How to overcome pitch fright and sell to your potential with acclaimed coach Paul Elliott.

Welcome today to Paul Elliott, who runs a company called Strategic Rebel, which is really an amazing coaching company. And, and I met Paul actually through a mastermind and was struck by his energy and his vision and also some of his great experiences. So, Paul, welcome and thank you for joining us on the podcast for Silver Fox Entrepreneurs today.

Yeah, appreciate it. Appreciate the invite. Always nice to talk.

Yeah. And Paul, you know, when we first met, we were talking about your life journey. Do you want to just share with us and introduce yourself to people?

Yeah, yeah. I guess it kind of— I never really set out with any visions of being an entrepreneur. You know, I'm from what might be called traditional working-class background. So none of my family had ever started a business of their own in any shape or form. They were all employed through their lives. So I kind of was first in my family to go to university. So that was obviously a big deal. Everyone was very excited about that, especially my nana. And then when I came out of university, I just followed the path of go get a job. And I moved from being in university in Birmingham, got a job in London. And I think things started to really kind of change in my own mind day one when I turned up for work and kind of was like, so I've got to turn up every day at this time, sit in the same place all day, and I can't leave until at least 5 o'clock. And actually, they'd rather I stay later when I've got other things I want to be doing. And so I guess at that point, I began thinking, this is not the kind of life I want. So the next couple of years, I didn't do anything about it other than I had 3 jobs, got fired 3 times. And I think at the end of that, I kind of realized, you know, maybe I shouldn't be working for somebody else. So I sort of started my own first business. And by that point, I had done a bit of traveling around the world. I'd met a guy called Ed Straker in Australia who had introduced me to NLP, neuro-linguistic programming, which I'm sure you've come across, and Tony Robbins, who I'm sure you've heard of. And I read Tony Robbins' books, went to a couple of his seminars, and was like, oh, this NLP thing looks good. It sort of gives you an opportunity to serve people, help people. Coaching was brand new in the UK. I mean, it was fairly well established in the States, but in the UK, very, very new. But I thought, okay, well, this is what I'd like to do. So I sort of got myself an office in Leicester Square, which was absolutely stupid. I knew nothing about business. I knew nothing about anything other than I had this desire to kind of get out there, share what I'd learned through NLP, and thought, let's go out and transform people's lives. Everybody will be up for it. Everybody will be happy about it. But of course, you know, along the way you realize that just because you've got a great idea and you're passionate about something, you know, particularly in the UK, people can be a little bit cynical and skeptical. And it was like learning to kind of get around all of that. And I got to a point where I thought, okay, if I'm going to make a difference to people, and that's how I thought about it at the time, just generically people, then doing that one at a time, as in one-to-one coaching, is going to take me a long time to reach a significant number of people. So I thought, okay, like I've got to run events, I've got to run seminars. So I put an advert in the London Evening Standard, which at the time cost me a small fortune. Used my flexible friend for that. And on the back of that advert, 70 people came to see me speak on a Tuesday night, as it happens, at a hotel in Victoria that I'd booked. And I talked for a good 2 and a half hours, maybe a little bit longer. And at the end of it, I sort of said to people, you know, I'm going to be running this event. We're going to be covering all these different things if you want to come on it. Go to the back of the room now, sign up, and I'll see you on the seminar. And out of that, out of the 70-odd people, you can guess how many bought? None. So that caused me to kind of go and sort of sit down and think, oops, that was a bit of a mistake. So obviously spending money on the ads, spending money on the room, spending money on the AV equipment and not having anybody buying isn't a business or isn't going to be a business very long. So it was really a turning point for me in the sense of I'm a big, I don't know about you, but I'm a big fan of keeping a journal. And I always have, you know, for the last 30-odd years I've kept a journal. So I, you know, I sat in a coffee shop, cup of coffee, a journal, a pen, and just started writing my frustrations down to begin with. Like, I literally wrote pages where every word was the same word. It had 4 letters. It began with F and ended in K. And I just kept writing, writing, writing until eventually all of that embarrassment, anger, feeling stupid kind of came out. And then actually what I started to write was useful. And one of the things I wrote was a question. It was, how do people make a buying decision? And that really changed everything. So on the back of that question, it was like, okay, look, I know and I've heard of people running events like I've just tried to run where they actually make sales. So I started using, if you like, the modeling skills I'd learned through NLP to seek out people who were very good at selling from stage. So I looked at a lot of American speakers because again, the Americans were leading the way at the time. It was very well established over there as a business model. It was brand new in the UK at that time. But so I looked at American speakers. I looked at a couple of other people in the UK who had started that path, that model, and were doing it very well. And that changed everything. You know, I read a lot about psychology. Certainly Robert Cialdini. I don't know if you've come across his work. I mean, he wrote, he literally wrote the book on influence. which was an easy book to read for anybody even though he's an academic, he's a professor. And I read that. I actually got a chance to interview him as well and talk to him about his ideas. And I just sort of started using it and started literally rewrote my presentation, rewrote what I was doing, and then launched it that way. And obviously, the difference was night and day. You know, that's where it all started to really take off. Interestingly though, I mean timing I think is everything. So today, you know, fast forward to today, there's not a day goes by that there probably aren't multiple events like this going on in the UK to the point where, and even, you know, one of the big companies in the world that runs these big events is called Success Resources. They've just run an event recently in London over the last, certainly within the last week. And, you know, their model is to have a headline speaker. So they've had Tony Robbins as a headline speaker. This time around they had Gary Vaynerchuk. I don't know if you've come across him. Yeah, podcaster.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And Grant Cardone, who's kind of a big sales guy, you know, his 10X philosophy. So they had those 2 as the keynote speakers. But of course, you know, they probably come on for half an hour, an hour at the most over a couple of days. So the rest of the day is filled with pitch speakers. So, you know, the market is really so saturated with pitch speakers now that the audience for that has kind of got a little bit disillusioned, peed off at times, you know. So the kind of models had to change, if that makes sense. So the timing was right for me at the beginning, whereas now I still do that and I do a lot more online. So I do a lot more through webinar. But the manner in which I write the presentation, obviously I still have a goal that, you know, yes, I want to help people. I want them to come on a journey with me. The only way that's going to happen obviously is if they buy into what I'm offering. But I deliver it differently and I write the presentation differently because my philosophy now is rather than— I don't know if this is going off on a tangent, but rather than this concept of let's deliver a presentation where we want to maximize sales, I think that's wrong. It's like I want to deliver a presentation that helps somebody now. Even if they don't choose to buy today, it still has an impact on them positively. Because my belief now is if you deliver a presentation and all you do is pee people off, they don't want to hear from you tomorrow. Whereas if you add value today, even if they go, you know, your offer's great but it's not for me at this time, they may come back and buy tomorrow or the next day or next month or next year. Does that make sense?

