Ep. 222 Unforgettable Content With Dr. Jeff Magee

Hey there, Mark Brown. Oh, my goodness. When I can have an actual mentor, somebody who literally helped me with my speaking business, and when I get to share the stage with him. We just shared the stage in Florida not too long ago, but man, talk about high content. There almost isn't time to cover his content because we can't keep up with him. He just spouts out wisdom. He is a friend, a mentor, and whoa, when you can have Dr. Jeffrey McGee on with you? I just had coffee with someone, Dr. McGee, and she was raving about how you were willing to sit down and give back. And I just see you doing this over and over again. I was like, why haven't I asked him to be on the podcast? This is crazy.

Well, I'm glad you did, Darren. So look, let's meet the inimitable Dr. Jeff McGee.

Thank you both.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the Unforgettable Presentations podcasts 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.

Oh, there. Mark Brown, welcome, my friend, my mentor, my colleague, Dr. Jeffrey McGee. Welcome.

Thank you very much. What a great opening. What a great program. I'm excited to be with both of you. The great Dr. Coach Mark Brown. I've heard your name for many years. I'm excited to be in your presence. You know, it's interesting, people say, I've heard your name, you kind of wonder, okay, what's that mean? Put it in the context. Is it good, neutral, or bad? What's alarming is it's never even been a neutral comment about you, sir. So thank you for your legacy.

Well, I appreciate that. Good to meet you officially for the first time. And I've heard your name for many, many years from an individual who I have the utMost respect for. Ms. Patricia Fripp. A friend, a mentor. She's allowed to slap us on the wrist whenever she wants because she's Fripp and she was the first person who mentioned your name. So I'm really thrilled to get to meet you today. Darren, thank you so much for putting this together.

Oh, I'm thrilled. This is awesome. So cool. And you crack me up. You're brilliant and funny and no pressure to be funny here, but I just love watching you Work and taking the truth, taking your trajectory, code taking sales mastery, which is one of your expertise and you work with the corporate clients all the time. So. Dr. Jeffrey McGee, welcome.

Thank you, thank you and thank you. Appreciate it.

Yeah. So where did you get started? How did you get started into the speaking world?

Great question. I get asked that a lot. There are some exceptions to my next statement, but most of us in this industry as little kids didn't have this as our goal on our, on our aim sheet. It wasn't written down. I want to go be a professional speaker or whatever and do speaking. For me it was complete happenstance. I went to college to be a journalist. That was my passion when I grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado area. Back in the day it was a two city newspaper and I actually had the opportunity as a journalist in high school to get involved with one of the major daily papers there for I went to college, I'd already had over a thousand articles published so I had some great scholarships that got me out of Oklahoma. I was a pretty good runner back in the day, so I was one of the top cross country runners in the state of Colorado, so I had some good scholarships. Of course today running is nothing I'm good at doing, but hopefully riding still is. But what took me to this space was after college I spent time in Kansas City as a business writer and broadcast news reporter. Loved it, absolutely loved it. Quickly recognize there's really not much money you're ever going to make in it. You know, few and far between make good money. I'm at a Kansas City press conference, club meeting. Excuse me. One evening, I'm looking around the house of the host. Everyone dressed nice, nice homes, nice cars. I'm going, what the hell am I doing wrong? That dawned on me. Most all of them had spouses with real jobs, I'll call it. None of us were making much money. But the turning point was at one point, one of the largest drug busts in American history happened in Kansas City. Very little coverage because it was connected to one of the largest advertisers in all of the medias in that city. And I realized, wait a minute. Advertising dollar drives what you read in the media. Very disheartening, very negative. Seemed like newsprint always focused on negative. And this is important even for presentations because your presentation comes from your history, it comes from your mental DNA and what's inside you. And some of your best stories may not be what happened in the last six, seven months. It might be going way back in that archive closet in your Head. So when I, when I left journalism, you know, I found cells. And I tell people that the good news is you're really never ever going to be unemployed because everyone's looking for a salesperson. So homeless in America could be solved immediately if homeless people actually want to get their butt and work. Because everyone needs someone to sell. Now if you're not good, you may not keep that job. So I went into sales. Long story short, Fortune 100 company, they would pay to send you and I, as their Salespeople to the 12 week Dale Carnegie sales class. I took that class. At the end of it, the gentleman who had the franchise in Kansas City said, would you like to come back for our next class and be one of the student assistants, help out, learn the class even deeper from the other side? So they absolutely did that. After that, he said, wow, you have a knack for this. So by day I'm selling, making pretty good money. At night I'm teaching, making no money. And there's your model. All of us have had older people tell us, find that thing you love to do, find a way to get paid for it. And you really never work a day in your life. And that was kind of the light bulb. So I recognized at age 24 as the youngest speaker in the world teaching the Dale Carnegie sales class. And that was when I realized that this is an industry I didn't even know existed. That there's trainers within businesses. There's people that are subject matter experts with tremendous knowledge, intellectual property. You know, they've got calluses on their hand and calluses on their brain because they've done it. And people are paying for that wisdom, for them to come in and share with them. And then the more I got into that, I reckon recognize. Wow, wait a second. This is an industry now being in Kansas City is unique to our listeners again, especially for those that are professional presenters or trainers or are looking to go that direction because that's really kind of the epicenter of all the trading companies. Fred Pryor started Fred Pryor seminars decades ago. And because he doesn't really practice a lot of what he preaches, he's ran a lot of his partners off. The gentleman that started national seminars used to be his partner. That guy sold national and back in the day with contracts, they forgot to put these non competes in there. So he took all that money from national, went on a vacation, came back, went across the street and started Skill Pass similar. She had all three of these right in the same town. Basically. I did market research from Fred Pryor back in the day, helping him to find new markets, new topics, new people that then took me to career track where I became a contract speaker for them and actually wrote some curriculum from them that is actually still in existence today, 25 years later. And then I went to career track seminars and that was kind of the Cadillac back in the day. And I wrote some content for them that hundreds of speakers have been trained on and hundreds of thousands of people have heard. And that took me into this deep industry. So there's contract training with anybody and speaking. And then from that I went off on my own. So several little junctures there. And so when someone's looking at speaking, you have to recognize, you know, what are the real calluses you have that you can help the audience to have unforgettable content. Because you have unforgettable content. You made comment, I have a lot of content. I think that the disservice a lot of speakers do is that there's some speakers that look a lot prettier than I, maybe us, they're much better at self marketing than I or maybe us. And they're one hit wonders. They can take the stage and do a great job, but it's really like cotton candy. It's impressive in the moment, but soon as it contracts and you wake up tomorrow morning, there's nothing left. No one remembers the message. There's no real strategic or tactical content that someone can actually go and use. And that's what I've kind of based my business on today. Both my training and my keynotes is I'll let someone else be the, you know, the entertainment speaker. Maybe there's a reason for that. But I don't believe we're put on this planet to waste our time. So I would prefer to be more content.

