Ep. 124 Think Like a Producer with Bill Stainton

All right, Mark Brown, whenever you're ready.

Hey, Darren Lacroix. How you doing, my friend?

I'm always looking forward to a legend Emmy award winning over and over and over and over again. He needs a bigger shelf behind him.

Yeah, I think so. You know, it's not very often we get someone who has got 29 Emmy awards, but also as a presenter who comes at it from a different vantage point. And I can't wait for our audience and friends to meet one of my new friends whom I actually shared a legends stage with. The great Bill Stanton. Let's do it, Darren.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the unforgettable presentations podcast with your hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown. Mark Brown.

Your life tells a story, and there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

And Darren Lacroix. And Darren lacroix.

Stage time.

Stage time.

Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation. Ahas. Let's dive right in.

Hey, Darren, this is so great today. I mean, our guest today is so different. You google speakers, you know, you google Les Brown. Darren lacroix. You see speaker, you google Bill Stanton. You see actor, producer first. And those who google him will not know he's also a CSP and a hall of fame speaker with the nsa. Bill Stainton. Welcome to the unforgettable presentations podcast, my friend Mark.

Darren, it is an honor being here with two world champions. It's a little intimidating, I gotta admit.

Well, look, like I said, I googled my friend Bill and it says Bill Stainton, IMDb actor, producer first. So I guess, you know, I'm already blown away by that. And Darren has gotten to know you a little bit. And I know he probably thought, well, he acted a little bit when he was younger. He's acting some comedy. He did stand up. But to show you first as an actor producer leads me to wonder what you can share with us for your experience. What are your thoughts, Darren?

I don't think you can compare my acting in a one Konica commercial in the 1990s and the rest on public access TV. Although I've been paying my SAG dues for over 20 years because I did a stand in that I never even made the set in a John Travolta movie. And there I was.

Which Travolta movie?

A civil action.

Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. Oh. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that movie, by the way. So the Konica ad, was that a national or a Regional.

It was national.

All right then, so that's the big bucks.

Yeah. Unless you do a buyout because it's produced in Boston.

Real quick, guys, for those who are unfamiliar, Darren, you mentioned your SAG card membership. Just. I'm gonn ask Bill to explain what that means to our listeners who are speaker based, not movie and TV based. Sag.

SAG is the Screen Actors Guild. It's a union for performers. It's affiliated with after, which is the American Federation of Radio and Tell or of Television and Radio Artists, which I was a member of for a long, long time. And because of that, I still get some residuals. There you go. Look at that SAG AFTRA after he's.

Got his card out.

Yeah, yeah. It's what, it's what enables you to get. To get residuals for work that you did a million years ago. I was on because I know Bill Nye the Science Guy. We invented him on my TV show. I was on his Disney show several times. And every December I get a check. It's now down to 18 cents. I get a check from Disney for 18 cents as a residual. That's the power of SAG AFTRA.

And I get 42 DVDs, right. When the SAG Awards come out. That's.

You get those.

Yeah, that's what I pay for. Because.

For your consideration.

Well, this is also great to hear. I know our audience is really concerned about the speaking end of it, but Bill, you are.

We know your audience going like when you get to the speaking part.

I know it's also. Is also value in the backstory. We teach that the backstory helps us to understand because they see Bill, they see Bill Saint and csp, CBA hall of Fame speaker, NSA keynote, best keynote or ever, whatever, you know, they see that. But. But the backstory helps guide us to that process. Because I would suspect, Bill and Darren, that there are individuals in our listening audience and viewing audience by YouTube who are wondering, how do I bridge the gap? I'm thinking of going into speaking. And conversely, there may be those who never considered that a previous career can lend great value to their speaking. So if you don't mind, Bill, could you give us some of the backstory? What was Bill's first career? How did you bridge that? How did you connect the dots to being a speaker? Oh, okay. I can do it too, man.

That's one of my signature keynotes. Connect the dots on creativity, innovation and breakthrough thinking. My backstory is in television, which is where the Emmys come from, because you get Emmy Awards for television. If you do it right, hopefully. I started off as a glorified secretary. And by glorified, I mean not glorified. It's my hometown TV station in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. My hometown. My backyard growing up was an Amish dairy farm. I got a job as a secretary for a show called PM Magazine at my local station. Literally, my job was to answer the viewer mail. That's it. So what I did, though, was my first day at the job. You know, it gets to be five o', clock, it's quitting time. Everybody else goes home. I don't. I go to the engineer's office and I say, hey, do you guys have a manual for the editing machines? And they said, yeah, here you go. So I stayed there most of the night teaching myself how to edit. And I did that for the next week, teaching myself how to use the editing machines. And then the following week, I did the same thing for the camera. You know, the remote camera, you know, do you have a manual for that? And I taught myself how to do that. Did that for two weeks. I was very tired by the end of it, but I taught myself how to. How to use the editing machines. I taught myself how to use the camera. Then I just had to wait for somebody to get sick. And eventually somebody did. And we had a shoot scheduled. And it was gonna, you know, go and go in the. It was going to get lost. And I said to my boss, John, I said, hey, John, you know, I think I can pull this off. I think I can produce it and write it and shoot it and edit it. And why don't you give me. It was just. It was a little one and a half minute thing. I said, so, you know, let me give it a shot. If it doesn't work out, you're no worse off than you are now. Well, it worked out. And then I started producing feature stories. And they got seen and stationed in Portland, Oregon, kept seeing my stuff and going like, oh, I bet he'd be cheap. And they were right. So they flew me out and they hired me. And then all of a sudden, there was a station in Seattle, King tv. And they were starting this comedy TV show. And they looked around the country. Apparently they did two nationwide searches to try and find the right person to produce this show. And finally somebody there said, you know, there's this guy just down in Portland who I've heard of. He might be worth talking to. And they flew me up. It was a match. Not because I was necessarily the greatest TV producer at the time, but I Had the right combination of skills. I knew how to do field production from PM Magazine, which is all remote work in Portland. I had done that. And then I had produced and co created a nightly game show with a live studio audience. And so I knew how to work with a studio crew and a live studio audience and that sort of thing. Those were two skills required for producing this comedy show, which at the time was basically a cross between Saturday Night Live and David Letterman. It was an hour long, we had interviews and sketches and things like that. And you kind of learn on the job. I happen to have the right background for the gig. I didn't set out to produce a local comedy show. There was no such thing when I was starting out. But you have the background and that fits in. And that's what you're talking about as speakers or would be speakers.

