Ep. 33 How to Be Distinctive with Scott McKain

Hey there, Mark Brown. I am super excited. We have been waiting for this interview for months and months, but he's so busy traveling around the world. I'm finally delighted that we got our next guest. Oh, my gosh, Mark. Talk about iconic.

Oh, yeah. I mean, this is a guy who began to speak when he was a teenager. On top of that, he's also been on the screen as an actor. And get this, he gets asked to deliver a presentation on the White House lawn by the governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Darren. Let's let our audience meet the inimitable Scott McCain.

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, Martin 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.

Mark Brown, the first time ever, you and I have to yield to the.

Voice, the voice of Scott McCain.

Welcome, Scott.

Welcome.

Oh, thanks, guys. It is so great to be with you. Sorry it's taken so long to make this happen, but I am thrilled that we did. So it's really great being with you.

Nice.

Scott, I've heard so much about your diversity. I mean, you've done the acting thing. You speak. I mean, you are.

Now let me get this.

You're the corporate trainer. What's the title? In residence. At PI Point. You are the corporate business leader in residence.

Well, yeah, Corporate educator in residence. And basically what that means is through the vision of our mutual friend Nito Quebein, you know, take what I'm talking about to corporations around the world and let their students know what that is so that they're better prepared to enter the job market because they're up to date on. On what top organizations around the world are spending to educate their people on if they get their students to be learning that before they enter the workforce. What a leg up that is. So it's a privilege and a great opportunity to Jo and folks like Steve Wozniak and Mark Randolph, co founder of Netflix. And I joke that when they have the list of who the corporate educators in residence or the in residence faculty is, it's like that kid's song. One of these things is not like another. Who's this guy? Where did he come from? You know, well, the funny thing is.

Scott, that's a really good question. Who is this guy?

We're.

Did he come from? Where did this phenomenon, I.e. scott McCain originate?

Oh, you're so nice, Mark. There's a grand jury looking into that. Thank you. I love talking about other people. It's hard sometimes to talk about myself. I grew up on a farm in southern Indiana. Matter of fact, if you remember the old John Mellencamp song small Town, when he sings, I was born in a small town. I literally was born in the same small town. But because our farms were separated by a few miles, I went to school in the even smaller Crothersville. The town that John sings about is where I was born. But we always looked at that as the big town. I grew up there. My folks farmed and owned a grocery store and spent my life stocking shelves and doing stuff like that. And early on, the owner of the nearby radio station offered me a job. And it really wasn't because he thought I would sound good on the air. It's because my dad owned the grocery store and he thought if his kid was on the radio, he'd buy more commercials.

Marketing, man, Marketing.

There you go. Oh, I gotta tell you guys, I found a tape a while back, and it was me calling a basketball game when I was 14. And, you know, we know that as guys, you're 14 and your voice is changing, and it's like I'm trying to sound like an adult. You know, there's the shot. It's good.

The Peter Brady thing, when it's time to change.

So my main focus in that time from 14 to 18, was working at the local radio station. And then also I was involved in a student organization. Back then it was called Future Farmers of America now.

Ffa. Yeah, ffa.

And got involved in the speaking contest there. And that was really my drive was. I don't remember a single night from my freshman through my senior year high school, other than, you know, like prom night, that I didn't stand in my bedroom and turn on a recorder and practice giving a speech. Wow. I would do two things. I would practice whatever prepared speech was for an FFA contest. But the other thing I would do is I would stand in my room and I'd look and try to find an object, you know, a coat hanger, and make myself give a two minute speech about the coat hanger. And then I would rewind and listen to it and try to eliminate the ahs and the, you know, it's so that I was training myself to be able to speak in an Impromptu manner about just about anything. And the payoff of that was graduate from high school. Now it's time to run for state FFA office. And they put a keychain in front of. They have a nominating committee where they really grill you and really put you through the paces to see if you're qualified for state office. They put a keychain in front of me, and they said, speak for two minutes about the keychain. I had done that in my bedroom.

Been there, done that.

And the speech was, you think leadership is about being the biggest key. It's not. It's the ring that holds all of the other keys together. Leadership was uniting all of the diverse, different aspects, and it was what launched everything that's happened to me since then.

And going back to. You obviously have this amazing voice that we have voice envy. And now we're finding out you had that obviously your whole life. When did you start realizing, well, hey, my voice is different, or people notice my voice because that's one of the things that makes Scott McCain unforgettable.

Oh, you're very kind. Thank you, Darren. You know, it's funny, I think what happened now. My dad has a great voice. My dad was a singer. He had a band that played every weekend, and they played everything in Louisville in southern Indiana. And he had a great, great baritone singing voice. I can't sing at all. But I think what happened was when my voice was changing for five hours a day, I was also wearing headphones, trying to drive my voice slower. And I think just through that process, perhaps I trained it, but I didn't even know what I was doing, let's face it. I mean, part of it is just. It's God's gift, or it's luck of the draw, or it's when I see our mutual friend Mark Eaton, that's the speaker that played for the Utah Jazz. I mean, you can't coach 7 foot 4. It's one of those things that's just a gift, but it's something I'm grateful for every day.

