Ep. 49 Where To Find The Gold In Your Life

Hey there, Marc Brown. You know what one of the most common questions we get is? I don't have any stories. What do I say? And I think a lot of people miss the gold in their life that's sitting there waiting for them to strike that vein, but they don't know where to look. They don't know what to look for. And then when they find it, what do I do with it? I remember my mentor. His name was Dan Dave Fitzgerald. And when we taught the humor boot camp together, he used to say, and I quote, there's gold and them there ills.

Oh, I love that. I can't wait to share this with our audience. Let's do it, Darren.

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

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

And Darren Lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time. Stage time. Stage time.

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

I gotta laugh, Darren, because in the I'm Jamaican. You know that, right? So I didn't hear too many cowboy stories growing up, but I remember, I don't know where her listing from, but some guy's going, we're going west. There's gold in them thar hills. And then you take that and you say, gold in them there ills. People are going, what?

Yeah, it was the setup for finding the comedy and the humor, but it's also the same setup for finding that gold in your life that you don't.

Know where to look.

How do you mine define your life, Mark Brown?

Well, you know what I have found? I have different techniques. I go back to certain parts of my life, I call it the seasons of my life, and I look for my experiences. What I remember and what I find is very often when I go back, there are things I don't really want to think about or talk about because they weren't the best experiences. But as I get older and grayer, I've learned that sometimes those not so much fun experiences really have value for the audience because I see the path my life has taken and how those experiences have helped me to grow as a person, you know, and that's one way I know I can find stories and value from those seasons of my life.

Yeah, the talk is I love Craig Valentine where he says, you know that dark place in your Life, that place you don't want to go. That's where the vein is. Why? Because when we're on stage, it's not like how good of our talents are we, but it's how our talents match the depth of our mining from our life and that transformation we have that we then transfer the story and the lesson to the audience. So the more we're willing to be authentic and go deeper, the more we're going to be able to help our audience. Well, what does an event planner want? Wants the person who's going to help their audience, that they're different somehow because of the perspective that you landed in their lap.

Yeah. It's funny you say that. One of my mantras is authenticity plus vulnerability equals credibility. And I recall Craig Valentine, our friend, the 1999 world champion, he had said, go to the place you don't want to go. Go to the part of your life you do not want to go, because there's gold there, which reinforces Dave's idea. There's gold in them. There ills the hard parts. The difficult things that you go through actually have gold because lessons come from those experiences. And if we're honest and we're vulnerable about it and authentic, that gives us credibility to share what we have experienced with the audience. Because I learned this a long time ago, you and I don't know what the audience is going through, but every so often we share a story from our life. Maybe a difficult story, a hard story, a painful story. It resonates and connects with the audience. They won't tell you, but they'll see value in it and they'll use it. And it could transform how they think and how they live.

Yeah. The deeper we go, I think the more value we can offer. So we've still got to take that story and work with it and pull the lesson out and tell it. But we're talking about, like, step one, mining your life. And we're saying, go to those places you don't want to go to. Thank you, Craig Valentine. Just such brilliant wisdom. And, Mark, I remember when I was standing there, Reader's Digest New York, working with you on my championship speech, you said I was talking about failure and falling forward. That was kind of the metaphor, the lesson from my life. But you said, are there any more tragedies from your life? Are there any more painful moments in your life that we could use as an example? And I think that's what we're trying to help people do. What's that pain in your life? I love what Michael Hague says. He says, follow the pain.

Follow the pain.

You got a couple of great quotes from him there too.

Michael Hague, one of our faculty members at stagetime, is a story master. I mean, he's a script consultant in Hollywood and he wrote the book on storytelling. And he says, in developing your stories, look for those events in your own life that brought you pain, struggle and fear. Wow. So he tells us to look for that because there's value there. And he says if there are times you failed, you fall on your face. Does that sound familiar to you, Darren? Falling on your face? He says, but you suffer the consequence of your thoughtless actions. He says, go deeper into the pain of those examples and experiences. Here's why I love this, he says, because your audience will identify with your faults and weaknesses and they'll connect with you and your vulnerability. Back to what I said. Authenticity and vulnerability equals credibility. And Michael says, find that pain and then go deeper into it because that's a point of connection. The thing is though, Darren, in my experience, a lot of us don't want to go there. What do you say to that?

