Why You Should Be Speaking From Stage

There are a lot of myths that float around the public speaking circuit. They have for years, decades. It's just been the way things have gone. However, sometimes those myths need to be dispelled, those mistakes need to be noted, and we need to just take the tips from somebody who's been doing it extremely well. Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. In this episode, we get to learn from truly the man, the myth, the legend, Paul Hartunian, who, as you may or may not know, is the man who sold the Brooklyn Bridge. Now, Bill Glazer is going to give Paul a full introduction. However, there is a lot that is jam-packed into this episode from 6 different myths, 3 mistakes that you shouldn't make, and truly a plethora of tips that come rapid-fire at the end of this episode. If you have ever thought about potentially being somebody who takes the stage, or you want to learn how to speak in front of many people in order to leverage your time and your selling expertise, this episode is one to pay attention to. Let's listen in as Bill Glazer introduces Paul Hartunian and why you should be speaking from stage.

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy. The legend of Dan Kennedy should be ignored at your own peril. They're not really lessons. They're kind of laws. Laws that you live by. Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless. His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy.

2 and a half years ago, perhaps, uh, Paul Hartunian and I were both at a Rory Phat boot camp. Rory Phat, for those of you who don't know, is the marketing guru to the restaurant industry. And both of us were there speaking from the platform. And during one of the breaks— well, normally, a lot of times I run into Paul while I'm out speaking. We run into each other. We normally go out, have a meal together. He's very predictable. As long as they got pasta, we're okay. We were on one of the breaks talking and we were saying, "You know, the problem is, Paul, that there's so much more demand for being a paid professional speaker than there is paid professional speakers. We really should be teaching other people how to do this thing." People want, they need more of us and there isn't more of us. Paul, who is not only one of the best speakers from the front of the room that you'll ever see, and I said earlier that I'd put him in the same league as a Ron LaGrande, a Dan Kennedy, a Nido Qubein, a Tom Hopkins, he's right there with them. He's very, very astute at teaching both levels of speaking, which is being a paid speaker, so you go and speak for a fee, or being what we call platform speaker, where you go and you speak and then you provide products afterwards, or actually there's a third level, which is C, which is a combination of the two. So in just about every business that you're in, you should be thinking in terms of using this— if not as your biggest resource and tool to get new customers, at least as part of one of the ways to get new customers. And there is no better way to sell something than it is from the front of the room where you can deliver a message as if you were going to deliver it one-on-one to somebody, but you can do it one-on-many, but it has the same feeling as being one-on-one. There's no other selling scenario where that can be accomplished as good as this. So you're in the hands of a real pro here for the next 75 minutes. My friend, Dr. Paul Hartunian.

Thank you. The speaking business is without a doubt one of the most exciting one of the most prestigious, one of the most enjoyable, profitable businesses you could ever choose to be in. If you're not in love with the speaking business right now, in 75 minutes you will be when I tell you the truth about the business. I want to get rid of a lot of the myths that you've been led to believe about the business, and there are lots of them, and just about every one of you in this room believes one or more of these myths. Now, that may be stopping you from getting into the speaking business entirely, or that may be affecting how much money you're making, or anywhere in between. I'm going to get rid of all of those for you in the next 75 minutes. The only thing I ask of you while I'm doing my talk is that you hold your questions until the end. I'll be happy to answer all of your questions when my talk is over, but I want to make sure I use every minute to fill you full of information about the speaking business. And one of the major reasons I want to do that is I want to encourage you either to get in the business if you're not in it now, if you're just beginning, to really accelerate your growth and your success in the business. And even if you're at the top levels of the speaking business. I guarantee you I'm going to have information that's going to help you to rise even higher. What I want to do is to start with the benefits that you're going to be getting out of the speaking business and benefits you should be getting now if you're in the speaking business. So if we can switch over to the overhead right now. Number 1, and I know this is at the top of just about everybody's list, let's talk about the money. Let's talk about the money. We could be talking about big, big, big money. When I'm doing speaker training for brand new people, I ask them to set a first goal of $5,000 for a 90-minute talk. Now for some of you, that may sound like a lot of money. For some of you, that may sound like very little. That doesn't matter right now, but we're going to be talking about the money in a lot of detail because I know that's critical to every one of you. Some of you may be way beyond $5,000. To set things in perspective, and there's going to be no ego here, by the way, no ego from me and hopefully none from you, just facts to get you the information about the business. I mean this literally. I would not take a $5,000 speaking engagement unless it was across the street from my house. Not interested. $10,000? I doubt it. $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000? Now we're getting a little interesting. Here's a check, and as I always say in all of my talks, you're very welcome to come up and verify that what I'm telling you is for real, what I'm showing you is for real, but I've got to move along really quickly. Here's a check made out to me for $123,628.67. $63 for one speaking engagement. Uh, $46,881.06. Oh, this must have been a slow day. $26,828.50 for 90 minutes. $43,856.50. $38,277.50. You should be getting what you're worth. You should be getting big money. And if you think— if this just boggled your mind that $123,000 for a speaking engagement, or $46,000, or $78,000, We have some talking to do in getting rid of some of those barriers in your mind. So the money can be staggering, and you are worth every penny. If you're doing talks for $500 right now or $5,000 right now, my bet is you're underselling yourself. You're leaving a lot of money there. One of the most exciting things to me about the speaking business is that I know when I show up and I talk about something I love— I generally talk about publicity, for those of you who've heard me before. I generally talk about publicity, which I love. I know that I will show up, I will be treated essentially like royalty. I'll fly first class, stay in a beautiful hotel, fly first class back home, talk about publicity for 90 minutes. I know that I'm going to get something at the end that I like. It may be a 2-week cruise, money to pay for that. It may be money to pay for another magnificent garden at my home. It