Genius Network Presents: Nothing is Impossible interview with Sean Stephenson

Hello, this is Joe Polish, founder of Genius Network, and I'm here with a good friend of mine and just an amazing guy by the name of Sean Stephenson. If you don't know me, I run the highest level discussion group in the world for people that are thought leaders. And Sean has been teaching people how to professionally speak and present, not only on stage, but on video. You've got a best selling book that Tony Robbins wrote the forward to called get off youf Butt. You want to rid the world of insecurity. You have many skill sets. You're a PhD. One of the main things you do though, is teach people how to be most effective with communication, be it in front of groups of people or whatever environment. So if you're a person that realizes the power of being a more effective communicator can be to you, then I'm going to ask Sean a lot of questions about speaking and also know that speaking could apply to any form of addressing any sort of audience over the Internet on videos and live presentations.

Well, first of all, thank you for having me, Joe. And I got to say, my greatest accomplishment is being a member of your organization.

Well, thank you.

You're welcome.

And you're awesome. People love you there and you always add so much value to it. So you have been speaking for what, 22, 23 years?

22 years.

So you probably have seen a lot of speakers.

Yeah.

Okay, which. Which ones suck? Like out of all of them?

A few come to mind.

No, I'll say. Seriously. I mean, I've been in this business for many, many years, so in suck is not just in terms of skill set, but in terms of integrity, in terms of promises. There's a lot of ways to look at it. What differentiates a powerful, effective, impactful, profitable speaker versus one that does not?

Well, I'll just tell you when I sucked and what I did to stop sucking, and then what I've seen other people do.

Okay.

When most people suck at speaking, it's because they get very technical and they get so robotic that they. They're more worried about where do I put my hands? Than what the heck am I conveying and why am I doing this in the first place. Right. And you know, most speeches that you remember in your life, you don't remember what the speaker said. Yeah. You remember how they make you feel.

Totally.

And so the speakers that are able to convey an energy that is right to your heart, where you can't look away because you're just leaning in and you just feel like they get you those are the speakers that make all the difference in our lives. And the speakers that suck are the ones that are so concerned about their agenda. Right. You know, buying something at the end of the talk or joining my group or whatever it is where they're so fixated on them that they lose out on why there's an audience there in the first place. Another thing that I notice about speakers that I went through myself is when you suck, it's because you're in your head and you're not in the flow and you're thinking about, do I look good? How do I sound? Like I said, robotic in some ways. And you want to get to that place where you get into the flow and into the zone. And we can talk more about that as we move forward here.

Yeah, well, one thing that there's a marketing term that I've always loved, which is people don't buy from you because they understand what you do. People buy from you because they feel understood. And when you're able to communicate and convey and get into their heads, there's a lot that you can do with that. And selling and speaking and marketing are very similar. I mean, you can, even if you're not selling something, it's just you're wanting to influence people. You're giving them an ability to think differently about what it is you're presenting. And sometimes you actually are selling stuff. And I define selling as influence and I define marketing as storytelling. And if you're more influential, you're going to get more buy in. If you tell a better story, you're going to enroll people. And so if you're going to speak, you want to either attract or repel. I mean, that's sort of an activity, selling. And so I wanted to frame it that way because people that are watching this, they may have never given the public presentation in their life, maybe they want to, but they're definitely afraid of it. So when we even talk about speakers that suck, they're like, I've never even spoke before, so I'm certainly going to suck. And they're going to go through that whole fear, you know, the whole statistics about how more people are afraid of public speaking than dying. And I know that you actually teach people how to get over those fear. And one thing with obviously pointing out the fact that you are three feet tall and are in a wheelchair, in case you didn't know that, I always say to people, it's like, look, you can come up with all kinds of objections about how you can't do this. You can't speak, you can't work out. Shawn does this stuff all the time. So it's a learned skill. And if you want to be good at it, you learn from someone that has that skill, that's been doing it many, many times for years. And if you, if you need to hire a brain surgeon, do you want someone that, you know, just got out of medical school and has never performed brain surgery, or do you want a brain surgery who's done it a thousand times? What will that, what are the chances that that person is going to really be the one that you need? And so I look at you as that way. You have done literally thousands of speeches and communications, either in person or on video, and you have what, like, close to a million followers on Facebook, and you just recently did a video that has been viewed as we sit here 67 million times. So you clearly know how to get messages out to the marketplace. And so here we are. And I've got a list of questions for you. I'm rambling here, but I think this is good.

