How Anyone Can Become a Great Public Speaker w/ Keith Ferrazzi | EP #65

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I was scared shitless of speaking public speaking. I really was. It was not my forte. Today I get on with passion, excitement. I actually enjoy that energy.

And I'm looking at this guy, this old guy, and I'm sitting there thinking, it's like, how am I going to help him go around the world, meet interesting people, share what you have to, but learn and grow and meet cool people for the rest of your fucking life. That's what you're building. You're building something that you'll have available to you for the rest of your life.

Keith, welcome back to Moonshots.

And we're back.

Yeah. So last time we spoke about writing a New York Times best selling book and in particular writing a book. And one of the things we talked about was people who write a book because they want to make money don't realize you don't make money on books, you make money on speaking. Today I want to talk to you about something that you gifted me, which was advice on how to build a speaking business, a keynote speaking business platform, speaking business, which has been financially very meaningful to me. It's given me the cash flow to allow me to start my companies, putting me in front of audiences around the world. And so we're going to go deep into that. Anyone who's listening, who's ever thought about being a speaker has watched people like Tony Robbins on stage and said, wow, he's amazing. How can I do that? So dive into this, dissect it. And like we did with our how to write a New York Times bestselling book, let's give a 101 on the process. You in for that?

I'm excited about it and I think it's meaningful. What I love about what we're about to do is I've done a couple of things really well. One of them is I published. And another is I've built a very thriving speaking business and I love it when I get a chance to be the usher of another person into that realm. There's a lot of dark twists and turns and things that people don't know and misconceptions. So why don't we give people some light in this process?

In the same way that you gifted that knowledge and literally opened up your old decks and made introductions and told me what does and does not work, looking forward to gifting that information to everybody watching. Here. Done. Let's do it. I had just published my book Abundance the future is better than you think. And I had lunch with you and we had just met, we had probably met at a conference, speaking at ted. And when people ask me about you, besides being an extraordinary executive coach, an extraordinary speaker, an extraordinary thought leader, you're one of the most generous people I know and I love you for that, truly. And you literally took me under your arm and said, I'm going to teach you everything I know about speaking. And you opened up your phone, you made some introductions, you gave me key advice and it was an inflection point for me financially. But more than the financials, it was building my brand in the world. Because when you're on stage and by the way, people, people treat you very differently if you're giving them a free Keynote versus a paid keynote. Very different. We can talk about that. So let's dive in. Let's open up in the question, well.

What was the takeaway that you, I'm curious if you reflect on that, what was the takeaway that you walked away from that conversation that was the most impactful or the biggest?

Aha. I remember when I started doing my keynote speaking, we had all these different agencies that wanted me to go exclusive with them. Right. And one of them was don't go exclusive with any agent. Agency. Right. You can have them all working on your behalf.

Well, let's explain that to folks. Okay, look, there are a few people who do well to have an exclusive bureau, speakers bureau, and they are the people who are looking to maximize the per unit price and minimize their number of speaking days.

Right.

So back in the day when Jack Welch was a speaker or Hillary Clinton.

Barack Obama.

Hillary Clinton, right. And these people are being deluged with people and I would imagine, you know, people like Simon Sinek and, and Adam Grant today, et cetera, perhaps that these individuals have more requests than they have time.

Yeah.

And they are trying to get their price up as high as possible given a very limited number of days.

I'm available these days.

Yeah. I'm available 20 days, although there's 500 people trying to get me. And as a result I want to get the highest amount. That's a great use of a bureau.

Of a single bureau where it's funneled. They know the kinds of gigs you like and don't like and they know which days you're available and what your minimum price is. And because it's scarcity, scarcity drives up the price.

But let's understand the business model of the bureau to understand why I would make that recommendation. So what a bureau does is they're working for the person booking the engagements. They're working for the booker.

So if you're running a conference and you're looking for a great keynote speaker on a particular subject, you go to a bureau.

So you're running your salesforce and you're running the big dream force. You have a bureau or many bureaus perhaps even who are looking to fill the speaking slots. And that bureau is looking for long term revenue. They're going to work for Salesforce, hopefully for five, 10 years running. There are bureau, there are agents out there who have worked for this event for five to ten years.

Yeah, right.

Their job is to fill that. So the fact that you happen to be exclusive to them, they'll put you in whatever they Own or they contract with once. Right. But now what you're really trying to do is there's eight other bureaus out there who are booking events for their clients that you want to get on their place. And if you're independent, you have a higher likelihood of lobbying those other. Those other agencies and bureaus than if you're wedded to just one.

Yeah, right.

And when it comes to the commission. Right. If you're wedded at just one, a number of the speeches that will come in to you that have nothing to do with the bureau, nothing at all.

They saw you speak, they read your book, they just call. And it's just.

You go to one bureau, 100% of those speeches will be covered by their commission commissioned by that, whereas there's an entire swath that you can get directly without paying the commission. The commissions could be pretty daunting. Right?

Yeah. 20% is not unusual for it. I've seen 25%.

I've seen 25 as well, and sometimes even 30, but.

And by the way, you can negotiate that at the end of the day. So before we dive too much into the weeds here, I'd like to go back to the entrepreneurs watching and say, why do you even start a speaking business? Right. What is it that is the benefit, the why behind it? And there are a few different reasons, and maybe we can. We can discuss that a little bit. I think one of them is you want to get your message out. You've written a book and you want to get your message out and being able to present with your emotion, your energy, and an updated story. Because a book is static once it's published, at least books in the past have been being able to update it. When I gave my abundance speeches in 2012, they're very different from giving that speech in 2023 because the data is so much more compelling. So it's getting the message out. Another reason.

Well, let's go back and put the hat on of the person we're speaking to here.

An entrepreneur, right?

Well, perhaps.

Okay.

That's one audience. There's an audience that says there's a group of individuals who just dream of being a speaker.

Sure.

And that's what they want to do. In fact, that's kind of where I was, if you don't mind me giving a little bit of backstory. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor. That's what I wanted to be. And I actually was. When I was 12 years old, I went to a summer stock Equity theater, which is professional theater. And my parents let me do this at 12 years of age. I spent the entire summer.

My boys are 12. Now I'm trying to think about what I would do. Probably not that.

Right. My parents let me, at 12 years of age, live at a theater company for the entire summer by myself in my own apartment. And I was playing one of the kids in Sound of Music for the whole summer. And it was Equity. It was a professional theater company. And what I noticed back then was that there were some amazing actors who were poor. And I said to myself, I can't go into a profession where if I'm really good, it has nothing to do with my success right now. What I didn't know was that what I did know how to do, which was to network and build relationships, would have probably made me an awesome actor. Because these folks who were really good and not capable of earning a great living was probably because they weren't playing the game and building the relationships, building the brand.

Yeah.

But at my point, I was just saying I can't be an actor because I won't be successful. Now, if you think about what I was able to do, I wanted to be an actor. What am I today? I'm on stages all over the world. Sure, right. I mean, I'm in media all over the world. And I've actually found a more fulfilling purpose beyond being an actor in terms of why, what? My mission and my purpose is to transform the way we work.

Give me the emotion you feel where you're on stage.

That's a great question. You know what? It's different. It's evolved. Back then, when I was a kid, an insecure kid who was poor, going to rich schools, didn't think I deserved to be anywhere. I suspect what I was looking for was significance. I was looking for self worth. Today, when I'm on stage, I feel effusively generous because what I do in this little trick, and I'm sure you do the same thing, before I go on stage, I do my research. I understand what I'm intended to do. I always ask myself the question. And then I ask my client the question, what would you like the audience to be doing differently three to four months after I've left because I was.