Well, there you go. Thanks for taking a breath so we can jump in and pretend we're part of the interview.

I've heard so much about Career Track, NSG National Seminars Group Skill Path. You are maybe one of the very few who took every step along that skill path. Right, everyone? And I guess the question is some may say, well, you're born a speaker. Do you think, Jeff, Dr. Jeff, you were born a speaker or you be still as a speaker?

I think I. And that's a great question. So what you two gentlemen do for anyone who's a new viewer and just, you know, landed on planet Earth, you need to do your research on Mark Brown and Darren Lacroix. But again, learning the craft of rhetoric, learning the craft of speaking. Learning the high art of how to put a story together that goes somewhere and it's not just a great story and tomorrow morning we've all forgotten it. To know how to meet people where they mentally are at the time you take that stage, whether it's walking in the front of the room in a meeting, you're a corporate executive walking out in front of a microphone, or whether you're a professional speaker trainer at the emerging level, wannabe level, or you're an aspiring speaker, or you're in this craft and always looking at how you can become better. You talked about the great Patricia for probably one of the top professionals in her space. And you two gentlemen live in that space to a degree in a differing space. You know, someone might say can Jeff, you know, would you give me some coaching on putting together a meeting or presentation? I can do it, but I'm not even close to you two or her. But I say that to come back to you and I for our listeners benefit. Darren, you and I on a regular basis, we go and play student. We're always looking to how do we learn our craft from another person's perspective and lens. How do we become a little bit better at that? And then the business of the business, everything that takes place behind the scene. Again, back to speaking, you know, taking the stage, that's the icing on the cake. Think of all the work it took to get all the ingredients to first of all figure out what sort of cake do you need to make for this person. So what's that speech going to be? How do you put those ingredients together in the right order in the mixing bowl so that when you put in the oven the right thing comes out that's shaping your message and rehearsing it and practicing it and knowing it I don't believe in. Again, I may go down the wrong path and you two can hit me on the wrist, but I've never met a professional speaker that truly in this industry has memorized one talk and that's all they have. They maybe had memorized some, some, some stories, mentally plug and play. But you know, I've been in those audience where phenomenal personalities have been wrongly trained to memorize their entire speech and they walk out and they start to give their speech and are doing great and then they forget where they are in their head and then they have no clue what to say next. I mean intuit again back to the big name companies. I used to get excited to go speak at lots of them and now I'm not as motivated Because I've learned a lot of these big companies really don't give a crap. They really don't care about what they say. They're just going through the motions. An example, they have this big conference every year and they hire you but you have to come out two days in advance and they pay you double fee basically because they do a run through on the day before. Every speaker has to go out on stage to do the thing. It's kind of like the million dollar roundtable. That used to be a big impressive thing. Now it doesn't matter. When you look at so many people taking that stage, it's embarrassing. And yes, I'm going to say that because that's a part of my personality. I'm bold and I'm honest, not rude. But what happens it intuit was that the second day live everyone was ready for all their audio visual to work in. Their system crashed. I was the only one that knew how to talk. It was stunning. It's like, I mean really, you're supposed to be an expert and your Crutch is your PowerPoint. That's, that's bad. So, so again, you know there's a lot of ways of looking at how you answer that question. And again I think one, you're always playing student but you have to really recognize what are you there to share. And so I think story is a, is a huge piece of unforgettable content. But the statement of unforgettable content is exactly that. What's your content? There's a lot of people, their content can't stand up. You can poke a hole in a lot of content very quickly. I mean LinkedIn, you know, the largest business social media platform on the planet. The number one job search platform on the planet. People use it for lots of reasons. I talk about how I use it when I'm talking to other business people and even speakers. But I'm continuously stunned at the amount of people have phenomenal LinkedIn profiles. But if you scan through what you realize is they've only spent one or two or three years doing something which means they don't know anything. But you eventually also people, they have all these certifications but they've never had a job. So back to Mark, you're saying about the training companies. Yeah, I work my way through those while having my own business on the side and having, you know, a company with Darren and I first met in Oklahoma. I had 22 employees in my training company and you know, it's built out of my house. I had a freaking huge house, 10,000 square feet. I remember Darren used to come over to that and you know, I had like probably six or seven employees just at one end that I had built onto the house and had a security door between it and where I lived and stuff. But I mean it was a lot of people to home base. But I learned why do I need to pay for an office somewhere else if I'm just going there to talk? I could do that in my own office. Then when I merged and moved to Montana, had 144 employees. So whether you're a solo practitioner, you've got a dozen or 100, it's always the same model. But content is what will keep them coming back.