may be money for a new car. And all I did was talk for 90 minutes about something that I love. So the money can be really huge if you know what the business is and how it runs. Number 2, fame. I don't know why this happens, but thank God it does. There are 2 groups of people that get instant fame from society, and that is speakers and authors. I don't know why society does this, why people do this, but if you've written a book or if you're a speaker, you instantly get fame. And you see this happening all over the place. Number 3, Huge benefit. This is enormous. This is so important to you, and I don't want you to underestimate this. Branding. Branding. For those of you familiar with me, when you hear the name Paul Hartunian, what do you think about? What comes to your mind right away? The Brooklyn Bridge. Exactly right. And for those of you who've known me in a little more detail, you know dog rescue work right away comes to mind. But it's that Brooklyn Bridge. I am instantly branded as the guy who sold the Brooklyn Bridge. That's great branding because the two go together forever because I'm speaking about it, because my talk is on DVDs, it's distributed all over the world, it's on my website, it's on other people's websites. If you do a Google search on me, you'll find tens of thousands of hits and you see the Brooklyn Bridge. So for you as a speaker, what great branding. And here, maybe for you folks, is the most important benefit you're going to get. I want you to understand this one. Number 4: Positioning. Positioning. If you are in a competitive field, let's say you're in real estate or chiropractic or you're a dentist or you have a pizza shop or bake— whatever it is, and you have competition. Well, we all have competition. My bet is your competition is not speaking. Once you speak about your topic, you've instantly risen above your competition. Just yesterday I was speaking to one of the women that I've done speaker training with. She was in the speaker training program and she said, She said, "Just recently I gave a talk to a group of my peers." And I stopped her right there. And I said, "I want to remind you that the minute you got on stage and started talking to those people, they were no longer your peers. You rose right above them. You neutralized your competition. They are no longer your peers because you are a speaker." I don't care what business you're in. I don't care if you have a bicycle repair shop. If you're out there giving talks about bicycle repair, immediately competition is over. You rose above your competition. Real, real powerful stuff. I wanna talk about the— ah, one other huge benefit. Being a speaker makes you an instant celebrity. An instant celebrity. Look at what's happening right now, this weekend, at this conference. Before a speaker gets up to speak, most of you don't know who the person is. You probably passed the person a dozen times in the hallway. You had no idea who this person was. As soon as that person got up and gave his or her 75-minute talk, what happened at the end of his or her talk? Surrounded by people. "Can I shake your hand?" "Can I have a picture taken with you?" "Will you sign this?" "Can you answer questions for me?" "Can I do some consulting with you?" If you guys have been in the men's room, You saw some of these speakers in there answering questions right in the men's room. Instant celebrity status. Instantly. And then for the rest of the conference, as these people are passing in the halls, all of a sudden they're not anonymous anymore because they were the speaker. They rose right up to that celebrity status. Use that celebrity status for everything you possibly can. What an enormous benefit. And it's instant. You don't have to do anything. You just have to get up there and talk. Let's talk about myths, myths that a lot of you probably believe. Let's talk about the big kahuna myth, the gigantic myth that I know a lot of you believe, and in fact, I've heard it a number of times over this past weekend. The number 1 myth about speaking: speaking in public is the number 1 fear. That is a total bunch of nonsense. I don't know who started it. It's been around for decades probably. Centuries, speaking in public is not the number one fear. The number one fear, and this is documented over and over and over again, the number one fear is death. It's dying. That is the number one fear. And I can prove that in my own life. For 15 years, I worked as a paramedic in a real intense area, and I will guarantee you that on the way to the hospital, if I was talking to my patients and I said, hey, I got a deal for you, "when we get to the hospital, if you just give us a little talk on some topic that you love, you won't die." 100% of them would have taken that deal. Speaking is not the number one fear. In fact, it's nowhere on the list. Somebody made that up a long time ago and you believe it. You want something to be afraid of? Be afraid of a grizzly bear chasing your ass through the woods. That's a good thing to be afraid of. I will guarantee you also that if I said right now to everyone in this room, "If you will come up here and just talk about something you love, I don't care what it is, talk about your kids, your grandkids, talk about your favorite entertainer, talk about gardening, talk about a recipe, talk about your favorite restaurant, I don't care, talk about something you love, and I will give you a check for $123,628.75." $1.68. Nobody would say no. I'm too scared. I don't want to do that. No, speaking in public is not the number one fear. It's nowhere on the list. Stop believing that, because if you believe it, you have invested in this idea that there's something to be afraid of, so you're not going to do it. There is nothing to be afraid of. There is nothing to be afraid of. Okay, another myth. And by the way, for those of you who are saying, you know, Paul, I've seen you speak so much, you know, you've got this natural talent, you've got this charisma and everything. Nonsense. Everything you have ever seen me do, every talk that you have ever seen me do, has been a result of working at it, understanding the speaking business, working at it. For those of you who doubt that, talk to some of the people I went to high school with, the people who called me Dorcus Malorcus in Latin class in high school. And if you think, what's that name, Bart Simpson invented that term, they didn't because I heard it in Latin class when I was in high school. And if you ever saw me in high school and actually in college too getting up to give a talk, I was like Ralph Cramden stammering there with the hamina, hamina, hamina, hamina. This is no natural talent, believe me. It took work to learn the business and to be very comfortable with it. So don't think you don't have the talent. I just don't believe that at all. Let's talk about another myth. This one also. Is huge. This is where so many people go wrong, and I'll tell you why they go wrong. Another big myth about the speaking business: people think that talking is the main part of the speaking business. Actually, talking is a very small part. What I'm doing right now is one of the smallest parts of the speaking business. And I always say speaking business. I never say I'm a speaker. That is so important for you to understand and for you to start saying. If you are in the speaking business right now and you say, if people say, "What do you do?" and you say, "I'm a speaker," stop saying that. Stop saying it. Because what you're saying to yourself is, "I talk." No, it's a business like any other