I say I don't blame you. I don't want to go there either. However, that's where the gold is. That's where the gold is. You have gold in your life and maybe you haven't searched for it. Maybe you need a coach. You and Jennifer Leone, our friend and world class coach from Australia, you guys have that ninja skill about going into someone's life and pulling that out, just like Michael Hague has that skill as well and he knows the questions to ask. That's why I think there's a huge value in finding a coach, the right coach for you to go deeper, to help you dig it out. Because sometimes we can't mine our own lives the way someone else can. Why? Because they're a skilled surgeon with those questions to kind of mm, mm, mm, bam. And I remember when you asked me those questions and you were digging it out of me, you said, what? You know, what were some of the failures in your life? And I, I thought about it, I went back and forth, I said, well, I used to tell this story about my subway failure. And you said, well, go ahead. And so I had to think about it for a second, go back to a routine I used to do and I told the joke and you, you, Darren, impression. Oh, my gosh.

Gosh, awesome.

But you saw the gold. See, I didn't see the gold. And I think that's part of our problem as presenters trying to do it Ourselves trying to DIY it. Now you can. We're just saying a coach is super helpful in this area, but we're trying to help guide you that way, whether you get a coach or you do it yourself. But when you said that now, when I wrote that Judy Carter joke, right, you know, I went through one of her exercises right out of the book, Stand Up Comedy. The book. And she said the same thing. It's the same principle. Whether it's comedy or storytelling, we just use it differently. Once we find that gold, a comedian will do this with it as a speaker, we do that with it. As a presenter, a transformational expert, we use it differently, but the same mining technique which is going into your life. So at that moment in time when that was happening, I was not thinking, ooh, this is going to be funny someday. It was painful. I sold a business at a loss. So I didn't default on my loan. It was that or bankruptcy. So I chose that because my brother said, do not declare bankruptcy, because if you do, that never goes off your record. Well, seven years later, no. He said, no, no, no. They asked the question, have you ever declared bankruptcy? I was like, oh, so it never does go away. So that was my struggle, my pain. And here I am with college, loans, business loans, business to pay it off, getting a job as a telemarketer, living at home with mom and dad. That was not a joyous time in my life. That's when I felt like the biggest failure. So how can we encapsulate that? And again, that goes back to what Michael Hague says. People in our audience, when we're willing to go deep, they're going to feel deep.

And it's fun. You say that because you have just broken down in greater detail the pain you felt. You're 35 years old, living with mom and dad, you doubled your debt, and yet you found a way to use that to make a point not only in your contest speech, but also in your comedy routines. And it was not the first time you did that. Matter of fact, in this contest, my goodness. You also told one other story of a night you bombed on stage. Now, I've never been a stand up comedian. I will confess to the whole world, that's the one thing I have not yet attempted. That's true. I've not tried stand up. I've done sit down, but not stand up. Okay. And I know, I know bad show. See why I don't do stand up. Okay.

Yes, I do. Yes. I'm not encouraging you, trust me.

But my point is you took that little story and the audience loved it. They laughed, but we didn't initially realize what that feels like for a comedian. To be seen not funny, to be mocked by somebody on stage. It's like everything went wrong. And he said to your mentor, I bombed. I died. They hated me in that moment. I'm going, oh, my gosh. He recalled one simple story. What would it be like for me to bomb, to die, have them hate me? And I can remember when I, as a speaker, bombed. And I called one of my mentors, Morgan MacArthur, 94, world champion, and being a veterinarian, he gave me the old vet metaphor, hey, buddy, get back on the horse. And I shared that story of the pain. Felt like, oh, my gosh, I'm in the wrong line of work. But when you mine your life and find these stories, find these painful experiences and share them, it becomes a tool. Somebody hears your story and say, you know what? I was gonna stay on the ground, but because of what you did, I'm gonna get back on the horse. Thank you for sharing your story, your experience. It inspires me to then move on. So your story of pain, hurt, tragedy, actually helps somebody else to get through a difficult season in their life.

Yeah. So think about it. In my seven, eight minute speech, I tell the subway story, I tell the bombing story. They're both moments. And here's the key with finding the gold in your life, it's usually wrapped around a moment. The story we tell is about the emotional moment where the shift happens, where the pain happens, where you feel the pain. Well, that's where the audience relates to the feeling of their pain. And that's where kind of that connection happens. Going back to what you said, authenticity plus vulnerability equals credibility.

Darren, I gotta take a pause here, because I know as I talk about this, in the last 25 years, I've encountered so many Toastmasters and contestants. And you and I can laugh about this over the years. We go to the Toastmasters World Championship.

And we have a little thing called the score. Yeah, right.