There, the question I ask as well is, what's the emotional experience you want them to have at the end of this next hour?

And you and I again. My whole brand is about doing and practices. You're about inspiring and potential, similar to what Tony does. Mine's about doing in practices. I'm Very clear. I say I want to make sure that by the time I'm walking off that stage, I have set a momentum to. So that your audience, a large portion of them, will be doing something different quarter later. Right now I feel effusively generous. And so what I do is I.

And you are authentic from the heart.

I do a ton of research, which a lot of speakers don't do. I'm constantly complimented by the amount of research I do. And I ask them, can I speak to more of your people? And in advance of even showing up, I do phone calls, talking to leaders of the company. What do they want me to do as a puppet of their vision, how do I be of service? But then what I do is I show up.

You're the channel, not the puppet.

Well, yeah, exactly.

Thank you.

Then what I do is the night before when I land, most speakers are like, oh, I'm just going to go straight to bed. I go down to the bar because that's where everybody is the night before the big speaking event. And I just shoot this shit. I'm like, what's really by there? They're drunk. So like, what's, what's really going on here, right? Tell me what's really going on. And I, I tease them out and they give me so much great information. Then I show up the next day and I go in the breakfast and I walk around from table to table, I sit down and say, hey, I'm your speaker today. Yes, you need to tell me what to say. I said, I'm writing the talk and I have no idea what I'm doing.

Oh my God.

I was like, tell me. I'm saying, here's my topic, tell me what to say. And I swear to God, at least 25% of what I'm going to say.

On stage will modify is developed the.

Night before and the morning of.

Amazing.

Based on those conversations. And it's all intended. And then what I do, last thing I do right before I go on stage is I sit in the back of the room and I look at the people in the room and everyone's quiet and everyone's looking up at the stage on whoever they're talking to and I am starting to get teary eyed and I imagine their life.

Wow.

And I asked myself, how can I help him? And I'm looking at this guy, this old guy, you know, is like a middle aged guy, middle tier in the company and I'm sitting there thinking, it's like, how am I gonna help him? How in three months from now.

Wow.

And then I look at the woman over there and the young kid and the young woman executive and whatever it is, I'm looking at these people and I'm like, how do I help them? And now I'm fucking ready.

Now you're on fire. And, buddy, you've been on my Stage @Abundance360 More and more every year. And people love you. I'll just put a plug in here, guys, if you ever want an incredible keynote speaker, Keith Ferrazi is the best. And just you move the audience, you bring an emotional connection in a way that's extraordinary. I'm super passionate about longevity and health span. And how do you add 10, 20 healthiers onto your life? One of the most underappreciated elements is the quality of your sleep. And there's something that changed the quality of my sleep. And this episode is brought to you by that product. It's called eight Sleep. If you're like me, you probably didn't know that temperature plays a crucial role in the quality of your sleep. Those mornings when you wake up feeling like you barely slept. Yeah, temperature is often the culprit. Traditional mattresses trap heat, but your body needs to cool down during sleep and stay cool through the evening and then heat up in the morning. Enter the pod cover by eight sleep. It's the perfect solution to the problem. It fits on any bed. Adjust the temperature on each side of the bed based upon your individual needs. You know, I've been using pod cover and it's a game changer. I'm a big believer in using technology to improve life, and eight sleep has done that for me. And it's not just about temperature control. With the pod's sleep and health tracking, I get personalized sleep reports. And every morning it's like having a personal sleep coach. So you know when you eat or drink or go to sleep too late, how it impacts your sleep. So why not experience sleep like Never before? Visit www.eightsleep.com that's E I G H T S L-E-E-P.com moonshots and you'll save 150 bucks on the pod cover by 8 sleep. I hope you do it. It's transformed my sleep and will for you as well. Now back to the episode. So going back to the why, right? So one is you can make a living. You know, it's good money. You can promote your brand and your personal vision.

And the other one is you can start investing in your future. Every one of you is running a company Today, or, you know, running a company today, having a team, one of these days you're not, one of these days you're going to be out of your business. You're no longer going to be CEO. You're no longer to be an executive in the company. And the question is, what do you want to do? What do you want to do with the last 40 years of your life? I'll tell you what I want to do. I want to go around the world and be asked to share what I know, to teach and, and I want to be paid well and I want to be able to pick the countries that I want to visit.

By the way, if you're in a, if you, if you're able to make it in the speaking business, you will have opportunities around the globe.

Around the globe. And, and what I want my leaders, yourself to be able to do is to say, okay, we're retired. What the hell that is? It's nothing. What that is, is you and your spouse get invited to go to Bhutan.

Or to Egypt or to Seoul, South Korea, right? Wherever, Dubai.

And you get to go around the world, meet interesting people, share what you have, but learn and grow and meet cool people for the rest of your fucking life.

Yeah.

And that's what you're building. You're building something that you'll have available to you for the rest of your life.

The emotional experience I have when I'm on stage and it can be an entire spectrum and I know if I'm not connecting with the audience, I'm sure it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen often, but there have been times. And on the other end, I know when I hate to use the term, I have them in the palm of my hand. I can feel they're connected, right? And I've moved them from a state of fear and scarcity to abundance and optimism. I move them from in their mindsets that they have, in their self belief of what they can accomplish. My MTP is to inspire and guide entrepreneurs create a hopeful, compelling and abundant future. When I can do that, I feel this incredible sense of fulfillment. It's awesome. One of the things that I do remember when I started Singularity University, one of the things that Singularity did was it made its faculty amazing keynote speakers because executives would come to Singularity. Here are these faculty, and then can you come and talk at my company? And so we helped these individuals become extraordinarily successful in their speaking business. Outside of su, one thing I started doing was giving away all of my PowerPoint slides for free. I would. At the end of the deck, I would say, I didn't use a QR code back then. It was a website. Now it's a QR code and say, if you want these slides, take them. Share with your kids, with your friends. And people say, aren't you afraid these people are going to steal your content and give talks? If they can give a talk better than me, fantastic. Let them do it. But it became a way, because to get the slides, they'd give me their emails. Maybe they're watching this podcast as a.

Result of that movement. Your community, we talked about this, and.

I have a connection with them and I can keep the conversation alive. And I want, if I am heartfelt about what I'm sharing on stage. I want that information to go beyond the single individual to as many as possible.

Well, and let's just talk about that once you're done with your speaking engagement and you ask them if they would like to see slides and they give you your email and you create some form of a drip campaign of generosity. Just keep giving to them. Always give if you're on there. What I always say is, if you're on their doorstep in a newsletter or something that just came in at the time when somebody says, do you know a good speaker or do you know a good coach or, you know, a good whatever, then you'll have a shot. But it's interesting. You could have crushed it a year ago, but just the day before somebody asked, do you know a good speaker? Some schlock walked across this guy's path. Guess who's gonna get recommended? The schlock. But if you don't have an ongoing touch point with these people to build a relationship, to build a relationship and stay on the radar screen, it's really important.

You know, a lot of people who wish to be a speaker, they watch amazing speakers on the TED stage or Tony or whomever, and they say, I could never do that. I'm fearful. I want to share something. For me, when I was in college, in the early days, I was scared shitless of speaking public speaking. I really was. It was not my forte. I remember I was running an organization called Students for Exploration and Development of Space Seds, which is still around now, many years, many decades later.

That's awesome.

