Joe Polish and Dean Jackson's Best Strategies To Become A Highly Paid Speaker - #180

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast. Hey, everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish together again.

And begin, Dean. All right, so welcome to, welcome to a lovely episode of I Love Marketing. I'm a little irritated today.

I understand. Yeah, let's talk it out.

I guess the best way is I couldn't folks see and start focusing on what's going to be useful to other people, which is our listeners. And part of it, I'm going to be doing a presentation for Sean Stephenson at his event that he's got coming up this week. Now, by the time we put this episode up, that presentation will have been delivered. And so this will kind of be like, I'll be doing it. And Sean is a three foot tall guy in a wheelchair. We've done a couple of episodes with him. Just the last, if you go back, what, two or three episodes, we have two in a row that have Sean on him. And he's made his living as a professional speaker in spite of the fact that he's never walked in his life. He's got a brittle bone condition which caused a couple hundred bones in his body to be broken by the time he was 18 years old. And recently he had the first injury in like 17 years. I was actually at the hospital a couple hours after it had happened. Happened, yeah. Fractured the back of his skull and broke his right leg in three different places. His ankle, his knee, his femur. So the guy's gone through what I would consider freaking hell. And in spite of that, he's traveled around the world and made a really good living as a speaker. And so that's pretty powerful. So basically what we're going to talk about, what I want to talk about and get your feedback, is the subject that Sean asked me to come speak on, which is how, Joe, did you make a living as a speaker? And since I don't really consider myself making a living as a speaker on stage, although I do that, and although I run Genius Network Mastermind, and I've done boot camps for many years, I'm not like one of my clients, Brendan Bouchard, who is on stage all the time, or like Tony Robbins, who's on stage all the time, I do it in doses. And I think you're pretty much similar to me in that regard, Dean. But we do speak all the time. We just may not do it in front of a live audience. We're speaking right now on a podcast. We create programs based around speaking. Some people speak and get a Speaker's fee. I don't really speak for a speaker's fee, although I have one when people need to know how much it would cost to get me there. And it's 50 grand right now to have me come and speak somewhere if someone wants to hire me to speak. And I always warn people saying for 50 grand you can get people that are more well known if you want well known than me. But if you want strategy, if you want stuff, that's what I cost and that's what I'll do. And most of the speeches I get offered, I don't even do them because I make almost double or triple that doing it in my own office. When I run my 25k group, the average amount of revenue I bring in is close to 150 to $160,000 a day when I run a 25k group. So where am I going to go travel and get paid that why would I want to travel? So I cherry pick speaking. But it's an interesting phenomenon because I was incredibly nervous and scared when I first started. So there's sort of a way to get into this business and a way to think about it so on. I love marketing today. That's what I'd like to kind of discuss is that subject and get more than anything, I mean I can give people strategies, as can you, but I really just want to create a conversation and people's minds about how they even think about speaking and all of the different ways that you can use your voice on the phone, on webinars, on video, in front of live audiences, multi day audiences, coaching groups, there's information products, there's a bazillion different ways to get paid to speak. And even my friend Karen Jacobson, which we have a bonus episode on, I love marketing. There's a video with the Australian voice of Siri who's on 50 plus million GPS units. She gets paid to speak on Siri. She's the voice on Siri on my phone.

Yeah, exactly.

So there's a million different ways to think about your voice. So that's the topic. And I can ramble on and on. But I want to ask you, when someone. Do you have people consider you a speaker or people reaching out to you? And I'm asking sort of a question.

When people see you.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean when people see you on stage or are familiar with you on stage, then you know, you're considered a speaker, I guess, you know, and that's. I think it goes all the way back. Like I remember the first Thing that I did as a speaker was a home buyer workshop for first time buyers as a real estate agent. You know, I did them in the library at, in Georgetown to you know, get business for my, for my real estate business. And there's so many. I just look at speaking as a delivery device, you know, still all the same things that go into marketing really apply with speaking. It's just that speaking is a delivery device. And there are some positives and negatives about it. You know, it certainly is the most responsive way to present something, to pitch something, to enroll people in something, is to create that kind of an environment. But the reason that's true is because it's sort of forced consumption. It's not that there's any magic in the message which has to be good, but if you take the same message and you get your best prospects in a room and deliver that message and there's something magic that happens that doesn't happen in the same. If you want to say, like conversion percentages, when you start removing that synchronous and scheduled element out of it, you know, that's what I think the magic is, is that you've got somebody in a room and they're there and they're consuming the message. And it's almost like when we talk about playing golf, you know, my optimal environment for golf. You got a goal, an optimal environment, limited distractions and a fixed time frame. When somebody's at a seminar or at a workshop or sitting at a presentation in person, all of those things are, are in line. You know, it's like they're, they're there. There's, you know, they're, they've chosen that this is what they're going to do for that one hour or the 30 minutes or two hours or three days or whatever it is that you've got the event scheduled for. And so they're getting it synchronously. Whereas if you put that same kind of message on a, on a CD or on DVDs or on a, you know, any other kind of asynchronous delivery device, there's so many. It's the odds of somebody consuming it all in order. Right then are very, very low, you know. Right.

