#91: Karim R. Ellis on How To GPS Your Success

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I'm ready for my close up.

Hi, and welcome back. I'm so grateful that you are back with me yet again this week. And if you are just joining us for the first time, thank you for being here and welcome. Okay, so a lot is happening. A lot has happened in the last week that I want to get you up to speed on around my book. And it's kind of crazy. I heard a little over a week ago from HarperCollins leadership that they wanted me to cut 8,000 words out of my manuscript, which I gotta tell you, as an author is super sad. It's your baby and you're having to crush the baby. So that was hard to process. I had to sit on it for a couple days before I could actually start looking at what I was gonna do. But then I jumped in and figured, okay, these guys are experts. They know what they're doing, and I'm going to follow the direction and put the work in. So I am nearing my cutoff and I think that we're making this book better than ever. But I will tell you, it's a hard pill to swallow to hear, hey, you over delivered by 8,000 words. Go ahead and cut those words out. I've learned so much about the book business not having experience working with a traditional publisher. And one of the things I want to share is don't go over your word count because publishers see that as money. Now take it back. Back during the pandemic when we were in the middle of quarantine, I'll never forget, I got a call from HarperCollins leadership and they wanted to set up a meeting with me, my agent and them. And the three of us got on a call. I didn't realize, but during quarantine, all of book sales, hardcover book sales in particular, nose dived into. And a lot of books are read on planes and trains and travel, and those books were not being purchased. So book sales were plummeting and the book industry was panicking, of course, because who knew if it was a new trend, who knew how long it was gonna go on for? So they wanted to cut costs and they ended up on a call with me and my agent saying, hey, Heather, we wanted to revisit your contract. And I said, sure, what's going on? And they explained, you know, we are looking out at the industry overall and seeing the decline in hardcover book sales and we want to dial back our hardcover book sale commitments because the books aren't selling. So we want to jump on a call with you today to basically see if you'd be willing to let us go ahead and drop the hardcover from your contract. And holy cow, pump the brakes. Here's what I know. Number one, I have a contract, right? So I'm thinking about that in my mind. It stunk that I couldn't see my agent because she's in LA and she's on the phone, but I can't see her to communicate directly with her. I'm new in this traditional publisher world. While I've written and published a book, I did that self publishing, which is 100% different. So I'm sitting there, I was actually in my bedroom in the middle of quarantine not knowing what I'm doing. So I just had to trust my gut and my gut said, no way, I need a hardcover. I had a hardcover of my self published book. I'm not gonna not have a hardcover of my HarperCollins book. So I said, well, you know, I hear your challenge and I empathize with you. That's very challenging. Who knows what this will look like a year from now. This is back last year when I'm having the conversation. I said, who knows what the world will look like though, a year from now when my book's coming out. So hardcover sales could be exploding because everyone could be traveling everywhere and the pandemic's over. And are we not being a little hasty right now thinking of throwing hardcover book out entirely? And she said, I totally hear you, Heather, and we don't know you're right. However, we as a company have made a decision that we wanna dial back hardcover offerings. So I said, I understand. However, the book you should not dial back a hardcover offering is mine. The and here's why. And so I just went into pitch mode and attempt to sell her on why my book will sell in hardcover. And I just started pitching. I said I have a huge LinkedIn following, which is a business following. It's where business gets done and business people purchase hardcovers not only for themselves but as gifts. My book is coming out in November of 2021. It will be purchased as gifts. I just started going on this rant of all the reasons why my book is a business book and business books are bought as hardcover. So I made this pitch in this presentation not knowing if I was doing the right thing. But I had no one else to. I couldn't see my agent to say, hey, this is crazy, right? I just had to trust my gut and go all in. And there was silence on the phone for a moment, and my agent spoke up and said, you know, Heather brings up some great points with Heather's business background and the business content in the book. I do support what Heather's saying, that this is not the book to go ahead and nix a hardcover on silence again on the phone, and our contact said, okay, I hear you. I appreciate you giving me this insight. Would you mind following up with an email to me kind of outlining the reasons why you feel committed to keeping hardcover book sales high and ensuring us that you'll be able to deliver on that? Basically saying, heather put in writing that you're committed to selling a significant amount of hardcover books, that you're really all in on this. And at that point, I understood something. I'm not dealing with the ultimate decision maker.

Right.

Because you could tell this woman had been told, hey, try to get a hold of as many new authors as you can and try to get them to give up the idea of a hardcover to ensure that if hardcover book sales are down in 2021, we don't take a beating on the printing costs.

Right.

It's all business, and it's all about bottom line. So in that moment, I'm recognizing this woman's caught in the middle. She and I are just establishing a working relationship, and here she is. You know, I had just signed the contract a month or two before. Now she's having to come back to me to try to unwind a portion of it. She's in a tough spot. So I realized I needed to help her sell through the idea that my book should remain intact exactly the way that we had come contracted. So I said, no problem. Give me 24 hours, and I'm gonna send you an email that will outline and highlight the commitments and why this book needs a hardcover and justifies the reasons. And she said, oh, gosh, thanks so much. So I took that next 24 hours to take snapshots of. It was so funny. I went back into my social media, and when you write a book proposal, you outline a why you section. Like, why is this author. Why does this author need to have a deal with HarperCollins leadership? You know, why is this person going to be able to market this book? Because at the end of the day, everyone cares about sales. It's not all about my amazing creative idea and story. No, sadly, that's not it. It's all about, does this person have a platform? Can this person Monetize a book and can this person sell? That's what they care about. And so I went back to the original book proposal that HarperCollins had signed off on and signed me as a result of. And I was reading it, and it was super interesting. I thought, wow, my stats have grown immensely since I submitted this. I have so much. I hadn't even hit a million podcast downloads at that point in time. And so I said, wow, my downloads have grown exponentially. And then, oh, wow, they didn't know I was named top 40 U.S. keynote speaker in 2020.

Oh, wow.

