How To Be A Winner with Mark Faust

Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments

Episode Summary

Today’s guest on The Successful Pitch is author Mark Faust who has written several books about high growth leverage. His new book is called Winning Strategy. He has a really interesting look at the strategies that happened during the recent presidential election and how you can see what worked and didn’t work and more importantly, how to apply it to your own business. He said there are really three keys to having a great strategy in anything. One is a vision, two is a focus and the third one is something called points of divergence, which he goes into great detail explaining how to double down on what you are already doing to get people to really understand your vision, your focus and more importantly, have the strategy that gets you funded or gets you a new client or gets you to win in any area of your life. Enjoy the episode.

 

Listen To The Episode Here

 

How To Be A Winner with Mark Faust

Today’s guest is Mark Faust who’s an author of multiple books. Since he founded Echelon Management in 1990, Mark has consulted with literally hundreds of companies, CEOs and owners. He’s also spoken to hundreds of organizations on how to foster and accelerate growth, which everybody needs. He’s interviewed and worked with Fortune 500 CEOs as well as many turnarounds. He’s referred to as the Doctor of Strategy. He’s one of the nation’s top turnaround and growth gurus. He’s worked with companies such as Procter & Gamble, IBM, Apple and John Deere as well as some smaller held organizations and governments, and even non-profits. He’s worked with an extensive number of family-owned and multigenerational businesses, which had its own set of challenges I’m sure. He’s been the adjunct COO, VP of Sales on many company Boards. He has worked with leaders of successful growth companies, knowing he can raise their bars. He’s also helped those that are struggling. Whether you’re struggling or at the top, you definitely need to read Mark’s books. Your opportunity to heat directly from the Doctor of Strategy is right now.

Mark, welcome to the show.

Thank you, John.

I’m always interested to hear from my guests their own little story of origin. This is your third book, I believe?

Yes.

Before you became an author, you obviously had to figure out what made you so good at figuring out growth. Can you take us back to did you always know you wanted to be an author? How did you get to where you are?

Actually, it’s an interesting story about how I always had this gut feeling about being a consultant before I even knew what the word was. I’ll never forget, I went to a parochial school where the priest would ask you in sixth grade whether you feel called to the vocation. One particular time he said, “I’m going to talk to you all one-on-one and ask you, so be ready in the weeks ahead.” I thought, “I better think about this.” I never forget going back in to the church to sit down and I was like, “I can’t think of any one business but I’d love to work with a bunch of different businesses helping them grow. It wasn’t until I was literally within a year becoming a consultant. I met my first boss in college. He and all his colleagues were in their 50’s with their MBAs and he was in a class I was in. It was there that I actually got my first and only job. I was a consultant for a few years. Eventually, he helped me start on my own. That was a quick overview from ten years old up to 21 up to here we are today.

I’m always fascinated by that. Some people at a very young age know, “I’m going to be an actor,” then he becomes Jim Carrey or something. “I’m going to be an engineer like my dad.” Something like this is not something that you typically see modeled for you and yet you somehow were able to imagine your future and you’re doing exactly what you thought you’d be doing, which is not always the case for someone. Before we jump into your book, Winning Strategy, which is this whole concept of the turnaround mindset and even looking at other non-business relationships of how do people come up with a great pitch including what happened in the last presidential race even. I want to talk about your other two books as a starting point because I think it’s always again, for me, really interesting whether you’re looking at an artist, and I think of authors as artists, and you look at their early work and how that lead to this, lead to this. Would you take us on that just brief journey of here’s my first book, here’s my second book and now, what you’re going to learn in winning strategy, combines all two or it leaves off where the other one stopped.

The first book proposal I sent out I have four publishers expressing interest which is atypical. The unique angle a couple of them hit on was the turnaround mindset. They said nobody writes about that. I ran with that. It was my first publisher being Career Press and they said, “Let’s accentuate that angle. It will be unique and you’re going to own it.” Another interest was I had several great mentors who were turnaround CEOs. I found the way that turnaround CEOs looked at growing any business to be very unique from any typical consultant’s approach to growing a business. The turnaround CEOs have to deal with the most dire of conditions. When they’re put in the healthy environment, they still use a lot of the same tools.

That built the framework of my experiences and what I would propose to do is interventions with clients, and then eventually the outline of Growth or Bust!. Growth or Bust actually had a little bit of different title. The second title is High-Growth Levers: How to Turnaround Mindset Propels Your Company. The first one is Turnaround Strategies That Can Grow Your Business. Those were the first two books. The High-Growth Levers has just come out here in early 2017 and we’ve had a lot of success with that. Because of the election and I just started to analyze what was being done and what was not being done and what blew my mind. Let’s look at the election with an apolitical view. Let’s try to be as subjective as possible. It’s very hard because our emotions get involved in politics. As a strategist, we have to do this in business.

Emotional decisions are a big factor in whether you win or lose an account. In order to learn, you have to pull back a little bit and just say, “I may not like it or I may be thrilled but I’m still going to see what’s right and what went wrong so I can use it in my own life.”

We saw so little of that, John, throughout the election before, during and after. Especially in the media, they try to analyze, they come up with the reasons. A lot of the political walks come up with their reasons. In reality, and as I was writing the book Winning Strategy using my seven aspects of strategy as the outline, it hit me how excellent and I was seeing this beforehand. I did predict, in fact, I had an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer back in March of 2016 where they asked me as a businessman to analyze the election and make a prediction. I did and I called it. I got some flak for it but I thought objective, apolitical view in a Socratic approach in the article. Bottom line, I saw the elements of a good strategy being at play and I’ll boil it down to three words. Rather than the seven aspects, you could look at strategy as just having three key legs. One is a vision of the future, ideal, improved state. Two is areas of focus or intensification of focus. Three is points of divergence. Especially in that last one, we saw Trump played that element of strategy out better than those anyone in memory.

[Tweet “Vision, Focus and Points of Divergence are key to winning strategy.”]

Let’s digest that. One of the things in your book is, “The best strategy goes undetected,” and this whole concept of things being predicted. Even in the UK, with Brexit. They thought, “How can the polls be so wrong in both countries?” That same thing is true because businesses are always doing research, “Is this product going to sell? Do we need to lower the price? Do we need to change our branding?” Let’s start there with his whole best strategy going undetected. I’m really interested in that. I think that’s a fascinating way to start.

In a war, it’s critical for survival. A lot of generals know about the importance of either a fake to keep it in simple terms or an intensification of focus in a way that throws the opponents off. That’s actually one of the seven aspects of good strategy. My second aspect is intensifying focus. Having an undetected strategy, and I’ll just give you a couple of examples of how Trump did it, when he came out with the most colorizing of comments, let’s go back to December 7th of 2015. People almost overlooked the fact that that was Pearl Harbor and FDR was the president that there were a lot of people in prison camps because of their color of skin. Was there a reason for his choosing that? I leave that up to the reader. It was never really discussed much on either side. The bottom line is that was when he read his statement. That statement pushed people to one extreme or the other. A lot of generals like doing the same thing. They like to choose one side of the field or the other or to bring their troops together so that they can surround, if you know what your next couple of moves are.

Let me just ask you a couple more questions there because you’ve got so much great insight. Before we jump to the next part, my first question here is, do you have any thoughts on why people thought, “He’s not serious. He really doesn’t want to win. He just wants the publicity to start his own network.” Even when he got the job, these rumors still continue, “He doesn’t really like doing the job.” I’ve never heard of that ever happening before for many presidents. Is that part of his strategy do you think?

Perhaps. Let me go back in history a little bit, John. I don’t know if you remember Ross Perot running, the businessman. A lot of people forgot that he was at 39% in June and Clinton was at the lower mid-20s and bush was in his teens. He was actually ahead by quite a margin. It was only when he dropped out due to the fear of his daughter’s wedding being attacked by Bush’s minions. That’s literally what he said in 60 Minutes, and he dropped out after two months. A lot of people I think were doubtful of Trump because of the Perot tactic that happened with Bill Clinton’s first run. I don’t know. Again, I’m not a political wonk. I would only guess that would be one reason. Also, the fact that he’s such a showman and a show-off and could say such inflammatory things, I think that’s another reason why people think there’s no way he could possibly, when no politician has ever come off like that and won. I think those are the first two things that come to mind about the lack of people taking him seriously.

