Ep. 35 How to Maximize Your Influence with Mark Sanborn

All right.

Hey, Mark Brown. I am so pumped. One of my heroes from the beginning in the 1990s. This guy is a mentor. He is so classy. He has so much poise and so much confidence. But Mark, one of the things I love about Mark Sanborn is he makes his audience think.

Definitely. And you know what? I can tell he's classy because you went and got a collared shirt just to spend time with this man who I've known has come. I've known. I've got to know him. I got to respect him. I had the honor of being the NSA Youth Conference chair when his son Hunter was in the group. And, man, his son is a reflection of him. All class, all content. I can't wait to meet this man. Let's do it, brother.

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

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

And Darren lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time. Stage time. Stage time.

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

Darren Lacroix. Today we have the honor, the joy and the privilege of spending a few minutes with the inimitable csp, CPAE hall of Fame and all around nice guy, Mark Sanborn. Hey, Mark, how you doing today, man?

I'm great. Thanks for having me. Two of my great friends in the business. Darren, I've known you longer, I think, than I've known my wife. I think you and I met in the early 90s, and then I met Darla in the mid-90s. And Mark, you're right. My. My son Hunter was a youth counselor, but my son Jack, I believe was also in the program at the time.

Yeah. 2015, Washington, DC. Yeah. When you and Mark Ferenbruck were co hosts, co emcees that night. I remember that. Yeah.

Jack went on to become a rapper. I don't know if you know that.

I did not know that. Wow. I won't even try. I won't even begin. I'll let your son do what he does. That's great, man.

Mark Sanborn, thanks for joining us. You have been a hero to mine since the very beginning. And you just have such class and important poise on stage, but you really make the audience think and your brilliance comes through. And there are a lot of smart people out there, but having the ability to bring that across on stage. And of course, you're known for the Fred factor and the famous Fred story. I do want to get into that, but. Mark Samborn, welcome.

Thank you. Thank you. Well, you know, I appreciate you saying that because you have to decide at some point in your speaking career what it is you want to be known for. And I do like to make people think. I like to make sure they have a good time, that they laugh, that they experience positive emotion, and that they have an engaging and an unforgettable experience. But really the only proof that you have that someone is truly listening to you is when you make them think, even if they disagree. And I think that before I forget to say this, that too often speakers think the goal is agreement. I think the goal is getting people to think. And you can't disagree with something a speaker has said unless you've really thought about it.

Hmm. Great point.

That's wisdom right there. I gotta write that down.

Hey, Mark Sanboren, what's your story? How did you come into the speaking world?

Well, I know you recently had my great friend Scott McCain. He and I have known each other for a very long time because we have similar stories. We both came up through FFA, Future Farmers of America and 4H. He was a national officer a few years before me because he's much older, 20 years older. We were both national officers, and then we both started speaking professionally again. He was a few years ahead of me, but basically my first speech contest when I was 10 years old, I did so badly and was so humiliated that I decided I wanted to learn how to be effective at public speaking. And it took me many years to kind of realize that if I had done okay, you know, if I had finished second or third or just not embarrassed myself, I might be an engineer or a lawyer or something very different today. One of the things I like to share with audiences is that we enjoy success, but we learn most from failure, because failure has a bigger emotional component. It makes us pay attention. So I thought, you know what? I don't ever want to stand in front of a bunch of people, look like an idiot again. Although my friends and wife might debate whether I've done that. So that's really what got me interested. And I entered speech competitions and eventually, after a little time in sales and marketing, started speaking full time at the ripe old age of 27. The good news is, back then, they hadn't invented videotapes yet. You were hired on the basis of audio cassette tapes. They would listen to a presentation and then they would hire you, and then when you showed up, they would faint when they realized you were 10 years younger than the average audience member. But I learned something else. As long as you deliver, they don't care how old you are.

I gotta tell you, Mark, something you just said stuck with me. You said at the age of 10, you made a decision to develop as a speaker. I gotta be honest with you, when I'm 10 years old, I'm playing marbles with my friends, I'm hanging out in the street chasing a soccer ball or something. At 10 years old, I'm not thinking I'm going to develop myself into a speaker. You seem to be so many light years ahead of yourself with that mindset. Where did that come from at age 10?

