Ep. 235 Get Yes! To Your Request with Ed Tate!

Hey there, Ed Tate. That's the first time I've ever started off that way. Mark Brown is on a plane heading to India. So I want to sit down with one of my favorite friends, my brother, and talk about how do you influence without any authority? Here we go.

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

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

And Darren Lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time.

Stage time.

Stage time.

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

Ed, I love how much you care about this topic, how into it and excited those of you who are just joining us. We started talking about it ahead of time and we were just kind of briefing before, pre, brief before we were going to dive in and Edge is like, I was like, let's just turn on and go and well, go ahead.

Well, since we got, well, since we got together last, I've got like a new title, if you will, you know, in addition to world champion of public speaking, in addition to csp. I don't have the accredited speaker like you. You're the, you know, I think you're the only person on EAR who has that. But I recently joined a faculty member of a gentleman by the name of Dr. Robert Cialdini. Dr. Robert Cialdini wrote a book called Influence the Psychology of Persuasion. It is sold over 5 million copies worldwide. It is embraced by 90% of Fortune 500 companies worldwide. So we're going to talk about that. But basically what we're going to talk about today is how you can influence others without authority, without a title, without necessarily having power over them. And we're talking, I want to put one other word, ethical influencing.

Thank you for clarifying, but that is important.

Yes, ethical influencing. It's, it's doing things ethically. It's doing things the right way. It's not tricking people. And especially in this day and age, if you trick, if you trick people, you can't hide, you know, you really, really can't because you'll, you'll definitely be found out. One of the things that, to talk about this concept, here's an idea I want you to embrace. No matter who's listening right now, you are already influential. You are already can persuade, you already can convince. Now some of you may not believe that, but there's a Book written by a guy by name of Daniel Pink. The book is called To Sell as Human. And they had a study in this book and this. And the study said that 40% of our time, that means 24 minutes of every hour at work is engaged in persuading, convincing and influencing. 24 minutes or 40% of your time, this means that you're already doing it. That means you're already influencing. So, Darren, let me ask you this question. Have you ever been in a relationship?

Yes.

Somebody made the sale.

Somebody made the sale. Sometimes the best sale is when you sell it twice. You get out and back in. How do you do that? You know, one of our friends, and I won't name names. One of my favorite stories is one of our friends from the Florida who's a toastmaster, who's been married like seven times.

Oh, my.

How do you get number seven to say yes? Just.

That's impossible, I think. You don't mention the other six.

But, Ed, this is apparent in your life right now too, because you have a young daughter.

Oh, okay, okay. Please grab the hands of the person next to you, bow our heads and let us pray. Or add. I have a 4 year old, soon to be a 24 year old. I mean, I, I, it's just, you know, I, I love her to death. And she is, she's going to be a strong. And she's very influential. She gets her way all the time. She runs this household. She runs the Tate household. So we, I should just have a picture of her and say, like, hey, this is how you get yes to your requests.

There you go. Look this cute.

Exactly.

And demand it.

Yeah. But getting back to like, let's talk about some of the, the principles of influence. There's seven principles of influence, if you will. And again, this is from the book called influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini. So influence principle number one. And that is, it's called reciprocity. Reciprocity is. We feel obligated to perform favors, for one. Now, there's a couple things about reciprocity. Number one, you give without the expectation of having something returned to you. That is, I want you to get that principle. Reciprocity is like, okay, I gave you something, now you're supposed to do something for me. And those particular instances in that situation, reciprocity does not work at all. In fact, instead of reciprocity, you get.

Resentment from reciprocity to present, from influence to de. Influence.

Exactly, exactly. So reciprocity is doing something for someone. So, for example, I'll give you an example of this late last, well, early this winter I had a keynote in Cancun, Florida. I had to fly back through California as opposed to flying back directly because of weather conditions. Anyway, I'm sitting next to this guy, his name is Ricky. And you know, we're flying in first class. You always ask, hey, what do you do? What do you do? So I wanted to experiment with something called a verbal business card. And this is how I introduced myself. And I said, I help people rejection proof their pitches in high stakes presentations. And you should have seen the look on his face. And Darren, he asked me questions for the next 20 to 25 minutes.