They didn't know my TEDx talk was promoted to TED and translated into six languages. I. Oh, wow. They didn't know that my LinkedIn platform had hit 18 or 19 million views in 2020.

Right.

There was all of this exponential growth I could point to. And the great thing I had going for me was the baseline I was able to use was the book proposal. So they knew it was all factually based, and they had already had it. So I took snapshots of all the things that I just outlined for you. Cause I want to give her proof that, okay, not only do I say I have 18 million views on LinkedIn, here's the screenshot showing the data. Not only do I say that I won, you know, top 40 keynote speaker, here's the article, and here's a portion I'm included in. I'm number 25, and here's my TED Talk now and et cetera. So I take snapshots and provide hot links for everything that I'm identifying as the reasons why I've grown so much more since I submitted the book proposal.

And.

And essentially, here's the proof to back it all up. So I send all of that in and basically arm her with a sales kit to say, here's why we need to keep Heather's book in hardcover format as well as the other formats, and we need to move on and look at other authors to cut. So I sent it to her. She sent me back. Holy cow, this helps so much. Thank you. And I didn't hear anything for a little while, which was super stressful. But eventually I heard back. Just FYI, Heather, we are keeping your hardcover intact. No worries. You know, moving on to other authors. It was a good reminder for me. Number one, always trust your gut. Number two, you're always in sales mode and in pitch mode in any conversation, whether you know it or not, so you might as well be aware of that. But also, number three, sometimes people. That woman didn't want to cut my hardcover, but I had to help prop her up so she could help me to. To ensure that somebody else didn't cut it. Right. So it's not necessarily, oh, gosh, this person's being mean to me, or, you know, it's not personal. There was a business challenge at hand. It was about finances and expenses, and I had to show her and arm her with a sales pitch that she could provide to somebody else to ensure they didn't cut our hardcover. And in the end, she's been amazing to work with and is so glad that we saved the hardcover. And now the heat's on to sell that hardcover. Cause I sure made a lot of commitments about it. So it's kind of funny what you go through suddenly and unexpectedly in different moments, but also great that my agent stood behind me and agreed that absolutely we needed to keep our hardcover, and we were totally on the same page. Okay, fast forward to now. We're in this book window where I've submitted a manuscript. They're coming back with changes. They want 8,000 words. Cut. Well, now we're in the top title element, which I named the book Leapfrogging Villains. I chose that name more than a year ago. I knew that was the name of my book. I wanted T shirts made saying Leapfrogging Villains. It's actually one of the chapters from my first book, Confidence Creator, and I've always loved that, and it just resonated with me. Well, when you sign with a publishing company, they ultimately have final say. I mean, the author has a pro. It's called author prerogative. Right. So they'll defer to you on some things, but you have to pick your battles. You don't want to fight with your partner.

Right.

And they're your partner. I mean, sometimes you have to. You have to hold your ground. Well, there's one thing I know, and that's data doesn't lie. So when my counterpart at Harper said, hey, Heather, we're going to test the titles. Now we're testing Leapfrogging Villains, along with five other title names that we've come up with. We'll report back on what the data reveals. So we got that report back this week, and sadly, my title did not perform. So she knew I was gonna be upset, and she sent me an email and said, hey, Heather. Unfortunately, Leapfrogging Villains did not perform as well as you had hoped. However, another title performed unbelievably well. Take a look at the numbers. And one title outperformed everything by a Landslide. And it was overcoming your villains, which is, you know, an adjustment from leapfrogging villains. It wouldn't have been my pick, but I do know this data doesn't lie. And my goal is to get this book into as many people's hands as I can because it will change lives and empower people and teach people and help people. And I'm so excited for that. So I go back to my business mode and say I respond to her. As you know, I'm so bummed because I was ready to print those T shirts. However, we've gotta move forward with data and I'm grateful that you guys tested. So let's move forward with overcoming your villains. So that's the title of the new book. I'm super excited for it. I can't wait for you to get this book into your hands. It's only a few months away and there's a lot of exciting stuff that's gonna happen before the book comes out. But just wanted to share that story. As I'm learning so much as a rookie and in the traditional publishing world, it's crazy how you get very little advance notice on things. Things happen very fast, and then there's these valleys where you hear nothing and you wonder what the heck is going on. And then suddenly it's very, very active and busy. So a lot more for me to learn, I'm sure, but really hopeful that their expertise and the fact that they're so data driven will just reveal a better book and better results for. For my second book.

Okay.

For my guest today, this is really interesting. As you know, I had the amazing Les Brown on last week and so grateful for him. He's such an inspirational and just magical person. But through meeting Les and working with Les's team, they asked me, hey, Heather, we wanted to see if you had any interest in interviewing Kareem Ellis. And Kareem is basically Les Brown's protege. Les took him under his wing years ago and helped develop and mentor him personally, which I think is unbelievable that Kareem had this opportunity. But what's really cool is I had the chance to sit down with Kareem, get to know him, and, you know, not only is he a really uplifting guy and great guy, but you're gonna love his new book. GPS you success, the concepts he walks through. Not only as a very well known public speaker, a founder of Empowered Education, you know, Kareem's doing so much great work to help and empower others, but you're really going to love the takeaways that he shares with us around GPS your success. So I want you to hold tight because we're going to be right back with Kareem.

Meet a different guest each week. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so excited for Kareem Ellis to be joining us this morning. Good morning, Kareem.

Well, morning, Heather. How are you?

Living the COVID dream just like everyone else. All right, so let's cut to. I struggled when I went out as an entrepreneur three years ago, finding a roadmap and anyone to share with me how to get into the speaking business. When I heard that Les Brown took you under his wing and became your mentor and you were his protege, I about fell over. How did that happen?