Let’s just talk about the strategy to win the nomination. Is it the same strategy to win the nomination as it was than they ultimately won the election or was there a difference?

Strategy is strategy. Yes, I think all the seven aspects were utilized throughout the primary as well as in the election. There are different tactics. Let’s start with the first aspect of strategy, which is identifying your primary source of leverage. There are ten different primary PSLs as I call them when I’m working with a client. It could be that your product is the primary source. It could be your selling approach. It could be the market that you have chosen. Usually, companies were discerning that. For the political realm, I looked at all 10 areas and I gave the pros and con in each one. For example, if it was a market focused PSL, Trump would have focused on the demographics through the Republican infrastructure and he would have tried to snap up as many of those and the market would have been big enough that he could have just won with that one focus.

In reality, he had to actually have a Hannibal-like approach. Hannibal had many different nations that made up his army that was outnumbered but still beat the Romans of the day. That was not his approach. Rather, what I think his primary source of leverage was his marketing and selling ability. I outlined in the book how he out Sunday interviewed, out evening news interviewed, tweeted in drama, not quantity. The Clinton team actually had more tweets but he had multiple followers. He had more power through that venue. If you go back and look through his history in business that he was a showman/salesman/marketing genius. He’d be a top 2% genius in regards to getting as much PR in media in Inc. as any other businessman could. In any event, I think the interviews tweets the rallies were in an aspect of selling and marketing effectiveness. He was able to get big numbers there, so he had that down to a science. Even his messages had an advantage and ability to go into the second aspect of strategy and have an intensification of focus which we can touch upon here.

You talked about the three keys of strategy is having a vision and painting a future. Let’s use a non-political example just so people can compare and contrast this. Do you have a client or company that has a vision that’s very strong, Starbucks, Apple, anybody you want?

Most people love Steve Jobs. I go back to his vision of a computer in every home when literally that was laughed at on the front pages of Wall Street Journal back in the early 80s. Why would we need a computer in every time at home? He saw and understood the future as did his team and he got them to understand if they didn’t, what the value of that and what would have to happen to get there, and that there would be a lot of pain and innovation that would have to happen to get us there sooner. They did it. With me and my best clients, I have a client in the agricultural world. They make application equipment and they went ahead of it. He had a vision, the third generation owner of being the Silicon Valley of the application world. He became that and was bought out by John as a result. Creating that vision, communicating that vision with passion and it’s got to be a vision that people will identify with and have a raise in depth or a higher purpose ideally for a business to really get the most out of.

It’s all about your ‘why.’ It has to be more than just making money. If you’re pitching to get funding, you need to be able to really explain that vision to get the right people to join your team, to get customers and pitching to get funding. Having a vision is critical no matter what you’re pitching. I think business is typically pitched at least to get good talent and good customers, and they may or may not need pitching for funding, but they definitely need the other two. When you’re pitching to get a customer, I think a lot people skip the vision part and just go right in to the features of a product without talking about what the vision for their company is and what makes that culture unique. You’re really missing out in my opinion, when you’re pitching to grow your business with new customers if you don’t explain your vision. What I see really works is when you explain how your vision matches your perspective client’s vision that there are some synergy between the brands. Then, they start going, “Maybe we should consider this.”

His name is escaping me, but the founder of 5-Hour Energy, he’s a billionaire. How is it that they get such great shelf space so consistently? They have a pitch that few people know about but it ties directly to not just a vision but the raison d’être of their company. The raison d’être of their company has to do with giving energy and hydration to the world. He is going to give away 99% of his billions of dollars. Those billions would go to fuel research that will help develop energy sources that go to the poorest and most remote of places around the world. Then the water finding and protecting and purifying innovations will also go to some parts of the world. That’s all happening because we’re buying 5-Hour Energy to keep us awake in our work day or driving. The stores are all the more motivated to give him the best space. They pitch that and they leverage that pitch so beautifully that it ultimately gets the more money, which just helps more people to be better off. What a great pitch.

Reminds me of what TOMS shoes does, that there’s a bigger vision here. For every shoe you buy, we give the shoes to someone who doesn’t. Let’s now jump into this focus part. When you’re pitching to get funded, if you’re not focused and really identifying one problem that you’re solving and trying to boil the ocean, as one investor told me, then the same thing is true when you’re pitching to get a client. Don’t tell me everything you do. Figure out ideally how this solves my problem by really focusing in on one thing. Even if you’re selling a car. You don’t talk about every single feature or a benefit. You figure out what’s important to that person. Is it the speed? Is it the way it feels? Is it the way it looks? Then, focus on that. Within focus on the strategy, what are some of the mistakes you think people make? We can go back to politics if you want. Is it not being focused on one message when you have multiple things to talk about, whether it’s world, international affairs, economy, integration? There are lots of different topics. How do you run a successful campaign when you’re having to solve multiple problems?

Let me answer it on both sides of that coin on how to get money from angels investors, mezzanine, whatever level it may be. I’ve sat on many of those boards, facilitated those boards that are interviewing people, giving their pitch. One of the easiest ways to prove you have clarity of focus on the right market is that you’ve actually pre-sold, whether you’ve been paid or not, that exact market and have lined up those customers. There’s nothing more real, nothing more scientific than people who will sign a contract or actually write a check to give money for something you’re about to build even if you’re in beta stage. That’s the ultimate proof of focus is that you define that ideal customer, you’ve lined them up and you’ve prepped those kids for future sales. That’s on the pitch side there.

The metaphor that we saw in the campaign of 2016 in regards to an intensified focus on a handful of messages could be seen in the areas of safety. You could have as an overwriting theme. Pride is an overwriting theme. Dive down a little bit deeper and that’s when you get into the immigration, defense and security, law and order, jobs, economy and trade. This is going to segue over into points of divergence, the sixth aspect. The crossover between intensified focus of getting some messages out much more rapidly and intensely, that were also messages that are completely different. For example, let’s just take jobs, economy and trade. Trump was able to own the Anti-NAFTA and TPP trade angle because of something that’s traditionally Republican. Trump, many political analysts are now saying has snapped up of working white vote for maybe good because he is so ably captured that. The Democrats are at a lost because they were pro-NAFTA and pro-TPP. Besides Parot from way back 1992 or some outliers like that, there really is nobody should promoted that. It was a sentiment that was in the marketplace and many voters moved over because of it, from both sides of the table. It was an apolitical bipartisan angle.

The other intensification of focus angle on the pride side we could take. We saw both Bill Clinton and Ronal Reagan used the Make America Great Again theme. Now, only Trump was the one to get the service trademark for it legally so he can sell it on tea cups or whatever. The point is, it was a proven theme. It was proven in two big wins with Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan in very tough races where it was a lot closer than people might remember. The point is that theme played well to all sides. That was another intensification of focus angle that Trump so aptly took. He knew how to go on both sides of the political spectrum which something nobody else could touch. For example, law and order thing. With everything from Wall Street to Black Lives Matter, highly controversial topics, people were afraid to touch either with a ten-foot pole but he blew it all apart and set law and order, safety, safety and people resonated at least for enough of the percentage of others that resonated with. He intensified that focus. He blocked it off as a point of divergence and owned a few different facets of topics there that others couldn’t snap up.

It’s interesting because what I heard you saying was if you have multiple things, lump them under one theme whether it’s pride or safety. Then, under those themes comes where all the other things fit in. You’re still keeping it fairly simple with your focus. We’re talking about safety and then there’s lots of topics under that. We’re talking about pride, Making American Great Again and jobs. I think that’s a very clever way to figure out if you’ve got a lot of things to offer, if you’re a company with a lot of different products for example, come up with some themes. If you’re selling dog food, the investors want to see the dogs eating the food and the customers. Customers really like to be the first. They like to see proof of concept and some case studies. Getting that first customer is just as tricky as getting that first investor.

