How To Say NO with Confidence!

Do you struggle with fear, doubt and worry in your public speaking? Do you find it difficult to connect with your audience and deliver presentations that leave a lasting, positive, unforgettable impact? If yes, then let's dive in the world of public speaking and presentation skills with your host, Eric Edmies. Welcome to the Unforgettable podcast.

You know, becoming a speaker has changed my life in measurable in countless ways. At a personal level, at a business level, at a spiritual level, like in every possible way. I'll give you a really esoteric one, and that is that the minute you become, say, a storyteller, the minute you begin to realize that your life experiences are, in effect, inventory, you know, like the things that are happening to you will probably come out on stage because they might be learning examples for other people. Something interesting happens to the way you navigate your life, and that is that you begin to realize that it's like you're living in a movie and you cannot control the supporting actors and you can't control the environment, but the only person you can control is you. And you have to improvise your way through these things. So the minute you're a storyteller, you realize that you want to, you want to come through these stories in the best possible light. So, you know, you're sitting, having a horrible, you know, a horrible customer service experience with the, you know, with the person at the check in counter at the airport. At the airport. And they're just being bad. I mean, they're being bad. It happens. They're having a bad day, they were badly trained. I don't know what it is. And I'll have these moments sometimes where I feel like saying, you know, you'd be better off, we'd all be better off if you worked in baggage handling. You know, I want to say something like that every now and again, but then you realize, if I'm going to tell this story, I don't want to be that person. In fact, I heard somebody say once, imagine how different your life would be if a documentary crew was following you around all the time. Well, once you become a storyteller, it's almost like that because you're the documentarian and unless you're willing to lie, you got to live better version of the story. And this, this even extends to much more serious things, like a plane that looked like it was going to crash the minute the oxygen mask dropped from the ceiling. The minute the announcement came on, that scared the hell out of everybody. My first thought was, look, I'm either going to live Or I'm going to die in the I'm going to diverse and there's nothing I can do about that. If I'm going to live, how do I want this story to plan out? I was like, I want to win, I want to. And so I handled the situation incredibly well. So that's one of the biggest benefits of becoming a storyteller, is that it like forces you to navigate your life better, it seems. Another one is that it's the ultimate networking accelerator. There's nothing more powerful. I am definitely much more introverted than I am extroverted. And I know people watch me on YouTube or whatever and they go, look how expressed he is. He's definitely extroverted. Not at all the case. I would even say that for a lot of my life I've suffered with low grade social anxiety and maybe even sometimes I still have a bit of that. I'm not outgoing, I don't go to a networking event and I'm not shaking hands and connecting with everybody. But if I go to that event and I do time on stage, you know, deliver well, deliver good content, make people think, make people feel, then I will meet everybody and they will make sure of it. And so it is a huge accelerant relative to networking. My network today of people is such that I can go to any city, pretty much any city, certainly every major city, but even smaller cities. I can go to any city in the world and I've got the right people, I know all the inside tracks. I. I've been traveling to Lebanon this year a few times and I go to Beirut. Never been there before, never spoken there. But as soon as I put on an Instagram, I'm going to be in Lebanon. Boom, the invitations come in. I can give you this tour, I can take you for that lunch. My network extends the world and that's largely because I got into speaking. Then there's the economics of it and I don't know why, you know, I even now feel a little resistance about talking about the economics. So it's all about the money. It's not all about the money. But the truth is, is that as a business consultant prior to being a speaker, I charge relatively high rates for doing that. And you know what that might mean is that I might charge somebody $5,000 to consult with them for a month. I'm not with them full time during that month. I might be with them an hour or two a week or what have you, but, you know, it was relatively good revenue 20 years ago when I did that. Then I got into speaking, and I remember distinctly one day, these guys coming up to me. I just came off the stage. I was in front of 2,000 or so people, and these guys walked up to me, and they're like, you got to come work for us. I'm like, no, I really don't. I'm not looking for a job. I'm very happy. No, no, but we need you. And we're doing, you know, we're doing, like, socially responsible things are gonna have an impact on the planet. We need you to come and work with us. And I was absolutely like, no, no, no. And they go, well, consult for us at least. And at this point, I don't know what prompted me to do this, other than I teach it sometimes. But that is, sometimes you should say no with a number. You know, if somebody comes along and says, is your car for sale? Probably your car isn't for sale, but maybe you should just say, yeah, it is, but it's $150,000. Well, there are a lot of cars you might be willing to sell for that price, you know, So I just did that. These guys said, well, what about consulting? And I was like, yeah, I could do that, but it's really expensive. And they go, well, tell us how much is it? And I want $20,000 for the week. And they immediately, without missing a beat, said, done. And I was like, that was too easy. So I go, wait. I don't. I don't work, so I don't travel on the weekends. I'm with my family. I fly on Fridays and Mondays. And so when I say 20,000 for the week, a week is only three days. And they just immediately said yes. And then they engaged me for six months of that. So I am absolutely certain I would not have attracted that price point for them if I had not been on stage evoking this stage effect, this attraction that you create when you're on the stage.

So that's it for today's episode of unforgettable. Head on over to itunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on itunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a private $25,000 VIP day with Eric Edneads himself. Be sure to head on over to unforgettable show and pick up a free copy of Eric's gift and join us on the next episod.