Ep. 24 How to Win Business Through Presentations with Ed Tate

Hey there, Mark Brown. Every time you and I get in front of that audience, any entrepreneur, any business owner or someone who works for business, there's potential clients in front of you, and there could be business to be gained. If your presentation is unforgettable, I gotta agree with you.

And we're always trying to find new ways to get that business. Besides, you go to the back of the room and you sell a book or you sell a cd, and there's some people who just have mastered this technique. Which is why I really can't wait to talk to our guest today, a fellow CSP and a fellow Toastmasters world champion. What do you think, Darren?

I'm thrilled to have Ed Tate in the house. The master of interaction, the first person we brought back for his own interview. He was on episode three. All right, guys, there's so much to cover, and I want to help some people. Let's do this. Oops, wrong sound effect.

That's the sound you don't want to hear when you're presenting. After you're done, you don't want to hear that sound.

All right, As I said, take two. Let's do this.

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.

All right, Mark Brown, how are you today?

I am thrilled, buddy, because we got a special special guest, and I know we got a lot of content to cover, but. But, Darren, I'm gonna put our guest, Ed Tate, certified speaking professional, world champion of public speaking, one of our buddies on the spot. He's got a very short story about how we welcome Ed.

Oh, all right. You are putting me on the spot. All right. It is the 2000 World Championship of Public speaking. We are in. What is it? What's the name of the city?

Fountain Blue Hills.

And in Miami, Florida, Fountain Blue Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida.

Miami Beach, Correct.

Yeah. Miami Beach, Florida. I'm walking through the hotel lobby, and there I see Mark Brown. Mark Brown is just returning from the pool. Very stout, chiseled man, long time ago, scattered her swim trunks. And he has just come from the pool. He's dripping wet. And I says, mark, Mark, I'm Ed Tate. I'M one of the contestants. I just have one question for you and how many. How long did were we there?

Probably 30, 45 minutes. Don't forget, I was at a pool earlier. I left to come inside. The hotel's about 65 degrees in the hotel lobby. And the elevator comes and goes. It comes and goes. It comes and goes. And that one question was about 40 minutes.

But you know what?

I was honored that Ed Tate came to ask me a question. And the cool thing is, the very next day, he cleaned out the house and became the first world champion in that decade. The first world champion of this millennium. Ed Tate. Welcome to the Unforgettable Presentations podcast, buddy.

Thank you, my friend, and thank you for that story. And by the way, I want to point something out. In that conversation, you gave me a piece of advice that saved my bacon. Really? You told me to have an emergency ending, the emergency exit.

Yeah, because sometimes audiences, they laugh when you don't expect them to laug. When you got 2,000 people in the audience, you never know how they will react. You ask any world champion, at some point in their speech, the audience reacted in a way they never expected. Isn't that true, Darren?

Amen.

And for you to Ed.

Yes, absolutely. And I can't remember what book it is, but someone actually timed the number of laughs. And I actually have more laughs in my speech than Darren. I'm technically the funniest speech of all time.

And thanks. That's our time for today. We're going to see you next week on. No, it is true.

Actually counted the time. But, like, when I was on stage, my timing was completely thrown off. The red light. And I never saw the yellow light, by the way, because we had spotlights in our faces. I never saw the yellow light. And all of a sudden it was red. And all of a sudden the conversation that we had in the lobby emergency exit, and I said to myself, I gotta end the speech here. And I literally cut out the last paragraph of my speech. And the reason I'm here today as a world champion of public speaking and as a csp is because of the advice that you gave me to hallway. Thank you, my friend.

Well, at least you knew how to keep your speech under 7:30.

Wow, that's another podcast.

Oh, boy. That's fine, that's fine.

All right, well, let's jump into the topic, shall we?

Now, Ed, I gotta say too, for those of you listening to this, if you haven't seen or heard it, go check out Ed Tate's speech on YouTube. There is just. It's brilliant. And it's also a different structure than I had ever seen in any of my studies. It's one story and just brilliant. And, yes, you did get more laughs. I bow to you. You win. Yes. But thrilled to have you here, Ed, because you have two things I want to cover with you, and the first is just audience interaction. Like, you are the king of this. I have never seen. For those of you who have never seen Ed before, sometimes he will actually, before a speech or a workshop or a presentation, he'll get the whole audience up and dancing. And Ed and I. I'm gonna spill the beans. We were in Belgium, and Ed and I were doing a speech in Belgium, and it's project managers. Pmi project managers. And this is Ed's world. He had the contact, and I'm not from that world. And these are all these corporate executives, you know, with their tie on and their handkerchief, you know, tucked into their underwear.

