Overcoming Seemingly Insurmountable Life Obstacles and Becoming One of the Top Speakers in the World (with Sean Stephenson) - Genius Network Episode #95

Everybody's always been staring at me my whole life. I came out of the womb being stared at, being pointed at, all these different things. Now there was a reason. Now I'm on stage as a speaker and everybody's staring and it's a different experience for me. Now I'm getting paid to be stared at. And I thought, this is a better way to be stared at. And it shifted everything because I said, I don't need to wait around for an employer to say, yes, we see your value. We'll work with your disability. I'm going to start my company off on my own.

Shawn Stevenson shares his amazing story of overcoming insurmountable life obstacles to becoming one of the top speakers in the world. He also shares techniques for making any audience laugh or cry and how to get your first $10,000 speaking fee. Even if you've never been booked as a speaker before, remember to subscribe to Genius Network so you don't miss a Future episode. Visit geniusnetwork.com subscribe for more. Hello, this is Joe Polish and I'm here with one of my very close friends. Awesome dude. Funny guy. Mr. Dr. Shawn Stevenson.

I like how you always stop. Say it again cleanly. Always makes me feel good. Thank you for that.

I'm trying to be professional here. You try What I'm going to do before we get into what is going to be perhaps one of the most profound conversations that I've ever, ever heard. Yes, at least I hope I'm setting this up.

Guaranteed. Guaranteed.

I'll let people know. I'm going to read your bio here. Dr. Shawn Stevenson was predicted not to survive at birth because of a rare bone disorder that stunted his growth and caused his bones to be extremely fragile, fracturing over 200 times by the age of 18. Despite his challenges, he took a stand for a quality of life that has inspired millions of people around the world over the past 24 years. His powerful message has been heard at live events in nearly all of 50 states and in 16 countries. Sean has presented at hospitals, universities, prisons, and to companies such as Nike, Whole Foods, Zappos, Walmart, and Sharp Healthcare. He shared the stage with US presidents, billionaire business moguls, celebrities, and His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. And I was there. During that time, Sean has appeared on everything from the Oprah show to Jimmy Kimmel. In addition to online videos with tens of millions of views, the Biography Channel produced an hour long feature on his life called Three Foot Giant. His international best selling book, get off youf Butt Spelled B u T has been Translated into over a dozen different languages. The foreword was written by our friend Tony Robbins. And as a board certified therapist and doctor of clinical hypnosis, Dr. Stevenson sees clients in a unique 12 hour session that gets to the root of their fears, excuses, and insecurities. Each year, Sean hosts live events and group coaching programs to mentor individuals in the art and business of public speaking. And you do phenomenal events.

Thank you.

And when Sean isn't working, he can be found in the gym watching basketball or reading side by side with his wife, Mindy Kinniss. So what did I not say about you that people should know other than this month? Within the next 30 days of us recording this, you're going to start, you're going to do your first stand up live show too, which is pretty awesome.

Talking about year for years that I wanted to get into comedy and I even posted it on the Genius Network, private Facebook group that I was gonna do it. And then everybody was like, when? Where? Give me a date, give me a time. So I finally got locked in, found a comedy club in Scottsdale, and we're just gonna start the career off just like I did with speaking. Work my way up the ranks, and I'm excited.

Yeah. Let me start with this because I've got a few questions for you that have to do with your career, with speaking, with presenting, with business and things like that. But you would be, on the surface, seeming like the last person that would ever be a public speaker. I mean, you're three foot tall, you're in a wheelchair, traveling on airplanes and things like that seem to be very prohibitive. And you have to deal with things that most people that have the ability to walk would never have as obstacles. And, you know, I couldn't even begin to imagine how many obstacles there were from insecurity issues and things that you're very open to talk about growing up, you know, being in the hospital so many times, constant broken bones, things that you know. But you've overcome so many of these things and you're now one of the top speakers in the world. And not only that, you actually train people to do it. So take me back to what, what was like, how the heck did all this happen? I mean, how did you become, how does one become a Sean Stephenson with just this vessel that you travel around in?