And MIT has something called Kresge Auditorium. And it was a massive auditorium. I don't know how many thousands of people it holds. And I was like, my dream when I was there my first year was before the end. I'm going to stand on that stage and give a speech. And I had a chance to do that and face down my fears. Today, honestly, there's very little anxiety in speaking. I get on with passion and excitement. I actually. When I have any kind of anxiety getting on the stage, I actually enjoy that energy because it's like a little bit of fear is like, okay, I gotta change up my game. It's like.

And you and I will find stages where, like, I remember the first time I stepped on Tony Robbins stage, right. Or Radio City Music hall to speak at Radio City Music Hall.

Amazing.

Or a convention center in Ukraine.

Right?

That's the. You know, you get those moments where you're like, holy shit, I'm about to go in front of 10,000, 50,000 people. But let's spin back a second. For me, thank God. My parents were religious, and I'm a spiritual individual myself, Christian. Speaking in the youth group at church was my first experience with speaking. I was invited as the youth pastor because I was in the youth group and I was invited as a youth pastor on Youth Day to be on stage with the minister, sharing the pulpit. I then became, as I mentioned to you, I wanted to be an actor.

Yeah, sure, right.

So that was huge. To be on stage and just learn how to project and just learn how to have an audience and to be able to replay with an audience, all of that. And then what I tell you is, if any of you are thinking about this for your children, think early. Let your kids encourage your kids to take acting classes. Encourage your kids. For me, it was a thing called NFL, National Forensics League, which is speech and debate. In high school, that's what got me to Yale.

I'll tell you, my very first speaking engagement ever. I was. I was 10 years old and I sat my parents down in the living room and I went and gave a presentation to them on the planets. And afterwards, my dad came over and gave me five bucks.

Paid speaking.

My first paid speaking.

Yes.

And it was like, maybe that was the one that influenced it all the way. But it was amazing.

But the point of, look, there are many of you who didn't have that, like the two of us did. Where I had a lot of early training, being on stage, the National Forensics League, Lincoln Douglas debate. I just. Every Saturday I was going to different schools and I was learning how to speak.

Debate is an amazing Capability X. Temp is fantastic.

You pull a topic out of the hat and you're given. But if you don't have any of that or you didn't have that Background. But I would recommend for your kids. You do then Toastmasters. My dad told me early on that he had done Toastmasters. My father was a steel worker, which I love about Toastmasters. You know, people who want to be professional speakers, but people who just want. I don't know why my dad did it, but my dad was a steelworker.

So do tell more. What is Toastmasters?

So Toastmasters is a club. You join the club and once a week you go. And everybody takes turns getting up and giving little speeches or different types of speeches. I was actually blessed. My dad told me about Toastmasters and Toastmasters honored me as their golden gavel. Top speaker in the world.

Amazing. Yeah.

I recently accepted that award. And past speaker, past award winners were Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins.

Amazing.

You should actually be up on that.

For sure.

But it was amazing. My father had told me about this when I was a kid.

What a beautiful close up.

I remember I was crying on stage when I received the award because I only wished my dad had been in the front row. He had passed. Would you imagine my dad in the front row listening to his parents receive that? But, but, but I'm saying it's about practice, right?

It is about practice.

Now there's different forms of speaking. I don't know about you, but when, when cameras and media started to happen, one of the biggest screw ups I've ever done in my life was my second book. I got on the Good Morning America and I hope it's not out there anywhere, but I choked on live television.

Oh my God.

And I was, I am, I was petrified of cameras being on stage. Had a forgiveness about it and it was long form. I could be on stage for an hour musing and talking and engaging with people. But when you put me in front of a little camera, I got terrified. I started sweating profusely.

You're doing pretty good right now, by the way.

You know, I practiced. It was fun. My ex partner, who you know very well, Stan, God bless him, I feel so bad. But because I was so terrified, he and I had a thing. This is back in the day when we didn't have iPhones, we had flip cameras.

Yes.

And so he would just walk around with me and he would periodically pause, hijack me and say flip camera. And he asked me a question and it would give me the practice to get comfortable with that medium. And we did it all the time. And I would get so upset and I would get so angry and I'd be so terrified. It took me years to be able to Be in front of a camera.

Yeah.

So this was as an adult. My point is, if you're terrified of speaking in whatever medium. Fucking practice.

Yeah. It is about practice.

All it is.

You know, it's interesting. I started putting myself into situations where I was speaking. You know, I had started after. Well, in the middle of medical school. And after medical school, I was running International Space University with two dear friends. And there was the opening ceremonies and the closing ceremonies, and in between. So I was giving speech teachers all the time. And I'll never forget an experience I had which taught me an amazing lesson. I was in Toulouse, France, at the closing ceremonies, and here we are with our 120 graduates and 500 parents and friends there. And I get up on stage to try and give a inspiring closing talk. And I had a speech right there in front of me, and I started reading it, and I started, like, just choking because, you know, it's, like, trying to make eye contact and reading it and, like. And it was.

Yeah.

And I literally put it down and spoke from my heart, and something flipped. And I've never, ever, ever had a teleprompter or speech. So my experience, I'm curious if it's yours, is I would make sure I had, like, five to ten maximum bullets. Like, these are the things I want to hit on.

Let's do that. Let's get into the structure.

And that would allow me to pick a subject. And a lot of times, my dear friend and writing partner Steven Kotler talks about being in flow.

Yeah.

And when you're on stage, in an audience, and you're in flow, and you're speaking from the heart authentically, it's a. People know it and you know it. Yeah.

So I'll tell you my. My. What I do is, number one is at the beginning of a speech, you should very quickly get into a personal story.

Yes. Stories are critically important.

The biggest mistake I've made is when I was trying to give too much information. And I felt that this audience didn't want to hear my stories. They wanted the information because I was intimidated. Maybe they were scientists or they were very senior executives. But the reality is that if you don't. If you don't capture their heart with authenticity through a powerful story at the beginning, you've lost them. So that's. Number one, is to start with some form of a story. The next thing I always do is there's. I always think of my talks as three sections. I don't know what they are, but there's three big sections, like In a movie, in my talk.

Yeah.

And if I lost my notes, all I would have to have is three sections to memorize. Right. Because I could flow through three things, and then within each of the sections, I'll have three or four bullet points. Right. So that's your point of 10 things. Now, what I will do, if I'm giving a talk that I've never given before, I will write out in two pages what I want us to share. Then I'll turn it in to three sections with bullet points. And between the time that I finalize what I think I'm going to say and the talk, I will take what used to be called recipe cards. Remember those little papers? I'll take a recipe card and I will write and rewrite my bullet points over and over again without looking at the last version. So I'll take a set of bullet points and I'll write them. And then I'll. I'll say I put it away. Let me do it again. And each time it'll get smaller and smaller. The number of bullet points that I need to remember gets smaller and smaller until I've really mastered the content and I don't need anything on the stage any longer.

I agree 1000% on grabbing them with an opening story. It's beautiful. Right. The thing that I've done recently that works really well for me as well is I have a PowerPoint deck.

Sure.

And the PowerPoint deck is mostly all image.

Yeah.

Pictures and a title across the top.

Which is your bullet points, which guidance.

And so as I'm going through the deck, I use it as a reminder. I'm going to tell some stories around this or some stories around this. People are there to be entertained, first and foremost. And if you can educate them on top of the entertainment, that's fantastic. If you just educate them without the entertainment, they don't get it.