So when you're, when you're talking about what's your preferred learning sort of environment for you? I mean, do you like reading, do you like going to events, do you like listening? I mean, what, what do you prefer? And there are, yeah, there's a lot to be said about consumption. I mean, some of the reasons I'LL do two or three day events is. It's the only way to sit my ass down for that period of time.

And just get it all. Yeah, I'm with you 100%. Because, you know, having ADD or ADHD, it's, you know, part of the thing is just consumption, you know, getting yourself to, to sit down and schedule it like there's no other way. You know, it's very difficult to get somebody to consume, especially a multi day type of thing. A three day event, you know, getting the DVDs is not the same as being there immersed in it for three days and, but you know, that told, I would say like a live experience would be my, the most effective thing. But then I would prefer CDs over DVDs because I can listen to CDs while I'm driving and you can, you know, it's just the odds of me consuming it are much higher than being held. I always find like DVDs feel like you're held hostage a little bit, you know, because it's the only thing that you can. I just find likely if I'm driving somewhere, I can listen to a, you know, listen to a CD and listen, I may listen to a multi day thing again and again and again, you know, and get it ingrained that way. Right.

Well, here's, here's one thing that I want to obviously clarify too, because if this podcast is listened to 100 years from now, I don't know if it'll be, or 500 or perhaps 10,000, maybe we'll be in. You never know. I went and saw the movie Interstellar last night. That was a very interesting movie. Yeah, it's kind of a freak show. So that being said, CDs and DVDs probably won't exist even five, ten years from now in terms of people as a usable thing. So just like we have a lot of people that say listen to the tapes. I mean, we still have people that say listen to the tape. So it's so ingrained in people's heads. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And people that are younger, of course, they're like, what the hell are you talking, what are you talking about? DVDs and CDs and tapes and stuff. But just, just use it as a metaphor for consuming audio or video. It'd be like if you and I.

Were Claude Hopkins and Albert Lasker and we're having this conversation and talking about, yes, I was listening to this audio on the gramophone. Right.

Exactly. Now, you know, we're still, we're still in a We're still in a space based on different age categories to where certain companies, they still, you know, ship their primary products out. You know, I run into people like, well, you know, no one watches DVDs anymore. I'm like, well, tell that to beachbody.com, you know, who is, you know, still sells, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of exercise DVDs. Tell them that no one uses DVDs anymore. It really depends on what you're selling and how you're doing it. But again, the whole point is, let me kind of go back to what speaking actually is. You said it is a delivery system. It is a way to talk. People can do it face to face. They can do it, do interviews and speak. You can ask questions. You can do it on stage. Of course, you can do small group discussions like we do when I first learned how to can and clone yourself, how to write a sales letter, how to take that whole concept, which we've talked about from the very beginning of. I love marketing and certainly I think podcasts are really valuable for ADD people also, because you don't have to listen to. You can kind of pick and choose whatever you want. And sometimes that's an advantage, sometimes it's a disadvantage. You can listen to as many in one fell swoop, or you can just do it in doses, which is kind of how I sort of operate. And going back to the very first time I had to even think about speaking, it was once I had it planted in my head that, oh, instead, instead of selling or talking to one person at a time, I can really leverage myself by talking to many people. I don't know when I first started thinking about the word leverage, but I've thought about that word a lot. Marketing is the ultimate leverage. It's maximum results, least amount of effort, and productivity is maximum results, least amount of time. And marketing and speaking packaged and designed in the right model is incredibly productive and is an incredible leverage. So this is really a conversation about how to leverage yourself and how to do it with your voice or with the voices of other people, because you can get other people speaking, package them up and sell that. If you take. Let's go back to beachbody.com since I. I mentioned it, Tony Horton is one of their biggest hits. P90X. Well, the owners of Beachbody are Carl Daikeler and Jonathan Cogden. I've interviewed Jonathan and basically they packaged up the talent. They have all the different fitness people and they videotape them speaking and exercising. So there's not only just the voice, but there's the demonstration. Then you get into music, then you get into performing. There's all elements of how people take their talent and how they package it. But everybody, for the most part can talk. I mean, some people cannot talk, but most people can talk. And a lot of people are incredibly skilled one on one. I mean, they're really skilled one on one. They know their stuff. But you put them in front of a camera or you put them in front of an audience and all of a sudden they think it's like different. And it is different to a degree because there's more pressure on you. But is the pressure real or is the pressure perceived? And so what I've learned, you know, early on is that the perception that I had about nervousness and about judgment and about rejection, I mean, there's things that are happening, you know, on a fear based level in different people that I don't even think we can explain where that comes from. I mean, I think it's genetically coded, you know, tribally into, into us about how we respond to the tribe, how we're going to be judged. And so I actually am suspect about people that ever get up in front of large groups of audiences and don't have a certain level of nervousness. I think it was Henry Fonda and Johnny Carson. You know, people that would throw up before they would go out and address an audience their entire careers, they would have issues. I mean, I don't know if this is 100% true. I heard that Johnny Carson would throw up, you know, from the Tonight show. For people that don't remember who Johnny Carson is or if you're too young.