Well, I'm glad you asked that question. Right. That's the one question I get from so many people across the world. How in the world did you get paired up with the world's greatest motivational speaker? And it's a philosophy that I call GPS my success. I don't believe in teaching anything that I don't live. I think we got too many people out there that play it fake. So I want to be 100% transparent when I say GPS my success. That means that when I look at my life, I want to believe that my life is almost like a vision machine. And a GPS we all know is useless till we decide to first give it an address. And so the question I have for your tribe today is we got to be clear about what address we want to put inside our life's gps. So when it came to Les Brown, I knew Les Brown didn't live in Cincinnati, Ohio. There is no way in the world it's going to crash into him at an intersection or at a gas station or inside a local grocery store. And so the address I put in is I want this man to be my mentor. And so, first of all, I have to figure out, how in the world do I make it to him? So I had to travel from Cincinnati, Ohio, all the way down to Atlanta, Georgia, and I made the decision to actually partake in a contest that he threw. He threw a contest for speakers. It was 13 of us, and I was one of the 13. I got on stage, I gave a very, very, very dynamic keynote. And that keynote was the thing that caught his attention. But it was all about, number one, setting the address with intentionality, and number two, moving with clarity. I was very clear on the goal of why I wanted this man to be my mentor. And from there, we opened up a partnership, a friendship, and most importantly, A mentorship. And my life has never been the same. It's never been the same.

Yeah.

You know, so often I am asked, how did you get to where you are in the speaking business? How did you land this talk, that talk and what I found? And I had all those same questions as well three years ago. And I'll tell you, I've never seen anyone share the roadmap. I do the best that I can to share mine with everyone because I think everyone should have access to whatever it takes. However, now that the pandemic's hit, the speaking business is completely different. How has it affected your business?

Well, it really has. Here's the thing, one of the things we talk about with the GPS success principle, we talk about the concept of recalculating, right. In other words, if I put an address inside my GPS and I'm trying to get downtown, it's a 25 minute drive. I don't know what's going to happen on that journey.

I don't know if I'm going to.

Run into rush hour traffic, there may be an accident, the road may be out. And the thing that's dynamic is this. The GPS doesn't give up on the journey. The GPS doesn't say, oh my God, it's a roadblock ahead, we got to go back home. The GPS begins to recalculate a different route to get to the same destination. And so one of the things I learned about COVID 19, either you suffered through COVID 19 or you accelerated through COVID 19. So for most of us in the speaking business, we accelerated. We just simply had to be willing to recalculate the address in the GPS and find alternative routes to still get to that fantastic finish line. So a lot of us have been doing more online presentations. We've been using Zoom, we've been using Microsoft Teams. So the journey hasn't changed. The way we've used technology has been the recalculation.

Not for me, I'll tell you. My experience in COVID 19 is people do not want to pay the same that they would pay for live. And the calls that I get from meeting planners are now working. We would like in 2022 to have you on site at that rate, but what can you do for a virtual rate for this year? So I don't know. For me, it's interesting. I speak more now. I typically now speak three to four times a week where before it was usually once a week. So I speak more now for less money, which is a broken business model in my Opinion, you know, I'm like, get me back to normal life again.

Okay, So I can agree with that. A lot of event planners don't want to pay the same amount of money they're going to pay you for in person presentation. But the beautiful thing about virtual presentations, there's more leverage. There is the way I see it, there's more leverage there with me doing it virtually, I have a little bit more control over the outcome of who's going to actually tune into the presentation. So that means that I can take a hit on the feed, but can I somehow raise the amount of the price on the product end or the services I'm offering or. Also, for a lot of people, this is a season of planting seed. This is a season of planting seed. The problem with a lot of people I see is we want fruit, but we don't get fruit unless we plant the seed. So what I've chosen to look at is we're going to take a hit. I'm fine with that. But strategically thinking, how much seed can I plant where I can turn some of these listeners and viewers into fruit down the road that may benefit or manifest in 2022, in 2023, in 2027. So that's the way I'm choosing to look at it. But that's about the concept of recalculating. I look at money and say, okay, if this is the amount of money I want to get, I'm fine with not getting it directly from the event planner. But can I be creative on how I get it? If my goal is to get, you know, 20 grand, can I split up how I get that 20 grand instead of getting it from the event planner, can I split that up? By now being creative on how I sprinkle that 20 grand out or 30 grand out between all the attendees that may be there or the potential spinoff speaking engagement. So that's. That's me. That's me.

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Sure, yeah, no I definitely see that with most speakers now. So tell me, in regards to your keynote and becoming the speaker that was able to get Les Brown's attention, what do you think it is about your speaking that you want to share with people to help them be better speakers?

That's a great question. So the first thing Is this be authentic, be you. We live in a world where everyone wants to be the copycat. And my goal number one was never to be Les Brown. A lot of folks don't realize this. I'm 44 years old. I've been listening to Les Brown since the age of 8. As a child growing up, my father, driving back and forth to his rental properties would pop in a cassette tape. It would either be Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar or Les Brown. And so I've been listening Les all my life. So to jump into this day and age and have him as a personal mentor and a friend, that was the universe conspiring to put me in the right place in the right season. But what I tell people all the time, be you. When you got put here, you're an original fingerprint. Unless you came as a set of twins and triplets, there's only one you. So be authentic to. You own the story that created you. When I look at you and look at your story and how you got here, there's only one you. There's no one else like you. So when you use your story, it gives you power, it gives you authority, and it gives you your own personal signature. So for me, it was always about being the authentic, best version of Kareem Ray Ellis. No one else. If you can be you and tell your story and live your greatness and you'll never have a situation where you don't stand out. You will always stand out.

What is the formula beyond just being authentic to be you? Do you believe in leading with story? Do you believe in a five step process? In the middle of the talk with the clothes with an, you know, I've seen a lot of different formulas. I know what works for me, but I'm interested to know what works for you.