I'm not exactly sure. The truth is, I was an overweight kid with no athletic ability who did well in school, which is a trifecta for getting beat up. I mean, I did not. You were out in the street having fun. I was out in the street getting my ass kicked. And so I decided I needed a sport that I could think my way through. And for me, that really was a big part of what public speaking was, because it was an intellectual exercise, you know, and of course, obviously, there's more than just the intellectual part. But what really kind of hooked me wasn't just entering the contest and realizing I wanted to learn how to speak, but two other very important realizations. The first is I saw Aug Mandino live in Akron, Ohio, when I was 16. I drove an hour and 10 minutes, which was no small thing for a farm boy to drive from rural northeast Ohio to the big city of Akron and park and go in to hear a professional speaker. But it was that day that I realized people made a living at speaking, that it wasn't just something you did for fun or as part of your job, but that you could make a living. And the second thing, and it was an epiphany that came just a little later, is that in leadership, your ability to communicate well is a critical skill. It's not the only skill, but in some regards, it may be the most important skill, because everything starts from that, you know, your ability to capture the imagination and to elicit cooperation and to cast a vision. And because of my interest in leadership, which kind of parallel processed or tracked my interest in speaking, you know, I went on to leadership positions in associations and other places. So the two really complemented each other. Well.

That's a pretty awesome. 10 years old. You see it at 16, you make the effort to go see the great Augmentino. And then at 16, I'm playing soccer for my high school. At 16, I'm sporty. Now I'm doing drama. I'm learning to sing better. I am noticing girls and you're thinking, I could make a living at this. And 11 years later, you build yourself and then you make that leap. Last question.

Just for the record, I noticed girls too. They just didn't notice you back.

Touche, Mark. You know, the thing is, knowing you now, it's kind of hard to see you as the little fat kid with all the brains. I mean, you just seem. You were such a classy man. You were so smooth. You never seem flustered. You communicate so well. But here you are six. You see that they could make a living doing this. With all your growth and development as a leader and a communicator, did you have in mind in 10, 15 years, that's going to be me?

Unequivocally, I became a member of NSA while I was still in college. I went to my first NSA event in St. Louis. I think maybe I was a sophomore at Ohio State. Now, the method to my madness was I was not a full time speaker. I was speaking part time. After dinner. For 100, 120 $550, I would do a high school commencement for whatever they had as an honorarium. But I have always lived by the belief that it's better to learn your craft before you try to monetize it. So I went to NSA years before I went full time in speaking. I didn't do the burn the bridges and become so desperate that you have to eke your way to make a living. I spent seven or so years in sales and marketing, had a corporate job, had a big expense account. And also, in addition to not having that stress of how am I going to pay the bills, I also got some direct experience in corporate America, in business. And I think that's so important because what most people don't realize is the most credibility comes not from being the best speaker, but from your experience. I've heard very, very experienced CEOs that were just mediocre speakers that just killed it because you could tell they knew what they were talking about. And then the other end of the spectrum is that speaker who's really glib and has a good routine, but you can tell it's from books and observation and secondhand experience. So being a practitioner of what you speak about or having been a practitioner is as important as how you speak about it.

Wow, I love that it's better to learn your craft before you try to monetize it. Any thoughts on that, Darren?

Yeah, I just love that you talked about being the practitioner.

Well, and, you know, there's one other. One other story back, and this is a long time ago. I had a website very early on, back when websites were first available. And one of the questions I got asked by other speakers is, are you getting booked through your website? And I said, no, not yet. And they said, then why do you have a website? And I said, because someday that's how people are going to book us and we need to know how to do it before. In other words, I didn't want to be playing catch up. That's another example of how you want to learn the skill early so that you can capitalize on it before everybody else. Yeah.

And I just love the practitioner part, too, because we see Mark and I especially emerging speakers coming through Toastmasters or not coming through Toastmasters, and they see Tony Robbins or Zig Ziglar or something early on, and they want to be that. And they're up there regurgitating other people's experience, and they just. They just. They haven't lived it yet. Like, you gotta. You gotta be it to share it first. And I just think that's a huge mistake. So thanks for reiterating that. It's so, so important.

Well, Danny Cox, he was a dear friend of many, many years. He said something I'll never forget. He said, a great speaker is someone who has lived their life fully and is merely recording on their. And that is, to me, here's the great irony. This is true confession time. I think I was all of 22 when I put that on my brochure, which begged the question, so how is it at 22, you've lived your life fully and you're reporting on the findings? But at least I embraced the spirit. It was a bit of a hoax in terms of having lived life very fully so far. But that's ultimately what we're trying to do, is we're reporting on our findings. Yeah. You know, I know my buddy McCain. He and I have talked about this, and I think you might have covered it in your podcast. But Scott once pointed out that people don't really, no matter how nice the audience is, they don't care what you've done. They want to know what you've learned from what you've done. I take that a step further and say they don't even care what you learned about what you did. They care about what they can learn. From what you learned, you have to begin with, experience might make you interesting, but it doesn't make you informative. What did you do? What did you learn? And most importantly, and this is what makes you relevant, that's what makes you unforgettable is being relevant. What did you learn that they can learn?