Right?

What's your background and what can you take from that? On one of your earlier podcasts, you talked about building bridges and actually you look at that from a lot of different points of view. It's a great, great podcast episode. But one of the first things you talk about was taking your background and using that to create a bridge, what my friend Max Dixon, who's a legendary speaker coach, calls the transferable metaphor. And I was taking your world and transferring it to their world. What's the parallel? My world, Basically. You talk about the acting, but mostly I was a TV producer. Now, not everybody has produced a TV show and if that's all I talked about, it would get boring. Yes, I've got great behind the scenes stories and things like that, but what I can talk about is like, yeah, but I was a TV producer. You're a producer in your world too. So let's look at what it really means to be a producer. Here's what it meant for me and here's how that relates to you. And we can all do that. So if you're going to be a speaker, so many people who want to be a speaker think, well, I've got this great story, I've got this great background, I've got, you know, I just, I have to share my story. Nobody cares about your story unless you're a name. Like if you're Adele, then good, we want to hear your story. But if you're Darren Lacroix or Bill Staton or Mark Brown, honestly, they don't care about our story unless it can relate to their story. So that's the first thing you have to figure out, is like, what can I offer that would be of value? To them. Not that I've got this great story that the world needs to hear. The world doesn't need to hear it. The world's got plenty of stories. But the world may need to hear how your story can help them.

Amen.

That's wonderful. It's just interesting.

You said.

I know I kind of lay with the whole acting thing, and I did know you produced a lot, and I don't want you to go and reveal your cool, personal blockbuster story about producing. But you just said here a couple of things. You hit me with that I really want to jump back onto. You mentioned that you had the right combination of skills. And my takeaway was the right skills combination can lead success. But I think what. What may be happening to many of us, Bill, is that we don't realize that our skill set is based upon a combination of things. I simply want to tell a really great story without understanding that I may have other skills that I can marry with that skill set. How would you advise a new emerging speaker regarding the combination of skills to be successful and unforgettable?

I think one of the things that you have to do is look at what are your. What are your real. What are the skills behind the skills? Let me try and explain what I mean by that. When I left the world of television because the show got canceled finally after 15 years, we were still number one. I'm not bitter, but I'm still angry about it. We're still number one in our time slot. They canceled the show one month after I bought a new house and a new car. So, you know, I had to come up with something else. So I started thinking, okay, what do I know how to do? What are my skills? And I ended up being very literal and very much on the set. Well, I know how to write jokes. You know, I mean, it was a comedy show. I wrote jokes. I wrote for the Tonight Show. Okay, I can be a joke writer, a freelance joke writer. Well, that's not gonna pay for the new house. I know how to produce a comedy TV show. Well, aside from Saturday Night Live, you know, L.A. and New York, there are no other shows like mine. We were it. We were the only regional comedy TV show in the country, so that was out. And I didn't want to produce any of these other. So I was thinking, okay, I'm a joke writer, and I can produce a comedy TV show. That's pretty much it. That's limiting. And I was kind of despairing for a while, and then finally I started to think, and it took me Longer than it should have. But apparently my brain is very small. But I finally started to realize, okay, now, wait, wait, wait. What other skills did I learn? Okay, yeah, I know how to write comedy, but I also know how to lead an incredibly creative team. I mean, my team, we were all Emmy winners as well. An incredibly creative team. And we also had to innovate. We had to create a brand new TV show every single week, whether we felt like it or not. We had to learn how to be creative and innovative on demand. And I know how to do that because after 15 years, you get good at it. The first few years, I would panic. I didn't know what to do. By the end, it's like, bring it on, bring it on. Just like the three of us here as speakers, we've been around enough that we can handle pretty much anything that comes our way because we've been there before. So it's the same thing with that. It's like, okay, I've got this skill set of leading innovation, creativity, of how to be creative and innovative on demand. Okay, those are valuable things. But that's looking beyond. That's looking at what are the skills. Beyond the skills I'm looking at. I think sometimes when people think about, well, I don't really have any good stories. I don't really have any good experiences. You're being too literal about it. I remember reading an interview with David Letterman. It was an interview somebody was interviewing. It wasn't like David and I were sitting around reading an interview, the interview with David Letterman. He said, look, all I'm looking for from any guest is two decent stories. That's all I'm looking for. And let me. Let's say, if you've been alive on the planet for a couple of decades or more and you don't have two decent stories, you're doing something wrong. But you and I, we know people think, well, no, I don't. I'm pretty boring. I don't have any good stories. And then you start talking to them. It's like. And the stories are bubbling out. We don't tend to value our own experience because we think, well, yeah, yeah, I know, yeah, yes, I did save the President's life, but that was just a thing. No, that's good. That's good stuff. We tend to undervalue our own experience and our own. What we can bring to the party. If you just sit down with a pad of paper and a pencil or a pen and don't do it in front of your computer because there's Something about the mind hand thing that we're. And you sit down and. Okay, what real. There you go. Exactly. What real experience do I have? Like, what have I been through in my life? Probably a mutual friend. A really good friend of mine who lives relatively close to me here in Seattle is past NSA president Anna Laiotta. Well, she speaks on generational issues. She's one of 19 children. Okay. That gives her some credibility. I mean, that's background.

