Ep. 52 How To Use Unforgettable Hot Seats With Ford Saeks

Hey there, Mark Brown. How are you?

So far, so blessed as always, my friend.

Yes, I am so thrilled we have a brand new hall of Fame speaker, CPAE Ford Sakes. He's been a legend and his focus is business growth specialist. But one of the reasons I want to bring him on is he has this ninja skill that just changes people, but it doesn't just change that one person. And it's called the hot seat. It's when you're coaching somebody live, whether it's he looks at websites or whether coaching Mark, like when you and I do VIP seats, but he just has this ability to make people laugh but be direct while still just having that great intent.

Man, I'm so thrilled to have Ford. And for those who aren't sure what CPA means, it's a National speaker association blessing from the best hall of Famers. It's the Council of Peers Award for Excellence. I can't wait for you all to meet our friend, cpae Ford Sakes.

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, time. Stage time.

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

All right. For everyone listening, you gotta know that Mark and Ford and I work together all the time. We love this guy, we've worked together. So we may tease each other as we go because that's kind of Ford style. And Ford, Ford is a high level keynote speaker, speaks for conventions, conferences, franchises, got three books. And we're just thrilled to have him here to kind of dive into not just what he does, how he does it. So you listening to this? You can use the hot seat as that tool to be unforgettable.

Welcome Ford.

How are you doing today? I'm amazing. I'm glad to be here.

Yes, you are amazing. Although we had to wait until you get the CPAE before we could have you on the call.

That's right. And for those of you just to kind of give some context, CPAE is kind of a big deal in speaking Earl Nightingale, Zig Ziglar and the greats. Out of the thousands of speakers over the years since NSA from 1960, there's only been 250 out of literally over 100,000 that have been inducted into the hall of fame. So I'm really honored to have that designation now. But really, this is just a testament about you. So this whole podcast, what we're gonna be talking about is how you can improve your impact with your audience, how you can use a tool in your toolbox. But, you know, there's pause, there's timing, there's humor. Well, the hot seat is a tool that we're gonna help you use, and we're gonna discuss how to use it and everything about the hot seat. So you can tool in your toolbox.

And Ford, some people don't know how you got started. The fact that you started as a contract trainer, correct.

Well, you know, I first started with expertise, but when I started in this business, I was successful in business, and people started to ask me how I did it, and I would tell the story. And then I realized, well, if I'm gonna tell the story, I might as well get paid for it. And so it was all about adding value and making a profit. And so I sold my sporting goods business, and I had 120 employees, and I went back to myself, and I was in my house. I thought, okay, I'm gonna learn how to this business. And so I went and I started doing presentations for the public seminar companies. Skillpath Career Track, Fred Pryor National Seminars Group, and Rockhurst University, where I actually ended up becoming one of their top earners for them. Was on the road three weeks of the month for three years straight. Did over a thousand presentations. Everything from six people to 6,000. Really learned the business side. The keynote is a keynote, but there's keynotes, those breakouts, workshops, there's training. So regardless of what role you have, as you're listening to this podcast, you can still use the hot seat. I've done hot seats on radio. I've done hot seats on podcasts. We can do a hot seat today with the podcast. Darren and Mark. Yeah, it's a great tool. But I got started, really by doing those public seminars, and then I advanced throughout the years, and I've been doing this now for about 30 years.

Right now. What is your specialty? So forgetting hot seats just for a second, but just so people are out there knowing what you do and what.

You talk about, I really bridge the gap between someone's value. I help them first identify and define and package their value, and I help connect it to a specific target audience. So I bridge the gap between understanding what their value is and how to connect with it. Now, you could call that marketing. You could call that sales. Sales Funnels, whatever word you want to put on it. It really is about how do you add value and make a profit. So it's Perfect for a B2B business. A B2C P2P for people to people. It's good for any size business. Whether you're listening to this as a solopreneur, speaker, author, trainer, consultant, or whether you work for a company and your job is to train internal people, you can still do hot seats, whether it's training or whether it's marketing. So the real benefit, I would just say this as I turn it back over to you guys, I'd really say the real benefit of the hot seat is, is it elevates the audience engagement and the impact and the value and positions you as an expert for social proof. And especially if you're one of those speakers, authors, trainers, consultants and authors who wants to sell at the back of the room, the hot seat is a critical element. We can get into that if you want to. Depends on what your questions are, on how you can actually leverage the hot seat to then increase sales.