That's a good verbal business card.

Yeah, and a verbal business card. Here's the essence of it. It describes what you do. It describes the outcome, the results. It's not a title. I didn't say, hey, I'm the world champion of public speaking. I didn't say I'm a consultant. I didn't say I was a speaker. All those titles, by the way, all those titles, immediately what will happen is they're like cliches. And the moment you say a cliche comes out of your mouth, people put you into a box and they close the drawer. Okay, But I want to say I wanted to talk about outcome, I want to talk about results in a way that would start a, start a conversation. And it started the conversation because he was very, very curious about what I did. Anyway, I discovered during this conversation that earlier in the year he had a really, really bad experience presenting. He presented in front of like I think four to 500 people. And he just didn't feel really about that experience. So this is where reciprocity comes into play. I said, okay, Ricky, how about we do this? You know, I, I, I will do a, a no fee, no selling call with you. How about you do this? How about you send me a link of the video of this particular presentation. What I will do is I'll go through it and I will provide you with some feedback and then we could talk about that. And again, absolutely no obligation to you whatsoever. So that was a reciprocity. Now I want to point out two things. I did two reciprocities in this case. Number one, I volunteered to watch his video, to provide feedback and video on my own. And then after I watched the video, number two, I gave him a call. So a complimentary call. So that again, that's reciprocity in that particular case. So that's how again, and I expected nothing because here's a person who, number one, didn't know the speaking industry even existed. Had never even considered hiring a quote unquote speaking coach, if you will. And I didn't even talk about that. I just, hey, this is how I help people. So, you know, number one is what we call reciprocity. People feel obligated to return favors. And the key here is you give without the expectation of having that returned to you, if you will.

Yeah, and I think that's big, Ed, because a lot of times we'll, you know, well, I'll give you. But then that, with that expectation. Now, if we have that expectation, that sets us up for failure. If we don't have an expectation. Here's the cool part, whether that guy hired you or not, with pure, let me just call it this, pure reciprocity, you just left an indelible mark on him that he could recommend you if he doesn't use you. But if there was a quote unquote pitch in the middle of that, he might not be open to sending you to his friend because now you're going to pitch his friend.

And the other thing too is, again, I didn't mention I was world champion of public speaking. I didn't mention I was a csp. I just, hey, I work in the speaking industry. I'm a keynote speaker, et cetera. And that's all I said. Because then Darren, at that moment, a person who doesn't know that this exists, it would be overwhelming for me to hit him with that. Okay, now there's a, there's a time for that, if you will. So later on, so we get together and he says, wow, I think I need help in this area. He says, do you know anyone? I says, well, you know, this is something that I do, but I also have other people I could recommend, you know, if you like, I can put together a proposal. Now, as we've talked about on previous sessions, I gave him a three tiered proposal. A three tiered proposal is option number one is, this is everything that Ed Tate and associates can do. Option number two is here is some things that I can do, plus some bonuses. And option number three was, hey, I, I do coaching, if you will. So I gave him a three tiered proposal. Now, after he got the proposal, he started asking me questions. Now, the, the, the lesson to me at that point in time was because he was asking these questions, it was my signal that he needed another one of the influence tools, if you will, and that is, he needed social proof, and he also needed authority. Social proof is all right, who else has done this, okay, authority is now my titles come into play. I'm a world champion of public speaking. I'm one out of 30,000. There is a.003333 percentage of winning this particular opportunity. That's, by the way, that's the number we both have. Okay? And I, I'm also a certified speaking professional. The top 12% in our industry when those pieces came into play. Now they're appropriate. So sometimes it's, yeah, you can know all these different things or these different ideas and these tools and strategies, but the question is, when do you actually use them? And that's a different thing. That's. That's why this is. This, this is. This is so important. So, number one, we talked about reciprocity. Lesson number two is liking. Ricky and I, we hit it off right away. And liking is basically, we do business with people that we like. That's what, that's. That's the definition of liking. So, for example, I have the example here of Taylor Swift. Now, I. She's been in the news a lot.

