Influence Every Day

Three times, the event changed underneath me minutes before I spoke. A 15-minute talk became an hour for a completely different audience. A 40-minute keynote shrank to seven. And a text arrived that no speaker wants to read before logging on. Here's what I did each time, plus the storytelling structure I used to tell these stories to a room full of speakers.

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Last week I spoke at a speakers' training. Talking to speakers about speaking is its own kind of pressure (you can feel yourself being analyzed). So I told them three near-miss disasters from my own speaking life:

In this episode I walk through what actually saved each one: a modular talk built from images, a backup plan that fits in a bag, and a sixty-second state reset.

Then I pull back the curtain on how I told the stories. I used nested loops, a structure from hypnosis and storytelling that holds attention by leaving stories open and closing them in reverse order.

Underneath it all is a single lesson: Even though the lights are on you, the talk belongs to the audience and to the people who brought you there to serve them.

The first change is information. When your time gets cut once, launch the backup plan prep right away, just in case.

Build talks in sections you can move, skip, or expand. Image-based slides work as cues, so one image can stretch to five minutes or pass in five seconds.

Carry a backup that needs nothing but paper. Index cards and Sharpies turned seven minutes into a book written by 500 people.

State management is a skill you prepare in advance. Know your sixty-second reset before the day you need it.

Organizers are carrying far more than your talk. Absorbing the chaos quietly is part of the service.

Nested loops (open A, open B, open C, close C, close B, close A) hold attention because people are pulled to finish what's been interrupted. Close every loop you open.

public speaking, keynote speaking, professional speaker, speaker tips, last-minute changes, state management, storytelling, nested loops, open loops, Zeigarnik effect, Ovsiankina effect, event planning, audience engagement, influence, Influence Every Day

Before you rehearse what you're going to say in your next hard conversation, ask a different question: what has the room already decided?

Dr. Tori has been running back-to-back (Not So) Difficult Conversations workshops, and the first skill every room learns is setting the stage... the environment, the time, the timing, the messaging that lands before anyone arrives, and the first few moments after they do. In this episode he makes the case that rooms are more important than rules, because the environment shapes behavior whether or not anyone remembers the rule.

He travels through eight spaces designed to change how people show up:

Most of these rooms do one thing: they shed status before the conversation starts. And some do the opposite on purpose... because if every meeting you run ends in full agreement, that's a red flag for potential groupthink.

The episode closes with the part that stings: we set rules for ourselves, break them, beat ourselves up... Never once do we ask whether we designed the room to make the rule easy. You're already deliberate about the room when you want to chill with a friend or family. Be that deliberate when the stakes are high.

Context is more important than content.

Pick one conversation you've been avoiding. Before you rehearse a single sentence, change one thing about the room... where, when, or what they hear before they walk in. Then see how much rule you still need.

Several months ago a colleague and friend reached out. She was about to appear as a guest speaker on a webinar and she was, in her words, incredibly anxious.

Her email said something close to this: "You always say if you can ever serve me to let you know. Well, I'm letting you know."

So I did two things. I offered her a practice run where she could present to me first. And I recorded her a video... ten points, off a single index card, no script.

Over the next couple of months, a few other people asked me some version of the same question. I removed her name and every reference to her situation, and sent them the same video with one line: "I recorded this for someone else. Perhaps you'll find it helpful."

Every one of them came back to say it helped.

This episode is that video.

If you have something coming up (a webinar, a panel, a podcast guest slot, a keynote, a board presentation) this is what I'd tell you if you emailed me the night before.

Inside this episode:

KEY TAKEAWAYS

QUOTES

"Ed. Ed. Ed. They need you more than you need them."
- Dr. Mark Smith

"You're not performing. You're serving."

"They don't know what you were going to say. They only know what you said."

"Nobody needs to know that you have notes right in front of your face."

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

LINKS

TAGS / KEYWORDS

public speaking anxiety · nervous before a presentation · webinar tips · guest speaker preparation · state management · manage your state · influence · communication · presentation nerves · podcast guest tips · Core Influence Framework™ · SFPC · 7 Simple Rules of Influence · Dr. Ed Tori · Influence Every Day

Someone took credit for your work. Before you settle on a verdict, Dr. Tori has a confession - and a video from a fifth-grade play in the 1980s that dismantled his favorite origin story.

It starts on the train to Georgetown. A distracted scroll lands Ed on a self-described body language expert quoting the famous "7-38-55 rule" (the claim that 93% of communication is nonverbal). If you've heard that statistic, here's what you may not have heard: it misreads Albert Mehrabian's 1967 studies (popularized through his 1971 book Silent Messages), which applied only to a narrow case — communications about feelings and attitudes, when words and tone conflict. Mehrabian himself has spent decades objecting to how the numbers are used.

So Ed feels judgy. An expert should know better.

