The Power Lies in the Pause
Big news and 12 lessons from the Influence Anyone podcast
This past Tuesday was episode 100 of the Influence Anyone podcast.
Did you know that 90% of podcasts never even make it past episode 3?
When I first started this podcast, it was all about having the most interesting conversations with the best in the world, answering this one big question: why do we do what we do, and how do we influence it?
After spending thousands of hours and dollars on it, I figured it was time to take a pause. Something my good friend and podcast guest, Scott Walker (former hostage negotiator) said to me “the power lies in the pause.”
The easy move was to keep doing the same old thing. And if you know me, that’s not how I roll.
In today’s issue, I will give you one of my favorite lessons from the show:
How do you influence an upset person to work with you, without the conversation blowing up?
And if you are keen, you can get the other 11 curated lessons in the deep dive and my honest reflections about the podcast in the audio episode.
Let’s get into it.
⚡️ 60 SEC INFLUENCE
Scott Walker keeps a stress ball with four letters on it.
W.A.I.T.
Why Am I Talking?
Scott told me every negotiation has three parts:
Gather information
Build the relationship
Solve the problem
Most of us skip straight from step one to step three. Someone's upset, we grab the first fact we hear, and we start fixing.
But the middle step is the real work. Scott puts it at about 80% of it. And none of it happens while you're talking.
So what's his number one skill? It sounds simple. Emotional self-regulation. Managing your own state first, so you can influence theirs.
Here's why it works…
Emotions spread. Psychologists Elaine Hatfield, John Cacioppo, and Richard Rapson called this emotional contagion. We unconsciously mirror the faces, voices, and energy of the people around us. Raise your voice, and theirs goes up. Slow down, and they start to slow down with you.
When we're stressed, we talk to calm ourselves down. Explaining. Defending. Filling the silence. To the upset person, it sounds like you aren't listening.
The pause flips that. It gives them room to say what's really going on. And what they tell you is the information you need to guide the conversation.
As a professional of influence, your calm is the first thing you're influencing.
Try this: The next time someone is upset with you:
Pause. Ask yourself, "Why am I talking?"
Breathe. Try a physiological sigh: two inhales through the nose (one long, one short sniff on top), then one long exhale through the mouth.
Ask one question. "What's the part that's bothering you most?"
Let them fill the room.
Then use what they tell you to guide the conversion.
As promised, influence in 60 seconds.
The Influence Anyone podcast:
Episode 100 is just me. It covers the honest reasons “Season One” is ending plus 12 lessons I treasure from the last 99 episodes.
The envelope Charlie Munger mailed to Robert Cialdini, how Nir Eyal agreed to be my very first guest, the "We missed you" cartoon that brought in $68 million in new revenue, and more…
🔎 INFLUENCE DEEP DIVE
A hundred episodes means a lot of brilliant people gave me their time.
I can't fit every one of them in here. (Go listen to the archive. Seriously.) But these are the 12 lessons that changed how I think about influence. Each one comes with something to try.
1. Robert Cialdini: Ink the favor.
One day, an envelope showed up at Bob Cialdini's house. It was from Charlie Munger. The two had never met.
Inside was a single share of Berkshire Hathaway, worth about $75,000 at the time. The note said, roughly: your book has made us so much money, this is my way of paying you back.
That's reciprocity, one of the principles from Bob's own book, landing right back on him. He never sold the share. Today it's worth over $700,000.
Bob's lesson for the rest of us is small and useful. When someone thanks you, don't say "No big deal." That shrinks what you did. Give the favor weight, then point it toward the future.
Try this: Next time someone thanks you, say: "Of course, I was glad to do it. And if the situation were ever reversed, I know you'd do the same for me." You never have to call in the favor. You just don't erase it.
2. Scott Walker: Why am I talking?
You got the full version above. The short one: most of the work in any tense conversation is building the relationship, and you can't do that while you're talking.
Try this: Put W.A.I.T. somewhere you'll see it during your next hard conversation. A sticky note. Your notebook. The corner of your screen.
3. Henna Pryor: Name the awkward.
Henna wrote Good Awkward. Right as I was reading one of her lines on air, a leaf blower started roaring outside her window.
She didn't pretend it wasn't happening. She pointed at it, called it a serendipitous moment, and asked to keep it in the final edit.
That was her whole point. Awkwardness you ignore grows in the dark. The most confident people have what she calls a fast comeback rate. They name the weird moment and move on.
Try this: Next time you say something clumsy, say it out loud: "Well, that was awkward." Then keep going. The faster you recover, the more confident you look.
4. Nir Eyal: Your beliefs are tools.
Nir was my very first guest. We met in Singapore, sitting in a cold plunge. I took my shot and asked him to come on a show I hadn't launched yet. His answer: we're already sitting in a cold plunge together, why not?
His lesson: your beliefs are tools you can pick up and put down. Turn them into labels, and they become your limits.
