ep26 – Chris Moody

This week I finally get to bring on my close friend and business partner, Chris Moody! Chris is one of the world’s best trainers.

– Chris says everything we do is an evolution, and shares his story of evolving from hairdressing to teaching

– The one moment that changed everything for him

– He digs into the differences between “show & tell” teaching and “share & learn” teaching

Complete Transcript

Chris Baran 0:00
How great would it be to get up close and personal with the beauty industry heroes? We love and admire and to ask them how did you learn to do what you do? I’m Chris Baran, a hairstylist and educator for 40 plus years. And I’m inviting all our heroes to chat and share the secrets of their success.

Well, welcome to Headcases. Now, I have to tell you, I’m really excited about this week’s guest. And, you know, upfront, I can tell you, he’s got it. It comes from a great hair family, he has salon on the UK. But even more so than that, it’s about the journey that this man has made from being a hairdresser behind the chair into being one of the world’s best in my mind. Trainers, educators, teachers, not only in our industry, but in other industries as well. He spent his his last number of years really researching and helping people to understand how to better get a message across so whether you you you’re interested in learning how to teach as an apprentice, if you’re somebody that wants to learn just how to pass on a message to your family or to other friends around you. Or whether you’re on stage shows, schools or whatever. This is the person that you really want to learn from. So let’s get to this week’s headcase Mr. Chris Moody. Mr. Moody, it is an honor and a pleasure. And just for those of you watching and listening now. Chris and I are on Zoom meetings, were dear friends, business partners, etc. But so to me, this is just like another one of our regular meetings on every week. So it’s actually it’s really fun. And I’d have to tell you, on the podcast, Chris, it is a pleasure and an honor to have you as one of the best and most highly regarded trainers of trainers that you created.

Chris Moody 2:09
And thank you for inviting me, it’s been a while hasn’t it? Because, you know, I’ve heard you talking about this podcast for a couple of years now planning it. And then I was really happy to celebrate with you when you launched it. And it’s been going a little while now we’ve been saying oh, you’ve got to come on, you’ve got to come on. And it’s taken a while really. But like you say we speak so often with each other. And that like this screen to screen, as it were, it feels like we’re talking together all the time. But it’s a real pleasure to be on. And I’m a bit nervous. Actually, Chris, if I’m really honest, I’m a little bit

Chris Baran 2:42
less because I didn’t see any questions. And you know, I have to say, for the audience of the, the reality is Chris is probably one of the most humble people that I know. Because I I kept saying, Come on, we need to get on here. And he kept saying, Well, what do they want to hear me for? And I went well, that’s what I find. And all the people that I interview is that’s the one commonality that I have right from Trevor to Sam via to all of the other industry greats, Anna and all the other greats that we’ve had on here, they’re all humbled by somebody even thinking that they’re one of the industry leaders and that you are my friend. So as that I mean, I always like to start off because, you know, the whole purpose behind this is just so the use that is out there can understand where we came from what we had to get, go through the tough times that we’ve had, and so on, just so that they know that they can, they can get it and do it as well. In other words, we can do it, they can do it. So give us you know, so it was hairdressing. Was that always in the charts, I know you came from a hairdressing family. But was that always on the chart? Did you go? No, I don’t want to do that because nobody else is doing it. What happened?

Chris Moody 3:50
Oh, well, I you know, I knew you could ask me this question because that’s a lot of people ask that question. He says hairdressing is something that you always wanted to do. So I kind of, I thought, you know, what, how shall I answer it? And how should I go ahead. And so I’ve just decided in this one, because it’s you Chris, and because I’ve known you for such a long time. And you know, the people out there that are listening and watching, they may not know this, but you’re my mentor, you’re my teacher, and almost everything that I am today and who I am and what I do is all it’s all down to you to the influence that you had on me. So I thought I’ve got to be really honest, I’m going to be really honest, and I’ve tried to be honest all the time, but I kind of edit the honesty a little bit but this time I’m gonna do as we all do. So no hairdressing was never on the cards. In fact, it was way off the cards. My mum is a hairdresser. absolutely remarkable hairdresser and has a long and really illustrious history. My brother is a hairdresser as you know, he’s been on the podcast, my dad, the only way that he could become part of the family was to quit his job and become a hairdresser too. And start a family business. And I was determined No, no, I was I’m determined not to be a hairdresser. It just wasn’t in my DNA at all. I’ve thought that I’m not going to be a hairdresser. I always harbored a desire to, to illustrate, I’ve always, I was always fascinated with comic books, the dream was that I would be a comic book illustrator, I was really into the work of like Jack Kirby and people like that the early comic book illustrators. And my dream was to live in a loft somewhere, maybe in New York or London, writing out comic strips, drawing out comic books and selling them to Marvel Comics, that’s, that was always going to be my plan. And when it came to crunch time, and going to art college, I couldn’t get into the art college that I wanted to go to. It was partly down to funding at the time, and because it was out of my district. And the only way that I could get in would be to wait a little while and to self fund which I was determined that I was going to do. And in that time, my mum turned to me, so we can’t do nothing, you have to do something. And she said, you’re going to have to come and work in the salon and do something, you know, you can’t you can’t not work and just just draw things. So I started working in the salon. And I have to say didn’t, I would love to say, you know, it was like some magical light bulb moment where I went, ah, gosh, this is it. But it wasn’t I didn’t enjoy it. I found it quite hard work. It wasn’t at all what I thought it was going to be it was you know, there’s a lot of housekeeping. I seem to be endlessly cleaning. It seemed to be up to my eyeballs in Perm solution. It was the early 80s. And I think that’s how long did about 25,000 perms a day. And I rinsed most of them, you know, so I had to back washes on the girl rinsing perms, and it was just, it was just a life of wet trousers and ammonia smells. That’s all it was. And then I thought, I can’t wait to get through this. But my brother was a hairdresser at the time. And he was working for Vidal Sassoon in the early to mid 80s in London, and it was really kicking off. And so I used to go down and visit him at the weekend. And it was those visits to him. And the people that he hung out with and the places that he went and the work that they were doing. That showed me that hairdressing wasn’t just about 1980s, shorter, Shaggy perms and things like that there was this whole kind of artistic genre to it with these fascinating people who did incredible things. And that’s really kind of what sustained me and I thought that there is a lot more to this than I thought really, there’s there’s a huge, many layers to this. It’s not just the frontline hairdressers that are working in the suburbs, who were super important and keep our industry moving. But there’s also lots of diversity. My brother was working with people that did hair and makeup, did hair and photography, did hair and body painting, did hair and making claws. Do you know what I mean? There was lots of this, all kinds of stuff going on. And that’s what sustained me and mentored me, I think and that’s our I stayed in hairdressing if you like,

