0135: Everything is a Presentation with Michael Angelo Caruso

Ea interviews, episode 135. Inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority effect. Interview presentations, business storytelling, all of these are important, but do you know how to do it properly? I'm excited to have Michelangelo Caruso on the show today. He's a great guy. I. I've been in many of his presentations and have known him for probably going on, what do you think, like a decade now? I think it was like 2009 or 10. It's hard to believe, but he is going to teach you how to present like a pro. If you have any business and you're not speaking, you should. And if you are, you better be leveling up your game. I'm excited to bring them up right after we thank our sponsor. There's money in the metrics. Do you know yours? Pipedrive is the simplest and easiest CRM to close more deals, deepen your relationships and increase your business profits. Get your free trial today@eainterviews.com Pipedrive Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Michael Angelo Caruso. Michael, how are you feeling today?

Hey, Mario. Feeling pretty good. How are you?

I'm having a great day. Excited for you to share with Expert Authority World. Tell us, how did you get into speaking next to death? It's like number two of what people fear the most. So why'd you decide to make a career out of it?

Well, I, you know, I came up through the music business, so we, we got. We tasted death early on. My brothers and I were on stage all over North America on the college circuit. We opened for acts like Rick Springfield, Corey Hart, Joan Jett. We had a strange gig with Fog Hat one time and we got used to being on stage when the band ended. I had a transitory type of career job, I should say, in the telecommunications industry. I went from being on stage in a very public environment to working a call center doing 50 outbound calls a day. And I quickly realized that wasn't me. And then when my father died in 1997, ish.

I realized that I was going to die one day soon, soon enough, and I should really do what I want to do for a living. And that's when I quit my job and started the speaking business.

Just like that, you woke up and quit? I mean, was there any lead up or was it really a split decision? And you just. A lot of people would think, that's scary. How did you just do it so quick?

Well, certainly it was scary. I'm giving you the shorter version, but in any experience, you know, there's like this teeter totter, this pain, pleasure thing that's going on. I was in pain in the job. If it was the perfect job, I wouldn't have left, but I was in pain. And when my father passed, it was just my, he was my second parent to die. And I just realized, you know, life is so short. We really need to do what, what we're meant to do. And I finally decided to man up and, and put my big boy pants on and, and hang my own shingle just to see what could happen. Fortunately, I've been in the music business. I understood a little bit about what it takes to create a calendar. And I had also had a chance to test market my presentations in the speaking business because I was showing up at trade shows doing soft skills like time management and, and leadership and that sort of thing. And that was the start of it all. Looking back, maybe it was kind of silly for me to do that, but it was a different time. I was younger and it's easy to look in the rearview mirror and say, yeah, I should have done that. But at the time it was a risky thing to do. You're right.

How are you feeling now looking back? Are you glad you did it?

Well, I went to the dentist today. My mouth is a little sore, but.

Other than that I'm feeling great. Yeah, you know, the feedback has been extraordinary. I've now spoken on five continents, 49 of the 50 states. I've got books and audio programs and video programs in people's homes all over the world. I have a crazy successful online present like a pro course where I'm helping other people now learn the business, which I find to be very gratifying. And so life is really good, man. If you think of it like a four legged barstool of social life, health, occupation or vocation and then avocation. I'm on about as solid of a bar stool as you can be on and be drinking at the same time.

Well, I'm happy to hear that and congrats on your success. You also reminded me I'm going to the dentist in a couple of days myself.

You're welcome for that.

Actually looking forward to. It's for teeth cleaning. So that way I. Everyone still wants to watch the show.

What have been some of you know, I'll ask you that in a second. Tell me about some of the things that people can do to improve and present like a pro because there's a ton of speakers out there and maybe they're professional. Maybe they're not. Maybe they're in organizations, maybe they're not. I mean, for anyone who doesn't know if you want to speak, you can go speak. There's no degree or anything you need, but there's varying degrees. That's kind of cool. There's varying degrees of how good people are. What do you find most people are doing that wrong, that they could be doing better?

Well, wrong is a heavy word, but.

What do you think they could do to improve?

Well, I say wrong is a heavy word because they're not actually incorrect when they do that. What I'm about to tell you. But everybody has trouble with this because it's so hard to do, and that is to be natural.

In front of people. I mean, just think about this. The reason we're not natural is because the central nervous system is under siege. You're either going to get the good kind of stress or the bad kind of stress. So the good kind of stress is you're a professional volleyball player and the ball's coming towards you and you're going to set up the person next to you and you know exactly what to do. It's still a form of stress, but it's the good kind of stress. The bad kind of stress is, oh, my God, I'm not really that good of a speaker, and there's a bunch of people out here waiting for me to wow them and, oh, my God, you know, and then they go into all kinds of other unnatural things. But here's the thing. When you're natural, you're authentic. When you're authentic, you're believable. And when you're believable, your call to action will fire. But if there's a breakdown along the way, any of those stations, your cta, your call to action becomes diminished and you're screwed. If you were there to sell stuff, you won't sell as much stuff. If you were there to help people, you won't help as many people. If you were there to get laughs, not so much.