And we have project managers. Different language, different culture, a lot more laid back.

Yeah. And very conservatively dressed. And I just looked at Ed, and I'm like, don't do the dance thing. Don't do the dance thing.

I'm queuing up the music. Dj. This is like.

He's like, this is what I do. This is what I do. And I'm backing away from him. I'm like, don't even mention my name. All you buddy.

All you managers.

I'm not Darren Lacroix. I turned into, like, Peter. Denying him.

I'm from Belgium. Yeah, right.

Sure.

I denied my buddy three times that day before the rooster. Crude. But, Ed, like, this is what amazes me about you. You owned it. See, I couldn't do that. Even if it was a structured thing that worked for me, I. I don't own it. But to see you take these conservative. And they just transformed. So by the time you took the stage, you had such a deep connection with them. It was ridiculous. And I also have a photo, Ed, that I sent you recently from a presentation you and I did. I think it was in California at a big Toastmasters event. It's a picture of literally 80 people on stage. Like, 80 people up on stage. No, I was the only one still sitting in my seat. So, Ed, this is obviously the Unforgettable Presentations podcast. I would never encourage anybody to totally just dive in like you do. Believe it's a muscle that needs to be learned. But what are some of your insights and how and why you do that? Like what. What are some tips you could give us for More interaction.

You just own that. So there's. There's two things I wanted to discuss. Number one is the science behind it, and number two, how to train the audience to do it. Okay, so number one, science behind it. A lot of people, when I do audience participation, like, I get like a. By the way, I do get resistance from people. You know, people are not used to. They don't like it, etc. All right, now, as a presenter and Darren, you've answered this question before, and I'm going to pose this to both of you. Generally speaking, when is a presenter the most nervous? At the beginning, the middle, or the end of a presentation?

Generally speaking, nothing general about it. It's definitely at the beginning.

Okay, and generally speaking, what is the audience the most skeptical of a presenter? The beginning, the middle, or the end?

The beginning, sure.

Okay. This is a dangerous combination. Okay, so this means that the audience is skeptical and the presenter is nervous. It's a very bad combination. As a presenter, you're up against four different tensions. Tension number one is between the speaker and the audience. Okay, so that's tension. Number one. You know, you're nervous and the audience is like, they're skeptical of you. Tension number two, I'm sure you've heard it before that the, you know, the top fear is public speaking. The top fear is not public speaking. The top fear is public embarrassment. It's public humiliation. That's the top fear. The number two fear is walking in a room of people you do not know. That's the number two fear. So the second tension that you're up against is between audience members. Okay, the third tension you're up against is like, if you have any type of materials, you have PowerPoint slides, if you have handouts, et cetera. So it's. The third tension is materials. And the fourth tension is the actual room or the environment. Sometimes the room is too cold, Sometimes the room is too warm. It's the room. So these are the four tensions you're up against right away, every single presentation. One of the reasons that I want to do, like, you know, have the audience dancing before we begin or some type of interactivity is to break down those four tensions. And what happens is we do something like this. For example, we have routines called Follow the Leader. That is, we have an audience member who actually leads dancing of the other audience members. It's fun, but what it does is it breaks down all four tensions. Number one, between the presenter and the audience. Number two, between audience members. Number three, between materials and the environment. It rapidly Breaks those down. So here's the science behind that. You want to rapidly break down all these different tensions so that you can build a relationship or build rapport with an audience. Darren has this phrase I love. It's called before rapport. This helps you to develop or accelerate before rapport. So that's one idea real quick for.

Everyone listening just to point out what he's saying. He doesn't just do it for fun. There's a reason behind it. It is fun, but there's a strategic reason behind it to break those tensions so you can create a deeper connection. So everything you do after that becomes unforgettable.