Well, two things really struck me just now. Dr. Jeff, you said be willing to play students. And Darren often uses a phrase, be a sponge. And then he said make sure your content stands up. And I just really want to tell you I appreciate the idea of being willing to play student because at times we meet individuals whose goal is to be a great presenter and they want to take a path by maybe going through Toastmasters contest. If I win that, I'm going to be great, I'm going to be famous. But the idea of putting in the work, and nobody proclaims that more louder than my partner, my friend, my brother, Darren Lacroix. Darren, huge.

I mean the number of people that talk about leadership, that have never signed payroll, never done a performance review is mind boggling. If you look at the stages across the globe today, again, people talking about management, but they've never managed or talking about sales and have never really sold. I mean the Army National Guard is a passionate client of mine. I love them, I've been doing work with them, you know, half my private sector fee for 30 some years. But in the, in the sell side of the military, that would be called recruiting. In this last year, as we're recording this, the Army National Guard just closed down their worst recruiting year in history. Five states made their sales mission for the year. The majority of the entire country failed to make their goal. I don't know of any private sector industry CEO that would keep an executive and a sales team that year in and year out failed to make their numbers a clean house. But the military, so I guess, thank God it's a government job, you can quantifiably suck and keep your job. Now hopefully I'm making someone mad with what I've just said because again, someone should have internal self esteem that tells them wait a minute, then how can I become better? Because I don't think people in general, especially employees, want to be losers. So again, when you have unforgettable content, you're speaking before a group, a crowd, or you're, you're talking to bosses. You need to be able to talk strategic and macro, big picture. But you better be able to have calluses on your hand and calluses on your head one more time. Meaning you've done the work and have the clue and you can get an attrition and say, no, here's what I do know works. But I think the danger, and Mark, you said it nicely, is that if I win this one speaking contest and I can have that accolade that I'm great and everyone's going to want to buy me. Well, that might get you five stages, but you're not going to get invited back if you don't have unforgettable content, unforgettable presentation, unforgettable stage presence. But I'm going to always kind of go back to content. I mean, the number of stages I've not been hired on because they hired a celebrity speaker that the next year I was hired. And the meeting planner or executive director of the association said, the reason we were going this direction, Jeff, is last year we had so and so the next day at the, you know, the pre breakfast, I'm talking to everyone about our speaker. Everyone said, oh my God, it's great, good to have that person great to their autograph. But then when I asked questions like, what do you, what do you walk away from? What's the key piece of their message? How are you going to use it? He said it was stunning that zero, no one even remembered the message. And I said that was just, I can save myself, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars no longer bringing these celebrity speakers let go. For some people with some content.

One of the favorite ideas that I got from you when you and I sat down over lunch, you asked the question, okay, you're going this new direction. You're going to speak and train in corporate. And here's what I see for content and for most speakers and presenters, I want them to get clear on this question. The Jeff question. What will be different on Monday morning? Because we heard you speak. What will be different on Monday morning? Hey, if you're a 100% purebred motivational speaker, what you do and what you say, the stories you tell, Monday morning, I should go back to my same job with a whole new attitude or you missed the mark. You missed the mark. And guess what? That's okay. If you're willing to be truthful with yourself and then do it better different next time get some help, get some coaching. So it's not if you won or failed, it's what you do with that. So if you could just speak to the Monday morning thing because I think that's the key to knowing if you really had great content.