So when I say it's hard or wrong.

When we say it's wrong, it's technically wrong. But fixing it, becoming natural, it's the right thing to do. But how do you do that? That's the secret.

Is there an easy way to do it?

No, it's not easy. I guess for some people it's easy, but for most of us, it becomes a study.

Because what I'm hearing is practice.

Yeah, but what do you practice? Being natural. You see that? You see that the mind. The mind. Trouble there. So one of the things you can practice are called mechanics. And you know this because you've. I've seen. You spoke at. Speak at enough events, and you have this. But the idea.

Thank you.

Practicing the correct speaking mechanics, which would get you in the right place. I'll give you an easy example of that.

When I'm speaking to you. Now, I'm sending you two types of signals. I'm sending you verbal signals, and I'm sending you non verbal signals. So verbal is what's come out, what comes out of my mouth. But nonverbal is the point to my mouth, the sense of confidence, how I present it to you verbally or visually, I should say. And there's an old saying that people believe what you do over what you say. So the nonverbal signals cannot be underemphasized. Well, what happens when your verbal signals don't match your nonverbals? You have something called discontinuity, and then you're a mess.

And so one of the things I go to work on with my students right away is this continuity between what they say and what they do. Everybody practices what to say in a speech, but very few people practice what to do.

True, I agree. I mean, we've got our speech or our talking points, and we practice the hell out of it. But when do you move? When do you gesture? What expression do you have on your face at certain junctures of that speech? I mean, all that stuff should be in the speech, almost like a. Like a talking point. And that's how you get continuity. Very few people take the time to do that.

Interesting. So you definitely piqued my interest with this. So when you're taking them through your training, are there some elementary building blocks? For example, stance, leg width, how you're standing, where your shoulders are, chin up, smiling. Are there basic things you start with?

Yeah, I think a good thing to start with is something called countenance. We heard Ben Franklin talk about it a lot. He wrote a lot about it. A lot.

The great Miles Davis, the trumpet player, called it carriage. You know, it's just how you walk into a room. It's how you step onto the. The speaker platform. We call it a platform because in many cases, when we're speaking, we don't actually have a stage. So it's that area of the room that you start to make your own. But I think it starts way before that, Mario. I think it starts with how you walk into the room because people are looking at you all the time. It's funny, we talk about living in an age where we don't judge. You hear this phrase a lot. I'm not judging, no judgment. But please tell me, you know, you're being judged all the time, especially by the people that say that they don't have any, you know, any judgment. I don't know about you, but I use judgment every day. And I'm especially using it when somebody hits the speaking platform. I'm deciding whether or not the person's educated. I'm deciding whether or not I like their outfit. I'm deciding whether or not they have something of value for me. I'm deciding whether or not they bathe. And that's just in the first 30 seconds. The judgment gets even deeper as they move into the program and start to, you know, present evidence or documentation or facts about, about their content. And I'm weighing every one of them. You know, does that sound vaguely familiar to me? Does it sound something like something I could do? And these, all of these are little rabbit holes that a speaker can go down and never recover from in a 20 minute keynote.

Is there anything that you see people do in the beginning that they don't do in the end? So maybe they come on real strong and start off powerful and then slip away from it. Do you have any advice on how to maintain it through the whole, through the whole presentation?

Yeah, I think, I think it's fair to say that every presentation should have a CTA or a call to action. So the whole reason you're there is some sort of call to action. Even if it's a safety program, the call to action is don't get hurt. Right. If it's a sales program, buy my product. If it's a motivational program, go out and be the best person you can be. Try to be in a good mood every day, be a good role model. So it's always about asking people to do something. So if the entire, as the French call it, the raison d', etre, right, the reason for the speech is the call to action, then all roads lead to the call to action. And I would be, if I'm crafty as a presenter, I would be planting seeds the entire way that would germinate in that 20 minute keynote and help you understand that the call to action is not only in your best interest, but it's undeniable. So you can imagine how many moving parts there are in a 20 minute keynote. If my very thing that comes out of my mouth at the very beginning is already a Harbinger of things to come in terms of the call to action.

So it's not just my talking points, it's not just slides 1 through 12. It's not just my expression and how I'm communicating with you, it's all of it. And all roads lead to the call to action.

It's a hefty proposition. Think of it like a piece of sushi. I don't know if you eat sushi, but absolutely.

Spicy tuna.

That's right. A piece of sushi is designed to have a bunch of different flavors that hit different areas of your mouth at different times. There's a part of your mouth that resonates with salt. There's another one for sugar, another one for temperature. The roof of your mouth feels the food differently than your tongue does. And of course all the textures and sushi is very know, carefully crafted to deliver that, that taste payload. Right. And I think a message, a speech is the same thing. Whether it's a pop up presentation in a, in a group meeting, a 20 minute keynote or a three hour workshop, it's all the same.