Well, you know, Mark, I would suggest to you that it wasn't a total hoax. Because if you're age 10 and you're viewing this idea of speaking well as being important, entering all these contests, that by the time you're 22, you have lived the short life you've lived, you have lived that as fully as you can or could have, and in the process have found some nuggets that you have learned from that you can impart well, because you built the skill. So I don't think it's a total hoax. Looking back, I think you were beginning to find the value of everything you've learned for the last 12 years, that short time span. But did I live that fully? And what can I take from that 12 years to impart to others that makes you then become involved in marketing and leadership. And at 27, going full time, that's a short period of time to do that well, to have the large expense account, it's a short time to do all that. So you really had lived fully from early on. I think there are lessons here for emerging speakers. If we begin to live fully and not just learn the lessons and craft the skill, I can tell a great story. But what do you have as value for the audience that you can deliver and over deliver for them that'll enrich their life, change the way they think? That's gold right there, Mark. That is absolute gold.

You're very kind and you know, you really bring up another point. I was kidding around just to how full of myself I was at 27. But here's the reality. I was speaking a lot to high school and college students. So as you mentioned, all things being relative, I did have something to say to a high school student or to a college student or someone in student leadership. Now, I didn't have much to say at 22 to a 35 year old account executive or a middle level manager. And I think that that goes back to the idea that you have to know who you're credible with, what is the audience you're most credible with. And as long as you pick the right audience, it doesn't matter nearly as much how old you are, what you've done as it does what you've learned. Relative to your audience.

And we have at the Verve church. Mark, you familiar with that? The. The idea of live a life worth watching? It's one of the series they do. And I think that's what we need to remember to do is live that life and then go report on it, make some more mistakes, and then go report on it. And Mark Brown, check this out. This is brilliance from Mark Sanborn. Okay? This is like something you've got to almost have a drum roll for. He says, fear nothing but to waste the present moment.

That's carpe diem Reloaded.

Bam. Well, yeah, I learned that from Fred, indirectly. Fred Shea, my postal carrier. Because when I wrote the book the Fred Factor, I interviewed him because I knew what he did and I knew how he did it, but I didn't necessarily know why. And I'm always interested in what motivates people. And I said to Fred, I said, what? You know, what motivates you? And he talked about six different things, but the one thing he said, he said, you know, I go to bed at night and only worry about one thing. And that is, did I waste any of the day I just finished. And that really struck me as profound because what he was saying is, you know, make the most of every moment he didn't. You know, I say, I'm not opposed to goal setting or strategic planning or any of that, but to be really engaged in the moment is the highest art in life. It's the best way we have to assure our futures, and so are. And now we're sleepwalking. We're right in the middle of. And I don't know when this podcast will air, but we're probably still going to be in the middle of COVID 19. And it could be three weeks, four weeks, five weeks, two months, three months, I don't know. But every day when I wake up, I don't think beyond the day. Oh, conceptually, I think about upcoming things. My son's graduation, which is now virtual from college, instead of in person, estimated payroll tax, I think about those things. But I don't go beyond the day, because if I do and I go, oh, holy moly's, even if give up shelter in place, it's still 23 days. That's really discouraging. It's really disheartening. Somebody, somebody well known, but not well enough known for me to remember their name, said, live your days in airtight compartments. And I've become much more focused on the day now that we're in this limited situation than I was when we had full freedom and mobility.

Mark, I gotta ask you real quickly, you talk about living better day, and I know I'm gonna shift gears quickly here, but I gotta ask you, honestly, as a professional speaker, during this season, we all are seeing the business pretty much die. And how do you encourage other presenters to stay sharp and stay ready and to stay active so they can be as unforgettable as Mark Sanborn, even during this difficult, how would you say to them?

Well, first, I have no idea what this profession is going to look like after we're through it. There are going to be some changes. And of course, the reality is that the best businesses, the most successful businesses, are usually a response to a newfound pain. I think that perhaps the kind of speaking we've done, I'm a keynoter, so my typical audience would be 500 to 5,000. I think the odds are pretty good that we're going to be more reticent to have large meetings, at least for the foreseeable future. But what's not going to change is that any speaker or author or coach is about conveying ideas that will benefit the listener, the audience. And when I speak to my clients, and I've been doing webinars with my leadership clients about what should they be doing now? I'm not predicting the future, but I am saying that you've got to think in terms of this. How can I make my presence and future client more successful than they would have been had they not done business with me? And so maybe the obvious example would be webinars over live presentations or smaller groups over larger groups, or some technology that displaces traditional presenting or the old technologies like ebooks and print books and other things that people use to get ideas. I'm not sure how it's all going to meld together, but I'm as encouraged by the potential changes as I am discouraged by what's probably ending. The good news is nothing's set in stone. And I know that there are a lot of people who are going to figure out how to do this better than it's been done before. We rarely go backwards in history, and if we do, it's usually only for a short period of time. This will allow us to leapfrog forward once we get our bearing.