Yeah.

I mean, I grew up. I don't use this as much as I should, but as I said earlier, I. My backyard growing up was an Amish dairy farm. I can still milk a cow with the best of them. At least I'm guessing I can. I'm guessing it's kind of a muscle memory thing, but I, you know. You know, and Amish kid taught me how to milk a cow. That's kind of cool. There's some fun stories there, but we tend to just be too literal about it.

Brilliant.

What got you to finally say, hey, I could be a speaker, or I could take these skills and here's a place that I think I could thrive. Because it's one thing for anybody to go from what they were to be a speaker, but to go from Emmy award winning to hall of Fame, that's different.

Yeah, right. I was kind of lucky because when you're on TV for 15 years, you get asked to speak in public anyway. Church groups, civic groups, school groups, things like that. Plus I did the audience warmup. So I was used to being in front of people and speaking in front of people. And because I was a small C celebrity here in Seattle, I mean, we were celebrities in Seattle. We couldn't walk into a restaurant without people turning around, like, looking. So that was kind of cool. But that meant that I got booked really easily. I had a serious advantage over most other people trying to break into the speaking business. When I said, hey, I'm available for speaking for free or for $100 or, you know, the way we all start out or most of us start out, I could speak as much as I want to. Darren, I know you talk about stage time. Stage time, stage time, stage time. I got a lot of stage time now. Mostly it was telling behind the scenes stories. You know, Almost Live was the name of my show. So I was telling Almost Live stories. Then I kind of pivoted into, like leadership lessons that I learned from Almost Live. Okay, so we got that, and now we're starting to build that transferable metaphor so it's no longer just an evening of funny stories about Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno and Ellen DeGeneres and people like that. Now it's okay. But what did I learn from that? I hadn't really hit on innovation and creativity yet, but it was leadership. But I was able to get booked a lot, but only here in my neighborhood. But I was able to build up some platform shops because a TV studio in front of 175 people who want to be there is different than getting booked on a stage. And then I remember when I got my first booking that I had to get on an airplane, too. I thought, well, I can't do this because, I mean, I'm great if they already know who I am. If it's, you know, oh, it's TV star Bill Stanton. And I was only a TV star in Seattle, right, in Dallas, Texas, which is where I think my first professional airplane gig was. I was terrified because they didn't. They don't know I'm not a celebrity already. And, you know, and the gig went fine. It was okay. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't a home run, but it wasn't, you know, I didn't strike out either. It was. It was like a double. It was good enough that I didn't have an excuse to quit. But then you learn by doing. But, boy, Darren, you're right. When you talk about stage time, there's nothing quite like that. That was the transition for me. And part of it was because I had to do something, because brand new house. I had a brand new mortgage and a brand new car payment. So I've got to do something.

Timing.

I'm curious, though, Bill, just to back up a little bit, were you actually being asked to do these funny stories at events while you were producing, or did they come after the show was canceled?

I was getting asked while the show was being produced. But then when the show was canceled, I actually did. Started doing outreach. Okay, so when the show was being produced, I would just sit at my desk and calls would come in. Hey, we need somebody to come speak to this Rotary. Hey, I want to speak to the Everett Rotary. I'll do it. When is it? How long do you need me to talk for? 20 minutes. Okay, fine. But then once the show went away, then I consciously went about trying to put dots on the calendar as we talked about. For those of you who aren't professional speakers, dots on the calendar are everything. That's our inventory. We have 365 days of inventory per year. And you put a dot. I'm Looking up there, that's where my wall calendar is. And you put a dot there. It's like, oh, that's a booking. There we go.

Yeah. Before Darren asked your question on one more thing, you just said, just now, you said, who'll do it? Yeah, I'll do it. And there's nothing wrong with starting small and starting free.

Right?

We're in the 21st century now, and a lot of people say, I want to be a speaker and they want that first great big gig. And you also said the first one was not a home run, but it was good enough for you not to quit. I think there's value in that. Could you just kind of really drill a little bit deeper down on the idea of it's good enough for you not to quit? Because some people don't hit the home run and they think I stink. How would you advise them?

Mine was a bunt single.

I had to outrun a little bit of force, guys.

So Darren was your first one, like in the comedy clubs? Because that's brutal.

Oh, well, I don't even count that, but yeah, okay.