And what do you think if your dad was a singer, what do you think drew you to the speaking side rather than singing?

I remember as a kid, and I'm guessing I was four years old, I remember sitting in a folding chair off the side of the stage and seeing my dad in the spotlight and then also noticing, maybe for the first time, about how the people in the audience were looking at him. And I just thought. I remember being four years old thinking that had to be the coolest thing in the world, I'm not a singer, I can't sing. And that was part of it. The other part of it, quite honestly, I mean, this is really personal. But the other part of it was that when I was 8th grader, through a family tragedy, my dad's brother unexpectedly passed away and we took in my cousin and so he started living with us. And he was a big sports star. He was one of the biggest sports stars in our community, in our area. And I wasn't. I was barely coordinated enough to applaud for those who could. I didn't have the gift, right? And so I remember as an eighth grader, getting the local newspaper back home and seeing my cousin, who was living with us, on the front page of the sports section. But then I saw the state FFA president was in the county giving a speech, and that was on the front page. And it was a competition, it was a rivalry. But I thought, you know, I'll never be able to make the front page of the sports section, but if I work at speaking and if I work at that, that might get so, you know, my goals were very limited. And that was the other thing. That's the power of a speech. I went to the state FFA convention as a freshman between my eighth grade and freshman year, and I heard the speaker talk about goal setting and possibilities and all of those things that sometimes we think is a little corny now in our profession, but for a kid sitting in the next to the last row of Loeb Playhouse at Purdue University, the first time I heard a speaker, it literally changed my life. It was the first time I thought there was something beyond the boundaries of my small town.

And this podcast is designed to help corporate presenters, pastors, emerging professional speakers, professional speakers get to that unforgettable level. And I think one of the. Your voice is obviously one number one. Another one is your presence. You just have when you take the stage, when you walk into a room, you've got this presence. How can we work on that? Where did that come from?

That is so kind of you there. And one of the things that people often overlook. I went through a period of time in my speaking business. People would come up after a speech and they would shake my hand. And I know they meant to be nice. And they would say things like, gosh, I don't remember what you said, but your voice is fantastic. And that was just the first time I had speech coaching was with the late great Ron Arden. And it was almost like therapy. He played my presentation to me. And when I got to a point that was important for me to make. My voice had ended up being up here, and I was doing this as I was trying to emphasize it. And he said, psychologically, you are pleading with the audience, listen to my content. Don't hear my voice. Wow. And he said, use your instrument and figure out a way to use what you have. And he said, and I'd never considered it before, but he said, you have a likable presence. Use that and develop confidence in that. And I think for many speakers, when we first walk onto the stage, the audience doesn't know if we know what we're talking about or not. But, man, they can sniff a phony out for miles. What I try to do when I walk onto the stage, I have to do something a little bit different than most in that I have to get you to hear something. I have to acknowledge how I sound at the beginning because there are some. I know that there's a certain percentage of audience members who think it's a disc jockey talking to us. Right. And so it's hopefully part of the presence to your question. Derek comes out of. I seriously analyze and think about what are the questions that the audience is wondering when I walk out and when I first start talking. Because I think part of our job as a speaker is to answer the questions that the audience is asking in their head so that then we can start influencing the questions that they begin to ask later as our speech continues. Right. So Chad Hymas will come out, and Chad is a quadriplegic. And Chad starts talking about how he got in the chair, which is a question he has to answer before the audience is going to listen to. What else? I had the privilege of helping in speech coaching the Real Life Captain Phillips. And one of the things that I said to him is your audience hasn't met a maritime sailor before. So before you get to how the pirates got on, you've got to get us with you on the ship. Were you in the navy? Were you. You know what got you on this ship to begin with? Because if we don't know that, then we're not with you when. When the pirates get on. And I just think that's part of what establishes our presence, is that are we thinking of the audience? Are we confident that we can answer their questions? Darren, you say it. I mean, you're my guru when it comes to this is. It's stage time and there's no substitute for that. I think it's all those hours speaking to a tape recorder in my Bedroom. And all those hours speaking at FFA meetings and all of that, that is paid off.

You know, Scott, right now you've already just proclaimed two things that Darren has been, quote, unquote, preaching at stage time for a long time. One is the stage time. Stage time, Stage time. But secondly, you talk about the fact that for our presence to be meaningful, we have to know what are the questions in the audience's mind. And Darren has taught so many of us the most important thing is the thought process in the audience's mind. And how do you respond then? And I'll let Darren ask this question after this. How do you respond, Scott, to the emerging speaker who doesn't feel that confident I'm going to look good on stage. They don't feel that strong about how I look when I come on stage. When you coach someone who's concerned about literally owning the stage, how do you help them to develop that presence?