Ed, every. If you've ever seen me present everything I do on stage, there is a reason for it. I never just do it for fun or just because I can do it, or the worst reason is to draw attention to myself. Never do that. One of the keys. Here's another key element. Let's talk science. People learn there are three different ways. Number one, visually, auditory and through kinesthetic. I think visually is number one. You know, depending on which survey you go, you can just Google the numbers. But vision is always number one. Number two, auditory. And number three is kinesthetic. That is movement. Kinesthetic is the least used, and it's only like anywhere from 5 to 8% of the population. However, it is the stickiest in terms of content. So when you combine your content with some form of movement, movement that makes sense, movement that is related to the topic, movement that relates to the context, then your message will be memorable. So whenever I have people, for example, I teach people my 4.5 ages of storytelling. It is head, heart, humor, heavy hitting. Okay, so this is your head. Makes you think. This is your heart. It connects. This is your belly, makes you laugh. This is heavy hitting. It is the point. So I have all the audiences repeat all those different routines, but guess what I'm doing? I'm combining movement with my message to make it memorable.

You know what's cool, Darren? I was privileged to go to South Africa with Ed. I think it was 2013 or so. And I have a photograph in my album somewhere where Ed is actually showing people not only what he does, but why he does it. And he tells him one of the first things he had to do was break preoccupation. He had me, he had the emcee on stage with our feet up, literally breaking an invisible rod. And he was showing them what he does and why you do it. So he was teaching, but he was actually employing that kinesthetic action so they would not forget. And if you want to share those points with our audience as well. Folks, take notes. Rewind. There's so much coming already. I've got six points of keepers already.

Okay, so there are three elements to an opening, but it's not just the opening of your presentation. There are three elements for an opening of every idea in your presentation. So if you've got five ideas in your presentation, each one of these ideas needs a unique opening. Okay, so every idea has to have its own unique opening. But there are three elements of an opening. The first is called break preoccupation. All right, so you guys follow along with me. Pretend like you have this imaginary rod in your hands, and I want you to break preoccupation. Okay, so it's break preoccupation. The second is frame the message. Everyone follow along. Frame the message. Okay, I'm framing Darren. Now I'm framing Mark. Okay, so there are three elements to an opening. The first is break preoccupation. The second is frame the message. The third is called jump into the content. All right, Jump into the content. Here we go. Jump into the content. All right, so those are three elements of an opening. The first, break preoccupation. Grab and break the audience's attention. Audience members, if they're coming to your workshop or seminar, they've been in traffic, they've had other meetings, they've had other phone calls, they're focused on other things. Your job is to grab their attention and keep their attention by breaking their preoccupation. Number two, frame the message in one sentence or less. What is your presentation about? No preamble. No pre. Ramble. I'm happy to be here. I've spoken here a couple. No, no, no. Just freaking get on with it. And then let's just jump into the content. So those elements of an opening. Right? So the other thing I promised the audience is how to teach audience participation. So here's a technique if you. Have you ever walked into what I call a cold room? What I mean by a cold room, not like the lobby. You were in Belgium. Okay, there's. Yeah, Belgium. Okay, that's a perfect example. There is very little. I mean, like, everyone's just kind of looking around, everyone's very, very serious, etc.

By the way, they just had beer.

