Influence Every Day

About Influence Every Day

Do you want to get to the next level in your communication? To turn everyday moments into impactful and unforgettable change agents? The Influence Every Day Show is for you if you're ready to level up every relationship you have. Dr. Tori shares his expertise in influence, persuasion, rapport and behavior change each week - small tweaks to your day-to-day interactions that will influence for good. Follow along on Instagram @ed.tori

Publisher

Dr. Ed Tori

Category

business · education · education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

5 Jul 2022

Latest episode

25 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

74 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   25 Sept 2026

   074 Speaking From Experience - 3 Near-Miss Public Speaking Disasters

   Episode 074 Speaking From Experience 3 Near-Miss Public Speaking Disasters TL;DR 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. --- 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: the conference where my audience and my time both changed while I had one foot on the stage steps; the staff gala where a 40-minute keynote became 20, then 7, and 500 people ended up writing a book together; the virtual keynote I delivered minutes after learning someone close to me had died. 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. Timestamps (estimated) 00:00 Speaking to speakers: "a different vibe" 01:00 Near-miss #1 begins: the agenda that didn't list me 02:30 One foot on the steps: "There's been a change." 03:45 Near-miss #2 begins: 40 minutes… then 20… then 7 05:00 Near-miss #3 begins: the text before a virtual keynote 06:00 Resolving #3: a smirk, Do Not Disturb, fully present 07:45 Resolving #2: index cards, Sharpies, and a seven-minute book 10:30 Resolving #1: "connect-tile dysfunction" and slides that bend 13:00 Why tell speakers these stories: service to the audience and the organizers 14:15 The reveal: nested loops (A → B → C → C → B → A) 16:00 The pull to finish what's unfinished 17:15 Keep the frame on them 18:30 Close Key takeaways 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. Useful quotes (maybe) "It's about your service to the audience and your service to the ones that brought you there to serve the audience." "I always bring a backup plan with me." "Most of my slides are images anyway… they're more like cues. I can expand on a single image, or I can contract and save time." "Keep the frame on them, because that's who it's for." "Start story A, don't finish it. Start story B, don't finish it. Start story C, finish story C. Finish story B, finish story A." Helpful Links Book Dr. Tori to speak: https://drtori.com/speaker (https://drtori.com/speaker) Apply for 1:1 influence coaching: https://www.drtori.com/coaching-application-1on1 (https://www.drtori.com/coaching-application-1on1) 101 Ways to Manage Your State: https://drtori.com/101 (https://drtori.com/101) Always Kiss Me Good Night: Instructions on Raising the Perfect Parent by 147 Kids Who Know, compiled by J.S. Salt (Harmony, 1997) Tags 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

2. 

   31 Aug 2026

   073 The Room is More Important Than the Rule

   The Room Is More Important Than the Rule The Influence Every Day Show with Dr. Ed Tori - Episode 073 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: The Dogon toguna (Mali) - the elders' meeting shelter with a ceiling about four feet high, where the traditional account is that anger, expressed by standing, has nowhere to go The nijiriguchi (Japan) - the tea-house "crawling-in" door, about two feet square, that samurai couldn't carry a sword through; lord and merchant enter the same way Floor-sitting cultures - Japan, Korea, and much of the Islamic world, where no seat is higher than anyone else's The Paris peace talks (1968–69) - ten weeks spent deciding the shape of the negotiating table before substantive talks could begin Finnish sauna diplomacy - Cold War negotiations in towels: no insignia, no rank, no weapons Hajj - millions of pilgrims in the same two white cloths Quaker meeting houses - no altar, no pulpit, facing pews, silence as the default Topkapi Palace - the "Eye of the Sultan," a carved grate over the council chamber where the sultan might or might not be listening The UK House of Commons - benches that face each other, so the opposing argument always has a seat 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. Key takeaways: Rooms are more important than rules. The environment shapes behavior with or without the rule. Setting the stage has multiple levers you control... including environment, time, timing, messaging before, and the arrival. Most deliberately designed rooms across cultures shed status. If a conversation matters that much, it's more important than your ego. Some rooms should be designed for disagreement. Full agreement in every meeting means you've designed out honesty. Before you blame your character for a broken rule, look at the room you keep breaking it in. Quotables: "Rooms are more important than rules." "If it's that important to you, it's more important than your ego." "If I get full agreement of everyone in the room, that is a bad sign." "Sometimes we break the rule and beat ourselves up, but we never designed it so it was easy to carry out the rule." "Context is far more important than content." This week's action: 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. Mentioned in this episode: Setting the Stage - the first of five moves in Not-So-Difficult Conversations (Dr. Tori's card-deck workshop) The Core Influence Framework™ - this episode lives in the Contexts pillar Rule 6 of the 7 Simple Rules of Influence: Make It Easy Links: How well do you listen? Take the quiz: https://listening.scoreapp.com (https://listening.scoreapp.com) Apply for 1-on-1 influence coaching: https://DrTori.com/coaching-application-1on1 (https://DrTori.com/coaching-application-1on1) Bring the Not-So-Difficult Conversations workshop to your team: https://DrTori.com/speaking (https://DrTori.com/speaking)