So what do you do when you get to the call to action? They've done the first and second part right so far. Now they're at the call to action. And this is a part you can either nail or completely screw everything up with also.

Yeah.

How does one prepare to deliver a good call to action?

Well, you know, I do a lot of sales training and in the sales training we talk about something called the trial close. Now the trial closes are these like.

Shallow versions of the call to action that precede the call to action. In a 30 minute sales call, I might do two or three trial closes. And the trial close is just to set up to make sure that my GPS is calibrated properly and that I've got your attention, that we're moving down the right path and that you're with me. So trial closes sound like something like this. Does this make sense to you? They're always yes questions, does this make sense to you? And I would actually nod my head yes. Now people who don't speak, that are watching our session today, this little interview, are thinking to themselves, this guy's crazy. That cornball stuff can't possibly work. But it works like a charm, especially in the hands of a good speaker or in the mouth of a good speaker. So the trial close, there's a million of them and you can use different ones for different personalities. If you have a lot of women in the audience, a lot of empathic people, who are emotionally based, you might say, how does this feel to you so far? But if you have a lot of cerebral people in the audience, engineers, for example, you might say, what do you think of this? Does this, does this sound. Does this. Do you think this could work? So I keep using language and non verbals that would appeal to. To the type of people I'm trying to message in that particular presentation. Podcasts are hard because we don't know exactly who's listening. But at the American association of.

Engineers, I can promise you that we're looking at a bunch of cerebral folks who are linear thinkers, and they're looking for a lot of statistics and facts.

How do you find that information if you don't know it? I know you know it because you've been doing it a while, but for someone that's not as far along as you.

Yeah. What kind of, what kind of.

Information.

Are you talking about as far as the audience? If someone's speaking to the association of Contractors versus Engineers versus Pottery Artist.

Yeah.

Those are different demographics. How do you know? How many personality types should you account for? And how do you find which one your audience is?

Well, I'm a big fan of Dr. Tony Alessandro. You probably know him. He's been talking about the platinum rule for a long time. Platinum rule is the antithesis of the golden rule. Tony works with only four personalities. The four personalities are. And these are in every audience, right? The relator, the thinker, the socializer, and the director. So a lot of the personality assessments will tell you that there are a lot more than 4, 16, 32. But for our purposes, when we're teaching presentation skills, just four types of people in the room, usually. And once I understand who the four personalities are and how many I have in the room, I can calibrate and work my presentation almost in real time. So I might have a speech that I'm delivering, but I would recalibrate in real time for that particular audience, and I would do that by.

Again, in real time, adjust, say, the yin and the yang of what I'm presenting.

Cerebral people in the room. Thinkers in the room might be looking for a lot of statistics and factoids, whereas non thinkers think. Sounds bad to say it like that, doesn't it? But people who are emotionally based are interested in stories.

So I would use less. Fewer bullet points, for example, and tell more stories. Now, I never abandon stories completely because stories are very impactful, and even with the most cerebral audience, a good story goes a long way. But it's that yin and the Yang, you know, numbers versus letters, stories versus bullet points.

Conversation versus a linear PowerPoint presentation. And all these are just micro decisions that I make in real time. Another thing I do is called the reverse presentation, where in a smaller group setting, I might get the other person to tell me his presentation before I deliver mine. And that's powerful. That's why every presentation should have a few of these, you know, we call them icebreakers. But it should be purposeful, where I take a quick straw poll of the audience. You know, how many of you people, how many people in the audience like to do this? Great. Hands up. How many people recognize this? Thank you very much. And maybe a third one. And the third one's always the one that gets the biggest, you know, response from the audience. So we do things in threes. The third one's always the best or the funniest or the most, you know, interesting. And then after doing that initial survey, I have a litmus test of who exactly I'm dealing with in the audience. And then I can again calibrate my content moving forward. I told you earlier that it's best to be natural. So how can I be natural if I'm slave to the PowerPoint presentation? I have to move sequentially through these slides, which were preordained. Right. And that's why I haven't used PowerPoint in eight or nine years now.

What do you think about. Have you ever used just images?

Yes, I love that because I'm not slave to the bullet points and so on. I'm still slave to the sequence of the images. But maybe that's not a bad thing.

You know, my favorite PowerPoint tool, Mario, is B for Black.

Because I can. I can just make the screen go black and just start free forming and. And work the crowd in a natural, authentic way.

You know, I came up through the music business and we talk about two types of musicians. People who play orchestra or in. They play from a music, right? They read the music, so they're classically trained. They never leave the music. There's other people playing the same music. We're all following the conductor. That kind of musician versus a jazz musician. No music, just chord progression. And he's. Because he knows his harm and because he's free to improv. Right. Improvisation, it's a much different style of music. It's freer, it's looser. Jazz has been more popular than classical music almost since it's been invented. And for that reason, it feels freer, it feels more natural. And so while I appreciate and can Read music. I'm much more of a jazz improv artist on stage, and that is a hard thing to teach people to do. Improv.

