Be You: The Importance of Authenticity with Fred Moore

Fred Moore:
You got to be you. You can’t be somebody else. There’s an old joke. Be as authentic as you can. Authenticity is the secret to success. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

Mathieu Yuill:
Hey, and welcome to the Leading with Nice Interview Series Podcast. My name is Mathieu Yuill, where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty and get results. Now today I’m excited about this one because I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. When I came across Fred Moore, I was just telling him before we began recording, I am positive that I was on YouTube and I’d followed some rabbit trail down on comedy. And then I started searching for some leadership stuff because that’s what I like.

Mathieu Yuill:
And I came across a Fred Moore video and I’m like, “Oh, who’s this guy?” And so I Googled them, found his website, read it, all, saw a few video clips and I’m like, “I want more of this.” This is the way I like to learn. The content is really solid. The advice is great and it’s actionable. You can actually take things from it, but also really fun and engaging to be a part of. And that is really one of Fred’s hallmarks is that his work is so engaging. So Fred, thank you so much for taking time to be on the show today.

Fred Moore:
It is a pleasure to be here. Mathieu. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. After that buildup, I mean, how can I live up to that? I’m just going to be boring and monotone the whole podcast. It is going to be, “Delete, delete, delete.”

Mathieu Yuill:
No, people will be rewinding 15 seconds at a time because they want to hear it so much.

Fred Moore:
Oh, there you go.

Mathieu Yuill:
So listen, dude, you have been speaking and teaching about productivity, that’s one of your like main messages you share in the corporate world, for over 25 years. And you’ve traveled and spoken in more than 30 countries. So I’m curious, when you travel to all these places and across North America and in these different countries, what is a common productivity killer that is pretty much the same, no matter where you go?

Fred Moore:
There’s two big ones I’ve found. I was going to say, the second one, I’ll get to later if I get to it. It’s procrastination. That’s the second one. First one is interruptions. Interruptions are a huge, huge productivity killer. And people don’t realize how much time is actually sucked out of their day because of it because you think, all right, somebody knocks on the door, somebody has a question and you’re like, “Yeah, yeah. Okay, fine.” And then the interruption is over and maybe the interruption takes 30 seconds. Maybe it takes five minutes. Maybe it takes 20 minutes. But even if it’s just a few minutes, what they’ve done is they’ve interrupted your workflow, whatever it is that you’re working on. This probably happened to you, Mathieu. You’re in the zone, right?

Fred Moore:
Whatever it is you’re doing is like, “Oh, this is working. This is gold. This is going to change the world.” And then, “Ding,” your phone goes up or somebody knocks on the door or somebody needs something and your focus gets pulled away. And you’re like, “Oh, okay, okay. What was I doing? Where was I going?” And there was a study, I was just reading about it, that it takes an average of 23 minutes to get back into the zone, back into where you were being your most productive and it’s 23 minutes. And, to me, that’s like, “All right, 23 minutes? Why?” Somebody knocks on my door and like, “Okay, I’ll answer your request.” And five minutes later, I’m back into it. But that’s not how it works because your brain is now focused on something else, whatever they wanted.

Fred Moore:
And maybe you were talking about that rabbit hole, that that’s how you found me. That’s what happens, right? They ask you a question. It’s like, “Okay, let me look that up for you here,” which makes you think about something else, which then goes, “Oh yeah, I have to get back to that thing that they reminded me of,” which leads you down to this, to this, to this. We’ve all done it, right? The old analogy, the old thing is you used to walk into a room and then think to yourself, “Why did I come in this room?” When now it’s, “All right, let me go online.” And then 10, 20 minutes later, you’re like, “Why did I go online because I got distracted by this funny cat video or my Facebook friend sent me this meme?” And that’s the new walking into the room, forgetting why you’re here. And it’s just so many distractions, so many interruptions.

Fred Moore:
I mean, the phone is supposed to help you, right? The phone is supposed to be this powerful device in your pocket, but hey, we’re conditioned. When it dings, when it buzzes, we’re going to look at it. Why? Somebody might need me right now? The world is on fire because they need Fred. No, it’s usually something that’s not that important. So personally, what I do is I’ve got times when the door is shut. Nobody interrupts me. I work from home. I’m on the leading edge. I’ve been doing that for years like now, like everybody now.