I've never heard of her in the.

Last minute, in the last 30 seconds. Okay? Now, before Taylor Swift, you know, got involved with a certain football player, I heard this story about her. Now, I don't necessarily. I'm not a fan of her music. I don't even have any of her music on, on my phone, etc. I can't say I followed her, but I heard this story that made me a f. And that was years ago. She was on tour. One of the people who works for her, her daughter was hospitalized because of cancer. Taylor donated well over $200,000 to pay for her hospital bills. Wow. It was never posted. She did it privately. She did it anonymously. It actually came out years later that she actually did this. I became a Taylor Swift fan because of that, because that told me the type of character that Taylor Swift has. So I'm a Taylor. I'm a Swifty. I know this is shocking.

I'm not going to tell anyone.

But I like her because of the character. So again, liking is one of the tools. The other is authority. So authority is. In this case, we look to experts. You're an expert. You're a certified speaking professional. You're a world champion of public speaking. Plus, you've also become your accredited speaker and toastmasters. And you, and you probably. And you, you. You run Stage Time University. You have so many different types of credentials and people look to us. Now, here's the lesson for the listeners. You too have some type of authority. You have expertise in your space. There's a, there's a, there's a place in your life and place in your world where you're the best and others look to you. So that's when you're going to bring up your authority when it's appropriate for those circumstances. Okay, makes sense so far.

What I like about this is, you know, this was influence without authority. Yet I think a lot of people don't realize the authority they have. If they step back, they don't realize, hey, maybe they've helped someone. Let's just take coaching, for example. Maybe one of my stage time members, Judy sent me an email, she's like, hey, I helped coach this person in the speech contest. And someone else heard what I said and they were so impressed. And it's like, yeah, you know what? She technically never won a title, yet she has a person who is aware of the influence she had helping someone else. That becomes authority.

I remember I was an executive in the computer industry and I had an employee who worked for me. I believe his name was Brian. This is like, this is decades ago. And you know, he was, he was a good employee. And then one day he'd invited me to this, this event, it was a fundraising event and I decided to go. Brian was the director of this entire event. John Elway, the former quarterback of the, of the Denver Broncos, was one of the guest speakers. This was a huge fundraising event. Now Brian at work was again, he was a good employee, but under these circumstances he was a go to person. He was the authority. I saw him in a completely different light. So everyone in some form has authority. Next, consistency and commitment. That is, we want to be consistent with our commitments. So for example, social media, you, you have some, there's challenges, right? There's weight loss challenges, you have the, you have the writing challenges, you have the video challenges, etc. And what happens is the power of this is you make some type of commitment out there in the world on social media, I'm going to do X. There's a power in keeping that commitment. So this is again another tool of influence, social proof. Again, I talked about this before. So going back to my friend Ricky, I gave him some social proof. Now I have 89 testimonials on LinkedIn. I didn't use any of them. Darren. That week, what had happened? The week I sent Ricky the proposal, I got two text messages from coaching clients. One coaching client was from Hong Kong. He had just spoken in front of 10,000 people. He said, ed, I gave the Speech of my career. Thank you so much for your help. Then I had another client who is not a speaker at all, he is a lobbyist and he was speaking in Hawaii and he sent me a very similar text. Two texts were sent to me within a 24 hour period. I got permission from both of them. I said, hey, can I share this with a potential client? They said yes. So I did screenshots of those and I said, ricky, here is. In case you're wondering the type of results I produce for others. Here's a couple of, here's a couple. And I sent them the screenshots. Plus I said, here's my, my LinkedIn profile. I have 89 testimonials there. He signed up right away. He signed up like literally within minutes. So that's what I mean about social proof. When we are in doubt, we look to others.

