The Raw Reality Behind ANY Dream Worth Having

What happens when a great speaker speaks is they unite people. Not just shared experience, but, like, listen, let's all go get better at this. It's not about never having the doubt. It's about not stopping when you have the doubt. It's not about not having the nerves. It's about aligning the nerves to the purpose. When you realize you have this opportunity to serve and you get to know the audience and you decide, it's not going to be easy. You're going to run the reps. I would go to local Kiwanis clubs, Rotary clubs, lion clubs, YMCAs, and I would ask, hey, is there any opportunity for me to speak? Is there anything I can share? And they're like, what would you like to talk about? I said, I don't know. What does your group need? What are you guys all struggling with? What do you challenge? I knew right off the bat it wasn't about me, as we'll get to. So it wasn't, hey, hire me as a speaker. It's like, hey, I would like to learn to speak and to talk and to train. I'd like to facilitate. I like to communicate. Is there anything going on here? And of course, all those are volunteer organizations, so they'd love to see a young kid coming up. They love to support and mentor, so they gave me chances. Then I got my first job. And in my first job, every speech. Every speech, I would ask, Sorry, every meeting, I would ask, can I talk? Every meeting, in my first job, can I talk? Can I give a status report? Can I share what we learned? Can I share? Every meeting, I would ask to talk. Why? Just putting in the reps, man. Just putting in the reps so that by the time I got to that title bout, I would be ready. And then I remember I got the title bout. I spoke to so many Kiwanis clubs, and they were having the National Kiwanis Convention, and they invited me as the keynote speaker. One of the worst days of my life, actually. But thanks for the cheers. The night before speaker tip for everybody. The night before, I made the junior varsity mistake that so many speakers have made on the road, I didn't know. The night before, I got to the hotel and they had one of those rooms for the VIPs. And I went up there and I had the shrimp cocktail. Yeah. Some of you know, don't ever have that on the road ever. Just stop. Nowhere ever. Should you have this? So I had the shrimp cocktail, and within literally an hour, I'm throwing up in the bathroom and other things. And I get food poisoning. I'm up all night with food poisoning. The speech is at 8am I get up at 6am, I'm sick all morning. I'm drenched. I'm so disgusting and filthy. I take the shower, I feel terrible. I get my suit ready. I put my suit on, my first like, fancy suit. And I gotta walk over now. I think we were in Texas. If I remember, we were in south somewhere. And I didn't calibrate right. It's only four blocks to the convention center, but it's like a million degrees in humidity and I'm drenched walking over there. And if you're sick and you're in the heat, you know what I'm talking about. It's terrible. I get there, I'm backstage and I'm just so sick. And people can see, like, you all right? I'm like, oh, yeah. Because at that time, I believe this is my shot. This is gonna make my career. This is the most important day. Because that's what we tell ourselves. We get myopic, we get acute in our anxiety and we forget everything is just another opportunity. And you're honing, you're developing mastery. It's not the end all, be all. You got your big webinar coming up. It's just one webinar. Go be awesome on it. Love serving, do so good. It's just one. You're going to do a hundred, you got your book launch, great. Work hard for it. But guess what? It's just one. Not. It's not the only thing. Even fighters need to learn that it's a fight. Bring everything you got to it. But there's going to be another one if you do well, like, but I didn't know that. So it's everything. I walk over there, I'm backstage, I'm feeling the nerves are going crazy. I think it was six or seven thousand people. So it's a whole convention center. My first big, big, big. And right before I run back to the bathroom and I'm throwing up and I'm feeling so terrible, but I know I need to hydrate because I got like a 90 minute set. So I, I'm like drinking water, but not too much because I'm like, oh, how much water can you drink? And I'm like, oh my God. And I'd never had that kind of thing. I don't, don't remember. I think it's the first time I'd ever been food poisoning. Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. And it's your Moment. Imagine it's your moment and you feel terrible. So I go out on stage and I think the adrenaline took over, and I just started doing my thing. I just started doing Brendan and adding the value and teaching the points they said was important for everybody in the audience. And I'm going to come back to the end of this story, but I want to teach you the second point. The speech is not about you. The communication is not about you. The relationship is not about you. And the more you make it about you, the more you suffer in your insecurities and the more you disconnect from the very people you're trying to connect with. That's a universal success principle. To understand, you gotta not make it about you. You can tell your stories just like I'm telling my stories. But here's what I'd done before this speech. I said, hey, can I speak in the weeks before the event, I said, can I Talk to the 10 most successful Kiwanians across the country? I just want to interview them. I want to find out what are their goals? What are their chapters struggling with? Why aren't there more leaders? Why isn't the organization growing more? Who are the people who build the bigger clubs? Who are the clubs who are struggling? Can I call them? I probably spoke to, on the phone 40 to 50 people before the speech, not just the event organizer. I talked to the top guys, the low guys, the people who are in between. I was getting all their best practices. I was asking, hey, tell me, what are some phrases that you use? Hey, Milwaukee, Kiwanis. What are some of the phrases you guys use? Tell me some of your inside jokes. I found the inside jokes of 40 or 50 clubs. So during my speech, I'd drop a joke or an inside thing, and I'd say something. What