Ep. 225 Unforgettable Referrals With Arel Moodie

Hey there, Mark Brown. When there's a game changer in the industry, I believe it's our duty to let people know. I am so pumped. I have been using this new tool, but there's actually a guy behind the tool. So we want to find out the story, the origin story. But if you haven't heard of this or if you heard of this, you have to understand the power of what was created to help you get more gigs, get more feedback. Oh, my goodness. Mark Brown, any initial thoughts?

Well, I must admit, I am flat excited because this is all new to me. I am as eager as our audience is to find out more about this new tool and its creator. Let's do this, 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 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.

If you're a speaker trainer, you need to listen up. This is critical. This is critical to your career, your message, helping people. And Mark, So here's the background. I'm with my buddy Ron Carr, which we have one of those. We see each other at the convention. We're not like best buds, but it's like, hey, we should hang out sometime. So I hang out with him at Chad Hymas son's wedding. And he said, hey, I got a speech in Vegas next week. And I said, hey, let me pick you up at the airport. I really want to spend some more time with you. So we're driving in the car and he start, do you know about Taka Dot? He goes. He starts showing. I'm like, what is Taka Dot? I never heard of Taka Dot. He pulls out his phone, he goes, you gotta see this. And he's literally showing me the screens, the reports, and I don't know, but here's what really got me interested. And R.L. you don't even know this story. He said, R.L. the guy who started this, he is just an unbelievable human being.

Cool.

You don't hear that a lot from somebody. I was intrigued. I loved what I saw, but I was only scratching the surface. So. Well, let's get him on here. R.L. we'll go into. We'll go into the talk a dot thing a little Later. But let's find out about you. To impress Ron Carr and have that be the first thing he tells me just blew me away. So I have had unbelievable customer service. I don't think Mike sleeps. One of the guys who, whenever I get a question or don't understand something, he is like, on it, on it. And if it's hard to explain, he shows me a little video. Anyway, we'll get to that. Let's. Let's find out about rl. Talk to us.

Oh, my gosh. Well, listen, dude, I am. I'm super excited to be here. And the secret to having people like Ron Carr say really nice things to you is paying them constantly a retainer. The opportunity comes up to speak. So thank you, Ron. Your retainer is in the mail now. But I'm one of. Of those people that have been in love with the. The art of speaking. You know, I. I am no grand champion like both of you are, but I've been enamored with the. The art of speaking. When I was 19 years old, I saw a professional speaker, and I remember saying to myself, I don't know what that guy's doing, but I want to do that for the rest of my life. It was. It was this, like, resonance inside of me of whatever that is. That's the thing that I want to do. And I've been doing professional speaking for 17 years now and started in lots of different niches, but I started in the student niche. And I know that, Mark, you help a lot of students with bullying and help youth get over that, which I very much admire, is. That's where I started. I start. I was very young. I was 23 years old when I started. I was like, well, you know, no one's going to want to listen to me. And an amazing guy named Victor Antonio, which I'm not sure if you're familiar with Victor. He's a great speaker, great guy. He actually came to speak at my university, and I came up to him afterwards and I said, dude, you know, one day, 20 years from now, I'm going to be doing what you're doing. And, you know, Victor in his simplicity and wisdom, just said, well, why don't you start now? And I was like, well, no one's going to want to listen to me. And he's like, well, tell me about your story. And I was like, well, you know, I grew up in the projects on welfare in Brooklyn, got into college and started a business. When I was in college, I got introduced to entrepreneurship. He was like, well, why don't you talk to students about how they can be successful? And I was like, well, I mean that, like, people would. Would pay for that. That's like, that would be a dream. And to this day, it still feels like a dream that you get paid to talk about something you're passionate about. And, you know, it's, it's. It's been an honor to travel 48 states, five countries, 750,000 people in those 17 years. So it's been, it's been quite an honor, quite a journey.

Wow. Tell us about your first presentation.

Do you remember whether it was University of North Florida? I'll never forget it. It was University of North Florida. I was pacing the whole hallways, and I think I had four people show up. It was like a Sunday morning, like, I don't know, 9:30am Volunteer presentation for college students. And I was like, well, this is, this is going to be good, you know? But you know what? One of the best pieces of advice someone gave me was never go down to your audience's level. Always bring your audience to your level. So whether you've got 400, whether you've got four, you've got to set the tone, and you've got to decide what that tone is going to be. And it was. It was absolutely amazing. It was an absolute vacuum. I think I was one of those people that. The first speech itself, I don't even know what I said. I don't even know what happened. I remember before, I remember after, but during, I was like, you know, but I was hooked. It was. It was like having someone ask you to take a photo with them. To me, it's not a lot of times when people have a photo taken, they go, ooh, people like me. I think of it more as when someone asked me to take a photo, that means that the experience left such an indelible mark on that person's soul that they want to capture it so that they can remember and recall it. And the ability to do that and give that gift to others is just. It's a special thing that I don't think any other art form has the ability to transform someone's life in one hour the way a good presentation does. I just don't think there's any other art form that does it. So it's a. It's a joy beyond joys.

I love that. No other art form has the ability to transform people's lives in one hour. What a difference an hour can make. I do.

Thank you.

Arel.

Yeah, no, of course.

All right. I'M gonna do something we've never ever done before. On this podcast. 225 episodes. We have two dad joke guys here.

Oh, no.

And we're gonna do a mini dad joke off. And Mark, we're going to start with you. We're just going to go back and forth. Three each. Three each. Let's see what we got here. And you, the listener, you can go on and vote which one, which ones are delivered best.

No one loses in a dad Joe contest. Everyone wins.

Yeah.

Oh, you know what, though? I'll tell you this much though, Darren. You know, you know me, I'm a football soccer player, right? But when you get injured, when you get injured, you find yourself at the foot of the hill trying to make your way back up.

Oh, man.

You know, that kind of reminds me of when I used to be addicted to the hokey pokey. But then I turned myself around.

I tell you, that was so well done. I gotta hand it to you, my friend.