Chris Baran 8:14
so what, what was it? Like? I mean, for those people that are out there, the brother we’re talking about is Stephen moody. And the you know, famous hairdresser. You know, big uns assumes was the dean of their schools, went on working with other manufacturers and is really, really highly regarded. In my mind, I would say probably in probably the top five hair cutters in the world. Yeah, what was that like of having them as a brother and you doing the same thing? Because you’re, you’re a cutter as well. What was yeah,

Chris Moody 8:46
it was really tough. It was hard at the beginning and I had a lot of insecurities, a lot of issues. First of all, I had my mum who was a workaholic high achiever, really, really naturally good at what she did could just kind of flick a wrist and make beautiful things happen. I then had my brother who was, you know, working his way up the Sassoon ladder was almost like right hand man to Fidel himself do some incredible things. And they either you know, that first 10 years, I don’t know probably 10 years or so, I got introduced either as Denise’s son or Stephens brother. That was my that was that was how I was introduced. I was oh, you know, this is my brother or that Stephens brother or this is Denise’s son, you know, that kind of thing. And I was I don’t know, I did always seem to kind of live in shadows really. So I’m barely when I look back on it. Now, I did have a difficult time. I think really, I just, I was always trying to be somebody else or be something else. And I think it led to I think it led to a real problem of inauthenticity, which I mean cutting fast forward, you know about that because you helped me with that with this thing where it’s always trying Need to be something else to somebody else? If you’re not, I mean, so I think it had an effect on me it was an issue I think took me a long time. I’m all for it now.

Chris Baran 10:09
But you know what I what I here’s what I what I think is so ingratiate thing about you and your work ethic and your coach ability is because I’m gonna, this is gonna sound weird, I’ve got you on the guest. But I just wanted to relive that moment a second because I remember the moment when you were, we were at a training at believin had can’t remember where la New York somewhere and a hotel and you are presenting. And then I remember I said after your presentation, I said can we just go out in the back room. And we went in the hallway in order, the older the servers go to serve the stuff behind the meeting rooms. And, and I remember we talked about just the being in and I can’t even remember the word I use at the time. But I said look at you are so much more than when you get into presenter mode. And and it was like a switch that happened because I remember you present it after that. And it was was gone. But you just you always take on everything. As soon as you take it in and you don’t you don’t take it with disregard.

Chris Moody 11:21
Yeah, I think I think that’s a maturity thing. And when I was younger, I think I was difficult to teach and maybe difficult to coach and I was kind of very defensive about everything. And I think I was so conscious of always trying to be something else or someone else that I was very defensive all the time. But yeah, as I mean, there’s a there’s a there’s a peripheral story to that, because that was when I got involved in teaching. And I mean that we’re going down rabbit holes now for different things. But I never really, this is what I wanted to say I wanted to be honest about like, people talk about hairdressing, and they say, Oh, it’s my life, and I live and breathe it. And it’s my passion and blah, blah, blah and all the rest of it. It’s never been my life, it’s never been my passion. It’s never been something that’s really set a lightbulb on my head where it’s the be all and end all it’s never been that it’s always been a means to an end. And I’ve kind of just got through it that way and enjoyed it. Fortunately, I’ve always enjoyed the people that I’ve worked with, I’ve always worked with really good colleagues, I’ve never had bad relationships at work. And I’ve always worked with really nice clients. But the thing that made the light bulb for me was probably, I don’t know, maybe 20 years into my career maybe was when I started to really do a deep dive on teaching. And I’ve always been fascinated with training and teaching. But the first 10 years of me training and teaching was about me exhibiting showing people all the cool stuff that I could do, and showing people how courageous I was to chop into hair and slice it out and do all fancy stuff like that. It was really all about me showing off. And then I started to get into studying the real pedagogy behind it, or how people learned and why some teacher was successful. And that’s when my my lightbulb hit. That’s when I had that kind of epiphany, that aha moment. And now if someone was to say to me, what’s your passion, what sets you on fire. It’s about teaching. It’s about learning. It’s that whole transference of knowledge, that whole kind of self development developing other people. It just so happens that hairdressing was the vehicle that took me to that place. But that’s the thing that sets me on fire. That’s the thing that keeps me alive.

Chris Baran 13:37
Thank you. It’s what? Now, the reason why I want to ask you this next question is this is I want people to understand that everything that we do is an evolution. You know, when people always say that, you know, will you I can’t remember the word that people always used about when somebody just moves forward, they always say you’re shifting and changing whatever. But I wouldn’t believe everything that we do is about an evolution. And you know, and obviously, you spent a long time getting to where you were because you were a cutter, and you’re an excellent cutter. And then I saw that transition that happened when you went from being a great cutter and then getting into training. And I could see the light bulb turn. And that’s why I said I remember having conversation with people. And I said, if you ever want anybody that’s going to replace Chris Baran, for whatever I do in training, it’s going to be Chris Moody, because I saw the passion that you have in there, but what I want for everybody else that’s out there training, whether you’re in a salon or in a school in a stage performer and you feel you were at where you were great at what you do and your technical discipline. But now you’re moving into a different profession. I was called the two different you know, your head rests on one hand, a teacher on the other. What was the transition like when you went from one to the other like and you had to experiment and try it So what was that like?