do you think? Milwaukee. And Milwaukee would go crazy. And they're like, he knows us. I did that with five or six different organizations around, and the whole I. The 6,000 people, I had them because I was speaking whose language, mine or theirs? Theirs. I knew every pain point. The whole speech was built on their goals and their pain points. At 90 minutes, I was speaking their language, their insider tricks, their stories. I knew where they struggled. I knew where they won. I knew the big names. I dropped the names of the big leaders, and I talked about the up and coming people. I had all. It was just. It was like watching a story, not of Brendon Burchard, but a story of themselves. See, most speakers never break through. Not because they don't have a signature Story. They don't break through because they don't know the audience. Yeah. Know about the other people. Then what else did I do in the speech? I knew the three objectives. You only got three objectives in a speech, in my opinion. First, obviously, let's just take the context of what I shared. You already know the audience. But then the objectives from there is, number one, demonstrate compassion. We need a significant amount of your speech to be in their world with a tone of compassion. I understand. Here's this person's story. I understand. Here's my story. It's that connection point that you have with people when you get to share that you have shared experiences or you understand their shared experiences and you slow it down. You talk about the challenges. You talk about the challenges that we all struggle with our finances. You talk about the universals that we all struggle to feel more joy. You talk about the struggles of family and relationship and work and career and clarity and feeling good. All of these are universals that we need to connect with. And so what are your universal values or experiences that you're going to share on purpose with an audience? What are they? And when you know that, then you can find a story maybe that triggers or maybe connects compassion. The second objective is challenge to challenge your audience. And how do you do that with the same universals. Listen to this challenge and tell me if it though still sounds compassionate. Isn't it true that you need to cultivate more joy in your life? Does anyone disagree with that? So it's a universal challenge, isn't it? You don't have enough joy in your life. We got to do something about that. Every person's like, damn, that's so true. Right. You know, sometimes you just be honest. You don't listen to your spouse enough. Now, that's a challenge. It's not delivered like you don't listen to your spouse. There's no Type A. It's just like, you know, sometimes you forget to listen to your spouse and you have to do something about that. So it can be. It can be said straight without the challenging tone. It can be compassionate. But the challenge is there. Universal is a great place to challenge people. Right. Sometimes you're just too distracted, and that's what's causing your family financial difficulties. Could you be honest about that? Raise your hand. That's a challenge. It doesn't feel good when someone says that. But most of you can go, yeah, I guess. And so you challenge the third objective. So important. The third objective is all about connecting the audience. It's about what Is the agenda for them moving forward together? How do you find that connection point where they're going to go together? They're going to go together, they're going to go do something. What happens when a great speaker speaks is they unite people. Not just shared experience, but like, listen, let's all go get better at this. Let's all go work hard together. Look to your person left, right, let's share this. Let's talk about this. It's creating and fostering a sense of belonging, to togetherness, unity, friendship in the room. So that the group goes, yeah, this is amazing. We're going to win. And when you do those things, you get the achievement of what I just call freedom. There's a freedom up on stage, there's a different feeling, because guess what, you're out of your head so much. And now you can just talk with the people about what they're challenged with what they're trying to do, about what their universals are. And it feels different when you care about them and you can still just do you. I'll come back to the story at the Kiwanis convention. Luckily, by the time I got there, there's no part of me that's nervous or I'm weird. It's just I'm sick. I have this shrimp cocktail hangover, drooling, spit thing. I got to go in front of 6,000 people. But I know Milwaukee. I know this person's name. I know their inside joke. I know their struggle. I know why they're not growing. I know what their leadership principles are. I know what their values are. I already asked the CEO, what would you love a third party to say to your group that you can't say because it'd be politically incorrect? Another million dollar insight. Because guess what? When I say to that audience and I kill it, the CEO goes, that's my man. That dude right there. Hire him again. Everyone's like, how do you always get rebooked? I'm famous for getting rebooked. I'm always rebooked. One of the reasons I'm rebooked is I know what the top leadership team really wants to say about the people who lack focus and discipline in the organization. But they can't say it. And I'm like, I can say it. I'll wrap it in a good story. I'll tell you what it is. Let me get at it. I'll tell you. And so I say what the leaders are trying to communicate, but they just can't quite. So next time you give a speech Think about that. What do the leaders wish they could say but it would be too harsh? What do the leaders wish they could say but it wouldn't feel good? Like, what is that? You have to find that. So I know all that. So I'm comfortable. So I got on stage, and I'm telling you, it was set up perfect. They had this huge lectern. One mic, two mic, three mic, this huge lectern. There's big jugs of water down there. And there was also a little monitor where I could see the slides behind me. And then 6,000 people. Oh, my God. And I got out there and I was mortified. I walked out there and I don't know what happened. Even though I'd given those