Well, it reminds me of the question of. What do you call a row of rabbits marching backwards?

No idea.

Receding. A receding hairline.

Oh, my goodness. Hey, Darren. You know, I. I am not really much of a farmer. I live in the country right now, and one of my neighbors who owns a farm down the street, he won the award for the most outs. Most amazing cornfield where no birds got. Because you know what? He went there himself as a scarecrow. They told me you were outstanding in your field.

Wow. You know, that's. That reminds me of the guy who really wanted to go around and tell everyone about the benefits of dried grapes. Really, it's all about raising awareness.

You know, I love that real quick, by the way, Darren, here in Georgia is a base, military base called Warner Robins. Not far from here's an air force base. Did you hear about a time that they court martialed the military attache? You didn't, huh? It was a brief case.

All right, last one I don't know if I can handle anymore.

Yeah, that was a great pun. It kind of reminds me of what happened when I found out that the semicolon got arrested. Did you hear about what happened when a semicolon got arrested? Yeah, it turns out it's serving two consecutive sentences.

All right, thank you. For the first ever.

Make this a thing. Make this a thing. Make this a thing.

Well, we might have to have you back if we can't find another dad joke guy. Maybe we'll just do an episode of dad jokes. Wow.

All day.

Okay, so, yeah, when you find common ground, you just, we gotta have it on the podcast. So thanks, thank you both for entertaining us. RL what are you talking about now? What's your subject now?

You know what happens with, I think professional speakers is we talk about what we are most interested in. Like what, what we're enamored with at the time. For some of us that's like a forever thing. And for some of us it evolves. Over the last few years, I, I came across this incredible body of research called adult development theory. And the summation of it is many people are familiar with child development theory that children pass through these predictable stages of development. It's kind of like a 6 month old doesn't have something called object permanence. So you can play peekaboo month old and they think you've disappeared. But if you played peekaboo with a 16 year old, you would get arrested for stranger danger because they're like, you're clearly right behind your hands, right? So those same stages of child development theory, actually over 60 years of research have proven that adults pass through predictable and sequential stages of development. The difference is where, say, generational data shows how people make decisions based on how old they are. Adult development theory shows how people make decisions based on how mature they are. So there's different stages of maturity that we go throughout our life. And once you understand these stages, you can understand how to better influence people, connect people, see where they're at, speak to them in a deep way, understand yourself, understand what's happening next. So I go into organizations and I teach them how to use this strategy to build their culture to help their leaders and help folks better connect with customer loyalty as well.

What stage of maturity? Right after dad jokes.

Oh, wow, that's, that's got to be.

Its own unique stage. That's how joke should be. That's the highest. I think that's the highest level stage, actually. I think that's the stage we all aspire to be in. So congratulations, Mark, you have reached nirvana.

Well, I appreciate that because, you know, I. When, when your adult kids buy you a dad joke book for your birthday, that's kind of scary, you know, and it's. But, but you know what, it's all in good fun. And I like the idea of when the concept about adult development theory, I don't know if in your study of this particular phenomenon, arel, you found that the way we as adults respond to dad jokes is any kind of indication that we're childish, childlike, immature or mature or not. Because I think dad jokes are Great. My kids roll their eyes. But maybe it's part of our development to enjoy these kind of jokes.

You know, it's always interesting because the way the stages of development work, which I think are very fascinating, is the stages that I focus on teaching are four stages. So the first stage that we go through in our adult life is called self centric, right? So it's all about, what do I get out of it? And if you think about, like younger in your career, it's like, well, how do I get ahead? How do I advance? How do I learn what other people want? Not because I care necessarily about them. I'm trying to get something from them, right? So we all kind of start there and then we can stay in that stage our whole life. But then after that, what happens is something called the group centric stage, where you know what, this lone wolf thing, doing everything by myself, it's not getting me the results. I want. I want to feel a sense of belonging. I want to feel like I'm part of it.

Group.

So for many of us as speakers, Speakers, professional speakers, becomes our group, becomes like, these are. This is my tribe. This is my people. These are the people that like, get me. I get them, and then they represent me. So if you attack them, you attack me, right? It's that kind of idea. Then what happens when you're in the group is that after a while you realize, I love the group. Like, I bet both of you love professional speakers. But you said to yourself, you know what? I want to be best in the world. I don't want to just be another professional speaker. I've got to find something, some topic, some skill set that will separate me. And that's the next stage, which is skill centric. What skill represents you? What is that thing that you want to spend all of your time becoming best in the world at? Then after a while, you can realize that no matter how good you are at a skill, you can't do everything. You can't impact everyone everywhere. You've got to move to the fourth, which is the highest conventional stage, which is called the achiever stage. This is where it's about developing other people. It's kind of when you go from player to coach, it's more about goal setting, giving back, supporting and helping others. And I spend a lot of my time there. So a dad joke might show up to each person very differently. South central person might go, well, could I use that to benefit me in the future? Group centric Michael. Oh, I've got to tell that to all My buddies, everyone's going to love it. Skill centric, Michael. But this has helped me get better at what I do. If not, I couldn't care about it. And then the achiever might go, oh, I'm going to open up my next, my next team meeting with that joke because I think it'll break the ice. So how we relate to things depends on what stage we're in. So it's the same thing. But as one person once said in the way to build a really, really good presentation is you have one idea and you hit it from three different directions. Is that right, Darren? And you've got to have the analytical people and folks like that. So it's the same way that one idea can be hit from different directions. A dad Jo joke can also be hit. Wow.

We, we might have just given you a new metaphor for your speeches. The, the dad joke theory.

Develop that thing. A rail orel.

Go for it, Mark. I think you gotta run with it. I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna gracefully pass the baton for you, dad Joe Fear. Listen.

Well, it could apply to what Mark does. It could apply to what you do.