Mathieu Yuill:
Yeah.

Fred Moore:
There’s a rule in my house that if my office door shut, unless the house is on fire, don’t come knocking. And you’ve got kids. You’ll appreciate this.

Mathieu Yuill:
Yeah.

Fred Moore:
My oldest, she’s almost nine now, but at the time she was probably about three years old. And so she was still home during the day. And I hear this very light knock on my office door. It was closed and I know it’s her. And I don’t answer it because I figure, “All right. She knows,” and she knocks again. And then she knocks again very lightly. And I hear my wife go, “Honey, what are you doing?” And she goes, “Well, try, try again. That’s what daddy told me.” So I opened the door, gave her a hug and said, “Good job. Get away.”

Mathieu Yuill:
Amazing. That’s what you get for teaching good lessons.

Fred Moore:
I know. The one time my kid listens to me, right?

Mathieu Yuill:
Children use it against you. So let me actually ask you a little follow-up on that. You’re in the elevator. Somebody recognized you and says, “Oh, Fred, what top three things I’m probably doing today I should stop?” So one of them is, I would extrapolate what you said, maybe put your phone on silent or do not disturb.

Fred Moore:
Yep.

Mathieu Yuill:
What are a couple of things for somebody working at home? Another would be around having a rule around the door closed. Give me a couple of other ones that would be top tips.

Fred Moore:
Yeah, close the door. Turn off the phone. If you’re going to be on your computer and you’re working on something, don’t have 900 tabs open. I’ve got two monitors and I will tend to have whatever I need to focus on on my main screen. Everything else goes to the other monitor. And if I really, really want to focus on this, I’ll turn that other monitor off, figuratively, closing the door on the rest of the internet because like I said, those funny cat videos would just suck me in in a heartbeat.

Mathieu Yuill:
Yeah, that really resonates. I personally, I used to work in education and my office, literally it opened into the student lounge. So there’s always students in there playing pool, watching TV, making photocopies. And I would find I would end up working really late or come in super early because I would get all my day’s work done for an hour before and an hour after 5:00 p.m. I never really thought about it until you just said that. That’s probably why, because I was just constantly being taken out of my rhythm.

Fred Moore:
Exactly, exactly. And that’s another tip that I can give you, too, is get up early. I know I just lost a whole bunch of people there. “Get up early. Are you crazy?”

Mathieu Yuill:
You mean like 10:00 a.m., right?

Fred Moore:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. I’ve got kids in and so I get up at 6:00 a.m. to help my wife get the kids ready and get them off to school. But I will get up half an hour early because now it’s half an hour of me. And may not even be work-related. It may even just be like, “All right. I got half an hour to figure out my day, to read, to meditate, to whatever.” But if you get away from people by getting up early or physically get up and, “All right, I’m going to go down to Starbucks and I’m going to spend 45 minutes there working on this thing and nobody’s going to interrupt me because hopefully you’re not there so long that like, ‘Hey Bob, come on in.'” But just getting yourself out of that environment by either getting up early or getting away from that workspace, if you can.

Mathieu Yuill:
Those are great.

Fred Moore:
Now, before we forget, procrastination was the other one and I want to make sure I get around to talking [crosstalk 00:08:29].

Mathieu Yuill:
I feel a theme coming on. Listen, so if people haven’t checked you out online, and they definitely need to, some of the clips where you integrate magic into your work is a lot of fun. I mean, what I found really speaks to me is you found a way to make your message your own with magic. It has a little bit of Phil Dunphy in there for modern family fans, which may or may not be a compliment depending on who you are.

Fred Moore:
I’m a fan.

Mathieu Yuill:
Good, good, good because he’s great. If someone said to you, “How can I find a way to share my message?” what advice would you give them? And I’m asking you this because you found a really unique way that is very genuine and very authentic. It comes through because you’re not going to tell them, “Oh, do what I do,” because what you do is yours. So what would you say to them?