Yeah, I think people don't underestimate when you get a text, take a screenshot because that is powerful. That's more, hey, if you get forwarded an email, you could use that. But maybe a screenshot of the email. But make no mistake, I think the influence of a sincere. Just going back to what you said, total integrity screenshot that you get a text that you get, take that screenshot, start a folder if you're not already doing this, have a credibility folder or a social proof folder. Sometimes it's a video, sometimes it's a text, sometimes it's an email. But have that place where you know, we talk about story folders. Have that social proof folder that, call it a testimonial folder, whatever you want, but have that place where you start to gather. And it's also going to help increase your confidence too.

The more you see, mm, scarcity is another tool of influence that is the less resources available, the more we want it. Let's talk about my daughter, Toriel. There's a, a balloon. Okay. There was only one balloon. Of course she wants only that one balloon. You know, it was a red bullet. Now this place that we went to, they had hundreds of, you know, hundred of balloons but it was only the red balloon that was available and that's the one that she wanted. That's scarcity. And I'm sure, I'm sure you've seen this before, by the way, if something is scarce, if there's less availability of that item, it actually becomes mentally more valuable. So that's the, the resource of scarcity. So how, how can your listeners use scarcity if you have a proposal? For example, the one thing I did With Ricky. Let's talk about Ricky. Ricky again. I didn't put pressure on him, but I said, ricky, here's the deal. I'm a pretty busy individual. I'm gonna give you two weeks to decide on this proposal. Then after that, if you choose not to do it, then that's fine. I'm not going to pressure you again. But I'm also, you know, after two weeks, I'm not going to follow up. So there was. There is a source of scarcity in terms of my availability to him. And again. So if you have a proposal, I'm inviting you to put deadlines on your proposal. That's a form of scarcity.

And then two words from people who have been around in the 80s, or it might even been. Yeah, I think it was the 80s. Cabbage Patch Kids.

Oh, my. Oh, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Oh, my Lord.

Pokemon.

I never paid, you know, was it Donatello? I never paid so much for a piece of plastic in all my life because it was. It was scarce. It was unavailable. I remember we. I. Oh, my God, you brought that. Such nightmares. My son David wanted this. I knew he wanted this. We had literally started looking for this in October, and we had family. Family members from across the country. And it was my brother in California who. Who finally found one, had it overnighted on Christmas Eve so it could be there on Christmas Day. Wow. Yes. That is scarcity. Thank you for reminding me of that pain. That's a great example.

But was he excited when he got it, though?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I take you back to. Oh, by the way, you know, the moment Toriel got the red balloon, she no longer was interested. And within days of David having Donatello, you know, it was. It just sat in the corner and collected dust. So that's. But that's another story altogether. Okay, finally, Unity. Unity is. And this is his newest principle. So this wasn't in the original book. This is in the updated version of Influence, the psychology persuasion by Dr. Robert Cialdini. And Unity. Think of it this way. It's not me, it's we. It's not me, it's we. So, you know, if you're a Kansas City Chiefs fan, guess what? You know, you're feeling pretty good right now about your team in terms of religious groups or, you know, Toastmasters or the school you went to or family. It's not me, it's we. There, basically, we feel like a group. We have this camaraderie, if you will. So these are some of the tools of influence that can help you get A yes to your request.