It also applies Darren. Honestly, I think about stage time too. People come in and wanted to be better at what they do and then they find this group in stage time and they get involved in that. But while we're going through that, we say, okay, what's your niche? How do you stand out? What is your topic? What is your lane? We discuss all of that and then many of our members go on to coach other members as well. So that very brief, very brief mini seminar can apply to what we do at stage time. So thank you, Ariel, I appreciate that too.

Yeah. And you know, the last thing I'll say about that is it's actually interesting. If you look at most of our adult journeys, we pass through that, right? If you take something like martial arts, right. Someone might first come into martial arts because like I want to defend myself, I want to beat people up. I don't want people to mess with me. That's self centric. Then you love the art form and you're like, ooh, like this idea of like, you know, martial arts, karate, like it's my group, it's my people. But then you go, no, no, I can't just be like those white belts, those yellow belts, I've got to excel at katas or sparring or being a black belt that like travels. And then after a while you start going, no, the real joy is passing this gift on to others. I want to become a sensei. So if you kind of at like, all of these, like, I could pull out lots of different examples. This journey we go through is very predictable and very sequential.

Nice. Well said. Thrilled to have you here. Thrilled to know more of your story. Back in the 80s, before RL was born, one of the things that I heard in the NSA, the National Speakers association world, is that 80% of your paid presentations come as a result of someone who's actually seen you speak. Now, they might not be the person who hires you, but you were referred or some. Some, you know, one of those Kevin Bacon. What is that called? The Kevin.

Six degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Six degrees of Kevin Bacon, exactly. I'd really love to hear the story behind where did Taka Dot come from.

Yeah. So I'm going to tell you the story that I'm not sure if anyone has ever heard this story publicly before. So this is like a exclusive here. So I was going through a phase during the pandemic which many of us as professional speakers, where we were like, what are we gonna do? What's gonna happen to the speaking industry? This was like before virtual speaking became like hot potatoes, you know, and everyone was like, I could get paid to just be in my office and do the same thing I love to do. This is wonderful. It was. It was actually sweet, right? Like, you got to impact people and still put your kids to bed at night, right? So before that became a thing, there was this large period of time where people had to go, who am I now? Like, if I can't go out on stages and speak? And I went through that, and I was very, very much like, is the speaking industry dead? Is this like, are we never going to be back in person again? So I started saying to myself, well, what can I do? And I had the skill set of speaking. I've been doing it for many, many years. I love it. It's. It's an art form. I treat it and care for it such. I was like, you know what? Let me help people who want to get better at speaking. I think it's like, like you said, it's very natural evolution of the game. So I started helping entrepreneurs and business own to get better at public speaking get better at it. I was part of an entrepreneurship group, so I was like, hey, I'll help, you know, run a speaker kind of group. And then from running that speaker group, which I wasn't getting paid for, I was just doing it. One of the members was like, I really, really want, like, one on one Time with you. Could you help coach me in speaking? And I said, sure. Now she had just sold a tech business, so she was going through, you know, maybe I should be a speaker, maybe I need to get better at speaking. And so I'm helping her with it. So we work through her message and her story and how do we do all that wonderful stuff that someone like Darren is way better at and someone like Mark is way better than I'll ever be, right? So I work through it and now we have the speech. And she's like, all right, we got it, it's good. Now you gotta go, you gotta go deliver it, right? It was like, we gotta find places for you to go deliver, you know, this speech. Wonderful, let's find like groups and this. By the time I finished the coaching, that was about a year long coaching program. By the time we got to the tail end of it, the world virtual speaking became a thing. It was opening up. So it was like, we gotta find you places to get talk. She was like, great, how do I do that? So I started explaining to her, well, you know, you gotta get in front of people who've seen you speak and they have to know who you are, they've gotta trust you. And she was like, yeah, but how do people objectively find something? And I was like, well, you know, like that's not really how the industry works. Like, it is really much like kind of who you know, how you know them. And so what happens for people who wanna get started, for anyone who's listening, who's a novice, you experience this pain. You go to a speaker and you say, give me advice on how to get started with speaking. They say, oh, well, people just come to me and then I go speak. And they're like, but how did you get the ball rolling? How do you start that? How do you, like, what's. Wait, I understand the end point, but what about that beginning point? And a lot of speakers, they can't even recall, like it just kind of maybe happened. So she kept asking me this wonderful question, why is it done that way? Why is it done that way? Why is it wait, why is it done that way? And I kept saying the worst answer, which is, that's the way it's always been. That's the way it's always been. That's the way the industry is. So her mind started churning. And then she said, you know, one, one of our coaching sessions, she said something to me that I'll never forget. She said, you know, it seems like this industry could use a Lot of help. And I was like, yeah, it could, because it's been kind of operating respectfully and I love this craft. I want to be clear, but we've been operating kind of like in the VHS world world when everyone else has moved on to the iPhone world. Right. As an example. And she was like, well, someone should do something about it. I was like, yeah, I would love it if someone did something about it, but here we are. And she said, what if we did something about it? She's like, you understand the industry, you know it really, really well. I have this tech background. What if we built something to try to solve these problems so that the right speakers can get in the right events every single time? And I was like, that sounds like crazy talk. And I like it. Right? Like that's exactly the kind of crazy talk I like. So her name is Poking Young and she's one of my co founders with Talk A dot and from there. So she had an incredible product background. Like she knows how to build beautiful products. But we needed a technical co founder. So we went there's a group called Y Combinator. If anyone's not familiar with it, it's a wonderful accelerator, but they also have a co founder matching platform. And we found our technical co founder who can actually build it named Jared Califf. And it's been, it's been a wild journey. We're just about like over two years into this journey and the first six months was trying to figure out what problem are we going to solve today? How do we solve it? And the decision we landed on in that first six months is what turned into what we all now know as Talk A dot. And now it's an iterative process of trying to make it the best tool possible to help speakers capture everyone in your audience who wants a book you to speak so you don't have to worry about if you exchange cards with them after on the stage. We want to actually help speakers prove the ROI and value of their presentations because most speakers can't. I heard one speaker say, what most speakers do is they show up, they blow up, and then they giddy up. And I thought that was a perfect how do you. But how do you measure? How do you know you've actually done an impact? How do you know? So we want to take something that's very intangible for speakers and make it tangible so we can show the value we bring. And then we wanted to make it easy for people to build a relationship with their audience long after the talk is over by capturing their Email addresses and putting them onto their email list. Because most speakers, if I were to ask them, let's say you're listening to this and you're an experienced speaker, and you'll say something with pride like, I've been speaking for 15 years. And you go, oh, my gosh, how many people have you spoken to in those 15 years? Easily half a million people. Half a million people. How many of those people are on your email list? Well, you know, I haven't really spent a lot. But imagine if you had 300,000 people who've seen you speak on your email list that you've been building a relationship with when you have a coaching program, when you have a course, when you have a need for speaking engagement, you can fill it like that. That's what the biggest people know. They know the money is in the list. So we help solve all three of those problems for speakers just by having a speaker throw up a QR code at the end of their presentation that leads to a survey that capt all of this data, turns it all into reports for you, captures all your leads, categorizes them by cold, warm, hot leads, and builds your email list all within two minutes of a presentation.

