An Actor's Playbook for Leadership, Sales & Presence — Dominic Colenso | 85

Dominic Colenso is a former actor turned leadership, sales, and communication coach who has worked with tens of thousands of people over the past 12 years. He trained at Drama Centre London, acted on stage and screen, and is the author of Cut Through. In this conversation, Dominic explains why the biggest communication mistake is making it about yourself instead of your audience, how to prepare in the five minutes before a big pitch, and the three ingredients of cut-through: simplicity, emotion, and "level eight" energy. He also covers whether charisma can be trained, why silence beats over-explaining, why AI makes human connection more valuable, and the fear he faced before leaving acting behind. Find Dominic: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominiccolenso/ Builders & Doers is produced by Horizon Search. Work with us: https://hiddenstructure.co Find out how much revenue your company is leaking with the 4-minute Revenue Leak Scorecard: https://hiddenstructure.co/scorecard?utm\source=youtube&utm\medium=description 0:00 Intro 0:49 Trained as an actor, now building a business around leadership, sales, and communication 1:04 From directing and teaching at drama schools to "you know about storytelling, can you help our team?" 2:55 What drama school teaches about human behavior that business school doesn't 4:12 Superpower or manipulation? Why the communicator sets the intention 5:11 Stanislavski and codifying the "emotional intention buttons" we press every day 6:50 Politicians, confidence as a proxy for competence, and Helen Mirren in MobLand 9:04 Everyone has innate confidence — what "presence" in great actors really means 10:55 Living in an "AHA world": AI-focused, hyper-connected, always on 12:03 How much of charisma is trainable? 12:45 Switching it off — why stars slip past autograph hunters at the stage door 13:41 Playing all the octaves: you're allowed to be more than one version of yourself at work 14:28 The most common communication mistake: thinking it's about you, not the audience 15:30 Less than two seconds to make a first impression 16:25 Five minutes before the biggest pitch of your career: walk the garden, have a cup of tea 18:05 Crying on cue — how actors learn to access and control emotion 19:56 The drama-school song exercise 21:50 Vulnerability as a superpower in the boardroom 22:40 Why founders avoid sales, and the proximity problem that sinks good products 24:29 Cut-through ingredient one: simplicity and the two-week rule 25:45 Ingredient two: emotion — what should they feel when the Zoom ends? 26:10 Ingredient three: energy, and why you should aim for level eight 27:25 The behaviors that are hardest to change and why awareness comes first 28:58 When your second and third thoughts keep coming: the problem of over-explaining 30:58 Getting comfortable with silence 32:07 Why "any questions?" gets tumbleweed, and what to ask instead 33:15 Preparing with rigor: discover and distill 34:27 AI, Hollywood, and billions of storytellers with studio power at their fingertips 36:35 Why live, human-to-human experiences will be worth more 39:09 Can AI measure executive presence? 40:08 Performing to the test: will AI scoring reshape how we communicate? 41:16 AI-written emails — "that doesn't sound like Bob" 43:05 Why he won't let his 12-year-old daughter hand her homework to AI 43:54 AI search summaries: a version of the truth, not the truth 47:15 Imperfection as a way to connect 48:07 Rehearsal is about failure, not perfection 49:04 Jonathan Frakes, Sir Ben Kingsley, and asking to experiment after a good take 51:10 The hardest reinvention: going all in and leaving acting behind 53:23 Judi Dench and the lesson of not taking it too seriously 55:27 Where to find Dominic and closing thoughts #through #communicationcoaching #leadership #publicspeaking #SalesTraining #executivepresence #storytelling #charisma #ai #ActingForBusiness #buildersanddoers #horizonsearch