Yeah. So specifically from the speaking side, I started 24 years ago and I was getting into the business because I wanted to make some side money. While in high school, I applied to three different companies. A chiropractor's Office, a limo dispatch company, and a electronic store. I won't mention their name, but they have the best buys if you ever go. And so these three different companies were all turned me down. And I had a good resume. I had great personality skills. And each one, when I asked them, why don't you want me to work for your company? They blatantly came out and said, no, you're a great guy. We like you, but here's the deal. We don't think the customers will be comfortable looking at you. I mean, what. You know, we don't think the customers would be comfortable looking at you. So then I brought it up with the. The limo service company. I said, I'm not even seeing the customers. They don't even know what I look like. And they said, well, we don't know what the other employees will be uncomfortable. I mean, what if you need to go run out and get us coffee? You're not going to be able to do that in the wheelchair. What if there's something on the top shelf? How are you going to reach it? Like, we're not discriminating against you. We just don't think you are a good fit here. I'm like, that is the definition of discrimination if you say, I have what it takes, but you don't want to adapt a few things to your building. And so I got really frustrated. I watched all my friends mowing lawns, which I couldn't do. A paper route, which I couldn't do. And I just wanted to make some side money to buy video games and some clothes and just, you know, kid things. And that's when a counselor came to me and said, hey, Sean, you are a pretty commanding presence. Would you be willing to speak at a high school about what it's like to have a disability? And I will pay you from school funds $75 to do that speech. And I said, I'll give it a go. I'll try it out. And first of all, $75 in the early 90s to a teenager for one hour felt like a lot of money. Right? Right. And so I thought, okay, I can do this. Got up, gave the presentation, and found out not only was I pretty good at it, like, people got a good experience out of the being in the audience, but I also loved it. And I think the key impact moment back then was, everybody's always been staring at me my whole life. I came out of the womb being stared at, being pointed at all these different things. Now there was a reason. Now I'm on stage as A speaker and everybody's staring. And it's a different experience for me. Now I'm getting paid to be stared at. And I thought, this is a better way to be stared at. And it shifted everything because I said, I don't need to wait around for an employer to say, yes, we see your value. We'll work with your disability. I'm going to start my company off on my own. So I actually have never received a paycheck from a boss. I've never had a boss or a manager. I went right into my own business in my early teens and I started speaking to schools. And then schools led to hospitals and prisons and companies. It just kept growing. And the fee went from $75 to $500 to $2,000 to now where it's like 20 and 30 thousand dollars speaker fees and up. And so it's been an incredible journey from basically a survival perspective. Like, I need to make money someday, and I'd like to start making it while I'm young to now what we've grown to do. Reaching people all around the world.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I think you're super inspiring to a lot of people because it shows that you can have a lot of excuses and, you know, you just barrel through them. I mean, you do what you need to do, you figure stuff out, and it's like that whole necessities of other inventions. So in your particular case, it's like you were kind of put into a situation and you have to figure it out.

And it always fascinates me. And this is a little off topic from speaking, but just in life, when people say, oh, well, Sean, you know, why do you have such a gregarious personality? Why is it that you can get up in front of a room and command the crowd and make them laugh or cry or whatever? And it's because at a young age, I realized I need help to survive. I mean, we all do from a big picture perspective. But literally, if I drop something on the floor, I need somebody's help to pick it up. If I need something off that top shelf, if I need help getting in the car or on the toilet, whatever it may be, I needed to build up rapport with people so that they felt. Felt inclined to help me. So I developed a personality to connect with people. So my basic needs got met. And then it kind of grew to, wow, I actually can go way above getting my own needs met. I can take this from a humanitarian perspective, like, how can I then be there for other people's needs and there's this weird moment that happens, Joe, when people don't know anything about my resume, anything about my background. They just see me on the street. The first moment they come up to me, I can tell how comfortable they are with themselves by how they treat me. The more they can be comfortable around me and play with, you know, tease and have fun with me. I know that that's a very solid person, but it's amazing. What happens is usually people come up and they think, how can I help this little guy in this wheelchair, you know, cross the street? It's the weirdest thing. It's part of my stand up comedy that you would never know this about my life, but I will go for a morning stroll. When I get up and I go to the coffee shop, I probably have two or three cars a day pull over, roll the window down, and ask me if I need help. Like, I'm just saying, do I have a sign on me? Like, what are you, what are we doing this for? But I think it's because people automatically assume, well, there's this little guy in a wheelchair, he must be lost, or. And so it's about educating people that actually you're rolling your window down. But I'm a therapist. I probably can help you more than you can help me. And it's that fun exchange when people actually realize what I do know. But that's a lot of us. You know, when. When you see somebody on face value, you think, oh, well, here's what I think their life's like. But then you get to know them and you might learn so much about them that they can end up helping you.

Man, I'm almost sitting there thinking, you should tell all those people when they come up and say, can I help you? Say, yeah, you know, you can go buy my book right now. Let me give you my website or whatever, and perhaps I can help you.

You get out of the car, I have a postcard. I need you to go use this QR code.

Look, if someone's willing to, like, stop their car and ask, they're probably, you know, a concerned person, which means they're probably more apt to be in the personal development.

Your entrepreneurial brain kicked on and said, how can we use that?

Absolutely.

I love that.

Like, how do you. How do you leverage the help of others for your own?

Sure.

Well, look, it'll help them too. If they get on your site and by your book, the world's going to be a happier place. At least I would think so. We'll strategize This a little more. And if anyone watching has any ideas, feel free to post them in the comments below. Okay, so let's talk about that business, then. The whole business of public speaking. And why do people need to learn about public speaking? I mean, is it business? It's more than just go out and turn it into a career, but your ability to persuade and move audiences. And people are definitely afraid of it at times. Some people don't know how to think about it. So let's just start from the beginning.

I want you to name three great leaders throughout history that come to mind. Boom, boom, boom. What do you got?

Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Steve Jobs. Well, Steve Jobs was not great with some people, but in terms of. Oh, absolutely. I mean, he.