Absolutely correct. So let's back up this clock. We're talking somewhere in the 90s at that time there were 54 Fortune 500 companies that had a chief learning officer. So at the ceaseless week not very many. So at that time I happened to get by accident I probably dumb luck I tripped into that group and I gold mined it forever. And one of the, one of the chief learning officers From a Fortune 100 company made a comment to me and that's where that comes from. Back in the 90s the big trend was confidence programs, rope courses, you know, experiential programs and retreats. You know Dr. Brown would take his corporation and you're one of the executives and I'm an executive, we go off in the woods or whatever. That was the big thing to do. I remember one of the executives say that here's why I'm not doing any of that and everyone in the room kind of like got whiplash. And he said when they come to me and talk about these programs my response is how do my executives, my executives don't have any time to waste. They may like to go out on a hike but that's not what they're being paid for. And they know that at the end of the day they're gonna, they're gonna get me fired at the C suite level if they can't come back together on Monday morning and use something to be more successful. So every time someone says you know about come to this program my comment's going to be how's it going to help my team to be more effective or efficient on Monday morning And if they stutter if they can't answer that deal breaker. Now let me take it one step further so how I would speak to it. And again right now I guess I'm giving away a couple million dollars what I should be charging for because this is the inside sauce. We all have our sauce. I hire Darren to coach me because of what's your intellectual property and that's why you want someone to come to you know, Stage Time University or come to the event you and Mark do and etc. So I would answer this way. There's a, there's a lady her name is Sam Horn and if the listeners are not familiar with her, you need to write that down. She's a God. So years ago I was in the audience and she had written a book at that time, early in her career, she used to be the host of the Maui Writers Conference and the book was called Tong Fu Tung Fu. The basic concept is taking one word and smashing and mashing it up with another word and come up with a whole new word set. Great, brilliant concept. So I follow that in terms of how I speak to it. So I have a leadership book called Talent Ification, Talentification and Talent Vacation. Looks at the entire 360 Process of talent from how you, how you first source it, find it, onboard it, grow it, develop it and it exits out the other end and all the steps in between. I have another book that just came out and the book is called Change Formational. And so I'm going to use the new book Change Formational to answer actually your question. And that's this. Any speaker that speaks on change should be smacked upside the head. Change is outdated. It's a billion dollar industry. So I'm not going to win what I'm about to say. But change means this. If I come to work and I have someone on my team, it's a change advocate, change agent. We're going through Lean Six Sigma so we can deal with change more effectively. You know, how do you, how do you become more agile and deal with change? All the buzzwords we've been, you know, just overwhelmed with for 10 years. But here's what change means. Change means someone else changed the rules at night while you're asleep. You woke up today and something has changed. You're trying to figure out what can I do to even survive in the new game. Or may might be a winner, but you're never going to be a winner. When you're dealing with change, the best you will be as a survivor. And for some people maybe that's great. I just want to work for the government 30 years, retire and have a pension and that'll be great. That might be fine, but for others it's not. So change really deals with survival, transformation. So now we have to put that one in the right context. Transformation doesn't mean you're going to necessarily be the winner. Transformation means you're going to be in essence the thriver. So change deals, will survive, transform deals with thrive. And what I recognize is we shouldn't look for that one time of year opportunity to transform our speech or our stagecraft or our gestures or etc to be successful every day, if you're paying attention, you are given an unlimited, unlimited number of change opportunities to transform and therefore become change formational shouldn't wait for one opportunity. All of these businesses in 2019 have thought, you know what, maybe we need to downsize by 30 or 40%, but had no idea how to do it. How about that? Merry Christmas. Covid showed up and it's amazing how many businesses were able to downsize. Or, you know, maybe my team wants to go virtual 2019, but I don't want them to go virtual. Guess what? Covid showed up in the whole damn world had to go virtual. And then they found that if you have the right structure, people can be just as, if not more productive virtually than they are live. So again, how do you look at. So some people, they don't transform unless they're forced to. Versus every day, how do we look at something different? Different. Bobby Flake, Mesa Grill, the number one restaurant in in Vegas for years serving the number one product of steak, which again, the number one selling product on the Vegas Strip is a steak. The worst selling product is a fish. So he get caught up. He got caught up in the change world and he's lost his butt. He. He created a fish restaurant at the Palms Casino off the Strip, and basically they lost their butt. Covid hit. When Covid hit, Caesar's palace was getting ready to expand. Makes it grow huge. I know this first person because the. The person at the time, Caesar's palace was a friend of mine. He's now moved on to another property on the Strip. They were going to expand it, but Bobby Flake comes in and says, no, I want to go to fish. See, he doesn't want to transform. He's following the change game of let's eat healthy. People don't come to Vegas to eat healthy, baby, just to change your mind. So get a clue. And they don't come here to drink water. They're coming to drink something else. So what he did was he shut down Mesa Grill to create a fish restaurant. Basically that in essence, two and a half years after it opened up, it's just now operating seven nights a week, and it's not even open for lunch where Mesa Grill is open seven days a week for both. So what he should have done was been change formational. I'll wait a minute. So Covid shut us down for a minute. Mason wants Caesar's House, wants to expand masonry. Let's do that. Well, Gordon Ramsay has a restaurant inside here right next to me, Gordon Ramsay got Caesar's palace to build a restaurant on the curb in the parking lot for his other restaurant. So why don't I open up two restaurants inside Caesar's Palace? That way if one doesn't really work, I still got my, in essence, cash cow. See, people, they are playing the game of change. Huge names play the game of change because they don't understand how to be transformational. Your speech can only speak to four things. Last response to your question. So I've given four answers. What I recognized in business because I got calluses on my hand, calluses on my head. Hopefully you're hearing a phrase from McGee today. That's what the speaker that's going to sustain and be successful in this industry. I mean, Darren, you have massive calluses. Think about it. I mean, you know, you went into business as a solo business franchisee. I mean, you went into Subway. And I'll save the rest of that story in case listeners haven't heard it. You got to ask Darren for the rest of it. So, you know, first person, all of those stories where someone else has no clue, but they're going to tell you how to do a business, and they have no clue. What I recognize is that we change our decisions for only four. You're going to get someone to, to buy your message for one of or a combination of these four reasons. So if you want to have unforgettable content, work to have your content hit all four of these. One is better, and you've said it three times. And this program that we've been on, if I can show you a way to do something better than you're doing it right now, you will always consider it. You may or may not change, but you will consider it better, faster. If I can show you how to be more efficient faster, then I'm giving you a reason to look at me better, faster, different. If I can show you how to do something different. Well, again, Bobby Flay smart. You want to do the Southern Amalfi fish restaurant concept. That's different. But wait a second. Take a step back. And what's the global statistics for the Las Vegas Strip on which sort of restaurants and what sort of food products really move? And you might get a clue because off the top of my head, I can't think of a fish restaurant on the Vegas strip. I'm sure there are some, but I can't think of one. I can think of an endless list of steak restaurants on the Vegas strip. So, I mean, I mean, where's our clue? Where Are we going here? So better, faster. And the last one's cost effective. Cost effective. So I won't mention Giada's on the Las Vegas Strip inside the Cromwell. I mean, they're doing so badly right now in Las Vegas, they actually charge you a fee for your butt to sit in a seat. Oh, that's kind of different. I like getting that on your. In when you get your bill. And Lady Fripp and I are having brunch there, and she goes, what's this charge here? Oh, it's basically. Basically a fee to sit here. So. Because you look around the restaurant and you see it's 80% empty. So. So what are they doing differently? They're different. Is causing people like me to not want to go back versus different to bring you in. So better, faster, different, cost effective, unforgettable content needs to ring those two, three, four bells. That's how you, in essence, blow the minds of the audience.