What a great question. And everybody has their own approach, and there's no right or wrong answer, perhaps, to this. But preparation has to be the key. I mean, I think for most of us, the nervousness and the concern springs from at the beginning, a lack of confidence in our material and ourselves. And it's hard to develop confidence in yourself if you're not confidence first in what you're saying in your material. I was on a conference call with someone who is an actor and has done pretty well in Hollywood on television and movies. And he was saying, well, when I speak, it's just, you know, I get up in a stream of consciousness and I just tell the audience what I'm thinking at that particular time. And I said, that doesn't work for me. And he was shocked. You know, he said, but you. And I said, well, in part, you can get away with that because you're famous. The audience knows who you are. When you walk on stage, the audience knows who you are. And so you can get away with that. But for somebody like me, the thing I have to do is to be so good and so precise. And no one wants to go to a concert and hear the band just riff and play original material all night long. We go to the bathroom and they say, hey, here's some new material. Here's our new stuff. You haven't heard this yet. We want to go. No, play the hits. Well, as speakers, what we really do is to play the hits. The audience might not know it's our hit. When I tell my story about Taxideri, which is kind of my signature story, they've never Heard it before. It's new to them. But I have confidence in that material, and that helps build my confidence when I walk on the stage.

One of my pet peeve is just that celebrity speakers who won't take the time to get coached because they don't have to. And to me, they just miss so much influence that they could have. They miss that privilege. And, yeah, they can go there. Yeah, they can get paid. But what could you have done for that audience if you are willing to be vulnerable, go deep, and get coached? So taxideri one of your iconic stories.

Oh, thank you.

How did you know that was the story that you were going to work on? And did that story evolve? Because you are such a good storyteller and I saw you teach it, and Mark, you and I have been doing this for years. Last summer, we sat there, we listened to him, and I'm still taking notes because you have a different perspective. So.

Well, it's something that really happened. And I thought it, you know, as it was happening, I thought, wow, I got to talk about this. This is really interesting. And I thought it was just kind of a short, cute customer experience story. But what happened was when I told it the next morning, literally, I wanted to say, hey, last night, here's what happened. So that I'm always concerned. And I think it happens the longer that you're in the business is there's a presumption, you know, when they say, this guy's presented so many speeches in so many states, whatever, then the audience in their head starts presuming, well, we're going to hear a canned speech. And so to fight that, again, to answer the audience's question, I always like having a prepared bit of material that I can say, hey, last night when I got here at the airport, I was picked up by, you know, something that connects to the local other than Philadelphia. I had one speaker say, I asked our friend Larry Wingett, do you customize your speech? He said, yes, I customize every presentation. I say, it's good to be in Philadelphia. To your point, when it happened, I knew it was something I wanted to chat about. So I literally tried it the next morning. I want to try something a little bit new every speech. And the audience response was instantaneous to it. So I started building on it, and it, over a period of time, became a story. But it was a lot of writing and standing in my room and practicing it and delivering it. And part of what happens is you take a degree of dramatic license. I mean, that's why in a movie it says based on a true story, not this is exactly what happened. Right. For example, one of the things when I tell the story is that taxiderry is a larger than life. Are you ready for the best cab ride of your life? Well, he really did say, are you ready for the best cab ride of your life? But he's not as forceful and dramatic in terms of how he says it. But the contrast between me and his overwhelming personality in the story provides more dramatic tension in the story and provides a greater illustration. So those were the things I kind of had to work out as I was building the story when I first started telling the story. And this is what he really did. He had one of those, this is how long ago it was. But he had one of those old Palm Pilots that he had on the dash. Well, if I say that now, three fourths of the audience in their head again, you gotta. What is the audience thinking? If I say there was a Palm Pilot on the dash, they'll say, oh, that story's too old to be relevant. Or 2/3 of them go, what the heck's a Palm Pilot? So now it's an iPhone on the dash. The story continues to evolve. And then the funny thing that happened was I went back to Jacksonville and called him and took another ride with him and he updated me on what had happened since that, which is pretty cool because he found a way to distinguish himself from Uber. So now the story is longer, but it has a more relevant kick. The other cool thing was this is one of the things that surprised me. He asked, could he put a video of the story on his website? I'm like, absolutely, I'd be honored if you did. And now I'm amazed at how many people come up after the speech and I mentioned he's on taxiderry.com and they'll come up after the speech and they've already on their smartphones, gone to his website and they see my video on his website. And it's amazing how many people will say, oh, I thought that was just a good made up story. It's amazing. I didn't think that would be real. Wow. And so what I learned from that was now I have a slide with a picture of Taxideri on the slide as more social proof, for lack of a better term about that. But what happens is stories evolve over a period of time. And you note that if there's a laugh line in the story. There was one laugh line that I moved up earlier in the story. So the story to kind of punch up the story that isn't chronologically exactly what happened, but it helps the story have the ebbs and flows that a good story has along the way. So, man, it is hard work coming up with a good story.

