From Saturday Night Live to Speaking in Synagogue: How to Truly Connect with Your Audience.

I love coming up with a great joke, but now spirituality is really my first and primary area of focus. When that switch flipped, I tried to extend all of the things that I loved about performing and try to apply that not to distracting people, but to uplifting them and inspiring them and teaching them.

And then how did that lead to what you're doing now? How are you helping other people?

You have a captive audience. What I loved was getting into a science, finding a beginning, a middle and end, an arc. Find finding those moments where you can be vulnerable and intimate with the audience and really transform them so they walk out differently than when they came in.

Okay, so welcome and it's good to have you here. Daniel Steinberg, very close friend of mine, has had a huge impact on my life. I'm excited to have this conversation today. We're going to kind of jump around and talk about a lot of different things, but for people who don't know you, I figured you could just start off with just a high level summary of a little bit about your career, your history, and include some of the cool stuff that, you know, I want to hear about that I've heard about before regarding your early days.

Okay, so right now I'm a rabbi, but it wasn't always rabbi. Before I was rabbi, I was a marketer. And before I was a marketer, I was a comedian. And before I was a comedian, I was an intern for Saturday Night Live. And before, as an intern for Saturday Night Live, I was an intern and writer for Howard Stern.

That's awesome.

So that's the high level, chronologically, reverse sequence.

And just for a little background, Daniel and I got a chance to work together for maybe over about a year, year or two, year and a half, something like that. And we got to participate in a leadership program together. And so we're going to touch on that a little bit today. But the heart of what I wanted to speak about today is I've been following you recently on LinkedIn, sharing about your new career community and your career path and public speaking. And just speaking in general is such an incredible topic considering that people, they say, would rather die than actually speak in public. People who have a fear of this. So maybe let's just talk about the heart of public speaking. Talk a little bit about what you're doing now so that you can kind of give some context. But let's just touch on what is the fear? Why is it so scary and why is it so hard for people to speak in public?

So it's not anything I've really dwelt on because I mean, it's almost insurmountable. It doesn't come natural to you. It's almost insurmountable to consider getting up on stage and speaking to people in public. And I had it, I had that stage fright, I had that. But when you're a comedian, so the path to being a comedian is to do that night after night after night for years. So it takes most people, I think about two years, four or five nights a week, getting in front of strangers, different crowds, crowds, until you can break that. And once you break that, you don't want to look back. It's so difficult. So it's hard for me to really backtrack and analyze what the actual fear is. But I think in a kind of nebulous type of way it is being judged. You're up there, there's no net. It's not like you're in a band where you have backup musicians and singers and things. You're there for everybody and everybody is judging everything that's coming out of your mouth and you have nothing to fall back on. It's all you. Who are you going to point to and say, I didn't really mean that. It's you. You have to stand by it. And so it's like thin ice and you can feel it cracking underneath you sometimes and it's really scary. But the way to just like everything, it's exposure therapy. You just have to do it again and again and again and again in front of a lot of people. And then eventually it's just. If fear never actually goes away, it's. It just becomes manageable. It's something that you feel this twinge and you're like, well, okay, but I know I can do it because I've done it so many times already. So it never really goes away unless you're a natural. Some people are natural. Some people are hams. They love being in front of, in a spotlight. They love being in front of people. That wasn't necessarily what I liked about it. What I like is being able to creatively self express myself. And if I could find a better way to do it without that fear, I probably would have. But. But that was the best vehicle for me.

It's funny, I always talk about what Dan Sullivan teaches in regards to the four C's where he teaches. If you make a commitment to do something. In this case, I want to commit to maybe being able to be speaking in public and then you have the courage to get up there and do it.

Yeah.

And Then the third C is you build the capability to, like, do it again because you did it once, right? But with public speaking, confidence, that's the right. It's the formula for confidence. But with public speaking, it's not the case. You don't really build the capability and like, like you. Unless you, like you said, you have to do it a lot. Like, usually you build the capability for something. One time you're good, you did it. But now with public speaking, even if I get up in front of people now, I still. But you get that feeling it never goes away.

It never goes away. And it's just something that. It's like something you live with, but you know that you can do it. So you just keep on. You've done so many reps that you know you can do. It doesn't frighten you to the point where you feel like you're throw up or something. That doesn't happen anymore. But there's still that panic, that momentary panic when you get up in front of people and you're just like, oh, okay, all right.

So talk to me about your current role, because I've seen you get up in front of a congregation before and talk, and you're very good and you're very casual and it's very easy for you. And granted, you've been doing it for years in front of people. So talk to me about what you're doing now and what led to that and what are you doing?