Mother Teresa. Yeah, yeah. The people that you mentioned are incredible orators. Totally. And I'm a big believer that you don't need to speak well if you're gonna play small in life. But if you want to make an impact, you're gonna need to speak well. Yeah, and you're gonna need to not necessarily make an impact on the masses, but on the impact of your children or your spouse or your employees or your friends or your community, whatever group you are a part of. Your ability to communicate your ideas, your ability to influence them through the spoken word, that will always have a positive impact if you can really hone the skill. I've never met somebody that said, you know, I got really good at speaking, and my life just went miserable. You know, when. When you get really good at commanding a presence and impacting a crowd, you can take it off into so many different directions. It helps you with sales. It helps you in influencing a cause, a movement. My big thing in getting people to get comfortable with speaking is to see, as we'll talk more depth later, is that it's not about you. It's about the impact that you can have on those around you. So I really think it's important to be a phenomenal communicator and order so that you can spread messages that you think are important.

Why are people so scared to speak?

Well, I think there's a couple reasons. One, we'll just take on from a biological. So for a very long time now, this is only for the people that believe in science. Okay. But for those of you that do believe a little bit in science. And we went a very long time as a species in tribes, in groups that we survived in these tribes, and we roamed the earth together. And if you got thrown out of the tribe, that was not a Good thing. And so we have millions of years of our brain saying, hey, let's not do anything to screw up. So let's not do anything to stand out. Let's not do anything that will have us be judged, because that won't go well. And I see how much fear grips people when it comes to public speaking. And I'm actually this side note. I'm glad it scares people because it allows me to charge what I charge, and it allows me to help so many people. But the truth is the secondary, so that's biological. Now let's talk personal. Personally, I think the fear of public speaking is just being addicted to yourself, being so concerned about, what do you look like? What are they going to think about you? What if you make a mistake? You, you, you. It's the. It's the me, me, me, all. All about me. But I do this activity in my live event where I teach people about speaking. And I don't know if you've seen this part. You've spoken at this event few times. But what I will do, and I'll get somebody out of the audience who is deathly afraid of speaking. And just having them come up on stage, they're shaking, they're sweating, and I'll say, so tell me what's going on in your body. And then we will list on the whiteboard all the things that are going on, and they're, like, just filled with all this fear. And then I say, okay, would you like me to get rid of that for you? They're like, oh, God, that would be amazing. Yeah, absolutely. I'm like, all right, I'm going to need you to go into this corner of the stage. I'm going to go talk to the audience. And then what I do is I roll to the edge of the stage and I talk to the audience and I say, I need 10 people to volunteer for this activity. If you're going through some kind of pain right now in your life, not just a small pain, but like, major pain, maybe you just lost your husband to cancer, your child hasn't spoken to you in years, you just found out your business is crumbling, and you're gonna probably have to file bankruptcy. You're being evicted. Whatever is going on, I want you to 10 people to go to the mic, and I want you to just share with this person that's scared. What are you going through? And then just finish with, I need your help. So the 10 people get up, they go to the microphone. I go back over to the person that's scared. And I'm like, all I ask you to do is just look at this person as they're talking to you, then look at the next person. And these 10 people share, and tears well up. They say, you know, I just held my wife's hand in the hospital last week, and she's gone now, and I need your help. And then the next person, you know, my son was killed by a drunk driver seven years ago. And I gotta say, I haven't gotten over it. And it's now affected my marriage, and I'm probably gonna get divorced because I can't get my. My life together, and I need your help. The next person comes up and says, you know, I made a massive mistake as a stockbroker, and I lost millions of dollars from my clients, and a lot of them were my friends. And now I feel horrible that I lost this money, and my friends don't trust me. I need your help. And it just goes on and on and on. And I just watched the physiology of this person that claimed they were afraid of public speaking change. And I then asked the person at the end, how do you feel standing up here on the stage now? You know what they say, Jill? They say, I'm calm, I'm grounded. I feel so empathetic. And I'm like, oh, but what about all that fear? You were just trembling up here about 10 minutes ago. They're like, I stopped thinking about myself. And so I think that when people say they have a fear of public speaking, somewhat is biological, and that's fine. But, you know, biologically, we can't fly, but we invented airplanes, right? And so the other is the personal is to realize you're not on that stage to just flap your lips. You're on that stage because people are in pain and you're able to help them, right?

Well, I'll tell you, when I first did my first public presentation, I was scared shitless. I was sweating bullets. People said, after three to five minutes, you'll calm down. And the entire day I was just like a nervous wreck. And it's kind of interesting how I got into it because I had created a marketing program using strategies when I was a dead broke carpet cleaner living off credit cards. I learned marketing because I needed to survive. That's my whole story sort of thing in the early days.

And.

And I knew stuff that worked, but I had never communicated it live to an audience before. And I'd created a course that I had sold through direct mail because the Internet didn't even exist back then. And I started Going to Toastmasters and doing things to try to get over the fear. Because I was very introverted growing up and I was very shy. And I mean, talking to one person was difficult for me, let alone groups of people. I mean, it was a giant fear. And I wrote a sales letter to do an all day seminar to carpet cleaners, and 52 people showed up for this thing. And I literally had no guest speakers. It was me all day and I sold this thing. And I was like, by the time I wasn't sleeping the night before, so not only was I scared, but I was exhausted at the same time. And so I literally gave this whole presentation, like all day just talking about the stuff and I had no idea if it was landing. I was just like, just, you know, I was in my early 20s and, or mid-20s, actually, and I was just kind of scared. And at the end though, I offered to sell a marketing program and I sold $12,000 worth of a marketing course. I was selling a $497 version called a basic package and a 597 version called gold package.