For L. Dominated audiences have a tendency to do this more than female audiences. Female audiences are a lot more fun. Male audiences. And by the way, I used to work for CareerTrack, and we talk about this all the time. It's just male audiences are tougher, they're more intellectual. Whereas by and large, and these are generalizations, it's not always true, but for the most part, the more women you have in a room, the easier it is to have interaction, if you will. But here's a technique that works every single time, and it's called Think Pair Share. Think Pair share. Now, the technical phrase of this is called nominal group processing, but no one can remember that. So think pair share. I used to teach a course called Making Managers into Leaders. The first question we would ask people is, what are some of your leadership challenges? So that question will be posted on the board or a PowerPoint slide. The think part is this working individually? Please write down two or three leadership challenges. That's the think part of the equation. Now, again, you're walking into a room, it's cold. You have very little rapport going on with the people you're presenting with. That's step number one. So what people are doing, they're writing down. Then the share part. Please share with a neighbor or two. Now, if we have round tables, guess what? Share your answers with the people at your round table. If it's a theater style, just share with a neighbor to your left or right. That's the share part. Now, if you hear people talking, they have answers. They have answers. And then finally we do the share part. That is. All right, who'd like to share some of their leadership challenges? Now, let's talk about the science. Let's rewind. Again. The number one fear people have is not public speaking, is public embarrassment. They don't want to look foolish. So what you want to do is give them a chance to think about the question and write it down. That's step number one. Number two, share, share the answer. Because again, they don't want to look foolish. They don't want to look silly. So they share their answers with just a couple people. Those people say, reinforce the fact that, hey, no, that doesn't say, hey, that's a great answer, etc. Now, they've built some confidence and like, all right, who like to share their answer. And since you hear the entire audience speaking this point in time, you know they've got answers. Now, as the presenter, what you should do is ask, who'd like to start us off? Who has an answer? And then you shut up. That's a Boston expression, right, Darren? Okay, you just shut up. Let the tension of the room say, all right, I've got an answer. And people will respond. This technique works 100% of the time, it has never, ever failed me. It is a way to. It's an audience participation technique that you can use in any type of business environment, any type of context, without feeling silly. And it works every single time. For example, every time I've taught making managers into leaders, I've got no less than 30 or 40 responses from the audience members. So, again, there's a science behind this, and there's a way to do it. And by the way, now, if you do this technique at the very, very beginning of a workshop, guess what? Now you've trained the audience to respond. Now, here's another aspect of it. No matter what, no matter how great you think the answer is, you never say, great answer. You only say thank you. I want you to think of yourself as being Switzerland. Okay? You're neutral. You know, thank you. Because here's the reason why. If you say great answer to one person's response, but you don't say it to somebody else, guess what have you taught the audience now? You've taken them back into their shells like, well, I'm not gonna respond because, oh, my answer was only average.

My answer's gonna be judged good or bad.

Exactly. So in this case, thank you. So you want to acknowledge every response, but you don't wanna have a judgment around it.

There's so much happening in the audience's mind. And, Ed, you just put it in such a great term. In fact, all of our master workshops are based on what we've learned from you training. So thank you for that. We definitely have better master workshops because of you and Kate.

Thank you. No, just to reinforce that. I want to make sure that nobody misses this. You are saying to acknowledge every response.

But not to judge it.

Acknowledge, don't judge.

Yeah. So, like, I hear that's a great answer. The moment you say, that's a great answer, you have to say that every response there afterwards.

So thank you is better than just saying, oh, that's awesome, dude, you've made my year.

So thank you. Hey, I appreciate that. You know, thank you. You know, just saying thank you and acknowledging that they've. And you. By the way, here's the other thing is you're not acknowledging that you agree with it or you disagree with it. You're just. You're rewarding that. You're training them to respond. And guess what? That builds up a positive momentum throughout the entire day or several days of your workshop.

You're thanking them for engagement, which is exactly what you're.

You're also building trust, too. And you're building rapport.

Nice. So smart. Now, Ed, I had to ask you about that because that's your ninja skill. But the other reason we have you on here is because you're so good and it's. Your whole business is how to build your business or gain business or win business through presentations. Let's switch over to that topic, because that's your other gift.

Let's talk about. That's my new branding. Like, over the past year, and we've had a great deal of success. I was working with an engineering firm. They had hired me, and this CEO of this company was going to be speaking in front of 25 executives. Now, previously, he had paid something like 10 or $15,000 just to stand on stage at another event. Complete waste of time. Complete waste of money. And this time, he, you know, he didn't want to blow this presentation. So I worked with him, and it was like. It was. I got. It was a technical snooze fest. It was just like, oh, my God. So anyway, I said, like, okay, we're gonna just set that aside for now.

I'm gonna invite you to never do that again as.

Again. I've 17 years in the industry. I completely get it. I completely understand it. I mean, that's just how the industry's built. In any type of technology industry, they go there. That's their superpower. I said, well, you know, tell me something like, tell me something about your technology, your company. Have you had any great successes? Oh, yeah. Well, he says, have you heard of the Alaska pipeline? I said, yeah, well, our software monitors all the oil flowing throughout the entire Alaska pipeline. Really? How much is that worth? He says, it's like a quarter of a billion dollars. Really?

Okay, let's not bring that up. We don't want too much credibility.