Yeah. Thank you, Ed, for going over this with us. If you're interested in learning more. And by the way, just a reminder, Ed can teach this because he's actually part of the faculty. Just to be clear, he's earned the right, if you will. But, Ed, these are such important principles, and I think what we need to do, whether we're speaker, author, consultant, presenter, trainer, any of these, we need to look at the list and then ask ourselves, how do I do this? How can I do this better? How can I be more likable? And, you know, Mark and I are working with ypo Young Presidents Organization. It's a worldwide global organization. And I can't tell you how blown away people are when we keep saying over and over, we want to be your favorite. We want to be your favorite. Which I learned from Patricia Fripp. But it makes it its reciprocity because it's not like, hey, I'm doing this, so you book us next year. It's like, hey, we're going all in. And we were just on a coaching call yesterday, and they invested in us coaching their people for these two global events. And then one of the people that we just met just had a, oh, I got a keynote coming up. Can I hire you for that? And it's just, it's. It's just these are. These are principles, but they're real. They're real. We got to ask ourselves, you know, how likable does that make us when we say, how can I be your favorite? What else could we do to be your favorite? We keep saying that over and over again. And, and a lot of people, even event planners, same thing. You don't know how powerful that can be. Jenny, who works for Executive Speakers Bureau, she's the one doing the contract and the car service for us and Mark over in Turkey and in Miami to and from the airport. And she's a team member of Executive Speakers Bureau. But I just said, hey, my goal is to be your favorite. She replies, you're already there. I said, I want to keep my status. And so, look, people are going to make mistakes. We can't just jump all over it. It makes us likable when we give grace. So consider all these seven and ask yourself over and over, how can I do it better? How can I do it better? How can I make it clearer? And I think if you do, if you ask those questions, I think you'll find that you'll find that answer and ask ChatGPT, how can I show more scarcity.

That's a great tool. That's a, that's absolutely a great tool. I also, you know, want to remind people that I'm going to dive into this topic and dive into this subject really, really deep at the upcoming Game Changers. You and I just, you know, were able to, to. We had Meredith Elliott Powell. She was supposed to be speaking at our chapter, our National Speakers association chapter. Unfortunately, because of a family emergency, she couldn't do that. But in preparation, because I was speaking the same day she was. So I wanted to include some of her content in my presentation to show her I did my homework again. By the way, that's. I got that from Darren. Okay. That's. Yeah, I'm give 100% credit to Darren for that because that is a great idea. It's a thing that Darren does again and it enhances Darren's likability. I would say Darren's superpower is his likability because he, he goes out of his way to serve people. He goes out of his way to serve you as stage time members. He goes and you just heard, you know how he's serving a professional speaker's bureau, so. And he's enhancing his likability. But merit. Elliot Powell said this. She says, seek elite influence. Only take advice from those more successful than you. Immerse yourself in the aura of achievers. There is a gentleman who I follow. His name is Benjamin Hardy. He wrote the book called Willpower Doesn't Work. And he's written some other really, really good books. But I love this code. He says if you don't pay for something, you rarely pay attention. If you don't invest in something, you're not going to pay attention. Hire the best your progress will. You'll make more progress in minutes than most people who dabble for months. The reason I bring this up is Game Changers is coming up April 5th and April 6th. Here's the only thing you need to know about Game Changers. Number one, it's about getting more bookings and higher fees. Any questions? Okay, so if you're, you know that, that, that's what this whole conference is about. That's it. More bookings or higher fees. Every expert on this group is going to share with you their expertise on more bookings and higher fees. And by the way, let's talk about two people who I know for a fact they have more expertise than Darren and myself and they're on the panel. Daniel, by the way, Darren, I, I believe this is your best roster ever, Ever, ever. And if I wasn't on. And by the way, not I would promote this even if I wasn't on the panel because this, this roster is really good. And if I wasn't a panelist on this, I would still pay for this because these people are amazing. Here are a couple of the elite influencers. Number one, we have Sam Richter, hall of fame speaker. He's going to be talking about how you can spend just 15 minutes a day using one of his artificial intelligence tools to find more bookings. Another elite influencer. And Darren, I'll have you talk about Ford. Ford stakes is in the hall of fame. This is what I know about Ford. Number one, brilliant mind, also brilliant entrepreneur. He has created multiple multi million dollar businesses from scratch and he's going to talk about power prospecting. Aaron?