Then he glances at his own open slide deck. The slide on screen reads: "Assume the best."

What follows is the self-audit that slide demanded - the story of Saleem's Dream, the children's book series Ed was certain he created from scratch (a boy dreams his organs testify against him in court), and the elementary school video that proved the idea had been planted in him thirty years earlier.

The phenomenon is called cryptomnesia: the memory of an idea survives while the memory of its source decays... so borrowed ideas honestly feel like your own. The expert quoting Mehrabian's misused numbers, Ed quoting borrowed jokes as his own, and the colleague who just said your idea in the meeting are likely all running the same very human software.

In this episode:

Quotable:

Links & Resources:

The Influence Every Day podcast is free - we don't sell advertising space, so sharing this episode with someone who needs it is the best way to pay it back. Better yet, it's the best way to pay it forward. If today's episode landed, take a moment to rate and review the show. Now go forth and influence for good. Every day.

The Influence Every Day Show with Dr. Ed Tori

Architects design spaces for two things — prospect, the ability to see what's coming, and refuge, the sense of being sheltered. Spaces that feel right have both. The ones that feel wrong are missing one. In this episode, Ed connects a childhood booth at Franzone's pizza place to Jay Appleton's 1975 theory and to a diagnostic you can use this week: when a hard one-on-one spins sideways, when a meeting feels unsafe, when a workshop drifts — you were probably missing prospect or refuge. Both can be designed in. Out loud, if necessary.

Episode Timestamps (estimated)

Key Takeaways

Resources Referenced

Tags

#Influence #Communication #DifficultConversations #Leadership #PsychologicalSafety #ProspectAndRefuge #InfluenceEveryDay #SevenSimpleRules #CoreInfluenceFramework

A package arrived on my doorstep.

Ordinary.

Forgettable.

Until it wasn’t.

In this episode, I share a moment of unexpected awe triggered by something most of us barely notice anymore. A cardboard box. A doorbell. A delivery notification. What followed was a cascade of realization about just how many lives, skills, systems, and unseen acts of effort converge so that a single package can arrive at our door.

I reflect on the old proverb often called For Want of a Nail, a centuries-old story about how the absence of one small thing can lead to catastrophic downstream consequences. From a missing nail, to a lost shoe, to a fallen kingdom. That story is usually told as a warning. This episode explores the opposite direction.

What happens when a small, seemingly insignificant moment leads to massive positive outcomes?

Holding that package, I trace the invisible web behind it. The driver who needed health, strength, and training. The truck that required parts, materials, and maintenance. The metal that required mines. The mines that required machines. The machines that required inventors. The inventors who needed teachers. The teachers who needed food. The farmers who needed sun, soil, rain, and forces far beyond human control.

All of it so that I could click “add to cart” and open a box.

...

This episode is not a denial of the real problems that exist in global systems. Exploitation, environmental harm, corruption, and injustice are real and worth confronting. But that is not the path I take today. Today is about gratitude. About choosing to see the human effort that usually remains invisible. About honoring the thousands of small contributions that make modern life possible.

I offer a direct thank you to the people behind the ideas, the funding, the design, the engineering, the manufacturing, the packing, the coding, the logistics, the driving, the maintenance, the teaching, the parenting, the farming, and the natural forces that sustain it all. This is a reminder that we never receive alone. We are always beneficiaries of lives we will never meet.

Gratitude, in this framing, is not sentimentality. It is perspective. It is state management. It is leadership. And it is a practice that can transform an ordinary moment into a grounding reminder of our interdependence.

This episode is an invitation to pause before the next package is opened. To see the invisible threads. To let gratitude recalibrate your state. And to remember that even the smallest things often carry the weight of the world behind them.

If this episode resonated with you, consider who else might need the reminder. Share it. Pay it forward. And as always, go forth and influence for good... every day.

We often hear that time is our scarcest non-renewable resource. This episode challenges that assumption.

While time is finite, it is not the true constraint shaping our lives, our relationships, or our outcomes. The real limiting factor is attention. Attention is more scarce than time, more fragile than time, and far more powerful in determining how time is experienced and used.

Attention is not just about where it goes. It includes how long it stays, how deeply it is applied, the intent behind it, and even when it is deployed. Attention can be placed in the present, replayed in the past, or projected into a future that may or may not arrive.

Because attention is a subset of time, it is what gives time its quality. Two people can spend the same hour and walk away with entirely different results based on how their attention was used.

This episode invites reflection without judgment.

A key distinction explored here is the difference between paying attention and investing attention. Paying attention is often transactional, reactive, short term, and consumptive. It frequently leaves us feeling drained, fragmented, or wondering where the time went. Investing attention is deliberate, chosen, deeper, and oriented toward return. It is how relationships grow, conversations change lives, skills compound, and meaning accumulates over time.

