The Confused Mind Does Nothing: Sifu Edward & Sifu Julliana Armstrong Sit Down With Chad Kirby

Adapted from the recorded conversation; the guest's words are verbatim. The questions are reconstructed and voiced by Sifu Edward and Sifu Julliana Armstrong.

🎥 Video podcast coming soon. The complete interview will play here once published. The full conversation is transcribed below, and the audio edition will be available on sifuarmstrong.tv.

In a new Sifu Armstrong interview, the author of Speak and Get What You Want explains why credentials don’t move an audience, why vulnerability builds more trust than polish, and why simplicity beats information every time.

Nerves aren’t a problem to eliminate. They’re excitement waiting to be redirected. That’s the reframe at the center of a new Warrior Intelligence Series conversation between speaker and author Chad Kirby and hosts Sifu Edward and Sifu Julliana Armstrong.

Kirby built his reputation speaking on behalf of the CEO at Infusionsoft, which meant regularly walking into rooms where the audience expected someone else entirely, including one event where he found himself on the same bill as radio host Dave Ramsey and former President George W. Bush. The experience shaped his central belief about persuasion: “People truly don’t care about your credentials as much as they care about your ability to solve their problem,” he said.

That belief extends into what Kirby calls the “credential trap,” presenters who talk about their own success instead of the audience’s problem. “If you keep talking about yourself... they really don’t care about your success,” he said, “because you’ve put yourself on such a pedestal that they cannot only not relate to you, but then they feel inferior about themselves.”

On stage fright, Kirby doesn’t preach confidence. He preaches vulnerability. “Some of my greatest presentations have been when I’ve had mishaps,” he said. Losing his train of thought in front of an audience and simply naming it out loud, he explained, builds more trust than a flawless delivery ever could: “People trust vulnerability, right?”

His sharpest rule may be the simplest: “The confused mind does nothing.” Kirby argues most speakers overload their message trying to sound thorough (citing presenters who show up with “83 marketing principles”) when the real power move is cutting it down to a handful of ideas an audience can actually act on.

Kirby is equally direct that none of this is a talent you either have or don’t. “Speaking and presenting is a skill that you can develop,” he said, pointing out that no doctor ever handed him one of his nine children and pronounced them a natural speaker. The same applies to storytelling itself, the skill isn’t the story, it’s knowing how the story connects to the point being taught, so it carries an audience across to the other side rather than becoming, in his words, “white noise.”

It’s a philosophy that lands squarely inside the Armstrongs' own teaching method: that instruction only works when it’s stripped down to what a person can actually use, and that any skill, spoken or physical, is built through reps rather than granted at birth.

In This Conversation

Why “people don’t care about your credentials,” lessons from sharing a stage with Dave Ramsey and George W. Bush
The “credential trap,” the mistake that makes audiences stop caring
Turning stage-fright nerves into excitement instead of trying to eliminate them
Why vulnerability builds more trust than a polished delivery
“The confused mind does nothing,” the case for saying less, better
Storytelling as a skill anyone can build, not a gift you’re born with

Chad Kirby doesn’t just teach people to speak. He teaches them to be believed, and that’s a rep worth training, whether the room holds ten people or ten thousand.

The Full Conversation

Sifu Edward Armstrong: Every form we teach in the 9 Forms curriculum lives or dies on one thing: can a single instruction actually land and change what a student's body does next? That's teaching. It turns out that's also exactly what separates a speaker who moves a room from one who just fills the air in it. Our guest built an entire career and body of work around that transfer: from thought, to word, to action.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: What pulled me in preparing for this one is how much of it maps onto walking out to compete, the nerves, the pressure of sharing a stage with someone far bigger than you, and the discipline of turning fear into fuel instead of letting it choke you. Our guest is Chad Kirby, speaker, educator, and author of Speak and Get What You Want, best known for years spent selling from the stage at Infusionsoft and for teaching audiences worldwide how to persuade, connect, and move people to action through storytelling. Chad, it's great to have you with us.

Chad Kirby: Oh, it's great to be here. Love spending time with you.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: When I'm at the front of an academy, I've learned the instruction is only half the transmission. How you say it decides whether it actually lands. You've spent your whole career on that other half. Take us back to the start. How did you first get into speaking and communication, and how did you find that you enjoyed it so much?