You said it was good enough not to play.

Oh, right, right. Yeah. Two things come to mind. First, there's the ever present for a lot of us, imposter syndrome, that I'm not good enough. I've got nothing worthwhile to say. There's nothing that can give you value. That's probably a whole separate podcast, that whole issue of imposter syndrome, because I don't know too many pros. There are some but who don't have that from time to time, especially if you happen to have a bad gig. Now, at our level, let's pat ourselves on the back. At our level, that doesn't happen terribly often. But if it does happen, you have a bad gig and they think, oh, I need to go work in the fast food industry tomorrow because clearly I'm not good enough. And then. And then you hit a home run. It's like, oh, I guess I am good enough. We're so fickle and mercurial that way. But at least I say we. I am okay. I am we. We accept we say we.

Say we. It's okay.

I think it's Anne Lamott in her book Bird by Bird, which is about writing. And she talks about. And she's not the only one who talks about this, but she writes, she talks about. I don't know if I'm allowed to say the word on the podcast, so I won't, I won't. But she talks about the Crappy. She uses a different word. The crappy first draft.

Yep.

You've got to be willing to do, you know, to do the crappy first draft. Now when it comes to writing, only you see that and then you go back and edit. But when you're first starting off with speaking, which is why it's great to take some of those low pressure gigs, you know, 20 minutes at a Lions Club luncheon did that. Okay. When we were doing our show almost live, we used to have this phrase called a career ending bit. You know, if we do a bit on the show and it just didn't go over terribly well, we say, well, at least it's not a career ending bit. So, you know, you start off by doing these smaller things and even if you screw up, okay, it's not going to be a career ending bit. It's not like that's going to be worldwide news and people are going to say, never ever hire this person for a speech because they screwed up at the Lions Club luncheon in Waukegan, Illinois. That's just not going to happen. Even now, there's value to doing smaller gig Sundays if you're working on a new speech or you're working out a new story. That's why I know you clearly are veterans of Toastmasters. Toastmasters is great for that. I'm in the National Speakers Association. When I did my TedX talk a few years ago, I rehearsed that there was one NSA chapter meeting. I said, hey, you know, I'd like to do the TED Talk and then have you guys tear it apart for me. And there was value in it for them because they got to see how a pro speaker puts something like this together. But I got great feedback as well, and that was a low risk gig for me. But you were able to get actual audience feedback. I know you talked about this at one point in one of your podcasts. Also, at a certain point, you've got to do it for a human being or two to see how you're really going to do it. Yeah. I mean, you've got to give yourself that permission. Nobody is a world champion. Nobody is a Hall of famer right out of the bat. And if you are, it's a fluke and you will fail at some point. We've all had the gigs that are just like, okay, that was not good. And which is great because it's great to have those stories now of the horrible gigs. It's nice to have those. You feel like I haven't paid my dues if I Haven't had at least one or two horrible gigs. So just realize that that's part of the process. If you're starting off and you're not that good yet, that's exactly where you're supposed to be right now. None of us were. None of us were. I had a bit of an advantage because I'd been on TV for 15 years and had some stories, but I didn't tell them particularly well. But because it was Jerry Seinfeld, okay, I could get away with not telling you particularly well. But eventually I learned, oh, you know, it works better if I cut this out or if I move this over here, or you play with it, you craft it, you mold it. Clay, you know, here's the raw material of the story. But you learn how to tell a story and you learn how, how to produce a presentation, how to produce a speech. Darren, you talked about doing the walkthrough. If you have to do a walkthrough where you tell somebody, well, okay, first I'm gonna do this. And the reason I'm doing that is this. And then I go into this section, blah, blah, blah, that's being a producer. What I find is that most speakers, even the professional speakers, there are basically three hats that we have to wear. A writer, a producer, and a performer. And most of us get the performer part. Yes, we're on stage or in front of a camera in the virtual world, we're performing. And then most of us kind of get the writer part. Also, that, yes, we write our own material. We do write our own material. Right. So we write our own material. But even the pros don't get, oh, I'm a producer also. I mean, you are a producer because you're producing a show. Now, if it's a keynote, that might be a one hour show or a 45 minute show, but you've got to figure, okay, how am I going to start that show? How am I going to end that show in a way that makes sense and maybe ties back to the opening? What's the ride? I'm going to take them on. When we produced our TV show for 10 of the 15 years, the final 10 years, we were half hour, four segments, four acts. And as the producer, I had to decide what's going to be in each act and why. For example, I made sure that this is going to be abstract to most people. Act one, the first segment had to be at least five minutes long. Actually slightly longer than five minutes. Why? Because if people tune out before five minutes, it doesn't count. In the ratings, the ratings were taken at that point every 15 minutes. And if you've got at least five minutes, five uninterrupted minutes, they count for that 15 minute block. So I could not go to commercial before five minutes because they might change the channel and then I might as well have never had them again. So that's thinking like a producer. And when you're coming up with a speech, when you're crafting a keynote, you think like a producer. You think, okay, what do I want to do? First thing I want to do is I want to establish that I know who they are, I understand their problems and I can solve them. Got to find some entertaining way to get that. Because once they know that, then they'll go like, okay, there's a reason to listen to this person. That's your first five minutes. I don't mean it has to be the first five minutes of the speech, but that's the job of the early part of your speech. And then you take them through this emotional journey. If you take them down into the depths, like maybe you're a cancer survivor or something like that, you've been through a horrible tragedy. If you take them down into the abyss, okay, now you have to bring them back. Because if you take your audience into the abyss and leave them there, that's professional malpractice. So you've got to find a way to bring them back up. That's craftsmanship, but that's thinking like a producer. Or if you think, okay, it's been seven minutes since I changed direction, or seven minutes since I had a laugh, or since I had a different modality. You know, I've been appealing to the visual learners for the last seven. Now let's do something that's thinking like a producer. And again, that look, that's high level stuff. And you're not going to be there at the very beginning. At the beginning, you're just learning how to tell a story. You're learning how to stand in front of an audience and look like you belong there. Okay, that's work. That's important work that has to be done. But then the more advanced you get, the more gigs you get, the more you can think about this deeper stuff. You know, the stuff. Apologies to Patricia Frick, who hates the word stuff. Yes, but the things that you've been talking about for 121 episodes of your podcast, now, this is how the big boys and big girls play the game. By thinking about this kind of thing. People think, well, surely that can't be Important. Yeah. It is important.