And I think those people who know and value what Mark Sanborn brings will keep consulting with him. This is my opinion.

Well, I hope so.

Yeah, I'm sure you do. And your family.

Can't always trust one man's opinion.

Was that Darren?

I said you can't always trust one man's opinion, you know?

Well, I think I need to offer them a guarantee. There you go.

And Mark, you're known for the Fred Factor, your book, and the famous Fred story. Where did that story come from? How did you bring that to light or tell us the story behind the story that makes that story unforgettable and part of your brand?

Yeah, I moved to Denver back in 1987. I bought my first house in 1988, and that's where I met Fred. Fred was my real life postal carrier. There's nothing about that story that's fabricated or made up. But at the time, I was doing contract training for career track and I was teaching, among other courses, Tom Peters in Search of Excellence. And one of the things that Tom was and still is very good at is the illustration, the story, you know, the interesting anecdote. And so when I met Fred and I just basically paid attention, I realized that I could basically do an entire module around how he took this very simple job of delivering in the mail and made it artistry. And so I made it part of my speech, I made it part of my seminar, and then later I wrote the book. Now, it's been the most successful book that I've written, and I'm grateful for that. It sold somewhere around a little over a million in the US and another million or so internationally. And 10 or 15 years ago, one of the questions I was asked is, why don't you just make your business about the Fred fact? Why don't you just hook your wagon to that rocket and make that your career? And I said, because someday the Fred Factor is going to be old news. I don't care how compelling the story is, it's not going to last 20, 30 years, and I hope to be in the business that long. So I started. Well, I continued doing what I had been doing that was developing my topic expertise and leadership, because that's really my passion. I wrote the Fred Factor as a business philosophy book. Most people think it's a customer service book. I always say, as long as you buy it, I don't care what you do.

I see it.

That's my goal. But I really have always been interested in how people and organizations perform at their best. And to me, that's a question of leadership. So I've written since Fred. I've written six more books. And one of the reasons was I wanted to demonstrate to the marketplace that I had new ideas that would benefit them. I'm getting older. Being an old white male in this business is a bit of a liability because this is a flavor of the day business. We want the next best thing. We want diversity and inclusion, and that's great. But I'm a realist. I think my greatest strength is my greatest weakness. 33, 34 years in the business, that's my greatest strength and my greatest weakness. Nobody that runs across my material, unless they're a new meeting planner, is likely to say, oh, that guy, I've never heard of him. They're going to go, oh, yeah, we used him. Heard of them, we saw them, we looked at them, didn't want to use them. And so up until now, it's been my goal to keep producing ideas that I hoped my audience would find valuable and either then buy the book or hire me to speak to them.

And how did that story evolve? Like, how did you know what parts of that story to tell our listeners, our pastors, professional speakers, and corporate presenters? Like, how do we identify it? And then what do you pull out and what do you let go of?

Well, first, I think the actual story about Fred is somewhere between four and six minutes, maybe even a little shy of four. Even though it's a centerpiece story, I think people think it's 12 or 18 minutes. It's not. Now, I refer back to the Fred factor, which, by the way, is corny. I know that when somebody says, you know, that's corny, I'm like, oh, wow, that's a surprise. I hadn't thought about that. And I'm not a big. As you guys know, I'm not big into corny or gimmicky. But corny or gimmicky can be memorable if it's not overdone. And so the Fred fact, the alliteration and the fact that it's about a guy named Fred who turns the ordinary into the extraordinary, it's a great callback. The stories may be four to six minutes, but then, this is what I like about your question. There's a dozen lessons I could pull in that story, but I pull out four because you have to direct your audience to what you want them to think. Now, it's okay if they think more than four. It's okay if on the way home, they say to their co worker, you know what I like to about that Fred guy? He didn't get paid more, but he decided it was worth it to him. If nobody, I mean, they may pull out another principle, but I have four principles. Everybody makes a difference which people think they've heard before. And that's Another trick, and that is say something people think they know and then prove they don't. Because we grew up being told you can make a difference. I'm not saying that. I'm saying you do make a difference, that neutrality is a myth. You make a positive or a negative difference because if you are neutral, people interpret that is indifferent. So I remind people that they have to be intentional about making a positive difference or they may by default make a negative one. It's all built on relationship. Now, that in itself isn't a novel idea, but when was the last time you thought about how somebody that puts mail in your box might build a relationship or make a connection? You know, you can add value to everything you do. What I like about the story, I think the secret sauce of the story is simply that Fred Shay isn't Bill Gates, isn't Warren Buffett, wasn't Steve Jobs. Because you look at those people and you say, they're geniuses. They're wealthy beyond imagination. Of course they can do that. No, he put mail in a box. And if he can bring that kind of value to putting mail in the box, then you and I have no excuse. And I talk about how do you create value in your work? And then finally, the last thing is you've got to reinvent yourself every day, which is to say you've got to stay motivated or else you're not going to motivate the people around you. And, you know, Fred's retired now. We're still in touch. My wife and his wife just left messages for each other recently. We see Fred and his wife a couple three times a year. So this has truly been a friendship for the ages. But the key is to not overdo it. If you make a story too long, and Darren, you know this. In comedy, do as well mark it. The longer the setup, the bigger the punchline. That's why jokes fail. If you got a little punchline, make it a little setup. The longer your story is as a speaker, you better have some really good learning from that story or people are going to go wasted 10 minutes. And by the way, people that aren't good speakers, they try to fill time. They don't try to fill mind, they try to take up space. They don't try to educate. And that's why I think you've got to watch that balance between the stories you tell and the impact that you have of those stories.