I appreciate it. And I feel like that regimentation and the idea that you're just going through reminders and nodes is important. Let's talk a little bit about over rehearsing talks and things. There's a. There's an association. I don't want to. I don't want to embarrass them in my. My belief of what they do. There's an association of speakers that has a very strong belief on how a speech should be done.

Huh. Okay.

And it's a very prominent group out there.

I'm going to start guessing and.

And they literally have the professionalism down to a science. You open your first remark here and Then you take two steps to the right and you have your next remark. And then. And it's this crazy, meticulous formula of giving a talk, which I might imagine for somebody who isn't organically good at this might be a really nice way to start. But when I watch them, I have lost a. Humanity.

Yes.

And what I love about both you and I on stage, and certainly Tony, you know, is what comes out is the raw nature of our passion and the message and the. And the other, you know, there's also a very famous place to give talks that have. They squeeze you into a box and.

How to give a talk there, 20 minutes.

And. And the way, you know, like, I remember I was talking to Reid Hoffman. Both he and I got coaching to do a talk. Come on, we know we're a TED Talk, right?

Yeah.

And we got our coaching to give a TED Talk. And we both swore that it felt like we were having the life drained out of us because it was so meticulous and out of gear.

It's gotten worse.

All of them, it was like. It was like, oh, my God. And I. And I look at it and I'm like, it was excellent. But the A pluses that I could have given if I didn't feel as regimented. But on the other hand, if you think about the average person that gets up to give a TED Talk, they need that, right?

The way I got pretty good decent at speaking was modeling others. So I would watch Tony. Tony's a friend. We built companies together, written a book together and so forth. And I would watch, you know, in the early days, watch him on stage. And I would watch him not for the content, but the delivery, his hand motions, huge hands, his voice inflections. And then I went on YouTube and on Ted.com and started saying, okay, which talks really stop me and are like amazing speakers. And why do I think they're amazing? What are they doing? And so I began emulating that. And one of the, you know, some of the lessons learned just for folks listening here is I don't ever get behind a podium, first and foremost. Never. Right. I'm in front. I'm bare naked. Second thing is, I go to 11. What do I mean by that? Right. If you think about ratcheting, it's when you're speaking at a level of energy that you think is high energy. It's not that high in the audience.

Right.

And so I need to go higher.

It's like one thing. I go to 11 and I go to 2.

Yes, 100% right. 100%.

The ability to go from there to then pause.

Yes.

And just land an emotional point.

Yes. And silence.

Inflection point. And silence.

Silence is a huge exclamation point. Yeah.

And, Tony, what I love about. You know, sometimes I find myself, after I've done, like, sometimes when I'm doing Tony events, they happen to be like three in a row.

Yeah.

And for the next month, I find myself using Tony Isms. Like, in the middle of the thing, I'm like, say yes. Exactly. Say yes, say yes. It's like, so to have that. So I find myself going into those things. The thing about emulation is so important. I want to tip my hat to a beautiful man. His name is Len Schlesinger. He was a professor at Harvard Business School. I was a second year. He was one of the most meaningful people in my life academically. I was a student of his, but I became a mentee of his. He was studying my subject that I was really interested in, which was total quality control and management. But he was doing it in retail and I had him come from manufacturing, what he would do. And he was one of the best speakers and he was one of the best professor lecturers. He was energized and he was always sweating and he was just. He was fucking amazing. But I got to the point where he said to me one day, he said, keith would. I can't go to the National Retail Federation to give this talk. Would you give it for me? But I had watched him so many times that I literally would sit back and I would scribe his talk and I gave his talk. Literally gave his talk. Not just his inflections, his manners, I gave his talk and I learned how to give his talk. And then I earned the right to change it for myself. Right. And so that was the best way for me, it was total mimicry. But then I adapted it for myself and I learned my own style, held onto some of his. So. And I suggest, I've got an amazing man that works in our company who. His name is Ronan, and he wants to be better and better at his speaking. So he's doing the same thing for me and I love it. He's giving my talks as him, but then he's modifying them.

Yeah. And I'm doing that with one of my Strike Force members, Yanni, just putting him on stage more and more to give them the experience. Let's put a nail or a stake in the heart of fear one second. So the answer to fear, it's natural, is practice. It is practice. Is practice, is practice, and it is allowing yourself. What I want to say is allow the emotion to come out fully. It's hand motions, it's volume, it's being confident in yourself. People love that confidence and they love the empathy that you have for them in this subject. At the end of the day, I remember my first TED Talk, actually, my first TED Talk, my second TED Talk, when I gave the Abundance Talk and I went and was giving it at the home of Lyndon Norman Lear, and she invited me to come and present it just after Abundance had come out. And I gave it, I gave what I was working on for ted. And then common friend Eric Hershberg pulled me aside and he goes, I think I could make it better for you. And we spent the better part of a week re engineering the talk and me giving it over and over and over again, and it was phenomenally better. And kudos to Eric, who is a brilliant creative himself.

Yeah, he is.

And when I got on stage and I gave that talk, I was, I felt on fire. And I was like on a mission to change the people's mindset there. But I was so confident. What I was saying.

Because you had iterated and iterated.

I had it allowed.

And that's what I was saying earlier. I literally, you know, I remember my TED Talk and getting ready for it and just that over and over and over again. And I think that until you just get such comfort that you can do it in your sleep. Yeah, I think that's critical. You know, the thinking about speaking. I did want to make sure that we also punctuated the mediums. And I do think that one of the things I learned is there was a little bit of a difference between being on this media.

Yeah. And being on stage and between a small stage and a big stage.

I agree. Like, between, like you're Talking about being 11 and being big.

Yeah.

I used to do that on television and it looked weird.

Yeah, that's true. It doesn't work for television.

So I think it's important to understand your medium. Most of the time, what we're talking about.

You just look crazy.

You do, you look. You look crazy. I actually remember the very first time I did a CNBC show with myself and rich dad, poor dad, and a bunch.

This guy's on speed.

Swear to God. It looked like I've never done cocaine in my life, but I looked like I had just overdosed on cocaine. At the end of the day, I watched myself. I was like, oh, that was so embarrassing. Right. So you do have to recognize that.

Probably came from nerves.

Well, yes. And it was a medium I was used to like. And again, I was used to being on stage and as an actor, and I was big and.

And TV wants an intimate setting.

Yeah. And, you know, it's different. So I think people have to be conscious. And let me say another thing. You and I are giving a disproportionate tilt to charisma and energy, et cetera. But let me. Let me suggest. Don't let that intimidate you if that's not who you are. And maybe I'm going to take a very antithetical approach to what we just said. There are comedians who are totally different styles and land the joke beautifully. There are some comedians that are deadpan and do a beautiful job of it. There are some. Now, you don't want to bore people, but I think that all of you could find a way to be a good speaker and honor you. You've got to command, you've got to modulate. I think even if you're not going to 11 to 2, if you go to. Your volume goes to 8 to 4, that's still going to be important.

Yeah. And by the way, you might be a scientist or a technologist talking about a really important subject, some kind of a breakthrough you've had.

Bill Gates doesn't do what you and I do. People listen to him. But he is Bill.

If you've got really very important, meaningful information to deliver, I think you don't have to be the, like you said, the charismatic presenter on stage, but you still need to get a connection with the audience.

Yes. Anecdotes, stories opening up with stories. I still see dry professors that use humor beautifully. Reagan used to do it. Right. He was just such a beautiful orator and he would tell jokes and it worked. Right. So I just want to make sure that we're not intimidating an entire population that don't think that they can be us.