Where is that in your presentation? He's just like, well, it's kind of towards the end. I said, I used to work for a newspaper, and we call that burying the le. Okay. I says, do you have any other, like, big wins like that? He says, yeah, we got like, well, our software helped this other company, and they made, like, about $150 million in, like, 30 days. This is really. Okay, I tell you what, we're going to talk about those first, you know, And I said, okay, now what do you want this audience to do? He says, we have something called the Jumpstart program. I says, what is Jumpstart program? Well, it's a way for companies to test out our software without spending a whole lot of money. I said, how much does that run? This is about 25,000 bucks a pizza. I says, have you sold them at these other presentations? We haven't sold one. I says, okay, we're gonna work on that. So anyway, here's what happened. He gives a presentation. He sells five jumpstart programs. So basically he has made $125,000 at that meeting.

He almost covered his fee to you.

Exactly. Not quite. He had to sell like five more. There was a person in the audience who invested in this company. He won't tell me that amount, but he has a multimillion dollar business. So I'm pretty sure it's, it's a nice amount of money there. And those are some of the results that he had. What I do is I help people to what, what is your end result? What do you want people to. We call it the kfd. Okay, this is a Pam Gordon. Pam Gordon is a CSP out of Colorado. She invented the phrase kfd. What do you want people to know, feel or do once you're done? So we asked them, what do you want them to do? I'm working with a client right now who has a presentation on February 22nd. He's in the real estate investment game. He's going to be speaking in front of 800 investors. He's only got 10 minutes. And unlike a TED Talk, this is not a TED Talk, even though they've described it as a TED Talk. I says, no, dude, this is a sales talk. Because he wants the investors to walk up to him afterwards and talk about investing in his organization. So again, diagnosis, tell me about yourself. This guy has a very unique background. Number one, he used to train horses in dressage, which is, you don't run into that every day.

Not in our circle.

Served our country, Afghanistan, Iran. Former police officer, and he currently works for Homeland Security. His family has just adopted their third child and they have a foundation for adoption. So this is what we're doing is, you know, and we haven't put the presentation together yet, but again, he's, he's a professional whip snapper. So break preoccupation. What we're going to do, he's going to come out cracking the whip. Now, I don't know where the presentation is going to go from there, but that it's going to separate him from everybody else who's going to be on the stage that day. People are going to be remembering the guy who cracked the whip. Okay.

That could also be a transition line.

We're going to show images of him and his Uniforms. We're definitely. His family looks like they are. They're beautiful. I mean, his wife is blonde hair, blue eyes. The kids look like, I mean, oh, my God, it's Family Circle magazine cover. So we're going to definitely show images of that. And here's the reason we're doing this. There's no selling or there's no story without emotion. There's no story. But also there's no selling. There's no movement without emotion. So you tell me, based on the things I've just told you about him, what are the elements that in your opinion will generate emotion?

The adoption for sure.

The adoption for sure. Showing images of his beautiful family serving.

His country, serving his military. Military serving his community. As a police officer.

Exactly. Okay, so he has multiple elements that are going to rapidly. They're going to break preoccupation, but they're also going to build that before rapport. They're going to break down all those tensions. So we got to rapidly break down those tensions. And he doesn't have as much time as we do. We usually have a whole day to work with people. He's only got 10 minutes and then he's going to talk about his business. But he wants to separate his business. His business is not about making money. His business is to support their foundation for adoptions because they are all in when it comes to adopting children and they don't believe there's enough people adopting children in this country. So he wants to say, that's my walk away message. At this conference. You're going to hear tons of ideas about how to make money. And by the way, oh, here's something else he's done. He's only been in the business two years. $15 million in deals.

Wow.

I said, I said, okay, that sounds like a big deal to me. But to these investors, will they be impressed with that? He said, absolutely. Also, he's got a podcast. The only person doing a daily podcast. He's already had 500 interviews with industry giants. So we're going to have photos of some of these. Some of the people are going to be sitting in that audience. He's already interviewed. So again, we haven't decided what the final presentation is going to look like, but these are elements we're going to put into it to help them achieve that goal. Again, we're going to help people win business through presentations.

And Ed, what would you say are some of the mistakes that you see because you coach executives on high stakes presentations? What are some of the common mistakes you see that Almost repel business unintentionally because the presenter didn't even get what they were doing and how it affected the audience. So what are some of the mistakes trying to win business when you actually push it away?