Wow, you are giving us a schooling. I love this. Now, quick question. This is just for my own curiosity. What did Fred think of all this fame in your book, I'm just super curious.

I'll tell you. He once said to me, he said it was the most important thing that ever happened to him in his life outside of getting married and raising a family.

Wow.

The beauty of Fred Shea is he never did it or he never did it hoping he'd deliver mail to an author or a speaker. He never did it because he wanted to be Postmaster General. He told me, this is one of my favorite lines. He said, mark, doesn't everybody do their job this way? And I said, fred, if they did, nobody would buy the book. You have no idea. You have no idea how extraordinary you are. But he did it and he's still that kind of person. He did it for this crazy old fashioned idea that it's the right thing to do and that, you know, he wanted to live a life of significance. So he's got more Fred Factor memorabilia than I do. If I only get one, I try to give it to him. If I get two, I keep one, I give one to him. So shirts and water bottles, little pins and logos. He really, it's meant a lot to him and that's very gratifying to me because he deserves the recognition that he's gotten.

That's awesome. And did you ever find out where he learned it from other than just like a natural good upbringing or.

Ah, there's a good question. I actually was in Columbus, Ohio at the airport. He occasionally will appear with me. And this was a few years ago, we were having breakfast, getting ready to fly back to Denver and I said, you know, Fred, I never asked you, but man, you must have had great parents to turn out like you did. And I share this with his permission. He said, I had the most self absorbed, petty parents you can imagine. He said, I knew they wouldn't send me to college, so I started doing odd jobs when I was seven, delivered newspapers, mowed lawns. At 16 they raided my bank account and bought new furniture for the living room. Then he said something I'll never forget for years, told the story and didn't have this information to include. He said, I became who I am not because of, but in spite of. See, he didn't want to be that way. And you know, today we're so cynical. We go, oh, he must have had, you know, his parent, his dad was a pastor and his mother was a school teacher. His father was a missionary. Of course he turned out. Well, no, he didn't have that. Matter of fact, he spent most of his childhood at his grandparents. He didn't have great home life. And his grandparents lived three doors down across the street from my house in Washington Park. And these were all things that I learned over many years being friends with Fred. So that bolsters what is a trademark idea in my work. And that is nobody can prevent you from choosing to be extraordinary. You might not have been taught how, you might not have been encouraged or rewarded or recognized. You actually might have been discouraged. But you can still choose to be extraordinary. And that's the ultimate freedom.

Wow.

Mark, this is one of the things that I love about you that most presenters never take the time to do, and I think it's one of your ninja skills, is that you have this way to take your wisdom and your experience and actually make it practical and easy for people to apply. After your speech, what would you recommend to do that or where did that come from? I just think that's what makes things unforgettable, is when we go do something.

