Episode #783 - Cameron Herold's Guide to Impactful Speaking

Foreign.

Welcome to this edition of the million dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

And when you get up to speak, is there standardization to the content of your talk or do you have like, are you like the Rolling Stones where you can pull from, you know, 15 or 20 albums from over the years?

Both. Yeah, both. I have two core topics that I tend to talk about right now. One is my around my new book, the second in command and then the second is around the content that's in my invest in your leaders course. Those tend to be the ones that I like to lead with. But yeah, I could easily go on a stage for 90 minutes and, and just talk. I've done a couple where I've just done fireside chats or Q and A and I can just go. I've got enough good content and I know the room. As long as I know the audience, if I know what the audience, I can really deliver for the audience. For sure.

I've found that key for me. I kind of terminated my speaking in 96, but at least have to sit a while out in the audience before I went up to kind of get a feel for the room. You know, there's something invaluable about that.

Would you rather be on a stage or mingling around talking to people?

Both.

I would much rather be on the stage until after I've done the speaking event. Yeah, I find it very hard mingling around talking to people prior to the event. But yeah, I will often get on the stage with the empty room and look out at the room. I often get briefed on the audience and the makeup to understand them because I really want to make sure that my content lands for them. Which is. Which is why I turn down a lot of events too. I turn down a lot of events that just are the wrong group for me. Like, I don't want to go and talk to a group of accountants. I don't want to talk to a group of government officials. I don't want to go do another chamber of commerce event. But. But if it's the right types of entrepreneurs, I'll say yes to them.

Why don't you want to talk to government officials or the Chamber of commerce? Where do they come? There's got to be some experiences there that have brought you to that conclusion.

Two parts. One, my core purpose is to help entrepreneurs make their dreams happen. So if it's entrepreneurs that fires me up. If it's not, I don't know why I'm there. And secondly, I had these speakers bureaus that booked me to a few events where I'm like, I don't belong here. Like, I had one. I was talking to 350 actuaries. I'm like, kill me. I don't identify with them, I don't understand them. I don't get it. I don't know how to deliver value. Now, if I had some of the content today around leadership that I have.

What did you say to the actuaries? What did you say when you found yourself?

I don't know.

Was that one of the ad lib things?

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I did another one where I was in a Bible belt and I dropped a couple of F bombs. And I learned very quickly to know your audience there too. I didn't realize I was in the Bible belt. I wasn't as bad as Gary Vaynerchuk, but I definitely wasn't PC either.

Well, when you get up on stage, how prepared are you? I mean, do you have it, you know, pretty much tracked to run on? Do you ever get up in front of the audience and you look at your notes, you're all, you were fired up before you got up there, but then you're looking out of the crowd and you're looking at what you got and you say, I got to go in a different direction.

Well, there's no notes. I don't work off any notes. So if I have a keynote deck, it's only photos. So it's like photo, photo, photo. And I just talk about the, and I know the content and where it's going. So if I'm running one of my two core keynotes, I could, and I can throttle it back and forward. Like I could take the same slide deck and do it in 30 minutes or do it in 90 minutes, you know, tell more stories, expand a little bit. But yeah, I could walk on any stage right now to a group of 500 entrepreneurs and do 90 minutes off the top of my head with no slides, no, no deck. And I would just, you know, I might even want to interact and ask a couple questions. And then I would just go with a whiteboard would be amazing.

I found the same kind of thing. Sometimes all you need is a spark. It's like a spark. The question. And then you're, you know, you could, you could say, we're going to have a Q and A, but they only get two Questions in and the hour's over.

I learned something About Q&As too, is you have to see the audience. You got to get a couple people in the audience to ask the first couple questions, to get the group feeling comfort to ask some questions. Or you have to find the people in the audience that you know want to ask a question. You're like, you. What's the question?

You have to control that because there is the tendency for the dumbest guy in the room to ask the dumb to have the most courage to ask the dumbest question.

I have a friend of mine, Joe Polish, says there's. There's no such thing as a stupid question. There's just stupid people with questions.

I think I can relate to that. Now. When you're out there, what, as you're moving around the world, you're probably open to speaking engagements coming in as, you know, paralleling some of your traveling.

Yeah. So there's a couple of things I've done paid events over video conference for 11 years now. Nine years. Sorry, nine years. So I'm doing a lot of speaking over video now, which has been great. But then my wife has our travel calendar planned for about the next 18 months. We know pretty much exactly where we're going to be. So I can actually reach out to groups in certain cities. Like as an example, I had a group in Ireland and they said, could you do it? And I'm like, let me look at my calendar. And I said, you know what? I'm going to be in Paris, France for two weeks. Right. When you want me to speak, if you give me this specific fee and all my travel, I'll hop over to Dublin and do the event, no problem. They said, yep, done deal. Great. Well, then I contacted another group that has always wanted me to come to Dublin. I'm like, dude, I'm going to be in dublin on the 15th. If you can book me on the 16th, I'll give you a discounted fee, no travel cost. You got. You're like, done. So now I've got, you know, I'll pull 40 grand in plus book sales, plus back of room sales and all my travel covered. I'm going to go over to Dublin for three days and pop off two events. I did the same in Cairo, in Egypt, and now I've got a group, two or three events booked in Sydney, Australia for next Sydney and Melbourne, Australia for next February. And they're looking for two other cities in Australia. But that's because my brand is bigger. Yeah. I'm not trying to do as much in person speaking as I used to, unless it fits my travel schedule.