Yeah, I was just sitting with Pam, Dr. Jeff, who you had helped, and I just had lunch with her, and we were talking about resilience. You know, resilience. Like, hey, that's a great topic, but we need the PA spin on it. What is yours? What is your version of it? What is your differentiator? And we were talking about, like, she's got a great smile. So what if it was smiling through resilience or resilience with a smile or something like that? I'm like, you gotta. So I said, based on what I've learned from you, you gotta go to the bookstore, look at all the books on resilience, and then ask yourself, how are you gonna be different? So if you're listening to this podcast, and if we could just get you more opinionated, Dr. Jeff, that would be awesome.

If you listen to this podcast, becoming more unemployed. Because people don't like truth, they become eagerly offended. And so they'll say, I don't want you. While their business continues to crater. It just. It defies logic.

Yeah. Look at the different speakers out there in your topic. Or if you're a CEO or a corporate presenter, what are the other people who present on your topic, and how is yours different? You know, there's a gazillion AI topics out there now. What is your spin on it? And let's just say, as Dr. Jeff would say, mark, I think we gotta change this to the Callous podcast. Where do you have callous on that? Because there's so many people who are now experts in AI, and some of them legitimately are. But Some of them I'm like, okay, but what have you done with it? Just because you're using it, who have you helped with it? Get those calluses, as you said? Dr. Jeff. And Dr. Jeff. What, like from an audience perspective, from you sitting in the audience listening to someone else, what would you say is important to have an unforgettable presentation? What is a quality or two?

Yeah, I think each person needs to bring their personality to the platform. I don't believe you should try to be someone else. And we see a lot of that out there. And again, for the educated mind, when to comes it, they see that whatever value you had just got flushed down the toilet because we know that you're a fraud. Now, maybe that's a strong word, maybe you're not, but that's how the brain's going to see it. You're going to go, oh, that's a zig Ziglar isn't. Oh, you know, that's. That's a less Brown ism. You know, again, you got to be hungry. I mean, if I hear one more person say that, I'm going to, like, smack, you know, that's a Les Brown, and Les Brown's a friend of mine. He's written for my magazine many times. We've spoken on the same stages year in and year out for 20 years. I mean, he and his family and me and my family flew to Cancun, Mexico a couple years ago on the same jet to speak at a conference. I mean, mean, so again, when I hear someone use this line because I have personal relationship, it devalues you with the other person. But sadly, a lot of the audience don't know where these concepts come from. So. So one, you have to have your own personality. Two, again, I try not. And seriously, I. I never try to be disrespectful, and I don't want to be, you know, rude when I speak, but. But part of my personality is I am bold. And some people don't like that. And I'm sorry. Sorry. More often than not, you end up losing. I'm sorry to say that. Just the stats show it. I mean, you know, I'm not going to be rude, but if you can't take tough conversation, I'm not sure which planet you need to be on. But Earth ain't going to be good for you. My clients hire me because I'm bold and I will push people. So that's the second one. How. How are you bold when you're in front of people? You can be bold with that smile or you can be bold with your stories and you can go back to smiles. I've got a CEO of a 7 billion dollar financial client I've been working with for almost 20, 20 years. They have been bringing me in almost every month for 20 years. And he has a phenomenal smile. And I made that comment to him many times. But, but, but the way that I would play that smile one step further is that when there's, when there's anxiety in a marketplace and I can look at Mark Brown with that facial gesture he's giving you right now, he's going to make you feel more comfortable, more safe and more confident that hey, we can get through this tough time and again with a smile like that. It's also because again, people know if it's fake and forced, you have a natural smile that actually is going to do you phenome service in the future. So I just want to add on that in case someone heard what you said as being sexist, because it's not. But sometimes we begin, and I say that that's the other element, that when you take the stage, you've got to be careful you don't come off as sexist or racist or have unconscious biases. It's going to get you in deep trouble, those sort of elements. So I think, I think the fourth answer is self deprecating at whatever level. You don't want to go overboard, but you know, I was raised on a farm in Colorado. I didn't know we were poor. Junior high school. I went to school one day and I had my older brother's clothes on from two years ago. And a teacher looked at me and said, you must be one of the McGee boys. And I said, how do you know that? She goes, because I saw that same outfit on your brother two years ago. It's kind of like, okay, so much for this John Travolta outfit. It ain't going to stay with me. So again, so one, exactly. And then from there I think you've just got to have great content again, unforgettable content. So let me answer it this way. People a lot of times will ask me, Jeff, what should I be reading? And a long time ago I learned I'm not going to give you a title. You know, read, read John Gordon, read Jeff McGee, read Sam Horn. I mean, I, I learned I'm not going to go for the name per se because that's too easy. That's safe. That's a cop out. I've created a formula if you want to read and you want to grow your brain. There's five types of books you should be reading every month minimum. One, what's the possible trade book in your craft today? Because everyone else is reading it, so you read that one. So what's the pop trade book? Number two, what's the autobiography or biography in your space, in your industry, in your trajectory? You should read that. That's number two. If there was a college degree in what you're doing right now and you went to any college that had that as a college degree and you looked at their book reading list of the books in the books store that you're supposed to buy for the semester, what would be one of the academic books in your space? You should be reading an academic book that will give you phenomenal base. So what's the pop trade book? What's the academic book? What's the auto autobiography or biography? What's the pop book period that everyone's reading right now? Because that may be different than a pop trade book. What's the popular book right now that everyone's reading? So for the most part in terms of success or or business at the time we're recording this John Gordon hand down. I mean he owns that space. He has more John Wiley books than I've got. I've got five, he has like 20. So I mean you can say I hate him but I mean he owns the space right now as recording it. We're doing this 20 years ago would be Tony Robbins would be the name. I mean so there's always a name or be Harvey McKay, you know, swim with the sharks. There's someone you should be go back and read the legends, you know, instead of just someone brand new. And the fifth book you should be reading is Something for Fun. And Something for Fun for me is always going to be a non fiction book because I don't believe we live in fiction. So you should ever read a fiction book. Now that's kind of stupid because everyone lives there. Yeah, read whatever for fun, but you've got to be looking. So those are again a litany of ways to how do you build your speech or how do you build the program? What makes you different?