Okay, so what works for me is this. Number one, I am a story guy. And that's one of the reasons me and, me and Les gel so well. I'm a story guy, so I believe in the same philosophy, which is never give a story without a point. So if I'm going to talk to someone, I'm going to give a story because the story is the thing that engages us. What I've learned from most people, most adults are nothing more than grown up kids. And as kids growing up, we love the great story. When you go to the movies, the movie is a great story. TV shows are great stories. So number one, I got to take a look at this story called My Life and figure out what are the highs and what are the lows that are very teachable moments? So I can talk about the time in 2015 and I was a victim of gun violence where a young man pulled out a gun and shot me in my right kneecap as I tried to intervene in a domestic dispute. But the story wasn't about me getting shot. The story is about the value of time. Because as I sat in that hospital, there was a man next to me that fell off a ladder the wrong way, and they said, he's not going to make it. And as I'm thinking about the fact of me getting shot, I transitioned to the fact that he's losing his life. And I think to myself, what happens if that man decides to pull the trigger one more time? What are the things that I wouldn't get done? What are the things I've been assigned to do while I'm on this planet that don't get taken care of? Because I thought I had more time in my life to just kind of mellow out and get things done in my own tempo and pace. So I've given you a story very, very quickly, but now giving you a powerful point to wrap it around. And then I can give you a breakdown of statistics or I can give you action steps of how to be more manageable with your time so you achieve everything you've been put here and designed to do before your timer goes off.

Wow.

Yeah, that's very powerful. One of the biggest, I guess, mistakes that I see with new speakers is they'll grasp the idea to be themselves. They'll grasp the idea that they have a few different personal stories, but it doesn't transition from there into those takeaways that the audience can then apply back to their life and lead that presentation with. Do you see that often with speakers as well?

I do, and here's why most people mess up on it. When we tell stories from the stage, we have to make sure the stories are 100% relatable. So I want you to think about a good storyteller, almost like a pastor. And I don't want to go into the spirit of religiosity because I know your tribe has. Everyone has different beliefs, but what I've learned is this. When a pastor gives a one hour message or sermon and has an altar call, what ends up happening is 30 people run down to the altar wanting to change their life. One person's down to the altar because he's cheating on his wife. One person's down to the altar because he's cheating on his taxes. One Person's down to the altar because the neighbor's dog keeps barking. And when no one's looking, he gave the dog a good hard kick. And notice something the pastor didn't say. If you kicked your neighbor's dog, come down to the altar. If you're cheating on your wife, come down to the altar. If you're cheating on your taxes, come down to the altar. The best storytellers in the world know how to give a powerful story, but leave it so ambidextrous, so to speak, that everyone in the audience can relate the story to them personally. So it's almost like painting a picture, but painting a picture in such a broad way that it captures everyone from the, from the CEO to the person that's working in the mail room, to the tech person. Everyone has to be able to take that message and make it relatable to them. So anytime I'm going to give you a story or message from the stage, I'm going to give you a broad picture. So that way folks in the room don't feel alienated. So when everyone has that alter call moment, they feel like, oh, he's talking directly to me. I'm not talking directly to you. I'm talking to everyone in the room. But I'm giving you enough energy and room for you to take those words and apply them to your life personally. So that way I haven't left you out. I haven't left you out. And that's the one thing most speakers have a hard time doing. They have a hard time telling the story with such a broad enough reality that everyone in the room feels like this person is talking directly to me. I got to get my life in order. I got to get down to the altar and change my life. Because this message was for me. It's not for you, it's for everyone. But the great storyteller knows how to tell it in such a way that everyone believes this is strictly for me.

Do you think part of that is because this is something that I struggled with, especially when I first got into speaking, is I assumed I could speak because I had spoken in corporate America to any audience. I assumed I could speak to any audience. However, what I've learned is I. I can have a speaking engagement with a particular audience with a visceral effect versus a very different audience with a pretty good effect. So then I start questioning myself, should I niche down? Should I niche to this industry? And there's very different ways of thinking in regards to less obviously speaks to all industries globally, beyond the US there's many speakers that only niche to the US that only niche to the pharmaceutical business. What are your thoughts on target audiences and owning a niche?

So when I first started this journey, I was, I was niche. A lot of folks don't realize when I first started this journey I was in the real estate world. So that's how I originally stepped out of my 9 to 5 to pursue my passion full time. I use real estate as the means to transition over. But I knew when speaking to real estate folks it was nothing against that crowd and audience. I still felt unfulfilled. I was making money, I had crowd, I had audience, I had social media fallback. I had all that stuff going for myself. But I still felt unfulfilled because my calling was bigger than just the real estate world. Motivation carries everywhere. I don't know a country right now after the ravaging of COVID 19 that doesn't need motivation, inspiration and uplifting. Because COVID 19 didn't discriminate. It attacked people of all ages, races, colors, denominations and so a lot of people need to hear game changing messages that change their life. So for me personally, I believe that you can niche if that's for you. Certain topics are niche topics. But for me, my vision was to impact the world. So I did not want to niche down. I did not want to niche down. Now there are certain topics you have to niche on. You know, in other words, real estate does not carry you everywhere. There's folks that don't, don't care about real estate. I love my 9 to 5 job. I love what I do. I don't want to get in the houses, I don't want to flip houses, I don't want to deal with tenants. So that's not an arena for me. My niche is going to keep me locked in, but for the goal of my life, the address put in my gps. I want to pack as many people on this planet as possible before my timer runs out. So for me it wasn't about niching or if I'm going to niche it, it's motivation. My niche puts me all over the place. So I really think that's kind of a question based on where you want to go, where you want to go.

Since you do want to reach as many people as possible. And we know less has reached more people than any other speaker I can think of that's in our world right now. Do you follow his exact process, his steps? How do you emulate and or make that process your own?

