't want to be judged as their idea is not worthy. I'd rather work alone. It's like, yeah, but you and I know that collaboration gets an exponentially better result.
So it takes boldness to say, I'm gonna be uncomfortable collaborating until you realize the benefit of it. I just shot a video yesterday. I shot three videos and I was talking to my brand builders coach and the old Fred would have said, I'm not gonna show anybody. I'm just gonna put it out there and hope it's okay and hope it does what I want. Instead I said,
Tell me which one of these works better and what's wrong with each of them. And what happened is the third one, she went, it's that one, which by the way, wasn't the one I was gonna run. But I just asked, I worked with somebody that was there to work with me. So the boldness to collaborate is just one more incredible breakthrough team.
Behavior.
Mike Goldman (46:05)
Fred, if someone hearing this wants to be bolder, that I get it, this is important, maybe I need some help, how do you, I know you do some coaching, you do some speaking, obviously you've got the book, Super Bold, what are some of the ways you work with people, you work with clients?
Fred Joyle (46:23)
So I have a book called Super Bold, not about football, it's got a D at the end, and that's on Amazon in hardcover, and it's me reading the audio book, and there's a Kindle version of it. The last third of the book is exercises, boldness exercises that start pre-verbally and work all the way up to some crazy stuff.
that you do gradually, but you challenge yourself. You know where to go next. So that's one way is with the book. if you have an organization and you say, I really wish my team were bolder. wish my sales force were bolder because prospecting takes boldness. Closing takes boldness. talking about the competition takes boldness. Anybody can be better at sales if they dial up.
their boldness. So I'll, I'll coach a sales team. I've, I've done lectures for a whole organization and they said, all right, the theme for next year is going to be boldness and the whole team, every department gets behind it and they have weekly meetings saying, what's, what's our bold goal? What's, what's the bold action the team's going to take, whether it's accounting or marketing or HR. And so I love working with companies.
And with high level executives, I'll do individually coach some of them. But they got to be coachable. If I find that they're not stretching themselves, they just want me to fix everybody else in the organization. And I know they're the problem. Then I'm just going to say, you're the problem. When you want to work on you, that's what we'll work together.
Mike Goldman (48:06)
So obviously, so if they want the book, they go out to Amazon. If they want to know more about you and your speaking and your coaching, where should they go?
Fred Joyle (48:14)
Fredjoyal.com, J-O-Y-A-L, rhymes with royal and is spelled like it. And you can see my speaking page, you can actually get links to buy the books there, download the first chapter, can even download the boldness exercises if you wanna just start doing them, go crazy without even understanding the principles behind them.
And there's, you can watch a couple of lectures of mine. There's a couple of quick videos as well. the website is robust with stuff and it's how to connect with me.
Mike Goldman (48:46)
Beautiful. Well, thanks so much. I always say if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. Fred, thanks for helping us get there today.
Fred Joyle (48:55)
My pleasure, Mike. Always great to have these conversations with you.