Yeah. Mark, one of the things. Before we go to another question, I want to just get clear. You have writer, producer, and performer, and some people who come from a performance background. They might be great performers. However, if they're performing bad writing, it still doesn't work.

That's so true. So true.

Or they could be eloquent writers and too fluffy and not be the good producer as well. So I love that you brought that up because I think to be unforgettable, you really need to be great at all three.

You're right. Unforgettable lives at the intersection of those three.

Well said.

I like that. That sounds so eloquent. Unforgettable lives. Every intersection have I heard producer.

I'm gonna have to listen back to the playback. I might be able to use some.

Of this real quickly before Darren's question. I just wanted to say one quick thing here, Bill. I know I asked about new and emerging speakers, but thankfully, over the last couple of years, we've had speakers at every level. So what you're telling us is gold for everyone who is hearing this. And for that, we thank you, Darren.

So this is for people who are have a desire, whether they're pro a pastor just beginning to become unforgettable. And what's cool is a lot of speakers have different backgrounds, and yours is vastly different from a lot of people, especially so much experience in the producer side. So for you, what do you think makes an unforgettable presentation?

Wow, that is a big question. Boy. There are a number of different approaches to that. I'll start with the macro level. On the macro level, making a difference to the audience so that when they come out, how do you want your audience to behave? We say to the meeting players, how do you want them to behave differently after I'm there? Or you want to affect some kind of a change? I like to take it even more. And most meeting planners can't answer this question, but I want them to think about things. Like when I talk about innovation, I want them to leave thinking differently. Like I've shifted their view of what it is and what it can be. So they're thinking about it in a way they never have before, and there's no going back now because I've shifted their view. So that's one way to make unforgettable by having a big message. Let's talk about some tactical ways to do it, though. I talk about. Imagine, like, if you have a rope. Okay, I like the rope. And there are five people standing in a row. And they're each holding up a little bit of the rope, right? So what you end up with, where they're holding the rope is a peak, and between the two there's a valley, right? So you have the peaks and valleys. Well, think about that rope as your presentation if you're a keynote, or that rope is one hour long. If you're a trainer, that rope might be half a day long. Whatever those peaks, you need to build those into your presentation. I call them bathroom blockers. And I'll tell you why I call them bathroom blockers. Because I'm sure you've had this experience and all of you listening, I'm sure you've had this experience. You're sitting in a movie theater. Oh, remember those days, sitting in movie theaters?

Is that again?