So my last iteration was before it became, you know, the interim rabbi at the synagogue over here in Columbus. I was a comedian. I was doing comedy. And I was. And it was my first love and middle love and last love. And it just, you know, I pick it up, put it down, pick it up, put it down. And it's been, you know, 30 plus years since I've been doing it off and on. So. And that's a bug that I think you're born with. You know, some people, they like to do it. They like the idea of it, they want to try it, but some people have to do it no matter what. And for me, that was something that I had to do and I couldn't. Couldn't shake it. And so what happened was Covid. Covid came. And for the first time in the history of, I don't know, maybe since like the bird, the flu of 1918 or. I don't know what it is, you couldn't get a crowd. You could not have a crowd assembled anymore indoors at least. And it just killed all live performance. No Music acts, you know, no spoken word, no comedy, no. It was just dead. Everything came to a screeching halt. And it really made me think about. It was a forced pause. And it made me think about what I'm doing with my life, where I'm headed, what my goals are, what my accomplishments are, what my legacy will be. And it was a forced break. I couldn't get on stage if I wanted to. There was nothing, you know, people were doing like zoom comedy, but that just wasn't my thing. So I really. It was a force break. And I started to think about, in terms of spirituality, what I really came to the world to accomplish. And it wasn't comedy, unfortunately. It was something that I loved, but I didn't feel it was something that was worth living 100 plus years. And I didn't feel like that was my legacy. So I decided to try an experiment. And I decided what I was going to try to do was use that same creative muscle that you use to kind of come up with jokes that it's a muscle, it can be honed and refined and toned, and it's a muscle. It's a way of looking at the world and kind of coming up with things. It's almost. Sometimes it's like grasping something out of thin air because you can't see it coming. If you saw it coming, it wouldn't be a joke. That's the whole idea of misdirection. It's something that you never would have thought of. So I tried to. To see could I apply that same discipline and same creative muscle to spirituality in terms of studying Jewish texts and trying to extract wisdom from them. And I could, and I did. And I did it for the duration of COVID where I couldn't perform. And I couldn't really. I didn't really feel motivated to write because I didn't know when I was going to get the chance to perform. I mean, you know, we lived through it, we didn't think it was ever going to end. You know, it's amazing that we're sitting across from each other right now. So I did that, and then there's something in me kind of, for lack of a better word, grew up or matured. And it was. I lost the bug. I enjoy comedy, I love it, and I love coming up with a great joke. But now spirituality is really my first primary area of focus. And so when that flip, when that switch flipped, I decided that I would try to apply again, try to extend all of the things that I loved about performing and try to Apply that not to distracting people, but to uplifting them and inspiring them and teaching them. And that was when I tried to borrow a lot of the tools and the formulas and devices that I learned as a comedian and to try to recreate that in my new role when I was hired as an interim rabbi at the synagogue, and try to use the vehicle of, not the joke part or storytelling part even of comedy, but the audience attention management. That's what I really wanted to. Because when you're a comedian, you are judged every 12 seconds. I mean, you have no grace. You have 12 seconds. If you don't make a person laugh in 12 seconds, you lose people. And you can see it very, very quickly. When you lose them, they're not laughing and then they start to get bored. But with public speaking people, you could talk and talk and talk and talk and talk, and people will sit politely and they won't interrupt you, they won't heckle you, they won't walk out, but they're checked out. So you have no idea until way, way later that you've lost people. But as a comedian, I can tell right away when I've lost someone. I can see it in their eyes. I can see when they start to pitch it.

Well, you bomb, you bomb. You have a joke and it bombs.

Yeah, yeah. So most public speakers are bombing, but they don't see it because. Because they don't have that same. They're not being measured the same way. So I said, well, if I can measure myself as a public speaker the same way, I would measure myself as a comedian and be very, very in tune with audience attention, very, very in tune to making sure that they're invested in hearing what I have to say. Then I think that that would be golden. And so that's kind of what I did.

And then how did that lead to what you're doing now? How are you helping other people?

So now, so to me, the prime time slot of the rabbi is the sermon. It's a Saturday morning sermon for pastors, ministers, congregational leaders, different persuasions. Usually it's Sunday morning, but Saturday morning, Sunday morning, it's the sermon. And the sermon itself is the closest thing that you could get to an act. Right? It's not necessarily comedy, but you have an audience there and you have about a 15 minute slot. You have a captive audience and they are there waiting for you. They want to be transformed. So to me, that was the closest parallel that I could think of to a comedy act, where what I loved was getting into a science, finding a beginning A middle and end, an arc. Finding those moments where you can be vulnerable and intimate with the audience and really transform them so they walk out differently than when they came in. So that's why I decided to focus on public speaking and the laser focused niche of sermon delivery. Crafting and writing and delivering a sermon. And so that's what I'm focused on now is using those same principles that I learned as a marketer, as a comedian, and applying it to that quote, unquote formal presentation, that weekly slot of sermon delivery where a lot of people just fall flat.

Have you found that? There's a lot of people who want that type of help.

So it's interesting. At first, everyone's like, you're crazy. This is the most ridiculous. It's like a niche of one, like, who is interested in this. And then in September, right before the high holidays, there was an article in the New York Times about a woman. She's a playwright and she was a former ad executive and they call her the sermon whisperer. And what she does is she is coach to mostly Reform and Conservative rabbis and helps them with their high holiday sermon. For them, for that, the high holiday season is like, it's like the World Series of, you know, sermons. There. There's a lot on the line. You're seeing people that you don't usually see most of the year. They come in, they have a short amount of time to reach them, and that's their perception of you as the rabbi for the year of what? They see that, that Rosh Hashanah, that, that, that Jewish New Year period. So. So I read something that she had. She was working on 33 sermons that month and she was charging something like $400 an hour. And I did some math in my head and I said, there's probably a market out there for that. That's just, that's her season. I don't know about the off season, but so I think that there's some meat on the bone.

And so do you started your own company with this? It's like your own brand, right?

So I'm in building mode right now. I've helped a couple people informally at the Columbus Community Colel. I gave a workshop, and I helped an assistant rabbi at Temple Israel with his high holiday sermon. So we're in building mode little by little. And at the same time, I'm also interviewing a lot of the veterans. I came up with my own method based on my own principles. But I think that there's a lot greater wisdom that I have to deliver from people who have been at it much longer than I have. So I've gone out and I've sought some of the greats, and I started a podcast called the Magin Method Podcast. And what I do is I interview people on their sermon methodologies and experiences, and. And I want to canonize that wisdom for the emerging. The younger generation of congregational leaders and educators.

So it's interesting. So you have this kind of spiritual foundation that you kind of built this on. But are you open to having people reach out to you who need help with public speaking to coach them, or is that.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you got to start narrow, and then you can widen out. Everyone can use public speaking, even myself. Everyone can use it. The question is, if you try to reach everyone, you reach nobody. So I figured I would start narrow in a world that I knew, that I succeeded at and then branch out from there.

So for sure, it's marketing. One on one, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm curious. You know, for me, I've never taken a formal public speaking class or anything. I did the Dale Carnegie Organization. They kind of do walk you through a process. And it was, you know, it was over two decades ago that I did it. But the one thing that I personally learned. I'm curious to know your thoughts, and then I want you to share a little bit about, you know, your experience, about what you know people should not be doing and things and tips and anything that you think people would enjoy hearing that you think could help them. Because I think everybody finds themselves at some point doing a toast, getting an opportunity to speak, say a few words. If you're a leader, you're in front of your company all the time. And so you have that, you know, that microphone, you know, constantly. And it. It has a huge, huge impact and influence when you're really good at what you do.