I would. I'm very much the same way. I play sax and piano. So if it's the classical side, the piano is great. But the sax is a lot of fun.

You bet.

Can just do what you want. And.

Same for speaking.

Sax, in some ways is the more popular instrument. You know, the saxophone almost always gets the solo. Right. Right. There's piano in every song, but you can hardly hear it sometimes. The sax is never hidden. It's always up front. The sax is the one that the piano has a note. You hit the note G, bing, bing. It's always the same. But with a saxophone, you could slide it up to the note. You can slide down to the note, you can bend the note. That's interesting to me.

So you. Your style, I think. And maybe it's why I like it and I'm biased. But you. It gives you the freedom to interact with the audience and actually add the value to them instead of being. I. I remember some people, they were. There was an issue with the PowerPoint projector, and they just stopped everything till it was fixed. I was like, dude, make something up or. Really?

Yeah.

You. You know, your material that little. That you can't just say the next bullet point here.

Well, that's the thing, you know, Slave to the. Slave to the projector. There's a famous story about President Bill Clinton giving a very important speech and the teleprompter shut down. And he continued on as if the. As if there was no teleprompter at all. And that's the mark of a really good communicator. We saw similar.

Fluidity from President Reagan. Not everybody has the ability to do this, but. But when. But when they have it, man, you just appreciate it so much. It's like a gift. Now, it doesn't guarantee that all the factoids are going to be in place. That's when you start misquoting statistics and that sort of thing. But, you know, let's face it, most of us know our material. Material pretty well. Martin Luther King has been credited with delivering Me I have a Dream speech in front of the Washington Monument as if it was some sort of master work. But anybody that has studied the speech knows that he had given components to that speech for months and months and months in advance. It just happened to be the time it was recorded. And people like to date and name stuff. So it became the I have a Dream speech. On such and such a day, you know, but components.

But it wasn't his first one.

What's that?

It wasn't his first one.

Well, it wasn't the first time he had delivered various components of that. He knew he had all of these doubles and triples and home runs and. But. But finally they coalesced on this particular day. And now it's the I have a dream speech. And calling it the I have a dream speech has a much more power and gravitas than just saying Martin Luther King was a hell of a speaker.

But make no mistake, all of those components.

Came from a body of work. Right. And I'll bet he gave a version of the I have a Dream speech after that too. But nobody talked about it after that because it served everybody to have it be a masterwork, a command performance on that particular day. But all of us, you have your bits. I work like a comedian in bits. And when I tell a joke to an audience, if I'm keynoting on Saturday night, I'm going to tell that joke as if I'm telling it for the very first time and I'm going to enjoy the hell out of it. And when you go see REO Speedwagon play on Saturday, they're going to play role with the changes as if they're playing it for the very first time for you. But it's part of their body of work. It's going to be a little bit different each night. The mix is different every night. But if you go see, if you become a groupie for REO Speedwagon, if you do, God help you. But if you go see them on a number of occasions, you'll see that it's basically the same every single night because.

It'S got a delivery system now, just like all good speeches, most presenters don't get nearly enough practice. Don't you agree?

For sure. There's so many people that go out one or two times and, you know, now they're a speaker. It's like you gotta. I personally think you gotta go out dozens and dozens, if not hundreds, screw up enough to know what works, what doesn't, test it out. You know, I tell my authors and entrepreneurs the same thing when I'm helping them with their business. It's like, what's the best way to do this? Here's what I found. Has a high level of success, but your audience is vastly different. This is gonna get you about 80, 90%, but you gotta test this out. Yeah. Ask your audience, get some feedback and refine it now what a lot of people think is it's going to take forever if I do all that work. No, you do it quick, one day at a time, not a month at a time, 100%.

And the people that go up three or four times, you know, they, they get just about to the place where they might be learning from their own presentations and then they change the presentation, they swap it out or they, they get bored or they, they want to do another title, another topic.

This is one of the digs that Seinfeld has about a lot of comedians. He says they don't take the time to truly cultivate their material.

Like most presenters should have what's called a signature story, should have several. And it only becomes a signature story after you tell it about 500 times.

It's not a signature story because you told it five times.

And what happens in those 500 times? You tell it using different lengths. A good signature story doesn't have to be any longer than two minutes. So try it at 2:15. Try to get it down to a minute and three quarters. What happens when you use a certain introduction for it? What happens when you accentuate certain words during the signature story or do a gesture on a certain word? What happens when you pause between certain words again? Now all those flavors of the sushi being adjusted until it tastes perfect and then that's the story you tell when you go on npr.

Well, you're given a lot of great expert authority insights and I appreciate that. Tell me, what is your biggest transformation story from one of your students that you've helped refine and go through this process?