The ddi, for those who are unfamiliar with it, Insider here, the DDI is our running tally of the dead, the dying and the injured in these contest speeches. And I will confess, my perspective is a little different than yours. I went to my first Toastmasters contest finals in 1994, okay, 27 years ago. I only missed two contests in 27 years at that level, not counting semifinals and the old regionals. After a while, I've heard the ddi, Dead, dying, injured, over and over and over again. It got to the point we champs get to sit together and we keep our pens and pads. Okay, who's got. We got three of those in that speech. We got two. We gotta laugh about it. But the point being, pain isn't always dead, dying and injured. As Darren shows from his own story, pain can be the experience. It could be the loss of a loved one. It could be a severed relationship. You know, when someone used you were so sure you were destined to be together. And the heartbreak and what it did to you, that's pain that some people don't want to share. So it isn't always dead, dying and injured. So Toastmasters don't think it has to be cancer or somebody dying for it to be painful. It just has to have an emotional appeal. It's genuine, it's real. That will connect with your audience. And Darren mentioned one of our coaches, Jennifer Leone from Down under in Australia. What he didn't tell you was the time he went to Australia and she sucked him in and made him a nice lunch. Began just talking to Darren, and in her own ninja steel way, she pulled out the scalpel and I'll let Darren finish the story.

It was a few well placed slashes with the scalpel that bam. In moments, she had me back to my youth and I was crying and it was amazing. Just sitting at the lunch table around her family lunch table, and we were just having a conversation and ooh, ooh, there it is. There's your heart right there. Boom, there's your ill. It reminds me too of early in the 90s or mid-90s when I was in NSA, you know, Glenna Salisbury.

Oh, wonderful woman. Yeah.

She said I was just sitting in the audience. It felt like she was saying it right to me. But she said, find the moments in your life where you transformed those life lessons where you were here and this happened and then you were here. That's our job as a speaker, is to help those. Help people with the transformation that we had, those magic moments of our own transformation. Well, they usually are wrapped around a pain, a pain from our life.

Yeah. And again, I want to reinforce this. Please don't get me wrong. Pain need not be someone passing away or dying. That's not always what pain represents. And so many people are afraid to tell. You know, if I don't do something tragic, I won't grip the audience by the heart. But the idea is not to grip them by the heart. The idea is to move them, to connect with them and to give them value from your presentation. And the pain can come in various forms. Like I said, it could be a relationship issue. Your pain could come from being an athlete, playing a sport, and finding yourself on the bench over and over and over again and just, hey, leave me out of it. Hey, dude, I've got my story, which I'm not going to tell on this podcast because I want people to come and hear me give it delivered in person one day. I know what it's like to feel that kind of pain. I also know the pain of having lost a relationship, of having the pain of unrequited love. If you mind your life and use the idea of the seasons of your life, look at your youth through high school or college in that season. What caused you pain in those seasons? And how has that pain and the way you respond to that pain shaped your life? Now? Maybe when you first got your first job, or you were first married, or your first meaningful relationship, what pain arose from those circumstances? What about the pain of being a parent and seeing a child make choices you would never want them to make? And you can't do a thing about that. I know what that's like because I got three kids, right? So pain comes in different ways. It's not just someone's passing. What have I learned from the experience? How did it shape me? What was the moment that I turned? Only you can answer those questions. But when you come to terms with that, when you mind your life and find the goal, when that nugget pops up, if you have a heart for your audience, you almost can't help but share that. As Darren said earlier, you've got to work on the story and craft it and wordsmith it. But, oh, that's a nugget of gold your audience needs to hear. And as I've always said, your life tells a story, and there's someone out there who needs to hear it. They need that nugget of gold. You hand that to them, you will literally enrich them by giving that nugget of gold that you have mined from your life.

Yeah. One of the cool things is you mine that. It takes time and effort. And again, often we don't want to go there, but when we do and we find that nugget, the cool thing is you can give that nugget to every audience. Every time you get on stage, it multiplies. So that work is minimized. And when you're on stage, it multiplies. So you're taking that time and. And trust us, it's not easy. You don't just, oh, here's A pain for my life. Boom. It's challenging, but a lot of the pros make it look so easy. So that painful place is where the gold lies. And then we've got to dig out what's the lesson, what's the story? How do we bring this there? How's the emotion? What's the shift? What causes the shift? Who was the mentor? What was the lesson learned? What's that foundational phrase we're focusing today in this episode, episode 49, about the pain, about finding the gold in the pain.