When attention is invested rather than paid, it tends to energize rather than exhaust. It feels coherent rather than scattered. It flows rather than fragments. Investing attention shapes who we become because it reinforces patterns of presence, care, service, and growth. This is why attention is never neutral. Where attention goes, energy flows, and that thing grows.

The episode reframes productivity away from time management and toward attentional stewardship.

Managing attention well leads to better use of time, better management of energy, and more intentional action. Especially during moments of change, renewal, or reflection such as a new year, an anniversary, or a personal turning point, the question is not how to manage time better. The question is how to be more deliberate with attention.

The central takeaway is simple and demanding:

Time is not your scarcest non-renewable resource. Attention is.

Be deliberate.

Be intentional.

Where you place your attention will shape the quality of your life, your relationships, your growth, your service, and your legacy.

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There’s a quiet danger in the most stable parts of our lives.

Not danger in the obvious sense—but danger in the way stability slips beneath our awareness. The way the most essential things become invisible precisely because they work so well.

This episode begins with a simple gratitude practice. Each morning, Dr. Tori writes down five things he’s grateful for—sometimes just a word, sometimes a phrase. No journaling. No editing. Just noticing.

And then comes a story that changes how you hear the rest of the episode.

A family member describes the first time she put on hearing aids.

She didn’t realize her hearing had been fading. Life felt normal. Work was normal. Conversations were normal.

And then—birds.

Birds chirping.

Sounds that had been gone for so long she didn’t even know they were missing. She cried—not from sadness, but from sudden restoration. From realizing something beautiful had been quietly slipping away.

To take something for granted is to treat it as:

Given

Stable

Not requiring maintenance

Unlikely to be taken away

When those assumptions settle in, attention fades. Appreciation fades. Presence fades.

And the tragedy is this:

The things most likely to be taken for granted are often the things that often matter most or hold the most meaning.

The episode walks through a series of experiences you likely haven’t thought about today—but rely on constantly:

Background sounds: birds, wind, distant laughter, the hum of your home at night

Peripheral vision: the ability to sense the world without staring directly at it

Micro-textures: the subtle vibration of pen on paper, the click of a button confirming action

Balance: standing, walking, orienting without conscious effort

Uninterrupted physiology: a heart that’s been beating since before you were born; breath that never needed instruction

Face and voice recognition: instantly knowing who you love without relearning them each time

Depth perception: pouring coffee, driving, navigating space without thought

Context sensing: walking into a room and immediately “getting the feel” of it

None of these announce themselves.

They work quietly. Reliably. Predictably.

And because of that—they disappear from awareness.

We are hardwired to:

Notice change

Track threat

Seek cognitive efficiency

When something is stable, non-threatening, and easy, the brain does exactly what it’s designed to do—it drops it below conscious awareness.

Which raises an uncomfortable question:

If we’re not aware of something, can we truly be in awe of it?

Can we give it reverence?

Can we care for it properly?

The most predictable, reliable, non-threatening people in your life are often the ones most at risk of being taken for granted.

Here's an unsettling question:

What if instead of treating these relationships as given, we treated them as fragile?

Imagine the most important person in your life.

Now imagine they’re gone.

Or changed forever by illness.

Or distance.

Or time.

Their presence was never guaranteed.

Seeing something as fragile changes how you hold it.

You maintain it.

You attend to it.

You don’t assume it will always be there.

Gratitude matters—but the episode makes a clear distinction:

Gratitude can be silent and internal.

Expressed gratitude adds words.

Active appreciation adds behavior.

Active appreciation means:

Maintaining

Improving

Paying attention

Being present

Acting in ways that protect what matters

You can feel grateful for someone and still neglect them.

You can appreciate something silently and still let it erode.

What if instead of taking things for granted, we took them for borrowed?

Borrowed things are handled differently.

They’re cared for.

They’re respected.

They’re returned in better condition than we received them.

So consider this...

Who in your life might you be taking for granted - and how would your behavior change if you treated them as borrowed instead?

Key Takeaway 

Don’t wait until something disappears to realize its value.  Treat what matters as fragile. Treat it as borrowed. And act accordingly. 

🎧 If this episode resonated, share it with someone who might need the reminder. 

Influence is something we practice every day—especially in the quiet moments we usually overlook.

The Influence Every Day Show with Dr. Ed Tori 

In the 1980s, there was a workout show called Buns of Steel—but today’s episode isn’t about glutes. It’s about something far more important to your influence, your relationships, and your leadership: your “Buts of Steel.” 

Not the muscles - the frames your language creates. 

Two tiny one-syllable words—and and but—decide what the brain focuses on, how people interpret your message, and whether a conversation opens up…or shuts down.

These words can:

shift emotional tone,

start or stop arguments,

open or close partnerships,

encourage honesty or shut it down,

help a leader receive information—or block it out.