Wow. Now, you could put a. Do you ever think of putting a screenshot of his website up on your slide?

Great idea. Yeah, I need to do that as well. Yeah.

Save some time for the people who are searching. But I love what you're saying, Mark, and I call it the emotional truth. So you're sticking to the truth of the story based on a true story, but you've got to make it interesting and ebb and flow. And for most presenters, the story is what makes them good, great, or unforgettable. What do you think it takes for a story to be unforgettable?

The change in the taxiderry story, that was fundamental, and when it became unforgettable is when I had worked through the story enough and got the story to the point that the audience stopped seeing me in the back of the cab and instead visualized themselves there.

Hold on.

And once that happened, the story was unforgettable because now they see themselves as riding with taxideri, not a story about me. Wow. And when that happened, that was it.

That's why you interview Scott McCain for his brilliance.

Oh, you do.

But you see things differently. And, you know, obviously I didn't even know a lot of your depth of your preparation and stage time and working it. And I love that because I think a lot of people who see great, amazing speakers think, well, you know, it's easy for them. They didn't have to put in the work. He's got the voice. The story happened to him. And I think many people miss the fact that there's so much work in that story to keep making it better.

I gave 1,000 free speeches before I got paid because. And for me, it was ffa, right. I was state FFA president, national officer the next year. And so you take a year off college. So I took two years off college. Totally. And you do nothing but travel and speak. And it's everything from Rotary clubs to high school assemblies to on and on and on. There's no way to replace that stage time. I mean, that's it.

Now I'm curious, Scott. With all that stage time, were there presenters whom you saw, admired, leaned into, listened to, learned from who, served you, mentored you, guided you, and helped you, despite your thousand free speeches and hours of practice that really helped to bring you to an unforgettable level?

I had two mentors early on. And, Mark, I'm so glad you're asking about the influence of others, because I love talking about. I was speaking at the Illinois FFA convention, and they had hired a speaker for that evening. And unbeknownst to me, he had wandered in the back of the room. It was at the assembly hall, which is where the University of Illinois plays their basketball games. He had wandered in the back of this, wondering how it was going to sound and all that to prepare for the evening. And he just happened to plop down and listen to my speech as the FFA officer there. And he was a speaker that I'd read about and wanted to hear. His name was Grady Nutt. He was from the Louisville area. I grew up three miles north of Louisville, and he was well known in the area. And his speech that night, to me, moved an audience more than I've ever seen before since. I mean, it was the roof came off the place. He had people laughing and crying, and it was unreal. Well, anyway, so speech is over, and I'm trying to find him in the crowd to shake his hand and just tell him what an incredible experience it was. And he said, I heard you today. And he said, when you get done with this, you ought to think about doing this for a living. And I'm like, do what for a living? I don't know what he's talking about. Right. He helped me. He helped me get started. He introduced me to his agent, Mike McKinney. And so my first speeches were booked because people didn't have the money for Grady. But he would say, okay, we got this young guy. He's just getting started. He's got a lot of experience speaking, but he's young. And so that's how I got started. But I wanted to lead to. I admired him so much that I tried to sound like him. And Grady took me to lunch. And it was one of those seminal moments in your life. And he said, scott, I appreciate how much you admire and respect what I do. But he said, if you're trying to be the best Grady Nut, the most you could hope for is second place. He said, I have a corner on the Grady nut market, but he said, you can be his best Scott McKay, to come down the pike. And that changed my life. It was a moment. It was the first moment. I just admired him so much. And because I came from such a rural area and because of my upbringing and background, I never thought I could be as qualified as anybody else. And so it was the first moment That I really felt like I need to do this. And that's when I stopped trying to be a motivational humorist and started thinking about business and life and the things that I talk about now that I'm much more comfortable talking about. But it's all because Grady. Grady made that happen. Grady was such a great friend that my first wife, my late wife Sherry and I were married in the living room at his home, making us the only couple you ever knew that was married at the nut house. Literally. Thank you, Tiffany. Waitress. Literally married at the nut house.

Wow, man, that is amazing.

Well, I think that's part of what you guys bring to the table as well. Part of the message that you're bringing is here's how you get there. But you be you, right? Be the best you that you can be. We can help you be better at expressing the you that's already there. I see a lot of folks try to coach speakers or teach speakers into here's the cookie cutter way that you do it. And that. That just doesn't work because you're trying to make somebody be something else. And that's acting. It's not speaking.