Chris Moody 15:03
So again, this is this is kind of coming down to honesty and I apologize in advance if I lose you and your listeners, because there’s a lot of deeply passionate and, and caring hairdressers out there that are going to be listening to this that may disagree with something that I’m saying. And that really and so I’m going to reiterate by saying this is just personal experiences just me it doesn’t belong to everybody. But the transition was was was striking because I think the thing that never really the thing that never really lit me up with with with hairdressing as such was, I couldn’t really see the point. I think that’s what it was. And again, I’m just being really honest here with everybody. I was cutting hair, and I was coloring hair, and people were happy with it. And it was good, but it never really felt particularly, I don’t know, life changing to me, or I just thought it was just, you know, I’m just cutting hair, and it’s okay, and it’s gonna grow back and blah, blah, blah. But then I was asked, I was being asked to do more and more teaching. And I think the teaching was based on my personality, not on my skill as a teacher. So I was bluffing my way through it by telling jokes, being entertaining, being larger than life just happens, all the stuff that you coached me on, you know, all that kind of thing, entertaining people, and people were having a great time, but not necessarily learning anything. Does that make sense? And that was what was putting me through. And then I started to recognize that there were some some things were effective, and some things weren’t. Some people left at lunchtime and never came back. And some people stayed the whole time. There were occasions where I got on a roll, and somebody said, you know, how is that working? How are you making that happen. And for some reason, I could talk them through it, I could dismantle the process, and I could see light bulbs going on. And I could see things changing and things happening to me. And I started to suddenly recognize, you know, there was, there was purpose in this there was there was something happening, I was genuinely making a difference, because thank you for your compliments about me being a great hair cutter, but I’m not I’m a regular hair cutter, there are there are people that are a million times better than me more creative, you know, more technical, more intuitive, I’m just a good solid day to day, you know, sort of foundation haircutter. And that really, and so and maybe that’s why I wasn’t changing anybody’s lives or sparkling anybody up, but I’m not being big headed is I really understand, I’m starting to understand more about how people learn and what makes them tick and, and what makes some pieces of information sit and some piece of information slip away. And I just felt I was having more impact, helping people to understand solving their problems through teaching and learning. I was having more impact doing that, than I was cutting, cutting. Somebody said, Does that make sense? I make a client feel nice, because I’d cut her hair and she’d say, Oh, that’s lovely. I feel great. But I remember there was one instance where I was teaching and it was a guy who’s much older than me. He was in his 50s, I was in my mid 20s. And he was doing something on a bob and he was cutting this Bob. And his problem was that he couldn’t get the Bob to sit under, it couldn’t get it to sit properly. And all it was was just the way he was holding a comb. And he just needed to just shift his elbow, turn his hand from being on the vertical plane to being on the horizontal plane, dip, his eyes drop forward, just slight changes in his body position. And it created something else. And I remember coaching him on that and he turning around and the look in his eyes and everything you need just turn around, he said, and he just said it then and he said, oh my god that’s changed everything I can see it’s changed everything, just those things. And I taught him many times afterwards. And he kept telling this same story, just this one thing, it changed everything for me changed everything for me. And I was thinking wow, that it really has made a difference. It’s changed something. So I suppose I’m rambling here a bit now the transition for me just became much more exciting, much more electric because I felt I just have more of an impact. I think I was just more passionate about understanding why it happened. I could do more by helping people dismantle the process. I think I could be more effective and help people better I could do nice haircuts. But I was better at helping people understand how to get the how to complete the tasks that they want

Chris Baran 19:28
to buy just for interrupting you there. But you said two really insightful words one to one was impact and and then the biggest thing that I want to get out of that is how is the transformation that you make on people that when when somebody is and then I want it again and you didn’t go down a rabbit hole deep enough that are far enough that I think took anybody away. But I think this session particularly I want devoted to people that are in their salon you might be in your salon loving what you do, and you know that you have something else to give, and you might not feel that you’re the very best at the top or somebody else should come to a training, you can do trainings on anything that one thing that you know how to do better than somebody else. And that changes their life just like that. That young man when he said, That changes everything, because at that moment, you changed, you changed his life path and his career, because the thing that he couldn’t, the problem he couldn’t get over is the thing that you’re going to get stuck at for the rest of your career if somebody doesn’t solve that problem. And most, I want to hear what you feel about educators that get on stage and feel that they have to change everything all at once, or what’s your feeling on that?

Chris Moody 20:50
Well, so first of all, I’m going to go go back a bit to what you said about you know, you might you, you may consider yourself, if you’re listening to this or watching this, you may think I’m not an educator, I’m just kind of helping people in my salons, I’m going to tell you this, this is a mantra that I live by, and I’ll stand upon a box and defend this to the death. Everybody can teach somebody something. Okay, so everybody can teach somebody, something we all know something that will have a positive impact in somebody’s life, that they don’t know, you just have to find that one piece of information, that little twist that little, just shift somebody from one place to another. So sometimes what happens with educators now, if you are an educator, we get up on stage. And if you’re listening to this, and you are an educator, I want you to write this down. We mistake value for volume, we mistake value for volume. We think that by giving our learners or our audience value for money, we should give them lots and lots of stuff, you know, we should flood them with information. Sometimes as educators, it’s taken us years and years to accumulate the information that we’ve got. And what we tried to do is we tried to squeeze hours and hours of our learning, sorry, years and years of our learning, and we tried to squeeze it into just hours and hours of teaching. And instead, what we need to do is we need to focus on what what piece of information can I share with you now, that will just help you move to the next stepping stone that will just help you make progress, it could be turning your hand from a vertical plane to a horizontal plane, it could be lifting your elbow, it can be doing just one little movement, that will just create a crack in that wall so that you can get through more and more conflict through, you know, sometimes pupils learners, you know, like a dam, they have this reservoir of potential behind them, and there’s just a dam wall in the front that’s blocking them. And you don’t need to dismantle the whole damn wall, sometimes you just need to make a little crack for a little water to seep through. And when that water start seeping through all of their potential can start to make its way through and eventually that dam wall can break, the barrier can go and their potential can come flooding forward. So sometimes it’s just one little thing, you don’t need to change the world. You just need to change that one little barrier, the one little blockage that that person’s got from helping them move to the next step.

Chris Baran 23:12
Yeah, it’s sort of like a linchpin, isn’t it? It’s like, all this potential is sitting on top of that person or waiting to be confidence. inspiration, motivation, sometimes held back by just one little linchpin. So what, what do you like I often see that when some of our teachers have always talked about the fear, and that is what holds that linchpin in place. Is the fear that we have. Tell us a little bit about like when what do you what do you do to help to pull that linchpin fear that fear linchpin out so that people can have that flood of information that that goes into their being? What what do you do with that? How do you as an educator, how do you deal with that?

Chris Moody 24:04
I think the first thing we’ve got to do is to stop telling people things. Stop telling them stuff all the time, you know, because what we might be telling them is stuff that matters to us. That’s important to us, but makes no difference to them. And instead, what we need to do is we need to start asking and more importantly, listening, just having a conversation with people. And if you think about the best conversations, if you’re going out on a date with somebody or you want to make a positive impression, you want to build a relationship with somebody, you take them out to dinner, you go out for coffee, you don’t talk at them, you ask them questions, and you listen to them, you listen and you respond to those questions. So as teachers, we’ve got to stop telling. We have to start asking and listening and watching and observing. And you know, we might have one hour with somebody like that guy that I was talking about, you know, there you know, I was with him for the entire day doing kind of Bob’s and then graduated bob Have some LED bulbs. And what we talked about was 50 and 20 seconds, that’s what shifted him and turned him into a lifelong learner turned him from a 50 year old cynical salon owner who said, I’ve got nothing more to learn and turned him into a lifelong learner where he kept going 15 seconds out of an eight hour day. That’s, that’s what that’s what it took. And sometimes we if we’ve got an hour with somebody with a learner, sometimes instead of flooding them with information, hey, look at this, what about this? Look at this, I can juggle three things at once, hey, what about this trick, we just need to step back and just start asking them some questions. Just start listening to them, observing them watching, seeing where they’re struggling, seeing where their anxiety goes, their frustration rises, what do I have that could just help make their journey a little easier? What experience can I share with them, that would just make them feel a little more comfortable, a little bit more? Like they’re making a little bit more progress, that they’re taking a step forward? We need to stop telling and start asking a little bit. Yeah.