I'm such a left brain wonk. I got a degree in economics and when I was young, I started reading self help books. At an early age I would read Norman Vincent Peale's books and he would make me crazy because he would tell a long story and then at the end of the chapter, I have two points and it took me many years to figure out, people don't remember the points, they remember the stories. So I always say stories are the mental coat pegs people hang ideas on on. And what I did is I just combined my desire to what do I do with how do I learn and remember it. And that's where I started to come up with this idea that when I teach to my clients, I say, pip, premise illustration point. You begin with a premise and that is what is it that you want your listener to understand? But that's unspoken. I hate that idea. Tell people what you're going to tell them. Tell them and tell them what you told them. That's boring. If I tell you what I'm going to tell you, then you go, okay, I'm going to read the newspaper, I'm going to look at my Facebook. Begin with a silent premise and the story engages them. Because a good story's got a little mystery built in. It's like, why is he saying that? Where is that going? And then at the end of the story, and this goes back to what we talked about earlier, you say, this is what I learned. And the audience might learn different things, but these are the four things for me that you want them to take away. I had a Pastor a few years ago that did something and I'd gotten away from it because, you know, sometimes you're so familiar with your career, you just kind of drift away from some of the better things you were doing. This pastor at my church some years ago, he would end every sermon by saying, now here's what I want you to remember Wednesday this week when you think back to what I said and I thought, that's a great idea. You want to make it so simple that even after an hour or 45 minutes or 30 minutes, people go, aha. And so. So now at the end of all my presentations, I have four to six actionable ideas and I make them as simple and easy to do as possible. Will people remember all four or six? Of course not. I just want them to remember one or two. Or if they're taking notes now, they've got four to six ideas they can implement over time. But the call to action I always historically thought was more metaphorical. You know, tell them what you want them to do in the stories. No, be real clear and say, do these things if you want to be more Fred. Like if you want to be better, if you want to be a more effective speaker, a better leader, that's powerful.

Mark, I'm hearing all this great wisdom. I want to ask a question. Have you ever been told you are a visionary?

I like beer and sometimes I do have visions. They're not the kind that would make one a true visionary because you forget after you. No, I'm kinder around. Well, no, I haven't really. Well, tell you what, aspire to that. If somebody was to say that, I'd be flattered. Let me turn the question mark because there is something I wanted to say. I have had on any number of occasions as a speaker or an author, someone come up and say, your speech or your book changed my life. And I am always flattered and I'm always gratified and I'm always quick to say, no, I didn't, my book didn't, my speech didn't. I didn't change your life, you changed your life. I couldn't make my kids take out the garbage when they left it home. When I hear speakers say, I'm out changing lives, you're taking too much credit. You know, that's kind of a God like syndrome. I love to give people ideas they could use to change their lives. I love to encourage them. But I don't change anybody's life except my own. I mean, I do take full responsibility for the good and the bad. That I've done. So to me, it's about giving people the resources they need to change their lives. Because change is an inside job at the end of the day.

Well, I use the word visionary because, again, at age 10, you could see ahead. At 16, you had a plan in place and you got very early on you got a website. Why are you doing that? Because you saw what was coming. So maybe because of your experience and the way you think and you inspire others to think, maybe you were actually seeing or getting a clearer picture of what can be and what you can work towards. And in that sense, you may be visionary, but there's no doubt countless people have taken your words, you've made them think they've made changes, and you continue to do so in a style that I want to touch on very briefly. That's amazing, because I can't picture this fat kid who gets beat up all the time being as calm, as classy, and as confident. Ooh, alliteration. Calm, classy, confident and cool on stage.

The three C's, as we'll call them now, on the spot.

Well, the three Cs, but that's the image I've always seen. I've seen you after a program, signing autographs, always gracious, always calm, always collected. Nothing appears to fluster you. And did you develop this cool style when you were 10, getting your butt kicked every day by the bullies in school? Or how did that become part of. Part of who? Mark Sanborn is a lot of what.

Makes us successful when we're younger, compensating for whatever dysfunctions. I had a friend years ago who was a psychotherapist, and he said he worked with high performance individuals. He said a lot of what drove their high performance was neediness and dysfunction. And I said, so isn't that kind of a tough job? Because if you cure them, then maybe they won't be high performance anymore. And I was only kind of half kidding around about that. But I think one of the things you do with maturity is even if the motivation, even if the fuel you had for becoming who you are wasn't maybe all that healthy, you can make it healthy by acknowledging that and say, you know, I don't have to do it anymore to prove I'm not a geek and nerd and that I don't deserve to get beat up on the school bus. And you simply go, and this is the problem if you're not introspective. And this is my book, the Potential Principle. A lot of leaders live in the outer world. And they do everything right and they succeed, but they never develop the depth of the inner world that helps them understand what sustains them and why they do it. And when I work with pastors, pastors, and again, I'm generalizing a bit, they have this amazing inner world of faith and spirituality and theology. They grapple with the big questions of life. But if you want to help them, help them give a better speech or hold a better staff meeting or communicate better in an email. And what I realized is the best practice. Performers are people that have a rich inner and outer life. They have the thinking and introspection skills coupled with the learning and the performing skills. And those are the four quadrants in a very brief explanation of what I call the potential matrix. So certainly I had a lot to prove when I was younger and I was dealing with those issues and our worth. Ultimately, we don't want to get into theology, but our worth shouldn't be based on what we do. But I'm just grateful that I have been able to. To take whatever my background was and do some, I hope, good and positive things for other people.