This episode dives into how “but” acts like a spotlight + eraser in neurolinguistic programming and why “and” allows two truths to coexist.

More importantly, it shows how using “but” repeatedly can harden into a pattern—a pattern that becomes a habit—

and that habit becomes how people experience you.

That’s what Dr. Tori calls

“You did a great job… but the ending felt rushed.”

Effect: 

The compliment gets erased. The critique becomes the only thing that lands.

Fix: 

“You did a great job and it was a little rushed at the end.” Both truths survive.

“I get what you’re saying… but that’s not how we do things around here.”

Effect: 

This is the death spiral of leadership.

It quietly shuts down ideas, creativity, dissent, and psychological safety.

Repeated often enough, people stop coming to you entirely—no matter how “open-door” you claim to be.

This is one of the most dangerous “Buts of Steel.”

“I want to write more… but I’m never motivated.”

“I want to eat healthier… but the snack bar at work is full of junk.”

Effect: 

You negate your own intention and center the obstacle.

You shine a spotlight on why you can’t take action instead of why you should.

This keeps you stuck—and often convinces you the problem is external.

“But” isn’t always the villain.

Used intentionally, it creates necessary rigid frames—your real Buts of Steel.

“I know you’re frustrated, but we don’t speak to our employees that way.”

This is clarity + protection.

A “but” here creates safety.

A recent example Dr. Tori shares:

A contract for a speaking engagement included an extreme IP clause.

He responded (appropriately) with a but to draw an unmistakable line.

“But” is the right choice when something cannot be compromised.

“I know everyone’s feeling pressure, but when we cut corners, we make things dangerous.”

Here, “but” reinforces standards and raises the conversation back to values.

When ethics or safety are at stake,

a firm ‘but’ is leadership. 

Dr. Tori explains that:

“But” erases what came before.

“But” highlights what comes after.

“But” breaks a frame and replaces it with a new one.

Repeated “buts” become patterns, and patterns become habits.

In leadership or parenting, these habits define what others feel safe sharing with you.

If you consistently use “but” to negate emotions, ideas, or intentions, people learn:

“Don’t bring things to them—they won’t really hear you.” 

Conversely, when used deliberately in the right moments, “but” becomes a necessary tool for clarity, boundaries, and ethics.

Dr. Tori gives three simple, high-impact experiments for you to try:

Do it once this week—especially in writing (email or text), where tone is easiest to misinterpret.

Still use “but,” but reverse the order:

“It was a little rushed at the end, but overall it was phenomenal.”

This preserves the praise instead of erasing it.

Try a single clear, healthy boundary using “but.”

Practice making the frame firm without being harsh or hostile.

If you mindlessly use “but,” you risk forging ugly Buts of Steel—rigid frames that accidentally shut down connection, truth, creativity, and collaboration.

But if you use it intentionally,

you can create beautiful Buts of Steel—the kind that set boundaries, reinforce values, and strengthen relationships.

Share it with someone who needs better “buts,” better frames, and better conversations.

Check out HypnoticGiftsBook.com for Dr. Tori’s framework for transformational conversations.

Or apply for coaching to master influence at a deeper level.

What if the good you do doesn’t stop when you do it?

In this episode, Dr. Ed Tori reflects on a powerful discovery: a newspaper article from 1995 that his late mother had saved - a story about his college t-shirt fundraisers that raised thousands for charity. Hidden in the article was a forgotten thread: he had once donated in the name of a 7-year-old boy named Nate Jones, who had raised $100 for a homeless shelter.

Decades later, that act reemerged - shaping reflection, identity, and a concept Dr. Tori’s mentor would later call “The Nate Jones Effect.” 

Some math can’t be done on paper.

The smallest good can ripple through:

Identities - A child who gives learns who he is.

Communities - A stranger multiplies the act in his name.

Generations - Children decades later read about it and are moved to do good.

The lesson: good doesn’t just add up; it compounds - invisibly, exponentially, sometimes beyond your lifetime.

Who is your “Nate Jones”? Who quietly moved you to do something good?

When was the last time you multiplied someone else’s goodness instead of just admiring it?

How might your unseen acts be shaping someone’s story right now - someone you’ll never meet?

We often look for proof of our impact - reports, outcomes, numbers.

But spiritual math lives in the ripples: in the people inspired, the words repeated, the habits that echo.

You may never see the results, but the ledger is real.

Keep doing good - the math is already working in your favor.

“What if every ripple of good that spreads from your actions is written down - every life touched, every story sparked, every unseen echo? That’s spiritual math.”

This week:

Notice a small good act by someone else.

Multiply it - anonymously, in their name.

Let it ripple.

HypnoticGiftsBook.com - A framework for transforming lives through a single conversation.

DrTori.com/coaching-application-1on1 - Apply for personal influence coaching with Dr. Tori.