Chris Baran 26:01
You know, as always, you know, whenever we have our sessions together, and I’m gonna pay back some compliments here. Because, you know, for those of you listening and watching right now, they that Chris said at the very beginning about how, you know, some of what he is right now is party because of me, but the reality is we learn from each other. And I remember that, you know, when you write down a note, and you put a note down, and it’s really quick, and you go, I’ll never, I’ll never, I’ll always understand what that is. And I from one of my teachers from Blair, singer, I had this note written down, and I’ve been rewriting a lot of my notes, so I can try to understand them better. And he had this one. One page that I filled out, which was a copy of his drawing, and it had arrows going from one in a circle, and it said, struggle, juggle, struggle, purge struggle, and he kept going around this, and I went back and what will this mean? And that’s exactly what you were just talking about, is that people are juggling their information, their trug, they’re stuck, they’re juggling this information, trying to make it all fit together. They’re struggling with it. But if they can’t get the understanding to make it under, understand a bowl, then they just purge that information and try to get on with something else. So as always, that sometimes everything in perspective makes it bigger. So I want a I’d write that down. If you’re, even if you’re not a teacher, just write that down, struggle, juggle or struggle, juggle purge. And if you think are cyclical that is, and that’s why, even if you’re, I don’t care if you’re an apprentice, and you have another apprentice that’s coming on. And let’s say you have to rinse that perm. And you can give them the talk. And I want you to talk a little bit, Chris about why the why is so important on everything, just like when you did that with a comb that was most people will teach you the how most people will teach you what they’re doing. But so few will teach you. Why what so give us a little bit on that.

Chris Moody 28:05
Well, yeah, it’s really interesting. And you know, there’s, there’s a, there’s this big philosophy now I think Simon Sinek talks about starting with the why and things like that. And to say I’m not entirely in agreement with that completely. Sometimes it’s important to start with a why sometimes you need to identify what it is. And sometimes you need to talk people through how to get to it. So that, you know, there’s a what, there’s a way there’s a how and there’s a why, and they’re not in any particular order. But What the Why or pertains to more than anything else. Why pertains to purpose, you know, what, what’s the purpose, what’s the reason behind this. And unless you’re a learner, anybody at all really has reason or purpose is a really big part of self motivation that’s missing. If if I’ve created a habit, if I’ve created a shortcut shortcuts and habits are created purely to save time and energy, it’s our brains way of saving time and energy and getting us from point A to point B as quickly and as efficiently as possible. And so if you want to deviate me from that path, the first thing I’m going to have to do is I’m gonna have to relearn New Directions, it’s going to take a lot of cognitive effort, and a lot of energy. So I have to have a motivation to do it. I have to have a reason why. And what most people will do when they’re talking about reasons they’ll do is they’ll sell somebody a solution. Well, the reason I want you to do this is because you know you have a problem with x y Zed and by going through my 20 step process and listening to all of this and practicing like that, you know, all of that will be a lot better. And what we forget is people don’t buy solutions, people buy results. And then once they’re happy with the result, then they’ll go and explore and go deeper on the solution. And so the Y is a way of motivating people to buy the solution that you’re looking for. So if you want me to spend time turning my hand from the vertical plane to a horizontal plane then lifted my elbow drop in my eyes, looking underneath the line rather than above the line, all that extra effort, all that extra movement. What’s the purpose behind this? You know, what’s the big picture? What result will it give me, which will help me to live an easier or more successful life going forward? I think that’s right as to what’s meniscus learners, teachers get so wrapped up on look at what amazing things I can do. Let me show you how to do it.

Chris Baran 30:28
Yeah, I’m gonna ask you this.

Chris Moody 30:33
What and again, it goes back to what we’ve always said, Chris, you know, a lot of hair, a lot of teachers and it’s not hairdressers, it’s all teachers, it’s very easy to get mixed up between teaching somebody something and just showing them what you’re doing. And that’s what happens with a lot of education. A lot of, there’s a lot of people out there who are educating, and they’re not really teaching, what they’re doing is they’re just showing people what it is that they’re doing. It’s what we call exhibiting rather than teaching. So it’s not really about you know, what, what they’re focusing on is show and tell. And what we really need to be focusing on is share and learn.

Chris Baran 31:08
In your that was a great lead in that, that this next questions are kind of a two parter is when you have to, when you sit in an audience, and again, we’re hairdressers, we’re gonna sit in hairdressing audience. But I find that even when I’m sitting in other presenters in other professions, and I sit in their classes, there’s times when I’m engaged in there’s times when I just went, you know, I wish I wouldn’t have sat so close to the front, because this would be easier for me just to get out of the room right now. What turns you off, when you’re in an audience, and you want to leave the room? And then if you were to coach that person, what would you say to them, the thing

Chris Moody 31:52
that turns me off is pretty easy. Somebody blindly following their agenda, and blindly following that predetermined objective. And focusing on here’s what I need to present, here’s the information that I need to get across in the next hour. It doesn’t really matter what’s happening out there in the audience, doesn’t matter what your problem is, or what your struggle is, here’s what I need to present. Here’s what I need to get through. And this is the objective that we’re going to get to at the end of the day, and I love it when teachers stand up. And I mean, it’s bad enough when teachers stand up and say, here’s what we’re going to learn today. So I was thinking, Well, you don’t know what I’m going to learn today. Do you are the standard and this, here’s what I’m going to teach you today. Well, that’s more accurate, you aren’t going to teach me that. But you know, who knows if that’s really what I need to learn. So it’s, it’s teach, and it’s not just teachers, it’s presenters just blindly following their agenda. And again, what what starts off as a class just becomes a presentation. Now, if it’s just a one way presentation, especially in this day and age, you may as well put it onto a video link and send it to me, I can watch it in my pajamas while I’m having cookies and milk and what have you. And, and so that’s really the thing that kind of disturbs me about people. And what makes me want to leave is when I get the feeling that it doesn’t make any difference whether I’m there or not. That makes me want to leave. So again, I as you know, I teach. I don’t teach, I don’t just teach hairdressers, I teach all kinds of different people I’ve recently been involved in, in teaching college lecturers who are working on what we call access courses. These are people that teach mathematics, literacy, numeracy, even sort of basic sciences, I was working with some people that do travel and tourism a little while ago, and what have you two people, you know, so it doesn’t matter what what you’re teaching the this, this pedagogy of this art of teaching, it’s the same principle applies. It doesn’t matter what it is that we’re teaching. But if I’m sat in an audience, and my presence and my reactions are having no effect whatsoever on your actions as a teacher, then there’s no point in you being there. I may as well be someplace else. And you can just leave my iPhone there on record, and I’ll pick it up later when I’m done. Because why am I there? There’s no point you’ve been there. Yeah, what I have to be able to do as a teacher or a presenter is look at you and feed from that audience. And that audience really kind of steers my path, I may have a destination in mind, you know, we’ve got to get to here by the end of this class, we’ve got to get to this point, by the end of this class, that’s one thing. But maybe I can go a different route. Maybe I can go a more scenic route. Or maybe I can take detours to places that you want to go and visit. But unless I’m feeding off you and allowing you to somewhat at least, at least influence the directions that I’m taking. Then what’s the point in you being there, you know, it has to be it has to be relational. It has to be a relationship.