I’ve got to throw you something out here, John. I have friend had a client from a billion-dollar pet food company that thought they had struck a new big cord which was better tasting dog food.

They actually tested it. It’s a Fortune 40 company that did it. It was Procter & Gamble and they know the odds. The bottom line was they knew for a fact dogs love this new flavor better. Problem is, dogs aren’t the customer; the owners are. It was failing miserably in the test markets and it took a brilliant product manager to admit that all their research previous was wrong and they had to pivot. They basically chose to promote healthier and were able to improve some aspects of the product to be healthier. The buyers want a longer living dog, not one that just enjoys its food.

I think the same is true of customers. You’ve got to really tap into who’s the customer here. For example, if you’re selling children’s clothing, is it the children that are telling their parents to buy for them or is it the mom and dad that say, “That’s a cool brand,” and how do you target your marketing accordingly. I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about what impact does it have when there’s a scandal? There’s a scandal with United Airlines pulling a man off the plane. There’s the scandal of Trump being heard, the entertainment show that most people thinking. That’s going to ruin his chances of winning or “The stocks is going to plummet on United Airlines.” Uber had a scandal about the way they were treating women in the workforce and started the whole hashtag of taking Uber off your phone. How do scandals impact strategy?

It depends on the response. In fact, I am waiting what they had brought to see what United does right now watching that video come out. We go back, everybody has heard the Tylenol response when the poisonings happened. They spoke with great candor, simplicity, directness, contriteness, concern, compassion and humility. They dealt very directly, honestly and tactfully with it. They actually grew their market share in the long run and what they lost was made up for by that growth. Similar things happened with other products. Again, I’m trying to be objective here. Politicians, it depends on how they handle it. Do they run from the issue? If we go back to Romney, he ran from the Mother Jones video that got out of him saying whatever percent will never be brought over. He did really deal with it that directly.

[Tweet “Ask Great Questions to Get The Right Strategy”]

Trump is a completely different animal when it comes to embracing conflict and public debate. Actually, I’ve been conducting an unofficial survey asking a lot of people who were either Hillary or Bernie people, “How would you rate Trump on his candor?” I didn’t say honesty, I said candor. He rates extremely high on that. When he has a controversial statement get out, if he addresses it directly, he is able to get out of it in a way that most people cannot. That’s an advantage he has; the bald, fearlessness of confronting the press or an issue. His calmness that he keeps before that storm rustles up. That was actually a part of what I labeled in the seventh aspect of good strategy, the advantageous approach. I think where he beat his political opponents was where he was not your typical politician. The candor, the simplicity, the bold fearlessness, his calmness before the storm, under the umbrella of how he spoke gave him an advantage in his approach that few politicians have.

There are other politicians who have done that. In fact, it was a strength of John McCain for a while. John McCain has lost a lot of his core support because he has whether it’s prevarication or flip flopping or whatever you want to call it. He has been a little bit all over the board. He’s been very anti-immigration. He’s been very in the middle. He’s been very on the other side. It’s another example of the frustration people have with politicians being all over. I was just on the phone with a politician who could answer your question. That’s atypical and Trump is atypical that way. That was one of the ways he could deal with scandal unlike others before him. That was a tactic; the release of a scandal is a tactic, not a strategy and something that politicians don’t realize on both sides.

You talked about the final key of the strategy is the point of divergence and that’s how you’re handling push back or even a scandal is like doubling down on something.

In fact, the temporary ban on Muslims from entering the United States, he double downed that. The use of tariffs, he double downed on it. Renegotiating or withdrawing from NAFTA and TPP, double downed on it, taking the oil from ISIS. These are all divergent points. Building the wall, boldly saying, “Build the wall.” In fact, talking about it being ten feet higher was a doubling down and an aspect of a visionary state that people can see a wall ten feet taller.

How does a business use this? Can you give us an example of either a brand we know or one of your own?

Yes, this was something that our marketing genius has taught us, as well as Michael Porter from Harvard. Strategies, you really need to identify all your positioning points of uniqueness, advantage, equality and weakness as honestly or objectively as you can. Usually, a third party is needed to do this well. Then you need to verify the realty of that by, again ideally having a third party doing the depth interviews that Peter Drucker has always said over a required aspect of the strategy process which a few people do, so they’re really not doing strategy. It’s through customer depth interviews that you confirm what their views of your uniqueness or advantage or equality of the weaknesses are. If you get clear about those and connect those positioning points to a point of benefit and then a point of proof, then you’ve got some power behind those positioning points. Just building that sheet of positioning points is one of the three most powerful pieces of paper that we usually construct with our clients to get them to accelerate their growth or to turn around from a dire situation.

Mark, I can’t thank you enough for sharing your Winning Strategy, that’s the name of your book and for teaching us how we can use this turnaround mindset. Is there any last thoughts you want to leave us with?

Winning Strategy was really written to promote High-Growth Levers, which is the more for explanation and detail on how to build a unique strategy, culture and attitude of innovation throughout your organization. Any company of any size can facilitate that and the key is to involve more people, not fewer and to ask great questions. That’s what all my books have. There are lots of questions that help you facilitate this on your own.

How can people find you on social media?

Twitter is @MarkFaustSR. Then also HighGrowthLevers.com will get you to our site. All our books are available at all the typical outlets.

Thanks again, Mark.

 

Links Mentioned

• Winning Strategy
• Echelon Management
• Mark Faust
• Career Press
• Growth or Bust!
• High-Growth Levers, How to Turnaround Mindset and Propel Your Business
• 5-Hour Energy
• @MarkFaustSR
• HighGrowthLevers.com

 

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Eyes Wide Open with Isaac Lidsky

Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments

Episode Summary

Today’s guest on The Successful Pitch is Isaac Lidsky, the author of “Eyes Wide Open.” Isaac went blind at the age of 25. It was a slow process when he was in his late teens so he had time to get used to the idea. At first, he thought it was going to be a very sad and small life, but he said, “You know what? I might have lost my sight, but not my vision for what I want my life to be.” He really has great insights into the importance of combining nonverbal cues with verbal cues, so that people really communicate clearly.

And, he said, “You need to take full responsibility for your own definition of success, and if you’re doing something that isn’t making you happy, don’t let other people tell you have to stay doing that very thing.” He leads a life that his eyes are wide open, his heart is wide open, and he shares tips with us on how we can have our ears wide open, and even learn to listen like you speed read. Enjoy the episode.

 

Listen To The Episode Here

 

Eyes Wide Open with Isaac Lidsky

Hi, and welcome to The Successful Pitch. Today’s guest is Isaac Lidsky. I have been waiting for a long time to get him on. As soon as I saw his TED Talk, I was completely riveted and moved, and have told everybody about this new amazing book, “Eyes Wide Open.” His popular TED Talk which I highly encourage you to go watch is “What Reality Are You Creating For Yourself?” He has literally done so many things in his life, from being on Saved The Bell as a teen star, to being an entrepreneur, to being a lawyer and clerking with two Supreme Court justices, and running his own business.

And now, he teaches all of us how he dealt with his information that he was going to eventually go blind, I believe it was at 25, and how he took that information, and he said a line in there that I think, well, I will remember the rest of my life which is, “I might have lost my sight, but I’ve not lost my vision for what I want my life to be.” Isaac, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much. I appreciate you having me.

It’s just amazing to see I think some of us think, “Oh, maybe I’ll have two or three different lives,” but you’ve really had five different reincarnations of everything you’ve done, don’t you think?

Yes. I’ve been blessed to do a lot of really neat things in my life along the way, as you generously mentioned. In a remarkable way, slowly losing my sight, I was diagnosed when I was 13 and it took above a dozen years. I lost my sight from 13 to 25. In a remarkable way, of the many things I’ve been able to do, going blind was one of the best things that happened to me. It really was.

Source: Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

[Tweet “Going blind was one of the best things that happened to me”]

As you said, I lost my sight, but I gained a vision in the process, and that vision has brought me immeasurable joy and fulfillment and success.

And not only are you successful, but you also have an amazing wife based on what you describe in your book, and four children I believe, correct?