12,000 cleared that public speaking fee right now.

No, here's what it did. Like, I was like, you know, I gotta learn how to do this. So you know what? The next speech was very scary and the thorough. But I was like, you know, I realized a saying that whatever you fear and don't face controls you. Whatever you fear and face, you can control it. Or at least you start taking steps to get better at. Not that. And to this day, I've never gotten rid of the nervousness. I mean, there were even estimates like, you know, the late Johnny Carson would throw up once a week before every, you know, the Tonight show, at least once a week. His whole career. Like, he never got over it. But you know what? He showed up and he did it. And not only did it give me the ability to make money, but I realized that this whole time is money sort of thing. I mean, I understand what people mean when they say that, but relationships are money. And if you're going to go out and talk to people and communicate with people, you are so much more effective if you can do it in groups than just even one on one. And even if someone that's watching this or listening to us right now is like, well, I'm never going to do a public presentation. Actually, you are. If you ever want to make an impact in anything, it may be a webinar, it may be a podcast, it may be, you know, any sort of speaking that you do, that's going to make you more effective, more clear, more persuasive. The ability to enroll people, you know, I tell people all the time, just go learn how to be a better public speaker because all kinds of aspects of your life are going to improve. And there are many people that have a ton of stuff to teach, but because they have this fear that they can't do it or they won't take steps to do it, they limit not only their ability to help themselves, but to help others.

Yeah. Speaking and writing and thinking are the things that we could spend an entire life mastering. It's not something that necessarily comes right away. Some of the students that I've been working with over the past four to five years in this business of teaching people about speaking, and it's amazing to see their growth the moment they believe they now have what it takes. I could tell them that they're amazing, but it's the moment they believe they're amazing.

Totally. And when you actually, like even the first time when I did that all day presentation and I got the acknowledgement that even though inside I was super scared on the outside, these people still invested in my ideas.

Sure.

And most people don't do that on their first seminar. I mean, in a lot of ways it was just. But I'll tell you, I had to gut my way through it, but thank God I did because it opened up a world of opportunities. And then within the first year of doing that, I ended up selling a quarter million dollars worth of marketing courses. And by the second year, it was half a million. By the third year, it was doing over a million a year. And the year that I did a million in sales, $250,000 of those sales in 1997, that was actually came from us speaking on stage at maybe like six or seven events.

Well, I'll tell you a quick story that when you get up in front of a crowd, you might think you suck, Right. You might be hard on yourself because you hear the internal dialogue. You're not hearing the external dialogue like everybody else. You're hearing parts of what you're saying, but you're also hearing that's kind of stupid. Or are they liking this? Or where's my hand supposed to be right now? You know, should I be leaning against this podium? And you're hearing the internal dialogue. So when you get off stage, it's very easy to believe. I don't know if I did very good. Because you have imprinted your internal dialogue on top of the external dialogue. They don't hear your Internal dialogue. I gave a speech four years ago. I had just come back from Robin Sharma's event over in Switzerland and I was totally jet lagged. I probably shouldn't have taken the engagement, to be honest. And I got up on stage and I was doing my presentation. Nobody was really laughing at the funny parts. And the moment you get mad at your audience internally, that's not a good moment. You have to stay fluid in that moment. And so I get off the stage and I think, oh man, I want to refund them their money. I was not on my game. They came up to me and they were like, that was amazing. Because they didn't hear my internal dialogue, right? They didn't hear how tired I was. They didn't hear the internal chatter. And then I was telling one of my students about how like, yeah, that was one of my worst speeches in the last few years. And the, the student just said, wait a minute, when was this? And then I gave them the date and the place and they're like, sean, the only reason why I'm in your high end coaching program is because I was in the audience that day and thought you were amazing. And it was like this incredible Twilight Zone moment. I was like, wow, I thought I sucked. This person just paid me a lot of money to continue to learn about speaking from me on a day I thought I sucked because she didn't hear my internal dialogue. So you have to keep going. It's like you can't get off stage in the middle of your talk just because you don't think you're doing well. You got to push through it.

Yeah, well, and here's the thing too, like when you take people in your speaking training course, which I'll tell you to tell people about later, you actually have people go through. They see others do it, they can participate in it themselves. And what the audience sees and what's demonstrated versus what's going on inside are in some cases completely different things.

And that's so much life as well. You know, a lot of people feel like, ah, I didn't make a good impression. Well, you don't get to see what other people see. You see through your own eyes and your own feelings, and so you have your own interpretations based on the messy soup on the inside. But if you do a phenomenal job of sticking to a lot of the fundamentals, you could still, you know, like what some of my friends have said to me, sean, on a bad day, you're still amazing. And it's because I stick to the fundamentals. Of speaking. So even on the days I'm tired, even on the days I don't feel well, I can get up there and act like the pro that I am. And that's what I teach people are the fundamentals. So on the days that you're still dragging, maybe because of outside circumstances, the audience doesn't know.

Yeah. Well, let me ask you about this then, because there's this one saying that you got to take this in the right context, because there's probably some situations where may not apply, but anything we're doing in life is we're doing poorly in the beginning, meaning now, if you have to do heart surgery on someone, you don't want to do it poorly and you don't want to do it the first time.