So what would you say? How would you define what is a hot seat?

The hot seat is where you're delivering content. You've established a baseline of information, and then you're asking the audience to participate. So, for example, if Darren, if you're going to talk about a hot seat for presentations, you might have someone come up and give their first three minutes of a speech. Okay, they just got introduced. What's the first three minutes of the speech? And you guys, you and I have both done this at stagetime Live, which we'll do it again here coming up soon at the event. But we would do a hot seat where the person would do the first 30 seconds to three minutes because if they haven't hooked him in the first minute, it doesn't matter what comes next. Right? So that would be a hot seat. I've done hot seats for books where we say, okay, tell me your book title. You know, what's your book title? I've done hot seats for your presentation. Okay, let's look at your presentation description. What's your title and what's your benefits? Why should they come? I've done it for speakers bureaus and agents. So a hot seat is where you've delivered content to establish authority and trust and value, and then you're actually applying it. So the hot seat is bringing someone into the focus, whether it's physically at the front of the room or a listener or on Zoom opening up their webcam. There's a lot of different ways to do that. We'll talk about the technology part of it, but the outcome is where you're getting the audience member to participate and you're actually solving their problems live, right. Then you're actually giving them value right then to where they can make a big impact. And the great benefit of the hot seat is not just for the person receiving the content. It's everybody else in the room who now can look at that and go, oh, that applies to me, too.

You know, I've seen you do the hot seats with YouTube pages and LinkedIn pages. And of course, you were very direct with me about my own website getting freaking done. Mark. I remember that consulting call.

And Darren mark this to edit because he's going to want to take this. I'm just kidding. Go ahead. So, yes, I've done hot seats on everything. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, just so people know, I have consulted Ford professionally as well, because he is a master at this. And I'm really curious, in 30 seconds, at what point did something click in your brain saying, the world needs this tool. What started that for you?

Well, I'm sure I don't. I don't want to. I didn't invent the hot seat for full disclosure, okay? I'm not the one who invented this. Audience participation goes back way before time, probably back in biblical days. Okay? But when it comes to a speaker, author, trainer, consultant, keynote, breakout, whatever, if you engage your audience, you know, I'm going to say it two different ways. I'm going to answer it this way. You guys do your humor boot camp? When do you do your humor boot camp? When is that like you do? A couple times a year.

A couple times a year? Yes.

So if I asked you, why is it important that I learn how to use humor? You would say, only if you want to get paid. Right. It's like you need to add humor because it really elevates the event. Right? Well, it's the same thing with the hot seat. The reason you need to do the hot seat is because it really elevates the audience participation. Now, your question was, where did I first get it? I sat through so many boring presentations that I asked myself, this doesn't make sense. And so think about a hot seat as an extended Q and A session. But you're not just answering a question. You're actually bringing them up and looking at something that they're doing. So whatever your topic is, again, leadership, change, communication, culture, diversity, whatever your topic is, you can do a hot seat. On that topic. So, for example, if you're a leadership speaker and you're giving information around leadership, and I'll just say situational leadership. Right? So if you're in leadership, you know what situational leadership is, is where you have to change your leadership style based on the situation. Right? Now this podcast isn't about that, but just I wanted to give you some context. Well, let's just say I just got done training between the four styles of situational leadership, which are directing, coaching, supporting, and empowering. Right. Those are four styles. Well, if I just got done training or delivering content on that, I might say I'm gonna use Darren, actually. So, Darren, let's talk about you and your team. Now, don't use any of your team members names if they're watching this, but you can make up a fictitious team member. Okay, you have one in your head. Give me some initials.

Penelope.

Penelope. Okay, so Penelope works for you. What's Penelope's role?

Penelope handles all of our members.

Okay, so she's member engagement and helping, really with the members. So a hot seat. If you were training her. If I was training her, I would say, you know, Penelope, what's your role? What's your strength? So, Penelope, what do you do when a new member signs up for stagetime Live? And she would say, what do you mean? And I'd say, well, what do you do? Well, I process their credit card and I put their email on a list. And then I would say, really? Is that gonna engage him? That's not gonna engage him. Are you sending out a welcome packet? Are you sending out a box? Are you sending out a water bottle? Sending out a hat? Are you sending them a video? So I would go through a list of ways that she could actually improve that process. Now, going back to my leadership example, if I was working with someone in leadership, I would say, okay, think about one of your employees. Think about when they have fumbled, what happened? And then they would describe the situation. I'd say, okay, in that situation, the reason they fumbled is they weren't trained to standard. You hired them and you empowered them and you gave them the authority and the responsibility. With no training, of course they're going to fail. You didn't coach them, direct them, give them a standard operating procedure. You didn't show them what success looks like. So that would be a hot seat. So whatever the topic is now, you can't do a hot seat. We'll get into the questions. I know you've got a lot of questions on. Make this shorter. One tip for Podcasts is make shorter answers so that the hosts get to actually speak. Just for the record, that's another tip. It's a bonus tip you can put in there. But I would say let's see if.