Fred Moore:
I think it’s like any performer out there. You got to be you. You can’t be somebody else. You can sing the same song that somebody else sings, but you’re going to sing it the way you’re going to sing it. You got to be you. And depending on who you are, that may dictate your audience, right? Because if we’re talking about speaking, find out who you’re going to be speaking to because your topic, your subject may be a broad subject. But narrow it down to one specific niche, one specific audience because then you can talk to them in their language. You can address their specific problems and you can get more comfortable with them. And when you’re talking to them, talk to one person.

Fred Moore:
If I’m on a stage and I’m talking to a thousand people, I’m talking to one person. I’m not using words like, “You all need to try this,” or I’m not talking in the masses. I’m talking about you. I’m talking about one person because the person that’s listening is one person. Now there’s a thousand sets of ears out there listening, but they’re all taking it in as me. “This is about me.” And so when you’re talking, whether it’s in your writing style or your videos or your speech or whatever, focus on them and make it like it’s a friend you’re talking to because if you’re up there giving a speech that you’ve written about this topic of yours, it’s going to sound like you wrote this and you’re reading it.

Fred Moore:
But if you’re talking to a friend, right, it’s a whole different conversational style. It’s more relaxed. Now, depending on your language. I mean, Gary Vaynerchuk, he gets away with that because that’s him and he has his tribe. He has his audience. He’s discovered his voice for his audience. There’s a lot of people that will turn him on and 10, 15 minutes into it after 20 F-bombs, they were like, “Oh no, thank you. Bye-bye.”

Mathieu Yuill:
Yeah, I just want to touch on that. That’s a fascinating point and that’s a great example because I like Gary Vaynerchuk, but also I don’t like Gary Vaynerchuk. And I actually do check out when he starts like cussing too much because I’m just like, “All right. This doesn’t appeal to me.” And also I don’t want to watch it and have my kids walk in and hear that as well. So if I were to extrapolate what just heard is do be like Fred and really lean into your authenticity. But one thing that I think I could be really helpful is when you’re sharing that message, whether it be an audience of 1000 or an audience of 10, speak to the individual.

Fred Moore:
Exactly. And be as authentic as you can because if you tell authentic personal stories to an audience, that’s going to create that connection. I tell the story about getting fired. Who wants to go on stage and tell everyone about, “Hey, here’s this time I got fired”?

Mathieu Yuill:
Right.

Fred Moore:
But when I opened myself up like that, I’ve had lots of people come up and say, “You know what? I really appreciate you telling that story because that happened to me and I thought I was the only one that felt that way.” It’s like, “No.”

Mathieu Yuill:
Yeah, it’s so relatable. And even I think people might think, after listening to this conversation, that we’ve known each other for years, but this is our first time chatting in real time.

Fred Moore:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mathieu Yuill:
But it’s very clear to me, the authentic approach to sharing information is what makes it attractive. I don’t think necessarily you have a secret sauce. I think the secret sauce is you’re very comfortable with your authenticity.

Fred Moore:
Yeah. Yeah, I’m very open about who I am and this is me. I’m a geek. I’m not pretending to be anything else. There’s an old joke. Be as authentic as you can. Authenticity is the secret to success. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

Mathieu Yuill:
Amazing. I like it. That is so good and so true. All right, cool. All right, so listen, since I have you on the line, I want to get some more tips from you. I was going to set this up and ask you for some more productivity tips, but I actually want to ask you about procrastination. And so, because as I’m asking this question, I’m looking at my desk. I have a fidget spinner, a fidget cube. I have this, I call it a telephone jack, but it’s actually an ethernet cable but just the jack part. And I take the port out of its plastic plug and I put it back in like 400 times while I’m talking. Then I create a game in my head where I’m like, “Okay, how can I make it fit perfectly?” And it’s just like such a productivity killer when I pick up these things and play with them and it leads to procrastination. So what are some secrets that I could employ right away? If you are my personal anti-procrastination coach, what are some secrets you would give me?

Fred Moore:
Well, if I was there, I’d take a ruler and smack your knuckles every time you picked it up, but I can’t do that.

Mathieu Yuill:
No, thank goodness.