Wow, that's a mouthful. Go ahead Aaron.

Yeah, I was just going to ask how would you already pre answered it with that answer, however, any other insights on how to find or develop up content? Unique content, how could you find or develop? What advice would you give.

People? Mental Journal, National Speakers association had a presence several years back, Mark Sanborn and he got a lot of crap after one of his comments from the stage. But that's what happens. I mean, little people find little things to bitch about. Little people deal with little, little topics on the planet. It takes a big mind to understand big ideas. Is. And so I would start by how you find those nuggets is you've got to make sure, first of all, you're not coming at this with a little brain. Little brains still everyone else's stories and ideas. Little brains are manipulative. Little brains might have a speaker's bro that falls in love with them and books the crap out of them, but they're actually doing a disservice for every client that they go out. And he made a comment that, that, you know, one of the things he does is he makes sure he takes time to just sit and think, think. And he got a lot of crap for that. And so it's just kind of interesting. In 1970s, one of my older brothers worked for a little company called IBM. And in the 70s, you know, IBM had these huge computers. You know, you and I would never have such a thing because, you know, we're not a big company. But everyone that worked in IBM carry these little notepads, and they were brown leatherette notepads, and it had the word think embossed on them. ThinkPad. And I hijacked those for my brother. So, you know, Mark, you're a great wordsmith. I guess I'm a nerd Smith like you. And so, you know, here I am in junior high school with a, with a think notepad in my pocket. I mean, I had to be the ultimate.

I had one, I had one.

There you go. And so that obviously, so. So there's the clue when they create, when they came out with their first, you know, notepad, computer, laptop, they call it the ThinkPad. Same thing. So Watson's ThinkPad from 100 years ago, that started with granddad, that went to dad, that went to son, just. They stayed with that same line. Okay, so hit pause. Part of where you find your content is listen to the stories you share that get people excited and they stop in their tracks and want to listen and they want you to tell them more. War, that's a place that you have a story, but you're probably going to have calluses behind that. So if we unpack that story, here's my brother, he's working in college and working for IBM part time, and he's in a military ROTC. And then he gets a direct commission and spends 20 years in the military. And he's very smart in where he's going, so he's very academic. He gets the government to pay for his MBA. He gets the government to pay for his PhD. He taught at West Point twice. He ended his career in essence in Pennsylvania, teaching at the Army War College, which is where colonels go to become generals. Etc. So I've got these stories in her second person. Everyone has stories. First and second person. You don't need to recite someone else's story. Oh my God, did you hear my friend's story? I gotta go home and practice that. No, you're a freaking idiot. Find your own story. And there's too many people out there stealing someone else's story. If I hear one more person tell Zig Ziglar story of the kid going across the field with his flowers to see his girlfriend. And halfway across the Billy rides, he's in a pen and there's a, a big old bull at the other end looking at him. Finish the story. And we've all heard it. If you've been around the block a couple of times, so, so one, when people stop in attraction, you want to hear your story? Take note. Put that in your ThinkPad. I got to develop that one. What are the refining defining moments? When I went to work for a company in Montana, I had two great business partners. Until I got there and found out one of them is Lucifer reincarnated. So when I left that company, I wrote down 13 consulting questions. No MBA school will ever teach you if you're going to go into business with someone. I mean, that's Prof. Lessons I learned there. I learned things that no one's ever been taught in business school. So, so your real life stories, when you're, when you're in second person watching someone else's story, but you're living it. And when someone stops and says, tell me more. And the last answer is what might cause some of us to be homeless for a little while before we, you know, make it rich, whatever that means. But what's your passion story? What's your passive passion content? Mine is about leadership. And then through the, the path, because I spent time in sales, I, I talked to organizations. Leadership teams usually have a revenue stream. It takes me to, hey, can you help my sales team? And so before COVID I used to tell people that what makes for a great leader is a person understands how to, how to sell what the company's about. You Google the top 32 brands that filed bankruptcy during COVID one of the phenomenons, no one in the leadership team ever spent time in sales. That's why they went out of business. Toys R Us files bankruptcy. Like, what? No kid's ever going to want a toy again. Lane Bryant goes out of business. What? There's never going to be a plump person again. I mean, some of these businesses went out of business. There's no excuse. But see, no one knows how to of content story. Share the information. Commercials.

Yeah. And Mark, you may not know this because you have not seen Dr. Jeff live. Some people use PowerPoint. I use a lot of slides. I use videos of my slides. Mark, I kid you not. This is his handout, his entire handout from Saturday. And those of you listening to the audio podcast, it's a card stock, a half sheet of paper. Paper, half sheet of eight and a half by 11, his whole handout. And he has it into four quadrants. Has a dartboard on one place, a black dot in another. And then, Mark, he has a whiteboard up with just a huge dot in the middle. That's it. That's his extent right away. Boom. That's different. That's different. And what are your thoughts on that, Dr. Jeff? The why do you do that? How do you believe that's effective for you and your style?