We can hot seat you on doing that.

Yeah, we're gonna do it right now. So I'm actually gonna say that's the purpose. You have to have expertise on your topic. You have to know it inside and out. You have to be comfortable flying without a net. You have to be willing to risk, and you have to be willing to be wrong. You have to be willing to say, you know what? I don't know, let's talk about that later. You don't have to have the answer. If you don't have the answer, you're better off not trying to BS your way, which is belief system for those of you that are thinking to BS your way through it. Do what you can do, but you should know you should never present anyway without a depth of knowledge. Back to you guys.

Well, you know, Ford, I'm thinking of some speakers now. We have new emerging speakers. We have experienced speakers. We even have pastors who listen to our podcast on a regular basis. Some might be thinking, okay, I need someone who can look at what I do and let me know where I can improve. But isn't that like hiring a coach? Is that different from a hot seat, or is the hot seat a part of what a coach would have to do for me?

Great question. Mark the question. I was going to repeat it for the audience, but you're listening, so I.

Don'T have.

Something you're used to doing as a speaker. It's also a technique that allows you to actually formulate your answer before you actually.

Exactly.

So I would say this regardless of what your role is when you're listening to this. Yes, a hot seat really is a mini coaching session. It's a mini coaching session live, and it's designed to make a maximum impact. And it's also designed so that when you're done, other people in the audience want to raise their hand and say, I want a hot seat. I want a hot seat. Now, the key to a hot seat is you can't perform a hot seat until you've delivered some value. So yesterday I was on a presentation for the Global Leaders Association. We did a virtual event for hundreds of people. Prior to that, I sent in my description, and in it it said, you know, make sure you attend live to be available for one of Ford's famous hot seats. If you're interested Send your name in ahead of time or, you know, we'll do this live. Well, I had the host call and say, hey, you know, we need to contact your hot seat people because we want to make sure that you have hot seats. I said, no, you don't need to do that. I said, first of all, there's no context. They don't even understand what a hot seat is or why they would go, so you don't need to do it ahead of time. I will do it live. I spoke for 25 minutes, and then I said, okay, let's raise your hand, put your name in the chat if you'd like to do a hot seat. A guy named Daniel said, I'd like to do a hot seat. I elevated him to a panelist. We turned on Zoom. I got on the screen. He said, hey, this is my website. Go look at it. And I said, well, before I look at the website, tell me about your business. It was terrible. His website didn't have any SEO. There was no security. It didn't have a call to action. It didn't even have his phone number on it or his address. I said to him, I said, look, what do you want people to do? He said, I want people to call me. I said, what do you think is missing from your website? And so, you know, you'd be surprised. Now, of course, once I did that, then everybody else was like, well, I want a hot seat. I want a hot seat. I want a hot seat. And I said, great. Go to profitrichresults.com withglo now, that's a live link, guys. You can use this for your podcast. I don't care. Leave it in if you want to go, even though you weren't part of that. And I'll tell you, it was a $500 deal. It's a Zoom call. You can go read about it later. But I did the hot seat live, and I got participants that heard it live. They'll also watch the replay live. And they went to profitrichresults.com now, you should go to that link just to look at what I'm doing. You don't have. If you want a hot seat for me, great. You can put your name and email in there and you can spend the 500 bucks. It's 100% guaranteed, and you can do that. But I just want you to see how I do it. So I do the hot seat live so that everybody in the audience goes, oh, I want that. The hot seat is not the same as the hour. I'm going to spend the hot seat. I'm going to spend five, seven minutes with you. So if in five and seven minutes I give you great value, then doesn't it make sense where I say, hey, everybody, how would you like to have an hour with me? One on one, confidential with zoom recorded? You can get you and your team on there. I'll go through your value propositions, your marketing, your sales funnels. I'll help you shorten the sales cycle. I'll help you increase your sales. I'll help you expand your influence. I'll help you improve your engagement. And I guarantee you I'll do that. And if at the end you don't think it was worth a hundred times the value, you don't have to pay well, so that's how you do it. So that's one way of doing it. But there's a lot of different models.