Yeah. What about your podcast? Are you. You're doing your podcast as you move around the world too? How often? How many episodes?

How often?

How long?

We've done about 350 episodes so far. One that came out two weeks. And I only interview the second in command. I never interview the CEO. We've heard the CEO story. I want the rest of the story. One that just came out two weeks ago was I had the second in command or the campaign manager for RFK junior's campaign. So I had, you know, he's running for president. I just wanted any presidential candidate, I want to know what's it like to run a campaign. I found out, got an unbelievable one. But I've had the CEO. CEO of Bumblebee, Shopify, the Cleveland Indians, you know, Asana Kajabi, activecampaign. I've interviewed the second command of all those brands. And yeah, we. We release two episodes a week. One that is. Is usually a repurposed podcast where I'm a guest on a podcast or it's me riffing on content, and then the other is me interviewing coos. We're getting 100,000 listeners monthly right now is what the second in command podcast is getting.

Congratulations. Now, tell me about your technically, like right now, what are you recording on? I mean, you know, so I've had people, and this may be what you're doing. They take the MacBook and they open the lid, and that's their studio right there.

I have a DJI mic. I'm not going to open the box up because it might change the recording, but I've got a DJI mic that has two microphones. One of the microphones is here on the inside of my shirt, and it picks up to a little Bluetooth receiver and also could plug into my iPhone. So that's what I use. And then I'm just using Zoom right now. Normally I would actually throw my iPhone camera in, but my iPhone was running low. But normally I'll put my iPhone camera on my laptop and I'll use the camera from the phone. And that setup tends to work very well.

Really? So you open up your laptop, you stick the iPhone on there, and you just decide to use the camera and.

The iPhone and Mac sync instantly. So then I just say to choose the iPhone camera, and then I would have like a 1080, really, really strong camera video.

And so you're using Zoom or Riverside or.

Yeah, Riverside.

That's a pretty flexible. I was Curious because, you know, you're staying very functional.

Yeah, we have to.

You don't have a studio or you don't have a fixed studio?

Well, I just, I was in Dubai last month for a month and I did a few media interviews and a couple of podcast interviews when I was there. And I was going into these people's amazing studios. I'm like, this is great. And they're like, yeah, what's your studio? I'm like, this is it, man. Microphone. I'm in an Airbnb in northern Norway right now.

How much of your travel is with the Airbnb or you're staying at lodges or resorts or things like that?

I would say that 90% of our nights are in Airbnbs. It's. If we have a stay of two nights, we'll do a hotel. If we're three nights or longer, we'll do an Airbnb. And so we tend to do more Airbnbs. But yeah, we'll do. If it's a two night, even sometimes three night, we might do a hotel. And then sometimes my wife and I'll each get our own room, hotel room, just to even give ourselves some space so we're not crawling all over each other because we're together, you know, 24 7, right?

Yeah. And so how long have you been in. When was it that you sold your houses and started off on this chase the bucket list adventure?

Yeah, it's been 29 months that we've been on the road, so two and a half years ago. And we both have our bucket lists. We actually publish our bucket lists online. We share them with the world and we're just chasing down one activity after another, crossing them off the list. One of my big ones has always been to. I always wanted to drive a Porsche on the Autobahn. And I remember as a little kid, I was like, gosh, it would just be so cool to drive where there's no speed limit whatsoever. And so my wife knew that and she looked up and found a place for us to be able to do a five day, four country Porsche tour with, with 10 other couples. And we did it. And day one was in Germany on the autobahn. I just dropped, by the way, our bucket list, if you want to share them or take a read. But we did it. And I got to 268km an hour on the autobahn, which is the equivalent of about 171 miles an hour. There's no speed limit. Four days later, we're in Italy and she wanted to punch it and she got to 253, which is about 166 miles an hour. But that in Italy is like your front page of the newspaper. Your car's impounded, you're. You're kicked out of the country. You're like, you're front page news, man. But anyway, we didn't get it. We didn't get a ticket, so she got hers. She got hers, too. It was fun.

Yeah. I can remember driving on a lot of drivers in Italy. Don't pay attention to the speed limit. I remember taking my mother over for a trip years ago, and we're sailing down towards below Rome, towards Naples, and just. I just screaming now. And this little, little boxy car just comes right up beside this little tiny boxy car with a, you know, mom and dad and two kids in the back, and they're crazy, you know, reading or something, and just sailed right by me, you know, like two. And I thought, what crap.

A little Fiat or something?

Yeah. And so pretty big engine in those things. It's. It could be a different experience, but what, you know, a lot of people think they'd like to try something like that. What's your experience doing that? You know? Did you have to go through an adjustment?