And you teed up beautifully, so thank you. So some people are just much better than I am in their craft. Hats off. I'm going to sit down, shut up, and be a student and watch and learn. Some people, they need the audio, visual, the PowerPoint, the craft, the 3D, the avatars, the smoke, the movie, the mirrors, the music, the whistles, the flashing lights, because it's a part of their show, their experience. And the ones that can do it effectively, which is about 0.01%, most of them actually suck at it. You and I were at a major conference this last year, and there was someone that came out on stage and did that. And the first 10 minutes of her program was very impressive, but the next 45 minutes, she lost the entire audience because it was too much. It was overkill. And. And it actually became distracted from the message because every time the avatar came out, you could see her silhouette backstage. Basically an opposite action to the messaging. And people started actually watching her shadow versus watching the show, just to use an example. So those are reasons why I don't. Because I've been in enough audience to realize I'm never going to be damn good enough to do it the right way. So why try, Maggie? Be yourself. Second. Second reason. Whether it's in a large arena or not, I don't do a lot of graphics is because everyone else typically does. So how do I differentiate 1, 2, if. If I drive the listener with a compelling mess, compelling content to listen and follow, then I don't need that. I can own the room. Second, if I give them a workbook or I give them a handout like that, and again, in the room where you and I were in that event, you were speaking of that, I had a whiteboard with a dot. Everyone had the handout. And there was, you know, electronic monitors around the room. And what it had up on the monitor was the exact same handout. That's all it was. Nothing else moved. I have to change the imagery because I wasn't using it that way. So for me, I hit all of the modalities of how our brain works as well as the modalities of how a room works. You know, one on one, break out, you know, ask your partner, interact, walk around, be at the front, beat the back. So I'm playing that, but I'm playing to the audio, the visual, and the kinesthetic with those three. And it also drives people to take notes. If you're taking notes and Mark is taking notes and I look at my left and right and see you guys taking notes, I'm gonna find a pen pretty damn quick to start taking some notes.

Nice. Well, Honor your time, Dr. Dr. Jeff, Mark is going to compile the wisdom that you have dropped as he does that one question we always ask to kind of help wrap it up. First of all, how do we reach you? And I know you have Performance Magazine, which you've had Richard Branson, Zig Ziglar, Les Brown write articles in how would people find Performance Magazine? And or how do they find Find you?

Perfect. Thank you very much. So one, the magazine URL is professional performance magazine.com so professional performance magazine.com they can see the podcast, they can see we had a TV show for several years. There are several books and anthologies we've done with different writers and authors as well as the last several years with the magazines are up there that people can get access to or subscribe to for talent management and talent development. That would be gentle. Jeffrey McGee.com which is my name. So it's J E, F, F, R e Y and McGee is M, a G, E, E. So jeffreymgee.com for your listeners and for the time together today as well, there's a massive archive of free mental DNA there. So if they go to jeffreymigie.com at the top, click on resources and under Resources they can go right down to podcast. This podcast as an example, will be also hosted there. There. Every podcast I'm on, I park it on my website is there. And my own podcast for years, I got that there. But also the archive articles, There are over 100 strategic and tactical articles on sales and there are 25 articles on strategic and tactical leadership development. So every time I write an article in the magazine, I post it and house it there. So those are other places just to give people free mental DNA.

Nice. Thanks. Thank you.

Thank you.

And last question. If I was to come and sit down with you, I was an emerging presenter and you and I were having coffee and I said, I just love what I do. I have a passion. I've been doing this for years. I want to present. What advice would you give me if I said, look, I just, I want to be unforgettable, I care about my message, I love my message. What would you tell me?

Great question. So very quickly, about 15 years ago, a lady calls me up on the phone. She's obviously very emotional. She's talking about she's about to lose her house. She did a second mortgage, she has no income. She spent an obscene amount of money with a, with a name that's somewhat known in our industry to learn how to be a speaker and basically got, got, got taken advantage of. I said, so here's the deal. One, I live in Las Vegas, she's in la. If you let's find a weekend that works for you if you can get yourself to Vegas. I have a penthouse suite in a condo here on the Strip. Across the street is the Westgate hotel complex. They've got a great resort restaurant inside. I can walk across the street and we'll spend all day Saturday and Sunday there and just have free food brought to us all day long. And I'll pour into you to, to get you off of where you are so you can be in a position on Monday morning actually to make a sale, make some money from that. I created a two day boot camp called Pro Speaker Biz. It's on my website. This is not an infomercial because I don't do it on a regular basis. About one time a year, I'll have enough people that have reached out to me saying, hey, what can I do? Your very question. And, and I'll host one of those at Red Rocks Casino here in Vegas every year. I also gift it free to the NSA Las Vegas chapter when they start their speakers academy each year. Just as Darren and Mark, you're very gracious And Darren, you donate and contribute some free seats to some of your programs as well to grow people. So that's the first thing I would say, is find someone who actually does this full time. It's not just trying to make money off of you that can help you for the listeners. Darren and Mark are unique because if you are a presenter at any point, any level, you want to become a better presenter in your own business and industry, or you want to be a trainer or speaker, well, you know, Mark and. And Darren, you're their customer. You are the person they can help. So, Darren, and again, when I've been, I had the fortunate opportunity to be voted and asked to be the president of the Vegas chapter twice. And in three other chapters around the country where I've lived, I was president of that. Yeah, I make the comment, Darren, I mean, anytime you have anything that can help everyone, I want you to bring a promotion, emotional piece, bring an advertisement, whatever, because I don't see that as you disrespecting the room because you're the one of the few people that this room really is someone that can benefit from you. I have a big problem with people that supposedly have a real career that now all of a sudden are trying to make money off of. Speakers on. I'll show you how to be successful. And the truth is, they're not successful themselves. So that's three huge answers if you're listening. And last, I call the Les Brown rule. So I wrote a book that I use in my boot camp that I actually use as the handout. And I think you were there when I did my last, last year program. You were there. So you saw. And the Les Brand rule is this. I would tell that person. So if Mark was the person sitting up and getting ready to ask me the question. So Mark will ask you a real question here and Darren will ask you the same thing if you were asking Darren's question. I'm in this, or I want to get in this. What's the major piece of advice? I would say, okay, Mark, who's the speaker in this space right now you truly respect and want to emulate? Any name come to mind?