Fred Moore:
Probably the easiest thing is to take away those distractions. Clean off your desk. I like to have as clean of desk as possible. 90% of the time that doesn’t happen because I’m working on stuff.

Mathieu Yuill:
Yeah.

Fred Moore:
But I feel if my desk is cleaned, if my office is clean and organized, then so is my mind, my mindset is, and I’m a little bit clearer and I get more stuff done. But that’s not to say that doing that stuff, playing with fidget spinner and all that, is not a good thing. It’s just that, “I’m going to start doing this.” So schedule a time to do that. Set a timer for five minutes that says, “All right. I’m going to play with this for minutes. Whoo-hoo. Let me try to see how many times I can get this thing in there,” and go, “Okay, back to work.”

Fred Moore:
So you’ve given yourself that brain break because that’s probably what’s happening. Your brain is going, “Okay, this is just too much going on. I need to do something here.” So you pick up that thing and it gets you distracted. But if you pick up that thing and then focus on that thing for five minutes, then you’ve got it out of your system. You’re good to go.

Fred Moore:
A couple of other things you can do is basically, I like to work in what I call focused time blocks. There is two hours every morning that I have blocked off for my business anyway, the most important task, which is prospecting. My job is not presenting on stage. My job is finding people that need me to present on their stage or finding somebody that has a problem I can solve. I used to spend all day doing it and not get that much done. What I do now is I have two hours of prospecting, and it’s a 50 minute block and a 10 minute break. That’s my fidget spinner time or my time to get up and walk around or play with the kids or whatever, and then back at the task. So it’s 50 minutes and I’m doing one thing, only one thing. I’m prospecting. I’m looking for prospects. I’m not contacting. I’m not researching. I’m not sending them. All I’m doing is looking. I’m filling up my database. My CRM is bursting with prospects after I’m done with these two hours. So, that’s all I’m doing, that one thing.

Fred Moore:
I’m not checking my email. I’m not going on YouTube. I’m not doing anything else but that. And it’s hard sometimes because I’m on the internet doing that. And I do have to do a little research into the company, but mostly it’s conferences coming to this area or whatnot. But I’ve found that since I started doing that probably two years ago, I’m getting a lot more done. I’m feeling a lot more accomplished at the end of the day. You’ve probably had that where at the end of the day, you’re like, “Wow, I did so much today, but I don’t feel like I’ve gotten anything accomplished.” But with those focused time blocks, then it’s like, “All right, for these two hours, I did this. This is the result. I’ve got 20, 30 new prospects possibly.” And so whatever task that is that’s most important, I chunk it down to those focused time blocks. And again, that’s no distractions, no interruptions. I’m doing this. And only this.

Mathieu Yuill:
That makes so much sense. I’m thinking I do the actual opposite is that I schedule a phone call or I’ll schedule a meeting, but I won’t schedule my actual like, “Here are some tasks I need to complete.” That to me was gold, all that information right there. I really was really drawn to your message. Nothing you say is complicated. I don’t have to learn a new system. It’s all simple. I loved it. It was so good.

Fred Moore:
Well, that’s the thing. I’m talking about time management, right? I’m talking about productivity.

Mathieu Yuill:
Yeah.

Fred Moore:
This stuff shouldn’t take you hours and weeks to learn. I watched a video on time management that was an hour and a half long. And it’s like, “All right, if it’s a book on 10 time management and it’s 300 pages, dude, you got to work on your message, okay?”

Mathieu Yuill:
Yeah. Okay, so people are going to listen to this. They’re going to start working. They’re going to master some of the techniques you’ve shared, and then they’ll want to start really being able to like kill their goals. But one of the problems that you talk about and I’ve seen as well too, is people have a goal, but they just don’t know how to figure out the steps from here to there. So I know you’ve spoken about how to figure out what those steps should be. You have a system. So tell us a bit about how do you figure out, once you’ve got your productivity down and you want to start killing goals, how do you figure out, “Okay, what steps do I take”?