business. You've got to understand how it works and you've got to follow certain rules and procedures if you expect to be successful. And people think that— I hear this all the time. If I don't hear it out loud, I can hear it going on in their mind. They're saying, well, I can talk, so I can be a speaker. All you got to get up there and talk. Oh, terrible, terrible. And I'll show you why, and I'll tell you how to correct this problem in just a little bit. The talking part, probably the smallest part of the whole business. The good news there is the rest of of the business is really fun. It's really exciting and it's really interesting, which is why I love this business so much. The next myth, this is again another very common myth, and hopefully if you believe it, you will no longer believe it because I'm going to give you such a great example of why this is untrue and why this stops some people from getting into the speaking business. The myth is you 'You need a golden voice. You need a golden voice. You've got to have nice deep baritone tones. You've got to act. You've got to project. You've got to do everything else.' Total nonsense. If you have a nice voice, maybe it helps you a little bit, but it's like being a gorgeous woman or a very attractive man. Yeah, you'll get attention for a second. It'll open the door, but then you've got to keep going through that door. Good looks only take you a little way. Same thing with a great voice. And in the speaking business, it's almost irrelevant. And let me give you an example that's going to prove this so solidly to you. Let's say that all of you are waiting for a heart transplant. You all have serious heart disease. You all need heart transplants. And let's say I am the coordinator of the heart transplant service, and you're all here now waiting for an announcement from me. And I am one of the worst speakers in the world. I am monotone, I am dull, I am low, I'm everything. And I come out here and I pick up a piece of paper and I walk out and I say, I'd like to thank you for coming here to the heart transplant members meeting. We have 4 hearts to give to 4 4 of you, and here are the names of the 4 people who will be getting heart transplants and having their lives saved. Do you think I have the attention of every single one of you? If somebody next to you sniffles, you say, shut up! Quiet! I want to hear if I'm one of the 4 people. No. Does it help to have enthusiasm? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Content. That's what the people want. Your talk, how you put your talk together. That was the worst speaker in the world and every one of you was dead silent. You want to be there. Even the speakers here, you wanted to hear what they had to say to help you in your life. Forget about— if you want to take voice training, I think it's a great Is it a great thing? If you're not comfortable with your voice or anything else— in fact, Susan Berkley is here. She does voice training. Boy, I can so highly recommend that. Is it mandatory? Should that stop you from getting in the business? No way. No, no, no way. Here's a huge one. Fortunately, I have not heard that— this one this weekend. Hopefully none of you believe this, but if you do, let me give you the realities. And here's the myth, you may have heard this before. People believe that you can dress up like Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, people from history or something else, and people will line up to give you checks for $10,000 to come and speak and pretend that you're Mark Twain. Keep dreaming. It's not gonna happen. Has it happened? Like anything else, I guess it's happened, but people aren't paying for that. People are not often, nowhere nearly as often, paying for what I call rah-rah, the motivational speakers, the yeah, yeah, yeah, everybody jump up, everybody clap, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're gonna be good. And then they go home. Do people make a living doing that? Yeah, in fact, there's somebody here this weekend who's making a great living doing that. But it's a lot tougher to make a living being strictly a motivational speaker, meaning you're just gonna go in and go rah, rah, rah, life is great, rah, rah, rah, everybody sing We Are the World or something else. Tough way to make a living as a speaker. How many of you already, and you don't have to really answer this, this is a rhetorical question, how many of you believe that in order to be successful in the speaking business, you must work with a speakers bureau? I have never once worked with a speakers bureau. There is nothing wrong with speakers bureaus, so don't go down that path. Path. They do a good job. A good ethical speakers bureau does a good job. There is no speaker I have ever met who uses a speakers bureau who's ever told me that the speakers bureau is responsible for really any even significant amount of their business. They mostly say the speakers bureaus get me a small percentage of my business. Very few, if any of you, would qualify to be represented by one of the big powerful speakers bureaus. You gotta be up in that earnings level already. So it's that catch-22. In order to make $50,000, $75,000, $100,000 and be represented by a speakers bureau, you've already gotta be making $50,000 or $75,000 to $100,000. So a lot of people make the mistake of saying, "Well, I'm gonna start out in the speaking business. I'll go to the speakers bureaus and I'll get represented by a bureau and they'll start getting me business." Bill has never been represented by a speaker's bureau. I don't know if any of the speakers here have ever been represented by a speaker's bureau. Again, nothing wrong with them, but to get these big dollar amounts, I'm not looking to a speaker's bureau to do that. I can't imagine that I would ever use a speaker's bureau. If you're going to, we'll talk in a little while about how to use a speaker's bureau. They can be very, very helpful to you, but never, 100%, never should you depend depend on a speakers bureau to provide you with all of your income and boost you up the ladder of success. As I said, just as I said that word, ladder of success, I'm going to retract that word. There is no ladder of success in the speakers bureau and speakers business, and you should know that from the talks that you heard yesterday. There is no ladder of success at all. I didn't climb any ladder of success. I didn't start doing $50 talks, and you hear this from other speakers. I started at $50, then I was getting $250, then I was getting $500, then I was getting $1,000. I started at zero. I went from zero to $20,000. There was no $50 or anything else in there. And then up and up and up since then. So there's no ladder. It's very easy. And that's another exciting thing about the speaking business. It's very easy to leapfrog very quickly, very quickly. There's nothing to earn, no titles or anything else you have to earn. It's all how you put that talk together and what the purpose of your talk is. And we'll be talking about putting your talk together in just a little while. Here's another one. This one I have heard quite a few times this past weekend. And I listened a little more to the conversation. And as I can recall, without exception, they were falling for this mistake. And this is a very, very, very costly mistake. Believing that you must have a demo tape and a 4-color brochure in order to be successful in the speakers business, I have never, ever had a demo tape or a 4-color brochure or a 1-color brochure for that matter. I've never had a brochure or a demo