Chris Baran 34:59
Yeah, No, I agree. And I, and I, one thing I want to make clear to the audience is what? What Chris and I are talking about, and this is not, is not to downplay the people that are doing it, it’s just that they don’t know better. Yeah, you know, and we, we generally, and I’m gonna speak to this for me personally, is, we tend to teach the way we were taught. So if somebody taught you and you respected them, and you went, Okay, well, that’s where I learned that’s wait. So that’s why I should teach. And often, like, especially when, let’s say you’re the what, half the centennial into this as I am, the way that we learned 40 years ago is very different than what people really need right now. That was just one way of teaching where it was just tell tell, tell, tell, tell, all about creation, perfection, and anything below that was frowned upon. Yeah, whereas that’s not way that’s not proper, prompt or not even the right word, but I’m gonna stick with it’s not the right way to go about with adult education, where people are learning something new breaking habits, etc. And it’s like, for me, when I, when I have that same feeling of somebody just has a, a PowerPoint that they bring up, and then they read what’s on the PowerPoint. I get really pissed off, and I just want to go well, you could have sent that to me. Yeah. So. And I noticed that, and here’s where I want to get your great wisdom on this next is I’m finding that all of that is now kind of reverting back, because we went through where everybody was on Zoom. And then everybody was on Zoom, and they were trying to teach in that old way on Zoom. Yeah. And then they went on to now they wanted to go back to in real life, but then they went, now we find people are going well, yeah, but I mean, I gotta pay and I gotta put pants on, and I gotta get on an airplane, I gotta pay for hotel rooms and food, etc. So I’d like to know your take on the difference between teaching in real life and versus teaching in? On video, yeah, that’s,

Chris Moody 37:09
that’s a, that’s a real big thing, I’ll definitely I’d love to share some thoughts on that, if I may, or I just want to circle back real quick to clear something up in case, you know, it’s not my intention to offend anybody on here. But that all thing about teaching versus telling and just being sort of fixated on your agenda, you know, sometimes there is there is a reason to do that. Sometimes there is a necessity to do that. So if you’re interested in you’re making notes, you listening or watching, listening, making notes, you know, you might want to write this down, sometimes you are just gonna have to stick to your agenda and just blindly deliver and get forward and time. So that is, if time is an issue, if you really short of time, and you need to get some information across. And time is an issue, you’re going to have to go into tell mode. If if there’s if there’s a real lack of data, it’s no good asking people questions if they’ve got no data from which to find answers. So if there’s a complete lack of data or lack of information, and people want to know specifically what you do, then you can have to go into tell mode. And the other thing is, if there are specific rules, standards, regulations, this is how you do it here. This is how we do an X Y Zed task, and this is the regulation way of doing it, then you have to go into that as well. So I’m not saying that you should never go into this thing about telling and being really regimented on your objective. Just make sure that it’s for the right reasons. If there’s a lack of time, or lack of skill or data, or if you need to stick to real standards or regulations. Or Or if you’ve asked your learner a question, what do you want to know? And your learner says, I want to know exactly how you do that step by step, take me right to it, then then then that’s okay. But other than that, you know, you want to get into that into that relationship teaching that we talked about. So the big differences between going online and working in real life? Well, Chris, is you you know, it’s really funny you and I started teaching online probably about six or seven years ago or something like that. We were, we were teaching online. So when all that thing hit, I guess you and I were in a great place. And we were really lucky. I feel really blessed. I don’t know about you, in those first few months, when a lot of people were struggling with a lack of purpose or a lack of direction. I think you and I, we were quite lucky and quite blessed. We were very busy. We had a lot of things to do. I mean, we we literally worked with 1000s of people all over the world online, helping them sort of transition from from in person teaching to sort of online or remote teaching and that so yeah, the big difference between it Well, I think as far as the structure goes, I don’t think there’s a big difference really, other than the fact that you’re missing physicality. It’s difficult for me to reach through the screen and and physically interact with you move you reposition you touch you or something like that. But other than that, I don’t think there’s a massive difference if you know if I I speak to you as though you’re in the same room as me like I am. Now, my brain just assumes that you’re there that you’re in the same room with me, and we’re having this conversation, you know, it brains adapts really easily, really quickly. So I don’t think there’s a massive difference between the two. That doesn’t mean to say that one isn’t any more challenging than the other, you know, I think working online in some respects can be a little bit more challenging. It takes a little bit more energy, a little bit more careful consideration. There are things like screen fatigue that we have to be aware of. It’s it’s, it’s a lot easier for people to disengage when they’re online than it is when when they’re in person in the same room and what have you. So there are things that we can do to alleviate that. And going back to that relationship training that we were talking about, if I can have a conversation with you and ask you questions online and value your input and get your input in your, your influence that will help to keep you engaged. I think the problem is, and it’s it’s taken a long time to go away, if I’m honest, is we’ve got a 50 year relationship with screens. Yeah. You know, from televisions all the way through to, you know, to these. So we’ve to these mobile phones, cell phones, so we’ve got a long relationship with screens. But up until just a few years ago, our relationship with screens was one way. So we sat in front of the TV, and we listened. And we took it all on, and it just spilled out to us. So it’s very passive. And I think the issue that people are having with online engagement, for instance, is that we are yet to transition into a place where we have a two way relationship with screens. Yeah. Those of us like you and I that do it a lot, we have a two way relationship with screens, you know, I’m listening to your voice and watching your face. And we have this to work. But a lot of people don’t they just have this one way relationship with screens. And the recommendation that I would make is if you’re going online, and you’re teaching of a zoom, or teams or Blue Gene or something like that, then stop thinking of it as a screen and think of it as a window. And try to remember that there is somebody on the other side of that window, that you’re just looking through a sheet of glass, and it’s in real time. And if you know whatever I say you will react to immediately. And so it will help to build that relationship if we start to think of it not as a screen but more of a window. Does that make sense?