What's the website again?

Profitrichresults.com Now, I know we're doing this as a podcast, but are you also gonna please broadcast this on YouTube and everything else?

Of course.

Okay, good.

That's why we made you put your shirt on and fix your lighting.

Well, I just want to make sure. So forward slash with W, I, T, H, glo, G, L, O. No, no W. Just glorious.

That would be good.

To clarify for those of you listening to the podcast and we're looking at the screen right now live. Go to the top. I'm going to shake. So this is a landing page, right? Accelerate your business growth with me, blah, blah, blah. Work one on one. Work one on one with me. In this special design for every business owner entrepreneur to make the most of their marketing, you get a 60 minute one on one Zoom call with me. You have up to 18 months to use the session. So you can lock it in and use it for 18 months. I typically charge, you know, 3,500 just for a hot seat and my consulting starts at 10 grand. So if you look at it, you're like, all right, 500 bucks. I'll spend 500 bucks for a hot seat.

Sweet. And Ford, I know that when you do this, when we watch you do this again, you've got the credibility you build, or Your company builds $25,000 websites for the mega speakers and other businesses. And so to just tap in and get a little bit of Ford in that mini coaching or that hot seat, then that is such an engagement to get them to want more, to buy more. If you are just delivering content, it's not nearly as powerful as watching you Work with people. I know we have our business mastery program and twice a month we do this for our members. And everybody raves about it because it's about them. And they want your perspective, which is just such a great marketing tool. But it also makes your presentation unforgettable to everyone because they're like, wow, he talked to them.

Yeah. And he raises the game. I mean, for me, fool knocked on my door. I can't tell you how many weeks and months. And when I had a quick call with fool one day and he asked the same question, mark, how will they call you? Is your phone there? I said, well, it's my private phone number. I don't want to use my private mark. They can't call you. He gave me one simple tip. Get a Google voice phone number. It's free. It's my business number now. And wow, what a difference it made having a simply phone number. But it was a hot seat experience that led me to realize I could make one small change. It was a hot seat that made me go out and finally get the website done. It was a hot seat that led to my LinkedIn page, my YouTube page, my website, having the branding. My background is the same branding. That was Ford's hot seat experience that led me to all these changes that's changing the way I do business. So I recommend you really think about what this hot seat concept can do for you and Ford. You mentioned individuals in the business, leadership, support staff. We mentioned websites. You do LinkedIn pages, YouTube pages. If I understand correctly, you have found a way to use a hot seat concept in every area of the speaking business, and a lot of people really focus on delivering content. What advice do you have to presenters, both new and experienced, with regard to how a hot seat can help them across the entire spectrum of their business?

Okay, great question. So way back before the Internet, for those of you that remember teleseminars, and before teleseminars, there was newsletters where we actually used to print on paper and mail them out. Right. I used to do a newsletter with Randy Gage called the Profit letter. We charged $177 a month for a six page printed newsletter and we had over 1,000 subscribers. Because in the newsletter we were giving key tips on how to improve your marketing, we were also doing written hot seats. So now what we've been talking about today are hot seats as it relates to presentations. And of course now livestreaming. Virtual hot seats are different than the in person ones. You can do it, but you can also, if you have a program or if you're selling something, you can do the virtual hot seat. You know, Darren could say, I'm doing a humor hot seat. Send in your video and I will critique it and send you a video back. It could be a writer like Tim Guard. Could be he's gonna write out your signature story and I'll. Or Kevin Burke and I'll. Or Stephanie McHugh and we'll do a hot seat for you virtually. So the hot seat, the concept, well that's actually a little different, but it's still a hot seat in the fact that the user gets coaching. You can call it a hot seat, but so you don't want to lose too much focus here. The best way to do it is to really learn how to do it when you're in an audience because what you're doing then is you're doing the mini coaching for that one person and then everybody else says, I want to do it. So it's typically a hot seat is used to establish your authority to really help someone solve. It actually puts the content that you've just been training into application. Right. I can tell you you need to do this, you need to do this, you need this for your website. But if I actually look at someone's website and they see it, so it makes it a lot more practical application.