For 30 years. Yeah, every night for 30 years. I can't imagine that.

No, no, not every night. He would do it like once a week or something. Like once a week or so. He would get really nervous. But, you know, I mean, he's going on national television, but I mean, have been so incredibly scared. So the point is, there you may be in that stage and you can sit here looking at, you know, when I go to events and I see people admiring the people on stage, part of the admiration has nothing to do with what's even coming out of their mouth. Part of the admiration is the fact that they're up on stage and a lot of people can't fathom that. And I used to like really be like, how do they do that? How do they do that? Not realizing that, that anyone that is willing to put themselves out there, go through the process, face the fear. If they have any fear at all. People that are extroverts, it's no big deal. Some people, from the moment they're born, they love having lots of eyeballs on them and adoring fans and people cheering them on. And other people are incredibly shy and definitely afraid of it. Wherever you're at with it, just know that this can be overcome. Because I myself was incredibly shy growing up and nervous as hell and scared. And I think a lot of people that tell you that they're not scared are just full of crap. I mean, they got to a point where they actually can handle it, but they forget back to those times when they were first learning. Now the cool thing is there's really most of the fear that people have about speaking and presenting and doing videos and starting a podcast or doing any of this stuff is so much more magnified in their own heads than by the perception of the outside world. Because frankly, most people don't even pay attention to you until you give them something to pay attention to. So a lot of the judgment of what people are going to think is really just manufactured. It's this sort of angel and devil sitting on each shoulder that you have, giving you whatever perception you're having about how people are going to respond to you. So my very first event though, here's kind of how I got into the speaking business on stage is I had some strategies and methodologies on how to build and grow a carpet and upholstery cleaning business because I was using them in my own cleaning company and I turned a very bad situation into a successful situation. And I transformed the amount of business I was getting by changing my marketing messages and by offering education based marketing and putting it out to the world. And so I developed some marketing strategies and I had sold some of these strategies using consumer awareness guides and free recorded messages to a couple of other carpet cleaners. And they started, and one of them especially within a year, just totally transformed his marketing and advertising. And I ended up starting packaging up my marketing materials and programs with a partner that I had very early on in my business for the first year. And so we started selling this to other carpet and upholstery cleaners and they were getting great success. So I thought, huh, how do I get in front of a group of these professional cleaners? Back then, before the Internet, in the early 90s, carpet cleaners would go to distributors, chemical and equipment distributors, and they would have relationships, and they still do today, with people that would sell them their chemicals and equipment. So I thought, well, the people that are doing business with a whole group of these cleaners. They already have a relationship with a bunch of carpet cleaners at a far deeper level than buying a list, mailing lists. And again, we're doing snail mail back then before the Internet or by running ads in industry trade magazines, which I was doing, but those were going to a national level. How do I target a specific zip code category? I went to a distributor in San Diego that I had met by being on the board called the Carpet and Fabricare Institute. So I knew people in different areas of Arizona and in California and Nevada and it was the most amount of people in that group were in California. So I met a lot of these distributors and they were all, you know, they were volunteering to be on the board of a trade association. And you know, that's one of the ways that they stayed in the industry and met people and all that sort of thing. Now the reason I'm bringing this up in case it sounds incredibly boring to anyone is if you want to speak to a group of people or you want, you know, in any category, I'm just going to use this on stage. You have to find where are they, who has the relationship with these people and how do you get them to tell others about you? So that's where joint ventures come in. Like my dear friend Kevin Thompson, who calls himself the JV Jedi. With this first event, I ended up having the carpet cleaning distributor. I said, look, if I can help your clients generate more business, they're going to buy more chemicals and equipment from you. So how about if we do a one day event, I'll charge $90 for the event, I'll 100% guarantee it. I'll speak all day and I'll just teach them my marketing strategies. And at the end of it, I'm going to offer one of my marketing programs that sells for $497 for a basic kit and $597 for a gold kit. Because that's what the price was at the time for me selling these KITS Starting in 1994, 1995, the distributor, he agreed to do it. So we sent out a letter, an eight page letter with, you know, basically how to double your business in six months or less. And it was a, you know, it was a marketing event and we charged, you know, $97 a person. And so I got up on stage and I literally no, no other guest speakers me for the entire day. And I was a freaking nervous wreck. I mean just a nervous people like, oh, after the first three to five Minutes.

So you went from no speaking experience at all to you were doing a full day program, your very first time.