tape. Now some of you may see a demo tape and on the tape it says, "Paul Hartunian's Demo Tape." I made that tape up to do speaker training. That was it. But I have never, ever had a demo tape. Speaking to Bill, he has never had a demo tape or a brochure. There are times, and we'll talk about this in just a little while too, there are times when you do need a brochure and a demo tape. For example, if you're speaking in the high school or the college circuit, pretty much you're going to need a demo tape and you're going to need a brochure. A couple of warnings about this, and I'll go into more detail in just a little bit. If you are going to do a brochure, do not, do not get that template paper you can buy at the paper store and everything else and run it through your laser printer, don't do it. It just screams amateur because everybody else is doing that too. So don't do that. We'll talk about your video in a little bit. But for this type of speaking, for the $123,000 check type of speaking, if I sent a demo video to Bill or to Dan, they would have no idea what to do with it, number one, and it would be a huge clue that Maybe I don't know how this works, how this business works. Why is he sending me a demo tape and a brochure? He must have read one of those books you get from the bookstore on how to be in the speaking business because he's following what that book says. He has this template paper. He ran through his laser copier. He's got this demo video. What am I going to do with a demo video? So you don't need a demo video. You don't need a 4-color brochure. For those of you in the speaking business, for those of you thinking about getting in the speaking business, for those of you just getting into the speaking business, never make this mistake. Never make this next mistake. If I were to list the mistakes in actual— in the presentation, I would put this as number 1. In the actual presentation of a talk, this is the number 1 mistake that speakers make. They try to teach. It's not possible. It is not possible And write this down because when I do speaker training, I pound this into my students' head. Your job as a speaker, as a speaker, notice I didn't say trainer. Now if you're hired as a trainer, let's say that a company hires you to come in and teach them how to use software, you're not a speaker, you're a trainer. We're not talking about that. You better teach if you're hired to do that. Or if you're hired to come in and teach some safety procedures, you're not a speaker, you're a trainer. Your job as a speaker is not to teach, it's to open people's eyes to possibilities that they may not have known existed or to possibilities that they knew existed but they didn't think pertained to them. And I'll repeat that. Your job as a speaker is not to teach because it's not possible. In 75 minutes, about the only thing I can do is teach you how to boil water, and that's about it. I couldn't think of anything else I could teach you in 75 minutes. But my job, your job as a speaker in 75 minutes, 90 minutes, whatever a relatively short amount of time is, your job is to open the eyes of your audience to possibilities they may not have known existed or possibilities that they heard of but they didn't think pertained to them. So when I'm doing my publicity talk, I can't teach publicity in 75 or 90 minutes. It's just not possible. It doesn't take long, but I can't teach you everything you need to know in 90 minutes. But what I can do is open your eyes to the possibilities that you've been passing up. And this is very, very common in my talks. I gave talks about publicity. People were unaware that the simplest little product or service that they were selling was a goldmine of publicity waiting to happen. And that's what I do in that 90 minutes. I open up their eyes to the possibilities for them to get huge publicity—radio, TV, newspapers, and magazines. So at the end of my 90-minute talk, they're alive. They're saying, "I've heard about publicity, but I had no idea why the newspaper reporters would want to report on me when all I am is a roofer or a plumber or a chimney sweep or a baker. Why would the media want to report on me? And at the end of that 90 minutes, you're saying, now I see why they want to report on me. Now let me do something. Let me learn how to do this. That's your job. If you try to teach I will practically give you a handwritten guarantee you're going to fail because you can't teach enough in 75 or 90 minutes to make any difference at all, and you really have failed the audience. They didn't want to be taught. Number one, they wanted to be entertained because everybody likes to be entertained, and all they want to know is, can I really sell stuff on eBay? Can I do it? Can I really use tear sheets? I don't know anything about tear sheets. Just tell me how it pertains to me. Can I really invest in real estate? Can I do that? Can I write my own book? Can I do that? That's your job as a speaker. Now let's talk— I'm talking a little bit more about your talk, putting your talk together. So the first mistake people make is they try to teach. Here's another one. How many of you have heard a speaker say this: "You don't have to take notes. The outline that's being passed out has all the information you'll need." What did the speaker really say to his audience in English? "You don't have to listen. You can take a nap if you'd like. In fact, you don't even have to stay because I just gave you everything you need to know." So why did I not make copies of these overheads and give them out to you? Because I would have been dead in the water here. Never say those words. Never say, "You don't have to take notes." Never say, "I'll send you my slides." You want the audience engaged with you. You want to make sure that they're following along with what you're saying. And in my publicity talk, you'll notice that I'm doing a little thing different here with the overheads. I'm leaving the overheads up. During my publicity talk, I just flash them up and take them down right away. The difference is here I'm giving you things very easy to write down, and they're so important I want you to write them down. When I'm doing my publicity talk, there's a lot more involved, so people are much more likely to keep looking at the screen trying to read everything. And I can pretty much gauge you too. I can see that you're looking at me right now, which means you copied it all down. That's good. So I can leave that up there and keep moving on there. So never say that to the the audience. I'm going to reiterate this one because it is so important. This is the mistake that holds so many people back, the biggest mistake: believing that fear will or even can stop you from being successful in the speaking business. Nonsense. As you heard one speaker say, I think it was yesterday, you're only born with two fears: the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. And by the time you're 2 years old, they disappear. They're there for survival. For a long time I taught at a university. I taught in the health and medical area, and I would teach this to my students all the time. And over 11 years of teaching there, I would challenge them to come up with one real fear, a fear that really existed. And of course they would say things like, somebody comes in and puts a gun to your head, that's fearful. No, it's not. That's survival. That's being a normal human being. That's common sense. Yeah, somebody puts a gun to your head and says, "In 3 seconds, I'm gonna pull the trigger." That's common sense. But this made-up