Everybody. Peter Diamandis here. I've been asked over and over again, what do I do for my own health. Well, I put it down in this book called Peter's Longevity Practices. It's very readable in just an hour. In the book, I cover longevity diet, exercise, sleep, my annual fountain upload, meds and supplements, longevity mindset. It's literally consumable in just an hour's time, hopefully, to incentivize you to make a difference in your life, to intercept the technologies coming our way. If you want this, it's free. Just check out the link below and download it right now. Now you may be an entrepreneur who's got a company of 10 people or a company of 100 people. And being able to stand up in front of that company and give a heartfelt, compelling drive and purpose and to ignite that company through a difficult time or a sprint you need to do is equally important. We are emotional beings and we have this emotional connection. Let's talk about how we turn this into a business because you and I have. And again, you gave me a tremendous gift of insight. So if someone's written a book and that's.

But that's so important. The day I started getting paid for speaking was the day I wrote a book.

Yes.

Really getting paid for speaking. And it's interesting because if you are a public speaker and you haven't written a book, you're probably going to get 10 to 20% of the revenue that you would get than if you wrote a book.

It's just a book in this matter is a representation that you have a concise body of knowledge. Right.

It's exactly it and it's your, it's your credential, it's your card. If you don't have a book, the likelihood someone's gonna, well, gotta remember who's hiring. It's, it's I, and I apologize for this. It's a, it's a clip laid late clipboard lady or clipboard guy. I always, it's like there's somebody five layers down in the organization who's checking the boxes, who's checking boxes and is working with the bureau to figure out what slate to give the CEO for the event. Of course it could come down from the CEO, but a lot of the times it's a risk adverse individual looking to qualify who's supposed to be on this stage at this point in time. And so not having a book is almost a disqualification.

Now you could have a very successful company or you could have a very successful life experience that the world knows about.

It's a brand. If you don't have a brand, you need a book. Maybe that's the mantra. If you don't have a brand, you need a book.

And by the way, when you're being introduced and someone says so and so is the author of so and so book. They don't need to mention how many copies were sold or anything.

And we talked about it on our other podcast, they will say that it.

Is a best selling book, whether it's.

Even though it's the best selling in Joe's book list. So no matter what, you'll Be a best selling author and you'll be able to have credential. People want to, you know, you, they want to put you on stage if they feel like you've got a credential.

Yeah.

And yeah. So that's so important. The book start. The book starts your speaking career.

It really does. It was the case for me.

It was. I think it's the case for so many, and I don't know many examples that can do it without.

And again, you know this added podcasters.

Again, you have a brand.

Yeah.

If you've got a major podcast that has a great following, again, it's because you have the brand. It's like having your own TV show.

And there are a few podcasters I know who haven't gone on and written a book.

Right.

You know the old saying, you don't make money on book sales, you make money on speeches is very true.

So now we're into the business.

And now we're into the business.

Can I talk about the first thing that needs to happen? What is your topic? And you know, I want to use you and me as an example here.

Okay.

You have found a topic. Now look, you weren't searching for a topic to get a good speaking business, therefore you picked abundance.

Yeah. That's not how it happened that way.

But let's just talk about.

Because my top, my topic early on for a good part of my life was space.

Guess, guess what kind of a speaking business you would have with a space.

Zippo.

I don't know, but guess what kind of a paid speaking business you would have with space. Zippo.

That's for sure.

So, you know, JPL would hire you to speak, but. And MIT would hire you to speak a free coffee. Right. So, but let's dissect a bit your abundance topic, which I think is really important.

Interesting. And I was kind of shocked that it became a successful, viable business topic.

Yeah. Well, I think that's just because of the purity of your intent of the message. You weren't engineering it for that. But as I looked at somebody who I helped to craft their speaking business and then all of a sudden I saw your speaking fee be double mine. Sorry, I was like, what? No, what is about that? So I started dissecting and I was like, what is it about Peter's speaking business that has taken wind? And here's my analysis. The first thing is, if you look at who's putting you on stage, there's a CEO putting you on stage, saying, I want you to kick the butt of my people. To be deeply curious, inspired to be over the edge in terms of what could be next. Not sitting on our laurels, but going big and going next. Because every CEO wants that. The other thing you do is you bring a very positive message when you leave the stage. People have walked in saying, the world is shit. And I, you know, and it's falling apart. And they leave saying, oh, my God, the world is abundant.

It's amazing.

Right. So you've gone too two extraordinary things. And it's not a surprise, it's not how you engineered it, but it's not a surprise that you've created that. Now why do I say that? Because when you're thinking about the business, if you're literally creating a speaking business for the sake of a business, then you need to ask yourself, is that message going to resonate with which audiences? So this is. I'm a former marketer.

Yeah.

So I would first ask the question, which audiences are hiring? So who's hires speakers? Sales organizations hire them for their big sales off sites every year. Leadership off sites, which is the big company meeting with the top 100,000 people or whatever it is.

Customer engagement.

Right. And then external customer events. Big. Like the big event where you bring all of your customers together, like Salesforce, and then associations which are hiring it for their members. And that's either a personal message, like you're going to get a sports hero that everyone's interested in, but you could define something that general consumers would be interested in. You really just think about who are the people hiring, speaking, and ask you, what gift are you giving that organization by virtue of you walking on stage? That's an important alignment. Where I have gone with my talks is I call my talks challenge talks because again, my brand is. Is partially to inspire. I go on stage and I say to an audience and this is what I have sold my speech to. Where do you want your people's behavior to change over the next six to nine months in order to meet your strategy? Peter's the guy that'll help your strategy and technology get on path. I'm the guy that comes behind and says, where are the behaviors of your people? And I believe that anybody in that room could be the tipping point of the transformation of the company. That's why I wrote Leading Without Authority. I'm trying to say that everybody in the room, you could take the manifestation of the strategy of the company and you could go out and build the relationships and the vision to make it happen, and your career would be on fire.

Right.

And by the Way you are a leader of a team that is yet to know that they're following you. That team is the people inside of the organization that are going to follow you and your vision on how to meet the strategy of the company. So that idea, I call it a challenge talk, and it crushes it out there.

Yeah.

Because, you know, you come on one day, we've done this actually, where you've spoken, then I spoke. You come on one day and you get the organization to see where its strategy and its technology needs to be. I come in and I see, you know, where is the. How can an individual ignite transformation by changing their behavior and managing teams different.

You know, tactically, let's say you've written your book or you've had this life experience or you had something that creates a brand that makes, gives you a message that is super credible and people want to hear. Right. One of the things that you taught me was you said, listen, you introduced me to leading authorities, one of the speaking agencies that still to this day we have a great, great relationship with. And you said, go to their office in Washington D.C. and meet with their team and give your talk there.

I also said, buy them lunch.

Yeah, right. I'm not sure if I did maybe.

Show up, offer to buy them lunch, you know, because there's a lot of people that want to get on their radar, say, hey, listen, I'd love to buy you all lunch. And all I want you to do is listen to 20 minutes of what I have to share.

Yeah. I mean, how many agencies are out there?

I think there's, you know, the first of all, there's hundreds.

Yes.

Because as, as the, as that that world has grown, any individual can be an agency. But I know, let's call it 12 to 15 important agencies. And I'm not suggesting, by the way, that the biggest agencies are the most important. Washington Speakers Bureau is not an agency.

That Harry Winston is that the other.

One in New York ones aren't necessarily where you're going to give me.

Those will be the agencies that typically have the Barack Obamas. Yeah, exactly. The ex politicos. But there are agencies that have either specialization to subspecializations and going and building a relationship there.

That's it.