3. 

   4 Aug 2026

   072 Nervous Before A Talk? Advice To A Friend

   Episode 072 Nervous Before A Talk? Advice To A Friend The Influence Every Day Show with Dr. Ed Tori 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: Why the feeling you're calling panic is closer to excitement than you think Why your years of experience are the reason you were asked in the first place... and why time away from the work can be an advantage rather than a gap The reframe that changes a speaker's whole nervous system: you're not performing, you're serving What my mentor said to me in a hallway outside a room full of strategy chiefs, four seconds before I walked in The part of state management I usually leave out of my influence talks: that your state runs on four different clocks, and three of them are already finished by the time you start panicking The two index cards that go under your camera (and why nobody has ever known they were there) How every one of these tips maps onto the Core Influence Framework™ - States, Frames, Patterns, Contexts KEY TAKEAWAYS You were brought in. Somebody looked at an agenda, found a gap, and decided the gap was the thing you do. That vote happened weeks ago, in a meeting you weren't in. You're the only one still counting. Performance and service send your body in opposite directions. Performance points your attention back at yourself. Service points all of it at them. Same room, same slides, different nervous system. Your state runs on four clocks, not one. Minutes (the tea, the walk, the song). Days (preparation). Years (experience). Decades (character). The five minutes before get all the attention and they're the smallest of the four. They don't know what you were going to say. They only know what you said. Every nervous speaker grieves the sentence they skipped. Nobody in the audience grieves with them. Points, not a script. Two index cards under the camera. One headed TAKE-HOME POINTS, one headed STORIES. Points you can glance at and elaborate... never sentences you'd read. Give them one thing to keep. When they ask for parting words, offer one. Maybe two. Never more than three. 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 Dr. Mark Smith - mentor and former boss; the hallway conversation before the strategy retreat 101 Ways to Manage Your State - the handout referenced in the original email The Core Influence Framework™ (SFPC) - States, Frames, Patterns, Contexts Rule 1 of the 7 Simple Rules of Influence - Manage Your State On anxiety and excitement: the research behind this from Allison Woods Brooks that pre-performance anxiety and excitement are high-arousal states; what changes is how you read the arousal. Here's the citation and link: Brooks, A. W. (2014). Get excited: Reappraising pre-performance anxiety as excitement. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(3), 1144–1158. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035325 (https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035325) LINKS Talk to my AI clone → DrTori.ai (https://drtori.ai) How well do you actually listen? Take the quiz → listening.scoreapp.com (https://listening.scoreapp.com) TING - the deep listening framework → DrTori.com/ting (https://drtori.com/ting) Influence immersion, 1-on-1 with Dr. Tori → drtori.com/coaching-application-1on1 (https://www.drtori.com/coaching-application-1on1) Everything else → DrTori.com (https://drtori.com) 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

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

6 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 52 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

80

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

60

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.