Try this: Catch one "I'm not..." you say about yourself. I'm not a writer. I'm not a morning person. Then look for proof the opposite is already true. "I'm not an author" becomes "I'm already writing. I just haven't published yet."
5. Melina Palmer: Do it today.
Melina has made over 500 episodes of The Brainy Business. When she talks about showing up, I listen.
Here's why "I'll start Monday" fails. Your brain pictures future you like a stranger. (Researcher Hal Hershfield has shown this in brain scans.) It's easy to make promises for a stranger. Then Monday comes, and it's you.
Try this: Make a "not yet" list. Name the one thing that matters most and do a piece of it today. Everything else waits. Use the same move when your team keeps pushing things to "next week."
6. Phil Agnew: Show the work behind the work.
Phil hosts Nudge, one of the biggest marketing podcasts in the UK. For an episode on shrinkflation, he went to Bolton, where Warburtons bread is made, pulled slices out of loaves, and asked about 40 people on the street if they noticed the difference. Only a couple did.
Anyone can make an episode about Toblerone losing a chocolate mountain. Going out and proving it is what made his worth listening to.
People value what they can see took effort. "In this world where AI can make content in seconds," I said on the episode, "visible effort becomes a trust signal."
Try this: Next time you share finished work, show some of what it took. The drafts, the research, the ideas you threw away. As long as it's true.
7. Nancy Harhut: People don't think the way you think they think.
Nancy is the queen of behavioral science in marketing. And her line stuck with me: "People don't think the way you think they think."
We assume people decide with logic. Most decisions happen fast, on autopilot, driven by feeling. Nancy shared a campaign to win back financial advisors who had stopped selling a company's products for over a year. No sales pitch. Each advisor got a framed, personalized New Yorker cartoon with their name in the caption, plus a note: "We missed you."
That was it. The result? $68 million in new revenue.
Try this: Win back a client who went quiet without offering a discount. Send them something personal they didn't expect, made just for them, with a note that says you missed them.
8. Brian Ahearn: Set up the moment before the ask.
I wrote about Brian before I ever met him. A company had overpaid its agents by hundreds of thousands of dollars and needed the money back. Instead of a cold demand, they sent a personal letter with a handwritten sticky note. Within weeks, 147 of 150 agents paid it back.
Months after I wrote about it, Brian reached out to be on the show. I told him, "Dude, I already wrote about you."
His lesson: the same ask lands differently depending on what comes right before it. Before he speaks at an event, he tries to email attendees a short note and a link to his TEDx talk, so they show up already feeling like they know him.
Try this: Before a big ask, set up the moment. A handwritten note. A short personal message. Something that shows you care before you need anything.
9. Owen Fitzpatrick: We sell ourselves stories.
Owen has become a friend and a mentor, and he taught me how beliefs actually form. First it has to feel right. Then it has to fit with who we are. Then it has to make sense. Logic comes last.
As he told me, "We don't just tell ourselves stories, we sell ourselves stories."
So when facts aren't changing someone's mind, they're arriving in the wrong order.
Try this: Stop leading with the data. Ask, "How did you come to see it that way?" Listen to the story they're selling themselves. Then show how your idea fits who they already are.
10. Kwame Christian: Acknowledge first.
Kwame runs the American Negotiation Institute. His big idea: you can't send a message to someone who isn't psychologically ready to receive it.
So you acknowledge the emotion first. Get curious. Then solve it together. It becomes you and me against the problem.
Try this: When you hit a "no," say their side out loud before you ask again. "I get it. That rule makes sense. I understand why you can't budge." Then calmly ask. And if you need to, ask twice.
11. Rich Diviney: Move the horizon.
Rich is a former Navy SEAL. He told me about Hell Week: running on a beach at 3am with a boat on his head. To survive it, he'd tell himself, just get to that sand berm. Then the next one. Then the next.
He calls it moving horizons. Fear, he says, comes from uncertainty plus anxiety. A close horizon shrinks the uncertainty. Your breath handles the anxiety: box breathing (four counts in, hold, four out, hold) or the physiological sigh.
Try this: When you or your team can't see the end, stop staring at the finish line. Name the next clear milestone. Hit it. Name the next one.
I'd had Sam's book POP! on my shelf for about fifteen years before she came on the show. When I told her I was training for a half marathon, running at 5am in a cold rain, she turned it into a rallying cry on the spot: "Just put on your damn shoes."
Her lesson: in a world where AI can produce anything, your true stories are what make you one of a kind. Hook people with a real story, then hinge it to them with a question.
Try this: Tell one small, true story from your week. End it with a "you" question: "Have you ever had a morning like that?"
🔥 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Your goals do not care about your feelings
One of the most studied methods for getting things done, especially things that are hard.
→ See the LinkedIn post (4,914 people have read this)
💸 SPLURGE
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There is something really soothing about sunsets, and it’s something that’s been bringing me joy. So here I am sharing it with you.
Professionals of influence, I’ll see you next Sunday! 😉
Warmly,
Howie