Marks Sanborn.

Okay, Mark Sanborn. Darren, if there's someone in the space where you want to go, who do you really respect and want to emulate?

Great question. I know my friends listen to this. So, okay, so stop, stop.

This is perfect. Let's hit pause. Yeah, let's play both. So with, with Mark, the Les Brown rule is going to be the Mark Sanborn Rule with you, it's going to be the wow, I've got several that immediately come to mind. Okay, you're gonna have several. So the Les Brown Brown rule is visualize a huge ladder that you can carry, and you're going to set it up against the wall right there. You have the first rung of the ladder you can step on, and the top rung, that rung. That ladder is the Les Brown ladder. So, Darren, you have several. Guess what? You're going to bring several ladders in here. So now you're going to have even more work than Mark. Mark, at least, was quick enough to only give me one name, but again, the more names, the better as well. So the Les Brown rule is this. Les Brown's name is at the top of that ladder. Ladder. Your name is on the first rung of that ladder. You're not even freaking close to Mark Sanborn. I'm not even close to Les Brown. So if you visualize you're at the first rung, how many rungs or steps are there up to where Mark Sanborn is, where Les Brown is? The multiple people that come to your mind are. And you start asking yourself, so let's say the next rung on that ladder is a marketing piece with Les Brown. Would Mark Sanborn create that marketing piece? No. Then guess what? Neither should you. Would. Would. Would. Would Mark Sanborn go on that podcast? No. Why are you. Would Mark Sanborn have this kind of content or use this kind of story or say something this way? No. Then why are you. Would. Would Mark Sanborn go to that audience? Would he speak for that fee? Would he do it for a lower fee? Would he. Would he do it for no fee? So any of those yeses, that's your challenge. You got to step it up and to get to that ladder then. But if it's nos, why are you doing it? So I would give the advice of, do you have a clue of who. Who is in the space you want to be like? And I'm not saying be like them, but you use them as your benchmark.

Brilliant.

That's the advice I'd give people. And so again, if you visualize you're on the first rung and Mark Sanborn's on that top rung, then you can think of the other speakers that might be in between as ways to kind of pace yourself. Okay, I need to get to this. This rung is going to be so and so, and then this one is so and so. But it gives you a whole new way of looking at Things and no one's ego should put your name name directly below the the the icon or the legacy or the mentor or the the celebrity or the SME name you're sticking on. Or would they do it? Yes. Then how do I do it better, faster, different, more cost effective? How do I do it in a way so they come to you and go wow, that is pretty cool.

Nice. Nice. Well said Mark Brown. What do we got for keepers?

My goodness.

Wisdom drop.

Have so many. I need to take about 18 different breaths but very early on. Jeffrey, Dr. Jeffrey said your presentation comes from your history. To find the best stories go back to the archives of your mind and experience, not the most recent. Love that because people pay for your wisdom. Ask yourself what are the calluses on your hands and your head? Learn the craft of rhetoric and speaking and meet people where they are mentally. Be willing to play student and make sure your content stands up. Ask how can I become better? Build your stage presence and ask also ask this what would be different in my audience on Monday morning? How do I look at something differently every single day? How can I be better, faster, different and more cost effective perspective? Bring your personality to every presentation. Be bold, smile, don't be offensive, but be, be, be self depreciating. Also read what's the top book, top autobiography, top biography, top academic book, the most popular book. What books do legends write and what do you read for free? Fun to build yourself. Keep a mental journal. Be big brained, Stop. Make time to think and develop those stories people always ask for. Tell about your lessons learned and what content are you passionate about. And don't forget the Les Brown rule. Who is where you want to be and how can you possibly, possibly get there? That's only half but I'm exhausted.

Great. Thank you. I hope I was able to share some value for you gentlemen but more so your listeners and Darren, you asked great questions. Hopefully I didn't talk too much.

That was.

No. It's our first podcast we've had that has been a two hour podcast in 51 minutes. But that's okay. That's why I brought you in. That's why I invited you. Thank you.

And I challenge all of the listeners to be that sponge that Mark you talked about. I mean Darren, I have shared that, that, that concept concept and giving you credit every time to, to thousands across the planet and I have again shared with people if you want to become better at this craft again whether you're in this as this is your profession as a professional speaker trainer because you're a subject matter expert on something or you just want to become better at stagecraft Again to give a presentation to your co workers, your colleagues, your bosses, to the board of directors, to shareholders, to investors, that that again, your two names need to be in people's phones on speed dial.

Thank you sir. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being a mentor, thanks for being a friend and thanks for giving back to so many other speakers. And thanks for your bold truth. That's part of what makes you you. Mark Brown Take us home my friends.

Play this podcast over and over and over again. Drink from the well of winter wisdom that is Dr. Jeff McGee and we'll see you next week on the Unforgettable Presentations Podcast.

See ya see.

Make sure you subscribe to our show.

Remember to subscribe because if you miss a week, you miss a lot.

If you like this episode, please leave us a review. If you want to get more from Mark and Darren, check out Steve Stagetime University where they provide experienced presenters a proven path and world class feedback. To become the speaker everyone is talking about. Go to stagetimeuniversity.com join us next week if you're going to take the time to prepare a presentation. Make it unforgettable.