Yeah.

And I made a very big mistake early on when I did my company holiday parties. I used to write out my speech, and I used to memorize that thing. And I never wanted to go up reading because I always thought whenever I saw someone reading, I'm like, that looks so bad. They're just reading. It's like, why would I come here? I could just post it online. And I stopped doing it, but I memorized. And it was the most stressful time of trying to go to a holiday event when I was supposed to have fun. And I never got it right. I never got it right. And I knew it didn't matter because I knew they wouldn't remember. No one remembered Anything. And no one knew I messed up because I was good at covering it up.

Yeah, but still that perfectionist part of you.

But I remember the year that I changed it.

Yeah.

I think I had talked to you about it. I was listening to someone who told a joke about someone who was doing a sermon. And he spoke for 45 minutes and a reporter was in the crowd. And the reporter said to him, hey, I have a radio show and I would love for you to come on and send this message, but the problem is I only have like a five minute slot. Can you take your 45 minute, you know, presentation? Do it five minutes? The guy said, absolutely. He said, then why didn't you. You know, because like, you know, like less is more kind of a concept. And so after I remember seeing that, I did an open, which was either a shocking statement, a question, something thought provoking, and then my middle was always going to be a story or an experience because then I didn't have to memorize anything. I would just tell something about what I could speak about. And it didn't matter how I said it because I'm just reliving it, trying to get them.

And then I would close, bring them into your movie.

That's it. And then close with something I wanted them to leave it with or think about. And so then it was just speak from your heart.

Right, Right.

And there was nothing to memorize, there was nothing to do. It would never take a long time. I can make it longer by drawing out the story.

Right.

But for me, it became so easy just to do that. And then I just started using that concept no matter where I was, no matter what I did. So that was my. So I'm curious, like, when you think about your coaching and your method, can you talk about a little bit about like how you would coach someone and is it similar to that?

What I'll say to you is that, is that what you did is probably like the most important part of my method, which is connection over the content. If you can connect with people, it almost doesn't matter what you say. It really doesn't. Because no one's actually going to remember everything that you said anyways. We're so close to what we want to say and we think that they're going to remember every little detail and what word we use versus that word. And no one ever remembers it. But what they do remember, the famous quote, is people don't remember what you said. They remember how you made them feel. So that that's really the most important thing. If you can connect with people, then it doesn't matter what you say. They'll give you the grace they'll give you. But if you have the greatest content in the world, but they don't trust you or they don't like you, or they don't. There's no rapport there. People just feel like you're trying to get through what you have to get through. Just try to get one over on you. Try to. They feel that it's important for you to get this out to them, and they feel like. They feel like you're talking at them and not to them. So the connection over the content, that's actually my very first step of my meth. And it's the most important. You get everything else wrong, but if you get that right, you're okay.

Okay, sounds great. But then there's the how.

Okay.

How does someone connect?

Yeah. So the easiest way, and it's so counterintuitive, but when you hear it, then it makes so much sense. So how do people connect with each other in real life? If you want to meet somebody and get a little closer to them, how do you connect?

It's funny. So Chet, the leadership coach, through Bill Slate, he teaches the 55, 38. 7 method.

Yeah.

Which is people remember 55% of what they. What they saw, and then 38% of what they heard. And then it's. The 7% is like what you said.

Yeah.

No one cares what you said. Like you just said. Right.

So.

So I think about that and so when you ask your question, I think about our built to lead practices and I think about how did we connect? We made eye contact.

Okay.

You know, it was our body language. It was, it was what we saw from each other. You saw people engaged. So what's interesting is when people speak, they're usually not doing that. I know someone taught me earlier on, you're supposed to look and then. And look and it's hard to do. You realize, like, you speak in front a lot of people, you don't end up looking at anybody. You're just standing the crowd.

Right, Right.

So I think that's a, That's a hard thing to do to connect.

So. So my method is, is the following is when you, when you get. When you want to, you meet somebody and you get acquainted with them. So the way to take it to the next level is you start sharing things about yourself with them. And the, when you share things about yourself that are, that are vulnerable, what you do is you're basically. You're putting yourself in the other person's hand. And you're trusting them and you're trusting that they won't exploit that and they won't abuse your trust. And it feels a little bit. It's a little bit risky. And what that does, though, is that it fuses you together when you reciprocate that trust and you don't abuse it and you don't judge me for it, or you open up in turn and share something about yourself in the same area of challenge or struggle or whatever it is, that's what bonds people. And the more vulnerable that you can get, the closer you can get with people. And you think about your closest relationships. They're the ones that were people. You're okay to talk to them about things that maybe you're going through or you're yourself. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so that's. When you strip away those facades. Now, to do that is very. When I said it was counterintuitive. People don't like to do it in a professional setting. They don't like to do it in a public speaking type of setting because they feel like, well, they're there to hear me talk about the newest software or they're here to hear me talk about the company quarter. You know, whatever. Whatever it is. They don't feel that it's their place to talk about themselves. But if you remember that when people look away, when people start to zone out, where do they go? They go. Usually if they go to their phones. Right. If it's not Saturday in a synagogue, they'll go to their phones. And what are they doing on their phones? They're looking on social media. And why are they looking on social media? Because they're looking for humanity. They want to see what other people are doing. They want to connect with other people. And so they'd really like to connect with you if you would allow it, but they're not allowing it.

And they're staying on the people who are being vulnerable and transparent.

Right, right, right, right. So you're there, up there. You know, they gave you the opportunity. You bailed on them because you thought that that's not what they wanted. And now. So they're, they're, they're, you know, you didn't show up for them, so they're not going to show up for you.

So I would, I would challenge the. I agree 100%, but I would challenge the fact that I know how hard it is for people to be themselves.

Yeah.

And thank God one of my, one of my skills was I was Able to be very vulnerable and transparent with my company and it built an abundance amount of trust.

I remember someone saying that they would run through walls for you, you know?

Yeah, I just, it was amazing. I, I truly believe it's one of the, the biggest skills of influence that a leader can have if they have the ability to be vulnerable and transparent.

Yeah.