And one of my other questions that I just can't leave without asking you about is your humor. You have this understated delivery style and your politics joke. I love your politics joke. Like that flipping kills me. I don't know if you choose to share that or not. I will let you decide on that. But where does your sense of humor come from or the humor that you develop on stage because you just have this like, bam. You don't see it coming?

Well, oddly, I didn't have as much fun and use as much humor probably until the second half of my career. I was a little late to the party. You know, I was always focused on content giving people. I mean, I had some humor, but it, it was pretty sparse. And when I started having more fun because one on one, people that know me well, I don't think people that don't know me would get this, but I pranks and I have a very warped sense of humor. And then when I had sons, it was like, thank you, God. Now I got two warped boys that I can share that sense of humor with. But I started having more fun. And when I started having more fun, the humor just became kind of natural. And there was a point where I just. And I want to be careful how I said this. I never want to intentionally offend. But anymore audience members get up in the morning looking to be offended. Doesn't matter what you do, you're going to wear something that's going to offend them or you're going to have your hair parted on the wrong side or you're going to look like an ex husband or an ex wife. So I just quit worrying about offending people. I didn't try to offend people, but I just. If I thought it was a funny idea, I shared it. We've become so polarized that it's taken a toll on humor. I'm not a stand up Darren, you understand? Stand up. And Mark, did you ever do stand up?

No, I sit down a lot. I sit down.

Sit down comic mostly around the dinner table. And if they laughed, well, I think we've made it hard to have fun and I think we need to lighten up a little bit. I think the best humor makes fun of ourselves. You know, people in the COVID thing, they go, hey, do you have any time next week? I go, let me look at my calendar. Let's see, I've got some time from now till 2023. Because that question just cracks me up. I mean, I know they're being polite, but it's like, yeah, let's see, I got a little time, so I just work. I love humor. I mean, I think funny and anyone that knows me will attest to, not always humorously, but I do think funny.

So to those presenters and those emerging presenters, those pastors who have a serious message and they want people to know who God is or I've got this great content. Your advice to them regarding including making humor a part of their entire presentation would be in one sentence.

Well, I'm going to quote Kurt Vonnegut. You know, Kurt Vonnegut wrote some classics and his brother, I guess, was a pretty bad artist. And his brother had sent him a drawing or a painting to look at. And Vonnegut replied to his brother, and I paraphrase just a bit, he said, remember, brother, what makes a picture great isn't its picture ness but its humanness. And I thought that was great advice for art and life. What makes a speech great isn't its speechness, it's its humanness. What makes art great, isn't it its artness? It's humanness. And that is we connect. And for a pastor or a speaker, and this is a mistake we all make because when we start speaking, we want to impress people. But impressing people is a head game and it changes what they think of us. I now want to influence people and influencing people is a behavioral group game. Impressing people is a short. There's very Little upside. The only people you should really worry about what they think about you is your friends and family, the people that know you well. But influence is about being the kind of person that other people want to be like, not because of your titles or your accolades or your possessions, but because of your character and your ideas. So I think we've. And that's what humor does for pastors. I love pastors that admit that they. They're imperfect. My best friend, pastor, who passed away a few years ago, he was always great. He tells a story that anyone that attended church still remembers about. He and his wife got in a fight and she kicked him out, made him walk alongside the road, and she drove slowly and made him follow her. And as he's doing this parishioner, remember, the church drives by and rolls the window down and says, pastor, do you need a ride? Well, isn't that great? Because you're thinking, I bet the pastor never fights with his spouse. And then you go, of course he did. And that's why you love the guy. It isn't like he was perfect. It's that he acknowledged the imperfection of life and then offered what he learned from it and how you could learn from it, too.

Well, Mark, if I grew up, I want to be a lot like you. If I grew up.

This is a great profession. And regardless what changes in the business, the relationships we've developed over the. The last 20, 30 years, they're not going to change. Well, the good news is we can all figure this out together.

And Mark, who do you think's unforgettable as a presenter who does Mark Sanborn appreciate?