Chad Kirby: Actually, I didn't realise that I was necessarily good at it until I started people being moved by what I was saying. And so I realised, wait a second, I can learn how to help inspire people to get them to take action. And so I was watching people, and then I started watching other people communicate. And I was watching people get up and give these amazing presentations or communicate very what I perceived powerfully. And then nobody did anything because of it. And I realised, wait a second, people need to understand that there's a way to help people not only listen and learn, but also take action. And so that's the key, because at the end of the day, if we're not taking action, then what's the point of the communication?

Sifu Edward Armstrong: Coaching students is where I really learned my own art. You don't know what you actually know until you have to hand it to somebody else. Did you study other speakers to find that inspiration for yourself, or was it more that once you immersed yourself in it, it just became natural?

Chad Kirby: Well, first of all, I immersed myself in it first. And so I was like, there was a lot of trial and error, like saying, "Okay, this works, this doesn't work." But then it really went from black and white to colour when I started coaching other speakers to be successful from the stage. And so then I started realising not only what worked well for me, but then when I had to start coaching it, I had to take what naturally was working well for me and articulate it in a way that helped other people consume it and then go execute.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: Building LSTA meant convincing plenty of skeptics that a full-contact light sword art deserved to be taken seriously. You learn fast that persuasion isn't optional, it's survival. I know a lot of people remember you from your time at Infusionsoft. What did that experience teach you about persuasion and influence?

Chad Kirby: Well, what it taught me about persuasion and influence was that you really have to quickly get to people's pain points. And so let me back up a little further. When I was speaking on behalf of Infusionsoft, I often went and spoke on behalf of the CEO. And so I wasn't the CEO. So I had to show up with people anticipating it was going to be the CEO, and then it's somebody else.

In fact, one event that comes to mind is there's a very big radio personality in the United States by the name of Dave Ramsey. And he's the second-largest radio personality in the United States. And he invited the CEO of Infusionsoft at the time to speak in between Dave Ramsey and then they had a former President of the United States George W. Bush. And so they were thinking that would be the lineup. Well, it wasn't. It was actually me.

And so it was like, wait a second, I'm going Dave Ramsey, me, George W. Bush. And I quickly realised that people were going to be like, "Who's this guy? Why is this guy in between?" So what it really taught me is people truly don't care about your credentials as much as they care about your ability to solve their problem. And so obviously when you don't have the credentials to being a former President of the United States, when you don't have the credentials of being a top syndicated radio talk show host, I had to quickly get to their pain in order to capture their minds so they can go, "Wait a second, does he have a solution for my pain?"

The only reason why people are listening to you is, can you help them live a better life? Can you help them achieve their goals? People think to themselves, "Oh, they just want to hear from me." At the end of the day, and we all know this, everyone's favourite subject's themselves. And so the quicker you can get to how they win by listening to you, the faster you'll be able to capture their hearts and minds.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: That's a hard lesson dressed up as a business story, credentials don't move people, solving their pain does.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: And that's exactly the arena I recognize, because when you step out to perform, nobody in that room came specifically to see you. And the fact that you spoke on the same bill as both Dave Ramsey and George W. Bush. How did you feel at the time? Were there any nerves, or was it water off a duck's back, as they say?

Chad Kirby: There were certainly nerves, right? There were a lot of nerves involved as there was when I shared the stage with a lot of people like a Simon Sinek or others that have maybe name recognition, and you don't have that same level of name recognition. Now, what I will say is this, do not discount yourself because you don't have that name recognition because if you can solve somebody's problem, if you can help people be more effective, if you have experience or you've been through experiences that have created a message for you, then don't discount yourself. Never discount yourself for that. So yes, I did have nerves, but at the same time, I knew that I was going to help them get to where they wanted to be.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: Before I compete, I've had to learn the difference between nerves that wreck you and nerves that sharpen you. Anybody listening to this or reading it who still fights that fear. Do you have any tips or tricks you could share, some takeaway points so we could overcome it?

Chad Kirby: Yeah. The best way to overcome the nerves. Now, I'm not going to say they're never going to go away. Because there's actually what you really need to is help yourself understand that those nerves are generated from excitement, not from fear. And so when you focus on the fear element of those nerves, then it can be detrimental to your delivery. It can be detrimental to your presentation, but if you focus on those nerves of excitement, those nerves that I'm about to make everyone's life better here. Now, when I'm speaking, I will take opportunity. I'll take moments to where I really get myself excited and try and translate those nerves from the fear space to the excitement space. And if you're clear on how you help other people, if you're clear on how your message is going to impact the audience, then it's easy for you to transition from that fear to that excitement. So don't try and get rid of those nerves, just translate them into excitement.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: So it sounds like the move is to lean into it, not fight it?