That is correct, yeah.

And a dog even.

Yeah, so my wife, Dorothy, who is a miraculous woman, and I adore and admire her. Dorothy and I have six and a half year triplets, and a 16 month old baby. That’s the four kids, we call them the Kidskys. You know, my last name being Lidsky, we call them the Kidskys. The triplets are the Tripskys.

Oh, my God.

And yeah, we’re all enjoying a very busy life.

Yes. You talk about that going blind has actually helped you, but it wasn’t always like that, and you were very candid in your book, “Eyes Wide Open,” talking about your own internal struggles. Can you talk about how other people can deal with these maybe not as dramatic of challenges, but you have some really great tips on how to deal with obstacles in any form?

Sure. When I was first diagnosed with my blinding disease, I was terrified, and I was convinced that blindness was going to ruin my life. It wasn’t really something I thought as much as it was just something that I knew. I knew blindness would end my achievements. It would be an end to independence to me, and then I would never find a woman who would truly love and respect me, ’cause I figured I wasn’t going to love or respect myself, and on and on, and on, and all these awful things.

Psychologists call it awfulizing, which I think is a great term. But it was all these awful images and what was amazing is, it felt real. It felt like truth, right? That’s what’s so pernicious about fear. We all confront fear, we all confront challenges, the unknown types of crisis, and in those moments our fear really fills the void of the unknown with awful, with the worst case scenario. If we’re not careful, if we’re not aware, we believe it, we experience it as truth, and then it becomes true, right? It’s self-realizing.

So, for me, going blind in a lot of ways, the disease was really kind of the cure. As I lost my sight progressively and slowly, produced all these bizarre visual effects. Objects would appear and morph and disappear, and if someone told me about the picture I was holding in my hand then I could suddenly see it, but otherwise it couldn’t, and on and on, and on.

The upshot was, the impact was that this illusion of sight, this human experience of sight which is an illusion, was kind of shattered for me. I realized that far from being some kind of passive perception of some truth or some objective reality out there, sight is this incredible personal, virtual experience that is crafted in the mind. Literally seeing that firsthand was empowering and liberating for me, because the same is true of our fears, the way we experience our fears. The same is true of countless other aspects of life, and once we see our role in shaping our lives, we can take control.

I love it. Well, I neglected to say in your intro that you went to Harvard, have your law degree, and were on this fast track and have clerked for two Supreme Court justices. While you were blind, you were still able to have this amazing career, and yet, you realized that for you, there was something else to do, and that’s the entrepreneurial itch sometimes. You have all this time and money invested in this amazing education, and yet you find yourself going, “This isn’t quite right for me.” Can you tell us about that big decision that you made to leave New York and start something else?

Sure. So, a big part of living life eyes wide open for me is really holding yourself accountable for your own definition of success, your own understanding of what value looks like. Really, being rigorous in assessing how you want to spend your time and who you want to be as a person. So, that has put my money where my mouth is and endeavoring to live that way has played a major role in my repeated invention or career switches along the way. The one you speak of, I was blessed to do a lot of really call things in law in the public sector. I worked for the Justice Department, litigated appeals all over the country, clerked for the Supreme Court, all these great things which I enjoyed.

Source: Warren Wong on Unsplash

[Tweet “I lost my sight, but I gained a vision in the process”]

Then I found myself taking the easy route and big signing bonus and fancy office and paycheck and all of that, and working for a big international law firm, which to be clear, there are people who enjoy that work, who find it rewarding, who find value in their lives in that work. I have no problem with it. That’s great for them. The problem was that it wasn’t so for me. I was pretty dissatisfied and pretty miserable in my career.

So, this was around the end of 2010, the beginning of 2011. I decided with my college roommate that it might be a good time to buy a small company and use it to build an excellent business of our own. My roommate, Zac, helped me find the business and he put up a lot of the money to buy it, but he kept his fancy day job in the world of finance.

I put every single penny that Dorothy and I had into the business, and moved from Manhattan and my fancy law firm office to Orlando, Florida, to serve as the first Chief Executive Officer of our new residential construction company, contractor, and that was in June of 2011.

Yes, that alone is a big decision and I know from listening to you read your book out loud to us on Audible, which is my favorite way to consume content, it is that you, because you’re a lawyer, know due diligence probably better than most, and yet, once again, another challenge appeared that you had to use your eyes wide open skills to figure out how to sort through that.

Well, you know, in retrospect, Zac and I really had little idea what we were doing. We learn in life, often by doing. Experience is the best teacher and all that kind of stuff, so the unfortunate corollary to that is your first time out, you don’t tend to have a lot of way by experience or insight. We thought we knew what we were doing, we meticulously analyzed the financials of the business. We met with the owner, we met with the team, and having bought the business, three months in we realized this data we had been so obsessively focused on really was nonsense. It was garbage in, garbage out.

The truth of the matter was nobody really knew what was going on with the business. The sole proprietor, owner, was relatively unsophisticated and anyway, far from treading water or getting by, this business we had bought was actually sinking like a stone. That led to a pretty miserable time in my life. It looked like Dorothy and I might lose it all, and declare bankruptcy. We even had conversations with her parents about maybe moving in with them and our then year old triplets, and our dog.

But along the way here, my mother revealed, it was a surprise to me and a surprise to really my whole family, but she revealed that over 30-40 years, she had been squirling away some cash to save for that rainy day. It was a lesson her father taught her well, and her father being an immigrant who had to start from scratch a couple of times in his life.

For him, the only way to truly save was by saving cash, right? Banks come and go, governments come and go. Anyway, it turned out my mom had $350,000 in cash tucked away, and she was convinced that I should take it and use it to try to save my dying business.

She said something to you about taking care of yourself, and loving yourself. Can you tell us what that was? It just touched me so much when I heard you say that.

Yeah, so after two or three days of really wrestling with this decision, whether I could actually bring myself to take this money and do something productive with it, we met, actually Dorothy and I drove down Florida’s turnpike, and met my mom. She drove up from Miami, we were driving down from Orlando, we met about halfway in the parking lot of a gas station, at a turnpike rest stop.

I got out of a suburban and stepped into a pretty tight hug from my mom and she said, “Please be good to yourself.” Then, she said, “I know you will fix this” which was pretty remarkable because she didn’t say she thought I could, right? She said she knew I could.

Then, she didn’t say, “Could,” she said, “Will.” “I know you will fix this.” Man, there’s a lot of wisdom in mothers, and I’m glad that she turned out to be right.

Well, you have people like that believing in you, and your wife was equally supportive saying, “Just fix it,” right? Your mom saying, “I know you will fix it,” I love that you differentiated that. Not “I think” and that “You might,” the distinction leads right into one of my many favorite things in “Eyes Wide Open” which is the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Can you tell us the example there? You said the wisdom of mothers and that leads right into this.

Yes. Yeah, that’s fun. So, it’s a saying. I wish I could claim credit for it, but it’s not my own, but they say that “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, and wisdom is knowing not to put tomatoes in a fruit salad.” For me, that very nicely encapsulates this idea that we get a lot of cues around us in the world from other people, from our circumstances, colleagues, friends, family, whatnot, that I would put in the knowledge bucket. But sometimes we do ourselves a disservice. We have a hard time trusting ourselves when it comes to wisdom.

Of course, on matters of who we want to be and how we want to live our lives, and what we’re trying to achieve, our own wisdom is vastly more important and vastly more relevant than any knowledge we might gain from without. So, that’s the way I look at that, I guess.

Well, I think one of the things that you really made me think, and I think’s going to be so interesting for everyone listening, is just because you lose your sight doesn’t make your hearing automatically better. Like, suddenly you have super hearing or something, right? And you’re a superhero with your hearing. But you do talk about we all know about speed reading, but you have this great insight that we can train ourselves even if we are still seeing with our eyes, to be better listeners or even faster listeners. Can you talk about that?

Sure, that’s exactly right. So, there’s a Hollywood shorthand that when you lose sense, your other sense “get better.” That’s not true at all. The truth of the matter is that you learn to use your other senses more effectively. You rely on them more, you pay more attention to them, and you learn ways to use them more effectively. That distinction is critical because it means that all the awesome and amazing ways that I have learned make my ears a lot more productive for me, a lot more useful to me.