So one of the things he said to me is this. He said that. And I'm not going to say this from an egotistical standpoint. This is a mentor mentee conversation. The best mentors in the world will tell you, I want you to take the race farther. Okay? I want you to. The baton gets past you. I want you to run farther and faster with it, and you should be able to do it, because you have one thing I didn't have back in my day. He says, you have technology. You have technology. Remember when Les started this race, it was physically going city to city, location, location. With social media, we can be in a million people's homes just like that, right? And so the idea for a mentee is to look at a mentor and say, this is the blueprint. Now, you look at the blueprint, and then you figure with your new enlightened mindset, how do I tweak it? How do I tweak it and twist it, put new things in, take old things out and make it better to perform quicker, faster, and take me farther. So the blueprint is already there. One of the most beautiful things about having a mentor is a mentor is what I call a warp zone. And I'm going to date myself here because I know some people are familiar with video game technology. Some people aren't in the video game Super Mario Brothers. It is full of warp zones that lets you skip boards and skip levels. And a mentor is your warp zone. Les has been speaking for 50 years. He's spoken in over 51 countries. And, like, he likes to tell people, I know a thing or two because I've seen a thing or two. So if he knows a thing or two because he's seen a thing or two, as a mentor, he can teach me a thing or two. But it's not for me to necessarily follow the blueprint step by step because times change. My job is to look at the blueprint and say, how do I tweak this? And bring it up to a 20, 21 standpoint.

So what is the biggest takeaway or lesson that you've learned from lesbian?

The biggest takeaway, I learned from Les. And this was a double teachable moment. I'm a strong believer in the power of your gifts and talents. I tell people that, you know, education is something that we learn over, you know, 12, 14, 18 years of our life. 20 years, our life. We go to college. We're always perpetually learning. But most of our education comes through our formal years, from kindergarten up until 12th grade in college. But a lot of times we Leave out our gifts and talents. You know, my favorite animal in the world is a cheetah. A cheetah's known for running 70 mph, but a cheetah is born with that gift of 70 mile power speed. Doesn't need a college degree to do it. It's locked in its genetics. So it lets me know that everyone on this planet has a unique gift and talent. And so when I landed Les as a mentor back in Atlanta, the way I got him was I believe in something my mother taught me a long time ago is your gifts will make room for you and put you before powerful people. Now notice she said your gifts will do it. She didn't say your handsome smile. She didn't say that sexy bald head. She didn't say those six pack abs. She said, your gifts will make room for you. So when I got on that stage and caught Les attention, it was me using my gift of communication, storytelling, my creativity that caught his eye and opened the door. So while I was happy to use that gift to get his attention, he threw one back at me. He said, yes, your gift caught my attention. It made you stand out. But I was also looking at your character. He said, before I brought you into my circle, I did my research on you, young man. I was googling you, I was taking a look at your social media accounts to make sure that you were the same across the board. Okay. The thing he taught me that was so deep that I'm going to share with your tribe today is this. He said, don't let your gifts and talents take you to a height that your character can't sustain you. He said the world is full of first round draft pick, pro bowl football players, quarterbacks that never got their shot or opportunity because their character landed them in jail. The world is full of politicians that had the ability to lead and change the world for the better. And they never got their opportunity because their character put them in a place where they got ousted out or they're sitting there in jail for a dumb decision that ruined their future. And so the thing he gave me was don't let your gift and talent take you to a height and that your character can't sustain you. And that was one of the most powerful things he said to me. It hit me here, but it also hit me here.

It's so funny, depending on what your own life experience is, when I listen to that, that's never something that I would think about. Hearing you talk, I was thinking fear is the thing that would hold me back versus the Example you were giving that some people, it's their character that might limit them, you know, regardless of what it is, everybody's got some hold back out there or potential holdback, like you said, and it's all up to us to manage it. A lot of people that I work with are very afraid and or nervous about getting into speaking yet maybe it's an obligation of their job, or maybe it's a goal that they have and they want to pursue in a new year. What do you say or how do you work with those people that have nerves around speaking?

I'm laughing because a lot of people don't know this. I'm very, very charismatic, obviously, as you can see. And I'm full of energy because I'm full of coffee. But I'm an introvert. And a lot of people go, how in the world I grew up as an introvert. I was very, very talkative, but very, very shy around people who I didn't know. And there's a reason why they say the number one fear on this planet is public speaking. That means there's more people that would rather face a firing squad or face death than get on the stage and speak. And so for that person, I got to ask the most powerful question I can ask you. What's your why? What's your why? What I find with most people a why this strong enough centers around our desire. Anything you have right now is based on desire. Anything you have from the car outside to the house I'm sitting here living in, from the technology I'm talking to you, on to the beautiful wife I married last year, everything centers around desire. And so when you have a strong enough desire about what you want, it's going to overcome anyhow. So the first thing I'm going to tell to you is you got to be clear about the desire of why you want to speak. I was not a speaker by trade. I was a great communicator. I could run my mouth. But to get in front of a stage of 1,000, 2,000, 10,000 people, the thought of it would just shake me up until I got centered on my why. Why do I want to do this? So that's the first thing I tell somebody.

Everything starts with why do you have a process? You know, I have a process that I go through. I leverage lavender. I wear blue or red. I write notes on my shoes. I have a playlist that I use that really puts me into a psychological mindset. It sets me up and gives me momentum to really launch onto a stage with Power. I do this exercise and I teach this exercise to everyone so that if it works for them to implement it, it really works very well for me to the point where if I do, if something goes wrong, a mic goes out, I'm able to move right through it. What are your steps or your processes that you use or teach?

Okay, so the first thing I do is I'm a visualization guy. So when I talk about gps, my success, again, I mean it clearly when I say GPS is a visual machine. The beautiful thing about a GPS is when I put an address in there, it will go so far as to show me an image of what the destination looks like, because we're visual creatures. And so one of the things I do at least 30 minutes before I get on stage, I shut everything down. I shut everyone out. And I meditate and visualize about the end result. I see that standing ovation. I see the folks being impacted. I see the folks giving rave testimonials. At the end of it, I see the folks run up saying, man, I want to be coached or I want to learn from you. So I put that inside my mind first, because, again, thoughts are things, and a lot of people fail to understand that thoughts are always things. So I look at the mind as the womb, and my job is to plant seed and then produce a result. And so that's my startup. My startup is literally just blocking everything out, shutting everything down and visualizing the result. And the beautiful thing about doing this, I don't have attachments. And what I mean by this, so many people go into it. They go into life in general, and they're attached to an outcome. You can be attached to the outcome, but if you think the outcome has to come in a certain way, that's where the letdown comes in at. And so I can get on stage and have a keynote speak ready to go. But since I'm not attached to the outcome, that means I'm not attached to how I deliver the speech. There's been speeches midway through, I've switched the whole flow up and went a whole different route, but still got the standing ovation. But it's all because I visualize what I want to take place at the end of it. And like that gps, I'm willing to recalculate. If a microphone goes out or if I got to engage with somebody, I'm still going to get the desired result because I'm not attached to the process necessarily, how to get there. I just want to see the result, the visualization. So that's me. I'm a visualization guy.