Out of the gate officially, sorta. Here's. I did have a little bit of experience because I went to Toastmasters and I would speak in front of Toastmasters groups, which was nerve wracking. I was the Arizona director of the Carpet and Fabricare Institute. So I had a couple of situations where I introduced like other speakers, two groups of, you know, 20, 30 people. But I was never on for like, I done like a long talk. I went to the Dale Carnegie how to Win Friends and influence people 12 week course. And during one of the things you have to jump up on a table and address people. And I've done human potential events where you have to sing this Star Spangled Banner, all kinds of crazy stuff like that, but never like an official, oh, Joe's officially speaking. So I thrust myself into that world, right? And thank God I did. Because if I didn't put the pressure on myself, if I, if I had to use my quote unquote, you know, rational mind, I would have, or logical or you know, whatever. I mean, I would have, no matter what part of my brain, I would have come up with an excuse not to do it because it was, it was too difficult. So I was like, you know, let me just sell it. Sell ticket, you know, if you want to perform, sell tickets to the performance, right? So. Because when people have paid you money and you have to perform, it puts you in a particular situation and if you, you know, even if you put yourself in a free situation, advertise something and get people signed up and just frickin do it. I mean, just put yourself out there and do it. And you know, there's, there's, there's not a tremendous amount of strategy that I could, you know, say there other than if, you know, if this means something to you, you're going to feel a certain level of, I believe, a certain level of nervousness. A great book that describes a lot of that fear is Steven Pressfield, who's a good friend of mine, he wrote.

The War of Art.

Read the War of Art about going from amateur to turning pro. Yeah, it's resistance. There is a lot of that resistance whenever you are moving yourself up to a, to a higher level in capability. So I did that one day event and I never got over the nervousness the entire day. I mean I was. How many people were there? 52. 52 people?

Yeah, yep.

Carpet cleaners. And at the end of the day I pitched my Stuff I literally gutted my way through explaining what it is I had, how it would help them, that it's all laid out, that it's worked for me, it's worked for these other people that have bought it, and it will work for you, and if it doesn't, I'll give you all your money back. And I sold $12,000 worth of my marketing programs that day. And I was like, going, you know, where the hell else am I going to make $12,000 in a day? You know, and this is, you know, from a guy who was, you know, lucky to gross that in a month in my carpet cleaning company with one van. And I was like, wow. But see, I had built up $125,000 a year business with one van. So I was, you know, bringing in over, you know, 10 grand a month with a, with a single van. And I knew how to do that. And most cleaners were not, especially during that time. And boy, you know, I mean, it created a stir. I mean, I had people that were buying my marketing program. First year that I ended up selling my marketing programs, I sold $250,000 worth of those kits the first year. The second year, I sold half a million. By the third year, I was doing over a million dollars a year in sales. Back in 1997, from six public presentations of those one day events, I had netted $250,000 just from netted, not gross, but netted $250,000 just from doing six presentations, six live presentations, and selling my kit at the end of it. Now, the difference was, though, it wasn't about speaking and it wasn't about pitching. It was that those were parts of it. It was about having stuff that worked. It was about authentically, in a very ridiculous way, because I am opinionated, I'm self deprecating. I don't see very many people. You know, I stutter, I jump around. I will be in the middle of a sentence and I will just go into another direction. I mean, there are a million ways that I violated Toastmaster recommendations on how to deliver a presentation. The ums and the ahs and all that.

Just for clarity, though, I think you're confusing self deprecating with self aggrandizing.

Well, I do a combination of both.

You do a combination of both? That's true.

No, I do a huge combination of both. Back then, though, it's very hard to do self ingratitude because I really, you know, I didn't feel very highly of myself. So it was a lot easier to make Fun of myself now today, being the total badass that I am. That's a hot no. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Isn't that funny though, that, you know, like.

So.