You don’t have to be blind to do the same. So, sighted people can do it, too, and one big part of that is listening to people more effectively, truly listening, and trying to communicate at a deeper level, which I talk a lot about in the book. But another example, a fun fact I should say. The average person reads somewhere around 300 words a minute, using their eyes.

I listen to information, I don’t use my eyes obviously, because they don’t work at all. So, the average American English speaker will speak 150 words a minute. Now, getting information primarily through my ears and listening to documents and books and things over time, and slowly nudging up the playback speed a little bit and a little bit, and a little bit, over time, I can now listen to somewhere in the 700 to 725 words per minute.

I literally, I listen to documents far faster than I could ever read them, even with “normal sight.” Again, you don’t have to go blind to do that. Some of my friends are fascinated by the idea, trying to do it as well, and they get through audiobooks in half the time and that kind of thing.

Well, the other really great example that you have used, being the CEO of your company, is when people would go around the room and you present an idea and you’d ask for feedback, and people would just nod. You really came into a big “Ah-huh” moment there when you helped people say, “Look, don’t nod.” Can you tell us that story?

Sure. Yeah, that’s a great one. We get all sorts of visual feedback from people. Facial expressions, gestures, that it’s our tendency to try to imbue them with all sorts of meaning. I think the nod is a great example. It’s a really pernicious example.

When I first took over at OEC and built up my leadership team and we would have these meetings. To your point, I would ask a question and, “Do we all agree?” Someone poses an idea, “Do we all agree or disagree?” Then there would just be silence. It would hit me. I’d say, “Folks, are you guys all nodding again?” They would chuckle. “Oh yeah, sorry, we’ll still nodding.” I’d chuckle back and say, “Yeah, I’m still blind so that doesn’t work. Let’s just go around the table and everybody says, just say, ‘Yes, I agree’ so that I can actually hear it.”

You’d think everyone would say, “Yes, I agree” because everyone just nodded, but it never once happened that way. It was instead, “I guess I sort of agree.” Which leads to the question, “Well, I guess I want to know the ways in which you might not agree.” Then, it leads to more and more discussion, so at first, I was wrong. I mistakenly confused this as some awkwardness, some sort of burden brought about by my blindness.

In fact, the awkwardness and the tension was a necessary component of meaningful communication, right? Of being vulnerable, of telling each other what we really thought, of inviting and perpetuating conflict, right? Disagreement.

Yeah.

And all these things that really were necessary requisites to our communicating effectively, and in the end, because my being blind forced us to get there, it wound up being one of the best things that happened to me as a leader, and I think it’s one of the best things that happened to my business.

That’s such a great takeaway for anyone who is in any way, shape, or form, working for a big or small company, in any kind of leadership capacity, is to really not just take the nonverbal cues, right? And really get people to open up and make that a new practice. I thought that was amazing.

Yeah, and for me, what I argue is, obviously you get a lot of information from your eyes, but to the extent you’re getting facial expressions or mannerisms, or gestures that are maybe inconsistent with what your understanding is, it’s great to pay attention to those if, and that’s a big if, you use them to seek more verbal communication, more words, more clarity. When you take them in lieu of words, or a substitute for words is when you get into trouble.

Oh, that’s a great distinction. Well, not only did you come up with a great title, “Eyes Wide Open,” but then you talk about how we can learn to live with our heart wide open. We’ve already talked a little bit about how we can live with our ears wide open. Can you talk about how we can live with our heart wide open?

Yeah. So, at the core of “Eyes Wide Open” is this idea, this awesome power we have, this inescapable responsibility we have, really in every moment of our lives, to choose how we want to live our lives, and who we want to be.

Circumstances, there are obviously circumstances beyond our control that we confront, but how those circumstances manifest themselves in our lives is entirely within our control. It’s our choice. For me, I would argue that to truly make that choice, with awareness and to hold yourself accountable for that choice, to know yourself and to commit to manifesting the version of yourself that you want.

You’ve got to be willing to really open up your heart, open up your heart to be seen, first and foremost, by yourself. You can’t hide from it, and also by others. I grew up a very I say committed uber rationalist. I did not like to talk about things like hearts and love and emotions, and I just was convinced that all of life was rational and logical.

Source: Tim Marshall on Unsplash

[Tweet “Learn to live with your heart wide open”]

Man, I was completely wrong. This notion that we can be purely rational is a total myth, and it’s a harmful one. It breeds polarization and bias, and it prevents connection and understanding. We’re creatures of the heart, whether we like it or not.

It’s so true. I really like that, ’cause when you bring your heart into the workplace, not only does your team feel more connected, but then even your clients and your customers do as well. From what I can see, that’s been one of your keys to success, whether you’re an actor, a lawyer, or running your own business. That’s really what I saw is a consistent throughline through your life.

That’s very insightful. I think that that’s true. I think that that’s true.

One of the other things about you, Isaac, is that you have a great metaphor about life being like poker. Can you talk to us about that?

Yeah. So, it extends to all forms of poker but Texas Hold ‘Em in particular, No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em which is a game that I enjoy immensely. There’s this debate in the legal world as to whether it’s a game of skill or a game of luck. Literally whether skill predominates, where the outcome is more than 50% skill or more than 50% luck, and it’s been litigated to major consequences.

To me, it’s astounding, because to me it is so obvious that poker is a game of skill. Properly viewed. Like, if you look at it one particular hand, yeah, maybe it’s a game of luck, and it depends on how the cards are dealt that one hand. If you look at playing poker over thousands of hands, over different sessions against different players, there’s just no questions it’s a game of skill.

So, for me, I love that as a metaphor for luck in our lives. I think that generally, we tend to misperceive luck in a couple of really important ways. First, we think that luck can be categorized as good or bad. Circumstances good or bad, and the truth of the matter is really they’re neither. They are what they are, and it’s up to us to make them good or bad in our lives.

I’ll give you an example. For me, going blind, I am certain of the fact that ultimately I was very lucky to go blind. The experience that I had losing my sight, the insights that I gained were one of the biggest blessings of my life. Who’s to say whether luck is good or bad? The second way is that we tend to think that there’s neat and tidy line that divides circumstances beyond our control from the circumstances that are within our control.

Of course, the truth is a lot more complicated and nuanced, and far more often than we realize, we do exert control over the circumstances we confront.

Well, you also talk about the house always wins in the majority of gambling, and you encouraged all of us to look at our life as if we’re the house, right?

Oh, sure. So, yeah, that’s our cosmic edge. Before you even get into the proper way to look at different events in your life, or how to leverage your luck, how to see yourself empowered to influence and take advantage of your luck and all that kind of stuff. First and foremost what I always think about is this cosmic edge. So me, for example, born to a middle class family in America, parents who loved me and nurtured me, never known hunger, always had shelter, always had access to healthcare, and on and on, and on.

You’re looking in the grand scheme of things, there’s just to me, as clear as day, it’s an objective fact that I am just immensely lucky. You look at the cosmic hand that I’ve been dealt. I think going blind in many ways, one of the biggest impacts it had was just that, to help me realize how immensely lucky I am overall in my life.

For me, to then curse my luck with respect to one particular term of the deal, going blind, or deal that doesn’t go my way, or a tough break or whatever, is to lose sight of that immense cosmic edge. Yeah, the metaphor I like to use is picture the owner, the majority owner and chairman and CEO of some huge casino in Vegas, standing on the casino floor and cursing his luck when a roulette player wins a big take on the spin of the wheel. It’s a ridiculous thing even to imagine, because of course, the house doesn’t gamble on any spin or roll or hand, right?

In aggregate, it has the structure in place that guarantees it’s going to win. The rule is rigged in its favor, and I think for so many of us, who live privileged lives, again, the rules of the world have been rigged in our favor, and to then curse your luck to me is a real shame.