Yeah, and by the way, if you're listening to this podcast, he's going to be joining us, me joining me next week. Which Ed, you're welcome to join us too if you want to. But he's, he's, he's like on the pulse of AI with AI exploding. So hasn't. Every speaker is talking about AI, but they don't all use it the way Ford does. He was on it from the beginning, stays on it and presents on it. But he's going to be talking about prospecting. Like without prospecting, without leads. Nobody wants to prospect. However, if we create that influence using Sam's method, using how Ford gives us these insights from how to use AI, it's just gonna get you more leads. More leads, the better. Your demo, you still need a good demo video, you still need a good one sheet of webpage. And then you gotta be all of those seven influences that Ed was talking about because a bureau isn't gonna wanna book you unless you have the tools to give them. So look, power prospecting, save time, more bookings, higher fees. And if you're listening to this, use Ed's discount code, which is Ed25. Just go to Stagetime workshops.com stagetimeworkshops.com drop down menu. There'll be a drop down for game changers. Just click on that and you'll get more details. But we're gonna have fun. This is our 17th year. Can you believe that?

Ed? I cannot believe it at all, man. And by the way, I just, I don't want to be sexist because we also have some other elite influencers. We have some ladies who are, you know, absolute elite influencers. Jennifer Lear, she's actually a speaker's bureau. So Darren, we talk about two things. At the National Speakers association meeting almost every week. Number more bookings, higher fees and how can we do more business with bureaus? We're actually going to have a speaker's bureau there.

And she just closed the contract with Mark and me for $58,000. That is not a fee. That's the whole contract for all that we were doing and coaching. Well, she closed that. She's a closer. You know the movie there. Coffee is for closers. She's got all the coffee she wants.

And you, you know, here's the other thing too I want to point out about Game Changers. It's not just people talking on the stage. It is an experience. It's an environment. It's a social gathering, if you will. So you get a chance to hang out with Ford, you get a chance to hang out with Sam, you get a chance to hang out with Jennifer and mix and mingle with them. If you're a VI. Well, the VIPs are already sold out. But you know, again you get a chance to hang out with these people and get to know them as individuals. MAUREEN so Paula A, she's a good friend of ours. She's in her mastermind group. But here's an individual, I've watched her at the start of her career and her career has catapulted and she's going to talk about how she started off and the things that she did to actually get booked and take it from the beginning until now. Bureau's absolutely love her. They book her on a regular basis. So she's gone from someone that the bureau's didn't know about at all to the point where they're booking her on a regular basis.

Aaron her ninja skill is research. She's going to show us how she researches to find the right clients. It's not just finding a client, but finding the client who's willing to invest in the topic area, the expertise that you have. So like this, like you said, this lineup is I think our strongest ever and we're going to have fun. And Ed, you don't even do you know Frank King?

I do not know Frank.

So Frank, he's one of Henry Devries authors. He's done 11 11, 11 TEDx talks. They won't even put him up anymore because they don't like that he's done 11. Well he's gonna join us the bonus day, the day before, which is the stage time summit and talk about wow, the biggest mistakes, why people don't get tedx talks.

Ed Wow. 11 so day one is about more bookings. Day two is about higher fees. You can join us in person, which I highly recommend, but you also can join us virtually as well. How much does it cost? Okay, VIP is 49.97. You don't have to worry about that because that's sold out. You will not pay 49.97. The regular price is 34.97. You will not pay that either. Right now, the early bird is 24.97. You will not pay that. If you take advantage of my code. And that's ED25. ED25. So if you type in ED25, you get a 25% discount off, and that brings your investment to 1872. 75. All right, if we can get you.

One more booking, Higher fee. One more booking and higher fee. This should pay for itself. And like you, like I said, too, Ed, you nailed it. Where these are all people that you're going to be having lunch with, going on break with, having coffee with, go to the bathroom with. So you get to know them on and off stage. The one big advantage, like, Ed, you and I are both NSA members, and I love nsa. I will be a member the rest of my life. But when you're at an event with 2,000 people, it's harder to network with the core people who are the presenters. You know, we've got like a hundred people coming, so you're going to be there with them on break, sitting next to them, and a lot of the faculty are going to be taking notes right alongside of you.