Because at the end of the day, when the agent part of that agency is on the phone with a large marketing event or membership event, they say, hey, let me, let me point you at this individual. Check out this website and let me know because I've heard them speak and they're amazing right now.

Let's talk about how to do that. Now, this is where my never eat alone hat comes on. You're not building a relationship with a bureau. You're building a relationship with three agents.

Yes.

And the way you do that is you start to connect by doing that first outreach. You get their email, you follow up, you ask them questions about it. You ask them questions about your talk, so they've just heard you give your teaser, and then you start a relationship. Hey, what advice do you have? What'd you think about the messaging? Where do you think that that messaging is going to play well? And by the way, do you have anybody that you're thinking about that you think would be great for that? Then the first time they put you up for a potential talk, whether you got it or not, I want you to send them flowers, an Amazon card.

That's what you should do.

Just say thank you.

That's what I would say. Thank you so much.

I didn't get to talk. Yeah, send them cash. Right. And by the way, this is. They're paid by their bosses. This is direct to them, the individual right here. I just want to thank you and remember their birthdays and find out. I mean, I used to have.

It's all the stuff that you teach.

It's everything. It's all of the relationship component. I had a woman who ran my speaking business for a while, Jordan. And Jordan was a great leverage for me with those bureaus. And she richly got to know those folks. She was sending birthday presents that were so intimate. Like she would send a baseball card to somebody that she had researched. That person's hero was that individual, and they were a baseball fan, and a framed baseball card was sent to him. That kind of intimacy. Now, you and I have gotten to the stage where we're probably not doing.

Those tactics anymore, but in the beginning, it matters. Right. And so, Jordan, for you, Connie, still runs my speaking business.

And that is important that if you're not going to hire 12 people to. If you're not going to go with an agency to have a right hand, whether that's your administrative assistant, maybe we can talk about that a bit. Little bit. What is the role of your admin or yourself if you got the.

Well, Connie, who runs my speaking business, used to be my admin. She used to be my executive assistant. And as my speaking business started growing, at one point I got her a second ea, Esther, and I said, connie, would you just go and run the speaking business alone? And I sent her to a negotiation school. And she has. She's done extraordinarily well for me and for herself. And then Esther became my EA and now my chief of staff.

But this person isn't. They could easily just be a booker, a transactional logistics person.

But Connie is a relationship person.

That's what's important.

She develops relationships with the agents as well. Right. And she's my first line of defense as well. Now I get a lot of inbound emails, people who are members of my communities or my organizations or donors. And Peter, can.

Can you speak mostly for free?

Well, the requests come in for free. I mean, everybody is asking and I get hundreds of requests a year. And my way of looking at it is if I do something, I'm trading against time with my 12 year old boys or trading against my companies. And so the answer is no, unless they meet a threshold. And that threshold is either it's extraordinarily meaningful for me or to my companies or I'm going to take a certain number of paid gigs per year and it's going to be one of the paid gigs. So Connie goes in and will say, I just got a request from a very high level politician to come and speak at an event. And I'm not going to say, listen, here's my speaking rate. But Connie can go in very respectfully and say speak so. And so here's Peter's speaking rates and he could be free on that day. Is that an option in going through that? But it gives me a separation in that.

But I want to level down for the viewing audience for a second.

But I hope they'll get there.

Yeah, but I also want them, I want to give them the opportunity. If you're an entrepreneur in the healthcare space and you're building a business that sells into hospital systems, there's a lot of really cool places that you could be developing a speaking business. Now here's the thing. If the association of Hospital Administrators, if you went to them normally and said I would like to speak on your stage and you have a business that sells into hospital administrators, they'll say yes, and you can pay us $200,000 for sponsorship. Right?

Exactly.

If you write a book and you write some articles and develop a sense of thought leadership and you have a $30,000 speaking fee associated with your name, you could probably get on that stage at a minimum for free.

Yes.

And that's okay.

Yeah. No, listen, so I want to talk about being on a stage in which it's great for your company or your organization, but that little strategy is important.

I want for people to Understand you went from being a sponsor, being a sponsor. When I was at Deloitte as Chief Marketing Officer, every time I wanted to show up and speak, people wanted me to pay them. And it wasn't long after that when I wrote a book that I started getting paid. And so it's a really important flip to be able to have and they're not on sale.

And by the way, if you haven't watched Keith and I talking about how how to write New York Times bestselling book, go watch that podcast next because the two are intimately connected. If you have, please leave comments. We'd love to know what you thought. Was it useful for you on how to write a book or is this podcast useful for you? Love to know everybody. I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that's very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love. The company is called Fountain Life and it's a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented physicians. You know, most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body. We're all optimists until that day when you have a pain in your side. You go to the physician in the emergency room and they say, listen, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have this stage three or four going on and you know, it didn't start that morning. It probably was a problem problem that's been going on for some time. But because we never look, we don't find out. So what we built at Fountain Life was the world's most advanced diagnostic centers. We have four across the US today, and we're building 20 around the world. These centers give you a full body mri, a brain, a brain vasculature, an AI enabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque DEXA scan, a grail blood cancer test, a full executive blood workup. It's the most advanced workup you'll ever receive. 150 gigabytes of data that then go to our AIs and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning when it's solvable. You're going to find out eventually. You might as well find out when you can take action. Fountain Life also has an entire side of therapeutics. We look around the world for the most advanced advanced therapeutics that can add 10, 20 healthy years to your life. And we provide them to you at our centers. So if this is of interest to you, please go and check it out. Go to fountainlife.com Peter When Tony and I wrote our New York Times bestseller LifeForce, we had 30,000 people reached out to us for Fountain Life memberships. If you go to fountain life.com Peter will put you to the top of the list. Really, it's something that is for me one of the most important things I offer my Entire family, the CEOs of my companies, my friends. It's a chance to really add decades onto our healthy lifespans. Go to fountainlife.com Peter it's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners. All right, all right, let's go back to our episode. One of the things that for me is important is this work life integration. Because a speaking business can be a bit addictive, right. If you start getting paid to go and speak and you're flying around the world and it can take you away from the normal course of your business. And so there's got to be a balance. A lot of times if you get a speaking engagement, they'll pay for your travel. I'm always asking to have a second person go with me so I don't go to any of these events on my own. I'll bring one of my Strikeforce members, Yanni. Because a lot of times, a lot of the business opportunities are occurring just before, just after, and having someone there and in bulk. And you can try, you get off stage and you're swarm up. Right. And so being able to like say yes and talk to Yani and you know, basically it helps a lot.

Yeah. Can I, on this simple little thing called travel expenses, what I found, and I think you might have found the same thing, is it's actually more efficient to have a standardized speaking. Standardized travel expense.

Yeah.

That you buy out. It's a buyout. It's like, you know, my speaking fee is 50k and my domestic travel is 3750 bucks, whatever it is. And you might say, and a private jet, whatever, wherever your level is that you can ask for it.

I'll never forget I was trying to get a particular well known tech entrepreneur to come and speak. This was years ago. And he came back and he said, my fee is 100k and a private jet. And I was like, WTF? Holy shit. Really? Like, who is this person?

Yeah, it's actually funny. I did something recently. I was helping a friend of mine who's the CEO, trying to get some pretty prominent people to come and speak at his event. But it was a small event. It was only 30chros yeah. And these people wanted a lot of money. And I said, I have an idea. Let's ask people who live. And this bet was in Santa Barbara. I said, let's ask people who live in. In San Francisco. Major people live in San Francisco. Let's not pay them. Let's send a helicopter for them. And it was amazing. We got them to say yes. The idea that they were getting a helicopter sent to bring them down to.