Yeah, you brought up, you know, the mic going out. What I found is the majority of the time, something will go wrong. So it's almost beneficial to start. It's shocking to me whether at one speaking engagement I had in New York a year ago, a woman passed out, hit a table that was full of glasses. And I mean, the shattering and the noise, and it was almost like a bomb going off, and I was speaking. And so you have to find ways to integrate. How do you know? Do you stop? Do you make that part of your actual presentation? Do you ignore it? There's so many different nuances that can occur that I believe come simply with practice, doing it wrong, thinking later, how can I do it? How do you coach yourself or work with people through those situations?

Okay, so I'm a person that learns very, very quickly to use stage props. And when I say stage props, I mean not just props you bring on stage. The audience is a stage prop. And a lot of speakers miss the magic of learning how to bring the audience into the presentation. I believe in 3D presentations where you are part of the presentation facts about it. I don't think I've given a keynote where I have not included the audience in some way, shape or form, because the job of every speaker is to figure out how do I make myself memorable. Anyone can get on stage and just give a speech, but the speeches we remember the most are the ones that are most engaging, entertaining, and the ones that excel in our mindset. So I'm the person that's always been quick on my feet. So if something like that takes place or transpires, I'm very quick to figure out how do I very subtly tie what just took place into the message. I'm giving in real time now for something where she's hurt bad, I mean, okay, I have to have empathy. I can't. I can't just bring her into the presentation without being empathetic. But I'll find some creative way to bring her into the presentation. If she's okay, I'm bringing her up on stage. There's some way I'm going to tie her in, because something like that's embarrassing for that person as well. So I want to take that embarrassment out so that way she can still enjoy the presentation, but turn it into a teachable moment. I think the best speakers in the world know how to be very captivating and quick on their feet. You have to in this day and age. So anyone that I coach and teach, I'm going to teach you how to turn the audience into a living stage prop, which makes your presentation 10 times more impactful and 10 times more measurable.

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Do that now with virtual? Because I know for me many times when I depending on the platform sometimes I can't see an audience. All I see is myself when I'm standing in front of the camera. And so some platforms you can see a few people if you do a zoom presentation. But it's been challenging because I can't see a face. I don't know how many people are there. There's no live back and forth. There's no messaging system. How do you involve them when you're just in front of a black screen?

So that's a great question. So there's a keynote I did for the Kentucky Governor's leadership on diversity and that zoom call had a little over. I want to say not zoom but they use Microsoft Teams. I think it hit close to like 1,400 people on there folks in government with Kentucky and I did GPS my success as a keynote and the last part of the keynote I turned it into a contest. The last part of the keynote I turned into a contest and what I did is I talk about a buddy of mine who got caught cheating on his wife and I said I pulled out $100 bill and I said I'm going to cash out $100 to the person who can guess how this man got caught cheating on his wife. And I give them a second to do it. Now, again, I can't see these people. But the beautiful thing about teams, teams has a little thing where they can do a Q and a box. Zoom has a Q and a box. And so oftentimes what I can do is have a different monitor set up so I can kind of look at it a little bit, so I can kind of cheat or have a tablet set up so I can pay attention to it. And part of the engagement is calling people out, shouting them out. So Sarah said he had perfume. Nope, Sarah, that's not it. John said that someone saw him out in public. No, John, that's not it. You know, Mike said that. And so I'm reading that stuff out, and I'm acknowledging the audience, and I'm making it fun, because now folks not only are getting recognized, they're being called out by the speaker, but they're competing victoriously over this hundred dollars. And then someone finally got it. They said, it's the gps. And I said, guys, come on. The whole presentation I gave about the gps, he got caught because of the gps.

That was very.

So what ends up happening is this is. They end up engaging. It's fun, it's memorable. Because no other speaker's done this, right? Every other speaker is just giving information. And so we don't have conversation. We have dialogue. Whenever I speak, I don't want the Tonight Show. I don't want to be up there giving a monologue. I want dialogue. I want folks to engage back and forth. And so that's where that creativity comes in at. So I think that if you're doing virtual, you have to figure out, in my keynote presentation, where are segue points that I can somehow engage the audience and get the audience to pull back in? Are there contests? Can I take this topic and pull people in for the event planner? Are there certain people you want me to shout out that are doing excellent jobs where I can pull them into the presentation just by mentioning their name? And that situation there, two things took place. Number one, everyone engaged. So everyone's paying attention, right? And then the second thing is, because they paid attention so well, I gave them an option, you know, to follow me on social media and get access to a couple chapters of the book GPS My Success, and then move forward from there. But to see folks jump out there, and we had at least, I want to say, 50 people leaping there saying, you know, giving me things they thought only to find out they're wrong. They're wrong.

They're wrong.

It's a gps, guys. But it was fun, engaging, entertaining, and it's a presentation they'll never forget. And of course, event planner is like, we're bringing you back. We're definitely bringing you back.

That was a great idea. Tell us a little bit about the book.