Number one is there's no emotion and there's no story. There's no emotion, there's no story, there's no what's in it for me. And what I mean by that is what's in it for the audience? Why should they care? So you've got to address why should someone care? Corporations have a tendency. I used to work for a computer company and we had this presentation. It was called the seven pillars, why you should do business with us. Oh my God. Did you see me crack my skull on my computer? Oh, my God. It was horrible. And it was all about us.

The only thing worse than, the only thing worse ed than five boring pillars.

Is seven boring pillars we had. The seven was enough to have five, not four, not three. We had seven and you. And damn it, you will listen to all seven. It was horrible. It was horrible. And so I think that's, you know, talking about yourself, just making it a book report, talking just about technology. Basically. There's no life. I just helped an executive from Saudi Arabia. So this is a female executive from Saudi Arabia. And if you haven't been following the news, Saudi Arabia, in the last two years, women have been allowed to drive cars for the first time. They're the last country on earth that has allowed women to drive. Recently, women can actually travel without having a male escort. This is in tradition. Again, no judgment here, but the Saudi Crown Prince wants 500,000 women to be in executive roles by the year 2030. And she's been charged with that. She had a 20 minute presentation in front of the Saudi government, a lot of contractors and corporations. So this was a big presentation. English is not her first language. I get a hold of her on January 8, her presentation is on January 15. It was just a little stressful. If any of you have ever coached, you know what I'm talking about here. Again, her presentation, it was facts, figures, data. It was, you know what her biggest mistake was? It was filled with what I called guilt. Guilt and shaming. It was going to be 90% men. You should do this. You should do this. It's the right thing to do. And I mean, she's absolutely right. But if I'm in a leadership role, is that going to work? I'm just the real talk here, real talk. Guilt and shaming does not work under any Circumstances, and if anything is going to annoy people. So I said, like, let's not. Let's not go that route. So we decided to go a different route. And she told me about her great grandmother. And her great grandmother was a family matriarch and the tradition in Saudi Arabian households. And I'm just talking tradition. Again, this is not about judgment, okay? We have different traditions here in the usa. Other countries have different cultural values. So again, we just. It is what it is. Again, there's no judgment here. But the tradition was that when women, when they turned 14, they got married and they started having babies. But her great grandmother said, no, the women are a family. Number one, you will finish your education first. That means college and an advanced degree. Not just college, but an advanced degree. And they actually have, I think, one or two family members who have PhD. Okay? So that's number one. Number two, the woman in this family will be financially independent. You will learn how to be independent on your own. That was a family matriarch. So guess what we started off with. She talked about her grandmother. Again, we only had a week. So she was struggling with trying to memorize all these facts and figures. I says, tell me about your grandmother. She didn't struggle with that story at all. And she said the following. This is the reason why I am who I am, and this is why my mom and these two women are my heroes. And that's just. And I want the same thing that. And the Saudi common prince wants that for our country. So she transitioned that story into the story as to why we're here in the first place. Standing ovation for her presentation and a language that is not her primary language. Sweet.

And for those of you listening, if you're listening to this, that's the value of a coach. You know, you have your story, you have your business, you have your experience. But sometimes what Ed does is. Goes in so well, and Mark does this as well. Ed focuses on pulling out those business credibility stories, which could be personal, but they make a business point. And, Ed, you are just. You're an amazing coach, and I encourage everyone. You want to hear Ed coach on presentations, go listen to episode three, when he dissects Mark Brown's speech. I again yielded to him the master.

Thank you.

So, again, your strengths when I first met you was just being a platform presenter. As a matter of fact, the year before you won the world championship, you actually presented at Toastmasters in 1999 in Chicago.

I did.

And I knew your name before you knew I knew your name. But then you knew my name and I knew your name. So now we know each other's names and I'm totally confusing our listeners. But that's okay. Then you translate that to being this ninja trainer where you have been our go to guy when it comes to train the trainer. And then you once again transition more into how to win business through presentations. And that represents continual evolution, so to speak. I don't want to say reinvention, but you build upon existing skills and find other ways to create business for yourself at the same time for business for other people. How did that transition come about? How would you advise others of us who are in the keynote lane and are thinking about other things to do with our businesses?