Oh, sure. The first big adjustment was the purging. It was getting rid of things. Took me a few months, and it took my wife a few months because she also sold her place, her home, and then got rid of all her. We even took all of our photo albums and decided which photos we wanted to keep and digitized them and threw out all the photos and albums. Like, we literally purged everything. So I did one exercise for about a month where anytime I bought something, I threw two things out. And that meant if I. If I brought in 34 items from the grocery store, I got rid of 68 items from my home. If I bought, you know, two shirts, I threw out four items. And that was a really good starting point at just getting rid of crap, you know, like all the stuff in your drawers. Like, you just don't need all these things. So by getting rid of things, that was the starting point. And then I started to sell some stuff, and I was like, selling it on Facebook, Marketplace, and people coming to the door and buying stuff. I'm like, I don't need the pain in the ass, but I may as well keep selling stuff of value. So I paid one of my kids 30% of the gross revenue. If he would list it all and he would sell it all and he would negotiate it all. So he started Selling stuff and that made it easier. And then I found an old landlord from years ago, 25 years ago, they were struggling in this thing. And I said, hey, I've got some furniture that I've got that I don't need. Would you guys want it or do your kids? He goes, oh, you have no idea. He goes, we just. They'd gone through a bad real estate transaction, lost a big home in Mexico and they were moving back to Vancouver. So they came and I gave them a whole bunch of furniture for free. And that was just this big karmic release. Yeah. And then it was just once you get going, it just got easy. Right. And all of a sudden when I started packing, I was like, what am I going to save all these, this clothes for? Like I'm, I'm going to be gone. I'm not going to come home and grab those extra five pair of jeans. So I just, everything was gone. So now I own two pair of jeans. I have a pair of chinos and a pair of cords, four pair of pants, and then I got two pair of shorts. I can tell you my whole wardrobe, like I can tell you everything I own.

And so I would imagine you're not toting a suit around with you so you're, you're able to do your speaking and everything without the big wardrobe.

Yeah, I mean, I did. When did I just buy. I just bought a sports coat for a wedding in November and I threw it into a store. We have a 5 foot by 10 foot storage locker. And I threw it in the storage locker. And the reality is I should have just donated it because by the time I ever remember I have a sports coat, it'll be out of style or I won't want it. You just change like on stages. I have like three dress shirts, so I would just put on a dress shirt and a nice belt. I have a brown belt and a black belt. I used to have 14 belts. Now I have a really nice black belt and ice brown belt. And I, you know, I put on a really nice pair of running shoes and a pair of jeans and a nice dress shirt and I would walk out on stage and crush it. And again, it's entrepreneurs that I'm speaking to. It's not, you know, whatever. But even when I went over to the country of Qatar, I had the emer. The family, the royal family, was hiring me to do some work. I went to Nordstrom and bought two suits and showed up. So if I ever needed a suit for something, considering I never spend any money on Clothes, I just go buy a suit.

You know, you say, you know, you got 14 belts and you got all these pair of jean everything. But when you start going through and throwing that stuff out, it is better if you pace yourself because like it or not, we develop emotional attachments to this stuff. It creates a grief. You know, when I, you know, I went through that up in North Carolina when I moved down to Florida. We've been in that house for 20 something years. And it's just like there's this depression about. There's only. I realize there's only so much you could do at one time, you know, that's very true.

There really was a grieving process of. I remember walking around my homes and taking a video and talking about memories in the home, and I kept that video and I took photos of almost every room. I made sure that I had time with my kids. That was really special in those homes, and we kind of honored that. But yeah, there was definitely. Look, I used to love to cook. Well, I still love to cook, but I had like an unbelievable collection of cookbooks and it was hard for me to pare that down to the six that I'm keeping. And I got rid of 30, and then I had my full, you know, Le Creuset collection of all my cookware, and I gave that away and sold a bunch of stuff and. But I realized that whenever I have another forever home, I'll just go to Le Creuset and I'll buy the whole kitchen again. Like, there was some hard parts for sure.

And when you do, you have the. In the back of your mind that this is a phase. Once we hit the bucket, you know, we. Once we tire of. We get most of the important buckets hit that we're going to want to stabilize again and have a different kind of life.

So we know that for the next year and a half to two years, we're still going. But in 2025, we want to start looking for two places. One in Dubai, which is where my company is based, and I'm now a resident of Dubai. As a Canadian, I'm not taxed on worldwide income and Dubai is free. So I can. I can really set up quite an affordable structure. And then secondly is northern Italy. We're looking around the Lake Garda area as our European base. So we'll have a place. I have a place in Northern Italy and then a place in Dubai as our two hubs. And we'll go to our place in Italy for a month and then we'll go travel for a month and we'll go to our place in Dubai for a month. We'll travel for a month. So it'll probably be like six months a year in our places and six months a year traveling. And then when we're not in our places, you know, rent them out on Airbnb or whatever for a while and then at some point we'll just be in our places.

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