I think most of my students have trouble with mindset. It's not about speaking at all. In the six week present, like a plural course online, we spend the first week just on mindset, this idea that, you know, you have to think about yourself differently. Most presenters that are doing it for money are way underpriced. They could be making a shit ton more money than they are. Not that money is the whole reason for doing it, but if you're going to buy an airplane ticket and get on a plane and fly someplace for a thousand bucks, and you could be doing it for 2,000 bucks, why don't you move into that area? You know, so not just the value of the speech, but also the content of the speech, what you're capable of doing in a 20 minute presentation is far greater than what you're exercising currently is my experience. And so I just try to get into their head and try to help them understand that they're just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of how they're. How many people they're helping, the quantity and quality of help that they're of care, that they're providing for people, if they're in sales or education or whatever, and then try to get them under to understand what's possible. I think that's a big, big thing that most speakers need to address early on.

How many people would say, where are they at?

When, by the way, Transformational, not information, right? When. When people call me, they say, well, I just need a couple of tips. And I say, well, I don't do tips. You know, if you want tips, just Google it, man. I thought you were serious. And then when they're like, whoa.

I thought you told me you only had one speaking engagement each month for the last six months.

You know, if I give you tips, you're only going to have one gig next month and the month after that. So I asked them, do you want information or do you want transformation? And almost everybody wants transformation. And then we go to work. So again, that's mindset, right? Getting straight on exactly where you are and exactly where you want to be.

Would you say most of them are at 40, 50, 60% or they're at 70, 80? Do they need just a few tweaks with the mindset, or is it like a complete 180?

Yeah, I haven't met anybody yet that couldn't improve. I don't know if you could talk about this mathematically, but improve 80%. You know, to say it this way, they're at 20% of what they're capable of. And I'm not talking about, you know, four years of college education. I'm not. I'm not talking about getting a degree. I'm not talking about spending.

Thousands and thousands of dollars on gear and lessons. I'm just talking about pivoting and a couple of key areas, and the mindset and the shortcuts that I show them. That's the, that's the magic right there. When we get all. All that stuff in a crock pot, it starts to smell pretty good pretty quickly.

I agree. It's delicious.

Yeah.

So I gotta ask you, before we go to our imperfect action round, who is an entrepreneur you'd love to have dinner with after you've been speaking on stage with them?

An entrepreneur that I love to have dinner with after sharing the platform. So this is somebody that's in the speaking business, Somebody maybe that I've seen present.

Yes. You just maybe don't know him yet, Maybe haven't spoke with them, but it's not just a hi, nice to meet you. You actually get to hang out afterwards.

Okay, well, he's top of mind right now. I don't know that. I don't know. They have a lot of time to come up with the answer for this and I'm not even in the action round yet, but I know that Aaron Sorkin, the, the prolific writer, director, creator of West Wing is doing a masterclass now online.

And I watch West Wing once in a while to get inspired because it's such a well crafted show. The writing and the speaking and the delivery. There's a lot of presentation tricks used on the show. I think he'd be a fun cat to have dinner with.

I do like him. And I did see the ma. There's a lot of great people in the master class. That's a good reference there.

Yeah. What are they, what are they charging for that? Is it varied price for everybody?

Do you know it's usually between 1 or 200, depending on the time of year. There's sometimes a buy one, get one or buy one, get one. Not buy one, get one, but get the full year for the court price of one. It just depends when you're looking at it. But there's just like every business, there's today only until next week and we change the name of the sale and it's something different.

Yeah, well, what?

Black Friday only then the sale goes off for Sunday and then, oh, Cyber Monday. Well, it's same deal.

So about masterclasses and online learning and live presentations, even song lyrics. You know, I just tweeted a song lyric from Barry Manilow of all people. I learned from everybody. I've learned from you. In our little pre roll, I was learning about production values and I'm learning interview style from you right now. You're asking fantastic questions. And unlike a lot of people who interview, your questions are actually shorter than the answers. How refreshing.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

The Barry Manilow lyric is from a song I just heard on the radio the other day and I was riding in the car with Renee and, and you know, I love, I'm a patsy for all that soft, soft rock stuff, especially if it's got a meaningful lyric. The song was I Made it through the Rain. And at this stage in my life as a, as a teacher now as a mentor for some people who are coming up, the lyric was I made it. Let's see.

I made it through the rain and found myself respected by the others who got rained on too and made it through. And I just, I almost had to pull the car over. I wanted to play the song again later by myself and really listen to it. So I love meter, I love pentameter, I love, I love words and how they fit together. I love words and I love the word combinations. And I'm just delighted to share it with your audience today. Thank you for asking.

Well, I'm glad you're sharing it because I think there's a lot of people who enjoy music and they just think it's, oh, I'd love to go to their concert, I'd love to hear their cd. And you know, for example, with authors, it's, oh, I love reading their book. It's like, why read a book when you can write one? Why listen to a song when you can play one? And why do you think you can't have your own concert or event? My biggest issue is when I'm at these things, I'm sitting here like, where do I walk up on stage at? Because it's like, you know, I'm used to it. The marching field, the stage for speaking, you know, the orchestra, shell hall, whatever you want to call it. And you know the feeling. But you've been on both sides of it and you like one more than the other, right?