We've built stage time based on this. We have our skill calls during the week. We bring people up and we have our business calls. You and me mentoring people in the business and doing hot seats. And people love it. Not just the person getting coached, but everybody else. It's actually you can learn through other people's pain, watching them get coached.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. That'll be in our sales copy. Come to the stagetime live where you can learn through other people's pains and.

For yourself or maybe other people you've seen do hot seats. What do you think are some of the mistakes people make when they're trying to do them but they mess up?

They do it wrong. Okay, well, it's important to establish rapport that you're sincerely interested in helping them. If you've ever participated in my live hot seats or an event, I can push the limit on the language and my authority and I'll be like, that's a cure for insomnia. That's a sales prevention tool. I'm throwing lines out there, but I'm doing it good hearted. So I think the mistakes are, you know, if you put someone in the hot seat and you, if you Abuse them for the sake of abuse, then that's a mistake. If you abuse them and you call them out for something that's in public, then that's your job. Give you an example, Darren. I was doing a presentation for a bank association. 700 bankers in the room, CEOs. We're going through. I'm doing my session. I said, hey, can I get a volunteer? And this guy raised his hand, and I said, okay, now this is a hot seat. Are you sure? Do you consider yourself one of the top performing banks? He said, yes. I said, okay, give. Give him a round of applause. Let's welcome him up. What's your name? Your name's Chad. Okay, Chad, come on up on stage. And he comes up on stage, and I said, so, Chad, why do people bank at your bank? And he said, well, it's because we have outstanding customer service. We're not a big bank. We're not Wells Fargo. We're not bank of America. We're a small local community bank. And, you know, we've been in business since 1800s and blah, blah, blah. And I said, so you're all about customer service? Yep, yep, We're. We're all about customer service. That's what our whole brand is. I said, great. So I grabbed my cell phone. We're live now, 700 people. And I said, what's your bank's phone number? He said, what? I said, I want to call your bank. So he tells me his phone number. And so I pick up the phone, and I literally. I went ahead and I dialed his phone number live, right? I dialed his phone number live. And I had a lapel mic. You know. You guys know a lapel mic? So I have it on speakerphone right here. And it's going out to 700 people. And the bank answers the phone. Yes, such and such bank, can I help you? And I said, yes, I'm new to the area. I'd like to set up an account. And the person said, what? What do you want? And I said, my name is Ford. I'm new to the area, and I'd like to set up a commercial account. Oh, just a minute. You got the wrong person. Transfer me. I'm on hold now. This is live. 700 people in the room. It's about 15 seconds now. 15 seconds may not seem like a long time, but. But I'm gonna just pause, and let's count just to five to ourselves right now. Ready? We're gonna pause. That was only five seconds. Imagine 15 seconds in front of 700 people. So finally, they get to the next connection, and I'll just shorten this story. I get bounced around three different times. They never asked me my name. It was a terrible experience. Sorry, you have to beep that out. And you can leave that in. For those of you don't blame the podcast if you're. That's just a. Anyway, moving on. So here's what happened. He got upset with me and he's like, you know, I can't believe you did that to me live in front of 700 people. And here's what I said to him. I said, chad, would you rather know right now that that's happening? This is public information. I just called your. Like, this wasn't anything private. I just pulled it up. Now it's happened when I've done hot seats with their websites. It's happened when I've done hot seats with, you know, they feel at first a little embarrassed, but then I tell him, look, would you not rather have me tell you now so you can go fix it and save your business? Because you've invested a lot of money to advertise and to build your brand and hire all these people. You need to know what's happening. He became one of my top clients. So when you're doing a hot seat, the mistakes you're gonna make are, one, don't use vulgar language. But two, make sure that you really come across with a sense of empathy. But you need to be direct. This is not time to sugarcoat things. Tell them up front, are you prepared for this hot seat? Are you prepared? And as long as you're pulling up stuff that's public, then it's your opinion. And then if he disagrees, fine. And again, not everybody's going to agree, but I'll tell you what, they're going to learn from it, and they're going to remember it, and they're going to be better because of it. If it means that when I picked on Mark the day that we did the hot seat from him and he didn't have his phone number on his website, if he gets a little frustrated that I, you know, he's a world champion of public speaking, and I. And I go ahead and I call him out in front of everybody in the audience, well, he's not. That's not his core competency. That's not his presentations and how to tell compelling stories and how to engage. It's not how to get someone to pick up the phone and dial. That's my area of expertise. So. So the mistakes are not being empathetic. Not making sure that you set them down lightly. And then also, if you find that the hot seat's going south, end it right away. Just say, you know what, thank you for your participation. Let's move on. Like, if you know you're with someone who they're not listening or they're arguing, like, don't force the hot seat. Be intuitive enough to go, you know what, this isn't really going. And the audience, you can tell from the audience participation from your dynamics. You just need to say, hey, thank you. Let's give Chad a round of applause and then just move on to the next person.