It's an intimate setting where you get a chance to build relationships. Okay. And that's what this, this is about. And build relationships, build friendships, and build partnerships throughout your life. So anyway, take. We take all the credit cards, you know, every form of currency. I don't think we take crypto. That's probably the only one we haven't made accommodations for yet. 100% money back guarantee. And again, the code is ED25. ED25. If you want to take advantage of this particular event. So there.

Now we also just watched or listened to Ed do a pitch. Notice what he did and how he did it. If you didn't pay attention, go back and listen again. So he not only talked about everything, but he used the principles in that pitch, which I think is awesome. It's a teaching tool. If you got a little more interested, well, then maybe it works. But please, I forgot that we have a direct URL stagetime live, but use Ed's code. That gives you 25% off and the price is going up in two weeks, so do it now if you want to save your seat, live or virtual. Love to have you join us. And Ed, thanks for not only teaching us the principles, but giving us an example. Thanks for being here, Ed. Any final thoughts?

Just one other story. So I want to talk about Sam Richter's presentation and Sam Richter again is on the, on the cutting edge of technology, etc. I'm so excited. You know, I, I would again if I wasn't part of the panel. I would come just to see Sam's because I've actually invested in his resources before. A quick story. I use one of Sam's research tools, company called United Healthcare. And with one of Sam's tools, I think it's called the intel engine. I found an article that was written by an executive at United Healthcare. Now, I was never able to find this on Google or any other form of social media or any other form of research. I found it with Sam's tool. This article was about this executive. Why she became an executive at UnitedHealthcare. Well, when she was younger, her and her family grew up in Puerto Rico. Both her mom and her brother were having challenges medically. Unfortunately, they didn't have proper healthcare and, and her brother died. He died at a very, very young age. Anyway, she grew up and she swore that, you know, she would do something about this. And again, she, you know, she went, she actually went to medical school, became an executive at UnitedHealthcare. And later on she determined she discovered that had they had better healthcare coverage, her brother probably would be alive to this day. So I found that article, it touched me. So I had a very similar experience in my family. So I just reached out to her, I said, hey, this, you know, I says this article brought me to, to tears. I shared my story. We build a connection. I didn't ask for any business. I wasn't trying to pitch her or anything. I just wanted to let her know the impact that that story had on me. And I. About 18 months later, she reaches out to me, she remembers me, and she hires me for speaking engagement. Again, I want to, I want to make one thing clear. I never pitched her. I never talked about doing anything. I never sent her any information. I just found this, this really heartwarming article about this individual. And it did bring a tear to my eye. I'm not going to lie. It was just so impactful and just remind me of my own circumstances. And we had that connection. But I was able to do that because of Sam's tool And Sam's going to share with you not only that tool, but he has, he has dozens of, dozens of other resources. So the reason I'm bringing that up is if you cannot get a return on investment by showing up at Game Changers with the lineup and the talent that's going to be there, I'm going to be bold. I'm probably going to piss you off. That's on you. It's not going to be on the talent which is there. The content is going to be there. If you are serious about being successful as a speaker, as a presenter or you're whatever your expertise is, we've got the experts who are going to make you financially successful. And if you can't get one deal or one gig out of it, we're responsible to you. We're not responsible for you. Right. So Darren.

Yeah. So whether you're emerging speaker, a $2,500 speaker, a $25,000 speaker, this event was designed for you. Total focus. I asked myself last year, what are we going to do next year? And I thought what do people really want? They really want more bookings and higher fees. So. And Ed, we didn't even talk about the bonuses. You get a year's access of at of Sam's tool which I use and I've been paying for for years. And number two, he's going to give us 3,500 contacts, event planner contacts for just showing up.

So I did not know that. Yeah.

Stagetimelive.com use Ed's code, ED25 and go back over this. Listen to Ed's pitch, see if you identify where we talked about scarcity. This is only once a year do we have our faculty come together in Las Vegas. Whether you join us live or virtually, we design it. My whole heart and soul is into it to help this be a game changer in your career. So join Ford me next week. And Ed, thanks. We'll see you in a couple weeks in Vegas.

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