Fred Moore:
All right. There’s two tools that I use all the time. The first one is a system. It’s a game plan. And game is an acronym because hey, I’m a motivational speaker and you have to use an acronym. It’s the law. But the game part stands for goal action, motivation, evaluation. So you have a goal. Well, the first part of the goal is to clearly define this goal and make it specific. Set a deadline to it. There’s a lot of details that go into it. But once you learn the method, it’s easy enough to just sit down and go through it. But that’s the basics of it is have a specific goal in mind with a deadline. Then the action part. Figure out what actions you’re going to take.

Fred Moore:
Now, the second thing I’m going to mention helps you with those actions, but the action is you figure out who you need to contact, what tools you need, what resources you’re going to need on hand, what help you need, who you need to contact, what’s the first step. And then take at least one action towards this goal. Once you set the goal and you’ve got it in place, take one action that day, that hour, that minute, if you can because that’s going to start to cause momentum because you’ll take another action step, another step and another step.

Fred Moore:
And then motivation is something that’s lacking because you need to figure out why you want this goal. What’s the payout for you? Now it may be financial. It may be, “If I don’t do this, I’m going to get fired, so that’s my motivation,” whatever it is. Just figure out what the motivation is and maybe some extra things you can do to motivate you like giving yourself a reward for completing this specific goal.

Fred Moore:
And the last one I think is the most important in the game plan that most people don’t talk about. They don’t teach, is evaluation because you can do something over and over and over and again and not get the result that you want and then go, “Okay, well, I guess it doesn’t work,” or you can spend so much time doing it and not getting the results you want that it gets frustrating. People just quit. So I always take Friday at the end of my work week, and I look at the actions I’ve taken that week. Are they working? Am I getting anywhere from it? Am I getting results out of those prospects? Have I gotten callbacks? Have I gotten leads? Have I gotten gigs from it? I take a moment to look at what I’m doing to see if it’s working. If it’s not working, I do something crazy. I try something different because obviously that’s not working right.

Fred Moore:
Now, this all leads into the other part of the thing that I do. So there’s a game plan, right? That’s how to figure out what you want. But a lot of people don’t know what they need to do. All right, I know what I want, but how do I get there? And I came up with this several years ago. It started as an exercise. Instead of doing a New Year’s resolution, I came up with 50 things I wanted to do that year. And what it’s morphed into is a 50 ways list.

Fred Moore:
So let’s say I have a big goal. I’m going to use just a generic goal that a lot of people have, weight loss. So I’m going to come up with a list of 50 ways to lose weight, 50 ways to lose weight. And it’s 50, because if you need to come up with 10 or 20, you could probably come up with 10 or 20 ideas. All right? It’s pretty easy to lose weight, 10 or 20 ways. But if I need to come up with 50, then I’m going to start getting specific with the actions that I want to take. Instead of like, “I’m going to go to the gym.” It’s like, “All right, I’m going to take a Pilates class. I’m going to do Zumba. I’m going to go skydiving.” I don’t know how that [crosstalk 00:22:33], the fear, “Ah.”

Fred Moore:
But you’ll get specific with the action steps that you’re going to take. And then you’ll also start thinking crazy things, things that you probably wouldn’t have thought of if you stopped with the list of 10 or 20 things. Like skydiving, “That’ll make me lose weight,” whatever, and push yourself to get at least 50 ways. And here’s the cool thing about it too.

Fred Moore:
If you’re working with a company and you have a team of people, you can get them to do this, but not as a collective. Have them do it individually because there’ll be some duplication between the group of 50 things, but there’ll be things that nobody had thought of. And if you just do it collectively, then everyone’s chiming in and they’re only putting in five or six ideas of their own. So now you’ve got a list of 50 things you can do. Some of them are going to be great. Some of them are going to be crazy. Some of them may not work, but now when it comes time to go after that goal and you’re like, “All right, well, what am I going to do today?” And you’re like, “I don’t know. What should I do today?” you have a list that list. You’ve got a list of 50 things you can do. Pick and choose. Pick three or four you want to try it today. See what they work. Evaluate at the end of the week. Move on to the next.

Mathieu Yuill:
I like that, as well, because I can see just when I’m imagining doing that exercise, 50 things, even if you’re trying two or three a day, that almost gives you a full month, if you’re doing it every day, of things to try.