I made a mistake not too long ago where I made a classic mistake of not getting permission. I was on a call with a bunch of professional speakers and I called somebody out in their virtual background, but they never asked for advice. And it was, it was. Anyway, I got called out on it. I called the person, I apologized. There's a little bit of Ford in me. I just wanted to die.

It depends on. I'll tell you that's good and I understand that that happened, but you did the right thing. So I just want you to know you did the right thing. But here's what I would tell you. I just want to ask you a couple questions about that. So we're going to use this as a mini hot seat right now. What type of group were you in when you called them out? Was it something that they came to? Were you a member?

It was a group of professional speakers. It was not an NSA chapter. It was just a group of like a mastermind.

Was it a mini mastermind or was it actually. How many people? 20. Okay, if it, was it NSA?

No.

Okay, so that's what it was. So it might have been Toastmasters or some other group.

Correct.

Okay, there's a reason why I'm trying to drill this down, everybody. So let me explain what I just asked. If it's Toastmasters, people are coming in and that's not why they're coming. Then, yeah, the advice can come across as why are you telling me that? Why are you embarrassing me in front of people? So, yeah, you can make a fumble and that's okay. But I also want you to remember that if they were there, and this is the rule that I want everybody to walk away with, if they were there to learn how to improve their presentation, to be more dynamic on virtual systems, to use switchers and use multi camera views, if they were there to improve their impact on how they look, sound and present, then you did the right Thing. If they were there because they wanted to learn how to take care of their dog and you were just telling them, hey, why do you ever. Then the context is off. So. And the other thing is, if Darren was coming from a position of authority, if he was the guest, then that gives him the authority to give you that advice. That's why he's there. He's there to give you ideas, advice, and impact. So calling someone out, they may not like it and you can apologize, but let it go. It's not your responsibility. I mean, I would have called him out, too. I'll give you an example. I was on the Million Dollar Speakers group as a very, very, very successful person I've known for 25 years. He had the zoom background with the Golden Gate Bridge.

Golden Gate Bridge.

He had the beach. Oh, yeah, the beach and going. And he didn't even have a green screen. So every time he moved his hand, he became a ghost. And I told him, I said, ray, turn that fricking thing off, man. This isn't. I mean, if it's just for us, that's great, but if you're using that for any professional reason, don't use virtual backgrounds like that. Now, Mark's virtual background, is that virtual or live? Mark? It's virtual, but it looks good, though. The point is, it looks good and it doesn't have a green screen, so you replaced it, and the quality is really good. Again, the point, let's not lose, wasn't about virtual backgrounds. The point is, you might make a mistake calling someone out and giving advice for those people that didn't ask for it. That's why I typically say so. I would say something like this. If it was stagetime Live, I might say now. Now, just know if you're a participant in stagetime Live, I may put you on the hot seat. And I need you to know that I'm doing it. Like, I would set the stage ahead of time and I would say everybody, but I might still call them out without volunteering. So the point is, I don't have to have a volunteer. I just have to have the right context. Yeah.

Now, it may sound a little harsh, but it's not called a hot seat for no reason.

I tell people that. I say, you know, people go away and they're like. I'm like, well, it's not called a warm seat or a cuddle seat. This is a hot seat. Yeah. I want to be very clear here. For those people listening and watching this, look, I didn't invent the hot seat. But I have definitely perfected the use of it.

Absolutely.

I sell so much more than most people at an event. And it's not about selling it. It's because I create interest where people say, I want that, I want to know how to do that. And isn't that our job? Isn't our job? The purpose of communication is the response it elicits. Right. That's the whole reason we do what we do. We want to make an impact on the audience. We want to change behavior, we want to change people's thought right there. I mean, Mark, wouldn't you say that's what it is?

I have to agree. I'm going to write that down. This is a keeper.