Wow, that's acting nice. I'm writing.

Mark keeps the keepers throughout, and then we recap at the end. So just so much brilliance.

That's great.

Go ahead.

Darren.

Yeah.

You just mentioned that you started realizing business was your audience. And you of all the speakers. I know your logo cloud on your website. Check out scottmcain.com, your logo Cloud of the best of the best companies in the world. How in the world do you get this? Their attention. Keep their attention and share your brilliance. Now, you're a brilliant man, but it's one thing to be brilliant. It's another thing to be in front of these iconic companies and help them yet have a new perspective.

What a great question. It's kind of funny. I remember the first speech. It was for superior grain bins. Right? Because as you might imagine, with my professional speaking stuff started, the natural audience for me was agriculture because of FFA and because of what. What I was doing there. I was so nervous because it was all their executives. And I'm 25 years old and I'm thinking, what in the world do I have to tell them? But what I did was to tell them what I had learned from other business people that I had met through my experience. And I'd worked on that speech. And here's what I learned when I met this person. Here's what I learned when I met. They paid me, $500 for speech. And the executive vice president handed me the check and he said, you know, this should be twice as much. Wow. And I thought, oh. And I realized that I was undervaluing. I mean, look, at the end of the day, when you're a professional speaker, everybody you work with, nobody says, hey, can we pay you twice that? I mean, you quote your fee, you can't go up. I mean, they're going to try to work it out, but you ain't going up. Right. So it really struck me, me that I had undervalued. And I think about that a lot when I'm, you know, I've worked for Apple, but one of the things I did with Apple, and you would think, who needs to tell Apple anything? But yet part of what I realized is there's two aspects that are involved. One is one of the things I did for them is the Apple resellers. You know, like in my home state of Indiana, there's an Apple store in Indianapolis. There's an Apple store just outside Notre Dame and South Bend. But the second largest city in Indiana is Fort Wayne, and it doesn't have an Apple Store, but there are the Apple resellers that are there. A lot of people have been to an Apple Store and they expect that kind of experience when they go into the reseller. And so what Apple wanted me to do was to convince those folks the importance of upgrading the customer experience. I can do that. It doesn't matter if it's Apple or car body shops. I mean, that's what I know. So I felt very confident in within that. Now, would I have been the right guy to go speak to Tim Cook about innovation? No, that's not me. So it's being an expert at your niche and understanding what that is. Now, I want my niche not to be a particular industry. I want my niche to be my material. I want my niche to be me. And that's possible if you work at it and if you develop it. But that's how you get that is when you bring them something that they don't feel that they can get from a thousand other speakers. Brilliant. Does that make sense? Yeah.

No, absolutely.

Those companies want you is because they don't feel like there's a thousand other people doing what you're doing, and then you've commoditized yourself. And that was where the whole thing that I write about, about distinction really came from.

And tough question here, Jevor Baum. I find it inspiring for other people to know that great speakers bombed. You Ever bomb. And what did you learn from it?