Right. That's why they have flight simulators, Right?

Exactly. But if you're going to do your first public speech, maybe the worst one you ever do is your first one. If you're ever going to do a webinar, the first one you do maybe your worst one, and then the second one may be a little bit better. But the thing is, if someone's watching this, they have to determine one is learning how to be a more effective speaker worth doing. And if it is, and you can say, yeah, the byproducts of that, the results, where it's going to take me in my career, where it's going to take me in my ability to influence others, where it's going to allow me to affect change, you have to be willing to do it poorly. Now, in many cases, you won't. It might be all in your head, but even if it is poor the first time, who cares? Because what person flew into flying? You got to crawl, then you got to walk, then you run, then wherever that goes, right, you fly. So it's rare that anyone in any area of mastery started out very good. As a matter of fact, almost everyone that's world class can tell you stories about how the very beginning sucked.

That's why you need a dojo where you can practice, whether it's in a group like that you hold here or in my groups, you need places that are safe emotionally to share and try things out and experience and then be able to course correct. Because if you. You don't want your first speech to be a paid engagement necessarily. You want to be able to go through a course where you can try out material. We have one speaker training that we do where they all come and get to speak, everybody gets to speak, and we break them into small groups and Then we take the best people from the small groups and then they get to speak to the whole group. And it's amazing because I don't really teach much at that event, but people always come to me and say, oh, this was amazing. I'm like, I didn't really say anything. It's because they had a safe space. The dojo, like in martial arts, they had a safe space to practice, to try out material, to tell a story for the first time to a small audience. And that makes somebody feel like, hey, I can do this with a bigger audience.

Yeah, well, okay, well, let's talk about what people need to do, and I'll go some rapid fire questions, because there's a lot of things I could talk to you about, but we can. You have an entire training on this. So I want to cover some of the essential things. What are mistakes? What mistakes do people make from stage that they need to be aware of?

They get in their head. They. They don't have a clear set of bullet points of like an outline. They think that I'm just gonna go up there and speak from my heart. Well, sometimes that works, but a lot of times it turns into a ramble. So I tell people, what if you could have some bullet points? You don't need to have your speech written out and read it word for word. What if you could have bullet points that you could look down at or maybe have on a sheet of paper off in the audience that you could just jog your memory and go from one idea to the next. Mistakes I see is when people, they don't do the rehearsal work ahead of time. They don't try it out on their partner or a group of friends or even the mirror. After all these years, 24 years of speaking, I still, when I'm trying out new material, will visually rehearse it. I will go through, in my mind, seeing myself share that material and think, was that the right area to do that? How did that feel in my body? You know, so not having practice can make a big impact negatively. Getting caught up in using a pet phrase can really make you look like an amateur. Something like I always say. I always say. Or, yeah, getting caught on a pet phrase and repeating it, looping it will make people go, oh, my goodness, that's 12 times they've now said, ladies and gentlemen, and it can be an awkward experience.

Yeah, gotcha. Okay, well, what puts people to sleep that bad? Speakers do.

They. The thing that people. Puts people to sleep is, is they don't modulate their voice. So When a speaker gets up on stage and they tell their whole speech like this, Joe, I'm really grateful that you're having me in this interview. I think that what you're doing for the planet is so amazing. And I just wanted to thank you for your contribution. And I am so excited to be here. That will put any of us to sleep. So you could have the best information, but you have to be able to modulate your voice because it's also bad to be talking like this the entire time because it's like, holy crap, take a chill pill, relax. You have to be able to understand how to take people on a wave. You know, Les Brown, one of my mentors, he said you sometimes need to go on a run. When you're on stage where you get into your moment and you are talking passionately and you have that plan, for about three minutes you're gonna go off and then you stop. And you make them digest that run. And when you can change the rhythm, the cadence, the modulation of your voice, it keeps us engaged. If you think about it, why do they have flashing things on ads on social media? Why do they flash? So that we look at it, so we pay attention to it. If it was a solid ad and didn't flash, we are more likely to not even see it. The voice is the same thing. When you're up on stage and you're not changing your voice, you're that static ad versus the one that flashes.

So, okay, so there's. What about, what is the process that you use to create like your content, your speech content.

So I call it the pull method. Pul. Whenever I'm giving a presentation, it doesn't matter if it's 10 minute talk or a two day long seminar, I will use this method. The P stands for personal. When you get up on stage, people want to hear your personal story. And that personal story is what makes you unique. It's what separates you from the crowd. Maybe you were a dead broke carpet cleaner living off of credit cards. I have your speech memorized now. And when you get up there. Most of us aren't dead broke carpet cleaners in our past. We don't know what that's like. But we then have you transition from that personal to the you, which is the universal. So this was my personal story. Now let me talk about the universal experience of it. Who in here has ever been in a financial challenge? Raise your hand, everybody's hands go up. You know that feeling like where you have more month than money, all the hands go up? Yeah. Well, when you're a dead broke carpet cleaner and you're in an industry that it's not really sexy to convince people to get their carpets clean, it's tough to kind of let them know that you, you have something important for them. And so you take this personal story and you universal, you give the universal message to it. What connects us between that? So like, if you are a good speaker, you should be able to take a black liberal, lesbian woman from New York City and being able to, using this pull method, be able to connect to a white, racist, conservative male in Texas. Now I'm just using stereotypes that never exist. But you know, and if you know the pull method, you should be able to connect these two people. Because that personal story, when told to everybody with the good unique diamonds of it, the woman could be nodding her head going, yeah, I've entered a room and felt all alone. You know, when you can take your personal story and then make it universal, and then the last part is the L, which is need to have incredible lessons. Because when somebody listens to that personal story of yours and then you're able to make it universal so they can relate to it, then they don't want to just walk away and go, wow, I feel connected to that guy. And that be the end of it. They want a lesson they want to take away. They want to know like, what did you learn at that age? What was something that you went through that I can now use it where I'm at in my life. You know, I once saw this speaker, great man, compelling story. But do you remember the story? They made it into a movie called Alive back in the 80s about the plane crash.