So the whole point of communication is the response it elicits. It doesn't matter what your topic is. If you are an authority speaker, author, trainer or consultant, or whether you're doing any virtual recorded whatever, whether you're doing an influencer for YouTube, whatever your role is, your job is to change behavior and inspire action. What better way than to make them want to crawl over broken glass to listen to more? There's no way you can give everything away in a podcast episode. There's no way you can give away everything in just a blog post. There's no way you can give everything away in a book. There's no way you can give everything away in a 10 part video module series. There's no way. So you have to make sure the two steps are first, you can't drink from an empty well. Right. You've got to have a big depth of knowledge. I come from over 40 years of business growth, 17 companies, working with thousands of clients. And as a consultant, you learn from. I mean, Darren, you've gotten better because you've coached people. Mark, you've gotten better because you've coached people. Champions. Right? But you got better because you were able to coach and we all get better. And those of you that have ever been a consultant, you know you learn from your audience, right? You learn from the experience. I'm encouraging you to practice these things. Start small, maybe have the hot seat. Be very particular around just this one thing. If you're a writer, maybe you're working with the book cover or maybe you're working with the bio. You don't talk about the whole marketing plan. Be very narrow first. And then as you start to expand your breadth, go wider. And if you get a question that's outside that scope, you just say, you know what, that wouldn't be a really good topic for this. What about this and just control the environment.

You know, one quick thing for you said this, Practice start small, narrow focus. I would think for me, what I'm hearing is first of all, check myself, really go back and look at what I'm doing. What do I have? What can I tweak? Based on what 4 Tools told me today, it's a good place to start. Darren and I can start with each other and each of us as presenters can begin to look at this particular skill to help ourselves and help other people. But the key is we have to be coachable. And Darren always preaches this, be coachable now, tell everybody listening right now. If you work with Ford, he's not going to sugarcoat it, but he will help you. Darren.

Yeah, there is a sugar coating in terms of Ford's charm and you can't coach that, but it's there. And going back to what he said, if your intention is to help, hot seat is a tool to help get that across. And why Ford, do you think the hot seat is so powerful for everyone, not just the person you're hot seating?

Two things that one. Thank you for the compliments you guys have been giving me throughout this podcast episode, but I would tell you that I'm authentic, okay? What I am on stage is what I am offstage. And if a four letter word pops out, that's who I am. Don't let the messenger get in the way of the message, okay? This is about impact, right? So I'm not. We're not gonna. That's a whole different topic right now. But what I'm getting at is authenticity is so important. You don't manufacture a hot seat. You have to be sincere and you have to know what you know and you have to be willing to risk that. Now your question was. And Darren, I'm going to make sure. I'm going to pause to make sure I hear it. Your question is why is it important? Is that what you want to hear?

What makes it so powerful for everyone in the room?

What makes it so powerful for everybody in the room is that they get to see live application of what you just trained. That is it. So if you're taking notes, it's your delivering a process, but then you're actually implementing it live right there. So, for example, I'm going to do a hot seat right now with Mark. Mark, what's the benefit of hiring you? Why? Why should who. First of all, we're going to do this as a hot seat. Who do you want to have hire you?

Mark Association.

Another Mark Online. Okay, I'm thinking.

I'm thinking coaching, not speaking. So.

All right. Okay. But that's fine. Either one. Who wants to hire. Who do you want to have hire you for a virtual presentation right now? Who would be your ideal audience?

My ideal audience would be any corporation or association that wants to build their leaders and make them more productive.

Okay. So improve leadership and make it more productive. Okay. We can get into narrowing that down in a minute, but let's just go to the next step. What's the benefit of hiring you? Are there other leadership speakers, Mark?

There are a gazillion other speakers.

So there's a gazillion. So why you? Why you? Why you? Just because you're handsome or what?

I wouldn't claim the handsome piece. I will change their people with their mindset and their approach. It will leave feeling that it can do better. Starting today with two or three specific changes in their habits to improve their productivity.

Okay, so you'll give them very specific habits to improve their productivity?

Yes.