Absolutely. So, like I said before, gps, my success is all about setting vision for your life. And I tell people that when the universe puts you here, I believe the universe puts you here with a purpose. You know, as lessons taught me, you've been put here on purpose, with purpose, by purpose, for purpose. As the old folks say, baby, you just got knocked up with purpose. The question being is, what are you supposed to give birth to? And so gps, my success is that roadmap. It goes through five core teachable principles. And number one is setting the address. Okay. You can't arrive at a destination if you first don't know where you want to go. Number two, we got to move with clarity. A GPS gives us crystal clear instructions on how to get from where we are to where we want to be. The opposite of clarity is confusion. And what I saw happen in 2020, for a lot of people that want to get nonprofits off the ground, if they want to just have better, better health overall, get back in shape, if they wanted to grow their business, a lot of folks didn't achieve it because they're moving in the spirit of confusion versus clarity. So you miss out on opportunities when you don't know what you're supposed to look for. So we talk about how you can move with clarity versus confusion. The third principle is all about connections. And what I simply mean is this. When you give a GPS an address, two things take place. Number one, that GPS pings the local cell phone tower. That tower then searches for a satellite in outer space. And as long as I got that trifecta connection going on, I can go anywhere that I put my address in. Okay? The question being in 2021, who do I need to connect with that's going to help me get to my finish line? Who are the coaches? Who are the mentors? What type of education should I be trying to gobble down in this season? What organization should I belong to is going to help me get to my finish line? So we talk about some of those things you need to be actively searching for and be plugged into and be connected to. But the opposite of a connection is a dead zone. And we've all experienced the dead zone. Right. That's the place where you're talking on your cell phone and all, suddenly the signal goes out, you're on your tablet and you hit a dead zone and you lose your signal. And so we got to ask ourselves in 2021, what were the dead zones we faced in 2020? For some of us, it was the fact that COVID 19 was a humongous dead zone where goals and dreams got put on the sideline. For some of us, we had jobs that told us we were non essential. Right. For some of us, it was health challenges. For some of us, relationship issues. Let's be real. 2020 took a toll on relationships across this country. I love you, you love me. But it's been a long time since we've been under the same roof 24 hours a day. I'm used to being gone for eight hours and seeing you for the remaining four. So we got relationship challenges and obviously we got leadership challenges in this country. So we got a lot of dead zones. The goal is to identify those dead zones so we don't get lost in the sauce, so to speak. We don't lose our way on the journey. And then the two more nuggets I'll give you that are teachable moments out of that GPS philosophy is we told you earlier about recalculating, that there's more than one way to get to the finish line. If I get lost along the way, my GPS doesn't cuss me out, my GPS doesn't call me names. Hey, stupid, turn around. Hey, stupid, you're going the wrong way. It just simply says recalculating. Recalculating, recalculating. I have to be willing to understand without attachments, there's more than one way to get to my finish line. And then, last but not least, we talk about the power of checking the history log. And we talked about it earlier. We talked about my buddy who got caught cheating on his wife. He got caught cheating on his wife because she checked the history log and she saw a bunch of addresses to 5 star restaurants, nice dating locations, and a couple of hotels that she knows she had never been to. So she's wondering, why are these addresses inside our family gps, inside this vehicle? And so if I want to know where you've been spending your time at, all I got to do is check your history log. It lets me know where you've been spending the majority of your time at, where your focus goes, your energy flows. So if you want to be dynamic and successful in 2021, we got to be clear about checking our own history log to make sure we're going after addresses to get us to our destination versus spending our time chasing everybody else's goals and dreams.

You're a fan of the Secret.

You know.

So many times in this interview I've heard lines that immediately it takes me back to the movie. It's so funny. I was thinking this morning, I was on a call with somebody yesterday and they brought up John Assaraf who I've had on the show. And I thought, oh, I need to revisit that movie again. You know, I really like it. And this morning I was thinking to myself, oh, this weekend I'm gonna watch the Secret again. I haven't seen it in a while and now this is just reminding me yet again, I need to watch it. Such a powerful movie.

Absolutely. Shout out to Bob Proctor. He put his whole foot inside of that one. Yes. I love it, I love it, I love it.

How do people work with you for coaching? How does that work?

Okay, so with the coaching program and I don't want to turn this to a sales fest. So what I'll do is this with your tribe, what I'll do is this, number one, if they want to get access to a preview of the book, if they want to shoot me an email to infoareem ellis.com that's K A R I m e l l I s I'll give them access to the book. I'll give them access to a couple of chapters from the book so they can kind of divulge into it, get their foot into it and understand the principles and philosophies of why it's so important to gps. Your success is super important this day and age. And then if they're interested in coaching for your tribe only just your tribe, I got to be careful. I say this, if they send an email, I'm going to give them a 20 minute consultation for free just to start out to make sure that I'm a good fit for them. Because one of the things I do believe, I do believe that we have too many people out there that are so money hungry that they try to be a fit for everything. And I think that's absolutely deplorable in this day and age. Right. I believe that even with Les Brown being my mentor, he had to be a good fit for me and I had to be a good fit for him because not everybody's teachable, not everybody's coachable and some people don't make good mentors depending on your learning style. We've all been there with that one Teacher in school where I'm a smart kid, but I just don't get your teaching style. I'm not dumb. Your teacher style doesn't work. So if they want to get ahold of me again, infoareem ellis.com just for sending an email, I'm going to give them access to the book, but at the same time, they'll also have the ability to sign up for free 20 minute consultation. If their goal and desire is to be a better speaker, we can talk about that. If they're saying, listen, I need to GPS my success, 2020 has left me stuck and I need to figure out how to create a roadmap to get those results that can be part of the consultation as well.

Well, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for creating that offer for our team. We appreciate you and your positivity immensely.

Created. Thank you. It has been a pleasure, a privilege and an honor. Like I said before, I'm a tremendous fan of yours. So to get up and wake up with you and coffee, you just made my whole day.

All right, guys, hold tight.