It does.

So my philosophy around it has changed. And I think, you know, massively because of the fact that in any market, it soon gets saturated. So you've always got to keep innovating.

So when you talk about what was missing in the presentation in terms of the close, can you share what that was? So for people listening now, what is the secret that you discovered?

So in terms of structuring the presentation, in terms of secrets, if you like, what I delivered in the beginning was just I wanted to share ideas. You know, so it was very much too much content in a 2-hour presentation and probably too long really, even though everyone was engaged. Too much content, too much kind of going into here's how you do it, here's how you make it work. So you kind of, you, from a psychology point of view, I was leaving people with this sense of they'd got completion, they've got everything they needed, they could maybe go off and do it themselves. And I realized that was a mistake. So within the presentation, it's like, okay, let's look at it differently. Let's look at it in terms of If I share a piece of information with you and you immediately believe you can do it by yourself on your own with no help, then there's a good chance I've done you a disservice. Because for the most part, most people won't get around to doing it anyway. And the ones that do get around to at least attempting it will start to realize there's more intricacies or subtleties or more challenges to overcome along the way, and then they'll fall down again. So it's like I haven't helped in any way whatsoever then. So I began to realize that actually how, what you deliver, how much content you include, we're not so much giving them how-tos but more giving them shifts in their beliefs. So if you look at it as a big picture, a presentation done right is actually coaching. And what I mean by that is coaching is changing somebody's behavior because if you look at it from a Real big picture. People's thoughts, people's beliefs drive their thoughts. Their thoughts shape their behavior. Their behavior shapes their actions. And their actions shape their results. So right now, people are getting a certain result in their life, whatever area of life it might be, whether it's, you know, money, relationships, health. So they're getting a certain result. If they want to change that result, what's got to change? Well, their actions have got to change. But what's really going to cause their action to change? Well, they've got to change their behavior. What's going to change that? Their thoughts. What's going to change their thoughts? They need a new set of beliefs.