Well, so let's talk about. You mentioned storytelling as marketing. And storytelling is huge in speaking, because when you tell somebody, okay, do this in your business, they're going to give you resistance. Do this in your marriage, do this with your children. It sets up this attitude that you know something they don't, and therefore you're superior. And they're just having to just take the advice. And that breaks rapport with the audience. This is where storytelling comes in. Whether it's storytelling in the form of marketing or storytelling in the form of professional speaking, it is a way to put the ego to rest of your audience member where they're able to just lean back and listen to a story. I mean, who doesn't love a good story? Think about how many stories we've been told and been telling our whole lives. And we love good stories. That's why we read books, fiction books, or watch movies or watch, you know, when we binge on episodes of Netflix and watching TV series, it's because we love that story. We don't know how it's going to end. And it pulls us into the plot. And so really good speaker has the ability to captivate the imagination with that storytelling ability. And if you can get the story to have what I call bridge moments where you're now not just talking about the character, but you're talking about them as the character, you know, not everybody is three feet tall in the wheelchair. Very few people are going to live their life looking like me. But Every single person has something about their appearance that maybe they're a little uncomfortable. You know, they have some element, maybe their ears are a little too big, maybe they feel like they have excess weight, maybe they don't feel tall enough. Whatever it is, we all have abnormalities that we fixate on visually. So when you're telling a really good story, you need to say, you know, what is it in your life when you look in the mirror that makes you anxious, makes you want to be able to just photoshop it out, make it bigger, make it smaller. And as you're telling the story with the listener in mind, you bridge from the speech and from the stage out to the audience. They get pulled in because they know it's not just about the speaker. And so a really good storyteller tells, activates the imagination of their audience. Another really good element of storytelling is you don't know what's going to happen. You know, people say, oh, I, I love surprises. No, I don't. They like surprises that end well, right? And when you have stories, surprise, you're bankrupt. Yeah, exactly. Surprise, I want a divorce. Right. It's like when you get those kinds of surprises, they hook you. They're like, oh, I didn't see that coming. And that's another really good, powerful element of storytelling is don't just tell them what they expect. Tell them, throw some curves to them. Life does that. So as a storyteller, you need to do the same where somebody goes, wait a minute, I didn't see that coming at all. I have a story that I teach about how we shouldn't judge other people. And there's this twist to the story where you start to hate this little kid, but then you learn this little piece about this child and how bad their childhood was, and then all of a sudden you don't hate the kid at all anymore. You, you love the kid and you feel bad for hating the kid. And those little turns in the story are what hook people and bring them in. And as you know, a veteran speaker of 22 years, that's just one of many little tricks to telling the story so that the audience is leaning forward and they can't wait to hear what's coming.

Now to play devil's advocate, but Sean, you know, I'm not very creative. I don't have a deep imagination, I don't have tremendous skill. I'm introverted, I'm definitely afraid of speaking and I'm not quick witted and I can't do improv. I mean, there's all kinds of things. What would you say to that?

Well, the biggest thing I would say is, you know, when you get up on stage, you're not ad libbing. When you get up on stage, you have a model that you should be following. And that's what I teach is you should have a formula, a model that you are putting in stories that make sense for your points and you're taking the audience on a journey. So it's not really about being gregarious and juggling and making sure that the audience is thinking that at any moment you're going to light yourself on fire. No.

Although you could.

Although that could be a good part of your speech, the big part of it. When you're putting together your talk, you want to make sure that it's you on stage. And this is where I see some speaker trainers going off the rails with their students. They make them little copies of them. So that person marches out of that speaker training and they become little versions of that speaker. And I always say, you don't want to be a little version of Sean. I'm already pretty small. Right. You don't want to be pocket sized. Right. So I teach people like, how do you find your own authentic voice? If somebody's shy, I don't want them to get up on stage and try to push, you know, some kind of gregarious personality. It's going to be incongruent. I'm going to say, okay, if your dry sense of humor. Use your dry sense of humor. You know, if it's like you, somebody's not funny at all, I just say, you know, just enjoy not being funny at all on stage.

That was an attempt to show me how much you love me.

Yes, of course.

Okay, so let me ask you some questions that I typed up on my electronic device here. Well, so in order to be skilled at something, it's nice to actually enjoy it or find value in it or love it. So why do you like or love speaking? Why this?

Well, I get my message out, Joe, as you mentioned earlier, through lots of different formats. We do webinars, podcasts, we do, you know, streaming video, a lot of different things. But the reason why I love this and I say this, being up on stage with a live theater, is you get instant feedback. You get to look at people's faces and read their body language and interact with them. So speaking now to me is more like surfing. I can see the wave coming when all of a sudden I say something that may make people squirm a little bit. We're talking about sur serious issues, maybe something that is going on in their personal life and you can watch it wash over the crowd. And being able to have that, it's almost like a dance with the audience. I love being able to take an audience on high highs and low lows and back. It's like a roller coaster. And so that that instant feedback. Most people spend their whole life like this. They're either holding their their phone or they're sitting at a computer screen. And this ability to see a human being for one hour uninterrupted and being able to have a heart to heart conversation where you can watch the tears well up in their eyes, where you can hear the laughter just spread over the crowd. It's the experience of that bubble where this theater becomes a safe space for people to feel emotion and they put their life on pause. Joe, you run events every year. You have large crowds and you also have, you know, monthly smaller gatherings. You know that when a human being feels safe to share their emotions, that's when transformation can take place in somebody's life. If it's just clinical, if they can hide behind a computer screen, if they can hide behind their phone, Something doesn't connect as deep as being able to see them and have them really there. I guess the thing that I love most is the interaction. I mean I've tried to leave the speaking industry. Multiple times I've said oh, I hate traveling or I don't want to run a live event. I know you and I have talked about the woes of live events. Filling up the seats are challenging, but yet we keep doing it. And it's not just because of the money.