Oh yeah, I saw that movie.

Yeah, the plane crashed and then to survive they had to eat some of the passengers that had died.

I haven't read the book.

Horrible, horrible circumstance, right? So he's up on stage, he's telling the story, totally personal, right? But that's all that happened. He didn't then make it universal about how we can relate to it. And then he didn't give us any lessons about how do we survive the plane crashes in our life because very few statistically of us are ever going to be in his scenario. No one in my audience usually is going to have to deal with being three feet tall and in a wheelchair. But if they have lessons on how to handle unfair moments and who among us haven't had unfair moments, then they can go out to their car in the parking lot and head home and go, God, I now have these takeaways I now know I have to ask myself, what's funny about this? And a great lesson is something that is so simple that people could go home and retell it to their children.

Right? Well, so what's the purpose of a speech?

Well, I think you would get a different definition from every speaker. But the way I see it is the purpose of a speech is to transfer ideas, shift emotions, and get people to rethink their life. You know, you want to transfer an idea so you have something that maybe they don't even know exists, right? And you share that idea with them. So then the light bulb moment goes off, but you also have to shift their emotion so that they have an experience in their body, not just in their brain. Because when you have an experience in your body, not just your brain, your body will connect those two and will go into long term memory. And so if you can shift emotion at the same time as introducing and transferring that idea, then you can have that moment where a person goes and rethinks their life. Of like, wow, I could do business differently if I had a free recorded number, right, where somebody could call in and learn about my service or if I had a contest, you know, the many things that you've taught me. If you can tell stories that transfer ideas, shift emotion, it'll help them rethink their life. And I've been doing this for years, and I find that if you fall down on one of those three people going away, they leave your speech going, it was all right. Or I kind of nodded off. Another thought I had about what causes people to go to sleep isn't just the voice modulation issue. It's being confusing. The moment the brain gets confused, it checks out. It goes, you know what? This is too hard. I don't want to, you know, like in math, I don't want to carry the one, you know, I don't want to do this long. And if I can't figure out where the hell this speaker is going, I'm going to start thinking about what I need to be doing for my grocery list when I go home. So you got to be clear. Your message has to pull them through the experience.

What does that have to do with the cost of eggs in China, though?

The cost of eggs in China. Let me think about that.

I was just trying to be confusing.

Yeah.

Okay, so how do you make an audience laugh and also make an audience cry?

Well, I don't think usually they cry at your jokes and they laugh at mine. But here's my thoughts on the two when it comes to laughing and making people laugh, I look at it this way. All humor is an exaggerated version of the truth or an exaggerated version of a lie. So let me tell you about this. So if you have somebody that is really quiet, like Rakim here, right? So Rakim is not known for being a loud, you know, rude human being. Right. He's very pretty quiet.

He's more like a quiet, rude human being.

Yeah, he's quiet. So what do we do when we're telling a joke? We either want to exaggerate a lie or exaggerate the truth. So if he comes in and we know he's a quiet guy, we could either exaggerate the truth and be like, do you hear him? I think he just came in. Because we all know he's quiet. That that's an exaggeration of that. Or we could be like, oh, here comes the rebel rouser. Here comes loud Rakim. Plug your ears. It's gonna get crazy. That's an exaggeration of a lie, right? Both are funny. Both make us laugh. Because humans laugh when there's an exaggeration of the truth or a lie. Another way that we laugh is by misdirection. And you do this constantly. You did a little bit with the eggs, but you could do it even funnier, I'm sure. And that is when you're taking somebody down a road and then you throw them a curve. I remember a quick little story about when I introduced Joe to my mom. I told you this story, but I was so worried about you meeting my mother because you have some very colorful sense of humor when I'm with you. And I had prepared her for days. I'm like, joe, you gotta see past the rude, crude humor. He's a good man. I hope you like him. And I built you up as my mentor for a few months before she met you. And then we go to dinner, and you were sweet as pie. And she just looked over and she's like, you were wrong about this Joe Polish character. I'm like, that son of a bitch is not being himself right now. And it was this great moment because in this experience of making people laugh, it's about throwing curveballs. And you were usually throwing all these curveballs, but that day you just threw nice softball right down the middle. She just thought you were sweet as pie. Still does.

It's true.

That's true.

That was awesome.

Making people cry.

Yes. So I'm crying right now.