I just think that’s a phenomenal perspective to look at life and reframe everything through that lens. It’s really been helpful. It’s been such an honor to have you on the show and get to hear you firsthand describe your vision and your life, and how you’re making a difference in the world. Now, you also are available if companies want to hire you for keynote speeches. Is that right?

Yep. So, since the TED Talk and writing the book and stuff, I have been doing a lot of corporate speaking and keynotes and whatnot as well. My passion these days really is sharing my “Eyes Wide Open” vision with others, because it’s not about blindness or even disability. It’s about taking control of your reality, mastering the life you want to live.

We’re going to put obviously the link to buy “Eyes Wide Open” in the show notes. If someone wants to follow you on social media, can you give us your Twitter handle or all that good stuff?

Sure. So I mean, if you go to my website, lidsky.com. Everything’s there. My TED Talk’s there, the book’s there, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, et cetera.

We’ll put all of that in the show notes for everybody to go. Isaac, do you have any last thoughts or comments you want to leave us with?

You know, I would just tell folks that whether you realize it or not, whether you like it or not, whether you believe it or not, your life is not happening to you. You are creating it, and you might as well do so with intention and purpose, because you can live the life you want for yourself if you choose to do so.

Great, great. Fantastic. Thanks again, Isaac.

Thank you for having me.

 

Links Mentioned

• Book: “Eyes Wide Open”
• Website: lidsky.com

 

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Live An Adventurous Life with Mark Lovett and Dr. Jeff Salz

Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments

Episode Summary

Today, I have two guests on the podcast. They are Mark Lovett and Jeff Salz, who have a business called Speaker Adventure. They help people craft a story so that they can become compelling no matter what their pitching for. They have great expertise with the TEDx and TED Events and really becoming an adventurer in your life because when you have a story of why you’re doing something or why someone should hire you, that gets people engaged with the storytelling, our brain works very differently when we tell stories. They say when you do a deep dive into yourself and you start your pitch with the end in mind and work backgrounds, that’s really the key to having a great pitch. Enjoy the episode.

 

Listen To The Episode Here

 

Live An Adventurous Life with Mark Lovett and Dr. Jeff Salz

John Livesay: Hi and welcome to “The Successful Pitch” podcast. Today, I have not one, but two amazing guests that are actually in business together at the Speaker Adventure. Dr. Jeff Salz is a professional speaker coach. He’s a 30 year veteran of expedition leadership and Global Exploration turned Hall of Fame Speaker. His passion is helping speakers express their hero’s journey and he’s actually gonna on several himself. Then he’s partnered with this amazing guy named Mark Lovett, who is also a professional speaker coach, who’s been the organizer and chief architect for the San Diego X’d San Diego since 2014. He’s got some really amazing tips having watched over a thousand speakers give their talks. These guys are experts on what it takes to have a great pitch. Gentleman, welcome to the show.

Dr. Jeff Salz: Hello, John.

Mark Lovett: Hello, John. Great to be here.

Glad to have you. Our mutual friend, Mark Golsten, introduced us and, of course, that’s what I’m always talking to everybody about is everything is about your network is your net worth. I always like to ask my guest to take us on the story of origin, of how did you get to where you are? We’ll start with Jeff. If you don’t mind, Mark. We’ll let him go first because he’s got this way of taking adventure and spirit and turning it into a way of life and a career.

And your question is?

How did you get to where you did? How did you decide that this is what you wanted to do with yourself? Did you know in college? Did you ever have a regular quote job or did you just say I’m gonna become an adventurous anthropologist? What? What made you figure out how to get to where you are?

I think it was because I was born and raised in a cultural deprivation zone called New Jersey. I mean no offense, but actually offending each other is how we show our affection in New Jersey. I think growing up on the East Coast and seeing the world around me in fairly mundane, in a mundane world, I just said this is not for me. I want more. I expect more. I demand more.

At a early age, by the time I was 16, I was already attending a crazy college in Arizona called Prescott College, very experiential. By the time I was 17, I dropped out of college, was traveling the world by myself. It’s been a non-stop pursuit of physical heights like the mountains and cultural distances, like the remote areas of Patagonia, Siberia, you name it.

But, ultimately, it took me to a desire and this is the hero’s journey stuff to give back. About 25 years ago, 30 years ago now, I decided to see if I could share the stories, do some writing of books, raising some small children, making a family. My life had become an adventure and now it became an adventure of creativity. That’s how I launched into the world of speaking, which I’ve done now for 30 something years. Most recently, I’ve again taken the next step is to say, the real adventure now is not me doing the thing so much as helping others have the experiences and succeed at. Along with Mark, it got our program.

We were just saying before we spoke to you how it’s an enormous adventure. Every time we sit down with a client and we wonder how the story will unfold and how they’ll express themselves and find more truth about themselves. It’s a real adventure. Maybe my life hasn’t changed that much after all.

Well, and you turned it into a book called “The Way of Adventure: Transforming Your Life and Work with Spirit and Vision.” We’ll get back to how you define what an adventure is because I always love that topic.

Mark, you have an equally interesting life to tell us about because before you became involved with TEDx, you were doing all kinds of things with Global Patriot. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Well, Global Patriot came out of a novel that I was writing and the hero in that book basically transformed himself from being an American Patriot to a Global Patriot, which means that he was dedicated to the health and well-being of the entire planet.

That’s where I started blogging and getting into social media on that and meeting a lot of fascinating people along way. Raised money for Doctors Without Borders by putting on three concerts in 18 days in three different countries, which was rather insane, but that got me into event planning in a very strange way. When the TEDx opportunity came up, I saw that ability to bring ideas up onto the stage and create events that impact people.

You’re also involved, for those people who may not know what a TED Talk is or a TEDx Talk is it’s this amazing opportunity for people to be inspired and informed and have an idea that’s worth sharing, but you’ve taken this into something that I have not been aware of before which is taking it into correctional facilities. How did that come about?

Well, each year, I’ve had a new project in tandem with TEDxSanDiego. That’s the main program that I run each fall and in 2015, that different story was that we did the world’s first cross-border TEDx, where we built a stage in the United States and a stage in Mexico and had speakers alternate between the two countries.

The next year, I produced a kid’s event where the speakers ranged from 13-years-old down to 6-years-old. Now this year is TEDx Donovan Correctional, where a friend of mine started volunteering in the prison. She knew I did TEDx. We started talking. We went to the prison administration. They loved the idea. We applied for a license from TED in New York. When we got the license, we started organizing this event that’s happening on May 21. It will involve five inmate speakers and five speakers from the outside.

I once heard Dr. Jerry Jampolsky talking about working with prisoners. He’s the author of books like “Say Goodbye To Guilt.” He said to the prisoners, “Just because your body’s in prison doesn’t mean your mind is.” I’m assuming and guessing that that’s a big part of what you’re trying to help them realize. Would that be accurate?

What I would say is that they have realized that themselves. Most of the men we’re working with have been in for 20 years or more.

Wow. Okay.

They’ve completely transformed themselves. The talks are gonna center around finding purpose, the power of love and the magic of self-forgiveness. If they hear these talks and I’m coaching them inside prison every Tuesday and Sunday and to hear their talks unfold as Jeff mentioned, it’s this magical process. At one point, one of ’em leaned forward to me and said, “You know what? I’ve never told this story to anyone in my entire life.”

Well, that’ll grab somebody’s attention. Jeff, how do you define adventure since that’s your area of expertise?

Good question, John. No, adventure, it isn’t so much about the physical risk that somebody might get hurt or die. It is about more risking assumptions, risking ease and complacency. Adventure is what happens when everything you plan ceases.

Ah.

Adventure is life. Adventure is the realization and the act of undertaking and experiencing of the unexpected, the untoward, the unplanned. Whether we like it or not, life’s an adventure, but adventure’s attitude. It means a willingness to go along and accept whatever comes to you as a gift and an opportunity. I’m just making that up as I go along here.

No, I like it.

Current definition.

Well, a lot of people, I think, whether they’re in prison or not feel “trapped by their life,” right? They don’t feel like they have the time or the money to “go have an adventure” even if they’re not in prison so I think that is really valuable to give people the sense of you don’t go looking for an adventure so much as you bring the adventure to whatever your experience is. That’s my take on it from what your said. Do you have anything else you want to add to that?