It is very powerful to actually influence and yield a certain impact. Power, persuasion, changing people's minds in ways that it's hard to put words into that. You almost have to experience it, what it does for your confidence level. And let's just take money. I mean a lot of people that would pay to come to an event of yours as an example, which I'll talk about because you do trainings for people and I'll ask you about your upcoming trainings and how people can personally get trained by you. There's a money aspect to it. A lot of people want to enter speaking because they're like, oh, this is going to be a great way to Selling one on one is not as effective as selling to large groups of people. So if we just go to the money aspect. When I was a dead broke carpet clean cleaner living off credit cards and I learned marketing back in 1992. I was first introduced to direct response marketing and that was after two years of living off credit cards, going deeply in debt, being, you know, ethical, caring about my clients, and still being broke because I didn't know how to package and present myself in ways that people would hire, you know, a carpet cleaner. And of course I started out in business selling something nobody wants to buy, which is carpet cleaner. So if you have to figure out how to effectively sell something no one wants to buy, it really forces you to learn how to present and package yourself. After I learned some marketing techniques, I turned my small company around and then I started thinking, wow, how many other people throughout the world could benefit from what I know? How do I tell them? So I wrote sales letters and did direct mail and ran ads and then I eventually started selling. Speaking in the very first public presentation I had given in the form of a seminar, I wrote a letter and I signed up 52 people to pay $97 to come to a one day event. And people would tell me that after the first two or three minutes, you know, the nervousness will subside and you'll be able to do it. I was like nervous as hell the entire day. And I never had anyone like you. I didn't go to some training and get trained how to do it. What I did is I actually sold tickets to a show and then I.

Had the performance, in true marketing fashion, sell it, then build it, right?

And So I had 52 people show up. Most of them were twice my age because I'm like in my mid-20s and I think I was 24, 25 at the time. And basically I sat and talk to this group of cleaners and at the end of it I actually made an offer for my program and I sold $12,000 worth of programs. And I thought to myself, this is pretty damn good. It's not that the 12,000 is pretty damn good because at the time it was great. Now I ended up doing really well and that was the start of me building a multimillion dollar publishing company. What was really great is those people bought my stuff and went back and doubled their businesses. Some tripled it. And fast forward, we've had over 8,000 service companies that have changed their lives. I've saved many people from bankruptcy. I've had people send me suicide notes saying had I not met you and solved this financial thing, I was going to kill myself. Which, you know, whatever, thank God they didn't. And there's many different things. It's just you never realize how you can Change people's lives until you just get out there and do it. And it was nerve wracking for me in order to do it. The first time was. It was difficult. But I'll tell you, it was one of the most rewarding things I'd ever done. And I was an incredibly shy kid growing up. I couldn't even ask someone out on a date without shaking like crazy. I mean, my heart would beat out of my chest. It was hard to interact with other people. Now I've spoken to groups of 5,000 people. I'm doing a presentation next year in front of 12,000 people for an hour. Had you asked me that in the very beginning, could you do that? It'd be like, no, there's no way. So the point is, no matter where you're at, don't be so sure that you cannot do this, and don't be so sure that you can not impact people. As a matter of fact, if you have some confidence in at least taking the steps to learn how to do it and listen to someone like you, who's been doing it, who's had enormous challenges. But still, I'll tell you, like, there's a lot of people that have your condition that are probably pretty miserable because they have never created an outlet to impact other human beings. And I know one of the things that drives me, and I would like to think it drives you, is that, you know, when you open up your mouth and you have a camera on you or you're in front of an audience, it makes you feel good when you know that people are like, wow, you know this. This person's adding some sunshine to my life. This person's teaching me how to be a better human, how to run a better business, how to be more effective at what I'm doing. And everyone, anyone that would ever watch this, there's something that if they just knew they could say it to the world and do it in a way to where they would win, they'd be doing it all day long. So the question is, how do we actually get them to that state?

Yeah. Well, if you knew your audience really well, you would never worry about speaking. I want you to think about that for a second. If you knew who was in your audience and what they were going through, you would never worry about your speaking skills, your view of how they look at you. I'll give you an example. I gave a speech recently to 5,000 people, and the night before, I met with their top 600 leaders in the company. And I asked the 600 leaders to text in anonymously to this number their greatest insecurity. And so the top leaders, the 600 best and brightest leaders, texted in their insecurities. And we got over, like, 550 submissions, so we got pretty much everybody. And then I gave the talk to the 5,000 people, and I read the top 10 most common insecurities of the leaders, and they were just floored by how even the best and the brightest in their company were struggling with challenges just like them. And what I teach is that the only difference between you and a leader, the only difference between the person on stage and the audience member, is do you push through your pain? You know, it's not always easy for me to go to work. You know, there are times where I go to work and I just found out somebody I love died or I'm sick to my stomach and I'm vomiting off stage. But I have a commitment to be on that stage. I've had so many different challenges happen right before I go on stage, But I have to just remember one thing, and that's the pain that's in the audience. Most of the human beings that you will ever present to, they're going through rough times. They're either going through challenges and their heartache, they're going through challenges financially, they're going through challenges and raising their children with their own body. Like, you don't get through life unscathed. No one gets to live a life without a problem, let alone several. And so when you get on a stage and you look out and you don't see eyes and ears and, oh, I hope they like me, and I hope they think I'm funny. But instead, you see what kind of pains in this room. That might sound dark, but actually it puts me into a better perspective because I'm like, I'm here to serve right now. And when you come from a place of service, nerves and fear and sweaty palms and all that, that just dissipates naturally, because you realize you have a very short window of time with somebody who you could impact them to not kill themselves that night or to make a change in their business that brings in dramatic increase in their profits, that then they can actually have so much more resources to see the world with their family or to have the money to help their hospital bills. I mean, you have no idea when you are impacting another human being, how far the ripple goes.

And it's true. And so that which you fear but don't face controls you. That which you fear, fear and take steps to face. You can Control it, or at least get a lot better at it. And the thing is, is that what are the consequences of not doing it? So a lot of people can say, well, you know, it's going to be hard. It's going to be challenging. Well, you know, it's going to be more challenging is regret and say, I could have made that difference. I could have learned that. And so, you know, people, I'm too young, I'm too old, I'm too experienced, I'm too unexperienced. I mean, there's a million different experiences, excuses. But the point is, you know, what would this do for you if you just put yourself out there just a little bit more?