My first room of home buyers, you know, doing a first time home buyer workshop at the library in Georgetown. And I remember it so well because I was really nervous. It was the first time I had ever spoken to anybody. And yeah, so I was, I was totally nervous about that, that first time. And then I just remember like halfway through, because you're always nervous that I'm not going to remember what to say or I'm not going to. I'm going to freeze up or, you know, but it went well and then everybody was having a good time and we were doing a Q and A and my mind was completely eased about it. And then every speaking situation after that was much more. I've never been as nervous as that very first time speaking to those 20 people, you know, and I mean, even that going to, then speaking to hundreds of people is, was made easier because of all the experience that I had of speaking to groups of 20 people. But you know, the interesting thing was that what you can do once you get your message down, you know, it's always. I've never. I think that part of the thing about speaking is being crystal clear on what the outcome is. You know, you and I are all. Whenever we're speaking, it's always with an outcome in mind. It's not just to, you know, just to talk or whatever, you know, especially if you're doing it in a, in a selling situation. It's always done to kind of set the stage for the next step. Because my whole thing was getting even in the homebuyer workshops, getting people to then come and start looking at homes or to get a home loan report that we're moving forward. It's always making that next step. But the cool thing about once you get a message down is the opportunity then to leverage that. You know, one of the things that I was able to parlay those homebuyer workshops into was getting a show on our local cable. And you know, it was just like coincidence that I was reading and read somewhere that the cable mandate is to provide public access. Like, part of the thing of them having the cable charter for the area is that they have to make television access available to the community. And so I called up the local cable provider and they had a channel that was, you know, the public access channel. And I asked about doing a show on there and they said, yeah, of course. So I told them I do these homebuyer workshops at the library and I'd like to do a version of that in the 30 minute TV show. And so I did that and got that into. You got a 30 minute basically infomercial filmed and offered three times during the show. I offered people the guide to six steps to home ownership. And I was going through all the info and said, you don't need to worry about taking notes or remembering everything. If you just call this number for a free recorded message, I'll send you a copy of the, of the book the Six Steps of Homeownership. And so I got that on TV on the cable access channel on Thursday nights every other Thursday for a year. And the whole thing cost me $500. I had to pay the editor who did the editing for the video. Right. And the, but that, but the actual air time and the studio time and the filming, all that stuff was, was free for, because of the, of the public access. It was just. So that's when I really understood for the first time the power of creating flywheels, you know, versus hamster wheels where you know, when you're doing a live performance or a live event like that, the only people who get to see it are the people who are right there at the, you know, at the workshop. But this was my first taste of something that could happen while I was doing something else. So I always made it a point to schedule listing appointments at the, you know, my show was on, on 7 at 7:30 on Thursdays. And that was when, you know, it was leading into Cheers and Wings and you know, it was like Must See TV on Thursdays. And so that I would schedule listing appointments at 7 o' clock knowing that my show was going to be on at 7:30. So we'd go through the house and we'd look at the house and we'd sit down in the kitchen and we'd start talking about marketing. And then I'd be able to say to them, you know, Joe, while we're in here talking about selling your house, I'm out there looking for a buyer for your house. And then we'd go into the living room and we'd turn on the TV and there I am on TV doing this homebuyer workshop while I'm sitting there in their living room. And they, every single person was just amazed by that, you know, that here you are on TV and then you're in their living room. And then at 8 o' clock after the show was over, I'd call in and list play Back the messages of all the people who had called to ask for the guide. So they immediately, I got every single listing that I went on during that time because they see, wow, this is really, this guy's got a real way to find buyers here, you know. Right.

Which is demonstratable. So how, how would you trans. Go ahead, say that again.

It's canning and cloning, you know, so it's like you get the message together. And that was when, when, when Joe Stumpf and I were doing big events for by referral only. We were going all over the country. We do, you know, 12 events a year with six or 800 people at each one. But you know, part of packaging up a message and that three day event was completely orchestrated and you know, a three day, you know, presentation that we're all, we weren't winging it. It was all very orchestrated of exactly what we were teaching and demonstrating, all to present our coaching program. But if you take that even one step back, what we did was I wrote a half day presentation, a three hour presentation and scripted it out line by line. This is all the, the arc of the message. And then we trained and hired two people to go out and deliver that presentation. So if we were coming to Phoenix, we would do, you know, we would pick 10 different locations around Phoenix. So we would do, you know, maybe three or four in Phoenix. And then we'd go to go up to Tucson and go to Las Vegas and go to Flagstaff or you know, all the other areas kind of of around where Phoenix was the hub. And they would go out and deliver this three day message that was completely orchestrated to sell the tickets to the three day main event. Just like the power of packaging up messages like that and delivering them in person as a speaker is really powerful.

How did you meet Joe Stump? I mean people that don't know that whole historical thing. Although we have talked about that in early on episodes of I Love marketing. I do want to mention if you're new to I love Marketing, there is so, so much really great content that we have recorded in the past. I mean a hundred and something hours worth, which you should just listen to non stop. You should quit your job and just listen to our podcast like that. Right. Well that's only if you have a lot of money saved up though. Because if you quit your job, I don't, I don't want, I don't want people blaming. Well, Joe said to quit our job and I know. Yeah, right. You got to be.

22.

Yeah. Now, how did you meet Joe Stump, he was a trainer to real estate agents.

That's exactly right. And we should actually have Joe on. I love marketing.

Why do you think he's smart?

Yeah, he'd be a great guest. I mean, that would be.

Joe's very.

As far as language and referrals. Brilliant. So I started doing all kinds of direct response things in my business, so very parallel to what you were doing for the carpet cleaners. And then I packaged up the things that I was doing and I was licensing it to 40 different real estate agents around Toronto. And so I had, you know, I'd created my guide to Halton Hills real estate prices. And then I created a guide called Toronto and Beyond. And it was 40 great places to live within an hour of the city. And then I licensed this whole guide System and to 40 different real estate agents in all the communities within an hour of Toronto. And that was on my way of building up an info marketing business. And just so serendipitous how you meet people. A guy said to me one time, you know, you should go, you know, just ump is coming to, to Toronto. You should. I think you'd really like him because, you know, he's doing a lot of the, the same kind of stuff. And so I went and, and we met and we struck up a friendship and I was, you know, showing him all the things that I was doing and he was already, you know, ahead of what, what I was doing. He already had, you know, four or five million dollars company at the time, so had a whole team and stuff and was doing, doing seminars. And so what, what he needed was these direct response tools, marketing tools. So we decided that we would, you know, I would come out and speak at all the main events and we started a consulting division together. And then we just kind of evolved that we spent 14 years doing all of the, you know, building up by referral, only up to a $20 million coaching organization, all on live events, direct response, marketing and coaching. And so it was just the perfect combination. But Joe is one of these guys who is a masterful speaker. I mean, you've seen him speak. He just completely controls and engages an audience and, you know, it was just great to get to watch that. I learned a lot about speaking and the art of engaging with an audience just from being around him all those years.