So here's why it's important to make people cry. And it Sounds mean, even. Like, I like to make people cry. I do. Because there's a magical moment that happens right after a person cries. You know, your tear ducts actually produce antidepressants. You actually get a relief from your tears. Now, here's the problem. Just like anything, if you cry too long and too much, the body no longer accepts it. The body no longer says, oh, we can. We can come up from this. So crying is important with an audience because the way I look at it is, you know those super bouncy balls that you get in a gumball machine that when you throw them down, they jump really high? You know what I'm talking about?

I am semi familiar. I mean, I can't say the last time I've ever bought one, so I'll.

Send you a few. Okay, but here's the metaphor. How do you make an audience go, hi, how do you make them feel amazing? You gotta throw them down hard. You gotta get them to see, like, the pain. You gotta get them to rethink. Like, man, maybe my life's, you know, got some things that are unresolved. Maybe there's some issues that I'm not wanting to look at. And I've noticed that deep down inside, most of us are looking for an excuse to cry for something outside of us. That's why we'll watch Forrest Gump and we'll cry when Forrest gets left by his Jenny. Jenny. Yeah, so he's like, Jenny, right. And she leaves on the bus and our heart breaks and we think we're crying for Forrest. And we are a little bit, but that's. That's a one dimensional screen. What's really going on is we can see ourselves in forest. And we think about the times we were left by maybe our mother, maybe by a lover, maybe a business partner. And we are able to shed a tear for forest. But it's also giving us permission to feel our own pain. And when you can help your audience shed a tear, then they actually will want to laugh harder after that experience. So I always say, start off at about 80 out of 100% of energy, then take them down, dip them deep into some despair on, you know, what are they not looking at? What are they not paying attention to? And then jump them at, you know, 120% when you leave them. So you leave them better than you found them, and you got to take people on this emotional ride. The worst, though, is when a speaker takes us to that depressing point and then says thank you very much, walks off the stage, and you And I have seen that when you're like, great, so all these children are dying in this third world country and now we all go home feeling like, what's the point of living? Right? It's because you can't just keep the audience down there. You gotta give them hope. You gotta send them on a better trajectory.

Yeah. So the point. Well, obviously you have learned a lot about every little nuance of speaking. And you teach this to people so that they can be more effective speakers. But you also teach people how to make money doing their talks. And so there's a lot that I could ask you about. We could go for like another week just on the different things. But you have a training on this. I do want to. So a couple things. One, I want you to talk about how do you actually get paid for like speeches? Like, what's the best strategy for landing high paying talks? And then the second is, where do people go to actually learn from you?

Yeah, so I'll answer the first question and you know, this is going to sound simple, but it's how I built my whole business. To get on the main stage, you got to get on the side stage first. So whenever there are massive conferences, they usually have all these breakout sessions. And these breakout sessions, they're event planners are scrambling to figure out, well, where are we going to get all this content of all these breakout sessions? And so if you go to a conference coordinator or you go to a website that where they're having a big conference and say, are you doing breakouts? Here's my material, here's a couple maybe testimonials of people that have worked with me. I'd love to be able to do a breakout workshop. Then you get to, if you get selected, you get to do a breakout workshop. They usually will film it. So now you have a little bit of a demo video. Then ask somebody to maybe sit in and say, hey, can you see if this is something that maybe is mainstage worthy? And they'll be like, yeah, maybe that is something that we could do. They come, they see you, you got to knock it out of the park. Got to do a phenomenal job on the free level breakout session. And then they'll oftentimes ask you to come back next year and say, you know, we have a speaker stipend, we'd love to have you speak at the main stage. And then when you come back in two years, because you did the breakout one year, second year, you do the main stage, then everybody in that audience, if there are any decision makers now they come up to you and they say, hey, what's your fee? What's your calendar? And so literally by taking a free opportunity, we call it showcasing. Then you get onto the main stage, then you get in front of decision makers. And I've done this for years and I've really learned to become friends with event coordinators. And I asked them a very simple question. How do you pick your speakers? Literally, it's that simple. Let's say I didn't know you and I and I wanted to speak at one of your events. I just literally see if I can get in that one, one on one conversation and say, hey Joe, how do you, how do you bring in speakers? And you might say, well, you have to be a member of my group. So then I think, okay, how do I join your group? And then you tell me, how do you join your group? And this is kind of what happened even in ours. And so I join your group, but then I get to get up on stage, give the presentation, knock it out of the park. And then all the people in the audience, their potential decision makers, they come up and say, hey, I want you to speak to my group. And it is an incredible like spiderweb activity. So that simple question, how do you pick your speakers? How can I do a breakout session? Sometimes it's even asking somebody when they have a. There's a little bit of ninja stuff is I'll come up to them and I'll say, hey, who do you know that has a conference on this material that might be interested in a speaker? And they'll usually say like, well, I do. And you know, if you don't make it painfully obvious, right? And literally the question of who do you know that is interested in this type of material that I bring nine out of ten times, they'll say, well, why don't you send it over to me? But if you came at them directly and say, I want to speak at your conference, that can maybe cause a little bit of lean back experience. So there's so many different things. And as you said, you know, I've been just in the short brief time we had together doing the broad strokes here, but we have a live event, you speak at it every year. It's called 10K speeches, teaching people how to get that $10,000 fee. Because that's when I feel like the industry starts to see you as an expert, starts to see you as a pro. When you start getting paid $10,000 or more a talk, you get treated differently. You get doors open that are Totally different. You know, when I struggled on the free or the thousand dollar level for years, one day, finally, it got to the chance to offer a $10,000 speech, and. And it was like life changed, and I got introduced to a whole different world, and people started treating me better. It was weird. Like, I'm getting treated so much better at the $10,000 speech than I did when I was doing it for free. Counterintuitive. But I want to get people to that $10,000 a speech level. So we have 10k speeches.com. people can come. We are opening registration right now for our summer event, and I'd love to have people in the audience because we make the ticket price super affordable so that people can come in and see if speaking is something that they can build in the different areas of their business. Because it's about getting a message out there. And I'm very platform agnostic. You don't have to be a public speaker. Like you said, it could be webinars, podcasts, even taking your videos and getting the transcripts and putting it into blog posts.