Fred Moore:
Exactly.

Mathieu Yuill:
Along the way, you’ll probably find a few things that work. You do it for a while, and the weight loss one is so great because I think what often happens in a weight loss journey is you’re doing something that might work for three weeks, but then your body adapts or whatever. I’m not sure of the science behind it, but it just stops working for you. And now you have a whole list of other things you can start trying. Yeah, I love that. It really pushes your mind to be creative.

Fred Moore:
Oh yeah.

Mathieu Yuill:
If people who listened to us talk for a half an hour or so, and they’re like, “I want more of this guy,” where do they go to find out more about you? Where can they get some more information or what can they do?

Fred Moore:
You can’t find me. I’m on the witness protection program currently. No, no, of course not.

Mathieu Yuill:
[inaudible 00:24:41] on the dark web.

Fred Moore:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. How’d this get out there? Who are you? How’d you find me? Yeah, if you want to get more Fred Moore, Do So Much More is my speaker’s website, Do So Much More, and it’s More, M-O-R-E, not like Fred Moore. Yeah, dosomuchmore.com. There’s lots of videos there. There’s some free stuff you can get on there, worksheets and exercises that you can go through to increase your productivity and get more hours out of your day and week and stuff there. So yep, dosomuchmore.com.

Mathieu Yuill:
And if I’m a business leader or an event planner, what kind of things would I be doing or thinking about that you might be the right person to bring in?

Fred Moore:
Typically, my clients, they need a keynote speaker and they need somebody to start off their conference or start off their meeting. And they’re kind of tired of just information overload of the CEO getting up there acting like he’s Steve Jobs. And so typically, they bring me in because they want to wake up their audience. They want to get them focused on the event. They want to get them good information because they want to save time. Matter of fact, if I’m the opening keynote speaker, I usually add in things that they can do to get the most out of the conference.

Mathieu Yuill:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Fred Moore:
So right off the bat, they’re saving time and getting more out of that conference that they just paid to go to than they had before. And they’re looking to relieve stress, especially after well, something strange happened earlier, I’m not sure, a few months ago. What was it? The pandemic, yes. After that, they’re just looking for some stress relief because people have gone through so much in these last few months, in the last years, that they need stress relief. They need people to relax. They need to be open to the information that they’re about to get from me and for that day.

Mathieu Yuill:
When I was watching your stuff, I totally get what you’re saying because I watched it and I was like, “Oh this is good information, but I’m enjoying it.” It was fun. And it was just easy to digest as well. They’re not overly complicated. The stuff you’re talking about is how to get stuff done. We can all grasp that concept. Well, Fred, listen, thank you so much for being on the show. You and I just didn’t by happenstance show up and start recording. Lots of people helped me get here. [Carrie 00:27:06] , who’s our account manager, makes sure the company is running and taking care of clients while I’m off yammering away with yourself and others. Naomi is the EA at Leading With Nice, and she made sure our questions were prepared and put into a document I could find them and set up the workspace for me. Cindy does all our guests booking and she contacted you and made sure that you knew all the information, where we could show up.

Mathieu Yuill:
If you’re listening to this, you probably heard about it on social or on our website. And if you did, that’s [Jamie 00:27:37]. He’s our content manager. He takes care of all of our promotion, getting the podcast up, getting the transcription, if you’re reading that. So thank you to him. And then of course, Austin Pomeroy is our technical producer, technical editor. He makes everything sound amazing. Fred and I actually sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks in real life, so he gives us that bass and tone to our voice to make us sound so much more like buttery smooth goodness. So thank you to Austin.

Fred Moore:
Yes, that’s right. That is exactly right. [crosstalk 00:28:05]. [inaudible 00:28:07], that Austin.

Mathieu Yuill:
I love the voices. It’s so good. And also there was a voice you did earlier. You’re doing when somebody thinks. I mean, I like how you have made that person sound because that’s how it does sound in your head.

Fred Moore:
Yep.

Mathieu Yuill:
Fred, thanks so much for coming on, man. Have a great day and we’ll talk to you again.

Fred Moore:
All right, thanks. Talk to you soon.