Yep, exactly. No, he's a, he's a super sharp dude, unlike you.

I mean.

Is that self aggrandizing? I never say that word right, but what I just said. Self aggrandizement.

Yeah, self Aggrandizement, self aggrandizing is when you build yourself up.

Right, Right. But when I tear you down, is that a.

When you tear me down? Yeah. That's not self aggrandizement or that's not self deprecating, it's Dean deprecating.

So here's the thing though, let me point out as it brings back to what our topic here is of speaking. You actually figured out how to go speak to and through and with another person, and that leveraged both of you, Right?

Exactly.

Incredibly, like you had a pretty sweet deal with Joe. I mean, I would venture to say that arrangement probably made both of you millions of dollars.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And there's the thing. It's like, you know, unique abilities, matching and you know, it's. There was. Joe had this incredible. And has this incredible ability to remember things geniusly. And so when we went out and when we were going to systemize the half day events, you know, Joe was doing all the half days in the beginning where he'd go out and do, you know, ten half day events in addition to the, the three day main event. And so I went out with him on the road for one of these runs and just kind of observed the half day. And over the course of those half days, we rewrote it to standardize it and to get the right messaging across to create a standardized way of delivering it so that we could get, you know, other people trained to do it. And you know, we would, you know, he would do the event and then we would debrief and talk about it at lunch. And I would, I had all these notes and I was kind of just, you know, saying to him the language and the words and the way to present something. And then he just had this masterful ability to go out and exactly repeat that, you know, with the same inflection, the same, you know, the way it was. Now he is not, he wasn't the guy who wanted to deliver the same message over and over. You know, he would often get into a situation where he'd go out on a half day and whatever book he was reading on the, the plane on the way to the city would be that next day's training. And he was so good that he could then turn that around and sell the main event. But in order to get a systematic, predictable process, we created this half day message that we were able to train two other people to do and just consistently go out and get 20% of the people in the room to pay to come to a Main event. And then at the three day main event, we get, you know, 40 to 45% of the people in the room to join a $5,000 coaching program. Just, you know, that kind of predictable engine.

You know, let me mention something about that too, because I'm very similar to that sort of personality. Whatever is the most pleasant thing in my mind is what I want to talk about. I mean, I can say we've probably built this podcast built around whatever tangents are going through our head right now. And we tie it back to, you know, marketing, including all of the bonus episodes that we do on all kinds of different topics. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm going to start a Genius network podcast because there's so many damn interviews I do that have absolutely nothing to do with marketing. But I want to share them with everyone because I think they're so darn interesting and useful. You know, like the one we put up with JJ Virgin recently and the one with Tony Robbins on Money. I mean, those are all just really useful things for entrepreneurs. And there's certainly tons of marketing lessons in all of that stuff. You know, one thing I will say this is kind of a little tangent since I'm on the topic of whatever's present in my mind. You know, a lot of times we'll interview people and we'll put them up as bonus episodes on I Love Marketing. And we'll do it with people that have a book coming out. So that topic's sort of recent to them. But I will tell you, you would be really well served to all of our listeners to follow some of the ways the book campaigns are marketed. Like JJ Virgin's book. I mean, you should get her book and you should get on her list and get the free videos. You should get on Tony Robbins list and see what he's doing and how things are promoted. I mean, you know, there's just so much good marketing lessons there. And you know, me and Dean, you know, we aren't doing this stuff, you know, in most cases, not that we've never done it before, that we wouldn't entertain it because I don't want to ever say, never say never. Most of the stuff that we are doing with other people, they are working out big joint ventures and affiliate deals with other people. And me and you just interview them and we just say, go look at their stuff. You know, I mean, it's not like we're driving people to, you know, affiliate pages and stuff. Most of the time, you know, if we go deep with someone and Do a joint venture. We'll make you aware of that. But it's like, you know, I mean, just looking at that now, going back to what Joe said, the point I want to make about it, and the reason I bring that up is a lot of people think you have to be really structured in order to make a good living, and that you've got to follow some sort of formula and people that are very distractible. I mean, had it not been for marketing for me to can and clone myself, I would be so dysfunctional because I really have a grasshopper mind. I've improved it dramatically over the years with things like meditation. And I've brought a lot of structure to certain things with people that work for me. Me, myself, though. Systems. I've created marketing systems, but systems cramp my style. When I say that I know the benefit and the value of systems, and I very much have developed a lot of systems, not because I wanted to, but because, like, my life works better when I have them. Now, the thing with speaking, though, if you've got an innate talent like Joe Stump had, you can pretty much read something and then parlay it into a speech. But you said something incredibly useful, though, Dean. As you said, we built this half day thing that we ended up teaching other people, which was all about speaking. It was speaking, it was presenting, but it was doing it in a structured way, knowing what the outcome is. So even if you're like, oh, I want to talk about this, I want to talk about that. When you start speaking and you do more of it, you can segue things that seemingly have no relationship to each other and make them fit together the more you do it.