The event, a VVIP experience, but we.

Didn'T have to pay them, so we ended up as a lot cheaper. But this idea of travel buyout is something people should know. It became easier than just tracking all the expenses. It was a chunk of change that you got. You have an international travel buyout number. You have a domestic travel buyout number.

So Covid hits, and we're not traveling anyplace.

And our speaking fees for about a month or Two went to zero.

Yes, they did.

And people were like, 5,000 bucks. You can come and speak at our event virtually. And isn't it interesting, it went back up that our virtual talks are now getting paid what our old speaking fees used to be.

Well, I'm not sure it's gotten up to the full one, but a virtual talk talk at a third the price for an hour, you're in your living. You're in your pajamas and slippers and giving your keynote.

Just under. Here you are.

Yeah. At least in half of it. And that's amazing. And so the ability. And I actually enjoy it, it can be as interactive, and I can deliver real value. What else do people need to know about setting your rates? So, I mean, listen, in the very beginning, maybe when your books just come out, you might be doing a number of talks for free. Right. Ted's never going to pay you if you can get on the TED stage. Let's talk about a little bit more. But otherwise, my speaking fees early on were probably 10, 20K. And that was amazing. Found money.

And that's still, I think, significant. That amount of money, if you get to be a $15,000 speaker, that's sort of the first rate. Yeah, I think the first. When you're a real speaker, you're getting paid 15k. The next level is 30, I find. And I think the next level goes to 50 to 60. 50, let's say. And then you're up to 75, and then you're at 100, which is a very rarefied group of individuals. But if you really think about those, I think those demarcations are about right. And the people That I know what, what becomes important is to ask yourself, you always want to use the price to set your days. Right? So, you know, at 15, you could probably be speaking all the time. If you were really going to hustle, you're going to do all the stuff with marketing we were talking about, get your butt out there, work the bureaus. You could speak a lot at 15K.

And one engagement can lead to three. Three to, you know, you have an extra one. Right.

Engagement, particularly if it's associations. You go and work at it, you know, speak at an association, you've got a thousand people in the audience, each of whom could go back and say, we should hire that person versus speaking at just one company. But the, the 15K, what I did was I was finding myself speaking too much and, and I had to up it to 30. This was back in the mid, mid mid 2000s. I had to up it to 30 to keep my days down.

Yeah, yeah.

My business was the same.

I meet with Connie once a year. We set our, our pricing and I, I ask her not to tell me about the gigs that come in too low. So I'm not.

You and I both would be like, well, it's 60.

Can I rationalize that?

60K?

Because 60k, I mean, that's a person's salary for a year. Yeah, it's crazy.

Exactly. It's a house when I grew up.

So the reality is you need to titrate that. And especially if you have a family or you're an entrepreneur running a company, balancing that is really important. But if you're at the beginning of your career and you've done something extraordinary, being on the road and being able to share your message and get paid for it is amazing. Amazing. The problem is, I'll come into Las Vegas for an association meeting and I'll arrive at midnight. I'll have this incredible suite. My Talk is at 8 o' clock in the morning, and then I'll leave. And it's like, what a waste.

What a waste of the glamour and the glitz. I agree.

You know, one of the things also is at this point in our lives, we get to cherry pick what to speak for. You should care about who you're speaking for. And I found myself in a few times where I'm like, how did I end up speaking to this audience? I have no connection to them. Yes, it's a great payday, but I should have said no. I think that being authentic and being able to really feel in your heart that you're going to help these Individuals is super important. What other lessons can we teach her?

I wanted to think a little bit about free talks because in one regard it's easy to say you shouldn't do them. But let's talk about where I have found free talks have really had a return on investment.

Please.

No question. A TED Talk. Yeah, it has the massive return on investment.

You want to talk about ted? One second first.

Sure. But I want to come back to other free talks and how one thinks about those. But yeah, let's talk about ted. So ted, it's still the shining star.

Star. It's the premiere hill.

It's amazing.

TED stands for technology, entertainment and design. Right. And it is.

I don't even think they claim that anymore.

Yeah, it's like it's just ted.

I mean, what Chris has done.

Yeah. Chris Anderson.

The Chris Anderson. You and I know each other from ted before Chris took it over.

Yep.

And that man and his team that, that has created the, the, the TED Talks, the media business outside of a single conference, that by the way, is a great example of abundance. By giving away your product for free, you exponentialized value.

They did it more than one way. Right. So Ted.com is where you can go and watch all the talks and people, you know, people say, well, why would you want to go and pay $10,000 or 15,000 or 30,000 if you're a patron and go to TED? If you watch the talks for free.

One month later, you're going to see them for free.

And of course, that's not why you're there. You're there to meet everybody else and to experience it live.

I'm here right now because of ted. You and I are together because of ted. Some of my best, dearest friends and my richest relationships I have in my life was because of the TED membership and the TED community. And I am so grateful for that organization and the community community that's created getting on that stage. I hope there has become a better mechanism than back in the day. And back in the day, I think it was pixie dust and huying you.

And how your name or book or topic came across the right person at.

The right time, which couldn't be engineered. It could be a bit, but it was very difficult. But now they've got an entire feeder system called the TEDx but program and it actually does work. I mean, you can be no. 1 and give a local TEDx talk and have that rise up through the ranks, through the likes of the system, and the next thing you know, you're on the main TED.

So Salim and I talk about TEDx in our EXO 2.0 book. Right. As an incredible exponential organization, how do you go from this once a year event, which TED used to be for how many people, 1500 people in the audience there, to all of a sudden reaching hundreds of thousands, millions of individuals through TEDx talks around the world and.

Their podcasting series, etc. So I would just say you and I both are super fans. We both have so much to respect.

The quality of what they've done.

And I would say the way to go about all of you should be worried about your TED talk. 100%. That's it. It's as important as a book.

Yeah. And your, your book, how would you present your book in 20 minutes or less or 18 minutes? What is it? Is it 18 minutes?

Well, it changes.

Okay.

Anyway, my ted talk was 12 minutes back in the day.

Okay. But I think if you can't convey your, your, your purpose, your mission, your mtp, your essence of what you're doing in that period of time.

Well, there's the bed, Franklin. Sorry. I wish if I had more time, this letter would have been shorter.

Yes.

So start to work your TED Talk, even though you don't have a place.

To give it yet, or throw a TEDx conference.

You get involved, then get involved in the TEDx community.

It's sort of the modern day tech version of Toastmasters.

In one sense it is at a hypered up level. So that's one. Now the other thing about free talks is, I'll tell you, this is my alumni university speaking at the reunion has sometimes been the best feeder for my, for my speaking engagements.

Interesting.

Because what, you know, particularly with my alma mater at business school, I was able to give talks to my classmates who were like, wow, that was a great talk. And you're dealing with an entire group of individuals that are running businesses. Your stages is, I'm sure, an immensely rich opportunity for a bunch of entrepreneurs to see somebody speak on stage and say, wow, I should have them come in. So there are places if, as I was mentioning earlier, associations, if the organization, if the forum is a group where the audience are buyers of speaking engagement engagements, then it's, it could be worth doing free talks.

Yeah.

And so that's what I want people.

To consider, or if you care deeply about, of course, the audience, the audience and the topic. Right. Yeah, right. So I am, I am whatever I can deliver to entrepreneurs and graduate students and so forth. I mean, the challenge is, I think people don't realize there's a lot going on in our lives. So being able to pick up. You're always trading time. Right. The one thing we all have in common is 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week, 365 in a year. And it's how you use your time, which is everything. It's our most precious resource right now.