Do good times and bad times. And I just, it came easy for me, so that was easier for me to, you know, to be able to lead and communicate. I had other struggles. That one was not one of my struggles, but I've realized, and especially I learned this with everyone I worked with and in our leadership practices, how hard it was for people to talk about themselves. And I think for a couple uncomfortable two, you are putting your heart in their hand. They can squash you and they can hold it against you, they can use it against you. But I think a lot of people don't know who they are to be able to talk about themselves. And that's a problem too. Right. So usually if you're only getting a one stop shop toast or I get a chance, someone asks me to speak in front of everybody and they're not used to it. The thought of going up and speaking about myself is the last thing I would do. Which is ironic because it's the first thing you're telling people to go do.

There's degrees. I mean, you don't have to rip open your clothes and say, you know, here I am, you know, you know, you don't, you don't have to do that. But. But a little goes a long way.

Yeah.

You know, there's, there's degrees. You can say, you know, I got up here, I thought I was going to say this and I just, I struggled with what I was going to say because I really appreciate your time and I wanted to make it important to you. And I'm just, I'm nervous. I'm not going to. People are like, wow, you know, they just want to hold you in their arms, you know, and it's amazing. So you don't. What I, what I advise people to do is at the beginning of the talk, to share a struggle, a challenge, maybe a fear, maybe a regret, maybe something embarrassing that happened to them. Something that shows the human side of yourself. And again, there's degrees. You don't have to go to town, you don't have to say, my brother abused me when I was five. No one wants to hear that. They just want to see who you are as a person and then they'll buy into what you have to say, assuming that you've met the next step.

Tell me about storytelling, the power of storytelling. And can storytelling be a. Could that be something that you do even before sharing something personal about yourself? Or instead of. And have the same type of connection and impact?

So storytelling is great, and I advocate using it as a device all throughout it. So I would say maybe use storytelling to reveal yourself, to reveal something about yourself. You know, use that framework of storytelling, which I have, a great framework that I learned from, believe it or not, all places. South Park. The guys who created south park have an incredible story framework that they used to make the show. I'll tell you about in a second. But. But the one thing about storytelling and joke telling and things that are shocking and things like that, opening, grabbing people's attention. It's very easy to get people's attention. It's really easy. It's like the easiest thing in the world. I mean, you could just hang out on the street and take a sign and start twirling it, right? You get people's attention very easily. The real trick is sustaining people's attention. It's not easy to sustain people's attention. So I'm very reluctant when people talk about, should I open with the story? Should I open with this? You don't want to bait and switch people. You'll grab their attention, and then as soon as you go into some type of substance with them, they're gonna be like, oh, that's boring. I only wanted the funny part, the shocking part, the interesting part. So it becomes like a clickbait type of thing. So storytelling is in itself, I don't think has a virtue, but in a larger framework of how you're gonna get message across. I think it's very.

It's a skill. I mean, you have to be a good storyteller. You can't just tell a story, right?

So that's. The south park guys came up with this method, and there's actually someone who saw them talk about it. And he came up with an entire. He wrote a book and has a whole, like, movement about their method. And it's the simplest thing in the world. I've never seen a simpler storytelling method. It's three steps. It's called what this guy calls it. I forget what his name is, who he wrote a book, but it's called ABT and. But therefore. So this is what happened. So you can look it up. The South Park. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, I think they were giving a class at, I don't know Some film academy, NYU or something like that. And so they said, this is how we approach it. Someone comes up, one of the writers comes up with a script, and immediately what we do is we look how many ands are there. And this happened, and this happened, and this happened, and this happened, this happened. And then we try to put in buts in the middle of the ands. So. And this happened. And that's, you know, if you just have a lot of ands, you're just like a journalist. You're saying, you know, this. You know, I went to the store and I bought some cake, and I took it home and I ate it. And it gets boring. You know, you just. If you keep on driving a straight line, just, you know, you eventually hit a brick wall. So what they did is they put in butts. Butts are like the left. They're the conflict. They take, you know, turns, they zigzag. So the person is continuously interested in finding out what happens in the story. So I went to the store. I went to the store to buy some cake, but they were sold out. Now that. Now you have. Okay, well, now what happened? Therefore, there's the resolution after, you know, it took a left turn to get back on track, which direction you're going to go. Therefore, I decided to get some potato chips instead. Right? And so if you keep on every. In the script, if you keep on putting. Look how many ands you have. There's too many ands. You got to start mixing them up with left turns and right turns, zigzagging. And then as a result of the zigzag, then something else happens, something else happens, something else. And now you have to store it again. But what most people do is they just like, well, I guess you had to be there. You know, like, it just fizzles out. It's because there's no conflict and there's no. It doesn't go anywhere. It's just an exhaustive list of facts. So the end but therefore framework. If you have a story to tell and you're not a good storyteller, just make sure that there's a lot of buts and therefores in there.

Right? You could really lose someone one day. Dray. On and on.

Oh, man, it just goes on and on. You're just like, man, this is you. It's. It's so simple. And I got so excited when I saw it, and that. That's, you know, so. So even when I write now, I'll put in buts and therefores within my writing. Just to make sure that. That it's not. It's just not, you know, driving in a straight line.

It's interesting how much do for the audience who doesn't know what a quick start is. A quick start is someone who's got thousand thoughts running through their heads and they can go in any direction. They can switch gears on a dime, but, you know, for a crowd, that's not so good. And I would imagine that your personality, and depending on the type of kind of mode you're in, if you're someone who changes gears and you talk about a lot of things all at once or you're talking too fast, you can also really lose people because you're talking off topic, off things, and you think of something and you start talking about it. How would you coach someone who does that to keep them on track if they're not writing down their speech?

It's very simple. You don't want to make more than one point in a speech, just one point. So if you're to talk off the cuff and just jump around and quick start, and you're going to risk people not being able to follow you, you have to think about what's the most important thing that you want them to take away when they leave. And so anything that doesn't fit into that is going to confuse people. They're strapped in for a ride that they have no idea where you're taking them. They can't scroll through your talk, they can't fast forward. They're sitting there, you're releasing information little by little by little in a linear fashion, and they have no way to know where the good parts are, what's in it for them. So it might be an enjoyable experience to watch you freewheel and go off in all different directions. And you may very well connect with them, but they may be confused as to what you wanted them to take away with at the end. So that's what I would lead with. Before you sit down and decide, you know, I got to talk to these people today, think about that. One thing, just one thing.