stuff, this stuff, afraid of spiders, afraid of bridges, afraid of needles, afraid of speaking in public, afraid of talking to new people, these are all things that are made up. People don't get into the speaking business and enjoy all these great benefits because of something they made up. There is no such thing as fear. Any fear you have, you made up. And if you can make them up, you can get rid of them too. Let's talk about what you need specifically, the tools you need. There are 3 things you need to be successful in the speaking business. Number 1, you need a talk. I didn't say you need to talk. I said you need a talk. So you've got to put your talk together, and I'm going to go over a little template with you in just a bit. On how to put a talk together. I'm going to talk to you about the most critical parts of a great talk. And I didn't say a good talk. I didn't say an acceptable talk. I said a great talk. I'm going to show you a template for putting together a great talk. And as I said earlier, speaking is a business. Your talk is simply the way you conduct your business. But your talk is what you see in the speaker. So when you've seen me before, the only thing you've really seen seen is my talk. You may have spoken to me after my talk, but you don't know what goes on behind the scenes in the business. I'm here as a person giving you my product. My product is my talk. So you're going to need a talk. The second thing you need is a product. Now notice what I said under product. People get tense when they talk about products. When I do In our speaker training, we spend a lot of time on product development. A good part of that time is getting rid of preconceived notions about product. Notice what I put up there. Your product can be books, CDs, software. Those are the common things people think about. Your product can be real estate investment opportunities. Your product can be you. It can be consulting time. Your product can be coaching programs. Your product can be pizzas, bicycle tires, clothes for drag queens, Anything can be your product. It doesn't matter. And I can almost guarantee if you speak about clothing for drag queens, I'll bet you're gonna be successful real quickly. That's a good topic. And your product is your clothing. But keep in mind, one of the easiest products to develop and maybe one of the most important, one of the most valuable products is you. Is you. One of the most common questions I get I get after my publicity talk is, yes, people, everybody buys my publicity kit, but a very common question is, "Can I buy you? I want to do one-on-one consulting with you." That's what people want because if you're up here, they always, you know the term guru, it's been really in my mind beaten to death. I'm going to try to stop popping my Ps a little bit here. They want you to help them with Google AdWords. They want you to help them with their real estate investing. They want you to help them with everything that you were up there talking about. So your product may simply be you, your consulting time, your coaching programs, anything else. Pretty simple product to put together. When we're talking about putting CDs together, again, people get far too tense about that. I do coaching calls for my speaker students and my for for publicity students, every 6 to 8 weeks or so, I will have a conference call for my members and my students. I record it. There's a product. Simple. Real, real simple product. So don't get tight. Don't get really wrapped up and involved in this idea that trying to create products is so difficult. I have, if you check on Amazon, I think I have 62 books that I've written and I have on Amazon I'm selling and people are going, 62 books! Oh my God, how did you ever get that done? Easy. I provided the basic information, well actually all the information, the detailed information, and I hired ghostwriters to actually do the quote unquote secretarial work, if you will. To do the typing, to do formatting and everything else. How did I find the ghostwriters? I went to Elance, elance.com, and I hired ghostwriters. You, unless you are a great fast writer, should not be doing the writing. That is not your expertise. That's not where your time is the most valuable. If you are going to spend X dollars, whatever X happens to be, I don't know what you want to get produced, whether it's a 500-page book or a 7-page report. You can spend anywhere from $10 to $20,000 depending on what you want this ghostwriter to do. They will do it quickly and you will have a product Bang! Like that. I have had ghostwriters do complete books for me, 180-page, 240-page, for a few thousand dollars. I think one of them cost me $3,000 for about a 200-page book. And then I had a, I think it's about a 160-page book, if I recall it was $1,800. It's not worth it to me to sit there and type out 180 pages or 200 pages I want somebody— and they had the work done. I think the 160-page book took 7 days, 10 days. The 240-page book took like 2 weeks, maybe 3 weeks at the most, while I was out there doing what I'm great at. I was out there speaking about these products, pre-selling them, and the ghostwriter was doing the actual work. A quick little word about ghostwriters, if you're going to use a ghostwriter to create your products. In my mind, and this This is my self-righteous, holier-than-thou opinion, and I'll tell you that right off. My opinion is there are two ways to use ghostwriters: one legitimate, one not legitimate. The legitimate way to use a ghostwriter, the only way I will use a ghostwriter, is if I give the ghostwriter all the information. I'll give them speeches that I've done, recordings, videos, reports that I've written, articles, and I'll say, "Here's all the stuff on the topic. You organize it." and put it into a logical sequence, and you do the typing, create the manuscript. Very legitimate because it's my information. What I think is not legitimate, and I think is very dubious, is to hire somebody to create a product that you really know nothing about. So let's say you want to create, um, an exercise product, a weight loss product, and you know nothing about it. And you say, go out and come up with a new diet idea, write a book about it, 'Put my name in there as the expert, put my name as the author, and I'll say it's mine.' Ooh, I think you're on real thin ice there. Why would you want to do that? You folks already know so much to speak about. Don't get locked into the idea. And in fact, this is a good way to introduce the next thing. Another thing that you need. I said you need a talk, you need a product, you need. A hard topic. Notice I underlined the word hard. This is one of the foundation building blocks of a great talk and a great speaking business. And I'll tell you the difference between hard and soft. A soft topic is often called touchy-feely. It's something that you can't measure or something that's very difficult difficult to measure. Motivation, for example. Very difficult to measure motivation. How do you measure that? You go home and you say, "I feel great. I feel 61% better than before this guy gave his talk." How did you measure that? And then how do you feel the next morning? Usually 1% better because it all kind of dissipated. So soft topics. Tough to create great products. Tough to get speaking engagements. Tough to turn into dollars. Hard topics, something you can measure, and the easier the measurement, the better. For example, make money— very easy to measure. Do this, how much money did you make doing this? With my publicity kit, for example, one of the