I've gotten to the stage where I could probably only do one or two talks a year that are purely generous and gratis without a motive for doing it, which is. Well, this is an audience that can be be more speaking engagements or more team coaching or such, et cetera. But I do think it's important. I just. I might. What I say to my team is this is our channel strategy.

Yes.

And my team is responsible for identifying who are the associations that you should speak in front of for your channel strategy. Now, this is where book helps. Because if you've written a book and if you haven't seen it, we've got a really great podcast about booking about writing books. About writing books.

Yeah.

If you write a book, it is all of a sudden a permission to speak. And so if you think about what free talks you should be given where writing a book for the next six months, it's very funny because if I reached out to Salesforce and said, you know, in Dreamforce next year, I've got a message I really think would be great. Okay, that's interesting here. We'll put you on the list. Yeah, no urgency. But if I reached out to Salesforce and said I've got a book coming out the month that Dreamforce is out or the month after, and I could tease out my message which is about to be published before anywhere else on your stage, and I'd be happy to sign books, all of a sudden, there's urgency about having me as a speaker. So I know of a guy who is just a brilliant speaker. I don't know if he would want me to say his name or not because his strategy is so beautiful. He writes a book a year just for his speaking business, and he does it just as a machine. And every year he writes a book, he publishes it, he markets it, and that's his next. And as a result, unlike guys like you and me, who I suspect the. The amount of time that we get invited back to the same stage one year after another is almost never.

Yeah. It's at best every three years, friends.

Like, you know, a360, etc. He gets invited back to the same stage. He's got a Different message because he's engineered his books around his speaking engagement in that way.

You know, other platform stages are YPO chapters and EO chapters.

And if you hear so again, EO ypo, but the, the actual chapters don't have a lot of money for speaking engagements. Right. They do have 5k, 10k, they have.

An education budget and sometimes they'll group three or four chapters together.

Right.

And create an event.

Right. But then the members, you have to ask yourself at ypo, certainly the membership has the ability potentially to speak engagements 50k, 15k. But as you go down to EO or Vistage or other organizations they may not have, you've got to ask yourself, is the audience used to paying my speaking fee? Now one of the other things that I've done, it's interesting. People think of speakers and they think of themselves as hiring speakers or not hiring speakers. What's the difference between helping them facilitate or helping them in a leadership off site versus a speaking engagement? I've been able to open up the number of engagements. I still get paid 50k, I still do the same prep, but I've now sold myself not as are you hiring a speaker, but when are you giving your next leadership off site? I'd like to present some of my research. Yes, it's a nuance, but this idea of selling yourself as a speaker, you've actually, by the way, you've usurped the bureaus, you've usurped the clipboard people, and you've gone straight to a leader who might think, you know what, I don't normally have an outside speaker at my team meeting, but this topic would be interesting. Sure. I'll free up 15, 20, 30, whatever it is for my team. So you can actually create a speaker slot that didn't exist before by virtue of going directly.

Shall we summarize? Yeah.

So inspiring thinking. You do this one first.

Okay, I'll go first. Speaking has a lot of extraordinary benefits for you personally. If you're an entrepreneur and a leader. It's a chance for you to become a thought leader on stages around the world. You can make a great living at it. It's a way to present your company, your ideas. And so there's a lot of elements of being, call it a platform or a keynote speaker. Fear often stops people. And there's one solution to fear, and that is practice, practice, practice. And speak about something that comes from the heart. If you're speaking with your mind and your brain, you're going to get caught up. If you're speaking from the heart. For me, a lot of my successes were emulating great speakers on stage who I watched and I'm studying you. When you're on my abundance 360 stage or Tony's on my stage or vice versa, it's like, huh, fascinating the way they did that, how they paused even a second longer than I would have paused or their volume or their motions and their hand motions. It becomes like incredibly, it shocks. Oh. Another thing that I do, I love doing when I'm on stage is breaking the barrier. I will jump off the stage and walk into the audience. It changes the entire dynamic.

The camera people hate that.

Well, I go and check with them first. I said I may jump off the stage and they say, well, stay away from that speaker and that speaker. So I get the feedback, but that's fine. And so. And you're looking to build a relationship rather than just hit and run, can you give your slides away to that audience and can you in fact keep a relationship going with that audience? But it's there to serve. Those are my thoughts off the bat.

Yeah. Well, look, as a good summary, I'm not going to be redundant. You've said so many, many good things in your summary, I stole some of yours. That's okay. It's a good summary. That's what we're here for. The inspire, inspiring summary. Where I want to go with it is maybe just a little different and maybe this is just because the way I think about it, I think about my speaking business really as a lifestyle for my future.

Interesting. Yeah.

The more that I invest in my brand today, I mean, the $2 million that I invested around some research that I did during the pandemic actually ended up being $5 million at the end of it. You know what I was thinking about? I busted my ass during that two to three year period doing research about the future of work. I invested my own money and other brands money. What I was thinking about was this is going to give me the permission when I'm 75 to 80, 80 years old, to go around the world and step on stage and my brand legacy will still be there and I'll be relevant and I'll be my partner and I will be able to travel and have a beautiful life because I will have built a brand and be meaningful to people and it's the way I want to live my life.

Fascinating.

And so that's what I was thinking about. I was thinking about what I consider the nirvana of my retirement. And I think that's what I would encourage Any of you. If you could start to build your brand and start to get permission to speak in people's stages and in their companies, it could be a beautiful way to live your life. And that would be my wrap up.

Statement I think a few points you made as well. Remember to tell stories, open with a.

Story, a personal antidote, authenticity, variability of.

Your voice level from and the last thing is relationships.

What kept coming up throughout this for the both of us is people. Whether it's bureaus. It's about relationships. It's about agents. It's not about bureaus.

Yeah.

It's about individuals. It's Sally from XYZ Speakers Bureau who has gone out on a limb and said Peter would be the right person and and then was rewarded for it both by your success but also by the flowers and the gratitude. To build that relationship is important and also I'll give you one last one is don't be afraid to ask. My old man used to say don't ever be afraid to ask. The worst anybody could ever say is no. If you've got a buddy that you know is a big wig in a company just say to them hey, who runs your the events that you do? I would love someday to get a chance to bring my message to your organization. What's wrong with that? I mean that kind of just putting yourself out there and asking is a great way to get your speaking business maybe even just started. You know what we didn't talk about by the way? I know this is the wrap up but what we didn't talk about is your speaker real important idea. And if you've never done any speaking before asking friends to be able to be to get on the stage in front of their company but with a video camera so that you could get it videoed and you can get two or three of them videoed and put it together in a reel. It establishes you.

Yeah. At the end beginning of your career when people don't know you, you don't have reputation, you don't have a bunch of you need the reel. You need something to demonstrate what your style style your capacity, capabilities and so forth. So Keith Ferrazi folks who want to hire you to go speak. Yeah.

Farozzi Greenlight Ferozzy Greenlight.com 2 Rs 2 z's yeah indeed.

Awesome. And they can follow you on which social media LinkedIn's probably best. Amazing. Thank you for this gift. Thank you for the gift you gave me a decade ago that launched me. I'll never forget where we you know that lunch, sitting outside and you were so generous in teaching me these ropes that we've now conveyed on. It changed my life and it truly was a rising tide. I hope it is for many others.

Good. Pay it forward.

Thank you.

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