There's only one thing is less is more. In this case, I mean, if someone says you're going to speak for 30 minutes, that might be hard to have. One thing. I mean, usually though, you can make a couple different points if you're right.

Right. I would say people will. People will sit through. You know, people always say people's attention spans are shrinking. Right. The shortest attention span in the history of man, people. My son is on TikTok and he scrolls through Videos. He doesn't even allow the six seconds of the TikTok. He's like, I don't like this one, give me another one, give me another one. And he'll do that for eight, nine hours at a time. And I cannot imagine what that's doing to his attention span. But on the same token, movie lengths are sky high. They've never been more longer than they are now. The feature films now are two and a half hours long. So you can't tell me people's attention spans are short. If someone's willing to sit through it, it's. They're short, they're just more selective as to what they're going to pay attention to. So if you're able to hold people's attention through connection and through a couple other steps that I'll tell you about, but it doesn't matter how long it is, it doesn't really matter. But you don't want to confuse people with more than one point. Save it for another speech. Just keep it all on that one point and you can't go wrong in my opinion.

Okay, so some of the do's and don'ts, just to get them out of the way before we move on. You know, again, when I see people reading off note cards, it drives me absolutely crazy. So someone who uses props, uses slides, uses whatever that is. What's your advice? Is it good, is it bad? I mean, on Saturday morning you can't do that. But for people just in general, for public speaking, do you recommend that slides are used? If they have an option and they choose to do it versus not.

I mean, it really depends on what the goal is. If you're there to connect with them as a person as more as like, let's say a class or something like that where you're there to impart information. I would say maybe there's a place for slides. Well, you don't want to do what I hate more than anything else. My biggest pet peeve is handouts. Handing it. So what you end up doing is people just look at the handouts all the time because they're bored, you're boring them. So they're hoping that maybe there's something interesting on the handout. That's, you know, that's my biggest pet peeve. If you can't remember what you want to say. I definitely don't script it out. You know, just put. Have some bullet points, but know where you're going and know where you're headed and what you want people to take away.

If, if someone Goes blank in the middle of a speech. They forgot. They're gonna say they forgot their next point, whatever it is. Outside of being vulnerable and doing what we said before, which just says, wow, I just completely forgot what I was gonna say.

Which is fine.

Which probably would work.

Yeah. Give you a heart attack. But you could do it, and people.

Could probably really feel, you know, the pain and feel for you. But is there anything. And how. How does someone. Did that ever happen to you?

Yeah, it happened to me as a comedian often because sometimes you forget where you are in your act and you get thrown off, and you're just like, oh, my gosh, it is the scariest feeling in the world because, I mean, you just can't stop the show. You can't stop. And so I would take a drink, and in my mind, it's the longest pause in the world. It's other people's minds. It doesn't. What they advise you to do as a comedian is to have what's called a street joke. A street joke is a joke that's not an original joke, but it's a funny joke that most people haven't heard yet. And it's just a joke that comedians tell each other on the street. Most people haven't heard it, but it's funny, but it's not original. Have a couple of those in your back pocket. So the same thing I would say over here is have a story in your back pocket. Take a pause and say, okay, and it comes back to you. Eventually it'll come back to you, but. But you need to buy yourself that time. So have a drink, take a step. If you don't want to be vulnerable these days, that's what I would do. It's almost like a game for me how vulnerable I can be, because I know the results. I've seen how much it bonds the audience to you. So I will see how far I can go with my vulnerability without embarrassing myself or anybody I know. So my first go to would be to reveal that. Oh, my gosh, I just went blank. This is crazy. Like, okay, give me a second. Bear with me. Okay, we're back. So I would do something like that just as a game to see if I'm willing to do that, but for other people, I would say come up with a short little story or something like that. You could say almost in any setting. That would buy you the time to remember. Awesome.

So this podcast is called Authentic Authority. So you've been. I love your questions, so I think you'll like these next ones. Too. It'll put us both in a position I think that hopefully we'll be comfortable talking about. But it's real and it's raw, and I think that's what people connect to. And I agree with you 100%. And I remember the first time you came into my company, and I remember the first time you came into Built Lead practice, which is a leadership practice that I did with my team. And I remember always watching you sitting there in the corner in a chair, leaning back. And you're a very deep thinker. You're a very deep thinker. And sometimes maybe, but I do. I do that, too. But I think you were always very open and when we would share things around the table, you never had a problem sharing your thoughts. And, you know, that's one thing I loved about you is like, I know what I get with you. You were always going to just share what you think and you weren't going to just say things to try to fit in with other people. And you're very distinct. There's no question. So I want to talk about leadership and I want to talk about your journey and your builder's journey, because you just said people like watching movies for two and a half hours. And so at Builds Lee, we talk about that. We say it's because it's this hero's journey. There's a story being told about someone that you're rooting for and you want to see this person win. And it's like the Rocky story. You know, you watch the end of that movie and you just are fired up. The hairs are standing up in the back of your head.

Right.

And in Build to Lead, we talk about the builder's journey, and everybody's got a builder's journey now where people are on that path. And I had a front row seat to your path for a certain period of time, especially as you were trying to figure out, like, what your magnum opus in life really is. And you were trying to find and you touched on it when you said, you know, Covid, and you talked about, you know, being stand up. And I watched you and I remember seeing videos that you put out there at some events that were awesome. And I remember seeing you do an event and you were really funny, you know, so you had this talent. But, you know, you said you at some point realized this is not going to be what's going to be fulfilling me and my magnum opus.

Yeah. So it took a while to get there. I mean, I'm almost 50, and it's scary because you want to plant your flag somewhere. And you think, okay, this is where I'm planting it. And then two years later, three years later, you're like, that's still not it. Still not it. And you keep on moving around and you're like, when is it going to stay? When it's going to be in that one place? And I think it's in that one place now, I'm pretty sure.