Yeah. I mean, you're making a great point. It's not just a book, it's not just a song, it's not just a concert, it's not just a keynote speech. It's communication, it's meaning.

It'S education, it's transformation. Right. If you want it to be. But if you just think you're, you're hammering together a PowerPoint presentation so you can fill a 20 minute slot tomorrow, you got the wrong idea, I think.

I agree. I mean, if someone's asking for the tips and tricks and you say, Google it, it's like, what should I put in my presentation? Just grab something from SlideShare and put your name on it.

Like, isn't that.

What if you don't care, that's all it's going to be?

Isn't that what we're seeing in presentation after presentation, as we're seeing jokes that email to everybody we're seeing, they'll pull up a slide of a meme that I've been looking at for two years now? Somebody the other day said, have you, have you seen the such and such video? And the way they presented it to me, it was like this very unique thing and I couldn't Wait to go see it, because it sounded like it was fresh and new. And I pulled it up and it was, oh, my gosh, the slowest moving thing was filled with pablum, you know, not an original bit of information in it.

The title, I think, was unique, but, you know, it's incumbent upon us. I mean, somebody got to be the standard bearer. I gesture to myself when I say that, but you too, everybody that's listening to this, be a standard bearer. Be original. Create your own content. Don't just put forth stuff that you've heard from other people. And if you do put stuff forward from other people, at least provide attribution. Mario, I'd like to have a dollar for everybody that tells me. I'd like to start with why. I'm like, that's Simon Sinek. Are you sure you don't want to mention his name when you tell me you're starting with the lie? That's his stuff you're teaching.

So we got a lot. We got a lot to. Lot to learn and a lot to change as we elevate the industry.

Yeah, it's interesting. I think a little bit of that fear goes in there. Like I asked, you know, how did you just quit your job? Like that. There's that fear of, like, what if. You know, I think there's nothing worse than looking back 60 years later going, I probably should have. And I remember I was speaking on my birthday because I love serving people and, you know, speaking, and I love what I do. I was speaking on my birthday, and I was talking on the phone, getting ready and everything. And it was when the Harlem shake was out, you know, a couple of years ago. And I was like, oh, my gosh, it'd be so cool if I could get the room to. And I was like, I'm the speaker. I can do what I want. And even if I can't, it's my birthday, so I could pull that card. So on the drive over, I was like, how do I pull this off? And I got the whole audience doing it.

Oh, good for you. And that's.

That would. That was not part of the speech, I assure you that going into it.

And that's interesting, too, you know, because so much of what we're doing is being recorded now. It wasn't the case when I got into the business, but now any clown can throw up an iPhone and record what's happening, so you better be good. You know, it's like, whatever you do is forever on the Internet. So let's. Let's up Our game, let's, let's get with it.

We're all going your best foot forward. I've been telling people that since I wrote my book on video marketing and especially since I started the show, I go, I've treated this since before day one. I do the same prep as if I'm speaking to a thousand people. And, you know, it's like, I don't roll up in pajamas and slippers and, you know, just like, oh, hey, I'm here. And it's astonishing to me because if you were speaking to a thousand or ten thousand people, everyone would be buttoned up, preparing the week before this, all kinds of stuff. But when it comes down to, oh, it's just online, it's like, yeah, there's actually more people watching you here than are in that room and it's going to live forever. When the elections were going on, you know, there was 1, 2, 3,000 people in an auditorium. Even if you have a large, you know, like in downtown Detroit, Little Caesar Center, 20,000 people, let's say it's a concert. You max it out, there can still be 50, 100,000 watching online, if not more.

So I was somewhat going, maybe I should have a course on, you know, forget the stage. Here's your real stage. Why, you know, flip it around and reverse it because, you know, I have videos from 10 years ago when we met and they're still out there and they're still getting views and people are still seeing it for sure.

So we're going to thank our sponsor. We're going to go to the imperfect action round and.

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I'm not sure, actually.

Well, you've been doing this long enough. You and you're great at the improv. It's not a big deal. But I created this because for years I've taken my authors and entrepreneurs when we're working one on one and they're like, you know, everyone has that head trash in that fear. And I always say, you got to take imperfect action.

Yeah, done is better than.

And that's when I was designing the show flow. I go, you know what? I want something that, whether you listen to the beginning, middle, the end, I wanted it action filled with stuff you can implement right now, today. And so I came up with these questions and the first one is, what.

Is the fastest path to the cash.

Bank.

For starting a new business? You just go to the bank and get money out of it.

Oh, you mean to generate money.

Okay, what is the fastest path to generate the cash?

I think online coaching.

Okay, why is that?

Well, because you can, if you work quickly, you can actually promote and enroll clients before the course is even finished. If you're going to wait for a keynote by comparison, and it's an annual conference, you have to wait for all 12 months of the calendar to come around and then hope that they need a keynote speaker at the exact time you call. But if you got an online program, you put it out there. You could even promote it on Facebook without a website. Say, I've got starting a new online program. Message me if you're interested in. I mean, that's pretty fast money, don't you think?