Yeah, yeah, right. It's something that we used to do back in the old days. Okay, so you're sitting in a movie theater, but before you go in, you make this classic mistake. You buy the popcorn and then you buy the above ground pool size of coke, right? And let's say the movie is two hours long. At about the 70 minute mark, you realize you have made a horrible, horrible mistake because you do not have a two hour bladder, it turns out. And so you start to vibrate, right? And you're starting to vibrate and eventually, you know, people on either side of you are going like, what's happening? What's happening? But it's you vibrating. What's the thing that you want more than anything in the world right now? What are you hoping for more than anything in the world right now? You're hoping for a boring moment, aren't you? You're hoping for something boring to happen. And finally it does. And they go, oh, thank goodness, thank goodness. And you get up and, you know, keeping your legs tight together, and you're like, excuse me, sorry, sorry, sorry. And then all of a sudden, bam. Something happens on that screen that you go, damn it. And you have to go sit down because it's something, it's too good. I can't miss this. Right? That's what you want to build in to your presentation. Just a few bathroom blocker moments like that where people think, oh, this is too good, I can't, darn it, I can't go to the bathroom yet. It could be a killer story, like a great story. It could be where you bring the entire C suite up to do some kind of activity where they might be embarrassed. Ain't nobody gonna leave if the CEO's gonna embarrass him or himself. If you're Mike Rayburn or Jason Hewlett or somebody with a huge performing background, it might be okay. Now you're gonna do some kind of virtuoso thing. Our friend Dan Thurman has a bit. He's an acrobat juggler. He's a phenomenal speaker, hall of fame speaker. He does this thing where he. There's usually a rickety lectern on the stage someplace where he grabs a hold of it and proceeds to do a handstand. We all hate him for this. On rickety left turn. And then he proceeds to do push ups, like upside down, push up, push ups on it. I don't know what his point is with this. I'm sure he had. I think his point is, look, I can do this and you can, but that's a bathroom blogger. You're not going to go to the bathroom while he's doing that. Why? Because there's a chance. There's. There's a reasonable chance that he's about to die. And you don't want to be in the bathroom when the keynote speaker dies. You don't want to come back from the bathroom and say, what did I miss? Oh, the keynote speaker died. Oh, darn it. So when you're putting together your presentation, thinking like a producer, think, okay, what are some bathroom blockers that I might be able to put in there? And you have those. That makes it unforgettable. And ideally, you'll have your biggest and best one towards the end of your presentation. Because you and I both know this, that the parts of your speech that the audience are going to remember the most are your beginning and your end. Those are the two most important parts. The beginning is kind of like the first impression. Like, this is what they're going to judge you on. If you nail the beginning, then they're already. Then they're on your side, and that makes the rest easier. But the end, the way you end, is how they're going to remember you. You're talking about being unforgettable. I read a study once that said something like 90 minutes after you finish speaking. 85% of what they remember is your last five minutes. So on a tactical level, if you really want to be unforgettable, nail those last five minutes. Five or ten minutes. Have something in there. There's a speech that I used to do. I'm still booked for it a few times. I used to talk about the Beatles. I'm a Beatles expert for no particular good reason, but I Have a speech called the five best decisions the Beatles ever made and why you should make them too. At the end, four people from the audience who don't know anything about this, and they've been kind of pre selected from a certain. Doesn't matter how, but they get up on stage and I give them guitars and wigs and we do a lip sync to Twist and Shout. And it's great because it's, you know. Yeah, there you go, Mark. It's cool because it's. And everybody takes pictures. It's always in the next edition of the newsletter. It gets posted on YouTube and things like that. And it's unforgettable. I know when I get rebooked, when I get spin off business, because in this business, it's all about spinoff. That's half the reason people say, oh, I want that at my meeting. Now. The rest of the speech comes with it. But they're booking that five minute chunk. Think about that. Think about, okay, what do I have that I can put out there, especially if it's towards the end, that's gonna be so good that they will book me just for that. Does that make sense?

This is gold, man. This is absolute gold.

Wow.

When we're both writing and there's silence.

For those who are listening, we're, like, in awe right now. We're just listening. We're both in awe of what Bill has said.

And this is the thing that, look, you don't get to be a world champion speaker, you don't get to be a hall of Famer without doing this. But so many of us just do it just by accident. We just happen to somehow Dodie. Dody do stumble into it. But I'm telling you, be conscious of it. Think like a producer. Like, maybe you've got a great chunk. That always gets huge response. But it's towards the beginning of your speech, okay, maybe it has to be there, but maybe that's just where it is, because that's where you always put it. If it's a guaranteed crowd pleaser, can you move it towards the end? Can you think like a producer? And like, you know what? This sketch is stronger than this sketch. I want to end with this sketch. I'm speaking about, you know, comedy TV shows. Now, can I put that towards the end? Now maybe you can, maybe you can't, but at least you're thinking about it. At least you're starting to think as a craftsperson, how can I craft this, Make a difference in their lives? That's one way to be unforgettable and that's important. But again, on a tactical level, put something really, really good towards the end and then don't screw up the rest of it. Because if you've got 55 minutes of crap and then five minutes of gold, that ain't going to work for you.

Yeah. Bill, I had. When I first started touring and doing Toastmasters around the world after I won, I had this. Mark knows this story, but I had this point that I made about the cherry tree effect. When you're sitting there with a blank piece of paper, what do you start? Which is what do you want the audience to think about differently when you're done? Which is similar to a point you made. Well, I used to have that in the middle of my presentation. But being a producer and remember my comedy days, I would see as soon as I said that, three quarters of the audience would go and write it down, right? And it was consistent. And so I was like, that needs to go to the end.

And that's a great reason when you're first getting started, notice. Notice the things that are resonating. Just like you said, Darren. I noticed that's something they all wrote down. And for you, it might have even been a toss off kind of thing. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but all of a sudden, oh, that's resonating. Maybe I should build on that. That's brilliant.

Yeah, but it's just exactly what you're saying. We got to think, like, if we want to be unforgettable, we got to think like a producer. And too many people just think like the performer and don't think like Mark. I think that's the title of this one. If you didn't already write that down. Think like a producer.

Well, I actually have four stars next to it, so it's my last keeper. But you gave it away. But fine, it's okay.

I think I'm flattered, but that's four out of what?

Normally I put one star.

No, no, four out of ten.

That's four out of four out of four. Actually. Four to four.

Yeah.

I just don't have that much room in my margin.

Mark, he's a producer. He wants the five stars.

Listen, the dude's got. Dude's got 29 Emmys. What is my extra star gonna do for him?

That's true.

He still lives in fear of being canceled.

We're not gonna discuss cancel culture right now. But, you know, I tell you, I'm just thrilled to get not only the wit, the wisdom, but the wit that Comes from you, Bill. And right now, just the last three minutes talking. I'm just loving this, man. This is really giving me the idea of. Darren says, being aware of how your audience responds and reacts will give you a clue as to where to move a story or a bit. And Darren and I do workshops together. Bill and Darren often tells a story of one change he made in his championship speech where his bit was to fall on his face, and he was very, very effective. And he had a second fall built in about two thirds of the way through the speech.