When I think every person in my audience has a solution for me, they have gone through something. You know, if you were in my audience, you would have a series of solutions for people on how to develop their marketing. You know, somebody else they might be on how to deal with children with autism. Somebody else it might be how to cook an incredible souffle for a big, you know, dinner party. I mean, whatever it is, there are solutions in every single person that sits in my audience. And so I am excited to teach people to not be selfish. Don't hold on to your solutions. Bring them up on stage, share them. As a speaker, I personally believe when I meet somebody and they've overcome something massive, they should be speaking. If all they do is maybe 10 speeches in their life, what good could that do for the world? Let alone once they get that speaker bug and they get hooked and somebody hands them a check for 10, 20, $30,000. I mean, you don't have to get many of those fun tickets. Change your brain quickly and realize, wait a minute, I'm speaking all day for free. It's about time I get paid, right?

Oh, there's something magical when you get paid for something that you never thought you could get paid for. And not only do people pay you, they will stand in line because they want your autograph. They will literally talk to you with intimidation. And of course, I do my best not to believe my lpr and I warn people about that, you know, the good and the bad. So don't let your ego get a hold of you. And it's amazing. It can do wonders for pumping up your ego when you. When you have the ability to get up in front of an audience. And it's hard for me to even relate to this now, a lot of people, the mere fact that you're one of those people that can get up and talk that impresses some people because most people can't even do that. They literally are so scared shitless that they will not get up on stage and do it. And so even getting that step is great. And once you do that and you keep at it, keep at it, then one day, and it doesn't in some cases take that long, especially if you get a coach, especially if you learn a certain formula. So going back to the formulas, okay.

If I could say one thing about that. A speaker is a tribal leader of the room. That's the tribal leader of the audience. You know that room, if there's 5,000 people in that moment, they are the tribal leader. And everybody looks up to them and says, lead us. And I, you know, people get so, so bogged down with, well, I don't have the credentials to be a speaker. You know, I don't have the expertise. And I'll tell you, in my 22 years of speaking, I found that human beings crave leadership more than credibility.

There's people that have gone to prison and while they're in prison, they write books. And then when they get out, they start talking about their crimes and they literally get paid for it.

Oh, big time too.

Movies get made about this.

Yeah, absolutely. Because it's a good story.

Yeah, yeah. So people have to rethink what they can or cannot speak to. So you talked about formulas. So I'd like you to teach me as quickly as possible how to put together an entire speech. If you do have a formula.

Yeah, I actually do have a formula. And I'm going to show it to you with the visual aid. I got something right on the other side here that's going to help you.

This thing?

Yep, right there. Okay.

And begin.

So I want you to think about a speech totally different than you ever thought of it. Most people think about, I gotta have points, I gotta, I gotta impress them. I've gotta be. I got a funny opener. Just put all that aside. I just want you to think about a speech in three simple blocks stories. They're the blue blacks, activities are the yellow blocks and your points are the red blocks. And now you have the start of a speech. And depending on how much time you have, you can have as many of these three black chunks as you need. So for instance, if somebody says, hey, I need you to do a 10 minute talk like you do in your genius network meetings, you might say, great, I'm going to start with a really funny story, get them laughing. Then I don't want it just to be about any old Story, I want to have a reason for why I told it. And so I want them to be able to digest their story with an activity. So I might have them write something down on a worksheet or turn into a group of three. And now that's starting to get them to digest the material to you were teaching to the story. So now you have your activity in the story. And then lastly you have your point which is the whole tie, tie in of the story and the activity. And the point is where you can have your facts, it's where you can show research, it's where you can reference interviews that you've done with other people to add credibility to what you were doing. But when you have a speech, just start thinking about, I need a story, an activity and I need a point. And in a one hour speech you pretty much only need, I call the SAP story activity point. You only need about three SAPs to make a speech. Three stories, three activities and three points. And when you start to think about, man, it's just blocks in my head. Well then when you're planning, you know, like you do multi day conferences, you're like, great, I need a bunch of blue blocks, bunch of stories to choose from. I need a bunch of different activities to pick from, a bunch of points, things that I want to teach, you know, Give me an example of a point in marketing that you would teach.

Robotic marketing how to can and clone yourself using sales letters or 24 hour free recorded messages.

Okay, so now robotic marketing you call it. Well, you could tell a story about the first time you ever can and cloned yourself right then. Now what would be an activity?

Creating a consumer awareness guy.

There you go. So now you have the start to your keynote and you know, if you want it emotional, you get an emotional story. If you want it to be just factual about how you came across something, it could be just a story just to establish the scene. But story activity points.

Yeah, you know, I want to say this too. So if people are thinking, well, you know, I'm not really super skilled at something because of course everyone is in something. But you can do talks on anything. Like for instance, remember that movie how to lose a guy in 10 days? You can do speeches on something that almost everyone's done. How to destroy a really great relationship or how to go broke very quickly.

You got stories on both, actually dozens.

It could be an entire series, a Netflix series. But the point is you can actually take any sort of life experience using that model and you can make a funny speech, you can Call it something to get someone's attention, but then within it are some great life lessons, because you can tell people what to do. If you know what to do in certain areas, you can tell people what not to do. If you've learned what not to do, you can tell people how to do it. You can tell people how to think about it. You can use this for knitting. How to teach a parent how to talk, how to, you know, build and grow a business, how to get hired, how to walk away from something in your life that's not working, how to, you know, overcome pain.