I would agree 100%. And that kind of touches on what I was just saying about the. You have the world at your fingertips now with the Internet. So let's talk the profit difference. One keynote speak speech is worth. How much would you say?

Well, people are at different levels, of course, but if you're speaking on national associations and, and you're not a household name, it would be fairly easy to get 10k if you've got some gain.

So 10k one time a year. And I know there's other events and this, that, the other thing, but for sake of apples to apples, you got 10 grand one time, which isn't bad.

Yeah.

What?

I know the answer. What do you, what do you believe you can do with an online course that you're not limited to one time a year?

Yeah, it depends on if it's a, when you say course, you know, is it three classes, is it six weeks, is it half of a year, is it ongoing? Like a retainer scenario? But you could easily get, I would think a thousand bucks for three sessions, you know, and if you're going to keep them for a while, you could, you could get thousands of dollars. I always try to provide three times more value than what they're paying. I try to help them get the pay for the course before the course is finished, if not the entire course, at least part of it. When I'm looking at my own business, Mario, I'm looking at four types of money. Big money, small money, fast money and slow money. So if I've got a book that I'm selling for 20 bucks, it's fast money, but it's small money. The keynote, which is 10, 10k could be 10k is big money but it's slow money because I have to wait for that conference to come around. And so if you're in the business of speaking for money, you want to think about those four different types of money.

That's a great point. And it goes into, well, actually the third question. But the second question is what is the biggest problem? You see your prospects making the fastest.

Way they can fix it it underestimating themselves and by getting their head straight on what they're capable of, they, they very quickly move into action mode. When you, when you, when you're plagued by self doubt or thinking that you're not good enough or you know, your, your presentations are not ready for prime time, you know, just, it just forestalls everything. You go into arrested development and that's deadly. I mean some people never come out of it. If your presentation is not ready this year, what makes you think it's going to be ready next year? Well, it won't be. So you know, here we are getting ready to turn the calendar year and I'm just telling people this next year doesn't have to be the same, man, it can be so much better.

That's awesome. And it should be every year as far as I'm concerned. Number three, what is the. No, number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Customer lifetime value. So you're talking about repeat customers and keeping people with you and all that sort of thing? Yes, I think it's delivering on your promises and doing what you say you're going to do. I've been taken by so many people, especially marketing people, who promise me the moon and I pay them a gajillion dollars and it just never materializes. And they have all kinds of excuses for this. They're not bad people. Some of them oversold me, some of them overestimated their own abilities. In some cases, I was even at fault, to be fair. But I think you have to deliver undeniable value and you have to get them to tell you that it was undeniable value. It's not just you going to bed every night saying, yeah, I did pretty good today, didn't I?

You have to get your customers, even your unhappy customers to tell you that you did everything that you could and more.

That's something. And very.

Yeah, I heard that the litmus test isn't what you can say about you, but what others can say about you.

Yeah, 100%. And it's not just your, you know, your high flying, happy customers. It's the people that failed who then say to you, you know what? You did everything you said you were going to do for me and more, it's on me that this didn't work. That's how you know you have a killer program. And these are the people that will come back and they'll buy anything that you put together within reason. They'll buy your books, they'll give you referrals for keynotes, they'll hire you for keynotes, they'll sign up for your online program. They'll be customers for life. What's that old book, Customers for Life by Carl Sewell? It's a great concept.

You must have looked at the question because, you know, I was just about to ask you, what's a good book that's made a big difference in your life that you could recommend?

Well, there you go.

Do you have any others?

A book for what?

Do you have any others in addition.

To that for speaking or just general.

Success in general books that have made an impact on your business?

I like all of the Malcolm Gladwell books, but not for the reason you might think. Although I like watching Malcolm Gladwell on video, he's not known as a particularly.

Well, I'm sure he's getting good, good coin for his speaking engagements, but I like him as a storyteller. And so if you read his most recent book, which is Talking to Strangers or Tipping Point or David and Goliath, just see how he really gets into the nap of the fabric of a story. And he comes from investigative journalism, so he really understands how to turn the Dirt over, as I say. So the garden gardening analogy is if you're going to get ready the weeds in your garden and you go out with this spade to dig the dirt up, you just can't turn it over one time because the weeds are still showing up. They just grow sideways now. Right. And on angles, you have to turn that same dirt over again and chop it up. You turn it over again, you turn the spade the other way, you chop it up another way. It's like slicing and dicing every square foot of earth in the garden. That's how you work a garden. And when you do that, the oxygen comes into the garden and different organic things start to happen. The chemistry of the garden starts to cook a little bit. But most people don't care to work the garden like that. And that's what you have to do to cultivate a good presentation.

It's reminded me of that Henry Ford quote where it's like all the success you're looking for is disguised as work.

Yeah, that's right.