Okay, good. So that's a benefit. Now if I said, what's the benefit of working with you? And you said, well, I'm the world champion of public speaking and I've been presenting for 25 years, CSP2. So again, I would have said, hey, those aren't benefits. Now, what Mark did is he gave very clear benefits. Thank you for doing that, or I'd be in trouble because we've already talked about this a million times. Lead with the benefit, substantiate with the features. So again, for you out there listening, whether you're a pastor and you want your congregation, or whether you're a leader of your company and you want to inspire impact with your team, or whether you know, whatever your role is, you're delivering content, that's number one, and then you're applying it live in front of the group. So it's not like you could do a hot seat with just a person one on one. That's a hot seat, I guess, too. But the real impact comes when other people get to observe it. They're able to think about their brand, their business, their processes, whatever it is that your topic is and how it relates to them. So it could be marriage counseling, although that would be a really tough conversation. But you could certainly do a hot seat on communication and listening and empathy. You could do it. You just have to have enough skill and empathy. If you're in a soft skill, emotional thing, you're going to have to be a lot more talented business. I'm safe right I mean, I'm safe, I'm in my sandbox, I know how to do it. I typically don't do hot seats for how to handle people with tact and skill. That's not my hot.

Not your strong suit.

They don't come to me for that. They come to me because they want the phone to ring, they want traffic, they want increased conversion, and more importantly, they want to bridge the gap, like I said, between. They know what they've got is value, they know what they're doing is valuable, but they just don't seem to know how to actually connect the dots. And of course they always say, well, I don't like to sell. If you're so good at it, will you just sell me and I'll give you 50%. Now look, everybody is great at sales. They just get confused on what it is. And I'm not going to go into that whole. That's a whole different topic. But, but the hot seat. I'm gonna encourage everybody to either participate, raise your hand. The next time there is a hot seat, I'm gonna encourage you to get to stagetime live, become a member of stagetime University. Cause we do those hot seats in Business Mastery twice a month. So if you want a hot seat, here's the deal. You can pay me 500 bucks for one hot seat or you can join Stagetime University and get access to me twice a month for a year. Like, do the math. I mean, which one should you do? Everybody should say, well, heck, I wanna go be a hot seat person. And we have people that are in Business Mastery that take advantage of it and then that are just observers. And that's fine if they want to sit on the sidelines. But let's get into the game, let's play and actually apply this.

Ford, our time's coming to an end. Here again, the website for people to learn from you. Profitrichresults.com withglo w I t H G L O if you want to work one on one with Ford, I would love to have you come to Game Changers Ford. Why should people join us September 1st and 2nd for Game Changers?

Well, that is the exclusive event to really supercharge your growth as it relates to the speaking industry. Whether you are trained, the trainer, whether you're trying to improve your presentation, your humor formulated speech, whether you're new or inexperienced, whether you're a Hall of famer like me. I learned a lot from being there. You know, if you're in this industry, that is the place to be. That is the place where you're going to get the real deal. You're going to get practical action steps that you can actually apply. Now, I know a lot of people are thinking, I've got zoom butt or I've got zoom fatigue. Look, this is not an event where you're gonna have zoom fatigue. This is an event where you're gonna be energized throughout the whole day. This is interactive. It's professionally produced. This is called Stage Time Live. So if you wanna get better at how you communicate, how you connect and how you engage and how you convert, then you need to be there, there.

So if you want to check out the details, just go to stagetimelive.com it's the only time all year we have all of our faculty together for two days, September 1st and 2nd, coming up, depending on when you're listening to this. This is 2020 when this episode was recorded, so.

Right. And if you haven't, just go back to the website because we do it every year.

Yeah, cool. Thank you, Ford. Mark, what do we got for keepers?

Wow.

I'm going to run through this. Understand that hot seat is a tool for you and the audience from which you can grow. Okay. Regardless of what you teach or how you teach, you can use hot seats, which is like an extended Q and A session. Oh, humor. Give shorter podcast answers. Okay. The key is, a hot seat is used to establish your authority and you should use it to build relationships. Do not abuse your client, but do so firmly but empathetically. If people are there to improve, it's okay to call them on what they're doing. Key phrase. The purpose of communication is the response it elicits. Our job is to inspire action and change behavior. What should we do? Practice. Start small and grow out. And use hot seats as a tool to change not only yourself, but the people with whom you work. Thanks so much, Ford. And for the record, for the record, the answer I gave Ford about what I deliver as benefit, I learned that from a hot seat. Back to you, Darren.

So, Ford Sakes, thanks for joining us. Love working with you. Nobody, nobody, nobody. Don't tell Fripp I said this. Nobody does hot seats better than you. Ford Sakes. Thanks for joining us. Go check out Ford's website. Ford finds final thoughts.

No, I'm just really glad to be here. The key is, it's not what you know, it's how well you execute. So if you're already familiar with this topic or the other topics we've covered, then my question for you is what are you going to do today to implement and take action on the ideas that you've heard on this podcast?

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