Well, in one situation, I was actually forced out of the keynote lane. For example, I win the world championship of public speaking. I'm in the right place at the right time. I get training companies, consulting firms, a couple of Bureau's, etc. Everyone's fighting to book Ed. I did not have to pick up a phone for seven years. Wow. In fact, I did not pick up a phone. And by the way, that is marketing malpractice. You have to learn how to market yourself. And Stagetown University has many resources in which you can learn how to do that. So we're not going to talk about that here. But anyway, what happens is I go from a full calendar to zero in two weeks. Wow.

Ouch.

So in the worst economic crisis of our time, I had to figure out what was I going to do next. So I transitioned from just doing only keynotes to expand it to training to consulting to. I finally listened to Darren and Darren, you know, showed me how to make products and things of that nature. So I have multiple streams of income. And so like, if something like that happen again, honestly, I'm not going to worry about it. I just took the entire month of December off, took my beautiful bride and our little daughter to South Africa and vacationed for a month. I told Summer, who's my assistant, you run the business. I'm not going to do any business. And I didn't have to worry about that because I have multiple streams of income. In fact, when I came back, I had so many opportunities, this month has been crazy busy because I made that choice. I made that decision now. Now, if you stay in one place, you will be hit by a train. Okay? You have to constantly grow. You have to constantly evolve. You have to. Because what used to work yesterday will not work tomorrow. I think there's a book, it's called whatever it Is that got you here today will not be there sufficient to get you there tomorrow. So you have to constantly evolve. Now, the answer to your question is this. I meditate and I have some quiet time and some ed time and I journal on a regular basis. And one day I sit, I looked at all my skills. I'm good at this, I'm good at this. I'm good at. And I said myself, oh my goodness, it was there in front of me the entire time. I've sold a half a billion dollars worth of computers in the computer industry. I know how to sell, I'm a platform speaker. I know how to sell on stage. And I could teach this skill to other people. That's how this latest evolution came about. And I just started testing that says, well, what do you think of this? And all of a sudden people say, well, yeah, now I just discuss this randomly with a couple of people and they say, well, when can I start? How much are you going to charge? It's like, let me get back to you. My favorite books is called Deep Work. And the basic premise of the book is that people don't take the time to think deeply anymore. I mean, we're so distracted with social media and people are coming at me, coming at us at at all different angles that we don't take the time to think deeply. By journaling and praying and meditating, it gives you that time to think things through. And that's where that eureka moment came for me. So did I answer your question?

Yes, you did. I'm going to chew on this for a while. I know Darren's got a question for you as well. I'm going to chew on this, meditate, pray, think deeply, identify your strengths.

Deep Work. Wow.

This is gold. This is gold.

Thanks. Here's my journal. Okay.

Those of you listening, he just showed us his.

Okay. That's right. This is a podcast. Sorry.

Wow.

So like, for example, like one thing, one exercise I just absolutely love. I did. Like you can see this, it says my key year in review. Yeah. So my year in review for 2019, like my wife, she got her, she got her 10 year green card. We've been working on that for like four years. The birth of our daughter on March 21, 2019. Let's see, I took a month off, you know, and just, and spent time with Sarika's family and spent time in South Africa. Just absolutely adored it. So I mean, I did this, this is something I do like on a regular basis and it just gives me time to think.

And you mentioned Your wife's family in Syracuse is South African, correct?

Yes. Yes.

Because we both met her on that trip together that we.

We did weeks.

Yeah, I remember that.

Yeah. Yeah. So that was life changing.

This is fantastic. This is fantastic. Ed, is there one? And this is not fair to ask you this because, but is there one nugget a must have drop dead must do for our listeners regarding a key to winning business through presentations. This is one thing everybody absolutely must know about that concept.

It. Monetize their problem.

Monetize their problem.