Right.

And so I began to realize that actually what I needed to focus on in the presentation was the beliefs that made the difference. So in other words, if you find someone who is exceptional at something and you compare that to someone who struggles with the same thing and doesn't get the result they're looking for, then I guarantee they have a different perception, a different set of beliefs around it. So if you can extract those beliefs and share them with that first person, then that immediately has an impact on them. Does that make sense? So it was like, if I can share that and get across some of the core beliefs that will make an immediate difference, and within that, let them recognize that this is the start of the journey, it's not the complete cake. And actually, to do this, it's not just about information, it's about implementation. You know, there's that old phrase, isn't there, in terms of money, it's not what you make, it's what you keep. Well, the same is true of anything now. It's like it's not just what you gather in terms of information. It's what you implement that makes a difference. And when you start talking to people about implementing things, especially when it comes to business and making money, what pops up? Fears. What drives the fears? Beliefs. So again, you're then looking at, okay, how do you reshape that? How do you help somebody? How do you give them more certainty? Well, you don't try and do it on your own for a start. You do it with someone who's already been down that path and got that result, which is where the whole concept of coaching and mentoring kind of really comes from. So that's how I approach the presentation. It's like, and then from a pure sales point of view, how you have an offer at the end, obviously, in terms of here's what's available, here's what it costs. And within that, there's all the psychology of setting up a contrast frame. So here's what it's worth, here's what you're paying today. So there's immediate contrast. And again, that's been done to death. So can you do that more in a more creative way? Yes, I can. But then actually the big thing is you start selling in your presentation from the moment you open your mouth. So right at the beginning, if you look at any of my presentations, they're very formulaic really. And there is very much within there right in the beginning, right in the opening, I start handling objections. So I actually start the selling from the moment I speak. Does that make sense? And then of course, if you get the opening right, then by the time you get to your, here's the actual offer at the end, your audience wants to hear it. They're excited to hear it. It's not, oh my God, he's about to sell me and their defenses come up. It's very much no, no. Want to hear this because if this is right for me right now, then I want to do it. And that's how it should be, but that's not how most pitch speakers get it. So when people go along to these big events and they see pitch speaker after pitch speaker after pitch speaker, 99% of which are following the same old formula in my opinion, so therefore all they manage to do is just annoy their audience. So you kind of have a situation where yes, some people go, actually, you know what? I've got that problem. The timing's perfect. I want to do this and they'll buy. So, you know, there'll be some sales made. But in terms of the rest of the room, most of the people there would be like, I never want to hear from this person again.

And do you think that's because the pitch is wrong for the audience then? Is that part of it?

I think the way it's delivered is wrong. I think there's too much emphasis on the selling and not enough emphasis on making a difference. And there's a balance between these two. You can absolutely deliver a presentation, give incredible value, value obviously being the perception from the audience's perception, not yours. So the audience go, this is great value, but they still don't buy anything. In which case you've done them a disservice because they've just, they've stopped. Nothing changes tomorrow. They wake up tomorrow, they go back to their old life. Nothing's changed whatsoever. That's not helping people. But by the same token, if all you do is focus on the sales aspects of that presentation, then people immediately just feel like you're just hammering them over the head until they finally give in and get their credit card out. That's not serving people either, in my opinion. Yeah, you know, so how do you get—

so how do you get the balance? Sounds like a very fine balance between— and you said that you're, you're kind of, you're overcoming objections from the very first slide or moment.

Without a doubt, without a doubt.

Yeah. So, so how do you sort of balance them?

Objections are really concerns. They're fears at the heart of it. You know, there's a— because people have got certain questions going on in their head. One is, can I afford it? Which isn't really the right question. So you've got, can I afford it? Do I have the time to do this? So people consider, do I have the time? Do I have the money? Those are your 2 primary objections, which I think are obvious. And then beyond that, the biggest objection which nobody ever voices consciously is, can I do this? So self-doubt is the biggest objection you ever face. You know, why are more people not running their own little business, independent, or carrying on going to a job they hate? because actually they don't have the confidence and the skills to do the thing they really want to do. The skills are readily available. You can go on YouTube and get most of the skills. But the skills by themselves aren't enough because obviously we can then come back to implementation. What gets in the way of implementation? Self-doubt. So then really my role is one, yes, to give you my insights on that information having used it, not just read it in a book. But beyond that, it's like I want to help dismantle the fears, guide you, put you on the right path, handle the challenges coming up, and so on.