Chad Kirby: Absolutely.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: I think a lot of people also fear the fact that they may get on stage and their mind goes completely blank: stage fright, standing there looking out into an audience, not really recalling anything they wanted to talk about. Have you ever experienced that, Chad? And if so, how did you overcome that?

Chad Kirby: Okay. So the key that everyone really needs to lean in, as you use those words, into vulnerability. So some of my greatest presentations have been when I've had mishaps, when I've had where slides didn't work the way they were supposed to. I lost my train of thought. And if you stop and just go, "I can't believe this. I just lost my thought in front of all of you," and you're vulnerable, your audience will actually want you to be successful because you're trying to be vulnerable. People trust vulnerability, right? And when you get up, and you are just this super articulate speaker that has that quote-unquote silver tongue, you actually aren't as trusted as the individual who may show a higher level of vulnerability.

So when you think to yourself, "Oh my goodness, I'm going to mess up." First of all, I would coach you on making sure we manage those thoughts, right? But if you do for some reason make that mistake and you just stop and acknowledge it, you will be stunned at how much the audience appreciates that and connects with you.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: There's a principle we hold to in the art, training only works if the person receiving it believes you're actually there to help them win, not to prove something about yourself. What about the premise of, say, a best man's speech, a room that already wants you to succeed no matter what you say, because you're sharing a story. Does that capture what you're describing? That in almost any situation, the audience genuinely wants you to win?

Chad Kirby: Yes, I absolutely appreciate that. But also the key ingredient to that is that you cannot make your presentation all about you. You cannot make your presentation all about your success. You cannot talk about what you've done in this because what I call that in my book, the credential trap, right? Because we get up, and we start trying to credentialize ourselves. And people in their mind are thinking to themselves, "Don't care, don't care, still don't care," right? They don't because they want to know, is listening to you going to help them? And if it is, yes, they're going to engage. But if you keep talking about yourself, then the opposite happens, and they really don't care about your success because you've already articulated that you've had so much success, and they're sitting there feeling bad about their own success because you've put yourself on such a pedestal that they cannot only not relate to you, but then they feel inferior about themselves.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: You've talked for years about how the more you tell, the more you sell. Walk us through that, and I know you've just delivered your ninth book, all about action. Tell us about it.

Chad Kirby: Well, the book is basically the foundational principles that I use to get ... It's entitled Speak and Get What You Want. Right? And so when you're speaking, how do you speak so that you can get what you want? And the reality is, Zig Ziglar said, "You can have anything in this world you want if you help enough people get what they want." And so as you're speaking, helping people get what they want is really how you become successful. Because if you can articulate their problem better than they can, then they're going to listen to you and go, "Okay, then what do I need to do? How do I need to do this?" Because what you're in essence doing is you're taking them from one side of the river to the other. You're like, "You want to get to this other side, and we're going to give you very clear stepping stones on how to get there."

Keeping in mind this, and this is a big mistake that a lot of presenters make, a lot of speakers make, is the confused mind does nothing. It does nothing. And so sometimes we'll get up, and I've heard this at events where people will get up and say like, "I have 83 marketing principles that I want to share with you." Well, the mind doesn't want to think about 83, but when you can say, "If you do these three things," and you simplify them. So some people think to themselves, the more they say, the more effective they're going to be, but the reality is the simpler you present, the more powerful your message will be.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: None of the 9 Forms came naturally to me, every one of them was built through repetition long before it ever looked effortless. Do you believe people are born with the skill of storytelling, or is it a skill that you can learn as you go?

Chad Kirby: Absolutely. And I would take it a step further. Speaking and presenting is a skill that you can develop. I have nine children, and never at any point did the doctor hand me a child and say, "Look, it looks like you got a powerful speaker here." Because that's not how it happens. And so you can learn how to present powerfully. You can learn how to share stories that are impactful. The problem is with most people is they have a great story, but they're not sure how it connects to the principle they're teaching. And so you have to make sure that it connects so that people feel the flow of it, and so it makes sense, and then it takes them again across the river. But if your story diverts too far to the right or to the left, then it just ends up becoming white noise rather than an impactful story.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: Our Club Sabernet members live for the moments where they feel like they're not just watching training, they're inside it with us. Do you have any tips on how you can involve the audience? If you're telling your own story, are there any little tips or phrases that can bring people in so they feel like they're sharing that story with you as you tell it?