I always love. I have a couple friends who say they've never bombed and I'm like, liar. You're the least self aware person. Come on. I didn't, but the audience did. Oh gosh. Oh, where do you want to start? Holy cow. Isn't it amazing? You can think of those much more rapidly than you think of the ones where you really killed. See, one of the things Grady Nut taught me was there's three things that could go wrong. It's your fault, you didn't deliver like you should. You're a professional and you are supposed to deliver. But he said sometimes it's the situation's fault if the sound system blows up and the back half of the room can't hear you. The room's 100 degrees and they can't turn the air conditioner on. It can hurt the response you get. And he said sometimes it's the audience's fault if they drink too much and you're getting up in front of a bunch of drunks. It doesn't matter how good you are, you're still not going to perform at the level that you could if the situation was right. But he said maturity as the speaker is knowing the percentages and where to place the blame. It's being willing to accept the blame if you haven't delivered, but it's also not being a martyr if the other things aren't right either. Now you're still a pro and you still have to do your job. He's not excusing that. I did what was probably the first keynote speech in New York City after 9 11. It was for an association of temporary employees. So these are the everything from manpower, which is huge. Every community has a small temporary placement agency. So there was supposed to be like 2,500 people in the audience, but it was literally the first meeting, big meeting in New York after 9 11. So there's maybe 700, 800 people, but still a nice sized crowd. Right? So they said okay. They come up to me right before I go on and they said, okay, Scott, because of 9 11, we're going to have a couple things added, but we still want you to take your hour, so don't worry about when you finish. But we're going to do a couple things before you get on. Great. So they introduce the general manager of the New York Hilton. And he's sobbing before he gets on the stage and he's sobbing about. We would have had to lay off all these people. All these people Serving you. If you'd canceled this meeting, I would have had the fire. These housekeepers are working, feeding their family, and he. He just stops. He's sobbing so much he can't even. He just walks off stage. So now they bring the vice mayor of New York on. And they said, Mayor Giuliani would have loved to have been here, but he's with President Bush today. But he wanted to do something special. Broadway is dark. They have a piano on the stage and they said, so he wanted to do something special. And Broadway is dark. So here to sing the music of the night from Cats is the longest running member of the Broadway cast of Cats. So he sings. I'm sorry, memory, not Memory is Cats in Music of the Night's Phantom. So the guy sings memory. And I mean, the place goes crazy. And the vice mayor gets back up and says, currently starring as the phantom, here to sing Music of the Night. And that guy gets up and he sings music of the Night, the Phantom. And the place goes crazy. Vice mayor gets back up and says, currently starring as Jean Valjean and Les mischievous here to sing. And he gets up and he sings. And then they bring in and there was a New York Fire Department lieutenant that sang at every one. And they paraded the tattered flag from the World Trade center down the center aisle. And I mean, and we all stood and sang God Bless America. Now, one of the things that happen at meetings like this that are association events is it's always Jane or Joe from Omaha that have this small business and they are well respected in the industry, but they've never stood in front of a group of people in their life and they give them a script. And so we've just had this emotional moment, and on this script, it walks right up and says nothing. But our speaker for this morning has, you hear 800 people go, I mean, they didn't want a speech, they didn't want a speaker. They didn't want anybody at that point. And it just. And I was so moved by what had happened. It was such a. That I was not at my best. And it was just. The audience wasn't ready. I didn't have the right message. It wasn't one of those where people walked out. I had a bunch of drunks one night in Illinois. My introduction was, here's our speaker. I bet he knows a lot of dirty jokes, and I hope he tells us every one of them. Wow. And then he said, please welcome Steve McLean. You can't make this stuff up, can you? So what did I learn from that, well, from the 911 thing, I learned that, you know something, I sat in my room and I was thinking, boy, I really want to get my material across to them as best. I should have just blown up my speech and just created a new one that said these are incredible times. Because if you remember back then part of our fear was we didn't know what was going to happen next. Would there be another terrorist attack? And tie that in with, okay, in your business you don't know what's going to happen next. It should have been based on that. So it was my fault that it didn't hit with them because I was trying to shoehorn the message I was comfortable in bringing with an audience that wasn't ready to hear that. I think that's part of what's happening. I feel like I'm going too long here. But I just want to add this because I think it's part of what's happening as we record this during the quarantine is that many speakers are trying to bring their answers to an audience that has not yet formulated their questions. And we've heard for years that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And I think many times in times like what I did erroneously after 911 and what I see speakers doing today is that we're trying to bring our solutions to a world that has not yet defined the problem and we're hitting them before they're ready. That was my mistake that day was that I was trying to hit this audience with business ideas about distinction and setting yourself apart and the customer experience when they were worried about survival. When we bomb, when I've bombed, it's because I didn't have the right approach and the appropriate content to meet that audience where they are.

Wow, that is so, so powerful and so meaningful. And it leads to this one simple question as a follow up. So Scott, have you ever found yourself, despite all your preparation, your pre conference calls and that where you went on a platform and realized I've got to switch up right now and change because something happened that night or that morning where you had to be flexible on the fly?

The one I just thought of, this happened a long time ago, but I did an in service program. I was brought in. A member of the school board had heard me speak and owned a business and he thought it would be great to have me speak for the in service day for teachers. And that's not normally a program that I, I did it years ago but haven't done for a long time, but would love speaking to Teachers, Right. Well, what I didn't know was, and what no one had told me was there was great animosity between the teachers and that superintendent. And in fact, that morning, I'm speaking mid morning, early that morning, they had voted to strike, but yet they had to attend this meeting. Well, here I am the speaker that the school board and the administration has brought in to talk to them. And their presumption was that I was gonna lecture them. And they introduced me and I walked up and the entire audience stood up, turned their backs to me, and stayed standing with their backs to me. Wow. I stood there for a minute and I ran to the back of the room. They all turned around again. So I ran back to the front and then I started laughing. I said, good Lord, we're acting like the kids you teach. Oh, wow. And some of them started laughing. I said, look, I'm not from here and yes, the administration has brought me here, but you are my audience and I respect you and my audience. This is not going to be the best speech you ever heard, but it's not going to be a lecture either. Could we just sit down and talk for the next 45 minutes? And maybe you're going to get something from it that will help you, regardless of whatever action that you take. Because they haven't and cannot tell me what to say. And I'm going to speak to you from the experience that I have, and maybe we can have a shared experience here. Wow. Wow. There was no standing ovation at the end of it. You know, it wasn't that, but it really, really ended up going well. That's one speech I'm particularly proud of. There are standing ovations that you get as a speaker that you really don't deserve. It's because it's tradition. There's some that you earn, but there's a. There's many, many more times that the audience is appreciative and not demonstrative. And that's what happened that day, and that's what I'm really proud of. Wow.