Well, and there's certain things like, so you're absolutely right. And you can. There are certain things that you can do that make things feel like they're spontaneous as well. So one of the. I'll just share with you, like the opening of the. Of the event, how it would start out. One of the first things that we changed, and I just remember this, like, so distinctly because it was really like the first thing that we changed on the first day we went out and Joe would start out and he had the easel with the flip pad on the thing, and he's a master at that. But he would come in and say to people, okay, you know, he'd just kind of do introductions and lighten up and things like that, and then start off and say, okay, you know, we got three hours together and what. We're going to talk. We're going to talk about the five biggest challenges that we're finding that people are telling us all across the country right now. Number one is time management. There's just so much to do and so many things. Number two is getting a constant flow of leads and you just started listing them down there and they were all true things and all things that people would say. But one of the first things that I. Okay, we've got.

Hey, wait, what's going. Are you getting. Say that again because your voice cut up.

Oh, sorry. So we would go in and say, okay, we've got three hours today and I really want to make this as useful to you as possible. So let's talk about what's going on here in here in Phoenix. So what are the big challenges that you guys are facing right now? Instead of saying, here's what the five challenges are asking what are the big challenges that they're facing? And the first thing that people, somebody yelled out was time management. And somebody yelled out getting leads. And Joe just looks back at me with this big grin on his face because it was exactly the same list. But now people are leaning forward in their chair because it's not. Okay, sit back and I'm going to share this lecture with you. It's added an element of improv theater. It's like he's creating this on the fly. And it was that kind of just that immediate engagement from people. Now they're listening differently because it's collaborative process. You know, they're saying, they said that their big challenge is time management and they said that their big challenge was getting leads. And all the big five were the big five. So that just changed the way that people do it. But then there's, you know, other things in that. Creating that arc is knowing what is happening at the end, knowing that what we're going to offer to people is the opportunity to come and spend three days growing deep on applying the before unit, the during unit and the after unit to their business. And so what, you know, we in writing that that three hour message had to know what are the things that somebody would have to believe to be true? What would they have to be saying to themselves and know that this is the right thing to do. And so one of the other changes that we made, we would talk about a six figure income and a four day work week. And so you start that as soon as you start dictating a message to somebody, it's a different situation. There might be people in the room who don't aspire to a six figure income or who are already making a six figure income. So you've already kind of eliminated them. So what we did was think of ways to articulate something that every person in the room could create their own meaning from this, that it would be valuable to them. So when we're talking about the before unit, we would talk about what would happen if you could get a 15 to 1 return on every dollar that you spent on advertising. So now they're doing the math and that becomes if they're spending $100 a month, that's $1,500. If they're spending $1,000, it's $15,000. So we're not talking about it's scalable that way. And when we're talking about getting 50% more business from their during unit. So have them look back at their last 10 transactions and how many referrals did you get during the transaction on the last 10? And then how many of you think you're going to be in business for 10 more transactions? And then projecting forward, what would it be worth to you to get five of the next 10 people that go through the transactional process with you to refer somebody before you've sold their house or before they've found their house? And what would it be worth in the after unit to get a 20% return on your relationship portfolio of the hundred or 150 people that you know, what would those 20 or 30 transactions be worth? So everybody's creating all of this and they're doing all the math and they're realizing all this opportunity that they have. And then when they're presented with an opportunity for $1,000 to come and spend three days and recapture this 80 or 100 or $180,000 that they've got right there on their worksheet with their own numbers, that becomes a very compelling message.

No, I totally agree. I totally agree.

At that was John Childers. A lot of that thinking comes from planting the seeds early that, you know, you're going to harvest at the end and letting them, you know, letting them grow during the talk.

Yep, yep.

There's so much. If you really listen to somebody who's doing a presentation, there's so much going into it. It's not just, you know, it's not just. They're not just talking off the top of their head for 90 minutes, especially if they're in a situation where it's a selling situation.