Chad Kirby: Absolutely. And it is not difficult. It's not complicated. You simply ask the audience, "How many of you have felt like that before?" And everyone raised their hand. And I know that's so simple and people are like, "Wait, really? That's it?" Absolutely. You just go, "And then I showed up thinking that I was supposed to be there at 8:30 when the event started at 7:00 AM. How many of you have had that experience where you thought it was one way and it ended up being ..." And everyone raised their hand and you're like, "Painful, right?" And everyone's like, "Yes." And they're in it with you the entire way. And so it's more of an opportunity to connect rather than just an opportunity for you to share your story.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: It's almost like taking them on the journey with you, in many respects, isn't it?

Chad Kirby: Absolutely. Yes.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: We built Club Sabernet knowing attention is the scarcest resource a message has left. In today's world, with so much noise and everyone pulled in a million different directions, do you believe storytelling is still as powerful today as it was a few years ago?

Chad Kirby: No question. The only thing that is really different today is you need to give them a reason to listen to the story. And so perhaps there was a time where people would listen to a story for a story's sake, but if you give them a reason to listen to the story, and you preface the story, helping them understand that they're going to learn how to solve their pain through this story, or you do something to capture their attention to get them to engage, that's what has changed. You need to help them become hooked so that they do listen to the actual story.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: We're running short on time, but for anyone who wants to go deeper on storytelling or presenting from the stage, where should they go?

Chad Kirby: You can connect with me in a variety of ways, but the best way is you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Chad Kirby, but you can also go to my speakandgetwhatyouwant.com website. And so either one of those works great.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: Before I ever compete, I have to walk out knowing the size of the stage doesn't get to decide how I show up. Before I let you go, I have to ask. What was it like actually sharing that stage with George W. Bush, an honest-to-goodness former U.S. president?

Chad Kirby: That was pretty remarkable. The security was probably the most nerve-wracking part of the experience. I guess over the course of his eight years of presidency, he may have irritated some people. So the security was very, very high. What surprised me the most though was that he's just a human being. And although whether you agreed or disagreed with him politically, he was a really nice guy. In fact, I was with someone who was in absolute opposition to him, and they ended up really enjoying him. And so it's pretty powerful. And I have a lot, I share a lot of these experiences on my Instagram as well, the Speak & Get What You Want Instagram account, and you can follow me, and I'll share more tidbits there as well.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: One last one from me. The Global Alliance Tour has taught me there's always a bigger stage worth reaching for. Is there anybody you haven't shared a stage with yet that you'd love to?

Chad Kirby: Ooh, that's ... I would say Nick James, but I've done that. And so that would be, is there anyone that I have not shared a stage with that I would love to share a stage with? Oh, Alex Hormozi. I would love to share the stage with Alex Hormozi.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: It's been an absolute privilege having you with us, Chad. Thank you so much for your time and for your insights.

Chad Kirby: Absolutely. Take care.

Sifu Julliana's closing word: Chad said it plainly, nerves are just excitement you haven't translated yet. That's the exact same instruction I give myself walking out to compete: don't try to kill the adrenaline, redirect it. And "never discount yourself" is something every Warrior-In-Waiting needs to hear before they ever set foot on a competition floor or in front of a class. Vulnerability isn't the crack in the armor. It's what the audience (or the opponent) actually trusts.

Sifu Edward's closing word: Chad's whole philosophy is one we live by teaching the 9 Forms: the simpler the instruction, the more powerful it lands. The confused mind does nothing, in a classroom or on a mat. Persuasion was never the enemy of the warrior's path; it's how you get a room, or an academy, to actually take the first step. Speak simply. Solve their pain. Never discount yourself. The tool is the message. The mission is the transformation. We don't entertain warriors. We create them.

Chad Kirby, speaker, educator, and author of Speak and Get What You Want. Known for his years speaking on behalf of Infusionsoft and for teaching audiences how to persuade and connect through storytelling. Connect with him on LinkedIn (Chad Kirby) or at speakandgetwhatyouwant.com.

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