And if that's not him, someone please correct me. And we'll update the show notes on EA interviews.

It's something like most people don't like to work because it's.

Dressed in overalls. Yeah, like this.

But there's a lot of people wearing those nowadays.

Yeah, right. I read a great quote this morning that happiness for most people is not doing anything. You know, it's just. It's just sitting around. And that's not that you're never going to get better like that. You might be happy, but you're just sitting around. You know, you're not. You're not helping anybody. You're not crafting something. You're not improving your presentations. So I find happiness. Everybody's different, but I find happiness in getting better at what I'm doing. I find happiness in helping people. And maybe that's just where I am at this stage in life. But.

If you have. If we're kindred spirits, that's good. Let's go have a beer.

I agree. Just not doing something you want that can help others, that you want to pursue. Definitely more joy than just sitting around. And I'm going to challenge one thing about this, because I'm curious what you think before we go to the last question. Do you think a lot of people say, I'd love to just sit around? Because the. When you say how, what would make you happy? I'd love to just relax and sit around. Do you think that's because the only lens they have of seeing Stuff is through constant work in the antithesis of that is doing nothing. So that correlates as happiness to them, because they haven't dreamed in a while. Because.

I actually was thinking, like, there's so many cool things you could do. Yeah, 100 years isn't enough to do them all in, I think.

I think leisure, happiness for a long time has been equated with leisure, you know.

So I think this idea of just watching three football games in a row on Sunday somehow became a guy's version of happiness. It's never been my version of happiness. I like football. I just can't do six hours of it, ten hours of it a day.

Somebody asked. I've always marveled at Paul McCartney's output.

And think about him as an artist. He's written children's books. He. He. He had pretty good career with the Beatles. He had a magnificent solo career afterward.

He's done work with the firemen, another kind of music. And somebody asked him one time, you know, how do you get so much done? And he said, well, I don't watch tv.

And he. And he spoke more about that. He said, I'm always way behind in all the series and all of the, you know, hot shows. He said, I just started watching the Sopranos, which has gone off the air, like, 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And so it's a decision. Every day, it's a decision. How do you want to spend your time? Just like when you're crafting a presentation, how do you want to spend your time? You want to spend your time getting the fonts right on the PowerPoint, or do you. Matching the color wheel, the color palette for the theme of that conference? Or do you want to get really good at telling one story, Hit that.

B for black and just throw something in there.

Yeah, no, I. That's a really great point. Joking aside, because there's so many things where it's like, the perfection. Perfectionitis will kill you.

You can.

For. We'll take my show. You can crank out. I can crank out 20, 30 more episodes. When I was getting this off the ground, there was six weeks where I didn't maybe half of one.

And actually, you know who it is. And I was just, like, so beyond frustrated. I'm like, I've been doing this, you know, video production professionally since 2005. What the heck is going on here? And I'm just thinking of all the people I can reach and the cool guest and all kinds of stuff. And the second I got it working, I was like, all right, let's go with this. And I was flying.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's that whole failure success thing. But at the same point, it's like, no, I didn't want to take. Take that much time dealing with, you know, the buttons and, you know, the font, if you will. But I also was like, I don't want to have it on an elementary level for the next five years. So it's like, how do you judge? What do you do? What's the highest and best use of your time? And it's like sometimes you just figure it out as you go, make it up, you know, do that improv, if you will.

And sometimes the market will tell you, you know, your quality needs to be better or you need to be faster or you're not making any money because nobody's seeing your stuff yet.

Yeah. Or maybe nothing's wrong and it's all in your head. Just keep going.

Touche.

Well, I have appreciated everything you've shared so far. And where can people learn more about you? Because I know you have a whole lot more to share.

Well, the website's easy. It's my name, Michael Angelo. Chris Caruso.com. we've got a blog there that's helpful. I also have a YouTube channel that's doing pretty well. So you can. A lot of people don't know this about YouTube or don't think about it. Of course, you would go to my channel to find all my stuff. But if you were looking for a particular help on a particular issue, like, say, humor or sales or leadership, then just type four keywords into the YouTube search panel. Michelangelo Caruso, sales. Michelangelo Caruso, funny. And then all of those associated videos will come up. You can quickly see which ones are 2 minutes, which ones are 10 minutes, and fit it to your timeframe. So it's a pretty cool place to go.

Excellent. Well, I appreciate you for sharing with us, and I hope you have a great night.

Mario, thank you very much and thanks for all the good work that you do in helping people.

Well, thank you. I appreciate it. All right, Expert authority world. We have another great episode here. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless. How can you know where you're going if you don't know where you're at? Pipedrive CRM makes your business easier, more enjoyable, and more profitable by allowing you to easily organize your deals and move them through your pipeline, whether you're in the office or on the go. Get your free trial today at each eainterviews.com pipedrive stop wasting your time continually looking for your information when you can be investing it, adding more value to your prospects and clients. Once again, that's eainterviews.com pipedrive hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show. And also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview, video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.