So that's awesome. And I want to get to that. But I want to talk real quick.

About.

The struggle of what you went through when you wrote the book.

My first book.

Yeah. And also touched on the fact that you had this storytelling video production company where you had come to my office and did videos. And people are still watching those videos. I'm still showing people those videos. And it really helped me tell my story. Story. And it was such, in my opinion, a winner. And I read your LinkedIn post the other day when the guy seared you. So I don't want the guy seared you with his comments.

Yeah, that was the Sandler guy.

So can you real quick just walk us through that?

So I took communications in college. Television, radio, and advertising was really my thing. I love the idea of encapsulating the selling point of something, whatever it is, you know, for your company. It was. It was the authenticity. It was the. Was the heart of the collection agency. And I love that. I always loved capturing the essence of something and being able to take it and shape it and present it to the world in a new light that it hadn't seen before. And so when I left the not for profit world, where I was a Jewish educator for many years, the most intuitive thing to me was, was to go into advertising, marketing, to try to try to use that. That talent of mine. And so I had no idea about sales. I had no. It was just like, oh, let's. Let's just hang out with Shingle and say we're in business. And I had no idea how that was. You know, I must have been an idiot. And it was the tail end of the recession and it was. It was. I mean, video was starting to get big, but people weren't really spending money on things like that at the time. At least people I had access to. And so I had to take some sales training, and I took the Sandler sales system of training, which was very aggressive, very assertive for my personality. And it had me doing cold calls and cold meetings and asking for one call. Closes. I remember you, Bristol, did that when we were meeting.

I never did that.

I know, I said, you can't think about it. You have to tell me yes or no. You totally push back on that. But to me, it was the hardest time of my life. I mean, besides the fact doing sales and needing money is a bad mix. You don't want to go into a sales call desperate for the sale. And I was feeling all that. I was so raw. I was doing things that were so outside my comfort zone, no idea what I was doing. And I was so far in, I couldn't scale back at that point and try to reorient. I was just figured, I just have to make this work somehow. And it was, it was so raw. And I ended up writing a book from my experiences where I basically bottomed out. And I realized that like I just, I had. I become so scarce and I had let so much of my need for money shape who, how I interacted with people, even in my own family. And it was, it was just really bad. And then when I. When I said, I won't do this anymore, things actually started to develop in a positive way. I started to become healthier physically, emotionally. Opportunities started to pop up that I couldn't. That I probably was squeezing away before because of my. I met the sales guy. He told me, he said, you have commission breath. That's what he said. Said, you know, it's like you could smell it on a salesperson. You know, it's a. It's a. They need the sale. I just felt very needy and I thought I was being a good salesperson, but it was so. So the story that I wrote about was a guy who. He was a fellow. He was a Sandler graduate that I asked him for some help with on something and he just blasted me about how that I had no conviction in what I did. It was just hard. It was just a comedy errors, you know. And I look back on it now in comedy, what they call. There's a formula for comedy and it's tragedy plus time equals comedy. So that was a tragedy. That was a very tragic time. It was about 12, 13 years ago now. It's kind of funny to laugh at now I can laugh at it. But at the time it was awful. I mean, I'd leave the house every morning, beaten before even hit the street. And it just seemed endless. And I didn't know how it was going to ever end. And then had a couple good years and you know how it is. Feast and famine, self employment. You hope.

So what was it like talking to people in my company who were employees? You also saw My journey. And you were very close to my journey. So you knew what I was doing and what I was shooting at. So you were seeing other people as you were trying to figure out your builder's journey, you saw all these other people trying to write their magnum opus. You saw people sharing it.

Yeah.

Was that easier? Did that make things harder? Just give me your thoughts on just the experience of going kind of going through a program where we were trying to figure that out.

I love being involved in was the highlight of my week. It was when I was there, even if I wouldn't speak up, just being in the room open something in me and made me feel differently and think differently. And it would spill over to the rest of the week. And there were times that I didn't speak up or do any of the exerc. But just being in that growth environment and seeing people able to share, people calling each other out in a safe environment where it wouldn't be held against them at work, I thought was so real and genuine and so necessary. I mean, people don't usually have that safe space where they can do that. And I saw that. How it bonded people, how the team became so cohesive as a result of that. It was amazing to me. And that was, I think, right after that time period that I described earlier. And it was very healing to me. It was great to see people not having it all figured out, working through it with each other. That spirit of camaraderie and lifting each other up and helping each other and wanting to be there for each other. It was amazing. Never forget that time.

That's interesting. So what would you say would be one of your biggest takeaways from your experience, kind of going through that program with us and being part of the team and coming in as a visitor and telling your story and then being one of one of us? You were like merging with our team. But there are a lot of. A lot of things learned in Built lead, and we cover lots of content and we talk about worldview and principles and big visions, and then we talk about whatever the group wants to go or that wherever we want to go. But what's something maybe you can kind of just share that maybe either stands out or that you took away from it, that you feel like you really adapted in your life.

I'll tell you one thing that sticks in my mind, and I think this is from one of the videos that we did together, which is Alicia. Alicia said. She said before, Built to Lead, I was sleepwalking through life. I was sleepwalking And I didn't really understand at the time, but the more that I proceed through life, I realized the autopilot, that type of. Well, that's what everybody else is doing. And I'm caught up in this. And so that seems to be the right thing to do next. And you just kind of. You're just. You're sleepwalking. You know, you're not. You're not really awake and present. And I think that that was something that Built To Lead really gave me, is that be awake, be intentional, be present, be purposeful about what you're doing, and make sure that you can explain it not just to other people, but also to yourself.

It's funny, because one of the purposes of Build Leaders. To wake people up.

Yeah.

It's to jolt people.

Yeah, right. Yeah. And Chet was great at that. You were great at that. And I saw how you'd interview people, and they'd come in and they walk out with. Wearing a tie when they came in, like, you know, pull down four buttons.