Well, knowing I was going to do this podcast, I thought back. National Speakers Association. A few years ago, Immaculate Illibagiza spoke. She wrote a book called Left to Tell. She was a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, and she survived in incredible circumstances and despite incredible odds and had her family murdered and speaks about forgiveness and redemption. And it's one of the most memorable speeches I've ever heard. I'm 61, and I can tell you that to see someone who a had worked through, a lot of speakers that have issues make the mistake of speaking about the issue before they work through it. And I call it group therapy, where you kind of throw something out there like, well, I'm cool with the fact that I'm fill in the blank or that I had this happen. You can tell from the nonverbal and the tone of voice that they're really still not at peace with it. And she was totally at Peace. And she exemplified maybe the hardest thing we do in this life. And that is not just how do we forgive people who have slighted us, but how do we forgive people that have injured us and that have taken us and loved ones from us. And the emotional impact of that speech for me was unforgettable. I'll never forget Jamie Clark, you know, the mountaineer. I think Jamie's from Canada, isn't he? Do you guys know Jamie? I think so. Jamie, I heard him speak years ago and he talked about what it was like to freeze to death. And I never saw anyone do this before. He went through the stages where he ended up on stage in a kind of a fetal position, narrating what it feels like when you're freezing to death. And I thought, you know, we talk about using gestures appropriately. Here was a guy, and I can still remember in my mind's eye him on that stage, still speaking to the audience. And again, he was being the story. He wasn't telling the story. And I think of Jennifer James. I've never met Jennifer James. She's an anthropologist. I heard her once on a conference, leadership conference. And her ideas were so intriguing that I've never forgotten her presentation because she. She impacted me with her ideas. She was a great presenter, but it was her ideas. So you've got that emotional impact of immaculate. You've got the experience of a Jamie Clark, and then you've got the intellectual impact of a Jennifer James. And those are the kinds of things that, to me, are unforgettable.

Wow, man. Thank you so much, Mark. I have one comment before I go back to Darren. It's this. I love the that fact. Fact that none of the names you mentioned would be the popular, well known, marquee speakers many of us would expect. Especially since you are so well known in NSA and you know, all these greats, you didn't go for great names. You went for concepts that every speaker needs to understand and how they were depicted well by the speaker. So, Mark, thank you for that. I really appreciate that. Darren.

I think I'm smarter than I was 47 minutes ago. This is awesome. That's what I love about Mark Sanborn. Mark Sanborn, you make us all better. A friend, a mentor, an unforgettable presenter. And one of the things we do at the end of the podcast is we recap the brilliance. We might need another 40 minutes or so to go over that. Usually Mark just keeps track, but I was like, ooh, I hope Mark got that one. Ooh, I hope Mark got that One. So as Mark gathers his thought, Mark Sanborg. Where would anyone go to reach out to you or connect with you or follow you or hire you for in 2023, when we start again?

Marksandborn.com all things Mark Sanborn are connected to it, from Twitter, to Facebook, to LinkedIn, to blogs and to 70 plus videos. So M A R K S a n B o r n marksandborn.com very soon.

And you gotta check out his demo video. Any presenter watches this demo video. I love it. It's like a little mini movie. Really, really well done. So, Mark Brown, what are our keepers?

Keepers? Deep breath. Okay. You can't disagree with someone until you've thought about what they said. We enjoy success, but we learn from failure in leadership. The ability to communicate is a critical skill. My favorite. It's better to learn your craft before you try to monetize it. I'll say it again. It's better to learn your craft before you try to monetize it. And ask yourself, to what audience am I most credible? To what audience am I most credible? I love this. Corny or gimmicky can be effective if it's not overdone. Oh, don't fill time, fill minds. Don't fill time, fill minds. You can choose to be extraordinary. Last two, don't impress influence. And remember that stories are the mental coat pegs that people hang ideas on.

All right, Mark, you missed a few.

Okay, go for it.

We've got to extend. This is the extended replay. Say something they think they know and then prove they don't. Oh, my gosh. That's awesome. The humanness. It's not the speechness, it's the humanness. And then be the practitioner. First, be the practitioner of what you're talking about. I love that. Love that. And then we had respond to the newfound pain. Like, if there's anything. Presenters and people who are professionals and entrepreneurs, small business owners right now respond to the newfound pain. We see people out there who own clothing shops and now they're making masks. My nephew's the company that he works for. He's an engineer for. They're making the plastic pellets that allow plastic companies to make plastic things for. I also love this. This is probably my biggest keeper. What will they remember on Wednesday?

One last thought. To be unforgettable. Have a rich inner life and a rich outer life as well. Mark, I can't thank you enough for all this wisdom, my friend. I've thoroughly enjoyed spending some time with you and I'm a better man for it. Darren.

All right, I'm going to one up you with another. Mark Sanborn, ism.

This is awesome.

We've never done this before. Mark Sanborn, just so you know, it's not what you did, but what you learned from what you did. But what they learned from what you learned from what you did.

That's great. It's not.

Not what you did. Not what. Go ahead, Mark.

I said you guys are great at summarizing and many other things too, but I'm very gratified to listen to that recap. Thank you.

Very cool.

Well, I'll give you. You can listen again and again until 2023 and you're back on stage. Mark Sanborn, thank you for being so kind and sharing your wisdom with us. We're thrilled.

Hey, Mark, it was a pleasure. It was a joy. Again, thank you for everything. We can't wait to hear you again back be it live, be it on video. But maybe we'll see you on stage in 2023. Bye y'. All.

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