Chris Baran 42:35
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Chris Moody 44:00
Again, I thought you might ask me this, because we’ve had this conversation a lot. And I thought what kind of answer Shall I give? I give the answer that people want to hear or

Chris Baran 44:08
shall I give? I’ll give the one what’s the real one?

Chris Moody 44:11
So the real answer is the way that I can only tell you how it helped for me and this is what I coach other people on is I stopped caring whether or not you liked me. I stopped caring whether or not you liked me. And I think that was my problem before when I talked to you before about the difficulties that I had at the beginning I was running around like a dog with two tails, trying to get people to like me and constantly trying to say things that might get positive reactions, trying to say things that might make people feel more aligned to me or, or say nice things about me once had left. Terrified that I might be upsetting somebody or saying something that somebody disagrees with losing points, losing status, all of that and So I stopped caring whether or not not no, that’s not true. I do care if somebody likes me, I like to be liked. But I stopped trying as hard to be liked, that’s more accurate to stop trying. So here’s the thing is everything that I say to somebody, everything that I share with somebody has born out of experience, a, they got it from my teachers, and I’ve used it and found it worked. So I pass it on. Or I’ve discovered it through my own mistakes and making my own, you know, follow ups. And I’ve got this experience. And I’ve said, don’t do it like that, because things go bad do it like this instead. So everything’s been born through experience. And it’s been tried and tested. And it’s worked for me. And it’s worked for a lot of people that I’ve shared it with, and that as well. And so I’m pretty sure it’ll work for you, too. So everything that I’m trying to do is trying to help you find a result for your problem. It’s trying to everything that I am trying to do is trying to help you get a result that will help you live more successfully. So I’m not trying to offend anybody, I’m not trying to hurt anybody. I’m not trying to upset anybody, everything is designed to try and help somebody live a little bit more successfully, or a little bit easier or a little bit better. And so, as long as I do everything with that intention, it kind of gives me carte blanche to be able to say what I think I feel and what I’ve experienced, without having to worry whether or not it it upsets or offends people. Because I think we’re in a real dilemma now where we then say things or do things everybody’s frightened of being upset or offended, or, or, or something like that, or being spoken too harshly or anything like that. Everything that I do is intended for one thing, it’s intended to help people get over their problems and find the results that they’re looking for. And none of it is intended to hurt or upset or offend anybody at all. And so the more I focus on that, the more I’m able to just drop my affected accent and speak how I normally speak, use the words that I normally use, even if sometimes the cuss words or something like that. Do things like this where I go, rather than speaking perfectly all the time, it just helps me have like, like your your producer, Lee, he said, I want this podcast to be like two people who meet in a bar and talk. And so the more I can make my interactions like that, and less like a performance, the more I believe that can have a positive effect on people. So I become more authentic by trying less hard to be liked. And just said, Look, here, here’s information that’s worked for me, it’s worked for other people. And I’m sure it’s going to work for you please take it with my name is Chris, I

Chris Baran 48:01
remember sitting in a session where for those who haven’t been to the exchange in New York City. What happens after the class is, as I’m sure most people will do, you have a debrief at the end. And I remember we would not only have the debrief after but we would have a briefing in the morning where you would practice a routine that you had to do on stage, just so that the information came out, right. And then everybody would give a quick round the table. And I remember that a bunch of people were offering, you know, and for those of you that are listening now I’m using air quotes, coaching tips to them. And I remember something that was truly remarkable that you said, and you said there was a difference between opinion and coaching. Could could you just walk people through that?

Chris Moody 48:57
Yeah, I think that was a time when I was going through this transition into this kind of, yeah, sort of reckless authenticity, if you like, really. I mean, Chris, I’m, I’m 57 years old now. I mean, I know I only look 56 and a half. But I am actually, I’m actually 57 years old now. And I’m coming up on my 40th year in this industry now in hairdressing and that really, you know, I’ve got a beautiful wife, I’ve got two amazing children, I’ve got some fantastic friends. So whatever happens to me, I you know, I have all of that. So I’ve got nothing, nothing really to be afraid of or anything. So I’m always up for coaching. If if it’s if it’s something born out of experience, that can help me think in a different way or help me break through a barrier or give me the courage to step forward where I wasn’t afraid before. But what so many people offer is, you know, and usually starts with the words of what you want to do is, you know, what I think you should do is that as soon as that comes out, I just think Okay, so this is just opinion based on your experiences on your life on your values. And it really doesn’t have anything to do with me at all. Had I sat down with you over a cocktail and said, I’ve got this problem. What’s your advice? What would you advise me to do, then that’s slightly different. But in a coaching situation, if we come armed with opinions, or pathways or thoughts on what was something, something that we should do, we’ve immediately negated any coaching that we’re offering. If we’re going in coaching, and we already have predetermined opinions of where we want someone to go the answer we want them to give, we’ve already negated our, our right to coach really, it should really just be about asking questions that the person that you’re coaching hasn’t thought to ask or doesn’t have the courage to ask. And then also, this is where it gets tough to coin, the author is hold their feet to the fire, so that they can’t run away from answering those questions. asking them a question that makes them feel a little uncomfortable and saying, Look, unless you deal with this question, you’re just going to come around to it again, and again. And again, unless you break through this question, and figure out the answer, you’re going to be stuck in this place. So it’s not my job to give you an opinion or to give you an answer. But it is my job as a coach to hold your feet to the fire so that you answer the questions that perhaps you’re less comfortable answering.

Chris Baran 51:26
And I want to just the rehab right now, I think what you just said there about questioning, and that’s one thing that is the hardest thing for most tell people that was a half, quote, tell educators is hardest thing to do is move to question. questioning skills. So we talked about that. And the reason why I’m bringing that up now, because we start getting to that that would probably be another hour session. But what I want to do is just to say if you ever see any sessions, where, because Chris and I worked together a lot, but he also is one of the most amazing trainers I know. And if you ever see anything, any class that is coming up on, that Chris is doing on training or anything as such, you would be doing yourself a disservice if you did not jump on that class, because I you know, we learned from each other. But I always learned every time that we talk I learned from this man. You, you, you, I don’t know how it just Just so everybody knows. I don’t send questions to people. Because I find if I send questions, I get pat answers. So I like to have a little bit of surprise in this. And I having said that I I’m it almost sounds like that I had sent questions, because the next question that I wanted to ask you about was your family. And in you mentioned them that you have a beautiful wife and two incredible kids. And in America and I’m saying this it might be a Canadian expression. Maybe it’s American, I don’t know. But where I got it from there was this thing that you have the the millionaire family, which means you have the the wife, the boy, the girl and white picket fence, that was the way it was always put to me. And what’s that? What’s it like when you’re a trainer, trainer of trainers, and problem solver? You know, you know how to consult you know how to probe with questions. What’s the what’s being a train, when you have that all that train the trainer knowledge and you have a 16 or 17 year old, and you’re trying to give them proper advice as you would in class? What’s that like in your family?