It's hard to get to the root of who someone really is and build to lead. What we try to do is we try to get to the root of, like, who are you? And the problem is, again, I say it because it's. It is one of the hardest things to do is to know who you are. In fact, one of the pieces of Built Lead is the identity piece. And I, for probably a decade, really, was writing things out about, oh, I'm a son, I'm a brother, I'm a friend. But I didn't really know who I was until I realized, wow, like, I used to be this athlete. I'm not an athlete anymore. And I was an entrepreneur. And then all of a sudden, like, I sold my business. Like, who am I?

Who's the real you?

And it led. For me, it led a big part of my life, which is my faith. And when I used to think about your experience with our company, the one thing that stands out to me is I remember how calm you were, almost. Almost like scary calm when you were going through really hard times, trying to figure things out. And you were. You were very patient. And I remember thinking and saying to you, like, well, what are you doing now? And I remember one time you told me, you're going to take some time and you're going to pause.

Yeah.

And I remember thinking, oh, my gosh, like, there's no way I'd be able to do that. How can you do that? And you're. You dove deep into faith and your learning and Just really, it felt to me like you were trying to find yourself still or reinvent yourself into like figuring out what you wanted to do.

Right? Yeah, that's accurate. I mean, what looks like calm on the outside is not always calm on the inside, but patient maybe is accurate. And that's a gift from that harrowing, difficult, scarce experience where I didn't have any money, I didn't know when the next money was coming in. And I lived like that for a long time. And it taught me there's two worlds you can live in. There's the world of scarcity and there's the world of abundance. And it really doesn't matter how much money you have. People are very wealthy and very scarce. We tell a story about the founder of ikea. He was a multibillionaire, I think, and he used to recycle tea bags, gift wrapping, things like that. He was, he was the cheapest guy on the planet. And so what's all that money worth if you can't appreciate it? And by the same token, there are people that don't have money that are beyond happy. You know, we know these types of people, you know, in hovels in the, you know, back alleys of Jerusalem that are just, you know, serene in all different places in the world. So, so the gift of not having money for an extended period of time and seeing that I was still okay and that I'd be okay, that gave me that gift of that long term vision that it's going to be okay that I have. I'm always supported, I'm always cared for, things have a way of opening up. So I remember someone saying to me that like, when I, when I decided one of my iterations, when I thought I was going to go out on the road and do some stand up comedy and I didn't really have much savings at all and someone said I wouldn't have the stomach to do that. I don't, I don't know how do you have. And I said that was, you know, after you go through what I went through, you know, it doesn't scare you anymore. You know, that's one of those Jeff Bridges in that movie Fearless where he almost dies and then he doesn't have that fear of dying anymore because he came all the way to the edge and you saw that, you're okay. So that's the gift. And I constantly have to remind my wife about that some. You know, when, when we go through a period where we're not sure where the next paycheck is going to come from or something. We went through that once before. If there's any lesson that we took from that is that it's going to be okay that we're upstanding individuals. We're just going to put our best foot forward and we're fine, we're good. I'm not going to feel poor living in a house that someone would feel rich in. Why would I do that to myself? That was the gift. It wasn't anything I would have chosen for myself. But God gives you what you ask for, what you need. That was a gift. It was a painful gift. It was a gift.

And how much of that part of the journey do you rely on God? And did it get stronger as you kept kind of going through these and building the muscle to be able to be patient?

It's not linear, unfortunately, because it's so emotional. It goes up and down. Sometimes you dip a little bit lower than the comfort level you've created for yourself. It gets a little heart pounding again. And then you're like, okay, let me remind myself every now and then, have people come up to me and send me texts about the book. And they talk to me. They said, go through hard time. I got the book. I got the book. So if the book works for other people, it should work for me. You know, it was. That was. It was my way of writing my. I always tell people I wrote myself out of my own grave with a pen. That's really what it was. It was. It was. I wasn't. I could not make sense of what I was going through. So I just. I sat in a coffee shop on Cassidy. You know that coffee shop up there, the right by the co op Bexley Co Op. And I sat in that coffee shop. It was previous owner and it was. It used to be this dark place and they had like a standing lamp and I was just sitting. Had like one table and I sit in the corner. I wrote the book in that corner over the course of a year. And it was started off as just blog post. And it was just trying me to make. Trying. It was me trying to make sense of things, of how to get it all out and make sense of it and why I was going through it and what I could learn from it and how I could maybe help people on the other side with it. I never really did much with it because it's one of those things that was just. It was personal and at the same time it was also. When you're doing better, you don't really want to dwell on that time. Period. So. But I draw from it often. I do. And the main thing that I really draw from it more than anything else is that there's a tendency, at least for me, that when you're not doing well, to kind of seclude yourself and not to reach out to people. Not to.

To go dark.

Yeah. Yeah. Because you're not. At least in your mind, you don't want to. You don't want to be the. I don't know, like a rain on someone's parade, you know, you want to be successful and appear successful. So that's a lot. Where I learned the power of vulnerability. Because I needed to reach out, to ask for people for help and I needed to network and I needed to do these types of things. And it was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted everybody to think I was doing fine. But you have. Sometimes you just. You're forced into it. And so that the people. People. I have a chapter in the book. It's called People who Need People are the greatest people in the world. So. So that was. That's from a song, right? From people and you people. Barbra Streisand song. That's what it's about. It's about people. It's about not going dark, not secluding yourself, putting yourself out there, being involved in people. People are really your greatest asset.

What would you say right now, looking and doing some self discovery, reflecting on your life at this point, something that you believe and could be about anything, business, personal, professional, spiritual, Anything where you feel like there's that integrity gap, which is that you're not doing what you want to be doing because you believe, like, I should be doing this, but you're just not doing it. Do you have one that you could share?

Yeah, prayer. Prayer is like highest up on the list. I can pray in my own words. Well, when I feel the need. Very often the typical. The routine, the couple set times a day that we Orthodox Jews do. I got into a habit a long time ago of daydreaming, and it's so hard for me to get out of it and on the outside and doing everything else well in my life, you know, studying and acts of kindness and all sorts of stuff that I should be doing. Prayer is like a vacuum for me. It's at least routine prayer, and I recognize that that's a gap.