speeches, I was scared. But aren't you always gonna be a little scared? See, it's not about never having the doubt. It's about not stopping when you have the doubt. It's not about not having the nerves. It's about aligning the nerves to the purpose. What you call anxiety, what you call acute stress, I call readiness state. I call. I give a damn, I call. This energy is being called forth for me to marshal this next level. Here I am. Emotions are automatic. They're physical, they're impulsive. They happen to you, but they don't have to take over you. You can feel it. So I felt the nerves. I felt the sickness. I'm out there in front of 6,000. My first big thing. Oh, my God, my dream. And I was fascinated. I just. I was almost slow in my first opening talk because you ever be on stage and you're just kind of taking it all in. I was just kind of looking, you know, the second town I grew up in, in. In. In Montana, we only had 2,300 people. So now I got 6,000. Imagine it's just like this overwhelming thing, and I'm just like, wow. I kind of. I got. I kind of looked like this for about 10 minutes. So I'm walking, I'm taking it in. I'm having a great time. 6,000 people. I'm like, oh, my God, the lights are up there. Thing is feeling good. This is like, wow. I'm like, oh, my. Look at this. This is amazing. And then I'm at. Towards the end, and I'm about to do this visualization of them visualizing and imagining their home and their Kiwanis club growing and their neighborhood. I'm doing this visualization, and I'm walking all of a sudden having a good time, and all of a sudden and I'm just talking. I don't think they can tell, but I always assume they can because I'm on a Jumbotron. So I'm like. And all of a sudden, I know I got maybe seven seconds. I got seven seconds. There's 6,000 people. What are you gonna do? I'm like, okay. So I. Either. Okay, I can run off stage over there real quick. I got control of the mic. I always make sure I got control of the mic. I know I got control of the mic. I don't think I can get off stage. It's 60ft that way. I got seven seconds. But right here is a lectern. So what I'd like you all to do is close your eyes. I got 6,000 people. No, really, I tell them, close your eyes. I wanna take through a visualization that I know will help you grow your club. So if you're into service, if you really wanna lead, if you really help people, let's close our eyes and let's have an experience together. Would you please close your eyes? Everyone close their eyes. I said, great. Now what I wanna imagine. I want you to imagine you're in your hometown and you're walking up to your childhood house. I want you to imagine you're walking up to the house and. And I want you to go in your house. And just for a moment, could you just walk in your house and visualize. Just close your eyes and walk and visualize each room. When you walk in the front room, what's the front room look like? And then I just want you to take a tour. Go ahead and do that now. Mic off. Mic is off. Their eyes are closed. Bend down. I had spotted the water jug in the lectern. I grabbed the water jug. Now you walk back outside. I'm pale as a ghost. But I just start walking it out, and I just start going. And I go and I go and I go. And you always have to close on a crescendo. Everyone say the word crescendo. You got to lift them. You got to what? You got to lift them. So I lift them and I say, listen, when we all leave these doors, the most important thing we do is. And then I unite them in the leadership principles of the organization. I thank them for being here. I thank 30 different clubs off the top of my head. This, this. You all made this possible. Day. We are changing the world. What an honor it is. This is my first big speech. Thank you, guys. This was unbelievable. Please go serve. Bam. I'm done. The place goes crazy. It's just like, the energy's like. And I just like, whoa. And then I was like, oh. And I was like. And so I go and I turn and I run back, and back there is the president of the thing. He's like, brendan, that was amazing. And I run and I throw up on the Illinois floor, five feet from the president before the bathroom's over there. I throw up all of whoa. And then run to the bathroom. I come out later after cleaning myself up. The guy is cleaning up the. The president and the event manager over there, like, horrified. Are you okay? Do you need a doctor? And I just walked up. I was like, I would really love to come back. Freedom, everyone. Say it with me. Freedom. When you realize you have this opportunity to serve and you get to know the audience and you decide, it's not going to be easy. You're going to run the reps. I've been blessed now to keynote every major arena as the keynote at other organizations at every major arena in North America. Now, since that day, 100 plus live events, an unbelievable joy of speaking on stages and on videos. Because I realized, no easy way. You challenge yourself to get over your insecurities. You show up, you run the reps. Every one of them, you're going to have stress, anxiety, weirdness, but every one of them, you're going to stretch a little more, you're going to learn to move a little bit more, you're going to try to add value. You know their insider language. You're going to find out, how do I unite them before they leave, give them some compassion, a little bit of challenge, Unite them, push them out, and you find a freedom. After a little while, you don't even have to worry about it because you're just being a servant up here, not being part of selfie culture that just wants the picture up there. You actually do it for a cause, for a purpose, for a reason. And you fall in love with that so much. So much that people, when they see the services on you and you listen to them and you cared about them, they invite you back. They invite you back, they invite you back. And if you were terrible, next one, next one, next one. And then one day, everyone's like, how did you do that? And you're like, you know what? I put some holes in circles, walking around, practicing my speeches over and over and over. I felt sick. A lot of times. I pushed through. I tried because I loved the idea that maybe I could make a difference. I could be that ripple effect in somebody's life.