Chris Moody 53:44
As you very well know all of this information is really sound and the techniques and the methods and the tools that we use are really sound and they work on everybody apart from your own kids. As you know. That’s not entirely true. So first of all, so my wife’s a school teacher, first of all, she teaches younger children she teaches if you’re over here in the UK listening, it’s called primary in the in the US its children from the age of four up to about 12 years old and the people that she teaches, and for me as far as the school system goes, that’s where real learning takes place. Between between sort of zero to 11 is where real learning takes place, kind of 12 to 18 is testing and measuring and then sort of 18 to 25 we go back to learning again, but so short so she really teachers, very difficult children really kind of children from very difficult backgrounds, children with really very harrowing sort of situations. She’s really on the frontline of some difficult teaching and she’s a massive inspiration and I always talk things out to her talk things through. And I’ve always said Chris, you know, I might not be I’m not a very smart man, but I was smart enough to marry a very smart woman. And you know, she’s she’s much smarter than I am. And so sometimes when we’re working with our kids teaching our kids, she’s very, very good at it, she was very good when they were younger, because my emotion would come out sometimes, and my emotion would get in the way of the lesson of the coaching of the teaching, and it wouldn’t work so well. So her her ability to kind of bring the, or bring the right kind of emotion to it to nurturing, supportive, gentle emotion that made them feel safe, that really worked. So I learned a lot from her, as the kids have got a little bit older. And I suppose they’ve come more into my world, which is kind of adult education, I’ve been able to connect with them really well. So she gave them an amazing foundation as as children as young people. And I think I’ve been able to take my experiences, things that I’ve learned from you, and people like you and pass that on to them. And I’m really proud to say you know, that they’re turning into really super well rounded adults. But the same principles apply. My son, Finn, he’s terrific. He’s a real an amazing young young man, and he listens, and he’s intelligent, he measures things out, and he takes things on board. Isabel, my daughter is a lot like me, she’s very, she can be quite volatile, she can be very passionate. She’s very strong willed. Very deeply passionate about things and what have you. So she needs a slightly different a different way. And again, for her, it’s about the Y, it’s about understand getting her to understand what the end game is, what the end result is, and working back from there. And saying to somebody like her, you know, let’s be clear, where do you want to be? Do you want to be here? Okay, let’s take a step back. How do we get one step back from there and one step back from there? And what do we need to do? So it’s kind of like taking steps backwards. And when she sees a clear path, she’ll take it. Finley slightly different, you know, he takes coaching in a slightly different way. But there’s no doubt that the methodologies that you and I teach and share have certainly been helpful. And I’ve said this before to Chris, and I’m going to be really honest with you. Now, I’ve said this before, I’ve said it to you in person, you know, and I’m not being sycophantic here. But you have made me a better teacher, but you’ve made me a better father, and you’ve made me a better person. So a lot of the things that I’ve learned from you, I’ve actually used with our kids, it’s been successful. So thank you,

Chris Baran 57:31
thank you. Just like my teachers, where I got it from, they said they got it from somebody else. And I think that’s the job of a teacher is to is just to help other people. Chris, I just want to ask you, I’ve got a couple of things, I want to go into some rapid fire fire shortly. But, you know, there’s, you know, as we always think when I think of Chris moody, and I see Chris moody on stage, I see everything that he’s doing on social media, and I see the training that he does. And if I’m sitting back as somebody starting off the business, I just think, damn, you know, I’ll never be able to get to that status. But I think it’s really important that to know people that were there’s hard times that we’ve had in our life, just like they are having if they haven’t had them yet, they’re gonna have them. What what do you feel is the probably some of the hardest times or transitions are things that you had in your life?

Chris Moody 58:21
Wow, you thought you did give me a heads up on this a while ago and I thought wow, that’s that’s a lot. And then the amount of mentors and teachers and people that I look up to and I listened to, and they tell me about these really incredible traumas and hardships in their life, you know, physical traumas or emotional traumas, economical, financial hardships, and things like that, all of that stuff. They teach that, you know, they tell me about and, and they used to think to myself, gosh, this is the only way to help people by by being in, in this situation is, the only way that you can help people is for you to be in a terrible situation and find your way out is that the only way that you can help people because if that’s the case, then then I’m scuppered. I have to say, Kristen, I’ve had a really blessed life i I’ve had no emotional hardships in my life, not that I’m aware of anyway, unless a psychiatrist might tell you something different. I mean, my mum, for instance, I you know, I love my mom very, very much. And I’m not sure if you listen to this, my mom’s a workaholic. Which which is which is problematic because it means that if you’re a workaholic, it takes you away from your family. And so she you know, I was brought up by my grandmother really because my mum was working all the time. And the thing about workaholics is that they think they’re doing it for their family, but you know, they say I’m working 24 hours a day, seven days a week so I can give my family a better life, and they do workaholics generally do give their family a better life. But at a huge cost. You know, in actual fact, really what workaholics are doing is they’re satisfying their own need to work like an alcoholic does or anybody else with an addiction. workaholics have an addiction to work and have to serve that addiction. So but but I don’t think that cause me any traumas are such even though again, going back to what I said right at the beginning being really really honest I think maybe my relationship with my mum is different to how it might be with a lot of other people because she spent so much time at work and I know my mum more is Denise the hairdresser then then Denise the month if you know what I mean. But I don’t think that’s caused me any feelings cause me any traumas or anything, then there was kind of starting work and constantly living in my brother’s shadow. But again, I think that helped me more than hindered me really, I learned a lot from him. I don’t think there’s been anything traumatic that way. So there’s there’s not the genuinely hasn’t been any traumatic hardship in my life, I don’t think possibly the only thing that I look back and maybe regret on is, before I really got into teaching, I tried so hard to be a good business person and to take this business that I was working on to take it to a particular place. And I think I sacrificed a lot of my creative energy, if you like in my educational energy, trying to be a business person. I don’t think that caused hardship. But it did kind of set me back a little bit. But I wish I’d got something more sensational to tell you Chris. But recently, I’ve had a really blessed life and a really good life. And I’m still having a good life. I’m, I’m really grateful. I’m really blessed.