No, very well said. Very well said. One of my very favorite quotes is an old Chinese quote: “That we use a finger to point at the moon, but we shouldn’t confuse the finger with the moon.” Adventure is like the finger, but the adventure is not the thing. The adventure is that thing, which points to a greater awareness and appreciation of life or of nature or of a relationship or a discovery of a principal wouldn’t have found had we stayed at home. The adventure is the vehicle toward a greater unfolding of the mysterious nature of life itself.

Yes. That’s great. Well, whether I’m working with big companies and helping them craft a pitch to get new clients or helping startups craft a pitch to get funded, one of the key areas is always the story of origin. Let’s hear the story of origin of how you two met and decided to start Speaker Adventure.

Well, I guess that’ll start with me. Let’s see. Speaker Adventure came out of a program that my sweetheart and I began called Courageous Speaking. Just I don’t wanna get too loquacious here, but I’ve always felt that speaking isn’t just a series of techniques. It isn’t like you stand on stage. You wave your hands. It’s an adventure.

That to really be a great speaker is to dive deep into yourself and to step into what could be and so from the weekends that we ran called Courageous Speaking, we realized we wanted to do more. We wanted to help people take it deeper and go further so when I learned about Mark, I’ll be very honest. His celebrity factor overwhelmed me and then when I met that man, I said, “You think he would really consider working with us?” It turned out that he’s as passionate and as driven about speakers and coaching and storytelling as I am.

Together, we formed a program that is three weeks that begins with coaching with Mark or myself via phone or in person. It culminates in a weekend, where people are on stage in a theater and we work with them there. We film them, but it ends with sort of then a integration into how can they find themselves on a large and powerful platform that could be a TED Talk or TEDx Talk or elsewhere? Or even become a professional speakers by learning more about the business.

It really, I think, Mark and I coalescing around the powerful love that we have and the belief that a story well told can save the world and will certainly save your soul.

Wow. That’s fantastic. I love that. That’s some lofty goals. It really makes people think twice about why they’re speaking in the first place.

Mark, what’s your memory of how you connected with Jeff?

We were introduced by way of a mutual friend.

There it is again. Yep.

Yeah. It was all about the network.

Yeah.

When I first sat down with Jeff and I came to know his background, there was this magic that developed between his many years on the keynote stage and my many years watching over 50 TED and TEDx events. As you alluded to at the beginning of the show, I’ve seen well over a thousand speakers live. My format is really that 15 to 20 minutes in Jeff’s format is more of the 22 to 40 and beyond so we were able to combine our skill sets. One of the things we work with people on is to say take your idea and think about a 15, a 30 and a 45 minute version because you might be on a TEDx stage, you might be at a conference and you might be asked to do a keynote.

We help them develop that idea in a fashion where it can be smaller or bigger and so that’s unique that I’ve seen in the coaching world that our two skill sets came together to be able to do that.

Yes, indeed. What do you think makes a good TEDx Talk versus a keynote? Is there a difference?

The difference for me is that the story is more concise and leading to one specific point. The tagline for TED is ideas worth spreading so they try to focus on what’s this idea and I can expand that to beyond being an idea. It could be a perception. It could be a concept. It could be something that you feel needs to change in society and if you can craft that story in that 15 to 20 minute time range, you really take people on that journey from here’s what I’ve discovered and here’s how this can affect your life.

That’s the journey. That’s part of the storytelling. Jeff, let’s jump back to you and have you describe what you feel is a good story.

Yeah. The first time I heard about TEDx – I’ve never told you this, Mark – but I thought I’m a Keynote Speaker, I need 45 minutes to develop my theme. It’s like saying we wanna see a movie, but can you take your 90 minutes and give us… Yeah. It’s like, okay, character develop. People started asking me can you do an 18 minute talk? I would say, “I would not ding.”

“We’ll pay you twice as much.” I’m not going to do it, you know. I actually refused an opportunity to earn good money giving short talks, but then working with Mark, I came to realize that it’s like anything else. When there’s a certain limitation, that limited structure, it necessitates a greater appreciation and a wiser economy of words and architecture.

To me what constitutes a great story, and to do this in 18 minutes takes true mastery. There has to be an emotional component. Unless there’s an emotional component, it’s just words and we get bored. For there to be an emotional component, there has to be an evolving story. There has to be a story.

Source: Pexels

[Tweet “Stories That Are Emotional and Involving Work Best”]

I was just drawing a diagram for Mark. It’s kind of like a very simple way to look at this is I just came about this coaching yesterday. Imagine an hour or a timer or an hourglass with a wide top and a narrow center and a wide bottom. It’s as if the story … The ideas on top and that becomes the story and that’s the top of your hourglass. Where the hourglass comes together that has to be what it all means. What’s the moral of this? What’s the lesson learned? Then it expands again at the bottom into the implications and the applications.

To me, a good story has topography, contrast, pathos. You distill it into a meaning for your audience. Then you help them see why this meaning is essential and how it could change their lives and affect the world around them.

I love that. I love that visual image that goes with it in particular. We get them emotionally involved. We zoom in and then I think, where most people forget, is to zoom back out and give implications, learn from that so I would love that you covered all of that.

Let’s say someone’s listening and they’re like, “I don’t really have any goals of doing a TEDx Talk, but I would love to learn how to be a better storyteller or pitch person,” or however you wanted to describe it, to get new clients. So many people are invited to come in if you work for a small company, a big company. Okay, we’re gonna see all the architects today from wherever and you each get an hour to come in and quote pitch or show us your ideas. What would you recommend somebody do that brings the elements of storytelling into a pitch to get someone to hire them that makes it so much more interesting than just talking about what they do?

One of the similarities that I see because I not only coach people who are gonna be on the TEDx stage, but I also do work with entrepreneurs and startup companies who wanna learn how to tell their story and it’s really about adding value to the audience.

When you get out of your ego and you completely put yourself in this mode of service. I’m here to improve the life of the people in the audience.

From the standpoint of a TEDx Talk, it would be that ideal worth spreading that people can take and they can pull into their own life. If you’re trying to pitch a product or get yourself hired or you’re a start-up company, you really have to think of what is the value I’m adding to the person on the other side of the table? Stop talking about yourself and bragging about this is what I do and it’s the greatest product on Earth.

It’s really about how will lives be changed if you hire me or if you buy my product.

I love that. Let me just hit the pause button on that because I wanna underline what you said. Circle it. Put it on a tweet. Stop talking about yourself for the first 10 minutes of a presentation and so many companies feel that they have to go into this here’s why were so great and the client’s just sitting there going, okay, this has … You’re just trying to impress me and I’m trying to figure out whether we’re a fit or not. I’m not gonna hire you based on how long you’ve been in business or how many other people you’ve helped. It’s what about me, right, is what I’m I hearing you saying.

Source: Marcos Luiz Photograph on Unsplash

[Tweet “Stop talking about yourself.”]

It is. It is really about understanding the value you can give to somebody else, understanding their pain point, understanding their problem. Why would they develop this product? Why would they hire somebody? Why would they start a company? If you can enhance their world or solve a problem then you become valuable to them and that’s why they want you.

When I work with people, I’d say your team slide. When you’re going in to present for funding or going in to pitch to get hired is the most important slide because people are hiring people they trust and like and wanna work with more than even what you’re selling. That’s how you separate yourself from being a commodity so do you have any tips on how people can sell themselves through storytelling?

Well, again, I think selling yourself is really understanding how you can benefit somebody else rather than just saying hey, I have a PhD and I’ve got all these accolades. Talk about real life examples where you were able to do something creative, you were able to solve a problem, you were able to fix something that was going in the wrong direction. That means that you have to do your homework and understand who the person is on the other side of the table.

Let me jump in here real quick.

Please.