And do you think then— so that's a great point— for people in their 50s, the community that we're talking about, for the silver foxes, do you find that people have got more fears or less fears, more self-confidence or more doubt?

I think it's kind of a mixed bag in some ways. I mean, statistically, if you look at people starting their own business, Then what you notice is in terms of success, like making the business a success, making it profitable, and the business still being in business a few years later, the older you are, the more successful you are.

That's right.

So therefore, what does that tell you? It tells you that those people starting a business have probably been in a corporate environment or a business environment working for somebody else for a number of years. That experience has highlighted a lot of filling in the gaps of what they need to know. Like when I started in my 20s, I knew nothing. And with hindsight, I wish somebody had come along and said, look, these are all the skills you're going to need before you start your business. I didn't know what I didn't know. I was completely ignorant. Ignorance is not bliss, by the way. Ignorance is pain because it bites you hard.

Ignorance is expensive actually.

It's very expensive. Yeah, without a doubt. So somebody in their 50s who's come through a corporate environment has seen all the different functions in that business. So they understand those functions serve a purpose. You need a marketing department. You need sales department. You need operations. You need HR. You need all these things obviously when you get to a certain size. But even from the get-go, if you're just the brand new you on your own with your laptop, you need marketing and sales. You know, you need something to sell. So I think, you know, the older people who've been through that path of being in corporate understand and recognize that even if they don't have those skills, they need to have them in their business somehow. So I think that adds to their confidence which therefore adds to their ability to be successful.

I think that one of the functions that we're hoping to fulfill within the Silver Fox Entrepreneurs Group is to create a community for people later on that can engage. And maybe we're not looking for mentors in the same way as we were when we were younger, but we're certainly looking for peers to talk through. And now you were talking earlier on, and when we were talking before about having a sense of purpose, You want to share a little bit about, you know, where that's coming from and what kind of business do you plan to run now, Paul, that kind of meets your desire for some financial independence, but also for the sense of purpose that you have?

Yeah. So I mean, from a, you know, my biggest driver has always been impact in terms of wanting to make a difference. That's always driven everything I've done. And I think on the one hand, that's kind of got me into problems in the past where I haven't put profit as high as it needed to be. Because of course, you don't help the poor by being one of them. And you can't continue growing your business if you're not making a profit. So I think it's caused me problems in the past. But it is still my main driver. I've just learned how to make sure that profit is still an important consideration. So in terms of my business now, it's like, can I serve people? What do I see that's missing? I see skill sets that are missing. So I want to fill that gap. And I see— and this is where the name Strategic Rebel came from. It's like, you do need to be strategic. It's like you've got to understand where are you now? Where do you want to get to? What's going to close that gap? And what's the simplest path that's going to close that gap? And I think if you have absolute clarity on those things, then it stops people overthinking, overanalyzing, and stops people then procrastinating and just obviously spending the next 5 years not making any progress. So I really want to share the core skills. And without a doubt, the core skill in business, in life is influence. You know, all sales and marketing is influence. All negotiation in property investing, negotiation is important. That's all influence. All of your relationships with your partner, with your children, with other people, it's all influence. And so if you can recognize that influence is a core skill, and I've spent, you know, the last 30 years mastering that as a skill, then obviously that's going to give you a major advantage in anything you want to do. And what I've learned, of course, is, you know, the 80/20 rule applies. You know, there are key things I can share with people that they can pick up relatively quickly, which will give them 80% of the result for 20% of the input. Yeah.

Now, You've done something that, that looks so impressive on your website, uh, on strategicrebel.com. You've got a number of courses where you've obviously managed to kind of codify what you've learned, productize it, and promote it. Can you share with us? Because a few people we know, um, we've been talking with have got great skill sets and they could replicate them by making them online. Can you share how you've done that? Because you've got obviously great success and knowledge in that.