A callback, basically.

Yeah, but pun intended. That fall fell. I said, darren, no, no, no. Move that to the end of the speech and see how much more powerful it becomes. I'll let Darren end the story for you, Bill.

I couldn't follow my fall. I had this witticism I thought would be stronger, and it couldn't follow my fall.

Right, right. I learned this back when I was in high school and stuff. I used to dabble with magic. I don't know if either of you ever did. And I got relatively good. I would do, you know, birthday party shows and things like that. But I remember one of my classmates a couple years ahead of me was a world class. In fact, he's won world championships in magic.

Oh, wow.

And I used to ask him, his name was Jay. So what happens when you start dabbling in magic? You learn a trick, a friend teaches you, a book, now a YouTube video, and then you learn another, and eventually you kind of have this collection of tricks that you can do, like, you know, 15, 20 tricks. And like, maybe I can do a show, but 15, 20 tricks, is that a show? No, that's just a collection of tricks. Because the show has to be routine, you know, and routine is figuring out what comes. That's the word we use in tv. We gotta routine the monologue. Here's all the jokes. Let's figure out which one goes first, second, third, whatever. So I asked my friend Jay, I said, so how do you make it into a show? He said, oh, it's so easy. He said, it's so easy. And this. And you talk about gold mark. What Jay said next has been gold. It took me through my producing career, it takes me through my speaking career. He said, you do this, you end with your best trick, and you start with your second best trick, but your second best. Start with your second best trick, end with your best trick. Because again, we talk about primacy and recency is the first thing they see is what they're going to judge you on that's the rule of the first impression. And then the end is called recency. There's privacy and recency. Primacy is, you know, in the beginning, recency is at the end. That's what they remember you the most for. So you put your best joke or your best trick at the end. Because when you start with your second best trick, when does the audience realize that that's only your second best trick till the end? I mean, so far when you start, it's like, that's amazing. And then you put fillers, good tricks, but they're not. Yeah, you know, but they're not, they're not the headliner tricks. And it's the same, the same thing with a speech. It's the same way with when you're crafting a story. It's the same way when you're producing multiple Emmy award winning comedy TV show. You start with your second best trick, you end with your best trick. Now, it doesn't always work out that way, but at least aim for that. I mean, sometimes, sometimes you can't end with your best trick just because the speech just doesn't work. You know, it just, it just doesn't fit that way. Okay, but at least you tried, at least you said that, at least you thought about it. You didn't leave it to chance. And so many speakers, even up to and including at times the hall of Fame level, we leave things to chance or we keep doing things because they've always worked before and we can get away with it. Oh, that's, that's the worst thing with when at our level, okay, you are both world champions, I'm a Hall of Famer. So we've achieved a certain level. Here's the danger with that, because the three of us, we are in the danger zone now. And what I mean by that is that this is going to sound horribly arrogant. But then that's just me. At a certain point, our C level work is better than most people's A level work. Like, we can dazzle them by doing C level work. Because our C level work is at such a high level, you know, our C level work is good enough. And so that's a trap. Once you start getting really good, you start just saying, you know what? This, it's working, it's fine, the gig's gonna go well. And because it's working, because our C level work is working, we don't really have the incentive to move up to B or A level work because the competition is, you know, we're already better than Most of the competition, but we're not better than all the competition, and our competition should really be ourselves. Somebody once said to me, I can't remember who it was. It's a great quotation. They said, you should be improving at such a rate that yesterday's audience is cheated by today's performance. Ooh, that's good. Isn't that good?

That's really good.

You should be improving at such a rate that yesterday's audience is cheated by today's performance. If you don't look back at the work you were doing a year ago, and if you're not even a little bit embarrassed, then you need a kick in the pants because you're getting stale. So our competition should be our performance. Yesterday. I used to say this in the TV show. This week's audience doesn't care how good last week's show was to the speaking world. Today's audience doesn't care about yesterday's standing ovation.

Preach it, brother.

Preach it. Which is why podcasts like yours are so important. Because even. Even at a certain level, whether you're just starting out or if you're a hall of fame, if you're world champion level, you listen to these things. And, yeah, they may be things that you've heard before, but it never hurts to be reminded of this, of these things. I mean, even as I'm saying it now, I'm going like, yeah, you know what? I do coax sometimes, because I can't. Life gets in the way. It's busy, and I've got this virtual gig. It's like, oh, you know what? It'll be fine. It'll be fine. Yeah, it is fine. But I don't leave it feeling great about what I did. I mean, yes, I did good. I provided value, right? There's a certain baseline to where we are. But it's a horrible feeling just. Just knowing that you could have done.

Better just based on what you said. That just sparked an idea for me that I'm curious as a producer mindset, how would you translate this into speaking? So one of my big missions and pushing myself to learn something new is I started learning how to write a movie script. So very different from this. But one of the tips when I, you know, I read all the books, which are, okay, do this, don't do this, do this, do this. One of the best tips I got was just, I never looked at it this way, which was every scene, look at the emotion. Is it at high or low? And the next scene should start at the same place so it starts high, goes low. Next scene starts low, goes high.

That's good.

And that changed how I wrote. And I'm just curious how that might translate as a producer into speaking.