And what's great about this model, and as a professional speaker, somebody pays you to show up and bring both information and entertainment. That's what a speaker is supposed to do. A speaker is supposed to shift emotion and transfer ideas. That's when a speech gets good and. And sometimes you get to your speech and they say, joe, we're actually running late on time. We're going to give you an hour. Now you only get 15 minutes. Most people would freak out. They'd be like, well, I planned out an hour. I memorized an hour. If you had your SAP model, you would go, great. I'll just cut a few of those stories, or I'll cut a couple of the points, or I'll just reduce one of those activities. And you can just mix and match, and you can be as flexible as you need to right before you step on stage. I can't tell you how many times this simple model bailed me out over the years.

I love it. I love it. So I'm going to hide this.

Perfect.

I might take it home with me.

Yeah, I can autograph it for you.

Expect me to show up here and just not take things with me. So how do you handle someone who is really petrified to get on stage and to share their message? I know we spoke about this. I just think that that's an obstacle to some people. And if they can't, they can see you giving a presentation. They can hear about me, they can see other people. But if they can't believe they can do it, then we can talk formulas, we can do stuff all day long. It's just not going to bridge that gap. And I would really like people that are watching and listening to this to have a sense of possibility.

Yeah. So what I can do is we can actually show a clip from my first event that you presented at 10k speeches, where I took a young lady in my audience who was definitely afraid of speaking, brought her up on stage. I don't know if you saw this activity. And we took her through a process that we're going to show right now.

With the mirror?

Yeah, with the mirror. And walking her through what the audience is going through. So let's show that now. I want to find somebody who is still feeling fear when they think about speaking and they feel fear with entering into this career of speaking. Maybe they've been in it for a while and they are still dealing with fears. It causes jitters. It causes panicking sweats. It causes sleepless nights. I want to find the individual who is going to represent our fear. She's got her hand up before we even ask for the volunteer. So if you'll come on up here, you and I, Nicole, we're gonna have an experience. Ready? Nicole, tell me your level of speaking. How long have you been speaking? Have you been speaking? Walk us through where you're at.

And I have stories that move people.

And when I speak, a lot of.

Times, I start off really confident I.

Can fake it for a while. And then I get to this point where it's like I can't breathe. Like, I want to cry. Like you want to cry? Yeah. Okay, I'm doing right now. So I want you to think about a struggle that you're in. And I don't want, like, oh, I'm struggling to get my business off the ground. I don't want, like, things that we may all be dealing with. I want to know the truth. I want to know going through divorce right now and tell us about it. I want to know about what's happening to your children. I want to know about a family member you just lost. I want to know pain. I want pain in the room to get a voice, because I'm going to show this lovely lady something. So I want you to tell us about some of the pains you're in. One pain only. There may be a lot of pain, but I'm looking for one thing you went through recently. It's been really hard, really painful. And here's what I want you to do. You're going to say your pain, and then it's Nicole, right? You're going to say, nicole, I need your help. That's how you're going to finish speakers in line. Do you get that? You're going to say your pain, and then you're going to say, nicole, I need your help.

And after about 40 years of being.

A single man, I finally found love in marriage.

And after 11 years, that marriage ended earlier this year in a horrible divorce.

And I'm Brokenhearted. And I have fear that I'm now going to be alone. I need your help.

I am scared to death of the ridicule that I could face and maybe I'm supposed to face, because I know that the more I step into my power and the more I bring my message to the world, I can and probably will be confronted by with more of the mirrors of that which I'm here to teach. And I know that if I cannot and do not for any moment stand in knowing I'm enough, and the power that I'm bringing to the world and the love within that power, that I could face persecution. And I know that there's a chance I could crumble. And I don't want for anyone. I especially don't want that for my audience. So, Nicole, I need your help.

September of last year, my mom was.

Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

July 18th, she passed away. And my mom was the most important.

Person in my life. And I was 24 when it happened, just not too long ago.

And I said, this isn't how it's supposed to happen. She was supposed to be here for my wedding.

She's supposed to be here for all these things, for my brother's wedding.

And losing her has been the hardest thing ever.

And so, Nicole, I need your help.

Nicole, what are you feeling now? I feel, like, honored to be able to share this room with everyone. When sensations are in your body, can you breathe? Yeah, I can breathe. I feel, like, release. How's your throat and chest? Oh, it feels good. Yeah. I feel open. I feel like. I feel like I thought that being.

Up here meant you just have to be flawless.

You're not taking notes, aren't you? It's not about flawless. Exactly.

And I see how much more beautiful.

People are when they open up and share themselves. Do you hear that? Yeah. Is it echoing back into your ears? Yeah. I'm going to be your whispering, unconscious mind. Okay. All right, Nicole, I want you to look into your own eyes. Put your arms down to your side. And this time, as you look into your own eyes, I want you to realize that your audience needs you. They're asking for it. They're begging for it. I've heard some people say, ah, you know, the world doesn't need to be saved. You're right. The world doesn't need to be saved. But the truth underneath that is that there's a lot of people in pain. And by hitting your tuning fork inside of your throat, your chest, your heart, letting your pain take. Take the stage in a Very professional, poised, purposeful way. It will resonate their pain. You will activate your audience and then you can influence and guide them. You're not going to save anyone. You're not a savior. That's a lot of pressure. It's not accurate. I used to think that I had to save my audience. It exhausted me. Guess what, sweetie, you don't even need to be saved. You're perfect just where you are. Your flaws have defined some of your greatest strengths. It's your flaws that's going to build the rapport or with your audience. And someday I look forward to opening your best selling book and reading about that one thing that you're so in the past terrified that we would find out. Because that one thing is what makes you human. The nice scarf and the hair and the jewelry, that's just shit to distract us. The truth is, it's your flaws, it's your pain. It's your own little silly ego that we all relate to. I need you to step up in your life. I need you to step forward into your power as a speaker. Because you heard it, they need you. Let's give it a round of applause.