Yeah. What I will say, there's so many good examples of things that you can look at. I mean, even like the greatest speeches of all time where you have like the John F. Kennedy speech or the Martin Luther King speeches. I mean Ron Ronald Reagan's radio presentations. You can buy all these things on CD and hear some, you know, Joel Olsteen, you know, even if you're not a Christian. I mean I would even recommend to atheists, although they probably won't like watching Joel Olsteen, you know, to literally just see how this guy structures his presentations because he spends pretty much the week preparing his sermons that he does on the weekend. And he is a master at, you know, he's like the Tony Robbins of Christianity. So it's, it's that, you know, there's a lot of good models. And so what I want to do to kind of wrap up what we've talked about because my goal with this one was just to give people perspective about how to, how to think about using their voice and about speaking and how to package it. One of the things that's really important is, is being Socratic. You know, when, when I'm going to speak at Sean's, I'm going to do something very similar and basically ask the audience like what do you guys really want? Now you've. Because I'm going to be going on after they spent the day before listening to Sean several times. Larry Wingate and several other really just phenomenal speakers. J. Abraham. I got Jay Braham to come down to this. So he's going to talk about marketing and whatnot. But I'm going to literally ask the audience, I already know what it is they can use and want and need to a degree. But just, just asking them so it becomes collaborative like you mentioned is really important. Secondly, I don't try to act like a professional. I mean I literally use self deprecating humor. I talk about, I show my report card where I failed owning and operating a small business and I got a C minus in principles of marketing from a community college. I mean that always lets the audience know this is not some, you know, polished expert up here. Polished. No pun intended.

Right.

And then I'm going to show like all the different ways that I've used speaking from like my Nightingale Conant program to like an event I did with Brendan Burchard and Paula Abdul when she joined my 25k group to having the highest close and you know, one of Dan Kennedy's events in, you know, Glaser Kennedy history. I had the highest, you know, closing percentages of the audience how I packaged up up speaking to do better your best content. I'm going to show people examples. But it all boils down to the action steps. And the action steps are, what are you going to teach or speak about? So that's one thing that everyone that's listening, if you want to figure out how to can and clone yourself, what are you going to teach? What is your topic? What is your subject? What is that thing that you're willing to go through? The nervousness, the fear, the apprehension, what can you so wrap your head around that you hopefully love, that when it's difficult in the beginning, you're able to push through it because you care enough about it? The second is, what are you going to sell? Are you just selling, getting paid as a speaker? Are you going to sell advice? Are you doing speaking because you have an interior design business or a pet sitting business, whatever your business is, what are you actually going to sell? Is it going to be information, products? Is it going to be knowledge? Is it going to be products, services? What is the thing? And then three, what platforms are you going to utilize? Using itunes is one of the platforms we use to distribute our speaking here, our different websites. Genius Network. You went to by referral only and did something with Joe Stump. Where are you going to have your content? On Hulu, on Netflix? What exactly are you are you going to use? So if people are like, the action steps are, what are you going to teach? What are you going to sell? And what are the platforms that you are going to utilize? If you put some time into thinking about that, then you have just opened up the arena of the world of leveraging your knowledge and using your voice to do it in front of cameras, in front of audiences, over the phone, on audio, all those different platforms.

Perfect.

Yep. So, anything else before we wrap up?

No, I think that's. This was a good episode, actually, because we don't think we've ever really gone that deep into speaking.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I more so, I wanted this again. I wanted this to be less about technique and more just to get people thinking about speaking. You know, because you're doing it all day long. Like you're going to go out today and you're going to speak. How much of those are going to be recorded and shared with other people? How many of those conversations are going to be leveraged? I mean, this podcast, which has now reached millions of people, if you think about all the different individuals, all started with me and Dean having a private phone conversation one day in December, I think it was in 2010. And we just had this really good conversation on marketing. And I said to Dean I was like, what if we actually had that recorded and other people were able to hear it? And that's when we decided, let's do a podcast and just start recording our conversations because maybe people will find them valuable. And so that's what we've proceeded to do. Now, when you allow the world to analyze and listen to your private conversations, you open yourself up to criticism, you open yourself up to ad duration, admiration, you open yourself up to a lot. But the pros of putting yourself out there, if you think about what you're doing and how you're doing it, have a lot of tremendous advantages. As a matter of fact, I'm helping some world class therapists start a podcast on sex addiction. And I just did the first interview with a guy named Ken Wells who's just brilliant and has treated people in the area of addiction, in a real specialty in the area of sexual addiction for over 20 years. And there's a lot of people that are suffering from that. And you know, all that's all going to be done through speaking. Because in his world, he's used to speaking in a very private therapy sort of situation with clients and he's had all kinds of normal people to world famous people, to billionaires that he has like helped with addiction and the thing, you know, he's done a few presentations here and there, but most of his 20 years. But now we're going to like, all right, let's take his 20 years of wisdom and let's package it and let's create. This podcast is just going to be one platform to distribute it, but there's all kinds of ways to do it. So the reason I brought that up is no matter what you're thinking, there's probably an application for it if you put a little bit of time on. What are you going to speak about, what are you going to teach, what are you going to sell and what platforms are you going to use? So give us your feedback on this episode. We hope you found it really valuable. And we'll talk to you next time on ilovemarketing.com and if you haven't subscribed on itunes, go to itunes and subscribe to tylovemarketing.com and that's that. Have a great day. Thanks. La.