Yeah, yeah. Well, again, I kind of, I started with obviously still the driver of I want to make a difference. So then in my head, it's like, okay, if I'm going to make a difference and I want to share something with somebody, then kind of the keys to that is that it's not just good enough that I can do this. If I share this and teach it, then of course, whoever's learning has got to be able to do this as well. So it's like my first question was, well, how do I break this down so that it's easy to understand? And then out of that, I kind of started thinking, well, if I can create it almost as a roadmap so it's as close to step-by-step as possible. Obviously, in the real world, you know, the real world is not paint-by-numbers. It's not step-by-step. But you've got to take a step, maybe get the feedback, adjust slightly, then take the next step. But there's always the fundamental big steps across the river. So that's how I broke it down. Everything I teach, I start by mapping the gap, literally by saying, okay, where is the person I'm trying to teach? Where are they now? What's their current situation? What's the goal they want to get to? What's that gap? And then okay, how do I break that gap down? And I'll from a teaching perspective, and I got this both from researching kind of learning theory, teaching theory, but also if you've ever had kids and you've ever watched anything like Dora the Explorer, one of the great things about Dora the Explorer is if you've never seen it, go watch an episode of it.

We love Dora. I have two daughters.

Absolutely. Yeah, of course. Yeah, look at us. Vámonos. Vámonos. Yeah, and always the map. The map comes out, so Dora's always got somewhere where she is and somewhere where she's got to get to. So immediately there's a gap. And then out comes the map to tell her where she needs to go to get to her destination. And of course, the map only ever has 3 things in it. So it's like everything's chunked into 3 big steps.

Hmm.

So I follow that same principle. It's like you want to be able to close the gap in 3 big steps. If you look at any of my online presentations, whatever I'm teaching, I break it into 3 major steps, 3 major chunks. Then within the chunk, you go down a level and you break that chunk into 3 more chunks. And if you wanted to and need to, You can take any of those 3 chunks and go down another level and break them into 3 chunks. So you can start with big picture and go into detail. But it makes it easy because a lot of the research that's been done in the past demonstrated that people chunk information. Like, you know, you probably remember your telephone number in 3 chunks. They chunk information and that's how they store it in their mind. But once you get beyond 3, and certainly once you get beyond 5, it becomes much harder to remember.

Yeah.

So that's my first principle in terms of teaching. It's like, okay, can I break this into 3 pieces? And the philosophy is it's a roadmap. I want to help somebody go from where they are to where they need to be. And then the NLP kind of came in in the sense of, all right, what helps drive behavior is belief. So what are my core beliefs around this? Why am I effective here when other people aren't? What are the beliefs that are driving it? And I use the, you know, selling from stage as an example. I was in South Africa back in 2014. And we had a local promoter and we were doing 3 events in a week. So we were doing Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town. And there was me, there's probably a handful of other speakers, and one of the speakers was also the host for the events. And he was a local guy, very energetic, great speaker, very charismatic. But as soon as he started promoting something, so he'd get up, he'd do a big, great big thing, the audience would love him. And then of course, he was almost like attached, you know, I've got to sell something on the end of this. So he wasn't approaching it in the right way. And of course, as soon as he started to sell, his energy dropped through the floor. You could see it. He wasn't comfortable at all. He was really uncomfortable. And when he came off, I said to him, look, you're not doing you or the audience any favors. And I said, like, one of my core beliefs is, I've already touched on this, is this is a journey. So this is the start. If these people don't come on this journey with you, you can't help them. And if you absolutely know you can make a positive difference in their life, then they have to come on the journey with you.

Yeah. Right.

That's the beliefs I operate from, which is why I'll say to people, I'm here now. And I'll tell them, I'll even actually say that consciously, like, this is a journey. You know, if you take what you hear from me today and you do nothing with it, then, you know, I make a joke about I'll hunt you down. I'll find out where you live. I'll hunt you down. But, you know, it's that very much like you want— all knowledge must end in action. So that's my core belief. So then it's like, this is a journey. So I shared those beliefs with them. So when I'm teaching something, I'm also going, well, what are my beliefs? What are my beliefs that allow me to make this work? Because it's not just the information. It's not just the steps. It's like what are the beliefs? Like what's the difference between Gordon Ramsay, who's a London lad that's written, sold hundreds of millions of books? You know what I mean? These top chefs. What's the difference between these top chefs and me trying to make the same dish?