guarantees is within 3 months, anytime within 3 months, you must get at least $10,000 worth of publicity using the system that I lay out for you. Very easy to measure. Take all the newspaper articles, magazine articles, radio and TV spots that you got, find out how much they would have cost if you had to pay for them, add it up. Real easy to measure. That's a hard topic. Good news. If you have a soft topic, spirituality for example, usually a pretty soft topic, how do you measure that? Dream interpretation. Are you getting the feeling of what a soft topic is? Good news. Almost all soft topics can be easily turned into a hard topic. I know of one speaker who was on the speaking circuit talking about soft stuff. She was doing okay, but not great. The other speakers were far, far outperforming her as far as dollars go, not as far as As far as speaking skills go, I mean, she has magnificent speaking skills. And then it's like, "Okay, I'm speaking on soft topics." Tough to put it together. Tough to build a business on a soft topic. Tough to get speaking engagements. Tough to make sales. Tough to put that kit together. Let's talk about hard topics. Switch to a hard topic, like a Saturn V rocket took off. So if you have a soft topic, don't give it up because that's what you know, that's what you love, that's your passion. That soft topic. And soft topics are great, but turn them into a hard topic to turn that into the dollars that you want. So make sure that if you have a soft topic, turn it into a hard topic. And of course, what you need is a clear understanding about how the business works. Now let's start talking about how the business works. Let's tie together putting a talk together and understanding understanding how the speaking business works. As I told you before, what doesn't work is saying that a speaking bureau will get you all your engagements and you'll be living in this mansion with a pool and a yacht and everything else. Not going to happen. It is just not going to happen. Some tips on how to put this talk together according to the way the speaking business works. Learn how to create the first and the last words that grab your audience and set you up for a surefire win. Surefire. The most important words out of your mouth are the first words you say. After your introduction, the very first words out of your mouth, the first 10 seconds are the most important words that you will say in your entire talk. I don't care how long your talk is, whether it's 5 minutes or 90 minutes or whatever else it is. The first words out of your mouth. And how many of you— and you don't have to answer this, this is a rhetorical question— but how many of you have heard speakers come out and say, "I'd like to thank the president of the association and the vice president and the board of directors and the treasurer and..." all the people of the organization for inviting me here today. Thank you very much. I really appreciate— What did you just say to your audience? I am about as boring as every other speaker you've had at your meetings. How many of you have heard speakers start by saying, "Can you hear me in the back?" Let me give you another guarantee. Every time you say that, at every talk you give, regardless of where in the world you give your talk, if you say, "Can you all hear me in the back?" there will without fail be some schmuck who says, "No, I can't hear you. Would you boost up the sound? In World War II, a mortar went off next to me and the only thing I hear in my ear now Is Glenn Miller playing Midnight Express? Can you boost it up a little bit? You lost your crowd. Who is now the speaker at this event? The schmuck in the back. I think this one guy travels to speeches all around the world just so he can say that. I can't hear ya! Move up! Don't say that. How many of you have heard a speaker say, "Hi, thank you. You'll have to bear with me. My plane was late." I don't have to bear with anything, pal. You get talking here. I paid to be here. You start those lips flapping. I'm not going to bear with anything. You immediately alienate your audience. And the one that I love, These pompous little jerks. How many times have you heard somebody come up and say, "Well, when I was in France last week and I spoke to the president and prime minister—" Shut up! Shut up! You did not. I'm going to irritate some people here, I know. I don't care. If you have known me and if you, in fact, if you've If you're on my mailing list and you just got my last email, you know I don't care. I've got this little gauge that I use to measure speakers. It's called the pompous ass gauge. You know these headshots you see of some speakers? What are they doing so many times? Talking on the phone or they're talking into a microphone. To who? There's nobody there. You're posing with a microphone. And the pompous ass test is the bigger the microphone they're holding, the bigger pompous ass they are. You know, don't get those photographs. That does nothing. It's a pompous thing that people do that I think is so foolish. Okay. This is going to be the most important piece of information you are going to get, not only in my talk but today. I'm not a big fan of closing techniques. That does not mean— hear me clearly— I didn't say closing techniques are bad. I said I am not a good fan of closing techniques. I am not comfortable saying, "Would you like delivery on Tuesday at 4 o'clock or Thursday at 6?" "If I could get it for you in red, do we have a deal?" I'm not comfortable with that. Lots of people are. It works very well for them. I'm not comfortable. Especially in the speaking business. I'm not comfortable with that. And in fact, when I do training for speakers, I am so reluctant to use the word close, to do the close. You've heard that term used. They're wrapping it up and they're making their quote-unquote sales pitch. And you may hear somebody saying, oh, he's doing his close, or he's wrapping up with his closing, or his closing techniques. I'm not comfortable with that. I don't do them well. A lot of people don't do them well, and they look very very stilted. So what do you do instead? If you've seen me do my talk on publicity, I know so many of you have seen literal stampedes to the back of the room to get my publicity kit. And if you haven't seen me in person do my publicity talk, you've probably seen the DVD that's going around the world. I mean, I don't know how many copies of that DVD are around. If you've ever seen my quote-unquote close, there is no close. There's no close. Why? Because when you do this, I think this is so incredibly powerful. What I want you to do is create the inevitable conclusion among the people in the audience that they must have more of you. Create the inevitable conclusion in the audience that they must have more of you. So I am very confident— I've never done this, I probably should— don't even do the ending where I talk about my publicity kit, because for those of you who've seen my talk, by the time I go through the Johnny Carson video and To Tell the Truth and Jenny Jones, my story about the Brooklyn Bridge, and I show all the proof and the evidence, if I were to stop right there, I'm certain I would sell the exact same number of publicity kits. That's it. There's no need because I have created in that audience, in every audience, the inevitable conclusion that they made on their own. I didn't come up with any closing techniques that say, "If I can deliver the kit right now, do we have a deal?" He's sitting there saying, "I gotta know how to do this." How does that benefit you, the