I could translate it this way. It's kind of a. One specific example. I tend to get booked mostly as an opening keynoter, sometimes as a closing keynote, but it's usually one of those two spots. And usually I'm an opener. Which means that usually I'm like at 8, 8:30, 9 in the morning. You know, I'm, I'm the first thing. I'm sure you've seen this. The audience comes in and they're bleary eyed because they've gotten there the night before. They just flew in the night before. And they spent most of the night in the bar. They closed down the bar, it's 8 o' clock and they're just like. And maybe it's a different time zone for them, whatever. And then the speaker comes in and says, hey everybody, let's get up and dance. It's like, no, no. There's a phrase I heard somebody that says, meet them where they are and take them to where you want them to be. Now that doesn't mean like if they're bleary and that you should start off bleary and hungover. That's not what that means. But it means match your energy level. Or we've probably again, because we've seen it all. Just before they introduce us, they announced that the beloved founder of the organization just died. And now here are the comedy stylings of Darren Lacroix. Da da da da da da da da. You can't just go into it like you've got to meet them where they are and bring them to where you want to be. And that's. I kind of see that as a parallel from what you're talking about. I'd never heard that about scene writing, but that's really, really good because otherwise it's too abrupt. Now that said, sometimes you want abrupt. If you're halfway through the speech and they're already on your side, you can get away with almost anything. Yep. But you've got to earn that right. And when you first step out there, you have not earned it yet. You are an intruder in their space. It's their association, it's their corporation. You're a guest in their house. So treat them with respect. And then once you've, once you've won them over and there are ways to do that. And you guys talked about in. So on one of your last podcasts all about building those bridges. Once you've built those bridges, then you can play.

Bill, this has been so much fun. I lost track of time. We got to honor your time. So in result, Mark's going to put together the keepers. So, Bill, how would people reach out to you? If we get an event planner listen to this or speaker wants to learn more from you, how would they find Bill?

Best way, of course, is through my website. Not surprisingly, is billstainton.com and there's an I in that last name. Billstainton.com My email is billillstainton.com using the speaker protocol. Billstaten.com that's the best way to get ahold of me. And I would look forward to virtually anybody who wants to reach out and continue the conversation.

And just to be clear, B I L L S T a I n t o-n.com Got it.

Bam.

It's because I'm reading over my own shoulder. I'm dyslexic. I want to make sure I get it right.

Very cool.

Sweet. So, Mark Brown, what do we got for keepers?

Oh, wow. I need about five deep breaths for this. I want to take some of your words, Bill, and paraphrase so I can dumb it down for myself to understand it. Early on, early on, you taught me, Bill, that the right combination of skills can lead to your success. Right? And you may have the right background that can make you unforgettable. Your audience doesn't care about your story unless it has value to them.

Bingo.

Ask and research. What are the skills behind your skills to make you unforgettable? When you deal with your audience, always ask, what value can I provide? And never underestimate or undervalue your own experience. If you're new and your first gig doesn't go really well, don't quit. If it's good enough, keep going. Start small. And even if it's not your best, it's not a career ending move. Do small gigs for the purpose of working on your stories and give yourself permission to fail. If you're not that good at first, that's exactly where you need to be.

That was good.

Think like a producer, okay? And there are three keys here. Be a writer, a producer, and a performer. Because leaving your audience down is professional malpractice. But unforgettable lives at the intersection of writer, producer, and a performer. Don't forget, make a difference to your audience. Shift the way they think and build in those bathroom blocker moments so the audience can't leave don't forget, your best story comes near the end and you have to nail your last five to ten minutes. Three more. Help me with this. Bill, you mentioned that be so good that yesterday's audience is cheated by today's performance. Okay, remember this. You're a guest in their house. Treat them with respect, Meet them where they are, then take them where you want them to be. Above all, think like a producer. Think like a producer. Think like a producer. Thank you, Emmy 29 time Emmy Award winning producer, Bill Stainton. I have a mouthful and a mind full of keepers.

Darren, I got three more that you missed. Well, one is transferred from Max Dixon, the transferable metaphor. I want to give Max credit. He's a legend. Been around since I started. I love this one. Now, you didn't necessarily use this as a point, but I took this especially for emerging speakers. Ask for the manuals.

Oh, good.

Ask for the manuals.

That's good.

If you don't remember at the beginning when he was talking about he wanted to upgrade his own job, so he asked for the manuals. And in his own time, he studied, learned the equipment, got ready, and he prepared himself for that opportunity. Last one, Wait for someone to get sick.

Bam.

But you can wait for somebody to get sick, but if you didn't get the manuals and study them, you will lose the opportunity. So, Bill, final thoughts?

So. I am so blown away by how good you guys are. This was fun. This was a fun conversation. Mark, I can't believe you were able to actually listen to what I was saying and write all that down. I'm not smart enough to be able to separate those two, but this is a blast. And your podcast is such an amazing service for speakers at every single level.

Thanks. Thank you. And if you're listening to this, you got a question for Mark and me? Go to unforgettablepresentationspodcast.com scroll down and there's a button that says click to ask us questions. And we're gonna start featuring your questions on our podcast. So, Bill, thank you for helping us be unforgettable. Mark Brown, take us home, my friend.

Bill, great seeing you again. Friends, listeners, and viewers, remember, if you want to be unforgettable, think like a producer. We'll see you next week.

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