So what can you do? What can you. Because that's something that a lot of people struggle with. Probably almost everybody. What's something that you can do? Or is that just something that just Kind of is a chronic problem that just doesn't go away.

No, it's a regimen. It's how you address any other problem. You have to sit down, baby steps, work through it. It's something you accomplish a little bit, then you build on a little bit more, a little bit more. And it's just one more thing that I actually have to start and do.

Does the events going on right now change anything to do with that issue for you?

It helped. It definitely helped. A lot of the things that. A lot of the text of prayer addresses things that are going on in the world right now. So the words were jumping off the page. And anytime there's. The trick is anytime there's a time of crisis, everybody instinctively reaches out for prayer. There's no atheists and foxholes. So those types of things is Covid. At the beginning of COVID I remember there was a time in the beginning of COVID It was like the first couple days when no one really knew what was going on. And there was a blackout. I don't remember Bexley. There was like a blackout. I'm like, oh, my gosh, the world is totally ending right now. There's a worldwide pandemic. We're being targeted. There's no electricity. People are going to start rioting in the streets. It was freaky. And so you instinctually reach out at those times. But the trick is the times that things are calm, things are not in crisis mode. How do you have that ongoing relationship with God where things are fine? You know, people, they always say in Jewish, in all outreach, really, is that the hardest people to reach are people in their 20s and 30s, when everything's going great for them. You know, career is going strong, family's going strong, everything's going strong. You know, it's when you get older or when you get sick or when you go through some type of crisis, that's when people reach out. So that's no trick. You know, the real trick is to have that ongoing relationship with God when everything's going well. And that's harder, and that's something I struggle with.

You said things jump out of you the page, like I was doing saying psalms in Salem. And the word Hamas is everywhere. And I. And I never. I never caught it. And now I'm seeing it, like, everywhere on the page, right. I look over and it just says violence and it says violence.

That's right. It's weird.

It's crazy.

Like, it's very weird.

The Torah talks a lot about.

It.

Kind of makes predictions, right? I mean, it talks about what things will be like, what things will. You know, it's incredible today as a practicing Jew, you know, the fear of people hating us for no reason outside of the fact that they hate something that's going on that they're seeing. But, like, I saw something last night that really was eye opening for me. There was someone talking about how everyone who's protesting right now, they're going crazy. But when other countries who have the same exact thing going on right now, people are getting killed all over the world.

Yeah.

People are being murdered by their own government.

400,000 people in Yemen and no one's saying Syria. No one's protecting.

Protesting that which really shows true colors because they're only coming out and protesting when this is happening. And I. I think that's an interesting.

Kind of Illuminati, an interesting thought this morning. It was. People were talking about because. Because to be fair, people are also Muslims are. Are getting the brunt of. Of some of the thing. So I think it's called like, Islamophobia. Right. So what it's interesting is, is that there's people are. There's Islamophobia, which people are nervous about Islam, but they're anti Semites. So people are not nervous about Jews because Jews are not really violent people. You know, they're not by nature, you know, but. But for some reason, you know, there's anti Semitism, but there's Islamophobia.

Right. That's interesting.

I don't know. I don't want to get controversial. Right.

All right. Well, we. We covered a lot.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's a pleasure. We went through a lot indulgence. Yeah, it's really enjoyable.

So I just want to. One last question. I just want to put you on the spot, and if we. If you tell me to edit it out, I'll edit it out. But I mean, if you're a comedian, I'm wondering if you have something in your back pocket or if you can think of a joke or something that you can share that. Well, don't make me laugh.

My mind is not in it so much as it used to be. A comedian's mind. I've been. Become dull. But a comedian's mind is always, always, always looking. It's a different way of looking at things. It's. You're putting on glasses and everything around you. You're looking for the funny part of things. And. And to the point where sometimes when comedians will be talking to each other and there'll be some type of Something a little bit funny. You can see that glint in their eyes and they're. Glint in your eyes and they're like, who gets it? Is it minors or yours? You know, it's, it's this, it's, it's a glut. You become a glutton for, for humor. So, so my mind has, has my eyes have, have kind of shifted focus. So I don't, I don't look at the world like that so much anymore. But I remember some of the jokes I, that I used to do, and I don't even remember them as well as I used to, even though I've done them so many times. But I do remember there was a joke that I used to do and I loved. My thing was I enjoyed playing with the English language. I love like wordplay. So I always used to talk about how kids, you know, kids are just so messy, you know, and having like little kids, you're like a janitor in your own home. And that's why when parents split up, whoever gets the kids is called getting custody Custodian. Right. Or when a woman has a, you know, when someone gives birth to a lot of kids, it's called a litter. Right. So like I love those types of jokes where you just, you know, it almost you, you wonder, how could everyone, how could anyone have missed that having a lot of kids is called litter? It's hysterical.

When I came and watched you stand up, your, your stories about your family and about your kids. And then I saw a video that you did with your daughter.

Yeah.

And I was so impressed because she was so good.

She was so good.

It's unbelievable.

Yeah, she was, she was great. We did that at the diner over on Enfield and Enfield in Maine. The grill it and Skillet or whatever. Skillet diner. And so we went there one Sunday morning after they closed and I had a film guy there and my daughter, I think was maybe eight at the time. And we sat there and we just, we just, just did this like, who's on first scene? And she was just, she shown she did it. She did a great job.

So good. So if people want to look you up, where can they find you?

So these days you can find me either on LinkedIn.

Okay.

The real Daniel Steinberg is my profile. And then the other place is the Magid Method is my website. M A G g I d method.com and that's where you can get access to my wisdom that I put amassed over the years. And it's funny to call it wisdom in ethics of the fathers perkiavos. So they talk about the different age brackets of a person and what they can contribute in the world. So 50 is counsel. 50 is advice. So I'm almost 50 this year, and so I feel like I could start sharing some road warrior wisdom.

You definitely have a lot. You're probably one of the smartest guys I've ever met in my life. So I appreciate our relationship. I appreciate you coming in today and sharing everything you share, being an open with us and. Yeah, go visit.

You know how to bring out the best in your guests.

All right. Sounds good.

Questions?

All right.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, thank you.