What I love about it myself, personally is it's hard to say, hey, if you're interested in hiring me, Patricia Fripp's the only one who does that impeccably.

Well, I mean, she's like. That's like saying Michael Jordan does that. Other people should. It's like, you know, she's in her own lane.

So my. So she's. One of her closings is for those of you who don't know, she's a legend. She's a mentor. She knows I do impressions of her, and she actually cracks up. So she says, my. If you don't remember anything, remember Fripp F, R, I, P P frequently reinforce and I don't remember it all. Ideas, ideas that are profitable and practical. Something to that effect. Effect. And then she says, when I walk off stage, I'm unemployed. And so she asks for people to just hire her or recommend her. Now, Patricia, I didn't do it word for word. It just popped into my head. So forgive me for that. But when you are a speaker, you want to look good, you want to help the audience and serve the audience. You don't want to pitch the next one. What I love, love, love, and the value that I see in this is I can simply ask friends for feedback, put up the slide, which you guys make for us. It's Got a QR code on it. Everybody's already conditioned. Thank you, Covid. For a positive condition to know what a QR code. Even some of the older people, myself included, yes. And now they get to do a very quick. Was it relatable? Quick. Boom, boom, boom. But then we can customize a question. So I just. I was speaking this weekend in California, small group, but I have a humor bootcamp coming up on Saturday. If you're listening to this, it was last Saturday, but it was coming up. And so I customized the question because they were adamant about me not selling. Would you like to know more about my one day virtual humor bootcamp? So I just asked that question and I got some referrals from a few of them and I followed up. So what I see as a value is it's just very subtle. Asking for something that's normal that people want to do, give you feedback. But then with the questions and the brilliance, the simplicity, like, you're talking. Mark will tell you you're talking Darren's language. In my office, R.L. we have a thing. You gotta daren it down. You gotta daren it down. And it's a challenge for me and it's an asset because it makes me a great teacher. I can't teach something until I understand it. So it makes me focus and understand it. But.

Well, dude, I'm sorry, finish. Cause I just. I love, like. Cause no one has seen that, the way you just said it. And we put so much attention into the problem you just presented. So, like, I'm gonna let. I'm sorry I got so hype. I'll let you finish your thought.

It's a conversation, man.

So, dude, the reason why I love the fact that you can actually see that and not everyone can see that, and I really love the fact that you can is because if you pitch on stage, 99% of the time, you could get black in the keynote world. They're not going to want you. They're going to be like, oh, don't invite him. Like, obviously, Patricia, like, again, like, you know, every. There's always a legend who can break the general rules. But generally speaking, pitching from stage will get you blackballed in our industry. Right. So you want to. We wanted to really figure out how do we create a win, win, win so that the speaker wins, the client wins, and the audience member wins. So the way that we set up our tool is that we're asking for feedback. We're like, we want to know what you liked about it. So it came better and Get a data report that's automatically created that you share that data report with your client. So the client wins because they get this ROI measurement tool that they can put in their annual report. They can show to their board, they can show in their grants, if they're writing grants on what they've done. And they love measurement. And with Talk A Dot, we've figured out how to get about 60 to 80% of an audience to actually give feedback. Where most surveys get like 5% if they're locking. So the client loves the fact that they have this large data set and this beautiful report. So they're like happy that you asked for it. From the audience perspective, we ask a question. Do you book paid speakers? If they say no, our system does branch logic and jumps. Any other lead generation questions, it doesn't ask it at all. So no one in the audience is getting peppered with questions that they would be like, offended. Oh, you're selling to me. I get upset. So they don't get those at all, only the people who actually want to get it. And then we qualify them. Well, would you like to book, Darren? Oh, you would? Please give us your information. But then everyone in the audience, regardless of who they are, as a thank you for taking the survey, they get access to a bonus that the speaker can give them. So if the speaker is like, hey, I'd love to give you a copy of, you know, deliver. Deliver Unforgettable presentations. I'd love to give you an ebook of that as a thank you for giving me your feedback. Now everyone goes, well, I want the E book. So they take the survey and they get it. So they get something for it. And then me as a speaker, I get feedback, I get data, but I also get a list of everyone who rose their hand and said, I book speakers, I'd like to book you, or I'd like to refer you to someone who does. So because of the way this was strategically set up, which I just so appreciate that you can actually see that, Darren. The client wins, the audience wins, and the speaker wins. And no one feels dirty about it. No one feels like you were like, you know, sullying the stage in any way. So there was a lot, a lot of thought put into how to set it up in hopefully a really simple way. That's, you know, when something works really well, you don't even notice it. The fact that you notice that I just want to give you your flowers because I think that's just. That's awesome.