Now, there is a caution, though, Darren, regarding that. I love the idea of that gold nugget being the gift that keeps on giving. But some people say, okay, I've got to find the deepest pain in my life, and if I share that, then the audience is going to connect with me and then they're going to understand my pain and then they're going to sympathize, they're going to empathize. I'm going to have the audience in the palm of my hand. But sometimes you go for that really, really deep pain. You go to that really dark place. I gotta be honest. I've heard and I've seen people go there, but they weren't ready to go there because they went there and couldn't find their way back. And that's really painful for the audience. Like watching a train wreck happen and you can't do a thing about it. And what it amounts to is almost making your audience into your counselor, into.

Your therapist therapy from the stage. We've got to be careful that there is a lesson learned. There is a personal transformation. There is the bright side. We've coached many people before. We won't use any names, but who. They take us down, then they bring us deeper and then so deep. And that's it. And they leave us there. That's when we've got to be super careful. Granted, I understand it can be welcoming, that, hey, here's a place you could get therapy. It's not the place for therapy. It does not serve your audience. So Mark and I are telling you, point number two here. You can't use the stage for therapy. You had to have had that transformation where you healed, you came out of it, and you have that hope. You have that lesson to hand your audience. And Mark related to that, I think when we were talking about the speech contest as the metaphor before, you know, the DDI Dead, dying and injured. I think part of the problem is people got the pain part, but they forget the bringing us up part. And they Also unintentionally. I want to say this unintentionally. They're manipulating the audience. Somebody died. We're going to feel bad for them. Okay, but what's the lesson you learned? You didn't die. We want to hear about your pain. Now, obviously there's pain if somebody close to you dies, but we've just got to be careful that it's not manipulation. It's actual inspiration.

Ooh. Not manipulation, but inspiration. In sooth, he doth wax eloquent. That's so awesome, Darren. I think we can chuckle.

I got my King James version right here.

But you do make a good point, though, about the idea of not using the state for therapy and not trying to manipulate the audience. I'll be honest. I have seen so many presentations where presenters have been emotional as they recall and relive difficult, painful times, but I did not feel manipulated. And if you go back a couple episodes, David Henderson, we talked with him about that because he is an attorney who was doing closing arguments in very serious cases, and he would find himself tearing up in the middle of his closing argument. But it was never viewed as manipulation because it was genuine, it was honest, and it wasn't intended to pull at your heartstrings. It was a natural outflow from the experience and passion he faced and felt. And when that's genuine, trust me, friends, your audience will know it. And if you don't believe me, try that on a bunch of teenagers and see what happens. They will figure you out in New York. Second, forget about it. Right? But we have to be honest about that. When we're honest with our situation, the audience will respond appropriately. It's not a case of having them deal with therapy. And I can recall telling a story in one of my presentations about a time when I was fearful. I had suffered with blood clots in the lungs, one clot in my heart, and I had was given at best a 50, 50 chance of survival. And I use a story of my struggle after it and how for two years, I was unwilling to. I was afraid of what happened to me, the depths I was in, the pain I was in. I talked about my doctor encouraging me. And I remember as preparing to give a speech in a contest back in 95, and I felt inspired to tell that story. God said, there'll be somebody in the audience who needs to hear that story. I'm like, okay. And I told it and how I came through with it. And I got, you know, I got the wake up call, had a moment where I turned everything around, got back playing soccer again, and it really ended in a very positive note. And when the contest was over, the event was over and everything, a woman approached me with tears in her eyes and she said, thank you. That speech was just for me. And my first thought was, oh, my gosh, you are the one. God told me there'll be somebody there who needs to hear it. I'm not saying to listen for the voice of God or angels, as Darren says. No. But I'm saying if know in your heart your intent is to leave a message that uplifts, you will not bring us down, bring us deeper, bring us into the swirling abyss and then leave us there. And here's my serious word of caution. If you know you cannot bring yourself back, then don't start that journey. Maybe you're not ready right now. Your passion says, I want to share it. But search your hearts, my friends. If you, you know, you were not ready to lead us down that path and then bring us back out. It's like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in the cave, Huckaberfin in the cave, and can't find their way out. You do not want to do that. So love your audience enough to be honest first with yourself and ask, am I ready to share this in a way that will end up serving, helping and uplifting them? If the answer is no, then maybe you must say to yourself, not yet. I will not use my stage for therapy.