Chris Baran 1:01:48
Okay, now some rapid fires for those of us who listen to the others, you know that I do these each time and just one quick one word response. And again, this like, we talked about creativity, it’s like you know what I’m about to say, Okay, what turns you on in the creative process?

Chris Moody 1:02:07
I’ll go through what turns me on in the creative process. I think that the problem solving making going from one step to another little steps that’s what really turns me on seeing progress, thinking to myself, oh my god, this is it. This is it. It’s coming. It’s coming and seeing it come together, not the actual full realization, just the steps, the steps

Chris Baran 1:02:28
are stifles creativity.

Chris Moody 1:02:31
The same thing, lack of progress just going round and round in circles a lack of progress, monotony, monotony, and a lack of progress, cyclical stuff,

Chris Baran 1:02:43
an event or a show or a class that you absolutely love just the first one that comes to your brain. Sure, there’s many

Chris Moody 1:02:52
an event or a show in the past that I’ve

Chris Baran 1:02:55
been involved in.

Chris Moody 1:03:00
The one that stands out the most was a big show I did in Germany in Berlin, and I was I was actually presenting some haircutting and I was working with another super creative person. So it was a big sort of European event in front of about four and a half 1000 People in Berlin at the temple in Berlin nice.

Chris Baran 1:03:21
It just in life in general, what do you dislike the most?

Chris Moody 1:03:29
Life in general, what do I dislike the most Gosh, kindness, and consideration and just being unnecessarily unkind. He loved

Chris Baran 1:03:38
the most courage thing that you hate most about our industry

Chris Moody 1:03:51
we take it too seriously a

Chris Baran 1:03:53
wonderful person that you admire the most.

Chris Moody 1:04:02
I’m going to choose to I’m going to choose to and I know it’s cliche that I buy both my kids the most for what they’ve been through with the pandemic and everything else how they manage life. So I’m gonna choose my kids Isabella a

Chris Baran 1:04:14
person that you could wish you could meet living dead whatever well preferably when when there’s

anybody even could be there living past the past or present. Probably wish you could meet

Chris Moody 1:04:36
Gosh, that’s that that’s that’s a really good one. There’s so many who who can I really meet that will be that will be that are alive. There’s so many I guess. I call like to say I qualified to sit down with them. And now we actually are qualified to sit down with David Bowie and have a little chat with him about his creative process and how we got to where he is and some of his thoughts.

Chris Baran 1:04:59
If something If somebody is something that people don’t know about you

Oh, you gotta get I have I probably several harmonicas here and all that comes out is bleeding noises. So you’re gonna have to give me some lessons. Okay, I’m going to snap my fingers, you got a month off? Where would you go? And what would you do?

Chris Moody 1:05:27
I’d go to Italy, and I would fly to Venice, I would get on the train that goes down the northwest coast. And I would take the train all the way down to a Malfi getting on and off when I like drinking cappuccinos and having nice

Chris Baran 1:05:43
things that terrify you.

Chris Moody 1:05:48
Gosh, things that terrify me. Well, things that tariff predictability,

Chris Baran 1:05:54
favorite curse word? Bollocks. favorite comfort food.

Chris Moody 1:06:03
Favorite corner, my wife, shepherd’s pie,

Chris Baran 1:06:06
something in the industry that you haven’t done. But you want to, if any,

Chris Moody 1:06:12
something in the industry that I haven’t done, but I want to what haven’t I done in this industry that I would really like to something in this industry that I haven’t done. But I want to Gosh, that’s a really tricky one that I haven’t done. But I would like to, I would like to I like to do. I think I’d like to get a rattle around a round table with the people who who will talk we’ll set set sort of education standards and education methodologies for our country. For the UK. I like to sit around a table with them and just listen to what they had to say.

Chris Baran 1:06:50
I wouldn’t be a fly on the wall for that one. And I think you might have answered this one already. But we have an expression in Canada called to do over. And when we’re part of the colonies, you have a dual power as well. If you have a do over, and we could give grant you a do over on anything. And I know people give me the just pat answer that, that well. Everything that I’ve done in the past made me who I am today. But I’m thinking that if somebody could have, you could have one that you could do over and that you would feel of either a correction or whatever, what would that be?

Chris Moody 1:07:24
It was going back to where I said in my early 20s, where I focused on becoming a business person started wearing suits and ties and focusing on spreadsheets and numbers because I thought that’s what I needed to do. And I think I wasted a huge amount of creative energy where I had a lot more creative energy and a lot more creative courage back then than I do now. I was completely fearless as far as creativity goes. And I think I would abandon that and stick to my gut feeling. I don’t care about the business. I want to start chopping things up and doing things differently. I will do that again.

Chris Baran 1:08:00
Okay, that tomorrow you couldn’t do anything with our industry training or whatever. What would you do

Chris Moody 1:08:08
if I could do anything you

Chris Baran 1:08:10
couldn’t do anything with hair couldn’t do anything with teaching? What would you do?

Chris Moody 1:08:17
I take the dog and go off on I’ll go up into the hills. Nice. Take the dog up into the hills and go walk up to the hills. Yeah with with Dennis Dennis my jack.

Chris Baran 1:08:27
And I love that I love the you know that I’ve always heard that expression that they say you can tell that. They say that people that give their dogs No, I never came up with this. This is just it when it’s not nothing too scientific. But they say that if you name your animals, like King or Prince and things such that they always say that they’re they think more of themselves than they have. But you know the people that just give them ordinary names like our cat was Thomas, your dog is Dennis. Okay. Okay, one thing if you had one wish for our industry, just final question. You can’t phone a friend. You can’t have a lifeline. But if there was one wish you had for industry, what would it be and why?

Chris Moody 1:09:19
Just just to embrace that it’s a creative thing and to try and regulate something that is creative will stifle it. So embrace the chaos of it. It’s a creative industry and sometimes things get a little chaotic. So Trump stop trying to control and regulate everything and get it all conforming and fitting in a box. Embrace the courageous chaos of it like maybe like Vidal did back in the 60s and like all great artists don’t, you know, within reason, just just embrace the creative chaos of it.

Chris Baran 1:09:53
Love it. Mr. Moody. You know, I don’t know for anybody that’s, that’s out there listening and watching. I I get to talk to this man almost weekly. So as always, it’s been a pleasure and honor to have you on here. And it as it’s been a pleasure, not only every time that you come on, I listen, and I learn, and I’m hoping that’s what the audience got from you as well. So, Mr. Moody, thank you so much for being so generous.

Chris Moody 1:10:20
Thanks for inviting me on. I’m sorry, it’s taking so long but thank you for everybody for listening to my ramblings as well. And thank you, all of you. It’s been a great pleasure and an honor. Thank you.

Chris Baran 1:10:30
It was a pleasure, Chris. Thank you.