That was great. So break down how you would apply that to other people.

Well, you know, when you get up there, you're going to have all these physiological responses and you could tell yourself, just like she did, that she was terrified, you know, and as she heard what the audience was going through and how they needed her help, her shift went from it's about me, it's about me, it's about me. Oh, it's about them and what can I do for them? And so as you're putting together your speech, as you put together your career, you got to think about how can you serve the planet? What is your why? What is the big purpose to why you're doing what you're doing versus how can I get, how can I extract from me?

Awesome. So you get to a point to where you can start making money with it. And I think if people realize that investing in becoming good at speaking would actually increase their career options, their income.

Their sales, their dating life.

Yeah, because it's all speech, right?

Yep.

So if everyone out there cannot get a date, it's probably because they're terrible speakers, is what you're saying.

Well, I'm saying it definitely has something to do with it. If you think of all the great leaders in history, they were really good orders. They had the ability to move a crowd, whether it's Steve Jobs selling an iPad to somebody that never Even heard of an iPad or Martin Luther King moving people to have racial equality to a John F. Kennedy, say we're going to put a man on the moon and bring him home safely. Like speeches and really good communicators really are seen as our powerful leaders throughout history.

Well, your whole thing is about doing 10k speeches. So talk about the money aspect. How does one translate speaking into revenue and possibly even a career?

Sure. Well, the biggest thing is you have to see it as a business first and foremost. And some people are like, well, but I'd be willing to speak just for free because I just have a message. Well, then you'll be seen as a hobby, you know, hobbyist. And you won't be able to get into those big name conferences because they want somebody who is time tested and has put all their eggs in this basket called speaking versus just dabbling in it, you know, And I don't believe a speaker is taken seriously until they get to $10,000 an hour. Until you get to a speech that is worth $10,000 and somebody's willing to pay you, you're just an amateur in my eyes and in the eyes of the industry. So my biggest thing is you got to build up the message, the delivery and the marketing with the right attitude to get a event coordinator, a decision maker, to see that you're really as good as you say. And it comes down. There's a lot of components that I teach in my event called 10K Speeches, where I walk you through a process of here's what you're going to need in your marketing materials, here's who you need to be contacting, here's how you need to handle them. When they have questions and when you start to understand the formula to speaking, it's a lot easier than one might imagine. And it just really comes down to having the right coaching and mentorship. There's no way I would be at my position in life career wise if I hadn't hired the best to teach me how they got there.

Right. Well, so what is the best? Since I obviously love marketing and I have a podcast called I Love Marketing, what's the best marketing Strategy for getting 10,000 or more per speech?

Well, I'm going to tell you this and it's going to sound like I'm kissing your butt, okay? And trust me, you're the last butt I want to kiss. But it's really about surrounding yourself with influencers. I have this thing called advocate marketing that I learned from one of my mentors. And being in groups like Genius network. Going to conferences and meeting people that have an influence over an industry that are connectors. As Malcolm Gladwell says, there's a few group of people on this planet, a select few. You are one of them that have access to potentially hundreds of millions of people through their contacts. And when you get to know these people and you bring them value, you know, I moved my whole business from Chicago to Arizona to get to know you, to spend time with you, to bring you value, to bring value to your community, to the people that you care about. I mean, Joe, you can call me day or night and say, I have a friend that needs help. And I'm not like, well, Joe, you know, that's not my problem. You know, my thing is I drop everything because you are one of these advocates. In my life now, because I do that, there is this unconscious reciprocity that just naturally happens. I don't do it for tit for tat. It's more of like this reciprocity of when you're talking to somebody about events, you say, hey, have you heard of Sean Stevenson? He's one of the best speakers out there. And it's because I stayed top of mind in your life by continuing to bring you value. And there's probably 21 other people in my life that I bring a massive amount of value to them. So on a moment's notice, they know if they're going through something, whether it's putting together a presentation, whether they need my therapy advice, whether there's somebody in my own Rolodex that I can reach out to that by bringing influencers a ton of value, they can make one phone call that can help you skip, you know, dozens of steps and potentially shave 10 to 30 years off the learning curve. Because they just know the right person to meet because they spent their time developing their, you know, network. And the best way that I built my speaking industry is find the people that have access to influencers, influencers of events and industries and the human race. I mean, now it's come full circle because now I have, you know, reached this year alone over 200 million people through my videos. And now you are able to come back and say, hey, Sean, you know, let's do something together and get it out to a mass amount of people and teach me how to do live streams or put together viral videos. And so it comes full circle. So if you just bring a ton of value to influencers, find the people that are so busy that they won't pay attention to you unless a you pay them Or B, you bring him so much value, it's worth more than money.

Yeah, so true. I mean, so true. And the lesson there is just be useful. And the more useful you are to the certain people or the right type of people. Although I think people should be as useful as humanly possible to everyone. I mean, you've heard me rap.