All of the science shows that we really do learn best from stories. That the different parts of the brain and I’m no neuroscientist, but are affected by information and storytelling. One is more affective and the other is more conative. The conative part; the facts come in, they go out, but a story, not only does it create an emotion, actually the listener feels like they’re having the experience themselves. To create a lasting value, a powerful connection, you’ve gotta access that storytelling side of the brain so I encourage people, even if the time is short, make sure you tell a story, a story that will connect and you’ll be memorable and you’ll reach people deeply.

I love that. That really is the way. People remember our stories way more than our numbers if you’re talking about statistics and you know. For example, back to the architect example again. If they start talking about a square footage and stuff like that, you’re putting people to sleep versus if you can tell a story about somebody else you helped.

Jeff, let me ask you about this adventure element in a story and how important it is. Typically, I see a lot of people in businesses giving quote, well, they call them case studies. Even that name sounds boring to me. As opposed to telling an exciting story of someone you helped as Mark was referencing. That you’re showing your skills and your experience as a tool to help somebody else. If you can paint that picture of taking somebody on that journey, that adventure, then they say, “Oh, that’s for me.” That’s what they’re hiring more than you or your credentials.

I guess my question would be do you have any tips on how to include adventure into a story? In other words, that there’s gotta be some conflict and some challenge that people are overcoming. It’s not just this boring we were hired to do this. We built it and we’re done.

Yeah. No, that’s a very good question. A couple things. One is in telling a story, especially if you’re pitching, you don’t wanna be the hero of your own story. That really looks your intent is self-aggrandizing and it’s not becoming.

It’s much better to tell a story where your client is the hero or someone you empowered or enabled wound up becoming heroic and accomplishing something. It’s really about them, which is essential so it’s important that you are the protagonist ’cause you’re there. That’s what you wanna tell, something that you were there for. It gives you credibility, but that you are not trying to make yourself look good.

The other thing about the adventure story. Everybody has heard the phrase the hero’s journey. Some folks know what it is and it’s a beautiful concept where Joseph Campbell looked at all the stories from Mesopotamia to modern times. He said, “There’s basically one schematic for the human experience and it’s in the stories that we tell.” I’m not gonna get into that except to say I recommend highly Joseph Campbell’s work on the hero’s journey. There are tapes. There’s books.

But what the hero’s journey basically is, very simply, in 20 seconds, is an individual sets out in an ordinary world. Something happens. There’s a really deep pit that winds up with this kind of sense of profound adversity and almost surrendering, but then we gain a sense of positivity as we defeat a dragon, as we gain a skill, as we meet an ally. Then we actually vanquish our foe after a moment of complete dissolution. Then we return to a point where things are okay. We learned the lesson. Then after we’ve learned the lesson, we return to share the lesson with others.

Every time we do that, that’s the completed sense of story that then belongs to us. You could tell that story in just a couple of phrases. When you do that, the person listening feels like they just saw a mini-movie. Kinda makes sense.

Basically, things are good. Things get really, really bad. How will our hero survive? There’s a couple of victories that make the hero feel stronger and successful. Then, the hero returns. You could be protagonist so things were great. Things got really bad. Somebody saved me. Fortune’s aided me and now I’ve learned these lessons, and I wanna share with you this view I got from the pit of despair from the mountaintop, from complete disaster.

We listen ’cause we’re happy to hear because we don’t want to ever have to whet it there ourselves. I think that so quickly and no one even knows, but in your mind if that had, that what Mark and I teach are strategies, architecture. If you have architecture in your mind, no one has to know that you got a map, but it will get you to where you wanna go every time.

I love that. When you have a map, you know where you’re going and then so does your audience if you do it right. Now let me ask you, Mark. People say well, at TED Talks, sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes less, a little bit more, but how much preparation do I really need to do it if I’m just speaking for 10 minutes? It’s actually one of my huge pet peeves when people say I don’t wanna practice my pitch. I’m like, “What’s your opening?”

“Ah, I don’t know. I’m just gonna wing it in the moment.” It drives me crazy and I think people have a fear of sounding robotic. Any advice, wisdom after hearing all of this sage? All these talks you’ve heard, you must have some insights into what really the difference between somebody being prepared and not prepared?

The person who’s prepared is someone who is truly embodied their entire talk. In the case of TEDxSanDiego, we have a team of speaker coaches. In fact, I just had a meeting last night with five of them to talk about this year’s event and every single speaker on our stage is assigned a speaker coach. They work with this coach over a four to five month period to craft that narrative, to come up with that idea to wordsmith it down to every single sentence of what are you saying and why? How is the audience gonna react to this? So that you truly do have a journey that you’re taking people on.

There are many techniques for how to open a talk and so you can discuss, which one works best in their case. How are you laying out your personal experience? There might be scientific data in there. How are you presenting that idea based on that journey? Then that closing.

One of the techniques I actually use is to tell speakers start at the end. Tell me what you’re gonna close with. Tell me that one line that the person’s gonna go out and tweet, that they’re gonna put on Facebook, that they’re gonna tell their mother, father, sister, brother. What is that kernel, that pearl of wisdom that you’re gonna give them?

Source: Pexels

[Tweet “Start With The End When You Work On Your Pitch.”]

Then as you construct your story, you constantly ask yourself are we going to that destination. Just like Jeff said with the map. When you have that map, you’re constantly saying, am I going off course here? Am I telling another story that’s not even relevant to this main theme? Those who are best prepared and really rehearse enough, they get beyond the robotic days of reciting and it moves through their head down to their heart.

Ah, nice. Well, that’s the tweet right there. How to move from your head into your heart ’cause I know what you teach is all heart centric based. The other big benefit of that is, guess what? All that preparation causes your confidence to soar, doesn’t it?

Source: Pexels

[Tweet “Move From Your Head To Your Heart”]

Well, absolutely. I’ve seen people who are very nervous and didn’t think they could do this and over a four month period, they come out on stage and they’re a rockstar.

What’s also interesting is when we do Speaker Adventure, which is a much shorter program, we also take people from an initial idea to coaching. We get ’em on stage and they’re actually presenting their talk three times over the weekend. By that third time on stage with cameras facing on them, we have seen these miraculous transformations of confidence because people really dug in. They did they work and they really brought their heart to the stage. And it’s visible.

Well, having two experts on the 30 minutes flies by much faster than it would have if I’d been able to just talk to you one on one, but you’re such a great team and we learn so much from each of you I’m thrilled that you both were willing to schedule a time that it all worked. Now are there any last minute thoughts that each of you wanna leave us with?

I would just say that when you become a storyteller, whatever happens to you in your life becomes grist for the mill. For a speaker, the worse it gets – my God – this is gonna be a great story.

I think part of the beauty of being a speaker and committing your life to any kind of art form is that we’re always on the search for the tastiest fruits, the most profound learnings that there’s nothing like creating a good story out of your life and if you don’t, you really haven’t lived.

Wow. That’s a great line. If you don’t have a good story, you haven’t lived. I love that. You’re playing it too safe.

Yeah.

How about you, Mark?

Yeah. I would probably answer that by saying that the most powerful storytelling is when your story becomes part of someone else’s story. That’s when you’ve imparted something wise and something powerful that they can take and weave into the fabric of their own life. That’s what we try to do in every turn when we’re working with somebody on developing their story. We want to find the piece of them that can affect someone else’s life.

Lastly, I would add is the reason that both Mark and I do this, if I may speak for the two us, is it because we’re enamored with speaking or storytelling? We’re enamored of the human experience. Helping people become better speakers is really helping them become better human beings. We get the real benefit. We get to see things happen. We get to be the mid-wives to magic every single time we work with a group.

Well, there’s a great line. The mid-wives to magic. That’s your new tag line from “The Pitch Whisper.” That’s great.

We’ll put the link in, but if anybody is listening and wants to just go right to it. It’s www.speakeradventure.com and why don’t you just share with us your Twitter handles real quick.

My Twitter handle is @GlobalPatriot.

 

There we are. Alright, well, we can find you on LinkedIn and other places I’m sure. Of course, your book “The Way of Adventure:” is on Amazon. Gentleman, thank you so much. You’ve been great guests.

 

Links Mentioned

• Book: “The Way of Adventure:”
• Website: www.speakeradventure.com
• Twitter: @GlobalPatriot

 

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