You know what's cool is I Love this win, win, win idea. And embedded therein for me as a presenter is a reminder that when I'm on stage, I want to create an environment where my client wins and my audience wins. And if I can create wins for them with this tool I used talking about Talk a dot, I'll also create a win for myself, but as a speaker and I hope everyone catches this. Yes, we're giving you a tool. We're sharing with you a tool that can really elevate your business. But as a presenter, bear in mind the idea. If my client wins and my audience wins, chances are I will too. So I'm going to branch off very briefly from this topic and invite our audience members to remember when you prepare and present a presentation with that mindset, it's less selfish, but on the back end, the results can benefit you as well. I hope that makes sense. Darren and Arel okay, it does.

You know, one of the biggest mistakes I see novice speakers make, and I'm going to say this respectfully because I think it will help someone, especially if they're new, they treat the stage as if it is their personal therapy session. So they go on stage and they go, here's all these bad things that happened to me and here's all these horrible things that happened to me. But you know what? I overcame it. I didn't let them hold me down. Thank you very much for your time. And it's like, wait a minute, what do I. Is the audience member like, so knowing that, that your story is only a vehicle to impact your audience's life. Your story is not the beginning and the end. It's not the alpha and the omega. It is a vehicle to impact lives. So when you actually realize what is the lesson? I want someone to extrapolate from my story so that my audience wins. Then if you're really about the game, you ask your your client in a pre event call. And I recommend all speakers have a pre event call. Nicole, ask them this question. If I gave you a magic wand and you could wave it over this event, what would be the perfect result? Because this event happened. B and then let your client tell you what is the perfect result they want. Do they want more people to sign up for a program initiative? Do they want less conflict during meetings? Do they? You want to know why is your host bringing you in? What problem are they hoping to solve? And then make sure you're tailoring your message to just hit those points. So if they want them to sign up for like their 401k, like I'm just making this up. Like, you know, not enough of our, you know, employees are signing up for their 401k. So you can do the exact same message you would do, but then say, look, if you want to take an action step about believing in yourself, believe in your future self, believe that your future self deserves a wonderful retirement, you've. You've got to max out your 401k. I want you to leave here today and take the first step of setting it up and, and implement. Like, you could just take 30 seconds to say that, and your client's gonna be like, thank you. Oh, my gosh, like you did. Exactly. No one ever does that. So the client wins, the audience wins. But the stage is not a. Let me just tell you about why my life was so bad and how I got over it and like, goodbye, you know, so I'm a big advocate of what you're saying there, Mark, that creating that win, win for the audience, creating that win for your client, that's what makes. Makes a. A professional speaker the difference from a public speaker. Right. A public speaker is someone who's orator, a professional speaker understand these nuances. So they serve their clients.

I like that. Orator versus servant. I like that. Wow.

Yeah. Giving this scenario, especially if you're an emerging speaker, Think about it this way. If you're not collecting referrals and staying in touch with them, any salesperson would knows the numbers, knows that you've got to reach out seven times, whatever that number is. It's not my expertise, but you got to reach out a certain number of times. So if the key to closing sales, to getting more bookings is staying in touch with them and reaching out seven times, how can you think for a second you can speak once and you're going to get all the referrals that were potential. You might get a couple, but you're missing so much opportunity. So here's the idea. Let's just say you're an emerging speaker. You give a program on customer service, and you do really good, and the audience loves you. And you have. Barbara's in the audience. Barbara loves you. Barbara goes home and tells her husband what a great program you did on customer service. Cool. He's appreciative. They have a great conversation. A month goes by, two months goes by. Next month, the husband has a problem. He has a meeting coming up, and they have a challenge with customer service, so they need to bring in an expert. And he says, hey, do you remember that person who you saw that give that presentation on customer service, who was that? Well, and it's over. Like that missed opportunity happened three months later. But because we didn't stay in touch, we didn't make sure Barbara had our contact information. So in that scenario it's our job to stay in touch with the audience, whether it's potential bookings or potential referrals or potential buyers of our coaching, of our books, anything like that.

Your thoughts, Darren? I'm just always impressed by someone who can understand nuance at the level that you do. What most speakers believe is that six months from now that conversation is going to go like this. Who was that guy? Oh, it was Darren Lacroix. Let me go reach. Like we think people are going to remember our name. They're going to be like, oh he was funny and he was good. And like at best they're going to do that and if they're lucky they'll remember what your name sounded like. And I think people actually don't realize that the secret to speaking is consistently being top of mind. One of the reasons why certain speakers do so well is because you're constantly seeing them. And the easiest way to do that is through email because someone can go, what was the name? I don't know but maybe stage, there's something about stage. And then they go to their email and they type in the word stage because it's the keyword they remember. So speakers actually have to know like what keyword do I want people to remember me? So if they forgot everything about me, they could go in their email and type in stage or unforgettable or something like that. And then they'll see your emails. But if you gave a presentation nine months ago, good, they're gonna go to Google, type in stage or unforgettable, find someone else and go that's close enough and book them. So the staying in touch is one of the like simplest, low hanging fruit that I think the majority of speakers just, just absolutely missed the boat on. And they don't even think like that in the beginning. So they're losing opportunity because what you said, I want to reemphasize someone today might book you in a year from now. So you've got to plant the seed today to make your future self in a better position. And if you don't do that now, a year from now a year will pass and you got nothing. And you're going to be frustrated as you are today. But if you start planting seeds today when it's harvest time, you're going to be really grateful. Your Past self, stayed in touch, collected emails, reached out to people, did those seven touch points. And that's what I think is the difference between people who are masters in the game and constantly booked and people who are like, I got a good message, I got a good story. I impact people's lives. Like, why aren't people reaching out? Nice.

And the Talk A Dot tool gives you the ability, the facility to have that contact information sent to you and qualified as well. And that to me is really most impressive. R.L. when you said it stops if no one says, I, I will book or I refer your program. Your, your algorithm says, okay, let's not make that a big deal. Let's offer them a freebie but not force them to think they must stay in touch with you. To me, that's brilliant. You know, I couldn't have thought of that, you know, because I'm just, I.