Well, you gotta give, expecting nothing thereof. When you call me, I'm not like, hey, Joe, well, I'll trade this help with this friend of yours that's suicidal in exchange for three good leads for speeches this month. It's never like that, you know, and that's the key here, is you have to just keep bringing value. There are 21 people that are influencers that I reach out to. And I will say, not everyone each year brings me value in return, but. And some have never even brought me value. But I'm looking at the long game of my whole life. And I'm looking at maybe someday that person of influence calls me up and says, hey, Sean, have you ever been on Fill in the Blank event, You know, media, whatever it may be? And my response is, no, maybe I haven't. And then now we've created that, we've closed that loop from bringing all that value to them. And, you know, when I look at the value that you and maybe five other people from that 21, each person brings in potentially six figures a year to my business by just bringing those few people value. And that's the power of mentorship. I mean, I pay you $25,000 a year, and I spend money out of my own pocket to market your materials because I know the value that comes from being your friend and bringing goodness to your world. I can never keep up with the amount of value you bring. I try, but it's yet to happen. I hope to surpass it someday.

We keep trying to outdo each other, too, which is great, because the whole premise is just, how can we be incredibly useful to each other? And there is no scorecard. I mean, we're not trying to say, oh, he's doing this for me, he's doing that.

Oh, that Mic Drop video got you this many people, right? You can't keep score. And the quickest way to lose at life is keep score.

Yeah, totally, totally. You know, I want to tell a little bit about how I basically have packaged my speaking, because. And when I say this, let me remind people that this is not just about being in front of audiences. This is in any situation. Like, for instance, yesterday I was being interviewed for a documentary and the person that's putting together this documentary, I'm not going to name names because when it comes out, we'll actually see. They want this documentary to be watched by over a million people. And I actually think they have the chops and the ability. And depending on how the content is, there's probably a really good chance that that will happen. And while we were being. While I was being interviewed at my home and then we went to my office because they wanted to do some footage there. I told them about, you're here in Arizona. When did your plane leave? I called you up yesterday. And this guy is going to be better on camera than me. He's awesome. They went over and did that. And it's because we have a relationship. The more that you develop and work on those relationships, the better. People say that time is money, and time is incredibly valuable. You're not going to get it back. You need to treat it well. You. You don't want to squander it. However, I've never hit my alarm clock, and there's been piles of money there. Money comes from relationships, and the more you develop and nurture those relationships, they will bring opportunities to you. It's the very nature of producing more than you consume. And if you do that, you will get all kinds of opportunities. So that would be an example. In my world, I don't really want to be on stage all the time. I do my Genius network, we have.

Currently 200, but I would say you are constantly. Every month you're on stage, that it's a stage that you built.

Exactly. So there are models on how to do it. And I know part of what you teach people is not just overcoming speaking, how to structure formulas, marketing, but literally the model. If you never want to get up in front of an audience, live audience, but you want to do a daily video, you'll teach people how to do that. If you want to create viral videos, you'll teach people how to do that. If you want to do a podcast, you'll teach people how to do that. If you want to have a big following on YouTube or Facebook, you'll teach people how to do that. If you want to do short clips on Instagram, you'll teach people how to do that. There's a lot of stuff that you actually do. I always look at the model. There are people, I charge $50,000 currently to do a talk. A lot of the talks that I do, though, I do them for free because there are certain people that are clients that if they ask me to speak and it's the right fit, I'll do it some. I may negotiate the $50,000 fee, but if someone just wants and that's just in the US and that's just if travel is easy, if I have to go overseas, the bottom line is I won't hop on a plane for a business thing in most cases unless it's worth at least a minimum of $100,000 to me. So even though I may get $50,000, it's going to also translate into something else. So my criteria for business is 100 grand and something that I'm aligned with or something that's just going to be so damn useful for me that it doesn't matter. I'm going to hop on a plane because there's some other benefit to it. But the reason I'm bringing this up though is that what I tell people all the time, if you're just looking for a famous person, you can get people a lot more well known than Joe Polish for 50 grand and some even for half that price that have more call it fame or notoriety. However, when I speak for someone, I don't just give them a presentation. I actually will spend an hour with them talking to them about how to set up the before, the during and the after the presentation. A guy that recently hired me for his event, it was to a group of it's like Michael Perella, he runs NABS Martial Arts Business Summit. I love kickboxing franchise. So here I am in a room with a lot of very strong people that can beat the shit out of me and I'm teaching them about marketing strategies. But before that, actually he delivers some really great coaching and has a whole program that will teach them how to build and grow their businesses. I spent about an hour on the phone with Michael and he's also in my genius network and gave him a model on how to present his program, his coaching program. At the end of the event, he sent me the nicest text saying thank you so much. Currently we've done 800,000 in sales and we're probably going to hit over a million. So I always say, do you think it was was worth him hiring me to speak? He didn't hire me just because he needed a famous speaker. It was because there's something there. So whatever your deal is, there is no right or wrong way to do it. There's this successful models and there's unsuccessful models. So looking at different models on how to package present charge has everything.

I call that platform agnostic. When you're not Attached to. Well, there's only one way to get a message out.

There's all kinds of ways that you can do this. And most people wouldn't even know that unless they're learning from someone that's done it for many years, figured it out. So you've got 22 years of doing this stuff. You have a lot there for people that would like to really what we're talking about. They're like, yeah, this makes a lot of sense to me. I want to talk about your training because people can actually come to you and they can learn how to be more effective doing this. And you're a damn good speaker and you're entertaining and you really care about people.