Mark, any other questions before we go to keepers?

I gotta ask one more question. Scott, please.

Yeah.

If there was one central message that defines who Scott McCain is to all his audiences at High Point University, to business leaders, to educators, to other speakers, to coaching clients, is there central theme that represents Scott McCain to the world?

Yeah. It's distinction. It's what can you do to distinguish yourself from everybody else in a hyper competitive marketplace? And Mark, a quick story about that, if I might. I lost my first wife, Sherry to ovarian cancer. And I was the sole caregiver, so I would pick up a speech or two, but most of my time was spent not working in the business, but just taking care of her. And. And so after she passed, I was seven figures in debt with medical bills and back taxes, and it was just. And nothing on the calendar. And so I started looking for. I had to get back in the game, and I had to get things booked. And I called speakers bureaus, and I said, when you recommend me to your customers, what do you say? And see, that was one of the things I talked about earlier is, you know, ask your customer what they think. Well, gee, imagine that. Do what we talk about, right? So I asked the bureaus, when you recommend me, what do you say? And the number one answer was, a good speaker and a nice guy. I want to be a good speaker. I work hard at being a speaker, and I choose to be a nice person. I think that's a choice. I want to be a good person. But I couldn't imagine the vice president of sales for Ford saying, for this year's conference, we need a nice guy. I mean, they want something. So I thought. I was desperate, and I thought, what can I do to rebuild my career and stand out? So I started really getting serious about researching what did it take to stand out? At first, I looked at differentiation, but then along the way, I realized if I slapped every client, I was different. It doesn't mean they'd ever booked me again. So I wanted something meaningful, and to me, that was distinction. Meaningful, meaning there's a uniqueness, in a way that has traction and value for your client. The blinding flash, the obvious, gosh, if I needed that, what's the chance that other people might as well? That's where everything about distinction came from, and it's really what. I'd had a good career as a speaker, but I hadn't had a great career until that. Just being transparent about that. And what I learned, helping other people learn the same thing is what really changed it for me. So to answer your question specifically, Mark, I think the word I would hang my hat on is distinction.

And that's your brand, and your distinction makes you unforgettable.

Darren, any other advice you have for presenters who are truly striving? And again, I appreciate your time because I love people who I hold on a pedestal and I think are rock stars, but are still trying to get better, still honoring the craft, still truly there for the audience, for other people who are serious as well and want to be Unforgettable. What advice would you give them?

Is the advice that Grady gave me. As much as you may admire the work that Zig Ziglar did, or as much as you may admire Brene Brown or Tony Robbins or whoever you want to insert into that. I remember my minister, Joe Hodge, I commented to him after one Sunday service how much I admired that. He, you know, because here I am in FFA giving the same speech to. Easier to find a new audience and write a new speech, right? The old line. And I would go every Sunday to hear him speak, and I said, gosh, I bet you could look down at a crack on the sidewalk and make a sermon about it. We laughed. And then I go in the next Sunday and the sermon is on. I'm walking down the street, I looked at the crack in the sidewalk. And while many of us would think that crack that they put in there is a fault, instead what it lets us do is to maintain our integrity through the seasons of life. And he gave this incredible sermon on the crack of a sidewalk. And so that's what I admire. And my minister here that we share in Las Vegas, Vince, is somebody that I admire so much because of the ability to create these stories. So I. If you were to ask me a single piece, I would think it would be to be constantly looking for good material and good stories. That's yours. We don't need someone else telling another person's story. We joke often about the starfish story. Yeah, right. I mean, that's become the cliche there. But we don't need anybody else telling the starfish story. We don't need anybody else saying, when you point your finger, there are. Or pointing back at you. I mean, we don't need that. But what we do need is for you to have your antenna up and to notice something in everyday life, whether it's a taxi driver or whether it is whatever. And help us illuminate our lives by shining your light on something that can assist us.

Scott McCain. I'm going to ask one more question before we go to our keepers. You are such a good not only storyteller, but a teacher of it. When you look at a story, how do you improve it? Or what do you look for?