Mean, you, you want the people who want to stay in touch with you to stay in touch with you. And look, you're not, you know, I think I heard who said, oh, man, I would give her credit. I remember one of our talk about users said this to me. She was like, I'm not Nutella. Everyone's not supposed to like me.

I remember that I was on one of the calls.

Yeah. And I was like, that was so great because, like, who doesn't like Nutella? But like, not everyone's going to want to stay in touch with you, but many of your audience will. And if every single time you speak, let's say you speak to 100 people five times a year, so it's 500 people. If you could get, you know, 50 of every audience to stay in touch with you, that's 250 people that could potentially book you one day that could buy your book when it comes out, that will tell someone about you to get you to, you know, 200, 251 people. So I think if you start looking at speaking as a compound effect industry, the work I do today compounds tomorrow comp. And then you get the, you know, the. What is the bamboo shoot story? Right? Like, this is a compound interest kind of business, not a simple interest business. And I think a lot of people look at it very transactional. They say things like, what email do I send to get booked to speak? And it's like, you know, good luck finding it. Like, there's not one email you can send someone totally cold that will move 50 people from cold never hurting you to asking for it. Like, it doesn't really exist. It takes Time, it takes relationship building. And that's what we're hoping to solve with Talk A Dot, so that people can maybe not only change their mindset towards how they build their speaking business, but get better at their craft, serve their audience more. And, you know, we have a deep hunger in not only elevating individual speakers, but elevating the industry as a whole so that the right speakers with the right messages are in the right stages all the time. Time.

I'm just going, wow, it's, it's. It's simple but not simplistic. It's very targeted and very focused. And as you're listening or watching this, friends, I invite you to assess your business in the light and in the context of what Arel just said about how through Talk A Dot, they want to help you to find the best way to be in contact with your prospects. And what really struck me, Arel, you said, you know, somebody could, year or two down the road, because of staying in contact, being top of mind, they'll give you a call a year or two, and who knows how long that term may be. I've been blessed in my career to get somebody to call me and say, you came to our school 15 years ago. Wow, that was a blessing. But can you imagine having that sort of having that accessibility where someone says, you know, seven years ago, here was a name. It was Darren Lacroix. It was Orel Moody. Let's get hold of them. Are they still doing this? So I really appreciate the simplicity of it, but the power of it as well.

Yeah, I think ego gets in the way a lot. And you gave that scenario that they think people are going to remember their name six months later. To give people a specific recent example was first experimenting with Takadot. I put the QR code up there. And this was a group of. I won't mention the name of the group, but this, wow, you're going to see a slide in a second. But they were all like, CEOs of companies. And this is one of my favorites. Now, I'm a dork about this, I'll admit, but, like, the hot leads, there's a little flame next to them. The cold leads is a little snowflake. I love that. Like, that's just like, you're speaking my language. I'm like, you made that for me. You don't know that. But we had one of the hot leads came in, and I had my sales gal literally call them and follow up right away. Now, it was just before a holiday weekend until we followed up after the guy didn't even remember putting in his name and his contact information. And this was four days later.

Okay?

Now, he loved it. I got a rave review. I got a quote, I got a hot lead. He gave me his phone number and didn't remember four days later. For those of you who think you're so good, they're gonna remember you months later, give it up. It's not about you, you know?

And I think when. When you kind of let that part of your ego go, like, could. Because what I realized about us as speakers, we're thinking about our craft, our message, our business. All the time, 24 7. In our sleep, we're dreaming about it. Like, if. I mean, you should be at least, right? So we think, well, other people must be thinking that way about me too, right? No, no. Like, they're going to be like, I'll speak out the of, you know, you'll speak. And maybe they were maybe right. And if anyone says, no, that's not true. I'm different, you know? What's the name of the person who checked you out at the grocery store? They had a name tag. You know, you had a pleasant interaction with them. Like, you'll see them walk down the street. You won't even know they existed. You know, like, there's a realization that my job is to stay in touch, follow up. Their job is to respond. Their job isn't to follow up with me. Their job isn't to remember me. My job is to make them remember me, follow up with them, connect with them, post content that's relevant. That's my job. So I always tell speakers, remember whose job is who. It's not your prospects, your potential prospects. Job to hunt you down, find you, reach out to you, and throw money at you. That's not their job. Their job is to respond or not respond. Your job is to create content and outreaches that make someone go, this person solves a problem. This person is good. I want them. And for some people, it could take them two years. I'll tell you a very quick story. Very quick story. I spoke at a college many, many years ago in Albany. And I. Years. I mean, maybe like seven years later, I'm at a zoo in upstate New York, and the client who had booked me sees me and goes, are you a rel? And I'm like, yeah. And she's like, you came to speak at my college, like, seven years ago. I've been following you on Facebook ever since. And I was like, you have? Like, she's never commented, Never Marked, you know, never, you know, ghost followed you. She was like, yeah, it's so good to see. We should have you come back and speak. And I was like, yeah, we should. And then I like, so literally, she's seen me posting on Facebook over and over and over and over. But until she had that run in with me, it actually flipped her brain from I should just be passively consuming to I should actually invite him because he did such a great job like seven years ago. So you got to remember, their job isn't to book you. It's your job to put yourself in a position. Now, that was luck in that particular case. But building relationships through an email, a newsletter, whether it's once a month, once a week, whatever it might be, that's your job. And then in those emails, I always recommend at the bottom having a call to action, not just here's great content you give. 99.9% of it is great content. And then on the bottom, are you looking for a speaker for your next event? Please reach out. It's amazing how you could give that same email, but without a call to action, people won't do anything. But you add that call to action, someone will go, ah, you know what? We do need a speaker for our event. I do like reading these. It's amazing how often it happens. But it's our job to remember what our job is. And our job is not to sit around and wait. Our job is to go out and create rl.