For example, there is a manufacturing company, a jewelry manufacturing company. And what I discovered is that they're a $15 million business. However, their sales have gone down over the last couple years by a million dollars apiece. So they have a two million dollar problem. So once I discovered this and listen to this expression, I forgot who I need to give this credit to. It is not mine. But if I help you to get a goal, in this case, if I help them not only stop this $2 million leak, but they actually make maybe $2 million in the reverse. So, like we're talking about 4 million dollar swing. Does it matter how much I charge? If I'm able to help you get your goal, does it really matter how much I charge? The answer is no. So monetize their problems. So in this particular case, what I did was I monetized the problem. I says, you have a $2 million problem. My proposal was $100,000. They said $100,000. I mean, at first they freaked out. And I says, okay, you've got a $2 million problem. Let me ask you this. If I'm able to help you fix a $2 million problem and it only cost you $100,000, is that good business? Complete silence. So monetize the problem.

Ed, I was just looking into. I just hired a Facebook ad agency to try and do what I was trying to do myself. And the woman said the same thing to me. She said, if I can show you how to earn 100,000 in a month using Facebook ads and I do all the work, does it really matter what I charge you?

I think I heard this from you. I heard this from you.

Well. Well, she gave it to me. I've heard Patricia Fripp say that, but it was done on me. And I'm like, yeah, I got nothing. So you win. That's how you win. Business is monetizing their problem and then realizing you got a solution that's a fraction of that, that changes everything. And then we need to tell that.

Through stories so in this case, like for example, by the way, here's a bonus tip. Don't tell them how. You get paid for the how. You tell them the what. For example, my real estate client generated $50 million worth of business in two years. We're not going to spend a second talking about how we did it. We're just going to talk about the results. Because what, what's our goal? We want people to walk. We want to use curiosity and we want people to walk up to him after his presentation and one on one explain how he did it and we want investors to invest in him.

We can't give away the how. That's what we do.

You get paid for the how.

You get paid for the process.

People give away the how.

Yeah, we get paid for the process. So, Ed, want to honor your time. So, so thrilled to have you here with us. And you're going to be one of our, you're one of our partners in stagetime Live. Game changers coming up. What are you going to talk about in Vegas?

Well, how to win business using presentation. You know, pitching to win, how to sell your products, your services and yourselves in minutes.

So if you're listening to this, you want to spend some time with Ed, Mark and me as well as our four other coaches. Please check out stagetimelive.com and Ed in a second here, we're going to go to your final thought and Mark's going to go through his keepers that he's been keeping track through the whole thing. Any other one idea that you would want to pass on to anybody trying to win business through presentation?

This is a learned skill you don't have. It's a learned skill. You don't have to be a celebrity. You don't have to be a full time paid professional to learn this skill. You have to be teachable, be coachable and also be willing to. My secret sauce is I want you to test this presentation in front of a live audience before the paid audience. So the one thing, and if you're not willing to do that, then I'm not going to work with you.

Great, great advice. And if you want to get coached by Ed, you can connect with him on edtate.com or in LinkedIn. Is that correct?

Yep.

Edtate.come d t a T E or look him up on LinkedIn. Thrilled to have you. Mark Brown, what are our keepers for this episode?

Oh, man. Well, first from his preferred story, have an emergency exit for your speech was cool. Understand when it comes to training, there's a science behind audience participation.

Okay.

And keep in mind the four tensions. Audience, speaker, audience, audience, the materials and the room environment. At all times you want to rapidly break down the tensions with what is called before rapport.

Okay?

Don't forget the idea of think pair share. You get the audience involved building relationships and breaks down the tension and they're willing to participate. Acknowledge everyone's involvement, but don't judge. Always ask what is the result or the end game of the presentation. It isn't about you, it's about them. And two keys for me is this. There's no story without emotion and there's no selling without emotion. There's no story without emotion, there's no selling without emotion. And regarding your business growth, if you stay in one place, you'll get hit by a train. I love this. Identify your strengths. Take time for prayer, for meditation. Assess what you have. Map out your year in advance, but also celebrate the wins of the previous year because it can be the motivation and the indication of of direction you're going to be going in when dealing with the client. Monetize their problem. And here is my gold. Tell them the what, but don't tell them the how because you are the how. And above all, be coachable. Wow. Mouthful today. Thanks so much Ed.

Thank you guys for inviting me.

I think this was the, as Craig would say, the most meat per minute in this podcast episode. Ed Tate, thank you so much. Look forward to sharing the stuff. Stage with you in March Again, check out stagetime Live to join us live or virtually. Ed Tate, you are the master. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you my friends.

All right, we'll see you next episode.

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