We also bring in some of the best in marketing and sales and in a lot of different formats that maybe aren't as my strong suit as speakingness. And so my live event that you're referring to, you've presented at a couple Times. It's called 10K Speeches. It's in Tempe, Arizona. It's actually here in this room, the Tempe center for the arts. And it's August 19th through the 21st. If people want to register, they got to go to 10k speeches. Com, the number 10. So 1 0k speeches. Com, you can get all the information about what you get. A lot of fun bonuses they get. They get more training before they get there on video than they could ever imagine alone. They get that. Plus they get the live event experience. We spend two and a half days with people. I've been told that it's one of the most fun events because I've been watching live events for 22 years. I see the ones that suck. I see that you gotta keep the audience involved and laughing and moving and dancing and having fun. And also you have to have substance. You can't just be fluffy. And, you know, I also don't like events that are just. The whole thing is a pitch fest, you know, that's why I say when you show up at my event, you get a ton of value for your price, for the investment that you put in. Because I'm a big believer of what you teach, what you pay, you pay attention to. And, you know, I've got all these years of expertise and I bring in mentors such as yourself and on panels and in speakers to share different aspects of business, different aspects of marketing, different aspects of sales, and different aspects of speaking. Because when you come to 10k speeches, I want you to be able to walk out after two and a half days and Say, wow, I got more information and more motivation to do this than if I had read hundreds of books and spent years of my life learning. I mean, I. Look at how I struggled. I mean, I didn't. This doesn't sound too sexy, but in 22 years of speaking, I didn't have 22 years of success. It's only been the last maybe eight years that I really dialed it in and figured out what are those little tiny hinges that the big door swings on, as you call it. And those little transformations are what I teach you know, where not to spend your marketing dollars, what mistakes to avoid. I have dumped tons of money into certain things that never panned out because I didn't know what I was doing. It's also a mistake to think that spending money on a bunch of, you know, fancy, flashy websites are going to get you booked. No, it's not. Or even it's not just about being a good speaker, because I spent maybe 10 years really honing my craft. And being a good speaker is not enough, because people will go, yeah, but we've never heard of him. We've never heard of her. How should we know? And when you really get it dialed in, where you understand all the aspects, the message, the delivery, the marketing, and the overall attitude, because, look, this isn't just about getting one date. This is about getting rebooked year after year. I have some clients like Whole Foods and Nike that have brought me in several times, you know, Zappos, these companies that continue to bring me in year after year because I've got the attitude that they like working with. And so I teach people how to have the attitude that an event coordinator goes, yeah, let's bring them in no matter what. Let's make sure the budget can handle this Joe Polish coming in. This Sean Stevenson coming in. And so we teach you all that. Plus, it's super fun. And hopefully your calendar permits that you can come back and talk to us about marketing again. But I just really think that this. This whole audience is going to be. It's going to make a magical space here. And some best friends are formed out of this experience. And I do this year and year after year, and every year I call you up and like, Joe, events are so hard to run. Why do I do this to myself? It's like having a baby. You're like, oh, you get this great idea. And it's fun to get the idea, but then you got to carry this thing for months. And then finally you hold it. And the day comes and the audience is filled up and your bank account's hopefully filled up too. And you're like, oh, I want to do it again. And that's why the brain deletes pain, so that we can do things more than just once.

What I want to mention too is there's a difference between just showing up and having someone else run an event and then running your own events. Oh yeah, but you're probably never going to run your own events unless you actually do some speaking. You can be crazy like I did, and I could run my own event as my very first speech and sell tickets and then show up and be nervous as hell and run everything, but still make more money than I've ever made ever in my life. And we one fell swoop, simply because I went through the fear and I just did it anyway.

I mean, one of my first speeches, Joe, I got paid and the person that hired me didn't even show up. And there was no audience. And I flew to Tampa, Florida and showed up, beautiful room like this, no one was there. And I remember thinking I could look at this one of two ways. Pissed off because there's no crowd here to hear my message, or excited because I get paid whether they're here or not. You know, so you gotta look at your speaking career as why are you doing it? Are you doing it because you have a message burning inside of you? Are you doing it because you feel like you are the one expert that can share this solution in the best way? I tell people no one can rid the world of insecurity the way I can. And if I could just kind of pull the curtain back for a moment and just tell the truth, here is this speaker training. It's really about how do you create world class humans? Because when you become a world class human that shows on stage, but nobody pays to find out how to be a world class human, they have to logically justify with becoming a speaker. And I think it's great to be able to teach them both.

Well, you know what, that's a good way to kind of wrap this up is if all of this you're still thinking, well, would I be well served to actually delve into this? If it made you a world class human, that would probably be worth it.

Think about what they could do with your family, your friends, the community, the planet. And as cheesy as it may sound, when you meet a human being that is really on purpose, you want to spend more time with them.

Anything. I did not ask you that I should have or could have that you would like to address.

No, I think we covered the whole thing and I just look forward to having some of the people from your community and tribe here. And I thank you for all the time that you put into my career and my life. I look forward to spending the rest of my life to keep up in the value exchange.

Thank you. Yeah. And of course this is definitely not going to be the last. I think I'll probably talk to Sean about. We should be doing some sort of series or some co collaborative project. Not that we don't already do that.

Already, because we do, but something on a regular basis.

Yeah, exactly. So the. The website again for your event is 10k speeches.com. 10k speeches.com and if you just type in Sean Stephenson into the Internet, you will find a bazillion things about him. And he has guided a lot of people and he's kicking ass and taking names. So I encourage you to get some training on this and go to someone who is a master at it. And that's how you get better. And so until next time, this is Joe Pollitzch and Shawn Stevenson. Thanks, buddy.

You bet, brother.