We have a friend, her name is Maureen Zapala. She's former NASA engineer, former rocket scientist. She speaks on imposter syndrome. And she and I were talking about it and testing it about the same time. And I asked her if she could be on the call with us. She couldn't, so she sent me an email and she said. My most recent event was nine days ago, live in person for a national council structural engineers in Disneyland. I customized my slide with my project branding colors and had an enormous QR code. Glad I did, because once I saw how large the room was and how big the screens were, I knew a larger QR code was better. There were 700 registered for the conference, but my keynote was the first thing and the second morning. And after a wild welcome party the night before. Hard to compete with wild party and the mouse. There were 400 in my audience, 265 opted in and did the survey. So if you're listening, 400 people. 265 people did the Talk A dot survey. Then there were 13 booking leads and 21 referral leads. One of the referrals is a guy in Vegas. I'm meeting him for lunch next week and the others I'll plan to contact next week. Now, for everyone listening, full disclosure. If you tell them you heard about it from the podcast or from Darren Lacroix, I will get a small referral fee. If you don't want me to get a referral free, I don't care. What I care is you get this tool. Try the free version if that's what you need to do. But I tried the free version. I did the 30 days and then if you put in my name, you can get the full version for the 30 days. But if you don't, I don't care. I won't want you to get more referrals. Now, this podcast is called Deliver Unforgettable Presentations. You still gotta be amazing on stage and you should always be trying to get better if you haven't been through our training. Unforgettable presentations training dot com. It's free. 59 minutes and you'll hear from Mark and me. Three secrets to be unforgettable that you just got to use to get where you want to go. Go. But look, if you are good and on the verge of getting better, we want everyone to like, resolve to evolve. Resolve to evolve. However, every time you speak, I believe you're missing opportunities if you don't use this tool, bottom line. And those opportunities are your business, your speaking, your bookings, next week, next month, month, next year. But you gotta follow up. And what I love is they have little videos that show you how to do everything. Little videos that show you the follow up email to create and then you make it your own. Take the ideas and make it your own. So I have never been so adamant about a new product that hit this industry. And thank you for you and your team and your founders for putting this together and making it Darren style. Forget what is it? What's that song?

What song?

Condom style.

The condom style.

You made it there in style.

And you know, one of, one of the things that is important to us is a lot of people who are speakers for whatever reason are not tech savvy. Right? Like so for we've seen so many speakers, when I say the word QR code, they kind of go above my pay grade. Above my pay grade. Nope. Nope. So one of the things that we're constantly doing is simplifying it. You know, we think the best tools are like, like Google Maps. You just use it, you don't think about it. You don't reach out to customer support. So like our job is to constantly make it so simple. One of our secret mantras is pill to six pack abs. That's what everyone wants. We want to take a pill and then magically get six pack abs. So the closer the the more you can shorten the gap between thing I want to do and benefit. And that's our job to figure out. So like, we know our user's job is to use the tool. Our job is to simplify it as much as possible. So you know, we have a free version of the tool. There's no reason anyone shouldn't start using it. If someone wants to get the bells and whistles they want to upgrade, I'm sure you'll put a link in the show notes for people to click on and get access to it. But I'm just such a big advocate because it's a rising tide that lifts all boats. If we all get better, if we get feedback, we get just 1% better. And we'll see things from an audience perspective. And then when you work with a coach like Darren or coach like Mark, you can actually bring your results to them and go, here's what people are saying, here's what they're saying is going well. Here's what they're saying needs to be improved. How do we now do that? How do we deliver? Is this actually even feedback worth improving on? So when they work with a couple coach like you two, they can actually even get better. And the best speakers in the world realize they're never baked. They always can get 1% better in their game.

Yeah. So I love how simple you made it. And one of the things that blew me away is I didn't do anything and I pressed a button and there's a beautiful report. So if you're listening to the audio version, you can choose, check this out on YouTube. Just go to 52 minutes in. Go to the YouTube version. Just put in unforgettable presentations episode 225 with RL and you will find it. But I'm going to share my screen now. This is from the event that I talked about. I was just getting started. I think this was my very first one national.

Oh my gosh. You nailed that one, dude.

100. Oh, look at that. Look at them. Numbers boy.

Well, thank you. Thank you. You. I love how simple this is. And then two things for everyone listening. Send this to the client because they're so caught up in so many other decisions and so many things going on. And Barbara has a Food allergy and da, da, da. And so they can't worry about this in the moment. So you send it after number two, send it to the speaker bureau, the person who booked you. This raises their confidence. One of the bureaus that I haven't been booked with, but I have a relationship with, I send it to them and they're like, oh, I have a client like that. So it allows you to just super quick. And it does this. It asks about engagement. Inspiring, interactive and actionable. So those are quick little bar graphs that are done. And what I love is the person doing it just has the little, little smiley face to sad face and they just push it. They don't even have to think about it, but that's what makes it go quickly. And then they want to finish up and then they can type in testimonials. So this is what it looks like. I get quotes. It was inspiring. It's very helpful, interesting, insightful and memorable. And I won't even get into how you can get specific quotes and use it on social media. Like you can just get a report and it's done for you. You want specific quotes as a way to do that. Attendee feedback. Then here's. I love the custom questions. So for this audience, I was teaching them better stories, better business. Now, these are all people who work for different companies that could hire me, but they might not be bringing in a motivational speaker, but they have a team. They just saw me teach this content. So would you like Darren to coach your team in stories or presentations? So I teach stories. That's what the program was about, but also presentations. And everyone walked away with one of my books that they paid for. So even this one. So yes, maybe yes. Yes, possibly yes. All these people are giving me permission to follow up and have a conversation. Will it lead somewhere? I don't know, but that's my responsibility. But what I love about Taka Dot is it did the work for me. It spoon fed me the people who were in front of me who might want more. These people were so caught up in the convention and the conference and what they're doing, what they should be doing that they're not maybe thinking, ooh, this guy could help our organization. I have to plant that seed with a question. Whether it's book me again or something specific. I'm just telling you I think you're crazy if you don't try this.

Well, thank you.

Am I clear? Do I need more clarity? Takadot.com. where did the name come from? I still don't understand where the name came from.