Ooh, great question. Two things. One is, can I relate to the story? Can I put myself in that situation? My first book was all business is show business, because I had the greatest side gig in the world for 10 years. I was a movie reviewer, you know, so I'd review these movies and I would see things in terms of how Hollywood would tell a story that then during the weekdays I was trying to do as a speaker and in my business, and I thought, wow. And I learned about story structure and all those kinds of things. But I also learned the most important thing is the structure of the story can be perfect. But if we don't relate to the characters, it doesn't matter in a story, we have to be able to see ourselves in that situation, because if we don't see ourselves in the conflict, then the resolution that the story provides doesn't mean anything to us. If we don't see ourselves in the conflict, then the resolution has no meaning. So how do you work on your story so that you push down your ego to the point that the audience all of a sudden can see themselves in that situation? Now, was on a webinar yesterday with a guy named Malcolm Jamal Warner, who is an actor most famous for being in Cosby. And he talked about how it had influenced so many families of color to be able to see this very successful family where, you know, dad's a doctor and mom's a lawyer. But one of the things I said was, I think you also have to understand that my mom, living in a county where there was no minorities in our county, none practically would say that her favorite television show was about an African American gynecologist and attorney living in New York City. Because when you're living in. And the reason was not because she could relate to the profession or the locale or the racial ethnic situation. It was because she could relate to the family stories being told. She put herself in the family story. And that was the genius. Despite all the bad things about Bill Cosby later, that was the genius of that story, of that show, is it didn't matter what your ethnic, social, economic background was. You could relate to parents and their kids. We put ourselves in that situation. And I think that's the key to any good story. The second thing is, quickly, is that the story has to mean something. There has to be. You don't just tell the story to be telling. Look what happened to me, right? The moral of the story of Taxideri, for example, is that this one person, by being distinctive, has created this business that is impervious to the pressure that Uber is presenting to everybody else in his industry. And just like he did that with Uber, you could do that with, if you're a retailer, with Amazon or with Walmart or if you are Apple, that you can protect yourself against whoever else is in a garage trying to come up with Something to put you out of business like you did with IBM, all of those things. There has to be a moral to the story, and that has to be crystal clear.

Mark Brown, we just got an education. It's going to take us as long to recap the keepers as it is to do the podcast.

We got schooled by the corporate educator in residence at High Point University.

Man. Wow. You guys are the best. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. And if you're getting my guesses for.

This one, Darren, take your breath and look that over. If you're listening to this and you love what he was just telling about stories, you might check out our episode 32 where we talk about characters and how to create your characters and let us see them, feel them, and hear them. Check out episode 32. All right, Mark Brown, what do we got for Scott McCain? Keepers?

Early advice he got was to use your instrument, in his case, his voice. Well, but do this always answer the question the audience is asking before they make meet you.

Keeper.

It's hard to be confident in yourself if you're not confident in your material. And the follow up Keeper is. He says, I want my niche to be my material and to be me.

Get this.

The excellent, the unforgettable, the distinctive. Scott McCain says, I try something new for every speech and I work on it, I rehearse it, I make it flow, and I perfect it. Stage time, Stage time. Stage time. It says, you don't bring your answers to audiences. Haven't yet defined the questions. Don't bring your answers to audiences that haven't defined the questions. And get this, if we don't see ourselves in the conflict, the resolution is meaningless. Your story must mean something.

Wow.

Just heavy. Thank you so much, Scott McCain. Get the audience to see themselves in the story. And man, I'm telling you one last thought. You can't deliver cookie cutter presentations. In that case, you're just acting.

Thanks, Scott. Thanks, guys.

He also mentioned that the audiences now are so savvy, you can sniff out phonies for miles.

I love that one. Thank you, man.

Yeah, Scott McCain, how do we get.

Ahold of Scott later on? Darren, if you want to get to know Scott, we have to work with you. Or what do we do, Scott, to.

Get hold of you? Oh, it's really Easy. It's Scott McCain, but it's spelled M C K A I N dot com. Just Scott McCain dot com has all my info. I'm real active on social media, so Scott McCain on Twitter or find me on Facebook, LinkedIn. Love being active on social media, I. That's me writing every one of those tweets. So would love to connect.

That's cool. And you got to get his book Iconic. I loved Iconic.

Thank you, thank you.

I remember coming up to you after service once and saying, yeah, I read it and I talked about the story from the Valley at the Green Valley Ranch. And you're like, wow, you really did.

Read it because that's at the end of the book.

Yeah, that's the only chapter I read. But you know, just kidding, you know, isn't it funny?

I mean, it's like that writing is so different from what we do with speaking because we get instant response from the audience. Right. We know if a story is working and how to work on it because we're getting this. But writing is kind of like the speaking in your bedroom to a recorder you don't know and you put it out there. So it is so gratifying when somebody likes what you've written and it goes from there.

Oh, it was great. I'm dyslexic. I don't even like to read, but I know I need to force myself. So most of my books are audible. So the fact that I went and got it and then I was like, this is great. So if you're listening to this and you're in business, you're trying to be distinctive, gotta check out the book Iconic Scott McCain, thank you so much for letting us tap into your wisdom and your experience. Mark Brown, take us home.

Hey listen friends, stay tuned because every single week you hang with us, you learn how to become unforgettable. Darren, I'll catch you next week on the next Unforgettable Presentations podcast.

See you then.

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