Yeah.

Because I've got the ingredients and I've got the little piece in the book that tells me, you know, Jamie what's-his-face that tells me how to do all of this. But I do it, it doesn't taste anything like when they do it.

No, I wish for me too. So do you think, Paul, that when coming back in a way to the earlier part of the conversation, do you think it's a lack of self-confidence where people then can't close? That they don't believe that other people will? Well, because you say he comes off the stage. Is it— I mean, ultimately people, I'm guilty of this too, I share all this information, then you go, well, they didn't buy. And I've been working on getting better at that. But is it because someone is afraid of Rejection? Is that the fundamental issue when people don't close?

I think that's at the heart of it. Yeah, I think that's at the heart of it. They don't want people to be angry with them. They don't want people to, if you like, reject them in any way. You know, we have a— and that's in evolutionary psychology terms, you know, we have an absolute need to connect with other human beings. You know, why are human beings tribal? Because ultimately, it increases your chances of survival. So we're still driven by that. You know, it wasn't my original thought, but I forget the guy's name, so I can't give him credit. But he did a little diagram and he basically said, you know, we're all, we're all still cavemen with briefcases.

Yeah.

So we're still driven by the oldest part of our brain in evolutionary terms, and that is very much wired for survival. So if you think someone's going to be angry with you or disconnect from you in some way, then of course at a deep unconscious level, then that threatens your survival in a tribal sense. And that still drives us. So, you know, this guy was getting on stage and as soon as he got to the sale, he was getting very uncomfortable because he didn't want people to be angry with him. And so that is a big issue. And so it's like you've got to overcome that. And the way you overcome that is recognize actually, no, this is a journey. I'm going to transform your life. And if I can't transform your life, I shouldn't be bloody here in the first place. So that's, you know, that's my core belief. So it's therefore I have a duty to do whatever's required to get you to make a decision to come on this journey. And in sales, most people, like you say, operate from this place of, oh, people don't like salespeople. They think salesmen, saleswomen are all slimy snakes selling snake oil. And that is a perception. That's still a perception that persists. But I think hopefully that that's been destroyed by people like me to some extent who are kind of coming at it from the no. It's not about— one of the things that I'll, you know, one of my common things that I tell people is, you know, the tools of good and the tools of evil, they're the same tools. What makes a difference is the intention behind them. So selling is a skill. You can learn the skills. There are nuances to it without a doubt. You know, you've got to handle objections, which means you've got to be aware what those objections are. But the way you handle them, you can do it in a very crass way. You can do it in a very subtle way. You can do it in a very elegant way. But you can learn to do it. So then whether you do it effectively then comes down to your beliefs around it. And if your beliefs are, oh, I don't want to upset this person. I don't want to offend them. You know, like I don't really want to talk about money. Well, you need to get rid of those beliefs because you're not serving you and you're definitely not serving your client.

Paul—

If you've got the cure for cancer, you're not running around going and saying, oh, I'm going to keep it to myself because I don't want to upset anybody.

No, that's— Paul, that is so articulate and so energized and energizing. If people want to find out more about you, Paul, how can they do that? Where can they go and what to learn more about?

Simplest way, yeah. Well, I would say simplest way, if you want to connect with me, go on LinkedIn. I use LinkedIn quite heavily. I think it's a great platform at this moment in time. So, you know, connect with me on there, Paul Elliott. If you want to find me, obviously through the website strategicrebel.com, drop me a line. And those are probably the easiest things. But yeah, if you want, LinkedIn is where I tend to— if I write a blog post or I do a video on YouTube, then I'll obviously promote it on LinkedIn and tell my connections about it. So that's probably the way to stay in touch with me long term. Or otherwise, on your platform, of course, you know, we're all on your platform. They want to send me a message through that.

Perfect. They can find you on silverfoxentrepreneurs.life. That's great. So Paul, thank you so much for joining us today. And we'll include obviously notes in the show notes on how to get hold of Paul as well. So thank you and believe in yourself and you're on a mission. It's not selling, it's sharing. Thank you very much. Do subscribe or leave a rating. And for more information, please visit silverfoxentrepreneurs.life and drop me an email. I'd love to hear from you. And maybe we can get you on the podcast and share what you know, or let me know what you'd like to know. Thank you once again. Have a great day.