You know, it was funny because one of our founders just randomly said, like, hey, if you want to talk a lot, you should get talk a dot. It was just like a throwaway statement. And it was like those poking and we're. She's like, that's the name of the business. I was like, yeah, that's actually hilarious. Let's do it. So if you want to talk a lot, get yourself some talk a dot. And we just. It was. It was kind of joking, but it turned into a thing. And here we are.

Here we are.

And look at that. Right?

All right, so as we wind down, Mark's going to collect his notes. How do we contact you? I know. If you're interested in Talk a dog, let me get you the qr code, the URL takadot.com takadot.com and start with the free one. If you want. If you want to put my name in Darren Lacroix for referral, cool. If you don't want me to get credit, I don't care. But go to Taca Dot, get a free account. It's pretty simple. And they got some great videos. And Mike, I don't know what you're paying Mike, but it ain't enough. So, Mike, employee of the decade.

Yeah, we put a big emphasis on customer success. I think there are a lot of tech companies out there that once you're in, they kind of don't care about you. We try to show all of our users we actually genuinely care. And we have an incredible customer success team that wants our users to do well. We care about you as individuals, and we ask people to not believe us, to test us, to see it. And we stand behind not only our desire, because most speakers, our tools are actually built for other people, and we try to figure out how to make it work for us. This is built from the beginning for us, you know, by us. As I guess FUBA would say, the David John business and the customer success is something that is, I think, the easiest thing for businesses to do, but also the most overlooked. So I appreciate you saying that. We love Mike. We love our entire customer success success team.

Yeah. I think one of the cool parts is you are a speaker and have been doing it for 17 years now. So that's not like an outside vendor trying to give speakers what they need. You are one of us, but now you need a tech person to do that, so you have that relationship. The fact who. You know, Ron said it right? Like, you're. You're an Amazing person. I'm thrilled to know you and get to know you even better. And then you got the right customer service team. It's just. Love the simplicity, though. That's what sells me. All right, so question for you. Last question I always ask people is if someone who is a good speaker wants to be unforgettable, they're emerging still, and they're sitting down with you over coffee, and they ask you, rl, I want to be unforgettable, what advice would you give?

I would say, ask yourself this question six months from now. If my audience only remembered one idea, just one, a phrase, an idea from my presentation, and that's the only thing that they remembered, what is the single most important thing that they could remember that six months from now? If I knew that they remembered that thing, I would feel on cloud nine. I'd feel like I was, you know, living my mission and purpose on life. I was doing God's work on this planet. What's that one thing you'd want them to know? And in the same way you teach people, it's only about one idea. I'm such a big advocate of that, because if you know what that one idea is, then you build your whole presentation around that one idea. Most folks, they go, oh, you know, well, maybe I want people to remember I was a good speaker. No, no, no, that's. You want them to know, because that's not going to impact their life. It's got to be one idea that would impact or transform the way that they approach life, the way that they see things. And then if everything you do builds around that, they're forced to remember it. If you remember Martin Luther King Jr. Had the I have a dream speech, not the I have many dreams speech. So a singular idea drives an entire thought process. And if we know what ours is, and if you don't work with Mark, work with Darren, that's how you get it. But if you know what that singular idea is, you build everything around that, and then you build in wonderful things like, you know, interactivity and storytelling and all those things that help them cement. But you need that one thing that they'll remember six months from now, and you become unforgettable.

Bam. We actually did an episode on that. What's your one thing? That's cool. Go check it out. I don't know what episode that is. Mark usually has a photographic memory, but I won't put him on the spot at the moment. But you can check out what's your one thing. And I love that stage Time. Stage time.

Stage time.

That's my one thing. All right, Mark Brown, what do we got for keepers?

Oh, man, this is a mouthful. Always bring your audience to your level. Don't go down to theirs. Leave an indelible mark on people's souls because no other art form can elevate someone's life in one hour. What we're doing.

Love that.

Investigate adult development theory can change your life. Figure out what problem you solve. Don't show up. Blow up and giddy up for your business. The money is in your email list at every opportunity. Create a win win for your client and your audience. It'll be a win for you as well. Do not treat the stage as a therapy session. Don't forget your story is a vehicle to impact lives. Ask the magic wand question of your clients in your previous event call. What perfect result would you desire from my presentation today? Don't be a public speaker orator. Be a public. Be a professional speaker who's a servant to your audience. The secret to speaking is being consistently top of mind of your prospects. Ask yourself, what keywords can I use in my correspondence that'll make people remember me? Stay in touch with your prospects over time. Plant seeds today to serve your future self and harvest time in down the road. View speaking as a compound interest industry. Your job is to make your audience remember you. Always add a call to action at the bottom of your email or your newsletter. Don't sit around and wait. Go out and create two more thoughts. Think of your client's success and as a presenter, focus on a single idea and build your speech around that. Then you will be unforgettable. That's all from you, brother. That's all Arel's wisdom right there, man.

Mark, thank you so much for. You know, when you're in the zone and you're just sharing your love, it's so wonderful to have someone summarize it in such a succinct way that you did. So thank you for being present and capturing that. I think it's just wonderful, bro. Thank you.

Thank you. Ael. Darren. He said succinct. You got it.

I just love listening to you be both your voices. You guys should do a swooner album, man.

We should do a dad joke podcast. That's all we do. We just come on and we just ask questions like why did the toilet paper not. Not cross the road? Why Got stuck in a crack. Wow.

Oh, man.

And that's how I totally just nose dive.

We, we.

We ended on such a high note and now. We just ended. I need.

I need to reciprocate. Hey Darren, do you know why the Budweiser beer was rated better than all the other beers around it?

I don't.

It was the head of the glass.

All right. Thanks for being on the Unforgettable Presentations podcast. If you miss a week, you miss a lot. We'll see you next week. Check out takadot.com use my name as a referral if you want to. Use marks if you want to. Don't use any, but do talk a dot if you want to. Talk a lot.

A lot. See you next week.

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