Right, Right. Well, so where is it located?

This year it's in Tempe, Arizona, and we hold it at the same theater every year. And this year, I'm pretty sure we're gonna sell out. And we have some phenomenal presenters. We have one speaker that I've been waiting for four years to have come speak, and he's booked 250 times a year, more than any other speaker I know, finally convinced him to present to our group. So I'm really excited about that.

Awesome. So what else would you like to share that I didn't ask you about or that you think is important for people to know?

Well, I would turn it back on you, and I would say, all these years that we've been friends and you mentored me, why do you think our relationship has grown where you want to help me? Because sharing that piece of wisdom, I think would be really important for whoever is listening or watching.

Well, why do I want to help you? What do I do? Because you're very much similar to me in terms of you're funny, you've been through a lot of hell in your life, and so we definitely can relate with overcoming in our own ways, different challenges. You're extremely conscientious about wanting to help other people. You would do this stuff even if you didn't get paid for it. So you want to help. You're very reciprocal. You're very much aligned with. With many of the same sort of thinking that I am. You're a perpetual learner. You always want to get better. You're willing to invest in your own betterment. So I like people. There's a lot of people that will want to learn how to do something, but they're not willing to put in much time, energy or money into something. And you're willing to put in your. Even though you're one of the best in the world at what you do, you realize that school's never out for the pro. So you keep learning, you keep educating, you keep getting continual training, and you're always wanting to better your best. So I already have arrived, would never enter your sort of consciousness when I.

Die, I'll say that.

Right, right. And you're just. I mean, you're just a caring person with a ton of integrity and you utilize your speaking as a way to make a living, but underneath it all, you're trying to reduce a lot of human suffering, as am I. I mean, I'm using my marketing and my genius network and everything to fuel genius recovery and to try to reduce human suffering and trying to have a shit ton of fun in the process. You're a fun guy. I mean, you don't take life too seriously because you also know that things are seldom as bleak as they seem when they're going bad and seldom as great as they seem when they're going well. And so lighten up, you'll live longer. So it's that sort of thing, which is my buddy Dave Kekich's quote. But you live that. And so how would you not want to help someone or be associated with that? Because that's what gives you energy. So you're an energy charger, not an energy drainer. And some people are. You can be a fountain or you can be a drain. And so you're a fountain.

Thank you.

As am I. That's why you're flowering right now. Just because you're being blessed in my presence.

Yeah, well, we all know that. Well, the reason why I wanted you to do that is because I'm going to have Rakim cut that part out so I can listen to it as I go to sleep. It's like a sweet, gentle, lovely burn, right?

Yeah. You'll have to replace the Wayne Dyer meditations and Eckhart Tolle and stuff. And you'll listen to me saying that all the time. It'll get more deep in your.

Nothing wrong with my ego that I want to hear you tell me what's amazing in the last question.

That's awesome. So here's what I'd like to say to anyone that's listening or watching this right now. If you are of the mindset that becoming better at communicating and being effective in any environment of your life is going to be helpful, or if you want to be more persuasive, more powerful, more impactful from stage, this is one of the best guys on the planet that you can learn it from. He will literally give you everything that he possibly could. And I've seen you transform people's lives over and over and over again that never thought that they could do this. And you've literally given them a whole new process and a whole new formula by teaching what you have spent years and a lot of time and a lot of money into learning. And you just download it very quickly. And so what's the website again for people?

10K speeches. So 1 0k as in kilospeeches.com and you know, I would absolutely love for whoever is out there, if you have any questions, you could email us off the website and we'd be happy to get them answered. But at the end of the day, whether it's marketing for you or speaking for me, we're here to reduce human suffering.

Yeah.

And so it'd be my pleasure to to be able to have you there to see how I can best support you. I tell people all the time I care more about you than your speaking career. And that's a good thing.

Yeah. Well, you're always doing awesome stuff, so always a pleasure. Thank you, brother. Thank you and see you. Go to 10k speeches.com right now and do something good for yourself. Don't miss another episode of Genius Network. Subscribe today. More information can be found@genusnetwork.com subscribe if you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event, go to geniusnetworkevents.com that's geniusnetworkevents dot com if you would like access to the complete video presentation, the show notes, the links, and the special resources for this episode, please visit geniusnetwork.com 95 that's geniusnetwork.com 95.