Yeah. Boom. Mic drop. You said it all. And trust us, there's plenty more pains in your life that you can find. So there may be several places that you don't want to go to. And so we're just telling you, too, it's a journey to find that gold. And you're going to come continue. Once you start looking, you're going to continue in the shower, when you're driving, when you're having a conversation with your kids or your parents or your grandparents or your grandkids, you'd be like, oh, and as Mark and I always teach, go to your story file. Build your story file, even if you don't know what to do with it yet. Just jot it down. Jot down those ideas. Collect those ideas in your story file.

Yeah, because story file, you compile the what. But over time, the why becomes evident. You're in a situation. You go, oh, I have just the right story for the moral for this, and it'll take you a while if you go back. I think it was episode 45 or 46. We had Jeanne Robertson as a guest on the podcast, and you'll correct me, Darren, by the number of the episode. But she talked about having a story, and she didn't use it for several years until her son. Well, her son Beaver. Until her son had his son. And she said, ah, now I got why I can use that story. I'm not saying you'll wait 25 years to deliver a story, but you have to understand the why behind it may not become evident at first, but put it in your story file, have the what's all lined up, and after a while, the why becomes evident. And when you do pull that out, when you do mine that and apply, that's when the audience gets your gold nugget. That's when they get the value. That's when they get the blessing. That's when they get the gift you have for them in that moment to give them a moment to transform and change their life and their experience.

Yeah, it's episode 46. 46. Check that out with Jeanne Robertson. I was shocked because even the baton story, her famous story, until you and I sat down were there, I didn't realize it was two completely different pageants that she took them and combined them to make it to be that one unforgettable story. But it was two different episodes that she just made work like the rock star one that it is. So, Mark, what's that last. Okay, so we kind of covered two points. What's that last critical point?

Well, you know, the story of your pain must have an objective. And I recommend that you think of it as a gift you give to your audience that has value for them that is like a golden nugget. Yes, I went through this difficult experience. I went through this pain. You know, I made a huge mistake. I had a financial reversal or I had a bad relationship, whatever it may be. But if you view the benefits it to the audience as a gift, you give to them something of value that might prevent them from walking down a similar road, that might enrich their life, that might provide an answer to a burning question that they have. Maybe your story is the answer there. Why? What can I do with this? How do I get through this? Why would this happen? And your story, your message from your point of pain becomes that one instrument that lets them go. Okay, I get it now. I'll keep going. Now I can keep going because your story gave them the example and gave them the reason to press on.

Yeah. Give your pain purpose.

Ooh.

Give your pain purpose. That's what makes it gold.

Find the purpose. I like yours. Give Your pain purpose. Give your pain not just for the idea of sharing a difficult story to tug on their heartstrings, but see the purpose behind sharing your story of pain.

And that's when it truly becomes gold. That's when the gold happens, when you're giving that gift to someone else of the lesson that you learned. And if you've ever been to a Anonymous meeting, whatever kind of Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, Al Anon, any, if you ever find yourself in that situation, like, I think a lot of toastmasters and speakers would cringe at some of the stories and how they're told. Yet the value comes across so glaringly obvious, so purpose driven. So the pain has that purpose. And there's ums and ahs and there's all these crazy things.

Things.

Yet the value is there. The value is there. Why? Because the pain has given purpose to the other people who are around and they can relate to that pain. There's so much pain there and there's so much purpose there that the is and ums, you know, sometimes they're not there, just like when you and I tell a story for the first time, but there are people there willing to share their pain. And I think that's where authenticity and vulnerability give you credibility. I think that's just a great example. Whether you've had that challenge or not, there's so much value at a meeting like that.

And Darren, I know one of your mantras is that we are merchants of hope. And I will leave this with our listeners and our viewers for this podcast. When you apply these stories of pain with a genuine, honest, vulnerable, authentic heart, you will give your audience hope that since you were able to come through this, then maybe, just maybe. So can I, I repeat for you the words of Michael Haig. He says, go deeper into the pain of your experiences. Your audience will identify with your faults and weaknesses and will connect with your vulnerability. And when they get to that point and they see the hope that your gift, your gold, gives to them, that is all they will need to take that story apply to their life. And in the end, they'll be able then later to use their story. And they'll make their story a gift, a golden gift that they will then share with their audiences. And as Darren said earlier, it becomes a gift that just keeps on giving.

So there is gold in them. There is. The question is, are you willing to mine? And will you mine the gold from your life?

Darren, it's been great discussing it. Let's find the gold and let's mine the gold.

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Hey, and if you're still listening after that, Michael Hague is going to be a guest coming up soon. Stay tuned. See you next week.