speaker? How does that benefit me? They made the decision to buy. I didn't manipulate them into any decision. And refunds? My refund rate is about as close to zero as you can get because I didn't do anything. I just told them the facts. They made the decision. They needed more of me. Ultimately, they would love to have me in person Paul, you write my press releases for me. Well, that's just not possible because of the numbers. What's second best? Paul, let's do one-on-one consulting. Well, if you know me, I spend 90, literally 90% of my day in the kennel working with the dogs. That's what I want to do. Very small amount of time on business. What's the next level? Paul, do you have something that shows me step-by-step how to do this? I mean step-by-step, Paul, everything where I will almost just have to Fill in the blanks. Yes, I gotta have it. If you, in your talk, can create the inevitable conclusion on the part of the audience, they made the decision. They've gotta have more of you. You have done your job because you opened their eyes to that opportunity that's waiting for them. That's what you should be doing. If you like closing techniques, if you're good at closing techniques, again, I don't want to I don't want to discourage you from doing that. There's nothing wrong with them. But if you're not good at them, if they're not working, make the audience so clear, "I've got to have this important stuff." Learn control techniques. You've got to be able to control your audience. I used only actually one control technique on you folks today. Can anybody tell me what control control technique I used? Is there anybody? Yes. Exactly. Very good. Please hold your questions until the end. That is a control technique. There are— I always use that. I always, for a very clear reason. And the reason is I'm very reluctant to open up to questions in this type of setting. Number one, you're taking away from my time opening your eyes to the opportunities that are here for you in in the speaking business. So you've sidetracked my time. Number 2, I don't know what you're going to say. You may be some raving lunatic. You may stand up with aluminum foil on your head. I'm in trouble. I want— you want, as a speaker, you want to maintain control. And the audience, as you see, audiences are very respectful if you give them a good reason to be respectful. If you just get up there and say, I'm talking, you're shutting up. Oh, nice way. It's not too diplomatic, but I gave you a very good reason. I said, please, I want to fill this with 75 minutes of information, and I'll be here, I'll answer your questions, which I will. I'll answer all of your questions at the end. Don't listen to them, they finished early. I now use two control techniques. Can anyone tell me the second control technique I've used on you folks? I'll mention this one more time to remind you. Know when to use a demo brochure, a demo video and a brochure, and when not to. Make sure you understand your market. Is this a market that requires demo videos and requires a brochure? And if it does, go top quality. Top quality. Don't cheat on that. Don't cheap out on that or anything else. For example, if you're doing industrial industrial work and you're going through meeting planners, a lot of those people do want demo videos. But if you're doing seminar work like this, you're wasting your time, you're wasting your money. In fact, you're hurting yourself because you're kind of giving an indication that maybe you don't know how this business works. If you're going to do your video, don't have your Uncle Nicky do your video. Uncle Nicky doesn't know what he's doing. Yes, he will do it for for $20 and it will cost you tens of thousands. And as I said earlier, don't use templates. Know how to get booked the easy ways. Know how to get booked the easy ways. When I do speaker training, when Bill and I did speaker training, the shortest amount of time was spent on getting bookings. That's not because we didn't know how to get bookings. We know tons of ways to getting bookings. But that is such a huge obstacle in speakers' minds. And there's a certain group of speakers, a certain type of speaker, that's all I hear them say. "Boy, I'm working on getting bookings. I'm doing more mailings. I'm going to showcases." I'm tired just listening to you. There's no need to do that. And I'll give you a little secret here. And if we have time, I don't know, if we have time, we'll talk about it more. One of the easiest ways to get bookings? Create them yourself. That is so easy. I've been speaking on publicity and speaking 11 years. I started this with one mailing 11 years ago to 24 people. Put a simple one-page letter in the mail. I have never in 11 years done another lick of marketing for my speaking business. I am one of the most highly paid, in-demand speakers anywhere. I remind you again, it's not because of any great talent that I have. Because I learned how to use the abilities that I had and I learned the speaking business. Here's another great hint for you. Speak at community and civic organizations. Now, some of you may be saying, "Oh, Paul, come on. You can read that in a $20 book. That's one of the simplest things. Everybody says that." Yeah, they say it. They don't know what they're talking about because they usually follow up by saying, "Speak at community and civic organizations to get your online presence up." 'on-the-job training' and the next sentence is, 'You won't make any money doing this,' total nonsense. Total nonsense. You can make a very good living speaking at civic organizations and community organizations. And I'm not just talking about JCs and Kiwanis. That's a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of it. I live in a microscopic little town, a few thousand people, northwest New Jersey, right near Pennsylvania. We have a long long list of these organizations. You can make a very comfortable living speaking at these organizations, being home for dinner every single night, never getting on a plane, and probably never traveling more than, depending on where you live, 20 miles from your home. I live in a rural farm community. I can make a very nice living not traveling more than probably 20 or 30 miles. If you live in Manhattan, Los Angeles, Chicago, you probably don't have to travel more more than 3 miles from your home. There are so many of these organizations here. Learn how to use those organizations. And the great thing about these organizations, it's so easy to get booked. They're dying for speakers. In every one of these organizations, there's the chairman of entertainment or education, whatever they call them. This person was elected chairman because he or she was out of the room when they had the vote. Nobody wants this job. They don't know how to find speakers. It is so easy to get these speaking engagements. I got to move quickly here. If you don't love the speaking business or if you haven't gotten started, you're going about it in the wrong way. You're putting together— another clue here. You never start putting a talk together by saying, "What am I going to talk about? How am I going to start my talk?" Wrong way. You started out, the very first step was on the wrong path. The question you should be asking yourself is, "What is the ultimate goal of this talk?" And then you put your talk together. Hardly anybody does that. They start out by saying, "What am I going to talk about first? Well, I'm going to welcome all the officers of the club." Errr! You're out. Thank you very much. President, Vice President, you're out. You're