We're going to be right back. I asked you to try to find your passion. Welcome back. I hope you loved hearing from Karim and learning about your gps. I love that concept and it just, it really landed with me, that whole idea. So I hope you loved it as much as I did. Okay, couple of questions that I received on social media this week that I wanted to share with you. First one. Hey, Heather, you were skilled in the corporate world, which I wasn't. What if you don't have typical skills? I'm in your old boat. I'm 42, just lost my job, but I'm an artist. I don't have the corporate type of skills that you had. I want to risk and follow my heart. But where do you begin? How do you know what you should try? Someone told you to write, but you had a story that others could find relatable. What are your suggestions? So this is interesting to me. I didn't know I should write. You know, Elvis Duran said to me, oh, well, obviously you're writing a book. And I just leapt on that and said, yeah, obviously I am, but. But I wasn't. I didn't know what I was gonna write about. I didn't know what was gonna work. And while you can sit there or anyone can sit there and say, well, you had these skills or you had this. I didn't know I had that right. I knew I had success and value in corporate America in sales leadership, but I didn't know if it was gonna be transferable to anything else. I didn't know if I was gonna be able to succeed, drive revenue. I didn't know any of these things. So where you're at right now, sister, I sat in that same boat. So it sounds like you've got skills around art and creativity. I would dive into that. All right. You know, that's your strong suit. You need to be the one to find where you need to go. No one can tell you where you should go. The fact that Elba Strand said, heather, you're writing a book, I could have very easily said, oh, no, I'm not. You know, I decided to jump on that opportunity. So here I'm telling you, you need to be an artist. Start painting, start creating, start putting yourself out there. Start going to museums and asking if you can work there. Put yourself in the element. Start taking action. First of all, you have to believe that you have the ability to do it. That's the most important thing. Believe it's possible. You have to put it out to the universe, and you need to start taking action to make it happen. Spend time, time doing the thing if the thing is painting. Spend time painting if the thing is working in museums. You know, start getting around the people that are already succeeding in that business that you want to succeed in and start taking action against it. Now, I had no idea I could write a book. So just know that it wasn't that, you know, typical corporate America skills. I didn't think typically could translate into becoming an author or a podcast host host or a keynote speaker. I didn't even know any of that was possible for me, but I just kept taking action, and that's how I found my way. Okay. Hey, Heather. I'm not sure if getting fired is what led directly to needing to step into uncertainty and take massive action, but what did stepping into that look like for you? Did you know what you were taking action on? I'm in such a rut. If my boss wasn't rooting for me, I'd be fired. Based on lack of productivity, leaning on the normal struggles of overall life. Virtual school, divorce, family issues. I know there's better on the other side of whatever I'm going through. I taste it for some reason lacking the clarity of what actions to take. Focus on life first, work, personal health. Question mark. There are so many questions, so many options. What was curious if there was more granular action plan you took? Is there maybe a person, particular podcast of yours that can highlight this? So this is you know, it just sounds like kind of being lost and down number one when you're in those situations and I've been in them. You know, I used to have a post it note on my computer and it said, drink water, meditate, go for a walk, work out, hug your child. Right? Like, it was just like the most basic things that I knew. If I slept more, if I drink more water, if I worked out more, if I hugged my child more, I would feel happier and better. So I would start there. Super basic. And that's for me, what worked for me. But you have to write down, what are those baseline things that you need that, oh my gosh, if I do these things and take care of my mental and physical health, I'll feel so much better. Because the minute that you start physically, mentally feeling better, you can start tackling these other things, then you can start saying, okay, I'm getting some momentum. I'm starting to feel physically better. That's helping me to feel optimistic. Then I would focus on gratitude every day when you wake up, what are three things I can feel grateful for? Then I would write out my New Year claims. And I've talked about this many times, you know, I would write on a piece of paper, I am so thankful and grateful that my life is so amazing, that I'm feeling so healthy and energetic and hopeful every day. I'm so grateful. I, I just got promoted to blah, blah, blah, like whatever it is that you want your life to look like, write it down as if it's already happening and read it every day and feel it and commit to it. Put it out to the universe. This is happening, people. I'm coming for you. This is my year, right? You need to start really believing in revisiting the messaging with frequency oftentimes so it becomes ingrained as part of the way that you think. When you wash your hands, state your claims. Every time you know, you're cleaning your house, go over and over in your mind exactly what that new life looks like and the fact that you're achieving it. The more you focus on the goal, the more the obstacles disappear and the solutions appear, right? So where your focus goes, your energy flows. This is all true and factual. You're getting led around by life right now. You need to lead, lead your life where you want to go. And that's a seismic seismic shift. So I would start there. Taking care of yourself first, make yourself a priority first, you know, before you can do anything else. Then as you start to feel better, I would practice gratitude every single day I would write down what your new life looks like. I would read that every day and I would start taking action steps to make those things happen. So it's raise your hand at work to say to your, your boss, hey boss, I so appreciate your support. You're amazing. Here's what I need from you now. Start asking for what you want. Ask for help. Right? Another way to feel great about yourself. Help others, do charity work, you know, help a kid that's struggling with school. You'll really start to see your own value the more you help and assist others. Once you've put yourself first, taken care of your health and start getting yourself going with building momentum, that's when you can start helping other people. They always say in an airplane crash, you put the mask on you first before you help everybody around you. So that's really, really important when you're going through a very tough time. And then as wins come up, celebrate them. Share them with people that love you and rejoice. The small wins. Because small wins will start building momentum which will ultimately take you to bigger wins. And listen, everyone's going to have bad days. We're living in a few freaking global pandemic, right? Nobody's living their best life every day. But it's about enjoying the small wins and joys that you can find in any day and focusing on those so you bring more of that into your life while taking action, while putting your goals out there and while taking chances and betting on you. I'm betting on me. I hope you are betting on you today. And if you haven't signed up for my free accountability partner program yet, go to heathermonahan.com for 30 days. You'll get an email from me every single day pushing you to be your best, to bet on you and to go all in. So if you could please rate and review the show, hit subscribe because I want to see you next week. And when you share this show on social I will always repost when you tag me until next week. Keep creating confidence. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're going to hear.

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