out. You lost your audience. You're the same boring speaker. So ask yourself, what is the ultimate goal of this talk? What do I want to happen after I've given my 50 minutes, 90 minutes, 60 minutes, whatever else it is? And then start putting your talk together, keeping in mind that the most important words out of your mouth are your first words. The second most important words out of your mouth are your last words. The last words that come out of your mouth are the second most important words. And what do most speakers say at the very end of their talk? Thank you. I will not be saying thank you at the end of my talk. Even worse, they trail off. They go into this endless cosmos. They don't know how to stop. Even worse, they say, "Let me open the floor to questions." Oh, you're dead. You are just dead in the water. And let me give you one high-level speaker, I mean real super pro tip, and I hope the audio guys are listening right now. When you are finished, when you say the last words out of your mouth, What should the audio guys do to your microphone? Wrong. That's what almost everybody does. They have the audio guy cut off their microphone. Don't do that. Leave the microphone on. The reason you want to leave the microphone on is you know you gave a great talk. You were entertaining. You were informative. You opened people's eyes. You got the people going. You got their interest. They're saying, "I want to do this. I understand it. This is an opportunity for me." How many people, and for real now, how many people right now at the end of my talk do you think are going to come up to me at the end of my talk in another 15 minutes, are going to come up to me and say, "You sucked"? Nobody. And no clowns in here, please. Don't go doing it. No, no, no, no. What are they going to be saying when they come up to you at the end of your talk? Great talk, thank you very much. I didn't even know that I could do this. This was great, you opened my eyes. I've heard you speak before, this was one of your best. Thank you, can I hire you? I want you all to be hearing that. Don't have the audio guys turn off your microphone. Let the whole room hear the great things things they have to say about you. Because you're going to do a great talk. Now, if tomatoes have come flying during your talk, give them the cut sign because something went wrong there. But if you know what you're doing, if you've learned the speaking business, if you put your talk together in the right way, that's not going to happen. Have you ever heard or seen a speaker that made you say, "I can do better than that," but you wonder why you aren't doing Why aren't you doing it? Because they took action. You didn't. You tried to make your speech perfect. You tried to do everything perfectly. You believed some of these myths that we were talking about. You thought it was scary. You thought you would fail. You thought you would get nervous. You thought, you thought, you thought, but this other guy who was not particularly good is moving and he's making money regardless of how much it is. And the people who aren't are sitting in the audience watching. Yeah, I'll bet you can do better. So do it. What makes you think you don't have to learn the speaking business? There are two businesses— these amaze me all the time— two businesses where people think that they don't have to learn the business: acting and speaking. And if you've ever gone to any community theater, you see that's true. People think all you have to do is get up there and start reciting lines. I don't have to take any lessons. I don't have to take lessons in speaking. I just talk. A very common thing I hear from people who want to speak or who are not very good, they say, I have a story that must be told. No, you don't. No, you don't. But I've got to tell people that when I was a little girl, I used to speak to fairies in the woods, and they told me the secrets of the universe. Ah, great. Oh no. Spend time to create a great talk and it can provide you with a great living for a long, long time. So many times, for those of you who've been to my house when you've done speaker training or something else, you know I have a magnificent house. And I sit on the back deck and I look at that big, beautiful in-ground pool and all those gardens that I have and the pond where we go rafting and the horse barn and the corrals and the woods and the 25 acres that I own with the trails and the forest that the dogs and I go walking in, and I realize that 11 years ago I took the time to put a talk together about publicity. And in 11 years, that talk has changed very, very little. And I learned how the speaking business works. And because I took the time to put that one talk together 11 years ago, I now live a life that almost everyone else dreams about. And there is nothing special about me. You may say, "Oh, Paul, you've got that great Brooklyn Bridge story already." Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So do you. You've got something. You've got something that people want to hear about. Learn that speaking business. It can provide you with such such a great life. And there are two things that you should have in mind. This is my little 67— 60-second philosophical little bit here. You should have two things in your life. You should have a goal, and that goal should generally be financial. And that's where people generally stop. You should have a goal and you should have a purpose. Yeah, you're gonna make tons of money, and I hope you do, and you deserve it, and you deserve to buy the Ferrari, You can have that big beautiful house and the jewelry and everything else that you want, those vacations, but you got to have a purpose there. What are you going to do with all this stuff? What are you going to do? And speaking gets out there and helps you do your purpose. Yeah, my purpose is to teach people to be great speakers and to have a great living as a speaker and then to move on from there. I want you to learn the speaking business. I'm amazed that people work in these fast food hamburger places, they've got to go to school for a week to learn how to flip a hamburger. But people think that they don't have to learn the speaking business where they'll make, I don't know how many tens of thousands of times the amount of money. It's a great business to learn. It's a fun business to learn. There's no grueling stuff that you've got to go through. And once you get up there, and I'll tell you, if you've never spoken before a crowd, that first time that you get that applause. Oh, it's just like a drug. It's great. It's a happy drug. It's a good drug, the one that you want. I remember when I first started in the speaking business, I brought my girlfriend at the time— and she still is, what am I saying at the time, unless it's something, I don't know— I brought her with me to one of my first speaking engagements, and I said, I was being introduced, and I said, Mary, when I come back in in 90 minutes, I will have earned half your annual salary and people will be standing up and cheering. She could not relate to that at all. 90 minutes later, I ended my talk, people stood up, were cheering wildly, and were rushing me. And I looked over and Mary was just going, what the hell is going on here? I want you to enjoy those opportunities. I look forward to seeing you out there. And as Bill said in the very beginning, there is such a demand for people who know the speaking business. I want you to fill that demand, and I'll talk to you on our coaching call.

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